Quack.

Climate Machines

Because it's hot.

Hong Kong Shops at Day

No, he is not my white man.

Every culture has its own criteria for "becoming a man," from building a seaworthy boat to slaying a calf and/or father. I'm not sure which culture uses the standard of "being willing and able to eat a chicken's foot using two sticks while a table of people who do not speak your language watch and applaud," but I do know that today I became a man. Please note: "chicken's foot" is not a cute anglofied term for a cookie, like "wife cake" or "uncle hand." It's a chicken's foot.

My coworker took me on a hot date today, which means that she brought me to eat a bunch of meats with bones shoved into them, and we walked around the street that smells like dried shrimp because that's where people sell buckets of dried shrimp. I think that if you add water they'll plump up and start swimming around, but maybe I'm too optomistic.

I was a little worried at the beginning of the day that we might end up growing tired of each other. At one point, I had a tough time explaining to her why a t-shirt that says "Santafe" as one word is actually very funny. But ten hours later I was analyzing the upstart costs and marketability of breast milk pudding, and she was crying without sadness.

Mount Stenhouse

They say you're not supposed to hike/climb up a thousand-food mountain on a sparsely populated island, on a whim, along a barely perceptible trail, alone on a day in which you've seen no other hikers/climbers, during a typhoon, with no food and only a little water, and your knife back at the hotel. They say that.






About 2/3 of the way up, after the jungly parts but before the rocks.



Few more.

Animals of Peng Chau

Cats eating out of cigarette cartons.


Mr. Fwuffyneck.

Hong Kong Shops at Night

So this is basically what it's like all over the place, except this is comparatively really empty.

Last night my coworker drove me through some of the mountains to a seaside town (though with a small land area and giant craggly coastline, every area in Hong Kong is a seaside town). There we pointed at things swimming in tanks, and ten minutes later we ate them. Prawn. Giant prawn (still prawn, but the size of a lady's shoe). Scallops. Squid. Well ok, the squid wasn't swimming anymore. And the scallops were just kind of sitting there, like they do. But everything else was moving.

I had had (regular size) prawn once in my life before, which was on the plane ride here. Scallops once or twice. And I'd tried calimari before, but the texture had grossed me out and I don't think I'd ever swallowed it.

But even with (or maybe because of?) all of my seafood ignorance, it was one of the freshest, most flavorful and textured meals of my life.

During the selection process, after we had chosen our prawn, one of the survivors kept jumping out of the tank. Sometimes two or three feet in the air, landing in other tanks or on the pavement. The guy kept putting it back in its place, but after the third or fourth jump I kind of wanted him to just toss it back into the sea. I like to think he gathered up his prawny energy and made it all the way back to freedom in one bold leap.

I like how this one came out, because it looks like I'm trying to squeeze a giant image into a very small frame. Which is essentially what I was doing. Anyway, these are some buildings, and there's a street. This is one of the less dense spots in Hong Kong, though I'm sure they'll be building something around it soon.

View From Hotel Room

From Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island, looking north toward Kowloon.

It's hard to find good Engrish in Hong Kong, but...

Allow me to transcribe:

GODYORK

God york
area of the work
Skill
calls beauty.

[I think this says GERCUDWORLD]

Un age to rage rumor live from the old dahs
Then,legend exists even now
It is said that some
wishes are satisfied about that doubledragon
Because it is certainly satisfied

Wow, right? I think it's Vonnegut. Slutterhouse Fourve.

Is it wrong to want to see the new Transformers movie solely because I'm in Asia?

T-Shirts Seen On People In Hong Kong So Far

"Bed Peace," referencing Lennon and Yoko's anti-war protests
"Deadline is Over" (x2), referencing same
There was also a shirt in a hip-ish boutique that said The Stone Roses, printed above a photograph of The Beatles. Chicken or the egg, I guess.

"Die Yuppie Scum" on an old man in a small coastal town. This is a town with one restaurant with signs in English, and that's where all the dozen or so white people on the island were eating. They looked at me sadly as I passed them. They are desperate to understand and be understood. I wonder if the yuppie-hater had any idea what his shirt meant, or if he knew how appropriate it was. I may be a white person, but at least I don't go to China to eat at a place advertising Bar Snacks and Smoothies. Even though that means occasionally losing the game I call, "Is it Meat or is it Mushroom?"

And a teenager wearing "Trenton - United States - The Brick City". It's nice to know that other people's views of the U.S. are as delightfully skewed as our views of the little squiggly places where they live.