I'M BACK

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

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