a big guy in a big city

Posted by Bone at July 2nd, 2008

Someone has actually offered me a job interview, I know I shouldn’t be that surprised since I’m usually well-qualified for most of the positions that I’m applying for, but since I’ve had little luck recently in even getting replies from companies this is a real confidence booster.

There is a slight issue that the job is in New York, and obviously I’m not, which makes things rather hard to coordinate, but I applied for the position with the knowledge that if I were to get it I obviously wouldn’t be commuting, so I’m starting my usual daydreaming and excitement that will almost inevitably end in disappointment.

Posted by Bone at June 16th, 2008

Just so we’re clear me+mustache=awesome. The mustache (which has now departed my face) did seem to have some kind of magic power over all those around me, or perhaps a mustache just made me more confident because I was ‘in character’. Anyway, I had a great weekend in Manchester, so here’s a load of pictures.

Pete went as Thom (red), and somehow actually managed to pull it off.

Rob was George Best (red and dead), and really stayed in character really well by drinking a lot and getting in bed with a random girl at the end of the night (just to sleep, no naughty business!). You may notice that he’s holding a white Russian, which was my idea to go with my costume, and I even bought vodka that was made in Russia for extra authenticity.

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Greggy went as Kurt Cobain (dead), which basically meant that he dressed as himself, but wearing a jumper, and that he brought along a guitar to smash up that took one hell of a beating before accepting its fate of not remaining in a single piece.

Thom was a Canadian mountie (red), and got most of the accessories for his outfit from the Early Learning Centre, and from the of his trousers they were made for kids too (they were so tight he could barely sit down).

Danni went as Danni wearing a red dress, Clare was Audrey Hepburn (made her own dress!), and Ben was a cowboy wearing red.

Hannah went as Hannah wearing red, in an outfit that took many hours to find, and meant that I went into Primark and New Look, something that every man fears.

Me and Clare continued our fake kissing exploits, because that’s what we do now, although she did also share a fake moment with Danni.

After many rowdy rounds of singstar the party started to wind down, and at about 5 thought it was about time to get some sleep.

Departing from the land of nod at about 11 we awoke in quite a mess. Pretty much every flat surface was covered in bottles and cans, and for some reason there was toilet roll all over the floor. Faced with this situation we did the classy thing and got out of there before we felt obliged to join in the cleaning.

When we got into town food was our first port of call, and we ended up at a place in Picadilly Gardens called Kro Bar and had table service in their restaurant section, which seemed ridiculously civilised considering our various states of hang overs and, for some, still being drunk. Greggy had a tuna melt, which from his description may well have been the finest tuna melt ever created. Rob asked if he could have gravy put on his chips, and they actually did it, it doesn’t sound that amazing now, but at the time it impressed me.

I ordered something called ‘bikesmad’ (it’s a Danish bar), which was rather tasty. It’s sauteed beef, potatoes & onion, with a dash of worcestershire sauce, with a fried egg on top and some beetroot.

After brunch I dragged everyone to Magma since there’s always something cool to buy there, and then I dragged everyone to the Urbis to go to the ‘How Manga Took Over the World’ exhibition. I knew there was a lack of enthusiasm from the group, so I didn’t force anyone to go in, but Rob and Greggy came in with me and immediately walked into the section marked ‘adult’, which was actually a lot tamer than you would have expected.

I’m not particularly interested in manga or anime, but I am certainly interested in the work of Terratag, Tado and Jon Burgerman. I’m not sure if you’re actually allowed to take photos in the Urbis, so I just took sneaky shots from the hip when none of the staff were around.

Then we hung out in the park outside for a bit whilst drinking medicinal Starbucks and headed off back to the LD.

Awesome weekend!

Posted by Bone at March 6th, 2008

Not really much to add to that title, except that if you’ve got a 7 hour layover at Paris CDG and you’re in terminal 2F you should probably stay out of the gates for as long as you can since the eating options there are utterly lame and ridiculously overpriced.

Posted by Bone at March 3rd, 2008

Hey Neil, remember how I said that I didn’t really want to fly with Air France? And how that if I were on my scheduled flight then I wouldn’t be able to write this blog post?

Turns out that the plane that I was meant to fly back to Paris in ‘needs a part for its motor’, which is going to be sent from Paris overnight (how can there not be anywhere more local?). So I’m stuck at the airport for a day, although Air France have set up the entire plane with rooms in the hotel attached to the airport, with all meals covered too, which you should expect really. I suspect that since they were able to get us into our rooms by 1:30 and we were meant to fly at 11 that they were pretty aware of the situation and had made prior arrangements for us. If all goes well my flight should be taking off at 7AM Hong Kong time tomorrow, but we were told that if there was any news we’d be messaged in our rooms, so I haven’t dared head back into the city. I have however ventured back to the airport terminal to enjoy the free wifi.

It would seem that there are only 3 Brits on the plane, me, a guy that went out in Macau last night and only got 45 minutes sleep, and a woman that also happened to be going back to manchester, she seems to fear eating alone and so we have arranged at lunch to have dinner together. Even though I don’t particularly mind eating alone it will be nice to have someone to chat too.

Neil, I’ve already e-mailed you this, but in case you haven’t checked that, but have checked here, check with Gary whether Mum and Dad are now aware that they don’t need to pick me up. I got Gary on the phone a bit ago, and I’ve tried mum and dads mobiles but they’re both switched off. I’ll call when I have more news.

Posted by Bone at March 2nd, 2008

I bought Superbad on VCD today for about £3. You’re probably thinking that I’m going to have a few questions to answer if customs look through my bags on the flight back, but I’m pretty sure that its actually a legal copy, its just that VCDs are really cheap here. My theory is that since the authorities and movie companies know that pirating is still pretty rampant in HK (even more so on the mainland), they might as well release movies cheaply in the lower-quality VCD format and charge small amounts for them instead of earning nothing at all from those releases.

Posted by Bone at March 1st, 2008

HKers seem to be obsessed with football, it’s on all the time, right now, they have TV channels showing every premiership match live (though I only get one of them in the hotel). I think that whoever is working reception in the hotel at the moment is a football fan, because they keep switching between matches, presumably to check the scores, which is cool since it looks like West Ham - Chelsea is already settled after 20 minutes.

Posted by Bone at February 29th, 2008

A couple of nights ago I thought I’d be a poseur and have a cocktail over at the Peninsula hotels famed Phillipe Starck-designed bar/restaurant, Felix. It’s quite the experience, the bar has its own lifts serving it, which have a programme of lights running as you go up the 28 floors. Then you walk up the the mezzanine and order your cocktail from a surprisingly small list. You then try and keep a straight face when the bill is HK$126 including a 10% service charge (I would have thought that tipping would be optional in a bar). Then you take in one of the best views in the world (out over the bay towards HK Island) and realise that you don’t mind paying so much for what is an excellent cocktail. It is fairly ridiculous that they have venetian blinds over the windows though. And the bars a bit small.

The toilets are amazing though, you stand at one of the three urinals looking out through a floor-to-ceiling window at the rest of TST and Kowloon, it would be nice if the toilets looked at HK Island, but I guess that real estate is a bit valuable (hold up, maybe the ladies, whose toilets were the opposite door, get a better view?). Also, the sink is weird, and is operated by a man who then hands you a linen hand towel, I was going to tip him (something I hate in toilets), but it wasn’t possible, now that’s service!

Posted by Bone at February 29th, 2008

Here’s a list of unusual (to me) food that I’ve eaten over the past few days:

Abalone (a type of sea snail) - Delicious, even if I get the feeling it was imitation abalone since the restaurant I had it in wasn’t very expensive.

Roasted pigeon - Not bad, tasted a bit too gamey, not the best quality perhaps.

Chicken gizzards (marinated in soy) - A lot better than I expected, reminded me of liver.

Pigs ear (marinated in soy) - I didn’t think I’d like it, but it was actually pretty interesting.

Duck tongue - I couldn’t get a whole one down, the bone in it was too large to break up and swallow, and found the tongue itself to be lacking in flavour and too jelly-like. Fail!

Shredded pork rice sheets - So glutinous Hannah would have probably died walking into the restaurant, rice sheets seem to be rice flour and water (or whatever it is they use to make rice flour noodles) spread out really thinly and steamed and then rolled around shredded barbeque pork. Pretty tasty. Oh, and this was for breakfast?!

Calamari - I got spiced salted calamari at a street stall in Macau for HK$10, it was out of this world, so much better than what you’ll find in the UK.

Spring roll with unidentifiable filling - no idea what was in it (I order food by simply pointing it then holding up a single digit when possible), but man did it taste good!

There’s probably other stuff I’m forgetting like all the little buns and cakes I keep picking up from bakeries between meals (they’re about HK$5.50 for three of them so I get to try lots of different fillings), but since I usually have no idea what it is I’m eating in those cases I can’t really write much about it, as the spring roll instance above proves.

Posted by Bone at February 28th, 2008

I don’t know how blogging this holiday got two days behind, but it has, probably because I’m shooting all the pictures in RAW format and formatting them is taking quite a long time, it does yield good results though so I’m sticking with it, even if I had used up more than 5GB of HD space this week.

On… Tuesday, I went to Ngong Ping to see the world’s largest outdoor sitting buddha statue, but as you can tell from the above picture, visibility was not good. Terrible, really. I got a feeling things might not work out well as soon as I got off the MTR at Tung Chung and looked towards the cable car station, and could barely see it even though it was only a couple of hundred metres away. The cable car is a 5.7km ride that provides stunning views across over the islands and South China Sea, but unfortunately in my car (after about an hour queuing) we could barely see the other cars passing us, let alone the sea, mountains or even the ground for most of the journey. And it seemed to only get worse the closer we got to the tourist village of Ngong Ping (purely built for tourism, which was kind of sad, but I did buy a pack of postcards that I haven’t got around to posting yet). I held out hope that the cloud would magically lift when I climbed the few hundred steps to the top of the hill where the buddha was, but it didn’t. It was a big disappointment since all the guidebooks mention the Tian Tan statue, and all I could see of it was a darkened outline. The monastery at the bottom of the hill was quite cool, although there are a lot better ones around the area (which was yesterdays trip, pics coming soonish). One funny thing was that when people walked up the stairs they were all laughing and smiling about how they’d come all this way (the journey from HK city centre to the statue was about 2 hours) and couldn’t see a thing.

After I got back from that area I had a wander around the mid-levels area and went on the worlds-longest outdoor escalator, which snakes its way up the hillside from down near the Central area. I didn’t go all the way up since you have to walk down and my ankles are not in a good way at the moment, but it was fun watching the streets roll past from a higher vantage point. I also found lots of cool restaurants and bars, so I might swing that way for dinner sometime. Then back to the room for a little rest. Then I went out to Kowloon Bay to watch Transformers on an IMAX screen at the MegaBox mall. I couldn’t find my way to the mall so I asked two random people, and they were going that way so they walked me to the shuttle bus (free shuttle bus to a shopping centre, brilliant!) then when we got there (after having a nice chat) they took me to the correct set of elevators and checked which floor I should be on, how astoundingly nice is that! I was the only person in the entire IMAX for about 15 minutes after the show started, which was amazing, then 3 other people turned up, but still, it was like having a private screening. I had to skip out a couple of minutes before the end since I was worried about missing trains back, and I was on the other side of the bay so it wouldn’t have been a case of getting a cheap taxi back.

I did make it back (probably with loads of time to spare, but the last train times are different depending of the train line and day, so there was no point risking it), but was hungry and fairly resigned to probably eating McDonalds as they were the only place I could think of that were open 24 hours (except for the tiny restaurants that scare me with their lack of an English menu). On the walk to McDs, of which there are two within 2 minutes walk of my hotel (and 4 7-Eleven convenience stores, they’re everywhere!) I noticed a restaurant was not only open, but actually looked quite inviting. I they had an English menu outside but not inside, so I ordered takeaway on the street (sweet and sour spare ribs with special fired rice HK$64) and ate it back in my room.

Another great day, even with the disappointment of the buddha (the fog probably made for more interesting photos anyway).

Posted by Bone at February 27th, 2008

On Monday I had a really awesome day. I got up, had breakfast in a coffee shop, hopped on the MTR to Central then walked up the hill to the peak tram. The tram was great, you don’t really get excellent views from the journey, but going up a 45 degree hill is impressive enough. And it was only HK$48 for a return ticket with entry to the terrace on the peak tower.

Upon arrival at the peak tower you’re in a shopping mall (which is what happens when you get off pretty much any public transport in HK) and go up a load of escalators until you’re on the open air terrace and surrounded by fellow tourists, all taking pictures and asking people to take pictures of them. I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to be impressed/envious of the pop out and flip screen on my camera, which is perfect for trying to take pictures of yourself.

I thought I’d treat myself and go to one of the restaurants since I’d read somewhere that the food was a lot better than you’d expect from a tourist destination. I first went into a cantonese restaurant but they couldn’t offer me a table with a view, so I left, what’s the point of eating at the peak if you can’t see the view? So instead I went to Japanese restaurant that was really, really good. That pic above shows off the raw scallop and pomelo salad and the ridiculously nice view I had from my table by the window.

This is the second course, a massive prawn and a small salmon fillet that I think were just fried with a little soy.

Third course: Thinly sliced beef stuffed with spring onions, and some fired mushrooms, a tomato, and a baby corn cob. There was fried rice and miso soup too, but this pic looked better. Total cost of the lunch with tea, a coke and a tip HK$282 (my highest yet! but still just £20ish)

Then I went down to Two IFC tower (currently the tallest building in HK) and went to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s exhibition, which I had no interest in, but I wanted to see the view from the 55th floor, it was great, but not many of the pics came out well because of lots of window light reflections. Then I wandered around the posh shops on Queens Road Central and went into the A Bathing Ape shop there, was tempted to try on some trainers even though they were £100 but just bought their Spring/Summer 08 magazine instead. After that I headed back to the hotel for a bit to rest my feet before heading out again.

I got the train back to Central and took the famous Star Ferry over to Tsim Sha Tsui (just HK$2.2 for the upper deck, though I’ve now found that the HK$1.7 lower deck has better views) for the “symphony of lights show” which is basically 33 of the skyscrapers around the bay lighting up to music. It was a lot of fun although the music that they played to accompany it was pretty cheesy. I hung around for a while afterwards taking lots of photos and then walked up the ‘Avenue of the Stars’, which is the Asian equivalent of the Hollywood walk of fame.

My gudiebook recommended a shanghaiese restaurant that was fairly close by, though unfortunately located just off Nathan Rd, an area where everyone asks if you want to buy a fake watch. I guess me wearing a t-shirt that had a watch pattern on it wasn’t helping my situation though. The restaurant was one of the underground ones that are really prevalent in HK but I usually wouldn’t go in because I couldn’t look in to see whether it was decent. It was decent, quite swanky in fact, and I thought I’d take it as an opportunity to see what a real sweet and sour pork tasted like… good. It was quite odd though, the accompanying the pork were small santini tomatoes, melon, and chinese gooseberries. Admittedly, it all worked very well, I even enjoyed the tomatoes, and the rice was great too. I think it cost about HK$200 with a beer and some really nice tea.

Now that was a great day.