Hongkie Town

HBO series Rome. Season two, Episode three:

Cassius: So, if we could return to the subject of money. Please bear in mind, your excellency, that those who help us now will have good friends in Rome when Marc Antony, the traitor, is deposed. Very good friends. It's only a matter of time, with or without your help, we shall raise an army, we shall. Antony's head will rot on a spike.

Turkish king: There are Roman women who are fucked by babboons.

Cassius: Um, er, excuse me?

Turkish king: I have heard there are shows where such things can be seen.

Cassius: Um, er, ah, well they are not so much shows, really, they are more a punishment.

Turkish king: I should like to see that. We do not have such in Bithynia.

Cassius: I should imagine it's simply a matter of training the babboons.

Turkish king: We have no babboons here, no apes of any kind.

Cassius: Oh, er, uh, I wasn't aware of that. So, as I say, those who help us now ...

Turkish king: Yes. You want my money to raise an army. I want to see a Roman woman fucked by babboons.

Cassius. Mmm. Perhaps arrangements can be made.

and ....

Atia: You came in very late last night.

Marc Antony: Business.

Atia: Business involving wine, vomit and sex.

Marc Antony: I'm sorry, did I disturb you?

Atia: Not at all. Do please wake me before you come at me so. It would be a little less ... alarming.

and

Marc Anthony: I didn't bring you here to talk of children.

Cicero: Indeed. I await your pleasure.

(Anthony stands up, Cicero flinches, Anthony walks over and starts peeing in the potted plant next to Cicero as the conversation continues.)

Antony: When my term as Consul is over, I no longer wish to take the governorship of Macedonia. I wish to take Gaul.

Cicero: But Decimus is governor of Gaul.

Antony: Well he can have Macedonia if he likes.

Cicero: (trying to look away as Antony continues peeing) I'm afraid that will be a bit difficult. The Senate may suppose you plan to emulate Caesar, camping your legions on our border, close enough to Rome to scare us into doing anything you wish.

(The conversation continues. Cicero is unwilling to go along with Antony's plan but is visibly scared.)

Antony: Well you leave me only one option then.

Cicero: It always comes to this.

Antony: I know. I'm sorry. Such times we live in.

Cicero: Please, go on. Make your threats. I don't like to submit to mere implication.

Antony: Hmm. There's a question I've always wanted to ask you. Your old friend, Crassus, when he was captured by the Parthians, is it true that they poured molten gold down his throat, because that would really sting.

Cicero: Thank you. It is correct, what you say. The weather in Macedonia is dreadful.

(Antony leaves the room.)

(In a later scene, Antony arrives at the Senate but Cicero is not there. A senator informs Antony he has a letter written by Cicero and Antony instructs him to read it.)

Senator: (holding scroll aloft) These being the words of Marcus Tulius Cicero. (Unwraps scroll.) When I was a young man, I defended our state. As an old man, I shall not abandon it. I give sincere thanks to Marc Antony, who has generously presented me with the most promising theme imaginable.

(Antony smiles and laughs.)

Senator: I address you directly, Antony. Please listen as if you ... as if you ...

Antony: Go on.

Senator: Please listen as if you were sober and intelligent and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck. (Other senators start to leave the chamber.) You are certainly not without accomplishments. It is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age. You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction. (The senate empties out.) You are Rome's Helen of Troy. But then, but then ...

Antony: Go on. Go on!

Senator: ... a woman's role has always suited you best.

(Antony jumps up, grabs the scroll, beats the senator to death with it.)

History come to life. I love this series and look forward to each episode.

The Tokyo trip has suddenly become a whole lot less stressful because the local HR rep has informed me that I cannot legally do what I came here to do. I must take it more slowly and with a lot of unnecessary interim steps in order to ensure compliance with local laws. What should have taken two days will now take at least two months. If anyone ever wants to know why the Japanese economy never outstripped the US, this would be a good starting point.

After work, hit a used camera shop and got a Nikon 70-300mm zoom lens (but no VR) for around US$200. 5% discount if I can show my passport, so will pick it up tomorrow.

Then off with a member of my local team to a small sushi place he'd read about, on some side street near Shinbashi. Wow. Wowwers. Wowwee. From memory, three small bowls of tidbits, Japanese version of amusee bouche, one bowl was described to me as "baby anago" (I think). Then a plate of sashimi that just killed. The toro (can't recall now if oh-toro or chu-toro) just melted on my tongue.

At which point I decided to switch from tea to sake, especially happy to find they had one of my faves - Uragusume - served in a way I hadn't seen before. A glass placed inside of a square lacquer cube, filled so that it overflowed into the cube. Drink from the glass and from the cube. Either way, it was a big glass and it was refilled more than once.

Next some cooked tuna in some sauce. Then a bowl of lotus root and some other stuff. Some grilled whole fish. Some sushi, some maki and finally some ice cream.

One benefit of going to a tiny place like this - the sushi chef was a young guy and very friendly and talkative. We found out he's 33 years old and studied for 12 years. He said it's hard establishing his place because people see him as being too young. Well, he's definitely talented.

Since everything was so tasty (I kept telling him "oishi des!"), I asked if we could buy him a drink and he went for a "small beer." He returned the favor by buying us two glasses of plum wine.

After finishing the two hour dinner, I pulled out my camera and asked him to come out from the counter for a photo. And my battery was dead! So my friend pulled out his camera phone. As we stood and posed for a photo, I looked at the table next to us. One guy and three vaguely cute women (it may have just been sake goggles). I waved for them to come over and join us for the picture and one of the women actually got up and came over. She spoke a bit of English and was quite friendly but at this point I was too wasted to put in the work to get her away from her friends.

As we left the restaurant, the sushi chef said to us, "see you tomorrow!" I turned to the three girls at that table and said, "see you tomorrow!" and they all giggled and the guy sort of glared at me.

The cost for this amazing dinner was around US$100 per person but considering this is Japan, I think we got a bargain for the amount and quality of the fish we had. I would definitely go back there. Unfortunately the business card is all in Japanese but if anyone's interested, email me and I'll scan it and send it to you. Just tell 'em the crazy gaijin sent ya.

Walked a couple of blocks and found a taxi driver standing next to his cab smoking. He asked us to wait till he finished his smoke. Then on the way to my hotel he passed a box of candy back to me, I took one and settled in for a short ride.

Back at the hotel, asleep instantly for a couple of hours. Now it's 1 AM and I'm wide awake. Taxi to Roppongi? Is it worth it, lemme work it .....

Am now on the "new" blogger. And when someone leaves a comment, the email I get now says "x has left a comment on your post y." So there's that.

No desire to upgrade to Vista yet, even though usually I like to be ahead of the pack. But this time, maybe not so much. I read elsewhere someone recommended that the time to upgrade will be when Microsoft releases Vista Service Pack 1, and that advice makes a lot of sense.

There was some other stuff I was going to add but some other news that came my way this morning (business-related) that has me terribly distracted now.

(I wrote this Monday night, yanked it Tuesday morning, deciding to repost it now, unchanged. No explanations offered.)

Almost 2 AM here local time and I should be tired since I've been up since 7 AM HK time, though I did sleep a bit on the plane and the bus.

Every time I travel I forget one thing. The problem is it's a different thing each time. This time I forgot the cable to connect my Archos to the TV so I could lie in bed and watch movies. Now I can either hold the Archos in front of my face (the screen is amazingly clear but just 4.3 inches diagonal) or transfer to my PC and watch on that slightly larger screen.

(The problem is that I can't just buy a generic cable for the Archos, otherwise I'd just go out and grab one. I tried that when I first got it, a HK$38 generic mini-plug to 3 RCA plugs and it didn't work. Archos has done something weird, probably with the spacing of the connections. You can only use their own cable, which costs something like 300 or 400, fuckers. A longer post at another time, I think.)

Yes, I know, I should make a packing list as reference for all my travel. I keep forgetting.

Hard to figure out what balance here. I'm no longer comfortable blogging every detail of my personal life. Yet I know that not only does that bring the hit count up (which only matters to me in a very small way), it's also the stuff I probably write the best (and my writing is a big point of pride, though hard to tell sometimes, like now, right?).

So just a couple of observations.

Saturday night's dinner companions were T and two female friends, both local HK women. One of them reads the blog. She asked me why I couldn't be physically faithful to T. I said, only half in jest, that I know I'm damaged, that I've been to several shrinks and they didn't help, and at this point I'm old and not gonna live that much longer and so what's the point of changing now?

What I also told them was that at this point, there have been so many bust-ups between me and T that a wall has gone up for me after the last fight. I'm sure she notices, too, but being Thai I suppose she doesn't feel free to start that conversation. I'm being pessimistic here, anticipating the worst, and my anticipation may bring that "worst" along much sooner.

On the other hand, Sunday night, she was walking down the street to meet me at the Wanchai Computer Centre. I could see her from a block away. Her hair was down and flowing, she was smiling, she was wearing tight jeans with knee-high boots and just looked great. As she got closer, some white guy stepped up and tried to pick her up and got shot down.

I also know that when we were at Neptune on Saturday night with our two female friends, she took the two of them out to the dancefloor and on her way there and on her way back, some guy tried grabbing at her both times even though he was already standing with a girl. (Her sister later scolded her saying, "where is he? why didn't you tell me? why didn't you come and get me?") I have no trouble believing this. Even though she was just wearing jeans and a loose sweater, when she fixes herself up, not only does she look great, she doesn't look like any other girl in these bars, she can really stand out in the crowd though when I tell her that, she just laughs.

Anyway, I'm not completely stupid. I know this was her way of telling me, "hey, other guys find me attractive, what's up with you lately?"

And it was not entirely unsuccessful. On Sunday night, with all of this running through my head, I came up with a new position (new for us, anyway). It was pretty darned good, if I say so myself.

On the other hand, on Saturday in Neptune, she was looking for her friend J. I commented that I saw her earlier and that she looked very fuckable that night. (J is older than T, probably around 40 or so, but still quite nice.) T asked me if I wanted to fuck J, and I replied by saying, "even if I did, there's no way she would fuck me because she's your friend and she loves you and she hates me because she thinks I'm a helicopter." At which point T jumped up, looking for J, in an attempt to prove me wrong. Luckily, she could not find her. I suspect someone else also thought she looked fuckable and pulled her out of there.

Anyway, kind of hoping that with all these business trips I have coming up, the whole "absence makes the heart grow fonder" thing will kick in.

Oh, other note, Saturday night, walking up to Neptune, they had a frigging velvet rope in front of the place and a long line of girls patiently waiting to be let in. I asked one of the managers. He said the police have been hassling them about overcrowding and said they would be shut down if they didn't keep within their limit - he says they're only licensed for 200 occupants. And I'm sure on your typical Saturday night there's at least double that number in there. He expects the crackdown could last for a couple of weeks or so and then back to business as usual.

Well, after 2 AM local time. Gotta try and get some sleep. Would get in bed and read but the reading light by the bed is crap. But that's some of the personal stuff many of you have been asking for.

(And for those of you who think that's everything, no, it isn't. Believe it or not, I still manage to hold most of it back.)

The past few days ... gave up on the dead hard disk (only had a couple more days to go before warranty expired) and swapped it for a new one. Bought a PS3 (2 games, 1 Blu-Ray movie) and HD-TV - wasn't quite planning on the TV so soon but a window of opportunity opened. Got a 3 year old Sony 29 inch not-plasma not-LCD TV for sale cheap if anyone's interested. If no one's interested, perhaps someone might suggest a charity in HK that would be interested in getting it as a donation.

Saturday - crap sushi for lunch (only $28 for 8 pieces and well worth that amount)(yeah, I know, two days before coming to Japan, but T is staying home) and then Chinese style Korean BBQ for dinner (all you can eat in 90 minutes for $105 per person)(and yeah, I'm going to Seoul in two weeks, but T and the two other friends who joined us aren't). Then took our friends to Neptune as they were curious. T did a quick count and said there were at least 10 women there I'd been with at one point or another. Sunday night vaguely okay Thai food at Thai Farmer - not as good as Thai Hut but not too far off and at least you can sit, accompanied by the pounding coming from New Makati disco just upstairs.

One nice thing about Sunday in HK. You pack for a trip, realize you need a new gizmo, and the computer mall is still open and selling away at 8 PM on a Sunday night.

Flight to Tokyo - Cathay Pacific lounge in HKG no longer has smoking rooms. I am so pissed. One of the delights of travel for me - settling into the lounge for an hour, chilling out, free food and drink, massive doses of nicotine depending on length of upcoming flight. Now you gotta go all the way outside to one of the regular smoking rooms, where you can't sit, the room is filled with smoke. Pain in the crackpipe. Especially because I don't see why they didn't file for an exemption - the smoking rooms are very well separated from the rest of the lounge, they're separate rooms for fuck's sake, and if the airport can operate smoking rooms, why can't an invitation-only club?

Flight seemed more than half-empty and service was only half good. Did they cut back on staff because of number of empty seats? (Would make sense, wouldn't it?) But when I hit the little buzzer I had to wait ten minutes for someone to show up - and they weren't responding to the buzzer, it was drink service. Bleh.

Then, well, I knew in advance ... I've stayed in the same hotel here (Imperial) 25 or 50 times and have been trying to avoid it the last few trips. The hotel I like now (Grand Hyatt) was fully booked. So was the new Prince Park Tower. Other hotels I want to try (new Conrad and new Four Seasons) are too expensive even for my budget. So I'm at a small place in Ginza that I used one time about 10 years ago. It's actually quite nice except taxi drivers don't know where it is (even though I know the Japanese name) because it's small and my Japanese is meager and so even though these guys all have GPS I end up having to yank out my map book and show it to them.

Spent a coupla hours at HMV and Tower Records in Shibuya. Bought some CDs and some Japanese tattoo magazines. Not that I expect to have time to get any ink while I'm here (though one never knows), the magazines are great anyway. Not seeing much odd stuff but then again not in the mood to really comb the aisles carefully. There is a DVD of Led Zepp, Earls Court 75, but it's selling cheap and wonder if it's any good. Also spotted a DVD of Miles Davis live in Europe in 67 (Shorter, Hancock, Williams, braindead, can't recall the bass player and I should be able to) but black and white and short running time. Did buy Japanese editions of some recent albums I've liked (bonus tracks) and a couple of things sounded good on the listening station - The Shins and a band called, apparently, "!!!". Was looking for some kinda funky, downbeat, jazzy compilation but started getting hungry before I heard anything that sounded like what I wanted. So many listening stations, so little time.

Even in the cold weather and all bundled up (well, more covered than usual) the girls in Shibuya and Roppongi look ever so yummy.

Shaky - you leave some comment as anonymous to some old post of mine and I'm supposed to know which post it was so that I can respond to you there? Life's too short. You follow the link to "view my complete profile" and there's an email link there. If your question was regarding what I think it was, I didn't like the FM transmitter for the iPod because the only way to get a blank station that stayed blank was to disconnect the car's antenna. Any spot on the dial that seemed blank would come to life as soon as I came round some bend or over some mountain. So the iPod would cut in and out, interference from radio stations, basically useless. And I didn't want to disconnect the antenna from the head unit or remove the antenna from the car.

And that's it for now. Gonna take a bath, maybe watch a movie or listen to some toons, zone out, the next three days will not be pleasant ones.

This article in the NY Times instantly caught my attention this morning:

In Clue to Addictive Behavior, a Brain Injury Halts Smoking

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting today that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

“This is the first time we’ve shown anything like this, that damage to a specific brain area could remove the problem of addiction entirely,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which financed the study, along with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”

I know what's gonna happen next. There's going to be a massive outbreak of attacks on cigarette smokers and the attackers will use this as their defense, saying "I wasn't trying to hurt the guy, I was trying to help him" and lawyers will wave this article around and the attackers will not just get acquitted, they will get medals.

True Story: I played piano from the time I was about 5 years old till I was around 20. I wasn't brilliant but I didn't suck. When I was 18, I was in a car accident, smashed my head on the steering wheel and had a severe concussion. When I recovered, I found I'd lost my ability to play different things with each hand simultaneously - e.g. playing rhythm or bass lines with the left hand while playing melody or soloing with the right hand. It never really came back and it's one reason why I quit playing. So I believe this whack-on-the-head thing to quit smoking could be for real. However, please do not attempt to try it out on me. If you don't kill me with the first blow, I will hurt you. A lot. No, I won't hit you, I don't do that. I'll just get my ex-wife to marry you.

Went to the Wanchai Computer Center.

First I was looking at the My-Blu, an accessory for the iPod that adds a remote control, FM radio and bluetooth with the headphones of your choice (connectible to both the iPod and your phone). The list price in HK for this is $600.

The first shop that I went into quoted a price of $720. I couldn't recall the list price at the time and just said to the guy, "that seems too high." He responded, "how much do you want to pay?" I walked out of the shop.

The next shop I checked quoted me a price right away of $550. But at that point I started to question how much I'd actually use this and decided to live without it.

Then I started looking at PS3's - I'm more interested in the Blu-Ray DVD player; I'm not big on videogames. But I realized I had forgotten to research one important point: region codes.

Shop A gave me the right information, that the PS3 they were selling would play US, Japan and HK DVDs. However, they told me the price of the PS3 was $5,500, with two games. The PS3 should be under $4,000 and the games sell for around $400 to $500 each, so I walked out of the shop.

Shop B had a guy working there who told me that the PS3 would only play HK Blu-Ray DVDs and it would not play US ones. (This same guy told me that HD-DVDs also have region codes, so the XBOX 360 wouldn't play US HD-DVDs, which is not true at all.) So was he an idiot? No, in retrospect, I think he misunderstood me and was giving me info about normal DVDs and not hi-def formats.

The price he quoted me for the machine was $3,980, but that's slightly higher than the list price for HK. As these now seem to be in ample supply, I have no intention of spending more than the list price. Perhaps I'll simply get one when I'm in Tokyo next week.

Last, the Logitech MX Revolution mouse. U.S. list price is $100 and it's widely available discounted at $80 or less. All the shops in the computer mall had it priced at HK$960, which is a tad under US$130.

Basically, if you go shopping for this kind of stuff in HK and you haven't done your research first, most shops will fuck you up, down and sideways - sometimes on purpose and sometimes because the people working in this shop are either stupid or just can't be bothered to learn about what they're selling.

Had I done more checking in advance, I would have skipped the Wanchai Computer Center and just gone to the Oriental 188 Shopping Center on Wanchai Road. AV Bi-Weekly magazine reports the 60 gig PS3 is selling for $3,780 there.

See, the thing is, there are a lot of locally published magazines - in Chinese - that cover this stuff in extreme detail - reviews, features, list prices and price comparisons at different shops. Local English-language coverage of this kind of stuff is minimal at best. Sure you can get American or Brit magazines for news and reviews or check the various web sites, but what you won't get is local price guidance.

What I do is I buy the local Chinese magazines. My ability to read Chinese is limited and I'm more familiar with simplified characters rather than traditional and of course I can recognize the Chinese characters for different districts. And surprise! The stuff you absolutely need to see - model numbers, specs, prices, phone numbers - is almost all in English. When I'm really stuck, I can just show a page to someone in my office and ask them to translate for me. E-Zone costs $15 per issue. AV Bi-Weekly is $18. Other mags are similarly cheap.

It's kind of like newspapers. Back in the US, you get used to a Sunday newspaper that weighs 10 pounds and is crammed with color inserts that, among other things, tell you of sales at supermarkets and pharmacies. The English-language paper in HK is crammed full of ads for expensive watches and real estate investment opportunities in foreign lands. But the Chinese language papers are crammed with those color ads (as are the more general interest Chinese magazines like Ming Pao).

I know, for some of you people reading this, the above is blindingly obvious. But perhaps for some of you, maybe not so much and maybe useful to know?

My brain is on the verge of exploding:

* Two deadlines in front of me and no idea what to write (or the basic ideas are there but the hooks are missing)(and after SCMP edited destroyed one of my jokes, does that mean I don't have to work so hard to be so creative in so few words for now on?)

* Four business trips tentatively planned for the next 5 weeks (Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, Mumbai in case anyone's interested).

* A major problem with a member of my staff in another country

* Oh, and sticking the hard disk on a block of ice so far hasn't yielded any difference at all (time to give up).

* What to eat for dinner tonight.

So in order to distract myself from all of this, thinking about HD. Of course the centerpiece of an HD set-up is the TV and am trying to educate myself on all this. LCD vs. Plasma. 1080p vs 1080i. Contrast ratios. HDMI. I was hoping that something reasonable might be found for under $20k but a quick pop into Broadway and it looked like there was nothing there under $24k that was full HD.

And then what for an HD-DVD player? I was tempted by news that LG has released a unit that plays both HD and Blu-Ray. I asked Koji Hase, the co-inventor of the DVD, what he thought of this machine and he shot back that the DVD Forum is refusing to certify it because it does not support HDi. I'm sure that other combo players will arrive at some point but do I want to wait?
An alternative would be to buy both the XBOX and PS3, I suppose.




I am so good at procrastinating. Wish I could get paid for that. Though I suppose, in a sense, I do.

$30 US to download this 75 page book on how to date Asian women. Judging by the summary on the web site, there's nothing there I couldn't have written. Only this guy did it first. Wonder if he actually makes any money off this? (Somehow I suspect he's getting rich.)

Klong bar shutting down at end of the month, closing down party I think this weekend. This was my ex's prime hangout after they closed JJ's. Three or four years ago this place would be mobbed almost every night, now the crowd has moved on and the landlord has increased the rent and they're either giving up or changing the concept.

Dinner last night at Devil's Advocate, 2 for 1 main dishes on Tuesdays, usually reliable but last night fucking beastly. First off there were four of us, the waitress didn't write anything down when we gave our orders, and she only placed orders for three dishes. The dishes each came out 5 minutes apart instead of at the same time and mine was cold. When we asked about the fourth, she tried to cover up her mistake and said it would be another 5 minutes. My friend was ready to cancel but I said, what's the point, it's free, so we waited for what turned out to be 30 minutes, at which point we said just wrap it to go. I then told the waitress she owed us free desserts or a round of free drinks for her screw up and we got the round of free drinks - however, we were drinking cokes and iced teas, so not much gain there. They have Long Island iced tea by the pitcher, maybe I should have asked for one of those instead.

Stopped in at the new Bull and Bear Pub. Their sign says "established 1974" but does that really count when they were shut down for six years and are now at a new location (prime viewing just down the street from Laguna)? May try the food there one of these days. $88 three course dinners, not too shabby.

And that's about it. Picked up some of the local mags to check out their coverage of HD TVs. AV Bi-Weekly has a cover story reviewing three 1080p TVs. But from what I'm reading now, I think I can go for 1080i and save at least a small bit o' change.

The 12 comments to my last post were certainly interesting reading. By way of response, I imagine that some of you have figured out that I don't post every little detail of my life - although I suppose it can sometimes seem that way. The anonymous commenter who wrote "something must be right if it has lasted this long without the two of you killing each other" is the one who comes closest to the way I feel about things. Whereas the one who felt compelled to write "disgusting" clearly hasn't read the blog description up top. And that's all I'm going to say about that - for now, anyway - except to say that T is on notice that if we have another week like last week, she's out of here and she seems to understand that.

As for me, a slow couple of days. The new RAID unit is working mostly okay - though I note that despite the presence of 2 internal fans, it has shut down twice in the past week of its own accord. Meanwhile the old, failed drive can only seem to come alive long enough for me to copy about 300-600 megs off at a time (even with trying the "overnight in the freezer" trick that some commenters recommended). This is a problem because some of the files on there are far larger than 600 megs.

Through constant rebooting and also re-obtaining some of the data from other sources, I've probably recovered more than 200 gig of the 350. Not great but better than nothing. I have a few days left before the warranty runs out, so will grab what I can and then take it back to the vendor for a replacement.

That's not my only computer problem at the moment. Before I left for my extended holiday, my Mac Mini was acting up in small ways - the "SuperDrive" started spitting out blank DVD-Rs. When I came back from vacation, the Mini refused to boot up at all. It just comes up with an icon of a file folder with a question mark. So somehow the internal disk on that has become corrupted. I haven't started to deal with this yet.

Fortunately all of the important data on the Mac was backed up right before I left, with the exception of my iPod/iTunes library. And, also fortunately, last month I'd decided to re-format my iPod on the PC, rather than on the Mac, because the Mac can read both formats but the PC can't, meaning I couldn't update the iPod while on the road using my laptop.

I then used Yamipod (Yet Another Ipod Manager)(shouldn't it be Yet Another Manager for Ipod?) which is freeware. It allowed me to copy off all the songs on my iPod to the PC. However, I couldn't replicate the original directory structure on my hard disk, which means that all of my playlists in iTune are blown and need to be recreated. That will just take a couple of hours - as opposed to if I had to start ripping CDs from scratch again.

Another tech item ... shouldn't the repair work on the Asian internet be almost done by now? I haven't noticed any news items on this lately. But I have noticed that internet during "prime time" is fucking horrendous lately. I use Giganews for my usenet stuff. They have an online speed test that allows you to connect to their various servers in the United Snakes and download a 3 meg file, with a nice graphic to show you the current speed.

Right now (2 PM) I'm getting a connection speed of about 700 kbps and can download that file in 34.8 seconds. Late at night, I can get about double that speed. But at "prime time," roughly between 7 PM and midnight, the speed goes down to about 2kbps. That's ridiculously useless.

Object of desire: Logitech Dinovo Edge keyboard. Retail price is US$200. For a keyboard. Looks really sweet though. Problem is, at least to my knowledge, one can't expect more than just a minimal discount on this sort of item at the computer malls. While at Amazon it is selling for $170 and on eBay someone has a "buy it now" price of $150. (Their high end Logitech MX Revolution mouth sells for $100 list, $80 on Amazon, and I've yet to see it discounted in any meaningful way in HK. So buy it from the US, get the wrong power adapter, and by the time you add in shipping charges, it costs just as much as buying it locally.)(Sigh.)

The annoying bit was that a few months back they were pimping the Logitech MX Revolution mouse as the "ultimate mouse" and now that they've got their so-called "ultimate keyboard," they use different wireless methods - the mouse using some proprietary wireless thing and the keyboard using bluetooth. What's wrong with these people? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing or what?

Sometimes you run across those blogs where someone does a minute-by-minute listing of everything they do in 30 minutes or a day or a lifetime or whatever. I can't quite do a minute-by-minute because I wasn't taking notes, but yesterday I had 12 hours that went a little something like this:

4:00 PM - We break up for good.

4:01 to 4:30 PM - She tells me everything I've done that she doesn't like. It's not that long a list but she reviews each item repeatedly.

4:31 to 5:59 PM - She tells me all her future plans, which change every minute. She's going back to her old job in HK. She's leaving HK and returning to her family. She's leaving HK and moving to Bangkok and going to look for a waitress job. She will move her stuff out tonight. She will move her stuff out tomorrow. She needs a few days to get all her stuff moved out.

6:00 PM - She asks if I'm hungry and cooks dinner.

6:30 PM - We eat dinner. Damn, she is a talented cook.

7:00 PM - She asks if I really want to break up with her, tells me I'm the only person she's ever loved aside from her family and that she can change and that I should give her one more chance.

7:01 - 8:00 PM - I tell her everything she's done that I haven't liked. I tell her that most people don't find 100% of what they want in relationships and I do get around 70% in this one and that I need to decide if I just settle for that or try to find the whole 100%.

8:01 - 8:30 PM - I list her good points and then go back to the way she annoys the crap outta me sometimes.

8:31 to 9:00 PM - The fighters retire to separate neutral corners.

9:01 PM to 11 PM - I go out, meet a friend (who also has a Thai girlfriend) at Devils. I start out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. No, fuck that, I start right in on the hard stuff. We discuss how our women are making us fucknuts. I decide that since it's mostly been good, I should give her that one more chance. I call and tell her that and then tell her I'm still gonna stay out and get wasted.

11:01 to 11:30 PM - We move to Dreams. I drink more. I say some incredibly funny stuff, none of which I can remember now.

11:31 PM to 12:00 Mid - Over to Fenwick. I am now the smoothest guy in the room, for reasons I cannot remember.

12:01 AM to 12:30 AM - Boracay. Flirt with a waitress I know. Another girl I know comes in, leading two guys. Another waitress flirts with me, causing me to spill my drink and break my glass.

12:31 AM to 1:30 AM - Over to Neptune. Talk with T's sister and one of her friends. Several other acquaintances come up to me and say various things. Starting to feel wasted.

1:31 AM to 1:40 AM - I have some discussion with one of the managers at Chinatown, and the waitress there who looks a little like J-Lo.

1:41 AM to 2:15 AM - Dusk Till Dawn.

2:16 AM to 2:25 AM - Taxi ride home.

2:36 AM to 2:45 AM - Tell her that I'm going to give her one more chance. Tell her some of the shitty things I do that I don't think I'm capable of stopping and ask her if she still wants to deal with all of that.

2:46 AM to not-quite-sure AM - Make-up sex.

Shots taken from the outdoor deck at the China Club. Went there for a dinner on Friday night, stepped out onto the deck to smoke, and was glad I had my camera in my pocket. These were taken with the Canon Ixus 800 IS, all hand-held, and just a minor bit of processing in Picasa.

Looking towards Admiralty, with the "World Carnival" rides at Tamar visible.

Panning slightly to the right ...

The Cheung Kong Center and the Bank of China Tower.

Looking out towards the harbor and Kowloon beyond.

A few pictures from the Eric Clapton show from Wednesday night. Yes they're small, but trust me, they look a lot better this size than full screen. These here are just with the optical zoom. As expected, those pictures taken with the digital zoom were useless.



And here's the crowd headed to the MTR after the concert, shots looking ahead and behind taken seconds apart.

Tonight, there was a party at the Priory Bar on Wyndham Street, free food and drinks from 6 till 9 PM. As you might expect, the place was mobbed. I don't much care for crowded bars, believe it or not, unless I have a specific purpose for being there.

As you might guess, the Wyndham Street bar scene is a very different one from the type I normally participate in. And the crowd was also very different from the kind of people I generally either hang out with or observe.

Years ago I worked in Central and now I work in Siberia Quarry Bay. I can't entirely express the difference. Is the QB crowd more local and the Central crowd more cosmopolitan? Is the Central crowd merely more affluent? I'm not sure.

I can really only speak for the people I work with. The division of the company I work for has about 80 people, only two of whom (myself included) are not Chinese. These people mostly do not "hang out." They don't go to bars after work and they don't eat in the city's finest restaurants. The rare few who do hit a bar after work don't go to the nearby western style bars like East End Brewery or Einstein. They choose a dark neighborhood place with a Chinese name that translates as Flying Dragon and the probably-purposely-obtuse English name of "Mandom." This place always has some beer on special, a bucket of six bottles for $100. It is playing crappy kiddy disco/house music that no one listens to. There may be a TV showing football but most of the people there are playing various dice games. It is typical of local-style bars in HK. A couple of years ago I was dating a local woman, divorced, over 40, who only liked to go to these kinds of bars. I found them boring and depressing, it was no surprise that we didn't last long.

So Priory had a different crowd. Probably half western, half Asian, though I'd venture to say that almost everyone there was speaking in English. And as I was wearing jeans, sneakers and a t-shirt, I stood out for being dressed far worse than the crowd, not that I care much about that. These people were, shall we say, hip enough to go to Wyndham Street rather than Lan Kwai Fong and the bar itself was quite nice. Maybe it was the crowd, but I found the entire thing tremendously unappealing. We were waiting for a friend to join us before going elsewhere for dinner. I called the friend and said I had to get out of there and told her to meet us at the restaurant.

We had dinner at Zest, my first time there. Well reviewed, I had high hopes for this place but I found the starters unremarkable. My tuna carpaccio was average, T didn't care for her duck liver thingie, and our friend's bowl of soup looked blah. But then the mains arrived. My veal shank was so tender and tasty that I almost started quivering, and yet it paled next to the incredible sea bass dish T was having and the pork belly that our friend ordered. The desserts were even more special. It's entirely possible that their lemongrass creme brulee was the best creme brulee I've ever tasted.

Following dinner, we went back to Priory. The party was over but our friend is a friend of the owner and had other friends hanging out there. The crowd now was younger, hipper, looser. There were some astonishingly good looking women to be seen.

We got on the subject of tattoos and I showed some of mine. Someone else showed hers and had to display a fair amount of very lovely skin to do so (no, it was not on her butt, just a matter of where it was vs. what she was wearing). As I talked about where I got my tattoos, one of the guys leaned over and whispered in my ear, "You've given yourself away, mate. Jimmy Wong, temple tattoos, you must be Spike." Yes indeed, I must be. And I soon discovered that one of the people I was talking to was the writer of a blog that I read daily. And I then found out a lot about this person that never made it to their blog.

For some reason, I started feeling old. Generally I don't have that feeling, even when hanging out with people half my age, but tonight, at this bar, at this place, at this time, I began to feel very unsettled. Certainly no one was treating me any differently than anyone else, everyone was friendly. I may just have been tired, it may just have been the alcohol, but I was feeling very out of my element, very out of place. I have some ideas as to why, and believe it or not, writing this out has helped me to focus on it better. But I have no need (at this moment, anyway), to share those ideas.

After finishing my drink, T and I went back home.

In the taxi, she told me that it was the birthday of some friend, that the friend was having a party but she'd told her she couldn't go. I told her she could go now if she wanted, and she said she didn't want to, and then, as always, as the taxi neared home, she said "actually, would it be alright if I go for a little bit," which I basically expected. So I got out, she went to her party, and I was left alone with my thoughts.

She came back after a couple of hours. A bit more drunk than when she left. Wanting some attention about something that I can't quite understand. And I know I can't explain to her how I'm feeling right now either ...

Good and bad and in between.

The band: Eric Clapton (guitar / vocals), Doyle Bramhall II (guitar), Derek Trucks (guitar), Willie Weeks (bass), Steve Jordan (drums), Chris Stainton (keyboards), Tim Carmon (keyboards), Michelle John (backing vocals), Sharon White (backing vocals). The three-piece horn section from the earlier Euro leg of the tour isn't with them for Asia.

Bare stage, just a curtain behind, simple light set-up, two large screens hung from the ceiling showing the video feed.

I was really (pleasantly) shocked when the first 4 or 5 songs were all Derek & the Dominos ditties, and he hit 2 other D&D songs later on. The highlight was a nicely played version of Hendrix' Little Wing.

The lowlight was that it seemed as if Clapton, Bramhall and Trucks were each going to take a turn soloing on every damned song. Trucks and Bramhall are better-than-average guitarists of course, but there didn't need to be quite so much of them. By the third song they even made space for Weeks to do a bass solo. I was dreading a 15 minute drum solo; thankfully that never came.

After 5 songs, they re-set the stage and Clapton did a solo blues number (aka "time for most of the audience to find the toilet"). Then an acoustic number with the band, then a semi-acoustic with the band, then back to stand-up rock 'n blues. The first set ended with a nice version of Layla and the two song encore was Cocaine and Crossroads. (Songs not played included Blues Power, After Midnight, I Shot the Sheriff, Lay Down Sally, Tears in Heaven, Change the World.) The entire show was about an hour and three quarters, no opening act.

They started out sloppy and if you've been to Asiaworld Expo you know the acoustics are dreadful. But the band really came together in the second half of the show and Clapton's playing was quite lovely in spots, reminding me of why I liked him so damned much so damned long ago.

As I'd guessed, this was T's first time to go to a rock concert and she enjoyed every minute. Her attention was fixed on stage for every song and she sang along with the chorus to the one song she knew (Cocaine). I told T that hopefully soon I could bring her to a show with higher energy (the crowd mostly sat throughout the concert). Perhaps the upcoming Youssou N'Dour show might fit the bill.

Leaving Asiaworld after the concert, a freaking mess, but expected, with most of the crowd heading to the MTR. They do a vaguely good job of crowd control with one exception ... as you're patiently waiting along the walkway to the track, you are assaulted with the same recording played over and over, in English and in Cantonese, telling you that the train platform is really crowded and that "access is restricted," at top volume - perhaps the assumption is that you're deaf after listening to the devil's music and you wouldn't hear this urgent safety message unless it punctured your ear drums. Music or even silence would have been much nicer.

I know, the above is all a bit jumbled, just wanted to get my impressions down tonight, tomorrow's a busy day.

Being somewhat braindead today (for reasons that I will soon make obvious), here is the best that I can do:

1 - Does it count as makeup sex if you haven't really made up? Do we need to invent a new term or does "Fight Club" handle it?

2 - If you're having one fight per week and having a round of makeup sex every week, is that a good thing? (See reference to "Fight Club" at #1, above)

3 - And last, without going into too many details, why is it that T needs to get drunk in order to tell me what she's really thinking?

Let's just say that last night, I was up until 4 AM and when I finally went to sleep, I left my mobile phone in the living room and also forgot to forward it to the landline, missing an urgent 7:30 AM call from my boss. However, as I was up until 4 AM, I'm not sure what kind of shape I would have been in had I taken the call.

And since I don't have the time to take some sort of nap today, falling asleep during tonight's performance by Mr. Clapton, a man who once "claimed to have bedded more than 1,000 women and once ordered a fellow musician to let him have sex with his girlfriend." But is sleeping with a thousand woman better, worse or the same as having makeup sex on a weekly basis? Discuss.

T returns to HK tonight. Tomorrow night will go see Eric Clapton.

To the best of my recollection, I've only seen Clapton live in concert twice. The first time was around 69 or 70, at the Fillmore East, as part of "Delaney and Bonnie and Friends Featuring Eric Clapton," a show that still stands out as one of the best concerts I've ever been to. But despite the presence of Clapton, Bonnie Bramlett was the standout that night. I still remember, we had 8 row center seats. The opening acts, if I'm not mistaken, were Wilbert Harrison (doing a one man band thing and concluding with his sole hit, Kansas City) and then Seals & Crofts, back before they had any hits. We had 8th row seats and when D&B hit the stage, this really cute blonde asked if she could sit on my lap during the show. And as soon as they hit the encores, she ran to her boyfriend, ten rows further back. (sigh)

The second time was around 74, at the Boston Garden. I was working backstage at that show. As soon as Clapton hit the stage we hit his dressing room, loaded with food and cases of vodka. Clapton's family from Toronto came to attend the show and the stand-out that night was his cute 17 year old cousin. We talked for awhile and I had a brief fantasy (probably fueled by the vodka and several other substances consumed that evening) of marrying into his family.

Years have passed and Clapton says he can't play Layla anymore, his fingers just don't move like they used to. And, with a few exceptions, his 30+ year solo career has rarely moved me as much as his work with Yardbirds, Mayall, Cream, Blind Faith or Derek and the Dominos (which remains one of my all time top ten albums). But respect is due to the man for surviving, if nothing else. Forty years at the top is no accident. So I'll be at the concert. And I'll try not to fall asleep. Hope he stays awake too.

The awards season has officially begun with the Golden Globes. It's a weird award, given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of less than 100 foreign journalists who cover the American entertainment scene. Despite being a small group, they manage to get their award show telecast each year and also manage to get most of the nominees to attend. This is seen as some sort of barometer for the Oscars.

The lead story for most news reports will likely be that Helen Mirren won two awards for playing two different Queen Elizabeths. Or that an American film won for best foreign language film.

Motion Picture, drama - Babel
Actress, drama - Helen Mirren
Actor, drama - Forest Whitaker
Motion Picture, music or comedy - Dreamgirls
Actress, music or comedy - Meryl Streep
Actor, music or comedy - Sacha Baron Cohen
Supporting Actress - Jennifer Hudson
Supporting Actor - Eddie Murphy
Director - Martin Scorsese
Screenplay - Peter Morgan "The Queen"
Foreign Language Film - Letters From Iwo Jima
Animated Film - Cars
Original Score - Painted Veil
Original Song - Song of the Heart from Happy Feet

TV Series, Drama - Grey's Anatomy
Actress, Drama - Kyra Sedgwick
Actor, Drama - Hugh Laurie
Series music or comedy - Ugly Betty
Actress, music or comedy - America Ferrera
Actor, music or comedy - Alec Baldwin
Mini series - Elizabeth I
Actress, mini series - Helen Mirren
Actor, mini series - Bill Nighy
Supporting actress, mini series - Emily Blunt
Supporting actor, mini series - Jeremy Irons

First lemme say a word about Hightech Computer, shop 153 in the Wanchai Computer Centre. These guys sell a lot of types of stuff but it's my impression that they really know their shit when it comes to hard disks.

When the drive died, I called them up. Now since I bought the drive more than two months ago, most shops in my experience would have simply given me the local distributor's phone number and hung up the phone. These guys offered several suggestions on the phone. When that didn't work, they told me to bring the drive down to their shop.

They broke out a USB/SATA drive box, put the drive into it, and tried to get it going. When that didn't work, they opened up a new 500 gig drive (without my ever committing to buying anything new from them) and tried to use Norton Ghost to copy my drive over. That didn't work either.

The thing is, I give them credit for actually making several credible attempts to help me out, when they didn't need to, because they're good guys. And I ended up buying two 500 gig disks and an E-SATA RAID enclosure from them. I was too shell-shocked and appreciative to ask for any discount - they gave me a couple of hundred bucks off without my asking.

The RAID thingie comes from the Raidon Corporation in Taiwan. The instruction booklet kicks off with the following phrase:

"Set up easily by humanization LCD operate interface."

That's the worst, though I also liked "After the installation of RAIDGuide RAID Manager software completed, you can start the program right now." So I can start it right now, before the installation?

Anyway, time to get some sleep and then back to this when I get up.

HELP!!!!!!!!

I have two hard disks in my PC, both serial ATA drives. The D drive is 500 gigs (with just 150 gig free space).

When I boot my PC, the D drive is there and I can look at it in Explorer and see all the files that are supposed to be there.

Within 5 minutes of booting up, even if I don't do anything on the drive in the meantime, the drive "disappears" and is unreachable. Because the drive is so large and "goes away" so fast, I don't have a chance to complete any type of error checking or virus scanning on it.

Because it's a S-ATA drive, I can't shove it into a USB box and see if it's accessible that way (well, for the moment, I don't own a USB enclosure that will accept a S-ATA drive).

At the moment, I'm thinking/hoping the problem could be the motherboard, that some circuit or transistor starts up normally but then heats up and cuts out.

Anyone have any (useful) thoughts or advice????

There is a search engine called, ahem, Dogpile. It simultaneously searches Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask and others and compiles the results into a single result set.

Someone found me via a search on this Dogpile place. They searched for "Hong Kong sluts." This blog is result #19. (Result #25 - Mariah Carey sues Hong Kong promoter.) (Result #52 - The Hong Kong Writers' Circle.)

I can't begin to tell you how thrilling it is to be recognized within one's own lifetime. And I'm sorry this site isn't as slutty as it used to be. As Kurtis Blow says, these are the breaks.

First day back in the office after being away for three weeks. Weird.

I noticed an ad in the SCMP that says that NOW is running some kind of promotion on the PS3. I don't have any interest in the games but I do have interest in the box as a cheap Blu-Ray player.

Have been trying to find it on the internet and have tried PCCW.com, NOW.com, netvigator.com, now.com.hk and of course nothing on any of those sites. Netvigator's site does have a box informing you that they have been the "designated Playstation partner for three consecutive years" but it doesn't link to anything - not to a special offer for the PS3, not to a press release informing you what the fuck it means that they're a Playstation partner and why I should care about it.

now.com.hk, which is the portal for legal digital downloads of music and video and game content in HK of course doesn't offer an English translation. The assumption (probably correct) that the majority of people who can't read Chinese wouldn't be interested in cantocrap cantopop and the assumption (probably incorrect) that most local people aren't interested in most western music.

Turning to the PCCW Online Shop, one notices that under "digital images," there is a category called "Memroy Cards." And if one takes a look at their plasma TV offerings, there is one model from a company called "Samsang." The Panasonic VIERA TH-42PV500H 42" Plasma TV is shown as having an original price of $32,800 and a sale price of $32,800.

At the Netvigator "NETcash" store, in the section called "trendy gadgets," one can find "NICI Polar Bear slippers" and a "NICI Polar Bear cushion." Someone please tell me how a cushion qualifies as a "gadget."

I suppose PCCW has given up caring about their public image (not that I'm sure they ever really did).

Elsewhere on the net, just thought it worth mentioning that if you're a fan of one particular aspect of Fumier, that aspect being his more-than-occasional-blogging about bad drivers in HK, then you owe it to yourself to check out Brian Donovan's Descriptors. It seems that he has undertaken a one-man (occasionally abetted by his wife) mission to stop people from eating and drinking on the MTR, and blogging every detail as his quest moves forward.

Of all the stuff in the news today, nothing has made me go "wha?" as much as the tale of a woman who entered and won a contest called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii." A 28 year old woman, appropriately named Jennifer Strange, entered a contest in which the person who could drink the most water without going to the toilet would win a videogame console. She died 24 hours later from water intoxication.

Is it worth it, let me work it
I put my bang down,
flip it and reverse it

Last but hardly least, I was very happy to turn up at my local lunch-time watering hole and find a sign in the window that said "SMOKING ALLOWED." And all the bars that I frequently frequent in Wanchai were allowing smoking last night. People are worried about secondhand smoke? Worried about inhaling carcinogens? Wake up people. You live in Hong Kong, rapidly becoming one of the most polluted cities in the world (though of course most major mainland cities are far worse). You care so much about what you breathe, move to Fiji.

The other night I had a date
With the cutest little girl in the United States
A high-bred, uptown, fancy little dame

She loved me and it seemed to me
That things were 'bout like they oughta be
So hand in hand we strolled down lover's lane

She was oh so far from a cake of ice
And our smoochin' party was goin' nice
So help me cats I believe I'd be there yet

But I give her a kiss and a little squeeze
And she said, "ah, Marty, excuse me please
I just gotta have me another, cigarette"

And she said, smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff and if you smoke yourself to death
Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate
That you hate to make him wait
But you just gotta have another cigarette

Back in Hongkie Town.

Last day a relatively slow one. Shave and a hair cut - not two bits but close. Late dinner at soi 7 seafood market. Over to Gulliver's, waiting for Jimmy Wong, ran into the usual krewe, farewell drinks. Madman Gary created his own dance floor. I think he's added about 10 more tattoos from various artists in the past week; told him that soon he's gonna run out of space elsewhere and have to do his forehead. Then late drinks with Jimmy at a beer bar that could stay open after hours because the police were also drinking there (in uniform, presumably on duty, probably collecting a chunk of revenue from the bar). Then a really late supper at one of the makeshift food stalls open all night along Sukhumvit.

The political landscape in Thailand worries me. I was going to start looking for a place to buy (not that I can really afford it, but seems like I'm better off stretching and doing it sooner rather than later) but this military government seems like a bunch of idiots running around in the dark and bumping into each other. They are still clueless about the New Year's Eve bombs (which makes one wonder if someone's claim that the government did it themselves to have something else to blame Thaksin with); they revoked Thaksin's diplomatic passport; they have told all news media that "we're not censoring you but don't publish any news reports on Thaksin because it's bad for the country;" some discussions in the papers over martial law. Combine that with capital controls, clampdowns on foreign ownership and other moves that have shaken the stock market and may have foreign investment running for other shores and you just have to wonder what they're going to screw up next. I don't want to spend money and one month later find out they're doing away with retirement visas or repatriating all foreigner-owned condos.

Yes, no place is perfect. Bush is a bigger idiot than ever, Tsang remains clueless, these guys in Thailand fit somewhere in the middle.

Ah well, such is life.

Now I have to adjust to no smoking in the restaurants in HK, except for bars that don't serve minors and have applied for a two year exemption to the new law. Health Nazis, hate 'em.

Ah, just bitchin' cause I always hate leaving Thailand.

Bangkok visit winding down. Wednesday night, a birthday part at Gullivers for A. Several bottles of Jim Beam and tequila assured a good time was had by all. And a bad time was narrowly avoided. A had been semi-steering clear of me for the past week but at one point during her party she did send some passionate kisses my way. I thought nothing of it - she was drunk and she'd told T she was feeling horny as hell - but apparently others were somewhat surprised. When Gullivers closed and the crowd was moving on to the Nana disco, she tried grabbing some guy still sitting alone and telling him, "you're my boyfriend tonight," no idea how that ended up.

Thursday, back to Wat Bang Phra for another temple tattoo. I've been wanting to do this for at least six months but hadn't had the chance until now. Jimmy wrote out the directions in Thai and T did all the translating with the monks. Here it is in progress (and before anyone else feels the urge to comment, yes, I am a hairy motherfucker):




And the finished tattoo, which I'm quite happy with.

After a blessing from the monk, headed to the gift shop for some trinkets, then off to feed the temple fish and then T "freed" a bucket full of fish for more good karma.


If you combine this with three nights in the chair at Jimmy Wong's getting one of my tattoos touched up and add in about 5 visits to the dentist, that's a lot of poking, prodding, drills, needles and pain coming my way this trip.

T also had Jimmy touch up her one tattoo, adding a splash of color to what had previously been all black.

Thursday night, T was in the mood for Japanese food. I'd read that there was decent Japanese food to be found on Soi Thaniya, off Silom Road and near Patpong, so we headed off in that direction. The street is filled with Japanese hostess bars and karaokes, with a few restaurants thrown in. We picked the place that had a huge statue of Godzilla in front. The sashimi was reasonable quality (toro sashimi was 3,000 baht so we stuck with maguro, aji tataki, bonito and kohada - the kohada was the best). Midway through the meal, the guy sitting next to me at the sushi bar started talking to me and T told me he was famous. He told me he was with the government and as he reeled off a list of the positions he's held, T whispered in my ear that he was "mafia." So I smiled and agreed with everything he said and we had our picture taken with him.

I hadn't been to Patpong in years so we walked through the night market there, managing to avoid the hundred different touts trying to lure us into pingpong ball shows. Much to my surprise, there was some nice crap for sale that I hadn't seen along Sukhumvit. One stand specialized in t-shirts of movie posters and I grabbed shirts for Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Godfather and Kill Bill 2.

Finished off the night at Jimmy Wong's, as usual. Aside from the usual crew, there was this young couple from Switzerland. They were taking a year off and backpacking the world. They'd already done South America, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and parts of Thailand and were going to finish off the trip through Myanmar and India. Nice.

Today some work to get done, one more visit to the dentist, promised Jimmy we'd go drinking late tonight. Back to HK on Saturday, T follows me on Tuesday.

I hesitate to say this for fear of jinxing things, but today, for the first time in two weeks, the internet is working for me the way it should. I've gotten used to looking in my RSS reader and seeing "200 feeds failed" but this morning no feeds failed. I've gotten used to looking at a feed and the pictures not coming through, today they're all coming through, and at a reasonable speed. Are things getting back to normal in HK as well?

So one thing that I've been able to check out is the iPhone - all the blog reports of Jobs' keynote address and introduction of the phone. The phone looks amazing in the photos, so good I started thinking that maybe I would consider getting one. But there are several stumbling blocks.

The first is availability. I read a report that says the phone will be on sale in the US in June, Europe after that, and won't hit Asia (except in grey market versions) until 2008! This seems an unusual tactic for Apple in that generally they announce a product when it's ready to ship, not a year in advance. Why the change now?

The second problem is that an article on TUAW reports that you won't be able to install any third party applications on the phone. That's a huge stumbling block for me as I have become increasingly reliant on WorldMate, HanDbase, SplashID, Resco Photo Viewer, Bejeweled 2 and maybe a handful of others. I got rid of my Nokia E61 because of the lack of apps on that platform and tossed my Treo 750v because I didn't like the way apps displayed on it's square, small-ish screen. So unless TUAW is wrong, the iPhone won't work for me.

Plus it's not 3G. And there's no slot for a memory card. I predict that by 2008, when this phone finally hits our shores (officially) it will not seem at all cutting edge anymore.

One thing I'm wondering about ... haven't run across any speculation on this elsewhere yet ... will Apple take that amazing 3-1/2 inch touch screen and put it on the iPod? It would certainly seem like a logical next step to me.

Last night I found myself in the vaguely weird position of sitting at a table in Gulliver with three women I've slept with. T, of course, plus A (whom I've known for three years and was spending a lot of time with last August) and G (whom I spent a fair amount of time with at the beginning of the year). And just one table away was L, but she moved away once I sat down. I did talk with her for a little while; she seems genuinely upset over the news that T and I are living together. (I'd told her when I was with her in September that this was likely to happen and she'd called me in HK in October to see if it had). Another girl whom I "know" from Joe Bananas was over at the pool table. Yet another one who is a member of this group was quite drunk and kept coming on to me and then realizing what she was doing and pulling back; she was also acting quite upset when I switched from drinking whisky cokes to 7-up (because I didn't want to get wasted). And three other girls at the table as well, one perhaps the hottest of the entire group. It wasn't uncomfortable, just weird.

Finally 1 AM neared, closing time, I paid the bill and crossed the street to Jimmy Wong, who spent a couple of hours doing some touch-ups and adding some more color to one of my tattoos.






By 3 AM we were all pretty tired and agreed to finish up the next night.

Today is A's birthday and I've promised to spring for a bottle of tequila at Gullivers. Thursday or Friday will try to get back to Wat Bang Phra and Friday, my last night in town, Jimmy and I will probably do a late night at My Bar.

I'm sure few if any of you will be surprised when I say that I don't care to provide the details of the past 24 hours here. Suffice to say it was a rollercoaster ride for both of us, and we're both still here.

Anyway, Sunday, Chatuchak aka Jatujak, the world's largest market. We spent 3-4 hours here and saw maybe 5% of the shops.

This guy saw even less ....




To prove that you really can find everything in the world at Chatuchak, a Tiny Tim t-shirt. I'm kicking myself for not buying this.

The Sex Pistols center stage:


Someone dressed as a geisha, singing/begging.

For all of you who wanted a picture of T, here she is impatiently waiting for her ice cream sundae.

Today, some signs. Beautifully designed poster and nice photo let down by stupid typo:

More tailor signs. "The Original Sam." Likely a rip-off of HK's world famous Sam the Tailor.


Lots of shops with variations on this name:

Many tailor shops announce that they have been named "Tailor of the Year." They don't say by whom (themselves) or for which year (every).


Inside the great Chinese-Thai restaurant found at the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 15. This place looks like it's been here forever and I eat here at least once every trip. They're famous for their roast duck rice, I thought it was so-so.


First page of their menu. Anthony Bourdain would probably go for the Stewed Deer-Gut but for me, not so much. Note menu item "Fried Eight Things." I would guess that the Thai script on the left would say what those eight things might actually be.

The "fried raviolis" are fried wontons. Yum. Great for my tastebuds but lousy for my cholesterol level.


Stopped at the CD department at Robinson's and we grabbed a few things. T got the latest CD by Cl*sh, the band we saw on New Year's Eve. She also got a CD/DVD by a group called Big Ass Begins. But she didn't want a CD by a group called the Big Ass Three.

I got a CD/VCD combo by the group Girly Berry, a pop group whose members can't sing a note but move nicely in the videos.


There's some other pop group that has a video playing on the Skytrain, looks like 20 girls in this group, but could only find a CD, no VCD or DVD and sadly have forgotten their name until my next Skytrain ride, tomorrow more than likely.

More intriguing, perhaps, this CD of jazz compositions by the King of Thailand, performed by Larry Carlton with Earl Klugh, Tom Scott, Harvey Mason and others, all proceeds to Thai charities. Recommended by my dentist, so I bought it.

Started updating one of my tattoos last night but then things sort of happened. Hopefully can finish that tonight. Was also planning to return to Wat Bang Phra for another temple tattoo today but that had to be postponed - possibly Thursday.

Ah, the joys of make-up sex ...

Very possibly.

Stay tuned. Watch this space.

2007 Bloggies are open for nominations. Please do consider nominating me for best Asian weblog.

The past couple of days have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride for a variety of reasons. Hard to say where this will end.

Friday night dinner at Zanzibar, a Thai/Italian restaurant on Sukhumvit Soi 11 that I've passed a million times but never tried before. We were lured in by the band playing there, a six piece Thai group playing jazz. After we sat down, their singer came out, a Thai woman who was really into the songs and had clearly studied the right sources. After opening with My Funny Valentine, I was happily shocked when their next two songs were Lullaby of Birdland and Night in Tunisia. Later I told the singer that I was impressed that it seemed like she'd actually studied the records and then put some thought into her phrasing. The Thai food was tasty, the Italian food was kind of weird - T ordered snapper wrapped with parma ham, a combination that I'd never encountered before and which didn't work too well for me. I ordered three Thai dishes - some dried beef, fried pork ribs and stir fried morning glory, all of which did work. Since she'd ordered fish, I went for a bottle of Pinot Grigio but my Thai food overpowered it.

Last night dinner at SteakOne, a restaurant near Nana Plaza. At the next table, a couple from Finland who'd just arrived. Him - tall, tattooed, long blonde hair, lots of silver jewelry, looked like he rides a Harley and indeed he does. Her - well, she was from Finland, so of course she was tall, blonde and pretty with added bonus of large breasts and no bra. They mentioned that right now in Finland the temp is 10 degrees C and no snow on the ground. I asked what happened and he said, "shit happening!" He repeated that phrase several times during various phone calls. Loved it.

Late night at Jimmy Wong's, met a 62 year old Jewish guy from SF covered in tattoos, lots of small ones. Superman symbol, Harley Davidson logo, Ferrari logo, Thai lettering, Chinese lettering, Biggie, Tupac, Killers logo (pissed off that when the Killers played in SF, he asked his 28 year old son to join him but the kid said, "no dad, I'm only into drug bands but if you want some ecstasy for the show, I'll give you some"). Now he's having various famous tattoo artists "autograph" him. Plus he's planning to add Eminem and a '64 Pontiac GTO. We hit it off immediately.

That's not all that's going on but that's all I'm gonna write about this morning.

Hookahs all ready for smoking at Egyptian restaurant Nefertiti, Sukhumvit Soi 3/1, Bangkok's "Little Africa" or "Little Arabia" section of town.

My Egyptian-style kebab plate, while in the background T is enjoying some bread stuffed with minced lamb.
Wacky tailor sign #1. Note misspelling as well as extremely long shop name, which apparently is meant to differentiate it from another Lucky & Oscar tailor shop just 10 yards away.

Groucho Marx once said he wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member. But did he know about this place?

My big mouth.

One of those nights. Ten years ago I'd spend every night in Bangkok in the go-go bars. But like most people who spend a lot of time here, after awhile those places become boring, if not depressing. I do like to visit Long Gun Bar on Soi Cowboy once each trip because I enjoy the show they put on there, a bit more intricate than what you'll see at the other bars. I described it to T, who has also seen many shows of this sort, and she said she also wanted to check it out.

Actually first we had dinner at the Soi 7 seafood market. T saw some girl she said she knew from Neptune - really beautiful - and they talked for a bit but I couldn't figure out if this girl remembered T or not. I'm fairly certain that I never saw her before. Then T wanted to pop her head into the Soi 7 Biergarden to see what it was like - a quick look told her all she needed to know.

We then went in search of places for henna tattoos because she wants to get her hands done in that Indian style. She asked several vendors at the night market, who sent us off on various wild goose chases.

Finally we gave up, hopped into a taxi and went down to Cowboy. We went to Long Gun, watched and poured lots of alcohol down our throats. She told me when she was younger she'd seen lots of shows like that in Pattaya. I told her she was lucky that she never had to work in a place like this. She asked for details on prices, drink commissions, etc. She wondered why the girls would work there instead of freelancing in the regular bars.

T kept asking if I wanted to talk with any girl there or take some girl for short time and that it was okay with her and there were a few real beauties there. Had I been alone, I might have looked to make a new friend or two. But I said to her, "What would these girls do for me that you don't already do? I'm happy to be with you and just watch the show."

We left early and returned to our room. At which point T pulled out a piece of paper showing that she needed less than 4,000 baht to finish paying off the finance company on her motorcycle. Not a lot of money. But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out why she'd been carrying this around and waited one week to show me this and decided the right time was the day I'd told her I'd just spent 87,000 baht at the dentist (and one day after I'd paid my HK income tax, and I'd told her about that as well) and when I was drunk.

As usual, it was almost impossible to get a straight answer out of her. Was this the price she wanted me to pay for looking at naked women? Did she think I'd be more likely to say yes because I was drunk? All she'd say was that she waited so that we could relax together for awhile or something along those lines. When I said to her, ask me again tomorrow when I'm sober, she got very quiet and mopey. Me being drunk, this pissed me off further but I kept it to myself. After about an hour she returned to her usual self and we fell asleep.

Two days in Bangkok now. Physical check-up complete and (mostly) in exceedingly good shape for my age, the amount I smoke, the amount I don't exercise. On the other hand, I may end up getting some dental implants next week, and I was originally planning on putting that off a bit more.

Hanging out at Gulliver's for a bit for the past two nights. As I expected, not only do I run into some old friends, so does T. Last night was especially interesting because we ran into A. A & T are friends for a long time. I first met A in Bangkok about three years ago, then spent some time with her this past summer at a point when T and I were not together. T knows all about that.

A already knew that T and I are now a couple. She'd been back to HK in October and I hadn't run into her but apparently all her friends gave her the news. And one might say that Gulliver is the Bangkok branch of Neptune, or vice versa. Earlier in the evening we'd run into G, someone I knew from both Neptune and Gulliver. G always acts disappointed that our relationship didn't develop into something more permanent but who knows? And on the previous night had run into a girl I knew from Joe Banana.

When we saw A and joined her and some of her friends for some drinks, T knew everything but A didn't know she knew and was trying to be "innocent." I took some photos of the two of them together (no, I will not be posting them, don't bother to ask, but it will be a nice memory/fantasy for me in my old age).

Anyway, at one point, A started doing one of these Thai bargirl tricks where she takes a napkin, folds it a certain way, holds it against the fingernail on a guy's thumb, tears off a bit equal to the length of the nail, and unfolds the napkin to reveal a hole that's supposed to represent the circumference of the guy's member. She did me and the resulting hole was large enough for a coke can. "You know!" I laughed at her. Looking over at T, she asked "How would I know?" At which point I told her that T already knew everything.

The two of them started yacking away, comparing notes, I suppose. At least later I was able to say to T, "see, I don't hide anything from you, you know everything." On the other hand, T asked me if I still loved A and if I was heartbroken because A now says she has a boyfriend. No, of course not. A and I hadn't spent that much time together and I never loved her but, to be completely honest, of all the Thai girls I've known, she's one of the very few I would have considered a more permanent arrangement with.

On leaving the bar, A told me that I have to stop fucking around now that I have a good woman. "Maybe nit noi," I replied, and she responded with a four letter word. We hugged nd kissed.

=======================

T keeps telling me that it's okay if I see some girl I like to go off with her for short time, that she wouldn't be jealous because it's just sex. I ask her why she always says that when she doesn't really mean it. She has no answer for that.

She asked me yesterday if I'd ever gone with a certain girl. I told her yes and that it was on my birthday and that she knew all about it. She asked where she was at the time and I said she was back in Thailand and as soon as she returned to HK I'd told her everything. I don't know how she'd forgotten.

She'd brought this girl up to our place to give me a massage once. She said if I wanted to also "boom boom" with her it was okay. Then when she was away during my birthday, she told me about 20 times I shouldn't be alone on that day and that I should take someone. And I took this girl. And when I told T, we'd had a big fight that led to our breaking up for about 4 months.

"Stop telling me things you don't mean and don't tell me you're not jealous when you are."

So I told her that I wasn't about to leave her sitting around in some bar while I run off and do short time with someone. But on the other hand, it might be nice if I was to bring someone back for a three-way. But T says she has no interest in that, although she then wondered why it is that so many girls seem to like her and started to tell me a story of some Filipino girl from Neptune that she'd sometimes done three-way with.

I told her I thought it was extremely unfair that she'd done this so many times professionally but wouldn't do it with me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I really do know. But a guy can dream, can't he?

More notes and maybe some amusing photos later on but time to head to the dentist.

A few snaps from last night. Concert Cl*sh on stage.

A couple of attempts to show how packed the place was, keeping in mind that these shots show about half the place and the other half was just as packed as this half.

Note the DJ booth in the center of the floor.




The high point of today was driving inland a bit to a roadside restaurant owned by one of T's aunts. As you can see, not much to look at, there's a billion others like it in Southeast Asia.


Here's some pork neck grilling over charcoals.

The finished result, together with a much spicier sauce than you get when you get this dish in HK.
Turns out, this aunt is a cooking fiend. After my first dish, which was all I thought we were getting, more dishes started showing up at the table. On the left, she used more pork neck with spices ground up in a mortar and some herbs. So spicy but so tasty! On the right, som tam, papaya salad, made with little crabs.

And much more. Dishes kept coming and family members kept appearing. And so too did the flies. I was wishing that I'd brought my electric "tennis racket" fly swatter from HK.

Back to the room and watched Pan's Labyrinth. I just don't have the words. Magnificent. A triumph of imagination. One of the saddest movies I've seen in ages. One of the joys in seeing such a complete work is knowing that the director is relatively young and will hopefully do more in this style inbetween the Hollywood stuff that pays the bills for this. (Apparently his next film is a Hellboy sequel.)

Dinner tonight in a crappy Korean BBQ place. The place was called 19th Hole but on the back of all the waiters' shirts it said 19th Hold. If this place was in Seoul the locals would burn it down - the owner actually apologized to me at one point, "sorry, Korean food Thai-style." But it was really all I was in the mood for, simple basic barbecued beef. At a nearby table, T pointed out some guy in a green shirt, telling me he was famous, or "famoose" as she says. I asked famous for what and she whispered "Mafia."

I reasoned that this guy could probably eat pretty much anywhere in town that he wanted so it must mean something that he came here. But I noticed that he brought his own meat with him, or so it seemed - bags of half cooked steaks and chops that he finished up on the charcoal fire at his table while he and his friends watched footie.

And that's it for this leg of the trip. Tomorrow morning off to Bangkok.

Sidebar to previous post - several months ago, when making room in closets and shelves for T to move in, I went through old Tshirts and sorted out 20 or 30 to get rid of. I don't believe in throwing out clothing. Normally I give old clothes to my maid, who in turn hands them out to friends or sends them home or whatever. This time I offered them first to T, who took them all. Sitting there with her family, at least half of them were wearing my old shirts. A really strange sight, looking out over a crowd that's all wearing your clothes. Thinking, "hey, that's a nice shirt" and realizing it used to be mine.

Happy new year y'all.

Sunday started with a trip out to someone's house in the country for a lunch with about 20 family members, none of whom speak English aside from T and her sister. I got to meet T's grandmother and her other sister, various uncles and cousins and a guy they all refered to as Osama because he has a beard. There was one tiny girl there, maybe all of 4 feet tall and 75 pounds, with dyed blonde hair, full make-up and big earrings. I had this horrible vision that this was some family member working as a very underaged hooker until I found out she was 25 years old and just "small" - someone refered to her as a hobbit.

I sat there on a wooden platform in the shade, surrounded by people who stared and smiled and pointed at me. A few attempted the little English they know. "Where you are from?" "It fucking hot!" and so on. There was a ton of food but also a ton of flies. And with coconut palm trees in the backyard, someone spent the whole time opening up coconuts and handing them out for drinking.

It didn't take long before I was bored as fuck. Luckily we didn't stay long. But with similar activities planned for the following day, my suggestion to T that she go alone and leave me behind met with a taciturn response.

T figured I was bored with Thai food and picked a Japanese restaurant for dinner. This place was filled with Japanese and it seemed to even have a Japanese owner, but the food itself was some of the worst Japanese food I've ever eaten. Finally took refuge in a California roll, with veggies and fake crab and smothered in Japanese mayo.

We ended up with some cousins of T's and their Japanese husbands in the huge disco Web Site, which as I mentioned a month ago may be called Web Site but doesn't have one. The live band was called, I think, Concert Cl*sh. Needless to say, nothing like the Clash in concert. Then a dj spinning hardcore hip hop. Never ceases to amaze me - most of these people don't speak English, have no idea what's being said, but love this music. The joint was packed and it kept getting busier and busier. A thousand people in there? Two thousand? All's I can say is that almost all of the girls were cute, many maybe more than merely cute, and only a few wearing the dyed hair and tattoos that in Thailand are often the mark of a bar girl.

Then a late supper of spicy baby clams, noodles and soup. Back to the room, TV on and news reports of 9 bombs going off almost simultaneously in Bangkok. I'm headed to Bangkok on Tuesday. Eager for a change of scene and a bit of excitement - hope I don't get more than I bargained for.

Many years ago he
Looked out through a glassless window
All that he could see was Babylon
Beautiful green fields and dreams
And learn to measure the stars
But there was a worry in his heart

He said,
How could it come to this?
I'm really worried about living
How could it come to this?
Yeah, I really want to know about this
Is it like today?

Then there came a day
It moved out across the Mediterranean
Came to western isles and the Greek young men
And with their silver beards they laughed
At the unknown of the universe
They could sit and guess God's name

But they said,
How could it come to this?
We're really worried about living
How could it come to this
Yeah, we really want to know about this
Is it like today?

Then there followed days of Kings, Empires and revolution
Blood just looks the same when you open the veins
But sometimes it was faith, power or reason as the cornerstone
But the furrowed brow has never left his face

He said,
How could it come to this?
We've living in a landslide
How could it come to this?
Yeah, we really want to know about this
Is it like today?

Then there came a day
Man packed up flew off from the planet
He went to the moon, to the moon
Now he's out in space
Hey, fixing all the problems
He comes face to face with God

He says,
How could it come to this?
I'm really worried about my creation
How did it comes to this?
You're really killing me, you know

It isn't just today
Is it like today?
Is it like today?
Bang!

Many years ago he
Looked out through a glassless window
Didn't understand which what he saw