After my previous miserable experience with LensCrafters at their Wanchai branch, I went to their Hang Hau branch yesterday.  A slight improvement.  Slight.

When I asked the guy about the 30% discount for HKAA members, he went to pull out some huge binder.  But fortunately this time I had the HKAA magazine with me so I could show him the info.  He accepted that.

As for the frames, they had the frame style I wanted but not the color.  I asked him if it came in other colors, he looked on the computer and told me no.

As for the lenses, once I told him “Superview” he was able to find that in their looseleaf binder.

Fortunately, at this point, the manager returned to the shop.  A very capable and not unattractive woman in her early 30s, for those for whom that kind of detail may be important.

She wanted to give me an eye exam.  Even though it’s free of charge, I didn’t want it.  I get my eyes examined by a doctor, not a shop clerk and I don’t trust the results these people get by sticking your face in front of a computer.  When I told her that my last eye exam was just a few months ago and was probably still valid, she agreed with me.

I asked her about the frame color and got a proper response this time – it comes in four colors but they only have the one color in stock, they can order any of the others.

Then it turns out that when the guy was quoting me the price for the Superview lenses, he was quoting the price for the Progressives, which is double the price of a normal lens.  I use my glasses for reading and for the computer – staring at the computer screen with progressive lenses would mean that only the bottom half of the screen would be in focus for me!  Fortunately she figured this out and put things right.

So, correct discount, correct prescription, correct lenses, hopefully the correct frame … it’s gonna take a week for this to be ready.  Let’s see if they actually deliver the promised product on the promised date – hope I don’t go through the kind of problems that Johnny Ng mentioned in his comment to the previous post on this topic.

Later, I’d actually never bothered to walk around the first floor of the East Point shopping mall in Hang Hau.  I did this after getting the glasses taken care of and found a branch of China Travel Service (shorter lines than Wanchai, presumably), a branch of Ajisen Ramen (a not horrible fast food chain that I sometimes go to in Mong Kok), a “healthy” massage place with “happy hour” prices in the afternoon and open till midnight every night, a branch of DCH Foods, a video game arcade and other stuff that I had no idea was in the area!

Then I walked over to Maritime Square, another one of the connected malls that I’d never checked out.  Aside from a 24 hour Wellcome “superstore,” a bunch of medical offices and day care centers.  But walking around outside that mall, I noticed one of the restaurants (no English signs or menu) had xiao long bau and a variety of Beijing-style dumplings listed on the menu.  Will hopefully try this place out soon.

Which reminds me, Thursday lunch was the wonderful fried pork & veggie dumplings from Baau Dim King in Wanchai, four for ten bucks – they always taste really fresh and this time was no exception.  If I live to be 1,000, I don’t think I’ll ever get to have my fill of Chinese dumplings.  I was tempted to also get an assortment of their wonderful steamed buns to bring home but it wasn’t practical that day.  I think they have a second branch in Kwun Tong – need to find it!

I’m not much of a cook so it’s lucky that I live with two very good ones.  Case in point, lunch today:

My gf made a filipino-style super sour fish soup, from scratch, slab of some kind of fish steak from the market, loaded with veggies – a little bit sour for my taste but really fresh and of course all natural.

Meanwhile, my maid has worked out a recipe for thai-style pork neck that’s the best I ever had in Hong Kong.  A slab of pork neck is really cheap in the wet market.   It’s a very lean cut of meat and I believe that means if you don’t cook it properly, it ends up rubbery and tough.  (Or maybe just all of the places in HK that serve it cook it so far in advance that it sits around all day and gets the consistency of a tire when they reheat it.)  My maid’s secret is that she marinates it over night, sears it in a frying pan and then roasts it in the oven.  The aroma as she’s cooking this wafts through the house and, like one of Pavlov’s dogs, I start drooling about 15 minutes before it’s actually ready.  She also makes her own dipping sauce, with soy, vinegar, chili peppers, coriander.

I promise next time they cook dishes like these to get further details on the recipes and photograph in progress for the blog.

Seriously thinking about a massage in Shenzhen tonight because my back is still killing me and two visits to Cherdchai in one week would be budget-busting.  Jacuzzi, steam room, 90 minute oil massage for about US$10 or $15 would be well worth the hassle of getting there and back.

I was in a camera shop on Stanley Street the other day and overheard a customer ask the sales clerk, in Cantonese, if they had the electronic viewfinder for the “Girl Friend 1.”  Of course he was referring to Panasonic’s very hot micro-four-thirds format GF-1 camera, which I also own.  I knew that people were jokingly referring to it by that name, now it appears to be official.

I’ve had mine for a couple of weeks now (and finally succeeded in finding the 14-45mm zoom lens on Thursday) and finding that the camera is capable of truly excellent results – but getting those results takes some care and attention.  Simply leaving it in Program mode only works about half the time.  And despite also having Panasonic’s Intelligent Auto Mode and more than a dozen pre-sets for specific types of scenes – from “Sunset” to “Architecture” to “Food” and beyond – clearly this is a camera that rewards those who take the time to figure out the manual settings. I also note that writing the image to the memory card takes noticeably longer (I’m using RAW + JPEG mode) but that could be because I’m using the free Toshiba card I got with the camera – I may need to invest in a couple of SanDisk Extreme cards.

SeriousCompacts.com has just posted an updated review, 2 Months With the GF1, and I’m happy to read this conclusion:

Overall the GF1 is a good, solid camera with no significant weaknesses. It’s certainly fun to use and I find I’m carrying it along more often than I did its larger siblings.

That certainly mirrors my experience with the camera to date.

John Biggs of Crunchgear/Techcrunch came to China and, as previously blogged, about 30 of us turned out to meet him one night in Hong Kong.  I didn’t have too much opportunity to talk with him myself but I was trying to figure out why someone would come to this part of the world for the first time and spend so much time in Shenzhen and so little time in Hongkie Town.

Bit by bit, his series of reports on Shenzhen are getting published and it’s easier to see what he was after.  And while normally I’m critical of the “tourist guide written by a tourist” syndrome (which of course is more prevalent on TV than in print), I have to say that he’s done a darn good job here.  Of course he’s not writing about saunas or restaurants or karaoke, he’s writing about the factories and the electronic markets.

He’s published six installments so far and I’ve enjoyed all of them.  Definitely check out the series even if you fancy yourself a Shenzhen expert.

We believe that machines make our machines. This is not true. Humans make our machines and they work long hours for a bit of comfort and an increasing wage. If you think your laptop or even your USB keys plop out like fully-formed electronic fetuses, think again. Each device we own has been touched by countless human hands in the process of prototyping, PCD manufacturing, casing, embossing/printing, and packaging. We forget this truth at our peril.

There is nothing particularly wrong about what’s going on here except for the apparent obliteration of breathable air and the potential safety risks presented by the extremes of the city. On one hand you have smooth, beautiful five lane highways stretching out into the suburban manufacturing centers. On the other hand you have unlit roads lined with dorms where those selfsame manufacturing employees live with their families. Walking home is clearly an exercise in fear control.

Again, I can’t pretend to know this place but it’s a place I’m glad I’m seeing. I’ll have a series of articles coming up next week featuring some of the characters I met out here. This is where the things we desire are made, and, as it goes with most objects of desire, the costs of these things are high and getting higher.

Here’s to my current favorite commenter:

Author : AccistNix (IP: 195.88.33.83 , 195.88.33.83)
E-mail : jesapysyubi.k.eh@gmail.com
URL    :
Whois  : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=195.88.33.83

This ass-wipe has been uploading spam comments, each filled with a dozen or more spam and porn links, about once every 12 hours for the past several days.  I’m guessing it’s a bot or something and that this bottom feeder doesn’t check to find out that the comments never actually go live here.

Any of my readers feel like spamming him, feel free!

I’ve written here previously about PCCW’s attempt to rip me off for $2,000 for phony roaming charges on my Pocket WiFi.  It took me hours of my time and multiple emails as well as hundreds of attempts to navigate their miserable voice menu system which seems designed to prevent you from actually doing what you set out to do, until they finally admitted I was right and credited back those charges to me last month.

Guess what?  Now I have the new bill from them.  And it seems as if they have reinstated those charges again!

There is a line item on the bill “Roaming Charges” with no further detail or explanation given, and the charge is $1,871.20. This bill covers the period November 10th through December 9th.  I was still in the US on November 10th and 11th but had stopped using the Pocket WiFi after they cut the service on November 9th due to this billing dispute.  From November 12th through today I have only been in Hong Kong, no travel, not even to Macau or Shenzhen.

So is this their latest trick?  Agree that they were wrong, drop the charge, and then simply reinstate the charge the following month and hope you don’t notice?

Hmm, trying to think of the appropriate name to call them.  Scumbags? Douchebags?  Donkey-raping uncle-fucking shit-eaters?  Your suggestions gratefully appreciated.