An open letter to a recalcitrant brother

Dear sir,

It has been brought to my attention that you have recently changed address at extremely short notice, creating significant inconvenience. Further, I understand that this involves someone of the opposite gender. Having never had the opportunity of meeting said individual, it has come as something of a suprise to learn that she is the cause of the relocation.

As such, I (and my spouse) have a number of very important questions:

1. We understand she goes by the name of Lui - what is her full name?
2. How tall is Lui?
3. Educational background?
4. Please describe Lui's cooking ability?
5. Does she have any special interests or hobbies?
6. Does Lui play sports of any kind?
7. When did you meet, and how?
   
8. When was your first kiss, if any?
9. When can we expect that you will introduce us to her?
10. Is there any other relevant information that we could reasonably expect you to share, and if so please provide details?
    

We appreciate your earliest attention, and remain your humble relatives.

Kind Regards,
Andrew & Sonia

PS: We understand that there is a general consensus of opinion that what Paul did should not be considered to set a precedent.

And now for the weather

Today continues much the same. After a week or so of hot and sticky weather, Hong Kong seems to have changed it's mind and decided that there is a bit more winter to get out of it's system. Oh well...

Rain

Today started with thunder, lightning, and much rain. It rained heavily for the first few hours (not sure what time it started), and then fizzled out into a gray day. The rain is a good thing, because it has cooled the place down (was getting a bit sticky) and has washed away some of the smog. Now I can see across the harbour and through to the beginnings of the hills behind Kowloon!

The Toilet Strikes Back

Well not really. In fact the big news today (apart from the change in CEO at my old employer) is that the toilet is working again.

I finally managed to get Eddie the maintenance guy to come over just after lunch. He attacked the toilet with the plunger while I stood smugly behind him thinking "I have already tried that and it did not work". However, being the canny man that he is, he quickly noticed that it was not working. At this point I was feeling vindicated. However, asking for a cloth, he threw it into the bowl before applying the plunger with renewed vigour. And hey presto the toilet works. Turned out that the cloth ensured a much tighter fit around the plunger, which stopped air and water escaping around the edges and ruining the effect. A useful home-handyman tip to remember (feel free to write it down if you need to) for when this next happens to you...

Today's Adventures

This morning started with me feeling extremely virtuous, having determined that today was to be Housecleaning Day. Immediately things began heading downhill. First, I managed to break the brand new mop. Oh well, the mop shop is just up the road, so off I went to get another new one.

Partway through mopping the floor I stopped to clean the toilet. Only to find that when I flushed it, the water did not disappear at it's normal rate. Or, in fact, at all. Problem. Off to the shop again to find drain unblocker. Which has not worked.

So the gym's "facilities" will come in useful until I can get the maintenance guy to see what he can do...

American Politicians

Sitting on the bike at the gym again. Watching CNN.

I have never come across a better example of the stupidity of politicians than what I just watched. Barney Frank's performance to the media only showed what a sorry politician he is. Populist, combined with what appears to be a general lack of competence. Or maybe the two are implicitly linked?

The soundbite (it only took a few seconds to demonstrate his "abilities") was shown as part of a segment on the 165 million in bonuses to AIG. Keep an eye out for this gem.

Tuesday

Today is Tuesday, and St Patrick's day. In Hong Kong this means an excuse for many people to go out in the evening. It is also warmer today. The past few days have been cooler, such that the air conditioner has been switched back off (it ran at night a few times before the wedding trip).

Caught up with an ex-colleague for lunch today. A good excuse for getting out of the house. Staying at home is going to wear thin, I think.

The rugby sevens are coming up soon, which means there will be a number of functions in the evenings. And the ANZAC ball is being held on Anzac day. Busy times...

More on USA and Canada

Colorado Springs was an interesting middle ground between country and city. Lots of music seems to be country, and boots are quite acceptable footware. But lots of Starbucks and American-style "restaurants". Restaurant = burgers, fajitas, pizzas, pasta, and anything else that can be fried or covered in melted cheese. That was a bit of a shock to the system after Asian's focus on rice, vegetables, and little or no fat/oil.

We climbed (drove) up Pike's Peak, where it was so high that Craig complained of being faint. This was of particular concern because he was driving... We also went to Garden of the Gods, which was impressive and would have been more so if there were not so many signs saying "stay off the grass", "stay off the rocks", "do not climb", etc. And Daryl managed to avoid following his own driving instructions and got lost trying to find the Visitor's Center. Might post some photos of these areas later on.

The flight from Colorado Springs to Denver was incredibly bumpy. Reminded me of flying into Wellington on a very windy day. We are talking about a plane that has two seats on either side of the aisle and no storage space. The flight was scheduled for 15 minutes, and I think the pilot took great pleasure in putting the plane at just the right altitude to maximise the bumps. The flight from Denver to Edmonton was much better, probably because we flew higher. Still the same size plane, but I guess the flight was longer.

Interesting aside: it was cheaper to buy a ticket from Colorado Springs to Edmonton (which involved the two flights via Denver) than to buy a ticket from Denver to Edmonton on the same plane! Idiots.

Canada was cold. We arrived into Edmonton (to be greeted by Evan's smiling face) and immediately had to go to Tim Horton's to warm up. Actually it wasn't that cold (not snowing, and the sun was shining) but we had to go to Tim's anyway.

The first day in Edmonton/Sherwood Park was cold but not too cold. It must have been hovering around zero if my memory serves. But the next day it turned cold - down to -15 and snowing. This is nice when you're used to HK/Thailand temperatures. I went to "help" with the delivery to Evan's store the next morning, which required getting up at around 5:30 in order to leave by 6am. It was snowing as we left the house. Arriving at John's store (Evan help'shelps John with his delivery, then they both go to Evan's store to do his), we settled into Tim Horton's for a quick coffee/bagel while waiting for the truck to turn up (normally shortly afterwards). After about 10 minutes Evan gets a call from the driver, who has been sitting stuck on highway waiting for the road to reopen. He's been there since 3am... Anyway, the short version is that the truck arrived a couple of hours late...

While in Edmonton we went to West Edmonton mall (as you do). The place hasn't changed much, although now that the girls are bigger they can go on more rides. Watching the people around the mall, I was struck by two things. First, there were a lot of people at the mall on a work day - why? Second, the mixture of people is different than I remember. More teenagers who looked like they were trying to immitate the goths around Harajuku in Tokyo...

Anyway, we had a great time catching up with E&K, and please refer to the Eggs Benedict review earlier on.

The holiday is over

Well, we are sitting at Tokyo's Narita airport, waiting for our 6:30 flight back to HK. The last couple of days in Tokyo have been on the cold side. The city seems to have been experiencing a cold snap, while it should have been getting warm in preparation for cherry blossom season (sakura). Alas, we are a couple of weeks too early to have seen it.

However, while it may be cold outside, never fear! Tokyo-ites are accustomed to it being considerably warmer inside. The gym at the hotel was kept at a cosy 24 degrees! Not great when you are trying to work out, as you only have to walk across the room to break into a sweat (losing weight by sweating out water does not count). And the lounge at the airport is so hot (Qantas lounge) that we are rapidly depleting the place's supplies of Coke and ice.

Los Angeles

I write this while standing next to the toaster in the Beverly Hilton, the hotel we stayed in overnight. We have about 3 hours to in before we take off on a 12 hour flight to Tokyo.

E&K's Eggs Ben

We were recently fortunate enough to have an opportunity to sample Eggs Benedict at a new location in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. E&K's place is somewhere that we have visited a number of times over the years, but never eaten Eggs Benedict. This visit, K decided that it was high time.

The dish was presented on a toasted bagel. The bagels were toasted just right, and hit just the right note. The eggs were freshly poached - in actual fact the whole dish was less than 30 seconds from creation to the plate being placed on the table. The whites were just right, not at all underdone or overfirm, and the yolks were comfortably runny while still being cooked. The only negative on the eggs is the colour - the yolks are not as yellow as a good NZ egg. The smoked salmon was thinly sliced, with two pieces providing a great counterpoint to the rest of the meal. The hollandaise was made fresh and was not too thin. Coffee was courtesy of Tim Horton's and freshly brewed.

And so to the scores:

• Eggs - 9/10.
• Bread - 10/10 - fresh bagel, toasted just right.
• Hollandaise - 10/10 - excellent.
• Coffee - 8/10 - not a real latte but for what it was, great.
• Ambience - 8/10 - pleasant environment with grown-up conversation.

Total - 45/50.

One last one, about dance

Credit to the Twists for locating and recommending the videos...

Mothers and fathers

An amusing take on the relationship between mother and child:

Momsense by Anita Renfroe (lyrics are available here).

And a followup that describes the relationship between a father and child:

It's true - men really do suffer more

We all know that men are affected more by the common cold when compared with women.

American Airlines

We have flown twice with American Airlines now, and I am a little unsure what to make of them. The first one was from Tokyo to Dallas, and was pretty good. Good enough that we were congratulating ourselves on having chosen them. We have just boarded mtr second flight, from Dallas to Colorado Springs, and so far it has been a very different experience! To be fair, much can be laid at the feet of the airport company rather than the airline. Checkin was a mess, with 3 counters open, and long lines queueing up. The checkin lady was nice, and pretty efficient. Then security - I have never been through a ruder of less friendly lot before. They had one line open to process a huge queue. Eventually they realised this might be a problem and opened another one, but by that stage the queues had built up. Then they shove the bags through the machine, and you had to watch your fingers as the lady shot the out the other end with no regard for how many might already be waiting to be collected. All in all the security team seemed to consider us a major blight on their days...

And to top it all off, the lounge did not provide complimentary wireless internet access. I think many of these people would benefit immensely from attending a customer service course, preferably run somewhere in Asia. They would learn a whole heap!

Captain just informed up that the plane is being "fixed" and that he will let up know more once he hears back from the maintenance crew. Meantime we are to sit tight... Grump, grump, grump...