Billy Preston and the lads

Today's SCMP carries a reprint of a recent New York Times article about Paul McCartney, Now I'm 64.

Time flies.

Or, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.

The Beatles with Billy Preston, Get Back, Apple Corps rooftop concert (1969), London: youtube

George Harrison with Billy Preston, That's the Way God Planned It, The Concert for Bangla Desh (1971), Madison Square Garden, NYC: youtube

Big Night Out: the day after

So, how was the show? As You Like It? The short reply is, great! Nay, more than that, I liked it very much; it was, brothers and sisters, double-plus wonderful.

Arriving at the venue knowing next to nothing except this was a Shakespeare comedy, once the house lights went down and the stage lights went up we were treated to a marvellous comic tale. One that was mostly about courtship and love and featuring lords, ladies, usurpers, sons, daughters, country fellows and wenches, a motley fool, drunken vicar, wrestler, shepherd and shepherdess.

Naturally, one of the ladies soon pretends to be a gentleman, which leads to all sorts of misunderstandings and hilarity. One can only hazard what the often-rowdy, mixed audiences of late-Elizabethan London further made of such comic twists when at that epoch all the actors were male. At that time, it would have been a gentleman pretending to be a lady who is pretending to be gentleman. Cool, eh? Gadzooks!

The show was lots of fun, had a superb cast, and great production. Listening to BBC Worldservice on the way home, it was clear that going to see As You Like It had been a much better choice than going to a bar to watch the predictable dismal performance of the over-hyped, over-rated England soccer team. Thanks, Mike W!

Big Night Out

Yes, off to town to see As You Like It, the Shakespeare comedy. As performed by a local English-language theatre company, the name of which escapes me. Anyway, the show's at Shouson Theatre, Hong Kong Arts Centre.

I do know the cast includes that well-known thespian Michael Harley. I don't know if he gets to say the following though, from Act II, Scene 7:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Hong Kong: wet, wet, wet

(click table to enlarge)
As the table shows, all things being normal, the months of May, June, July, August and September are our wettest months.

Methinks the downpours today are half of this month's rain allotment all in one go. Some it accompanied by very fierce gusts of wind. Still, at least it's not cold rain!

For more Monthly Meteorological Normals for Hong Kong (1961-90): Observatory

Language, loss, and metaphor

By Ellen Hawley: The Threepenny Review

Bob Dylan: Theme Time Radio Hour

The latest Bob Dylan radio show, Coffee, is now available for our listening pleasure. As for the other shows, it is downloadable as an Mp3. The site also has a link to the playlist.

Many thanks to WMS, and his pal Steve: White Man Stew

Hong Kong: Bus Uncle + fifteen minutes of fame

Last week, local weekly magazine Next, having tracked down Bus Uncle, took him to to an estate agents in Kowloon to "meet" his erstwhile bus companion "Alvin".

Local reporting had thus moved from reporting news to manufacturing news.

Since when, Alvin and "Jon" (the person who filmed the incident that livened up the journey home on the 68X bus) have met and made the frontcover of another local tabloid magazine.

But one tabloid has since gone even further: taking Bus Uncle across the border to mainland China so as to ply him with cheap drinks and even cheaper sex workers. (If I remember well, they pulled the same stunt some years ago with the husband of a woman who had been murdered. Pictures and headlines that followed were along the lines: Heartless husband frolics with happy hookers.)

Uncle Bus makes for, and gives, good copy. Clearly enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, he brags about the huge quantity of women he has bedded and commends the benefits of cunnilingus:

"before the train even enters the tunnel, she has already capsized in Tolo Harbour."

Erh, yes, quite. Anyway, Uncle Bus goes on a Field Trip: EastSouthWestNorth

Search for a surname

Look up the geographic distribution of your surname, or anyone else's, in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales) for 1881 and 1998.

The site has other stuff also worth digging around in (but you'll need to turn on yr cookies for any of it to work): spatial-literacy

Thank, Nick G!

Hong Kong: June 4 vigil at Victoria Park

The heat, humidity, laziness, and sundry chronic aches and pains kept me away from Sunday's June 4 vigil at Victoria Park. Here's how the event is reported in today's Standard

Normalizing the Unthinkable

John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world’s press: Information Clearing House

Soccer World Cup 2006

The winner is? How to beat the bookies: The Predictor














Support England (if you must), but not the soccer team: Guardian

Better than flying

The skyscraper boom: Economist

June 4, 1989

Bob Dylan: Theme Time Radio Hour

The fourth Bob Dylan radio show is now available for our listening pleasure. This one's theme is Baseball, and it's a good one.

All shows (with link to playlists) currently available in Mp3 format: White Man Stew

Thanks, WMS and his pal Steve in the UK!

Clouds: flying high

(click on image to enlarge)
This year's UK surprise best-seller: The Cloudspotter's Guide:
Guardian

Taking the world by storm, fighting the banality of "blue sky thinking", Cloudspotter's website: Cloud Appreciation Society

Hereabouts, commonly observed clouds: HKO cloud division

Hong Kong: a better tomorrow?

Patrick L Smith writes:

When Stalin's apparatchiks rewrote history books and airbrushed fallen colleagues out of photos, there was a saying among Soviet citizens: The future is certain, they would jest, it is the past that is not yet clear.

Good lead into his report on the heated debate about what to do with the now empty Hollywood Road Police Station / Victoria Prison in central Hong Kong: IHT

Bus Uncle: It is resolved!

Bus Uncle? Found in Yuen Long: EastSouthWestNorth

The Tank Man

PBS documentary about China 1989-2006. It's in six parts: Prologue, Tens of Millions of Protestors, The Theatre of Massacre, China's Rise, Two Chinas, The Struggle to Control Information.

Oh, the power of images.

Viewable online (click High Cable/DSL): PBS Frontline

Futbol? Futbol?

You want futbol? Shaolin soccer: youtube

Dragon Boat Festival

Tomorrow, 31 May 2006, is Tuen Ng Festival ((what with it being the Fifth Day of the Fifth Moon) and Dragon Boat Day.

Another public holiday.

This year, the International Dragon Boat Races are taking place at Stanley Main Beach, on the south side of Hong Kong island. According to the official website, the International is now in its 39th year and there will be 3,500 paddlers. The website's frontpage has a neat pre-warm up video (but the frontpage also loads a rousing and loud rap version of I've Got the Power. If that means NSFW, wait till you get home.) Dragon Boat

Hereabouts, on a little island in the South China Sea, there were dragon boat races in the harbour on Sunday just gone. As in many other matters, here we paddle to the beat of a different drummer.

Yet more weather porn

This is so neat: HK Observatory

The road more travelled

Travel writing (an entirely new category?), by Jeremy Treglown: FT

Futbol!

How's this for a power play:

The government capitulated after several nights of terror. . . The delegation promised to provide imprisoned PCC members with 60 televisions and to permit them to watch the football World Cup.

Sinister forces flex their muscles in South America: spiegel

Hong Kong: Central harbourfront to be vibrant and attractive (with photos)

(click on images to enlarge)

Vibrant and attractive? That's what they say, but they would say that, wouldn't they? Well, it looks like a done deal: Hong Kong Government press release

But don't be too sure. It ain't over 'till the fat lady sings, et cetera.

There so many things wrong about the plans, I don't know where to begin. Grrrrhhh!

After a deluge: salt and water

Hereabouts, eighty percent of the year's annual rainfall occurs between the beginning of May and the last days of August.

It seemed this Sunday morning as if we were getting half of it in one go. Yes, an amazingly heavy rain storm. It just bucketed it, bucketed it down.

Then it stopped.

Still, there is much pleasure to be had witnessing said tumult -- providing one is sheltered, safe and dry. Plus, as mum would say, a downpour's good for the plants, settles the dust, and cleans the streets.

All well and good, but that urban (and rural) run-off mostly pours into the sea -- which is why the local authorities recommend citizens stay out of the briny deep for the three days following a heavy rain storm.

The salt of the earth take no notice and bathe before, during, and after a deluge.

Irrepressible info

The pledge:

I believe the Internet should be a force for political freedom, not repression. People have the right to seek and receive information and to express their peaceful beliefs online without fear or interference.

I call on governments to stop the unwarranted restriction of freedom of expression on the Internet – and on companies to stop helping them do it.

Sign this pledge: Amnesty International

Enron: Guilty!

To mark the occasion musically, how about a bunch of songs? Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Plus, an Enron Voicemail. All mp3s: WFMU

Hong Kong: Bus Uncle says "I've got pressure"

Among the many items that caught my eye several days ago in the ever busy and informative local EastSouthWestNorth was a story titled Bus Uncle.

That story has now made today's (26 May 2006) Guardian. The Guardian credits an agency report, in this case Associated Press (25 May 2006). Both the AP and Guardian reports have, among other things, lame links to youtube.

Uncredited be either the Guardian or AP is the Hong Kong blogger who broke the story in the English-language medium: EastSouthWestNorth:

Excerpted from Apple Daily via InMediaHK:
What is the most popular movie in Hong Kong? It is not M:i:3 (which is likely not to be shown in mainland China) and it is not Da Vinci Code (which is severely criticized by the Catholic Church). No, it is a stealth video clip entitled "巴士阿叔, Bus Uncle" on YouTube.

The incident occurred on the top deck of a Number 68X Kowloon bus on April 29. A young man observed that the middle-aged person in front of him was talking too loud on the mobile telephone. So he tapped the man's shoulder and asked him to keep the volume down. This led to a vigorous response, including a string of obscenities. The entire proceedings were recorded by another passenger using a mobile camera phone. The film was uploaded on YouTube and then seen by the whole wide world. As of May 19, 1.2 million people have watched the video clip!

Here is the original report in English (24 May 2006) with direct links to the appropriate youtube clips as well as to merchandising opportunities and ring tones: EastSouthWestNorth

Bob Dylan: Theme Time Radio Hour

That third radio show by Bob Dylan is now available for our listening pleasure. This one takes as its theme Drink.

As was and is the case for the previous shows -- Weather, Mother -- you'll find the mp3 here: White Man Stew (that's Stew, not Stews as I wrote in my earlier post; my bad). Thanks, WMS!

Radical Chicks

After time out, time in. By way of re-entry, there was going to be a quote from T S Eliot's Burnt Norton but that is saved for another time. Instead, for all kinds of reasons, here are the Dixie Chicks with Not Ready to Make Nice:

Time out

Typhoon Chanchu: aftermath

Last night at 9:30pm. Hong Kong Observatory dropped the signal from No. 3 to No. 1. By the time Mister B woke up this morning, all was back to its seasonal normality: blue sky, tranquil sea, hot sun, warm earth.

The sort of day that brings to mind the opening sentence of the novel Murphy, by Samuel Beckett: The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

Anyway, South China Morning Post (paid; no link) reports that, locally, the worst casualty was a 79-year-old lady hit by a falling flowerpot. Her being in Kowloon, the flowerpot may have fallen from a great height. She is in a serious condition in United Christian Hospital. Here's hoping the elderly lady gets well soon.

Elsewhere? To the east of Hong Kong, mainland authorities in southern Guandong and the southern provinces in Fujian evacuated up to six hundred thousand people in anticipation of Typhoon Chanchu's predicted northeasterly course along the mainland coast.

Bob Dylan: Theme Time Radio Hour

Like to listen to the first two Bob Dylan radio shows? They are now available as Mp3s: White Man Stew

Typhoon Chanchu

Zhuhai, next door to Macao: waterfront on 16 May 2006

Typhoon Chanchu

Let's see, Monday evening Hong Kong Observatory issued a Tropical Cylone Warning No. 1.

Tuesday? Most of the day was overcast with patches of very fine rain. It was only in the evening that the winds significantly picked up accompanied by the passage of light rain bands.

At daybreak this morning, Wednesday, the Observatory issued a No. 3 Warning.

(For language mavens. The Obs used to "raise" or "hoist" a warning. During a storm some poor blighter had to go out and hoist the appropriate big symbol up the flagpole at the weather station. When the weather station became "de-manned" and automated a few years ago there was nobody there and nothing to raise so they switched to "issue".)

For more information on Warnings: Definitions and Meanings: Hong Kong Observatory

Timing of the ebb and flow of the tide coupled with the storm surge means that around now some low-lying shore areas may be subject to flooding: Hong Kong tidal information (real time)















It's 23C, overcast, very windy with heavy rains.

The Wrong Guy

Nice follow up by BBC News 24 about their mistaken identity interview (Guy Goma/Guy Kewney): BBC AudioVideo
Thanks, Nick G!

Reading matters

Not done this for a bit. Of interest:

The Wars of the Texas Succession, by Paul Krugman (2004): New York Review of Books

Humanity's Ground Zero -- Turning a Planet into a Slum, interview with Mike Davis: Tomdispatch (1)
Green Zones and Slum Cities -- The Imperial City and the City of Slums, interview with Mike Davis: Tomdispatch (2)

Classical music, the love of my life, by Armando Iannucci: Guardian

Weather Porn

Not just Weather!

For all your emergency and disaster needs -- Biological Hazards, Earthquakes, Epidemics, Fires, Floods, Heat Waves, and Volcanoes: World Disaster Alert Map

Fare comment!

The cabbie, from French West Africa, was waiting in the lobby of BBC Television Centre in West London, when a line manager mistook him for an expert on the Apple Corp versus Apple Computer legal case.

The cabbie was rushed to the studio, micced up, then interviewed live.

Confused but co-operative, he did a pretty good job. Here's the clip (Windows Media)

Ha! Now it's made it to Youtube

Typhoon Chanchu

(click on image to enlarge)

About one thousand kilometres south-southeast of a little island in the South China Sea, Typhoon Chanchu continues to make (relatively) slow progress in a west-northwest direction. Hong Kong Observatory is forecasting heavy rains and "squalls" mid-week.

Not that you'd know it here: today has been a mild (25C) and sun-filled day. This morning, Mister B went for a ride on his bike -- to Sai Wan and back. It is usually a ride done at least once a day. That little jaunt was the first in more than three weeks. Having felt very unwell for even longer, it is hoped today's sortie augurs well.

Typhoon Chanchu

(click to enlarge)
Having ripped through the Philippines as a mere Severe Tropical Storm -- ships aground, thousands homeless, not many dead -- upon reaching the South China Sea Chanchu has intensified into a typhoon! First of the season, by the way. Temperature has dropped, dogs are barking. . .

Unscheduled: ship to shore

(click on map to enlarge)
On Friday, not everyone's day turned out as planned. Especially so if they were on a lunchtime ferry from Central to Mui Wo, Lantau.

There's a blue sky, it's a clear day, and at 1:28pm and within sight of the Mui Wo ferry terminal, the double-decker ferry does an abrupt turn to starboard and soon enough slams into the headland at Man Kok Tsui. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt.


(click on map to enlarge)

Marine Department and ferry company enquiries to follow.

Summer song: koel

The hot months have arrived, the days and nights of heavy rains are not far off.

Mangos are plentiful, lychees are imminent.

Interrupting the torpor: the Asian Koel, aka common koel:

This is a noisy species, with persistent and loud ku-OO ku-OO calls as well as other cackles and screams.

So far unseen, but surely heard. Perhaps it perches in the higher reaches of one of the square's tall Chinese Banyan trees.

For more info: Wikipedia

Where: map

Sound byte: Bird songs (wav files), Hong Kong Bird Watching Society

Hong Kong: white house with dark secrets

If you have ever taken the Number 54 public lightbus from Outlying Ferry Terminals to Queen Mary Hospital (as Mister B does with some frequency) you may have wondered about the seemingly derelict house just glimpsed on Victoria Road, Pokfulam.

Someone, long ago, told me the place had once been a British colonial interrogation centre used by the Special Branch, the police's politico division. That certainly made sense, in the 1950s and '60s the area was still relatively remote and few other buildings then existed in the area. No one would have heard the screams:

The white house was the secret prison used to imprison political prisoners and terrorists during the British colonial period. It also served as the training school for Hong Kong/British secret agents. Many famous people with ties to the Chinese Communist Party were prisoners here, including the famous 1960's actors Fu Qi and She Wei, the spy police inspector Tsang Chiu-Fo, etc. Since the prisoners had important key information that the government needed, the special agents at the white house would use any means including drugs and hypnosis to induce the prisoners to confess.

It is, by all accounts, still a Government property and is often hired out to film crews. For pix and more: EastSouthWestNorth

Billie Holiday

Fine and Mellow (1957)
(this may take a moment or three to load, but patience -- as we have daily the opportunity to discover -- oftentimes has its rewards.)



On 8 December, 1957, Billie Holiday performed on the CBS TV show The Sound of Jazz with a band that included (in order of first appearance, I think I got them right):

Coleman Hawkins (tenor sax), Lester Young (tenor sax), Dick Dickenson (trombone), Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax), Doc Cheatham (trumpet), Ben Webster (tenor sax), Roy Eldridge (trumpet).

Fine and Mellow, indeed.

Same sight, new view

One of the photos accompanying this previous post about the fiftieth anniversary of the shipping container, prompted Billy C to send me the photo amended as follows:














(click on image to enlarge)

Further plus. . . Billy C says that despite a gruelling workload he still manages to skate there once a week.

Oh, and Billy also says Barb is due to arrive hereabouts 25 June. Thanks, Billy C!

Noblesse oblige: Finnish style

That avoid-the-festivities festive party? The glamour may still be there but stamina, apparently, isn't what it was:

A certain noble Finn traipsed all the way down the slope to restock the beer bucket. When he came back with armloads of booze. . . all except [the building's residents] and the noble Finn's spouse had decamped.

Thanks also for photo (severely cropped by me), Dave A!

The Sultan's Elephant

A wonderful thing in a sometimes terrible world:
The Sultan's Elephant: youtube
The Sultan's Girl: youtube

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

That's it. All over. The procession. The bun tower climb. Honour upheld: local fireman Jason Kwok ka-ming won for the second time.

Visitors to the island? Fifty thousand, according to the SCMP report. But they were quoting one of the organisers. And he would say that, wouldn't he? (For another crowd estimate, see Standard, below.) Who knows? Ace eye-witness (Nick G) relates that in the evening people queueing for the ferry back to Hong Kong were five deep in an orderly fashion from the ferry terminal all the way back down to Pak Tai Temple.

There were a lot of people.

I hear the avoid-the festivities-party at Sui Kwai Wan was a success. Perhaps someone who was there could email a report? Or, leave in comment box, below.

Me? I sat on my balcony and watched the spectacle. If I am still here next year (I have reached a time in life where I wake up everyday and say thank you), I will have a small party so that others may enjoy too. That, or hang a banner saying, "Photo op! $HK300 per person, with one drink and ice included".

What else?

Several elderly parade viewers were treated for heat stroke and one floating girl fainted atop her pole before the parade began.
And about 34,000 visitors - 10,000 of whom left following the parade - brought brisk business to the island.
Lau Pang-kwai, owner of a Ta Hing incense store, said he enjoyed a 50 percent increase in sales, while Yen Lau said she expected to sell out her stock of 4,000 bun-theme pillows at HK$45 each and make up to HK$50,000.

Full report: Hongkong Standard

Stairway to Heaven

Thirty seven versions (including an excellent version by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention) of that song. Mp3s, all: WFMU

Oh, Stairway's acoustic guitar introduction was lifted from Taurus, track four on Spirit's homonymous first album, released in 1968. Just so you know.

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Foregoing the undoubted pleasures in store at the avoid-the-festivities-party taking place in a little island in the South China Sea's Sui Kwai Wan district, Mister B elected this afternoon to watch the procession pass through the village.

Brill! The procession that is. (I wish I had a digital camera to have recorded the passing moments.) Although it is too early for anyone to have put any photos up at flickr.com, maybe you should look there?

Anyway, lots of colour and lots, and I mean lots, of noise. More than once, the square was filled with two or three lion dance teams with their pennants flying and accompanied by the equally exuberant and rowdy creations of the musicians with their cymbals, drums, cornets and horns. (I wish I had a tape machine to have recorded the different styles of music.)

Amidst all this, the crowning moment was an all-female, cheerleader-type brass band which passed by. Dressed in fetching white uniforms -- decorated with purple plumes -- they marched their way through as they banged on their sidedrums, blew on their trumpets, clarinets, trombones, and one instrument which I have since identified as a sousaphone.

Having the old and the new playing simultaneously side by side turned out to be a wonderful delight.

I am going to watch the Cantonese opera at the temporary bamboo opera house in front of Pak Tai Temple.

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Here's a rant (his description, not mine) from Mick S:

Ended up going out for dinner with the beach bar people last night - 2nd night of the 3-day 'fast'. Follow us, we know where we can feed on meat. Kicked out of one place, we wandered seemingly aimlessly, arriving eventually at East Lake. We had our meal and while usually I recognise little of the food when eating with this group, the dishes served up where strangely familiar:

sweet&sour pork
fried squid
beef with onions
diced chicken with cashew nuts
fried fish pieces with beancurd
soy noodles with spring onions

Seems they were only willing to serve meat dishes to tourists and thus I had to act the token part. It was all nod, nod seeing as the owner and staff know me by name, if not always the same one.

So tradition is dead. And deserves to be. Setting aside the travesty of the resurrected bun scramble on the government run, steel frame tower 50 feet from the real towers, the one god burning you can't see for the nervous, fully clad firemen and the Tourist Asso' sponsored 2nd day march, the organisers this year decreed that ripping off the plastic wrappings on the China-made buns was too much trouble and that they be placed on the towers as they were. Result, crimson towers, glinting inappropriately in the TV lights.

The opera is pretty good though.

Off to an avoid-the-festival party soon. Think I'll assume the old bore persona, "assume" hah!, wistfully recalling old days when traditions were respected and all was right with the world. Won't mention the fact that the festival was moved off the beachfront in the late 60's to accommodate the tourist hordes. Some myths have to be protected.

Thanks, Mick S!

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Yesterday afternoon, Wednesday, the island went vegetarian, or its notion of vegetarian. Steamed, or is it boiled, oysters, anyone? Still, the vegetarian crispy rolls are very good, if you avoid the over-greasy ones. Meat eaters mostly go into the closet for two and a half days.

Also on the plus side, as a sop to local custom, McDo -- yes, sadly, not gladly, there is a McDo on a little island in the South China Sea -- apparently stops serving its global McChew and McChuck. What do they serve instead? I have no idea.

What else? The selling of the Bun Festival. . . Official souvenirs? Phone strap (left) and magnet (right). There's probably more, but I haven't seen any yet.














This year, the baker asked me if I wanted a festival bun with lotus seed filling. I said I didn't care, just give me a lucky bun. He laughed, but took my money all the same.

Friday is going to be very crowded.

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Crowd control barriers arrived? Check. Bikes illegally parked on the waterfront removed? Check. Official viewing stands ready? Check. Bun Tower? Check.

Extra ferries? See earlier post. Check.

Hong Kong Police? Check. Hong Kong Fire Services Department? Check. Hong Kong Hospital Authority medical services? Check. Hong Kong Government Flying Service? Check.

Transport Department Emergency Transport Co-ordination Centre? Check. Home Affairs Department Emergency Co-ordination Centre? Check. Hong Kong Observatory? Check.

Local worthies? Check. Local unworthies? Check. Politicos, civil servants and other VIPs? Check.

Media centre? Check.

Hong Kong Tourist Authority? Check. Leisure and Cultural Services? Check. Islands District Council? Check. Hong Kong Mountaineering Union? Check? Cleaning Services? Check.

Hong Kong Police Bagpipe Band? In drone mode.

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Bun Festival.

Easily the best guide to the history and customs of the Tai Ping Qing Jiao (Purest Sacrifice celebrated for Great Peace).

Aka Bun Festival:
Dr. Sui-wai Cheung

How to brighten up a night at the bar

Horn guy: video google
Thanks, A Depth of Life!

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Late Wednesday night, this email from Mick S:

I just saw the ATV late news and apart from telling its audience that the bun festival was on Saturday I'm sure they said there'd be special ferries and overnight buses TO Cheung Chau. Well, I want to be on one.

Thanks, Mick S! Here's a preview.


(click
on
image
to
enlarge)



Still, even local terrestial broadcaster ATV isn't alone in its confusion about when the Bun Festival takes place. Today's South China Morning Post also repeats the Saturday error in its extensive report "Bun festival climbing champion vows to keep local grip on trophy." (The defending champion, Kwok Kai-wing, is a local who is also a fireman.) If you are interested, the story is on page four of City section (no link, paid).

Still, every cloud. . . et cetera. Those of a curmudgeonly disposition will welcome ATV and SCMP's hopelessly misinformed reporting as this promises fewer people visiting the island on Friday. Even if the other English-language newspaper got it right: Hongkong Standard.

And here, too.

Hong Kong: Bun Festival 2006

Please to make a line here. Thank you for your co-operation.

"The Incomplete, True, Authentic and Wonderful History of May Day"

According to historian Peter Linebaugh:

On May Day 1980 the Green and Red themes were combined when a former Buick auto-maker from Detroit, one "Mr. Toad," sat at a picnic table and penned the following lines,

The eight hour day is not enough;
We are thinking of more and better stuff.
So here is our prayer and here is our plan,
We want what we want and we'll take what we can.

Down with wars both small and large,
Except for the ones where we're in charge:
Those are the wars of class against class,
Where we get a chance to kick some ass..

For air to breathe and water to drink,
And no more poison from the kitchen sink.
For land that's green and life that's saved
And less and less of the earth that's paved.

For more about the Red and Green as well as the remainder of Mr Toad's terrific poem: autonomedia

Service resumed

Neil Young: Living with War

To listen to Neil Young's new album
(streaming): Living with War
Tracklist:
1) After The Garden
2) Living With War
3) The Restless Consumer
4) Shock And Awe
5) Families
6) Flags of Freedom
7) Let's Impeach The President
8} Lookin' For A Leader
9) Roger And Out
10)America The Beautiful

Hong Kong: 1946-47

Hedda Morrison: photographer
Wonderful. Just wonderful.
Thanks, Nick G!

Made in Macau

A better tomorrow?
China's Peasants Gamble on the Future, by Ullrich Fichtner spiegel
Great read. Thanks, Gavin!

Hong Kong: containers

Apparently, yesterday (26 April 2006), was the fiftieth anniversary of the sailing of the first container ship: Wikipedia

Who'd have thought that an unglamourous, boring box would have been one of the key factors in the growth, development and prosperity of Hong Kong from the late-1960s onwards? (Click image to enlarge).

Somebody wrote a book about it:

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger -- video interview with Marc Levinson (Quicktime/Windows Media)

Plus. . . Ocean shipping is the biggest real-time datastreaming network in the world, by Stewart Taggart:

Today, enough shipping containers exist on the planet to build an 8-foot-high wall around the equator -- twice. Wired

And another eerie fact:

There are more shipping containers loaded and unloaded off the coasts and rivers of China, than travel to or from all other territories put together. It is in China that more than three-quarters of this activity takes place. The majority of China'’s shipping by implication appears to be 'domestic'’. The rest of the world put together only handles a third of what China handles. Thus at least half of all container shipping in the world appears to serve China's domestic market, be from ship to ship, or consist of part-finished goods being transported along the coast or down-river.

To make big that which is small, click on image.

Worldmapper

But, oh, is there any way to work the Boxer rebellion into this post? Suggestions appreciated. Thanks!

Let there be (flourescent) light

Why you can't reproduce a Dan Flavin at your local DIY store: Dan Flavin: A Retrospective - Hayward Gallery, London Social Affairs Unit

Bob Dylan:Theme Time Radio Hour

Want to listen to the first Bob Dylan radio show? To listen, click here (username: press1 password: xmr0ck5!). Bob Dylan: "It's time for Theme Time Radio Hour. Dreams, schemes and themes."

Thank you

Mister B required a Marine Police launch medi-vac in the early, dark, small hours of Friday. Already attached to a drip-feed, what thenceforth unfolded were 30 hours mostly spent wacked out in ward C5 (colo-rectal), Queen Mary Hospital, Hong Kong island.

(I thought I was done with that place.)

This time? Suspected appendicitis.

That was until they finally got around to do an ultrasound. Then, it wasn't appendicitis.

Eventual diagnosis? Tentatively. . . colitis.

The doctor doing the ward round on Saturday morning finally agreed to a discharge. I walked out of QMH on Saturday lunchtime.

Glad to be out of there, glad to be free of the catheter stuck in my hand and the attendant drip-feed. Glad that it wasn't anything that required surgery, chemotherapy, or any other sort of medical treatment. Glad to be back in the sunshine. Glad to turn my back on the the reality of the treachery and on-going disintegration of the body; the in-your-face reality of flesh, organs, bones, blood and other body fluids.

I think it was in the very useful Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (by Sogyal Rinpoche) that I read and then thought about how some Tibetan monks used to meditiate next to dead bodies. Although I am neither a Tibetan, nor a monk, some days I deal better with that stuff. Other days, I don't.

Lately, I could have done without the hassle. I am tired of that kind of drama. I would like my life to have other kinds of dramas. I know, I know: don't pray for stuff, you may get more than expected or wanted.

Anyway, I am very grateful that the medical staff, Marine Police, ambulance people, hospital workers and all the other people were there to care for me. I am a very fortunate person. Thank you.

Nepal

Kathmandu, Nepal (16 April 2006). Photo source:
Road Blog Ahead
This website is so good, it's banned in Nepal:
International Nepal Solidarity Network

For local (and not so local) friends

The other day, an item in the South China Morning Post (no link, paid) reported how many fewer foreign nationals now live in Hong Kong. The report also carried some neat tables showing the numbers for the past five years.

SCMP gave its source as Hong Kong Immigration Department. I have since spent ages trying to track down the numbers and those nifty tables at the Immigration website. No find, not yet.

In the absence of which, a summary: Brits? Way down, from 17,780 in 2004 to 13,490. Canadians? Down. Australians? Same story. Americans? Slight drop in numbers. Others? Ditto. But what about Filipinos? The largest group of foreign nationals in Hong Kong? Down, down. Why? Filipino domestic helpers are being 'let go'. Why? To be replaced by those more easily exploitable: women from the farthest reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesians are way, way up.

Domestic helpers aside, none of the numbers include those who have gained 'permanent residence'. For all I know, the overall numbers may be up. Or down. Or the same. Moreover, it is not clear if or how the countless Hong Kong-born-but acquired-a-foreign-passport figure in the Immigration Department's number crunching.

Interpretation of statistics is a treacherous business.

Some people believe everyone is moving to Shanghai or Dubai. Good. That means fewer bellowing gweilos vomiting all over the place.

Oh, and next time someone asks you how many people live on a little island in the South China Sea. . . you'll be able to tell them: Hong Kong Census and Statistics (scroll down)

For everyone.

George W Bush II? The worst (American) president? In history? Ever? Historian and American, Sean Wilentz weighs up the evidence: rolling stone

For my American friends: Oreo cookies

Ben, ex-Ben & Jerry, explains the US federal budget using Oreo cookies: true majority

Hong Kong: theatre du pif

Harold's Pinter's
Ashes to Ashes

Presented and
performed by
theatre du pif

When? 27-29 April 2006
Time? 8pm
Where? Fringe Club

Tickets at Fringe Club box office or Hong Kong Ticketing
Otherwise, HK Ticketing phone bookings (10am-8pm) 31 288 288 [10:53pm update. Saturday night? Sold out!]

Hong Kong: The Front Door/The Back Door

Hong Kong: adapting to the architecture of density. Photos by Michael Wolf

Hong Kong: eat your greens?

A hundred and thirty-odd years ago, Karl Marx commented somewhere in Das Kapital that "man has been abusing food ever since he started selling it."

True, Karl, so true. Just look at today's frontpage story in all the local papers, which report the Greenpeace Hong Kong investigation and findings that Parknshop (百佳) and Wellcome (惠康), the biggest supermarket chains in the territory, are selling some types of vegetables containing illegal pesticide and excessive pesticide residue.

The supermarkets, of course, don't grow all those pesticide-laden vegetables, they buy them from farmers across the border in China. Farmers who, to be charitable, don't know what they are doing. Or, less charitably, couldn't care less as long as the crops grow, and they can sell their produce to the wholesalers as well as to the buyers from the two supermarket chains. Such are the demands of a poorly and/or unregulated market-driven system. Greenpeace report

As a public service to readers, here are pre-emptive measures to minimise pesticide poisoning due to consumption of vegetables:

* Remove the outer leaves
* Wash well in clean water for several times
* Immerse vegetables in water for one hour and then rinse
* Cook thoroughly before consumption

Courtesy of a Hong Kong Government press release

Bon Appétit!

Interlude

Normal
service
will
be
resumed
as
soon
as
possible.
Thank you.

Saturday night with Sam, and friends

Mister B doesn't get out much at all these days, but last night was the moment to jump on the ferry and go to town. Why? To see Mike Harley, Jonathan Douglas, Jacky Andrews and David Booth in their Fringe Club performance of Samuel Beckett's play Endgame. Theatre review? Loved it.

You want more? The cast were first rate. OK, I know three quarters of the cast, but they were all very good and as an ensemble the casting was inspired. The play? Never seen it before, but it turned out to have pace, great lines, and lots of very funny moments. Most enjoyable. One of the best shows I have seen in a long time. I am so glad I went.

Plus, there was the unexpected bonus of a bunch of people in the audience I know but don't see often enough; people who were pleased to see me and I pleased to see them. Thus, having enjoyed the show so much, it was only natural for us all (plus two of the cast) to continue with a few drinks afterwards upstairs at the Fringe Club's astro-turfed, open-air, roof-top bar. It was, as Wallace (and Gromit) would say, "a grand night out".

Please excuse the rash of postings about Samuel Beckett. This is the last one for the foreseeable future. Promise.

Samuel Beckett

You scored 9 out of a possible 10

VLADIMIR: That passed the time.
ESTRAGON: It would have passed in any case.
VLADIMIR: Yes, but not so rapidly.
(Waiting for Godot)

Well done: you clearly know your Beckett, well enough to know how meaningless such achievements are.

Beckett Quiz: Guardian

A history of the car bomb

Car bombers have included American-Italian anarchists, proto-fascist Zionists, French colonials, Mafiosos, the Provisional IRA, ETA, Israel's Mossad, the CIA, US Special Forces, the mujahedin, Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, Hezbollah, Peru's Shining Path, al-Qaida and jihadists among others.

By Mike Davis, The poor man's air force (part 1): Asia Times Online Return to sender (part 2): TomDispach

Raise the Titanic?

Photos courtesy of Dr Martin Williams.
Thanks, Martin! (Click on images to enlarge.)

Further to previous post, M's boat: RIP.

Update! Update!

On Wednesday, a large barge (with an onboard, industrial-strength crane) hauled M's sunken, concrete boat off the harbour bed.

Once the crane had lowered the crippled craft onto the barge, the ensemble made its stately way to some official shipyard in Aberdeen. According to an impeccable source, there have been dark mutterings about the sinking "being investigated for criminal damage". Thanks, Nick G!

To be continued. . .

Easter + Tin Hau

Today is Good Friday, a public holiday. This morning, I couldn't be fussed to go down to either of the big supermarkets on the waterfront to buy a pack of Hot Cross Buns, instead I went across the square to the bakery and bought a bunnish "raisin stick" to have with my fresh coffee. As I usually do.

Wednesday past, the temperature during the day was 28C. Since when, a cold front has rushed down from the north and the temperature plummeted to 16C. It's really quite pleasant.

As well as being Easter and a public holiday, the people from Sai Wan (down the southwest corner of a little island in the South China Sea) are celebrating the Tin Hau festival. Unlike other Tin Hau celebrations taking place next week elsewhere in the region, the timing of the local Sai Wan festival is strictly in accordance with the appearance of the full moon (lunar phases).

Other than that, during daylight hours there is much beatings of drums and blowing of horns as various teams of lion dancers make their slow progress through the holiday crowds.

For health obsessives, hypochondriacs and nattering nabobs of negativism: Hong Kong Government Department of Health Travel Health Service

Hong Kong: Mai Po Marshes Nature Reserve re-opens

Further to this post of 28 March 2006, Hong Kong Government announced late yesterday that Mai Po Nature Reserve re-opens, as of today:

"As there has not been any new case of birds infected with H5[N1] virus for the past 21 days, which is the World Organisation for Animal Health's standard of an avian influenza infection-free place, the Government has decided to re-open the Mai Po Nature Reserve to the public," a Government spokesman said.

This is good news. Cock-a-doodle-doo.

But what's with that World Organisation for Animal Health? A quick google unearths: OIE

Mai Po Nature Reserve: WWF Hong Kong

An Overgrown Path: Michel Petrucciani

Yet another great post from Overgrown Path. This one is about Michel Petrucciani.

Overgrown Path's post includes a link to a 38-minute documentary about the short but magnificent life of Petrucciani (28 December 1962 - 6 January 1999), one of the world's greatest jazz pianists.

For what it's worth, I think to watch it is, to say the least, thirty eight minutes well spent. Thanks, Overgrown Path!

One Good Move

These days, one of Mister B's regular ports of call is One Good Move: I thought these things might be clues.
Why? Good links and access to video excerpts.

Regulars include highlights from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. (More from Jon Stewart's Daily Shows are also available at Comedy Central.)

Oh, yes, One Good Move is also currently carrying a clip from the British series Yes, Prime Minister! Worth a look.

But if you watch nothing else at One Good Move, please watch Bush answering(?) a question at John Hopkins International Studies School. That man is the leader of the most powerful and militarized country in the world.

Prefer to see the John Hopkins' Q&A in Quicktime format? It's short, and also at Crooks and Liars

All that and more at: One Good Move

Wall and Bulldozer

Kleenex workers, by Barbara Ehrenreich: The Progressive
Thanks, Gavin!

Wall and bulldozer, by John Berger:

The End of History, which is the Corporate global slogan, is not a prophecy, but an order to wipe out the past and what it has bequeathed everywhere. The market requires every consumer and employee to be massively alone in the present.

Open Democracy

Hong Kong: Holidays! 2007! It's official!

What better way to start the week? Statutory holidays for 2007? The list was gazetted on 7 April 2006 by Hong Kong Government: days of our lives

Video of giant centipede eating a mouse

We have centipedes on a little a island in the South China Sea, but none I have seen have ever been longer than six or seven inches. Even so, they pack a really, really, nasty, venomous and very painful bite. (I know of what I speak.) Turns out, however, there are even larger centipedes!

According to Wikipedia, scolopendra gigantea, more commonly known among creepy-crawly cognoscenti as the ‘Peruvian giant yellow leg centipede’ or 'Amazonian giant centipede’, can grow as long as ten inches. Shock horror!

As those common names indicate, that particular centipede is native to lands far from here. Long may it stay that way.

Which all brings me to this: a video of one of those giant centipedes, grabbing, paralysing and then dining on a (white) mouse. Not for the squeamish, those of a nervous disposition, etc. Nature, red in tooth and claw. . . Youtube: snack attack

Iran? Keep an eye on the B-2s in Gloucestershire

Fairly (long and) chilling article in the latest The New Yorker magazine by Seymour Hersh about the planning and internal debate -- which includes whether or not to use nuclear bunker-busting bombs -- against multi-various targets in Iran.

Sy Hersh has a long and good track record in these matters -- he has excellent contacts in the Pentagon and US State Department. Some of those contacts are clearly horrified with the policy-thrust and plans already cooked up by the gung-ho chickenhawks in the White House. Sy Hersh, The New Yorker: The Iran Plans

Mentioned several times in the Hersh article are the possibiities of massive air attacks against numerous Iranian installations of one kind or another.

One of the types of miltary aircraft that would be used in such attacks is the B-2 Spirit, that's the stealth bomber.
Home base for the B-2s is Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri. But the B-2s also operate out of Guam (Pacific); the British -- but on long-lease to the US military -- island of Diego Garcia (Indian Ocean); and (what's more English than the Cotswolds?) USAF/RAF Fairford, (Gloucestershire, England).

For the time being, it is possible to get close enough to Fairford military airbase to take photos. If/when there is a security clamp-down on and around those Cotwolds' lanes: watch out for the flares lighting up the land of Iran. The photo above is of a B-2 at USAF/RAF Fairford and was taken in March 2006. Photo source: (unofficial) RAF Fairford

Judas Iscariot: With God on Our Side

"Judas!"
Judas, who?
Judas Iscariot, that's who.

He whose name has long been synonymous with betrayal and selling out for thirty pieces of silver.

I see he is back in the news: Guardian
Re-evaluation, what-ho!

But, my sweet, my pretty one, has no one ever listened to the last-but-one verse of the 1963 Bob Dylan song With God on Our Side? Forthwith, exhibit one:

In a many dark hour
I've been thinkin' about this
That Jesus Christ
Was betrayed by a kiss
But I can't think for you
You'll have to decide
Whether Judas Iscariot
Had God on his side.

Echoes: Nixon/Bush II

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce."” Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852)

Marx, however, as becomes clear soon enough, was talking of how persons "conjure up the spirits of the past to their service. . . " (Perhaps I am doing that here, too?)
Nonetheless, Mister B was reminded of those Eighteenth Brumaire opening lines while reading today's Scranton Times-Tribune (see link, below).
But. . . Scranton, you exclaim. Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA? The Times-Tribune?
Yes, indeedy. And praise be! Praise be the flow of news, information, education, diversion, prOn (for those who like that kind of stuff), and other earnest (or not so earnest) endeavours available by way of a standing order to the bank, a contract for a broadband connection, assorted cables, hardware and software. All lightly leavened with a little time and some curiousity. But, onwards!

Until Thursday, the only element missing was a rogue president who follows the Nixonian logic that states, "“If the president does it, it can't be illegal."”
---
Mr. Nixon's Achilles' heel was a man named Liddy.
Mr. Bush'’s is named Libby.

Chris Kelly, columnist: Scranton Times-Tribune

Weird, huh?

Chevy Tahoe

General Motors are is running a competition to 'make your own ' commercial for the gas-guzzling Chevy Tahoe SUV.

Truth in advertising:



More at youtube: Chevy Tahoe
Make your own: chevyapprentice.com

Hong Kong: Ching Ming, the aftermath

Photo source: Hong Kong Government Flying Service -- Photo Gallery

Yesterday was Ching Ming Festival Day. See previous post, which included:

(Someone, somehow, always seems to manage to set a hillside on fire; perhaps the festival should be renamed Burn Hillside Festival?)

BHF? Dude, make that a robust WTF. . . For, yes, as today's South China Morning Post reports, there were 31 reported hillside fires -- three quarters of them in the New Territories.
No mention of a little island in the South China Sea -- but the fire on hillside at Hung Shing Ye, Lamma Island was, according to SCMP, among the worst. Oh, last year there were 55 hill fires on Ching Ming Festival Day. Make of that what you will.

Mahzer Mahmood

On Tuesday, 4 April 2006, George Galloway MP was served with a UK High Court order restraining Galloway from "publishing or disclosing to any person any photograph
of Mr Mahmood".

That High Court order
does not extend to
these shores:
High Court (pdf)

Mahmood, often referred to as the 'fake sheik', is the undercover reporter who works for the Rupert Murdoch-owned, British Sunday tabloid News of the World.



For more on
Mahmood
and his sting
operations:
wikipedia

The Figure 5 in Gold

Charles Demuth, The Figure 5 in Gold (1928)

Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg (3 June 1926-5 April 1997) Wiki

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Howl (For Carl Solomon)

Robert Kissel's brother found stabbed to death

First there was the Hong Kong 'milkshake murder', now there is another violent death in the family.
Andrew Kissel, Brother of Murdered Banker, Found Stabbed, Dead in US: Bloomberg
Prefer a tabloid report? New York Daily News

Hong Kong: ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil owns 60% of the three local power stations that generate most of Hong Kong's electricity.

An Open Letter to New Exxon/Mobil CEO, Rex Tillerson: Ralph Nader

Hong Kong Sevens

For those who care, this weekend is also the one for the Hong Kong Sevens. Now in its 30th year, the Hong Kong Sevens is the biggest rugby sevens tournament in the world. (Pause, briefly, to swell up with civic pride.)

I guess you have to be there: "The server at www.hksevens.com is taking too long to respond. The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments."

Server down. . . has someone dropped the ball? You may have better luck: hksevens

Ching Ming festival: 清明節

Sunday on a little island in the South China Sea is even busier than usual. Why? Ching Ming Festival, which literally translates as Pure Brightness Festival (清明節).
Commonly known in English as Grave Sweeping Day, this is one of those times to go to the cemetery and sweep and tidy up the grave. That done, it is customary to offer flowers, food (usually roast suckling pig) and drink to one's ancestors. Plus, light a bunch of incense sticks and burn some imitation paper money.
(Someone, somehow, always seems to manage to set a hillside on fire; perhaps the festival should be renamed Burn Hillside Festival?)
But what happens, you ask, to all that food and drink after the ancestor spirits have blessed it? The family has a picnic at the gravesite. Given that the festival is a way to re-connect with one's deceased ancestors, it would be, all things considered, unseemly and uncharitable to have the picnic anywhere else.
Actually, Ching Ming Festival Day is 5 April, a public holiday hereabouts. But since this is a weekend a lot of people have come over to beat the crowds. . . so a little island in the South China Sea is clogged up with the living come pay homage to the dead.

Time running out for bun scrambling competition entrants

According to this press release, submission of entries closes on 4 April for those wishing to take part in the "bun scrambling competition" on 5-6 May, 2006 at Pak Tai Temple Playground soccer pitch, Cheung Chau.

Jointly organised by the Hong Kong Cheung Chau Bun Festival Committee and the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the "2006 Bun Carnival" will be staged from 22 April to 6 May 2006 at the soccer pitch of Pak Tai Temple Playground, Cheung Chau.
The event is presented in association with the Cheung Chau Wai Chiu County Association Limited, the Cheung Chau Rural Committee, the Islands District Office of the Home Affairs Department and the Hong Kong Mountaineering Union, and sponsored by the Islands District Council and 3D-GOLD Jewellery.

Three-d gold? Is this the Bun Festival goes bling? Stay tuned. Amateur scramblers should take heed, however:

Selected applicants must complete the safety training sessions provided by the Hong Kong Mountaineering Union on April 22 and 23 on bun tower climbing and accident prevention.

Hong Kong Mountaineering Union? What's the betting they'll be handing out an engraved certificate for those who have successfully completed the 'bun tower climbing and accident prevention course'? Stage One -- the "bun scrambler" enrolment form: Leisure and Cultural Services