Gorillaz is coming to HK December 3rd at AsiaWorld, tickets went on sale today.  You can get them online here.   “In addition to Damon Albarn, Mick Jones and Paul Simonon, the Gorillaz live band also includes Mike Smith, Cass Browne, Jeff Wootton and Gabriel Manuals Wallace, as well as additional backing singers, brass sections, a full string ensemble and special guests. Artists that have performed in previous shows included among others the likes of De La Soul, Bobby Womack, Booty Brown, Mos Def and UK Hip Hop stars Kano and Bashy.”   I don’t think we can expect to see any of those guests appearing onstage here, but if the band really does include Jones and Simonon, that will be thrill enough for me.  The one and only time I saw the Clash live was at Bonds in NYC – almost 30 freaking years ago, holy crap.  And I never got to see Blur live in concert.

Not much else going on.  My search for restaurants in Kennedy Town continues, today’s lunch was at the oddly named Thalassic Thai Restaurant.  A set lunch of grilled pork neck, rice, vegetable soup and an iced lemon tea set me back HK$38 and was quite tasty.  And a lot of the dishes I saw on other tables also looked quite reasonable – I will return.

Dinner tonight was my first time at a Wanchai spot that’s been around forever – 3.6.9. Restaurant.   You may recall that I used to like Tai Ji back when they first opened but their quality went downhill after awhile and now they’re gone.  After swapping out a camera battery at the Wanchai Computer Centre, walked over to this place which was quite full at 7:30 PM.  My friend and I got a tiny little table in the back which left me literally leaning against the air conditioner.  We had chicken, pork belly with mushroom & bamboo, choi sum with “chicken oil” and of course xiao long bao.   I don’t remember the name of the chicken dish but it was quite nice.  The pork could have used a bit more sauce and a bit thicker but was okay.  The xiao long bao wasn’t very “soupy” inside but it was tasty.  $280 for these four dishes plus two cokes – not the best Shanghai food I’ve ever had but not bad and I think I’ll return there as well.  (Update – now that I’m thinking about it, my jaw kind of has that feeling that I get after eating something with MSG.  But I don’t know for certain.)

Also, regarding 3.6.9. – I wanted some Shanghai style pork belly.  The guy standing at the door to lure in customers brought out an English menu.  I asked if they had pork belly.  He said, “Of course!”  And then he flipped through the menu, couldn’t find it and said, “Oh, it’s not on our English menu, just ask for it.”  Which we did.  And it left me wondering what else they have that’s not on the English menu (which was actually quite extensive already.)  On the plus side, I see that one of the reviews on Open Rice notes that they stay open till 4 AM.

Last and maybe least  - for those of you who’ve mentioned to me that you’re not getting email notifications on new comments in threads you’ve subscribed to, the guy who takes care of my server says he’s finally tracked down the issue.  Expect a fix to be in place by this weekend.

Yes, another Saturday, another trip to Mong Kok.   We parked in the Langham Place Mall, simply because we’d never been there.  The mall is huge and it was packed and shortly after getting in, we got out as fast as we could.

Hungry, we chose a spot at random on Portland Street and got lucky because we loved it.

Here’s a panoramic shot of the interior. (Click on it to see it full sized.)

They had a partial English menu with pictures – partial because there was a separate menu listing all of the bubble teas and coffees on offer that was Chinese only, with almost no pictures.  Anyway, there was a small Sichuan section on the menu and we took a chance with this dish, which had 6, count ‘em, 6 chilis pictured next to the dish.

And it turned out to be authentic, hotter than hell, honest to goodness Sichuan food, a huge spicy hot bowl of thin sliced beef with all sorts of veggies.  We also got an order of wontons in chili oil with spring onion and ginger and a dish of prawns with cashew nuts & chilis.   It was all good.  It was all, actually, very good.  Three dishes together with an ice lemon tea and an ice coffee with all sorts of stuff in it came out to under $200.  This was some seriously tasty food served by friendly staff in a old fashioned, comfortable and clean spot.  We are definitely going back.

As always on a Saturday, Sai Yeung Choi South Street was wall to wall people.

The rainbow reproduced via Keds sneakers, in a shop that finally had the Vans in the style, color and size my gf was looking for.

We also found this shop, BXS I think it was called, selling a line of clothing and items labelled “Mini Che” – cartoon versions of Che Guevara and I gotta confess, it was some damned cute stuff, cheap, we filled up a bag or two while there (not any of the stuff in the photos though).  I have to admit, the entire concept of taking Che, either a beacon of justice or insane murderer depending on your outlook, and turning him into a lovable cartoon character, appealed to some side of me.

Check the sign out for this sauna on Portland Street – “Hong Kong Style Service – Most Cheap Money Only.”   Given the location, one could make an educated guess about what kind of service they offer?

Let’s hear it for Dick Hui – Mathemagic Power!  Appropriately next to an ad for the Modern Toilet Restaurant.

I wasn’t offended by the cartoon Che merchandise but this bugged me – an expensive sports car with the personalized license plate “NO MONEY.”

And actually, the car’s owner came by just after I took the picture – someone I’d guess was well under 30.  Did daddy buy the car for him?  Is he a banker or a real estate speculator?  No idea.

P.S. I am, as you guessed, enjoying the crap out of the Sony NEX-5 camera.  It’s super light to carry around and the photos are nice and sharp for the most part.  Loving the panorama feature and the supplied software does allow me to “play” it as a scrolling image on my PC, though I have yet to find a way to export that to share anywhere.  Only a couple of problems so far – at lunch on Friday when the auto white balance was way, WAY off and also, unless I’m missing it, not able to change the focus point once the camera thinks it’s found the right spot.  Will play around some more on Sunday.

I went a little bit insane tonight and bought the Sony NEX-5 camera with the 16mm lens.   While I did not love the Panasonic GF-1 camera and sold it after a few months, I was attracted to this because of the larger APS-C size sensor (the largest available in one of these so-called EVIL (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lenses) cameras), HD video (albeit 1080i), respectable high ISO performance and some of the special effects built into the camera.  No pictures to upload tonight but look for some by the weekend.

There is also a boxed set that includes both the 16mm lens and an 18-55mm zoom lens.  That set is completely sold out in Hong Kong and word is that it will be one month until it’s back in stock.  I can hold off on the zoom for now, especially because Sony is planning on releasing an 18-200mm zoom in September and I’ll want to see what that’s like.   With the 16mm lens, I can fit the camera into my pants pocket as long as I’m wearing somewhat baggy trousers.

Sitting in a restaurant tonight, I decided to try out the panorama feature.  It’s easy enough for a five year old to figure out; I didn’t need to look at the manual.  Just selected the option, followed the on-screen prompts, did a 180 degree arc around the restaurant, and there it was – an extremely wide-screen 180 degree view of the place.  I also had the option to view it larger sized, the camera “scrolling” around the stitched-together photo.  Incredibly easy and nice result, though I have no idea of how it displays on a computer (or a blog for that matter).

Aside from “intelligent auto,” the camera has the full range of PASM modes and can save RAW as well as JPEG.  And another major point in its favor for me, one can use SD cards as well as the misbegotten Memory Sticks.

So far, it seems really sweet.

Not really sweet was the restaurant we ate in.  This friend of mine, a westerner who actually lived in Thailand for two years, for some reason is in love with Wanchai’s Chili Club restaurant.  I’ve tried it twice in the past and didn’t really want to go back.  One time was with a Thai girlfriend who tasted the food, wrinkled up her nose and said, “This is not Thai food, this is Chinese Thai food.”  I think it’s been at least four years since I ate there and he said, “Maybe it’s changed, maybe it’s better since then, I love it!”

So to make him happy, my gf and I joined him there tonight.  I said, “You love this place, you do all the ordering.”  Blech.  He’s a big fan of this “charcoal chicken” dish, which was just a hacked-up chicken that certainly didn’t taste of charcoal grilling and barely tasted of any marinade or spice at all.  The skin was not crispy, not even cooked long enough to melt away the fat.   He also loves the giant king prawns they serve there, 3 for $130, shoved on a stick and grilled without any spice, not even salt or pepper, just a tiny bowl of fish sauce on the side, though the prawns themselves were nice enough, just boring.  He got a Thai beef salad, nowhere near as spicy as I’m used to on this dish, and while some might be happy that there was so much beef on the plate, I could barely find any salad in the bowl.  The only thing my gf and I liked was the fried rice.

So until I finally get off my lazy butt and get over to Kowloon City for what’s supposed to be the most authentic Thai food in HK, I’ll stick with Thai Farmer and Thai Hut, thank you very much.

Yes, blogging was uncharacteristically light for me during the past week.  It was an extremely frustrating week both at work and at home – not going into details, just take my word on it.

Although there was one good lunch this week at that middle eastern spot, most lunch hours were spent at Cyberport and my hatred of the food choices there and the shopping choices in that mall seems to increase on a daily basis.  Thinking back …

One day hit this place, Hang Heung or something along those lines.  I ordered a combo of prawn wontons with brisket and noodles – there were no prawns to be found in those wontons and the brisket was 98% fat and tendons.  But I did better than my friend, who I suppose hasn’t been in Hong Kong long enough to figure out that when you go into a place where everyone is eating congee or noodles or roast meats, don’t order the fucking fruit salad.

Another day, Tutto, the ersatz Italian joint which has proved to be relatively decent although a tad expensive, which is probably why the place is almost always empty at lunch time.  There were three of us and we got burgers.  We already know that the bun is about 6 times bigger than the tiny burger they give you, but this time they outdid themselves with dried out lumps of what I think was once hamburger combined with bacon that had yet to see anything resembling a flame.

And Friday, trying one of the few remaining spots I hadn’t tried up till now, Beautiful Shanghai.  Like most third rate so-called Shanghai restaurants in Hong Kong, they thing if they put xiao long bao and pork belly on the menu that they can call it Shanghai food, and most of the other choices came from all over the map.  A $48 set lunch that included the absolute worst dan dan mian I’ve ever had in my life.

And this shopping mall, filled with its useless, empty shops stuffed with merchandise that no one in their right mind could possibly want.  Just to break up the monotony one day, went into this “art” place that specializes in recreating classic paintings using crushed up bits of left-over gem stones.  Van Gogh in oil not enough for you, you want smushed up bits of colored rock instead?  Tens of thousands of dollars.  Or if you’ve got more money than brains and an ego to match, you can bring in your own photo and they’ll “gem-ify” it – and it takes six months.  From the way the woman reacted when we came in the shop, giving us a 15 minute tour, we were probably the first people there in weeks.  Then again, given the prices they charge, they probably only need 1 or 2 sales per month to stay afloat.  I’ve heard a rumor that these shops pay either $0 or close to $0 rent so that the place doesn’t look like even more of a disaster than it actually is.

And while I’m at it, what about the pitiful magazine rack at the Park & Rob, aimed at the idle rich women living next door in Smell-Aire.  I mean, it’s one of only two places to buy some magazines in the midst of what is supposed to be Hong Kong’s high tech center and they don’t stock Wired or Fast Company but you can find People and OK and every global variation on those.

When I worked in Quarry Bay for 8 years, I used to tell myself how much I missed working in Central.  Now I’d give anything to be back in Quarry Bay again, where there are dozens of reasonable lunch spots across all cuisines and budgets and some places that have some actually useful shopping.

Thanks goodness the photo shoot at PASM on Friday night was fun.

That’s just a quick sample I’ve pulled out from the batch I’ve shot, more maybe later.  The model was a very sweet and very thin young lady down from the mainland who also spoke surprisingly good English.  She also posed topless in each session (but with pieces of tape covering the relevant bits).  I posted the above picture on Facebook and someone thought it was Chrissie Chau and looking at it now, I see a slight resemblance.  I was happy to hang out with a group of friends for the evening and actually managed to relax for a few hours, even if I was driving and had to restrict my drinking to 7-Up.  Anyway, we had a good turn out and as always I’m looking forward to the next one.

Saturday became the day to catch up on shopping.  Since I was in Quarry Bay to get my iPhone, we went over to Cityplaza to grab a few things we needed.  Lunch was at Ruby Tuesday and I have no idea why I bitch and moan about food choices in Cyberport and then choose this place for lunch.   Yes, another burger, and quite expensive at over $120 for a bacon cheeseburger and fries.  They also have a “wagyu” burger at $148.   This place is seriously expensive for a franchised American joint.  A half rack of ribs here costs the same as a full rack almost anywhere else.  Their deal is that they offer a 50% discount card but you gotta buy that and the thing costs $600 for 6 months or an uncool thousand for 360 days (why not a year?).  I actually shelled out for a $52 lemonade with bits of mango in it that was so ludicrously sour that it made sinigang taste like apple pie.

This evening, Inception, as previously mentioned, at Mega Box.  Only 1 movie trailer in between the 10 minutes of ads and it was a local film, City On something or other, with bits of action but lots of really bad CGI and even worse make-up effects.  It looked like the cinematic equivalent of most of the meals I’d had during the week, in other words shit on toast – but be grateful for the toast I suppose.

After the movie, we decided to walk around Megabox before heading home.  The joint was packed.  I mean seriously packed, with long lines of cars waiting to get into the car park, long lines of people getting on and off buses, every shop busy, every restaurant busy.  It occurred to me that as much as I (and some other English-language bloggers) love to make fun of this place, local people actually like it.  And why shouldn’t they?  Movie theater, tons of cheap restaurants, ice skating rink on the 10th floor overlooking the harbor.  Even Ikea was packed tight with people and at 9 PM on a Saturday night the 7 check-out lines were each six people deep.

So Sunday’s just gonna be a day to chill out, watch a movie or two around the house, get caught up with chores, relax in preparation for a week that I am hoping will be an improvement on the previous one.

(Oh, how nice, just as I was writing the final paragraph above, WordPoop gave me a message, “you have logged out, cannot save draft!”)

Busy at work, busy at home, here’s a variety of updates though ….

Sunday I was shopping in Mong Kok and so of course stopped into some sneaker shops.  Walked past this shop called “Dahood” and saw these in the window:

And I gotta tell you, they look even better in “real life.”  And I thought, “What better way to show my love and admiration for Jimi Hendrix than by wearing him on my feet?  Buying Converse is easy because they run large so I can pick up a size 11, a size most shops here stock, and they’ll fit fine.

But later on, I saw a pair of Nikes that I loved, too.  Nike, I need a size 12.  I went into every shop along Fa Yuen Gai, probably 20 in all, and all of them stocked this shoe but none of them had a 12.  One shop shocked me by having a 13 in stock!

So, determined, Monday night I stopped off at New Town Plaza in Shatin on the way home.  5th floor is loaded with sneaker and sporting goods shops and not one of them had my size in this either.  At least they had more helpful sales clerks – one who told me that the style was a month old so they couldn’t order it any more;another that told me that not only do most shops not stock size 12, those that do just get one pair at that size and once those are sold, that’s it.

I suppose I could have continued my quest for several more nights – Times Square?  Hang Hau?  Ah, frig it, internet.  Found a shop that had it and that also had a web site smart enough to read my IP address and toss up a large banner reading, “Yes, we ship to HONG KONG!” before I even thought to check.  Ordered them last night, got the shipping notice this morning with the UPS tracking number, another quest resolved.

Okay, at the moment, retail therapy is one of the sole (no pun intended!) pleasures in my life and no, I don’t feel like going into detail about it.  Just take it as played.

Speaking of retail therapy, my iPhone 4 order is settled and I’ll be picking it up on Friday night, after I leave the office and before I head to the next PASM Workshop party.  We’ve got a super hot model from China which I guess is why this party is titled, “The Heat Is On.”  If you want to check out the invite on Facebook (and maybe even come over to join the fun – HK$100 all you can drink!), then check the details here.

Yes, I don’t give a poop about “antennagate.”  I’ll shove a case on it and it will work fine.  Incidentally, today I had my first experience with iOS 4′s multi-tasking.  I’d had Skype fired up for some chats with my boss, who is currently out of town.  And even though I closed the app and was doing something else, I kept getting notifications for the next several hours as people noticed I was online and wanted to chat.  (One reason I hate chat software – I find it quite obtrusive at times and so only run it when I need to.)  At any rate, yes, it does work as promised.

Last for now, just want to mention a fabulous lunch I had today in Kennedy Town.  I’d passed this place last week and made fun of their sign:

I’ve never been to Twon before so can’t say if this is truly the best steak there or not.  Anyway, the place is called Al Basrah although the sign in front actually said Al Basrah Cow Pampas.  The menu cheerfully informs you:

I am BAHADUR K.C. SHIVA Founder of the trendy SOHO diniing area in Hong Kongin 1995 successfully open first restaurant Nepal Cuisine & La Pampa Argentinean Steak House, La comida coccina spanol, Bar Club, 1911 Kathmandu!!  Now I have chosen an upcoming new area in western district to open the first Fine Dining Restaurant and Wine Bar serving both middle eastern cuisine and the best Argentinean beef cuts from the FALKLANDS and SUCCULENT LAMB SHANKS FROM PATAGONIAFood of high quality with healthy aromatic spices to suite discerning Diners.

Whether or not this guy really kicked off the Soho dining scene I can’t say but I’m not entirely sure it’s something I’d boast about.  But I shouldn’t make fun because Mr. Shiva was there in the restaurant at lunch time and he turned out to be a very nice guy indeed.

Anyway, I wasn’t too impressed with the look of their $48 quick lunch buffet so I decided to order off the regular menu.  From a section called “The President’s Favorite,” I chose Biryani Laham which the menus says is Iraqi style lamb shank with rice.  And HOLY FUCK WAS IT EVER GOOD!!!!!  The rice was great, the lamb was so tender I didn’t need the knife provided and I wanted to ask for a straw to suck out the marrow from the shank, not sure why I didn’t, what I could get of it was enough to remind me why Anthony Bourdain often tags bone marrow as his favorite food.

The iPhone photo above doesn’t begin to do it justice.  The only down side was that I was only able to finish about half the dish.  I had them wrap up the rest for me to take home, shoved it in the fridge at the office, but by the end of the day I was feeling so frustrated by the day’s events that I left it behind in the office (called a friend who was still there and told him to take it home for dinner).

Anyway, should you find yourself in Kennedy Town or in the mood for something from the middle east, definitely give this place a try.

And, uh, oh crap, 12:30, time for bed!

I hadn’t been up to Shenzhen for several months and was feeling in desperate need of a massage.  Add to that a friend who is relatively new to Hong Kong and had never been across the border.  And so, yesterday, off we went.  Since he’d never been there at all, I figured it made sense to do some of the usual stuff for his first visit.  Which meant, of course, the Luo Hu shopping mall.

First stop lunch.  I always love to eat at Laurel but we were hungry and I knew that at 1 PM on a Saturday afternoon it would be at least a 30 minute wait for a table, so we picked a different spot in the mall (sorry, I’m spacing on the name) with reasonable quality stuff and average price of around Y10 per dish.  Of course I ordered way too much and we were full before the last dish came.  And since it was a long time in coming, I tried to  cancel it but they wouldn’t let me.   Oh well, at Y38 (fried chili peppers stuffed with minced fish, spicy as hell) I didn’t mind too much.

Walking around the shopping mall, it seemed as if every shop had the same two iPad knock-offs, each of which seemed to have both Windows and Android installed.

As you can probably tell, the boxes look the same (the one on the right has the Android logo on top) and these things seemed relatively okay on first glance.  Note that on the bottom there is a connector port (not Apple’s dock connector) as well as USB and a Micro-SD slot.   The interface seemed like Windows and then you’d tap an arrow and another icon menu would launch featuring Android options, Android 1.6.  The smaller iPad also has a front-facing web cam built in.   Some dealers had taped an Apple logo on the back.   I couldn’t figure out what processor was inside but these suckers were pretty freaking slow.  Asking price everywhere was around Y1200; one shop came down to Y700 and they were trying really hard not to let me leave without buying one, literally hanging on to my arm as I tried to get out of the shop.  But I figured, even if I could get them down another hundred or two (which seemed likely), this was something that I wouldn’t actually use more than a couple of times for novelty or show-off value due to that really slow processor.   Perhaps there are better ones available at Huaquiangbei but we didn’t have time to get over there to check it out.

I did buy a different cute gimmicky thing – a key chain with what looked like the usual set of buttons for locking/unlocking a car but actually had a tiny video cam embedded – for Y80!  Takes Micro-SD cards and seemed to work decently in the shop – tested out this one and it seems to work okay so I’ll be dangerous during the week ahead.

The only other photos of possible interest are these two shots taken from the toilet in Luo Hu looking at the border.  I find the graves on the hillside facing Shenzhen to be of particular interest (sorry, couldn’t get rid of the reflection in the glass) – were these placed there merely because it’s on a hillside facing water or was there some political significance that I don’t know about?  I fantasized that these were people born across the border, came to Hong Kong in 1949 and are hoping that some day their spirits will return to a free China?

The next stop was massage, of course.  I asked around in the mall and the name that came up most often was Queens Spa & Dining so we went back to the train station, found the Queens Spa shop and hopped on their free shuttle bus for the 10 minute ride somewhere near Dong Men.  I thought I’d been there before but everything there was new to me so perhaps it was my first time.

There were six people, all dressed in white, lined up outside to welcome people.  Everything in this place seemed shiny new and immaculately clean.  One floor features a “30,000 square foot water park!” but we hadn’t brought appropriate attire.  The shower area featured three huge baths set at different temperatures with those big stone jacuzzi loungers, very relaxing.

On entering the lounge area, we encountered a Caucasian woman in uniform with a big button that read, “I speak ENGLISH!”  Her name was Natalya, Russian, living in Shenzhen for 10 years.  Actually we encountered a lot more English outside of Luo Hu than I’d encountered in the past – many of the Chinese staff members at the sauna spoke at least some English, at least at a similar level to my Mandarin (probably better), and when we went for our massage later on, one of the two massage girls could speak basic English and told us she was studying at a nearby school on her days off.

We settled into huge lounge chairs in the movie area – big projection TV, the day’s film schedule posted (we watched Four Christmases, Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon, better than I expected) while helping ourselves to drinks and fruit – fancier drinks and food available at extra charge and we did spend Y10 for some popcorn.

When we felt ready for the massage, we were brought to a computer screen where we could choose from baseball-card-like displays of each masseuse, her name and specialties (though only in Chinese) – each one photographed in skin tight outfits looking like pop stars, each one more beautiful than the last, although of course no “extras” are to be had in these kinds of places.  90 minute massages start at Y168 and go up depending on which options you want.  ”Hong Kong style” oil massage was Y188, if memory serves.

Note – if you just want to go there and use the facilities without getting a massage – pool tables, movie and karaoke rooms, mah jong room, water park, food, etc. – the cost is Y98 for 24 hours.  That’s really nice, right?   Walk around Shenzhen, get hot and sticky (no pun intended) and come here and pay 98 yuan for locker, shower, pool and some food, that’s a damned good deal IMHO.

From there, jumped in a taxi to my favorite restaurant, the Luo Hu branch of Sichuan chain Ba Shu Feng.  And for the first time, these guys let me down.  I ordered 4 dishes – 3 of them came relatively soon and were as fiery spicy and wonderfully tasty as ever.  But the 4th dish never showed up.  I kept calling waitresses over, the manager kept coming over, they kept getting on their walkie talkies and asking, they kept telling me it was coming, but it never came.  Finally it was getting close to 11 PM and I told them we had to get back to Hong Kong and didn’t want to miss the train.  As opposed to our lunch experience, this time they were very apologetic and didn’t charge us for the dish that never came.  Which was very nice of them except that fish dish is really freaking tasty and I had been looking forward to it but it was not to be.

So we hopped in a taxi back to the train and very soon we were back across the border in Hong Kong.  One thing I find is that people in Shenzhen are consistently friendly, smiling and helpful – and not just when they’re trying to help themselves to some of the money in your wallet.  Then we came across the border to Hong Kong where no one smiles, everyone’s in a rush and grouchy all the time.  Logic would seem to dictate the opposite should be true.  But these days I find people in Shenzhen to be more laid back and welcoming than the people in Hongkie Town.  My friend’s reaction to his first trip?  He wanted to leave Hong Kong and move there.  Next trip I’ll take him around Dong Men and Shekou and see if he still feels the same way.

Finally figured out how to have a halfway decent lunch at Cyberport.  Leave.

Yep, a friend and I jumped on the number 58 minibus, HK$5 and 10 minutes later we were in Kennedy Town, walking around and found a place called The Clay Oven, Indian place with a $45 set lunch that was not bad at all.  I’ll be going back to K-Town often to try some of the other places there.

A couple of doors down was this place named Al Basrah Cow Pampa.  As in “Middle Eastern Cuisine – Argentinean Grill Steak.”  I suppose that’s as fusion as one can get.  A sign there proclaims that they have the best steaks in “twon.”  I got a photo but I’m unable to sync my iPhone at the moment.

Which is really weird.  iPad syncs fine.  iPod syncs fine.  Then I plug in the iPhone – nothing, nada, zilch, the phone doesn’t register that it’s plugged in or charging, let alone start to sync.   So one might think that the problem is the sync cable or the dock connector on the phone, except if I take that exact same cable and plug it into a charger, the phone starts to charge right away.  (I’ve tried two different USB hubs; have not tried the USB ports directly on the computer because it’s a pain to get back there and anyway, as I said, everything else is syncing normally.)  Anyone have any thoughts?

Around 5:35 PM, the Black Rain signal went up with just 10 minutes advance notice.  Yeah, one is supposed to stay indoors when this happens, but I took this as a cue to get out of the office and try to maybe beat some traffic home.  As if.  Actually, things were quite okay on the HK side, but once I came out of the Western Tunnel, the rain was coming down as heavily as I’ve ever seen it.  And this being Hong Kong, people were continuing to drive as poorly as ever – lights not turned on, not signaling lane changes, speeding, etc.

So I get to the place near Shatin where Route 8 merges into Route 9 – 4 lanes going down into 1 and even with the rain, a bunch of brainiacs decide to create a 5th lane to cut through traffic more, further backing things up – and then at the bottom of the hill a huge flood.   Then a mile or two down the road, where I get off the highway, there must have been an accident, traffic on the cross street wasn’t moving and had all but completely blocked the intersection.  I sat there waiting for the light to change while another group of brainiacs figured it was a good time to run through the red light and try to squeeze through the small opening in that intersection – I kid you not.  Sai Sha Road had a spot that was flooded completely across.  And then at the traffic circle in Sai Kung town, a taxi driver who didn’t seem to care that there were other cars (including me) already in that circle, he was a TAXI! and he demanded his right of way.  Ah well, just another day on Hong Kong’s roads.

Anyway, before I head to sleep, let me just alert you that Barnes & Nobles is having a 50% off sale on ALL Criterion DVDs – including boxed sets and blu-rays.  Criterion is the “gold standard” for this stuff – great films, lots of time and care spent on the digital transfers, amazing bonus features.  I’d like to own everything they put out but it’s beyond my budget.  So this sale gave me a chance to get caught up on some of the stuff on my want list.  I counted about 30 things I wanted and then cut the list down to these:

• 3 Films by Louis Malle – boxed set featuring Murmur of the Heart, Lacombe Lucien and Au Revoir Les Enfants – each one a classic
• Burden of Dreams – Les Blank’s documentary shot while Werner Herzog shot the astonishing Fitzcarraldo
• Complete Monterey Pop Festival – one of my favorite festival films, finally getting the blu-ray
• Fanny and Alexander boxed set – featuring the over-5-hour version of Bergman’s final film
• Eric Rohmer’s 6 Moral Tales – My Night at Maud’s, Claire’s Knee, Chloe in the Afternoon and more, more goodness in one box than I can stand!
• Night on Earth – hard to realize I didn’t already have this splendid Jim Jarmusch compendium
• Yi Yi – I love this Taiwanese family drama, again stunned that I didn’t already have it

So 50% off each of the above and I picked the “slow boat to China” shipping option which was just US$20 – after saving around $200 on the above stuff.  The sale runs for another 10 days so you have plenty of time to check it out and I have time to go back and order a few more – Burmese Harp, Berlin Alexanderplatz and the Olivier’s Shakespeare boxed set are looking very tempting.

Well, to varying degrees.

Setting goals:

Got the above on Boing Boing.  Go to Boing Boing to get the credit & link to creator.

Spicy soda?  This company is making soda with chili and wasabi.

Go to The Awl to get the link.

Amazon says that for every 100 physical books they sell, they sell 180 eBooks.  And without giving away any numbers, they also say that since the iPad came out, the Kindle is selling at a faster pace.

When I was a teenager, I devoured “underground comix.  R. Crumb was (and remains) my favorite but my #2 was Gilbert Shelton and his Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers (and the Fat Freddy’s Cat spin-off).  According to Never Get Out of the Boat, someone is scanning the old comix and putting them online.  Funny stuff, or at least it was funny when I was much younger and much higher.

And now a serious one – The Washington Post series on Top Secret America – “A hidden world, growing beyond control.”  I haven’t had a chance to read the whole thing but what I’ve read so far is fucking scary shit.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine.

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

Found in a hallway in Cyberport – certainly seems to me like the title of a Wes Craven film.

Spotted in Wellcome in Sai Kung.  (Sorry, no time to flip the image, “image rotation not supported by your web host.” Sigh.)

Okay, it looks a little strange with the bits of white tape and all, but this is something I’m in favor of.  Food labeling in the US is incredibly misleading and research has shown that in the 30 or so years that they’ve been calling foods “Fat Free,” obesity has drastically increased.  I’m happy that Hong Kong is taking a stand on this.

Speaking of Cyberport, food and horror, this is the chicken curry they serve in the food court.  Literally skin and bones, I don’t think there was even an ounce of meat in this bowl.

Last for now (and maybe least?), on the 69X mini-bus from Cyberport to Quarry Bay, I was pleased to note that the bus doesn’t have a driver, it has a captain.

We started out this afternoon at Gateway, over in Sheung Wan.  If you’re not familiar with this shop, what they do is have someone in the US go to CostCo on a regular basis and buy enough to fill up a 40 foot container.  They ship it over here and have a shop filled with stuff that you can’t find elsewhere in Hong Kong.

Obviously there’s no perishable goods there – no meat, no produce, nothing frozen.   Everything is in those super large sizes that CostCo sells, which can be a pain for some.  And they often run out of stuff between shipments, or get different stuff in each shipment, the result being that you can go there with a list of stuff in your head that you saw last time but there’s no guarantee it will be there this time.

One thing I wanted to get that I’d seen last time was a box of Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.  Nope, none this time.  They did have some packets of another brand so I grabbed a couple of those.  And then I looked for maple syrup.  Nope.  They had syrup.  ”Aunt Jemima’s Original Syrup” and a few variations on that.  Not one of these syrups had maple syrup in them and all of them listed high fructose corn syrup as the number 1 ingredient.  So I passed on all of them.

Following that, we did some other shopping in Wanchai.  We stopped in at Amazonia and grabbed a couple of cokes and thought about dinner choices and kept coming up empty.  Nothing was getting me hungry.  So I told my gf that if we went home early, we might have time to watch a couple of movies.

Thanks to this rain, the traffic coming home was some of the worst I’d ever seen.  I looked over at the highway and saw the sign saying 22 minutes to the Eastern Tunnel (usually the number is more like 8 or 10).  I thought we might do better on local streets.  Mistake!  Hennessy and Lockhart were both essentially parking lots.  No accidents, but dozens and dozens of double-decker buses lined up across all three lanes waiting to pull into bus stops just brought everything to a halt.   It took an hour for us to get from Wanchai to Tin Hau.   After which, things were moving normally again.

We decided to stop at Paisano’s on the way home for some pizza and lasagna.  But even with this rainy, crappy weather, the place was full.  There were 5 people working behind the counter, 2 or 3 more in the kitchen, every table was full, and they were running two delivery cars.  I noted at least two tables with groups of 6 or 8 people sharing the great 24 inch pizzas they do there.  Outside, there are help wanted notices advertising 5 different positions there.

The good news is that they signed the lease for their second location, which will be on Lyndhurst Terrace.  They expect to open there in August.

In other Sai Kung food news, Lyn’s Cafe is gone.  Despite being owned and run by the same people who have the popular Mushroom Bakery in town, this place just never took off.  Any time we’d go into town and decide to try someplace new, we’d walk by there and it would be empty, which didn’t give us a lot of confidence in the place.   The spot has been taken over by Pizza Pomodoro – the former Pizzeria Rosso moved to this new location and changed its name.  This was the same place that ran ads locally inviting people to come in and try their “Original Italian Receipt.”   I never tried the old place after reading that ad and don’t feel any urge to check this place out either.

Anyway, by the time we got home and finished eating, it was well past 10 PM, too late for a movie, just some TV.  That’s the way the cookie crumbles sometimes.