Sometimes I question the wisdom of blogging very personal things (and yet sometimes I still do it). I’m not really seeking comments or feedback. So why do I do it? Fucked if I know.

I have to preface this tale with the information that you already know … that T is upset over the fact that on this entry to HK, she only received 14 days; that T is bored because she cannot work and has nothing to do but sit in the house all day watching DVDs. I know this, and it becomes a component of the way that I react.

So … come home from work tonight. Sit with T, discuss my upcoming trip to Thailand to deal with dentists. We discuss splitting the time between Bangkok and Sri Racha. Reassure her that I want to be with her the entire time I’m in Thailand. She tells me that at the end of December there will be some kind of big family get-together, 50 people or more. Then move on to discussing plans on how to get her here legally, specific and legitimate steps we can take. She asks me something she’s asked before, have I thought about what we would do if she can’t get here legally. I tell her that I haven’t thought that far ahead because I don’t expect that to happen. She says she’d probably just stay in Thailand and find some other job. I tell her I’m confident that we can make this work.

Should be all good, right? But for some reason it’s not. She gets all quiet. I tell her that I need to do stuff for about half an hour and then we can go out for some dinner. She goes out, comes back, says she wants to go out for a walk and I should call her when I’m ready to go.

She comes back 15 minutes later. I tell her I’m ready, we get changed and go out. I offer her several choices for dinner, her response is “you decide.”

In the taxi, she turns to me and says maybe she can get someone to marry her. I ask her if she’s got someone specific in mind and it turns out she does – someone who is not me. We get out of the taxi, I get some cash from the bank, and we get to a restaurant.

After we order, I ask her more questions about the guy. She says she has a feeling he would marry her. I ask when is the last time she spoke with him and she swears it’s before we start living together. I ponder this for awhile, quietly. She asks if I’m upset.

“Yes, of course I am upset! I spent all this time tonight talking about the things we can do so you can stay here, and then you tell me about this guy. It’s like you’re saying to me, ‘if you can’t work this out, then I’m going to go with someone else who can.’ It’s like you’re putting a gun to my head.”

She apologizes. We move on to eating our dinner, talking about the food. We finish, go to a bar, get a couple of drinks.

I tell her that one of the reasons I’m glad we’re living together is that it makes me work at the relationship. I remind her how I dated lots of women in the three years I was single and how I’d always break up with them at the first hint of any problem. But since we live together, when there’s a problem, I want to work it out, work our way through it, rather than just running away like I used to do.

Then she tells me that when she went out for her walk earlier, she thought about texting me and breaking up with me, her “can you find some other girl” line. I tell her what I always tell her when she asks me that. That I know I could find 20 other girls that night if I wanted to but that I know she is with me because she loves me and the 20 other girls would be with me just for the money and the opportunity to stop working in the bars. That I love her and trust her and that I would not be able to trust any of those other girls.

We head home. During the taxi ride, she asks a question about my ex. She’s interested in how my ex got her HK ID (she got a dependent visa after we got married) and if she still has it. “I suppose she still does, we’re still married.” “You’re still married?????”

This stops me cold. I don’t know how many times I’ve told her this. I don’t know how many times I’ve told her we’re going through the divorce, that the papers are all signed and filed and that we’re just waiting for the HK courts to finish processing them. I have no idea how she could not know this.

Back home, in the bedroom. I think I start by saying that I’m really worried that she says she didn’t know I was still legally married. That either she really needs to work on her English or really needs to work on my Thai.

After awhile, she says that it would be easier for both of us if she moved out, I found someone else, and she went back to “work” as a hooker. I went through the 27 reasons why that would be a bad idea, both in terms of our relationship and in terms of her own life. I tell her how much happier I am since she’s moved in with me, how it has made my life better. I tell her I thought she was happier too and she says she is.

Finally she tells me she loves me, tells me she’s willing to wait and see if my plan works out.

I go to sleep. She goes into the living room to watch more DVDs. I wake up two hours later. She’s taken a bottle of wine from the fridge, drank half of it. Tells me she loves me. Asks me if she can cut her hair short. Asks if I will have a Christmas tree, remembers I’m not Christian, asks me if I believe in any god and I tell her no. She goes back to watching TV, falls asleep on the couch, I wake her up and bring her to the bedroom and tuck her in.

As I read back on what I wrote, I worry that I’ve omitted important stuff that prevents the reader from getting the true picture of the evening. I worry that I haven’t caught the tone right. And I worry that someone reading this might think that she’s incredibly smart and manipulative, playing me like a violin to get the results she wants, and that I’m a lovestruck fool, going along with anything she says.

I suppose there is a 10% chance that’s possible, that she is scamming me in some way. I choose not to believe that. As I said near the start, I think she’s operating from a place of insecurity, and that insecurity influences a lot of her words and actions.

Well, this is all jumbled and I don’t know if I see the point in actually posting this but what the hell….

Feeling like poo. I estimate that in the past month or so, my dental bills have totaled about HK$40,000. The wonderful dental insurance policy that my company provides has reimbursed me a grand total of HK$116. And I’m not even close to finished yet.

The only thing to make me smile today is the KKKRamer Rap. Someone has taken the audio from Michael Richards’ racist rant at the Laugh Factory plus his appearance with Seinfeld on Letterman to apologize and done the best mash-up/hip-hop single of the year. I’m not kidding, one listen and you will not get this song out of your head.

Actually, the other thing that made me laugh was reading this comment by Donald Tsang.

“The life expectancy in Hong Kong is among the highest in the world … you can come to only one conclusion: we have the most environmentally friendly place for people, for executives, for Hong Kong people to live.”

Which raises the question: Is Donald Tsang really that stupid or does he just think everyone else is that stupid?

I link to news stuff in The Standard because you can. The SCMP must be one of the only major metropolitan newspapers in the world that has a website that charges for content (even to see something like movie or TV listings). The Standard is crap too. It exists mainly as a wrapper for corporate notices.

Check this quote from the story about pianist Lang Lang becoming a “quality migrant” to Hong Kong:

Dressed in a glamorous black suit and Louis Vuitton shoes, the pianist was overjoyed …

We get the brand name of the shoes but why didn’t they get the name of the tailor? What color was the lining of the jacket? Accessories? Shoddy reporting!

And exactly how “overjoyed” was he?

He said he has yet to decide whether he will apply for permanent residence in Hong Kong after seven years … “In fact, I have had many opportunities to obtain foreign passports.”

He sounds completely verklempt.

“I’m a northern Chinese, so Hong Kong is too humid for me. So I think winter here will be perfect for me.”

Lang was not quoted as saying, “Actually, I don’t like Hong Kong because you can’t see the air here like in Beijing. But Donald Tsang has personally assured me he will remedy that situation.”

Feeling a bit better, we ventured out this evening. After debating dinner back and forth, we decided to try JoJo’s in Wanchai. I’ve had several people tell me it’s their favorite Indian place; one or two had negative comments about the service.

It’s certainly a nice looking place. Got to give it that. And with a view overlooking Fenwick’s, there’s no shortage of entertainment. On the other hand, it’s larger than most Indian restaurants I’ve been to. And when we entered, there were just three people working the floor. One of those three was almost constantly on the phone dealing with, I suppose, Food-By-Fone orders or something. The second was almost constantly behind the bar pouring drinks. That left just one person running back and forth to the tables for a good part of the time. After awhile, someone whom I presume was one of the bosses showed up and he took over the phone.

After we ordered, we had to wait 5 minutes for papadums and another 5 minutes for our drinks. After that, it was another 15 minutes until our food arrived. Perhaps they were equally short handed in the kitchen. This guy came in after us and ordered something for takeaway and it seemed like he was there for at least 20 minutes after ordering. (In all fairness, he didn’t use a menu to order so perhaps he’s a regular and perhaps we caught them on an off night.)

The food itself was hit and miss. I ordered some variation on chicken tikka and it was so bland that T covered hers with salt and pepper while I liberally applied the mint sauce. Our naan didn’t arrive until we’d almost finished this dish (and I usually live to wrap bits of this stuff in naan). T had selected a fish curry which I found spicy but she also thought was bland. The one dish she liked was the vegetable biryani. We agreed that next time we’d go someplace else.

After that, over to Maya. I found our usual table in the front was gone, replaced by a stand holding two Roland keyboards. I thought this did not bode well, but after a few minutes one guy stood behind the keyboards, another guy picked up a 5 string electric bass, and they proceeded to play real jazz. And these guys could really play. T said she recognized the bass player, that she’s sometimes seen him sitting in with the band at Neptune.

After the first song, I joked to the bass player that they’re not allowed to play real music in Hong Kong and that they’re supposed to just play kiddy shit like the Macarena. He laughed, he knew what I was getting at. And while the audience inside was appreciative, it was interesting to watch the people passing by. Maybe only half actually stopped and looked inside once they heard the music. Another 25% stopped but that’s because there was a football match on the TV. Another 25% just kept walking.

As they kept on playing, this guy came by, heard them and started dancing, what almost looked like real jazz moves, very slow, very precise. He then lured in two Filipino girls coming down the street, bought them drinks, kept on dancing. The girls left after they finished their drinks so the guy went back to dancing in the street. It was very Borat-like, he’d come up behind someone walking down the street and dance behind them and most often they’d turn and notice and run. One woman actually stopped and danced with him for a few bars before moving on.

At any rate, I didn’t catch the musicians’ names but I’m told they’re gonna be there every Sunday night and if you find yourself in Wanchai and want to hear something other than the Ketchup Song, you should check it out.

What else could have gone wrong? Ah yes, T returned to HK. Although she had gone to the Chinese embassy in Bangkok and received a three month visa, on arrival in HK she was pulled off the line, interviewed in one of those little rooms and at the end given just two weeks instead of three months. Despite the fact that she was carrying a letter from me, a copy of my HK ID card and a stack of photos of the two of us taken at different times, at different locations, with different groups of friends. She asked the immigration guy to call me to verify the information but he refused. He advised her to tell me that I should get my company to provide her with an HK ID card, and of course there’s no chance my company would agree to anything like that. For those of you who are new to this ongoing saga, marriage is not a possibility. I do have some other ideas but they will take some time to try.

As you can imagine, this put her in a lousy mood. All she wanted to do was go out and get smashed and I’m in no condition for that, so she went and drank with her fake aunt.

I stayed home and watched Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center.” I don’t think that anyone expected such an apolitical film from the usually opinionated Mr. Stone and in that sense I think he did exactly the right thing. Yet by giving the movie this title, one expected a sweeping panorama of the entire event. I already knew from the reviews that this was not it – the film focuses in on two Port Authority policemen who were trapped under the rubble and their families, waiting for word in their suburban homes. Which means the definitive account of the event has yet to be made and I’m sure there will be many attempts to do it. In the meantime, this is excellent film making and shows that even Nicolas Cage can be non-annoying when working with the right part and the right director.

T came back early, very smashed. Subsequent conversation included her wondering if I got the flu because I’d gone with other girls while she was away. I waited for her to be sober this morning before telling her that I hadn’t been with anyone else and that after a couple of operations, my resistance to germs was down and that’s why I got sick. Not sure if that’s the reason but the truth is that while she was away, while I was hitting the bars, I was also being faithful (which as many of you know is not something I’m normally good at but this time I was).

At any rate, today, the combination of vitamins, cold pills, lots of fluids, healthy eating means I’m starting to feel better. Two doctor appointments set for this week and the Seoul trip rescheduled for the following week.

Other distractions:

Something that caught my eye on Gizmodo this morning:

According to a recent report by In-Stat, over 15% of people carry two wireless phones. Other findings include:

80% camera phone users say they regularly carry their digital camera
75% of SmartPhone users say they also carry a PDA
>50% of users of multimedia phones also carry their MP3 player.
Just 43% of the respondents thought a smart phone could offer higher productivity.

Guilty as charged. My standard “day-pack” now includes a Treo 750v, a Blackberry 8707g, an iPod (either the 2G nano or 5G 60 gig), a camera (either a Canon Ixus 800IS or Nikon D80). It all gets shoved either into a 7 year old Oakley knapsack or a one year old fake British Army, fake leather shoulder bag (which one of my staff referred to as a “man purse”).

Okay – two phones because the Blackberry is supplied by my company and I’m not supposed to use it for personal calls or messaging, and I certainly don’t want my private life showing up on the corporate server, waiting for some admin with nothing better to do to start going through my logs. My personal phone is a smart phone because I do too much SMS’ing for a 12 digit keypad and there are a number of apps I have grown dependent on (HanDbase, WorldMate, multi-language dictionaries, a couple of games).

The iPod and the camera because neither phone does a good enough job of playing music or taking photos to replace those – and if they did, then battery life would start to become a major concern I’m sure.

It’s worse when I travel because I have all of the above plus my laptop, plus Altec-Lansing InMotion speakers for the iPod, plus a charger for each and assorted plug adapters depending on where I’m going. All of the chargers and adapters, a mouse and assorted cables, go into a small bag (which no longer has space for the laptop charger).

Speaking of tech, the Chicago Sun-Times puts into print what we all could have guessed:

Microsoft’s new Zune digital music player is just plain dreadful. I’ve spent a week setting this thing up and using it, and the overall experience is about as pleasant as having an airbag deploy in your face.

“Avoid,” is my general message. The Zune is a square wheel, a product that’s so absurd and so obviously immune to success that it evokes something akin to a sense of pity.

The setup process stands among the very worst experiences I’ve ever had with digital music players. The installer app failed, and an hour into the ordeal, I found myself asking my office goldfish, “Has it really come to this? Am I really about to manually create and install a .dll file?”

The Zune is a complete, humiliating failure….Result: The Zune will be dead and gone within six months. Good riddance.

Check this out. From ebay, a Playstation 3 sold for 99 cents.

From the NY Times, an article on the glut of new and reissued recordings by Philip Glass. One thing I love about Glass, aside from his music, is the fact that in his early days, he supported himself by being a NYC taxi driver. And back when I was a NYC taxi driver, I once got into a heated argument with a passenger over whether or not what he was doing was “music.” My first wife and I went to the NY premiere of Satyagraha, his opera on the life of Gandhi in South Africa, which was sung in Sanskrit. I remember sitting there thinking that the combination of the music and the staging was the most transcendent experience I’d ever had in a theater. I looked over at my wife, she noticed me looking at her and whispered to me, “I’m going to get you for this.”

Politics now, then some sex. The NY Times reports:

The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

And this:

Defying a government curfew, Shiite militiamen stormed Sunni mosques in Baghdad and a nearby city on Friday, shooting guards and burning down buildings in apparent retaliation for the devastating bombings that killed more than 200 people the day before in the capital’s largest Shiite district, residents and police officials said.

Militia fighters drove through neighborhoods in Baghdad and the provincial capital of Baquba, firing at mosques with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades on the Muslim day of prayer.

Similarly from the LA Times:

Iraq’s civil war worsened Friday as Shiite and Sunni Arabs engaged in retaliatory attacks after coordinated car bombings that killed more than 200 people in a Shiite neighborhood the day before. A main Shiite political faction threatened to quit the government, a move that probably would cause its collapse and plunge the nation deeper into disarray.

The massacre Thursday in Sadr City — a stronghold of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr and his Al Mahdi militia — sparked attacks around the country, reinforced doubts about the effectiveness of the Iraqi government and U.S. military and emboldened Shiite vigilantes.

In a sermon Friday, Sadr, a strong opponent of the United States, said the Pentagon’s refusal to grant full control of Iraqi security forces to the Baghdad government was leaving the populace vulnerable to insurgent attacks.

And as Sadr’s militiamen took matters into their own hands in battles with Sunni Arabs, his political representatives demanded that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki signal his displeasure with the U.S. military occupation by canceling a meeting with President Bush next week in Jordan.

The U.S. government continues to insist that Iraq is not in the midst of a civil war.

Last, some sex stuff:

Everyone is posting this recent picture of Salma Hayek. But just in case you missed, here it is as a public service for my readers.

Also getting posted everywhere are new nudes of Courtney Love published in Pop Magazine (obviously NSFW). Okay, her life is a series of trainwrecks and she’s had ‘em done (several times) but for 42 years old? Not bad.

One other NSFW recommendation which I keep forgetting to add to my blogroll is Tokyo Undressed. “A concept series project by artist/photographer Rikki Kasso.” Mostly very NSFW, despite the two pictures I’ve put below. Also very artistic.

Just like I’m proud of where I live, I’m proud of where I was born.

Dominatrix alleges bizarre sexual encounter with cop

“He wanted to go to a motel in the Bronx where I would defecate on him, but I told him I was uncomfortable going to the Bronx,” testified the dominatrix, Gina Pane, 31.

My health continues to slide rapidly downhill.

Yesterday, two last minute invitations for Thanksgiving dinners but turned both of them down as I did not feel up to being in a social situation with new people. I can’t talk too much without being in pain and didn’t want to come off as the quiet sociopath sitting in a corner whom everyone whispers about. (Unfortunately for you, dear readers, while I cannot talk, I can still type.)

Thanksgiving is a weird kind of holiday here – one not officially celebrated by the masses and yet definitely celebrated by the tens of thousands of American ex-pats and possibly loads of locals who were educated in the US. But in my current state of mind, all I could think was that the various food delivery services might be really busy and it could take hours to get something delivered.

So out I went and, without thinking, went to Wanchai. I said “without thinking” because I knew it was going to the be the first night of U.S. Navy in town and the word was that this was another large-scale visit. I know this, I know what Wanchai can be like when this happens, I went there anyway.

I managed to get a front-row seat at Devil’s Advocate and watched horny sailors just off the boat, many not realizing that the potential pleasures and pitfalls of Wanchai represent their own unique theater of war. Some guys were just very drunk, some had their new-found love (or loves) clutching their arms, others were … well one guy came up to me and asked me if I knew where he could buy some “you know, party stuff!” Devil’s thins out once happy hour is over.

One of the waitresses, an especially cute and sweet lady, walked by me at one point shaking her head and saying to herself, “they’re everywhere, my god!” By now a friend has joined me for dinner, but afterwards he has to go off and meet someone and I’m feeling like staying put.

In one of those moments that have become typical in my life, my phone rings, unknown caller. It’s a Filipino girl and she’s standing right across the street in front of Fenwick. She can recognize me but I can barely make her out and have no idea who she is. She says she just got back in town (fortuitous timing, that). I tell her I’m not setting foot in Fenwick and tell her to come across the street (so I can figure out who she is) but she says she’s going back to her room to go to sleep. Guess I’ll never know.

Then in another one of those moments, a Thai girl comes walking by, one I’d been with once about six months ago. I tell her I’m being good these days, that I have a girlfriend now. She tells me she really likes me and says my name. I’m impressed that she remembers it; I can’t recall hers though I do recall it was one of those nights where I really liked her in the bar when it was dark and I had the beer goggles on but once I got home with her, not so much. So no temptation for me, she’s nowhere near kryptonite like one or two others, and after a couple of minutes she descends into Fenwick.

(Look, in my defense, first of all, most of these girls use made-up bar names instead of their real names when they’re working. Since the name is fake, why should I bother to try to remember it? And even when it’s not fake, the Thai girls are always Lek or Noi or Oi, how can you keep that straight? The odd thing with T is that though she had a bar name and everyone in the bar knew her by that fake name, for some reason when we met she never told me her fake name, she told me her real name right away.)

So now I’m thinking that I wouldn’t mind some sort of company for awhile. But I’m also not feeling well. Could it be possible that, aside from all the pain I’m having, I’m coming down with the flu as well? I decide it’s time to get away from Wanchai. I’ll go home and if I’m feeling okay later, will head to Lan Kwai Fong.

Except later I’m not feeling okay. Instead I watch the HBO/BBC co-production of Elizabeth I. Yes, Helen Mirren’s great in it, but it doesn’t shake my tree. Despite good acting, nice costumes and sets, it feels small, confined. I’m well aware of the techniques being used to make small crowds seem large, small locations seem big. It seems low budget, it feels too “TV-y”.

I start sneezing. I start taking massive amounts of Vitamin C. I get in bed with a book. Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible and Learned to Disappear by Jim Steinmeyer. No jokes about how this does or does not seem related to my life.

This morning I wake up, still sneezing. Swallow a fistful of antibiotics and Vitamin C, open a can of chicken soup. T is back tomorrow. I’m looking forward to home made chicken soup.

P.S. The reason I screwed up on the date for the Wanchai pub crawl thing is because I was right, it has been pushed to a week from Saturday, but the web site hadn’t been updated so it was still showing the wrong date. I think the promoters wisely decided to wait for all the Navy to leave town before attempting this.

Lotsa new ones added. Very few taken away. Apologies to those I should have linked to sooner. Can’t say it won’t happen again!

Just back from the endodontist. One of those dentists who has a flat screen TV on the ceiling and DVDs playing (no sound but subtitles on) in hopes of distracting you from whatever horrors he is orally committing. The movie I was subjected to was worse than the drilling – Analyze That.

Side note … having been to three different dental specialists in the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that in each case, when the dentist is giving a shot of novocaine, each of the assistants has massaged my shoulder. I never really noticed this before and I guess it’s common practice now.

At any rate, back on antibiotics and painkillers. My Thanksgiving dinner will likely be soup and, if feeling bold, a soft roll.

In answer to some recent comments …

Well, yeah, okay, November 25th is this weekend. I’m on a lot of drugs at the moment to get in peak condition for this.

“How much for the little girl?” No apology needed. Blues Brothers reference enjoyed.

What’s there to do in Seoul besides work? There’s a red light district in Itaewon catering to the US military and foreigners. It’s expensive and not much fun. There’s a Hard Rock Cafe, bars in 5 star hotels, and lots of stuff that doesn’t really cater to non-Korean speakers. I’ve been going to Seoul for almost a dozen years and if I’m not going out with friends or on business, I stay in the hotel and watch DVDs.

“double duck portions” Some movie or book or conventional wisdom has it that if you want to know what your girlfriend will look like when she gets old, meet her mother. I am consoled by the fact that so far I have not had any romantic relationship last for 20 years and, should this be the one that does, by the time T is her mother’s age I expect to either be dead or not able to care one way or the other.

What a shitty 24 hours this has been. Out last night with buddy S for an impromptu bar crawl and decided against all odds (and some reason) to be good.

Came home, went to bed if not entirely to sleep. Woke up at 4 AM to puke and then woke up at 6 AM in significant pain. I sat there realizing that for possibly the first time in my life I’d have to postpone a scheduled trip for health reasons. By 7:30, I knew I had to get to a dentist and luckily mine was able to see me in the afternoon.

Returning home from the dentist, simultaneously numb and in great pain from novocaine and some assorted pills, I sat in my room morbidly pondering my mortality and then distracted myself first by watching Clerks 2 (a disappointment) and then commencing on redoing all 60 gigs in my iPod. And yes, as you might have guessed, a bowl of soup for dinner.

The true bummer is that if I’d gone on the trip as scheduled, then Thursday night, Thanksgiving night, I’d have been out with friends in Seoul, eating the best barbecue and drinking the best soju all evening long.

I turned down all local invitations for Thanksgiving dinners since I didn’t plan to be in town. And unfortunately these were the sorts of dinners that the hosts needed to book in advance, so I can’t call them up now and say, “oh, by the way, could I …?” Not sure that I could actually eat much of anything, but certainly would be able to drink.

My girlfriend is still in Thailand and won’t be back till Saturday or Monday, she’s still not quite sure. I hate the idea of going to some Dan Ryan kind of place and sitting there by myself. I suppose I’ll be going out on my own to the more-or-less usual spots.

Sorry to be so fucking weepy. I’m sure my mood will pick up soon. It always does.

One thing I can look forward to is the Xtreme! Hong Kong Pub Race. It’s on November 25th, a week from Saturday. The deal is one drink in each of ten bars plus some sort of challenge or game in each bar. They’re looking for teams of 4 and team entry costs $888. That works out to $22.20 per drink and that seems like a pretty good deal to me and I’ve already got my team lined up. (Guess I should mention that BC magazine is one of the sponsors of this event.)

This is kinda neat:

This is the Gorillapod and it comes in different sizes for point and shoot cameras, SLRs and SLRs with large zooms. The one in the pictures weighs less than 6 ounces and costs US$40. Kinda neat looking gizmo.

Hey, check this sucker out:

This is the “Flame” which will come out from O2 at some point next year. 520 MHz processor, 3G, WiFi, 2 gigs of internal storage and a 3.6 inch VGA screen powered by NVidia. I imagine you’ll need a big pocket to fit it in and deep pockets to pay for it

Last but not least, this item from OhGizmo! caught my eye, taken from this article from the BBC. Mobile operator 3 is offering a thing they have boringly called “X-Series”. If you buy one of two phones (one’s a Nokia, the other a Sony Ericsson), you can buy a package that will come with a bunch of pre-installed software that you could load in yourself (Skype, MS Messenger, etc.) but it will then include flat-fee pricing for internet access. No idea on the price or when (or even if) it will be available here. The per-meg pricing that mobile phone operators are doing today is so 1995. Then again, in many, if not most other countries around the world, you can get a phone at a deep discount or even for free subsidized by the carrier. You get crappy rebates spread out over whatever period the carrier tries to lock you in to.

Couldn’t sleep, checked the news, saw that Robert Altman had died. His films were incredibly important to me – he’s most famous for using large casts, improvisation, overlapping dialogue, character-driven films. And almost everything he did – good, bad but never indifferent – bore his unique imprint. His career had more downs than ups and I think some of his less-than-well received films will someday also be more properly recognized. Nominated for 5 Academy Awards for best director but never won, did receive one of those honorary Oscars instead. My favorites of his:

M*A*S*H (and he hated the TV series)
Brewster McCloud – a boy who wants to be an angel and lives in the Houston Astrodome
McCabe & Mrs. Miller – no western more revisionist
Images – a hallucination?
The Long Goodbye – the best Raymond Chandler adaptation
Thieves Like Us – the anti-Bonnie & Clyde
California Split – reteaming Sutherland and Gould
Nashville – the magnum opus
Buffalo Bill & the Indians – yet another deconstruction of American myths
3 Women – a dream?
Quintet – left even his biggest fans scratching their heads on this one
Popeye – maybe I’m the only person on the planet who loves this one
Tanner ‘88 – collaboration with Doonesbury cartoonist Trudeau
The Player – biting the hand that never fed him
Short Cuts – incredibly influential work
Gosford Park – yet another return to success
Prairie Home Companion – meanders too much yet charming

The NY Times obit quotes from a 1993 interview: ““The people who get into this business are fast-buck operators, carnival people, always have been. They don’t try to make good movies now; they’re trying to make successful movies. The marketing people run it now. You don’t really see too many smart people running the studios, running the video companies. They’re all making big money, but they’re not looking for, they don’t have a vested interest in, the shelf life of a movie. There’s no overview. No one says, ‘Forty years from now, who’s going to want to see this?’ No visionaries.”

I can’t entirely agree with that but he’s not that far off the mark.

Me? Not feeling well. Have postponed Seoul trip. Other priorities today.

I read somewhere that the Playstation 3 is now going for as much as US$10,000 on eBay. It’s one of the few things I actually don’t want to buy – somehow I remain untouched by that particular bit of hype. Or maybe it’s because I’m happy playing a 10 year old version of Risk on my PC. People looking for the PS3 and not able to find it should content themselves with this review in the NY Times, which says it’s “surprisingly clunky to use” and “falls far short” of what Sony promised to deliver.

Michael Richards, Kramer from Seinfeld, hasn’t had much of a post-Seinfeld career. He’s almost 60 years old, certainly wealthy, but still trying new stuff. He tried stand-up over the weekend. He got heckled by the audience and responded by saying stuff like “throw his ass out, he’s a nigger, he’s a nigger, he’s a nigger, a nigger, looks there’s a nigger.” This is probably not going to help his career. Of course you can watch the entire train wreck on YouTube.

Speaking of videos, K-Fed has been saying he would sell rights to a 3 hour video he made of him and Britney having sex if he doesn’t get custody of the kids. He’s looking for $30 million. Dollars. Britney has said let him try it, she’ll give the video away for free.

Earlier today there was some bit on Reuters about pollution being so bad in Beijing yesterday they had to shut down highways across an area bigger than Great Britain. Lost the link.

Spent too much fucking money at Rock Gallery today. Seems like everything I special ordered over the course of the past month showed up at the same time.

That would include the 2CD + 2DVD Harry Smith Project: David Johansen, Steve Earle, Wilco, Beth Orton, Beck, Elvis Costello, Richard Thompson, Van Dyke Parks, Lou Reed, Marianne Faithfull, Nick Cave and others tackling classic American folk music.

And Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra Records, 5 CDs, 96 page hardcover book, CD ROM with Jac Holzman’s book and complete illustrated discography and more. Artists you know like Doors, Stooges, Judy Collins, Phil Ochs, Tim Buckley, Carly Simon, MC5, Incredible String Band, Paul Butterfield, Love … and dozens of obscure artists and rarities.

Talk Talk China is gone but Sinocidal is here.

Seems like a lotta new (to me, at least) HK blogs recently. I’m heading up to Seoul tomorrow, it’s gonna be fucking cold and I don’t much like going out there, so hopefully will find lotsa time to update my links.