Yes, two posts on a Saturday night, when presumably no one is reading blogs.  Should I write this stuff and save as drafts and postpone published till Monday, following conventional blogging wisdom?  That’s never been my style.  Anyway, this is minor stuff, noted in passing.  It all falls under the list of Reasons I Love Hong Kong.

Friday afternoon I went to Wing On in Sheung Wan in search of de-humidifiers.  I settled on one particular model, only to be told that it was out of stock, that I could buy it and get it delivered within 4 or 5 days.  I decided that I didn’t want to spend my life searching for this, buy it and get it done with, even if I had to wait a bit.  While I was standing on line, a guy rolled in a trolley of stuff that had just been delivered, including a stack of the de-humidifiers I’d just ordered.  “Do you want to take them with you now?”   Why, yes, indeed I do!  The box was quite heavy, I’d bought two of them and I asked them if they could help me get them to my car (which was parked in the Wing On car park).  “Of course!  No problem!”  And a minute later there was a young guy with a trolley to help me out.   Point being that good service is not a rare commodity in Hong Kong in my experience; it is the rule and not the exception.

Standing outside of Amazonia on Friday night, I got to talking with this guy.  Exchanging the usual info, he told me that he was born and grew up in Hong Kong, moved to the States and hated it (he was living in L.A.), happy to return here.   What were the things about Hong Kong that he appreciates?  The usual – the convenience, how it’s so easy to get everywhere, how places stay open late and you have a thousand choices for a good meal after midnight – the kinds of things that we often take for granted.   But I knew what he meant, having moved from HK to San Francisco and then very happy to return to HK again.

Saturday morning, I realized that the Oscars would be broadcast Monday morning local time and that I don’t get broadcast TV at home.  In years past, I’d just watch it in the office (not a problem, after all I was working for a movie company).  So I went down to Patsy House in town and asked, “Do you know anyone who can fix a TV antenna in a village house?”  And one woman behind the counter raised her hand, like an eager schoolgirl who knows the answer to the question.  “I do!  I know someone!”  And it turns out she had two people listed in her contact book who do this.  “Tuesday or Wednesday okay?”  “Well, I was hoping to get it done before Monday.”  She said she’d try her best.   Now here’s the extra mile that she went for me – the guy she found called me at 6 PM and asked if he could come over right away and I said sure and then, two minutes later, the lady from Patsy House called me just to make sure that the guy she found had called me and that I was being taken care of.  By 7:30, it was all fixed and I can now receive our four wonderful broadcast channels.  With my luck, I’ll probably forget to set the alarm clock and wake up after the whole thing’s over.

I know, I know, this is all really simple shit.  But sometimes I take pleasure in the simple shit and don’t want to get jaded to the point where I take peoples’ kind actions for granted.

After getting that taken care of, I thought this might be the day that I finally try the food at Camden Town for lunch.  But they’re gone and already replaced by something else.  Oh well.  I turned the corner and said, “Okay, this is the day we finally try Fiesta Fiesta.”  It’s a comfortable looking small place on one of the back streets in the old part of town.  They’ve got a lot of western food on the menu but I thought it might be better to go with something Filipino.

So I ordered the pork adobo, which was listed on the menu at $68.  A couple of minutes later the waiter came by with a bowl of soup.  “I put you down for the lunch set, same thing plus soup, drink and dessert, and it’s just $58.”  The soup was cream of chicken with noodle with a small bit of garlic bread on the side.  The pork adobo came with a heap of rice and some broccoli and wasn’t bad at all (though not as good as my gf’s).  The dessert was some kind of Filipino jelly thing with a bit of strawberry sauce.  My gf ordered their Lumpiang Shanghai, spring rolls with pork, served with a salad of lettuce, cucumber, tomato, yellow pepper and we both thought it was quite okay (though not as good as her mother’s).   We got to sit outside for a relaxing hour watching people strolling by – lots of people with dogs, lots of people with cameras, as always. This wasn’t gourmet stuff by any means, but comfortably in the cheap ‘n cheerful category.  The place right next door, Pan Da Cafe, also seems popular and I’ll have to give them a try one of these days too.

The dehumidifiers are working great.  I’m shocked at how quickly they’re filling up with water (I got the 21 liter models) and just kicking myself that I didn’t get these years ago.  Tonight I sold off my Nikon D300 to someone via DCFever.  Dinner at home and a relaxing evening.

So it’s been a relatively productive couple of days.  Nothing at all planned for Sunday and I’m quite okay with that.

The Shamrock Irish Pub on Ashley Road in Tsim Sha Tsui has been open for awhile now, but tonight was finally the grand opening party.  For two hours there was plenty of free food and drink, so of course they attracted a large crowd.

Now others at BC Magazine are expert in working the room at events for the BCene page, one of BC’s more popular features.  But believe it or not, I’m too shy to do that – to go up to complete strangers and say, “Can I take your picture for BC please?”  But by the same token, the Nikon D700 camera and Nikon SB-900 speedlight are pretty fricking huge, so people see me with that and I suppose they assume I am working – which in this case as I walked by, many people actually stopped me and asked me to take their picture, and I was happy to oblige. (In case you’re wondering, two of the managers had asked me to bring my camera and take photos during the party.)

There was a great lion dance and afterwards we went walking around TST for a bit before heading home.  Several different sets of photos to share below.

(And many of you will be happy to note that I have finally done the right thing – uploaded photos to Flickr first, organized them into sets, and using the Lightbox add-in for WordPress so that you can view larger versions of all the photos without leaving the page.  Can’t promise I’ll always be this organized but I will make more of an effort to do this in the future.)

This first set is from the party at Shamrock.

And a separate set of photos for the lion dance outside.  Not that I’ve seen hundreds of these, but this was definitely one of the better ones in my opinion.

After the dance finished and the party started winding down, we ducked into Sushi One on Ashley Road for dinner.  Normally I’m not a fan of the robot belt sushi chains in Hong Kong, but this was actually quite okay and we filled up for HK$200.

Then a bit of walking around, giving me the chance to grab some shots of the Peninsula Hotel and the new Hullett House shopping mall.

I’d parked the car on the roof deck of the Ocean Terminal garage so that I’d be able to grab some harbor view shots before going home.  Despite the continuing foggy weather, I think I got some decent shots.

Finally, on the drive home, I pulled over along Sai Sha Road because I’ve always wanted to get some shots of the restaurants there at night.  I don’t know quite what the deal is with Sai Sha Cafe and Country Inn – that these two places right next to each other both serve Thai food and seem to be competing for how many colored lights they can use to attract customers.  But if someone told me that both places had the same owner, I wouldn’t be surprised.  The relatively new Tom Bar + Grill right next door looks positively dowdy compared to these two spots.  The food?  Couldn’t tell you.  I ate at one of these Thai places more than 10 years ago and the reviews on Open Rice for Tom don’t make me feel like running there any time soon.

I know, I’ve probably over-shared in terms of quantity of photos posted tonight.

In 12-1/2 years in Hong Kong, I’ve never felt the need to buy any de-humidifiers.  But this past week has been just horrible.  I don’t want to run the air conditioners but if we leave the doors and windows open, not only do the wood floors get all wet and slippery, I’m finding mold on almost everything leather that I own.

So what’s the solution?  Doors and windows shut and run the air cons all the time, despite the negative impact to the ecology and the massive electric bills?  Or go out and buy half a dozen dehumidifiers – lower electric bills, sure, but balance the lower electric bill over the purchase price of several of these things and any savings are wiped out.

So which is the better solution?  What do you recommend?  How are you coping with this wave of wacky weather?

ARGH!!!! One day after buying a new Pocket WiFi unit from PCCW to replace the one I lost, I find the one I lost.  Don’t ask.  It’s too aggravating to detail.

But that does leave me with two devices and I only need one, so I am going to sell one off.  You can take a look at the Netvigator Everywhere page here.

This provides WiFi connectivity for up to 5 devices anywhere in Hong Kong.  It works in bars and restaurants.  It works hiking in the woods.  It works in the car and in the MTR – basically anywhere that there is a cellular signal.  7.2 meg connectivity, connect up to five devices at once wirelessly and you have the option to connect it to your PC or laptop with the included USB cable.  It’s roughly the same height and width but half the thickness of a pack of smokes.  The battery recharges via a separate charger or USB.

New, this sells for $2480, as I found out last night.  You may establish an account and get a SIM card from PCCW (HK$328 per month for unlimited usage) or it may be compatible with other SIM cards and services; I can’t say.  If anyone’s interested, you can buy this from me for $2,000.  Post a comment or send an email to hongkietown at gmail dot com.

I’m thinking about my reaction to this opinion piece in today’s SCMP by Peter Kammerer.  My ego (and a friend) tells me he is probably writing about me, though a couple of supposed “details” are wrong.  I am actually more aware than most of how public this information really is and how, once posted, the information remains available online even if I subsequently delete it.  I know about caches and internet archive sites, I know that Facebook is searchable from Google and other search engines and I know that a cyber-stalker recently went through my Twitter history trying to find some evidence that did not exist to use against me.

I don’t post every detail of my life, even if it sometimes can seem that way.  (Of course, anyone who has been reading me pre-2006 knows that I used to post far more intimate details of my life, much more than I do today.)  I believe that the writer has taken a few bits of info and puffed them up to make them seem more important than they actually are.  He knows I drive a BMW?  Lots of people in Hong Kong drive one.  He knows what movies or music I like – and so? I enjoy communicating about my passions in life and since those passions don’t include abusing animals or 80s hair metal music, I’m not embarrassed to share them.  (Although naturally there are those who do not share my values and who find some aspects of my life or some of my opinions distasteful, but that’s life.)

As I’ve commented before, both here and elsewhere, the fact that I’ve indicated on foursquare that I’m in some specific bar or restaurant does not mean that my house is vacant or unattended – far from it.  Yes, I’m easy to identify when I’m out and about.  Yes, in many cases, you (the person reading this right now) know more about me than I know about you.  But I don’t see that as a bad thing.  On the other hand, I think that there definitely are many people who post way too much personal information about themselves online, much more than I ever have or ever will about myself.  There are quite a few blogs dedicated to things people have posted on Facebook that should never have been so public; as far as I know nothing I have ever posted has been worthy of a mention in these blogs.  I agree with Mr. Kammerer that children in particular need to be educated as to the potential dangers and that their internet usage should be monitored to a certain extent by their parents.

I have gone through these periods of thinking that I post too much personal information about myself, that I should strive to make the blog less personal and then something happens that I just can’t stop myself from writing about.  I have learned that a little bit of offhand phrasing here or there has a way of being misinterpreted and backfiring, though generally in ways that are more amusing than harmful.  I know that just because I write about something and think that everyone will see it as “X,” some will see it as “Y.” And I suppose that some will say that it’s an expression of ludicrous egotism that I think this piece is about me or that I am revealing too much by writing about it here and drawing further attention to it and to myself.

There is an upside to the very minimal amount of fame that I may have which does not get mentioned in the article – and that’s assuming that having a few hundred people per day read my blog makes me “famous.”  In Hong Kong, far more people know about Bus Uncle than know about me.   But in the balance, I believe I’ve received far more positive things than negative as a result of people knowing who I am in the real world – from the occasional free drink in a bar to job offers.

At any rate, take a look and let me know what you think about all this.

Too much information
PETER KAMMERER

Mar 02, 2010

I have never met Mark, but I feel I know him well. From following his blog over the past four years, receiving his Tweets and occasionally checking his Facebook page, I have learned what I presume to be virtually everything there is to know about him. From his postings, I have a sound sense of his likes, dislikes, hates and fears. With a fair degree of accuracy, I can second-guess his music and movie choices, which restaurant he will go to for dinner and his next holiday destination.

At any given time of day or night, I have a good idea where Mark – not his real name – is. I know that he is moderately wealthy, has a Filipino girlfriend whom he met in a Wan Chai bar and has a taste for Shenzhen massages. Without difficulty, I can show you where he lives, reveal the type, model and colour of his car and, if needs be, find out his mother’s address. I even know how many tattoos he has and where they are on his body.

My interest in Mark would seem to be more than casual. There may appear to be a measure of voyeuristic intent in the way I follow his activities. Even as I write this, I have to agree that this all sounds creepy. If you’re reading this, Mark, please understand that I have no ill will towards you or your property; that I read you because I like your style of writing and find your life interesting.

Of course, I could well be the exception. I know from the page views and comments posted to the various internet sites that I am just one of a number of Mark’s followers. Some of the remarks point towards people who are not so enamoured with him. Anyone jealous of his circumstances would, I believe, have little difficulty breaking into his home when he is out of town – a quick look at photographs posted to his blog can easily confirm this – and make off with some of his rare music memorabilia, his wall-sized plasma television or expensive camera equipment.

To prove that I am not devious of mind, this did not occur to me until I encountered the website pleaserobme.com at the weekend. Using information from the social networking site foursquare.com, which lets people share information about their whereabouts, it produces a list of people who are not at home. Whether they are in Tokyo, Seoul or New York, it takes just a little internet research to get an address. With a smattering of knowledge of burglary techniques, I imagine all manner
of ill-gotten gains are up for grabs.

Mark is, after all, not a rarity – a quick scan of social networking sites and blogs reveals an alarming number of similarly minded people with lax regard for safeguarding personal information. Whether because of a love of writing, a need to share information with friends and relatives or merely a planet-sized ego, they seem to think that they can let slip all manner of details along with their opinions and images. They clearly do not realise that the world is watching them. Along with those who have been “friended”, and casual readers, may be lurking teachers, employers and thieves.

I am sure this did not occur to a former colleague. A Tweet he sent out a few weeks before he left his job referred to the meal he was having at a time he should have been at his desk: a steak sandwich and a vodka. Nor, probably, did a friend think twice about the photos of a rather risque party in Manila posted on his page. As a teacher, he should have known better – and was fortunate Facebook censors stepped in before his school noticed.

My teenage sons have been lectured mercilessly about their Facebook pages. They have been told to be careful about who they “friend”, to think before putting location-specific information on posts or photos, to be hazy about addresses and to be wary about cross-posting to Twitter. In their haste to tell all and sundry about an interesting happening, they sometimes forget. They are lucky that I am lurking nearby to remind them.

The internet has revolutionised the way we work and communicate. Through it we have found new ways to express talents. But it is a tool that has to be used with care and thought. With the world as a potential audience, you can never be sure who is watching.

A discussion on Twitter regarding the movie Platoon triggered this memory.

In 1972, I was 18 years old.  I’d tried for Conscientious Objector status for the draft but was turned down by the Bronx draft board and rated at 1A.  Back then, there was a lottery, they’d pick birthdays out of a hat and assign a number to them and if your number came up in the first 120, it was a given that you’d be going.  If I recall, my number was lucky number 8.   I started contemplating a move to Canada.

A cousin of mine had done the flee-to-Canada bit a couple of years earlier.  Unlike most east coast draft dodgers, rather than settle into some mundane existence in Toronto or Montreal, he went to the Northwest Territories.  He got picked up for running bootleg guns and whiskey to the Eskimos, at least that’s what I heard.

Anyway, my number never came up.  That was the year they started bringing back more people then they were sending over, so I never had to face that decision.  Dead or Canadian – which would have been worse?  Anyway, I thought Platoon effectively depicted every nightmare I’d had about the war.  I found it hit me on a personal level and I’ve also found it’s one movie I haven’t been able to go back to and watch again.

That cousin got to return to the US under Carter’s amnesty plan.  (I think it was Carter.)  Then he moved to the Philippines for a few years and had more adventures.  I got a kick out of the fact that my draft-dodging cousin got hired as an extra to play American soldiers in all the Vietnam films shot in the Philippines in those years.

(His father managed to get my family investigated by the FBI when I was 12 years old.  That’s another story.)

Okay, this is my fault.  I lost my pocket WiFi device. No one else lost it, I did.

Over the years I’ve trained myself to always look back into the taxi I’m getting out of before closing the door and letting it drive away.  But, as near as I can figure it, I didn’t do that last Tuesday.  I was wearing a suit and the device was in one of the jacket pockets.  After having the flat tire, I was carrying the jacket.  After dropping off the car at a tire shop, I took a taxi home.  It probably slipped out of the pocket into the taxi and thanks to my mood, I never noticed.   I didn’t look for the device after that because I didn’t go out on Tuesday night and on Wednesday, when I left for Manila, I wasn’t planning to take it with me.  Getting ready to go out for the day yesterday, I looked in all the usual spots – and some unusual ones as well – and couldn’t find it anywhere.

And so, once again into the breach, the battle known as PCCW’s phone menu system.

First I looked at the PCCW Netvigator Everywhere website.  The “Contact Us” page has a subscription hotline and a service hotline.  I called the service hotline number.  Nope, it’s for repair only.  They told me to call 1000.

So I did.  It took ten minutes for me to get to talk to a real person.  This was not ten minutes on hold because the operators were busy.  This was ten minutes navigating through the system and listening to a myriad of marketing messages and pre-recorded options that I didn’t need until I could get to a “press 0 to talk to our service representative” choice.  They suspended the service.

I asked them to check and see if there was any usage on the device after February 23rd.  Nope, they can’t.  (That would have confirmed to me that I did indeed lose it and someone found it and is using it; that it’s not simply hiding under a stack of magazines or something.)

So they told me I could go to any PCCW shop and get a new SIM card for the device.  Hold on, wait a second, what about getting a new device?  What good is the SIM card without something to put it into?

Oh.  They don’t know.  They can’t tell me.  I need to call another number to check on the price and how to get one.

Guess which number they give me?  Yes indeed, the number for the Netvigator Everywhere repair center.  Sigh.  But I called it.  “We are repair only.  You need to call the hotline at 1000.”  “Please don’t tell me to call 1000 again.  I did and they told me to call you.  Can you give me a direct line to call?”  They gave me 1833-800.

Called that and it only took about 2 minutes for me to get a person on the line.  Who told me the price ($1,680) and that I could go to any PCCW shop to get the device and a new SIM card.

So it only took 30 minutes to report the loss and find out how to get a replacement.

Before anyone asks, I’m continuing the service first and foremost because I signed a contract that has another 18 months to go.  Beyond that, I was actually very happy with the service quality and relatively happy with the device (short battery life and it gets damned hot but otherwise works as advertised).   I’m not aware of anyone selling a third party device that would work as this one does – if anyone knows of one (and how much it costs), I could presumably go out and buy that and just get the replacement SIM card.

I know, I should be in bed.  But this is one of those nights where I went to bed early, woke up again after a couple of hours and the sleep I got functioned more as a nap.  So I’m wide awake but hoping that I won’t be up all night.

I sold off my Panasonic GF1 today.  As much as I thought it was a terrific camera, I wasn’t using it.  In 3 months, I’d taken less than 500 shots with it (I take 500-1,000 per month with my DSLR).  The problem is that it’s not truly pocket-sized.  So any time I was going to take it with me, I needed some sort of backpack or shoulder bag and at that point I’d usually say, “the hell with it, might as well take the DSLR instead.”  Now I’m wondering if I should go out and buy something truly pocket-sized, like the Canon S90 – a few of my friends own this and are very happy with it – or just try to make do with my iPhone camera, crappy as that may be.   Any thoughts on this?

Today, I found out something about a longtime friend that I never knew.  He and his wife both have full time jobs and yet, together, they are also operating a very successful online business – successful to the point where they rent office space and have employed staff.   Some people have told me, both online and off, that I should be looking to start my own business and of course the idea is nice but I have my doubts.  I’ve started or co-started 3 businesses in the past and been involved in a couple of larger-scale start-ups and, well, I certainly don’t own any beachfront property in Phuket or Boracay.   The photo studio’s doing okay and I make some pocket money from the blog but neither are going to give me the sort of income that I need, let alone that I want.  The idea of having an online business – that dream of being able to work from anywhere – is attractive.  And with Hong Kong rents being what they are, starting a business where one doesn’t need to pay rent here (or at least having a well-trafficked location like Lan Kwai Fong is not needed) is definitely a plus.

I’ve taken an occasional look through alibaba.com and that seems to be the spot where a lot of things converge.  But if it was so easy, everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?  I know it’s not a case of just building a web site and waiting for the world to beat a path to my virtual door.  My imagination conjures up long lists of potential pitfalls.  Can anyone point me to some online references that discuss how one gets started, what traps exist and how to avoid them, etc.?   (Yes, I know there are some exhibitions coming up at the HKCEC in April and I will be there.)

Is there any restaurant in Hong Kong that does Romanian tenderloin steak?  What about chicken fried steak – with lumpy mashed potatoes and white gravy?  Pierogis?  Blueberry blintzes?  California burritos?  Any restaurant in HK doing Filipino food on any level better than Cinta J?  Just curious.

Also in need of some good Lightroom presets for the Nikon D700.  Can’t seem to find any so far that work as well for me as the ones I had for the D300.  And lemme tell ya – while physically the D300 and D700 are very similar and while the menus are almost identical, the different sensor inside means the D700 is a very different beast indeed.  Mostly in good ways.  But definitely more of a learning curve than I expected – not in the pure usage but in terms of wringing the best results out of it.

Oh well, let me see if I can sleep now.

Oh btw, new triple-CD set from Joanna Newsom sounds quite good on first listen.  And 50% of the way through the Red Riding trilogy, starts slow but does the job.

Which means blogging may be light over the next couple of days.  Flight with Cebu Pacific – a crying baby in the row in front of me and another one in the row behind.  A 15 minute non-stop remix of Lady Gaga “Bad Romance” when boarding the plane and then they keep the music playing for the entire flight.  Once they finish selling snacks and duty free, time for a game – win a badge. “Who can hold up or show me a passport and a pen?  We have a winner!”  But at the price, cannot really complain.  Got a promo fare going – HK$300 plus tax, regular fare for return HK$580 plus tax.  Tax at HK Airport HK$150, tax at Manila Airport HK$6.

Staying at the New World, which until last year was the Renaissance.  (Yes, I know, I’m giving more money to New World.)  The hotel is looking rather drab and worn out and the only renovation New World has done to the space so far is to change the signage.  But the staff here are all terrific, friendly and helpful.  We upgraded to the club floor and the club buffet in the afternoon is far nicer than I expected.  And we’re right across the street from Greenbelt 3, a perfect location.

Tonight there was a free live jazz show in the park between Greenbelt 3 and 5, a very nice band and lovely to sit outside – even though the temperature is above 30 there are always some breezes there and an interesting view at night.  I discovered, sitting in the plaza, that the D700 with my 50mm f/1.4 lens set to 6400 ISO is an amazing spy cam.  (Photos to come later.)

Tomorrow we have to be up at 6:30 AM, sigh, gotta be at Alabang at 7:30 for the physical.  I’m not bringing the camera to the hospital but I will post a review on their facility and how it compares to Bumrungrad by the weekend.

Some shopping today courtesy of DC Fever.

First stop, TST, to get a used Wacom Intuos4 tablet (link is to US web site in English).   It sells new here for HK$2800.  The guy’s ad said $2400 “non-negotiable” but I noticed that his ad was just over a month old.  So I asked if he would accept $2,000 and yes indeed, he would and he did. (6 months old, doesn’t look new but looks barely used.  I’m too cold to install it and test it right now!)

Then over to Admiralty to get a Nikon AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED.  I know this is not one of their sharpest lenses but it sells new for HK$5,040 and I got it used for $3,480.  (3 years old, looks very clean, took some test shots in the MTR station.)   This gives me some time to play with it before the 7s and if I’m not happy, I can turn around and sell it for a similar price pretty easily.

Oh, I’m such a pimp. Of course both of these guys are photographers so I gave them the card for PASM.  The first guy seemed interested so I gave him a 5 minute spiel about the parties there.  The second guy was more interested in how I was able to navigate and read DC Fever (which is an all-Chinese web site).  But I gotta say, in all seriousness, all the people I’ve met through DC Fever, whether buying or selling, were nice, a pleasure to deal with.

At this point, it was 6 PM and I hadn’t eaten all day.  Since I was in Admiralty, I decided to go to Dan Ryan’s and grab a burger.  I’ve been going to DR’s for 15 years (a lot more often when I worked nearby 12 years ago) and I don’t think anything at all has changed there in that time (except maybe the prices) and that’s fine by me.  They still do one of the best burgers in HK in my opinion, good size, good char-grilled taste.  And my question is, do these places make more money off bacon than booze?  Two crummy slices of bacon for HK$10?   And what does that cost them, about 38 cents?  But of course every time I have a burger I must have a bacon cheeseburger to enjoy the vicarious thrill of breaking two dietary laws at once.

And then …. home.  Yeah, home by 8 PM.  Look, I love the US Navy as much or more than the next guy, and I’m thrilled when the fleet comes in and they spent millions of dollars having their well-deserved r ‘n r in one of the best cities on the planet.  But that doesn’t mean I wanna hang out in Wanchai when they’re here.

So back home, where it’s raining and 6.5 degrees outside.  (The light rain is the reason that I didn’t go back to the same spots as last night to try the news lens.)  Of course at home my maid left the windows open to “air out” the place.  Heaters on full!  Getting under the covers with a movie shortly.  But thinking how good a massage and a schvitz would feel tonight.  I don’t have a favorite sauna in Hong Kong any more – any suggestions?  Or should I consider a late night sauna run up to Shenzhen?  Drive to Lok Ma Chau, bus across the border, I’m told there’s lots of new, nice, cheap sauna palaces in Huanggang.