a day out with the guys

The theme of James' bachelor party, held in the afternoon and evening of Saturday, September 18, was "reset." We spent our day at Chelsea Piers, a bowling alley, and at a laser tag arcade in Times Square, and at each one we ran into minor and major problems that required the intervention of facilities staffers. Despite our difficulties, we had a great time hanging out, as we always do.

My role in the day's events started with a long bus ride downtown to meet everyone at the Chat 'n Chew diner near Union Square. I was supposed to get measured for my tuxedo before brunch but didn't make it because of the flooded subways. I was lucky to get there in time to eat. After a tasty omelet stuffed with sausage, peppers, and Mozzarella, we hopped on the subway and on the good foot over to Chelsea Piers. Our first stop was the driving range where we each rented a club and paid for a ticket for 80 or 100 balls. We ended up with three stalls at the far left end of the second level, where we proceeded to hit the crap out of the golf balls and tried not to injure ourselves or others. Near the end I was hitting the balls about 80 yards, which I thought wasn't too bad for someone who hasn't touched a driver since one day in high school gym class when they tried to teach us how to swing a club. The stalls have automatic ball tees: a mechanical tee pops up with a new ball each time you hit one (instead of the usual low-tech method of a bucket of balls). We had trouble with one of the stalls the entire time, and near the end of our stay this stall started popping the new ball up and down, like a whack-a-mole game. So now we had a new game: time your swing to when the ball popped out of the hole. Rich, who has actually played golf, was getting some serious lift with this method, while I had trouble with the timing. It was a unique twist on the otherwise routine driving range concept.

Next, we went downstairs to the batting cages. I passed on taking any swings myself, since I haven't looked at a pitch in over ten years and I was never much good at hitting a baseball or a softball. I'd already had enough trouble hitting a ball that wasn't moving over at the driving range, so I didn't want to try my hand at the batting cage. We didn't have too much trouble with the cages, though Rob tried the baseball "simulator," which was a video screen with a projected pitcher. When the projection wound up and threw, the baseball flew at you from a small hole near where the pitcher's release point would be. But for five or six pitches, the pitcher threw but no ball came out. One of the attendants reset the machine and Rob was able to finish his cuts. But this was an ill omen for what was to come.

We left Chelsea Piers around 5:30 and stopped at F&B on 23rd St. for a snack of gourmet hot dogs with fancy toppings -- I had one with guacamole, salsa, and shredded cheddar cheese. Our next stop was the bowling alley at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. James had seen it before and decided it was a "hive of scum and villainy" that would remind us all of our suburban or rural upbringings. It wasn't quite as nasty as we had expected, and actually wasn't such a bad place to spend an hour or so, especially if you had some time to kill before your bus left. We paid for an hour on one lane, figuring we'd easily get in two or three games even with six people. But we had too many mechanical problems with the lane. Our pin reset machine didn't reset properly a few times, our time ran out early, and even when they extended our time because of the breakdowns, our lane still shut down on us before we were done. So we overpaid for one game for six people. Even though we wanted to bowl another game, we decided we'd given them enough of our money and went to Virgil's for dinner. As always, Virgil's served us some excellent platters of ribs, lamb, chicken, sausage, beans, collard greens, and cornbread. Even the Cajun spring rolls we had as an appetizer were well done. Properly refueled, we walked two blocks to our final stop: Lazer Park.

By this time, some of us were realizing that we're not in our 20s anymore. Due to injuries, strains, and other mechanical failures, we were down to four players in the laser tag arena: James, Jon, Greg, and myself. We paid for two missions of two games each and after another wait, we entered the arena around 10:45. They gave each of us a "vest" which was bulky shoulder pads with a gun attached by a thick cable. The game was manhunt, or deathmatch if you prefer, but either way it was every man for himself. We were lumped in with about 15 other people, mostly teenagers, mostly racially mixed. In other words, the four of us were the "white boys." In the first game, something went wrong with my shoulder pads set, as I got shot about five times and then was unable to shoot anybody for the rest of the game. Jon had the same problem, and we just assumed that we had a limited number of lives. The second game went a little better. The pads worked properly, and instead of a score of -535, I fought my way to about 100 (25 points for shooting someone else, -5 every time someone shot you). In the second mission's two games, the four of us teamed up and controlled a corner of the arena. The first game of the second mission was a better effort for us, since the other kids didn't know what we were doing. They were all shouting about how they were getting creamed in our corner. In the last game, we took a different corner and tried to defend it, but the kids fought their way in. Eventually it devolved into a standoff, as we were trapped shooting at the kids and waiting for our pads to clear each time we got shot (each time you get hit, the system says "shields up" and you can't shoot anyone for 4 seconds). Considering how upset the kids seemed to be at our tactics, I think our team was successful. When we were done, it was nearly midnight, and Rich and Rob had to get back to Brooklyn to get the car for the drive back to DC. So we parted ways in the Times Square subway station and I got home around 12:30 AM, about 13 hours after I left.

I think James had a good time, which was the most important thing since it was his party. Of the four main activities, the one I'm most likely to try again is the driving range, which is a surprise to me. Bowling is a close second, but I've done that before so it didn't really count as a new experience. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed hitting the balls and trying to figure out the basics of a golf swing. I'm not saying that I'm about to buy a set of clubs and start playing the links every weekend, but I'd definitely go to a driving range again. Maybe not the one at Chelsea Piers, though. Since I have no frame of reference, I have no idea what it should cost to hit 80 balls. But $20 for balls and $4 for a club seems a little expensive, so I don't think their driving range is going to become one of my regular haunts. Laser tag was fun, but Lazer Park's arena is too small and too crowded for me to go back there. And the kids were more than I wanted to deal with. I think I'll stick to the first-person shooters on my computer.

my newest toy

Because a fool and his money are soon parted, I am now the happy owner of a hard-drive MP3 player. No, I didn't buy an iPod. I'm not an iPod guy. I actually resent the iPod owners I see on the subway. Just because everyone else has one doesn't mean I need one. I've tried to use iTunes to manage my MP3 collection but it always seems to screw things up. Classical music CDs especially don't import correctly and require lots of tag editing. So I looked for a player that would let me organize my music my way, specifically one that would show up as another hard drive on my PC and let me drag and drop files onto it. After flirting for a long time (including my two weeks in Asia) with the iAudio M3 (the MP3 player with no LCD screen, just a remote), I decided on the iRiver H140. It's not just a 40 GB drag & drop player. It has an FM tuner, line in and microphone recording, support for just about every audio file format out there, can be used for plain old file storage, and it was cheaper than the 40 GB iPod. And the sound! I didn't think MP3s could sound this good! Until now I'd only heard my music on my laptop or my Treo 600, but never on a device designed for audio. As I write this post I'm listening to Sir Charles Mackerras' recording of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks with the original all-wind orchestration, and I'm hearing notes I've never heard before. Earlier today I listened to some Dream Theater and some Allman Brothers, and in both cases I heard bass lines I never knew were there. It helps that I'm in a quiet room tapping away on my laptop, but even on the subway this evening coming home from work, I was able to hear songs with a clarity that I'd never before had on my commute. I will admit that the H140's navigation is nowhere near as cool as the iPod scroll wheel -- my player has a "joystick" that's really just a raised button on the front that toggles in four directions and clicks for various functions. There are short and long clicks for different features at different times. It takes some adjusting, but I'm getting the hang of it. For my next trick, I have to find the right cables to connect it to my stereo so I can use it as a jukebox for our infrequent parties. And then I can figure out how to use it in a car with our old CD player cassette adapter. The more I use this thing, I'm convinced I made the right decision. And I no longer resent those snobby iPod people, as I've got something cooler. So there.

finally, some new pictures are up

I've uploaded pictures from Tokyo and Hong Kong. See the photos link over there on the right.

With the exception of a few shots taken in the evening, I thought my trusty old 2.1 MP Canon worked well. Maybe I was being too hasty looking for a replacement while I was over there.

another Stephenson book review

Last night I finished Neal Stephenson's Interface, a thriller about a US presidential election, shadowy world-dominating organizations, and a candidate whose thoughts are being controlled by political consultants and media moguls. He wrote the book in 1994 with his uncle, Frederick George, and published it under the pseudonym Stephen Bury. 1994 puts it between Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, for those who follow Stephenson's career. I've never seen the novel in the US, but I found it in a bookstore in London's Gatwick Airport last summer and again this summer. Apparently Stephenson would rather not publicize this book -- there's no mention of it on his web site and I've only found it on Amazon.com under a search for Stephen Bury. Maybe, like his early novels, he doesn't think it's up to the standards of his later works. Or maybe he doesn't want to take full credit for it, since he co-wrote it with George. Or maybe he just doesn't like it much.

I didn't think it was that bad. I got caught up in the story and really liked it. It's a good thriller plotline of mysterious, all-powerful forces versus a few questioning heroes who quietly struggle behind the scenes until a final showdown. It reminded me of Robert Ludlum's novels Trevayne and The Icarus Agenda, both of which involved politics and campaigns, along with Ludlum's usual monolithic all-powerful bad guys. The characters are well-defined, interesting, and sympathetic, qualities I don't always find in thrillers. And the writing style is similar to what Stephenson fans expect: casual prose, sometimes witty, sometimes tangential and rambling. It's definitely not as mature as Cryptonomicon or the Baroque Cycle trilogy, so hard-core fans may be disappointed. But casual readers who are looking for a good book to pass the time on that long flight back from London would enjoy it. In the end I forgot it was a Stephenson novel and just enjoyed it for the political thriller that it was.

My biggest complaint about the book has nothing to do with the writing or the story, but with the proofreading. Not to put too fine a point on it, this book was the most poorly edited and proofread book I have ever seen, and I've read lots of crappy paperbacks in my time. Every chapter had at least one spelling error or mistaken word, requiring me to re-read a sentence two or three times to discern what the authors were trying to say. The poor quality of this printing might be one of the reasons Stephenson doesn't tell his fans about this novel. It was a serious flaw that detracted from my involvement in and enjoyment of the story. It was so bad I nearly took a pen to my book to correct it so that friends who read my copy won't have to endure what I did.

Stephenson published another book under the Bury pseudonym, The Cobweb, in 1997. It's on my Amazon.com wishlist, if anyone wants to buy it for me. Otherwise, I'll pick it up myself, but not until I've read Stephenson's The System of the World, the final book in the Baroque Cycle which comes out later this month. And I've got Dan Brown's Deception Point to read in the meantime.

Jet lag is no fun

I keep dozing off in the early evening in front of the TV. Just like my father! Strangely, I was about to fall asleep during the Bush daughters' speech tonight, but woke up to talk back to the TV like I usually do. (Yes, I'm a complete whack job.)

One final thought on my Asia trip:

Based on my co-workers' stories and my impressions from guidebooks and other sources, I expected to be lost in Tokyo and right at home in Hong Kong. I thought for sure that I'd like having the possibility of an extra day for tourism in Hong Kong and that any time available for such things in Tokyo would be welcome, but useless, given the language barrier.

I was completely wrong. I fully enjoyed Tokyo and wish that I'd had another day there to explore. I had no trouble finding my way, the lack of communication only made things more interesting, and I loved the food. I got sick on the food in Hong Kong, visited the only major tourist attraction on my first day there, and discovered that there was nothing else to do aside from work but shop and sweat. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been miserable for three or four days, but I think I would just have been bored. I like to visit foreign cities that offer historic sights, not just modern consumerism. In Tokyo, I got a sense that the city's past was readily accessible, that it's been there for hundreds of years. Hong Kong, while it's definitely an old city, doesn't look or feel like it's been there for more than 50 years.

My Hong Kong hotel did have better English TV channels than the hotel in Tokyo, and thank God for that, or I'd really have been in trouble. Tokyo offered Japanese baseball, Olympic baseball (featuring Japan), and more Japanese baseball. At least when I couldn't go out in the evenings, I got to see American TV shows (Law & Order, CSI, Smallville) and other Olympic sports.

I'm back

That was one LONG flight. Fifteen hours in the air. It was so long that I watched 13 Going on 30, the last half hour or more of Mary Poppins, The Two Towers extended edition (over 3 1/2 hours), and both The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. (I did fast-forward through some of Jake Lloyd's scenes in TPM, so it was slightly shorter than the advertised running time.) When I had watched all of those movies, I still had over three hours left on the clock, enough time that I could have squeezed in a 90-minute movie and still had time to put the laptop away before the crew served brunch. Instead, I napped for about an hour and tried to keep my legs from getting stiff. The good thing about arriving at Newark at 3 PM on a Saturday afternoon is that there were no other flights coming in at that time, so the immigration hall was empty. Since I carried both of my bags on board, I rolled off the plane, through immigration and customs, and found my driver within about five minutes. That's never happened before and probably will never happen again. I hope that after a night of rest the feeling that I'm still on the plane will go away. And maybe it won't feel like I left Asia sometime last year, instead of earlier today.

Friday night shopping

After work on Friday, I had one last chance to look for a digital music player and any other souvenirs. First I went back to Kowloon to Mong Kok, a shopping neighborhood that one of my local co-workers had recommended for electronics. I checked three or four different stores and found the player I wanted at the same price in each store, and it was much more than I was willing to spend. So I didn't buy any new toys to bring home.

Then I went south to the night market at Yau Ma Tei. My guidebook described it as a lively bazaar of CDs, knock-offs, bric-a-brac, and junk. It was actually a slightly more cramped version of a New York City street fair, minus the sausage and crepe stands. There were four basic booths: knock-off designer goods, clothing and t-shirts, pseudo-authentic Chinese goods (clothes, purses, makeup cases, etc.) and random cheap plastic crap. I have no doubt that any item I could have bought here could also be found on Canal St. (Maybe not the books of quotations from Chairman Mao.) I didn't see anything that struck me as authentically Chinese and worth bringing home as a souvenir. But it was fun to see the other tourists, none of whom could possibly have been New Yorkers, looking over the goods for bargains. As I walked back to the subway, I passed several outdoor restaurants (little more than tables outside a large kitchen) with menus all in Chinese and one table set up with example dishes. One restaurant had a display table covered with seafood dishes, all of which were still moving. I'm not sure if the meals were served raw or if they were just keeping the day's catch fresh. Either way, if I saw my entree blink at me, I think I'd lose my appetite. I went back to my hotel, ordered a club sandwich, and packed my bags.

where are all these places?

Here's a map of Hong Kong that shows the general layout of the various islands. My hotel and office are on Hong Kong Island.

These maps show the city in greater detail, but they're PDFs, so they might take a while to load.

Dinner with a view in Kowloon

On Thursday night, we took a cab over to Kowloon to Hutong, a Chinese restaurant on the 28th floor of an office tower in Tsim Sha Tsui. The restaurant is two blocks from the harbor and has a spectacular view of the Hong Kong skyline. It's a little cheesy, but most of the skyscrapers in Hong Kong put on a laser and spotlight show in the evenings, visible only to those in Kowloon. I remembered the Pink Floyd laser show I once saw at the old Buhl Planetarium in Pittsburgh, and the spotlights made me think of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I thought we were signalling alien starcruisers, telling them just where to land.

The food was exceptional, and it just kept on coming. We started with hot Chinese wine, which was sweet with a slight vinegary taste, but not in a bad way. Then we had spring rolls, spare ribs, fried lobster with vegetables, dumplings, pea pods with shredded pork, and fried rice. I managed to get everything into my mouth with the chopsticks, though the lobster posed a challenge, as it was chopped up but had been fried in its shell. After dinner we went upstairs to Aqua Spirit, a bar with the same view but a different ambience. We had drinks and swapped stories about our firm's many offices and attorneys. It's only on trips like this that I hear all the good gossip.

We took the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong Island. The boat is smaller than the Staten Island Ferry, and shaped more like a traditional boat than a squarish ferryboat. The ride was about 10 minutes and, like the Staten Island Ferry does in New York Harbor, offered its own outstanding look at the sights of Hong Kong. Since we'd had rain all day, it was a cloudy night, but the skyline was still visibly striking despite the mist.

Times Square in Hong Kong

On Wednesday evening I ventured out to explore another neighborhood on Hong Kong Island. We had talked about the great shopping available nearby, so I took the MTR (HK's subway system) two stops over to Causeway Bay. The subway system immediately made me think of London's Jubilee Line. The trains and platforms are separated by double doors, similar to airport trams, and the train cars look similar to cars on the Underground. Here, English isn't an afterthought on the signs, it's larger than the Chinese characters in some cases. I had to walk a long way underground to get to my intended exit, at Hong Kong's Times Square. When I finally got to ground level, I was in yet another shopping mall. It took me a few minutes to find my way out of there onto the actual street. The mall itself was called Times Square, though the area didn't remind me at all of New York. This neighborhood was just another crowded shopping district with streets of small stores and occasional larger buildings housing air-conditioned malls. I walked around for about 45 minutes, sweating all the while in the humidity, before I had had enough of the shopping scene. I found the nearest MTR entrance and went back to my hotel.

Today (Thursday) was another uneventful day at work. It rained all day, and tomorrow we might just get hit with a typhoon. We're going over to Kowloon for dinner, and based on the weather and tomorrow's work schedule, it looks like tonight might be the extent of my touring here.

Hong Kong update

I haven't written anything in two days because I haven't been feeling well enough to do anything interesting, or even anything at all. I've gone straight back to the hotel from the office and collapsed on the bed for most of the evening. This morning I'm feeling better so hopefully now I'll be able to go out and see more of the city. Our primary IT contact here wants to take us to the Peak on Thursday night for dinner, hopefully not at McDonald's. And my NY colleague wants to go shopping for a camera, so I'll tag along with him and see if I can find a better deal here than in Tokyo.

The weather here has been hot, humid, and rainy. Every day the clouds roll in during the afternoon and our windows are lashed with rain. It usually clears up before we leave at 5:30, but last night I could hear heavy showers after dark. When it's not raining it's just hot. Every morning I start to sweat as soon as I leave the hotel. To compensate for the heat, all the buildings run their air conditioning at subzero levels. Even with a jacket, by the end of the day I'm shivering in our conference room and anxious to get back to my hotel room where I have some control over the temperature. It's so cold inside that several times a day we take warm-up breaks outside the building, just long enough to get rid of that icy feeling. It reminds me of my first few months at my job, when I had a cold air vent blowing straight down on my desk. After complaining for a while, someone from building maintenance came up and fixed the problem by covering the vent with a piece of cardboard. Too bad I can't block the air vents in this conference room the same way.

Goodbye Tokyo, hello Hong Kong

Aside from a bumpy ride, my flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong was just how I like it: short (compared to the flight to get to Tokyo in the first place). I watched The Ladykillers, which was hysterical, and had whatever Asian cuisine that Cathay Pacific put in front of me. At the airport, my hotel ran a car service, so I didn't have to mess around with a bus or train. I'm used to being met outside Customs by a driver with a sign, and while things in Asia don't work quite like that at least where my firm is concerned, having my own car to get to the hotel was an improvement over Tokyo's hotel bus system.

After I settled into my room, I decided that the weather wasn't too bad to prevent me from checking out the neighborhood. My first stop was the Pacific Place Mall, which is directly below my hotel. I got some Hong Kong dollars from a Citibank ATM and browsed through some of the shops. It's an upscale mall, with European stores like Hermes, Marks & Spencer, and Bang & Olafson, as well as Asian department stores and curio shops. There are also familiar American restaurants like McDonald's, Dan Ryan's, and Starbucks. The layout of the mall and stores remind me of Georgetown Park in Washington, DC, though it doesn't look anything like that mall on the inside -- more like one of the gallerias in Tysons Corner.

I walked from the hotel to the Bank of China tower, where my firm's local office is located, then up the hill to the Victoria Peak Tram. I hadn't planned on riding the tram to the peak just after I arrived, but since the weather was clearing I figured it made sense to see Hong Kong's primary tourist attraction while I knew I had the time. The tram resembles the inclined planes I'm used to from Johnstown and Pittsburgh, but it's really more of a cable car system. Since the route that the tram traverses isn't an even grade the entire way, parts of the ride feel like a roller coaster. At one point the tram ascends a 40 degree incline, so I got the sense that the rest of the world was leaning as we passed apartment buildings and bridges on the way up.

The views from the top of the Peak are beyond breathtaking. Imagine if you could climb to 1300 feet above the skyline of Manhattan, only the skyscrapers of midtown and downtown are all compressed into one small area. That's just an idea of what Hong Kong looks like from above. It was partly cloudy, so the view across the harbor to Kowloon was partially obscured, but I could still pick out landmarks and get some decent pictures. Since it's a tourist destination, the Peak is also home to hawkers of the same kinds of junk you find being peddled on the streets of Manhattan. There's another mall at the Peak as well, selling more tourist trinkets. There's also a grocery store and preschool in the mall, reminding me that people actually live on Victoria Peak near the top, and have much better views from their houses and apartments than their neighbors further down.

I got back to my room around 9 PM and collapsed into bed at 11, early for me. But after two days of walking around and traveling, I had no energy left and my legs felt like jelly. Even after a few hours' sleep, I still don't feel back to normal. I'm actually looking forward to a semi-normal week at work, albeit as normal as things can be when I'm halfway around the world from home and living out of a suitcase.

First work, then tourism

Friday was all work and no play. Our upgrade project started at 6 PM, and we had to be in the office all day, so I was up at 8 AM and in the office around 10:30. We had a late lunch of sushi at a traditional Japanese restaurant, where we sat on the floor on cushions and tatami mats and ate at a low table. The sushi was excellent and not much different from what I've had in the US, except that here they hid wasabi in between the rice and the fish. Except for my legs falling asleep constantly it was a great meal. Then we stayed up all night migrating the Tokyo NetWare server data from one disk array to another. I could go into the details but who would care but me? I was back at my hotel by 6 AM for a few hours' rest.

I got up around noon and after puttering around the room for a few hours decided to get out and see the city. My friend Rich, who came to Japan in 1998 for the Winter Olympics, recommended that I see the Imperial Palace Gardens. Despite the heat of the day (cooler and less humid than the past two days but sunny and warm) I walked to and around the gardens for about two hours. The gardens are mostly just trees, grass and hills surrounding the Imperial Palace, along with some old forts, a moat, and other signs of Tokyo's past. The cicadas were out in full voice this afternoon, providing a unique soundtrack for my wanderings. I especially liked the remains of an old donjon fort and the samurai guardhouses, where the emperor's elite defenders lived when they weren't fending off attackers.

After leaving the gardens I walked south to Ginza, Tokyo's upscale shopping district. If Shinjuku is Tokyo's Times Square, then Ginza is Madison Avenue. All of the major European fashion designers have stores there, as well as more moderate retailers like Eddie Bauer, the Gap, and HMV. I found myself in the Yamaha showroom, looking at grand pianos and violins, and in several electronics stores browsing through cameras and MP3 players. At Bic Camera, one of the largest electronics shops, I looked for a long time at gadgets that I'd love to own if I had a money tree in my apartment. Electronics stores in Japan have all their wares out as display models, so you can play with your potential purchase and decide if it works for you. Consequently, there are large racks of gear and dozens of people waiting to get their hands on everything. I found a camera I might have bought were it not for the fact that I speak no Japanese and it wasn't entirely clear how I would have gone from looking at a floor model to buying the actual item. While there were salespeople milling around the store, they were outnumbered ten to one by shoppers, and there were no indications in English of the shopping process. Now that I'm back in my hotel room and I've missed my chance to snag a possible bargain, I'm consoling myself with the knowledge that I have a working camera that I like and that I probably didn't need to spend that money in anyway.

When I'd had enough of the Tokyo shopping scene, it was time to come back to the hotel. Initially I'd planned to walk back, but given the heat and my general exhaustion from hours of walking, I opted to get myself home on the subway. (When I took it on Thursday, I had either Tokyo residents or experienced Tokyo visitors with me to keep me from getting lost.) The Tokyo subway has signs in Japanese and English, and though the ticket machines aren't well marked in English, the platforms and trains are easy enough for foreigners like me to manage. Of course, I kept things easy by taking only one train, but I'm confident that if I ever come back to Tokyo, I'll be able to use the subway without any problems.

My Tokyo trip is nearly at an end. I've enjoyed myself more than I thought I would, and I'm a little upset that I don't have more time to spend here. I didn't get to the real electronics shopping neighborhood of Akihabara or see the nightlife in Roppongi. Hopefully I'll have another work excuse to come back here in the next few years. As much as I like Tokyo, it's too far to travel if I've got to sit in coach. Tomorrow morning (Sunday), I need to get up at dawn to take the bus back to Narita for my flight to Hong Kong. After all of the walking I did today, falling asleep should not be a problem, though getting up may be a struggle.

how's the weather here?

Because everyone always asks about the weather. It's hot and humid. It reminds me of Washington, DC, in the middle of August, though it's not the wall of heat that I remember so well from nasty DC summers. In the shade it can be comfortable, but in the sun, the heat is brutal. Even at night, it's still a little stifling. There's a typhoon on the west coast of Japan that will pass by Tokyo in the next few days, but we'll miss most of the rain. The hotel and office have excellent air conditioning, so I don't have to sweat it out indoors as well. Hong Kong's weather is supposed to be even worse than Tokyo this time of year, so I can look forward to more oppressive heat and thunderstorms.

authentic Japanese food and drink

Liz thought it was strange that on Wednesday night, my first night here, I ordered the fried chicken dinner from the hotel room service rather than trying some actual native cuisine. My reasoning was that I wanted something normal after a long day of traveling, and that my colleagues in the office here would take me out for authentic Japanese food during my stay. And I was right.

For lunch on Thursday, we went to a teriyaki restaurant and had breaded & fried pork, shrimp, and some kind of creamed crab meat, with rice, cabbage, and iced green tea. When we sat down, they gave each of us a ceramic bowl filled with black and white sesame seeds, and a wooden pestle. We ground up the seeds in the bowl, then dumped the mixture onto the cabbage and meat, along with sauce or salad dressing.

We went to Shinjuku for dinner. Shinjuku is similar to New York's Times Square: lots of neon lights and shops, and the train station there is one of the busiest in the city. We ate at the bar at a yakitori restaurant in one of the shopping malls. The grill cook worked in front of us, cooking skewers of chicken on what looked like popsicle sticks. I don't know what parts of the chicken we ate, just that everything was delicious. I had two glasses of sake, served in champagne flutes, and we were in a hurry to leave to get to an electronics store, so I drank the last bit of sake in a few gulps. That wasn't the best move, because when I got back to my room, I think I fell asleep for a while and forgot about the snacks I bought at 7-11 for dessert. (That's OK, my Haagen-Daz red bean ice cream will keep in the minibar freezer for a few days.)

I had about 10 minutes to browse for MP3 players at the electronics store. Just as I found from my online research, the players I want aren't any cheaper here than they are in the US, and in fact they're a little more expensive. My Hong Kong counterpart who is with us here in Tokyo explained that the ones I like are Korean, so they're imports here as well as the US, thus the higher prices. He thinks I might find better prices on them in Hong Kong.

Today (Friday) we'll be working late on a server upgrade that is after all my reason for coming to Tokyo. We might get the chance to sneak out of the office at lunch to go shopping again, or on Saturday afternoon and evening if we're not exhausted from working all night tonight. The office is on the top floor of an office building that overlooks the Imperial Palace, and there are some excellent views of the city from the conference rooms. My only complaint is that the Internet connection in the office is soooooooooo sssssslllllllloooooowwwwww. They connect to the Internet through our conference center in midtown Manhattan, so the data has a long haul to get back and forth. It took me half an hour to download a 5 mb file. Like every other foreign office, my firm provides free drinks and snacks here. I had a can of cold green tea yesterday, which was better than I expected. I now know the Japanese symbol for tea: a thing that looks like a H with a long crossbar, over a house on stilts. (Unfortunately, to me a lot of the Japanese characters look like houses on stilts.)

this blog is very big in Japan

OK, not yet, but maybe something will come out of my trip to Tokyo. After a long flight (I still feel echoes of the plane's turbulent bouncing) and a long bus ride from the airport, I've been relaxing in my hotel room for a while. I really wanted to explore the neighborhood, but it was about 95 degrees when I got here and I'm dead tired. I'm just forcing myself to stay awake for now so I can hopefully avoid any jet lag tomorrow. I watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" on the plane courtesy of Continental Airlines, and I think it might be Charlie Kaufman's best work yet as a screenwriter. Then since the rest of the movie selections stunk, I watched "The Godfather Part II" and "Wayne's World" and tried to sleep. On the bus ride into Tokyo, I could tell that I was really tired when I didn't realize for fifteen minutes that the Japanese drive on the wrong side of the road. Tokyo doesn't remind me of any other city I've ever seen. One observation I can remember right now: in New York, people who live in the city and have terraces or balconies usually use them for junk storage instead of relaxing outside. Here, it looks like a terrace or balcony is where you let your laundry air dry. Also, I'm pleasantly surprised at the number of buildings and businesses with names in English. And I hope I learn to like Olympic judo and baseball, since right now that's all they're showing here.

almost ready to go to Asia

I spent my weekend mentally preparing for the ordeal that will be tomorrow's 14-hour flight to Tokyo. I still can't fathom just how long I'm going to be on that plane. Up to now, my longest flight was an 8-hour return flight from either Frankfurt or Brussels (I've gone to Europe on business enough times now that all the flights seem to run together). The problem then was that after I ate the main meal, watched a movie, tried to sleep, and watched another movie, I realized I still had three or four hours left before we got to New York. It wasn't quite depressing (after all, I was in business class), but it wasn't an appealing thought either. Tomorrow, when I hit that four- or five- hour mark, I'll still have nine hours left. I'm bringing at least two books, eight or nine movies, a magazine, and my MP3 collection on my laptop. I assume I won't sleep much. At least I feel better than the guy we met at dinner on Saturday night, who was flying to Hong Kong today. He used to fly business class, but now that he works for his own company, he flies coach to save money. 14 hours in coach is why we'll never take a vacation in the Far East.

It only took me about an hour to pack this morning. Liz still can't understand how I can wait until the last minute to pack my bag. I'd already mentally packed the bag by deciding which clothes I wanted to take, so it was only a matter of getting everything together and squeezing it all into my small carry-on suitcase. I'll feel guilty tomorrow when I take up almost an entire overhead bin with the bag, but the thought of rolling off the plane and through customs without waiting at baggage claim goes a long way towards assuaging my conscience. And I'm a man: I don't need to pack three ziplock bags of cosmetics and half a dozen pairs of shoes. In college, I spent a four-day weekend at the beach with a girl I was dating and her family. When we got to the hotel, she unpacked at least three bags of cosmetics, hair care products, and God only knows what else. For four days at the beach!! But I digress. I still need to pack some of my electronics gear, DVDs, and assorted chargers. I don't worry so much about my clothes getting there, but if I forget a charger or adapter, I'll stew over it for days.

We saw The Bourne Supremacy on Sunday afternoon. I think the first movie was slightly better, but this one was absolutely worth the trip. This film lacked some of the emotion of The Bourne Identity, but made up for it in thrilling chases and espionage elements. Matt Damon and Brian Cox were excellent (as they were the first time around) and Karl Urban, though he didn't say much, was effective as Bourne's primary hunter. Joan Allen was good, but not as effective as a character as Chris Cooper's Conklin was in the first film. Judging by the user comments on IMDB, many people were put off by the handheld camera work, but it didn't bother me at all. The handheld cameras made me feel like I was riding along in the car or running alongside Damon as he evaded capture. What I love about these movies is that little of the story is implausible. Unlike James Bond movies, Bourne doesn't rely on gadgets, charm, or wisecracks to get out of sticky situations. He devises a plan based on what he has to work with. And he gets hurt, which never happens to Bond. And unlike the muscle-bound heroes of movies in the 1980s and 1990s (Schwarzenegger, Willis, Stallone, etc.), Bourne doesn't overpower his enemies with brawn, but with his wits and cunning. He's a much more realistic character than anyone I've seen in this kind of movie in a long time. My biggest complaint with both movies is that they hardly use any material from Robert Ludlum's original novels. I'm amused by the fact that bookstores are selling paperbacks of Supremacy with Matt Damon's picture on the cover, though the book has virtually nothing in common with the film. There is a third book (The Bourne Ultimatum) but there's no way a third movie will have anything to do with the story. However, Ludlum fans will like the end of the movie, when a major detail of the novels finally gets mentioned in the films.

I had hoped to see The Village before I left, but we didn't have time. So I'll have to go another two weeks avoiding spoilers and hoping no one inadvertently gives away the surprise.

The RNC vs. protesters

Salon is featuring this article titled "New York lockdown" about the planned and unplanned protests for the Republican National Convention later this month, and what the city plans to do about them. I'm not too worried about terrorists that week, but after reading this I'm more concerned that protesters are going to do something stupid that provokes a rash reaction from the police. I had hoped to avoid all of the mishegoss of the convention, since I live on the Upper East Side and commute to work on the Lexington Avenue subway line. But some of the protesters plan to go where the police aren't and disrupt things. I can just see me walking several blocks out of my way because some idiots have chained themselves together across lower Broadway, blocking my access to my office. City Hall is just a few blocks north of my office; I'm sure there will be a protest presence there at some point. Don't get me wrong: I don't disagree with these protesters or their right to express themselves, but I'd prefer it if they kept themselves and their expressions out of my neighborhood.

Actually, the most disturbing part of the article is right here:

This terrifies Bush opponents, who worry that violence on the streets of New York will help the Republicans by making them look like Middle American moderates besieged by nutty radicals. They note that the Chicago '68 debacle helped cement Richard Nixon's reputation as the law-and-order candidate.

One of the organizers thinks that ordinary New Yorkers will see the protests and join in. I can guarantee that I won't be among them. I stood on the fringe of the anti-war protest in Washington Square Park in March 2003 and had zero desire to get any closer. When i saw police in riot gear run past I went straight home until the whole thing was over. If the convention week is anything like that anti-war protest, it actually won't be that bad -- there were only a few arrests in an otherwise peaceful crowd. Unfortunately, based on this article and some other things I've read and heard, I think the outrage at the Bush administration is at such a high level that this time protests will be long, loud, and combative.

...and I've moved

I'm now on blogspot.com. If you had a link on your site to my old page, it will redirect here. www.fiveguysproductions.com will also get you to this new site. No more FTP errors for me.

Hopefully, regular posting will resume shortly.

Running out of disk space

One reason I haven't posted much lately is that I'm running low on storage on my personal web site, where I host this blog. If you click on the "Phil's website" link on the right side, you'll find that most of the content is now missing. That's because I've had to delete just about everything from my web site in order to make room for the blog. But now even that's not enough. I'm deciding what to do next: dump the archive, try to get more web site space from Earthlink, or move the blog to another site. The easiest (and likeliest) option is to move it to a blogspot.com address, where there doesn't seem to be any size limit. And fiveguysproductions.blogspot.com is a better URL than the home.earthlink.net one I've been stuck with for years.

Mostly I'm writing this now to see if I can actually post it, or if I'll get another disk space error.

new security features at my building

I've had all sorts of craziness at work lately and blogging has fallen by the wayside. Not much of an excuse, but if you don't like it, hey, no one's making you read this.

My office building is not one of the targets in the latest terror warning, though my firm does maintain a conference center in the Citigroup Center in midtown which is on the list. But as I was leaving work this evening, I noticed the large maroon jersey barriers that someone placed in front of all of the street-level entrances, thwarting any car- or truck-bomb attempts. They must have been installed today, because I didn't see them when I came in this morning. The barriers are so garish that it looks like our building is in downtown Baghdad instead of Manhattan. The color of the barriers doesn't make any sense: why maroon? The outside of the building is black and the planters and sidewalks are a pinkish marble. Another problem is the length of the barriers: they block most of the space between the planters so there's only a little gap to walk between them. I took some pictures with my Treo camera as I was leaving, and assuming the Homeland Security folks don't arrest me, I'll post them here tomorrow. I understand the need for increased security, and I appreciate anything that keeps potential car and truck bombs away, but I think the building management got a little carried away.

Our weekend in upstate New York

We spent last weekend in Niagara Falls visiting some friends that Liz used to work with at her last job. For a four-day weekend, we had a full schedule:

Friday: We visited Fort Niagara and saw a reenactment of a battle from the French and Indian War. That night, we dined and danced at the country club's annual dinner for the Porter Cup amateur golf tournament. We were the youngest people there by at least twenty years.

Saturday: we saw the American side of Niagara Falls, Goat Island, and the whirlpool gorge. In the afternoon we followed the last group in the final round of the golf tournament, taking a break after six holes to eat lunch. Since our hosts' house abutted the 17th green, we caught up with the leaders there and saw the finish on 18. Spencer Levin won the tournament despite playing his worst round of the week. I mention his name only on the odd chance that he someday becomes famous and Liz and I can say we saw him when he was just an exceptional college player. (He did have an excellent chip shot on 17 in the third round on Friday.) On Saturday night we went to a cocktail party in honor of the neighbors' daughter's engagement to a Manhattan restaurant chef. The party was in the backyard of the neighbors' house, with a spectacular view of the Canadian side of the Niagara River and an amazing sunset.

Sunday: we ate brunch at and then toured the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. Dinner that night was a New England clam bake (though as the pot only had five clams in it, it was more of a lobster bake) with mussels, sausage, potatoes, corn, and lobsters. To cap things off, we saw the fireworks from the nearby outdoor performance of the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra.

Monday: we went to Canada. We saw Niagara Falls from the Canadian side, which I have to admit is more impressive than the American side. You can't understand how powerful these falls are until you see the water rushing by and feel the spray in your face. After lunch, we stopped in Niagara-by-the-Lake, a village with an old historic hotel and many quaint shops and restaurants. We bought a few souvenirs, including a bottle of icewine, which is made from grapes that have been frozen on the vine. For dinner we had a special treat: on Sunday afternoon, the neighbors who had given the party on Saturday borrowed a few large bowls from our hosts, explaining that the chef (their daughter's fiancee) was cooking that night. On Monday morning, they returned the bowls with some leftover pasta. It was penne tossed with fresh tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, mozzarella cheese, and olive oil, and it was delicious. Even though our clambake was excellent, I think I should have gone to the neighbors for Sunday dinner to watch this professional chef at work.

We flew JetBlue to and from Buffalo, and I have to say that I love this airline. Complimentary DirecTV at every seat is a fantastic innovation. They turn on the TV feed while you're still on the ground, and leave it on through touchdown, taxiing, and even deplaning. So on Friday morning I watched OLN's coverage of the Tour de France, and on Monday night I flipped channels from the Democratic convention to A&E's "Airline" to ESPN. The flight was only an hour, but with TV it didn't even feel that long. I'm not sure I'd be able to last on a cross-country flight (it's still a small cramped plane), but on East Coast routes of three hours or less, I'd be just fine.

Lance Armstrong vs. his rivals

This commentary on Lance Armstrong's prospects for victory in the Tour de France appeared yesterday on ESPN.com, so it's already outdated -- he won today's time trial race to the summit of L'Alpe d'Huez -- but a friend alerted me to this great line:

Once in the Pyrénées for two hard climbing stages, Armstrong punched the accelerator with his trademark high-cadence rhythm, and the favorites fell away like the French defending Paris.

Never miss a chance to dis the French.

Don't be "That Guy"

In today's Washington Post David Segal writes about typical boorish behaviors he's encountered in his years of attending rock concerts. I can't say I've seen any of these first-hand, but it's been many years since I went to a club for a concert where people actually listened attentively to the music (as opposed to a P-Funk All-Stars show, which is about the dancing as much as the music).

The article reminded me of my bygone concert-going days, where we'd make fun of the people who came to the show wearing the t-shirt of the band that was performing. "That Guy is everywhere" was a popular concert quote. According to us (originally Brad, I think, though I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong) dressing that way was exceedingly uncool. It was OK to buy a concert t-shirt at the show, but you couldn't wear it until at least the next day. Rob and I inadvertently created a corollary of this rule at a Who show in 1997 by wearing the same Van Halen t-shirt. Don't wear the exact same shirt as someone else in your group, especially if the band on your shirt has no connection to the one performing that night. Not only will your friends make fun of you, but so will people you don't even know.

The Tate Modern Gallery

I was going to write a lengthy review of my visit to the Tate Modern Gallery last Wednesday, but it's just not coming together. I took some pictures of the outside of the gallery and the interior "Turbine Room" featuring a giant metal spider sculpture. The rest of the gallery was off-limits to cameras. I skipped the temporary exhibits of Edward Hopper's works and a French (I think) artist, and instead viewed the permanent collections instead. My favorite items were "Revolution," an exhibit of Soviet propaganda posters from the 1920s and 1930s, some of which I saw at MoMA here in NY a few years ago, Chris Ofili's "Double Captain Shit" featuring dung genitalia (NYC readers may remember Ofili's Virgin Mary painting caused a stir at the Brooklyn Museum of Art a few years ago), and a painting by CRW Nevinson entitled "Soul of the Soulless City," which showed the artist's disdain for New York, but which I liked anyway. You can see some of these works at the Tate's web site, including the Nevinson painting, but not the "Revolution" posters. Which is too bad, because I would have loved to get reproductions of some of them for our apartment. Nothing like Soviet propaganda to motivate me to work harder.

Quick London trip review

This is going to be a quick take on the rest of my London trip. A slightly more detailed version will follow, assuming I write it on the flight back Friday afternoon, along with pictures.

Tuesday and part of Wednesday I spent at work. Tuesday night's dinner was at Busaba Eathai, a Thai restaurant northwest of our hotel, near the British Museum.

On Wednesday afternoon I went to the Tate Modern art gallery, then took myself out for a cheap fish & chips dinner at Garfunkel's (yes, I'm aware it's a lousy diner). On Thursday we had lunch at Brown's with the London IT staff, then they took us to Global Switch, my firm'sbackup data center for our European offices. We ended our evening at West India Quay with many beers, some pizza, and the entertainment of dragon boat racing on the small inlet/fjord/man-made riverbank alongside the restaurant row.

It was a mildly disappointing week at the Light Bar at St. Martin's Lane Hotel. While there were some attractive members of the opposite sex, for the most part it was a slow week, with many empty seats. Tuesday and Wednesday nights were particularly sad, as the bar was a complete rod-fest. But sweet liquor kills the pain, and the firm paying the bills makes you forget the pain ever existed.

Spider-Man 2 premieres in the UK in Leicester Square

When I got back to the hotel this afternoon, I flipped channels and stopped on MTV. It was the UK version of "TRL" live from Leicester Square, where they had rolled out the red carpet for the S-M2 premiere. I wasn't interested enough to go right over there, so I stayed in the room, talked to Liz, and then went out to dinner with a co-worker. After dinner we walked over to the square to see if there was still any excitement. After we waited and strolled around a bit, the premiere ended and the attendees came out. There was still a large crowd of fans gathered around the red carpet, and we were amused by the behavior of the people as they saw their favorites stars (nearly all of whom were unrecognizable to Americans like me). I did see David Hasselhoff, or at least the back of his head, after a man in front of us kept saying "Knight Rider! Knight Rider!" Hasselhoff stopped to sign a few autographs, long enough for me to pick him out. He's taller than I expected. Otherwise we didn't know anyone who came out. Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were there (because I saw them on a news report after I came back to the room) but they must have slipped right into their limos and left. We then went to the bar at our hotel, hoping that since it's a fancy celebrity hangout maybe someone famous would be there, but it was not to be. We stayed for a drink anyway because we're guests and they have to serve us even though we're not attractive movie stars.

Funky Pie

On Sunday night I had dinner at an Indian restaurant across the street from the hotel. The lamb kebabs and chicken tikka masala were good, but nothing spectacular enough to warrant a post. However, dessert was a confection named "Funky Pie." It was neither funky nor pie: vanilla ice cream topped with toffee and hazelnuts, served in a graham cracker crust. But I had to order it based on the name, and it was delicious. The whole time I was eating it, I thought the restaurant should have had George Clinton and Bootsy Collins playing "One Nation Under a Groove" in the background.

sightseeing in London, once again

I spent my first day in London walking in a wide circle around most of the major sites near the hotel. I was with a colleague from New York who hadn't been to London in about thirty years, so I took him past Big Ben, Parliament, the south bank of the Thames, Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, and the theater district. I've seen all of these tourist haunts before, but not in several years, and it gave us both a chance to stretch our legs after sitting for six hours on the way here. I didn't have the opportunity to get to Madame Tussaud's, and I probably won't see it on this trip either. But I'm still hoping to see the Tate Gallery later in the week.

Random observation from the President's Club lounge at Newark airport: Gentlemen, if you're going to wear a blazer over your polo shirt, please, for the love of God, wear slacks, not shorts. The blazer over polo shirt with shorts and loafers look doesn't work for anyone regardless of how much money you have.

VH1 UK is showing videos from '80s movie soundtracks right now. I had forgotten how bad some of the videos could be, especially the ones that showed the movie stars jamming with or otherwise appearing in the video with the artists. Of particular sad note is the video for "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" from Mannequin, which features Andrew McCarthy wearing a long duster, sunglasses, duck walking and pretending to play the guitar while Grace Slick becomes a mannequin herself. While the video for "St. Elmo's Fire" also puts the cast of the movie into the video (and none of them look like they want John Parr singing to them) I have to cut it some slack because it's such a good song.

Too busy at work this week to post

I've had a busy week at work, which kept me from posting anything. Another guy who shares my responsibilities is on vacation for two weeks, so my projects went on hold while I covered some of his duties. Throw in the preparations for my London business trip and it meant nothing new in the blog all week.

I took today off and rode 45 miles around Manhattan on my new bike tires. The bike had three-year-old tires on it and I've had several flats on the rear wheel, so it was time to change the tires. I spent Wednesday evening struggling with the tires, eventually getting them onto the wheels, and in the process I became an expert at the procedure. However, it was such a hassle that next time I'll probably just let a bike shop do it for me. Now I know how to change an inner tube or tire in an emergency, but for regular maintenance it's just too much effort to do it myself. The new tires are faster than the old ones, so I'm glad I made the switch. Too bad I won't be able to ride again until I get back from London.

The 4/5 "Express" train myth

Gothamist links to a NY Daily News study of the local vs. express trains in the NYC subway system. They sent two reporters on a trip downtown from 86th Street to City Hall, and surprising no one except MTA designers, the local train rider won. Since Liz and I moved to the Upper East Side (or Yorkville, if you want to be that specific), I've suffered on these overcrowded trains like everyone else on that side of town. I decided that the East Side subways were intended to punish people who live on my side of the city, and in the Bronx, via this cruel form of torture. However, my consolation has been that at least the express train only took about 20 minutes to make the trip downtown. This morning's ride, for example, took almost exactly 20 minutes from when I boarded the train to when I got off at Fulton Street. But for the past three weeks, almost every ride to work on the express train has been filled with stops and starts and especially long waits in the tunnels while multiple local trains pass by. My average commute to work sometimes stretches to 40 minutes or longer. I saw this service advisory about track work on the downtown express tracks going on until mid-July. But the NY Daily News article says that riders can expect these delays until late September! That's ridiculous. In a subway system that regularly reroutes trains and repairs lines on weekends, why does the MTA have to work on train tracks during weekday rush hours? Is this some form of cost-cutting? They hired a contractor but refused to pay them overtime for weekend and late-night work, so they're working during the day? I've tried the local train, and sometimes it's quicker for me than the express, but ultimately I lose because the local ends at Brooklyn Bridge, one stop before my regular stop at Fulton. Then I have the choice of waiting for a delayed express train, which will probably be one that my local train passed in the tunnel, or walking to the office from there. The walk adds 10 minutes to my commute, even at my pace. Either way, I lose.

Since there's no other option for me to get to work, I'll just have to put up with the delays. And that's the most frustrating thing.

Yes, this post is a rant.

Jon Stewart on "Larry King Live"

I never watch LKL, so I completely missed Jon Stewart's appearance on the show for a full hour on Thursday, June 25. But I just finished reading the transcript (thanks to Gothamist for the tip) and I can practically visualize how it all went down. Stewart is insightful and hysterical at the same time, as he tends to be on The Daily Show, and the interplay between him and King is entertaining. It's a long read, but well worth it.

So what's YOUR neurotic behavior?

At the beginning of his chat today, Gene Weingarten posted some of the responses he received to a previous week's request for examples of neurotic behavior. All I have to say is that there are some bizarre, sick, and twisted people in the DC area.

Also, Gene hates the comic strip Mutts, even going so far as to post a "Mutts Embarrassment of the Week." He is now calling for the strip to be removed from the Washington Post, along with Classic Peanuts, BC, Family Circus, and others that he despises. I agree that some of these comics need to go, especially ones like Peanuts where the cartoonist is now deceased, but I enjoy Mutts. It's cute, sometimes it makes me laugh, and it always reminds me of my cats. I was going to say that Gene's problem with the strip is that you have to be a pet owner to really enjoy it, but I think he has a dog, so there goes that theory. I have to give him credit for turning me and many others on to Frazz, the best comic currently not appearing in the pages of the Post. (Liz, I know this because a) I read about it in Gene's chats, and b) I read the actual paper comics when I visit my dad.)

The NY Times on the NY Philharmonic

Liz will be surprised that I'm posting this link. She doesn't think I ever read the NY Times. I don't, usually, but this evening I came across this article in the Magazine about the current state of the New York Philharmonic, America's oldest orchestra. At first, it's a discussion of the organization's financial status and recent changes in the subscription concert sales policies, but the orchestra's music director, Lorin Maazel, and the future of the orchestra also come into focus. It's seven pages online, but for me it was a quick read. Basically, the NY Phil is in much better shape financially than many other American orchestras, but they're struggling to find ways to attract and retain patrons like other artistic institutions.

Liz and I would love to purchase season tickets, but we would have a hard time affording even a small package of a few concerts a year. We had season tickets to the National Symphony Orchestra when we lived in Washington, DC, and I really miss the concerts. While listening to classical music on CD, MP3, or radio is excellent, it's no substitute for a live performance. Now, as typical New Yorkers, we look forward to the annual concerts in Central Park as our chance to hear the NY Philharmonic for free. This year, we're going on July 19, when the orchestra performs Smetana's Overture to The Bartered Bride, Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, and my all-time favorite piece of orchestral music, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade.

Wired Magazine on Robots

Wired has an article on the upcoming film I, Robot and Isaac Asimov's literary career re: robots. I've always been a huge fan of Asimov's works, especially the "Foundation" and "Robot" novels, though I enjoyed everything of his that I read. And when I was growing up, I read plenty of Asimov. The article is a good overview of what he had to say about robots in general. I agree in part with what Doctorow says about Asimov's fiction (see page 2), but I think that for Asimov, character development was never that important. Visions of future worlds and societies were his primary focus, and his characters just took the story where he needed it to go. I'm sure that I wouldn't appreciate his books the same way now as I did fifteen or twenty years ago, but for me, a child with a serious interest in science fact and fiction, nobody explained it better or told a better story than Asimov.

I'm more than a little apprehensive of the movie version of "I, Robot." It's been years since I read the book, but I don't remember any guns or explosions in any of the stories. The movie trailer makes it look like a typical Will Smith summer blockbuster: loud and violent. Which in and of itself isn't so bad, but in the context of an Isaac Asimov story seems jarring. In fact, I can't recall any novel or story of his that directly involved violence. Usually his characters found peaceful ways to avoid conflict. Perhaps I'll just take it in as a sci-fi yarn, and try to forget the creative genius behind the source material.

Shmooze with Average Joe?! Sign me up!!

New Yorkish links to the summer's premiere event for Jewish singles, the Summer Shmooze cocktail party featuring Adam Mesh from NBC's "Average Joe." I got a spam e-mail about this party and thought I was special, but it seems I'm just in their target demographic: I have an e-mail address.

I love the picture of Adam in the ad. He's got a goofy smile, a cheesy unbuttoned shirt look, and an orange rainbow behind him. Who came up with this design? Attention ladies: you had your chance to meet Adam for free last February, when he was the featured attraction at an ASPCA adoption event on the Upper East Side. Now you'll have to pay, and pretend to be Jewish if you're not.



BTW, I'm back from Frankfurt, for the three people who didn't already know that.

football and more...

On Tuesday night, Kerry and I watched the Germany-Netherlands game in the bar on the ground floor of the Main Tower, where my firm's office is located. The local IT administrator took us there on Monday for a pre-dinner drink and said that it was the place to be on Tuesday nights. And he was right. The bar has two areas inside the building - a glass-enclosed traditional bar, and more seating in the lobby just outside the bar, where the games were being projected on the wall. We arrived a few minutes after the game started and since the lobby was full, we had to drink in the bar itself. Inside the bar, we heard a DJ spinning old and new dance music instead of the game commentary, which was OK since neither of us understands any German. So we watched the game through the glass wall and enjoyed the "scenery" of the bar (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, etc.). For some reason, the bar employs three dancers - one shirtless guy and two women wearing nothing more than bras and panties - who danced in front of the DJ and on top of the bar. At one point one of the female dancers got another female bar patron to dance on the bar with her, giving us two shows to watch: the game and the dancers. Germany led after a goal in the first half, but the Netherlands scored in the 81st minute and the game ended in a tie. After the game the bar filled up and turned into a real "meat market." We observed the mating rituals of young Germans for a while (not much different from American mating rituals), then called it a night just before midnight. Despite (or due to) drinking two half-liters of hefe-weizen, I had the most restful night of my trip so far.

Sunday night and Monday in Frankfurt

On Sunday night, we found a street full of pubs showing the England-France football game in the Euro2004 tournament. England scored in the 38th minute but was unable to hold the lead until the end. France scored two goals at the end of the second half to win the game and break the hearts of all the English fans. Although I was rooting for England, I wasn't too upset about the loss. If it had been the Pittsburgh Steelers blowing a lead like that against a rival like Baltimore or Cleveland, I'd have been crushed, so I can understand how football-crazy Europeans get upset over a loss like this. It's only the first round, and England can still move on in the tournament by beating Switzerland and Croatia. Check the pictures link for some shots of Frankfurt and of us watching the game.

On Monday we went to work (that IS why I'm here). So far, the project is going well and we haven't had any serious complaints from users about the new firewall restrictions. It looks like we'll be done by Thursday evening, which is convenient since my flight leaves on Friday morning.

Part of the fun of dining in Frankfurt is figuring out what the English translation of the German menu really means. Kerry, one of my co-workers here, is a vegetarian, so he's had some trouble ordering meals. At one restaurant, one of the dishes said "tofu" along with some other words, in the English translation. It didn't mention that only part of the dish was tofu -- the rest of it was some sort of poultry. Last night, he was about to order something labeled "tatar" until I figured out that it was what we Americans call steak tartare, or raw meat. Instead, he had French onion soup and potato pancakes. I had a delicious veal cordon bleu, which was two veal cutlets pressed together, stuffed with ham and cheese, then breaded and fried. Served with fried potatoes and washed down with a half-liter of hefe-weizen, I'm lucky my heart didn't stop. But it was damn good.

Tonight, we're looking forward to the Germany-Netherlands match. We're going to find a busy pub area and enjoy the game with a large crowd. I don't think I'll cheer for Germany, but I definitely WON'T root for the Netherlands.

Still awake in Frankfurt

I've arrived safely in Frankfurt. I'm convinced the Frankfurt office only hires one driver, because the same guy who met me at the airport last year met me again this time. It's good to see a familiar face when you're in a foreign country. I think I actually slept for about an hour on the plane (which never happens) because I don't feel as tired now as I usually do after a red-eye flight to Europe. There's not much to do in Frankfurt on a Sunday: all the shops and most of the bars and restaurants are closed. We went for a long walk around town, ate lunch at one restaurant that was open, and had ice cream at a sidewalk stand, but by 3 PM we decided to hang out in our respective rooms until dinner at 7 PM. I watched a little of 24 Hours of Le Mans, but I must have taken a nap because when I came to, the race was over. Now I'm watching Switzerland vs. Croatia in the UEFA Euro 2004 football tournament. Soccer commentary in German isn't as exciting as Andres Cantor, though I'm sure the announcer will become animated if someone scores. Not that I care much about this match. Later tonight, England plays France, so I'll definitely have a team to root for in that game. Assuming I stay awake that long.

Wi-Fi comes to the Presidents Lounge at Newark Airport

I'm waiting in the business-class lounge to board my Saturday night flight to Frankfurt. Over the past four years at my firm, I've gotten to know this lounge well. Those of you who have never been here aren't missing much. You get free coffee, comfy leather chairs, and a view of the tarmac that's a little brighter than the one you get at the gate. Usually I have some coffee, a snack, and read while scoffing at my fellow travelers who can't be out of touch for a minute. These folks would hook up their laptops to the phones at the little tables and pay exorbitant rates to send a few e-mails. Although my office would pay for it, I've never dialed up from here, because I've never needed to, and because I only go online by modem in extreme emergencies. I've wondered why the airlines didn't put in a pay-per-access wireless network; I'd use that in a heartbeat.

Today, while walking up to the lounge's entry desk, I noticed a sign advertising the lounge's new complimentary wireless access for us business travelers. Now I can surf for free while waiting for the boarding call. Thank you, Continental Airlines. You guys rock. If only I had something important to do online right now....

A soldier's view of a state funeral

In Thursday's Washington Post, Stephen Hunter writes an account of his role in the funeral for Dwight Eisenhower in 1969. I'm fascinated by the rituals associated with the military, and often moved by those traditions associated with state funerals. Hunter recounts the preparations that the privates went through, including multiple inspections and polishings, and the long stretch of time when he stood on the street waiting for the caisson bearing Eisenhower's body to pass by. Only then was he allowed to move, from one military stance to another. Today, Joel Achenbach writes about the honor guard in the Capitol Rotunda for Reagan's lying in state. It seems nothing has changed in 35 years, which is a good thing for this aspect of the military.

The closest I've ever been to what these soldiers go through is the time I had to substitute as a model for a Georgetown University art class. It was fall 1993, and I was a student worker in the Fine Arts department. One of the Drawing professors came in late in the afternoon, looking for anyone who could model for his figure drawing class. The regular nude model hadn't shown up. I agreed, but refused to do the job al fresco, and he said that was OK. I stood on a pedestal about five feet off the ground. For the first hour of class, he had the students draw quick sketches of me in various poses, most of which I chose: a quarterback with right arm cocked in a passing motion; playing an imaginary viola; variations on "The Thinker;" and so forth. For the last drawing, he asked me to assume a casual pose and hold it for about 20 minutes. No problem, I thought. I stood on the pedestal with my hands in my pockets, looking casual. For the first few minutes, I was fine. Then I started to notice some of the things Hunter mentions in his article: my heartbeat, my bladder, stiffness in various joints, etc. About fifteen minutes in, I felt lightheaded and the room started to go black. I knew I was about to pass out, but somehow I fought through it, shifted my position slightly, and managed to hold out until the class finished. Afterwards, one of the artists, an acquaintance, told me that he thought I was about to collapse; I had hoped that no one would have noticed. Anyway, the point of a long story is that if I couldn't get through 20 minutes standing with my hands in my pockets, I can't imagine how anyone could stand ramrod straight in a dress military uniform for hours at a time. It's just beyond my understanding.

You think your job stinks?

I'm having a rough day here: a too-long subway ride this morning, many things to do today before my Frankfurt trip, including a run up to the vet to exchange a bag of one type of cat food for another, and even a meeting that's sure to be tedious. But that's a picnic compared to this tale of the day in the life of an investment banker. I'm exhausted after just reading it -- I can't fathom what it would be like to live it. The accompanying article explains that the author no longer works for the unmentioned employer. He took a substantial pay cut to go to a job with regular hours. Anytime I start thinking that my compensation pales in comparison to what the associates here make, I need to remember that I get to go home at a regular hour and keep my weekends for myself. That's better than any sum of money.

A different view of Ronald Reagan

It's impossible to avoid the accolades and tributes to the late Ronald Reagan this week, as the nation prepares to bury him on Friday. In today's Washington Post, Marc Fisher looks at Reagan's presidency and legacy a different way. Like Fisher, I also never understood how so many people could love this man so much, when he seemed so out of it, so detached from the realities of life in America. I didn't hate him (or if I did, it was a childish hatred born out of a lack of understanding of politics), but I knew that his economic ideas had long-term consequences for my generation, that his foreign policy might have gotten us all annihilated by the Soviet Union, and that his social ideas were just plain wrong. (OK, that's just me being a Democrat almost since birth.) There are those who promote Reagan as the greatest president of the 20th century, who seek to put his face on our paper money and coins, and who would name something in every state and county in the nation after him. They're wrong on every count. I'd put him in the top 10 presidents of the last century, but the Roosevelts, LBJ, and maybe even Clinton would come before him. (Clinton, for all his faults, did preside over one of the greatest periods of economic growth in history.) Besides, Reagan already has an airport, a federal office building, and an aircraft carrier that bear his name. Do we really need to name every third public school and municipal court building after him? If the Republicans have their way, I guess we do.

Reagan's passing is a sad occasion, and I admit that I'm moved when I read and hear some of the things people say about him. Thinking about Reagan reminds me of my middle school and high school years, which were filled with heated arguments with my conservative Republican friends about Reagan's policies and ideals. While I was usually on the losing ends of these arguments, they were some of the best times I had with my friends. Oh, to be young, idealistic, and naive about the real world again....

Miscellany

I gave my second and last Gmail invitation to Ed, the proprietor of Caffeine Free Digital, a mostly technology-oriented blog. I didn't get anything in return, other than an eventual plug for my blog in his. I just wanted to get rid of the thing, and from his posts and e-mails he seemed like a decent guy.

I've been drafted for more business travel this summer. I'm going to Frankfurt next Saturday for a week, then London in July, and Hong Kong and Tokyo in August. We're deploying a managed desktop firewall to all of our PCs, and my department is in charge of the server side of the operation. So we need to go along for the rollout and make sure people can still work despite our policies blocking any applications we don't want to allow, like instant messaging, viruses, and trojans. I don't know much about the software, but I'll pick it up in a hurry.

As part of my agreeing to work on this project (not that the idea of free travel around the world wasn't enough of an incentive), I asked for and received a new laptop. I had been using an IBM T30 ThinkPad for about a year, but I never really liked it that much. It was fast, and it had a touchpad, but it was large and heavy, and not particularly sleek for a ThinkPad. Our firm's summer associates, as well as myself since yesterday, are using brand-new T41 ThinkPads, which are slightly lighter, but faster and much better looking than the T30s. Plus they come with DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drives, so now I can rip and burn CDs and watch movies with the same portable PC. I think the screen is a little bigger than the T30, so my DVDs should look even better while I'm sitting in business class for seven hours. There's still no decent 3D gaming support in these laptops, but I can play Age of Empires II, so I'm all set.

On Wednesday night I watched The Magnificent Seven. Among other things I got from the movie, I now understand why Steve McQueen was such an action idol in the '60s and '70s -- he is the embodiment of cool. The closest modern actor I can think of who has or had the same onscreen persona would be Harrison Ford back in the '80s, in his Han Solo-Indiana Jones years. And even he played up the humor more than McQueen did in his roles. McQueen was more of a deadpan joker. It's fun to see all these great actors of that generation - Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Robert Vaughn - in a film where none of them, save Brynner, had the fame and acclaim they would later achieve.

While Kurosawa's epic The Seven Samurai doesn't feel like it's over three hours even though it is, I liked the fact that The Magnificent Seven tells its story in a little over two, without sacrificing much to do so. It's missing some of the emotion of Samurai, though. For example, aside from the three boys who are upset at the death of Charles Bronson's character, I didn't get the sense that anyone else in the town would mourn the gunfighters the way the villagers in Samurai were going to mourn the fallen swordsmen. But overall the story translates well to the format of the western.

For me the best part of the movie was the music. Elmer Bernstein's score is one of the most famous in all of cinema, and even though I've heard it many times before, there's nothing like hearing that sweeping string melody while watching the hired guns ride across the open plains. It makes me want to head out on the range with my horse. Unfortunately, my horse is a hybrid bicycle, and the soundtrack doesn't fit well with the image of a guy in tight shorts and a colorful jersey pedaling around New York.

The DVD includes a 45-minute documentary in which the producers and surviving stars (as of 2001, when it was made -- at this point only Robert Vaughn and Eli Wallach are still alive) discuss the genesis and making of the movie. Bernstein's score gets a few minutes all by itself at the end, for those who enjoy that aspect of movies as much as I do.

Gmailswap works, in my case

Last week, I wrote about the popularity of Gmail, even in beta test, and my use of gmailswap.com to unload an unwanted Gmail invitation. At the time I thought I'd wasted my invitation, but on Friday afternoon I got two bags of Starbucks coffee in the mail, just as we'd agreed. I had accidentally given the swapper the wrong ZIP code, so that explains why it took a few extra days for the post office to route the package. I still have one invitation left, and I've had a few e-mails from interested parties. The offerings on Gmailswap don't interest me right now -- they're either worthless or seem too good to be true -- so I've still got the invitation. I have a feeling that Gmail is going live in a few days or weeks, so the invitations will be worthless themselves soon. I guess I'd better get something for my last invitation soon.

another casualty of Atkins

A. Zito & Sons Bakery, a Greenwich Village landmark for 80 years, is closing this weekend, and the owner says one of the reasons is that his business is down due to the popularity of low-carb Atkins diets. While I'm not sure I believe Atkins has THAT much to do with the closing (he mentions increases in rent and truck insurance rates as other factors), I'm not surprised that media outlets have picked up on the Atkins thread. Gothamist also carries the story and laments the imminent closure of Columbia Bagels, though it's not clear that Atkins dieters are to blame in that case. What's funny is that earlier this morning, while cursing a commercial for low-carb milk (why, God, why?), I suggested to Liz that in 20 years we'll all eat a gray goo that has the exact amount of calories, fat, carbs, protein, etc., to keep us all thin and beautiful. Gothamist had the same idea. Maybe that diet will just apply to fashion-obsessed New Yorkers, and I can continue to enjoy meals like tomorrow's anniversary feast at Morton's, where I will consume a steak the size of my head (Atkins-approved), preceded by a loaf of onion bread covered in rich creamy butter (Dr. Atkins rolls over in his grave). With a Godiva souffle cake for dessert. I may not be able to move afterward, but man, will that taste good.

Come on, people: a little bread won't kill you. And you know what else? Neither will good old-fashioned exercise. Let's back away from the low-carb cliff and keep in mind that a few minutes of exercise each day will drop more pounds from your ass than all the Atkins-labeled foodstuffs you cram in your mouth.

Jerry Seinfeld's garage is completed

Jerry Seinfeld has more money than all but a handful of New Yorkers, so I'm sure he didn't even notice that it took five years and considerable expense to build a garage on West 83rd Street for his car collection. The Smoking Gun has details, pictures, and blueprints. I don't care about the cars. If he's going to be ostentatious enough to a) own five cars and b) keep them in Manhattan, then he's entitled to have a secure place to keep them. What bothers me is that the "bachelor pad" above the garage is probably as big as my apartment, if not larger. Somehow that offends me more than the utterly unnecessary need for five cars in Manhattan. At least he can't drive all of them at the same time.

the latest addition to my desk at work

My desk is a cluttered mess despite my efforts to keep it tidy. But I did find room for this baseball souvenir a friend gave me on my recent visit to Washington. He'd gone to Pittsburgh for a hockey tournament and went to a Pirates game at PNC Park, where he received the following as a free giveaway:



It's a figurine of Chuck Tanner, the manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates 1979 World Series Championship team. The team is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the last Pirates team to win a championship. At the rate the current Pirates are going, it might be 25 years before they win another World Series.

(I took the picture with the camera in my Treo 600, which accounts for the poor quality.)

Gmail is more popular than I thought

As a Blogger.com member, a few weeks back I received an invitation from Google (Blogger's parent company) to try their new Gmail e-mail service before the system goes live. Even though I already have too many e-mail accounts that I don't check, I created my Gmail account anyway, just to see what the system looks like. It seems about the same as Yahoo mail, only with more space. I'm hardly using the account right now, and I don't see any circumstances under which I'd use it more. I guess if I were stuck with Hotmail all the time, I'd see Gmail as a big improvement. At least I've reserved my usual e-mail handle on Gmail, so no one else gets it.

Last week, Wired and The Washington Post both covered GmailSwap, a site where those who want Gmail can beg those who have it for an invitation to join now, instead of when the system actually launches. There are all sorts of interesting things offered in exchange for a Gmail account, though I suspect most people aren't following through on the offer once they receive their coveted invitations. I responded to one post and agreed to send an invitation to a Yahoo! mail user in exchange for two pounds of Starbucks coffee beans. I doubt I'll actually see the coffee, though, as the same user has continued to post offers for coffee, Starbucks aprons, computer parts, secret shopping tutorials, and other things in exchange for Gmail access. I have a strong feeling I've been taken. (In retrospect, I could have told the guy that I would send him the invite once I got the coffee, but what reason did he have to believe that I'd follow through? I could have kept the coffee and sent the invitation to someone else.) In economic terms, the Gmail system has little value to me, so if I gave up something of virtually no value (and certainly no monetary value) in exchange for no coffee, I don't think I've lost much. Ideally, GmailSwap would be a great bartering system. Unfortunately, I think it's just a waste of time. That hasn't stopped me from looking for another potential suitor for my one remaining Gmail invite. If you're reading this, and you actually know me personally, and you want the invitation, e-mail me. You don't even have to give me anything in return.

Angst about the cost of living in NYC

Today's column in the New York Observer discusses why people living here are upset at the latest price increases in apartments, taxis, coffee, brunch -- you name it, it costs more this year than last year and someone is mad about it. The most interesting part is the psychological need behind the willingness of New Yorkers to spend more to keep up with their peers and neighbors. It's more difficult to go back to eating at diners once you've had a taste of the Four Seasons, or shop at a discount store after years shopping at boutiques in Soho. Apparently the disappointment at regressing is much worse than the high you get when you make that upgrade. It hasn't happened yet, but one of these days sticker shock is going to convince me that it's time to move out of this town. It would have to be something utterly essential to my existence, like a major subway fare hike or a huge increase in our rent. And I don't think I could just move to the suburbs, either. I'd have to pack up and get out of the entire region.

Jon Stewart's commencement address

Jon Stewart gave this outstanding commencement address at William & Mary over the weekend. Why couldn't Georgetown have gotten someone like him for my graduation in 1996? I went to several ceremonies that day, and the best speaker the University had was Richard Holbrooke, who addressed the School of Foreign Service graduates about his role in the negotiation of the Dayton Peace Accords for Bosnia. My school, the College of Arts and Sciences, listened to a speech from Louis Dupre (whoever he is), and all I can remember about the address was that halfway through I lost track of what he was talking about and instead watched where he put his water glass each time he took a drink. I doubt many of the SFS graduates from that day remember Holbrooke or his speech, but at least I remember who was there and what he talked about. I'm sure many of the William & Mary grads will remember Jon Stewart's speech many years from now.

I think it's safe for me to say that Georgetown will NEVER ask me to speak at commencement. I cannot imagine what might happen in my life that would make me worthy of addressing a graduating class. Although I'm sure that when Jon Stewart was 30, he didn't think William & Mary would ever ask him to give a commencement address.

Can this franchise be saved?

Christopher Bahn has some ideas about what can be done to save the Star Wars franchise. (By the way, Episode III opens exactly one year from today. Fanboys: line up now.) I've said all along that George Lucas should have let someone else direct his films. I still think Hayden Christiansen has potential as Anakin Skywalker, if he can get more emotion out of Lucas' terrible dialogue. His performance in Shattered Glass showed that he has range beyond what he was able to do in Attack of the Clones. By now enough ink has been spilled about midichlorians and Jar-Jar Binks that I'll leave those concepts alone. Having just seen The Seven Samurai, I agree that the more cribbing Lucas can do from Kurosawa's films, the better. Heck, I'd pay twice to see Samurai remade as a Star Wars film. Set it about ten years before Episode IV, when Darth Vader and the Empire are hunting down the Jedi. A remote outpost needs protection from interstellar pirates and tracks down some Jedi Knights who are trying to hide from the Empire. Throw in a space battle and a kick-ass tangle between the Jedi and the pirates (who have hired a dark Jedi and a few bounty hunters as mercenaries) , and you've got two hours of movie that's got to be better than Episode I.

Meet the Press hijinks

Gothamist, among many other press outlets, has a post about yesterday's unusual interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell on "Meet the Press." I'm usually busy or asleep when the show is on (I'm still a lazy guy at 30), but yesterday morning I was up and had the show on, mostly to make myself feel intellectual. So I wasn't watching too closely when all of a sudden the camera on Powell panned over to the body of water behind the secretary, and Tim Russert asked for someone to put the camera back on Powell. It was just a strange interlude in the middle of what was apparently a good interview. To his credit, Powell dressed down his press aide and got the camera back for Russert's last question.

I did pay closer attention later in the show when Russert asked Senators John McCain and Joe Biden about the persistent rumors of McCain's possibility as John Kerry's running mate. McCain still denies any interest ("categorically" was how he put it) but Biden thinks he'd make a great vice-president. I don't think it's going to happen, but I can't think of another possible running mate for Kerry who would energize the race like McCain might. At least a McCain-Cheney debate would be interesting.