nwoT eikgnoH Hongkie Town

As a friend put it, of course since we have a 4 day weekend it's raining. And to top it off, I've got a cold.

Did a bunch of shopping for the house on Thursday. Price Rite and Ikea. Happened to be doing some online banking today and noticed that my Ikea shopping shows up as Dairy Farm. Dairy Farm is owned by Jardines and in turn owns Wellcome supermarkets, 7-Eleven, ThreeSixty and a variety of other brand names across southern China, south east Asia and Australia/New Zealand. Jardines also owns Hongkong Land, the Mandarin Oriental hotel chain and others.....

Anyway, catching up slightly, I see that Brian Donovan's Descriptors blog and the more recently established (and very similar to BD'sD) Ring of Gyges are both gone.

I've had several nice meals at Cru in Sai Kung and Hebe 101 in Pak Sha Wan/Hebe Haven. Cru is always busy, justifiably so. Huge salads, the thinnest thin crust pizza I've ever seen (and more pepperoni on a pizza than I've seen in ages), and a very friendly staff.

Hebe 101 is rarely busy, perhaps due to some bad word of mouth right after they opened or an inconvenient location. But I had a really nice braised lamb shank there the other night, their ground floor bar looks comfortable and their rooftop bar is relatively unique in HK - roof of a village house, nicely decorated, open air, overlooking a marina, what's not to like?

After all these years finally tried the Main Street Deli at the Langham Hotel in TST. I thought the kosher pickles on the table and Dr. Brown's on the menu were a good start. But ... the potato knish was triangular, deep fried, served with some salad and two dipping sauces on the side - Yonah Schimmel wouldn't have recognized it. And the pastrami was, well, vaguely pastrami-ish but far from the real thing.

My company pays Xmas bonuses at the end of March - go figure that one. Anyway, I've decided my one indulgence will be to replace my current a/v amp with one that handles the newer uncompressed Dolby and DTS that one finds on blu-ray discs, as well as having HDMI inputs and outputs. A recent UK magazine article tested 5 of these beasts in the mid-range level and liked Pioneer the best. Question is - if I need to sell my own amp, I don't want to deal with Craig's List or eBay or Geo Expat or similar, are there shops in HK (somewhere in Mong Kok?) that buy and sell used stereo equipment?

Interesting op-ed piece in the NY Times on the current situation in Tibet. Not what you'd expect, not least of all this question (which, when you think about it, seems to make quite a bit of sense):

The question that Nancy Pelosi and celebrity advocates like Richard Gere ought to answer is this: Have the actions of the Western pro-Tibet lobby over the last 20 years brought a single benefit to the Tibetans who live inside Tibet, and if not, why continue with a failed strategy?