…. and you always learn the lesson the hard way.

Point 1:  The electricity supply in Hong Kong village houses is somewhat antiquated.  Any time there’s a thunder storm and lightning comes down out of the sky somewhere in the immediate vicinity, the main circuit breaker pops and my house loses all electricity.  The circuit breaker is outside the house and of course it only needs to be reset when the rain is coming down in buckets.  For various reasons, it’s not always possible for me to shut my computer down when a storm is coming and I know this could happen.  Or I suppose I could bring in some electrical contractor to redo the wiring or to modernize this stuff.  Except that I only rent the joint and I expect to be gone next year and I know my landlord wouldn’t pay for it.

Point 2:  I keep my important data on RAID 1 drives – two identical drives, one mirroring the other.  One drive fails, the other is okay and you don’t lose anything.  Or so you are told.

So, thunder storm.  Power goes out.  Power gets switched back on and one of my RAID boxes, 750 gig X 2 drives by Buffalo, indicates that drive 1 ain’t doing so well.  I switch off the box, switch it back on and it starts rebuilding drive 1.  A few hours later, it all seems good.  Except it wasn’t.

Some of the files are missing.  And some are now just 0 bytes.  I keep two kinds of data on this drive – my iTunes collection and all of my photos.  I start going through iTunes – I start at “A,” checking every file to see which ones are gone and which ones are still there but are now “nothing.”   Of course I can’t finish this in one sitting because I have almost 45,000 songs sitting in iTunes.  And when I come back the next day, some of the files that were okay the day before are now also screwed.  Some of the files that I re-added the day before are gone again.

The problem would seem to be that the power surge (and yes, I do have this plugged into a surge protector, albeit a cheap one) has damaged the drive controller.  Which then screws up the directories and file systems.  And the files are fucked.

I got a new RAID box, copied over everything copy-able from the old drive.  I’ll smash open the Buffalo box, rescue the two hard disks (which I can reformat and reuse) and toss the box.

The iTunes stuff can all be restored – it’s just really freaking time consuming.

The photos?  Actually, I’m too scared to look right now.  I don’t want to think about what might have been lost – and 95% of them can’t be recovered if they’re gone.

So, now … back-ups on two separate physical devices?  Off-site storage?  Seems like “the cloud” is a possible answer but since I’m talking at least 100 gig here, I don’t know if there’s any solution that falls within my meager budget.  Suggestions?  Recommendations?

Sigh.

Yesterday, my company held a day long event for all staff.  Being the cynical fucker that I am, I have to admit that when I heard the detailed plans for the day, I wasn’t expecting too much.  I was wrong, as is often the case.

Also, I was told that it was a tradition in the company that all of the managers contribute cash for prizes.  This is the first time I’ve ever encountered anything like this.  ”What happened to going around to local businesses and hotels and getting them to contribute prizes and coupons?”  Apparently they’d never heard of this but at my last company (admittedly much larger and more famous), they’d get dinner coupons from hotel restaurants and places like Fortress and Broadway would kick in mobile phones, cameras, video game consoles.  The company did buy two iPads to give away as prizes, everything else was cash awarded to teams for winning various events.

The day started with laser tag and other games.  The other games were necessary because there was 110 of us and the place we went to could only accommodate about 50 or 60 players at a time.  X-Game Square (the link is to their Facebook page) is located in an old rundown factory building in the industrial section of Kwun Tong.   I was driving since it made little sense for me to drive to company bus pick-up points around HK island or Kowloon, and my first laugh of the day was when I found that the closest carpark was a Wilson carpark located in a building named Candy Novelty House.  Who wouldn’t feel happy in the morning going to work knowing they’re going to the Candy Novelty House?

The huge space for the game was kind of cute – they laid it out like a city but on a very low budget.  There were signs for familiar businesses slightly modified – a “7″ shop stocked with dozens of empty plastic bottles, a “McDonnas,” various food stands, some movie posters, a Shelf petrol station, and so on.  It was cute.  I really didn’t expect to get into the whole laser tag thing, running, jumping, crouching.  But people told me that once I put on the gear – helmet, vest, plastic shotgun – I became a different person, charging into rooms and blasting away.  Well, sure, I couldn’t really get hurt or killed and once you got “killed” you could be “revived” by the “doctor” pointing a remote control at your sensors.

In the afternoon, we went up to the Sai Kung Country Park area to the Po Leung Kuk Holiday Camp.  I never knew about this place – they have a huge variety of sports and recreation facilities as well as bungalows and hostels available for over night stays.  Very good for groups or families.  The place has an interesting history.

In the late 19th Century, abduction and trafficking of women and children were serious crimes in Hong Kong. On 8th November, 1878, a group of local Chinese presented a petition to the Governor, Sir John Pope Hennessy, K.C.M.G., to set up Po Leung Kuk to rescue the kidnapped victims. The “Society for the Protection of Women and Children” was approved by the Hong Kong Governor in May, 1880, but as the petition was submitted on 8th November, 1878, that date was adopted as our founding date.

We were there, apparently, because we could rent  a large air conditioned room cheap.  We had video game competitions  (my suggestion, actually, since we are primarily a video game company) and some presentations.  They broke out the beer and wine around 3 PM.

We cleared out of there at 6 PM for dinner at Chuen Kee in Sai Kung.  Again, since I was driving, I got there way before the buses did.  So I’m sitting there outside the restaurant and I notice these two women posing for photos.  One is blonde, pretty, almost completely flat-chested and wearing a black dress open in front almost to her navel.  The other was even prettier, dark complexion, green bikini top and long white skirt, very very fit.  They’re attracting a fair bit of attention, asking passers-by to take their pictures with their iPhones.  And then one of them walks over to me, the one in the green bikini top.  ”Excuse me,” she says (British accent), “you probably weren’t looking but I’m wondering if you’ve seen where the people we were here with went?”  ”Oh, I was looking,” I replied, “but I only just got here.”  ”You’re sweet,” she said, running her hand up and down my arm, making my arm hairs tingle, before she smiled and walked away.   Her friends showed up and so did the company buses.

(Okay, maybe the above is a trivial aside, but my gf has been in the Philippines for two weeks visiting her family and doesn’t get back here till Monday, so it was nice.)  Anyway, it was a beautiful day in Sai Kung yesterday.

Some quick shots of the seafood on display.  I’ll take all of these, please.

I was told these are called bear crabs, because of their resemblance to a bear paw.  I don’t recall ever seeing these before, wonder how they taste?

Okay, this is just weird, these things are stuck into plastic drink bottles when they’re tiny and then grow in the bottles.  I assume there’s some point to this.

Given my company’s budget issues, I wasn’t expecting anywhere near as nice a dinner as we had.  Some people were joking that maybe all we could get would be roast chicken, fried rice and a sea view.  But it was a nice Sai Kung seafood banquet menu – steamed prawns, scallops with garlic and glass noodles, lobster in cheese sauce with more noodles (I know, I know, but local people seem to go for that cheese sauce), a really nicely done steamed garoupa, roast chicken, fried squid … actually I lost track because I was pretty full by the time we polished off the garoupa and stopped paying attention, going around the room and taking table photos.   Our CEO brought along several cases of wine and of course there was a lot of beer and several drinking games along with some final presentations and awards.

By 9 PM, everyone was exhausted and most people were drunk – sadly not me since I had the car.  I was expecting to do my drinking back home – I’d invited several people to come up after the dinner but by then, everyone was just beat, myself included, and I was glad when we decided to postpone for another time.

Anyway, as I said, the day was much much better than I’d expected and you might want to check out X-Game Square or Po Leung Kok.

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.

Adam Lambert is coming to Hong Kong – October 12th at HITEC.  (Tickets available here.)  Being brought to Hong Kong by a promotion company called, appropriately in this case, Lushington.

I listened to his album once.  I didn’t make it all the way through.  My gf loves him.  Maybe “love” isn’t a strong enough word but it will have to suffice.  Even though as near as I can tell, she never listens to the album.

So, yes, I got tickets.  I even got the most expensive tickets, which are standing room, despite my hatred of standing for hours at concerts.  I figure she can rush the stage and I can sit on the floor on the sidelines somewhere.

But now she can’t complain when I drag her off to see Gorillaz and Flaming Lips – both are supposedly coming to HK in the fall.  Actually, I expect she’ll rather like Gorillaz.  Not sure she’ll know quite what to make of Flaming Lips.

It’s 11:49 PM and I haven’t set foot outside the house all day.  In no small part, that’s because I’ve been ill all week (went to work every day though) and glad to have some time at home to rest.   I’ll tell ya, getting ill is the best diet I’ve found.  Last year when I was really really ill, I dropped close to 30 pounds in a month.  I’ve mostly managed to keep them off, but they’ve been creeping back recently.  So thanks to this bout of stomach flu or whatever I’ve got, I’ve managed to drop 3 pounds in 3 days.  If I can remain ill for 5 more days, I can go out and buy smaller jeans.

I had been thinking about a Shenzhen run today.  I was in the mood for a massage and the whole spa experience.  But not feeling well combined with it being so freaking hot outside, I stayed home.  This turned out to be a lucky choice.   This woman came over, a friend of my helper, and she gives massages in her free time.  And so of course I wanted one.  She was nervous to be left alone in a room with me (she knew about my reputation already?) so my gf sat on the bed, watching, and eventually pitching in, trying to learn to do it herself.  My helper came up to the room to see what was going on and the next thing I knew, there were three women giving me a massage.  Nope, no happy ending (you don’t get that in Shenzhen either) but I’m sure you can imagine, it was pretty damned nice all the same.

Tonight after dinner (home made chicken soup with pasta), movie time.  I settled on Repo Men.  Now I’m wondering if I can repossess the two hours of my life that I spent watching it.

When I first heard about this film, I thought it was a remake or sequel to cult classic Repo Man.   Turns out it has nothing to do with that film, and with a cast including Jude Law, Forest Whitaker, Liev Schrieber and Alice Braga (Sonia’s niece), I thought it might be worth watching.

Here’s the idea.  20 or so years in the future, everyone drives Volkswagens and artificial organs are being sold for mega bucks by a mega corporation.  A pancreas costs $600k and you can buy it on the installment plan, 19% interest.  Miss 3 payments in a row and someone comes around to repossess it, forcibly and apparently legally.  As you might have guessed, this is an extremely violent film – even more so in the unrated home video edition.

It starts off well enough.  Its production design is an homage to Blade Runner and Jude Law gets me thinking of his performance in of AI.  Other parts steal from The Matrix, Brazil and many other far better films.  About halfway through, the film just goes completely off the rails, throwing logic to the wind in order to have a bunch of sequences that make little sense but look good on screen.   We stuck with it, even though about 10 minutes before the end there was a particularly gory sequence – I rarely flinch from on-screen gore and worship at the altar of Sam Peckinpah but this had me saying out loud, “Oh, this is just sadistic”  - and I didn’t mean what the characters were doing to each other, I meant what the film was doing to its audience.

It’s wretched films like this that send me running away from new films and taking refuge in older ones.  I’ve been meaning to write about Crumb since re-watching it earlier in the week but never got around to it.   I’m a lifelong fan of artist R. Crumb.  I saw Terry Zwigoff’s documentary when it first came out in 1994 and found it unsettling and disturbing.   I watched it again this week now that it’s available on Blu-Ray from Criterion.

Crumb is an intensely private man and he only opened up to Zwigoff because they’d been friends for years.  Shot over a period of several years, the film starts with a portrait of the artist and a retrospective of his “greatest hits” (Keep on Truckin’, Fritz the Cat, the Cheap Thrills album cover).   And you soon realize that someone who draws comix like this might be deeply disturbed and to some extent that is indeed the case – Crumb manages to completely unfetter himself and let everything from the deepest darkest recesses of his mind pour out onto the page.  Perhaps that’s how he is able to deal with life around him, by getting it out in this fashion.

And then, we meet Crumb’s two brothers, Charles and Maxon.   Compared to them, Robert is the normal one.  Crumb’s father was physically and verbally abusive and their mother was a drug addict.  Charles hasn’t held a job in 30 years, lives with his mother, never goes out of the house, subsists on a diet of prescription anti-depressants.   Maxon lives in a flophouse in downtown San Francisco, sits on a board of nails, swallows a ten foot long stretch of cloth to clean out his intestines every week and gets by by begging on the street for a few hours each day.  Crumb’s two sisters refused to be interviewed for the film and the film gives no indication of what they’re like.  (The film was originally supposed to focus equally on all 3 brothers.)

When I thought about the film after watching it for the second time, I was filled with admiration for how much information Zwigoff fit into two hours and how naturally it all flowed.  The film works for me on all levels.  I’ve picked up the Criterion DVD of Zwigoff’s first film, Louie Bluie and looking forward to watching it soon.

Here’s some links relevant to the film that you should check out:

Crumb: Minds Are Made to Be Blown – Crumb has been writing autobiographical bits that are getting published to his web site, this one about moving to San Francisco and how LSD influenced his art.

Crumb Reconsidered – a terrific essay by Jonathan Rosenbaum on Criterion’s web site.

And last but far from least, a fantastic interview with Terry Zwigoff at AV Club.  I find it rather depressing that most of the 206 comments on this interview are about Zwigoff’s mustache.  Those are the people who deserve to see Repo Men.

I bought this yesterday.  To be more precise, I pre-ordered it a month ago and picked it up yesterday.

Yes, it’s an Albert Einstein action figure.  Comes with an extra set of hands clenched into fists.

Okay, it’s an Albert Einstein doll.

I know.  But I like it anyway.

I got this in my last order from Amazon.  The Godfather Family Album, published by Taschen.  To give you an idea of how whomping huge this book is, that’s the Blu-Ray set next to it on the right.

It was previously a limited edition of just 1,000 and those now sell for upwards of US $3,000, at least the first 200 in the series, which were autographed and numbered.   Now there’s a “general release” version, listing at $70 and selling for $44 on Amazon.  At that price, I couldn’t resist.

You can guess the impact of this book with such great pictures in such a large format.

There’s a bunch o’ words in there as well.

Most days, if forced to choose, I name Godfather as my all-time favorite film.   So I’m extremely happy to add this book to my library.

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!”)

First I go to 3HK’s web site to “register my interest” for a 32 gig black iPhone 4.  A week later they send me an SMS confirming this and telling me that I have registered my interest for an 8 gig black iPhone 3Gs.  I send an email to “customer care” seeking to correct this and of course it never receives a response.

So I call up the 3 corporate sales guy I dealt with back in my Warner days and tell him I’m at a new job and can I still get an iPhone through him and he says “of course.”  Yesterday, the day the iPhone 4 was released in HK, he sends me an email to tell me that the warehouse informed him there are no available 32 gig phones and would I settle for a 16 gig.  Not so much.

Then I see reports on Twitter that many people I know have collected theirs.  I call the guy back and tell him I see all my friends getting one and that I’m a “3supreme” customer and that I should be able to get one right away as well.

At 6:30 PM, he calls me back to tell me he’s managed to get one for me.  However at this point, I’m at PASM over in San Po Kong getting ready for our latest photo shoot and party and don’t have time to go to his office in Quarry Bay.  We arrange to meet on Saturday morning.

Saturday morning, I make the trip from Sai Kung to Quarry Bay, pick up the phone, grab some lunch, come home.  Plug in the phone and get an “activation” failed message.  I try rebooting the phone.  Nope.  I try ensuring that my other phone is switched off.  Nope.  I restart iTunes several times, unconnect and reconnect the phone, nope.   The phone says “No service” and “Waiting for activation, this might take awhile.”

So I call “3Hotline” and the first few times I try, I just get a busy signal.  I try again half an hour later and get through to someone after 10 minutes of pre-recorded sales pitches.   I tell him what’s up, he puts me on hold, comes back and says he’ll try to figure it out and call me back.

I don’t think this is going to happen today.  It does make a lovely shiny black brick in the mean time.

Now I’m off to see Inception.  Non-IMAX because I didn’t feel like waiting weeks to see it or sitting in the front row of an IMAX theater.  Hope it’s good.

And if 3 is going to get back to me today, I would bet good money they’ll call me in the middle of the movie.

UPDATE:  Came out of the movie, iPhone 3Gs said no service, switched on the iPhone 4 and it came up with the message “activation successful.”  As for the movie, liked it, didn’t love it, maybe more on that later.

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!

Actually, I was intending to go to Shenzhen Saturday, but the friend who was gonna go with me backed out and I couldn’t find anyone else to go at such short notice.  Could have gone on my own but one of my reasons for going was to hit a couple of favorite restaurants, neither of which make sense if I was going to be there alone.

And so I stayed home and … sigh … installed the 64 bit version of Windows 7 and a couple of dozen apps.  I figured it was time.   I’d installed Win7 before and was dual-booting but I’d never gotten around to installing most of the apps I use on it.   Lightroom 3 64 bit is noticeably faster than 32 bit under WinXP – not sure if that’s a fair point of comparison or not but what the hell.

Migrating iTunes with all my settings and playlists seems to have as well as can be expected.  I’m syncing my iPad now and it’s an hour so far and not even halfway through the back-up.   And that reminds me – I’m running Open Office here instead of MS Office, except that I’m still using Outlook to manage my contacts.   I don’t want to go the bloat-ware route and install Outlook here so I need another strategy for a contact list that syncs to iPhone – any suggestions?

Win7 may be the fastest selling version of Windows ever, or whatever it is that they’re claiming, and I can see some improvements but also, one day into this, I can see a lot of the same old errors and crap that’s been carried over from older versions.  Minor annoyances such as how File Manager still shows directories on tree on the left even after that directory has been moved or deleted and even after I’ve hit the refresh button several times.  You’d think they could at least get the simple stuff right.

So I’ll leave you with a link to Wired’s list of “cerebral sci-fi films.”  Actually it’s rather disappointing – no Forbidden Planet or Fantastic Planet, let alone Silent Running or Dark City.

And another movie list by Julie Gray at Huffington Post, she says this is an evolving list from GASP (without saying what GASP is) of films you should have seen if you plan on working in the entertainment industry.

Although it is simply not possible (or advisable) to have seen every movie ever made, the criteria for this list is that these are movies that have seminal, iconic or culturally significant performances, writing, direction, or premises. These are the movies that set the bar, raised the standard or innovated something new and oft-imitated.

I counted 156 films on the list and I’ve seen them all but I find the list rather distressing.  I counted a total of 3 non-English language films on the list and those are Amelie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and La Dolce Vita.  No Kurosawa, no Bergman, no Truffaut or Godard or Antonioni or Rosselini or Satyajit Ray.  And the sad thing is, this list is the set of cultural touch points for Hollywood today, which is probably one reason why most American commercial film making is so unambitious.

I could probably sit down and do blogs that collect essential film and music lists – well essays more than just lists, perhaps group blogs with several trusted contributors.  The only problem is that I have this little thing called a job.  Could I jettison the job and do these?  Yeah.  Could I jettison the job and do these and earn a decent living from it?  Maybe not so much.