Since my previous post on Sheung Wan restaurants seems to have been well-received, I figure a similar post on dining spots in Sai Kung is in order.  If you don’t live in the area, you might think that Sai Kung is only those waterfront seafood restaurants but actually OpenRice lists 299 restaurants in the Sai Kung district.  Most are in Sai Kung Town, but not all.  This is just a rundown of the ones I’ve eaten in.  Note that I have not eaten in some of Sai Kung’s more famous restaurants, such as Loaf On and Anthony’s Kitchen and One Thirty-One.  One of these days …

Honeymoon Dessert – Yes, they’re all over town but if I’m not mistaken, this is their original location.  Every bit as good as you’ve heard, when the weather’s nice people are still lined up on the street waiting for a table at midnight!

Anthony’s Ranch - Anthony knows food (and I know Anthony, so take this with as many grains of salt as you wish).  Some of the best baby back ribs in HK, really good steaks, and what I’m sure are the best huevos rancheros to be found in Hong Kong (only on the breakfast menu but they’ll sometimes make them for other meals on request).  A bit on the expensive side for some items.

May’s Sawaddee Thailand – A bit confusing because there are three places in town with this name and at least one claims to have no relationship to the others.  Popular and reasonably okay Thai food.

Paisano’s – This is the original branch of what is in my opinion the best pizza in Hong Kong.  The owner, a former golf pro, is an Italian-American whose parents have pizza places back in the US.  He makes his dough and pasta fresh daily.

Pepperoni’s – I’ve been here several times but it’s been years since I’ve gone back.  It’s very Hong Kong-style pizza (wrong kind of dough, sauce too sweet), the other dishes are okay.  The owners of Pepperoni’s also own Jaspa’s, Wagyu and several other chains around town.

Jaspa’s – With branches in Soho and TST (and Saigon!), this is the first place that fills up in town on weekends and with good reason.  I’ve been coming here for 10 years and never had a bad meal.  Whatever you order comes with a huge amount of fresh greens.  And last time I was there, Moreton Bay Bugs were back on the menu!

Chuen Kee – I think there’s been some consolidation of ownership among the waterfront seafood restaurants.  For all I know, they might all be owned by just one or two people now.  If memory serves, this is the one that is listed in the Michelin guide.  Stay away from larger fish, lobster and more exotic choices and the price can be quite reasonable.  Beer is super cheap here and a great place to sit at night stuffing your face and watching the crowds stroll by. I’ve probably eaten at all the waterfront seafood places at one time or another, I’ll just list this one.

A.J.’s Sri Lankan Cuisine – I believe this is the only Sri Lankan place in Hong Kong.  R.J., the owner and chef, is really from Sri Lanka (the place is named for his son) and the food is consistently delicious.

Sawaddee Thailand – Okay, I see they’ve removed the “May’s” from the name of this location.  It’s a back alley place, cheap folding tables and plastic stools.  I think they’ve got the most authentic Thai in town.

Mr. Froyo – Nothing that really sets this apart from the other frozen yogurt shops in town except this is the only one in Sai Kung town and it’s quite nice. (Oops, there are two now.  This is the only one I’ve tried.)

Ali-Oli – If this isn’t the best bakery in Hong Kong, it certainly has to be in the top ten.  Aside from the cakes and fabulous breads, they set up tables outside now for sandwiches, salads, or just a cup of decent coffee with a croissant.

Hebe One O One – In a village house in Pak Sha Wan.  Readers of Sai Kung Magazine voted this their favorite Sai Kung restaurant last year.  Another consistent spot, it’s what I think of as Australian style.  Great grilled stuff and my gf swears by their apple crumble.  The ground floor bar area is filled with overstuffed old leather sofas and steamer trunks for tables, first floor a more traditional looking restaurant, rooftop bar.

Colour Brown – Yeah, we do have a Starbucks in town but why go there when we also have this gem?  Serious coffee, good sandwiches and cakes, a small place that’s impossible to get into on weekends but worth the wait.

Anthony’s Catch – Same owner as Anthony’s Ranch, this is mostly Italian-style seafood and they make their own pasta.  Expensive but quality stuff.

Fiesta Fiesta – An odd little place in the old part of town, they have some western dishes and some Filipino food.  And it’s the Filipino food that we go there for.

Ristorante Firenze – An Italian restaurant that appears to be owned and run by Indians.  Quite good.

Sauce – I think I’ve been here twice in 10 years.  It’s not bad, it’s just not as good as Jaspa’s in my opinion.

Steamer’s – A longtime Sai Kung favorite, a bar with half a dozen outdoor tables and some British and Indian style pub food.  Nothing exceptional but cheap & cheerful.

Classified – The Sai Kung branch of the popular HK chain has me on the fence.  Sometimes when I go here I really love it, other times it hasn’t quite lived up to my expectations.  On the whole though, I’m glad they’re here.

Sawaddee Thailand – This is the branch next to McDonald’s.  A couple of outdoor tables and usually busy.  My opinion is that the food is fairly average HK-style Thai.

Village Malaysian and Indian – I’ve been here twice and wanted to like it a whole lot more than I do.  Ground floor of a village house, they grow their own spices in their backyard, yet the two or three times I’ve been here it’s been less than inspiring.

Juicy J’s – Big British-style breakfast served all day in a tiny place, they also specialize in hot dogs with Japanese toppings.  Definitely different and the one time we were there it was quite okay.

Bacco – The upstairs portion of this bar is a branch of HK Indian favorite JoJo’s.  The one time I ate here, the biryani had what was obviously frozen vegetables in it, something I think is inexcusable in HK.

Agua Plus – It was Aqua Plus when they first opened, then it changed for some reason.  This was a hard luck location with two previous places not catching on here, but they’ve made a run of it.  Booze and outdoor seating, mostly, but the British pub grub and Indian curries are quite okay.

Occo – The Pepperoni’s/Jaspa’s folks shut down Cru, which I loved, and re-opened as Rocco, but then had to drop the R because there’s already a Rocco someplace else in town.  Been here once, it’s good, I miss Cru and don’t know why they felt impelled to change.

Ten Ku – See if you can follow this.  The sign outside says “Shushi”.  The listing on OpenRice calls them “Shsui”.  Whatever it is, I came here twice and doubt I’ll go back for a third try.

Wing Wo – There are actually two listings for this place in town (they have two shops, directly across from each other).  One listing says closed, the other says closed for renovation.  Either way, incredibly friendly staff, cheap prices but some of the worst dim sum I’ve ever had in Hong Kong.

Thai Ho – Actually I’ve never been here but each time I walk by I tell myself I need to try this place.  Maybe by listing it here I’ll remember next time!

There was a great small and cheap Vietnamese place in town that recently closed that we miss.  A couple of years back Dia, which I thought had the best Indian in town, got replaced by a Japanese “fusion” joint that I still haven’t tried.

For many, the center of food in Sai Kung is not the water front or the Man Yee Square, it’s the alley that runs between Fuk Man (yes, I know) Road and King Man Street.  There must be at least 20 different hole in the wall joints here, mostly HK style noodle joints, some little Thai places, all of them extremely cheap. most of them foreigner friendly, most of them quite good.

So there you go, 27 out of 299, obviously I still have quite a few places to try!

What places have I missed?  What are your favorite spots?

I’m coming up on one year working in the Sheung Wan district.  That’s following a year in which I worked in Cyberport, one of the worst places in all of Hong Kong for food.  Open Rice currently lists 496 restaurants in Sheung Wan so I suppose one might say I’m spoiled for choice now.  Sheung Wan is interesting in that much of “old Hong Kong” is still very visible.  However, the pace of gentrification is rapidly increasing, rents are going up, the neighborhood is changing almost daily before my eyes.  I thought some people might find it useful to know where I’ve gone for lunch and maybe even give a few recommendations in return.  Note that my office is not far from the MTR and Wing On and that I have a tendency to avoid walking up hill in the direction of Hollywood Road and Soho; I pretty much stay close to “home” for lunch. No food photos, no silly language about mouth feel or how some wine has undertones of chocolate and carpet scrapings, just the facts, as it were.

One final note – most offices in the area start their lunch hour at 1 PM.  That means if you go out to lunch at 12:30 you stand a good chance of getting in almost anywhere without a wait.  At 1 PM, any place in the hood that offers lunch under HK$50 will have a long line in front – that means either doing takeaway or going someplace expensive if you don’t want to wait.

Sang Kee – These guys have 3 store fronts along Hillier Street and Burd Street.  They’re most famous for their congee and their beef brisket noodles.  A bowl of beef brisket noodles costs HK$26 and is quite nice.  They also have this sort of fish pancake thing for $11 that I always order as a side dish.

Barista Jam – Everyone’s favorite coffee shop also serves pasta, salads and sandwiches.  A little bit pricey but not bad.

Dim Sum Square – A tiny place that gets seriously packed at lunch time.  The quality of their dim sum is average at best but the prices are good.

Pizzeria Jacomax – Owned and run by an Italian, the pizzas are supposed to be quite good here.  I’ve been here once, ordered a panini, it was awful, haven’t been back.

Malaymama – One of my favorites.  I can’t speak to how authentic this hole-in-the-wall place is but I love their bak kuh teh and their laksa.  Around $45 per bowl unless you go for one of their “special” combinations, seriously filling and tasty stuff.

Pret A Manger – Sometimes I just want a sandwich and Pret has a $50 combo that includes a bowl of soup, half a sandwich and a cup of tea or coffee. It’s also a fairly comfortable place to sit and read while you eat.

Men-Dokoro Ryo Tei – There are two ramen shops near my office.  I prefer this one.  A little bit pricey – a bowl of ramen, an order of gyoza and a drink has me pushing the $100 mark but sometimes it hits the spot.

Chez Meli Melo – An odd little shop in an odd out of the way location doing authentic French baguettes.

North Garden – Your basic standard Cantonese seafood restaurant serving dim sum for lunch, I’ve been here a few times for big team lunch events.  Quality-wise they’re about in the middle of the pack. Nothing is great but nothing sucks either.  Prices also in the mid-range.

Monsieur Chatte – A small French grocery store in Sheung Wan?  Well, they’ve lasted 4 years and have now opened a second branch in Elements so I guess they’re doing okay.  Aside from the wine and cheese and homemade foie gras, they have 4 different baguettes each day along with some pasta and salad choices.  The bread for the baguette is seriously good.

Pho Tai – People seem to really line up for this Vietnamese spot. I think it’s more for the price than the quality of the food.  It’s okay.

Ninoen – This little Japanese take-away only place must be less than 100 square feet.  I tried a sushi assortment here once.  About the same quality as you’d get at Park ‘n Shop.

Katong Laksa Prawn Mee – Directly across from Malaymama, I’ve been here once.  I ordered the prawn mee.  I think I found 1, maybe 2, pieces of a prawn in the bowl.  Haven’t been back.

Trattoria Doppio Zero – This is a seriously nice Italian place.  I’ve been here twice and loved it each time.  But set lunches start at $100 so it’s a place I go only on rare occasions.

JP Deli – Tried here once.  A bento box of Japanese style fried chicken with rice & veggie set me back around $50.  Quite okay but I thought a little expensive for what you get.

Bowl Burger – Sometimes I just have to have a burger.  This is the closest burger place to my office.  It’s better than McDonalds.

Mian Cafe – Two menus here – one for Japanese food, one for Taiwanese.  So far I’ve tried off the Japanese side (pork cutlet curry with rice) and it was quite okay.

Masala – The closest Indian place. Their set lunch includes soup, salad, naan, rice and a main dish.  A lot of food for the money compensates for the food only being so-so.

Bun Me – I wish this place was better.  Even so I end up coming here roughly once a week.  Their baguettes are Hong Kong-style – soft.  They don’t have pate to put on the banh mi.  Otherwise it’s quite okay, their vermicelli salads are nice.

Subway – Yeah, I come here sometimes.  Every day they have a different $19 special.

Maxims Palace Chinese Restaurant – In the basement of Shun Tak Centre, it’s every bit as good as you’d expect it to be.  Also expensive – special occasions only.

Harmony – One of the more English-friendly cha chaan tengs in the area.  The food isn’t great but they have a huge menu, well translated, portions are huge and prices are cheap and they’re very friendly.

Mutekiya – Our second ramen shop. Been here twice, I just seem to prefer Men-Dokoro.

Taiwan dumpling place, no English name – Quickly becoming a new favorite.  They have about 8 different dumplings to choose from, mix and match, they also do a really nice hot and sour soup with dumplings.

Cafe Nirvana – Oy vey.  I really want to love this place.  A funky bar, almost a dive bar atmosphere, during the day they have set menus for Italian and Thai food, neither of which they do particularly well.  But it’s a comfortable place to sit.  Their lasagna’s not great but it doesn’t suck.

Lee Fa Yuen Korea House – The set lunches are around $70 and for that money you get a ton of decently prepared Korean food. Probably not the most authentic Korean food, mind you, but good enough.

Grove Sandwiches – Another sandwich chain in Hong Kong, they manage to make Oliver’s Super Sandwich seem good.

Magnolia – Okay, I’ve never been here for lunch, they don’t serve lunch.  But it is in Sheung Wan.  A private kitchen doing authentic New Orleans cuisine.  We came here once for dinner and it was fantastic. Highly recommended.

Gourmet Burger Union – This branch of a Hong Kong burger chain has outdoor seating only and is a bit of a walk.  I’ve only been here once as a result but the burger was quite okay.

Gaia Ristorante – The set lunch here is $248, which means I don’t come here unless someone else is paying.  It is really good, though the portions are on the small side (not counting, of course, the antipasto buffet, which is very nice indeed) and service is haphazard.

Hmmm, what have I left out?  There’s a branch of Cafe O that I’ve been to a couple of times, relaxing and decent food.  There’s this place on Queen’s Road, upstairs, Cafe something, recently opened, western set lunchs running between 50 and 100, had a nice burger and salad there.  A few more hole-in-the-wall joints with no English name doing some seriously good noodle soups seriously cheap.

So that’s 30+ places out of 496.  I still have quite a few to go!  (And sometimes when I’m feeling ambitious I’ll head over towards Central for a bite.)

What places have I missed?  Which ones do you consider to be a “must”?

And I don’t really have anything to say now, either.  Just wanted to let people know I’m still here.

Chimes of Freedom is a new 4-CD set released to benefit Amnesty International on the occasion of its 50th birthday.  4 CDs, 73 tracks, selling for $18.99 on Amazon right now.  If you buy the digital version from iTunes, it’s $19.99 and includes 3 additional tracks.  Not sure with the physical CD version but for the digital one, $11.90 out of the $19.99 is donated to Amnesty.

The disc is a multi-generational, multi-genre tribute to the songs of Bob Dylan.  It is quite obviously one of many albums over the years that highlights Dylan the songwriter, the universality of his themes, melodies and of course lyrics.

If you look down the list of tracks and performers, you’ll see many names you know – including a few that might make you go WTF? – as well as some you don’t.  Here’s just a partial list of who appears on this album, it’s pretty impressive:

Johnny Cash, Patti Smith, Pete Townshend, Bettye LaVette, Diana Krall, Ziggy Marley, Gaslight Anthem, Sting, Mark Knopfler, Lenny Kravitz, Miley Cyrus (!), Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Jackson Browne, Joan Baez, Adele, Pajama Club & Neil Finn, Bryan Ferry, Carly Simon, Joe Perry, My Chemical Romance, Nils Lofgren & Paul Rodgers, Sinead O’Connor, Ke$ha, Kronos Quartet, Maroon 5, Jeff Beck & Seal, Taj Mahal, Mick Hucknall, Dave Matthews Band, Lucinda Williams, Kris Kristofferson, Eric Burdon, Marianne Faithfull, Pete Seeger and one track from Mr. Dylan his own self.  The 3 bonus tracks are from Outernational, Silverstein, Daniel Bedingfield.

Haven’t had a chance to hear it yet and I’m sure some artists will fare better than others but I figure it’s for a worthy cause and worth supporting.

By the way, due out next week is Old Ideas from Leonard Cohen.  It’s his first album of new material in 8 years. I’ve heard it – it does not disappoint.

By now all of you, or at least all of you who live in Hong Kong, have heard of Kong Qingdong, the Beijing professor who called Hong Kong people “dogs” and said that the Rule of Law is only needed in trash societies like Hong Kong and Singapore.  Very indicative of how tempers have flared in the aftermath is this column in Asia Sentinel by Alice Poon – not so much for what she has to say as for the extreme racism and misogyny in the comments on her editorial.

So, my take?  Who the fuck is Kong Qingdong and why should I give a shit about what he has to say?  As near as I can figure it, he’s China’s answer to Rush Limbaugh – a big bag of gas who says whatever he thinks will land him media coverage, whether he believes it or not.  I mean, come on, if Hong Kong is a trash society, what about a place that practices extreme censorship, puts people in jail without a trial for expressing their opinions, puts melamine in milk powder or builds schools out of cardboard in earthquake zones?  Strike all that.  How many people does China execute every year?  China has the rule of law, too, it just doesn’t enforce it equally across all walks of life and classes of people.   Kong says he’s a direct descendant of Confucius, by the way, 73rd generation.  And what should that count for?  I mean, after 73 generations, I think the bloodline might have thinned out a little bit.

The whole tempest in a teapot comes on the heels of the D&G photo mess, which presumably started because some rich mainlander didn’t like having his picture taken in their shop.  It’s all a slap in the face to Hong Kong, which is now seriously dependent on mainland policies and mainlanders for much of its economic survival.  Remember back in the 90′s?  Damn, HKers loved to make jokes about mainlanders, how they dressed, how they acted, how they spoke.  It was hard to say who was lower in HK eyes back then – mainlanders or white people.

So now the tables have turned.  HK needs mainland money.  HK needs mainlanders to come here and buy over-priced shitbox flats and LV bags and Rolex watches by the bushel to keep the economy going, never mind how that money managed to illegally cross the border.  There is a divide – a cultural divide as well as a language one – between Hong Kong and the rest of China.  Anything that attacks at that divide, that tears down the wall, gets people upset.

Am I being harsh here?  Some will say yes, others will say not harsh enough.  Maybe Hemlock or others will take it further.  All I can say is this: who the fuck is Kong Qingdong and why does anyone care what he says?

Maybe the answer is that people are afraid that what he’s saying may not be true but that it represents, at least to some extent, the thoughts and feelings of the ruling class in China – otherwise why would he be allowed to say it and not be tossed in jail afterwards?  And if that is indeed the case, what happens to Hong Kong?

Both sides are wrong.  Both sides are right.  What’s next?

Here are excerpts from some of the comments that Ms. Poon received:   ”A coward old b!tch whining about mainland.” “her degenerate and prejudiced opinions” “Wannabee White’s like this Alice Poon are disappointed that she longer has the priviledge to asskiss the Brits.” “she is a neo-liberal hell-bent on trying to propagate the so-called western values like demoncracy, human rights, free speech etc. unto HK in particular & China in general That is alright if she balances her such admiration of the white man’s ideas with the darker sides of these same western bullshits which now prove so disastrous economically humanity-wise with equal zeal.”  ”I think Alice Poon is whitewashed” “This Alice Poon like so many Hong Kongers are traitors.”

Pleasant stuff, eh wot?  Maybe I’ll get some “you white piece of shit how dare you comment on China like that” kinds of things.

Every year when they announce the Oscar nominations I get excited.  Don’t ask me why; it’s not something I can easily explain.  Sure, once upon a time, in a different century, I had dreams of being nominated and I’ve sort of figured out by now that’s not likely to happen.  I know the Oscars are political, I know they’re driven by mass opinion and by advertising dollars and I know that in many years the most deserving often didn’t win.  Nonetheless ….

Best Picture – 9 nominated films this year – Tree of Life, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris, The Help, Hugo, Warhorse, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Descendants, The Artist – I’ve seen 5 of the 9 so far.  I’d love to see Tree of Life win; not that it was the best picture but it was the most wildly ambitious and partially succeeded.  The Artist (which I watched last night) probably doesn’t stand a chance.  Maybe Spielberg’s Warhorse, which I haven’t seen, or the feel-good mush of The Help or a nod to Woody Allen’s film – it is the top-grossing film in his long career.

Best Director – Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Alexander Payne, Michel Hazanavicius, Malick.  They won’t give it to Hazanavicius for The Artist simply to spare the presenter from having to pronounce his name.  I love Payne but haven’t seen Descendants yet.  It could come down to a New York war – Scorsese vs. Allen – each of their films set in Paris, Scorsese’s a love letter to cinema, Woody Allen giving advice to Luis Bunuel on film-making.

Best Actor – Demian Bichir (A Better Life), Jean Dujardin, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Gary Oldman.  I think it’s Clooney’s year. I haven’t seen A Better Life so I can’t say about Bichir but all the other nominees did really strong work.  Actually I don’t know who Bichir is and I think most people were expecting Michael Fassbender to get nominated here.

Best Actress – Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs), Rooney Mara, Viola Davis, Meryl Streep (her 17th nomination!), Michelle Williams.  I’ve only seen 2 of the films here and it does seem to be Ms. Davis’s year.

Best Supporting Actor – Kenneth Branagh, Nick Nolte, Max von Sydow, Jonah Hill, Christopher Plummer.  I’ve only seen 2 of the films and thought that both Hill and Nolte gave great performances, Nolte’s all the better because no one thought he had anything left at this point.  But all the attention is going to Christopher Plummer who is old, has been good for decades and I think never won.

Best Supporting Actress – Berenice Bejo (The Artist), Melissa McCarthy, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Janet McTeer.  Two noms for The Help might cancel each other out.  I absolutely loved McCarthy in Bridesmaids and could have watched another hour of her.  But I fell in love with Bejo in The Artist.

Original Screenplay – Midnight in Paris, The Artist, Bridesmaids, Margin Call, A Separation.  Bridesmaids won’t stand a chance because most voters will think it was mostly improv.  Margin Call was an exceptionally strong piece of work, balanced and nuanced.  But this one is a sure win for Woody.

Adapted Screenplay – Moneyball, The Descendants, Hugo, The Ides of March, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Not having seen The Descendants, I think it’s a strong contender here.  But Moneyball has names that Oscar likes – Aaron Sorkin and Steven Zaillian (and Stan Chervin).

Foreign Language Film – Bullhead, Footnote, In Darkness, A Separation, Monsieur Lazhar.  Everyone is going to say A Separation.  All I’ll note is that the only Asian films nominated this year come from Iran and Israel.

Animated Feature – A Cat in Paris, Chico & Rita, Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots, Rango.  I don’t even know what the first two films are.  I’m hoping for Rango.

Okay, there’s 14 more awards, but not going to run them down here.  But here’s the scoreboard:

Hugo – 11 nominations

The Artist – 10 nominations

Moneyball & Warhorse – 6 each

The Descendants – 5

Midnight in Paris – 4

Studio-wise, Sony did the best with 20 nominations.

So what are your picks for the winners?

With the weather so depressing outside, we spent the day cooking … and eating.

My gf dug out the Julia Child cookbook and went for chicken ragout and I must say it came out rather nice.  It’s a sort of rich, dark stew with a very deep and flavorful sauce.  Can’t complain about her getting more ambitious in the kitchen.  I think one reason for the ambition is that I recently got some new pots and pans, German stainless steel, 50% off sale in Hang Hau.

I was vaguely less ambitious.  Salmon.  Quick and easy recipe grabbed out of Bittman’s How to Cook Everything.  Cast iron pan.  Little bit of vegetable oil.  Salt & pepper.  Salmon, skin scored.  A minute or two on each side.  Then used Bittman’s “5 Minute Drizzle Sauce” – extra virgin olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, salt & pepper, heated up in a sauce pan, poured over the salmon.  The salmon was Alaskan sockeye salmon, scored from The Porterhouse.  I gotta say, they’re not a cheap, but some of the stuff I’ve gotten from there has been seriously good.  Their Angus burgers (8 ounces each, 6 for about $200) are the best I’ve ever had at home.

We also prepared something to marinate overnight and cook and eat tomorrow – suon nuong, or Vietnamese style pork chops.  These are the ones we had on the street when we were in Nha Trang and I can still remember how damned good they were.

I found this recipe in Saveur Magazine and a friend of mine asked me to post it on the blog so here goes, more or less:

You start with thin pork chops, no more than 1/4 inch thick.  Then you need:

• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp sugar
• 1/3 cup thinly sliced shallots
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced lemongrass
• 2 tbsp peanut oil
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1-1/2 tbsp fish sauce
• ground black pepper
• 8 garlic cloves finely chopped

Heat the 1/2 cup sugar in a saucepan until it turns to liquid caramel. Remove from heat, add 1/4 cup boiling water, return to heat, cook till the caramel dissolves in the water.

Put this in a food processor or blender along with the rest of the sugar, lemongrass, shallots, oil, soy sauce, fish sauce, pepper and garlic. Puree until smooth.

Put the pork chops in a pan or dish, cover with the sauce, cover and chill anywhere from 1 hour to over night.

Cook the pork chops in a cast iron pan about 2 minutes till cooked through and charred in spots.  Serve with rice and chili-garlic sauce (we have lots of bottles of Sri Racha sauce at home, I can’t live without it now).

Richard, let me know if you try it out yourself and how it comes out.

(Many of you will no doubt find the following post pointless.  But many people seem to like when I post this sort of stuff.  Feel free to skip it if it ain’t your cup o’ joe.)

It’s been a week of ups and downs for me, probably more downs than ups.

It was, for starters, the week that we lost two giants of music – Etta James and Johnny Otis.  It was also the week that the feds shut down file sharing site Megaupload.  It’s estimated that this site earned US$175 million in revenue over the past six years and the reported lifestyle of its founder, Kim Dotcom, certainly would seem to support that.  (What’s funny is that the SCMP insists on calling Dotcom a “Hong Kong man” despite the fact that he was born in Germany and essentially bought his New Zealand citizenship (which is where he was arrested) because he did live in Hong Kong for awhile, apparently in a suite at the Grand Hyatt.  How odd that the media is so strenuously trying to claim this guy as one of our own.)  New Zealand police, cooperating with the US, apparently not only raided his house but had to break their way into the armored safe room somewhere in the house where he was hiding.

I haven’t been feeling very well for quite some time but was just letting it go by.  I don’t want to be labeled a hypochondriac and as a result I tend to not go to doctors unless I’ve been shot or lost a limb.  Then we watched this movie, 50/50.  It’s writer Will Reiser’s semi-auto-biographical work about a 27 year old guy who comes down with cancer and how his best friend supports him through it and how he reconciles with his mother, blah blah blah.  Actually, it’s not great but it’s quite okay.  It stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the cancer victim, Seth Rogen as his best friend, Anjelica Huston as his mom, Anna Kendrick as his shrink, Philip Baker Hall and Matt Frewer as a couple of other cancer patients.

The thing is that JGL discovers he has cancer because he has this persistent back ache, so he goes to the doctor, gets an MRI, discovers he has this rare form of cancer on his spine.  I watched it and thought to myself, “Hmmm, I would never go to a doctor for that!”  And then I thought about the way I’d been feeling lately (and the fact that despite the best of intentions I remain a heavy smoker) and went to the doctor.  Maybe this does make me a hypochondriac after all.  I then had a few days of extreme nervousness and lack of sleep waiting for the results.  In the end, it was nowhere near as bad as I was dreading.  No cancer but something that I used to have has returned.  Actually, back when I had it, there was no Wikipedia so I couldn’t read up on it, now I can and I see it’s something that once you have, you pretty much have it for the rest of your life (and no, it’s not an STD).   At least now I know and I know how to deal with it and I expect certain things to improve relative to the good ol’ “quality of life” thing.  So I have that.  But I now also have a lot more tests to undergo and weekly doctor visits for the foreseeable future.

Without going into a hell of a lot of details, I’ve been seriously considering buying something in the Philippines – a flat or a house or something.  I’m not sure what and I’m not sure where.  Do I want to stay in the big city, which means Manila, which probably means Fort Bonfacio since that’s my favorite part of Manila?  Do I want to look a couple or a few hours away from Manila?  (I didn’t much care for Clark/Angeles, haven’t been to Subic.)  On an island like Boracay – a place I really like but a pain in the balls to get to and from since you have to take a boat to get to the nearest airport?  Some other island or beach that I’ve never been to?  I’m planning a trip there in March, in part to take a bit of a look around.

Of course, it’s now Chinese New Year.  Last night we went over to the malls at Hang Hau for dinner.  Around 9 PM, much as expected, most of the shopping mall was empty.  However Taste, a vaguely upscale supermarket owned by Park & Shop, was packed.  People were going pretty crazy buying the sorts of things that Hong Kong people buy in anticipation of CNY – presents to give when visiting family & friends, food & drink for when friends & family come to visit them.  There were huge stacks everywhere of deluxe gift boxes of chocolate, cookies, cakes (yeah, I know, how did I manage to go out without a camera? just my mood relative to my health I guess).  What struck me as odd about this is that most of the stuff being bought seems to have been boxes of western sweets – things that most HKer’s don’t really go for.  (Krispy Kreme lasted just a year in Hong Kong because local people found it way too sweet.)  Gift boxes that contained Cadbury Chocolates and Pepperidge Farm Cookies?  And some of these people were buying like 10, 20, 30 boxes of this stuff.  Gift cases that contained XO sauce and other Asian sauces seemed to make more sense to me.  The wine section was packed with people – probably in no small part thanks to a sale, buy 6 bottles and get an extra 15% off.  Yes, I was planning on buying 1 or 2 bottles and I bought 6.  Anyway, 10 PM Saturday night, every register open, lines 10 deep at each register, each person with a shopping cart stacked up to the ceiling.

Also traditional for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong – shit weather.  The skies are grey, the clouds are low, the temperature has dropped.  It’s 11 degrees in Sai Kung and that’s probably where it’s going to stay for the next 3 or 4 days.  Thanks to the visit to Taste and a delivery from The Porterhouse, there’s plenty of food in the house.  Then I had this idea – that I could speed up the performance of iTunes on my PC if I moved the drives (two drives, RAID 1) from an external USB box to the inside of my PC.  So I figured, okay, move those two 2 Terabyte drives and then buy some new ones to shove into the soon-to-be-empty external RAID box.

So I put the two drives into the computer, booted up, checked the BIOS, made sure they were set up as RAID1, all good.  And put two new drives into the RAID box, booted up, brought up disk manager, formatted the drives, or so I thought.

Because what actually happened is that when I put the drives into my computer, some resource conflict blew out my USB 3.0 ports.  And what I thought was the new disks was actually old disks sitting in another external box that I had inadvertently left powered up and for some reason the computer decided these were new disks.  So I reformatted hard disks that contained close to 2 Terabytes worth of MP3 files.  And not just any MP3 files.  This was the A-J section of my collection.  Just losing the B’s alone would be a disaster – every noise the Beatles ever made down to belches and farts; every wheeze that came out of Bob Dylan’s nose, every Bruce Springsteen concert and outtake from the 1970s.  Because this stuff was stored RAID1, I didn’t bother backing it up to Backblaze.  Because this was RAID1, when I reformatted one disk, I reformatted both disks.

The only thing that saved me was the fact that after mistakenly reformatting these disks, I hadn’t done anything else to them.  Which means they’re recoverable.  I tried out a few different bits of software, finally went with one that was recommended to me via Twitter, GetDataBack. As promised, it is able to not just recover the files, it can recover the long names and the directory structures as well.  It allowed me to run the discovery process against the drive (which took ten hours) before deciding whether or not to buy it, so that I could evaluate how successful it was going to be first.  It looks as if 100% can be recovered and it’s now in the process of copying the files from the accidentally reformatted drive to a new drive.  One file at a time.  I think it’s going to take a couple of days to complete this.  I’m spot checking and the files are there and they can be played but it looks as if all the tags have disappeared.

Just posted by the SCMP.

For renewing my NOW-TV contract, I get a HK$100 supermarket coupon.  Someone calls me to tell me that in 4 to 6 weeks, they will mail me a redemption letter so that I can travel to their redemption center to collect the coupon.  ”So, you are going to mail me a piece of paper that says I can go somewhere to collect a piece of paper?  Why not just mail me the piece of paper?”  ”Uhhhhhhhhhhh ….”  ”Yes, I know, you are just the phone person and you don’t set policy and have no control over this but will  you at least agree with me that this makes no sense?”  ”Uhhhhhhhhhhh ….”

I might as well have asked them why the porridge bird lays its eggs in the air.