Pho Photo

Dropped into my favorite Vietnamese restaurant for a bowl of Pho today. The broth looks a bit like dirty dishwater but it really is quite tasty. Photographing one's food really is not an odd sight in Hong Kong restaurants so no one looked twice when I broke out the camera to photo my pho.

Father's Day Contest

Our building is holding a Father/Son similarity contest for Father's Day and its being advertised on a sign in our lobby. My OCD kicks into overdrive every time I walk by the sign...I'm going to have to stealthily bring my staple remover and rearrange the lettering.

Baby Blue

I was more than a little disappointed that the baby blue whale on display at the IFC Mall was just a fiberglass replica of the real deal. After all, the advert in the SCMP said "Come See the World's Biggest Baby." I had expected the real thing, perhaps some take on a Damien Hirst art installation with a real baby blue suspended in a tank of formaldehyde.

Toys

In an attempt to promote Ingrid's imagination we got her a doll house. She loves it and is just small enough to crawl inside the downstairs room to join the little furniture and dolls in their daily activities. When I knock on the front door it is not a 4 inch doll that comes to the door, instead Ingrid prefers to answer the door herself.

Running in the Rain

I love running in the rain but today I got all I could handle. It poured so hard on me that I couldn’t even keep my eyes open because the water was dislodging my contact lenses. It was like staring into a shower nozzle. I was soaked to the bone, running up the Morning Trail which climbs 2000 feet up to the top of Victoria Peak, a combination of Sawyer Camp Trail and California Street in SF. I like to think of the Peak as 'Currahee' from Band of Brothers and when I start to lag I gain inspirateion by imagining Captain Sobel jawing at me as I head up the hill.

Rain is manageable but lightning is another matter. On two occasions lightning cracked within a mile around me, going by the old reliable flash thunder counting method…so to keep from becoming fried chicken I ducked under a pagoda to wait it out. I was the only one out on the trail, for good reason it seems.


The trail winds through a semi tropical jungle of bamboo, banyan trees, hackberry trees, rubber trees and groundcover of ferns and other brush. To be within the canopy and hear the sound of the rain pounding through is really quite an experience and because this weekend’s rain was the first good drenching in months, I really had a feeling that the greenery was just so happy to be soaking it all in.

Toward the top of the trail I saw the weirdest thing. A 4-inch orange crab clickety clacked across the trail and into the jungle. Where did the little crab come from? 2000 feet up from the harbor and nowhere near any local restaurants. Very odd, but it was probably wondering what I was doing out in such bad weather.

Making headway on my weightloss goals! Sorry only stock photos, but I didn't want to drench my camera.

Rebrab

I laughed at this tidbit in this morning's South China Morning Post, the local rag in HK. Wang Xiayou, a barber in the Mainland who had grown bored of his job after 10 years decided he would re-invent his career by cutting hair while standing on his head. He didn't change his craft or take up a hobby, he just decided to change it up a bit. A lesson for all of us who have grown tired of our jobs, imagine it upside down.

Georgetown University

Congratulations to my brother Peter for completing his PhD program in Political Theory. During the ceremony Ingrid woke herself up from a nap by clapping for each graduate. Even now when she looks at the photos of the graduation she starts clapping. I was very happy to be able to be in D.C. to see Peter receive his Doctorate and get hooded.

Bravo Gordon

We get the Brit equivalent of C-SPAN here in HK and I love to watch the lively sessions of the British House of Commons. Prime Minister Gordon Brown is ruthlessly savaged by his political opponents in the open forum wit-fest, but he's been flogged especially for his previous unwillingness to grant full citizenry to the brave Nepalese Gurkha soldiers who have valiantly fought and died alongside British soldiers thru the WW's all the way thru to Iraq. Well, after a great deal of debate on the matter Brown today awarded the Gurkhas the right to settle in Britain.

My father made a business trip to Nepal in the mid-80's and brought me back an 18-inch long curved Ghurka knife known as a "Kukri." The scabbard of it to this day smells like death so I was always curious whether it actually saw action on foreign battlefield or whether my dad actually just picked it up at the airport gift shop....I always felt it was the former but with the more time I spend on time constrained business travel the more I lean to the latter!

The announcement is Hong Kong's loss as the city has a large Nepalese population and expects to lose over 10,000 of them who will like move out of the city to the UK. Their battle motto is "Better to die than be a coward." Tough stuff.

Turkish Airlines

This advertisement in Hong Kong had me a bit puzzled today when I walked past. Couple Questions: 1) When did Kevin Costner become so popular in Turkey that he could pitch for the national airline? 2) When did his looks begin to converge with those of Joe Montana?

More Tall Buildings

Blog posts about tall buildings are getting a bit tiresome, I know, but this building is really tall….it’s the Shanghai World Financial Center in the city’s Pudong District which sits across the Huangpu River from Puxi, or ‘old Shanghai.’ Old China Hands wax on about Pudong being nothing but a sandbar as recently as the early 90’s before it became the megalopolis it is today (and still growing), and the SWFC is now the biggest on the block, and 2nd tallest in the world by roof height. See the stock photo below, I think you’ll agree it looks like a beer opener.



Well, I was in China all this week and last night stayed in the Park Hyatt Hotel which occupies floors 79-93. My room was on the nosebleeding 84th floor, quite a view! The Hyatt hotel chain is apparently now following the Starbucks model, opening properties directly across the road from one another. In these photos taken from my room you see the 88-storey art-deco Jin Mao Tower, home to the Grand Hyatt (floors 53 to 87). The Hyatt has the market for highest hotels covered as these properties now rank #1 and #2 in the world. I have to think if Hyatt execs had a crystal ball 5 years ago they might not have been so ambitious given the current economic weakness. An eerily quiet breakfast buffet confirms my suspicion.

Too bad I was only there a single night, checking in after midnight and out before 9 the next morning, I didn’t even have time to relax on the swanky chaise lounge in my room.

I photoedited these shots into black & white because the smog and din of Shanghai is colorless anyway.

Beijing Food Market

Teenagers in the States work in their local mall at Hot Dog on a Stick, these Chinese teens in Beijing work at Insect on a Stick.

Ugly Coffee Dome

I noticed a new food item in (one of) my local Starbucks this morning, the "Ugly Coffee Dome." With such a literal and unappetizing English translated description, I've got to think its a regional offering.

New Routine

Different continent different routine - The morning visit to our grassless Hong Kong park has been replaced with mornings exploring the yard around my parents' house. Examining and tasting rocks, pulling unripened fruit from Grandpa's trees, climbing the stairs and waving at birds are some of the favorite activities. And now that she has her little 'Junior Ranger' vest, she has lots of pockets in which to carry her specimens.

The Three Amigos

Happy Mother's Day!

Graduation Fiesta for Brother Pete

Last night we had a get together to celebrate my brother Peter and the completion of his PhD program in Political Theory. Ingrid danced to the Mariachi players and ate hundreds of tortilla chips. This week the family is off to Washington D.C. to attend the commencement ceremony and continue the celebration.

Top Shelf

Wine popularity is growing exponentially in Hong Kong. Its always been popular with the expat crowd but is now gaining uptake with the average HKer, so you're seeing an expanded presense in all the neighborhood supermarkets. There is a lot of really bad wine on offer (Franzia is sold in bottles not boxes, tragically), but in the 'drinkable' category you mainly see Australian, French and Chilean mass producers. But for the first time today I was excited to see Ravenswood on my local shelf! Better yet, it was the top shelf! It felt great to reach up to the very top shelf and grab a 100 $HKD ($13 USD) bottle of Ravenswood, the most expensive Chardonnay in the whole shop! Probably double the per unit price at Costco. I now have a reasonable 'go to' wine in HK.

New DBack Skipper

My college teammate AJ Hinch was just named head coach of the Arizona Diamondbacks making him the youngest ever major league manager. He's got no coaching experience at any level and his appointment as skipper has been wildly unpopular thus far with the Phoenicians. Ungrateful lot, they only just got a team a decade ago, come on. But the local paper held an online poll that gave AJ just a 2.75% hiring/job approval out of a not statistically insignificant 7,625 votes. Ouch.

I'm really pulling for him. Will be interesting to see his leadership capability as I would never have considered him the prototypical field general as a player, instead preferring to stoically lead by considerable example. He's never executed a double switch or a defensive replacement, but he knows the game cold. And he's taking over for Bob Melvin, another professionally insignificant catcher with Palo Alto roots who were largely untested managerially when as skippers. Go AJ, Go Stanford.

Asterisk*?

I am a Red Sox fan and Giants fan which makes today's news about Manny Ramirez particularly bittersweet, or sweetbitter as it were. There is schadenfreude in the news that Dodgers fans will be without Manny Ramirez for the next 50 games, but it raises questions about how PED-free the Sox's 2004 Series title can truly be considered. So deflating....

The Sports Guy has a great piece on espn.com today.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/090507&sportCat=mlb

Cousin Wyatt

Today Ingrid met her new best friend, cousin Wyatt. She took every opportunity to point at his nose and grab at his ears as well as hugging him all over. Wyatt seems to have pretty quick reflexes for a two month old so he should be able to keep his eyes for the next few weeks. He is a sweet baby and a good sport about all of the love and affection.

Home Sweet Home

Ingrid has made herself comfortable here at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Back in Phoenix

Lizzie and Ingrid will be in Phoenix for the next month spending time with family. With my two muses gone, I'll be scratching for blog material. I'll try to keep the blog fresh current with random items from Asia and Lizzie will be my Stateside blog correspondent. Be patient...

Strike Mission

I jammed home for a quick 3-day visit over the weekend. I enjoyed some home-cookin', took in some Little League baseball, ate at a favorite Mexican food haunt, avoided the swine flu, but most importantly took in some good quality time with my family.

27 hours on a plane in total for 72 hours on the ground and it was well worth every moment. I'm back in Hong Kong now and my body is a bit confused about whether it had enough time to get 1 or 2 doses of jet lag.

We went out to the Coast to watch some baseball. Ingrid's attention span was short for the game, but luckily there was a lot of room beyond the field to roam and explore. Below are some shots.