Hongkie Town

I'm gonna be doin' some o' dis ....


and hopefully it will result in a lotta dat ....

After being vaguely active on Facebook for a couple of months, I'm starting to seriously burn out on it.

It's not just the volume of notifications I get inviting me to add more and more mini-apps that do the same things at 27 other useless mini-apps I've already got. A big part of it has become my annoyance that I get these notifications that such and such wrote on my super fun orgasmatron wall and I find that it's the sort of thing that use to be mass-forwarded in emails (here is your horoscope and if you don't forward this on then something bad will happen to someone somewhere in the world).

But the latest feature is potentially more insidious.

See, now that Facebook supposedly has 50 million registered users, they are trying to figure out some way to make some money from that. Rather than follow established routes, they're trying something new. Something that a lot of people perceive as evil.

Let's say that you're logged into Facebook (as I always am, since I run Firefox and generally have at least half a dozen tabs open) and that you then go to some seemingly unaffiliated web site (like Travelocity or Overstock) and make a purchase. If that web site is participating in a new Facebook thing called Beacon, your purchase on that site will be logged by Facebook. It will then appear in your Facebook friends' newsfeeds. ("Spike bought durian flavor disposable panties at eatme.com!")

You cannot opt out of Beacon with a single click. You have to opt out for each site you visit. And it may not be so easy to find the opt-out box - and who the hell wants to have to remember to do this for every web site they go to?

So far 50,000 Facebook users have signed a petition protesting Beacon. There is also a group on Facebook now called "Petition: Facebook, stop invading my privacy," which so far has more than 51,000 members.

Curiously, if you do a search on Facebook on the phrases "facebook stop invading my privacy" or "petition: facebook stop invading my privacy," this group does not appear in the result set. While other sorts of searches always yield near matches as well as exact matches, in this case, not so much.

Further info here.

What's more funny? That they can't spell "American"? That they think of Tara Reid as an "A Lister"? Or that this obvious candidate for a Darwin Award is taking place in a town called Malice Darwin?

Australian news has some fun with this:

Aside from her films — the next most popular of which was the forgettable Van Wilder: Party Liaison with Ryan Reynolds — Reid is perhaps most famous for having breast implant surgery in 2005 which went terribly wrong.

Meanwhile, the event promoter says:

Mr Dunne says it was a big coup for the club and Darwin to have Reid host the event, saying they usually get passed over by "big-name stars".

If you've seen the blurbs for Version 2 of Google Maps mobile version, then you've read how they use triangulation between cell sites to provide your location if you don't have GPS. Naturally it doesn't work in Hong Kong, at least not on the so-called Smartone-Vodafone network (which of course is owned by a real estate developer).

Someone asked me at lunch, apropos of nothing, where I'm planning to retire. I thought about it for 20 seconds and decided that my best option is prison. Free room, free clothes, free food and medical care. So when I'm done with working, I just need to rob a bank or a jewelry store and hang out long enough to get caught. I believe I have enough money saved up to buy a lifetime supply of Marlboros to use as bribes and trade for other goods.

Now I just need to decide on a country where they don't whip you every day and where the prison food is halfway edible, some place that has some emphasis on prisoners' rights so I get access to a TV and the internet from time to time. Suggestions appreciated.

I suppose a mental institution would be an acceptable alternative and I believe I could qualify.

While the week has barely started, so far I've been mentally exhausted thanks to a global reorganization of my division - trying to anticipate and understand how it will impact me and if it will be better or worse in the long term. So far I am not optimistic.

It's relatively typical of this company that even though I was able to guess the key points a few weeks in advance of the actual announcement, when the official word went out, not only did no one bother to call me to tell me I was going to have a new boss, I wasn't even copied on the email. "A communications company where no one communicates" is a phrase I've often used to describe our little slice of multi-national hell.

They've thrown the dog a bone in a manner of speaking. They've offered me a promotion, "maybe." Not quite the one I've been lobbying for. An additional word in my title. No extra pay. No extra perks. No larger share of the bonus or options pool. I can get a new business card with this extra word and also add it into the .sig in my emails. This is supposed to get me excited? For the sake of job security, I'm pretending it does.

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One of the few things to catch my eye this week is the profile of Doug Morris, chairman and CEO of the Universal Music Group, over on Wired. Perhaps you've already seen it. It's getting a lot of attention because of this snippet:

And that's what Morris, and everyone else, continued to focus on. "The record labels had an opportunity to create a digital ecosystem and infrastructure to sell music online, but they kept looking at the small picture instead of the big one," Cohen says. "They wouldn't let go of CDs." It was a serious blunder, considering that MP3s clearly had the potential to break the major labels' lock on distribution channels. Instead of figuring out a way to exploit the new medium, they alternated between ignoring it and launching lawsuits against the free file-sharing networks that cropped up to fill the void.

Morris insists there wasn't a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me." Morris' almost willful cluelessness is telling. "He wasn't prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology," says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. "He just doesn't have that kind of mind."

The ignorance is overwhelming and a shame, considering Morris's long track record in the music industry. Presumably he has retained his job because everyone else missed the boat as well.

Here's another bit that hasn't been as widely quoted but is also interesting:

As Steven Levy writes in The Perfect Thing, his 2006 book about the iPod, when Apple was trying to start iTunes as an online music store it had trouble convincing the major labels to offer up their music. Apple managed it only after Jobs launched a charm offensive against Morris. According to Levy, a big factor in his success was Jobs' assurance that, since it was limited to Macs, iTunes could affect, at most, 5 percent of the market. (iTunes for Windows came out in 2003.)Whatever the promises, once the mighty Universal signed on, everyone else followed.

With the record companies on board, Jobs did something remarkable: He turned the labels' demand for bulletproof DRM into a way of locking up the retail end of the online market. Jobs argued that in order to make Apple's DRM software, called FairPlay, effective, it had to be proprietary — and since Jobs won't license FairPlay, tracks sold on iTunes can be played only on iPods. (Similarly, the iPod won't play DRM-encoded files purchased through other retailers.) This lack of interoperability, combined with the iPod's overwhelming dominance, gave Apple a stranglehold on the digital music marketplace. And Jobs got to be the good guy with consumers, blaming the mess on the music industry's pigheaded insistence on DRM.

When I suggest to Morris that the labels gave Jobs license to create what was in effect an Apple Walkman that played only Apple cassettes, it's Caraeff who answers. "Looking back, the best thing we could have done would have been to mandate one format," he says. So why didn't that happen? Morris is happy to field this one. "It never crossed anyone's mind!" he exclaims. "We were just grateful that someone was selling online. The problem is, he became a gatekeeper. We make a lot of money from him, and suddenly you're wearing golden handcuffs. We would hate to give up that income."

For 25 years, record companies sold digital music without any DRM (the compact disc) and seemed to do okay. To me it's continued proof of their lack of understanding of the consumer and the marketplace that they insist on DRM for online music. And only now coming to grips with how that insistence is slitting their own throats.

Anyway, there's also this essay by Jermaine Dupri over at Huffington Post, which starts out like this:

Some people find it hard to understand my man Jay-Z's decision not to let iTunes break up his American Gangster album and sell it as single tracks. They say he's fighting the future and losing out on sales from fans who only want to download singles. But I say it was a stand somebody had to take in the music industry. Jay is speaking for all of us. ..... Every record is in some way a concept album. The whole always strives to be better than its parts

One problem is that this just isn't true ... there are very few "artists" who are approaching albums as anything other than a collection of potential singles and filler, a return to the days of the 60s before Sgt Pepper, Pet Sounds and Tommy (among others) revolutionized not just the music business but music itself. It's not necessarily worse or better; it's just how things are today.

My opinion is that if an artist creates an "album" then all serious fans will want the album and not just pieces of it. But when such a large percentage of so-called commercial product represents a collection of tracks put together by different production and writing teams, it just isn't going to hold together as an artistic whole, complete and indivisible. I got nothing against singles - rock and roll was built on the single.

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Well, only four hours of sleep last night. Hoping to catch up tonight.

This is very addictive.

I forgot about the great artwork by Satty on every letters page

Yes, get people to buy a Neil Young album by having them mail in a coupon for a free bag of dirt.

Warner Bros Records used to do such great marketing

Loving the old ads. More to come.

As I think I mentioned before, when I was in the US I picked up the DVD-ROM Rolling Stone Cover to Cover, every page of every issue from the first 40 years of Rolling Stone magazine.

The first issue I'd bought was #21. And in the early years, a portion of the back page was given over to free classified ads for musicians looking for gigs or bands looking for musicians. And I suddenly remembered - I'd placed an ad there myself once!

I started playing piano around the time I was 7 or 8, I guess, and was vaguely decent. I started playing bass around 11 or 12. At 14 or 15, I was on stage at Carnegie Hall, playing the bass in the "Bronx Borough Wide Symphony Orchestra." Not a big deal - it was a high school thing and I'm sure the only people in the audience were family and friends of those of us on stage. Nevertheless, I did get to play Carnegie Hall once in my life (and contrary to the old joke, I didn't practice all that much). Eventually convinced my parents to buy me an electric bass guitar and a small amp (I think both together cost around $75, a princely sum back then). I was a good sight reader and did okay with sheet music in front of me but I couldn't improvise worth a damn.

But somehow I had the balls to send in an ad to RS's Musicians Free Classified section, and after a bit of searching, sure enough, I found it. It's in issue #52, dated February 21, 1970, cover price 35 cents, Creedence on the cover. I was 15 years old. My classified ad reads:

WANTED: ANYONE & anything to help fill the void left by the departure of Mothers & Bonzo.

Followed by my first name and phone number and "Bronx."

Okay, so here's what happened as a result. I am not making this up.

I came home one day and my mother told me that someone had called for me. She said his name was Neil Innes. He'd left a phone number and said I could call back collect.

She had no idea who Neil Innes was (for those who don't know, he was one of leaders of the Bonzo Dog Band - he later went on to do songs for Monty Python and collaborated with Eric Idle on the Rutles). She was, however, convinced it was a scam. Even though the guy said I could call collect, she wouldn't let me use the phone at home to make the call.

Now, if memory serves, the phone number was in Seattle. Obviously there was no way this was really Neil Innes, but when you're 15 (and smoking a fair amount of weed on a regular basis) you don't apply a lot of logic to a lot of situations. I was convinced that one of my heroes had seen my ad and was getting in touch with me.

I went up the block to Etta's, our local lunch counter/candy store and used the phone booth there to make the call. I called the guy. I don't remember the specifics of the call any more. I'm sure he continued to pretend that he was Neil Innes. I was the star struck fan. He asked if there was any way I could get out to Seattle to join some new group he was forming but hey, I was 15 years old!

Well, whatever. After that, I don't think I placed any more ads. I think I just responded to other ads, found various people to jam with off and on, realized how bad I was at this and moved on to something else.

Sorry the ending isn't more poignant or that I don't have some neat little moral with which to rap it up. I just felt really weird seeing this there and wanted to share.

Last night asleep at 10, awake this morning at 5:30. At least I'm getting normal amounts of sleep, finally, just need to adjust the start and stop time on this aging machine slightly. Last night, met a friend for dinner at 7:30 and by 9 PM I could barely drag myself from the table to the street to fall into a taxi. Got home, started watching the 4 hour documentary on Tom Petty, directed by Peter Bogdanovich of all people. It's okay for what it is, and maybe unfair to judge after watching only a quarter of it, but so far not revelatory.

On Saturday, I picked up Guitar Hero III for the PS3. I don't buy or play many video games but the air guitar faux rock star concept appeals to me so I thought I'd try it out. Over to Oriental 188 Centre. Only one or two shops had it in stock. I asked the guy, any difference in game play between PS3 and XBOX 360? Nope. Any difference in price? Nope. Which one should I get then? Easy - he only had the PS3 version in stock. Oddly enough, he wanted to charge a premium for using EPS, choosing the odd sum of $9 on a $680 purchase. Two women at the counter start talking in Cantonese about how they shouldn't be charging extra for using EPS and I said, "What can I do? He's the only one who has this in stock and it's just nine bucks."

Got it home, set it up, and - hey, since I haven't really played any instruments since I was around 20, it's freaking hard! When you get it right, it's fun. When you get it wrong, you get booed off stage.

Question - wtf is it with these people who are deciding the features on mobile phones? Why is it that every phone represents some kinda compromise in features? Case in point - HTC. Their Touch phone looked great and had a spiffy interface but wasn't 3G and the tiny onscreen keyboard was practically unusable. So they come out with the Touch Dual. It has 3G and a slide out 20 key keyboard (similar to my Sony Ericsson P1i). But the Touch had WiFi, the Touch Dual doesn't! What were they thinking?

Interesting article in the NY Times on attempts by western rock & pop acts to break into the China market.

When Jeff Antebi, manager of the R&B duo Gnarls Barkley, was looking over worldwide accounting statements, he was perplexed to see that the group’s song “Crazy,” a Top 10 hit around the world, registered no sales at all in China. It was a “black hole,” he said. Frustrated when the label, Warner Brothers, blamed only piracy, Mr. Antebi recently decided to open an office in China to protect his interests.

...many Chinese labels, nimble and unencumbered by tradition, have adapted to the contaminated marketplace in ways that Western companies are struggling with. Viewing CDs as a loss leader they routinely sign groups to all-encompassing contracts that allow the label to share in revenues from touring, merchandise and endorsements.

Every lyric on a CD and every song planned for a live performance must be approved to obtain the necessary permits for a concert or retail release of an album. Approval can take months, and the ministry has a way of undercutting the best-laid plans of global promotional campaigns.

“Most of the rejected tracks are smash hits in the international market,” said Danny Sim, the marketing director for international repertory at Universal Music China. “Akon’s ‘Smack That’ and ‘I Wanna Love You,’ those tracks were rejected by the government. They were the first and second single from the album.”

Censorship can rear its head in less obvious ways. When Sonic Youth played Beijing in April, its hand-picked opening act, a Chinese band called Carsick Cars, was taken off the bill at the last minute. No explanation was given, but Thurston Moore, one of Sonic Youth’s guitarists, said he suspected the government had been alerted to his band’s participation in the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in the United States in the 1990s and was offering an oblique punishment.

From Boing Boing, a bunch of vaudeville girls do a pin-up calendar, each picture representing a company or special interest group that has benefited from the presidency of Dick Cheney:



Paris Hilton in Shanghai, demonstrating her techniques to the Chinese press. Actually, as things go in Shanghai, she's probably viewed as rather conservative and restrained. Note that she stayed at the Grand Hyatt, not the Hilton - which is seen as being rundown because its ten years since its last renovation. Paris's last renovation was probably more recent.


From CelebSlam, finally a book that dares to tell the real truth:

• A cobra once bit Chuck Norris’ leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.
• Chuck Norris can impregnate women with only a glance. He can also do this to men.
• When Chuck Norris breaks wind, it stays broken.
• Mr. T. once defeated Chuck Norris in a game of tic-tac-toe. In retaliation, Chuck Norris invented racism.
• When he is alone at night, Chuck Norris likes to wear slippers with bunnies on them. Real live bunnies.
• When an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger” aired in France, the French surrendered to Chuck Norris just to be on the safe side.
• Chuck Norris once visited The Virgin Islands. Afterward, they were renamed The Islands.

So tasty:

This morning in the lobby at Hotel One, the laowai manager there remembered my name and the company I worked for, even though I'd only stayed there once before and that was several months ago. A neat trick, wish I could do that. My memory's great, I only have trouble with names and faces. But I can remember which Bonzo Dog Band album has the track "My Pink Half of the Drainpipe." Good that I have a firm hold on the important things.

Today went walking down by the art museum, which seems to be run like a real museum, not like the jokes in HK. Current exhibitions included a survey of Taiwan art from the 1700s, a current Chinese artist, a documentary film festival, and a Rodin exhibition. The museum itself is surrounded by a large park filled with outdoor sculptures, mostly modern styles.

Leading off in one direction is a broad street called something like Art Museum Park Street. The center section is all grass and trees and benches and art. Along each side, running for about 5 blocks, are 2 and 3 story houses that have been converted into restaurants. Most of these seemed to be Mediterranean cuisines.

We chose a place that on the outside was all futuristic, glass and steel, and inside featured large wooden chairs suspended from the ceiling on ropes and filled up with comfy cushions and settled in for a leisurely lunch.

Now back in Taipei. I've been upgraded to a suite, god knows why. I'd left some luggage with them before heading down to Taichung. I handed the claim tag to the front desk and they told me it was already in my room waiting for me.

No idea what's for dinner yet but Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Except, I suppose, for the Americans on the Kitty Hawk and its support ships, all of which have been denied entry to HK for the holiday weekend. Some of the sailors' families had flown to HK to spend the holiday with them here, others were likely looking forward to tearing up Wanchai. Don't you just love it when a super power acts like a spoiled child? (Yes, I know, I'm American, a poor example, but still it ain't nice.)

UPDATE: China has changed its collective mind for "humanitarian reasons" (according to CNN) and the sailors can now enter HK. Probably some minor fuctionary rejected the papers because one "i" wasn't dotted and then his superiors said, "what are you, some kind of fucking moron," and then said, "hmmm, how do we spin this so we look good instead of looking like morons ourselves." Hence, "humanitarian reasons."

UPDATE 2: The Kitty Hawk decided not to turn around and come back to HK; it's continuing on to Japan anyway. The NY Times notes that in 2006 the US Navy spent US$32 million while on shore leave in HK. The article interviews the manager of Coyote who says US Navy visits typically bump bar revenues by 60 percent and that they'd booked a table for 60 for Thanksgiving dinner and that, understandably, morale on the ship is a bit low at the moment. Morale is probably low among HK bar owners, bar managers and, ahem, bar girls as well.

So as promised, dinner last night in Taichung at the WEIN Restaurant and Lounge in Taichung. A simply amazing place and if I lived here, this would surely be my regular joint.

The food itself is fusion, yes I know a naughty word, but in this case very Chinese with mostly light western accents, so everything tasted great and balanced nicely. Let's see, there was this rolled up fish topped with XO sauce and a bit of Mexican pepper. Some slices of seared tuna. Fried soft shell crab "kung pao" style, some vaguely Shanghai style pork belly, fried pork ribs, thin slices of beautifully marbled beef cooked on the table in a fragrant soup, tofu. Food presentation was carefully thought out, almost Japanese in its precision. And to top it all over, most of the main courses were under NT$400 (so under HK$100). The small but balance wine list was also reasonably priced - we went for a California cabernet sauvignon that was priced at around NT$1400. After dinner, we were able to take our wine down to sofas in the lounge bar and just relax for awhile.

By the way, in terms of the place itself, I strongly recommend you click on the link to the restaurant and click on "architecture" and "interior design" to see what the place looks like, from the bamboo grove in front to the post-modern industrial design inside, this shows what someone with some money and ambition can create for people when you're not being raped by real estate developers. If Wallpaper ran an article on Taichung, this place would be in the spotlight. And I'm told there are at least several other places like this in town.

I was planning on hitting Pig Pen, Taichung's local expat hangout, after dinner but just completely satisfied and didn't need anything else to complete the evening.

Some other stats - population here is just over 1 million. People say this place has the best weather of all of Taiwan, average temperatures here are just 23 degrees. With the completion of the Taiwan High Speed Rail, it's just an hour away from Taipei, train ride each way (for unreserved seating in last 3 cars of the train) is around NT$500.

Wish I could stay here for a second night but returning to Taipei later this morning.

Monday night in Taipei, feeling lazy, dinner at Hooters since it's walking distance from the hotel. Got there in time to watch the "show" - some of the exceptionally cute waitresses there (in their tight little shorts and tighter tank tops) doing stuff with hula hoops. They dragged some diners up to join them, fortunately I was not asked to make a fool of myself in front of a room full of strangers.

Tuesday lunch at Din Tai Fung, of course.

Tuesday night, dinner at a restaurant called It's Pub on Anhe Road in Taipei. A tiny French restaurant, where we were greeted at the door by the wife of the owner. The owner himself, in shorts and sandals (with socks) was drinking at a table in the basement. They don't have a menu; I'm told they've been serving the same basic items for ten years and they're busy every night. A salad, smoked duck breast, perfectly rare lamb chops, a nice glass of wine, an espresso and I was quite satisfied.

Wednesday morning, high speed rail to Taichung, my second time here.

Staying in Hotel One, a great hotel for just HK$1000 per night. My room has a 42 inch LCD TV (with a hook-up for my laptop), DVD player with six speaker surround sound and connection for my iPod, free internet, LCD TV in the bathroom and a huge bathtub next to a picture window - in a place like Tokyo or Shanghai this hotel would obviously cost three times more. Bar on the 42nd floor and they bring in international guest chefs from Europe and the US.

It's a small city, but a prosperous one, judging from the huge Porsche dealership I spotted on the way in. The pace is slower here and people seem to take a lot of pride in this place.

Lunch at a "cultural tea house" near the hotel. We're near a small computer mall, and lots of shops selling high tech stuff spilled over from the mall into the surrounding streets. One shop has the iPhone in the window, fully cracked and Chinese language too. But at NT$26,000 (roughly HK$6,500) it's no bargain.

Dinner tonight probably will be here. Seems to be a fair number of places here that are well designed and trying to appeal to more sophisticated palates.

Haven't seen any Betel Nut girls yet, but looking.

Back to Taipei on Thursday, back to HK on Friday. Apparently Jerry Seinfeld is in HK on Thursday to promote Bee Movie. Could have gone to the press conference if I wasn't here. Darn.

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Does this surprise anyone?

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby were ''not involved'' in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame. "There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.''

CC: I got all the way to Harlem when I heard Wagner coming from my phone.

Jack: Harlem?

CC: I'm working out of the Clinton offices for a few weeks. I'm helping Hillary retool her universal health care platform.

Jack: God I wanna kiss you on the mouth to stop you from saying such ridiculous things.

CC: Here's your phone. Obviously we can never be seen together again.

Jack: I'm up for the chairmanship and I don't want to risk that. They give you a helicopter you know.

CC: What about me? How can I look those little orange children in the eye?

Jack: They have no other documented health problems you know.

CC: They're orange! That's why I got into politics, to stop big companies from hurting the little guy!

Jack: What happened to you that made you this way?

CC: In 1998 I got shot in the face by my neighbor's dog.

Jack: Oh CC, I'm so .... wait, what?

CC: My neighbor had a Riverton hunting rifle with a faulty trigger safety. One day his Jack Russell terrier started chewing the area, the gun went off and shot me in the face.

Jack: Oh. The terrier.

CC: So I did what was right. I sued Riverton, my neighbor and the dog.

Jack: CC I'm so sorry.

CC: Well, don't be. After 6 reconstructive surgeries I'm much better looking now than I used to be. Plus they made a Lifetime movie about me.

Announcer: Tonight on Lifetime, Candace Vandershark stars as Celeste Cunningham in "A Dog Took My Face And Gave Me a Better Face To Change the World: The Celeste Cunningham Story."

Jack: You know, I thought you made love like an ugly girl. So present, so grateful.

CC slaps Jack. They kiss.

Later in the same episode:

Jack: Be with me CC. We'll ignore our differences till the sex goes bad then we'll walk away bitter and angry.

Tuesday morning, 8 AM, unable to load scmp.com. Five minutes of "connection to server was reset while loading." Standard loads just fine.

Small item of possible interest in the Standard - "Supermarket giant ParknShop yesterday pleaded guilty to selling oilfish wrongly labeled as codfish, but escaped charges of false labeling of food. The chain admitted nine counts of selling food not of the substance demanded by the purchaser between October last year and January this year. But the prosecution offered no evidence on nine other charges of false labeling."

Can you say "plea bargain"? I don't suppose the fact that PnS is owned by Watson, which in turn is owned by Hutchison Whampoa, would have anything to do with it.

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Anyone in HK interested in Kindle? Without the free WiFi that comes with it in the US, is it still worth US$400? The notion of being able to carry multiple books and subscribe to magazines on a lightweight device seems quite attractive. But I'm not gonna pay 99 cents a month for each blog I wanna subscribe to (note that there will be revenue sharing for those blogs that Amazon decides to offer - I can't imagine anyone paying 12 bucks a year to read me though.)

Early morning reading:

Unlocking DRM:

In the end, the long battle by the record labels against unrestricted digital music may have been little more than sound and fury signifying nothing.

At least, that's how it's starting to appear now that two of the major labels in recent months have embraced in some fashion the MP3 format, which has no copy protection. The early returns from those moves indicate they've had little impact on the industry's fortunes -- for better or for worse.

Instead, the moves highlight a bigger problem. And that is how the labels are going to replace sales of CD albums, which constituted the core of their business and have plummeted in recent years.

"These are ailing businesses on their last legs," said Eric Garland, chief executive of BigChampagne, a market research company focused on digital media. The question of copy protection on song downloads "matters a whole lot less to them than it once did."

Full Disclosure from DVD-CCA:

The DVD-Copy Control Assn. may have decided to hold off on considering managed-copy for DVDs (at least for now) but that doesn't mean it hasn't been busy.

On Friday, the group posted on its web site the final version of the CSS managed-recording amendment authorizing the use of CSS for manufacturing on demand (in-store burning) and electronic sell-through (download-and-burn). It also included a link to a formal "Notice" to all CSS licensees spelling out the amendment's effective date after which a licensee can begin commercial deployment of MOD and/or EST services.

Yet for an effort that was supposed to resolve concerns about the compatibility between burned discs and set-top DVD players, DVD-CCA seems mighty concerned about...well, compatibility issues raised by managed-recording--not to mention its potential liability should consumers end up feeling duped (if you'll pardon the pun).

Heading off to Taiwan this afternoon. Until then, checking coverage of yesterday's election in HK. While the elected positions themselves are relatively meaningless, the results should show the political climate in HK. With the general perception being that the HK economy is doing well, it appears that those in favor of democracy in HK did not score well in the polls. "...people in the streets, shopping malls and restaurants were more interested in pursuing their pleasure than the ballot box..." (The Standard)

This is one of those days when I wish I could read Chinese, because I'm sure the coverage of the elections is far better in the Chinese language press than that provided by the meager resources of our two English-language newspapers.

Check out how the two papers manage to put a different spin on the same numbers.

The SCMP:

A record 1.149 million people voted yesterday in the city's most competitive district council polls ever, with a turnout exceeding 38 per cent.

(Though in another article, the SCMP notes, "On the face of it, public enthusiasm for the district council elections has cooled since the last polls were held in 2003. Turnout yesterday failed to match the record 44.06 per cent of four years ago." So which is it?)

The Standard:

The presence of Hong Kong's leading political figures and a number of key clashes in several constituencies failed to excite voters, with just over 38 percent of the electorate turning up for yesterday's district council elections.

So which is it?

The SCMP reports that at one point, Anson Chan and her staff were "surrounded" by Ip supporters in a "tense encounter" and that they only managed to "escape from the scuffle" when a single policeman came to their aid. While such a display of anti-democratic tendencies by Ip's supporters is both deplorable and expected, one wonders how tense the situation was if it took just a single police officer to resolve the situation.


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A non-election item from the SCMP worth noting today, yet another example of why HK remains a backwater burg instead of "Asia's World City":

Al fresco dining was supposed to be the pièce de résistance of the restaurant area above the new Elements mall atop Kowloon Station.

But the restaurants - most run by the some of the city's catering heavyweights - face a wait of up to 18 months because a group of about 20 residents have objected to liquor licences.

Instead of a bustling outdoor dining scene, the Civic Square and the Podium dining areas are windblown, empty expanses.

Members of the wealthy residents' association of the Waterfront building fear the restaurants will bring drunkenness, rubbish and late-night noise - and leave them footing the bill through additional management fees.

The residents were spurred into action after discovering a promotional press release billing the area as the "Lan Kwai Fong of Kowloon", after the Central entertainment area that is renowned for late-night revelry.

.....

The restaurant and bar owners have expressed their frustration at not being able to open in the outdoor areas for which they are paying rent. Most have hired extra staff in anticipation of the al fresco areas being a highlight of their business.

Dining Concepts' managing director Sandeep Sekhri, who has opened Arabesque Cuisine and Vietnamese-Thai restaurant Nahm, said they were supposed to have an extra 40 seats outside.

"[The residents] are very much against having restaurants on the podium level, and we know for sure that this is going to be a lengthy battle with these guys," he said.

Johnny Shen, assistant general manager of upscale New York-based Japanese restaurant Megu, said they were disappointed the MTR Corporation had not dealt with the outdoor seating issue years ago.

"My company feels we have been misled by the MTR. In the beginning they said it was a private area and you could sit outside, but they hadn't gone through all the processes and realised there could be problems."

Christopher Lenz of Igor's Group, which has opened a branch of the Lan Kwai Fong bar Stormy Weather, said they had lost about 50 per cent of their seating area because of the complaints.

"Ironically, 90 per cent of my business now is residents. Can you imagine those poor people over there who for five years haven't had a bar or a shopping centre or a restaurant? Most people are ecstatic they can walk outside and go for a drink."

Fuck these moaners. They should have known about it before they plunked their money down on some over-priced poorly constructed flat.

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

Also yesterday was the second annual "Harbour Day," celebrating Victoria Harbor, once HK's greatest natural resource, now a polluted mess with access to most of it cut off from the public.

"Victoria Harbour is an extraordinary natural asset for Hong Kong, and a key cultural and historic icon of our city," said Margaret Kennedy, chairwoman of the organising committee.

"We aim to showcase our vibrant and beautiful harbour, and to enable the entire community to enjoy it from a range of perspectives."

I would appreciate it if my readers would send me some of the same drugs she's taking.

Swim Donald Swim.

Further proof that the landlords own Hong Kong, as if any was needed. From the SCMP:

A judge has cleared the way for a controversial Mid-Levels development - nicknamed "the toothpick" by opponents - to proceed, ruling the Town Planning Appeal Board had wrongly taken traffic and visual considerations into account in blocking it.

Mr Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung yesterday ordered the board to reverse its decision blocking the relaxation of height and plot ratio restrictions on a block of land abutting Castle Steps to make way for the development by a subsidiary of Swire Properties.

The government said it would study the judgment in detail before deciding whether to appeal.

The order, which could affect other sites zoned similarly, came after International Trader Limited (ITL) sought a judicial review of the board's decision. The company wants to build a 54-storey building on a parcel of land comprising the disputed block and several others on Seymour Road.

The board, by a majority of three to two, had continued to refuse ITL's application to remove the 12-storey limit on the site because of traffic and visual considerations.

Mr Justice Cheung found that under the original Mid-Levels West outline zoning plan, the block, which has no direct street frontage, had been zoned for unrestricted residential development but had subsequently had restrictions placed upon it because of concerns about access for fire services and refuse collection.

The judge accepted ITL's argument that, if traffic considerations were not in play, the concerns about access no longer mattered once the site was included in a development that had direct street frontage.

"Traffic and visual considerations are not relevant planning considerations" in relation to applications for the relaxation of restrictions on such sites, the judge said.

A spokeswoman for Swire Properties said: "Now that the matter is resolved we will go ahead and build [the tower]."

Central and Western District Council member Chan Chit-kwai said the implications of the court's decision were huge. "The new development is going to create a wall effect and residents of the Mid-Levels will have to double their time for travelling to the city centre," he said.

Town Planning Board members said the case was a typical example of developers' use of judicial procedures to get round the board's decisions

Okay, visual considerations perhaps not. But traffic considerations are not relevant? In Hong Kong, apparently it doesn't mean a thing. So we will get an additional 54 story tower in an already 0ver-crowded neighborhood where all of the streets are just single lane in each direction and traffic already backs up considerably during peak hours. And hundreds more people overwhelming the miserable little Park 'n Shop and Wellcome on Robinson Road.

SCMP's editorial also weighs in on this:

A High Court victory yesterday by a subsidiary of Swire Properties concerned only a single site in Mid-Levels. However, it has troubling implications for residents in the district already plagued by overdevelopment, heavy traffic and the canyon effect of walled-in pollution and trapped heat. It also raises questions about how well the Town Planning Board can represent the wider public interest should developers choose to challenge it in court.

Private property rights must be respected. But the planning process must also work in a way which serves the wider public interest. In the judicial review launched by Swire's International Trader Ltd, Mr Justice Andrew Cheung Kui-nung of the Court of First Instance ruled that the court must adhere to the original intentions of zoning and rezoning plans. This is a fundamental legal principle. The problem, however, is that many such plans date back years, as is the case with the Mid-Levels site. As a result, they may not reflect contemporary concerns about the wall effect, visual impact and quality of life.

There is no question that Mid-Levels has become overbuilt and its roads saturated. These problems are likely to worsen as developers zero in on the district to build more luxury residences. This is especially so at the junction of Castle Road and Seymour Road, where Swire has applied to build a luxury, 50-plus-storey complex on two adjacent sites. The 2,100-plus-square-metre site is only one of more than half a dozen sites on the two narrow roads that have either been bought by developers or where negotiations for collective sale to them are under way.

This judge, by the way, is the same one who gave the okay to build on conservation areas in Clear Water Bay after a land owner there destroyed all evidences of nature on his land.

I live in Mid Levels. Around 96 or so I lived on Seymour Road, the only time I have lived in one of these god forsaken massively huge cheaply built developments. Soon after I moved there, I was surrounded on three sides by new construction sites and the daily pile drivers slamming into the ground. I moved away as soon as I legally could. Now I'm back in Mid Levels but I think next year I'm going to have to look elsewhere again.

Which reminds me of another Swire development, "1 Island East," a 70 story commercial tower opening up between Tai Koo Place and Tai Koo Shing. Again, this area is filled with single lane streets. Lane closures on these small streets to facilitate construction have already resulted in daily traffic snafus and all day horn blowing to go along with the daily construction noise. Once this building opens and fills up, the neighborhood will be overwhelmed. On the plus side, Swire has also demolished the existing concrete park by Tai Koo Shing and is promising a new park with "abundant greenery" and "water features." Be still my beating heart.

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

And another article of particular interest from the SCMP today:

The government has released its response to criticisms by the UN Human Rights Committee about universal and equal suffrage for the Legislative Council, right of abode, media independence and investigation of complaints against the police.

The report, sent during the summer to the UN panel, covers Hong Kong's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

A human rights groups called the report "the most insincere and carefree" it had seen in more than 10 years.

In response to criticisms of the Legislative Council election system, the report stated: "For proper perspective, it should be pointed out that, when the covenant was applied to Hong Kong in 1976, a reservation was made not to apply article 25(b) in so far as it might require the establishment of an elected Executive or Legislative Council in Hong Kong. This reservation continues to apply."

Article 25(b) of the covenant points to the need for every citizen to have the right "to vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage ... guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors".

The report also stated that the pace of Hong Kong's democratic progress was set by the central government rather than the covenant.

"The final goal of Hong Kong's evolution towards democracy originates from the Basic Law, and not the covenant. Both the central authorities and the government are fully committed to achieving the ultimate aim of universal suffrage in accordance with the Basic Law and the relevant interpretation and decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of April 2004," it said.

But the UN committee's view was that an elected Legislative Council was already established. It argued that its election must conform to Article 25 by abolishing functional constituencies.

Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor said the government was basically telling the UN in the document that it would maintain its position regardless of international condemnation. "The report is severely lacking in sincerity. It is also among the thinnest I have seen for more than a decade - simply for the reason that the government has no progress whatsoever to report on," the group's director, Law Yuk-kai, said.

Without a democratically elected government answerable to the general population, Hong Kong will continue to be a third rate Chinese town instead of the so-called "world city" it aspires to.

Businesspeople are growing increasingly pessimistic about Hong Kong's ability to be competitive, a survey has shown.

The General Chamber of Commerce interviewed 323 members for its annual business prospects survey, released yesterday. It showed that while most respondents were satisfied with the state of the economy, there were growing concerns about operational costs.

Some 57.3 per cent of respondents did not think competitiveness would improve in the next three to five years. Only 41. 5 per cent thought it would, down from 49 per cent last year, while 39.3 per cent said competitiveness had declined over the past year. Some 32.8 per cent thought it had remained the same, and 25.7 per cent thought it had improved.

Hong Kong can never be truly competitive as long as it is owned and managed by a handful of realtors operating in their own self-interest.

Music lessons pay off in higher earnings

"88 percent of people with a post-graduate education were involved in music while in school, and 83 percent of people earning $150,000 or more had a music education."

Still not in the timezone after being back for one week.


(picture nabbed from here)

Didn't make it to see/hear Z-Men last night because I was a vegetable all day. Any of my readers check it out?

Latest column is up in BC. Honestly, not one of my best. Written on the run, as it were, while in the U.S.


Also note that BC Magazine has issued a challenge to Donald Tsang to clean up the harbor within five years. Will it work? Probably not, Tsang is little more than a bowtie, an empty suit and a one man big business/Beijing appeasement campaign and people seem to view environmental issues as anti-big business, but if enough people were to get behind this, at least it might get more of a serious discussion going.

Still in jetlag mode. Went out late last night with the thought that a few drinks might help me get to sleep. But ended up staying out way too late. Some people won't believe me, some won't understand, but the fact of the matter is that I actually found it very liberating to be out in Wanchai bars and not looking to score. I think it's the most fun I've had there in a very long time.

Nothing to do tonight? Go to Le Rideau Theatre Cafe and see Z-Men. The self-described power trio features Flynn Adams playing his 7 string electric bass, along with guitarist Guy Le Claire and Robbin J. Harris on drums. I've seen Flynn play several times and he's a world-class musician.

Admission is $100 and includes one drink; the music starts at 9 PM. Le Rideau is at Hilltop Plaza, 49 Hollywood Road, entrance on Graham Street. If I'm not a total zombie tonight then I plan to be there.

Was sitting in Old China Hand tonight. Like to sit there and admire the view (women passing by). Unfortunately tonight the main thing to look at was an election poster of Regina Ip tied to the center barrier, with the slogan "I'll do better than my best!" I think the Chinese part might have said "I have normal hair now so please vote for me" or "Try to forget Article 23, I know I have."

Then in a taxi going up Cotton Tree Drive, at two points along the road there were candidates standing there in front of posters of themselves, waving at cars driving by. This is not a pedestrian area and it's not a place where a car could stop and you could lean out the window and ask a question. In other words, they positioned themselves in places where no one could possibly walk by or talk to them. To me, it seems that if some candidate believes this is a good way to spend their time, there's no way I'd want to vote for them.

That's right, they just stood on a street corner to wave at cars, much like prostitutes in various sections of the world, and more than likely that is their intention. "If elected, I promise to take your money and fuck you every chance I get."

Wanna get pissed off? Just read the SCMP or the Standard. I find no shortage of outrage.

Unfortunately, I can't find a link to a story I read in the hard copy version of the SCMP during lunch today. The story reported on a judicial review of a lands decision - that a certain area in Sai Kung needed to be preserved as a natural resource and as a result the owner was not going to be allowed to build on it. It seems that the review was based on aerial photographs taken 4 or 5 years ago and things have changed since then.

What changed? The owner of the land, guessing what the review would decide, had gone ahead and chopped down all of the trees and strewn construction materials all around, destroying everything. Apparently he was "warned" twice about this. But with no fear of any financial penalty, he ignored the warnings.

Now the judges are saying that since the land is no longer valuable as a nature conservancy, the landlord should be allowed to build housing units on it. This bastard will now realize millions of dollars in profit. What a tremendous example he has set for others to follow - and follow it they surely will.

In what I see as a related story, the SCMP reports today that the Home Affairs Bureau commissioned the University of Hong Kong to survey HK companies on their knowledge of corporate social responsibility - specifically in the areas of ethical practices, minimising negative impacts, social contribution and improving employees’ well-being. Only 23% of HK companies surveyed knew what it was; only 9% actually had programs in place.

I don't think it's merely a question of why stupid and greedy people do stupid and greedy things. I think these people do this shit because they simply don't know any better, and they don't know any better because no one's teaching them - the schools are focusing in on curriculum that lead to making money without any emphasis on the core humanities.

Which is also why the arts scene in HK remains so dead - there is little local interest because people simply don't know.

Of course that's just a guess on my part. What do I know?

(click on image to view larger version)

I don't blog for awards, though I do appreciate kind words that come my way from time to time. A couple of years back I was in the running for some best Asian blog award - I don't even recall which one. I like my blog; I think I write some vaguely good stuff from time to time. I also think there are many blogs that are a whole lot better than mine (and that's not false modesty).

But I have to confess that I am taken aback by the 2007 Weblog Awards. I think I've got a pretty extensive list of links for HK and a passable beginning for Singapore. If you look at the nominations, you won't see a single blog from my list in the running. As a matter of fact, there were no Hong Kong blogs nominated and one of the nominees is from Melbourne, despite the fact that there is a separate category for Australian blogs. And with only one bilingual exception, all of the Asian blogs are English language.

A total of 1,338 votes were cast in the Asian blog category. I would guess that some HK blogs like Hemlock or See Lai receive more hits than that in a single day. The winner, with 385 votes, is a Singapore woman doing a personal, non-political blog.

I'm not going to bother to read how they decided on nominations - clearly the word went out somewhere, outside of what I would think of as mainstream circles.

I'd say when you're talking about global blog topics, front runners are easy to predict (e.g. Gizmodo and Engadget for gadget blogs). But clearly the process is lacking something, and I feel that the results invalidate the entire thing.

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

I've been somewhat active on Facebook recently. I have two profiles there (one my "real self" and the other my blogging identity) and I've enjoyed some of it. I understand that the proliferation of third party applets is one of the reasons for its increased popularity recently, but most of them do very to excite me.

Last week, they changed things somewhat, trying to up their revenue stream and justify their market evaluation by adding in advertisements, but not just page banners or pop-ups. Now you get ads in your "news stream" and apparently the advertisers can use your name and image in subsequent ads if you opt to join a group related to the advertising.

What they don't offer is a way to opt out of this. And I think they're going to have to. Otherwise I think there's gonna be people running for the exit.

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

Bad enough I was constantly jetlagged in the U.S., now that I'm home same thing. Last night I went to bed at 2 AM, woke up at 4 AM, finally fell asleep again at 8 AM and slept until 1. Tonight I came home from dinner around 9:30 and couldn't help myself, fell asleep for an hour, woke up, and now I see it's 2:30 and I'm still wide awake. This is not conducive towards showing up in the office vaguely on time on Monday.

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Sad to note the passing of Norman Mailer on Saturday.

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Just finished ripping the 8 Miles Davis boxed sets that represent his studio recordings for Columbia from the late 50s through the early 70s. 43 discs, 275 tracks (after eliminating rehearsals, alternate takes), 5.5 gigs @ 320 kpbs. Still gotta add in Birth of the Cool, Ascenseur, some of the other live stuff. Don't know what I'm gonna do about the Warner recordings, though I do like some of them.

Actually, as I mentioned before, now that I've got the 160 gig ipod (actually capacity only 148.8 gigs), I've been going back and re-ripping stuff at 320. Right now I have 11,759 songs on there, out of which 3,800 are ripped at 320, still have about 58 gigs free.

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Oh well, time to stop procrastinating, gonna get into bed with a book and hope I can drift away.

A DVD screener of American Gangster, Ridley Scott's new film starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe, has found its way to the internet. Watched it on the flight home yesterday. As much as I like Scott, Washington, Crowe, not entirely sure what I make of the film. Scott has assembled a great cast - Washington, Crowe, Ruby Dee, RZA, Joe Morton, Carla Gugino, Cuba Gooding Jr, Armand Assante, Jon Polito - and the film moves at a good pace and looks absolutely authentic. But at the end I wasn't sure it really explained the motivations of the main characters and I must confess I was expecting more stylized violence and dramatic set pieces than Scott delivers - perhaps I was looking for another Scarface instead of a very factual accounting. With a rating of 78% at Rotten Tomatoes, and a strong US box office for its first week, I suppose lots of people like it and I won't be surprised if it gets some Oscar nominations.

At any rate, for those who see the film and want to know more, here is the Mark Jacobson article, The Return of Superfly, on which the film was based. And just last week, another Jacobson article in New York magazine, Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes sit down and talk "three decades after their heyday."

MJ: You guys have been described as being competitors. Is that true?

FL: Well, Nick wasn’t gonna catch me—I was paying $4,000 a key. Nick, you was probably paying $65,000 or $70,000, weren’t you?

NB: During that time I was paying $35,000.

FL: And I was paying $4,000. So there was no fight then.

MJ: Which one of you guys had the best dope?

FL: Mark, here you go! Stirring shit up. Man, I had the best dope in the world. I had 98 to 100 percent pure.

NB: Frank had a nice package, no doubt. I had to get a pen and a pad and mediate my stuff. But when you took the mix out, my thing was close to his. Close enough for somebody not to wait on one when they could get the other. Frank, you were mostly on 116th Street, right?

FL: Yeah.

NB: Well, I had powder in all five boroughs. Not just uptown.

FL: You were big, Nick, all over.

Can't say why, but every time I'm away for a week, it feels like I was away for a month. Fortunately I did not have to go into the office today - didn't fall asleep till around 6 AM, slept till 1 PM, good ole jetlag. Gonna spend the day ripping the CDs I bought in the US over to iTunes.

Speaking of ripping, here's an interesting article from Daily Variety, via Lexis Nexus, via Content Agenda, about the Kaleidescape system. Director Brett Ratner has ripped his collection of 10,000 DVDs to this server, which allows him to search on a variety of fields and then view the movie anywhere in his home. I'd love a system like this, but the entry level price is US$13,000. Even though I could probably whip up something homegrown for much cheaper, you can also bet that a multi-millionaire like Ratner didn't rip those DVDs himself - surely he had some assistant do it for him. And if Ratner was having problems finding space for 10,000 DVDs in what surely must be a humongous L.A. home, imagine the issues I'm having with what must be around 3,000 mostly-legal DVDs in a Hong Kong sized apartment.

The rest of the article is an interesting discussion over the legalities of doing this sort of thing.

My whole trip to the US, I've basically resisted getting into a US time zone. Since I only sleep 4 to 5 hours per night (when I'm alone, anyway), I've basically been falling asleep around 10 or 11 PM, waking up around 3 or so, then making my way foggily through the day.

Last night, my flight from NY to SF was delayed by an hour. I did sleep for most of the flight, arriving in SF around 12:30 AM. Even though I used to live here, it took me an hour to get from the airport to the motel - should have been 5 to 10 minutes at best.

So by the time I got to the motel and got checked in and caught up with email, it was 4 AM.

Around 5 AM, I discovered that my motel is right next to a CalTrain railroad crossing. From 5 AM onwards, with increasing frequency, the trains have been shooting by. About two minutes before the train comes, the gate lowers, complete with clanging bells. Then the train comes through, blowing its horn because it's approaching a crossing. From about 7 AM onwards, it seemed like trains were coming through every 2 minutes, which meant practically non-stop clanging.

As a result, I have been awake since approximately midnight California time. It's now 9:20 AM. I'm meeting someone for an early lunch in two hours, followed by a couple of hours to browse in Amoeba, and then hopefully can stay up long enough to meet a friend for dinner tonight. Trying to decide if I will buy an iPhone while I'm here. Don't "need" one but I've got that itch.

I can't fucking wait till tomorrow morning when I will get on a plane back home!

1 - heading from NYC to SF later today.

2 - if you're on Facebook, find me here. Haven't really done much with the profile there yet. Won't you be my friend?

3 - Latest BC column here, adventures in Shenzhen

Saturday was the first time I sort of liked New York in many years.

Took the express bus from my mother's place into midtown Manhattan. The bus goes down Fifth Avenue. You pass Central Park, the Guggenheim, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, etc. and for me, I was reminded about those places that I used to really love and those things that don't begin to have any equivalent in HK.

Went to the Apple Store on 5th and 59th - a line to get in and once inside, the store was mobbed. No chance to get anywhere near the laptops to play with them. The lines were especially long for buying iPhones - plenty in stock but vaguely deciding that I am not getting one.

Then ... Madison Avenue, one of the busiest streets in the city, closed for 20 blocks on a Saturday afternoon for a street fair. This would be the equivalent of shutting down Hennessy Road in Causeway Bay and doing something for people instead of cars - will never happen, of course.

Then ... lunch with a 25 year old cousin whom I hadn't seen in at least 12 years. A very enjoyable couple of hours. For someone who carries the burden of being in my family, she's surprisingly good looking. And, unlike most of my family, sweet. I wonder what went right there.

After lunch, we spent a few hours shopping together. First down to St. Marks Place, a street I used to virtually live on but hadn't been back to in years. Three tattoo shops, several CD shops (one of which was actually interesting, Rockit Scientist, check it out when in town) - bought a buncha stuff, but the guy forgot to include a rare Scott Walker CD I'd selected (didn't charge me for it at least), lots of t-shirt and souvenir shops including a CBGB's store, which just seemed so wrong.

Then over to Broadway, walking from 8th Street down to Soho. Tower Records is now Toys R Us. (Many years ago, this stretch of NYC was completely dead. Tower opened their first NYC store there. A year later, all of the shops nearby were rented and this started to become the destination that it is today.) The sad thing is that this mile is now primarily chain stores; very few of the indie shops that once made it so unique still survive. Keith Richards used to live in a condo above Tower (I'd often see him on the streets walking his dogs) and the area was filled with hip restaurants and boutiques. Now it's Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Levis, Banana Republic - in other words mostly featuring the same choices as any suburban shopping mall. Nevertheless, the area was literally mobbed with people and I heard a wide variety of languages. I could have easily spent several more hours there but was running out of both time and money.

On Saturday night, if I hadn't had to spend the evening with my mother, groups playing live that I could have chosen to see included: Black 47, Bon Jovi, the Strawberry Alarm Clock (holy crap!), Duran Duran, Fiery Furnaces, Gogol Bordello, Annie Lennox, Phil Lesh & Friends, Josh Rouse, Sufjan Stevens, Van Halen, Joshua Breakstone, Oscar Brand, Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter, Ute Lemper - and that represents perhaps just 5% of the choices available for one evening. Time Out New York Magazine also lists a couple of dozen comedy clubs, about 200 different movies, dozens of shows playing on and off Broadway:

Tom Stoppard's Rock 'n' Roll, A Bronx Tale (Chazz Palminteri), Xanadu the Musical!, The Drowsy Chaperone (Bob Saget), The Farnsworth Invention (a new play by Aaron Sorkin, starring Hank Azaria), The Ritz (Rosie Perez), Cyrano de Bergerac (Kevin Kline), The Color Purple (Fantasia), The Sensuous Woman (Margaret Cho), Die Mommie Die! (Charles Busch), Hairspray, Jersey Boys, Legally Blonde, Les Mis, Lion King, Little Mermaid, Pygmalion (Claire Danes), Monty Python's Spamalot, Young Frankenstein the musical - I'm sure not all great but further indication of the choice available on any given evening.

The one thing about NYC though - if you live in the NYC area but you're not in Manhattan, then it's a shitty place to be, because it takes so damned long and costs so damned much to get from place to place. The subways were crowded, traffic on the streets was at a crawl, taxis cost more than double what they cost in HK, rents in Manhattan now rival or surpass HK. And one would have to put up with the brutal winters and summers there.

Of the 39 years that I lived in NYC, only 10 of them were spent living in mid Manhattan. Those were years when one could live there and pay just US$300 rent per month (and years when I had very little money for going out). It was a completely different experience from my 22 years in the Bronx, 5 years in Queens, 2 years in Jersey.

I was surprised to feel this tinge of nostalgia. Not that I'd ever seriously consider living here again. But I do miss the choices.

Not sleeping so some misc stuff:

Jimmy Page broke a finger, the Led Zep "reunion" show has been postponed by two weeks. I'm assuming that this show will find its way to CD and DVD, legally or otherwise, so I will survive not being there.

Lisa Stein, 62 years old, was found beaten to death in her NYC apartment. Stein, ex-wife of Sire Records head Seymour Stein, was the Ramones' manager in the 70s and the person responsible for bringing them to the UK in 76 - which was directly responsible for the subsequent explosion of punk rock in the UK.

December 4th sees release of a 16 disc Pink Floyd box set, Oh By the Way, which does not include their live albums or Relics. Initially at least there will be only 10,000 copies. Don't know what they will add to make it irresistible for collectors and trainspotters.

U2's biggest album, Joshua Tree, gets reissued later this month as a single cd, double cd, double cd + 1 dvd, and double vinyl lp set, some of these with super deluxe packaging.

If you don't already know about this, check over on Youtube. Two members of Arcade Fire turned up at Springsteen's Ottawa show, joining him for his own State Trooper and their own Keep the Car Running. It's really worth checking out.

A live Wilco concert on PBS in the US this weekend. Hopefully downloadable by early next week from the usual sources.

The Standard notes that the two Americans found dead in a hotel room in the Grand Hyatt died from a drug overdose - in this case a combination of coke and heroin. While they had been spotted earlier bringing girls back to the hotel, there was no evidence of robbery or violence.

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Had a funny lunch experience today, going for fake Chinese food for lunch. Our waiter was a young man who had recently moved to the US from Singapore. I told him I lived in HK and had just been in Singapore two weeks earlier. After conversing a bit in Putonghua and mentioning the great crab and tiger prawns I'd had while in his home town, he warned me that the food in the restaurant was not very good. "Nothing fresh, everything frozen," he said. After finishing, when I told him he was right, he asked if I could recommend any restaurants to him. I apologized, told him I hadn't lived in NY for 12 years and that if I knew any better places, I wouldn't have gone there in the first place.

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Figured I would try to conquer my jetlag and force myself to stay up until at least 11 PM. Flipped around the 800 channels on the cable TV vainly trying to find something watchable. Had to explain to my mother that Nicole Richie was someone who was famous for being famous. And then she insisted on watching a primetime game show called Deal or No Deal, and I was fast asleep before 9 PM, up at 1 AM again. Gonna try for more sleep now.

Jetlag is setting in. Today I basically slept from around 6 PM till 1 AM. So some random, disorganized thoughts on my observations comparing my old life in the US vs. my current life in HK.

In 1994, before moving to HK, I was living in Bloomfield, NJ. I was renting half a house - 2 floors, garage, front and back yard - for US$700 per month. I'd moved to Bloomfield for a woman, and after we broke up, well, I was still in Bloomfield. Manhattan was too expensive an option for me back then, and by the time I'd get home from work, it was too difficult to go anywhere worthwhile at night most of the time. A big night out for me was having dinner alone in a diner and then spending a couple of hours browsing at a nearby Barnes and Noble book store.

From 99 to 01 I was renting a house in the Twin Peaks section of SF for something more equivalent to HK rents. But the combination of crappy public transportation and difficult parking made it a real effort to try to enjoy much of what the central city had to offer. There were some sections of town that had some great restaurants and bars and I'd need to get there an hour in advance to spend time looking for a parking spot 8 blocks away.

Yesterday was a shopping day and, between store visits and browsing online, I was reminded of all the things I can buy here that I can't find in HK or that I can find but cost a lot more. Costco has 42 inch TVs for the equivalent of HK$10k (though just NTSC, of course) and this weekend both Wal Mart and Best Buy will be selling Toshiba HD DVD players for under US$100. A visit to supermarket Pathmark revealed about 57 varieties of Oreos and 92 types of Crest toothpaste. I bought the 40 years of Rolling Stone magazine complete on DVD for less than the price on Amazon. Gasoline is about 2/3rds cheaper here (though everyone is complaining about the price). Saturday I will spend several hours at the Strand book store and next week in SF I have an entire afternoon blocked out for Amoeba Records.

The retail choices in HK are more limited because there is no true competition allowed in many areas, those in which the major real estate companies have dipped their greedy, fat fingers; as well as general lack of interest by the majority of the population for certain products. Most so called super markets in HK are equivalent to neighborhood grocery stores here and the virtual lock-out of hyper markets, which do exist in almost all of our neighboring countries, further increases price and decreases choice. There are some notable exceptions - like all the goodies that appeal to my inner geek in places like the 298 Computer Centre and Sham Shui Po.

In HK, I can still walk down any street any time of night and feel safe. I can get anywhere I want, usually in under 15 minutes. A taxi ride from Central to Causeway Bay costs the equivalent of US$7 - even with the possible upcoming fuel surcharge - and it's still practical and easy to do pub crawls and meet new people every night. A two hour flight from NYC would get me to the Ozarks; a two hour flight from HK gets me to Shanghai, Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand. I'm dating someone in HK now who is pretty, sexy, intelligent and half my age. If I was living in New York, I'd be dating my left hand.

Won't even get into the politics except to say that while people are speaking out vigorously against war with Iran, it seems to be almost generally accepted that it will happen. The sum total of Bush's disastrously stupid policies at home and abroad are hastening the destruction of the U.S. At this point if someone told me that Bush was the real life Manchurian candidate, sold by his parents to the Saudis at an early age and now their witless tool, I'd have a hard time arguing against that.

In the past 24 hours my mother has asked me about 37 times why I don't consider moving back here and I respond each time by looking at her with a mixture of horror and pity.

A new wrinkle though ... I told my mother my eventual goal was to find citizenship in another country and give up my U.S. passport. She wants me to vow not to do that, one argument being what past generations of my family went through to get to the U.S. But the U.S. today is very different from what it was 100 years ago, eh?

Unrelated note - currently reading John Burdett's Bangkok Eight. I have this real hatred for all these expat novels written by guys who think they are the first ones to discover that you can have sex in Asia. Turns out Burdett is quite different - a real writer, for starters - and I like the concept that his protagonist is a half Thai/half Caucasian son-of-a-hooker cop. I'll be picking up his other books for sure.

So here I am in Da Bronx - and not the one pictured above, which is a disco on Burgos in Makati - rather I'm in the real, original, nothing-like-the-real-thing Bronx. Too bad that "you can't go home again" can't be taken literally.

For a variety of reasons, I had to fly Cathay from HK to SF and then American from SF to NY. American was not as bad as I recalled. Business class food was a roast beef sandwich (in economy you have to buy food). For entertainment, they handed out these kits that included the latest Archos, with the 7" touch screen, preloaded with various movies, along with Bose Quiet Comfort 3 head phones. That's not too shabby. In lieu of having a cute girl to sit next to, the man I was sitting next to turned out to be the brother of former Warner Home Video president and all around visionary Warren Lieberfarb. I told him to tell his brother he is missed and sorely needed.

On arrival, checked through all of the stuff that I'd had shipped here. The jacket and hoodie from Scott eVest both fit perfectly and look great. I'd also ordered Logitech's new Pure-Fi Anywhere iPod speakers. Logitech stuff is expensive in HK - for some reason they use UK-based pricing rather than US - and these speakers, given a top rating on ilounge, aren't available in HK yet. They sound great. They blow my old Altec Lansing inMotion speakers outta the park. I am very very happy, at least I have distractions while I am here.

That being said, I don't have much planned and expect to be near-suicidal from the combination of boredom and dealing with family by the time I head to SF on Monday.

Minimal blogging at best till I get home in a week.