Far East Cynic

Finally got to Hong Kong. Flight sucked, service on United Airlines in coach was lousy as usual. Still, at least they are not charging for drinks like they do on American. However the looks you get when you ask for a drink after the dinner service is done, really diminishes

Just a quick note, getting to ready for a weekend on the road in Hong Kong…going to try posting to the blog from Victoria Peak if the wireless arrangement on my laptop works! Lots to talk about, not time to say it. Did watch NHK this morning and they showed

U.S. Catholics are not going to be happy I think. Turning their back on the “Social Justice” Cardinals, the College of Cardinals selected a man rumored to be a Vatican hard liner. While the conventional wisdom is that Cardinal Ratzinger was elected because he will be an “interim pope” (

This blogging thing is kind of like getting drunk in Tokyo, you never know what new and interesting bar you are going to stumble into; or how much it is going to cost to drink there. After getting slammed (good naturedly) by CDR Salamander during a discussion of who was

I watched a CNN report tonight about the Papal selection process. They gave what I thought was a pretty good report , revealing that the next pope will come from one of three camps: 1) Social Justice Cardinals, e.g. those who are concerned about the ever increasing gap between the

Stumbled in from playing golf with Harumi yesterday evening, to turn on NHK and get the latest tally on the “impassioned student” demonstrations in China. Seems now that there were demonstrations in Tianjin, Shanghai, two northern cities that I cannot make out the names of ( This was based on

Harumi gets the Japanese papers since despite her very excellent command of the English Language, she still prefers to A) watch TV in Japanese ( which is painful for me since Japanese TV is BORING!) and B) read about world events in her native language ( a perfectly understandable sentiment…).

Work has kept me on the go the last couple of days as well as having to have a physical exam as is required by my employer. As I am not quite the young stud I once was, I had to undergo all the of the exams to make sure

In case anyone missed it, there were some big riots in Beijing this past week against Japan and Japanese things. A large crowd of “spontaneous” protestors attacked the Japanese embassy in Beijing. According to Simon at “Simon’s World” : “The Government has already put a clamp on official media reports,