June 2004 Archives

My friend Steve Bunche has a new blog, replete with (long) posts titled Love Song To The Might And Majesty of The Chili Dog, El Buncho Does 007 (not that either one of us is into that, but you know what I mean), and Literature Blights An Innocent Brooklyn.

I give it three thumbs up. Check it out.

Anyone else get slammed with a whole mess of spam comments last night today, many of them from 198.26.*.* addresses?

(btw, 198.26.*.* appears to belong to Moffett Field, a former Navy blimp base…)

On the other side of the cinderblock wall is the inside of a rather glitzy shopping mall.

What you don’t see is the giant cruise ship about 15 feet behind me.

A restaurant with a familar name:

No idea if it’s even remotely related to the legend on 28th St.

Catching up…

• Clotide, author and proprietor of the fabulous Chocolate & Zucchini, isn’t just producing the most gorgeous food porn this side of Gourmet; she’s achieved some kind food blog state of grace (satori, perhaps?) by having one of her recipes get picked up and adapted by a sandwich chain; the best part is that the real-world sandwich is named after her. Seriously—how cool is that?
• The Morning News answers one of life’s great questions—indeed, one that has been asked on this here blog before.
• I still got Gmail invites, and I’m running out of funny names to call myself.
• Oh, and that pretty little white heron from yesterday? Apparently they’re a primary vector for Japanese Encephalitis. Guess what disease has just killed someone and put another in the hospital out in the New Territories?

Or, it’s time for that July title contest. The rules (once more, with feeling): post in the comments your favorite quote with the word “July” in it.* Winner gets their quote put up in the title bar (up there, where it currently says “So we got married in Venice in June, So what?”) and their blog/website/whatever gets a month-long gig heading up the randomized permalinks over there on the left.

*For example:

Long has paled that sunny sky:
Echoes fade and memories die,
Autumn frosts have slain July.
— from “Of Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll

Any questions?

Making up for yesterday:

And in other news, I’m working silly hours, six (sometimes seven) days a week, and yes, it’s really hot and humid out, but I can’t say that I can tell, since I’m inside all the time…

Yeah, I know I missed a day. Some brief notes:

• First off, I’m very pleased to announce that reports of my demise are greatly exaggerated.
• Second, when Sweden and Denmark play each other, for whom do the Norwegians root for?
• And third, if you asked me for a Gmail account and you never got your invite, check your spam folder or email me.

Boats jockeying for position outside of Queen’s Pier during a public holiday.

In the background is The Building of the Hong Kong Detachment of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. In Macau, the troops of the local PLA garrison are allowed to mingle freely with the Macanese; while I didn’t notice any during my day there, at least one guidebook suggests that they are a frequent and common sight among the streets in the former Portuguese colony. In Hong Kong, however, PLA troops are strictly confined to the grounds of the garrison; they are completely cut off—isolated—from the local populace.

Two other, perhaps unrelated, facts to consider:

1. The PLA troops that rolled into Tiananmen Square in June of 1989 were not Beijing-based, local garrisons; they were troops that had specifically been recalled from the hinterland and who had no local connections or allegiences.
2. Macau is thought to be politically stable and unlikely to rock the boat, unlike Hong Kong, which is considered by the mainland to be a hotbed of seditious democrats.

If you’ll excuse me, I have to go adjust my tinfoil beanie.

Just got back from seeing Troy. All I gotta says is Boy! What a giant flaming cheezeball!

Though as giant flaming cheezeballs go, it coulda been a lot worse. Anyway, time for bed.

The classic children’s book Make Way For Ducklings comes to life in downtown Oslo. It’s very cute.

For the record, I’ve never seen anyone in a bikini in Lan Kwai Fong.

So can drunken sailors sue for false advertising?

A good idea: Gmail4Troops.com.

I am, however, still handing them out to readers of this site (if you want one). Check here for details.

Last two from Macau:

We will return to your regularly scheduled Hong Kong pictures tomorrow.

OK, I got a few more Gmail invites to send out. Hm. How ‘bout this time, we try pleading your case in rhymed couplets?

Two towers in Macau.

I gotta say that the restaurant that we ate at at the top of the second tower was far better than the usual tourist slop that they normally serve at these sorts of places.

As a side note, they have “adventure walks” that take paying customers outside the tower building and around the very edge of that outer catwalk, some 70-odd stories up.

Since I don’t have the time to write a longer entry, here are two more images of the ruins of St. Paul’s:

And for those who are curious, here are some more basic facts and figures about Macau (or, your tax dollars at work).

The most famous landmark in Macau is the ruins of Sao Paulo, the remains of a 16th-century church that burnt down* during a typhoon** about 150 years ago. The ruins consist primarly of the church’s facade.

As you can see, Saint Francis has gone to the birds.

*Burnt down or burned down? Discuss.

**I’m not sure how a large building can burn down in the middle of a rainstorm, either.

Eeeeerie: within 20 minutes of each other, both Eurotrash and Maccers post about dumping: Eurotrash on what it really means when someone dumps you and Maccers on appropriate responses to getting dumped.

Related: Deb’s post from a couple of weeks ago (and the 115 comments it inspired) on horrible breakups (abstract: dumping someone over IM=bad; dumping someone over SMS=worse).

I believe that the Corrs did a song about this, no?

"Being a Red Sox fan is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance." -- from The Soxaholix, the brilliant yet twisted love child of Get Your War On, 20th-century poetry, and various Red Sox fan-run Internet bulletin boards.

Macau comes by its southern European charm naturally; the Portuguese had a presence on the islands for nearly 500 years, until 1999, when it was officially handed over to the PRC.

 

I found the street sign whilst wandering through the back alleys of the historic district. Unfortunately, most of Macau (which is surprisingly small and quite walkable) doesn’t look like this.

Some inside baseball from the depths of the blogverse:

• Jason “what happened to the McCabe?” Calacanis completely and utterly lost it (see the comments) last week when Gothamist got a little snark up in his face. It’s simultanously funny and sad.
• A few days after that, Gothamist interviews itself. Yeah, ok then.
• Time does a story on blogs. Goin’ big time now.
• Dave Winer shuts down weblogs.com without any notice, deep-sixing more than 3,000 weblogs in the process. Dave says that “Four years of free service is a pretty good deal, and we’re going to help people transition.” And you know, that would have been a perfectly reasonable statement to make… if he had said it before the server shut down. Wired has a story, as does The Register. Some interesting thoughts here, here, and here.
• Some good news: SixApart has revised the licensing structure for MovableType 3.0. The short version is that restrictions on the number of weblogs have been lifted; the different tiers of pricing are for number of users only. It still seems a tad pricy, but it’s infinitely better than the old pricing.

Went to Macau on Sunday. Took lots of pictures.

 

Didn’t gamble; the HK$200 minimum (US$24, roughly) at the blackjack tables made me realize that I really don’t know how to count cards…

So, anyone out there want a Gmail invite? So far, I gotta say that I like what I’ve seen of it so far. Leave a note in the comments telling me why you want one.

This is a picture of the base of the former Prince of Wales building. Back when Hong Kong was still a British colony (i.e. prior to 1997), the Prince of Wales building was HQ for the token British military presence in Hong Kong. Today, it’s the HQ for the token People’s Liberation Army presence in Hong Kong.

It used to have “The Prince of Wales Building” in big raised metal lettering on the side of the building. Last time I was in Hong Kong, the lettering had been removed (naturally), and the building had been given a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, the paint used was not sufficient, and the words “The Prince of Wales Building” were still clearly visible. As you can see, they came up with another solution for that problem.

(Not that I actually know what it says—going by the first three characters, which is pretty much all I can recognize, it probably says “The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Forces Headquarters”)

I just got two curious pieces of comment spam: you can read them here and here. This appears to be an attempt to googlebomb the symbol (c) and linking it to disney.com; Disney, of course, has been one of the heavies in the whole copyright fight (see Lessig for many more gory details). I'm guessing that this is some kind of political statement, though it is a rather subtle one to make...

I wonder if it has anything to do with me posting about Ninme Mouse.

Update: If it is an attempt to make a political statement, it ain't gonna work: putting "(c)" into Google returns the speed of light. Looks like everyone's favorite search engine doesn't search on the brackets...

The World Mouse Clicking Championship.

I got 62 (well, 229, but I was cheating then). Via Annelogue.

Well, that’s what the sign says.

It should be noted that what with bird flu and swine flu and SARS, the matter of slaughterhouses shouldn’t be played only for laughs any more. But doesn’t that pork look lovely?

The Jardine’s Crescent street market. There’s about another 250 yards of street stalls and the like beyond this point.

Unlike the NYC subway, the subway in Hong Kong uses neighborhood names for subway stops.

It makes sense, since Hong Kong’s street plan is so convoluted that no-one can be expected to remember all the street names. But that got me to wondering what NYC subway stops would be called if they were named after neighborhoods instead of streets:

For example, the 1/9 line from 125th St. down to South Ferry (official stop name, taken from the MTA website, in brackets):

Harlem [125 Street]
Columbia [116 Street-Columbia University]
Morningside Heights [Cathedral Parkway (110 Street)]
Manhattan Valley [103 Street]
Riverside [96 Street]
?? [86th Street]
Planetarium [79 Street]
Ansonia [72 Street]
Lincoln Square [66 Street-Lincoln Center]
Columbus Circle [59 Street-Columbus Circle]
?? [50 Street]
Times Square [Times Square-42 Street]
Penn Station (East) [34 Street-Penn Station]
Garment [28 Street]
Chelsea [23 Street]
?? [18 Street]
McBurney [14 Street]
Sheridan Square/West Village [Christopher Street-Sheridan Square]
SoHo West [Houston Street]
HoTun [Canal Street]
TriBeCa [Franklin Street]
Battery Park City [Chambers Street]
World Trade Center (closed) [Cortlandt Street]
?? [Rector Street]
South Ferry [South Ferry]

Anyone else?

The shirt belongs to some random fella who just happened to get in the way at the right time.

Sorry about the focus again.

BTW, CafePress has added colored shirts to their stock. Just thought that I’d mention it.

Did you know that they’re building Hong Kong Disneyland, due to open sometime in 2005 (or maybe 2006)?

Dunno if this shirt will be on sale there, though.

Scenes from a market:

If memory serves, the ones one the faaaar right are Whybark’s famous 1,000-year-old eggs.

Apparently the People’s Bookstore wasn’t drawing enough business. Note the relative sizes and positions of the two signs.

Compare with the Mao picture from a few days ago.

He’s suppose to symbolize man’s increasing dependence on technology.

Or something.

Paul Thurrott needs to get a Mac.

It was fifteen years ago today.

Some background here and here. Unsurprisingly, a number of Chinese dissidents (which in this particular context inclues those who publicly say that running over unarmed protesters with tanks is a bad thing) have suddenly disappeared from view; this includes the doctor who became a national hero after blowing the whistle on Beijing’s SARS coverup.

One can only hope that said disappearances are only temporary.

A close-up of the Bank of China building.

This was I.M. Pei’s answer to Norman Foster’s HSBC building.

Mmmm. The Times talks to a guy who wrote The Secret Life of Lobsters, while, of course, eating a whole lobster (sans bib). Seems like he has a rather interesting technique for munching on them. Compare to Lindsay and Ben’s experience when tackling their first lobster dinner.

As for me? Well, if you have to ask, I think this says it all.

Damn. Now I’m hungry. Guess it’s good thing that it’s lunchtime.

Not sure what it says (anyone?) but, judging by the surrounding signage, it probably has something to do with getting your hair cut at a Japanese hair salon.

Or then again, maybe not.

No, really, I mean it.

The buliding in the front is the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Building (yes, HSBC stands for Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), Hong Kong’s first great modern skyscraper; rising behind it is IFC 2, an 88-story tower that, with those white prongs at the top, kinda looks like a sandworm from the planet Arrakis. OK, so maybe it’s just me.

In an apparent attempt to keep up with their neighbors the Swedes, Danes face bust boom. It’s good to see the blogosphere keeping abreast of news on this front.

I was going to list alternate titles for this post at the beginning, but then realized that it would make the post top-heavy.

Found via the Buzzmeister.

Another view of the UFO convention center.

Click to make it biiig.