The personal effect

For all the high-tech that is HK, there is a weird obsession with doing some things face-to-face or with old-fashioned faxes. (If faxes can be considered old fashioned). I recently had to get a new credit card because they thought I had suspicious activity being charged to the card; it was me charging stuff for my family's trip.
So I now have to change all the numbers my cell phone, health club and cable tv bills are charged to. But I can't just call and do it over the phone. I have to stop in person, or fax it to them. Why, I don't know. I just get the feeling that in the ubertech cities of Seoul and Tokyo, you just do this all over your mobile as their uberadvanced cell phones confirm your ID via hologram.

Circus Hongkonginus

The carnival is in town, and in true HK fashion it's sponsored by a multinational company, AIG. I and a few friends attended it this weekend as a late celebration of a friend's 30th birthday.
In a nutshell, it was just like Hong Kong. It was extremely clean, though people did have a tendency to jump in front of you when you tried to play games. (they did follow the queues though, when waiting for rides.) Everything was new. And big teased hair was evident everywhere, courtesy of the usual influx of teens at fairs.
They were the cleanest carnies I've ever seen though. My guess is the people who ran it were Polish, most definitely Slavic of some sort, looking at their names. But they were clean cut, well dressed and not creepy at all.
I did learn more Britishisms, though, thanks to two Brit friends who came with us. Cotton candy is called called candy floss, and bumper cars are called dodgers. And the soft-serve Mr. Softee truck outside the entrance didn't sell cones, but 99s, they said. (My guess is they cost 99 pence.)
A good friend of mine has parents who are carnies; they now own a few games with one that travels mostly the upper midwest and east coast. I followed her advice and avoided most of the skill games for the most part. They are so loaded against you (for example, the basketball games use heavier than normal basketballs, the rims are smaller than normal and higher than normal, with a low ceiling to prevent most shots) that I tried chance games. The Winnie the Poo I won for a friend didn't last long; a gweilo boy, maybe 8 years old, saw her carrying it and wanted to trade his pink Micky Rat for it, and who was she to refuse?

The social plateau

More things:

1) A moment of clarity hit me on a ride home from a night out the other night. At some point, everyone develops a reference point for their stories, their experiences, their joys. For some people, it's high school. For others, college. For others, it's their first few years after college; all their stories, all their cultural references, all their adventures harken back to those years they lived it up before they settled down. Maybe that's when music stopped for them. Maybe that's when the adventures stopped and they settled down with a family. Maybe that's the best it got, and it's better to recollect the good times than dwell on what (little) is going on now.
For me in Hong Kong, I realize that epoch might be my time in Chicago. I constantly compare things here to Chicago and tell stories and adventures about Chicago. It could be natural, as I spent nearly 10 years there, including my time when I lived in the burbs but played in the city. Or it could be that I've reached a point where I don't want to try the adventures I did back in Chicago. Or that my adventures in Chicago seem much more exotic than my adventures here. Either way, it's been on my mind lately; did my cultural and social life peak halfway around the world.
2) I've been stressing out a lot lately about a few of my family members visiting next week. Which is natural: between the both of them, there is a combined one trip overseas for them, and they're travelling in Asia, which is a little more exotic than Belgium (though I would argue Belgium can be more fun.) But as a coworker said, quit worrying and stressing about all the negative stuff and the hassles with organizing a trip, and concentrate on the good stuff: I get to spend a week with family, who are travelling halfway around the world to see me. Sometimes the simplest advice is botht he truest and the best.
3) For said trip, I've been going nuts trying to find an air mattress for me or my sister to sleep on. After a lot of searching - and I mean a lot of searching - I found an aerobed in a home good store on the 13th floor of an office tower. Afterwards, I had air bed with a friend and she was like, "Dude, too bad it's not an Aerobed, they're the best. You should have bought one of those." And then I explained my long, involved quest to find an air bed; I was happy to get whatever I got, and thankful for it. "Dude, it's like finding Belgian beer in Honky," I told her. "I'm thankful for what I find now. I concentrate on what I can get, and enjoy it, instead of worrying about what I can't, because that would drive me nuts."
4) Speaking of, I've found a way to solve said beer problem: I'm ordering cases direct from the importer. In a way, it's kinda stupid, because I don't drink that much at home. Seriously, I only drink when friends are over, and I have bottles of beer at home now that are a year old. But I do miss me Saison DuPont and Fantome and St. Feuillein, and a local importer will get me some, as long as I order a case at a time. And because no duties are charged here, it's gonna be very cheap: I can get a case of Saison duPont, 750ml bottles, for $430HK, or about $4.60 US a bottle. At my liquor store back in Chicago, it was nearly twice that, and it usually runs $15 a bottle at Hop Leaf, a favored watering hole in Chicago. Score!

Movie time

A few things:

1) The movie scene in Hong Kong usually is dire. The one saving grace is the occasional bootleg DVD touts who will come up to you in the bars. They'll come up with a stack of bootlegs, for $25HK apiece, and you don't even have to get off your stool. But if you thought the theater offerings in HK are bad, you should see what they are usually trying to sell. The late-night offerings on Cinemax are usually of higher quality. Last week, the best picks were the Will Farrell Nascar movie, Ricky Bobbie or whatever, and Jackass 2. And here's my quick review of them: Jackass 2 was the better movie. And that's all you need to know of how bad Will Farrell has fallen.
2) Speaking of bars, HK adopted a smoking ban on Jan. 1. There still are ways around it, especially if you are a bar. My local watering hole, the Globe, has gone non-smoking for now, but may change back to smoking, maybe not. All I can say is stay non-smoking. It really is much nicer, and cuts down on my bad habit to socially smoke on occasion. If you have to go outside to smoke, I ain't doing it. And I doubt the bar will lose business; the people who head to bars to indulge in vices aren't going to stop going because another vice has had a hindrance placed in their way.
3) Speaking of vices, a friend has returned to Hong Kong to work for a year loaded with two of my favorites: beer and baseball. He brought back 12 bottles of hoppy microbrews from the west coast (he lives in LA) and an even better gift to get me ready for spring training: an old 45 of Cubs songs.

It's an old Chess recording from the early 70s. The A side:

Though the B side is much more likely to describe what will happen to the Cubs' season, despite their offseason improvement.
4)I will be heading back to the states in March, courtesy of frequent flyer tickets. On the menu for when I land in Chicago: Hot Dougs and Frontera Grill. And lots fo 3 Floyds beer. You've been forewarned.

Sweet Jesus, Alabama

Maybe I even moreso see the mucked-upedness of this because I now live overseas, but what are universities in the states thinking paying $4 million (and that's US, not HK) a year for a football coach?
Sure, Alabama isn't known for its quality of education. And I know part of that money will come from sponsorships, TV shows, etc. But $4 million a year is still that much, coordinated as part of a compensation package, and really, does anybody not think a state as educationally challenged as Alabama shouldn't use part of that money to maybe improve their education? Not only is Alabama playing to the stereotypes of stupid, football-worshipping yahoos, it pretty much is getting near the apex of doofus nirvana: becoming an Onion headline in real life.
I've said it before: Going to a state university has its advantages. Academics take a priority over athletics. If we ever met someone on the football or basketball team, the inevitable question would come up, "Dude, why are you still playing sports? It's not high school anymore. You're not even getting a scholarship, give it up!"
Sure, maybe they had what some call a love of the game; I would call it an inability to let go of high school. The great thing of going to a small school is knowing your Saturdays are always free, both while you attend college and after you graduate, because no one really cares about the football, basketball or other teams. Were we NAIA? Division III? Who knows? Who cares? Not me!

We wish you a bacon christmas

One good friend just sent me the best Christmas presents from Chicago: a christmas card featuring a pic of her dog after he ripped apart his bed (which I previously posted). She also sent bacon band-aids and, even better, a bar of cohcolate from Cocorouge, a chocolatier from my old stomping grounds. The Carnassier bar has bittersweet chocolate and maple carmelized bacon, with hints of smoke and deep earthy flavors of maple, it says. I almost don't want to eat this, but my love of bacon and weird foodthings will force me to.

What would Crockett do?

A few recent moments:

1) While navigating through the madness that is central at about noontime, i thanked my blessings again for the nimbleness and spider-sense I developed while running in downtown Chicago. I thought, "Next time I come down here at noonhour, I should bring my camera with me and set it to record about 3 minutes' worth of walking as a video to show people how crazy it is." Now the hard part is remembering to do so. Stay tuned.
2) While walking downtown, I still cna't get over how much the 80s has never left Hong Kong. Lots of younger women with big, teased, permed hair. And lots of guys with mullets and spikiness. The even weirder thing is how a lot of said people still wear a lot of acid-washed jeans, too. If only they listened to Ratt or Def Leppard; at least that would be better than the Cantopop that's played everywhere here.
3) A coworker commenting about a picture I sent of him, of a local Cantopopper taking home a award for the most popular songs of the year in Hong Kong. "3rd most played song of the year in HK. That's like borat's sister winning 4th best prostitute in kazakhstan."
4) Hello Kitty stuff is everywhere in this city. Dah Sing, whom I have my local credit card with (they're the only bank that offers a United Airlines mileage reward credit card) has a Hello Kitty credit card, and last week they were giving away small Hello Kitty refrigerators as some type of reward. Much more disturbing is what another coworker found at a local Watsons, which essentially is the Walgreen's of Hong Kong: Hello Kitty maxipads and tampons.