Hongkie Town

So the first part of this post will be food p0rn, shots from tonight's dinner in a small restaurant on a side street in the Shinbashi area.

I was told that this huge poster represents rankings of the small sushi restaurants in Tokyo. It is produced quarterly. I was given one as a souvenier because, apparently, this place ranked pretty highly. It's a large sheet - laid it out on the bed for the photo.



We started with dried soba:



Sashimi - I could have eaten this entire platter myself but had to share with 4 other people:


Salad - the white chunks are not tofu or chicken, they're grilled tuna:



A Japanese take on a classic Chinese dish, sweet and sour pork:



Our waitress, caught at an inopportune moment. She's holding the ingredients for hotpot, or is it called nabe here?

Here it is:


I was so full after this (and a little tipsy after drinking half a bottle of sake myself) so I didn't bother to photograph the last course, congee.

After dinner, raining fairly heavily so just back to the hotel. But after that, eventually over to the branch of Tsutaya in Roppongi Hills. (Sorry, didn't have camera with me.) This shop is open from 07:00 to 28:00, which I presume means until 4 AM.

The ground floor is a Starbucks and a bookshop that is primarily devoted to art, design, photography and architecture, with huge sections on food and travel. Think about that for a minute. An art book store open till 4 AM 7 days a week. Think we'll see anything like this in HK soon? It is to laugh.

Upstairs is a CD/DVD shop.

Next door is Foo:D Magazine, a 24 hour grocery store run by Seiyu (which is partly owned by Wal*Mart). The shop concentrates on imported and higher end stuff, including excellent departments for meat, fish, cheese and a bakery (though the bakery shelves were empty at midnight).

Now please don't think I'm turning into Brian Donovan but here are shots of three of the more unusual snacks I picked up - well, unusual varieties of brand names we all know well, but only available in Japan as far as I know:





And that's about it. Work, lunch and dinner with colleagues, no bars, no girls, about to get into bed with just a book.

Some quick shots from the main crossing in Shibuya. Note that there are three large video screens on separate buildings (only two of each visible in each shot) and they are synchronized to each play the same thing. This is not silent - there are outdoor speakers blasting the soundtrack to whatever ad is playing.




The huge crowd of people, coming down Centa-Gai (Center Street) waiting for the light to change to cross over to the Shibuya train station and Hachiko, the statue of the faithful little dog, a popular meeting place.


Tokyo Tower in Roppongi - a replica of the Eiffel Tower, but bigger.

So in Tokyo now. I hate that I seem to get upgrades on shorter flights - who needs business class for a one hour flight? - but for this four hour flight, no upgrade, no empty seat next to me, and leg room in these A330s is nonexistent. As Lewis Black once said, the seats were clearly designed by a dwarf with scoliosis who was very pissed off that day.

As always, my first night spent at HMV and Tower in Shibuya. I would be there yet except those stores close at 11 and my backpack was full. As usual, bought too much. Anything that sounded reasonably interesting and had Japan-only bonus tracks. Plus some UK/US stuff not too easily found in HK. Too bad I didn't back my DVD-drive for my laptop or I could put this stuff on the iPod now. Some highlights:

Union of Knives - Violence and Birdsong - kind of J&M Chain-ish?

Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Prefab Sprout - Steve McQueen legacy edition

Songs the Bonzo Dog Band Taught Us - original versions of songs the Bonzos covered

Johnny Thunders & Patty Palladin - Copy Cats. Finally on CD. Almost jumped up and down and spun in circles when I saw it at HMV. Thank you!

Omar Rodrigues Lopez - Se Dice Bisonte. No Bufalo. Big guitars. Some electronics.

Fields - Everything Last Winter - tuneful

Mumm-Ra - These Things Move in Threes - also tuneful

Charlotte Gainsbourg - 5:55 - er, um, chanteuseful?

David Pastorius & Local 518 - no idea if he's Jaco's son but he plays like Jaco and the band sounds fierce

Gilles Peterson - 2 disc set of selected tracks from the Fania archives

and assorted others ...

Plus a book on the making of Grindhouse and several Japanese tattoo magazines & books, all of which will eventually find their way to Jimmy Wong's shelves in Bangkok after I've searched them for inspiration.

After that, I was amazed to spot a sign for Nanbantei right near Tower. Maybe they've been there forever and I just didn't see it before. Maybe they're not the best yakitori in Tokyo but they are certainly the most foreigner-friendly. Even this Shibuya branch had an English menu (with lots of things not found on the menu in their HK branch) and an English speaking staff. Several old favorites and tried one new thing - mentaiko stuffed with chicken. All yummy.

And then a stroll through late night Shibuya, seeing some astonishing looking women, not one of whom would even acknowledge my presence.

Just sent to me by a friend. Here's the link and here's the intro:

I’m seeking a like-minded woman to share a disastrous 3-9 month relationship with, ending in acrimony, emotional chaos, and possibly legal proceedings.

My name is Lloyd, I live in Chicago , I’m 27 years old, fairly well educated, I hold down a good job and am pretty stable. I’m told I’m fairly good looking, but I’ll let you be the judge of that - I’m generally caring and very honest.

I am looking for an attractive female who will at first give me obsessive love, praise and devotion - but whose paranoia, self-loathing and fear of rejection and abandonment will eventually lead her to alternately push me away and pull me closer in a love/hate cycle that will lead to infidelity, consensual sexual violence, and the eventual emotional breakdown of one or other party - or if we’re lucky - both!

Wonder if this guy reads my blog?

One picture from Kaohsiung that I forgot to post, this 85 story building that dominates the city. The architect is the same man who designed Taipei 101, for now the world's tallest building.



All over Taichung I saw different ads featuring Kelly Chan for Toto toilet seats. This is not the best one, but it's the one I got. Can you imagine any western celebrity endorsing toilet seats, especially butt-washing ones? Wanting their image associated with this kind of product? Apparently in Asia either it's not an issue or Kelly is just that desperate for money. "When you think about taking a shit, think about Kelly! (Or at least her music?)"


The U.S. has "park 'n ride," low cost parking lots near commuter rail and bus stations. Here in Taiwan they have the much nicer "kiss and ride." But apparently you have to bring someone with you for the kiss, they don't just have people employed to stand there and do that for you.

This is the workstation area at Hotel One in Taichung. 42 inch TV, Sony DVD with 5.1 surround - note the subwoofer in the central base of the workstation area. On the bottom right, note the laser printer in the cabinet. Lastly, on the back of the Aeron-style chair, it says "Enjoy!" I certainly did.

The view from the 36th floor of Hotel One in Taichung. Heavy rains meant the windows were not that clear and it was also difficult to get a shot without my reflection in the glass. Note the bank of low clouds coming in over the mountains. (I've now figured out how to get the G7 into manual focus mode, which turns out to be as simple as pushing one button and then using the scroll wheel on the back. In the LCD screen, they provide a magnified area in the center as well as a digital read-out of the selected distance of the focus, making this really as easy as possible. I know this may sound crazy but now I'm wondering if I really need the Nikon D80 or if I should look to sell it.)


In Taipei, half of the sidewalk on all of the main streets is given over to scooter parking. Terrible for pedestrians, especially because these scooters scoot down what's left of the sidewalk going to and from the parking spots. But of course, if you have a scooter, it means you can park almost anywhere.

Lingerie shop along Fuxing Road. Love this window display!

Last Taipei shot.

Last but not least, no photos unfortunately but I jotted down the Chinglish names of some menu items from the hotpot place in Taichung:

• Selected rectum
• Selected honey cumb
• Selected hog bowel
• Rice nuddles

Of course, I'm actually grateful that they went to the trouble of having an English menu and while it wasn't the best hotpot I've ever had, everything was fresh and tasty and the service there was first rate. Plus I'm glad they would take the trouble to actually select the rectum as opposed to just tossing random pieces of ass at you.

Thursday lunch at a small restaurant down some tiny lane somewhere in Taipei, with a guy who used to be a major in the Taiwan air force, so he's taken "Major" as his English name. I was told he's an expert on Taipei restaurants and based on this choice, I have no reason to doubt that. I didn't recognize about half the dishes, was told the place was a mixture of Taiwanese and Sichuan food. He asked if I could handle spicy, I told him of course, so he ordered a bowl of beef swimming in chili oil, and then seemed fairly shocked when I told him I didn't think it was very spicy (but it was delicious and I told him that, too).

Thursday afternoon shopping at Costco in Taipei. Bought so much stuff that I also bought a rolling duffel bag to hold it. This was in an area just outside the city, perhaps 10 square blocks, that was packed with multi-story hypermarkets and discount outlet malls. Carrefour, RT Mart, factory outlet clothing and furniture palaces, huge auto supply shops and so on. Why don't we have shopping on this scale in HK? There's room in New Territories and enough people have cars. It's because the billionaires and real estate cartels that really run HK won't allow this kind of free market access and choice. And the government won't do anything about it because they don't have to answer to the public.

Thursday night, ladies night at Brass Monkey in Taipei. I was there from around 9 till almost 3. Interesting, young crowd. I was done in by being too honest and by losing track of how much I was drinking.

As things were warming up, I noticed a lady who stood out from the crowd for two reasons. The first is that she was noticeably older than the rest of the women there, most of whom were in their 20s and she was at least 40. The second reason was that she was wearing an extremely short skirt and, whatever her age, had amazing legs. She was standing on her own, kept looking at her mobile phone in annoyance. Finally I went over and said, "You're waiting for someone, right?" She said yes. "Well whoever you're waiting for is an idiot," and she looked a little bit shocked at that. I continued, "No man should let such a beautiful lady wait alone in a bar for so long." She almost smiled but also clearly was not willing to continue the conversation. Later I noted that she was meeting a woman, not a man. And even later I noticed her leaving the bar and going home alone.

Fortunately by then I had recovered my balance and met someone, not my dream girl by any means but good spirit, fun. "I'm not young, I'm old! I'm almost 40!" she told me. And it turned out that "almost 40" meant 34. She wanted me to watch some rugby game with her on Saturday, I confessed I was leaving on Friday, at that point probably too drunk to even attempt a lie. But phone numbers exchanged, various SMS's received from her today.

Friday morning up early. I generally don't get hangovers but this morning was darned close. I was gonna walk around for a bit before heading to the airport, but stepping out of the hotel door (yes, it is Les Suites, one of my favorite hotels in the world) it was so freaking hot that I gave up on that idea. Yes, even worse than HK. Absofuckinglutely baking on the streets.

Dragonair has moved to the new Terminal 2 at CKS Airport. It's a huge improvement over the decrepit Terminal 1 but HK and Changi have little to fear from it.

At one duty free counter, the girl refused to sell me a carton of cigarettes after seeing I was going to HK, limit of just 3 packs for residents (and why does HK have such a ridiculously low limit?). But she didn't know I was a resident and didn't speak any English so I couldn't explain to her the "mistake" she was making, that tourists can bring in entire cartons. I simply went to the next shop, where they assumed that I was simply a tourist heading to HK and sold me whatever I wanted.

Dragonair upgraded me to business class but printed the boarding pass on an economy ticket, so I didn't know I was upgraded till I got on the plane. Looked at the seat number, looked at the seat, looked at the ticket, sat down, kept waiting for someone to make me move. At any rate, business class on a one hour flight seems like a waste.

Tonight, started out at Heat and then checked out Underground HK at Galaxy. So freaking weird. The HK indie bands and the people who follow them and lots of hookers sitting at the bar. And poor Sammy, he's so sad, I'm telling him it's great that he's trying something new with the bar and look how packed the place is (and it was, too) and he looks like he's gonna cry. The first act was two guys with acoustic guitars singing weepy folky stuff, the singer looking like Elvis Costello in a dutchboy cap. One song about "how do I find the words to make you love me," the next about needing a reason to keep on living. Oh boo fucking hoo. My friend kept shouting "Show me the money!" at them. The next band was kind of power trio-ish but the songs were tuneless (especially odd in a bar of hookers that a band couldn't manage a hook?) and we decided we'd had enough. Also I was not thrilled to discover that while most people were paying a very reasonable $50 cover charge for the bands, the hookers were allowed in for free. They should charge everyone the $50 and this will keep the hookers out until after the show is over. Otherwise, this is not gonna work too well.

So over to Laguna, Joe Banana, Fuckwick. I didn't mean to have any alcohol tonight but eventually my resolve weakened. All the travel and drinking isn't affecting my ability to conduct business but I found that certain parts of my body aren't functioning as well as usual right now.

Thursday morning, holiday in HK but working day here in Taiwan.

Aside from the great hotel in Taichung, a nice spicy hotpot dinner. After which we went driving around endlessly in circles for an hour. Our two local hosts don't make big salaries and had no ideas which bars might be good. The town is filled with KTV joints with hostesses and the betelnut stands, with girls who dress like hookers even if they're not, close early. At 10 we went to some recommended music bar and at 10:30 we found a lounge bar and at 11 we stumbled upon some Brit-style pub - all of these places were empty and we were told they wouldn't be busy till at least 1 AM. Back to the hotel bar for a drink - also empty and my attempts to lure the girl from the front desk who'd checked me in were in vain - and finally a (legit) massage at a nearby sauna.

Wednesday, train to Taipei, upgraded to a suite at the hotel, can't complain there. Wednesday night, just wanting some simple western food for a change, had dinner at Hooters, one block from my hotel. Ended up talking with some American guy who'd spent 11 weeks in Taipei, took a weekend break to HK and ended up in the go-go bars along Lockhart. By the time he got pointed in the right direction (Sunday morning at the Bridge), it was time for him to fly out.

I was going to go to Carnegies but friends insisted I join them at some "piano bar" which was having its anniversary party. Turns out it's another overpriced hostess bar. The girl sitting with me spoke very good English and physically was very much my type, but I decided against enquiring about prices. The special event for the anniversary was that the club brought in two strippers - a very amateurish onstage performance in which they alternated dancing energetically and then staring at each other wondering what to do next. After stripping down to just g-strings and boots, they went around table to table, room to room, doing a series of table and lap dances. They removed most of my clothes and then poured ice cubes down my shorts, to the great delight of everyone in the place except for, well, the guy who was getting ice cubes poured down his shorts.

At 1 AM, finally over to Carnegies, which was packed tight, all asses to elbows. I couldn't quite work out the scene there and the music was really too loud to try to talk to anyone. The girls who seemed to be working there all looked old and hard. And no eye contact with any of the girls who didn't seem to be working, not for lack of trying. To add insult to injury, on returning back to my hotel, another taxi was dropping off some fat old guy with a huge mustache and a very cute young lady.

At 4 AM, received an SMS from an HK girl who'd done a very evil thing to me about 3 weeks ago. Claimed she'd lost my number and only just found it and could I ever forgive her? I have not replied.

Tonight, ladies night at Brass Monkey, might give it a try. Friday back home, get to spend 4 whole days at home before the next trip (Tokyo) and hopefully after that a week at home before the next next trip (Sydney).

If you should find yourself in Taichung, Taiwan, there is a new hotel called Hotel One and, one hour after check-in, I'm finding it to be a pretty freaking amazing hotel. Not quite sure of the rate but I'm sure it's under US$200 per night and if this was in Tokyo it would be at least three times that.

Start with a 42 inch plasma TV. Sony DVD with six speaker surround sound with connections for my iPod and my laptop. Free wireless internet throughout the hotel. Laser printer in the room. Huge bathtub right alongside the window looking out on the city from the 36th floor. Rain forest showerhead. This is just crying out for a party that I won't be having since I'm just here for one night.

I was offered (for additional fee) use of a mobile phone. The phone had two added features - first is that from anywhere in Taiwan I could just dial 8 on that phone and be connected to the hotel, second is that any calls to my room would be forwarded to that phone if I didn't answer my room phone.

They do in-room check-in here. The girl who brought me up to my room was young, cute and spoke good English. It took me about two minutes to find out that she lives with her parents and doesn't have a boyfriend at the moment but "dreams" of finding a nice one. She gave me a free drink coupon for the hotel bar and said if I wanted more, just ask her. On leaving the room, she turned and said, "I like you very much" in Mandarin.

And I almost forgot to mention this girl walking through the lobby as we were checking in. Backless dress, but I didn't need to see the back to see that she wasn't wearing a bra. Long, curly hair. Cowboy boots. And apparently not a "working girl" as valet parking had brought her car around. And maybe I'm flattering myself but it seems she did look back at me as she was going out the door.

I wonder if I could somehow stretch my trip here out to a few nights or weeks ....

Arrived in Kaohsiung Monday morning. Here's the view from my hotel room.


And as sunset approaches:

The hotel features a Hello Kitty shop in the lobby:


And a Hello Kitty car parked out front:


As you can see, there's an Outback Steakhouse near the town's famous Love River. Fortunately I did not have to eat there.


Here's a tale about the Love River. Years ago, at night, there would be hookers and pimps on scooters parked by the Love River. The hooker would be wearing a long coat with nothing underneath. The pimp would sell you a match for NT$50. You would then light the match, the hooker would open her coat, and you could look until the match burnt out. Folks, you can't make this stuff up.

The day was a series of retailer visits. Here at Costco, the watch on top sells for NT$744,000. That's more than US$22,000. Think about it. You want to spend $22,000 on a watch. Are you gonna go to Costco where you have to fill out the SKU number on a little slip of paper and try to find someone to check stock for you? Seems extremely odd to me.


The new Dream Mall in Kaohsiung features a ferris wheel on top of the mall.


The mall is anchored by the Japanese department store Hankyu. There's also a Marks & Spencer there. There is a central outdoor courtyard. You can sit outside there but they have ads blasting at top volume, making it an extremely unpleasant experience. I suppose they think the impact is that it will send you running back into the mall for more shopping, but to me it just shows contempt for the customer.

Clouds over the city at sunset, taken from my hotel room. (I am loving the Canon G7.)



For dinner, I was taken to this very local style seafood place. Seemed very popular and I was told that each night by 9 PM they'll sell out on the most popular dishes.


Some of the selection, if you get there early enough (we got there at 6:30):


While at Costco, we picked up a couple of bottles of wine to go with the dinner. That may help to explain why the focus is a little soft on some of these pictures. We were five people and had 12 dishes. This is "oyster sashimi," chopped up raw oyster with spring onion, japanese radish, wasabi:

On the left is squid slices, on the right shrimp balls:

This is rice noodle with shredded pumpkin:

Abalone:

The guys hard at work in the kitchen:

We also had fish soup, steamed prawns, steamed crab, a salad that consisted of baby bamboo and bitter melon, plate of roasted bamboo, couple more plates of veggies. Everything was very fresh and tasty.

After dinner, off to karaoke in a hostess club. Sorry, no photos of that! The girls were all tall, all wearing floor-length gowns slit up to the hip on the side. None of them too attractive but none too ugly either; very minimal English spoken. I started to think about the nasty way in which these clubs turn the women into objects, even as I sat there with two women with their arms around me. And in the interest of getting nice tips, these women were quite enthusiastic about their work. They keep pouring whiskey down my throat and when they removed my shirt, I stopped thinking about much of anything ....

Off to Taichung shortly.

Two! Two! Two posts in one.

When I travel to Shanghai, I always book a hotel car to pick me up at the airport. The taxi stand is a free-for-all, practically a melee, and I rarely have the desire to deal with it. Maybe it's improved in the past year or two, I don't know.

(The last time I took a taxi from the airport, it broke down on the highway. Another taxi driver stopped to pick me up and the two drivers got into a fight and I was almost hit by a truck running to the working taxi and being chased by the first driver. I don't need that excitement.)

This time, I was staying at the Four Seasons and my driver was a 40-something year old man named Jason. Jason spoke far more English than any Shanghai hotel driver I've ever had. And he was patient with what's left of my Chinese. I mentioned to him on the ride to the hotel that I had studied putonghua for one month at Fudan University. We talked back and forth for the entire ride, in a mixture of English and Chinese. He let me smoke in the limo. He told me his English name and his Chinese name and asked me to specially request him for the return trip to the airport.

On arrival at the hotel, I had no small bills. Normally I would just apologize to the driver and run into the lobby. But I liked this guy too much to stiff him. I tipped Jason 100 RMB. He acted as if that was the largest tip he'd ever received - possibly it was. And in a city where you can get a good meal for under 10 RMB (if you know where to go), 100 will go a long way.

Now, when I leave Shanghai, I generally take a taxi to the airport, depending on the time of day and the weather. (There are no taxis to be had in Shanghai during rush hour or when it rains.) But this time, I decided to book the hotel car and requested that Jason be my driver. Of course he remembered me. And he surprised me by remembering my Chinese name.

I sat in the back seat and closed my eyes. After a short while, he woke me up. It seemed that since we were early and traffic was light, we had some extra time so he decided to take a detour. We were parked outside of the entrance to Fudan University. He thought I'd like to see it again.

(Oh yes, we made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and Jason received another generous tip.)

Despite what you might have read or heard elsewhere, there are still some extremely nice people in Shanghai.

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Tonight I was supposed to go out but stayed in. I didn't sleep much the night before. I was hoping to catch up on my sleep on the airplane, but was seated next to a chatty Australian bloke making his first visit to Hong Kong. He talked for most of the flight and I tried my best to answer his questions. So on getting home, I was more tired than I anticipated.

So instead of going out, I watched Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain. I thought it had the most beautiful trailer of any movie in 2006. However, the movie really polarized audiences. In its debut at a film festival, it was booed at the end. Rotten Tomatoes scores it 50%. So it took me awhile to work up the will to watch it.

Spoilers Ahead:

Here is the plot of the movie in a nutshell. There is a research doctor named Tommy (Hugh Jackman). His beautiful and intelligent wife, Izzi (Rachel Weisz, Aronofsky's wife), is dying from a brain tumor. She dies. He goes a little crazy. He gets better. End of story.

All accompanied by some incredibly beautiful photography (Matthew Libatique) and production design (James Chinlund).

Okay, there's this bit that takes place in the 1500s, when Queen Isabella of Spain tells conquistador Tomas to find the tree of life in the New World and that if he does, she will be his Eve. That's just a re-enactment on screen of the book Izzi is writing when she dies. And there's a bit set in the far future, as Tommy and Izzi (who is now a tree) travel through the universe in a huge snow globe towards a star worshipped by the Mayans. That's just Tommy's subconscious, insane visions.

It's a trifle of a story, which takes 96 minutes to tell. It attempts to be poetic, elegiac, the stuff that dreams are made of. In the hands of a far better writer, it might have added up to a lot more than it did. It's not a complete failure but it's far from a triumph.

In part, there isn't a lot of chemistry between Jackman and Weisz. She's radiant, continuing a tradition hearkening back to Ali MacGraw of looking stunningly beautiful as she's dying from a debilitating disease. He's grumpy, alternating shouting at people and then apologizing. The relationship is given to us in shorthand and we're supposed to fill in the missing pieces. We're supposed to believe that Jackman will be a better person for having gone through this and for having learned the lesson in the book that Weisz was writing, but we don't really care for him all that much in the first place.

The basic elements are there but a lot of the important pieces are missing, merely hinted at. The result will leave some people scratching their heads, some people bored, only a very tiny few will be emotionally moved.

The first round of shots with my Canon G7.

This shot, at Xintiandi at night, shows that the flash is pretty frickin' powerful for a compact camera.


Dinner at Xinjishi at Xintiandi. This dish is one of their signature dishes, "grandmother's pork."


Some chicken, a prawn and a shitload of pepper:


Crabmeat served in a ceramic crab:


This shot was taken without a tripod:


An older house in the central city, how much longer can it survive?


Another hutong like area in the central city:


Taken from my hotel window. Note on the right side, the Jin Mao Tower in Pudong (which includes the Hyatt, the world's tallest hotel) is in the process of being dwarfed by a new building to the right:

Again, taken from my hotel window, no tripod. Clearly, the IS and the high ISO are working in tandem nicely:



This is what I wanted, a camera that weighs very little and which can capture everything I want without my having to put too much thought or effort into getting the shots. I think this is going to get me out of the camera upgrade race for awhile.

People some times ask me why I don't do major medical things with Hong Kong doctors, why I choose to go to Thailand. It's not just the cost in HK, it's not just the women in Thailand. A member of my staff came down with a serious illness. At a major HK hospital they opened him up, pulled out his intestines, snipped off some bits, and literally stuffed them back in.

That last bit is in bold because he required a second surgery a week later for the sole purpose of "untangling" his intestines because they didn't bother to put them back properly the first time. I mean, well, have you evah?

I've managed to have three not bad meals this trip yet have not had (and probably won't have) any xiao long bao.

Yesterday's lunch at a new spot in an army-owned compound behind Julu Lu. This used to be Vietnamese restaurant Cochinchina, now it's called FCC but is not the Foreign Correspondents Club. They have two menus - one Vietnamese and one Mediterranean. We ordered from the Vietnamese menu and it wasn't all that authentic but still managed to be very tasty. The best part was that we could sit outside on the balcony of this old pre-1949 house, overlooking the park area in the compound. And there were three very attractive women at the next table - Chinese but talking in a mixture of Cantonese, Mandarin and English. If only I had the skillz to pay the billz.

Last night's dinner at Xinjishi, the branch at Xintiandi, where I made sure that the dinner included two of my favorite dishes there, "grandmother's pork" (super tender double cooked cubes of pork belly in a thick brown sauce) and little nuggets of chicken stir fried with about 5 pounds of peppers - they don't use the round Sichuan peppers though so the dish is not as spicy as one would think. Also some crabmeat in a thick sauce served inside a ceramic crab. (Three women at the next table again, a different three, duh, and only one attractive.)

Today's lunch at another new place, next to the new FCC restaurant, a Chinese restaurant with some difficult name, I think maybe Laomanke or something along those lines. We started with two cold dishes - one was marinated mantis in a vinegary sauce (perhaps some Chinese wine in there) and tea-smoked "wild" duck which was really fantastic. Then some not-really-Sichuan not-at-all-spicy Sichuan chicken, some tofu in a brown sauce, some veggies and the piece de resistance - foie gras in a brown, almost curry-ish Chinese sauce, which was prepared on a cart alongside our table. Not quite as smooth as the foie gras I'd recently enjoyed at the French bistro in Knutsford Terrace (which was world class) but not too shabby either.

Also today found a terrific little DVD shop - a selection as vast as the legendary Ka De Club stuffed into a shop just one quarter the size. After an hour I had only gone through about half of their titles and was too tired and hot to keep on going. Huge selection of Japanese and Korean films, tons of Criterion and other European titles, a selection of documentaries that was equal to their selection of animation. And a big sign in English in the window saying that they guarantee all their discs and anything defective can be exchanged.

Tonight maybe back to Xintiandi for dinner, don't know yet.

Didn't yet mention that the camera I settled on was the Canon G7. 10 megapixel, 6x optical zoom, and capable of full manual control as well as all the usual automatic modes. I didn't mind a slightly larger camera because I tend to carry some sort of shoulder bag or backpack every day, the larger size fits my hands better and overall it has a nice retro look that appeals to me. In terms of controls, it features a scroll wheel around the control button that serves different uses depending on what mode you're in, and makes the camera much easier to control. It has image stabilization and Canon's latest DIGIC III processor, which includes face recognition. The camera starts up fast and has almost no shutter lag.

Of the major complaints in all the reviews I read, most of them are not an issue to me. It seems that unlike the previous G6, this no longer supports the RAW format (which I never used) and no longer has a swiveling LCD screen (which I can easily live without). The optical viewfinder is horrendous - what you see in the viewfinder represents just two thirds of the actual image you're capturing and the lens takes up the entire left corner when you're in wide-angle mode. But so far, on the 2-1/2 inch LCD, everything is coming out fabulously. All of the reviewers seemed to agree that photographic quality was excellent.

The true test for me will be when I get home and look at the stuff on the big screen; forgot to pack a card reader. If the stuff comes out as nicely as I hope, will post some photos after I get home.

Last and far from least, an email from the friend I had dinner with on Wednesday night here in Shanghai. He wrote to me, "your innocence outshines your appetites."

Hey. How are ya? How's it going?

Ya know, I really oughta get outta here on Friday. Instead I'm staying till Saturday. Everything I needed to do is done. But I'll stay the extra night.

So I was standing in Manhattan Bar, you know the one, on Tongren Lu. The DJ was playing utter crap but one o' the two coyote dancers on stage was freaking unreal. And of the 50 or so women in the joint, maybe half Filipino, half otherwise, maybe 3 or 4 were truly pretty. Maybe 3 or 4 were truly scary. The rest in various stages along the middle range. The problem was that none of the pretty ones would come over to me, even though I'd make eye contact and smile. They all wanted me to go over to them, except I was really comfortable where I was.

And then this gorgeous one came in, showing a lot of skin. We locked eyes and she came over. I asked her where she was from, knowing full well she was Filipino. As soon as she opened her mouth, it was one of those "oh shit" moments. "I'm half Mexico, half Philippines," (s)he said in a deep voice. (Why is it transsexual Filipinos always claim they're only half Filipino, half something else? Discuss.) "I'm sorry darlin', I think you're bakla." "Do you like bakla?" "That's not my style." "I'm a woman!" (s)he protested. "Maybe now but you're not arguing with me on the bakla bit, sorry." And fortuitously, off she went.

And as I was standing by the wall, looking around, taking in rest of the view, such as it was, I became aware of a Chinese lady standing next to me. And she was quite tall. Which I like. But I couldn't really see her, she was too close. I was tempted to tell her that, to say, "I can't see you, you're too close, could you move a bit farther away."

And then I thought, blinding revelation (fueled by Jack Daniels). I can't see you, you're too close, could you move a bit farther away. That's a metaphor for my entire life.

And then I thought, wow, what a great inspiration. What a deep thought. I need to share it with the world!

And then I thought, oh bfd, it's a metaphor for almost everyone's life, not just mine, and almost everyone already knows it, everyone except me.

So I kept my mouth shut and returned to my hotel where I shall now attempt to go to sleep.

Thus endeth tonight's lesson.

Can I get an amen? I'd prefer an awoman. (Sorry. They paid Robin Williams millions for that joke. He used to be funny.)

Ma Lik says he may have been "rash and frivolous" in his comments on the June 4th massacre. But he still says it was not a massacre. Even Ma will admit that hundreds were killed (general opinion is that the true number is at least 3,000) but says it was not "indiscriminate" killing.

Does anyone see the irony in the leader of a political party which has the word "Democratic" in its name coming out and saying that Hong Kong should not have democracy?

In an expected move, James Tien of the Liberal Party has also announced that June 4 1989 was not a massacre.

Conventional wisdom in Hong Kong is that if you find James Tien siding with you, you need to seriously question your position.

In this New York Times article on elections in the Philippines, they have quotes from "regional military spokesman Maj. Randolph Cabangbang." Cabangbang? What were the odds he'd end up in the military?

But for extremes of lunacy, one needs look no further than Hong Kong. Ma Lik, chairman of the Really Stupid Party Democratic Alliance for the Ruinment and Destruction of Hong Kong, was quoted yesterday as saying that Hong Kong people shouldn't have the vote because they still believe there was a massacre in Tiananmen Square. Which leaves two choices - the man is a complete idiot or completely without scruples, willing to say whatever Beijing wants him to say in return for ten bucks and a bottle of whiskey.

He explained his comments today, whilst wearing a red nose, a fright wig and size 37 shoes, as quoted in the SCMP:

"We should not say the Communist Party massacred people on June 4. I never said that nobody was killed, but it was not a massacre. A massacre would mean the Communist Party intentionally killed people with machine guns indiscriminately. How could people say bodies were minced under the tanks? Has anybody tried mincing meat under tanks?"

My money's on complete idiot.

I buy too many magazines and spend too little time reading them. Such is not the case with the current issue of Vanity Fair (UK edition). Kept me busy for the entire flight to Shanghai and there's enough left over for the return flight as well.

Pictures of Queen Elizabeth taken by Annie Liebovitz.

Healthy excerpts from Ronald Reagan's White House diaries.

Splendid lengthy article from Nick Tosches on the inner workings of the Tsukiji fish market and the history of sushi in the US.

Great editorial from editor Graydon Carter that starts out like this:

Imagine this: The world's premier military and economic superpower (let's call it Country A) gins up a war against a faraway opponent (Country B) after it refuses to kowtow to Country A's wishes. Country B, it should be said, is rich in the essential resources that A requires to continue its expansion. A showers B with name-calling invective and then, with war imminent, A's leaders predict that B will collapse almost immediately. But not only does B not fold—it rallies and fights back guerrilla-style. Meanwhile, in Country A the war's architects and proponents are accused of misjudging the enemy. Country A's leader (let's call him George) is accused of being ill informed and downright ignorant of the people and customs of Country B. Within A, tensions rise and the nation divides on the issue of the war. Country A throws everything it can at B—including a number of "surges"—and still B fights back. After eight long years of warfare, Country A concedes defeat, and from those ashes, B rises to become the next great sphere of influence in the world.

If you're thinking Country A is the U.S., you'd be wrong. A is late-18th-century Great Britain under the reign of another failed George, George III. Country B is the formative United States of America.

Incredibly scary article by Christopher Hitchens on the rise of radical Islam in the UK.

Michael Wolff calls Rudy Giuliani insane, and means it.

The Yoga Portfolio - stunning photo portraits of some of the key figures in the current yoga movement, celebrities and non.

Cullen Murphy attributes the fall of Rome to privatization and says the U.S. is going the same way.

And more ....

Don't wanna be totally silent here and give the wrong impression. What's going on isn't what some people think. It's not all bad, it's not all good, it just is.

So, externally, the album I'm playing the most this week is about a year old, A Blessing and A Curse by the Drive-By Truckers. They have several lead singer/songwriters and the band sounds different depending on who's in front for the song. Musically not very original but I like the sources they draw from and I like their lyrics. And while I liked it on initial release, it didn't get stuck on repeat play till this week. This one's called Gravity's Gone, by Mike Cooley, and it has an alt-country feel to it:

I went stumbling through the fog trying to find a reason for the things I told her
She woke up sunny side down and I was still thinking I was too proud to flip her over
Between the champagne hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved
Cocaine rich comes quick and that's why the small dicks have it all

So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating

Those little demons ain't the reasons for the bruises on your soul you've been neglecting
You'll never lose your mind as long as your heart always reminds you where you left it
And don't ever let them make you feel like saying what you want is unbecoming
If you were supposed to watch your mouth all the time I doubt your eyes would be above it

Between the champagne hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved
What used to be is gone and what ought to be ought not to be so hard

This one's called Aftermath USA and has a mid-to-late period Faces feel, which definitely matches the lyrics:

When I crawled out of bed this morning
I could tell something wasn't right
There were cigarettes in the ashtrays
They weren't your menthol lights
There were beer bottles in the kitchen
And broken glass on the floor
Someone must have slipped me something
Passed out a couple days before

The car was in the carport sideways
Big dent running down the side
Never seen anything as frightening
As when I took a look inside
Smell of musk and deception
Heel marks on the roof-line
Bad music on the stereo
All the seats in recline

The aftermath staring me right in the face
I'll get around to breaking even one of these days

My credit cards have all been maxed out
The meat in my freezer all thawed
The IRS laid the facts out
It's all worse than I thought
The welfare lady said enough is enough
The kids ain't been to school in weeks

Crystal-meth in the bathtub
Blood splattered in my sink
Laying around in the aftermath
It's all worse than you think

Even on the Spike Scale of Life, last night was pretty freaking weird.

Unfortunately, dear readers, I do not intend to document said weirdness here. Am merely noting it. Life, especially mine, is never simple and the complexity is purely of my own making and doing.

Going to Shanghai tomorrow for a few days. The timing is excellent.

"You can't make up anything anymore. The world itself is a satire. All you're doing is recording it." Art Buchwald.

With the above in mind, it seems as if Hemlock has actually gone and published a book. Not the long threatened Tung Chee-Hwa autobiography, How I Trashed Asia's Greatest Economy or something to that effect. Nope, it's called We Deserve Better - Hong Kong Since 1997 and it seems to be an actual book and seems to be available from Paddyfields (and eventually from Amazon?).

I was thinking he had self published, but it comes to us from Chameleon Press and would seem to fit in well with their existing line-up, which includes Panda Packs Her Bags, Sasha Visits Bali and How to Raise a Money-Wise Child. Not to forget Fruit Dreams by the wonderfully named Roseanne Thong and Jeremy Wagstaff's Loose Wire. (Come to think of it, if you're drunk enough, Wag Staff could be a rather rude name as well. And I would happily patronize any establishment named Wagstaff @ Thong.)(Anonymous commenter: You already do. Me: Shut the fuck up.)

In all seriousness, or as much seriousness as I'm able to muster on this gloomy Monday afternoon, congrats to Hemlock on the publication and I wish him every success.

Have not been blogging personal stuff because, as sometimes happens, I'm in the midst of things that could be disrupted by doing so.

If you're not a geek or a nerd or a psychiatrist trawling blogs looking for new patients, you probably should skip the rest of this.

Thinking about cameras. Right now I have three. I have the Nikon D80, for when I'm trying to take serious photos. I have the Canon Ixus 700IS, which by and large I was pretty happy with. And I have the Sony T100, which I bought semi on a whim. My options at the moment are to sell either the Canon or the Sony ... OR sell them both and get something else. I'm not happy with the T100 over the long haul because for a snapshot camera, it seems to require a lot of fiddling to get the best results. And while I've liked the Ixus 700 IS, I do suffer from upgrade-itis and just knowing there's the 800 IS now means I can't sleep at night knowing that the 700 is on my shelf.

A friend who takes a lot of photos on a daily basis has one of Canon's Powershot A series cameras and seems to get consistently good results. There is the Powershot A710 IS, which looks nifty. Except megapixel.net rates the A710 an 8.4 for functionality and a 9.6 for photographic qualities, while they rate the Ixus 700 9.2 and 9.6. (They haven't reviewed the Ixus 800 IS yet).

Now Canon is about to replace the Ixus 800 IS with the 850 IS. The A710 is six months old, so that will probably be replaced soon as well. And there's also the S5 IS, packing a 12x optical zoom, but that's going to be a bit bigger physically than I'd want.

So waiting to see when these new ones are due out and what they'll cost.

In the meantime, having finally decided what size and shape bag suits me best, not finding it locally and having read many reviews online, I went for the Cargo bag from Waterfield. Industrial strength construction and some leather trip to make it look nice.


I figured as long as I was at it, I'd get the combo set. And then the iPod gear pouch as well.



I expect these in the next 10 days or so.

And then, in order to fly my geek flag high, I went for this shirt, containing a certain famous encryption code:



And then completely over the top, this bluetooth handset:

Both are from ThinkGeek.

Yeah. This is all due to the fact that my company pays annual bonuses late, I didn't have much to do this weekend, and decided to burn off the rest of what I'd set aside for spending.

Yeah, I know there's a certain percentage of you out there that wants to read about what passes for my love life or further adventures in Wanchai. Not now. Maybe later.

Trying to momentarily chill from my outrage over the recent internet conviction and fine, I've found the perfect thing.

No, it's not the bizarre new release from Lou Reed which I spotted today, Hudson River Wind Meditations, four instrumental tracks (two of which are described as being basically Doppler-effect sine waves) meant to be played while you're doing tai chi. I passed on that one.

What I picked up was a new DVD from Santana, Hymns For Peace - Live in Montreux 2004. His regular band is augmented with - take a deep breath - Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, Steve Winwood, Angelique Kidjo, Patti Austin, Nile Rogers and more. Two discs, DTS sound.

Given the theme of this show, there are none of the usual hits. The song selections relate to the theme, and include Afro Blue, Redemption Song, Exodus, Get Up Stand Up, Blowin' in the Wind, What's Going On, In a Silent Way, A Love Supreme and Give Peace a Chance. Right now Adouma's on, I'm watching Angelique shaking her hips in front of Corea while he's trying to solo.

I'm going to finally need to figure out how to rip the audio off a DVD, this needs to be in my iPod.

Following a comment made a couple of hours ago, I needed to get more details on a story from today. Here are excerpts from the SCMP account:

A Hong Kong man who posted a message with an internet link to an overseas pornographic website was fined yesterday for publishing an obscene article via the internet.

The prosecution and conviction, the city's first under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance, involved the use of a common computing technique, the police's commercial crime bureau said.

The judgment has worried the local internet community, particularly with regard to possible constraints on the free flow of information.

Questions were also raised on whether guidelines are sufficient to halt online distribution of obscene material.

Woo Tai-wai, 48, pleaded guilty in Kwun Tong Court to publishing eight obscene photos via a local internet forum.

He provided a linked message which, when clicked, would enable other forum users to access an overseas pornographic website showing the photos.

Deputy Magistrate Jason Wan Siu-ming fined Woo HK$5,000 in light of his guilty plea and clean record.

He also said that while the articles at issue were obscene, they were not extreme or of deviant taste.

Internet Society chairman Charles Mok Nai-kwong said the court case, the first prosecution of its kind in the city, raised more questions than answers.

"It worries us as in this case the court has given a new direction to the public concerning the responsibility of internet users," he said, as well as affecting the notion of freedom regarding the distribution of information on the internet.

"It may cause damage to the freedom of information on the internet. This man posted a link on the internet, which now becomes an act that constitutes the breaking of law, and my question is whether a link is being regarded as the `obscene article'."

Mr Mok said he was also concerned that materials connected to links are changeable.

"Materials behind a link are always changeable. It could be pornographic material behind the link on the day of his arrest, but it could be something else on the day he posted the link," he said. "Where should the authority draw the line?"

He said popular search engines such as Yahoo and Google carried links to porn sites. "In cases where search engines list out all the links to pornographic websites, is it justifiable to ask whether these would have to undergo censorship as they also provide these hyperlinks to obscene articles?

"We are not encouraging the distribution of this kind of material, but I suggest more guidelines from the government for internet users," Mr Mok said.

The court heard in mitigation that Woo saw similar messages being posted at the forum and therefore did not know it was an offence.

Woo was remorseful, and he had just wanted to share the photoes "with other netizens", the court was told.

The case came to light when the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority received a public complaint last November about obscene articles on the popular internet forum uwants.com.

The forum's webmaster checked records and found the message was posted by "fireman 1324" at the chat room "Adult Images Posting Area".

The IP address belonged to the defendant.

Police raided a Sham Shui Po flat and arrested Woo, who confessed and said the message was posted via his home computer.

"I uploaded the pornographic [link] to uwants.com but I didn't know it constituted an offence," Woo told police on his arrest.

The court heard that Woo had made no financial gain from the publication of the link.

So fucking much for fucking freedom of speech in fucking Hong Kong, huh?

It's a damned shame this guy pleaded guilty. But considering that he lives in Sham Shui Po, odds are he wouldn't have been able to afford proper legal representation. Too bad he didn't get that professor who is representing the bad movie bit torrent guy. And too bad we don't have the equivalent of an ACLU to take up the case.

UPDATE: My thanks to boingboing for linking to my story on this. We need to publicly spread the word and express our outrage at this idiocy in the hopes that this will not be repeated.

An Eternal Thought in the Mind of Godzilla - blog of Patrick Macias, gaijin expert on Japanese pop culture. His most recent book - are you ready? - is Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook.

Hong Kong Pussy Fest - "I am a married man with children living in Hong kong. I am fat, middle age man that is not particularly attractive but get so much pussy that I am absolutley astounded. I kind of treat this like a sport and go out to meet new gals just so I can have sex with them. I have a problem don't I?" Nope, not another blog by me. I'm not married and don't have children.

More to come (no pun intended).

Like many westerners in Asia, I've assumed that if I ever do get to the point where I can retire, it would likely be in Thailand. Reports like this one (found via boingboing) are making me think twice about that assumption.

Thailand's National Legislative Assembly approved a controversial law this week which could seriously effect how Thailand's internet users use the web. The main effect of the bill is to outlaw any attempt at bypassing government censors to access any of the thousands of sites that have been censored due to their moral or political purposes.

This single law could put Thailand in the same category as China and Burma with regards to censorship and the lack of a democratic right for free speech.

YouTube is just one of the thousands of "forbidden" sites. There is an online petition where one can register one's disgust at this proposed action. (The comments field there also contains links to other similar petitions.)

At the same time, this report (found via noodlepie) suggests that things are opening up in Vietnam:

Vietnam will permit foreigners working in the country to buy houses, local newspaper Youth reported Tuesday.

Under the scheme compiled by the Construction Ministry and submitted to the government for approval, those eligible for house purchases include people who directly come to Vietnam for investment or make contributions to the country and receive medals, or scientists who are bestowed Vietnamese academic titles and degrees, experts in socio-economic fields, highly-skilled workers, and persons who get married to Vietnamese citizens.

To buy houses in Vietnam, the people must meet three criteria: they are working and living in the country, they have entered Vietnam and been permitted to reside in the country for at least one year, and they will buy houses for accommodation for themselves and their family members.

Sure, they have a long way to go in a lot of different areas but this is a positive step forward IMHO.

I've seen lots of coverage on this all over the place, but this is a nice succinct summary. From Andy Ihnatko, writing for the Chicago Sun-Times, via LexisNexis, via ContentAgenda. The only thing is that it's the MPAA and not the RIAA that's going bonkers over this if I'm not mistaken.

More guffaws from the record industry; Heavy-handed group goes from comic to tragic

I don't know why the Kennedy Center is awarding the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor to Billy Crystal this year. For one, I don't think any of us have forgiven him for "Mr. Saturday Night" yet, despite the fact that it was released a decade and a half ago.

But mostly because, come on: if there's one American person or organization that's truly stepping up to the plate with exciting and ground-breaking comedy, surely it's the recording industry.

Pardon me if I'm savoring all of this, sensation-seekers. Because as a seasoned technology commentator I can sense that we're nearing the end of that phase when the recording industry's reaction to piracy and attitude towards the community of people who use and enjoy technology (i.e., anybody who doesn't strap on a black bonnet before heading out of the house in the morning) transitions from comic to tragic.

The latest high-water mark in the timeline of their unfolding dementia: their handling of what's become known as the 09-F9 Affair.

"09 F9" are the first two sets of digits in a 128-bit number that represents a "processing key" -- the super-triple-secret string that (along with a sprinkling of other mojo) encrypts HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, and prevents purchasers from ripping their movies into video files for their computers and portable players.

Some Clever People successfully extracted this key. The news, and the key itself, were duly reported by the usual tech news sites back in February, and then more or less forgotten. Nobody seems to be anywhere close to an iTunes-like HD DVD ripping tool.

I can sense that you're a wise person, both in the ways of the world in general, and in the broad problems of preventing theft and piracy.

You're thinking, "I suppose with millions of people trying to figure out a way to break the Advanced Access Content System, and consumers' relentless ongoing transition to digital media players, it was bound to happen."

And you're right. The first inroads against the scheme were logged last year, in fact.

"Well, what are you going to do?" you say, with a shrug. "Once information is out, you can't put toothpaste back into the tube, can you? 'Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,' etc., as the old saying goes."

Indeed, dear reader, you show wisdom and maturity beyond your years.

The organization that stewards the Advanced Content Access System, for its part, shrewdly chose to have its lawyers send letters to every news site and blog that had ever published the key, threatening Old Testament-style legal retribution unless they immediately took it down.

It was a brilliant plan, and the Internet community's reaction last week was calm, reasoned, and served the goals of the organization.

Ha, ha! I guess I'm gunning for a Twain Prize of my own.

No, the Internet went more or less batspit.

I first learned of the kerfuffle when all of a sudden, two or three people on my buddy list had changed their Status messages to "09 F9 11 02 . . ." which had seemed vaguely familiar. A Google search of the entire sequence turns up, let's see, "about 1,720,000" hits.

So: somewhat short of a complete success for the Advanced Access Content System folks, then.

No digital rights management scheme can possibly withstand the relentless probing of millions of Very Clever People, many of whom believe that breaking a digital rights management scheme is a holy cause.

Moreover, digital rights management is simply bad for business. It marginalizes the content, consumers don't want it, and movies appear on file-sharing services long before they show up for sale at Best Buy anyway.

I suppose there's a silver lining to this. "09 F9 11 02 . . ." now joins "THX-1138," "CPE1704TKS," and others in the pantheon of immortal numerics that automatically provoke a chuckle of recognition among any properly geeky peer group. So you can't say that the modern entertainment industry never contributed anything to world culture.

When I read this SCMP article, via LexisNexis, via ContentAgenda some things just didn't make sense. This is the full text of that article:

Any stuff going on in my life at the moment is stuff that (believe it or not) I don't want to blog about. However, it's all good. Very good. Post-birthday blahs are behind me and things are looking up.

So I'll just note as a follow-up to my last post that Chris Albrecht, chairman and CEO of HBO, was "asked to resign" following his arrest in Vegas Saturday night but an L.A. Times story may have had a lot to do with it. No surprise that alcoholic men who commit violence against women do it repeatedly but the details are quite shocking to me:

In 1991, Time Warner Inc.'s HBO paid a settlement of at least $400,000 to a female subordinate with whom Albrecht was romantically involved after she alleged that he shoved and choked her, according to four people with knowledge of the matter who declined to be named because the payment was confidential.

The settlement, to Sasha Emerson, was overseen by Time Warner President Jeffrey Bewkes, who at the time was a top executive at the cable network, said two people familiar with the details. Bewkes is in line to become chief executive of Time Warner next year, when Richard Parsons retires.

Look at that. A married executive of a corporation was having a romantic relationship with a married subordinate employee. He physically attacked her. On company premises. And he kept his job. And the company paid to keep her quiet.

And this time? Details are starting to emerge, in this subsequent L.A. Times story :

Officers at the site of the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. boxing match came running when they spotted a man later identified as Albrecht grabbing a woman by the throat with both hands and dragging her toward the valet parking station at the MGM Grand.

Police said Albrecht was unsteady on his feet, reeked of alcohol and said of the woman, "She pissed me off."

Albrecht is actually a talented guy who shares a lot of responsibility for HBO's success over the past two decades, making this even sadder. I hope that he seeks professional help.

And, another day, another thing to be pissed off about in Hong Kong. From the SCMP:

Lawmakers were split yesterday on the need for a law to stop developers inducing a "wall effect" by constructing buildings which cut off airflow to densely populated areas. A motion calling for such a law was defeated.

Directly elected legislators voted 13 to 10 in favour of the motion, moved by unionist legislator Wong Kwok-hing, but it was defeated because of opposition from 16 functional constituency lawmakers.

Is it any wonder that the real estate cartels that control this city would not allow a law to be passed that might place a limit on their future exorbitant profits, even as they openly collude to defraud the public?

I know the new Bjork album is getting some negative reviews. I wanted to dislike it, no special reason. Listening to it for the first time now. So far I think it's her best album since Post. Yeah, it's really fucking annoying too. The first song ends with 30 seconds of tugboat horns. The second song ends with 30 seconds of what sound like bicycle horns. I still kinda like it. Wait, third song is a duet with Antony, what's his group? Antony & the Johnsons or some double entendre like that? Only so much of him I can take. Perfect antidote for him - Deodato Bossa Nova Sessions Volume 1. Oh wait, Julian Cope Out of My Mind on Dope and Speed, better.

I wore my Julian Cope Live Jehovahkill t-shirt last night, which is basically the same photo as this album cover, him wearing a Faust t-shirt.


Of course, since almost no one in HK knows who the fuck he is, lots of people seem to think that the photo on the shirt is me, even though I stopped wearing my hair that long a decade ago. In the past I've also been mistaken for Chris Elliott and Eric Clapton. Put those three together, stir, hang to dry for a few decades, that should give you a good idea of what I look like.

Wore said shirt to Bulldogs in Wanchai. Was hungry, late, their kitchen stays open late and you can smoke there now. At midnight, there were perhaps two other paying customers in the joint. The band came on. I had made the unfortunate choice of picking a table near the stage, figuring with the place so empty, they were done for the night. Not so. Two cuter-than-average female singers wearing identical dresses and really hamming it up on stage. Good drummer but the material was all over the place (as was the singers' pitch) until they hauled out Brown Eyed Girl to close their set. One of the singers then was sitting with some old (for "old" read "my age") white guy, the other disappeared. As I was sitting with someone myself (I might have forgotten to mention that), there seemed little point in trying to bust a move on her anyway.

Working on a senseless playlist for the iPod that, for want of a better name, I'm calling "sample pairs," current songs that rely heavily on identifiable samples from older songs, but I like 'em anyway. So far Rhianna SOS + Soft Cell Tainted Love, Rogue Traders Voodoo Child + Elvis Costello Pump It Up. More to come. The world holds its breath waiting.

I'm a bit bemused by this. HBO chairman and CEO Chris Albrecht was arrested in Vegas over the weekend. He was there to watch the HBO-broadcast De La Hoya/Mayweather boxing match and allegedly got into a fight with his girlfriend in the parking lot afterwards. Albrecht has blamed the incident on his being an alcoholic and suffering a "lapse" and is taking a leave of absence to work out his problems. The NY Times draws a parallel where one doesn't really exist IMHO:

Mr. Albrecht’s leave comes at an inopportune time for HBO. Hours after the Las Vegas police released Mr. Albrecht on Sunday, the cable channel broadcast the latest episode of its marquee series, “The Sopranos,” which will end its six-season run on June 10. In Sunday’s episode, one character, Christopher Moltisanti, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, was depicted as committing an act of violence after getting drunk.

Of course violence against women is deplorable in any circumstance and I haven't hit a girl since I was about 5 years old and in the US you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty but I'm wondering if I was to ever find myself in a similar circumstance, especially in such a public fashion, would my employer be so understanding?

Here's the line-up for the Fuji Rock Festival 07. Vaguely tempting. Probably this is the closest to HK that the Stooges will get.

I'm 100 pages into Shantaram, 933 page epic by Gregory David Roberts. Every page seems eminently quotable to me. Here's one bit, maybe more later, if I have the energy to type:

Prabaker played the Virgil. His soft voice was ceaseless, explaining all that we saw, and all that he knew. He told me the children would've died, if they hadn't found their way to the people-market. Professional recruiters, known as talent scouts, roamed from one catastrophe to another, from drought to earthquake to flood. Starving parents, who'd already watched one or more of their children sicken, and die, blessed the scouts, touched their feet. They begged them to buy a son or a daughter, so that at least one child would live.

The boys on sale there were destined to work as camel jockeys in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and other Gulf States. Some would be maimed in the camel races that provided afternoon entertainment for the rich sheiks, Prabaker said. Some would die. The survivors, grown too tall to ride in the races, were often abandoned to fend for themselves. The girls would work in households throughout the Middle East. Some of them would be used for sex.

But they were alive, Prabaker said, those boys and girls. They were the lucky ones. For every child who passed through the people-market there were a hundred others, or more, who'd starved in unutterable agonies, and were dead.

The starving, the dead, the slaves. And through it all, the purr and rustle of Prabaker's voice. There's a truth that's deeper than experience. It's beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It's an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We're helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than my heart would willingly pay. It doesn't always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I'm telling it to you now.

Johnny Depp has bought the movie rights. Roberts is writing the first draft screenplay and also working on a sequel to the novel.

Erm, no, that's not quite what I had in mind.

(sorry, perhaps this post should have included a warning and an air sickness bag)

(pic stolen from the bastardly)

Oh well, movie time.

Slow day, plus focusing my writing energies on coming up with my next BC column, which is due in less than 48 hours. Wish I had the kind of blog where I could just neaten up one of my posts and hand it in, but such is not my fate.

I met up with new HK blogger Banished Immortal tonight for a coupla quick drinks. Good guy. Links to me, so smart too.

Quick note - Heat, at the site of what used to be Klong, will have its opening party on Thursday night. Could be worthwhile. Also Devil's is gearing up for their 8th anniversary party very soon and looks like they're gonna try to do something fun and special there for that.

Quick note 2 - have been told there are two more spots on HK island where one can bring dogs leash free, both along the harbor. One next to Fenwick Pier, the other in Causeway Bay east of the yacht club, I suppose east of the noonday gun, along the water towards Tin Hau. Anyone have any more deets on these or other spots?

There was something else I was gonna write, can't recall it now. So instead just gonna link to this post at Sinocidal, funniest thing I've read in days, on the two basic ways to order food and eat in a restaurant in China:

13. Finally choose something they have and ask them not to put any egg in it.
14. Relax. All the time, a million Chinese peasants are staring at you, spitting, and muttering: “laowailaowailaowailaowailaowai”.
15. After 20 minutes ask what is happening with your meal.
16. After another 20 minutes receive meal, then send it back because it has egg in it.
17. Seven days after you entered the place, finally receive meal.
18. Pick out the stones and pubic hair.

The NY Times reviews a book called "The Joy of Drinking" by Barbara Holland.

Ever have problems with the US Constitution? Find parts of it unnecessarily vague? This could be the answer:

She reminds us that in 1787, two days before their work was done, the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention “adjourned to a tavern for some rest, and according to the bill they drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 of whiskey, 22 of port, 8 of hard cider and 7 bowls of punch so large that, it was said, ducks could swim around in them. Then they went back to work and finished founding the new Republic.”

With me, after just five glasses of whiskey, anything starts to sound like a good idea.

And British friends? Take heart:

The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Holland writes, “claims that a moderate beer drinker — whatever that means — swallows 11 percent of his dietary protein needs, 12 percent of the carbohydrates, 9 percent of essential phosphorus, 7 percent of his riboflavin, and 5 percent of niacin. Should he go on to immoderate beer drinking, he becomes a walking vitamin pill.”

That's assuming you can still walk.

And an excellent quote from Dylan Thomas:

who once defined an alcoholic as “someone you don’t like who drinks as much as you do.”

Woody Allen once wrote, was it in Annie Hall?, "Sex without love is an empty experience. But as empty experiences go, it's one of the best." True. But it strikes me that it gets progressively emptier as time goes by.

Two minor events today set me thinking.

The first was this afternoon, when I brought my dogs over to the dog run in Happy Valley. I ran into a former colleague there, H (female). H is HK Chinese, married, speaks very good English, is extremely easy on the eyes. Everyone I know loves her and it's not merely her good looks. I gave it a bit of thought later on and realized it's because she's so consistently nice. She's always smiling, always pleasant to everyone, and if she ever has a bad day, she never lets it show (at least not out in public).

Now, let's contrast that with event #2.

When I don't answer my mobile phone, it rings over to my office. I missed a call today so checked my voice mail. Apparently I'd forgotten to change my voice mail message. So one of the messages waiting for me there was from my mother. Her message was, "What the hell kind of stupid message is that, that you won't be back until April 19th." I didn't bother to listen to the rest.

My mother, her entire life, has been an overwhelming negative person. Yet people seem to like her. My life consisted of people coming up to me and telling me what a wonderful person she is. My response is invariably, "Everyone who never lived with her loves her." I suppose in public she's probably seen as a positive kind of person. But at home she can be positively venomous.

So I grew up under the triple whammy of a venomous mother, living in New York and being Jewish. These three factors have led to my being a predominantly negative person.

There's this thingie called "The Secret" - some big best selling DVD and book that's another one of these self-help books where some rich guy tells you his "secret" or some guy gets rich telling you his "secret" and apparently the whole hook in this one is just to be a positive thinker and you'll get what you want. There's a funny editorial trashing this in the current issue of GQ (with Stephen Colbert on the cover) and the editor includes a bit about if getting what you want is an Asian hooker and you get one, congrats! Well, most of the mag is online but the editorial isn't and I'm too lazy to cut in the salient bits, so just take my word for it.

The point is, or the question is, is positive thinking enough? Naturally the GQ editorial trashes the concept and yet I suppose an argument could be made either way. Take my ex-colleague. I suspect she leads a sunny, mostly happy existence. And she deserves to.

But if you're some AIDS-ridden hooker from Nepal and you think bright thoughts all day, will Richard Gere come swooping in and marry you? If you're someone staring down the barrel of a gun in Darfur, will being really "up" mean that Spiderman will swoop in and shield your family from the bullets? If you're some 53 year old guy in Hong Kong who still can't figure out what the fuck he wants out of life, will having a smile on your face every day and a kind word for even the insane old woman who begs every night in Wanchai and clutches onto your shirt sleeve and won't let go yield a girl friend with the body of Raquel Welch (hopefully 20 years ago, not today) and the brain of Albert Einstein (no, not the fuzzy haired MC squared dude, I was thinking of Albert Brooks, whom I find very funny and whose real name is Albert Einstein, which is why he changed it for showbiz)? Life doesn't work that way.

Life is fucking tough. The Buddhists have it right, I think, that desire is at the route of all unhappiness, and yet it is an almost impossible task to completely rid oneself of desire. Life has no meaning other than whatever you decide it should have.

The one thing about life that is fucking certain and fucking tragic is that 99% of the people in the world have to go through every mistake themselves. It doesn't matter how many people tell you, it doesn't matter how many books you read (or buy and put on your bookshelf and plan to read someday), you have to live through it yourself. It's human nature.

You can tell it was a real up Sunday for me. Walked the dogs a couple of times in the neighborhood and drove 'em over to Happy Valley so they could run and play with other dogs for a bit. Ordered up some Indian food from a usually reliable spot and ended up with the not-quite-screaming shits an hour or two later. A moment of semi-panic when one of the disks in my RAID array failed. Popped the disk out, cleaned out the unit, the disk was back but then the unit, thinking it was new for some reason, had to rebuild the entire drive - 500 gigs, mostly full, which took hours and provided a nice opportunity for a nap.

And now, to demonstrate how utterly bored I am, I'm putting together an Al Kooper play list on the iPod. Blues Project, Blood Sweat & Tears, Super Session and solo stuff. (Not going for the productions, Skynyrd, Tubes, etc., at least not on the playlist.) Weird how I never met him - well, did stand on line in front of him in a bookstore once and we did pass some emails back and forth a couple of years back when he was playing in Tokyo and I tried to lure him here. Saw him live three times that I can remember. Once with the Al Kooper Big Band around 69 or so, the most memorable thing that night was Bernard Pretty Purdie on drums, what a powerhouse of a drummer he was. Once at the Cafe Au Go Go on Bleecker Street, probably 71-ish, when he only played guitar and screamed "boogie" at the audience repeatedly because everyone stayed seated. Once at the Blues Project reunion, 1972? 1973?, when he came on stage in a wheelchair, as a joke I think.

Well, T returns to Hong Kong. A phone message saying she's arriving today. An email saying she's arriving Wednesday. I am hoping no confrontations. I am planning on staying the fuck outta Neptune. But all her stuff is still here and I suppose the question is if she plans to show up while I'm in the house or not. At any rate I'm off to Shanghai in a week and Tokyo after that, perhaps squeezing Taiwan in the middle.

Someone at Sony was thinking positively. Spiderman 3 did $148 million its opening weekend in North America. Cumulative global total since opening worldwide on May 1st is $375 million despite mostly negative reviews, proving yet again that the public doesn't give a fuck about film critics. The film was reportedly budgeted at around - wait for it - $260 million. Tack on at least another $150 million for prints and marketing. Even after one subtracts what the exhibitors will keep, how much Maguire and Raimi will pocket, I think Sony will come out ahead.

Yep, a thrill a minute around Hongkie Town these days. Just write it down to post-birthday blues.

Well, after four nights in a row of partying, something had to give, namely my energy, and all I've managed to do so far today was go out and meet a visiting friend for lunch.

I also watched two episodes of Not Just the Best of the Larry Sanders Show DVD set and the extras are truly remarkable. Shandling, who has never topped this show since (well, very few people have), went out with cameras to interview some of the guest stars from the series but is not aiming for cream puff interviews here. To wit:

Shandling, who is 58 years old, boxes. Seriously. And he has Alec Baldwin (49 years old) meet him in the gym to spar while they talk. Shandling manages to piss Baldwin off, Baldwin lands some solid blows and pins him against the rope .....

You learn in the extended segment with Sharon Stone that Shandling and Stone had the same acting teacher and were involved early in their careers. It also appears that Stone is no dummy, regardless of how the press often positions her. She says some stuff that Shandling notes, in a written postscript, had him trembling for the rest of the day.

If you have never watched the Larry Sanders Show and you are a fan of Larry David or Ricky Gervais, you owe it to yourself to discover this show - David and Gervais clearly owe a lot to it.

Latest BC column is up. Extended review of new covers albums by Bryan Ferry and Patti Smith. This didn't set out to be the sole topic of an entire column but sometimes the thoughts just flow, the fingers dance over the keyboard (ugh) and before I know it, a thousand words are there.

And what am I going to write about next time? How much I like Singapore? How much I like Singapore girls? (Better, but that would be pushing the envelope of what BC would be willing to print.)

And forget the next column, what else am I going to do tonight? It's past 1:30 AM and I could get in bed and put a movie on (I tried watching A Scanner Darkly earlier but fell asleep 15 minutes in, which doesn't bode well) or I could go out and get something to eat and we all know how that's gonna end, don't we?

But before that .... useless thought of the day .....

Ignoring for the minute about whether or not the government is right in redeveloping those areas of Wanchai, because it is a done deal, a fait accompli, like the Star Ferry terminal they are determined to proceed and they will not be stopped because the potential profits in the hands of a few billionaire real estate developers is more important than the desires of the masses ....

I'm fixated on how when you walk around Singapore, there is green everywhere. When you walk down Orchard Road, not only is it relatively Orchard-like, but the public space includes lots of benches along the road for people to sit on.

Now, take these side streets just south of Johnston Road. These are very narrow, twisty streets. The medium sized buildings are going to be replaced by bigger size palaces of greed. And let's not even bother to think about how the local infrastructure will be affected when there are thousands or tens of thousands more people traveling to and from that area every day.

(The same thing is about to happen in Taikoo Shing. Swire is building the massive "One Island East" in an area that is all single lane streets. At least they did provide some nice public space in and around Taikoo Shing but what's going to happen to the busses, MTR and surrounding streets after this building opens and tens of thousands more people are coming and going every day? I'm so looking foward to whatever shopping mall they will put in the podium because right now I have to walk three blocks to get to the nearest Giordano, City Chain and Watsons.)

It would have been nice if the government simply wiped out the old streets, put in fewer, wider streets, and planted a few fucking trees and a little bit of grass and someplace for someone to sit down for a break after a hard afternoon's shopping (or a hard night's drinking). I know, it's not a practical suggestion because all of the buildings aren't coming down. But it's really gonna be horribly congested around there in a couple of years.

I seem to recall that at one time (and maybe even today) there was a zoning law for central Manhattan that said that for every X number of feet a building was going to rise beyond a certain level, said building had to set back from the street and provide Y square feet of public space. BECAUSE IT'S THE RIGHT FUCKING THING TO DO. Because once in a while, not all the time but every now and then, you provide for the public at large and not just 6 or 10 billionaires who will never go to that area because the checks come in the mail and they've got 10,000 acre estates surrounded by forests and electronic fences so fuck everyone else.

Look at Central. It's a concrete jungle. When the old Swire House went down and a new one went up, we didn't gain an inch more sidewalk space. Look at Times Square, which at least does have a huge public plaza - which is often cut down by 2/3rds so that commercial exhibitions can fill up that area - and with thousands of people passing by each day, they provide uneven monkey bars with "seating" for 12 people. Try sitting on the 6 inch high "wall" around the "grassy" areas and a hard will hurry over and politely ask you to stand up.

Yeah, Hong Kong is 70 percent park land, but not where it fucking counts.

Rant over. For now.

Tom Poston is dead. Tommy Newsom is dead. Wally Schirra is dead. And clearly I'm not feeling so good myself.

A most excellent party last night, if I do say so myself, a very good group, spent the first several hours at Peel where I believe everyone got well ripped, and a few maybe not-so-well ripped. Then several hours tearing through Wanchai (what, you were expecting Disneyland?). The ending was a bit weird. Several women begged me to buy them commission drinks and I said I wasn't in the mood to do that on my birthday and they could buy me drinks or go away, knowing full well they would choose option #2 and I didn't care. I remained frighteningly in control of myself despite losing track of how much I drank early on, and even more scarily decided at some point that I was going to come home alone, but that could have been because of those women on the very short list of ones I wanted to spend the evening (or early morning) with were not available to do so. Some of them were at the party, some of them weren't, none of them were in Wanchai. Lots of great pictures from last night, none of which I can publicly share, sorry to say.

By all rights today should be spent in recovery mode but there are still more people to see, more beverages to imbibe, more xxx to xxx.

It seems like this year I've turned this annual celebration of not dying and not being woefully ill and looking at least one year younger than my actual age into a week-long event and I suspect it's a tradition I may continue. If I make it to 60 perhaps it will be a month-long event. With fireworks and pantomime horses, no doubt. If I make it to 65 probably pantomime hookers instead of horses.

But I think he had it wrong about Uzbekistan. Cause if there are more girls there like J, I wanna move there.

Okay, my internet connection about to be finished, can't spend a load of time on this, just gonna say today more book shopping, okay food but nothing special, too much whisky at Brix, and then met someone who I thought was from Thailand but turned out to be from Uzbekistanland. Really tall. Thin. Long hair. Light skin. Asian eyes, 24 years old. Says she's here studying English but she must have just started cause her English is kinda feh.

Okay, I'm drunk. Happy birthday to me. Flying back to HK in the morning gotta pack now, partying with friends in Soho Thursday night. This has been a good trip. Might come back in June for Phil's 50th bday party, sounds like it's gonna be mega.

I'm wasted, finish packing and go to sleep. Disneyland with a death penalty? Whatever.

I was thinking today that while I may not have really shown the outward signs, the past three weeks have been really not the best of my life. The break-up with T, the subsequent disappointment a couple of weeks later that I really didn't blog about, the wacky shenanigans of the past weekend. What I needed most was to chill out and put that behind me. And this afternoon, as I sat outside at a bar at Boat Quay with some friends, both old and new, I felt totally at ease, completely relaxed.

I started off the day by hitting HMV - the selection here is just as bad as HK and the prices are just as ridiculous. From there over to Takashimaya - I'd heard that the food court there was one of the best in town, but this being a holiday, it was packed. I grabbed a chili crab puff and munched on that as I walked around, but there wasn't even a hint of a spare seat, so I didn't bother to get anything more.

Upstairs to Kinokuniya books, which is just wonderful. I would have spent much more time there but I'd forgotten to take my painkillers before I went out, which proved to be a limiting factor after walking around for an hour.

In desperate need of a place to sit, and with a very long line outside of Crystal Jade, I went to the next closest place, Sushi Tei. I figured that Singaporeans are so gonzo over food and that this is attached to a Japanese department store so it had to be good. WRONG! Very possibly the worst sashimi I've had in my entire life.

As I was finishing up, these two Singapore girls sat down at the counter next to me, grabbed the little sauce bowls, and proceeded to dump in a mountain of wasabi, with just a sprinkling of soy sauce. I was about to say to them, "that's all wrong, you should just use a dab of wasabi, you really want to be able to taste the fish," but the fish was so fucking bad that I was wishing I had done the same thing!

After that, over to Borders books, to try and fill out more of my list. Neither place had the new Michael Chabon novel yet, but I did find the Walter Isaacson bio of Einstein and several things less essential but probably fun.

Back at the hotel, I was thinking about stretching out by the pool when an SMS came in from Phil that he was going to meet up with some folks over by Boat Quay, so I went over and joined them at Harry's Bar. I got to meet Indy - I never would have thought it from his blog but he and I think alike in many ways. Also in the group was someone I will refer to as Q, this incredibly hot, sassy, flirtatious Indian woman who is a cock teaser and proud of it and she can both dish it out and take it. Oh my. She has these long legs and was wearing these little shorts and I confess that I had to take out the camera and grab a picture of her rear when she was walking ahead of me. And apparently she doesn't realize how hot she is, which makes her even hotter. (And at some point she mentioned Paris and I said let's go and she said when and I said tomorrow and she said okay but I knew she was just joking and so was I but by the same token if she'd meant it I would have done it without a second's hesitation.)

Phil, Indy, Q and I headed over to the East Coast Seafood Center around 6:30 or 7. Phil jumped in the front of the taxi, the rest of us in the back, Indy and I squeezing Q between us. Q said, "Phil, I want to have you in the back!" and we didn't let her forget that one for the rest of the night.

Some other folks joined us at Jumbo and had chili crab, pepper crab, drunken prawns, fried rice, veggies and beer. We got the medium sized crabs which were plenty huge - and those Sri Lanka crabs are incredibly meaty and tasty. The bill for the six of us was just over S$200, maybe around HK$1100 or so, and I'm sure this meal would have cost far more at Sai Kung and not been anywhere near as good. Sitting there at an outside table, along the water, it was so nice I was actually starting to think that I should move to Singapore.

One thing is - I know this is stereotyping and a case of the grass being greener so forgive me in advance - Singapore women seem so much more cosmopolitan than most of the HK women that I meet. And all of these women are well educated and have good careers going. (And, yeah, okay, they all speak fluent English.) And every place is so green, so many public spaces, such amazing food (except for the cheap sushi). Yeah, okay, they've got this ridiculous government and ludicrous censorship and I'm sure the list goes on, but as I said yesterday, as a tourist, it doesn't impact me. I only get to see the good sides and, from where I'm sitting, it all looks pretty damned good.

Following that, several more bars, the group shrunk down to just Phi, Q and me, another taxi to some more bars. At one point Q said I was looking at her like I was falling in love and I said I wasn't falling in love but was definitely falling in like. Anyway,I think I'll hold off on the rest of the evening and see how Phil chooses to describe it - he did such a good job on the previous night's escapades. Let's just say that tonight he was wearing long pants and was considerably more popular than the night before.

I just need to add - there was some discussion at various points about Phil's upcoming 50th birthday party. It sounds so promising that I'm seriously considering coming back down for that.

But I do quite like E@L's write-up of our activities last night, even the details on the bits that I had chosen not to blog about. When there are so many others willing to spread The Legend Of Spike, I don't need to do it myself.

What amazed E@L was that despite being dressed in the absolute heighth of fashion, with overlarge cargo shorts and fairy sandals, the girls all ignored him and instantly made a beeline for Spike! Time and time again the girls who made their move towards us went straight to him!

Which probably doesn't mean I looked more attractive than you in any sense other than that of the two of us, I looked more likely to open my wallet.

Tonight ... a very good night. Phil tried to get a bunch of bloggers to join us, but as it's holiday eve and last minute, the only one who could join us was knobby - thanks for letting us drag you out!

We started in a wine bar, Wine Company, about ten minutes from Orchard and Scott, a place on a quiet street where we could sit outside, surrounded by greenery, look up at the full moon. I didn't look at the menu, we had some reasonable satays and I noticed decent looking pizzas showing up on other tables.

Then over to Arab Street and Zam Zam (two pairs of chopsticks in Makansutra), famous for their murtabak. And a big helping of that and some biryani and some curry. Unfortunately they were out of mutton, their specialty, so we went for chicken and beef dishes. Knobby said he wouldn't classify it as Indian food, to him it was just Southeast Asian halal food. Tasty enough for me!

And then one more bar and now back in the hotel just relaxing before heading off to sleep. Yes, my night turned out much better than the previous two. And tomorrow night we're gonna try it again.

What I'm listening to right now: Mark Ronson - Version. Current hotspit producer responsible for a lot of the sounds on Amy Winehouse's most excellent Back to Black. This is a weird throwback album. It reminds me of the 60s, when producers and managers were putting out orchestral covers albums - Andrew Loog Oldham, Brian Epstein, that sort of thing. And it sounds simultaneously current and old, like Winehouse, but not the same sort of sound, if that makes any sense.

An orchestral big horns version of God Put a Smile on Your Face. ODB rapping on Toxic. Right now, the Jam's Pretty Green, not quite ska, not dub, I really don't know what to call it. Robbie Williams on the Only One I Know, Kasabian on LSF (Revisited), Lily Allen on Oh My God, Amy Winehouse on Valerie (Version Revisited). It's all heavy with about a thousand different things - horns, hiphop, 60s rock, blips and bleeps. Definitely not art and maybe too left field for some but this is fun stuff.