Hongkie Town

Neil Young's been working on and talking about his "Archives" series for longer than Axl Rose worked on Chinese Democracy. Now "Archives Volume 1: 1963-1972" is finally coming out on January 27, 2009.

Young has never been a fan of CDs (let alone MP3s) so he's decided to release this set on DVD and Blu-Ray. Each is a 10 disc set.

List price for the 10 disc DVD set is US$345.

List price for the 10 disc Blu-Ray set is US$432. $43.20 per disc.

I find myself wondering what color is the sky on Neil's planet?

There are at least 3 people from my company staying at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai right now. Two of them were in the lift standing next to the Japanese businessman when he got shot. I cannot even begin to imagine how I would react if I was to find myself in that kind of situation.

Not entirely true. Someone did pull a gun on me once. And it wasn't someone I knew. And he wasn't joking. But I gambled that he wasn't going to use it. And he didn't.

Still ... imagine, standing there, nowhere to turn, nowhere to run, the guy next to you gets shot, I'm relatively certain I'd need new pants after that.

Fake New York Times here. Looks just like the real one but the date is July 4, 2009. And the headlines include:

• Iraq War Ends
• Ex-Secretary Apologizes for WMD Scare
• Court Indicts Bush on High Treason Charge
• Nation Sets Its Sights on Building a Sane Economy

and an op-ed piece from "Thomas Friedman" that begins

The sudden outbreak of peace in Iraq has made me realize, among other things, one incontestable fact: I have no business holding a pen, at least with intent to write.

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

Two new restaurants opening up near my office. They are both very depressing.

The first is Epoch, which bills itself as a "coffee bar and desserterie." Though they have sandwiches and salads on the menu.

The second is a Japanese place that has decided to call itself Miso Cool. Mentioned this to a friend of mine and he said that made him think about Jar Jar Binks. Not something you want to think about if you plan to keep your food down.

Via Idolator, the Brit music magazines are now posting their best of '08 lists. It's only November, I haven't given it much thought myself!

Mojo
1. Fleet Foxes [Wasn't excited after 1 listen]
2. The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age Of The Understatement [not bad but hardly original]
3. Paul Weller, 22 Dreams [seemed all over the map after 1 listen]
4. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!! [liked it]
6. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive [I still don't get them]
7. Glasvegas
8. The Week That Was, The Week That Was
9. The Bug, London Zoo
10. Neil Diamond, Home Before Dark
11. Portishead, Third [loved it]
12. Don Cavalli, Cryland
13. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation’s Dark [weaker than the last one]
14. British Sea Power, Do You Like Rock Music?
15. Eli “Paperboy” Reed & The True Loves, Roll With You [promising but needs better songs]
16. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)
17. Sigur Rós, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust [weaker than earlier stuff]
18. Pete Molinari, A Virtual Landslide
19. Beck, Modern Guilt
20. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
21. Amadou & Mariam, Welcome to Mali
22. Mercury Rev, Snowflake Midnight
23. Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
24. Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life
25. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels [loved it]
26. Peter Broderick, Home
27. M83, Saturdays=Youth
28. Neon Neon, Stainless Style
29. Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
30. The Night Marchers, See You in Magic
31. Duffy, Rockferry [liked it a lot]
32. Seasick Steve, I Started Out With Nothin’ and I Still Got Most of It Left [really good]
33. Kasai Allstars, In the 7th Moon, the Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy by Magic
34. Fuck Buttons, Street Horrrsing
35. Our Broken Garden, When Your Blackening Shows
36. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
37. Gavin Bryars & Philip Jeck & Alter Ego, The Sinking of the Titanic
38. Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
39. Abe Vigoda, Skeleton
40. The Black Keys, Attack & Release
41. The Fall, Imperial Wax Solvent
42. Juana Molina, Un Día
43. Aimee Mann, @#%&*! Smilers
44. Goldmund, The Malady Of Elegance
45. Metallica, Death Magnetic
46. James Hunter, The Hard Way [recommended]
47. Flying Lotus, Los Angeles
48. AC/DC, Black Ice [not bad]
49. The Neil Cowley Trio, Loud… Louder… Stop
50. Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul [about half is yawn-inducing]

Q
1. Kings of Leon, Only the Night
2. Fleet Foxes
3. Coldplay, Viva La Vida... [snore]
4. Vampire Weekend [oh please, really?]
5. Glasvegas
6. Duffy, Rockferry
7. TV On The Radio, Dear Science
8. Elbow, The Seldom Seen Kid
9. The Raconteurs, Consolers of The Lonely [yes]
10. Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Dig!!! Lazarus, Dig!!!
11. Sigur Ros, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
12. Keane, Perfect Symmetry [huh?]
13. MGMT, Oracular Spectacular
14. Kaiser Chiefs, Off With Their Heads
15. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
16. Hot Chip, Made In The Dark
17. Adele, 19 [not bad]
18. British Sea Power, Do You Like Rock Music?
19. Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
20. The Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound
21. Razorlight, Slipaway Fires
22. The Killers, Day and Age
23. Beck, Modern Guilt
24. The Last Shadow Puppets, The Age of The Understatement
25. Metallica, Death Magnetic
26. Conor Oberst
27. Neil Diamond, Before Home
28. Paul Weller, 22 Dreams
29. AC/DC, Black Ice
30. Portishead, Third
31. Black Mountain, In The Future
32. Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul
33. Hercules & Love Affair [one play was enough]
34. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
35. The Hold Steady, Stay Positive
36. R.E.M., Accelerate [???]
37. Lykke Li, Youth Novels
38. John Mellencamp, Life Death Love And Freedom [really?]
39. Santogold
40. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
41. Lindsey Buckingham, Gift of Screws [should be higher on the list]
42. Liam Finn, I'll Be Lightning
43. Joan As Police Woman, To Survive
44. Black Kids, Partie Traumatic
45. Jack Johnson, Sleep Through Static
46. Jenny Lewis, Acid Tongue [should also be higher on the list]
47. The Verve, Forth [one third of a good album]
48. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
49. Emmylou Harris, All I Intended To Be [yes]
50. Dido, Safe Trip Home

Guess I'm skewing old these days.

This Friday is Underground's last event at Club Cixi. For some reason, Cixi won't be hosting future Underground shows. There will be one or more bar managers attending this event to determine if their bars should host future gigs, so a big turnout on Friday night will help. Starts at 9 PM, $100 ($80 for students - do I have any student readers?) gets you six bands spanning a variety of genres, you can't beat that with a stick!

Fenwick's will not be closing or moving after all. They've managed to negotiate a deal with the new landlord, who probably took a look at the current economy and realized that the space could end up being vacant for a long time (just like the renovated floors above, which have been empty for years).

Bought a barbecue grill last week. As luck would have it, one week after buying it, not one but two ads go up on Asiaxpat for used grills. Fortunately I didn't feel the need to splurge on something super expensive. This Saturday will be cooking for about 15-20 people. Hopefully all will survive to tell the tale.

Can anyone tell me what the English portion of this ad in the MTR is supposed to mean?


Sunday night, dinner at one of those places that never seems to get reviewed in any English language HK guide (at least none that I know of). Actually there are tons of restaurants along Jaffe Road on the Wanchai/Causeway Bay border that are well known yet seem to escape most of the English language guidebooks and magazines. Most of them are places doing crab.

On Jaffe Road between Marsh and Canal, Hee Kee has been in business since 1965, but not always at this location.


This is two doors down from Hee Kee.


Both places have windows filled with photos of the local celebs who've eaten there.

This place is across the street from Hee Kee:


Of course, along Canal Road and Lockhart Road are four places all called Under Bridge Spicy Crab (but, I am told, different owners and different names in Chinese), all specializing in Typhoon Shelter chili crab. One has Anthony Bourdain's photo in the window - probably the reason I always choose that one. (No photo of that today, sorry.)

Anyway, last night we joined a couple of friends and ate at Mr. Fish, 392-402 Jaffe Road.


This place stays open till 3 AM! Its specialty is hotpot, though they also offer some barbecue and some sashimi. Inside, the place is a little fancier than most. Check out the glass table, glass pot for the soup, glass plates. The walls are lined with fish tanks and the sashimi is on display in a glass counter towards the back.



It's a small place, holding perhaps 40 or 50 people tops, and at 9 PM on a Sunday night, it was full. I can only guess at how busy they are on other nights but booking is essential here if you plan to go during normal dinner hours.

We had so much food .... lobster, prawns (raw and cooked), fish, squid, crab, clams, beef (raw and cooked), fish balls, dumplings, veggies, eel, assorted sashimi, lots of beer and coke, I can't even remember what else. Everything tasted very fresh. We asked for "ma la" sichuan style soup for the hotpot, asked them to tone it down just a bit, so it was on the borderline of spicy for me. They also provide crushed red pepper flakes, garlic and ginger to mix in with your soy sauce. We stuffed ourselves silly and the bill for four people came out to $845.

Mr. Fish has an English menu and English-speaking staff and I will return.

Last month in NYC, ordered a bunch of stuff from Amazon. Including this Nikon lens cleaning thing in the shape of a pen, it was about 8 bucks and kinda neat.

Today got an email from Amazon recommending accessories that would go with my accessory.



A shower enclosure? For washing my digital camera, presumably. And a twin burner propane tank for setting the whole damned thing on fire if I'm not happy with my pictures I guess.

Warning - some movie spoilers ahead.

We went to see Burn After Reading last night. I was really tired and ended up sleeping through some of the movie - not so much because I was bored, I simply sank into the big comfortable chair at the AMC Pacific Place and couldn't help myself. I know from reading some of the reviews after watching the film that I completely missed some key scenes. I'm glad the DVD comes out in a couple of weeks so I can watch it again and see the bits I missed.

Now, the Coen Brothers are movie making gods for me, and not merely because one of them went to the same school I did at roughly the same time and it's even possible that I knew him. Hard to tell because my freshman Intro to Filmmaking teacher encouraged us to do lots of mescaline, saying it was "essential to understanding the film experience." So I don't recall a lot from those two years.

Regardless, the Coens have made some films that I've not only enjoyed watching, I've enjoyed watching them over and over again, each time discovering new details, uncovering new layers, seeing something different each time. Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, Miller's Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother Where Art Thou?, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men. I've enjoyed those films so much that I forgive them for The Hudsucker Proxy, Intolerable Cruelty and that undefendable remake of The Ladykillers.

But .... remember the end of No Country? Lots of people hated that ending - Tommy Lee Jones just sitting at a table talking, the bad guy not caught (I never read the Cormac McCarthy book so no idea how that compares).

And the end of Burn falls off the face of the earth in a completely different way. It goes along for 90 minutes or so at a very Lebowski-like pace. And then it's two people sitting in a room going, oh, here's what happened to this guy, here's what happened to that guy, here's what we should have spent another 20 minutes putting on screen but I'm just gonna talk you through it.

The final scene only works because the dialogue is between two masterful character actors - J.K. Simmons (the dad in Juno) and David Rasche (whom I mostly remember for playing the lead role in occasionally wacky TV series Sledge Hammer 20 years ago). As one reviewer put it, Simmons doesn't have many lines but each line is a punch line - this is a guy who could read the South China Morning Post and make it funny. (Oops, perhaps it already is.)

But this is not how you end a movie. You don't just come to a dead stop and have someone say, "oh, that character you've been watching and enjoying for the past hour was killed offscreen." Granted the Coens have generally been willfully, almost gleefully bizarre, but still, come on!

Well, the Coens have four films in the works, including an adaptation of Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union.

And I'll get the DVD of Burn After Reading and decide if it's a Lebowski Achiever or an act of Intolerable Cruelty.

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

Ever since I went to the Billy Joel concert and saw the guy in front of me with a video camera, I've been vaguely obsessed with the notion of getting a pocket sized video camera. I didn't need the best, just good enough for me. Figured it would be good for music, the dogs, even sitting outside a bar in Wanchai and watching the nightlife go by. Right or wrong, I didn't believe that getting a "regular" digital camera with video capabilities would yield the results I wanted.

After reading a bunch of reviews, settled on the Sanyo HD1010. Sony has a similar sized one that features possibly better image stabilization and other features, but it only records to memory sticks (costs much more than SD cards) and I'd come across some very negative comments about video artifacts.

I knew the Sanyo listed for $6980 and that Broadway was selling it for $5980. At the Wanchai Computer Centre, the grey market version is selling for $3680. At that price, couldn't resist.

Naturally, going out last night, the video camera was in my pocket. And it belatedly occured to me that I was going to a movie theatre with a video camera in my pocket. I was even mildly tempted to take it out and shoot a few seconds off the screen just to see how it would come out. But I managed to resist that notion ....

Anyway, the images look really nice on the camera's 2.7 inch screen, haven't tried hooking it to a big screen yet to see how it really looks.

But it's the right size and relatively intuitive to use. So far I'm happy.

Hot pot dinner with friends tonight. Time to make a movie.

I read reviews

My attempt to upgrade my iPhone to the latest software version 2.2 failed, leaving the phone a brick. Attempts to restore it met with "unknown error." In my experience, Apple is unique in issuing software updates that render the updated device unusable. Several reboots of the PC, removing and reinserting the SIM card, various unspeakable acts of black magic later, the phone is in the process of restoring and recovering from the most recent back-up. Sigh.

Oh, if anyone was planning on buying me those 5 double disc New Order reissues for Christmas, please don't.

But alert fans quickly complained of about 300 errors, mostly relating to poor sound quality on the bonus discs. The pops and crackles on many of the tracks suggest they were transferred directly from commercially available vinyl recordings rather than from the original master tapes.

The discs were released in Britain last month, and music magazines there, such as Q and Mojo, did not mention any of the technical shortcomings in their rave reviews.

But Peter Hook, the bass player with the defunct group, said on his MySpace page that the reissue project was a "mess." He blamed the label for not sending out advance copies so that he and his former bandmates could do some quality control.

Despite the discontent, Rhino released the discs in the United States last Tuesday, and U.S. fans noticed the same problems. Rhino, an affiliate of Warner Bros. Records, plans to reissue the reissues, and will allow fans to exchange their dud CDs.

Yes, that's right, they need to reissue the reissues.

Last night after the concert, more tired than hungry, so plans to grab some food on the way home were forgotten and once home right to bed. No dinner, no food since lunchtime - which I suppose is something my waistline needs.

This morning, watched the latest episode of Top Chef. Coliccihio basically says that all of the food was disappointing, so I could watch in comfort.

And then I read this. And looked at the pictures there.



Holy crap I'm hungry now. The only solace is I doubt that there is anywhere in HK that serves satay even close to this. Finally a reason to go back to Jakarta?

Not only do they not put a little widget with the current HSI quote on the front page, apparently because they want only their paying customers to see it, when you do get to that page, you are greeted with garbage like this (look at the current index price and then look at the graph and see how well they correspond):


They might as well just replace the extensive disclaimer on the bottom of the page:


with something saying "this information is worthless, don't bother."

As previously mentioned, last night went to the first of two finale concerts for the first (and hopefully not last) Hong Kong International Jazz Festival.

Opening the show was Hong Kong-based pianist Ted Lo, who put together a group of friends from his New York days, appropriately called Ted Lo's New York Session. The group included Jay Azzolina on guitar, Bruce Gertz on bass, Tim Horner on drums and Billy Drewes on sax. They played for about 90 minutes and the crowd responded well, applauding every solo as well as every song, but to be honest, I was rarely moved. To me all it proved was that session players are technically excellent but often play without emotion or inspiration. While these guys were clearly enjoying playing together, that joy was not communicated well to the audience. The songs all went along at roughly the same tempo, roughly the same length; it seemed more of a technical demonstration than anything else.

Bob James was a different story. His latest project is called "The Angels of Shanghai" and it includes a four piece, truly international jazz combo (American James on piano, Korean Jack Lee (leader of the group Asianenergy) on guitar, Japanese Tetsuo Sakurai (a founding member of Casiopeia) on bass and African-American Gene Jackson on drums - "the devils") with five students from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music ("the angels")(two on er-hu, one each on pipa, dizi and guzheng) playing "east meets west" fusion. On the first number, the devils kicked off and when the angels joined in, the crowd was on their feet and cheering.

More new age than jazz, more instrumental pop than improvisation, it sounded great, the nine musicians sometimes sounding like an entire orchestra rather than a small group. The songs were a combination of traditional Chinese songs and reworkings of some of James' better known numbers including Westchester Lady and Angela (the theme from the old sitcom Taxi). James has toured with this group in Japan and Korea and seemed to take great pleasure in announcing to a very appreciative crowd that they were thrilled to be playing this music in concert for the first time in China. A CD is available.

By the way, when I say "crowd," I should sadly mention that the hall was less than half full. Jazz is no longer a commercial enterprise in Hong Kong and these are not exactly big marquee names. To my surprise, the audience was about 95% Chinese, running across all age groups and clearly enjoying every minute of it.

Hong Kong used to have more of an active jazz scene, centered in part around the now defunct Jazz Club in Lan Kwai Fong, which put on consistently excellent jazz and blues shows nightly featuring a variety of international stars, usually backed by local HK musicians including Ted Lo and Eugene Pao. Watch the John Woo movie Hard Boiled - aside from being one of the greatest action films ever, Chow Yun-fat plays a cop who moonlights playing sax in a group at the Jazz Club; his partner Tony Leung on drums. Woo cast himself as the bartender at the club. The atmospheric scenes shot in the club in the early 90s are all that remains of it now. Several places are attempting to relight the torch - occasional shows at Grappa's Cellar and an ambitious schedule of local performers at the Peel Lounge in Soho.

For a start for what will hopefully be an annual enterprise, they did manage to bring in some international stars who clearly put some thought into what they were doing. So big respect to promoter Clarence Chang, his partners and sponsors. In the program, Chang mentions that getting such a festival going has been a "decades-long obsession" and I hope he succeeds in making this an annual event.

Tonight's show, if you're interested, features Canadian bassist Alain Caron and guitarist Frank Gambale plus the Yellowjackets and Mike Stern. It's at the Queen Elizabeth Stadium in Wanchai and kicks off at 7:30.

I know that some people don't care for the Asiaxpat web site for reasons that I won't go into here. But I will say that their free classified ads work.

About a year and a half ago, I bought a Sony TV and as a bonus got a Sony 160 gig hard disk recorder/DVD burner. Since I already had something along these lines, I never took the Sony out of the box, never used it, figured some day I'd have a use for it.

Started perusing the classifieds on Asiaxpat (and other places) looking for a barbecue grill. Didn't find one. But as I was looking around the room this morning, my eyes fell on the box with the Sony thing sitting in it, taking up prominent space. What the hell, I figured. I posted an ad on Asiaxpat.

Within five minutes, I had an email from an interested buyer. He was willing to pay my asking price, no negotiation (which probably means that I was asking too little but, you know, I got it for free, put in an amount that I figured I'd be happy with and that's what I got). And he came over at lunch time today to pick it up and hand me the cash.

Which means this weekend I'll get off my ass and post ads for the bread maker that I bought (and that I failed with miserably), my Canon G7 camera (now replaced with the G10) and maybe even some of the hundreds of DVDs and CDs I have sitting around that I want to get rid of but have just been too lazy to drag off to the shops in Mong Kok or Wanchai to sell off.

I don't think I'll have a 100% success rate but still, it's a pretty easy way to try to unload this stuff.

I feel kind of bad that I didn't mention this sooner - just in case you didn't hear about this elsewhere - but there's still a little time left.

The HK International Jazz Festival winds up tomorrow night. I'll be going tonight, Bob James and Ted Lo, should be fun. Probably not sold out.




Tonight is also latest edition of BC Unplugged at the Wanch, starting at 9:30. If I'm not overcome by my never-ending jet lag will try to get over to that as well.

Support our local music scene!

Still not sleeping anywhere near normal, last night slept 6 PM to 8:30 PM and 2:30 AM to 6:30 AM. The screwed up sleeping schedule is affecting my eating schedule as well - yesterday had lunch at 2:30 PM and never had dinner. Seeing as how I've been back for more than a week now, this is just insane.

Did watch two movies yesterday. Wall-E, which could well end up being my favorite movie of the year (or one of), not to mention the best science fiction film in ages. Tropic Thunder, about what I expected, very funny in spots but overall just okay; I think the ginormous budget worked against it in the laughs department and the MTV Video Awards "viral video" included as a bonus feature is funnier than anything in the movie itself.

Web Site With a Name That Perfectly Describes Its Contents Dept: Hot Chicks With Douchebags. Apparently it's been turned into a book as well. No photos from Wanchai.

Victoria's Secret photo shoot in Miami last week, prior to their fashion show. You can click on the image for a larger version. (Stolen from Bastardly.)

Lil' Bill O'Reilly here and here. From Spike Feresten, talk show host and writer of the classic Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld.

Also ....

Pirate blu-ray discs sold in China are not blu-ray.

Using Blu-ray ripping software from SlySoft, bootleggers extract the high-def content from legitimate Blu-ray discs then recompress the video using AVCHD, a compression format developed by Sony and Matsushita (now Panasonic) for use in HD camcorders.

Although the resulting file is only 720p--rather than the 1080p of the original Blu-ray disc--the lower resolution allows the pirates to squeeze the film onto a standard DVD-9, which is far cheaper to mass produce than Blu-ray discs.

The discs are then packaged in Blu-ray's distinctive blue cases to fool the unwary.

Look here and here for lots of pics from this year's Victoria's Secret fashion show. Pics like this:

USB 3.0 standard finalized, devices should start showing up late next year or early 2010. Seriously faster (4.8 gigabits per second) and also delivers more power for charging devices. But you'll need all new computer ports, hubs, cables.

Hunter Thompson made lots of voice memos and notes, something shown in the documentary Gonzo, which comes out on DVD next week.

Shout Factory's just released a 5 CD set of those audio tapes, "The Gonzo Tapes: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson." Comes with a nice 44 page booklet.

Also new on DVD and Blu-Ray, the Who at Kilburn 1977. This show was filmed for the Kids Are Alright documentary and may not be the best Who show ever but it is the 2nd to last concert that Keith Moon played before he died.

Though Who biographer Johnny Black has called the concert "disastrous," Daltrey says the he "always thought it was quite a good show, but I remember that Pete (Townshend) at the time wasn't very happy with it, and I never quite figured why. I'll have to buy the DVD and find out, I guess." During the concert a clearly upset Townshend tells the somewhat unruly crowd that, "There's a guitar up here if any big mouth f*cking little git wants to take it from me."

The disc includes a complete 1969 show as a bonus feature.

Also out in time for Xmas gift giving is a 3 CD 1 DVD boxed set retrospective of the ZTT label, complete with a 72 page book.

Features cuts from acts like Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Grace Jones, Propaganda, Art of Noise, Seal, 808 State, Bjork, Shane MacGowan, Kirsty MacColl, Shades of Rhythm, Adamski, Lisa Stansfield, The Frames and David Jordan plus remixes from the likes of Brian Eno, The Orb and William Orbit. Salvo.

And there's a 21, count 'em 21 disc DVD boxed set of Monty Python just out, which Amazon is selling for only 90 bucks. Every episode of the TV series, every movie, lots of bonus features (most previously available). If you don't already have all this stuff, this is a cheap way to get caught up.

Season 5 of Entourage is coming to an end. I used to love this show but this season has just been awful. Just the four of them sitting around, moping and whining for 12 episodes. I'm still watching because the Jeremy Piven Ari Gold stuff is still good but otherwise the show has tanked.

A show that tanked even quicker? Second season of Californication. First season was fun, second season there is no story worth mentioning, no decent arc for the characters, just a series of would-be-but-not-really shocks and dirty jokes. I'm still watching because ... well, actually, I don't know why.

This one may be smarter than the last one.

Dear Spike,

What do you mean by the response to my mail that you will use what to enslaved women or what?Please tell me what is the meaning of that mail you sent to me.

From:

"GOD.BLESS.YOU.AND.YOUR.FAMILY"

To:

undisclosed-recipients

Good Day my beloved friend,
may God bless you as you read this mail,this mail comes from a
devastated, sorrowful and emotional laden soul that needs compassion from
a kind and good spirited person to wipe away my tears and appropriate my
dream and humanitarian gesture. As you read this, don't want you to feel
sorry for me, because, I believe everyone dies someday.
My name is Mr Bener Teebi a merchant in Dubai,in the U.A.E.I worked with
Zambian Ministry of Mining and Resources for eight years as a contractor,I
have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of
medical treatment,I am very worried as the doctors have informed me that
its terminal. I don't know how much time I have left on earth, hence this
mail to you.

I have not particularly lived my life well, as I never really cared for
anyone but my business. Though I am very rich, I was never generous, I was
always hostile to people and only focused on my business as that was the
only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this as I now know that there
is more to life than just wanting to have or make all the money in the
world. So far, I have distributed money to some charity organizations in
the U.A.E,Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has deteriorated so
badly, I cannot do this myself anymore. I once asked members of my family
to close one of my accounts and distribute the money which I have there to
charity organization in Bulgaria and Pakistan, they refused and kept the
money to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not
to be content with what I have left for them. The last of my money which
no one knows of is the huge cash deposit of $28,000,000,00 that I have
with a finance/Security Company abroad. I will want you to help me collect
this deposit and dispatch it to charity organizations.
I have set aside 20% for you and for your time.
Please for more informations and documentation of this funds contact me
urgently on my private email below.
benerteebi20@yahoo.com.hk
Regards,
Bener Teebi

Reply:

My Dear Beenie,

May I call you Beenie? Because after reading your long email I feel as if I already know you and Beber seems too formal to use among friends, and now I count you as my very good friend.

Thank you for offering me all that money. I would like to use it to purchase women to use as my personal sex slaves. By my computations, 20% of $28,000,000 would be roughly $37 billion Tsatsiki plunchons, the currency of my home country. Where would this money purchase more women, in Dubai or Zambia? Which country in your opinion features hotter women who are more skilled in the arts of oral relief.

Beenie, I hope you can reply to me quickly, before you die?

Your new best friend,
Me!

Stay tuned ....

Got one friend who sends out about 5 email "forwards" per day. I'd tell him to take me off his list except every now and then he strikes gold.

Invitation to the George W. Bush Library

You are cordially invited to the upcoming official pre-inauguration of the George W. Bush Presidential 'Hall of Shame' Library at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, which includes:

The Hurricane Katrina Room, which is still under construction.

The Alberto Gonzales Room, where you won't be able to remember anything.

The Texas Air National Guard Room, where you don't even have to show up.

The Walter Reed Hospital Room, where they don't let you in.

The Guantanamo Bay Room, where they don't let you out.

The National Debt Room, which is humongous and has no ceiling.

The Tax Cut Room with entry restricted only to the wealthy.

The Airport Men's Room, where you can meet some of your favorite Republican Senators.

The Economy Room, which is in the toilet.

The Iraq War Room. After you complete your first tour, they make you to go back for a second, third, fourth, and sometimes fifth tour.

The Mission Accomplished Room with an effigy of President Bush in an aviator suit on an aircraft carrier deck with a portrait of 'What Me Worry' Alfred E. Neuman behind him.

The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, complete with shotgun gallery.

The Environmental Conservation Room, still empty, but very warm.

The Supreme Court Gift Shop, where you can buy an election.

The Sorry room with the names of the hundreds of thousands of people killed, maimed and displaced in Iraq.

The Wall Street Room listing the executives, government officials and politicians that have plunged the U.S. and the World into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of eighty years ago.

The Defense Contractors Room who through their Republican Party donations and connections received and wasted billions of taxpayer dollars in non-bid military contracts.

The Rogues Gallery Room of indicted and convicted criminal Republican politicians.

The Health Care Industry Room extolling the profits of Providers at the expense of 50 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance plus the names of the millions of families that have been bankrupted by the Health Care Industry.

The Shredding of the Constitution Room where our tri-cameral form of government, individual liberties and civil rights were assaulted.

The Torture Room with a live demonstration of 'waterboarding' and images projected of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo which became recruiting tools for Islamic Terrorists.

There is also a Weapons of Mass Destruction Room, but no one has yet been able to find it.

Additionally, the museum will have an electron microscope to help you locate the President's accomplishments.

This pisses me off ....

F-Listed's Newest Snatch Talker, Sabrina C!

Why, because in the little crappy interview to hype this new writer, they ask the question, "What song best describes you in a nutshell and why?" She responds, "I Touch Myself by Blondie, 'nuff said."

I posted a comment, nicely, not being a wise-ass, correcting that.

They updated the article, replacing Blondie with Divinyls. And deleted my comment.

Sleazy assholes.

(And why do I spend time looking at web sites like that? Nice pictures.)

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

Well, for whatever it's worth, they did publish my second comment "thanking" them for not publishing the first one. So I'll withdraw the sleazy assholes bit and just say that they're sleazy, but in a good way.

Last night attempted to watch Sukiyaki Western Django. Directed by insane Japanese auteur Takashi Miike (Audition, Ichi - well. according to IMDB, he's directed 78 films in 17 years), this is a spaghetti western that takes place in 19th century Japan, with Japanese actors speaking heavily accented English. I actually enjoyed the prologue, shot on a sound stage with a heavily stylized background. And for once, I didn't mind the presence of Quentin Tarantino (he's just in the prologue) - love him as a director but watching him onscreen usually makes me cringe. Anyway, past the prologue, into a Yojimbo like plot (one character even mentions that Kurosawa classic by name) and despite the weirdness, I had trouble staying awake. I think Miike started losing me around the time of Happiness of the Katakuris (which was the Sound of Music - if the main characters were serial killers) and this does nothing to bring me back into the fold again.

Tonight we went to see the new Bond film, Quantum of Solace, not just the worst Bond title but also the worst Bond theme song (by Jack White and Alicia Keys) and the worst credit sequence. I note that the film only scores 66% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes (and only 35% from the "top critics") but I liked it overall. It's nowhere near as good as Casino Royale but Olga Kurylenko is a very sexy Bond girl, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini and Jeffrey Wright have their good moments and the film moves quickly. Then again, villain Mathieu Amalric may be a respected actor in France but looking at him I just kept thinking Roman Polanski. And the ending lacks the kind of satisfying emotional pay-off one expects from this sort of film. It's entertaining but probably just a minor contribution to the Bond canon.

Here's the weirdest bit - the director, Marc Forster, his previous films? Kite Runner, Monster's Ball, Stranger Than Fiction. Not exactly the kind of CV that you'd think would lend itself to this sort of action vehicle, but he did a decent enough job.

I recall reading somewhere that at 106 minutes this is the shortest Bond film to date. I think it might have actually needed to be a bit longer but in the post-Bourne world I guess this is how they make them now. Okay, no Q, no Miss Moneypenny, gadgets are limited to huge computer touchscreens and Sony Ericcson phones (Sony owns MGM now) but ... no "Bond, James Bond" either (at least not that I recall). By grounding it so firmly in reality, in some ways it's the least James Bond film of the James Bond films. Well, it had the largest opening day for a Bond film in the US ($27 million, probably $70 million for the weekend - #2 is Die Another Day, which had a $47 million opening)(plus it already grossed $160 million internationally) so there will be another one in 2 or 3 years, as if there was ever any doubt.

Mathematician and novelist Manil Suri was born and raised in India, but he's also lived in the US and France. He returned to India to cook a French meal for his family. It didn't go well.

My cousin and her husband arrived with my aunt just as I was putting out the Camembert. “It smells even worse than it looks,” my mother declared and refused to touch it. My father, who relished the Laughing Cow processed cheese wedges I occasionally brought as a treat, was more game. Ever since I had arrived, his knees had been so swollen with arthritis that he couldn’t get up, so I cut a piece and brought it to him. He chewed it once, then literally leapt out of bed and ran to the sink to spit it out. The sound of his furious gargling ensured that none of the other guests dared a taste.

And it's all downhill from there. Read the rest.

Also in the NY Times food section ....

Review of Season 5 Episode 1 of Top Chef. This year they're in NYC.

Mark Bittman on the future of fish. It ain't looking good and that's not just because Chinese fish feed contains melamine.

Also just added Remember the Milk's iPhone app. The web version is free, the iPhone version is only free for 15 days, then you have to upgrade to a "pro" account for US$25 per year. But I haven't come across any other task management program that offers so many options. Including syncing or linking with Gmail, Twitter, Blackberry, Google Calendar ... plus a variety of 3rd party plugins.

On Friday at work, couldn't remember my password. Unfortunately, the password was stored as a note in Outlook and of course I couldn't get to Outlook without being logged in. Duh. So for a password mgmt program, I've just put mSecure on my iPhone. 256 bit encryption and almost infinitely configurable - go with a bunch of pre-defined data types (credit card, web login, frequent flyer card, bank, etc.) or create your own. The only negative here is that if my iPhone is lost or destroyed, the only way I can get the data back is to buy a new iPhone and restore the back-up. I've been in touch with the developers and they tell me they're working on a desktop app that will directly sync with the iPhone. (Yes, I know there are others that do this already, but seems like mSecure is cheaper ... $2.99 for mSecure iPhone app, $9.99 for SplashID iPhone app.)

Well, gonna try yet again to get some sleep ....

In the U.S., Sun is laying off 6,000 employees. Intel, Nokia, Cisco and others have issued warnings that revenue is plummeting.

And in Hong Kong .....

Tai Lin, a chain of electronics stores that's been in business for more than 60 years, is shutting down. They sold tickets to their clearance sale, to be held at branches in Kwun Tong and Jordan this weekend. "Lucky" customers are allowed 15 minutes and a maximum of 3 items.

Hard Rock Cafe is closing this month. They say they plan to re-open with two new shops next year, when they expect rents to be significantly lower.

ATV has laid off 47 staff.

Lane Crawford has laid off 100, 10% of their staff.

Hong Kong is officially in a recession - 2 consecutive quarters of economic contraction.

Thanks Donald Tsang for your swift and effective actions to turn this around. As if.
=================
Correction: Tai Lin gave the tickets away. Some people who got the tickets put them up for sale on the net.

(the above picture has nothing to do with the rest of this post, I just wanted to share it, stolen from The Blemish, yes that is Sean John P Diddy Puff Daddy, who by the way has just put out a new mens cologne called I Am King)

One of the things about Hong Kong you always hear is how many restaurants it has, tens of thousands. What you rarely hear is that many of them seriously suck. You can do pretty well with a hole in the wall joint and stand decent odds with a place where a meal costs what an average HKer earns in a week. It's the middle ground where things get shaky.

75% of the places around here don't offer English menus. A good 25% of them represent Chinese attempts to ruin other foreign cuisines - Chinese Thai, Chinese Vietnamese, Chinese Japanese, Chinese Korean - all of it cheap and awful.

Then there's McD, KFC, Oliver's (ahem) Super Sandwich. A few lunch box places that are cheap 'n cheerful but their limited selection rapidly grows old. A few hole in the wall places where you get to sit on a cheap plastic stool 3 inches above the floor and the tables are so close together that you sit in each other's laps, not exactly a relaxing mid day respite from the daily drudge.

I've worked in the same place for more than 7 years and that means I'm so bored to death with the available lunchtime choices that I mostly eat in the same place every day. The food ain't great but "everybody knows my name" and I can smoke.

But sometimes I go out with co-workers and they invariably make regretable choices.

Today's case in point. Simply Life Bakery Cafe.

Me to two of my colleagues: Where are we having lunch today?

Them: Simply Life.

Me: (shuddering just at the name) That's the name of a restaurant? What do they serve?

Them: Fusion.

Me: (shaking) What about Indian buffet?

Them: Too spicy. The Korean place?

Me: And pay $70 for a plate of sinew and gristle? Wait, I know, let's all go to Macau for lunch, I'll pay.

Nope, I was outvoted and we went to City Plaza and experienced the horror of Simply Life.

Actually the baguettes in the window looked quite nice. Perhaps sticking with baked goods is the way to go here. But we went with the set lunch menu.

"Special iced tea" turned out to be crysanthemum tea with way too much sweetener.

The starter salad was served with a topping of corn flakes. I shit you not.

The "classic beef cheeseburger with Italian bacon" was without a doubt the most tasteless hamburger that had ever entered my mouth. The meat literally had less taste than the chemical concoction pushed by McDonalds. The "bacon" seemed like standard Oscar Meyer, half a strip cut into two tiny pieces. The cheese? Saw it but never tasted it. The bun was nice. Served with a bowl of thick cut fries that managed to be neither crispy nor soggy and also a very thick slick of slightly grilled onion and another very thick slice of slightly grilled tomato - the onion and tomato together were thicker than the burger.

One of my colleagues made the mistake of ordering lamb shank with rice. I considered that to be a case of reckless optimism, thinking that in a $62 set lunch she was going to get a quality piece of meat and sure enough, after two bites she pronounced it inedible and went to work on my fries.

Time Out HK reviews the branch of Simply Life at Festival Walk and gave them 2 out of a possible 6 stars. I think they were being overly generous.

Excuse me, I need to go purge.

or maybe someone already has?

I went to Asiaworld last night to see Billy Joel. As I may have mentioned before, the last time I saw him live was circa '73 or '74 when I was working concert security for Don Law in Boston. Joel played the Orpheum Theatre. Piano Man had just been released. Joel didn't like the piano and slammed the cover down after about 3 songs, saying something about having worked too long to put up with this shit, and stormed off stage. He came back out 10 minutes later to finish the set. Not the best introduction.

Now it's 35 years later. Closing in on 60, he's now bald with a small goatee, dressed in a black suit and black t-shirt and introduces himself as "Billy Joel's dad." On some levels he's reportedly unhappy, something that his monthly drunken car crashes a few years back would attest to. He's never possessed the same skill at writing lyrics that he has for composing catchy melodies, he's never earned the critical respect that he thinks he deserved and I guess that's why on some levels he's given up - he hasn't done an album of new material (with the exception of an all-but-ignored instrumental classical-ish album) in 15 years; he's an oldies act now. But with a tightly rehearsed 7 piece band, if nothing else, he knows how to put on a good show. The two hour set had the almost sold-out crowd on their feet, screaming for more, even after 3 encores.

Billy Joel isn't going the Bob Dylan route. Dylan never sings a song the same way twice, Joel strives to recreate the sounds and arrangements of his albums even if some of his songs are desperately crying out to be rethought. Why does he still need to dig out a harmonica for Piano Man? Because that's what the fans expect and that's what he delivers. He even apologized before singing Zanzibar, telling the audience he was sorry it wasn't a hit single but that it was fun to play.

He seemed happy and was talking far more between songs than most artists I've seen here. He offered a "doh tse" and a "lei ho ma" after the second song (as opposed to Mick Jagger, who a few years back haltingly stuttered "xie xie" asking if that was right) and even a "joi gin" (sorry if my pinyin sucks) as he left the stage for the final time, first shaking the hands of almost everyone in the front row and doing some kung fu posing. He delivered a well played, solid, dependable set that, as I said, left the crowd stomping for more.

There was also one of the oddest moments I've ever seen in a big concert setting. 75 minutes into the show, Joel got up from the piano, strapped on a guitar, and moved away from the spotlight, brought the guitar roadie "Chainsaw" to center stage, told us if we didn't like it we could "kick his ass off stage," after which said guitar roadie sang a full version of "Highway to Hell." It was so unexpected (I don't read concert reviews so no idea if this is a staple of his current set) and so inappropriate that you had to love it and indeed, the audience did.

I had a good time and my gf absolutely loved every second of it. Next up, Kraftwerk on December 5th, though my gf is lobbying for me to get tix for Kylie and I'm also debating Manic Street Preachers.

Vanity Fair: Wall Street Lays Another Egg

This year we have lived through something more than a financial crisis. We have witnessed the death of a planet. Call it Planet Finance. Two years ago, in 2006, the measured economic output of the entire world was worth around $48.6 trillion. The total market capitalization of the world’s stock markets was $50.6 trillion, 4 percent larger. The total value of domestic and international bonds was $67.9 trillion, 40 percent larger. Planet Finance was beginning to dwarf Planet Earth.

Planet Finance seemed to spin faster, too. Every day $3.1 trillion changed hands on foreign-exchange markets. Every month $5.8 trillion changed hands on global stock markets. And all the time new financial life-forms were evolving. The total annual issuance of mortgage-backed securities, including fancy new “collateralized debt obligations” (C.D.O.’s), rose to more than $1 trillion. The volume of “derivatives”—contracts such as options and swaps—grew even faster, so that by the end of 2006 their notional value was just over $400 trillion. Before the 1980s, such things were virtually unknown. In the space of a few years their populations exploded. On Planet Finance, the securities outnumbered the people; the transactions outnumbered the relationships.

New institutions also proliferated. In 1990 there were just 610 hedge funds, with $38.9 billion under management. At the end of 2006 there were 9,462, with $1.5 trillion under management. Private-equity partnerships also went forth and multiplied. Banks, meanwhile, set up a host of “conduits” and “structured investment vehicles” (sivs—surely the most apt acronym in financial history) to keep potentially risky assets off their balance sheets. It was as if an entire shadow banking system had come into being.

New York Times: Sparring Starts as Republicans Ponder Future

This is hardly the first party to have been left sapped and divided by a losing presidential campaign. But the scale of the party’s difficulties appears particularly daunting as the Bush era seems to be ending and no obvious leader is waiting in the wings.
.....
The most important question for Republicans in both the House and the Senate — and for the future Republican chairman — is how forcefully to take on Mr. Obama once he becomes president. Richard N. Bond, a former Republican chairman, said he thought the Congressional Republicans would — and should — take on Mr. Obama aggressively. Mr. Bond suggested that Republicans should not be deterred by the enthusiasm inspired by Mr. Obama’s election, which he argued would be transitory.
....
“I think the party should be very selective,” [Newt Gingrich] said. “We’ve had an election. The new president and his family should be in our prayers. We should give every indication that we will work with him when we can. But we should be comfortable disagreeing with him when we have to.”

Who would have thought we'd reach a point where Newt Gingrich seems to be the most reasonable voice in the Republican party. This probably represents early days for Gingrich 2012. But Bond's approach may be more typical of what we can expect in the next few years - rather than both parties working together to try to fix the huge problems facing the U.S., attack for the sake of attacking, party before country, attempt to create two years in which nothing happens so that Republicans can regain control of Congress, power for the sake of power.

Tech Crunch: Google Adds Voice and Video Chat to Gmail

Okay, so Lindsay Lohan is excited that America has its first "colored president." And she has no movie career left. And she's straight. Or she's gay. Or she's bi. She's still hot.

But first, an old joke ....

An old American guy goes to Hong Kong, gets off the plane, is met at the gate by his tour guide. "Welcome to Hong Kong, Mr. Stein. I imagine you must be tired after your long flight. Shall I take you to your hotel so you can get some rest?"

"No, Mr. Wong! I've dreamed about this trip my entire life, I've saved for this trip my entire life, I want to get started right away! I love Chinese culture, I love Chinese food, and the first thing I want you to do is to bring me to the most popular restaurant in Hong Kong!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!!!!!"

So Mr. Wong shrugged his shoulders and brought Mr. Stein to McDonald's.

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

I needed a quick lunch today at 3 PM. A KFC just opened about a block away from my office so I figured I'd give it a try. I may have to call for an ambulance soon.

In 1993, I spent 9 months working on a project at Pepsi's global headquarters. At the time, Pepsi owned KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, so there was a lot of that at the employee cafeteria, at deeply discounted prices. (We also got all the Pepsi products we could drink for free. At the time, Pepsi was also the US distributor of Stolichnaya, but we didn't get that, as much as we could have used it on that messy project.) I mention this because once in a while I'd eat KFC and it seemed reasonably okay. But I can't recall the last time I went to one - several years at least.

So I ordered something I vaguely remembered, the Zinger, a sandwich with an ostensibly spicy coating. As it turns out, the side dish that accompanied this was not fries, not mashed potatoes, not corn, it was a chicken leg. One of the smallest chicken legs I'd ever seen, slightly larger than pigeon sized. Under the, ahem, Colonel's favorite batter was this dried out, sinewy piece of blech. The Zinger wasn't much better - beyond the lettuce, tomato, Russian dressing and sort of spicy batter was a greasy, tasteless blob of chicken (I think it was chicken).

People like this stuff? Why?

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

Another thing I don't understand. I get a free email account from Google that gives me 7 gigs of space, growing every day, free. Yahoo and Hotmail also give out huge allowances for free accounts. My place of business, Miracle Pictures ("If it's a good picture, it's a Miracle!") provides me with a whopping 200 megs of space for email. Just think about receiving dozens of emails per day, most with attachments. That 200 meg gets used up fast.

As you start to approach that meager limit, you get daily automated warnings. Eventually, your mail box is shut off, no new messages can be delivered until you get below the limit again.

We oughta migrate our corporate email to Gmail. Probably in the long run a lot cheaper than the dozens of specialists we need to employ in order to deal with crappy Microsoft Exchange Server.

The long trip home ... because the trip was booked using miles I had limited options on flights. So first, LaGuardia airport to Toronto, then a 5 hour lay-over in Toronto, followed by the 17 or 18 hour direct flight to Hong Kong.

When I checked in at LGA, American told me my bags were checked through all the way to Hong Kong. So when I arrived in Toronto, I just dashed through immigration and customs to get outside and have a smoke. Two hours later, when the Cathay Pacific counter opened, even though I had my boarding pass, I stood on line to get a lounge invitation card (CX doesn't have their own lounge in Toronto so I had to find out who they were sharing with). I was then told, guess what!, that I was supposed to claim my bags in Toronto and go through customs and re-check them. American Airlines lied. Except, the CX guy told me, this happens every day, so CX had gone and claimed my bags, processed them through customs and re-checked them for me. So I was spared having to pay money for a push cart (Canada, like the US, seems to charge for what every airport in Asia gives you for free) and push around my luggage for hours. Can't really complain about that and, as it happens, when I arrived in HK (4:30 AM landing), my bags were the first ones on the belt. If I'm ever forced to travel this route again, I think I'll just trust American Airlines again.

My final days in New York continued to be consumed with thoughts about where I should live. While it's a bit premature, now that Obama's won, I'm starting to feel like the US could be my country again, and I haven't felt that way in more than a decade. With my job situation so up in the air, I was thinking, okay, New York is unrelenting grey and 40 years of mostly bad memories, but there are nicer places I could target - San Diego? (good weather and just a short hop to Tijuana) Hawaii! Austin, Texas - be right there for SxSW every year?

And then I got home and took a look out the window and saw this:



I'm home.

I've just finished reading Heat by Bill Buford. It was sitting on my bookshelf for awhile, I'd tossed it into my bag for this trip and once I started it, I found it next to impossible to put down.

Buford was the fiction editor at New Yorker magazine. After doing a profile of Mario Batali and becoming friends with him, Buford did a remarkable thing. He quit his job at the magazine and apprenticed (for no pay) in Batali's kitchen for more than a year. The more he learned, the more he realized how little he knew. So he learned to speak Italian and moved to Italy and apprenticed with true artisans, masters of pasta and meat. The butcher he studies with is a tempermental, Dante and Elvis quoting sixth generation butcher (and the episode where Buford and that butcher go to a nearby restaurant and proceed to demoralize and practically demolish the owner is worthy of Monty Python. Not to forget about the last chapter, a dinner with Batali that includes more than 30 different appetizers and a helluva lot of wine and Buford's wife admonishing Batali to finish his wine or she's going to smear shrimp all over his chest.)

While he never explicitly says it, what runs throughout the entire book is Buford's realization that in order to understand what it takes to be a great chef, a great butcher, a great pasta maker, he has to understand the person doing it and not just what they're doing. And that's where his mastery as a writer kicks in, as he delves into not just food histories but biographies and analyses of the people he's working with. The result is dramatic, emotional and in some ways even inspirational.

Plus, it seemed to me that I was learning far more about the daily workings of a professional kitchen than I did in Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential because Heat gives it to you from the unique perspective of a slave or "kitchen bitch" who also happens to be a terrific writer.

Buford was clearly obsessed to embark on a young man's mission (16+ hour days on your feet by a hot stove day after day after day) while in his forties and I don't feel any desire to follow in his footsteps. But I do feel inspired to take more notice of what I'm eating, think about what went into making the food and even to be a bit more ambitious about the meals that I make for myself at home.

I strongly recommend this book to any of my readers who eat.

(picture stolen from BoingBoing)

Yes, that adorable kid is probably happy because of the news. The news that copies of Wednesday's New York Times are selling for up to US$300 on eBay.

Today visited the new Apple store on 14th Street and 9th Avenue, the old meatpacking district. They're in an old warehouse building, occupying all three floors, they ripped out the insides and totally redid the place. The third floor is entirely devoted to the Genius bar, people making appointments and coming in and getting assistance with their computers. I bought a few odds and ends, approached a clerk on the floor to ask where I paid, and she said if I was paying with a credit card, she could do it. She whipped a handheld device from a holster, scanned the bar codes, swiped my credit card, and then asked if she needed to print out the receipt or if she could just send to me by email.

Then I walked around that area, looking at the expensive shops and restaurants that have opened up around there.

Such a dichotomy. The way this neighborhood has been reclaimed and beautified, but only for the benefit of those who can afford the gentrification. The streets are still broken up and in bad need of repair even has hundred year old warehouses are converted into shopping malls, condos and modern offices. At the end of the day, the streets are also piled with garbage bags and businesses put them out for collection. Half the street lights are out. It's High Street and Third World at the same time. It's not a pretty picture.

My mother loves this time of year because it's when the trees are changing colors. And wooded areas here are a gorgeous riot of color (sorry, no opportunity to take photos as I should have done because it's all been viewed from a moving car). But the city itself is grey. Grey skies and grey faces on people as they hunker down for the approaching winter, a season I am glad to have escaped.

Dinner with a friend at a horrendously inauthentic Thai restaurant that he suggested. We had an open view towards the street and every few minutes or so I'd see some attractive woman walk by but of course in New York I'm the invisible man.

This friend, btw, is someone who was born in HK but emigrated to the US 9 years ago with his wife. He says he now feels that he hates Asia and never wants to leave New York, just as I hate New York and never want to leave Asia.

As we walked around the Chelsea district, he mentioned that if he was to live in Manhattan, he'd love to live in this area but probably couldn't afford it. And this is someone who is a VP at an investment bank and who owns his own home in Westchester County.

He wanted to know if I'd considered moving back to the US given the current instability in my workplace. My mailbox actually fills up every day with details of open positions in the US that I could conceivably qualify for, but I still can't imagine moving back to the US, even to someplace a bit sunnier than NYC. I do confess that I look at the specs for these jobs and feel a twinge or a pang or something. But I delete all of them without replying.

But would I still feel that way if I was out of work and the only job I could get in HK was as a HK$30k per month bar manager versus a CIO position in the US? I think I'd need massive quantities of drugs and alcohol to get through it.

Ah well. No need to answer these questions immediately. One and a half more days here, and then the 24 hour trip back home. (I'm stuck with a 5 hour layover in Toronto.)

Don't mean to be all morose and weepy, just another late night post cause I can't sleep and this is how I get late at night but most of you already know that.

Did you vote for McCain? Check this voting chart from IanUnderCover:

Oddly enough, another post from the same web site makes the claim that Sarah Palin probably voted for Obama - apparently she's superstitious and never votes for herself.

Newsweek has an upcoming series called Secrets of the 2008 campaign. A preview is available online now. Among other things, it will highlight that Sarah Palin didn't know Africa is a continent. Some other revelations:

McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.

The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. "Why would they try to make people hate us?" Michelle asked a top campaign aide.

On the night she officially lost the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a long and friendly phone conversation with McCain. Clinton was actually on better terms with McCain than she was with Obama. Clinton and McCain had downed shots together on Senate junkets; they regarded each other as grizzled veterans of the political wars and shared a certain disdain for Obama as flashy and callow.

At the GOP convention in St. Paul, Palin was completely unfazed by the boys' club fraternity she had just joined. One night, Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter went to her hotel room to brief her. After a minute, Palin sailed into the room wearing nothing but a towel, with another on her wet hair. She told them to chat with her laconic husband, Todd. "I'll be just a minute," she said.

Last night I went out for dinner with the guy who was my boss in New York circa 1994. He's one of the few bosses I ever had who possesses an intellect that I could respect, combined with common sense and a drive to do the right thing for his people - which is one reason that we remain friends 14 years later.

Every time we meet he always chooses the same restaurant - a really old school Spanish place in Greenwich Village. So I'm still somewhat jetlagged but I did allow myself a few glasses of sangria with dinner. (I haven't had sangria in eons and forgot how much I like it.)

Anyway, after dinner, we're standing outside of the restaurant, smoking, talking a little while longer. He's 63 years old and in good health but he had a serious health scare recently. And he started giving me a very detailed, blow by blow account of what he went through. It's a very scary tale because he was feeling fine but the doctors saw things on his chart they didn't like. Had he followed their advice, he would have ended up getting open heart surgery, but he was smart enough to say "hey, wait a minute, what you're telling me makes no sense," got additional opinions, took things slowly, and he's fine now.

The odd thing is, as his story progressed, I started feeling as if I was going to pass out. Okay, some wine combined with jetlag may have played into it but usually I'm not someone who has trouble with gory details. But as we stood there, I started feeling this wave passing over my body, something beyond extreme exhaustion. I had to interrupt him and tell him what was going on. He suggested that we go back into the restaurant, but it was crowded and noisy and I didn't think that would help. It was raining so I couldn't just sit on a stoop but I figured my car was parked one block away and that I could make it that far.

I almost didn't. We got about halfway there and I found myself looking for a dry bit of pavement. But there was none so I stumbled the rest of the way, unlocked the car, collapsed into the front seat. I was busy thinking to myself - sleep in the car for an hour? Leave it there, take a taxi home, come back and get it the next day? But as we sat and talked, the weakness passed. After 30 minutes I was okay to drive back to my mother's place.

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

I had a few hours to walk around Manhattan yesterday and will have some more time today. Didn't buy much even though I did go into some of the few stores that remain from "the old days." I would have taken some pictures but it was raining most of the time.

Another age thing - there are several stores along Broadway between 8th Street and Houston featuring, for want of a better word, hip hop fashion. They had some truly outrageous looking stuff, t shirts, sweats, jackets, very stylized designs. I found myself admiring quite a few things. And I grabbed a few, stood in front of a mirror, held them up, and saw a 54 year old man trying to look hip and failing horribly. I put them back. Sigh.

On MacDougal Street, I went into a jewelry shop called C'est Magnifique. There was a heavily tattooed guy in the back cleaning jewelry. I said to him, "I know this sounds odd, but I bought a ring in this shop 37 years ago and I can't believe the shop is still here!" He smiled broadly and said, "And it's still owned by the same family! Welcome back!" I described the ring to him (a medical prosthetic eye in a sterling silver setting which I still have), told him it was my "high school graduation ring" and asked if they still sell ones like that. He told me the price of prosthetic eyes has drastically increased over the years so they don't stock them any more but can do special order. We discussed some possible settings but he didn't have any actual examples to show me. So I said thanks, took some photos and left.

Seems like every street in the Village has at least two tattoo and body piercing shops on it. Every street.

Yeah, Gray's Papaya. Shit, again I feel old - two of the best hot dogs on the planet and a grape drink used to cost a buck. Now it's $4.45. And the hot dog is half the size. But still "tastier than filet mignon." Tomorrow I need a slice of NYC pizza. From Ray's. Or Famous Ray's. Or Ray Bari's. Or Famous Ray Bari's. Or Original Ray's. Or Original Famous Ray's. Well, one or the other.

New York City parking meters now accept credit cards. Using AmEx to pay $1 for an hour of street parking feels really wrong.

Looked in the windows of several shoe stores and debated a pair of cowboy boots. The ones I have no longer fit and sometimes you need boots. But they're expensive now and my luggage is already full. Next trip I suppose. Went looking for some retro rock t shirts but it seemed like all I saw was 20 different Dark Side of the Moon shirts and 10 different Ramones ones. Did get Joy Division, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Robert Johnson shirts.

Went into one of my old favorite CD shops on St. Marks Place. As I browsed, listened to the clerk telling some customer that he's known Sean Lennon for 12 years but they never have a conversation that isn't superficial, even though he makes a point never to mention his father, and concludes that after 12 years, if Sean Lennon doesn't want to have a substantial, meaningful conversation with a record store clerk, he must be a superficial asshole.

Lots of houses on side streets have Obama posters in the windows - and several have balloons tied up in front.

Over by 14th Street and 9th Avenue, wow has that area changed. It's the part of New York known as the Meatpacking District and it was once literally that. Then in the 80s and 90s the name took on a new meaning because at night it was filled with gay sex clubs and transvetite street walkers. Now it's all high end restaurants, shops and galleries, with a huge Apple Store right in the middle. It's not quite the chain store abomination that Times Square turned into, but it feels wrong.

But I still cannot bring myself to enjoy Manhattan any more except as a once a year tourist. The thought of me living there again makes me shudder.

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Got home by 9 PM. Tried to stay up at least till 11 but didn't make it, TV and lights off by 9:45 and awake at 5:30 - so 8 hours of sleep but still slightly askew. By the time I get completely adjusted it will be Saturday and time for me to board the plane back home.

Hong Kong doesn't offer the cultural or shopping choices of New York but it feels more like home to me than this place. Most of my New York is gone.

Well, I'm sure you could have guessed I'd have something to say on this topic.

Since I'm in New York at the moment, I had CNN on non-stop from about 4 in the afternoon. As polling closed and the numbers started coming in, I waited for the bad news that never came. As the projections piled up in Obama's favor, I breathed a sigh of relief.

(My 87 year old mother's reaction? "I never expected that there would be a black president in my lifetime. And I never expected that I'd vote for the black candidate. But they forced me to. I wanted Hilary but she's not running and I can't vote for McCain.")

At 10, I switched over to Indecision 2008, Stewart & Colbert, but I was tired and they weren't playing at the top of their game. So by 10:30 TV off and asleep.

Woke up around 5 and of course went to the computer to check that what I saw when I went to sleep was real and sure enough, a decisive victory for Obama as we all know by now. Far ahead in the popular vote and the electoral college, there is no way for the Republicans to try to steal this one like they did the one in '00. Percentage-wise, voter turnout was the highest in perhaps 100 years, so a victory for democracy in many ways.

Obama's victory is historic in so many ways. And I hope it represents at least a temporary respite from Karl Rove smear tactics, a repudiation of the dirty flip-flopping campaign that McCain ran, of the supreme insult of him putting a joke like Sarah Palin on the ticket. (Though it seems probable that she will be at least a contender in 2012.)

Come January, there will be inauguration parties that will for once feature good music. And then the work begins - unraveling 8 years in which Republicans tried to dismantle the Constitution, tried to make torture acceptable, tried to erase habeus corpus and all but destroyed the US economy.

Still watching the Senate race in Minnesota. Al Franken is running inches behind incumbent Norm Coleman, with 16% of the vote syphoned off to a 3rd party candidate. With 2.5 million votes cast and 99% counted, Franken and Coleman are separated by only about 700 votes. Whichever way this goes, there's sure to be a recount.

I don't quite get Biden simultaneously running for VP and re-election for his Senate seat - he won the latter but obviously won't be serving in that position.

And convicted criminal Ted Stevens is maintaining a slight lead in Alaska, the goofball state that thought nutjob Palin made an acceptable governor.

New Hampshire kicked out Sununu. North Carolina gave the boot to Elizabeth Dole.

All in all, not a bad night.

I'm in New York now, more specifically The Bronx.

Thank goodness I was able to fly here on Cathay Pacific and not an American airline. I had a plane with their new business class seats - each compartment almost totally isolated from the others (not a bad thing as it seemed the only cute women on the flight aside from the stewardesses were in economy). 15 inch TV screens offering more than 100 movies and 350 TV series episodes so no shortage of entertainment. Staff that is helpful and attractive. A nice salad with lightly seared slices of decent grade tuna (and plenty of it), later followed with a couple of glasses of a French Pinot Noir to help me sleep. Reading Bill Buford's "Heat" on the plane - it sat on my bookshelf for a year and now I'm sorry I waited so long to get to it, it's a great piece of food journalism with more inside info than Kitchen Confidential (the chapter on Marco Pierre White is one to read and read again and maybe come back to yet again a few months later).

My mother has lived in the same apartment for the past 13 years (she lived in the previous one for almost 40 years). She lives across the street from two high schools - Bronx High School of Science and DeWitt Clinton (which I briefly attended). Her place is not in walking distance of anything else. At 87 years old, she's still in good enough physical shape (mental shape debatable) to own and drive a car - a ten year old Toyota Corolla with 21,000 miles on it. (Yeah, she drives 2,000 miles per year, mostly to and from the supermarket.)

My first day here .... lunch at a kosher deli, stuffing myself with halfway decent pastrami and a potato knish and a decent all-beef hotdog in natural casing properly grilled so it had a nice amount of snap when you bite into it. Then over to that great American shrine, Costco, where I remain astounded by the infinite varieties of product names "extending their brand," as well as prices on books and DVDs that are even cheaper than Amazon, although the selection is relatively lame. But bargains like half a dozen sweat sox for 5 bucks cannot be ignored. Hmmmm .... a one terabyte Western Digital MyBook for US$179, do I want to fiddle with voltage converters if I bring a few back home? Maybe not.

Anyway, I'd ordered a ton of stuff from Amazon and the Amazon marketplace last week, and small packages will be arriving daily, hopefully everything I've ordered will show up before I leave on Saturday. I could have ordered the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 - when I checked over the weekend Amazon actually had a few pieces still in stock. The camera is intriguing and the initial reviews online have all been raves but the price - US$800, not a good time for me to be spending that kind of money on a toy.

Back to my mom's place where she has about 1,000 channels on the TV. But day time it's deadly. The broadcast networks still fill up their time with Maury and Jerry Springer and Ellen and Dr. Phil and a thousand different court shows (how is Judge Judy still on the air?), while the cable networks fill the schedules with endless recycling - the Travel Channel was showing Anthony Bourdain ALL DAY while Bravo had repeats of Top Chef looping. Verizon is now offering fiber optic to the home - the ads don't say what internet speed that offers but it must be quick since they're offering downloads of HD movies on demand.

And tonight, awake since 3 AM, going through hulu.com, able to watch everything there at will and without fiddling with proxies.

Yet none of this stuff is attractive to me on anything other than a "once or twice a year for a few days is nice" basis. This is a good life I suppose for a family man or a hermit, someone who doesn't need or want to go out at will for a bit of excitement. I can live without a dozen varieties of Reese's Peanut Butter cups a lot more easily than I can live without Wanchai, Lan Kwai Fong or Soho right now.

The New York Comedy Festival is on - I won't be attending any of that.

Theatre a mixed bag - Harvey Fierstein in Hairspray. Patti LuPone in Gypsy. Young Frankenstein. Arthur Miller's All My Sons with John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest. David Mamet's American Buffalo with John Leguizamo, Cedric the Entertainer and Haley Joel Osment? (yikes) Mindgame, directed by Ken Russell and starring Keith Carradine. The musical version of Billy Elliott with a score by Elton John. A musical version of Boeing Boeing with Greg Germann and Gina Gershon. Daniel Radcliffe in Equus. Frank Langella in A Man for All Seasons. Peter Sarsgaard and Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull. Monty Python's Spamalot - starring Clay Aiken? Jeremy Piven and Elizabeth (Mad Men) Moss in Speed the Plow.

Music choices for Monday night, always a slow night - Black Crowes, Flobots, Denny Laine (!?), Phil Lesh & Friends (14 nights at the "Nokia Theatre"), Sisters of Mercy, Dave Allen, Mingus Dynasty, Kevn Kinney, a "get out the vote" party featuring Joss Stone, Robert Randolph and ?uestlove.

The great restaurants that are here, the famous chefs, the gastronomic experiences - but just try to get a table at any of these places.

And of course museums, galleries, a lifestyle of cultural alternatives not even remotely available in a backwater town like Hong Kong.

But maybe a movie if I have the time - Synecdoche New York or Zack & Miri Make a Porno?

But living in Manhattan is too expensive, going out to this stuff is also too expensive to do on a nightly basis. Getting to Manhattan from almost any suburb requires driving for an hour and then spending another hour looking for a parking spot or paying a lot for a garage. (Regardless of what anyone says, thanks to experiences from decades ago, I will not trust NYC public transit after dark.) So you end up not doing it.

In Hong Kong, it's easy to go out. Everything is near everything else, parking is easy and taxis are cheap but the choices are so much less.

There really is no perfect place, as I and others have said dozens of times before. So you pays yer money and you takes yer choice and I've chosen to be in HK for 11 years so far. Sometimes I wonder how that choice will look to me when I look back at it in another few years.

Yeah, this is what happens when I blog at 5 AM.

Lots of people flew into HK for the weekend to watch a rugby game between Australia and New Zealand. Kind of a mini version of HK 7s madness I suppose.

Check out the crowd in front of Delaneys:


Here's Spicy Finger.

And looking down towards Mes.


All of the other bars were similarly packed.


Oh, the empty floor between Bulldogs and Tai Ji now has a sign announcing "Traffik" bar and disco opening soon. So that ain't gonna be the new Fenwick home, unless they're also changing their name?

Anyway, off to New York tonight, blogging may be light for the next week.

Driving home tonight, I stopped for gas at a Caltex station. Caltex recently started a promotion, 10% off on gas if you use an HSBC credit card on Fridays (6% on other days). And even though the price has dropped recently, it's still quite high.

While the tank was filling, a young man approached my car to give me details on a Caltex credit card, the lure being a bigger than 10% discount on weekends if you use the card. Now most of the gas chains (petrol for those who speak British) in HK offer similar stuff, but only post signs about it in Chinese. Most don't have English language web sites either. So I was quite happy that Caltex decided to post an English speaking representative at a station.

He seemed to be quite excited that I was interested in signing up for the offer. So excited, in fact, that as he was talking to me, his gum slipped out of his mouth and into my car - fortunately landing on the floor and not on me. After I'd signed all the papers and he used a digital camera to photograph my ID card and license plate, I got out of my car, pointed and asked, "And now would you please remove my gum from your car?" which he did.

Chill, Winston.

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In other less than enthusiastic news, Led Zeppelin are about to announce plans to embark on a world wide reunion tour - one that I'm certain will not land in HK. Excited? Don't be.

It's Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones and deceased drummer John Bonham's son Jason. But there's no Robert Plant, who is continuing to tour behind his excellent "Raising Sand" album with Alison Krauss and says he'd rather look forward than back. The replacement vocalist looks set to be Myles Kennedy, who most recently was lead singer in a group called Alter Bridge and is now nicknamed "Who?"

Meanwhile Yes becomes the second major band to find a substitute lead singer by watching videos of tribute bands on YouTube. If this is a growing trend, it is one that I do not endorse. (As if anyone cares.)

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Not many comments on my camera query but I'll mention that I decided to go for the Canon G10 after all. I looked at the two recent Ixus ones and decided that each represented major compromises over the functionality and features of the G10 and that while the G10 may not be pocket sized, it's small enough.

Tomorrow I'll start playing with it.

And now it's time for our daily MILF:

40 something year old Elle Macpherson