TOKYO - 29 Nov
You may have noticed I haven't been updating this as much. There are a few reasons for this. One is that Japan has surprisingly few internet cafes, and those that exist are very expensive. The reason for this is that it's cheaper and more rewarding for most Japanese to use "i-mode" -- the always on internet resource for mobile phones. Pay attention, because this is coming your way soon enough, and it's scary. I remember how surprised I was when I first got to London and saw that everyone had a mobile phone. Even more surprised when I thought people using their hands-free mics were complete lunatics who were talking to themselves. But I got used to it, so much so that in Hong Kong when I saw a crazy old lady in the park talking to herself my first thought was "she doesn't look like someone who would own a mobile phone." In Japan I've been surprised by the zombie-like masses being led by the glowing green phones held out in front of them. In the subway, everyone sits, flips open their phone and begins typing away. I'm waiting for everyone to open their phone at once, then noticing that I don't have one, they'll start pointing at me and scream in that high-pitched invasion of the body snatchers shriek after which a truckload of hard-hat wearing police with their red glowing batons will force me to the ground and hold a phone to my face until I submit. You'll know when that happens because then I'll start saying that "i-mode" is actually a good idea. Hold on a sec -- someone is looking over my shoulder...

Anyhow, as I was saying -- "i-mode" don't knock it until you try it, I say. I'll pick up a phone while I'm here so I can show it to everyone I meet on my trip around the world. You may be surprised at first, but you'll get used to it. I did.

TOKYO - 17 Nov
I always seem to come dangerously close to missing my flight. While I was able to check my luggage in from Hong Kong central hours ahead of time, as I wondered around town to kill time, I became obsessed with tracking down the source of these little metallic triangle stickers with holograms that a lot of people seemed to be wearing. I asked a vendor, and he pointed to the street corner where I saw nothing. I asked a lady, who told me the stickers were given in return for a donation to the "community chest" and there were people collecting all around. I went in search of these people, but to no avail. At times I'd be surrounded by people wearing stickers, but I couldn't find anyone handing them out. It was maddening, as if someone was trying to mock me for wanting to donate to charity not out of good will, but for my want of a shiny trinket. Eventually I looked up at a clock and saw that I had an hour to get to my gate, so I found a sticker that someone had discarded and rushed to catch my plane.

It's possible that I passively wanted to miss my flight so I could stay in Hong Kong a little longer. I didn't voluntarily change my flight because I knew that would have a domino effect on my trip, but that didn't change the fact that I had been invited to a DJ event that afternoon and I was starting to make friends with a bunch of interesting like-minded people.

But as I boarded the plane, all I could think about was that I was about to go to Japan -- a place where I've wanted to go as long as I can remember. The land of samurai, ninjas, anime and video games. The land of the future.

After an uneventful flight, I traded my Hong Kong dollars for Yen and tried to phone Carrie, whose place I'd be crashing at. I went to buy a phone card from a vending machine only to be surprised when a small box came out. Opening the box I discovered, in true Japanese fashion, a small 20-page instruction manual, in every conceivable language, explaning how to use the card. After deciphering the instructions (dial this for international calls, dial this for local calls unless you're calling a mobile phone, in which case you should dial this...) I keyed the complex sequence of numbers into the phone only to hear a Japanese voice repeating. I understood that I wasn't getting through, but I had no idea why. When you hand up the phone a cute little animated woman bows to thank you. It becomes less and less cute when you have to wait for her to bow before trying again for the eleventh time. I eventually asked someone at the information desk, who came over to the phone and did the exact same thing I had just done, but got through. (This wouldn't be the first time something like this happened). I was happy to hear Carrie's voice, it was already 9pm, parts of the airport were closed, and I wasn't really prepared to try and find a place to stay. She told me to take a shuttle bus to Hotel Okura where we could meet.

The ride to the hotel was fairly ordinary. The bus driver wasn't a robot, he didn't even have a funny robot sidekick, and as we drove around there weren't huge spotlights coming out of the city, projecting giant floating holograms in the sky -- it was just a normal skyline.

I reached Hotel Okura where I called Carrie, who as it turns out I had just passed in the lounge. She introduced me to a motley group of friends and acquaintances. There were ten of us in total, nine dressed for a night out of the town, and me in sandals and wearing a huge backpack. I learned that Carrie really only knew a few of them, and most of them were Naoki's friends -- including a grinning guy in a suit that looked out of place.

We decided to split up and meet at a club later so I could drop off my stuff, and Naoki could try to lose suit-guy. Carrie warned me that her apt was messy, but in the end it was just "lived in" which is a nice change from the uncomfortable hotel-like feel that most corporate apts have. They seem to be at once anyone's apt and no one's apt, because people come and go after a short stay. In London, the corporate apts I stayed in always had strange relics as reminders that faceless others had once pressed their khakis there. The collection of travel guides, the mound of change on the dresser, and the kitchen with potato chips, wine bottles, instant meals and a half-full jar of black olives that you wouldn't dare eat because it may have been sitting there for years, but you can't throw it away because they might have been left just last week. And there's always the smelly, mouldy thing in the corner of the fridge that everyone thinks the next guy will throw away.

Yes, corporate housing usually doesn't feel like home, but Carrie's flat was cool. Turntables in the living room, a widescreen TV, a lava-projector lamp and the designer labels on the clothes scattered about made the place seem like more of a fashion statement than a mess. Compare to the cubbyhole I had been staying in while in Hong Kong, this place was the Ritz. I could get out of bed without stepping into the bathroom.

We got a call and headed to Shibuya to meet Naoki and friends at a club called "Womb." As we waited for them on the corner, I was introduced to the fashion obsessed Tokyo residents. Everyone that passed by seemed to have spent a lot of time, money and meticulous effort to get "the look" whether that is hip-hop with baggy pants & sweatshirts, skater-chic with floppy caps and ripped camoflage trousers, or ska with flat caps and checkered Vans. Then they're were the Japanese innovations like fake tans, giving some people a bizarre orange skin-tone.

Womb was a medium-sized club with a large dancefloor, known for its immense mirrored ball, private lounges above and a basement sofa-lounge. None of us seemed to be into dancing. Me probably the least, feeling slightly jet-lagged and very untrendy. We ended up spending most of the time downstairs with our heads bumping into the small potted trees that were a little too low for tall-folk. And ended the night rehydrating with "Life Partner" bottled water and a "Body Request Pocari Sweat" drink, that tasted like mild gatorade.

HONG KONG - 17 Nov
I'm off for my flight to Tokyo. I have a few more stories that I'll log when I get a chance. I've really enjoyed Hong Kong, I'm sorry to leave. I could have changed my flight, but I'm worried that if I did that, I may get stuck here for a really long time.

HONG KONG - 16 Nov
I've been searching for the Chinese translation of my name for a couple of weeks now, and I had almost given up hope of discovering it before I leave. I didn't want the syllable-by-syllable sound translation of kai-ga-ni, but I wanted the closest translation of the meaning of my name. With some help, I finally got it: Fei Ying.

SHENZHEN - 14 Nov
I wasn't prepared for Shenzhen. It was only a 30 minute train ride from Hong Kong, and in my mind it was going to be very much the same. Kind of like going from San Francisco to Oakland, except more Chinese.

I expected the red tape. From Lo Wu station, walking to Shenzhen would be the equivalent of walking one or two city-blocks. Instead, I went through the station, waited on line for my passport to be stamped out of Hong Kong, passed through customs, went upstairs, applied for a 5-day visa, got the visa (and they were cheeky enough to sticker it to a whole page of my passport -- limits the number of repeat visits, doesn't it.), waited on line for my passport to be stamped, passed through customs. I was now in the People's Republic of China, even though I hadn't left the building I was in while I was in Hong Kong.

I couldn't complain though. I thought of all the poor commuters. There were so few foreign visitors that the lines I waited on were relatively short, unlike those who held Hong Kong residence cards and had to go through this nonsense on a regular basis in the course of their daily work.

I crossed the footbridge, over a filthy little stream that was the official division between the two regions. And then it hit. I suddenly realised how much I was relying on the little English subtitles that accompany all of the Chinese on the signs, and now they were gone. I was in the middle of a busy station without any cues as to where I should go next.

I've shared some of my views on tourism, but I have to admit that I appreciate the infrastructure it creates. When you exit the station at Hong Kong, you're surrounded by signs and you can follow those signs to nearly anywhere in the Central district without any loss in continuity. And unlike London the directional pedestrian signs point in the actual direction. But Shenzhen was a commercial area set up by China for the Chinese. There was little need to cater to English speakers, and I couldn't get around on the 100 or so characters I've learned to read.

Leaving the station, I was presented with a huge walkway with shopping centers organised around a giant dirt lot which looked like a cross between a construction site and a junk yard. I went into the mall, lured by familiar brand names and posters that have become the universal symbol for commerce just as the stiff little blue man has become the symbol for men's toilets -- which is what I was looking for. I was further put off by an aggressive toiletry gang, who after giving me no choice but to take the soap and towels they threw at me started grabbing at me and pointing angrily at the tip tray.

I tried to leave the area as soon as possible. I know better than to judge a town by it's train stations and bus depots, but this place was tempting me to turn back around and catch the next train back. There was a desperate, developing nation feel to it. There were the touts who went from the familiar "Yes, hello!" to the seedy "Sir, you want pretty girl massage?", to the confused "Hello miss -- geshhouse?" Some of them still needed a bit of practice. Further out was the shoeshine brigade, banging their stools, harassing anyone who passed by in leather shoes.

It felt dangerous. Not in the sense that someone might look to do me harm, but rather that I might bring harm on myself by being completely oblivious to the warning signs. For example, walking with my head buried in a map and then looking up to find that I had crossed between a man carrying black bags from a bank towards an armored car and the two rifle bearing guards that were there to protect him. I smiled sheepishly and gave a look that was meant to read -- I'm just a stupid tourist. I guess it did because no one shot me.

I finally made my way out of the confusion and saw a street that I could also find on my map (which only labelled the streets in English if it fit), and was able to relax a bit. I looked around and tried to appreciate the city, but given that introduction and the fact that it was a grey, smoky day, even the most impressive cities would have a hard time winning me over. It had some neat buildings. Tall glass obelisks in jade, gold and bronze, but they weren't as daring and interesting as what I had seen in Hong Kong.

I passed someone who kept calling to me so politely, that I had to stop and talk even though I knew he wanted something from me. He showed me a card for an Afgan restaurant, and said he delivered food for them. Then he asked where I was from. I have three answers to this question, depending on where I think you fall on the love-hate spectrum towards the US. The honest one, "from the US." The less honest one, "living in London," which allows me to follow with the honest one if, after talking for a while, it seems ok. And the complete lie. "I'm from Canada," I told him. He gave me his card, which quickly found its way to the nearest trashbin. I had already seen a saucer-eyed woman having been stopped by three people in uniforms who were going through her papers. I wasn't about to carry anything that said "Afgan" on it as I wandered around.

I walked around, went to a museum, sat in a place that I pretended was a park, but I had the feeling I wasn't supposed to be there, and found a mall where I could order from the menu which offered "main cuurses" and "sandwishes." In the end, however, I wasn't going to give Shenzhen a fair chance. I wanted to go back to the little comfy piece of a life I had carved out of Hong Kong over the past couple of weeks. Back to where I had some friends, a place to hang out, a growing list of vegetarian restaurants and a room where I could practice writing Chinese characters.

And besides, everyone seemed much happier there.

HONG KONG - 9 Nov
I finally met up with the friends of Teak. His sister Sum Sum, and her boyfriend, Ray, had been busy over the past few days setting up an art exhibit. When I first spoke to Sum Sum, she made it sound as if it was a small school art project with kids. Later, I would read BC magazine (Hong Kong's free equivalent of Time Out) about a Picasso exhibit taking place and the article mentioned Sum Sum's name.

The exhibit was on two floors of the building, showing the work of children and teenagers across multiple schools who had taken Picasso's paintings and turned them into full sized sculptures. One hallway was a ramp connecting the two floors. This had been turned into 'the secret garden' with strange and surreal beasts and mythical characters lined up along the way, with some flying above -- strung up to the ceiling with wires.

It was all very well done. Still, I hadn't found Sum Sum and Ray there as I thought I might. We ended up meeting a few days later at the Fringe, an artsy bar/cafe/exhibition space. "So what have you been doing in Hong Kong?" she asked. That shouldn't have been a difficult question to answer, but it was. I thought about it, and realised that the honest answer was "nothing." I've been wondering around the city with no particular destination in mind, letting myself drift over to whatever catches my interest. At times I'll get a pang of guilt, as if I really should be making better use of my time, but I'm able to fight that off and get back to the do-nothing business.

Obviously, that's not entirely true -- but what I am doing I could be doing anywhere in the world, the fact that I'm in Hong Kong is incidental. I spend a lot of time reading, but being here has sparked new interests. I've taken my initial curiosity about Chinese characters further and I've read about their original, archaic form. I've also begun to study how to read and write Chinese. Unfortunately, doing so has destroyed some of the romantic notions borne of my ignorance. I had hoped that the writing system was perfectly meaningful and completely derived from pictograms. There is still a lot of that, but not all pictures have been paired up and combined according to a poetic logic. Combinations have to do similar sounds. For instance, the symbol for 10,000 is the symbol that was used for scorpion, but had the same sound. But still, I think the characters are more closely linked to their history in a way that seems to mirror the Chinese respect for ancestry, heritage and tradition.

I've also taken an interest in the seal, and the art of seal engraving. Although this interest would seem completely different than the interest that made me start taking a DJ class, both are about learning a new appreciation. I just as I couldn't appreciate what DJs actually do, where the skill lay, I couldn't determine what a well executed seal looks like.

So I will keep doing nothing for a while, because somehow these scattered activities seem to make sense to me intuitively, as preparation for when it comes time to do something again.

HONG KONG - 5 Nov
I've managed to find quite a few vegetarian restaurants. The first one I discovered is still my regular favorite, but there are three others that I've happened upon -- some of them with multiple locations on both the mainland and the island. Now I could eat in a different place every day of the week if I were so inclined.

I plan to write up a review of each when I'm done, but it can be difficult assessing the meal you order. Given such a wide selection (one place had over 100 dishes on the menu), a bad meal could easily be the result of your choosing poorly rather than the skill of the chef. I had an imitation beef dish that was delicious, but the sweet and sour mock-prawn dish I had upon my return tasted a bit like stir-fried pastries. Apparently the prawns were mocking me. However, the good thing about eating vegetarian is that no matter how bad, or unrecognisable your choice might be, you know that it doesn't come from an animal. Had I not been certain of that, I would have drawn the conclusion that whatever it was that was floating in my soup must be the scrotum of some poor soprano singing beastie. Instead, I could rest-assured that at worst it was a fungus.

For the most part, though, the meals have been incredibly tasty. The Chinese are probably the best suited to invent vegetarian meals as they seem to have found a way to eat just about anything that isn't fatal (at least in small portions). While I turn my nose up at the giant shark fins, frogs, hairy-crabs bound with straw, and other dried bits and bobs that something wishes it still had, I'm grateful for all the mushrooms, roots, vegetables, seaweed, fungi and every possible type of bean-curd. It's this familiarity that allows them to create masterful recipes. Meanwhile the British came up with Quorn. Something was once edible, blasted apart, down to the sub-atomic level to create 'mico-protein'. This is then taken and pushed into a variety of meat-shaped molds so that it has the appearance of a traditional non-veg dish, but the consistency of a sponge. The Chinese imitation meat dishes, however, don't really try to fool you into thinking you're eating meat. They still seem to resemble what they were made out of. After all, if you really want something that tastes exactly like meat -- go eat meat.

HONG KONG - 5 Nov
I haven't had as much to write about as I've let myself slip into a rather ordinary routine. Going to a museum or a park by day. By night, watching a movie (see 'Memento' if you haven't already), having a couple of drinks in a bar, or just calling it in early and watching the Chinese version of 'The Weakest link'. Speaking of which, for some reason they only have women contestants -- maybe Chinese men can't stand the loss of face involved in having a woman insult their intellectual capabilities. I'm not complaining, it keeps me watching even though I can't understand a word they're saying.

I've adopted a banal daily routine of the past few days out of necessity really, otherwise I'd be finding myself approaching travel-burnout as I move into the third week. I also needed a regular schedule of sorts to keep my mind's sense of time from turning into congee, the rice porridge that has become my breakfast of choice. I knew it was a bad sign when instead of asking "what's today's date?" I began asking "what day is it today?" If I didn't clean up my act I'd next be asking "where am I?" and then "who am I?" In fact, my wondering the streets of Hong Kong scribbling notes eerily made my life seem a bit too similar to the plot of Memento.

In addition to choosing a life more ordinary, I've started taking a DJ training class. After seeing a flyer for this place, I hopped on the MLR to Kwun Tong, an area notable for its abundance of generic industrial buildings. When I first wrote that, I thought I was being a lazy observer and hadn't bothered to pay attention to types businesses in the area, but when I went back I saw buildings with names like "Jumbo Industrial Building" and realised that they really were generic. No doubt named by an entrepreneurial minded owner who didn't want to restrict his leasing opportunities, or by a criminally minded one who didn't want to disclose the true nature of his business.

This land of no-named companies was on the edge of the Kwun Tong pier where they could ship whatever it is they made to whoever would buy that sort of thing. Stuck in the middle of all this, between the bicycles, stacks of woven baskets and the fishermen and their bite-sized catch of the day, was the DJ training centre. It was in a converted warehouse, its sleek red and chrome interior behind glass. An anomaly of cleanliness, amidst the rest of the pier that was dripping with fishy filth. I soon saw the reason for both of these things. As I stood at the front desk, the receptionist noticed two guys who were enjoying their work out front, laughing as they went about their job flinging buckets of dirty water all over the place. The receptionist quickly ran out front, and said something that sent them scurrying around the corner. Angry Cantonese has that kind of power. You need not understand it to be filled with the urge to do whatever it will take to make the speaker stop.

When the receptionist returned she introduced me to Alan. Alan wasn't his given name, but that's what he asked me to call him before I got a second chance to butcher his real name. Alan showed me around the place. Their were eight practice rooms along the main hallway which lead to a large room with a DJ booth in front of 3 rows of chairs. That was the 'lecture hall', he explained. Right now, there was only a class in Chinese, but he would arrange for someone to teach me in English. I signed up for the course that would consist of 6 hours of training and 10 hours of independent practice. Before I left, he asked me who my favorite DJ was. I didn't really have anyone in mind as my favorite, but since I had just read an article about Paul van Dyk coming to Hong Kong in a few weeks, I said his name. "Hey!" Alan's eyes lit up, "You're lucky -- Paul van Dyk is coming here on the 17th." "Wow! Are you serious?"

I returned the next day to meet my teacher, Cataline, whose English Alan had told me was better than his own. When I met her, I began to doubt if that were true, but I had already paid up front and I guessed that both of their English skills would get considerably worse if I asked for my money back. Besides, I have no aspirations of becoming a professional DJ, I just wanted to someone to show me how to play with the decks. Given that my "carry-no-technology" rule was leaving me wanting for music, it gave me time to listen to some. My worries about Cataline soon faded. While at times it felt like the Tao of Mixology when her lacking vocabulary forces her to describe the cross-fader and volume level in terms of running water, I was actually learning something. Soon, I knew about how the 8 sets of 4 beats that are the basis of most house music, when before I thought you just matched a beat -- any beat, and that was all there was to it.

The two hours passed before I knew it. Cataline signed me up for my practice session and reminded me that I'd need to buy my own records beforehand. I asked her if she knew of a record shop. "Yes," she said. I smiled, anticipating that she was about to give me access to the hidden world of the DJ underground record stores. "It's called 'HMV'"

HONG KONG - 1 Nov
The average Hong Kong main street, Nathan Rd in Kowloon for example, is a scene of color.

Hanging signs painted brightly by day, and glowing with neon at night contrast the simple design of red & white taxis and the modest tan double decker "KMB" buses with their ruby tops and bottoms. Other buses come in different shapes and heights, but most carry posters which are both eye catching and enigmatic to the Chinese illiterati like myself. One such poster shows a close up of a woman eating a peach a three different angles -- left biting a small slice, front biting in a half peach, pit side up and facing right biting into a whole one. While I don't think it was an ad for the Peach Growers of Hong Kong, I'm otherwise clueless. Other posters range from cartoony, to overdone with 3-D metallic chrome-effect characters written over airbrushed futuristic and abstract scenes usually paired with a touched up photo of someone holding a product.

The metallic script is also found on storefronts, realised in gold on white ground or silver on faux marble -- not quite as loud as the advertisements, but still a far cry from the original black calligraphy that gave birth to these forms. (Ok- I won't start on that again.)

The glistening storefronts separate the decaying residential hotels, and their laundry-curtain windows, from the sea of people below. The style of dress found in the crowd is equally varied and colorful. A hunched old man puffs happily on a cigarette dressed head-to-toe in khaki. School kids run by in their spotless white uniforms with navy blue sweater-vests. Their self-expression is limited to their choice of bookbag and haircuts. Some of the girls tint their hair to one of the orange highlights that is still respectably not-punk. I'm reminded of India's henna-headed folks, but there it seemed more like it was a refusal to go grey rather than a fashion trend. Hong Kong's a fashionable town, in an everyday way, with even the cops alternating between their beige summer outfit and the blue ones worn in winter. Others seem to have created their own sense of style, distinct from everyone else. A girl manages to wear a bright yellow t-shirt with a black playboy bunny logo, and an electric pink backpack without looking like a tart. In fact, she doesn't even stand out, next to a woman shopping nearby in a blue floral pattern dress with a bright orange handbag and white parasol, or kids in their aqua blue matching shirts and shorts with yellow trim. That's something else I appreciate -- children here are dressed to be the cutest things imaginable, in their slightly formal dress that is reserved specifically for them, unlike other places where parents seem bent on dressing their kids as little mini-me adults, catered to companies like Nike when they introduced Air Jordans the size of Michael Jordan's big toe, or Baby Gap so they could ensure that everyone can unswervingly follow their "Everyone in Denim" commandment.

Even the staggering vagabond is on the fashion cutting-edge for the down-and-out types. Dressed in black, with trousers open at the knees, he's sporting the matted dreadlocks that are all the rage. It's ass if he just popped out of the wardrobe of a Kung Fu flick, where he would be playing a martial arts master having given up his worldly ways. However, this guy move this guy seemed to know was the 1000-Hands-Of-Scratching.

I know that's in poor taste -- but there aren't that many homeless people on the streets which says something about the city's social services program. It's either progressive, making sure that everyone has a place in society, or it's fascist, quickly escorting the homeless out of town. I haven't been here long enough to say which, but I'd guess the former.

HONG KONG - 31 Oct
Hong Kong is the closest I've seen to a vertical city. The 800-metre Central/Mid-Levels escalator helps maintain that image. After riding up this seemingly endless escalator you step out only to see more high-rise buildings towering above you. I was a bit disappointed to find that the end of this ride, this record breaking achievement in people moving technology, was a drab green building covered in small green swimming pool tiles, ironically named the "Elegant Garden." (Once you notice them, you see these small tiles everywhere, in every possible color, lining the walls of restaurants, paving the way of the underground pedestrian walkways -- I half expected someone to sneak up behind me and snap me with a towel.)

Unlike San Francisco, little attention seems to have been paid to opening up spectacular views of the city. There are some I'm told, but from what I can see the emphasis in city planning has been to cram as many of the tallest building on every available square foot of space. It was a little unsettling, watching a TV program on fire disasters from my room on the 16th floor of Mirador Mansion, to learn that the Fire departments in Hong Kong had ladders that only reached up to 15 stories. As if that wasn't bad enough, the fire chief admitted that although their firemen have one of the most rigorous training programs in the world, if a fire breaks out in this crowded city, "there's really not much we can do."

After riding up the escalator, I continued to walk up Conduit road and then followed a twisty path through a small piece of bamboo forest and was briefly rewarded with a glimpse of what Hong Kong island looked like before the building frenzy began. Then the road ended in what at first looked like an electrical powerplant and then a giant swimming pool filled with concrete, but from the benches soccer goals at either end I was able to discern that it was a park.

All of this was surrounded by your typically hideous residential buildings. Blocky lego-like stacks of 1980's avant-garde apartment units. Those are the older ones, which are further decorated by pipes and electrical wiring, but not in an interior-as-exterior Pompidou sort of way -- more like an ok-boss-we've-poured-the-concrete-now-where-do-you-want-the-rest-of-this-stuff way. The modern ones are less offensive, but they're likely to suffer the same fate that makes the older ones so ugly. These buildings aren't designed to age gracefully. The exposed pipes, vents and air-conditioning units start to rust and leak leaving huge Tammy Faye Baker mascara rust tears down the sides. The soil of the roof gardens starts to burst through the top level of the structure making the edges pucker and crack with dirt, roots and mold. Paint starts to chip in places that the most well intentioned manager would not be able to fix without either covering the entire 22 floors with bamboo scaffolding or by hiring nimble Chinese circus acrobats as painters.

This is all because each building is meant to be more shiny, new and state-of-the-art than the last. Instead, they should be timeless. They should be build for beautiful decay. If I were given a chance I'd build a giant Flintstone building, and name it "Rock Kong Estates."

HONG KONG - 30 Oct
Ok, the timeline of the travelogue is going to get a little like the plot of Pulp Fiction now -- this happened before I was interviewed outside of the HK cultural centre.

I went to the Hong Kong Museum of Art and saw an exhibit on an artist called Li Keran, a painter who spent his life developing his ink brushwork and was noted for his recurring depiction of a boy riding a buffalo. I admire the discipline found in these paintings, the evolution of work through the tireless pursuit of formal perfection. Keran's admiration for the buffalo was tied to this philosophy about working hard to achieve not reward, but the appearance of effortlessness. Among others, he practiced a technique created by the Wu family, which Keran held in high esteem. The family specialty was painting dripping mist above mountains. Li Keran worked for years to learn this style, and even longer to perfect his own representation of trees backlit by sunset. Now that's attention to detail.

It's also a Chinese tradition stretching back to the Tang dynasty (600-900 AD) where intellectuals like Lu Yu wrote a three volume book about drinking tea. He and the educated elite of the time were looking to find "the mirror of the Universal in the particular" which is similar to saying "God is in the detail" and means that you can discover the meaning of life in doing something as ordinary as clipping your toenails. Or perhaps updating wireframes for the 100th time. (Information architecture joke, don't worry if you don't get it -- it's not that funny anyhow.)

For a while, during the cultural revolution, Li Keran was forced to stop painting landscapes and limited to writing calligraphy on scrolls. However, there is such diversity in Chinese calligraphy that it is an art form in its own right. The writing is an expressiveness that the west has lost with a roman alphabet brought to maturity through the rigid formality of taking chisel to stone, rather than brush to paper, and a culture that places more of an emphasis on what is said than on how it is said. (I wonder which influenced which.) Not only has the ability to communicate meaningfully been lost to all but those who can appreciate typography, the meaning of the individual characters has also been abstracted away from the natural forms and pictograms of their origin. How many people can tell you what 'K' represented in the Phoenician times? In contrast, once you've learned the Chinese character for "fire" you cannot help but see it as a small flame.

Writing is the calculus of thought.
The addition and multiplication of characters form particles that are the atomic structure of our ideas -- words. You might say that since we don't know the meaning of the letters we use, we don't truly understand the meaning of what we're communicating.

'K' once represented a hand.

HONG KONG - 30 Oct
You see a great variety of people at internet cafes. That's where I met Reid, who it turned out was in a band that would be playing at a club called JJ's in the Grand Hyatt.

In the evening, I found JJ's but I was a little worried about the dress code. They had a sign of excluded items, one of which was sandals -- which I was wearing at the time. The recent humiliation of being refused entry on multiple occasions when I tried to get into Djinn's in New Delhi was still fresh on my mind, but I still I asked "Can I get in with these?" "Put out your hand" the lady at the door said. I did, and she slapped the back of it. I was thinking that this was even worse than Djinn's, but then she smiled and said, "next time, you'll wear something else."

I went inside and found that the band was about to play. They were "Absence of Color" a group from Atlanta that played old school funk and R&B as well as some more recent covers. The lead singers were a couple of twins doing a bit of a Jodeci impression. The music was pretty good, but at HK$70 a drink, I thought I'd be broke before they finished a set. Luckily, they ended their set as I took the last sip of the rum & coke I had been nursing as the bartender looked on with contempt.

Reid came around an thanked me for coming. I asked him about other places in Hong Kong I should check out, and he suggested I asked the band. Bingo! I was backstage. I met the rest of the band and introduced myself as a travel writer. This is something that any real travel writer worth his salt wouldn't do, but so far saying I'm a internet consultant had provoked yawns and I knew the chaos and confusion that saying 'information architect' would create.

They didn't have much information on Hong Kong in the end, but they told me about Pickfort Live Hall and V.Eddie's in Japan. Then the manager rushed in to tell them that a Malaysian princess was on her way, and asked if they knew her. "Oh yeah!" One of the twins said. "You give her baby?" the manager laughed. "No -- she was that one. ah.. what's her name..." "Yeah I know, the.. um" the other twin chimed in. "From Penang" "She's from Malaysia" the manager said. "Yeah! Penang." The twins clearly didn't know who she was.

After a while, we talked about how they were working on their much anticipated second album, and how Singapore was their next stop. I can't remember how, but I managed to drop my Sugar Hill Gang Copenhagen story into the conversation. Who said I'm above name dropping? At any rate, I wasn't hooked up enough to get free drinks at the bar, so I decided to leave at the start of the second set before I damaged my wallet and liver any further.

HONG KONG - 30 Oct
I was lucky enough to have spotted a sign that read "Vegetarian" down Austin street, east as I was walking up Nathan Road.

I had become nervous after stopping at a place for lunch which had nothing without meat on the menu. They stopped just short of "Beef tea." In fact, most of the streets had every type of animal from frog to crab, in every condition from live to dismembered to dessicated and mummified. It wasn't exactly a vegetarian's paradise.

So finding Tak Bo Vegetarian Kitchen reassured me that I would have at least one place to eat in the city.

I'm used to being a spectacle at this point. An old man by the elevator slapped my shoulder and shouted "You have two metres?" "Yes," I said. "Two metres! Ha!" he laughed. Given that and a strange interview at the Hong Kong Cultural centre, where I was ambushed by teenagers and asked a series of questions about how I liked Hong Kong, what I thought of the service industry and if I played basketball (although I don't think that was on her sheet of questions) -- I was starting to feel like a minor celebrity. Even Mr.I-Make-You-Cheap-Suit remembered me from the day before.

But eating was a different story. I was becoming a little self-conscious of my chopstick skills. For the most part, they were okay, but after 3-4 attempts to pick up a particularly slippery mushroom I noticed that the body language of a woman across from me seemed to suggest she was telling her boyfriend something like "Hey -- you've gotta see this." The pressure to perform was on. As the mushroom slipped again I drifted into fantasy:

"Ha! Ha!" he said, "Your scissor technique is inadequate. Go take that back to the cheap, greasy, white-boxed American fast food Chinese where you learned it."

"Hey!" I replied with my lips moving for many more syllables. "Watch this, Ha!" Briefly, I spun a single chopstick on my finger, then grasped it in my fist and jabbed dead-center through the middle of the mushroom.

The restaurant went silent. "The harpoon technique!" he gasped, "You must know Master Chin!"

"Ha! Ha! Yes! Master Slo Pi Chin taught me well."

Then the fantasy was over, and I realised that they probably weren't that impressed that I was stabbing my food with a chopstick.

HONG KONG - 29 Oct
I woke up the next morning with one thing in mind -- finding a cheap place to stay for the rest of my stay. Again, I wondered the streets, but I finally had to cheat and went to a bookstore to seek the great oracle of travel guides. The travel section seemed to have books on everywhere in the world except Hong Kong as if to say "oh no, don't come here now with your tail between your legs!" Finally I found a book called "China by train -- for the budget traveller." I got past the discouraging intro which read "Hong Kong is so expensive that most people only spend a few days there" and found a section about guesthouses located on the lower part of Nathan Road.

I found my way to 31-44 Nathan Road, looked up at the building, and as if he had jumped out of my head, Mr. Li was standing there asking "You want guesthouse?" I usually avoid touts, but looking into the swarm of people inside the building, most of them being more touts, I realised it might be better to stick with one of them who would help me cut through the rest. Mr. Li eventually took me next door to Mirador Mansion. Don't be fooled by the name, it's a dirty, chaotic high-rise like the rest. However on the 16th floor this melee of shops, restaurants and residences sat a clean little hallway of rooms, one of which was well within my budget. So I chose Kowloon Hotel as my base for the next week.

HONG KONG - 28 Oct
In Hong Kong, I was planning to truly go it alone. This meant travelling without a guidebook. That's what separates the tourist from the traveller I thought, smugly.

I took the airport express train direct to Hong Kong central and, since I hadn't slept in a bed for the past two nights, I planned to stop and check in to the first hotel I saw. As I made my way out of the labyrinth of elevated walkways and escalators that comprised the harborside station and mega-mall, I was surrounded by shops selling Armani suits and Prada shoes and realised that any hotel I might find here would probably exhaust my savings the first night and have me applying for a loan the next. So I walked up the road into an area of artsy cafes, looking for a quaint little neighborhood to settle down in. No hotels were appearing though, so watching a few students enter a clean looking apartment complex, I thought I'd ask if they had serviced apartments, or weekly short-lets. I asked the woman at the security desk and she replied in Chinese. "I'm sorry, I don't understand." Laughed and continued to speak Cantonese, probably amusing herself at my expense. I walked away as she continued on.

"What are you trying to find?" a voice called out as I stood at an intersection staring wearily at my map. I looked up to see a chubby guy in shorts grinning at me. His wife at his side, looking very small by comparison. I didn't know it yet, but he was the happy fat guy (more on this later). He was nice enough to point out that I wouldn't find any of the streets on the island by looking at a map of Kowloon on the mainland. When I asked about reasonably priced hotels, he said it had been 16 years since he had to look, but chances are I wouldn't find any around here. He suggested that I try a YMCA. This immediately brought to mind locker rooms, shared showers and Village People - so I was mildly offended. However, I was a vision of sweat and filth, so I couldn't blame him for directing me to lower end accommodations. He did help me get oriented, though, so I was able to find my way to the tourist center.

At the tourist information desk, the lady was nice enough to replace my damp, crumpled map with the crisp new one that was "in English -- you have Japanese map!" She also showed me the info kiosk where I was able to look up local hotels and check there rates. I was surprised when I saw the pictures of the YMCA. It wasn't a gymnasium, it was actually a very nice hotel, and it was the least expensive one I could find on the website. With even the low-end hotels going for HK$600-$1000/night I was worried about how I would manage for three weeks, but I could worry about that later.

I found the YMCA International House in Kowloon, went straight to my room, de-grimed myself and dove into bed where I stayed for a good 16 hours. I slept, that is, after I was able to get that damned Village People song out of my head.