Hongkie Town

I went to my usual watering hole for lunch today. While there, it was invaded by a group of about a dozen Kiwis, all in town to watch the 7s. I knew they were Kiwis because most of them were wearing rugby shirts that said "100% Kiwi." They were loud but polite, having a good time and, most importantly, spending a ton of money in the bar.

It occurred to me as I was sitting there that March is one of the few months that Hong Kong gets right. With the HK International Film Festival and the 7s (not to forget HK Filmart), we have two international events that are both enjoyed by locals and attract a large number of tourists (who spend a lot of money while they are here). Why do the other months seem so lame by comparison? Why can't those responsible come up with similar events the rest of the year? Why does it seem that the HK Tourist Board, when not busy lining their own pockets with our tax dollars, seem intent only on attracting people from the mainland - not that I have anything against mainland tourists but they mostly come on these cheap package tours and don't spend much money once here (aside from those few who bring sacks of cash to buy Rolexes and gold).

And that also reminded me about how sometimes I don't like Hemlock's blog. Granted, those times are few and far between, but his post for Thursday, making fun of the 7s and those who enjoy it, is one of those times. I don't like the 7s, I don't much understand or enjoy rugby, and I intend to steer clear of Wanchai and Lan Kwai Fong this weekend - but I do appreciate that a lot of people do enjoy it and that it brings a lot of revenue to the territory.

One thing I do enjoy, only Buddha knows why, is articles on food history and here's a great one in the NY Times on "yoshoku" - the Japanese reinterpretation of western cuisine that is so popular in Japan but virtually unknown outside the country:

In New York or Los Angeles, fans of Japanese cuisine can rattle off orders for uni and o-toro, or urbanely express a preference for soba over udon. But what about “Napolitan,” cooked spaghetti that is rinsed in cold water, then stir-fried with vegetables in ketchup? Or “menchi katsu,” hamburger covered in bread crumbs and deep-fried? Or “omu rice,” an omelet lying over a mound of ketchup-flavored rice?

At once familiar and alien, these dishes may make Americans feel, with some justification, that they have wandered into a parallel culinary universe. All are standards of a style of Japanese cuisine known as yoshoku, or “Western food,” in which European or American dishes were imported and, in true Japanese fashion, shaped and reshaped to fit local tastes.

I recall that on my first visit to Tokyo, in 1994, I was taken to one of these places. I ordered pizza. It was served on top of a bowl of spaghetti, with a fried egg. I said, "Lesson learned, only eat Japanese food in Japan." But it turns out one of my favorite Japanese dishes, ton katsu, is considered yoshoku cuisine. So there you go.

I also loved this bit from the same article:

Shocked to discover how much shorter they were than Westerners, Japanese determined that they would catch up not only economically and militarily but also physically, by eating their food.

That desire survived at least until the 1970’s, when a businessman named Den Fujita established McDonald’s in Japan and claimed that its menu would make Japanese as tall and attractive as Americans.

“Japanese are poorly built because they eat rice,” he said at the time. “We’ll change that with hamburgers. After eating hamburgers for a thousand years, Japanese will even have blond hair.”

So they have that to look forward to.

And I didn't know this bit of history:

For 1,200 years, an imperial edict banned the eating of meat because of a Japanese Buddhist belief that it was unclean. Fish was central to the Japanese diet, and meat was consumed furtively, only for medicinal purposes.

Then in 1872, the emperor lifted the ban.

“To catch up with and overtake the superior culture of the West, Emperor Meiji believed that eating habits had to be changed first,” said Tetsu Okada, an expert on Japan’s culinary culture and an author of a history on tonkatsu. “He told everyone to eat meat, and to get the ball rolling, ate it himself.”

And it turns out that Japanese curry tastes the way it does because it was brought over from England, not India, and is considered western food.

The unpacking goes on ... and on ... and on ........

Since I don't have closets to simply toss boxes into, I actually have to go through everything and deal with it. Not a bad thing. Two things found today:

* My ex-wife's IBM Thinkpad 600 laptop, circa 1998. It has a Pentium II chip and 128 meg of RAM. It does not boot due to failures with the system board and the memory. This thing cost at least US$2,000 ten years ago. Now it's junk. What's the point of trying to fix this? Sigh.

* My mobile phone from the US from 1993 or 1994, a Motorola Star-Tac. A CDMA phone, one of the very first flip phones, with a two line LED screen. In its heyday it was the epitome of cool (at least if you were a geek). It's small. Maybe I'll hold onto it.

Original of the above can be found here.

On the right, the man who lied to the American people and has systematically attempted to dismantle the Constitution. On the left, the man who would continue the same policies.

I can't say yet if I'm for Obama or Clinton or someone else. But I think I'd vote for a bowl of Campbell's Soup before I'd vote for McCain.

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?

You may have seen ads for a new HK music service that offers unlimited downloads from a library of 600,000 songs for a flat fee per month. I took a look at the web site.

The service is through SmarTone Vodafone. Download to your PC for HK$56 per month or to your mobile phone (if you're a SmarTone subscriber) for HK$96 per month.

The FAQ makes no mention of file formats or bit rates. But since they say that the files can't be played on an iPod, you can bet they're not MP3. And since it says that a 256 meg memory card can hold up to 125 songs, at 2 meg per song you're getting bullshit audio quality.

And you'll also be getting a healthy dosage of DRM. Yep. You can only play the tracks you've downloaded for as long as your subscription remains active. If you stop paying, you can't keep playing. If you change your computer or mobile phone, you have to call them to enable your music to play on the new device.

This business model already failed in other countries. And when one of those online shops went bust (was it Sony or Nokia? I forget but it was within the past 3 months), you also lost the ability to play the songs you downloaded and PAID FOR.

So is anyone really going to pay for this? Why?

While it's nice to have a music portal with an English interface in Hong Kong for legal downloads of music, this low bit rate high DRM crap is bound for failure.

Yes, I haven't been posting quite as much the past few days. I'm exhausted. I look around the house and see how much work remains to be done and am paralyzed into a state of inactivity. But with a four day weekend coming up, hopefully no excuses and I'll emerge out the other side with most of this stuff completed.

I've had this idea that I should head into town and have a beverage or two in the bars, but that has yet to happen. There's this new Van Morrison album out called "Keep It Simple," and there's a track on there called "Don't Go to Nightclubs Anymore," which is basically a rework of the old "I Don't Get Around Much Anymore" song and what's funny is that he mentions by name some of the people he doesn't see now because he's not going out, and I know people by all those names too! (Well, it was funny to me.)

In the past week I've had the lights out by 11:30 most nights and staying in bed till 8:30 or so each morning, which would be great if I didn't suffer from OSA and don't like using my CPAP machine. Well, again, I'm hoping for a return to normalcy by next week.

I've also been wanting to reward myself with a serious massage but keep putting that off, in part because I can't think of where to go to get one. (Last one, at Sauna Lotto in Wanchai, was okay - but the best part was the free ice cream.) Any recommendations? (And no, I'm not looking for a happy ending.)

It's also occurred to me that while I used to make an average of two trips per month, I haven't been out of Hong Kong in two months (not counting one day trip to Shenzhen). I think this is the longest I've ever remained in town. Two trips coming up in April though (Tokyo and Manila).

Of all the searches that have led people to this blog in the past few days, I think the strangest has to be a google search for "hsbc atm map costa rica."

Ah well, lunch time ....

Arthur C. Clarke died, aged 90. Recognized globally as one of the great science fiction writers of all time. Best known, I suppose, for co-writing 2001: A Space Odyssey, still the greatest science fiction film. I interviewed Sir Arthur in 1971 or 1972 (don't think I still have a copy of that article) and found him to be gracious and charming and especially patient.

Anthony Minghella died, aged 54. The Academy Award winning director of English Patient, Talented Mr. Ripley, Cold Mountain and others apparently died from complications caused by surgery for tonsil cancer.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Since I've slammed them many times, to be fair, I should note that today's "The Standard" commits a fair number of pages to coverage of the current events in Tibet, though most of what's there is cobbled together from agency reports. Oddly, their editorial makes no mention of any of this. The editorial is on the potential impact of the Olympics on inflation in China. And they are the only daily newspaper I know of willing to sell full page ads on their front page.

I'm just wondering if there is any connection between Bjork's on-stage pro-Tibet outburst in Shanghai a couple of weeks back and the start of these demonstrations. Probably not, but this whole thing started pretty soon thereafter. I suspect Patti Smith won't be doing any concerts there in the near future.

One of the related stories in The Stan is of a Hong Kong tour group that has decided not to cancel a planned trip to Llhasa at the end of the month since everyone who has booked the tour still wants to go. Let's see - the city is shut down, foreigners are not allowed to leave their hotels, rioters are targeting Chinese businesses (and presumably Chinese people) - perfect time to go?

Also, today marks what I believe is the debut of "The Standard Page 3 Girl" - in this case a photo of one of the two prostitutes murdered over the weekend, taken from the web site advertising her services, in sexy lingerie but with face pixillated out, with a caption of "see page 4 for details" (and a larger version of the picture). In case you haven't read it elsewhere, three prostitutes were murdered over the weekend, two in Tai Po, one in Yuen Long, both found strangled with shower hoses, leading police and the press to wonder if there might be a serial killer at large and if Edison Chen will star in the film version. Both women were in their 30s, one was married and had an eight year old son and was doing this work to support her family.

I have reproduced that picture below (snagged from The Stan's web site) because I find it fascinating that the "newspaper" did not obscure the name of the web site on which she advertised her services! A two year old with a pirate copy of Photoshop could have blanked it out in half a second. Since this picture appears twice in the newspaper itself and once on the web site, were they paid to run this ad?



Hang Seng finished down 1,152.50 today. Wonder what tomorrow will bring?

With the collapse of Bear Stearns and other horrible financial news from the US, news this morning is that Asian stock markets are tumbling. I see that as of 11:30, the Hang Seng index is down more than 1,000 points. That means it has dropped by about 1/3rd in the past 3 months. The US dollar is tumbling too - 96 yen to the dollar in Japan is the worst exchange rate for the US dollar there in 13 years. (As just one example, it means a Big Mac meal in Tokyo now costs double what it costs in HK.)

Among many other things, I wonder how this news will impact local real estate prices, which have been skyrocketing in the past six months. Will continued financial setbacks bring HK prices back down to earth again? And if so, why couldn't this have happened when I was looking for a new place, instead of right after I've moved into one.

Over the weekend I was able to contrast two different HK landlord styles, my previous landlord and my current one.

I met my old landlord on Saturday at the old flat to hand over the keys. He and his wife walked through the place in two minutes and then he pulled out a check and asked how much he owed me. He wrote the check and then said I should call him if the figure is wrong and he owes me more. His wife apologized about ten times for them returning to HK from Shanghai, saying if they hadn't decided to return, they'd have been delighted to have me continue as a tenant.

There are several major repairs that my new place needs. The new landlord agreed to these and they have been written into the lease. Two weeks after lease signing, the repairs have not even started. My gf spoke to the landlord over the weekend and the landlord attempted to weasel out. "Well, you know, I didn't need to say yes to these, I did it out of the goodness of my heart."
Goodness, schmoodness, they're written in to the freaking lease that she signed.

Not to mention the fact that when I gave her the mail sitting in the mailbox a week ago, there was a disconnection notice from the power company. This Saturday yet another disconnection notice received. I went to the realtor's office and told him to tell her to take care of it that very day. He said he would but I didn't get confirmation on that. Power was still on this morning so ....

Considering that I've handed her a huge sum of money two weeks ago and all she has to do is make a couple of phone calls to get all this done, I'm feeling bushwhacked by her lack of responsibility.

Well, the answers are simple.

Next month's rent will be withheld if the repairs are not complete before then.

And unlike with my last landlord, where I paid every month's rent and waited for him to refund my security deposit, I know the only way I'll ever get my deposit back from this one is by following the time honored HK tradition of not paying rent when it comes to my last two months there, whether that's two years from now or more.

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

If you haven't tried it already, you can probably guess that highly touted video streaming site Hulu.com, a joint venture between Fox and NBC/Universal, doesn't work in HK.

And four Japanese ISPs have announced that they will start shutting off internet service to users who are using file-sharing software - so much for net neutrality but presumably there are other ISPs there who are a bit more open. I don't think the question is if this will happen in Hong Kong, I think it's when will it happen.

So things are slowly coming together.

Found a guy in town who does electrical and plumbing handiwork cheap and have had him doing all sorts of minor repairs around the house. (As one example, I wanted to replace the crappy shower in here with something a bit nicer, the rain forest type. The shop I bought it from wanted $1,000 to install, he did it for $400.)(These rain forest shower sets seem to go for as high as $15,000 but walking in and out of every shop on Lockhart Road, I found one shop with a sign on one "last one! special" just $1280. Replaced the exhaust fans in the bathrooms, replaced the rotted out light bulb sockets, fixed the screen doors. Now I still need to figure out the drainage ditch that runs around the house (filled with mud and overflowing regularly), dealing with the mosquitoes and black flies, covering the gate (need some kind of fabric or vinyl material that is about 4 feet high and 30 feet long) on one side so that the yappy dogs on the other side can't see up to here, which has them barking constantly. Those dogs start barking at 8 AM, my new alarm clock.

Something was on my mind all week. Putting it into words on Thursday night talking to someone finally crystallized it for me. The house is very run down. The owner didn't want to put any money into fixing it up. And that's why the rent is so far below current market rates. "I've got a million dollar view and a $20 house." Actually so much of the things that need attention here cost very little but there are a few that would cost a lot; need to see if I can just live with it.

Curtains are sorted. I called the shop in Shenzhen and said, "the curtain sizes are all wrong." "All long?" "No, wrong! Incorrect! Not right!" "Long?" So my girlfriend called back and sorted it out for me - I will have to pay a small amount for couriers but they picked it up today, doing the alterations tomorrow, deliver again on Monday. (At least my gf approved of the fabric, color, patterns I selected.)(Replying to an earlier comment, it's quite difficult for her to go to SZ, not worth the hassle.)

Also got the lowdown on bars in town from someone who should know, a guy who manages one of the bars in Wanchai but lives nearby. So important stuff all sorted!

And what some of what I suspect will be my new normal Saturday. Buying bread and pastries at Ali Oli. Getting meat at Butcher King. Buying whatever furniture electric stuff I need for the home from the small shops in Sai Kung - not needing to go to Fortress or Ikea. I feel nice about that. Not just because these small local shops have everything I need but also because everyone who works in these shops is helpful and friendly.

A Sai Kung seafood dinner Thursday night with my team, since we had an out of town guest. Service was horrendous, some of the food overcooked, no wonder I only do this on "special" occasions. The night was only saved by us walking over to Honeymoon Dessert to top off the dinner - I had the mango sago and I think I've found a new addiction.

Yeah, I know, this is all boring stuff but it's what's consuming me at the moment. Would like to blog about the riots in Tibet, the Spitzer scandal, the HK school closings, movies, music, the usual but well, I guess you can say that you are being spared my commie liberal leftist opinions for the time being. If this keeps up, my next BC column will also be about the move because I certainly haven't had time to watch any movies or listen to much music lately.

Except that Season 4 of Top Chef started! Yeah!!!!! (Except that one of the chefs is named Spike - don't know if I should root for him or hate him.) And there was actually one song on American Idol this week that didn't suck eggs - Chikezie, the round soul singer in a Luther Vandross mode, started off a Beatles song by sitting in a pit with guys playing banjo and fiddle, really old timey country style, then midway through jumped up and turned it into a James Brown rave. Within the context of what you normally get on AI, this seemed quite decent.

Back online and all moved but not all unpacked.

The move went as well as a move can go. Done in two days by a local Indian-staffed company whose quote was 1/3rd less than other companies - and at the end, they came in just $300 over the initial estimate because some stuff had to be carried down stairs in the old flat. So far, practically nothing broken, far less than other moves.

Now I'm left with the task of unpacking about 200 cartons. Which is made worse by the fact that the old flat had huge floor to ceiling built-in closets in every room, this place has practically none. So while the place itself is much larger, I either have to buy a bunch of closets or racks and will probably toss a lot of stuff.

That's the downside of too much storage. You get something, you don't know what to do with it, you stuff it into a closet and forget you have it. In this case, US 120 volt stuff that I've been saving for Buddha knows what reason since I moved back here in 2001; boxes and boxes of VHS tapes, financial records from ten years ago, clothes that no longer fit, motherboards from PCs I dismantled 5 years ago, the list just goes on.

The first ordeal is unpacking and reorganizing the CDs, DVDs, books. Everything else tossed in a pile in the middle of the floor ... and then a lot of it will go.

The flip side of all this was sitting out last night with my gf (who brought over a pizza without even asking first, bless her), enjoying the quiet, the view, cold beers in hand, just mellowing out.

I'd be even mellower if the place in Shenzhen hadn't fucked up all my curtains. Example - one that's supposed to be 24 inches wide by 60 inches high is 60 inches wide by 24 inches high. Hoping to have the energy to deal with the guy on the phone later today, hoping this can be resolved without my having to make another trip up there but not feeling very optimistic. It's a shame too because actually the fabrics I chose were quite nice and they did a real first class job in making them ... just they don't fit the windows ....

20

I tried but I could not find a way .....

This afternoon I sat out at the new house, waiting for some deliveries. Background noise was birds chirping, water dripping from leaky pipes from the house next door, dogs barking and the not quite constant roar of jet engines from planes overhead, as Sai Kung is in the flight path to HKIA. It's almost as if the powers that be decided that Sai Kung is too nice and had to come up with a way to spoil it and make it like the rest of Hong Kong, hence airplanes during the day.

I'm not complaining, mind you, even if it seems like that. Because I came back to my flat in Mid Levels (only 2 more nights to sleep here!) to find my old building under attack once again from sledge hammers and power tools. Only 28 flats in the building, yet there seems to be no respite from renovation madness.

The folks in my village are said to have a reputation for not being friendly. So far there has been no welcome wagon, no one coming over with a casserole or fruit cake left over from Christmas past. That's fine by me.

I have met some of the people in the house next door. If I'm not mistaken (and I often am), the man in the ground floor of the house on the left, who has three dogs, has taken "Poochie" as his English name. Their helper, a young Filipino lady, seems to be named Thomas. "You lived here, sir?" she said to me when I introduced myself. Temporarily thrown off by her conjugating, eventually I said, "yes, in two days."

Today, measurements for curtain rods, lock changed, delivery of two canisters of propane (no Towngas up there), replaced all light bulbs with fluorescents. Two runs up to hand carry some of the more fragile items. Tomorrow the moving begins in earnest, hopefully done in 2 days.

Tired, still smoking too much, but eating well. Last night a yummy rack of lamb at the HK Marina Club and today an amazingly good sandwich at Cru - parma ham, cheese, mustard, tomato and greens on cibatta, with some potato wedges and a huge heap of salad on the side. Someone at the next table over got a pizza and I think I'm going to need to try that there next.

Over the years, one way or another, I find access to all the things from the US that I used to miss. TV shows via the internet, Reese's peanut butter cups show up sometimes at City Super, deliveries from Amazon and so on.

But one thing still eludes me, one of the foods that I grew up on, something that is every bit as much a comfort food as a burger or a slice of pizza - American Chinese food. (Yeah, I know, there's one place in town that purports to do it. I tried them once. A poor imitation.) Actually, the closest thing I've found is the siu pai gwat (barbecue ribs) at Joy Hing in Wanchai, which are getting to be like heroin for me.

So I can only satisfy that craving via the literary method. Here's a review of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by NY Times correspondent Jennifer 8. Lee (yes, her middle initial appears to be a number).

Lee presents an intriguing idea in a chapter called “Open-Source Chinese Restaurants,” contending that “if McDonald’s is the Windows of the dining world (where one company controls the standards), then Chinese restaurants are akin to the Linux operating system, where a decentralized network of programmers contributes to the underlying source code.” She contrasts the decade of “failed experimentation” before the success of Chicken McNuggets to the breathtaking speed with which chop suey, fortune cookies and General Tso’s chicken took hold in Chinese restaurants everywhere thanks to a “self-organizing” system in which good ideas spread like urban legends.

It’s fun to read about the Jewish passion for “safe treyf” (Yiddish for nonkosher food) and to accompany Lee on an exhaustive hunt for “The Greatest Chinese Restaurant in the World” outside China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. But amusing as such diversions are, Lee’s book is more serious than its jolly subtitle suggests, exposing some very ugly sides of the business. She journeys to the province of Fujian, which is “the single largest exporter of Chinese restaurant workers in the world today,” and documents the ordeal of a teenager named Michael from the fishing village of Houyu, which has sent more than three-quarters of its population to the United States and where a school teaches restaurant English to the young. Michael spends a harrowing two years trying to get to America, winding up on the notorious Golden Venture, the ship that ran aground off Rockaway Beach in 1993 and raised public awareness of human smuggling. She writes about the vulnerability of Chinese deliverymen, for whom homicide is a leading cause of on-the-job death. And she tells the tragic story of an immigrant couple who try to make a go of a small Chinese restaurant in northern Georgia but are left broke and broken by the experience.

And here's the first chapter of the book, which has been added to my wish list at Amazon. Some excerpts:

It's not surprising that the Powerball officials heard the same tale repeated over and over again across the twenty-nine states, from coast to coast. The stories were different. The stories were the same. It was takeout. It was sit-down. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet. It happened years ago, months ago, earlier that day. It was dinner. It was lunch. It was where they ate every week with coworkers. It was on a family vacation to a neighboring state. The number had been in a fortune cookie they had cracked open themselves. The number had been on a fortune found while cleaning a car or waiting at a convenience-store counter. But the one thing all those stories had in common was the starting point: a meal from a Chinese restaurant that had ended with a fortune cookie.

The lottery story ran in AM New York, the commuter daily I picked up one morning to read on the New York City subway. The one-paragraph article said the March 30 Powerball had been pummeled with an unusually large number of winners, 110 in all, largely because of fortune cookies.

.........

My siblings and I are known as ABCs, American-born Chinese. We're also known as bananas (yellow on the outside but white on the inside) and Twinkies (which has more of a pop-culture but processed ring to it). There are a lot of inside jokes among immigrant families. My family even has one embedded in the children's names. My parents named me Jennifer; my sister is Frances; my brother is Kenneth. If you string together our first initials, you get JFK, which, my parents tease, is the airport they landed at when they first came to America.

.........

The Americanness of fortune cookies hit home a few years later, in a 1992 front-page story in the New York Times with the headline "A Fortune Will Greet You in an Endeavor Faraway." The article announced that Brooklyn-based Wonton Food was to sell fortune cookies in China. It added that in Hong Kong, the cookies were already being marketed as "genuine American fortune cookies."

.........

But as interesting as the local food was to me, I was interesting to the locals. You could see their minds processing: She looks perfectly Chinese. She speaks Chinese perfectly. But something is amiss. Perhaps it was the way I moved, the way I laughed, the way I dressed. I wasn't, they felt, of China. Hong Kong? Taiwan? they asked.

"I'm American," I explained.

Their reply: "No, you're Chinese. You were just born in America."

I was not an American to them. I was an American-born Chinese. Maybe the same thing was true of Chinese food back home: It's Chinese. It just happened to be born in America.

Or maybe the truth was closer to this: It's American. It just looks Chinese.

I was going to start moving stuff over to the new place on Saturday, but when I went up there it looked as if bears had been living in the place. The temporary tenants - relatives of the landlord's ex-husband, as it turns out - left stacks of garbage lying around, didn't move out all of their stuff, hadn't surrendered their key. One bathtub had 5 inches of water and garbage in it. And so on. My maid called her sister and together the two of them got the place into reasonable shape. My girlfriend called the landlord to complain for what must have been the 58th time. The landlord actually told her, "well, sometimes you have to compromise and have some advantage on both sides" and my girlfriend, Buddha bless her, said to her, "yeah, but it looks like in this case you're taking all the advantage, what advantage have you given us?" and of course there was no answer to that. Monday I'll change the locks.

And still need to locate a painter. So far everyone is quoting HK$20,000 for the job. One color. I think it can be done in one day, two days tops. I keep telling them I'm not expecting the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling. Maybe it's a weekend project for me.

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

Now that I've been blogging for so long and since this isn't a commercial endeavor, I no longer pay much attention to the hit counter. I do look at stats for two reasons - I find new blogs via those new ones linking to me and also still curious as to what searches led people to me.

Blog found this morning:

Ring of Gyges - had to google this, from a tale by Plato, a mythical ring that allowed its wearer to become invisible. Four posts so far.

Weird one:

A page listing a bunch of links hidden away on the web site for a needle point shop in Ohio!

Some of the searches that brought folks here:

* uk google: asian british wankers (?????)
* uk google: looking for fake louis vuitton bag shop in pattaya and bangkok (you don't need to search for this, it will find you!)
* filipino cover band insomnia lan kwai fong (someone must have really liked them)
* singapore google: bra strap pics (some people have more specific fetishes than others)
* fi (finland?) google: property for rent baeng saen thailand (well, i've been there)
* ca (canada?) google: does locate me work in hong kong (nope)
* taiwan google: edison chen scando (scando????)
* italy google: hong kong ladyboy
* hong kong google: sham shui po acupuncture (ask sham shui po boy)
* threesome Wong Hong Kong sex (yes not enough info on this in the Standard, need to know more)
* ebay movies 1986 tv series downturn michael nouri (your guess as good as mine)
* tin hau famous yakitori (would like to try)
* uk google: british louts abroad

and the winner this week is:

* hydrocephalitic listlessness

which of course is a phrase in a song by Joanna Newsom which I mentioned here in November 2006.

As always, deepest thanks to all referrers, you know who you are.

Today's issue of The Standard, is 64 pages.

There is one page devoted to world news. (Breaking story - there are a lot of natural disasters in The Philippines and the government does fuck all to help.)

One third of the single page editorial "section" is devoted to the he-used-to-be-funny-but-now-only-once-in-awhile-and-then-by-accident Nury Vittachi.

One third of a page devoted to further coverage of the local rape trial mentioned in the previous post.

This is "the standard?"

Finally Hong Kong has the only thing it was missing - an English language tabloid daily newspaper. The Standard has had many incarnations and attempts at purpose over the years. Now that it's given away free, they're making it more and more like the New York Post - I'm halfway expecting that in another month or two they'll start running the local equivalent of London's page three girls.

Case in point - the kind of titillating tale that has no impact on anyone's life (outside of the actual participants) but that people love to read. Given that The Standard has so few pages devoted to news, it's interesting to see that this sort of thing receives so many column inches. (And am I not as guilty as them, for linking to it and quoting it here?) For a daily newspaper, the language is a bit rough. Shouldn't it be rated Category III? And I just love the aberrant spelling on the reporter's name - Nickkita Lau.

"Threesome Hearing Told of Tattoo Terror"

Mrs V said on the night of January 13, 2007, she had visited her good friend Wong at her Miami Beach Towers residence.

She said she had some wine after which she found herself unusually dizzy and high and passed out.

She woke up twice and found Chan having sexual intercourse with her without her consent, but had no strength to resist.

She woke up the next day and found all three of them naked in the same bed.

She said she did not know she was being filmed.

Wong later told Mrs V that Chan possessed an audio recording of her moaning.

In order to get the recording back and to stop Chan from revealing the incident, she was told she must have sex with him once more and give him a "good memory like one between a boyfriend and girlfriend," Mrs V said.

Wong warned Mrs V if she made Chan angry, she would have to bear the "consequences." Mrs V said she was frightened and, after numerous telephone conversations, she agreed to go along with Chan's demand.

She insisted it was against her will and that she only wanted to get the audio recording.

On the night of February 10, 2007, Mrs V went to Wong's apartment again.

Wong then took Mrs V to the master bedroom and showed Mrs V a tattoo of Chan's name in English on her pubic area, which she got as punishment for cheating on Chan.

The hearing continues today.

Public viewing of Ms. Wong's tattoo at 3 PM.

Build a DIY music server
A computer's USB connection has become the preferred method to bypass a soundcard. The HagUSB is a $119 box with a chip that turns that USB connection into a digital signal like the one created by a DVD player.

The Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"
However you come to the song, it's got an aura around it. If it's through Buckley, well, he's this beautiful dead boy with an apparently "ethereal" voice, and he's singing this song that sounds like a long-ago thing. Cohen himself is distant enough at this point to be symbolically equivalent to an old blues guy: mysterious, wise, world-weary. Buckley's martyrdom cleanses him of the "dude with a guitar who signed to a major label in the 90s" status, and Cohen, cheesy though he may be at times, comes from the pre-corporate past of the music industry, and is untainted by its commercialism.

What Happens to Your Body if You Drink a Coke Right Now
>60 minutes: As the rave inside of you dies down you’ll start to have a sugar crash. You may become irritable and/or sluggish. You’ve also now, literally, pissed away all the water that was in the Coke. But not before infusing it with valuable nutrients your body could have used for things like even having the ability to hydrate your system or build strong bones and teeth.

50-50 Split New Starting Point For HK Divorces
Assets held by Hong Kong couples at the time of their divorce will be split evenly from now on - regardless of who brought them into the union - unless there are exceptional circumstances, the Court of Appeal ruled yesterday. The principle applied even when the assets brought into the marriage plainly exceeded what was needed to ensure the continued comfort of all parties, a three-judge panel said.

Last night, rough transcription:

My gf: You're always grumpy!

Me: No, I'm not! When I'm out with you, I'm always happy!

My gf: Yes, true, but on your blog you're always grumpy and angry. I hate that!

Oops.

So today I went up to Sai Kung, signed the official lease, paid the rest of the money, got the keys. Walked around town, including checking out a place selling some very affordable looking and comfortable outdoor furniture. A nice swing set built for two. Some sturdy looking wooden lounge chairs. Will go back on Saturday and buy some of this stuff.

Then a quick lunch at the Ali Oli bakery. I haven't been inside this place in 5 or 6 years. I was amazed at how beautifully they've fixed it up inside, how many more products they offer, how tasty they all look. I am so looking forward to having this be one of my regular stops again.

Walking around town, I passed another bakery I didn't know about, called Mushroom Bakery or some incongruous name like that. But looking in the window, their stuff looked as tasty and nice as the stuff at Ali Oli.

I really do like Sai Kung town so much. A great little town with almost everything you need in just a few small streets. I'm so looking forward to living up there again, being able to sit outside on the weekends with that great view. A spot to do some barbecue. Getting eaten alive by Asian insects, chomped on by snakes ... oops, let's not go there.

To make a long story short I'm very happy today about all of this.

(Honey, is that okay?)

Been up late re-arranging the music on my iPhone. I'm spending too much time listening to old faves - just removed those playlists and replaced them with about 30 recent albums I've barely listened to.

Went out to dinner late, just over to Subway in Wanchai. Well, it's cheap, I can drive to Wanchai in 5 minutes (rather than spending 50 bucks round trip on taxis)(until next week when I move) and parking is easy on the street after midnight, a distinct advantage over LKF.

So dig this. Two guys ahead of me online. I'm waiting patiently. Some hooker strides in. Drunk, stoned, stupid or a combination of all three. The fact that she was wearing a long down winter coat over a very short dress, I'd say stoned. Very short dress under that big coat, tattoo on one leg, legs in general very banged up, bruised, not really attractive when you can actually see them in the light.

So she strides past everyone waiting, goes up to the counter, says she wants 3 coffees to go. Then she looks at the guys behind the counter. One is making a meatball sub, one a ham and cheese. She points at the food and asks how much? She can't be bothered to look at the huge menus on the wall, just like she can't be bothered to wait until the people who were in there before her get served. Normally I might say something but I'm not in a mood to get into an argument with a stoned hooker. The price for the ham and cheese is 27, she says she wants one.

Now, the staff there MIGHT have said, "could you please wait, these people were here before you." Instead, one of the guys behind the counter stops working on the meatball sub and starts to make her ham and cheese. He pulls out a six inch bread, slaps some ham onto it. She asks how much more for "the whole thing," a 12 inch, he tells her and she says she wants that. He takes the ham off the bread, puts it back in with the other bread, and pulls out a footlong and starts to make her sandwich, then for some reason stops and returns to the meatball sub.

Now he goes back to her ham and cheese. She asks if he can cut it in three. He says yes. She looks over at me, finally realizes I was there before her, murmurs something at me, I say, "No, it's clear you're in a bigger hurry than me." That goes right by her. The guy finishes making the sandwich and starts cutting it in half. "No, in three!" she yells.

Now he asks her if it's to stay or for take-away. He has to ask her three times before she understands. "Yes," she says. Let's see, she's in there alone, she's ordered 3 cups of coffee and asked for a sandwich to be cut into thirds. Does anyone think she was planning to stay?

Then he wraps up the sandwich. No, she wants each third wrapped separately. He wraps them all up. She unwraps one, starts fingering it, looks at me and asks, "do you think I should pay for this? it's cold!" I'm not sure if she's trying to get me to buy it for her, I just say, "up to you, none of my business."

Now it's time for my sandwich. I want a six inch tuna. The guy reaches into the rack and pulls out the same six inch roll that he'd just slapped ham onto. "I don't want that! You put ham on that!" He puts it back into the rack with the fresh bread.

The girl leaves. She walks across the street, hands two thirds of the sandwich and two of the cups of coffee to the two guys working the door at Neptune. She comes back into subway, plops down with the last cup of coffee and piece of sandwich. She starts screaming into her mobile phone, "I"m in Subway! Subway! SUBWAY!!!!!!!"

I finish my tuna sub and go home. Thinking that after I move, I'm going to keep a supply of decent bread, lettuce and tomato at home so I don't have to deal with this silliness.

Took the day off from work and went up to Shenzhen. Ordered a complete set of curtains, all lined with black-out material, for the house. All lined with black-out material, curtain hooks inserted for me, delivered to the house on the day I move in - all for an fraction of what it would cost here.

Dim sum lunch - alone - at the branch of Laurel Restaurant on the top floor of the Luo Hu shopping mall. I get there around 1. When I leave at 2 PM, there's still a 30 minute wait for tables. Unlike so many dim sum places in Hong Kong, this place has an English menu and a staff that's both hard working and unfailingly polite. People at nearby tables see a lao wai sitting by himself and say hello. The char siu bau and har gau are as good as I've had anywhere. Another steamed dumpling combines prawns with dau miu, not a bad combination. The mango pudding has chunks of real mango. Together with a pot of tea and a can of Coke, 95 RMB.

Then the curtain shop. Some browsing, the usual knock-off selection. The electronics shops on the 5th floor are packed with fake iPods, fake iPhones, USB and SD memory cards, MP4 players, portable DVD players with screens, Chinese made stereo systems. Down to the first floor, I score a heavy duty tripod in one shop for 400, complete with carrying case. (The guy didn't want to come down below 480, then for some reason the boss walked over, took a look and said let him have it.) Another shop, a telescope so that I can enjoy the view from my new balcony. The girl gave me her name card, told me if I had trouble working it I could come back to the shop and she would teach me how to turn the two knobs. (Yeah, I realize that's a horrendous double entendre there but I don't think that's what she had in mind.)

Loaded down, I decided to forgo massage and head back home early.

On the train, surrounded by people reading comic books and screaming into mobile phones, competing with the commercials being blared by the train's own a/v system. Slimming centers. Cough and cold remedies (being advertised with cute animated characters to attract kids).

As it happens, I'm sitting there reading Eric Clapton's autobiography. I'd bought it months ago, read the chapter on Derek & the Dominoes, then put it on the shelf. But after listening to respectably decent audience recordings of the three shows Eric just did with Steve Winwood in New York, my interest was renewed. Managed to finish off the chapters on his early youth, the Yardbirds, John Mayall.

I was struck by the creative energy that existed in London at that time. The synergy as people who'd grown up listening to an unbelievably wide variety of music (and Clapton also mentions watching French new wave cinema films and Kurosawa films in the early 60s), how they all knew each other to some extent, played off and against each other. And that kind of energy and creativity still exists in MOST urban centers around the world.

Then came home, flipped on the TV and Anthony Bourdain was on, this episode in Berlin. He mentions the German expressionist cinema of the 20s. Goes to see some avant garde-ish cabaret performances. Visits a series of modern art galleries run by young, up and coming talents.

And I couldn't help but think that I'm living in a city that is mourning the loss of one of its "great" creative talents - Lydia Shum. In her more-than-40-year show business career, as near as I can figure it, she achieved fame by being fat and jolly and having a wacky hair style. The arts here serve two purposes - Cantopop, movies and comic books that cater to the lowest common denominator. Art galleries selling anything painted with crayons in China for investment value. Oh, and let's not forget Australian touring companies performing Broadway and West End musicals five years after their sell-by date. I'm not just talking western-style art either. Where are the books by Hong Kong authors that are being translated into dozens of languages around the world? Where are the Hong Kong movies being shown at Cannes or other film festivals? (Okay, thanks to Johnny To and Wong Kar-Wai there actually are one or two every year.) There are some people here trying something creative and new but they are tiny in number and mostly ignored by the public and the mass media.

Like I said in the title, maybe I'm just being grumpy. I'm moving into a fabulous house with an amazing view. I've got a beautiful, sexy and sophisticated girlfriend of a caliber I probably couldn't even begin to aspire to back in the town where I was born. It's a series of trade-offs, like anything else.

I'm sure I'll cheer up by tomorrow ....

Some days are more trying than others.

Before I signed the lease on the new house, I checked with PCCW to ensure that I could get internet service there. They said yes. The landlord also said yes.

So today I call to make appointments for the relocation.

I call PCCW and the guy says he can only handle my land lines; he'll need to transfer me to a different department for the internet stuff. Okay. He's quick and efficient. The entire process takes about 5 minutes. I get the appointment I want, on the date and time I want. And then, without my even asking, he gives me his name and direct line and says I can call him if there are any problems or questions.

Then he transfers me to the internet department. I spend an hour on the phone with this girl. She cannot find my house on the map. I tell her that I called before and was told there was service there. I tell her I have an appointment for the land line relocation already. She insists she cannot find the house. She tells me she will need to put in an order for someone to go and survey the house and that it will take 7 days to tell me if there is internet service available.

I try again. I lead her on the phone through a map from Sai Kung Village to the main road to the village road. She asks me if the road has a number - no, it has a name. She says she can find number 42 - well mine's a semi-detached house and 42 is the right side of the house and 43 is the left side and I tell her this but she says there is no number 43. She asks me if the house has a name - tempted to tell her it is called Spike's Carpetblogger Mansion but instead just tell her it's a village house.

Throughout the hour on the phone she keeps putting me on hold. Each time she comes back on the line she starts by saying, "I'm so sorry." With each "I'm so sorry," I light a cigarette. (Not good as I'm trying to quit.) I keep telling her, "Look I'm not trying to be rude, I understand you are trying to help me but please understand that you CAN provide service!"

I tell her that she can call the guy who set the appointment for my land line, that I can give her the guy's name and number. She doesn't want to take it. She says my appointment doesn't show up in her system and there's no point for her to call this guy.

Finally I give up. Before I get off the line, I ask for her name and direct phone number. She has a name but no direct line! Why do the fixed line folks have direct lines and not the internet people? Same company!!!!!

So now I get off the phone. I google a list of HK ISPs. I start going through their web sites. Most don't bother to provide coverage areas on their web sites. The only one that does says, "nope, sorry."

My gf calls. I tell her what I've just been through. I ask her, maybe you can call the landlord (who doesn't speak English) and ask her who I can call. Otherwise I am thinking I will drive to the village, park my car and stand there, waiting for other people to come home for the evening and ask them how they get their internet. Or spend 6 hours every night in Starbucks in town once it opens. Or see if that PCCW Netvigator Everywhere WiFi/HSPDA switching service might work where I am.

Ten minutes later she calls me up. She's got someone on the line, he's found my house, he's ready to make the appointment, she needs my ID card number and to know when I want them to come.

Later, after getting down on my knees and thanking her, I say, "One question: did you talk to the guy in English or Cantonese?" "English," she replies. (Okay, my gf is Chinese but not HK Chinese. As far as I can tell, she's fluent in Cantonese, though she denies it.)

So what it seems to come down to is that she got someone who knew what he was doing, I got someone new, or poorly trained, or clueless. What I couldn't get in 1 hour, she got in 5 minutes just by talking to a different person.

So I said to her, "If you're trying to prove to me that I can't survive without you, you're doing a damned good job!"

The move is scheduled for the 12th and 13th, but I suspect I'll spend some time up there over the weekend just enjoying the view. Here's the view from my bedroom:


And here's the garden area, freshly cleaned out and waiting for me to decide what to put there:


There Will Be Parties. (for those intrepid enough to make the journey)

On Thursday, taxi fares in HK went up for the first time in about 10 years. The initial charge is now $16 instead of $15. Given ten years of even modest inflation combined with huge increases in the price of fuel, a one dollar increase per ride seems almost Scrooge-like.

Naturally it will take some time to adjust all of the taxi meters. In the meantime, our department of transport has come up with a new rate sheet to be displayed in taxi cabs. Now they might have opted for a sign that says "add $1 to the price on the meter" and let it go at that.

However, they seem to believe that this would be beyond the reach of most people. So the rate sheet has columns of taxi fares starting at $15, incrementing by $1.20 per line, going up to, jeez, I don't know, $500 or something. The left side shows the fare on the meter, the right side shows that fare plus $1.

So if you look at the meter on a taxi and it says your fare is $24.80 and you cannot figure out how much you should pay ("um, er, $24.80 plus $1 equals? oooh, that's a tough one, wait a minute, let me get out my phone and run the calculator program on it, oops sorry, I've got a smart phone running Microsoft Windows Mobile and it's crashed, let me just reboot my phone, oh, I forgot, there's an abacus in my briefcase somewhere, nice briefcase right? LV knockoff, AAA quality from Shenzhen, it holds my phone charger and my copy of Next magazine with the Edison photos and my lunch and a card with my name on it in case I forget, how much, well they were asking $2,000 but I knocked them down to $2,500, good deal huh? Yeah, LV is doing cases with Hello Kitty now, at least that's what they told me in the shop. Okay, wait, that's $24.80 plus $1, never mind, here's a thousand, give me $1 change, that's about right, huh?"), never fear, it's been done for you.

I'm not quite a non-smoker yet. However, after two acupuncture sessions, I have cut down by 75% and my desire for smoking is greatly reduced. I have also managed to not rip anyone's head off. No doubt my gf is appreciative of that fact. I have a third session today.

Coincidentally, latest BC column is now online, about my 30+ year love affair with smoking and why it's time for me to quit.

My computer is acting odd lately. It seems I've picked up a virus somewhere along the line, the temp2.exe virus, despite having anti-virus software running. Scanning the system now. Argh. Odds are I picked up this little "friend" when attempting to download the complete collection of Edison Chen's greatest tits hits so I suppose it serves me right.

Also having mouse trouble. I've got the Logitech MX Revolution. And every time I left click, the effect is that of double-clicking. Have gone through mouse settings, "slowed stuff down" in a matter of speaking, but the mousing is still sub prime. It leads to very annoying things like clicking on the "X" to close a window and having the window behind it close as well.

Stuff like this leads me back to smoking again.

Here is an odd one ... in a few years, the MTR will build extensions of the rail system on Hong Kong island out to the southern part of the island, including Aberdeen. Given the route the system will take, it would seem a no-brainer to include a stop in Happy Valley. The roads in Happy Valley get extremely congested during rush hour and also on racing nights.

Apparently the MTR has decided that people in Happy Valley don't want an MTR station and that if there is to be one, the Jockey Club should pay the more than HK$1 billion cost for it. The government Secretary for Transport and Housing, Eva Cheng, agrees. The Jockey Club has responded by saying that they are a non-profit organization and should not be funding a profit-making venture by a for-profit organization. Some have further responded by saying that since the head of the Jockey Club is also one of the heads of a bus company, he doesn't want the train station because it would cut into bus company profits.

None of this makes any sense to me, except for that bit about business as usual in Hong Kong, in this case the government saying, "No one wants an MTR station in Happy Valley but give us a billion dollars and then who gives a fuck about what everyone else wants."