Hongkie Town

Latest Spike column for BC magazine is online now, geeky stuff about Blu-Ray DVD.

The front page "Editor's Bit" is worth a peek. An excerpt:

A good friend has just fallen head over heels in love, I mean movie-style love complete with all the sappiness. They’re both over 40 yet walking around on Cloud Nine. They radiate happiness – I mean, they’re like two mini-novas walking down the street and it’s wonderful to see. The cloud, and it’s a deep black Category 10 hurricane, is her ex-husband.

I don't know why someone who doesn't bother to identify him or herself but merely posts an anonymous comment would expect me to care if that person finds the blog boring. This is not a commercial endeavor and I am doing it primarily for myself. If I cared about hit counts and ad revenue then I'd be posting stories about sexual encounters and pictures of naked women. Actually I've never quite understood why I continue to have as many readers as I do after changing over to "Redux." If you find the blog boring, I'm not upset, not going to suddenly change course and change content.

In other boring news, trapped in the elevator (or "lift") in my building for somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes today. No phone service in my elevator so could not do email or internet. Did not want to listen to iPod since I wanted to be able to hear if anyone was trying to contact me. Cold in there so did not sit down on the floor. Alone so no one to talk to or abuse or get abused by. I decided I would ignore the "no smoking" sign.

Eventually they had to call the Fire Department (or is it "brigade") who managed to get me out pretty fast once they arrived.

Even though I'm not a Republican, I'm quite happy that McCain won in Florida and that Giuliani had such a poor showing. McCain is the most reasonable of all the Republican contenders and, given the Democrats' penchant for nominating losers, would certainly be better than Romney or Huckabee. And that's why the Dems were hoping that Romney would win, because it would be easier to run against his extremist positions and record of flipflopping on a large number of issues. The Clintons' meltdown in South Carolina and the Kennedys' subsequent endorsements of Obama mean that the campaign continues to be an interesting one to follow.

Feeling very unambitious with the cold and wet weather. Though I grew up in the relatively harsh winters of New York City (yeah, I know, try telling that to someone in Siberia or Chicago) I've become so acclimated to the HK climate that 11 degrees Celsius now feels like frostbite season to me.

Anyway, some misc notes ....

Probably the only record release delayed longer than Guns 'n Roses' Chinese Democracy is Neil Young's Archives project, which I think was first supposed to come out around 30 years ago. It might finally come out this year, though I wouldn't bet the farm on it. Neil Young is also famous for his hatred of the compact disc as a music medium, and has now declared that Archives will not be released on CD - only on DVD and Blu-Ray.

Blog io9 has the tagline "Strung out on science fiction" on their masthead. The blog comes to us from the same company that gives us Gawker, Defamer, Fleshbot, Gizmodo and Gridskipper, amongst others. Sure it covers movies, TV, comics and books. But it seems to have something more going on which may make it a bit more interesting. Recent posts have included:

• The Future Will Taste Like Space Food Sticks
• Everything You Need to Know About the Madness of Nikola Tesla
• Gas Clouds Implode in the Star Factory
• Japan's Wackiest Inventor Saves the World With Super Viagra

Kind of a nerdier BoingBoing, I suppose. But worth checking out.

If I was still the old Spike, then The FARANG Speaks 2 Much would be one of my favorite blogs. These days I read it as an exercise in nostalgia.

Would also recommend that you read the latest post from 10thingsihateabouthongkong. This whole real estate thing in HK is driving me buggy as well. I think Hemlock used to infer that sooner or later HK will become so expensive that all of those in our service economy will be commuting from Shenzhen. Or, I suppose, Tin Shui Wai. Further reinforced by an article in HK Magazine that says that people working for food chains such as Cafe de Coral earn less than HK$5,000 per month.

Taxi fares, which haven't gone up in ten years despite increases in costs for things like fuel and insurance, are going to rise a whole US 13 cents per ride this year. I think the average taxi driver only clears about HK$200 per day, working a 12 hour day and working a 6 or even 7 day week.

Add to that the destruction of Wedding Card Street, the planned destruction of Sneaker Street and various other market streets for no good reason in an attempt to eradicate the past and make every street look like every other street, down to Disney-style recreations of a storybook past. Unqualified bureaucrats get to issue these plans to justify their phony baloney jobs and are supported by a non-elected non-representative government that is in the pocket of the major real estate developers who are the only ones who stand to profit from this.

And because local people worship money, the people who buy these shoddily constructed flats then turn around and attempt to charge more than the market will bear in rental so that they can become mini Li Ka-Shings themselves, further adding to the general misery.

My landlord, who is a gentleman and a scholar, especially in comparison to most other landlords, has raised by rent by only 10% each time he's renewed my lease. 20% increases are more common this year. Why any increase at all? The underlying fundamentals haven't changed - his monthly expenses on the flat haven't changed. I can escape this amusement park ride by buying a flat - yet I'm convinced that everything is overpriced, approaching a bubble that will burst.

The stock market has become a dare devil roller coaster ride. After dipping down by close to a third in the past month, it has become subject to extreme daily movements - Thursday one of the biggest percentage and point losses in history. Friday back up by 1400. Monday back down by 1300. Today up by 240. People with vested interests declare that the market will hit 35,000 this year but the fundamentals aren't there to support it.

So it's becoming just like that old US Depression-era song, How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live. I predict the middle class in Hong Kong will soon be wiped out. Hong Kong will be the playground of the super rich and those who are allowed to stay because they service the rich in a variety of ways.

But I fear that as the "have nots" increase in number, then something that Beijing fears the most, social instability, will raise its ugly head.

Okay, so I'm a little cranky today. I'm sure I'll feel better after it warms up a bit and I get some sleep.

My girlfriend is going to ask her lawyer if I can publish the bastard's name and his company names here.

Oh, in a related story, child molester Gary Glitter may be getting an early release from prison in Viet Nam due to health issues. He has said that he's considering settling in Hong Kong. One reason he is apparently considering Hong Kong is because HK does not maintain a registry of convicted sex offenders.

Up to now, I've been quiet about my girlfriend's situation. But I don't intend to stay quiet much longer. People are going to find out about how calling her ex-husband an asshole would be unfair to all of the assholes in the world. There are other very public venues aside from this blog that may be available to me and I intend to take advantage of every one of them. When a man who cheated on his wife attempts to throw not only her but their two young children out into the street without a penny, people should know.

Before I went down to Bangkok for my annual medical check, I'd told my girlfriend that I'm so ludicrously happy that something bad is bound to happen and that more than likely they'd find cancer.

Well, they didn't, but the past seven days have held an extreme amount of small annoyances that taken together have pushed my stress levels sky high. This includes:

• an altercation with my new boss's new boss, who seems to feel that his recent promotion has bestowed divinity upon him and woe unto those unable to recognize same.
• camera broke
• car overheating - and if I want the repair done for free under warranty have to wait until Monday, which means no Sai Kung for me this weekend
  
• MediaMan (box with hard disk that hooks up to TV to let me watch downloads) died
• First replacement for MediaMan was piece of shit, second one being set up now
  
• No NOW-TV for one week (granted, a mixed blessing)
• Slow internet for five days followed by no internet for two days

and there's probably more that I've left out.

The thing is, all of those things taken together don't add up to 1% of what my girlfriend has been put through in the past week (not by me, ok?). Kudos to her for keeping it together in the face of some truly horrendous stuff.

Last night marked 7 weeks since we met and we ended up spending the evening at the same bar where 7 weeks ago I told her, "I could be Mr. Right." I think it's fair to say we both had too much to drink. I seem to recall that after this guy showed his ass tattoo to everyone, I was inspired to remove far too many of my clothes for public consumption on Jaffe Road. My apologies to all who were forced to witness this unsavory sight.

just got the call that my internet will not be fixed today. Saturday? Possible but doubtful. Further posting and replies to comments on hold until this is resolved.

First off, just wanna mention that if like me you're fed up with HSBC, a friend recently introduced me to Patrick Poon at Citic Ka Wah Bank, Wanchai Branch on Hennessy Road. Patrick is an old fashioned banker in the best sense of the word - he takes the time to listen to you, works with you to come up with a solution and then delivers on his promises.

Now, internet. Saturday my internet speed slowed down by 75%. And it was too slow to support NOW-TV, that was completely gone. Since I couldn't get anyone on the phone, I resorted to a stream of emails to their customer support mailbox.

It took until Tuesday to get someone out to my flat. He banged around for awhile and then said the problem was with the outside cable and it would take two days to replace.

Thursday he comes back, bangs around some more, goes out, says he'll be back and never returns. I come home from work, no internet service at all.

I call the PCCW service line several times but cannot get a human being to answer. Finally around 2 AM I succeed. Except I get someone who found the English language challenging. She bravely attempted to read from the script in front of her, blithely ignoring everything I said.

I knew I was in trouble when it took 10 minutes for me to get her to understand my login ID. Then I said, "check my records, I've been having trouble all week, someone was here today." Then another 10 minutes to get her to understand the brand name and model # of my PCCW-supplied DSL modem.

"I have no service."

"What error message do you get?"

"I have no service. My WAN line keeps blinking."

"Is your power light on?"

"Yes"

"Is your WAN light on?"

This was quickly turning into a Bob & Ray routine. Finally I had to say, "look I appreciate you are trying to help me but you clearly don't understand what I'm saying. Is there anyone else I can talk to?" Asked this one three times before she wrote down my number and said someone would call me back.

Someone called me back ten minutes later. After begging and pleading for an immediate appointment, I managed to get one for this morning.

The same guy who'd been there on Thursday returned this morning. He thought everything was fixed. He is surprised it is not working. "It never worked!!!!!" He banged around some more and then said there must be a problem with the new cable.

He's gone out to look at the cable or something. I'm in the office now so I have internet from here. I have no idea when this will be resolved.

dial 1833-833

listen to the menu selection of languages ... if you hit the wrong key, you then get to hear "sorry you made a mistake" in three different languages again before you get back to the menu

press 1 for english

input your hk id.

listen to them recite your hk id and press 1 to say you put it in right

listen to an ad about their hdtv channels

menu of choices

select 2 for technical support

select 4 for problem with web browsing

select 0 to talk to someone

the phone rings for awhile

get a recording that says "sorry all lines are busy please hold on"

listen to the phone ring 100 more times with no one answering and no further recording

give up, hang up, wait until 3 AM to call when the line is less busy

this is customer service?

Read together or separately, these two blog posts should make one stop and think about the true implications of online social networking.

Loose Wire - Who Needs Enemies When You have Facebook Friends?

the application is also now able to access the private data of your friends. To be clear about this, I'm not talking about friends who also agree to install the app; I'm talking about all your friends, period. ... by accepting someone's friendship on Facebook, you're agreeing to allow all the third party apps they install to access your private data. ... this data is stored, not on Facebook's computers where you and they might be able to keep an eye on it, but on the computers of the third party apps.

Hong Kong Phooey - International Delete Your MySpace Account Day

3. You’re a girl who constantly gets marriage proposals from random men in the middle east.

5. You have to make redundant clicks to perform simple tasks because Myspace keeps taking you to advertisement pages where you have to click on “return to myspace profile” in order to continue what you’re doing.

8. You read yet another news account about how some child predator using Myspace has abducted a little girl or that some hoax myspace account has caused a teenager to commit suicide.

Nominations are out for the 2008 Bloggies and I'm not nominated. But then again, none of the Asian blogs that I normally read are there. No Hemlock, EWSN, Fumier, RConversation, etc. So since I'm obviously following bad examples, what can I expect to achieve myself? (Joking.)

Actually the 5 nominees look okay and I do wish them luck. They are:

Mall - a Filipino freelance artist

Freshly Squeezed - 18 year old blogger in India

I Love Typography - exactly what the name suggests

Sparklette - 20-something female computer programmer and web designer in Singapore. Provides icons if you want to link to her but doesn't seem to link to anyone else.

Start Drawing - "The Asia Drawing Portal. Drawings From Asia. Drawings By Asians." Founded by two people in Singapore, actually a bit more varied than their blurb would suggest since they're including comics and digital art as well.

Believe it or not, I've never been to a horse race anywhere in the world, not even in HK. I lived in Happy Valley in 95 and 96, could see the track from my flat, and enjoyed the parade of horses coming down from the stables to the track on racing days. But I never felt the temptation to, ahem, pony up the bucks to sit in the stands and watch a race.

Last night, several art galleries got together for an event hosted by The Racing Club at the 7th floor "penthouse" at Happy Valley. Since one of those gallery owners is a friend, I received an invitation and thought it too good an opportunity to pass up.

The club itself was packed, presumably with both club members as well as those invited by the various galleries. The walls were lined with horse-racing themed paintings brought by the galleries. Lots of people in suits and no shortage of attractive women wandering around (though I was well taken care of in that respect).

As for the races themselves ... watching them from inside an enclosed room, despite the wonderful view, it wasn't very interesting. But at one point I went back downstairs and stood at ground level, along the track, listening to the crowd shouting louder and louder as the horses neared the finish line. It was quite different then - I almost began to catch the fever.

But did I place a bet? Nope. I wouldn't have had any idea of what I was doing, not that that seems to stop most people.

Probably just pissing into the wind, but for whatever it's worth, an article from the Western Mail, via Content Agenda.

You're cheating yourself and the jobs of others if you buy pirated goods

The Western Mail , January 23, 2008, Wednesday WMail Edition

Counterfeit goods and piracy is a multi-billion- pound criminal business. Now the Intellectual Property Crime Report, from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, has revealed its impact on the economy. Dr Gillian Whitfield, managing director of Newport-based patent attorneys Astrum-IP, assesses its findings

YOU could view it as an act of rebellion - cheating the system by getting the latest films at a fraction of the cost and months before they go on general release.

But would you be willing to buy a dodgy DVD in a pub if you knew it could have a direct adverse impact on the livelihoods of the people around you, and the economy in general?

When Apollo Video Film Hire closed more than 100 shops in the UK last year, its misfortune was widely attributed to piracy.

As well as a loss of local business, intellectual property crime has been described as "the biggest threat to the prosperity and development of our creative industries" which, in turn, contribute more than 1 trillion euros to the EU economy each year, and employ over five million people.

International trade in counterfeiting and piracy is estimated to be worth $200bn a year, and pounds 1.3bn in the UK alone. Here in Wales, seized counterfeit goods have included everything from mineral water to a fake Dalek.

Intellectual Property crime hugely affects our health service, too. The Tobacco Manufacturers Association estimates that two billion cigarettes smoked in 2006 came from illegal sources, making a shortfall in duty of pounds 18.5bn.

This trade increases the strain on already-stretched NHS resources, robbing it of valuable funding while delivering possibly more people into its care, as counterfeit cigarettes have been shown to contain up to 160% more tar, 80% more nicotine, and 133% more carbon monoxide than their genuine equivalents.

IP theft is also having a considerable impact on innovation.

Almost a quarter (23%) of SMEs surveyed recently believed that their businesses had been affected, with job losses of 5% or more on the previous year.

Businesses are affected by IP theft on a number of levels.

Counterfeit goods undercut prices, and successful, consequential litigation is difficult.

But they also serve to damage the reputation of brands, reducing sales of real goods and making it much harder to market to new customers.

The Intellectual Property Crime Report describes IP theft as "a double-edged crime", unfairly undercutting the legitimate trader while defrauding and threatening the customer.

It makes a series of recommendations (which can be seen at www.ipo.gov.uk/ipcreport.pdf). However, all of us, at street level, can make a difference here.

The front page on the SCMP web site has been updated with an article on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's biggest one day drop in years, far worse than yesterday's biggest one day drop in years. Roughly 10% in two days. There's also an article noting that inflation in HK is at a 10 year high. Kind of a one-two punch, eh? Can't wait to see what our glorious leaders will have to say to their flocks tomorrow.

Questions about the SCMP web site ....

1 - Why isn't there a dedicated box on the front page showing the current HSI? How much screen real estate would that take? (They want you to click through so they can serve another ad?)

2 - Why is it that when I log into the NY Times web site (a free web site) I can get the current temperature and conditions in Hong Kong on the front page but only a 24 hour forecast on the front of the SCMP page? (They want you to click through so they can serve another ad?)




3 - Why is it when I log into the SCMP web site I get an ad saying I can get a free 7 day trial of the web site? I'm logged in so I must be a subscriber, no? As it happens, this red line of text:



appears almost dead center in my screen when the page loads.

4 - As noted on one other blog (can't recall which one right now), isn't this just a bit too close for comfort?

The Academy Award nominations are out. Full list here. 8 nominations apiece for No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, 7 apiece for Atonement and Michael Clayton.

Major category nominations:

Best motion picture
“Atonement”
“Juno”
“Michael Clayton”
“No Country for Old Men”
“There Will Be Blood”

(I've seen all of these except Atonement. I'm guessing There Will Be Blood.)

Performance by an actress in a leading role
Cate Blanchett in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”
Julie Christie in “Away from Her”
Marion Cotillard in “La Vie en Rose”
Laura Linney in “The Savages”
Ellen Page in “Juno”

(The only one of these I've seen is Juno and Ellen Page is amazing but will probably be seen by voters as being too young.)

Performance by an actor in a leading role
George Clooney in “Michael Clayton”
Daniel Day-Lewis in “There Will Be Blood”
Johnny Depp in “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”
Tommy Lee Jones in “In the Valley of Elah”
Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises”

(Have only seen 3 of these. Can't imagine it not going to Day-Lewis.)

Performance by an actor in a supporting role
Casey Affleck in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford”
Javier Bardem in “No Country for Old Men”
Philip Seymour Hoffman in “Charlie Wilson’s War”
Hal Holbrook in “Into the Wild”
Tom Wilkinson in “Michael Clayton”

(Almost always the toughest category to predict. I'd be hard-pressed to choose between Bardem and Hoffman.)

Performance by an actress in a supporting role
Cate Blanchett in “I’m Not There”
Ruby Dee in “American Gangster”
Saoirse Ronan in “Atonement”
Amy Ryan in “Gone Baby Gone”
Tilda Swinton in “Michael Clayton”

(Have seen 3 of these. The Academy likes Cate Blanchett but her lead actress nom could split votes.)

Achievement in directing
“The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” Julian Schnabel
“Juno” Jason Reitman
“Michael Clayton” Tony Gilroy
“No Country for Old Men” Joel Coen and Ethan Coen
“There Will Be Blood” Paul Thomas Anderson

(Anderson or the Coen Bros., a tough call.)

My company snagged 16 nominations - not our best year, not too shabby though.

My gf and I had a good evening out, relaxing dinner with a friend. Today is the 6 week anniversary of our first date and while normally I would be running away as fast as I can at this point, this is showing every sign of settling into a long term relationship and I'm quite happy about that. However, last night was another night of bad sleep. Perhaps too much caffeine yesterday, though it normally doesn't affect me much. In bed at 12:30, read for half an hour, lights out, sleep but up again 30 minutes later, followed by 4 hours of tossing and turning until I finally either drifted off or passed out around 5 AM. Up at 9, so I'm in wonderful shape today.

Today, PCCW finally showed up. Despite giving me a new ADSL modem and a new NOW TV decoder box, my DSL line speed is still down by 75% and that also means the line is too slow to support broadband TV, not that I watch it so much anyway. The repair dude ran out of ideas and says they need to change an underground cable and that will take at least 2 to 3 days. We'll see.

Haven't seen too many bloggers writing about the current meltdown of the HK stock exchange. The Hang Seng index was at around 31,000 in December, yesterday closed in the 23,000 range. A loss of about 30% in a single month certainly seems to me to qualify as a crash. The meltdown continues today with a mid-day loss of almost 2,000.

Hemlock has written about it, and as usual has taken the opportunity to boast about his expertise in picking stocks. Good for him. As the stock market was rocketing up in December, I thought about taking whatever meager amounts I could scrape together and buy whatever I could. But by the time I had everything worked out, the HSI was at what turned out to be its peak and something just told me it was the wrong time to jump in. Sometimes my intuition is wrong, this time it was right.

And while Hemlock deems that now is the time to buy, I don't have a feeling that things have bottomed out yet. I think I'll wait a little bit longer. Could the HSI go as low as its SARS numbers, below 10k? Maybe not, but I wouldn't be surprised to see things go even lower before they start to level out.

For those who know how to obtain such things, I'll mention that there's a video floating around on teh interweb of the Led Zep reunion concert. It's an amateur thing, single camera and somewhat shaky at times. But both video and audio are clear enough for the point and the power of the whole thing to come across. I have a hard time believing that they won't eventually release the real thing on both CD and DVD but this will hold me until something better comes along.

According to Digital Inspiration, via Google, researchers in Cardiff claim that the 3rd Monday in January is the most depressing day of the year.

I don't know if it's the MOST depressing but I'm certainly feeling like crap today. Among the reasons:

• First day back in office after two weeks out
• Camera died on last trip, still waiting for repair quote
• Home DSL line working at just 25% capacity, NOW-TV not working at all
• Left front fog light on car not working
• Next column for BC mag due in 3 days and don't have a topic yet and the column after that due just 7 days later
• Monday's a holiday in the US but not here.
  

And some other stuff that I won't go into. Oh, and my current lease expires March 15th, I plan on moving, and someone in my office told me today that rumor has it new rental leases are expected to rise by up to 20% following Chinese New Year. Can I wish for continued poor performance for the HK stock exchange to offset that?

Plus my sleep cycle is getting weirder. On the one hand, I hadn't been able to sleep late for months, and this weekend saw me sleeping till noon each day, which was nice. On the other hand, probably because I have OSA and don't use my CPAP machine enough, I have nights like last night -

• read till 1:30
• lights out
• asleep instantly
• woke up feeling refreshed, ready for my day, turn over and look at clock and it's 3:39 AM
• up again at 6:30 AM
• up again at 8:30 AM
• up and out of bed slightly after 9

I know, sorry, boring stuff, what can I say?

Little bits of news here and there keep attracting my attention today, but no links, sorry. Seems that the Jockey Club is reporting betting is down 20% because the new casinos are stealing away the punters. Suzanne Pleshette died. John Stewart died. (Not Jon Stewart, ok? A singer-songwriter who should have been better known.) Super Bowl will be Giants and Patriots so this year I might actually give a damn.

Also, while I am not a Republican, I figure that McCain winning in South Carolina is good news, as he is far less insane or dangerous than Romney or Huckabee. Now hoping he knocks out Giuliani, by far the most insane and dangerous of the Republican candidates, in Florida. I am still unable to make up my mind on Clinton vs Obama and wish that Edwards didn't seem on the verge of being on the way out.

The one bright spot I have today is that if today is TRULY the most depressing day of the year, as some would claim, then after today things can only get better.

If you're more than a casual fan of movies, then odds are you know the name Roger Corman. As a director, he was responsible for 55 films including Little Shop of Horrors, The Trip and a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations starring Vincent Price. As a producer, he produced almost 300 films and provided the all-important breaks for Martin Scorsese, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola and basically anyone else who is anyone in Hollywood today. His students paid him back by giving him parts in movies like Godfather 2, Philadelphia and Apollo 13.

His movies were made quick and cheap, featured violence and nudity and a little bit of a social message. He boasts that his films never lost money. But one did. It was a movie he directed in 1962 called "The Intruder," in which William Shatner turns up in a small southern American town to incite racial hatred and violence. It bombed at the box office and Corman never made another "straight" film, instead indulging his love for art films by distributing films from the great European directors, like Fellini, in the US. (The trailers only made them look like exploitation films.) Had "The Intruder" done well at the box office, his career would have taken a very different turn.

(I know all this stuff because back in the 80s I was writing a book on Corman that, for a variety of excuses reasons was never completed.)

I was thinking about the above because of the recent news that Quentin Tarantino says he wants to do a remake of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" Who knows if he's serious or not? The thing is, he's claiming that for the three stars he wants Eva Mendes, Kim Kardishian and Britney Spears. (Well, at least Mendes can act her way out of a paper bag.)

And I was thinking ... Tarantino came out of the gate with Reservoir Dogs, which got the critical acclaim. He followed that with Pulp Fiction, which made massive amounts of money and established Miramax as a real studio.

And then came his best film, Jackie Brown - still the best screen adaptation of an Elmore Leonard book. Despite a supporting cast that included Robert DeNiro, Michael Keaton (playing the same character he would later play in Out of Sight) , Samuel L. Jackson, Bridget Fonda, Chris Tucker and great acting from leads Pam Grier and Robert Forster, no one went to see the movie. It was seen as his first failure.

Tarantino didn't makie another movie for 6 years and when he came back, it was the over-the-top pastiche of Kill Bill in 2003. Four years later he had the Death Proof segment of Grindhouse (and really, isn't that already a sort of remake of Faster Pussycat?). He keeps talking about some war movie called Inglorious Bastards; the script's been rumored or floating around for years.

But essentially, since Jackie Brown, he's turned his back on his talent, doing genre exercises that aren't worthy of him. I find it rather sad.

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Meanwhile I just watched "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City) who must be close to 80 now and can still hit the high notes.

Also, just got the HD DVD of Roy Orbison, Black & White Night. I had worn out the original DVD of this. If you've never seen this .... the core backing band includes legends like James Burton. Back-up female vocalists are Bonnie Raitt, kd lang and Jennifer Warnes. Back-up male vocals come from Jackson Browne and JD Souther. The rest of the band includes Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, T-Bone Burnett and Tom Waits.

This was the start of his comeback in the 80s. The concert (in black and white, as the title says), is really well edited. And the sound on the HD-DVD really cranks.

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

Hey, since they seem to have fans among readers of this blog, did you know that the Bonzos have just released their first studio album in more than 35 years? They gone back to the full name - Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The album is called Pour L'Amour des Chiens and has a 28 track CD plus a bonus DVD. The band includes Neil Innes, Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, Legs Larry Smith, Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, Sam Spoons and Bob Kerr. Of course Vivan Stanshall isn't there but he has been "replaced" by Adrian Edmondson and Stephen Fry. Essential.

While in Thailand, I stopped into the Bose shop at the Siam Paragon mall to try out the Bose Quiet Comfort 3 headphones. I quite liked them. In the US, they sell for $350. At the official Bose shop at Paragon, they were selling for US$900. The guy claimed the reason for the difference was shipping and duty and VAT. Yeah. Right.

In Hong Kong, the Bose shop at Times Square is selling them for HK$3480, or approximately US$425. In the US, Bose has a $40 accessory that includes a line-in microphone and the proper sized plug to fit into the iPhone. This accessory is not sold in Hong Kong.

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While in Thailand, my dentist told me I needed to get a WaterPik. They had the travel version in their office but he told me I should wait until I got back to Hong Kong, that it would probably be cheaper in HK because of duty and VAT in Thailand. Having just had that experience at the Bose shop, I was inclined to believe him and so didn't purchase it there.

On returning, I found that WaterPik is only sold by Jusco in Hong Kong. They are only selling two of the low end old models, not the current ones and not the travel version.

The lower end travel version lists for $30 in the US and Amazon sells it for $22. For some reason WaterPik does not see fit to sell the travel version with a multi-voltage adapter. Their agent in Singapore offered to sell me the Euro version, 230 volts, for US$120!

I have found web sites selling the travel version online for about US$40. Or I could buy the US one and get a small voltage converter to go with it.

The Braun equivalent to WaterPik sells in HK for just under HK$900.

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

eBay here I come ....

Back in Hong Kong. Hazy, foggy, smoggy, cold, but happy to be home. Too many things to do tomorrow, may actually have to make a list.

Latest BC column here - somewhat rewritten version of an early blog post.

I love reading about the history of food. You learn so much culturally when you find out how dishes came to be created and how they traveled around the world. Lizzie Collingham's book, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, is a great example and a great read.

Today's example is the humble fortune cookie, served in Chinese restaurants all over the world - except in China. It turns out this dish thought by most Americans to be quintessentially Chinese is really Japanese.

The idea that fortune cookies come from Japan is counterintuitive, to say the least. "I am surprised," said Derrick Wong, the vice president of the largest fortune cookie manufacturer in the world, Wonton Food, based in Brooklyn. “People see it and think of it as a Chinese food dessert, not a Japanese food dessert,” he said. But, he conceded, “The weakest part of the Chinese menu is dessert.”

(You can say that again, Derrick.)

The American fortune cookie, variously claimed by Chinese and Japanese immigrants to the US, is thought to have been developed just prior to WWI.

A number of immigrant families in California, mostly Japanese, have laid claim to introducing or popularizing the fortune cookie. Among them are the descendants of Makoto Hagiwara, a Japanese immigrant who oversaw the Japanese Tea Garden built in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in the 1890s. Visitors to the garden were served fortune cookies made by a San Francisco bakery, Benkyodo.

A Japanese researcher has found references to fortune cookies in Japanese books predating WWI by about 100 years. They were baked outside of a temple in Kyoto and are still available there to this day.

As to how the cookies traveled from Japanese restaurants to Chinese ones in the US, it's thought that the Chinese "took them over" as Japanese businesses were closed up during WWII.

(pics taken before camera broke. thought i'd put this online but checking, saw it wasn't there yet.)

New? I think that all of the girls working in the bars in Bangkok already know about this method of learning English.


Hey, now HERE'S a unique concept - this shopping mall put benches so people could sit and wait to meet someone or just rest for awhile. Hello Times Square?


I'm sure that Hong Kong will have an international dance music festival around the same time Hong Kong gets democracy. Hey Hong Kong tourist board nitwits? People actually travel to come to these things - plane tickets, hotels, restaurants, shopping - okay, maybe not mainlanders who let their children pee in the streets - and sometimes even local residents like this sort of thing.


I think this prime piece of real estate along Sukhumvit has remained like this for about 10 years now.


I guess only the Skytrain station in the background betrays the fact that this is Bangkok and some some small rural village setting. Pick-up truck, monk, Buddha statue, umbrella, guy in the cab yadda-yaddaing away on a loudspeaker, people coming up to give some money and get some blessings or advice.


The New York Times reports that Apple and China mobile have called off talks to have CM launch the iPhone in China. I suspect that CM laughed its collective head off when requested to give 40% of its revenue to Apple in order to have "exclusive" rights to the phone.

Carrying on from an element in this post by 962:

Yes I have decided that the measure of a countries standing on a western benchmark is weather they sell Frisse and Rocket in the supermarket. The answer for Hong Kong is no, unless you go to city super, for Bangkok the answer is YES. And it’s cheap about a quarter of the price of Hong Kong, grown locally and organic. Put that with a million and one varieties of cottage cheese, Olives to die for and real pasta and the supermarkets in Bangkok start to provide a real rationale for why Welcome and Park N Shop are examples of why monopolies are bad.

For the last few years, I've stayed at the same place every time I go to Bangkok, the President Solitaire, at the back of Sukhumvit Soi 11. This is a happening little soi. Bed Supperclub, Q Bar, Twisted Republic, Spice Club, Cheap Charlie's and at least several restaurants that I would say are above average.

I've had local Thai people take me to Rosabieng for Thai food and loved every dish I had there. I enjoy sitting in the outside garden at Zanzibar listening to live jazz while sampling their Thai and Italian menus. And I've had some great Italian food at Contrazi. The German place isn't the best German food I've ever had but I've had far worse. And I have yet to check out the big Korean place just past Bed or Chilli Culture - hell, I've never been to Bed (Supperclub, duh!).

And that's not even counting how after dark, the street becomes a long strip of carts doing barbecue, fried chicken, noodles, the best of Thai street food. And Baan Phuan does seriously good Thai massage, 2 hours for 400 baht. (Oh, yes, there are even a few bars with congenial "hostesses" if that's your thing.) Not to forget a 24 hour supermarket and 3, count 'em 3 7-11's.

So you get the idea, Soi 11 is a great street and you can spend most of your time on this one street and still not hit every place there is to hit.

There's a little place right across from my hotel that I must have passed about 100 times but never tried. It's called La Piola. Yesterday, I walked by, someone was sitting on their outside terrace having a pizza and it put me in the mood for one. So tonight I decided to give them a shot.

I was greeted on arrival by the owner, an Italian gentleman, who explained to me that they change their menu daily, depending on what's fresh in the market that morning. He then walked me through the entire menu. As he finished, I felt like something of a cad for saying, "actually tonight I just want a pizza." "No problem," was his reply, and he handed me the pizza menu.

I had "Pizza Pisa," a margherita pizza topped with Italian salami, onions, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms and olives. And it ranked up there with any pizza I've ever had. A lot of cheese. Classic dough. Light on the sauce, heavy on the toppings, just the way I like it. The owner came back out to check on me and I said, "This is seriously good pizza! But I guess you knew that already." And he smiled. Normally I can only manage half a pizza this size (I think we're talking 10 inch diameter here) but this was so good I finished 6 of the 8 slices and then scraped the toppings off the remaining two slices.

The best part? The price of the pizza was 290 baht. That's about HK$75. Just under US$10.

And THAT is another example of what you can have when you're not being raped by greedy landlords who raise rents to cosmically and comically ludicrous levels and own most of the businesses in the prime locations themselves.

After a visit to the tailor, a foot massage, interrupted by my stomach not being happy with what I'd had for lunch. After the foot massage, a quick visit to the pharmacy to get some Imodium. Washed that down with several glasses of "black so," which seems to be how one orders a Johnnie Walker Black Label and soda in the bars here. As a distraction from everything around me, checking emails while drinking and a stream from a friend having some problems. But as the black so went to work, I'm not sure that my responses were helpful.

Drank enough, Jimmy Wong not in his shop yet, standing on the street along Soi 5, I get accosted by two African men. They tell me they're from Liberia. One very drunk, or pretending to be more likely. They want to be my friend. They want my phone number so they can call me and we can hang out. They love George Bush because he got their president to leave. They want to tell me about the horrific violence in their country. Oh, and they happen to have a 3.3 karat diamond with them that they can't bring to London because it will be turned into guns or they want to turn it into guns and can show it to me if I'm interested. I use the term "blood diamond" and they're highly offended. I told them I didn't have a phone. So they said I should pick a time for them to meet me the next night. I told them that if it was fated for us to meet, then we would. The one pretending to be drunk then asked me since I believe in fate do I believe in god, and when I told him no, he said I should walk away before he hits me. And I did.

Jimmy turned up around 11:15. I looked at the sketches he'd done for the gonzo fist and they were okay but I didn't love them and asked him to hold off on that for awhile. Instead he did some changes and touch-ups to the dragon on my left arm.

Some Thai girl came in, talked to Jimmy for a bit, flashed her blue underwear at everyone and we also all saw the scars on her arm from what looked like it had been a very serious attempt to kill herself. Later, while Jimmy was working away, I got into this discussion with a British guy who has been there every night and is slowly covering all of his skin with classic Thai designs. He's about my age and has lived in Thailand for more than a decade and speaks fairly fluent Thai. A professional snooker player and gambler back in the UK, his life was off the rails until he met the right woman a few years back and he seems to be on his way to finding the contentment he seeks. Not going to detail the tales he told me last night but they were about a life lived and lessons learned. He said he rarely tells them to anyone but after hearing me talking about my girlfriend, he wanted to share them with me because he knew I'd understand.

Also, my camera died last night, my trusty Canon G7. Thought maybe the battery was dead but after charging last night, the camera still refuses to switch on.

This morning, checking messages, I see a friend request on Facebook. I look at the name and it doesn't register, I look at the profile and realize that this is from the woman who was my girlfriend on and off junior and senior years of college. I haven't seen her or heard from her in more than 30 years. After watching something on Facebook on 60 Minutes, she decides to sign up. It blows my mind, to say the least, that I'm one of the people she thought to search for once she was online.

Well, last night marked 11 nights in Bangkok so far and, as much to my surprise as anyone else's, I have managed not to have sex with anyone.

One problem is that on past visits, so much of my time was spent looking for, ahem, companionship, that I find myself at a loss as to how to occupy my evenings. I don't want to just sit in the hotel watching TV so I go out. But even if one chooses to avoid Patpong, Nana, Cowboy, temptation is everywhere and in your face and even though I know there are several bars that have decent bands but it's not what I'm in the mood for most nights.

So most nights, for at least part of the night, I'm hanging out at Jimmy Wong's. It's more than a tattoo shop, it's a kind of clubhouse and most nights there are other people hanging out there whom I know. The expected side effect is that I will likely be going ahead with some ink for my left leg.

I've shown Jimmy a few examples of the Hunter S. Thompson "gonzo fist" and asked him to come up with his own interpretation, in particular making the knife portion "more Thai." I've also told him to replace the peyote button in the fist with an eyeball.

He should be showing me some drawings tonight and if he's come up with something that I like, I'll go ahead with it. One problem is that I don't think I can fairly expect him to copy Ralph Steadman's splatter-like fonts from the small pictures I've given him. I guess I'll take a look to see if I can get any book with Steadman's artwork at Kinokuniya this afternoon.

The Golden Globes are the annual awards given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group that has less than 100 members. On some levels they're meaningless - one year the pint sized sexpot from New Jersey Pia Zadora won for "best new star of the year," probably because she married a millionaire and then took off all her clothes in a film and perhaps she'd slept with all 100 members of the HFPA, perhaps not.

At any rate, some see these awards as an indicator of how the Oscars will go and, if you don't know it, Academy Awards add big bucks to a film's final gross.

Usually the Globes are a big televised ceremony, so big that Star carries it live in Asia. But this year, due to the writers' strike, the awards were announced during a one hour press conference. And here they are:

Feature film:
Best Picture, drama - Atonement
Actress, drama - Julie Christie, Away From Her
Actor, drama - Daniel Day-Lewis, There Will Be Blood
Best Picture, musical or comedy - Sweeney Todd
Actress, musical or comedy - Marion Cotillard, La Vie en Rose
Actor, musical or comedy - Johnny Depp, Sweeney Todd
Supporting Actress - Cate Blanchett, I'm Not There
Supporting Actor - Javier Bardem, No Country for Old Men
Director - Julian Schnabel, Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Screenplay - Ethan & Joel Coen, No Country for Old Men
Foreign language film - Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Animated film - Ratatouille
Original score - Dario Marianelli, Atonement
Original song - Guaranteed, Into the Wild

Television
Best series, drama - Mad Men
Actress, drama - Glenn Close, Damages
Actor, drama - John Hamm, Mad Men
Best series, musical or comedy - Extras
Actress, musical or comedy - Tina Fey, 30 Rock
Actor, musical or comedy - David Duchovny, Californication
Mini-series - Longford
Actress, mini-series - Queen Latifah, Life Support
Actor, mini-series - Jim Broadbent, Longford
Supporting actress - Samantha Morton, Longford
Supporting actor - Jeremy Piven, Entourage

#1 - Why is it that Bangkok has a better English language book store than any of the ones in Hong Kong - and run by a Japanese company? How come Kinokuniya can be in Sydney, New York, Los Angeles, Singapore, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei but they're not in Hong Kong?

BTW, Dymock's in Hong Kong is a franchise joint venture with the SCMP. Here's an interesting article that the SCMP ran when the first Page One (a Singapore-based chain) opened in HK in 1997. What a shock, they blame the lack of decent-sized book shops in HK on high rent.

The managing director of Far East Media, the company that owns Bookazine, is quoted in the same article as saying, "For every 100 customers we get buying books, we don't get more than five Chinese." And in case you haven't noticed, next time you're on the MTR, take a look around and see how many people are reading - don't count the people reading manga (originally wrote "kids" instead of "people" but you see adults reading comic books on the train and even walking down the street). Why is it that more people in HK don't read books? Not even frigging business books. I suspect it represents a failure of the education system here.

#2 - "What the hell happened to you?" Asked of me by Jimmy Wong when I told him I was going back to my hotel at 12:15 AM Saturday night/Sunday morning. But I was bored sitting in his shop watching other people get tattoos, not in the mood to drink alone and not "hunting." So blogging, watch a movie or, ahem, read a book. (I bought six at the Kinokuniya at Emporium today and will probably get around to checking out their Paragon branch before I leave town.)

If you haven't spotted this elsewhere, here's the video of "Bill Gates' Last Day at Microsoft" that was shown at CES. Regardless of what you might think of Microsoft, this is genuinely funny stuff!





Question - anyone with an iPhone figure out how to save a jpg from a web page you're viewing in Safari or that comes as an attachment in email?

Thought: all of these "iPhone killers" that seek market share by emulating the iPhone's look and feel are doomed to failure. The iPhone wasn't the paradigm-changing success that it was because they copied other stuff - they rethought the entire experience from top to bottom. An "iPhone killer" will be someone else doing a similar rethink and not someone doing a "me too!"

MacWorld is coming up next week and I would guess that Steve Jobs will be announcing the next generation iPhone and everyone else will be playing catch-up again.

(nipped from icanhascheezburger.com)

Just watched the movie Balls of Fury, a satirical take on Fists of Fury and other martial arts films, but with the focus on ping pong instead of kung fu. It's not great, but it's not bad either.

Written and directed by two guys from the Reno 911 show, it stars some guy named Dan Fogler, who is apparently bigger on Broadway than in movies. But it also features Maggie Q, Christopher Walken, George Lopez, James Hong, Robert Patrick, Deidrich Bader, Aisha Tyler, Cary Hiroyuki-Tagawa, Jason Scott Lee and, in what will go down as one of the odder cameo appearances, Masi Oka from Heroes playing a bathroom attendant.

Reasons to see it? For one, they don't give Maggie Q a lot of clothes to wear. And it features some decently goofy lines, like this one, delivered by the always great James Hong:

Ping Pong is not the Macarena. It takes patience. She is like a fine, well-aged prostitute... it takes years to learn her tricks. She is cruel, laughs at you when you are naked, but you keep coming back for more, and more! Why? Because she is the only prostitute I can afford.

Earlier watched Michael Clayton, Tony Gilroy's first film as a director - he co-wrote all 3 Bourne movies as well as Devil's Advocate. Kind of standard stuff in some ways but nicely done, good twists in the plot, a good mcguffin to throw you off track, Clooney is terrific. Quality stuff.

Not much going on at the moment. Last night finally finished off my King Crimson tattoo, that's the highlight of the past couple of days. Just slow and easy in between doctors and dentists. Still need to figure out what I'm doing between Saturday and Wednesday - extend stay in same hotel, switch to different hotel for change of scene, quick two or three day trip somewhere?

The new season of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations started this week. First episode is a return visit to Singapore featuring the usual assortment of hawker stalls and an unusual high end restaurant that features dishes done molecular gastronomy style with the added novelty that all chairs in the restaurant are wheel chairs and the dining tables are hospital operating tables. Here's a lengthy interview done with Bourdain by the folks over at AV Club - no surprises but manages to cover an impressive amount of ground.

From Fosfor Gadgets to FormatWarCentral to TheDigitalBits, a series of updates that indicates that both Paramount and Universal, the last two studios releasing in HD-DVD format, will start releasing discs in Blu-Ray format. Paramount got a lot of press when they decided to go HD-DVD only last year; apparently their deal with Toshiba has an escape clause that they're now seeking to trigger. So that's basically it, looks like the high definition DVD format war is well and truly over.

I use Google's RSS reader but some may be interested to learn that NewsGator has decided to make all of their products free in 2008 - this includes NetNewsWire and FeedDemon.

All of the product announcements are coming out from the Consumer Electronics Show. Creative has an iPod dock that will upconvert video to HD. JVC has a FM radio with two iPod docks built in. Logitech is coming out with a stylish mini keyboard that will wirelessly work with PS3 and PCs, great if you have a media center PC in your bedroom or living room. Logitech also has a three speaker desktop speaker system for PCs that provides 180 watts of power and simulated 5.1 surround stereo. And their Squeezebox Duet features a remote control with a color screen for wirelessly streaming music from your PC around the house. I think it's Samsung that's showing a video projector that's the size of a mobile phone.

Time to drop off laundry and go to the tailor ...

The song Up the Cuts, by the group Against Me!, from their album New Wave:

I can’t sleep.
Dry red eyes wide open.
Stare at the white stucco ceiling.
I turn on the TV,
watch music on television.
Have I heard this song before?
Did this already happen?
Derived influence in style of dress.
Similar trends in camera technique and editing.
Sync up the cuts to the bass drum kick.
All the taste makers drinking from the same glass.
Is there anyone thinking what I am?
Is there anyone thinking what I am?

Are you restless like me?

All the insiders rumor over the decline in sales.
All the buzz is happening in the new digital market place.
FBI warning printed on the flipside.
Under penalty of law piracy will be prosecuted.
In MRR (Maximum Rock And Roll) someone asks the question,
“With the instant availability of information
and content so easily obtainable
is the culture now a product that’s disposable?”
All the punks still singing the same song.
Is there anyone thinking what I am?
Is there any other alternative?

Are you restless like me?

Lessons learned today: mind your own business, don't be friendly or attempt to offer help to those who seem to be in need. And while many westerners like to say that they can't understand the Asian mindset, what about understanding the British?

Standing in front of my hotel in Bangkok around 1 PM, waiting for the hotel shuttle to take me over to the hospital so I can get the results from my annual physical.

Two Brits come out. Half my age and twice my size. Brit #2 had a tattoo on one leg that I believe was the emblem of his favorite football team. Perhaps that should have served as a warning to me.

They go up to the taxis parked in front of the hotel and tell the taxi drivers that they want to go to a British or Irish pub with pool. I figure that if they don't know the bars in the area, they probably are new to Thailand. I walk over to them and say, "Can I give you a tip? Never take the taxis parked in front of hotels." The first guy asks why and I tell him, "They never use their meters. Flag down a taxi that's cruising and no problem."

Seems all innocent and harmless enough, right? Yet somehow I managed to enrage football tattoo Brit #2. He comes over to me, sweating, slurring his words, drunk or high at 1 in the afternoon, screaming, "Thai tips! Thai tips! Fucking bloody Americans!" And then grabs me by the balls. Not squeezing or punching, just a quick grab.

Needless to say, I don't understand this behavior at all and walk away. The hotel shuttle comes by, I tell the driver, "Hospital," and as I get in the moron starts yelling, "Hospital? Ya got AIDS? Ya got HIV?" thereby further confirming his mongoloid status.

I think I'll buy a taser at the night market tonight.

I know I had it when I went out last night but I think I left it somewhere.

Out again with 962. Drinking, eating, more drinking. Dinner at Basilico, an Italian restaurant on Soi 33 that seemed to have at least one actual Italian on staff and some nice imported ingredients.

I thought the night would end for me around midnight, when I went over to see Jimmy Wong and see if he was free to do some work on me. He had some Australian girl in the chair, putting birds on her feet, and said he'd be free around 3 AM. I said I'd be asleep by then. Didn't turn out that way. Back to the bars.

Despite the mandated early bar closings, the fact is that if you can't find someplace in Bangkok that's serving beer, pumping sounds, packed with sweaty bodies after 2 AM, you're not really looking. We hit at least a couple of them (and no, I don't think I should be posting names/addresses).

3 in the morning or maybe later, gulping down cheap Thai whiskey, the hip hop music pounding nails into my head, a thought almost occurred to me. I've known for some time that simply because I CAN buy something doesn't mean I should. If the thing is for sale and the money or plastic is in my pocket, I often do, even if it's wrong. Too many DVDs, too many gadgets, too many (well, long time readers can guess). I've told myself time and again to not buy something merely because I can, but only if I really need it. Time and again, I've done it anyway.

With so much for sale in front of me last night and with so much alcohol within me, I'm amazed that I could remember that. And got out of the disco and back to the hotel and managed to get my clothes off before collapsing in bed.

But overall, a very good night.

My plans for the weekend and next week are not solid yet and I'm starting to think that I will remain in Bangkok the entire time. Given the amount of money I'm spending, I decided that if I'm getting out of Bangkok for a few days, it should not entail airplanes. That means essentially Hua Hin, Pattaya, Samet.

But another problem is that I have to be able to get work done during the day, which means I have to have internet access in my hotel room - and something reasonably fast and solid, as VPN access back to corporate servers demands it. That means I can't stay in some dumpy concrete bungalow with a tin roof and ceiling fan. This is high season for the islands in Thailand and the US/HK dollar just doesn't buy what it used to. (A few years ago, I used to stay in the Grand President in Bangkok, paying less than US$50 per night. It's now $100. The place I'm staying in now, my "home" in Bangkok for the last 3 or 4 years, used to run about $75 per night, now it's $125. With a 42 inch plasma tv, dvd player, kitchen and something resembling a pool, it's a bargain.)

Three star shacks on the beach in Samet are going for more per night than my almost-5-star service flat in Bangkok. Pattaya? Shitty beach and I don't play golf, which leaves nothing but bars and whores, and prices for the nicer hotels are sky high - I'm sure the last time I stayed in the Marriott there I wasn't paying much more than US$150 and now it's US$300. The Hard Rock is $130 but I stayed in the Hard Rock in Bali once and that was a dump. Hua Hin? Was just there in August and this being January, 4 and 5 star hotels are averaging double what I paid 5 months ago.

So while Bangkok for the entire two weeks is not my first choice, it may be the most logical choice economically. Or not. I still have a couple of days to think about it.

The Warner Blu-Ray story is not going to die down quickly. This is the text of an announcement made by Toshiba.

Toshiba is quite surprised by Warner Bros.' decision to abandon HD DVD in favor of Blu-ray, despite the fact that there are various contracts in place between our companies concerning the support of HD DVD. As central members of the DVD Forum, we have long maintained a close partnership with Warner Bros. We worked closely together to help standardize the first-generation DVD format as well as to define and shape HD DVD as its next-generation successor.

We were particularly disappointed that this decision was made in spite of the significant momentum HD DVD has gained in the US market as well as other regions in 2007. HD DVD players and PCs have outsold Blu-ray in the US market in 2007.

We will assess the potential impact of this announcement with the other HD DVD partner companies and evaluate potential next steps. We remain firm in our belief that HD DVD is the format best suited to the wants and needs of the consumer.

Toshiba partnered with Warner on development of the original DVD. There are varying opinions on the subject but the fact remains that Toshiba shared the DVD patents with Warner and those patents have meant at least $1.5 billion in additional revenue to Warner since the introduction of the DVD. Judging by this press release, it would appear that no one at Warner bothered to call anyone at Toshiba to warn them this would be coming.

Way to go, guys.

I know some more but can't post here.

Damn, being good in Bangkok is not an easy thing. Having been very bad in the past and now going for at least moderately good is a challenge but so far I am succeeding, sorry if some of my readers are disappointed by that. It means sitting alone in restaurants while watching other old men being fawned over by very young girls. Coming back to the hotel at night and getting into the elevator along with similar. Today the only people I have spoken to are waitresses, shop keepers, taxi drivers, hotel doormen (and one phone call from a friend in L.A.). But I am relaxed.

Actually, right now I am in pain, having spent three hours shopping in MBK with inappropriate footwear. It seemed like every shop on the 4th floor was selling unlocked iPhones. Many also had signs offering to unlock and upgrade your existing iPhone. I confirmed that they could upgrade mine from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 ... but I'd lose all existing data on the phone. No contacts, no music, no photos - all of which currently reside on my PC in Hong Kong. So I didn't go for that obviously.

I did buy a knock-off Bell & Ross watch, knock-off Ed Hardy shorts, some pirate Led Zeppelin DVDs (which may duplicate something I already own, now that I'm thinking about it), some knock-off Calvin Klein underwear (now I don't have to do laundry, I quipped to the sales girl), a hat and a shoulder bag that I was assured was not a knock-off.

When I was trying on hats, I looked at myself in the mirror. The image I saw shocked me. When the fuck did I start looking my age? (As to the question of when I plan to start acting my age, the answer is "hopefully never.")

Yesterday was a different story. It was a "being lazy and pamper myself" day. Spike The Metro Sexual Day. I went to the salon I always go to here, only to find that most of the people who knew me there had moved on. Figuring that all of these places are pretty much the same in terms of service and pricing, I reasoned that going back to the same place each time would yield better results because they know me.

Still, this time there was nothing to complain about. I had four women working on me at the same time. One girl on foot massage, one girl on pedicure, one girl on manicure and a fourth shaving me and giving me a back massage. All for around HK$250. Yes, as James Blunt whines, my life is tragic. (I do love the vicarious thrill of having a beautiful Asian woman holding a piece of sharp steel at my throat. The thrill is significantly lessened because here they use disposable plastic razors because of AIDS. It just ain't the same.)

(Kind of like the joke, I forget who told it, "I once shot a man just to watch him die. But then someone started talking to me and I missed it. People tried to describe it to me but it's just not the same.")

The country is officially in mourning as the king's older sister died four days ago. People are supposed to be wearing black and white polo shirts but I see little evidence of that. I was warned not to wear red as that's seen as a "happy color." On the Skytrain today, it was obvious that other tourists had not been similarly warned. The Princess was famous for her love of western classical music (as well as her charitable endeavors) and they have already announced that they will build a concert hall on the banks of the Chao Praya river and dedicate it to her memory.

Anyway, time to rest my weary feet before thinking about dinner.

Manohla Dargis does a brilliant deconstruction of a scene in David Fincher's "Zodiac," which is one of my favorite films of 2007.

The three detectives sit in a semicircle — with Armstrong behind a table — facing Allen. Initially the scene unfolds straightforwardly with a series of over-the-shoulder shots and countershots. (In these shots, as the name implies, the camera seems to peer over the shoulder of a character whose body is only partially visible.) This shot-countershot pattern is interrupted only when Allen crosses his legs, a gesture followed by a cut to Mulanax looking at one of Allen’s feet, which now looms in the lower center of the frame. (The killer wears similar boots.) The over-the-shoulder shot-countershot sequence resumes until Allen volunteers that he was carrying bloody knives in his car the same weekend as one of the assaults.

Allen’s startling admission leads to a shot of Mulanax looking straight into the camera in close-up. This shot is soon followed by similarly framed head-and-shoulder close-ups, first of Armstrong and then of Toschi, each staring directly into the camera. With these near-identical, shared looks, the three finally seem to see — perceptually, intellectually — the stranger before them, the story’s invisible man. In this moment sight becomes knowledge, however tenuously grasped. Not long after, referencing one of Zodiac’s ciphers, Toschi tells Allen, “Man is the most dangerous animal of all.” Allen responds, “That’s the whole point of the story.” It is also the point of this scene, which in under six minutes lays out the movie in miniature.

The above is just one of many reasons that I think Zodiac is great cinema, though its greatness is so subtle that it may elude casual viewers. Among other things, the film is a tremendous technical achievement because it has so many locations, scenes, speaking roles and yet the viewer is never lost in terms of who they're looking at or where they are in the film. Believe me, this is NOT an easy thing to do. And this kind of precision is lost on the casual viewer.

Aside: during college, I worked as an apprentice film editor on a weekly TV series called CBS Sports Illustrated. This job coincidentally helped me out with a part time job I had during the 80s and 90s, working for LucasFilm's Theater Alignment Program, aka TAP. This job entailed viewing the same film in the same theater multiple times over a two week period, taking detailed notes on the progressive degradation in the quality of the print. I had to sit there and take notes during the screenings, detailing every blemish and scratch, even ones that just flashed on the screen for 1/24th of a second - position on screen, color, length of time visible, etc. So I'm better than average when it comes to seeing camera positions, edits, the visual technique and language of film. (No, the job didn't pay much, but I did get paid for going to the movies and got a guided tour of Lucas's Skywalker Ranch.)

Zodiac runs almost three hours and consists almost entirely of dialogue (as Dargis notes, all of the non-sensationalized violence in the film occurs within the first 30 minutes), yet it seems to fly by.

I also love it for the way it depicts how obsessions, reasonable or otherwise, can overwhelm otherwise sane peoples' lives. As someone who is similarly obsessed with a variety of things (none on the scale depicted in this film, of course), I can easily identify with what's taking place in the lives of these detectives and reporters.

Mentioning this because the "director's cut" of the film has just been released on DVD. The initial release was bare bones. This new release also includes a second disc filled with documentaries not just on the making of the film but on the Zodiac himself, including newly filmed interviews with police who worked on the case and the survivors, plus great archival footage like Melvin Belli's TV "interview" with Zodiac which is reenacted in the film.

I suppose some people didn't like this because they were expecting Fincher to do another "Seven." But he's already done that, its influence has been pervasive and he's talented enough to not need to repeat himself. If anything, this is the anti-Seven, far more ambitious and less easily imitated. And it easily holds up to repeated viewings.

Ratatouille, Knocked Up and No Country For Old Men are also on my list of favorite films for the year, with Super Bad as an extremely guilty pleasure. I have yet to see There Will Be Blood, Sweeney Todd or The Assassination of Jesse James, three that I expect will join this list.

Further to the previous post, several quotes from Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders in this article on Content Agenda:

Not only did neither [high-def DVD] format really take off as expected in fourth quarter, but standard-def was softer than expected given the release slate .... We’re seeing research now that shows that consumers are starting to delay purchases because of the format war, not just on high-def but standard-def purchases as well. That’s very alarming. ... They're waiting for something to happen. They're waiting for the whole situation to become clear so they know what to buy. If you look at the historical conversion ratios of box office into DVD sales, several titles this fourth quarter underperformed where they should have been.

It’s hard for us to speculate about impact this will have on the format war. All we can do really is make the best decision for our business and the rest of it will really take care of itself, in time. One of the things you see in the NPD data for this fourth quarter was that even with a $100 [price] premium, Blu-ray set tops outsold HD set tops in December. Even with Toshiba having the lowest-cost player in the market, software sales remained 2 to 1 in favor of Blu-ray.

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Last night met blogger 962, also currently in Bangkok. We ended up playing pool after dinner. I rarely play and when I do, usually it's pretty sad. Last night best I can say is that I managed to not embarrass myself.

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Thanks to those commenters who recommended Daemon Tools. Seems to be working well so far.

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Killed a bit of time yesterday watching some reality TV shows I'd downloaded.

The first was called "My Boyfriend, The Sex Tourist." Seemed to be a British show. In episode 1, they travel to a resort on an island off the coast of Venezuela. The resort hotel, owned by a Brit and his Venezuelan wife, provides 5 star resort services as well as a girl to stay with you. While two of the men did allow their names and faces to be shown on the show (one an obese Canadian sports journalist, the other some guy from Alaska), most of the show focuses in on the women in the hotel, their lifestyle and in some spots their opinions of their "boyfriends." It ain't pretty. And in what I'm sure was no accident, there are some scenes of people watching Hugo Chavez making speeches on TV about patriotism and socialism.

The second was the kick-off of the new season of Iron Chef America, a show I'd never watched before. I love Top Chef and tolerate Hell's Kitchen - this falls somewhere in between. I might try another episode or two.

The third was the kick-off of the new season of The Apprentice, a special "celebrity" edition. Like most New Yorkers, I basically think that Trump is a blowhard and a phony. And that's made clear right at the outset of the show, when he says he has "issued a challenge to 14 of the world's most successful celebrities." Who might those be? Oprah Winfrey? Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? Li Ka-shing?

Nope. The assortment includes .... a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, Lennox Lewis, "ultimate fighter and sportswear mogul" Tito Ortiz, Marilu Henner, "judge of America's Got Talent" Piers Morgan, "marketing genius and KISS legend" Gene Simmons, "softball gold medalist" Jenny Finch, Stephen Baldwin, "the original super model and health pioneer" Carol Alt, Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy from the Sopranos) and Omarosa, "famous" for being a bitch on a prior cycle of The Apprentice.

Apparently Gary Coleman, Jean-Claude Van Damme, David Hasselhoff and all the former members of the Bay City Rollers were too busy.

I made it about 5 minutes into the first episode. And then I decided that life's just too short.

In the early 80s, there were two formats for home videocassettes - VHS and Beta. Y'all know how that one ended.

In the late 80s, there were two formats for video discs - Pioneer's laser system and RCA's needle-in-the-groove section. Pioneer "won" that but the format never really took hold in most of the world.

In the late 90s there were two formats for DVDs. Then Warner Home Video president Warren Lieberfarb basically bitch-slapped the industry into going with one format. The result was that the format co-developed by Toshiba and WB went on to be the consumer electronics product with the fastest rate of adoption ever.

In the 00s, there are two formats for high definition DVD. Paramount and Universal release their stuff on HD-DVD while Sony, Fox and Disney release theirs on Blu-Ray. Warner, the studio with the largest back catalog in the business, is the only major studio to releases in both formats. Here in Hong Kong, the local companies that are putting out high def discs are releasing only Blu-Ray.

Warner employees included Koji Hase, who had invented the DVD during his 30 years with Toshiba. And Warners' SVP of HD was Steve Nickerson, who also came from Toshiba. Nickerson left the company a few months ago. Hase left at the end of 2007.

And yesterday Warner announced that starting in May 2008 they will only release their HD titles in Sony's Blu-ray format; no more releases in Toshiba's HD-DVD format. With Warner going exclusively to Blu-Ray, the war is all but over.

The logic behind having a single format has been demonstrated many times. In the case of DVDs, the numbers for standard def discs were in freefall in 2007. Once a cash cow for the industry, sales went into a tailspin with no hope of recovery. Some blamed piracy, some said people were looking elsewhere for entertainment (video games, internet, digital downloads, "on demand" HD satellite programming).

Others theorized that people were not buying DVDs because they knew there was a newer format and didn't want their purchases to be obsolete yet were not buying high definition discs because they were waiting for the format war to be over. Warner is hoping that their decision will end the format war and therefore the perceived consumer indecision.

In the videocassette wars, Beta was technically superior to VHS but VHS one. In the high def war, many would say that HD-DVD was technically superior to Blu-Ray but in the end that didn't matter either. HD-DVD players are selling (in the US) for as much as 5 times cheaper than Blu-ray players. HD-DVD discs cost far less to manufacture and have a much lower defect rate. HD-DVD's advanced interactive and internet-compatible interactive features have yet to be truly matched by Blu-Ray. Blu-Ray discs have larger capacity and are said to have better DRM.

At home, I have the XBOX360 for playing HD-DVD and the PS3 for playing Blu-Ray. My preference has been for Blu-Ray because the XBOX is so much noisier and the XBOX only outputs 1080i while the PS3 outputs 1080p (not that my eyes can see the difference, but subconsciously I'm aware of it). I've got about100 HD titles, with approximately 2/3rds of those being Blu-Ray.

Even so, I wouldn't have minded if the balance of power had shifted to HD-DVD instead.

One thing I love to do when I go to Bangkok is go to the movies. Bangkok cinemas are properly sized temples within which one may worship the Gods and Goddesses of the Silver Screen. Some even have reclining chairs and a select few offer waiter service. Yes, you're expected to stand at the beginning of each movie to salute the King. A small price to pay compared to the unpleasant shoe boxes that pass for "movie houses" in our little town.

So it was with high expectations that I opened today's newspaper, looking to see what movies from my want list would be playing. No Country For Old Men? (yes, have seen it but on a big screen it would be even better) Nope. There Will Be Blood? fuggedabouddit. Charlie Wilson's War? Not so much.

Instead it would appear that the entire city is having a Film Festival now, the theme being "The Worst Reviewed Western Films of the Year." The choices are:

National Treasure 2
Aliens Vs Predators 2
Alvin & the Chipmunks
Elizabeth 2

The few that are of borderline interest to me are:

I Am Legend
Across the Universe
Bee Movie

But none enough to make me conform to a schedule, take a train, wait in line, etc.

Opening on January 10th is Mr Woodcock, a movie so bad that I couldn't make it all the way through the DVD rip I'd downloaded off the internet.

Pirate DVDs here cost about 100 Thai baht (at least if you're white). That's about three times the price of the same thing in Shenzhen and even more expensive than if you buy from the fake deaf guy who circles the bars in Wanchai at night.

Apparently, drinking makes you gay. Via new sf blog io9 (and why an sf blog is linking to this is a mystery to me), scientists at Penn State have tested animal sexual behavior under the influence of alcohol.

.... male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively court males when they are given a daily dose of ethanol. ....A second discovery is that repeated exposure to ethanol causes male flies to engage in more inter-male courtship ...

Please do not look to this blog to make some politically incorrect but probably funny jokes about drunk gay FRUIT flies.

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Meant to mention, yesterday flew on one of Cathay's newly outfitted Boeing 777s. The seats in business class are all facing at an angle, rather than straight ahead, enforcing privacy even if you don't want it.

Back in steerage economy, the new seats have backs which do not recline. Instead when you push the button, your seat slides forward. So the guy in front of you can't destroy your laptop when he decides to go into nap mode after a meal. Not entirely comfortable though. The foot rest is a band of strong cloth rather than what you may be used to, extremely uncomfortable to me. The seats are a bit wider (9 seats across rather than 10) but this is partially negated by the fact that each seat belt now has this huge padded airbag attached to it. If the plane slams into the side of a mountain or goes into a screaming dive from 35,000 feet, not sure what good an airbag will be. Book/magazine storage is now under the seat instead of in front of you - and when you slide your seat forward you can't get at it.

Also, they couldn't get the video system working properly during the flight. For lack of anything better to watch, I watched the boot-up messages each time they rebooted. Their system is using Linux, and I saw all these error messages not only related to non-existent files and directories but also related to programming errors. What kind of tests does their IT department do before moving stuff into production? From looking at this it would seem the answer is "none."

Oops, time to go to the dentist!

First, check lyrics to David Bowie "Panic in Detroit," do they fit this situation?

He looked a lot like Che Guevara,
drove a diesel van
Kept his gun in quiet seclusion,
such a humble man
The only survivor of the National People's Gang
Panic in Detroit, I asked for an autograph
He wanted to stay home, I wish someone would phone

Um, nope.

Be Bop Deluxe "Panic in the World"? Lyrics not online.

Anyway, next section is geek stuff. If that bores you, please skip to a couple of questions at the end of this post.

Managed to beautifully fuck up my laptop last night. I have this virtual CD ROM program called Magic Disc which works well within certain limitations, but I always have to remember to disable it before shutdown or reboot because something in it screws up the booting process on the laptop (works fine on my desktop PC). I keep it because it allows me to have one of my many addictions (a ten-plus year old computer version of the board game Risk) while traveling.

So installed it but it would not complete the installation. Portions of the laptop were frozen. Couldn't access Magic Disc to disable or uninstall it. Tried killing various processes in Task Manager, no luck. Finally, when all else fails, reboot. And that's when all hell broke loose, at least in a limited manner.

I simply couldn't log in to my PC. The fingerprint scanner software wasn't coming up and I hadn't logged in with a password in so long I couldn't remember what my password was. No matter, because each time I tried a traditional login, the PC informed me that only an administrator could login that way.

I spent the night, well part of it anyway, wondering what I was going to do if I couldn't get this going. I'm not 100% on vacation while here. I do have to get some corporate work done. And will probably have a new BC column due one of these days. And just general web-surfing, planning the next segment of my trip and so on. Email at least still accessible via both Blackberry and iPhone.

As you might have guessed, after sending a panicked email to the help desk, last night I drank semi-heavily to temporarily not think about this.

I'm not even traveling with the DVD-ROM drive for the laptop. The best plan I could come up with, after about 8 glasses of Johnny Walker and soda, was to take the PC to the local computer center, buy a pirate copy of Windows to tide me over, and find some shop with a USB DVD ROM drive to do the install for me. At least this way I'd have internet and access to my files until getting home, even though I'd probably lose the ability for a VPN connection back to corporate servers. A viable plan? Luckily, I won't need to find out.

This morning, the phone went off early, my friend at the help desk getting back to me first thing. He supplied the admin login for my laptop. And it still didn't work! I wasn't able to change the login domain from something corporate to just the local PC.

Finally I had a flash of inspiration. I used the admin login in safe mode. Yippee! I was in. I could then uninstall the offending program. Several minor hiccups along this path but finally successful, on the next reboot everything came back normally. (Hence my ability to post to the blog.)

This does now mean two weeks of not playing Risk - each game takes at least 30 minutes, a most excellent brainless time killer. Solitaire and Hearts not the same.

So, no more heart attack, things are calm and happy.

Questions:

1 - Anyone know of a good, reliable (and hopefully free) virtual CD drive program for the PC?

2 - Any recommendations on where to buy knock-off watches in Bangkok that are better than the crap they sell in the night markets, equivalent to the "AA" quality (or whatever they are called) one finds in certain shops in Shenzhen or other places in China?

3 - Any of my readers ever go to Ko Samet or Ko Chang? Any thoughts on that or other Thailand beach/island reached by taxi/ferry (rather than airplane)? I do not want to go to Pattaya or Hua Hin. My copy of Lonely Planet "Thailand's Islands and Beaches" is from 2004 and I assume is somewhat outdated.

Flying to Bangkok today. Six days there, then maybe off someplace else in SE Asia for 5 or 6 days, then back to Bangkok for another few days before returning home. I'm looking forward to warm weather and having people in white coats put some stuff into my body and take some other stuff out.

The other day, after reading contradictory reports about the RIAA suing someone for copying legal CDs he had purchased onto his computer and his MP3 player, I thought I'd reached my limit with the stupidity of record companies. After buying at least 5,000 vinyl LPs and 5,000 legal CDs, I resolved to only go for illegal downloading. But then I was in Rock Gallery, where I discovered that ECM had reissued three Keith Jarrett albums recorded at Record Plant in New York City in the early 80s as a 3 CD boxed set called "Setting Standards." And I reasoned that ECM is not as evil as the Big Four and bought it. And promptly ripped it to my ipod. I so love Keith Jarrett's piano playing. I so hate his grunting and moaning while he plays.

I also picked up and watched the DVD for The Kingdom. It's a sort of issue film, detailing a horrific terrorist attack against Americans in Saudi Arabia and the attempts to bring the terrorists to justice. Jamie Foxx, Chris Cooper, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. Directed by Peter Berg, who also directed Friday Night Lights and guilty fave The Rundown. Cooper is fantastic, but he'd be great just sleepwalking. It's shot and cut in a manner very reminiscent of the two Bourne movies that Paul Greengrass directed - I guess that's the style du jour for now. Nevertheless, the first two thirds of the film are riveting.

(SPOILER ALERT!) The final third is another story though. After a tense chase, we are given a protracted battle sequence in which 5 good guys square off against hundreds of bad guys. The bad guys have machine guns, grenades, RPGs. The good guys just get a few scratches. Peter, please watch The Wild Bunch again. The very end of the film is also messy - a conflicting geopolitical message that just seems wrong. Yes, I understand it was just one battle and one terrorist leader sent to his final reward. But there's this odd bit equating the FBI (the heroes of the film) with the terrorists and it just didn't work for me. The New York Times review says it's a "slick, brutishly effective genre movie: Syriana for dummies." (END SPOILER ALERT!)

10thingsihateabouthongkong has posted the lyrics to Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi as a sort of mournful ode to Hong Kong. Me, the other day this Talking Heads song came up on the ipod and gave me a bit of a fantasy about the Hong Kong of the future. Some day, perhaps 100 years from now, Hong Kong will be green. And Li Ka-Shing, who will live forever, will be left standing there singing this song. Wait, maybe that's me singing? No, I don't dream of cherry pies. Blueberry pies, maybe. Never cherry pies.

Here we stand
Like an Adam and an Eve
Waterfalls
The Garden of Eden
Two fools in love
So beautiful and strong
The birds in the trees
Are smiling upon them
From the age of the dinosaurs
Cars have run on gasoline
Where, where have they gone?
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
You got it, you got it

We caught a rattlesnake
Now we got something for dinner
We got it, we got it

There was a shopping mall
Now it’s all covered with flowers
You’ve got it, you’ve got it
If this is paradise
I wish I had a lawnmower
You’ve got it, you’ve got it

Years ago
I was an angry young man
I’d pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it’s only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it’s nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we’d start over
But I guess I was wrong

Once there were parking lots
Now it’s a peaceful oasis
You got it, you got it

This was a Pizza Hut
Now it’s all covered with daisies
You got it, you got it

I miss the honky tonks,
Dairy Queens, and 7-Elevens
You got it, you got it

And as things fell apart
Nobody paid much attention
You got it, you got it

I dream of cherry pies,
Candy bars, and chocolate chip cookies
You got it, you got it

We used to microwave
Now we just eat nuts and berries
You got it, you got it

This was a discount store,
Now it’s turned into a cornfield
You got it, you got it

Don’t leave me stranded here
I can’t get used to this lifestyle

Sorry, quite busy at the moment.

Please note that the nomination forms are now online for the Eighth Annual Weblog Awards, aka the Bloggies. I have no delusions that I will win this thing but I wouldn't mind being one of the finalists! Please help me impress my girlfriend?

Actually this first photo was taken on December 22nd, outside the Intercontinental Hotel.


And now, some shots from New Year's Eve (sorry, no fireworks shots, didn't see them).


You probably can't make out the sign in the photo below. It says, "The Waterfront and Clock Tower are crowded, please do not enter."


People coming down Nathan Road towards the waterfront.










Anyway, we had dinner at Morton's last night. I think I haven't been there in about 5 years. And yes, we had serious amounts of cow. A group of 10 and at some points it seemed like we were the only table there in full New Year's Eve spirit. Everyone else seemed like they were attending a funeral; several seemed like they wished they were sitting with us.

The last two photos are taken from inside Morton's and we would have had a great view of the fireworks except that dinner was finished by 10:30. The party then moved on to Sticky Fingers (if you were there, we were that big group at the section next to the band.

Very drunk and a little tired, we were something of party poopers at that point. My gf and I left at about 12:10, martinis, wine, champagne all adding up and taking their toll. We managed to make it to the countdown and to wish all our friends a happy new year. At which point it took us over an hour to walk back to the car at Hung Hom. Crowds, walking slowly, getting lost at one point, and perhaps someone might have had a hard time remembering where she parked.

But all in all an excellent evening!