An impromptu adventure ...

Tonight, after bathing in the fine, sun-soaked waters of Lake Wanaka, Michelle and I returned to our overpriced quaint "Alpine Motel" to get all dandified for a quality evening at Cinema Paradiso, the local hot spot for cinema, where we watched The Imitation Game and sampled some of the "famous" homemade ice cream and cookies (NB movie was fantastic and I for one hope Cumberbatch's streak of playing misunderstood, socially awkward geniuses continues ad infinitum). In doing so, though, we left our little guy (the bustling bundle of 2.5 year old energy that he is) in the capable hands of our friend Saria, who joined us on this trip through Middle Earth all the way from Papua New Guinea where she works for Doctors Without Borders.

On our return, Saria related a rather humorous tale. Shortly after we left, Saria and Simon also went out for a sort stroll, but while Saria was locking our front door, Simon darted off through the conveniently open door in the motel room next to ours. He apparently took a quick look around, saw that the family was preparing to eat dinner (which included a heaping bowl of rice, one of our little guy's favorites) and proceeded to pull himself onto one of the chairs at the kitchen table. I can only imagine the Chinese family looked on with slightly befuddled amusement.

Saria of course ran in and pulled him away with apologies as he was reaching his hand toward the rice ... and the family was uber excited at Simon's mixture of (a) cute and (b) moxie ... but to me, the story underscores a rather simple theory I've had since Simon was born in Queen Mary hospital: A child born in Hong Kong will never be able to withstand the draw of adventure, Asians and rice. Put all three together, and the above tale seems as inevitable as the coming spring.