Pants are for public

Sometimes I feel bad about interviewing people over the phone in my underwear.

Un-PC in Private

"Sorry, if you look on any news website it's all about Mad Men. Tibetans don't count this week."

--Mark

LOL'd three times reading these two paragraphs

Long-suffering Northwesterners still waiting for Cats to make NCAA 

My alma mater, Northwestern, is on the bubble. You already know this, just as you already know that Northwestern has never been to the NCAA tournament, largely because every sports media outlet seems to be overflowing with Northwestern alums like myself who can't stop talking about it. 

Two in particular, ESPN's Michael Wilbon and CNBC's Darren Rovell, aren't shy about their passion for all things purple. Both have chronicled their tortured existence during the Wildcats' nerve-racking quest to end their 73-year NCAA drought this year. "Surely, somebody will call and tell me about it because I cannot watch ... It's too excruciating," Wilbon, the PTI co-host, wrote recently. "When I die, the cause of death might be Northwestern basketball," Rovell tweeted after yet-another heartbreaking Big Ten defeat.

Full story here

What a dumb-ass hog.

Yes, YOU, Henry Tang.

MORNING MEETING

Stephanie: [wearing a pink top] you guys have no holiday spirit.
Emily: [wearing normal beige clothes] It's not a holiday.
Stephanie: Isn't Valentine's Day a holiday? It's not a day off, but it's a holiday. Right?
Me: [wearing normal gray clothes] A Hallmark holiday.
Stephanie: Isn't it, like, a religious holiday?
Me: ... As in, Saint Valentine?
Stephanie: Yeah, Saint Valentine's Day.
Me: So ... are you doing anything tonight?
Stephanie: We're not sure yet. My husband might cook dinner.
Me: Aw.
Stephanie: What about you guys?
Me: Oh. We're like in breakup mode, or something.
Stephanie: What?!
Me: Mm.
Stephanie: Are you having a fight?
Me: I dunno.
Stephanie: Valentine's Day is not a holiday!
Me: O.K.

###

... love had trained her to see the world through his eyes, and through his eyes this place was a vapid dump.

--The Art of Fielding

You know what

By not buying a super cheap ticket to Tokyo for 2-3 days, I can buy 40 non-happy hour drinks.

"It's so obvious to me that writing is the only thing you're passionate about."

It's less obvious to me, but I'll take a view from the outside.

Why do people have to suck on Facebook? Why do they have to post pictures of stuff they buy? And talk about their wine-tasting classes? And post endless pictures of their babies' daily milestones? And update everyone about their minor health problems? And PLATITUDES... in the form of pictures. Without irony. What. It's a forum made for passive-aggression. And self-everything.

Ugh

riled up

From the WSJ:

For the last 15 years he has conducted surveys every six months on how strongly local residents identify as Hong Kong citizens, Chinese citizens, and other permutations. 

In December, the Hong Kong citizens score hit a 10-year high, while the Chinese citizens score fell to a 12-year low—almost certainly as a result of vote-rigging in the District Council elections, which local media have tied to the Communist Party's underground organization in in the territory.

A few years ago, I was asked by a suspected Communist Party member to vote for the pro-China party in the District Council elections, and he also wanted me to ask my family members to do the same. I told him to go fuck himself. OK, I didn't. I just smiled and turned to the person next to me and said, "I think that's illegal."

The most pathetic thing about the D&G hullaballoo is...

NO ONE SHOPS AT D&G ANYMORE ANYWAY.

D&G, FACE IT, IT'S NOT THE 90s ANYMORE. WE KNOW YOU WERE/ARE ONLY CATERING TO THOSE WHO DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER.

I hate the world today

(and channeling Meredith Brooks)

Makes me want to do this:

Kim Jong Il died

And in between writing captions and uploading files, all I want to do is look at this awesome and hilarious blog:
http://themiddlestsister.com/

Is this an only-in-HK thing?

This is one reason I hate when it rains on weekdays:

The color coordination is appreciated, but ... how is this OK?? It's a workplace. Also, umbrellas take like 7 minutes to dry, when semi-closed, yet lay wide open all over the floor for hours. Conclusion, I really really hate it when people do this.

I'm not sure this warranted a whole story in SCMP

Which makes it kind of... funny?

Police are conducting an internal probe into allegations that five officers - including the station sergeant - cooked a hotpot meal for themselves in Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station during an overnight shift this month. 

Alfred Ma Wai-luk, director of police personnel and training, said such behaviour, if proven, was a breach of discipline.

Full story here

Uh, NO.

This from Time.com:

In the week since Wang Yue, the two-year-old girl better known as Yue Yue, was hit by not one but two vans, then ignored by 18 people before finally being rescued by a scrap picker, the Chinese public has agonized over how such a thing could happen, how the suffering of a helpless innocent could be ignored by so many. Several explanations have emerged, ranging from fears of legal liability to a belief that economic reforms have led to a decline in the sort of selfless behavior promoted in under Mao.

This is exactly why I have a fear of getting hurt, sick or attacked in China. People won't help you; actually they might mug you while you're down. Maoism did not result in any selfless behavior for such a thing to be in decline. Maoism made people scramble for themselves, lest they end up with ... scraps.

re: a job

Me: It'd be writing about all the stuff I'm into, like sustainability...
M: And shopping.
Me: Hey shut up! Like sustainability, medicine and science.

Nothing!

Nothing gives me a worse first impression of someone than: lots of makeup

And that's the thing, she concludes.

And that's the thing, she concludes. Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" worked on an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower.

-Empire Falls

 

Hate is a strong word

I feel juvenile laughing out loud at this blog. But I really couldn't agree more with these two posts:

http://ihatehongkong2.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/sick-as-a-dog/

In more backward parts of the world, lazy workers are allowed ridiculous leeway by crazy employers who allow multiple instances of having a day off work that don’t involve a trip to the doctor to fetch a note. Employers with this kind of hippy mentality are asking for trouble. How could someone who is sick for a day notgo to see the doctor on that day? There would be something very, very fishy about that…more fishy than a Sai Kung fish butcher. In Hong Kong when you are sick, you must get up and get outside and get to the doctor. It doesn’t matter at all if you end up having to wait hours to see a doctor or that appointment times seem to be as flexible as everything else in Hong Kong is inflexible…or that in going to the doctor you are ultimately doing everything you set out not to do that day…commuting, lining up, waiting, being pushed, yelled at, listening to people eating MacDonald’s in the waiting room…just generally being assaulted by all those aspects of Hong Kong culture you sought to avoid. Anyway…you got pills coming…and pills make it better.

http://ihatehongkong2.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/work-hard-play-hard/

“Work hard play hard” is a pathetic excuse that blankets a justification over everything that people don’t want to really think about. It’s a catch-phrase that paints over a lot of cracks. ‘We can take our six allotted holiday days a year from our shit job where we’re under the microscope of pitilessly cold and heartless supervisors…we can work overtime without warning for no extra pay, undergo appraisals by power drunk morons one rung higher on the ladder than us, ride on dizzyingly overcrowded public transport seven days a week…and feel ok because…we can play hard after our work is done!!‘

So, what do they do when they have a chance to ‘play’? Fuck all that’s good. Their favourite activities, I’ve come to learn, are eating and buying shit. Pretty much the same as the rest of the world I suppose…but hey…this site is for complaining about Hong stinky Kong. I suppose they can’t help it – every slogan, ad campaign, TV show and even the education system itself indoctrinates Hong Kong people to value their environment as one where you can shop for and eat anything. That’s what Hong Kong is – one big gaudy shopping mall riddled with bistros.