Zhen(1) Kuai(4) a!

How time flies!

We've had eight visitors from out of town in the last six months. I've decided I'm going to charge for my private tours of Hong Kong starting in 2010. I've also decided to eat at home more often as Shanghai hairy crabs (along with clams in black bean sauce, mantis prawns, abalone, typhoon shelter crabs, razor clams...) are quickly catching up to us in both budget and waistlines.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about eating out here in Hong Kong. The food is too damn good. But after all this decadent eating, I'm starting to feel more like a glutton than a gourmand. So, the tentative plan is to buy more groceries, eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat, and try to order takeaway less than twice a month.

Tonight, Stu decided to make a lamb stew (no pun intended here, folks) with a nice piece of lamb shoulder, freshly flown in from Australia, that he had dressed and frozen the week before. After, cutting off most of the fat, there wasn't too much meat left, but we were okay with that. Less meat is good, right? I guess he was really getting into the whole budgeting thing because he picked up a trio of simple but classic root vegetables for the stew: potatoes, one onion, and some carrots. He threw everything in a pot and let it gently simmer away.

The results were less than inspiring. His stew was a dismal, Dickensian meal fit for an 19th century orphanage or maybe a soup kitchen in a recession. I searched for the lamb meat between the mounds of potatoes and carrots; no sign of an onion which he had sweated and melted into the broth for my benefit (I hate onions, but don't mind the flavor, but it's more complicated than that; I have a whole manifesto on the subject). We didn't buy enough lamb meat to make a good stew and forgot to anticipate how much the meat would shrink when cooked.

After I finished my bowl of root vegetables, water, and one tender, succulent bit of lamb meat, I held out my empty bowl and said in my best Cockney accent, "Please, sir, may I have some more?"

Running Is Good For You

Today I just got told by my cleaning lady.

Amy, our daily housekeeper (everyday except Sundays and public holidays as stipulated in our lease agreement), came in this morning in an especially chatty mood. She speaks Mandarin which is great for me to practice speaking putonghua.

I said brightly, "Ni hao, Amy!"

"Ni hao," she replied. "Good morning. Afternoon."

Then, out nowhere, she started talking about how everyday (I caught that part, mei tian), there were runners in that park (pointing out our bedroom window to the little track down the street from us) very early in the morning. I didn't catch the word for runners, so I said, "Mei tian zhe shi shenme?" (Everyday, there's what?) She said, runners, gesturing outside then making elaborate motions of running like a mime.

"Oh, runners," I said in English. Then she started speaking more agitatedly in putonghua. With some help from Stu, I gathered what she said which was something along the lines of, "There are runners in the park every day early in the morning. You two sit inside in front of your computers all day. The air in here is bad for you! You need to go outside and exercise, run!"

"But, Amy," I replied reasonably, "the air outside is very bad too, even worse! Besides, I do yoga everyday." It was more like me pointing outside and wildly gesticulating while saying, "bu hao, bu hao." (Not good, not good.) "Mei tian, women qu yu jia."

She laughed and shook her head. I'm going to the gym and a yoga class tomorrow. Amy has shamed me.

Why, you little weasel...

This one is for my buddy Alex, so patiently waiting for a blog entry from his lazy friend in Hong Kong. Hope you like it!

Funny, well sort of, thing just happened to me, and I don't know whether to organize it under faux pas, plain old incident, or food for thought. It's probably a little bit of everything. I had recently returned from Vietnam and missed a friend's birthday here in Hong Kong. I brought back with me a 100 gram bag of freshly ground "weasel" coffee as a small birthday gift for said friend.

I had first heard of this type of coffee when I was perusing a gourmet grocery store either in London or New York, and distinctly remember the feeling of my eyes growing very wide when I saw the price tag on those tiny bags. A friend with me at the time said nochalantly, "Oh yeah, in the Philippines, they go around collecting these coffee beans that weasels eat, but can't digest, and poop out. Something about the digestion process makes the coffee beans really tasty. But it's a little labor intensive so they're pretty expensive." I was intrigued, but there was no way I was shelling out something like 30 USD for a 100 gram bag.

One major joy of living in Asia is the ability to find for dirt cheap what was exotic and too expensive in the States. Dragon fruit, star fruit, precious Indian mangoes, pristinely hand-wrapped, sweet, crisp Asian pears, pounds of fragrant vanilla beans, you name it, they sell it. So you can imagine my excitement when I found weasel coffee for a bargain in the Old Quarter of Hanoi. The very perceptive and capable sales lady even offered us a sample, quickly filtering a fresh cup. The result? Chocolately, velvelty, nutty, simply delicious. And with condensed milk, I was sold. I picked up a bag for myself and a bag for the friend thinking it would be the perfect gift since she enjoyed coffee.

I handed it to her at a casual birthday get-together at a bar. She opened it and said, "Hmm, weasel coffee? That's a strange name." It sparked a brief conversation about where I got it, and I don't remember what I said, but I think I heard Stu mentioning the origin of it. Or maybe I did. Or maybe someone else did. In any case, I thought my friend was clear on how it was produced.

The next day, I saw my friend, and she said brightly, "Oh hey, we tried that coffee, and it was really good. It was really nutty or something!" I replied, jokingly, "Yeah, you know where that taste comes from." I couldn't help it. She looked at me, confused, "What do you mean?" "Well, you know, weasel coffee... How they poop out the coffee beans and all." "What? I didn't know that!" "Oh no," I cried, "I thought you knew!"

She looked a little sick to her stomach. Her friend visiting from the States looked horrified. And her husband's eyebrows were furrowed. "Oh yeah, thanks for the coffee," he said dryly. Hmm, what the hell had I done? I felt awful that I might have caused them distress from a simple cup of coffee. Had I ruined their whole day? Would she throw out the rest of the coffee in a fury? "I'm never accepting any crap from Sandra ever again!" (No pun intended, okay, maybe a little.)

In any case, it got me thinking. I found it interesting that my friend and her companions had reacted badly to the knowledge that their coffee this morning was not their normal cup of joe. What makes people revolted by their food on certain facts rather than others? Certainly, it's a complicated answer - cultural, historical, anthropological, biological - but mainly, this little incident was more proof that we, mostly Americans but increasingly the rest of the world like Europe and China, need to be removed, as far away as possible, from our food. I would venture to say that most people don't know which part of the cow their steak dinner comes from, or how their chicken from KFC was raised. But as movies like Food, Inc. and books like The Omnivore's Dilemma increasingly inform us on these murky practices, we would probably begin to find weasel coffee a very appealing alternative.

This desire for transparency won't happen overnight, it may even take generations as it has taken a couple of generations to gradually remove ourselves from the origins of our meals. Even I, having grown up on offal, dried and raw fish, the heads still attached to whatever cooked carcass on a plate, had a rare moment of sick-to-my-stomach-ness when I was attacking a prawn in Vietnam. We were on Ha Long Bay, and maybe it was the gentle rocking of the boat, maybe it was the echo of the gentle chastising from my doctor about high cholestoral foods in my head, but my stomach flipped when I tore off the little legs and pulled off the crunchy exoskeleton helmet with the long tentacles and beady black eyes that make up its head. Holy crap, I thought, I just pulled the head off this creature and its contents, including the juices that it was cooked in, just spilled all over my plate. I'm a murderer! And it was kind of gross. But once I popped the succulent meat in my mouth, I remembered exactly why I'm an omnivore. And I found no dilemma there.

New Place

We moved this Friday to our newest home, this time in Causeway Bay. I've lost count of how many places I've laid down my head to rest, but every place feels like home now. I don't have a set of dishes to my name, just boxes of clothes that I never wear and books and mementos that I hardly ever revisit. I felt a little embarrassed while I kept the doors open and tried to stay out of the way of the 2 movers we had hired. They moved our 30+ boxes in and out of the van fast, but it was clear that it was a really hot and humid day, and that some of our boxes and suitcases were heavy. How do we manage to accumulate so much crap when there's so little we actually need? I wish I had the guts to detach myself from my things which is just stuff really and be able to hit the road with nothing but a backpack and a notebook. Wouldn't that be something?

Storm!

No. 8 Storm Signal is in force right now! It's not so much the rain which looks more or less like regular rain. It's the crazy wind that slams around objects left outside. It's the rainwater on the road sliding across the pavement like an invisible fire hose washing down the road with blasts of water. It's the strange, displaced thumps in the night that you can't attribute to anything because it's too dark to see. Mostly, it's a bad storm in a foreign place with a storm signal system that makes it sound a helluva lot more exciting than it really is. Still, it's my first tropical storm in Hong Kong!

Weather report from the Hong Kong Observatory.

Tropical Cyclone Bulletin

Here is the latest Tropical Cyclone Bulletin issued by the Hong Kong Observatory.

The No. 8 Northwest Gale or Storm Signal is in force.

This means that winds with mean speeds of 63 kilometres per hour or more are expected from the northwest quarter.

At 1 a.m., Typhoon Molave was centred about 70 kilometres east-northeast of Hong Kong Observatory (near 22.5 degrees north 114.8 degrees east) and is forecast to move west-northwest at about 25 kilometres per hour across Dapeng Peninsula.

Molave is expected to enter Mirs Bay, and will be very close to Hong Kong in the next few hours. Gale force winds will generally affect Hong Kong and there will be heavy rain with squalls. According to the present track, local winds will turn southwesterly before daybreak. Places previously sheltered from the winds will become exposed. Members of the public should take precautions as soon as possible. In the past hour, the maximum sustained winds recorded at Tap Mun and Cheung Chau were 80 and 63 kilometres per hour with maximum gusts 115 and 99 kilometres per hour respectively.

(Precautionary Announcements with No. 8 Signal)

1. Complete all precautions in your home. Lock all windows and doors, fit bars into position and insert reinforced shutters and gates if they are available. Adhesive tape fixed to large window-panes in exposed positions will reduce damage by broken glass. Storm water drains should be cleared of leaves and rubbish.

2. Do not stand near windows on the exposed side of your home. Move all furniture and valuables away from these areas. Make sure you have a safe place to shelter, should windows be broken.

3. Since seas are very rough and the current is strong with changing direction, you are advised to stay away from the shoreline and not to engage in water sports.

4. Flights at Hong Kong International Airport may be affected by the weather. Please contact your airline for the latest flight information before departing for the airport.

5. Please listen to radio or watch TV for the latest weather information broadcast at the 15th, 30th, 45th and 58th minute of each hour. You can also browse the Hong Kong Observatory's web site for the information.

MORE Crazy Names!

King Kong. I kid you not.

Blackie Hui. Hmm, I don't know how well that name would fly in the States.

The Gross Side of Hong Kong

I finally joined a yoga studio here and am happily finding my way back to a regular yoga practice. In class, I usually try to focus on my postures and look at my inner eye and all that crap, but it's a bit difficult in Hong Kong. It's hard to feel a sense of solitude in the city in general, but in yoga, it's especially difficult when people seem to have trouble refraining from passing gas. Loudly. In the last few days, I've been to four classes in a row in which someone has loudly interrupted my yogic peace with ripping horn-like sound. In one case, a guy declared "excuse me" in a commanding voice after his contribution to HK's toxic air.

In other things I find disgusting, nose pickers. It might be a cultural thing, but it seems that people have no qualms about absently sticking a finger and digging around for a booger nugget in public. On the subway. At the tram station. On street corners. Everywhere. At least I didn't catch anybody rubbing their genitals on subway car rails.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCs53AJVss

Really, dude?