Disney Pissney

Today I had the pleasure of driving all the way from Hong Kong Island across the Kowloon Peninsula (by way of a tunnel) and across the truly magnificent Tsing Ma bridge to Lantau Island.

I was sitting in the front seat of a moving truck taking some furniture from my friend’s house over to my groovy little country pad.
That drive is one I haven’t undertaken in years, and it was with not a little dismay, okay, disgust, I noticed the new enormous road signs everywhere above the highway, showing motorists where to go to get to the airport… and Disneyland.

Yes, Hong Kong has now truly arrived on the world arena by sporting its very own little (and it is tiny) HK style Disneyland, the pinnacle of Chinese success, on the formerly pristine island of Lantau.

What vexed me, having known about and been against this symbol of American cultural imperialism ever since the first plans were enthusiastically laid out by the HK government years ago (we use the Hk taxpayer’s money to build it and the Americans rake in the profits! Greeeeat!) was the signs themselves.

On all the signs, next to the international symbol for “airport” was the international symbol for “Disney” namely the silhouette of Mickey Mouse, a rodent.

A big circle with two smaller circles.

All the other directions had names: This way to Lantau, this way to Tsing Yi… and then a plane and the head of a cartoon rodent. The word “Disneyland” was completely absent in English or Chinese, the three circles deemed to be enough.

I thought Disneyland was a privately owned enterprise, which by the way, despite the government’s frantic efforts to force people to go there, is losing shitloads of money because nobody can be arsed to pay shitloads of money to be bored there. How come the HK government has seen fit to present it like a symbol of equal importance as that of our airport?

I felt saddened and strangely demeaned by those signs. But, of course, not surprised.

Beautiful Dudes V

No, I’ll take that back. Beautiful Dude Of The Year 2007 more like it! This guy (whose name I forgot to ask; it was hard enough holding the camera steady) just walks around a shopping center (let’s call it X, we don’t want a stampede now do we) selling …objects, whereas if he lived anywhere else but in man-rich China, he would be snapped up by eager beauty scouts and I would be selling tickets to people queuing up to even look at his picture.

In a word: Crikey!

Pukeably, knee droppingly, sickeningly beautiful I say. My camera exploded after I took this photo.

Refreshing Soup Is Back

Hoi hoi everybody! It is with great joy I can report that the toxic brown-grey soup is back with a vengeance, after having been missing for three weeks, due to the unstinting efforts of the environmentally sensitive Hong Kong government. They wasted no time in taking credit for the bluest skies Hong Kong had seen in a decade, boasting that it was their far-sightedness and political nous that mysteriously cleared up Hong Kong’s skies from one day to the next.

The problem was that with all the buildings, islands and horizons that nobody had seen for years, if ever, which kept popping up, we got completely disoriented and had no idea where we were, and everything was simply too bright. Now the reassuring 300 meter visibility is back and we can breathe a big, sloppy sigh of relief.

Having taken credit for the pollution not being there, surely it will now be impossible for the government to take responsibility for its being there, and therefore… ipso facto… er… a witch! A witch!

Beautiful Dudes IV

Ah, Ben Si Bar! The best bar in Shenzhen, possibly the world. This guy, A Yong, possibly A Tong, a manager, is always walking around there looking and being busy. Wide shoulders, narrow waist and always standing well inside my personal space. My gay friend says he’s gay, but that cannot be. God will not permit it for a start.

Ben Si Bar is my favourite bar. It has three large rooms, one for drinking, talking and playing pool, one has a live band and the innermost room is for bopping. The music, although dunk-a-dunk-a bass’n'drum and not like the 80’s, is curiously danceable and it’s impossible to stand still.

The music is in fact so hypnotic that even fuddy duddies feel compelled to jump up on the speakers and give it a go. And that’s the beauty of Ben Si Bar – everybody can get into the groove as it were without feeling or looking like an idiot. From super cool barmen

and slinky babes in stilettos to side-parted fuddy duddies and young fogies like myself, the Ben Si Bar embraces everybody, shakes them around a lot and spits them out exhausted at three o’clock in the morning. The drinks are cheap and the dudes plentiful. And the next day there’s a much better breakfast than you can get anywhere in Hong Kong, as well as HK$10 DVDs. What’s not to love? Shenzhen, forgive that I ever called you a shithole.

Nokia Sucks!!!

Is this another scam, like the Millennium Bug, the dear emails from Our Friends in Africa wanting to give us the $ 92 million they happen to have hanging around, or the dreary, eternal US “we are going to attack and kill you for your own safety” delusion?

Or worse, is it real?

Glancing at the news just now I saw that, or they said that, Nokia is recalling all their mobile phone batteries of the brand BL 50C. Apparently they overheat while charging … and may explode.
Well it didn’t take old Nokia long to realise their mistake, that has to be said; they’ve only produced 46 millions of the things.

Oh, what a bore! Now I have to find some phone outlet – and what if I explode on the way there? How potentially embarrassing that would be. I’m seeing a new client tomorrow. “Yes hello, good of you to c….” BAH-LAMMMM.
Or what if all the 46 million, or those of us who are near our phones, explode at the same time? The mess!
No I think it’s better if Nokia starts living up to its reputation, as in my posting “Nokia Rocks.” I can’t go back to motorola!

Man Breasts

A keen admirer of the male chest but an adversary of Tony Blair’s, I was nevertheless forced to say to myself, upon seeing a topless photograph of him on a yacht in the Mediterranean LAST YEAR: Wow! Not a bad chest for whitey!

At that time, probably last July, Tony had been snapped by some paparazzo, standing on the deck of one of his many rich pals’ yacht brandishing a cool drink and sporting an impressive V-shape. Wide, a little bulging and with not many hairs, it was a chest of which he could be proud.

Fast forward to last week and what’s happened? MAN BREASTS!!! Is it the ignominious loss of his title of prime minister that has catapulted Tony into the world of floppiness, the scourge of middle age? Is he planning to let himself go and let all sorts of things wobble forth on his physique now that he’s only dealing with fat and hairy guys with moustaches?

Whatever the reason, let this be a warning to you all. Men, wherever you are and whatever you strive for in the physical department: Man breasts are not, have never been and will never be good. Women don’t have the need to bury their faces between two floppy mounds, or bite playfully at a nipple only to see it stretch for meters.

Padded: Good. Breasty: Not good.
I refer to my posting Beer Pressure for reference.

A Pain In The Arse

This is not Piles my hound, but a Lantau water buffalo. However, Piles looks not unlike this majestic beast, for every time the damned dog as much as sniffs three grains of rice with a pinhead of curry, no matter from how far away, he’s off. If there was a St. Bernhard kind of service to locate missing leftovers from several kilometers away, Piles would be king.

When he runs off, I know where to go to find him head down in some restaurant dustbin, scoffing down vast amounts of thrown-away rice (another reason to follow through with one of the few good suggestions the HK government has come up with this decade: Ask for less rice with meals and pay less. Although that idea is so good it probably didn’t come from the HK government at all.)

So now he’s on a leash most of the time. Stupid Piles! He could have so much freedom if he was only content with dried dog food (who wouldn’t be?) and water. But no, it has to be rotting curry, three day dead fish and stinking ditchwater. And the result is that sometimes he looks like the above water buffalo, all sticking out stomach and a waddling gait. Extremely embarrassing. Fat dog: Bad owner.

It made me think about instant gratification: What if there was an entity who could keep me on an invisible leash, and make me only eat dried dog food and drink fresh water, exercising three times a day and showering once every two weeks? Instead I just do what I like with no thought of the consequences, which do inevitably follow. Ah… but if I had a leash holder I probably wouldn’t be allowed to travel in China, so forget it.

Has Its Moments

On an evening like this, with sun and moon out at the same time and some scattered skyscrapers, I have to say, old HK isn’t half bad! Now if we could only get rid of the self-serving, self-important, fuddy-duddy, reactionary, power-hungry, sycophantic, car-worshipping, tree-hating, concrete-pouring, government SHITHEADS, this could be not a bad little town. Not a bad little town at all.

I invite everybody familiar with the HK government (they strongly resemble the Bush administration before Rumsfeldt left, only even more corrupt) to come up with more adjectives to describe these bastards. I’d hate to repeat myself.