HBO series Rome. Season two, Episode three:

Cassius: So, if we could return to the subject of money. Please bear in mind, your excellency, that those who help us now will have good friends in Rome when Marc Antony, the traitor, is deposed. Very good friends. It’s only a matter of time, with or without your help, we shall raise an army, we shall. Antony’s head will rot on a spike.

Turkish king: There are Roman women who are fucked by babboons.

Cassius: Um, er, excuse me?

Turkish king: I have heard there are shows where such things can be seen.

Cassius: Um, er, ah, well they are not so much shows, really, they are more a punishment.

Turkish king: I should like to see that. We do not have such in Bithynia.

Cassius: I should imagine it’s simply a matter of training the babboons.

Turkish king: We have no babboons here, no apes of any kind.

Cassius: Oh, er, uh, I wasn’t aware of that. So, as I say, those who help us now …

Turkish king: Yes. You want my money to raise an army. I want to see a Roman woman fucked by babboons.

Cassius. Mmm. Perhaps arrangements can be made.

and ….

Atia: You came in very late last night.

Marc Antony: Business.

Atia: Business involving wine, vomit and sex.

Marc Antony: I’m sorry, did I disturb you?

Atia: Not at all. Do please wake me before you come at me so. It would be a little less … alarming.

and

Marc Anthony: I didn’t bring you here to talk of children.

Cicero: Indeed. I await your pleasure.

(Anthony stands up, Cicero flinches, Anthony walks over and starts peeing in the potted plant next to Cicero as the conversation continues.)

Antony: When my term as Consul is over, I no longer wish to take the governorship of Macedonia. I wish to take Gaul.

Cicero: But Decimus is governor of Gaul.

Antony: Well he can have Macedonia if he likes.

Cicero: (trying to look away as Antony continues peeing) I’m afraid that will be a bit difficult. The Senate may suppose you plan to emulate Caesar, camping your legions on our border, close enough to Rome to scare us into doing anything you wish.

(The conversation continues. Cicero is unwilling to go along with Antony’s plan but is visibly scared.)

Antony: Well you leave me only one option then.

Cicero: It always comes to this.

Antony: I know. I’m sorry. Such times we live in.

Cicero: Please, go on. Make your threats. I don’t like to submit to mere implication.

Antony: Hmm. There’s a question I’ve always wanted to ask you. Your old friend, Crassus, when he was captured by the Parthians, is it true that they poured molten gold down his throat, because that would really sting.

Cicero: Thank you. It is correct, what you say. The weather in Macedonia is dreadful.

(Antony leaves the room.)

(In a later scene, Antony arrives at the Senate but Cicero is not there. A senator informs Antony he has a letter written by Cicero and Antony instructs him to read it.)

Senator: (holding scroll aloft) These being the words of Marcus Tulius Cicero. (Unwraps scroll.) When I was a young man, I defended our state. As an old man, I shall not abandon it. I give sincere thanks to Marc Antony, who has generously presented me with the most promising theme imaginable.

(Antony smiles and laughs.)

Senator: I address you directly, Antony. Please listen as if you … as if you …

Antony: Go on.

Senator: Please listen as if you were sober and intelligent and not a drink-sodden, sex-addled wreck. (Other senators start to leave the chamber.) You are certainly not without accomplishments. It is a rare man who can boast of becoming a bankrupt before even coming of age. You have brought upon us war, pestilence and destruction. (The senate empties out.) You are Rome’s Helen of Troy. But then, but then …

Antony: Go on. Go on!

Senator: … a woman’s role has always suited you best.

(Antony jumps up, grabs the scroll, beats the senator to death with it.)

History come to life. I love this series and look forward to each episode.

The Tokyo trip has suddenly become a whole lot less stressful because the local HR rep has informed me that I cannot legally do what I came here to do. I must take it more slowly and with a lot of unnecessary interim steps in order to ensure compliance with local laws. What should have taken two days will now take at least two months. If anyone ever wants to know why the Japanese economy never outstripped the US, this would be a good starting point.

After work, hit a used camera shop and got a Nikon 70-300mm zoom lens (but no VR) for around US$200. 5% discount if I can show my passport, so will pick it up tomorrow.

Then off with a member of my local team to a small sushi place he’d read about, on some side street near Shinbashi. Wow. Wowwers. Wowwee. From memory, three small bowls of tidbits, Japanese version of amusee bouche, one bowl was described to me as “baby anago” (I think). Then a plate of sashimi that just killed. The toro (can’t recall now if oh-toro or chu-toro) just melted on my tongue.

At which point I decided to switch from tea to sake, especially happy to find they had one of my faves – Uragusume – served in a way I hadn’t seen before. A glass placed inside of a square lacquer cube, filled so that it overflowed into the cube. Drink from the glass and from the cube. Either way, it was a big glass and it was refilled more than once.

Next some cooked tuna in some sauce. Then a bowl of lotus root and some other stuff. Some grilled whole fish. Some sushi, some maki and finally some ice cream.

One benefit of going to a tiny place like this – the sushi chef was a young guy and very friendly and talkative. We found out he’s 33 years old and studied for 12 years. He said it’s hard establishing his place because people see him as being too young. Well, he’s definitely talented.

Since everything was so tasty (I kept telling him “oishi des!”), I asked if we could buy him a drink and he went for a “small beer.” He returned the favor by buying us two glasses of plum wine.

After finishing the two hour dinner, I pulled out my camera and asked him to come out from the counter for a photo. And my battery was dead! So my friend pulled out his camera phone. As we stood and posed for a photo, I looked at the table next to us. One guy and three vaguely cute women (it may have just been sake goggles). I waved for them to come over and join us for the picture and one of the women actually got up and came over. She spoke a bit of English and was quite friendly but at this point I was too wasted to put in the work to get her away from her friends.

As we left the restaurant, the sushi chef said to us, “see you tomorrow!” I turned to the three girls at that table and said, “see you tomorrow!” and they all giggled and the guy sort of glared at me.

The cost for this amazing dinner was around US$100 per person but considering this is Japan, I think we got a bargain for the amount and quality of the fish we had. I would definitely go back there. Unfortunately the business card is all in Japanese but if anyone’s interested, email me and I’ll scan it and send it to you. Just tell ‘em the crazy gaijin sent ya.

Walked a couple of blocks and found a taxi driver standing next to his cab smoking. He asked us to wait till he finished his smoke. Then on the way to my hotel he passed a box of candy back to me, I took one and settled in for a short ride.

Back at the hotel, asleep instantly for a couple of hours. Now it’s 1 AM and I’m wide awake. Taxi to Roppongi? Is it worth it, lemme work it …..

Am now on the “new” blogger. And when someone leaves a comment, the email I get now says “x has left a comment on your post y.” So there’s that.

No desire to upgrade to Vista yet, even though usually I like to be ahead of the pack. But this time, maybe not so much. I read elsewhere someone recommended that the time to upgrade will be when Microsoft releases Vista Service Pack 1, and that advice makes a lot of sense.

There was some other stuff I was going to add but some other news that came my way this morning (business-related) that has me terribly distracted now.

(I wrote this Monday night, yanked it Tuesday morning, deciding to repost it now, unchanged. No explanations offered.)

Almost 2 AM here local time and I should be tired since I’ve been up since 7 AM HK time, though I did sleep a bit on the plane and the bus.

Every time I travel I forget one thing. The problem is it’s a different thing each time. This time I forgot the cable to connect my Archos to the TV so I could lie in bed and watch movies. Now I can either hold the Archos in front of my face (the screen is amazingly clear but just 4.3 inches diagonal) or transfer to my PC and watch on that slightly larger screen.

(The problem is that I can’t just buy a generic cable for the Archos, otherwise I’d just go out and grab one. I tried that when I first got it, a HK$38 generic mini-plug to 3 RCA plugs and it didn’t work. Archos has done something weird, probably with the spacing of the connections. You can only use their own cable, which costs something like 300 or 400, fuckers. A longer post at another time, I think.)

Yes, I know, I should make a packing list as reference for all my travel. I keep forgetting.

Hard to figure out what balance here. I’m no longer comfortable blogging every detail of my personal life. Yet I know that not only does that bring the hit count up (which only matters to me in a very small way), it’s also the stuff I probably write the best (and my writing is a big point of pride, though hard to tell sometimes, like now, right?).

So just a couple of observations.

Saturday night’s dinner companions were T and two female friends, both local HK women. One of them reads the blog. She asked me why I couldn’t be physically faithful to T. I said, only half in jest, that I know I’m damaged, that I’ve been to several shrinks and they didn’t help, and at this point I’m old and not gonna live that much longer and so what’s the point of changing now?

What I also told them was that at this point, there have been so many bust-ups between me and T that a wall has gone up for me after the last fight. I’m sure she notices, too, but being Thai I suppose she doesn’t feel free to start that conversation. I’m being pessimistic here, anticipating the worst, and my anticipation may bring that “worst” along much sooner.

On the other hand, Sunday night, she was walking down the street to meet me at the Wanchai Computer Centre. I could see her from a block away. Her hair was down and flowing, she was smiling, she was wearing tight jeans with knee-high boots and just looked great. As she got closer, some white guy stepped up and tried to pick her up and got shot down.

I also know that when we were at Neptune on Saturday night with our two female friends, she took the two of them out to the dancefloor and on her way there and on her way back, some guy tried grabbing at her both times even though he was already standing with a girl. (Her sister later scolded her saying, “where is he? why didn’t you tell me? why didn’t you come and get me?”) I have no trouble believing this. Even though she was just wearing jeans and a loose sweater, when she fixes herself up, not only does she look great, she doesn’t look like any other girl in these bars, she can really stand out in the crowd though when I tell her that, she just laughs.

Anyway, I’m not completely stupid. I know this was her way of telling me, “hey, other guys find me attractive, what’s up with you lately?”

And it was not entirely unsuccessful. On Sunday night, with all of this running through my head, I came up with a new position (new for us, anyway). It was pretty darned good, if I say so myself.

On the other hand, on Saturday in Neptune, she was looking for her friend J. I commented that I saw her earlier and that she looked very fuckable that night. (J is older than T, probably around 40 or so, but still quite nice.) T asked me if I wanted to fuck J, and I replied by saying, “even if I did, there’s no way she would fuck me because she’s your friend and she loves you and she hates me because she thinks I’m a helicopter.” At which point T jumped up, looking for J, in an attempt to prove me wrong. Luckily, she could not find her. I suspect someone else also thought she looked fuckable and pulled her out of there.

Anyway, kind of hoping that with all these business trips I have coming up, the whole “absence makes the heart grow fonder” thing will kick in.

Oh, other note, Saturday night, walking up to Neptune, they had a frigging velvet rope in front of the place and a long line of girls patiently waiting to be let in. I asked one of the managers. He said the police have been hassling them about overcrowding and said they would be shut down if they didn’t keep within their limit – he says they’re only licensed for 200 occupants. And I’m sure on your typical Saturday night there’s at least double that number in there. He expects the crackdown could last for a couple of weeks or so and then back to business as usual.

Well, after 2 AM local time. Gotta try and get some sleep. Would get in bed and read but the reading light by the bed is crap. But that’s some of the personal stuff many of you have been asking for.

(And for those of you who think that’s everything, no, it isn’t. Believe it or not, I still manage to hold most of it back.)

The past few days … gave up on the dead hard disk (only had a couple more days to go before warranty expired) and swapped it for a new one. Bought a PS3 (2 games, 1 Blu-Ray movie) and HD-TV – wasn’t quite planning on the TV so soon but a window of opportunity opened. Got a 3 year old Sony 29 inch not-plasma not-LCD TV for sale cheap if anyone’s interested. If no one’s interested, perhaps someone might suggest a charity in HK that would be interested in getting it as a donation.

Saturday – crap sushi for lunch (only $28 for 8 pieces and well worth that amount)(yeah, I know, two days before coming to Japan, but T is staying home) and then Chinese style Korean BBQ for dinner (all you can eat in 90 minutes for $105 per person)(and yeah, I’m going to Seoul in two weeks, but T and the two other friends who joined us aren’t). Then took our friends to Neptune as they were curious. T did a quick count and said there were at least 10 women there I’d been with at one point or another. Sunday night vaguely okay Thai food at Thai Farmer – not as good as Thai Hut but not too far off and at least you can sit, accompanied by the pounding coming from New Makati disco just upstairs.

One nice thing about Sunday in HK. You pack for a trip, realize you need a new gizmo, and the computer mall is still open and selling away at 8 PM on a Sunday night.

Flight to Tokyo – Cathay Pacific lounge in HKG no longer has smoking rooms. I am so pissed. One of the delights of travel for me – settling into the lounge for an hour, chilling out, free food and drink, massive doses of nicotine depending on length of upcoming flight. Now you gotta go all the way outside to one of the regular smoking rooms, where you can’t sit, the room is filled with smoke. Pain in the crackpipe. Especially because I don’t see why they didn’t file for an exemption – the smoking rooms are very well separated from the rest of the lounge, they’re separate rooms for fuck’s sake, and if the airport can operate smoking rooms, why can’t an invitation-only club?

Flight seemed more than half-empty and service was only half good. Did they cut back on staff because of number of empty seats? (Would make sense, wouldn’t it?) But when I hit the little buzzer I had to wait ten minutes for someone to show up – and they weren’t responding to the buzzer, it was drink service. Bleh.

Then, well, I knew in advance … I’ve stayed in the same hotel here (Imperial) 25 or 50 times and have been trying to avoid it the last few trips. The hotel I like now (Grand Hyatt) was fully booked. So was the new Prince Park Tower. Other hotels I want to try (new Conrad and new Four Seasons) are too expensive even for my budget. So I’m at a small place in Ginza that I used one time about 10 years ago. It’s actually quite nice except taxi drivers don’t know where it is (even though I know the Japanese name) because it’s small and my Japanese is meager and so even though these guys all have GPS I end up having to yank out my map book and show it to them.

Spent a coupla hours at HMV and Tower Records in Shibuya. Bought some CDs and some Japanese tattoo magazines. Not that I expect to have time to get any ink while I’m here (though one never knows), the magazines are great anyway. Not seeing much odd stuff but then again not in the mood to really comb the aisles carefully. There is a DVD of Led Zepp, Earls Court 75, but it’s selling cheap and wonder if it’s any good. Also spotted a DVD of Miles Davis live in Europe in 67 (Shorter, Hancock, Williams, braindead, can’t recall the bass player and I should be able to) but black and white and short running time. Did buy Japanese editions of some recent albums I’ve liked (bonus tracks) and a couple of things sounded good on the listening station – The Shins and a band called, apparently, “!!!”. Was looking for some kinda funky, downbeat, jazzy compilation but started getting hungry before I heard anything that sounded like what I wanted. So many listening stations, so little time.

Even in the cold weather and all bundled up (well, more covered than usual) the girls in Shibuya and Roppongi look ever so yummy.

Shaky – you leave some comment as anonymous to some old post of mine and I’m supposed to know which post it was so that I can respond to you there? Life’s too short. You follow the link to “view my complete profile” and there’s an email link there. If your question was regarding what I think it was, I didn’t like the FM transmitter for the iPod because the only way to get a blank station that stayed blank was to disconnect the car’s antenna. Any spot on the dial that seemed blank would come to life as soon as I came round some bend or over some mountain. So the iPod would cut in and out, interference from radio stations, basically useless. And I didn’t want to disconnect the antenna from the head unit or remove the antenna from the car.

And that’s it for now. Gonna take a bath, maybe watch a movie or listen to some toons, zone out, the next three days will not be pleasant ones.

This article in the NY Times instantly caught my attention this morning:

In Clue to Addictive Behavior, a Brain Injury Halts Smoking

Scientists studying stroke patients are reporting today that an injury to a specific part of the brain, near the ear, can instantly and permanently break a smoking habit. People with the injury who stopped smoking found that their bodies, as one man put it, “forgot the urge to smoke.”

“This is the first time we’ve shown anything like this, that damage to a specific brain area could remove the problem of addiction entirely,” said Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which financed the study, along with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”

I know what’s gonna happen next. There’s going to be a massive outbreak of attacks on cigarette smokers and the attackers will use this as their defense, saying “I wasn’t trying to hurt the guy, I was trying to help him” and lawyers will wave this article around and the attackers will not just get acquitted, they will get medals.

True Story: I played piano from the time I was about 5 years old till I was around 20. I wasn’t brilliant but I didn’t suck. When I was 18, I was in a car accident, smashed my head on the steering wheel and had a severe concussion. When I recovered, I found I’d lost my ability to play different things with each hand simultaneously – e.g. playing rhythm or bass lines with the left hand while playing melody or soloing with the right hand. It never really came back and it’s one reason why I quit playing. So I believe this whack-on-the-head thing to quit smoking could be for real. However, please do not attempt to try it out on me. If you don’t kill me with the first blow, I will hurt you. A lot. No, I won’t hit you, I don’t do that. I’ll just get my ex-wife to marry you.

Went to the Wanchai Computer Center.

First I was looking at the My-Blu, an accessory for the iPod that adds a remote control, FM radio and bluetooth with the headphones of your choice (connectible to both the iPod and your phone). The list price in HK for this is $600.

The first shop that I went into quoted a price of $720. I couldn’t recall the list price at the time and just said to the guy, “that seems too high.” He responded, “how much do you want to pay?” I walked out of the shop.

The next shop I checked quoted me a price right away of $550. But at that point I started to question how much I’d actually use this and decided to live without it.

Then I started looking at PS3’s – I’m more interested in the Blu-Ray DVD player; I’m not big on videogames. But I realized I had forgotten to research one important point: region codes.

Shop A gave me the right information, that the PS3 they were selling would play US, Japan and HK DVDs. However, they told me the price of the PS3 was $5,500, with two games. The PS3 should be under $4,000 and the games sell for around $400 to $500 each, so I walked out of the shop.

Shop B had a guy working there who told me that the PS3 would only play HK Blu-Ray DVDs and it would not play US ones. (This same guy told me that HD-DVDs also have region codes, so the XBOX 360 wouldn’t play US HD-DVDs, which is not true at all.) So was he an idiot? No, in retrospect, I think he misunderstood me and was giving me info about normal DVDs and not hi-def formats.

The price he quoted me for the machine was $3,980, but that’s slightly higher than the list price for HK. As these now seem to be in ample supply, I have no intention of spending more than the list price. Perhaps I’ll simply get one when I’m in Tokyo next week.

Last, the Logitech MX Revolution mouse. U.S. list price is $100 and it’s widely available discounted at $80 or less. All the shops in the computer mall had it priced at HK$960, which is a tad under US$130.

Basically, if you go shopping for this kind of stuff in HK and you haven’t done your research first, most shops will fuck you up, down and sideways – sometimes on purpose and sometimes because the people working in this shop are either stupid or just can’t be bothered to learn about what they’re selling.

Had I done more checking in advance, I would have skipped the Wanchai Computer Center and just gone to the Oriental 188 Shopping Center on Wanchai Road. AV Bi-Weekly magazine reports the 60 gig PS3 is selling for $3,780 there.

See, the thing is, there are a lot of locally published magazines – in Chinese – that cover this stuff in extreme detail – reviews, features, list prices and price comparisons at different shops. Local English-language coverage of this kind of stuff is minimal at best. Sure you can get American or Brit magazines for news and reviews or check the various web sites, but what you won’t get is local price guidance.

What I do is I buy the local Chinese magazines. My ability to read Chinese is limited and I’m more familiar with simplified characters rather than traditional and of course I can recognize the Chinese characters for different districts. And surprise! The stuff you absolutely need to see – model numbers, specs, prices, phone numbers – is almost all in English. When I’m really stuck, I can just show a page to someone in my office and ask them to translate for me. E-Zone costs $15 per issue. AV Bi-Weekly is $18. Other mags are similarly cheap.

It’s kind of like newspapers. Back in the US, you get used to a Sunday newspaper that weighs 10 pounds and is crammed with color inserts that, among other things, tell you of sales at supermarkets and pharmacies. The English-language paper in HK is crammed full of ads for expensive watches and real estate investment opportunities in foreign lands. But the Chinese language papers are crammed with those color ads (as are the more general interest Chinese magazines like Ming Pao).

I know, for some of you people reading this, the above is blindingly obvious. But perhaps for some of you, maybe not so much and maybe useful to know?

My brain is on the verge of exploding:

* Two deadlines in front of me and no idea what to write (or the basic ideas are there but the hooks are missing)(and after SCMP edited destroyed one of my jokes, does that mean I don’t have to work so hard to be so creative in so few words for now on?)

* Four business trips tentatively planned for the next 5 weeks (Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, Mumbai in case anyone’s interested).

* A major problem with a member of my staff in another country

* Oh, and sticking the hard disk on a block of ice so far hasn’t yielded any difference at all (time to give up).

* What to eat for dinner tonight.

So in order to distract myself from all of this, thinking about HD. Of course the centerpiece of an HD set-up is the TV and am trying to educate myself on all this. LCD vs. Plasma. 1080p vs 1080i. Contrast ratios. HDMI. I was hoping that something reasonable might be found for under $20k but a quick pop into Broadway and it looked like there was nothing there under $24k that was full HD.

And then what for an HD-DVD player? I was tempted by news that LG has released a unit that plays both HD and Blu-Ray. I asked Koji Hase, the co-inventor of the DVD, what he thought of this machine and he shot back that the DVD Forum is refusing to certify it because it does not support HDi. I’m sure that other combo players will arrive at some point but do I want to wait?
An alternative would be to buy both the XBOX and PS3, I suppose.

I am so good at procrastinating. Wish I could get paid for that. Though I suppose, in a sense, I do.

$30 US to download this 75 page book on how to date Asian women. Judging by the summary on the web site, there’s nothing there I couldn’t have written. Only this guy did it first. Wonder if he actually makes any money off this? (Somehow I suspect he’s getting rich.)

Klong bar shutting down at end of the month, closing down party I think this weekend. This was my ex’s prime hangout after they closed JJ’s. Three or four years ago this place would be mobbed almost every night, now the crowd has moved on and the landlord has increased the rent and they’re either giving up or changing the concept.

Dinner last night at Devil’s Advocate, 2 for 1 main dishes on Tuesdays, usually reliable but last night fucking beastly. First off there were four of us, the waitress didn’t write anything down when we gave our orders, and she only placed orders for three dishes. The dishes each came out 5 minutes apart instead of at the same time and mine was cold. When we asked about the fourth, she tried to cover up her mistake and said it would be another 5 minutes. My friend was ready to cancel but I said, what’s the point, it’s free, so we waited for what turned out to be 30 minutes, at which point we said just wrap it to go. I then told the waitress she owed us free desserts or a round of free drinks for her screw up and we got the round of free drinks – however, we were drinking cokes and iced teas, so not much gain there. They have Long Island iced tea by the pitcher, maybe I should have asked for one of those instead.

Stopped in at the new Bull and Bear Pub. Their sign says “established 1974″ but does that really count when they were shut down for six years and are now at a new location (prime viewing just down the street from Laguna)? May try the food there one of these days. $88 three course dinners, not too shabby.

And that’s about it. Picked up some of the local mags to check out their coverage of HD TVs. AV Bi-Weekly has a cover story reviewing three 1080p TVs. But from what I’m reading now, I think I can go for 1080i and save at least a small bit o’ change.

The 12 comments to my last post were certainly interesting reading. By way of response, I imagine that some of you have figured out that I don’t post every little detail of my life – although I suppose it can sometimes seem that way. The anonymous commenter who wrote “something must be right if it has lasted this long without the two of you killing each other” is the one who comes closest to the way I feel about things. Whereas the one who felt compelled to write “disgusting” clearly hasn’t read the blog description up top. And that’s all I’m going to say about that – for now, anyway – except to say that T is on notice that if we have another week like last week, she’s out of here and she seems to understand that.

As for me, a slow couple of days. The new RAID unit is working mostly okay – though I note that despite the presence of 2 internal fans, it has shut down twice in the past week of its own accord. Meanwhile the old, failed drive can only seem to come alive long enough for me to copy about 300-600 megs off at a time (even with trying the “overnight in the freezer” trick that some commenters recommended). This is a problem because some of the files on there are far larger than 600 megs.

Through constant rebooting and also re-obtaining some of the data from other sources, I’ve probably recovered more than 200 gig of the 350. Not great but better than nothing. I have a few days left before the warranty runs out, so will grab what I can and then take it back to the vendor for a replacement.

That’s not my only computer problem at the moment. Before I left for my extended holiday, my Mac Mini was acting up in small ways – the “SuperDrive” started spitting out blank DVD-Rs. When I came back from vacation, the Mini refused to boot up at all. It just comes up with an icon of a file folder with a question mark. So somehow the internal disk on that has become corrupted. I haven’t started to deal with this yet.

Fortunately all of the important data on the Mac was backed up right before I left, with the exception of my iPod/iTunes library. And, also fortunately, last month I’d decided to re-format my iPod on the PC, rather than on the Mac, because the Mac can read both formats but the PC can’t, meaning I couldn’t update the iPod while on the road using my laptop.

I then used Yamipod (Yet Another Ipod Manager)(shouldn’t it be Yet Another Manager for Ipod?) which is freeware. It allowed me to copy off all the songs on my iPod to the PC. However, I couldn’t replicate the original directory structure on my hard disk, which means that all of my playlists in iTune are blown and need to be recreated. That will just take a couple of hours – as opposed to if I had to start ripping CDs from scratch again.

Another tech item … shouldn’t the repair work on the Asian internet be almost done by now? I haven’t noticed any news items on this lately. But I have noticed that internet during “prime time” is fucking horrendous lately. I use Giganews for my usenet stuff. They have an online speed test that allows you to connect to their various servers in the United Snakes and download a 3 meg file, with a nice graphic to show you the current speed.

Right now (2 PM) I’m getting a connection speed of about 700 kbps and can download that file in 34.8 seconds. Late at night, I can get about double that speed. But at “prime time,” roughly between 7 PM and midnight, the speed goes down to about 2kbps. That’s ridiculously useless.

Object of desire: Logitech Dinovo Edge keyboard. Retail price is US$200. For a keyboard. Looks really sweet though. Problem is, at least to my knowledge, one can’t expect more than just a minimal discount on this sort of item at the computer malls. While at Amazon it is selling for $170 and on eBay someone has a “buy it now” price of $150. (Their high end Logitech MX Revolution mouth sells for $100 list, $80 on Amazon, and I’ve yet to see it discounted in any meaningful way in HK. So buy it from the US, get the wrong power adapter, and by the time you add in shipping charges, it costs just as much as buying it locally.)(Sigh.)

The annoying bit was that a few months back they were pimping the Logitech MX Revolution mouse as the “ultimate mouse” and now that they’ve got their so-called “ultimate keyboard,” they use different wireless methods – the mouse using some proprietary wireless thing and the keyboard using bluetooth. What’s wrong with these people? Does the left hand know what the right hand is doing or what?

Sometimes you run across those blogs where someone does a minute-by-minute listing of everything they do in 30 minutes or a day or a lifetime or whatever. I can’t quite do a minute-by-minute because I wasn’t taking notes, but yesterday I had 12 hours that went a little something like this:

4:00 PM – We break up for good.

4:01 to 4:30 PM – She tells me everything I’ve done that she doesn’t like. It’s not that long a list but she reviews each item repeatedly.

4:31 to 5:59 PM – She tells me all her future plans, which change every minute. She’s going back to her old job in HK. She’s leaving HK and returning to her family. She’s leaving HK and moving to Bangkok and going to look for a waitress job. She will move her stuff out tonight. She will move her stuff out tomorrow. She needs a few days to get all her stuff moved out.

6:00 PM – She asks if I’m hungry and cooks dinner.

6:30 PM – We eat dinner. Damn, she is a talented cook.

7:00 PM – She asks if I really want to break up with her, tells me I’m the only person she’s ever loved aside from her family and that she can change and that I should give her one more chance.

7:01 – 8:00 PM – I tell her everything she’s done that I haven’t liked. I tell her that most people don’t find 100% of what they want in relationships and I do get around 70% in this one and that I need to decide if I just settle for that or try to find the whole 100%.

8:01 – 8:30 PM – I list her good points and then go back to the way she annoys the crap outta me sometimes.

8:31 to 9:00 PM – The fighters retire to separate neutral corners.

9:01 PM to 11 PM – I go out, meet a friend (who also has a Thai girlfriend) at Devils. I start out on burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff. No, fuck that, I start right in on the hard stuff. We discuss how our women are making us fucknuts. I decide that since it’s mostly been good, I should give her that one more chance. I call and tell her that and then tell her I’m still gonna stay out and get wasted.

11:01 to 11:30 PM – We move to Dreams. I drink more. I say some incredibly funny stuff, none of which I can remember now.

11:31 PM to 12:00 Mid – Over to Fenwick. I am now the smoothest guy in the room, for reasons I cannot remember.

12:01 AM to 12:30 AM – Boracay. Flirt with a waitress I know. Another girl I know comes in, leading two guys. Another waitress flirts with me, causing me to spill my drink and break my glass.

12:31 AM to 1:30 AM – Over to Neptune. Talk with T’s sister and one of her friends. Several other acquaintances come up to me and say various things. Starting to feel wasted.

1:31 AM to 1:40 AM – I have some discussion with one of the managers at Chinatown, and the waitress there who looks a little like J-Lo.

1:41 AM to 2:15 AM – Dusk Till Dawn.

2:16 AM to 2:25 AM – Taxi ride home.

2:36 AM to 2:45 AM – Tell her that I’m going to give her one more chance. Tell her some of the shitty things I do that I don’t think I’m capable of stopping and ask her if she still wants to deal with all of that.

2:46 AM to not-quite-sure AM – Make-up sex.