Chasing Irrelevant Dreams

Man is this like a once a month blog or something?

2009-11-29T22:14:00.000-08:00

Why yes, yes it can be.

Just checking in to say that the following has occupied my life for the last few weeks... Dragon Age: Origins... that is all.

Well not quite all but it is one of those games that I tend to play and inordinate amount of and I tend to play RPGs more when I am stressed and it has been a stressful month. A month that will be made more stressful as it is the company financial year end and I have the auditors coming to visit. That in itself would not be too bad but when everybody has spent the last week and a bit working all the days of the week to solve some 'small' (read: bigger than Ron Jeremy) problems and we haven't done the stock take yet... well you get the idea.

Back to your regularly scheduled programing now.

I have been spending some time recently on the China Smack website. Not the best designed website in the world but nevertheless very useful for those of us who like to keep up on the rantings and ravings of the deranged Chinese Internet user. I highly recommend it if you want to see what the views on a half black half oriental person are (hint: not very pleasant). Also the kind of things parents can get away with in China.

This past week I also managed to finally get round to eating at Kitchen buffet in W Hotel. It was pricey but overall worth it. Very good fresh ingredients that were regularly replenished (I can guarantee you that point as we were on the chef's table). I would highly recommend it if you want to get your significant other dosed up on the aphrodisiac oysters which were (thankfully) freshly shucked rather than left to sit out.

I also can't leave this roundup without mentioning the following sites that have kept me occupied and (relatively) sane throughout the recent trauma of work. The Dark Side have kept us regularly entertained with humors observations on local goings on as well as the regular updates of their Willy. Also a wonderful webcomic named Subnormality that I recently came across drawn by the enigmatic Winston Rowntree and a rather... different take on how to do a comic by David Malki! (note: do not try to pronounce the exclamation mark, many have tried and failed... just a thought but he must have real trouble when filling out webforms that only take alphanumeric characters.) called Wondermark.

Maybe sometime in the next couple of weeks I will get back to a normal schedule of updating this damn thing. In the meantime and in the words of the immortal poet Lazarus:

"Peace! We out bitches!"

Differences in the workplace

2009-10-19T22:03:00.000-07:00

This is probably going to turn out as more of a rant than the well constructed argument that I would like it to be but I can at least try. This is not so much a pros and cons discussion of working in Hong Kong itself but more a critique on working WITH people in HK and the ways in which I find that enjoyable or frustrating.

1. People here work really, really long and hard hours.

This is actually in many ways NOT A GOOD THING. Usually this is expounded as the main things that people (especially middle managers) like about this city, and about a lot of Asia in general. I could make the same point about Japan and it would not be too far off.

However people here work way past what I would call their productive point. The point at which you are so tired or overloaded with information that you are unable to work well anymore. In my office I have people who no matter what I say to them continue to work till 9 or 10pm when they still have well over an hours commute home. They also do not stop to take a break to get some dinner if they are going to do so.

If you are tired and hungry your work will suffer. Most of the stuff I get from them that gets sent after about 8pm I find has some very basic mistakes that would easily be picked up if they were rested and on their game.

The reason behind this is not that they have so much work that they have to work these long hours, it is in fact my second point.

2. People here do not work smart

The obvious example of this that springs to mind with me is that the girl who works receiving and dispatch for our company. About 6 months ago she was staying very late on doing her work when we weren't particularly busy. The reason behind this was that she was typing out all the commercial invoices by hand in excel... There is a copy and paste function in our order system that can export this automatically! Apparently she hadn't thought to ask FOR THE LAST YEAR if there was anything to make this easier or tried to work something out herself.

When things take a long time to do over here people just stay late and do them the slow way they were doing before. Why not try and figure out a way to make it go quicker. Hell ask me it might take me 30mins to write a macro that formats orderforms or spreadsheets correctly for you and that might save you well over 30mins each day!

3. Lack of job loyalty

I have seen people over here switch jobs from a company that had treated them very well and where they get on well with people and had a definite career path going to another job at a completely different country for a raise of as little as 5%.

This to me is really very strange and to me looks completely awful on your CV. As a manager I look at new employees job applications and if I see that they have changed jobs on average around the 18month mark or even less then I won't hire them. I don't care how good you are at your job I don't want to hire you get you into the job position and then your are gone 12months later and I have to find someone to pick up all the shit that you were handling.

I can completely accept it if someone gives me a reasoning behind changing jobs all the time (like getting canned). However if you are every year or so going straight from 1 job into another this looks very dodgy and it has no doubt pissed off your former employer and you will no doubt do the same to me and piss me off.

4. People out here are very helpful and friendly

It is strange and welcome to find a complete lack of office politics. There are no real cliques here that can cause problems and you have to take account of when working with people. Everybody is quite happy to work with everybody else. They are also very understanding and patient when it comes to helping train new staff and nobody resents having to basically hold them by the hand until they get up and running.

5. They don't get enough respect

I am in a minority of foreign managers in my particular field. In fact I only know of 2 others and they work for 2 extremely large multinationals in comparison to ours. Mostly all of my peers in competitors and trade partners are local. Here is a summary of their opinion of their workforces.

Local (HK)

"They are lazy, you have to watch them all the time or they will not work"

"I can't trust most of them, that's why I have my husband and brother work with me... They would try to take information to other companies"

"I work till 9pm every day and I expect them to also"

Chinese mainland

"They are always trying to screw you"

"They drink and smoke too much"

"They are so more stupid than [my workers] in HK, but that is not saying much about my HK workers"

I put a lot of the above down to the distinct lack of social progression in Hong Kong. They assume that if you are born into a poor or lower class family then all you are good for is low level work. So you don't get paid that well. So therefore you might try and steal so they have to watch you all the time.

This is complete and utter bullshit. We have one person in my office currently who started off at the very bottom job in the office. She is now the 3rd most senior person in the company and has earned all that she has got.

I understand that the above may not apply to a lot of people if they work for a multinational company which has progressive minded managers. However for the majority of HKers the above is pretty typical.

I often wonder what the hell the people who made those quotes above would think if they ever came and saw how work is conducted and the kind of pay people expect back in the UK.

I'M BACK

2009-10-16T01:43:00.000-07:00

Right it's been 5 months since I last posted on here and I am back and deciding that this blog needs a change of voice. Fuck all that actual stuff about my life and interesting photos of HK and what not. I am on the internet! This is not a place where I am meant to be a nice quiet reserved person this is gonna be all the random crap that pops into my head and my opinions on all sorts of stuff. It will probably be mainly HK related because that's where I am at bitches!

Okay lets get this show on the road:

Carson Yeung. Birmingham city fans I pity you because Carson Yeung is not the guy who owns your club now. Grandtop International Holdings owns your club and Carson Yeung owns 16% of that company. We are not sure who owns the rest, or what else they actually own. This company apparently "is engaged in the provision of apparel sourcing, sportswear and apparel trading, and entertainment business". I can find no information anywhere on teh interwebs that will tell me what companies they actually own so I must assume that they don't.

Also last time Carson Yeung on his own tried to buy the club he couldn't come up with the money. I doubt highly that you supposed millions for transfer fees will materialise at all because this is likely to be a front for something else and I can easily see your club being sold on again very quickly.

In short Birmingham City... your fucked.

This week has also seen the release of what could be one of the most fun video games ever released Brutal Legend.

There is no denying that this game will be a riot to play. From what I have heard so far the cameo appearances by such renowned Heavy Metal gods as Ozzy and Lemmy are excellent and should be worth a good few laughs.

There have been some concerns that this game is less action and more RTS and these concerns would appear to be justified when the lead guy actually has to issue an open letter telling people how to play the game you might be right. However I have great respect for Tim Schafer as being one of the most fun (and certainly the most metal) game designers out there. So I will reserve judgment until I have played the game thoroughly.

In related news the misses recently expressed some interest in forming a band. I could not be happier at this kind of expose on her part. However in the practicalities of such an endeavour we must reconcile her classically trained soprano against the kind of music I can actually play.

Many bands have and do delve into the realm of classical singing. Most significantly of course being the legendary Tarja Turunen of Nightwish fame and her very decent voice a great example of which can be found below.

I could go down this route but it is not my area of expertise on the guitar and I feel somewhat hampered in the song writing department in the genre of "Epic Metal". My guitar abilities lend themselves towards more traditional aspects of hard rock and metal. Guns n Roses, Black Sabbath, Audioslave, Van Halen, Motley Crue etc. are the bands that I am adept at playing. Having said that I do stretch towards more progressive bands such as NIN, Tool, Dream Theater, Pink Floyd, King Crimson etc. However none of these are traditionally suitable for female vocalists. So we shall see what direction we head in with this project. It may be that we are able to hybridise many elements into a new direction in music. Only time will tell in this regard but I can promise that there will definitely be some very self serving intricate guitar solos (hey write what you know!).

Dragon Boating and Champions League

2009-05-29T01:49:00.001-07:00

One of the many things I love about Hong Kong is the greater number of public holidays, 17 to the UK’s 8. Related to that I also love the fact that these public holidays all appear to exist for a valid reason, whether that be because it is the traditional day to go tend to your ancestors graves or like yesterday which celebrates the anniversary of the death of the great poet Qu Yan. It is also widely know as the Dragon Boat festival, where across all of China teams gather to compete in races.

You may ask how we got from poet to Dragon Boat racing, well let me explain. Qu Yan died by throwing himself in a river after his city was captured by the Qin dynasty (from which he was previously exiled). The local people admired him so much that they threw food in the water so that the fish would not eat his body and the locals rowed out at great speed to recover his body. This rowing out at break neck speed is supposed to be the origin of Dragon Boat racing.

In a modern Hong Kong it means that large groups of people gather at Stanley’s main beach to watch and compete in races throughout the day. Many of the teams are now done in a corporate manner, I saw a Stanley Morgan boat, a University of Toronto boat etc. I was down their largely because Debbie was competing for the University of Cornell team (her alma mater). Her first race was at something like 8am and there was no way in hell I would be getting up for that as I only went to bed at 6:30am.

I was in bed at 6:30 because I was awake to watch the Champions League Final between Barcelona FC and Manchester United. As with all football fans who aren’t Man U supporters in England I was cheering for Barcelona. Why you may ask would I support a Spanish team over an English team? Well that is quite simple, I had Man U they may play some great entertaining football at times but they play it with a horrible attitude. They always whine about how the other teams try harder against them than their rivals, about how the referees are completely biased towards them. They are not gracious in defeat but they don’t lose vary often. They are epitomized by their star player Cristiano Ronaldo who can go from the brilliant to the ridiculously petty.

Therefore as I settled down at 3am (god damn you HK time difference!) to watch the match I was practicing my Spanish and talking up Barcelona. Barcelona (apart from 10mins at the start of the game) controlled the game completely Xavi and Iniesta were sublime and made sure United could not play their usual game. Eto’o scored a cracking opener for Barca and Messi produced one of the best headers I have seen to seal it for the Catalan team.

The match finished at not long before 5am HK time, so me and my fellow companions went and got breakfast at one of few 24 hour diners in HK The Flying Pan. As usual the food was tasty and the company was just as good. We were all knackered by this point and I watched Bharat nearly collapse into his plate at the table. I would like to congratulate Paul, Chloe, Sarah, Sarah P and Bharat for staying awake long enough to watch the match. Extra brownie points for Sarah P who also managed to get up and come meet me at the Dragon Boat racing (see came full circle bet you weren’t expecting that huh?).

I got up at around 11am later on that morning and did a bit of cleaning about the flat in preparation for Gemma’s return and my Sister’s visit today. I had some lunch and left for Stanley at about half 1. It took me an hour to get to Stanley time spent finishing my book, playing on my PSP and listening to my I-pod. When I got to Stanley it was very breezy and it was beginning to rain, luckily I had my brolly with me so I kept out of the rain. The same could not be said of Sarah P however who was pretty soppy by the time we met up to get the water taxi. The water taxi was necessary to get to the Junk the the Cornell team were using as their base. After about 30 mins we managed to get to the Junk and join the team who were celebrating their failure to make the final races by getting absolutely trashed.

We met Talya and Debbie on the Junk and we had a roaring good time all round. This was aided by the free beer and food laid on for us my the generous people of Cornell University and pass on my thanks to them now. I got to watch several Junk races from the boat and ran in to someone who had also gone to Sheffield University all be it 15 years before I had done so! The boat was a mix between a full blow frat style party and a family gathering (due to some people having to bring their kids along). I think we improved the kids language skills through the medium of 50 Cent quite effectively.

When I was leaving the Junk towards the end of the proceedings I had a most unfortunate accident. As I placed by foot on the water taxi a large wave rolled throw jerked the bow of the taxi up and flicked me straight into the water. If you were paying attention further up the page you will have noticed that I was carrying in my bag an I-pod and PSP along with my BlackBerry in my pocket. They luckily managed to pull me onto the boat pretty quickly and I was able to pull the batteries out of as many of the electrical items as I could. The most annoying of these things to drop in the water is definitely the PSP, the phone is a company one so they will be paying for the replacement and the I-pod was nearly 5 years old I was actually planning on replacing it sometime soon (this just means I will do it quicker). The PSP is also the most expensive of all the items listed above and the one most likely to break due to it being a rather sophisticated piece of hardware.

However I am not angry about this and I feel that I will be able to cope easily without these items for a short while. I am just glad I had a really fun time over the last 36hours and I hope that this bodes well for the future.

Music:

This week we have an excerpt from a song that I have been trying to learn to play recently. The full version is here put I include the below snippet because it is the more public friendly part of the song and also gives you an idea of what I am up against technically speaking in learning this piece. I give you Selkies: The Endless Obsession by Between the Buried and Me.

Paul Waggoner - Selkies: The Endless Obsession Solo

Not Finishing

2009-05-26T21:13:00.001-07:00

I don’t finish stuff that I start, that’s my thing and it’s also my life’s truest philosophy. Many people may see this as a failure on my part, I pity them for they do not know the true joy that comes with the simple act of leaving something incomplete.

I was not always this way, once I was like the rest of you; determined, single minded and driven towards a particular goal. Oh! what a fool I was back then. To clarify I will explain why I stopped this narrow mindset and moved on to a higher plain of mental existence.

As people who have known me for a long time will be aware I used to be a competitive paralympic swimmer. I started swimming before I could walk and following my accident when I couldn’t walk easily again I returned to the pool as part of my recovery. I got good at it without any informal coaching and was devastating at school swimming events, I didn’t lose a race through my primary school years, baring in mind that I was keeping against full able bodied kids.

When I was about 8 I joined a competitive swimming team and we would train 3 times a week after school at one of the local swimming pools. Outside of school competitions and having had no formal training in swimming I was hopelessly outgunned and lost quite a few races miserably, mainly due to a lack of stamina and having no race tactics (I used to lead until the last lap and then fade away and finish 3rd and 2nd a lot). However with the training and the patient work of Doug my coach I got better and by the time I was about 13 or 14 I was starting to consistently win at county championship levels.

Unfortunately for me I was also at a very academic secondary school and the teachers had high hopes for me to do well their also. At 14 you are coming into the run of the English school system where they start preparing you for GCSE exams. These are probably the most important exams, as everyone in the country is supposed to take them. They are the marker for whether or not you can go forward to higher education like A-levels and if you don’t they highly influence who will employ you.

To cut a long story short I was asked to make a choice at this point between going full blown with my training for the swimming. This means training 5 days a week possibly twice a day, morning and evening. I had 3 close friends for the swimming club who did this, all 3 of them went to the Olympics at some point or another 1 won Gold, 1 won Bronze and the other didn’t place. That was the aim of my coach to try and get us to Olympic competition standards. My parents didn’t push me and left me to make a free choice on this. I chose not to go for the win I chose not to finish this, I left this half done. I still trained and competed and kicked some ass in school events but I decided that I didn’t want my knowledge and intellect to suffer for the sake of finishing this.

This has been my philosophy ever since, I would rather do a little bit of many different and varied things, than become a specialist at one thing at the expense of others. I am not a specialist academic, I did a mixture of sciences and arts into senior education. Even doing History at university I would quite happily take modules from different fields, be it biology, geography, philosophy etc. I am still not what I would call a specialist historian, it is the subject I enjoy the most certainly but I would never want to become a specialist expert in one field like my professors.

This is also the reason why I play several musical instruments to a reasonable standard but none of them what I would call expertly. It is the reason I have started novels and poems and left them unfinished if I found something else interesting. It is why I have been in successful bands and quite happily walked away from them to try something different (I walked straight out of a very promising rock band into a jazz band, switching instruments in the process). It also the reason I had no problem leaving this blog for over a month without updating.

I recently read an article about what happens to those people who do finish things properly who do reach the mountain top… they hate it. Once you have got there, what do you do? There is nothing for you to do now. If you are a swimmer and you beat the world record and win that Gold medal, you have done what you set out to achieve and now… You are left being good at only one thing, one thing that you have enjoyed because you had something to focus you and something to aim towards. You leave yourself with a set of skills unsuited to anything else. Many people, athletes, writers, composers and the like fall into bleak depression once they have succeeded and may never be the same person again. One of my friends who I mentioned above, who went to the Olympics now works at a supermarket trying to save up some money so she can go to Uni to get a qualification. A qualification to do sports, so she can train other people to take the same route as her; to me that seems like madness.

The same can be said of true love and companionship. Love is a rare find and something that is always new and fresh and exciting. To me every day with her is like discovering something new again and that is where true happiness lies.

The true joy for me in life is knowing that there is always something out there that I haven’t tried. Something that is new and exciting to stimulate my mind with and have a good crack at. I may not be the best at it and may not finish it once I start it, but there will always be something else for me afterwards. Because I keep an open mind, because I refuse to finish anything.

Music:

That said without people who do go to the top and finish something properly I wouldn’t be able to enjoy this song! I respect and appreciate these guys, I just don’t want to be them. Also this is close to the most pretentious video you will every see, I suggest you close your eyes for the first listen as the song is brilliant (Grammy winner? Oh yeah!) and then watch the video the 2nd time around and laugh heartily at it. Even Steve Vai himself does these days!

Murders in the Rue Morgue

2009-03-31T00:55:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading a collection of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories. I was already acquainted with Poe’s poem “The Raven” and his short story “The Pit and The Pendulum”. “The Raven” I have always liked for its brilliant rhythm and pace as well as its fascinating insights into the mental state of the main character. I came across “TPATP” in the introduction to an Historical work I was reading on the Spanish Inquisition and it has long been a favorite of mine especially Poe’s descriptive work.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I did not rate his most famous piece “The Fall of the House of Usher” as highly as some of the other collected works. To be true it is a beautiful and haunting descriptive work but I felt unable to engage sufficiently with the characters.

I was pleasantly surprised however to find that Poe had in essence invented Sherlock Holmes before Arthur Conan Doyle in his recurring character Dupin. There is a series of 3 stories containing this character of which the title of this post is one and which I thought was a thrilling engaging read written in a radically different style to what I expected. “The Purloined Letter” the 3rd in the trilogy was my 2nd favorite and I think is the first example in literary work of what we would now understand as a detective story.

I have glossed over Poe’s poetical works in this short critique because I do not feel adequately equipped in literary terms to do more than say which I like and which I don’t. However they are well worth the time to read through as they all have at least some merit to them.

In my world of tech this week I have managed to do quite a bit. I have a twitter account which is highly addictive and potentially might be causing some mental instability (see the feed to the right for numerous examples).

I have redone my desktop to make it cleaner and more efficient and set up a flickr account to post photos of said innovations so that if I want to return to them I have a record and also so that people can actually see them properly.

I have added to said desktop a program called Launchy which I would highly recommend if like me you prefer to use a keyboard to clicking through a ton of stuff with your mouse. Also in the same vein I have added Ubiquity for Firefox which is brilliant and also customizable so that i can now browse for and post stuff quicker and therefore kill off my desire to procrastinate quicker.

Also if you are like me a torrent addict you might want to check out this article. It’s a very useful way of being able to torrent download without using company equipment to do so. I managed to get it working first go so I would count this as very simple to set up.

In film land I have not got around to watching The Departed yet because I haven’t really had a spare 150mins plus to sit down and watch a film. I have watched movies but they have all been in the under 2 hours bracket recently. A lot of James Bond going on recently because Gemma hasn’t seen any of the old ones so I am educating her in why Sean Connery was the best. Having said that I thought Christopher Lee was the best bond villain and that was in a Rodger Moore film.

Also I have recently discovered this site which is well worth signing up to if like me you have watched most obvious mainstream movies you would like and are after finding something that you might not think of. These guys are the same ones who power Netflix’s search engine but the advantage here is that you don’t have to sign up for a Netflix account to get the recommendations. As a result currently on my list for getting hold of are Kontrol, Re-animator and King of the Ants. All slightly freaky and left field so we shall see if the movie matchmaker lives up to expectations later on.

Music:

As threatened to various people I am adding in a video of one of my own songs this week. I apologise in advance for the poor quality of the recording but I think it gets across the idea of what I was trying to achieve with the piece.

I call this one “Under Dark Waters”

Under Dark Waters

Back in the hood

2009-03-16T05:43:00.000-07:00

I am back in Hong Kong and as such normal blogging service can resume. With the added bonus of my Twitter feed being included in the top right of the screen now. So now you get even more of my irrelevant ramblings for your pleasure.

Also have just finished re-reading Magician by Raymond E. Feist which is one of my favorite books by the author who is my guilty pleasure (I own all his books). If you haven't read I would heartily recommend it whether or not you are a fan of the Sci-fi/Fantasy Genre or not. There aren't many books that cover such a wide variety of people over such a lengthy period of time, character development is extensive and detailed and the plot isn't half bad. Unfortunately I forgot to bring back my copy of the follow up Silverthorn so re-reading that will have to wait.

In the meantime I have bought Elephant's on Acid, not literally, its another book this time by Alex Boese. I have a very disturbing interest in all these weird experiments and was thinking of ways that I would have changed the experiments to make them better or more interesting. My favorite experiment so far has been the infamous dog head transplant that resulted in several two headed dogs. I was thinking how this could have been much improved by the addition of a modern day stem cell research into spinal column regrowth and then realised what I was suggesting and put the book down for a bit.

I have almost finished re-reading the Watchmen comics in anticipation of going to see the film sometime in the next couple of weeks. I am going to go see it at the IMAX cinema in Hong Kong because I feel that a film of this visual magnificence deserves the best. I have heard some very bad reviews of the film and some outstandingly good ones. One reviewer for The Times loved it, another for the Sunday edition hated it, so this should at least provide some interesting debate with whoever I go to see it.

As a side note I have not got round to watching The Departed yet but intend to do so sometime this week now that I have it downloaded on my laptop, so my next blog maybe all movie reviews.

Music:

As a change this week and because I felt like doing something to distract myself i recorded myself playing the Guitar and have decided to throw it out there for the world to mock. The song I am covering is YYZ by Rush, which is my favorite Rush instrumental and in my top 3 Rush songs. Enjoy... or don't!

All over the place

2009-03-09T00:48:00.001-07:00

It has been an interesting weekend to say the least. I had a great time at Sarah’s party on Saturday night. I haven’t been to a house party since I have been over here, mainly I think because the chances are that if you have more than about 5 people round to most homes over here you quickly run out of space. Not the case with Sarah’s apartment, which is the biggest I have been in since I came to HK. For one person it is almost too big, got to be about 2,500 square feet if it’s an inch.

Any way the party was good fun plenty of booze, lots of good interesting people to talk to. Lots of people who hadn’t met me to freak out by turning my false leg backwards and walking around with it like that! I have also discovered that Jack Daniels, Coke and chocolate brownies do not mix well. I had two JD and Cokes which had given me the alcohol munchies (well that and the two glasses of red wine, and 5 beers I had had by this point). Anyway I ate two brownies in quick succession and felt instantly ill and ended up puking up the brownies and JD and Coke, luckily we were getting ready to leave anyway hence why I ate the brownies too quickly. I am going to blame the eating too quickly as that is not enough alcohol to make me sick, I am sure a couple more JD and cokes would have been getting close to that. I was at least able to walk away without any assistance which was some comfort.

As you might expect I woke up late on Sunday, 2pm to be exact and was shocked and please to find that Gemma was still asleep as well. This is something of a rare occurrence as she doesn’t sleep well and even if she has been up very late doesn’t usually stay in bed past 9am. We got up had a snack and headed out to have some food at the dog of bulls in Lan Kwai Fong for our Sunday Funday with friends. That’s about where the good part of the weekend ends.

As we were heading into Central I got a call off my dad on my mobile. This is an event in itself as he usually never bothers me at the weekends and its also damn expensive to call a mobile over here from England. I got one of those feelings when I heard his voice on the phone that something was up, because we work for the same company I was expecting it to be some problem there. He told me that Gemma’s Grandfather, Harry had passed away very suddenly that morning and that I would have to tell her.

I don’t know if any of you out there have ever had to tell somebody some bad news like that, but its not pleasant and this is the second time I have had to tell someone some news like this. Losing a Grandparent is difficult enough, especially when it happens for the first time. However in Gemma’s case Harry was more than just a Grandfather as she had lived with her Grandparents since she was around 10 or 11 years old. They raised her during those years and in many ways made her the woman I know and love today, the decency and sense of family pride and duty that they instilled in her are qualities that I admire and respect in her.

Harry was a truly great chap, someone who was never short of an opinion or a view, but never opinionated. He had a sharp whit and could disarm you very quickly with it and was never afraid of poking fun at himself as well. My deepest sympathies will be with his wife of over 50 years Brenda, and all their children and grandchildren, especially Gemma.

I find it difficult that he is gone and I think I am finding it harder to cope than I thought I would, because in many ways he reminded me of my own Grandfathers who I lost several years ago and whose passing pains me greatly still. I will hold Harry in my mind in an equally high regard and although they never met when I think of one I am sure I will think of them all.

I will be heading back to England probably sometime late this week or early next for the funeral. Normal service will be resumed then.

Infernal Affairs

2009-03-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

It has been pointed out to me that although I am a movie buff in real life my online persona appears to have failed to carry this enthusiasm over. It is therefore high time I rectified this and I am going to start by giving you my top 10 films, in no particular order as that changes depending on what mood I am in!

Godfather (Part 1 & 2)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Police Story

Fight Club

The Good The Bad and The Ugly

Spirited Away

Return of the Dragon (aka Way of the Dragon or Fury of the Dragon)

Rashomon

Airplane

Infernal Affairs

That last one is a new one and brings my top 10 up to half Asian cinema and kicked Pulp Fiction out (really started to date that film). For those of you that don't know Infernal Affairs is a Hong Kong made film starring Andy Lau (who is worshipped like a God over here, and no matter what he thinks can't sing!) and Tony Leung (who you might know from Lust, Caution by Ang Lee). This is a cracking piece of cinematic work and has one of the best storylines I have seen in a movie, with unexpected (but explainable) twists that throw you off guard.

Tony Leung plays Yan who has been an cop undercover in various Triad gangs for the best part of a decade. He is promised that this is his last assignment and that he will go back to normal life after this. Andy Lau is Inspector Lau, a rising young star in the police force a man who is clearly consumed by ambition to get to the top. Unbeknownst set to his colleagues he was inserted along with others into the police force by a triad boss, the triad boss who Yan now works for. Beyond that I am going to say very little about the plot as it gets very complicated and I would probably give away lots of spoilers.

The highlight for me was Tony Leung's performance as Yan where he carried an air of resignation and whimsy to a character of could have been very one dimensional. Andy Lau was reasonable in his work, I have never been a big fan of his but I thought this was possibly the best thing I had seen him in. The real cinematic joy of this film was in the portrayal of Hong Kong as the flashy neon lit city it is with the element of grit and grime tucked not very far below. As many people who live here will know you only have to scratch lightly to see it.

As an added side note to how good this plot was, this film was remade in Hollywood as the multi award winning The Departed. I will confess to not having seen The Departed yet so I will probably post a comparative review on here once I have done so. I will be surprised however if it lives up to the original.

Tired... but getting better

2009-03-02T01:20:00.000-08:00

I would like to start by apologising for the huge gap between posts again. However I have a valid excuse... my boss has been over... and he is the only person in the office who sits behind me and can see my computer screen. I therefore feel bad if I start writing my blog which I do in about 5min bursts whilst waiting for people to e-mail me back over the course of the day. Also the fact that he has been here for two weeks has meant me pulling some very long hours and is the main reason for my title.

Things are looking up however, I finally managed to shift a persistent cold/bug that I have had for about a month (in all probability it was actually several different bugs that happened to follow on from one another). My fiancé Gemma is also back in HK now after being absent for two weeks to finalise some wedding plans, woot!

I am now another year older probably not a lot wiser but I certainly feel like I have been round the block a few times at the minute (note to self: get to Gym more often). I can foresee that I might not get much sleep on account of the fact that one of my birthday presents was Little Big Planet. I have heard that this game is fascinatingly addictive and as you can create virtually anything has an almost infinite lifespan as a game. An example of the possibilities in this game is the infamous calculator someone created. I have not picked up the game yet owing to the fact that I am still playing Metal Gear Solid 4 which could take a while seeing as I am only on Act 2 of 5. I have one thing to say about this game... best ever (its like being in a movie its shockingly good).

However in the spirit of creation and customization that Little Big Planet brings I have done some tweaking with my work desktop today to make it look like this

There is a point to the layout it means I don't have to browse to anywhere else to look for the weather, news updates, blog updates, my cpu usage or a calender. This is a modification of the Enigma desktop that was featured on lifehacker.com follow the link if you fancy trying something similar. This is helping with the tiredness as it makes me more efficient which hopefully means I should be able to get home at a reasonable time and get some better sleep.

Music:

Because I have been tired recently I have been reverting to comforting or relaxing/ambient music. So I thought I would give you an example of each. Unfortunately the main example of the ambient music is very difficult to find online and I had to order the album direct from the artists website. The whole concept is basically that it is a music soundtrack that uses ambient noise instead of conventional instruments, its very relaxing.

I have also been listening to some punk again, particularly Rancid and for some unknown reason this song. I hope you enjoy as much as I do.

I think I like this song because its about being in a band and wanting to succeed so much... but it not working out. I know how he feels, and I always get chills whenever I hear that opening base line because it reminds me of how much I wanted to succeed like that... but also didn't.

Pub Quiz Update

2009-02-10T23:06:00.001-08:00

Last night was Tuesday which means only one thing... PUB QUIZ!!! I think this will have to go down as one of our teams best ever performances, coming in 2nd and winning a round of drinks and a HK$500 voucher.

Once again however we were shown up by the "other team" who consistently beat us and frequently win the entire Quiz outright. I think we shot ourselves in the foot a little on a few questions, San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica not Puerto Rico and Mumbai is the "Gateway to India". As always with these things though I came out feeling like I now know more than when I left, like that Herbert Hoover was a Mining Engineer before he entered politics.

John brought down his step-mom, her sister and her partner to the Quiz which was great as they were much more knowledgeable about certain things than us. However they were slightly crazy after a few drinks and started shouting out answers to the music round questions before the song started playing.

One person from another team was annoying me slightly during the music rounds. She was shouting out answers correctly and winning herself free shooters, which she was refusing to drink and was fobbing them off to other members of her team who tried to make her drink them and she refused etc. What the hell was the point of shouting out the answer if you didn't want the shooter, keep your mouth shut and let the rest of us who are actually playing for the shooters have a go, or tell one of your team mates who does want a drink what the answer is.

As per usual I stayed out far too long after the end of the Quiz finishing up the free drinks and generally having a good time chatting with people. I got into a rather heated discussion with Lisa about old school rap and when it started and got generally "flossy" in my conversations with Debbie. In the end I didn't get into bed until 2am and managed to fall asleep with laptop in the middle of the bed between me and Gemma which gives you an idea of how tired I was. I am feeling a little tired this afternoon to say the least, thankfully no headache just a lot of gas which everyone in the office is having to put up with!

Music Time:

Some tripped out stuff from one of my favorite artists Devin Townsend here.

This the kind of stuff I love to listen to when I am feeling a little tired. Its got that really powerful wall of sound feeling that just seems to go right through your chest and wake you up.

Some reasons why we don't actually exist

2009-02-09T22:18:00.000-08:00

I know that the title may sound like I am about to go off into an emo style hissy fit about how no one pays attention to me, but hear me out!

Actually this is more just a collection of some articles that I have been reading around a general theme... is this real? I was investigating the premise that everything that we experience as reality is false or as you might better know it the Matrix theorem.

Well the probability that we are not living in a computer simulation is tiny, once you get past the stage where you can either plug yourself into a machine or the computers themselves are able to create consciousness out of thin air a simulated existence of reality will carry on until the end of the universe.

Therefore the statistical likelihood that you are living in the time before the artificial reality around us was created is tiny. Even if we are living in reality as we know it there is some rather surprising evidence coming out to suggest otherwise.

So it is likely that you are inside a computer, and it is also looking more likely that the computer you are existing inside does not actually exist itself and is rather a hologram of something else. I therefore feel like I know that we are living in a false reality. Other people may argue that they can just know that they are living in the real world but we might both be wrong for how do we actually know what we know?

Music:

Today, considering the rather out there nature of the post, I am going to leave you with a true classic song from one of the all time greats of rock/progressive music. This is one of my favorite songs to listen to when I am really tired or really drunk and I am by myself. Turn it up really loud on some decent speakers and it just envelopes you.

Busy few weeks

2009-02-04T20:37:00.000-08:00

Ok sorry for the delay in posting my latest update. I do have a good reason this time, I have been back in dear Ol' Blighty planning my wedding. I won't bore you with the little details except to say that most of the major details (date, venue, catering, marquee, suits, dresses etc.) were done in the space of the 10days holiday I had. 7 of those days were spent suffering with a raging cold that I am still dealing with the back end of. Have you tried flying for 12hours with a cold? My ears have yet to get back to anything resembling normal (I have to keep popping them every 30mins). The other obvious downside was that this was the first holiday I had had in 6months and I have come back feeling more tired and run down than when I left.

In all honesty however I am glad that most of it is sorted, so I can relax for most of the time running up to it. My wife to be has also been fabulous at organising everything and she is actually going back to the UK in about another week to carry on with some more things.

I deeply regret missing Chinese New Year in HK but it did make me feel like an actual local as this will also be the only time of year where I will be easily able to go back home and see my family.

Things I noticed when I was back home (good and bad)

1. Man is England dirty compared to here. Seriously the amount of general dirt and crap on the pavement and on the buildings is unreal compared to HK.

2. The shops shut a ungodly early hours. 6pm closing! I don't finish work on a good day till then.

3. Nobody seems to smile as much. I haven't been back since the economic downturn took hold so I am going to play it safe and blame it on that.

4. The TV is genuinely brilliant comparatively. No adverts! God bless the BBC. I saw a load of brilliant documentaries, some pretty damn good dramas and had a proper football highlights show (Match of the Day is god).

5. Beer. Mmmm. bitter... IPA... Micro Brewery... if you haven't been to England you have no idea about beer. I had 5 beers that you would not be able to find outside of the pubs that were serving them. I went to a hamlet that had no services, only 10 houses but 2 pubs! The only way that works is if you are making some damn fine beer. If you haven't been to England, or have only been to London then you haven't really lived. Ask me nicely and I will take you on a proper tour someday.

Enough of that nonsense its time for some music.

I can play this one.... just. Seriously this is a mind boggling hard song to play well on all of the instruments and they just make it look so damn easy. You can also see that John Petrucci (the guitarist) can't actually hear anything properly from the way he is gesturing at the tech guys, which just makes me wonder how in the hell he managed to play this song properly.

Why I suck at Pub Quizs

2009-01-14T17:23:00.000-08:00

Another week has passed and another Tuesday evening was spent trying to win stuff at the Bulldog's Pub Quiz in Lan Kwai Fong. As per usual our team didn't win and was once again beaten by our friends from the rival team (curse you all!!). We cam 5th out of 14 teams, which on the face of it is not bad going and wasn't as frustrating as the 4 week stretch we had of coming in 2nd overall to the "Other Team".

Still winning was never the real point of going to the pub quiz, although it has now become an obsession so much that I am refreshing a random fact generator as we speak. Did you know that Green is the colour least used by plants in photosynthesis, therefore more light is reflected of the green pigments to our eyes making the plants appear green. The real point of going to the Quiz is to meet up with some really cool people have some fun, get drunk and then try and wake up for work the next morning. Note: I have now determined that 5 pints of Kronenberg is enough to get me reasonably drunk and still be able to get up easily the next day. The time I drank 12 Heineken was hell, Heineken gives me a headache in small doses but in those doses my head felt like there was a Frenchman living in it.

The beer is probably the reason why we don't do as well as we could in the Quiz. The "Other Team" are all slightly older and more sober than us which does help a lot. Also we all tend to think we know the answer to the questions which means we can need several minutes to thrash out the arguments for a particularly contentious question. Also we do quite well in the music rounds usually, which is bad because it doesn't count towards the overall score and you get a free shooter for every answer you get right.

However despite the humiliation each week it is really good fun. I think I enjoy it more than a full blown night out in many ways (mainly because I am a lazy arsehole and the opportunity to sit down and get drunk appeals).

The Music section:

Last week I had two songs highlighting my earlier musical days and also what that developed into. This week I thought I would continue that with my love of instrumental guitar music. The song below is Always With Me, Always With You by Joe Satriani. This the first instrumental guitar song that I learnt to play, back when I was in school. Playing this song I became the first person ever at my rather old fashioned school to get to the final of our annual music competition. I entered myself in the strings section, against some very decent classical musicians and won, this didn't go down to well as it meant that there wouldn't be a senior violinist etc. at the end of year concert. So they made a new category for the guitar for the first time, something which they have kept going ever since. I didn't win the overall prize but I enjoyed the experience of being able to show some rather old fashioned people a snippet of what is possible on the electric guitar.

Christmas in HK

2008-12-29T17:46:00.000-08:00

Ok apologies first. I haven't blogged in 2 weeks, been very busy what with Christmas and all, so an extra long post today to update you on what I have been doing in that time.

I am currently suffering from culture shock at Christmas in Hong Kong. The first thing was the rather strange decor that goes along with Christmas over here. Christmas decoration ideas appear to have arrived here from cartoon America via those twisted warped minds who design stuff like this in Japan. Here is a photo from a friend of mine that kind of sums up what I am getting at (many thanks to Lisa for snapping this)

I mean what the hell. Has a 1950s demonic, Elvis impersonating Santa decided to build himself a little fort out of poinsettias and strike a Kung Fu pose. Also why is he wearing a sleeveless top, who the hell does he think he is Chuck Norris.

However there are some plus sides to Christmas in HK. Everything is open pretty much as normal on Christmas Day so if you had forgotten to buy something at the supermarket you could nip down and get it, if this were England you would be buggered. Also the weather is brilliant, I was sat outside at 9pm on Christmas day in Civic square at Elements shopping mall wearing a t-shirt, drinking a pint of Guinness whilst listening to my fiance and her choir sing Christmas carols. Surreal but utterly enjoyable.

I also had my company's Christmas dinner out at Po Toi O, near Clear water Bay in a small fishing village with an absolutely cracking seafood restaurant in it.

Here is the office team. Clockwise from bottom left they are Brick (I know please don't ask), Vanessa, Minnie, Chris, Me (also Chris), Bowie, Kanas, Carol, Carmen and Ricky (our factory manager)

And here is the factory crew. I know how to pronounce this lots names but writing it out is a different matter as most of them don't have an English name.

Menu was as follows:

Seafood Soup with Corbicula, Bean Curd and Fish

Vegetable fried Razor Clams

Cuttlefish Sashimi and Deep fried Cuttlefish

Egg White Steamed Crab with Shaoxing Wine

Salted Shrimp

Boiled Spiral Shells with Spicy Wine

Whole Steamed Grouper

Deep fried Shrimp Ball

Sea Urchin fried Rice

Fried Noodles

All the food was excellent and a good time was had by all. I was glad that is all went well as this was my first meal with them all since the old manager (another Chris) had left. I felt it was a real bonding experience and I hope that this helps promote a good working relationship between everybody for the future.

A note on our transport to Po Toi O, we had a bus that the restaurant uses for large parties come and pick us up. If you have ever been out to this part of the New Territories you will know that the terrain is not what you would call flat and the roads are not straight but rather twisty. Despite this and the fact that we were driving along a cliff edge at the coast for long periods the bus driver maintained a steady 70mph, speeding up occasionally to overtake cars and trucks in his way. This was fine and quite fun on the way there, but on the way back with 5 beers and a large amount of seafood in my belly it was not so pleasant. To give you an idea of the speed we got from Tsuen Wan to Po Toi O in around 25mins, it is direct about 30km on the map.

A double dose of my music selection for you today, because... well just because I can. First up I am going to show my misspent youth by posting a classic Sublime song up. This brings back some very good memories from my days in a Ska/Punk band. We had one song where we used to switch instruments and this was the song I got to play the guitar on. There is a recording of this event floating around out there somewhere from a gig back when I would have been 16, I have no idea who has it now all I remember was that it was on a mini disc (they didn't last long did they)

I will follow this up with a song that I remember fondly as inspiring me to want to be a Bass player (along with Won't Get Fooled Again by the Who) and also started me listening to some more challenging and interesting Music in general. I therefore give you Schism by Tool. For all you music buffs out there the main verse is in alternating bars of 5/8 and 7/8 instead of straight 12/8 to give this disjointed feeling (a Schism in the music), shifting into 13/8 for the bridge and a straight 12/8 for the chorus (joining up the Schism in the beat).

The end sequence of the song shifts into 8/4 then 9/8 and 7/4 (once again Schism in the beats) before the end riff which is in 12/8 to join the whole thing up again before closing in 4/4. Horrendously difficult to count but not something you can play just by feel as the timing of each note is crucial to this idea of having deliberate splits in the beat.

A Goodbye but a Good Weekend

2008-12-14T18:45:00.000-08:00

Today was the first time in about 2 months where I woke up on a Monday feeling a little drowsy but ultimately refreshed and not tired. I still look tired, I have large bags under my eyes and I am a little pale but I feel... good. No other word really to describe it I feel right in my body and my head. I think I was helped by having my first Saturday off for about 5 weeks so the extra day where I could sleep in was very welcome.

There was a touch of sadness this weekend as Chris who his Operations Manager for the company is leaving us and it was his leaving party this weekend gone. Chris has been with the company in HK since it started nearly 8 years ago. It is in many ways sad but also good because he has been training me to do his job and it has been awkward top have two people around who are doing the same jobs, although my remit and position are slightly to different to his.

It was also good for everyone in the office and the factory as we all got to spend some time together and everyone is now accepting of and used to the reality of Chris not being around anymore. All I can say is that I appreciated everything that he has helped me with and wish him and his wife and young daughter all the best.

I have decided due to some positive feedback I had from my last post to add a music section in with my blog as a regular spot. I mentioned in my last post how I enjoyed Mahler and I recently saw that the HK Philharmonic will be performing Mahler in a one off special next month. I will be trying to get down to that with my fiance. So for your pleasure I have below the 1st Movement of the Symphony No 8. Which as I have mentioned before is one of the first occasions where an Orchestra was used in a Symphony. Due to unfortunate restrictions I cannot bring you the whole of the first movement in one hit as it is 25mins long and would be three videos worth. The others are up there on youtube if your interest is piqued and you want to keep listening.

Music or lack of

2008-12-11T19:13:00.000-08:00

I am what you might call a failed Musician. I "play" five different instruments: Piano, Clarinet, Saxophone, Bass Guitar, Electric Guitar. That is also the order in which I learnt them and is also the order of my ability on them although I am divided about the last two.

Despite this however I struggle to read Music (this is one of the ways my Dyslexia manifests itself) and the best way I have found of improving my playing has been to watch somebody else play and I play essentially from memory a lot of the time. I am therefore an avid concert and gig attender, everything from Opera down to Punk is fair game to me as I don't limit myself by style. I do like to go and watch musicians who are at their peak or who are doing something new and challenging.

For example I loved going to watch a performance of Mahler's 8th Symphony, as it was one his more innovative works along with the 5th which was the first Symphony to use a choir. My favorite gig to date has been going to see Dream Theater at the Manchester Apollo. These guys are on the cutting edge of what it is possible to do with the basic setup of Guitar, Bass, Keyboard, Drums and Vocals. If you haven't heard anything by them I would heartily recommend you to go look at the video below. The main part of the song kicks in about 2 minutes in after the heavy intro.

The real rub with living in HK is that I hardly ever get to see any decent musicians or hear any decent music. I cannot see what is good about Canto Pop, J Pop, K Pop or Cheesy Dance music that I hear everywhere. I can get the occasional decent Jazz or maybe some more inventive dance or Drum n Bass at a couple of places, Gekko in mid-levels is fast turning into a favorite.

There is also one "rock" club in HK called The Underground which tends to play middle of the road Indie pop bands. It is a shame as a lot of the time it makes me think twice about going out for the night. The company is important yes, but as I am not the sort of person who goes out and gets drunk for the sake of it I like to have something decent to listen to or watch being played.

As a result of this I am contemplating forming a band just for the sole purpose of trying to shake up the music scene here and introduce some variety into the system. Maybe two will be required one decent rock/punk band and one fusion tripped out weird Jazz band. The grand plan is to try and make HK more like Japan, a must stop place for all decent or well know artists. Anyone interested?

Pizza

2008-12-11T18:50:00.000-08:00

I had a good time out last night saying farewell to Michael who is going away for Christmas and with a bit of luck should be back in the New Year.

Lots of people about good load of Beer consumed in the pub before we went off to Pizza Express (apparently Michael goes to one in every city he visits). I am not usually a fan of Pizza chain restaurants, I find them a little tacky and a bit generic. However this time I was mightily impressed and have to declare that the pizzas were some of the best I have had outside of Italy. I was especially impressed by the base which was nice and thin and tasted distinctly fresh, also it was not overcooked so it became dry which was excellent.

The real treat of the night for me though was the Peking duck pizza. Hoi sin sauce instead of a tomato base, some very nice pieces of duck topped off with fresh crunchy spring onion. Served on an ultra thin pizza base it was a perfect blend of two classic styles and two iconic dishes. I would heartily recommend you try it. Also had a very nice bottle of a Chianti with the Pizza, which was simple very smooth and went down far too easily.

It was a shame I had to leave before the real party started but I was glad to be able to say goodbye to Michael and still manage to get up in time for work!

Business

2008-12-10T22:06:00.000-08:00

No not the sitcom everyone knows that real life is far more depressing than working for David Brent.

I am coming to the inescapable conclusion that everyone in business over here automatically assumes you are trying to screw them. My customer thinks that we are trying to screw them over the price of our goods, the exchange rate went from HK$15 to the pound to HK11.5 in 3 months!! We are not trying to screw you the exchange rate screwed you!

You give someone a price over here and they come and ask for half that amount. I am not trying to screw you that price is correct, you order lots of it maybe I will give you a small discount but never half price!

Which brings me on to my second point, why do the suppliers think I am stupid and offer me really inflated prices every single bloody time! We have been using some suppliers for 5 years and they still do this! I know your bottom price is a least 30% less than that because we work in the same industry! You know I know this I know you know that I know this, then why do I have to ask every single time for your best price?

I think I just answered my own question about why people think I am trying to screw them. It's because everybody else is.

...we came in?

2008-12-09T17:35:00.000-08:00

Where to start?

Age - 21

Height - 6"3'

Location - Hong Kong

Nah thats not working for me, it makes it look like a dating site post.

I suppose an explanation of the title of the first blog would be a good place to start giving you an idea about myself. Okay seems good, here we go.

This refrain can be heard in the background of the Pink Floyd album The Wall. Except that the part in the title is placed at the very begining of the album and the start of the quote at the very end. I like this as it gives a feeling of life and time in general being circular, a view point that I hold very strongly to.

This thought was again in my head as I walked to work the other day, a walk I have done for the past 4 months or so in a repeating pattern. I see patterns and repeats in everything from the way projects at work develop to how my football team (West Ham) are playing to the general conflicts and struggles that I see on the news.

This is not to say that I believe this is deliberately set out and some force is at work controlling this. I am think this is just how stuff works, planets, atoms and the London Underground all try to work in a circular way, and the point of balance for all these things appears to revolve around moving back to where you started at regular intervals.

This pattern and order exists because it has to, without it life thought and even the mere existance of anything would be impossible and I wouldn't be able to look up from my desk occasionally and think...

Isn't this where...