Blocking Websites

This post is directed to all budding entrepreneurs, current business owners and anyone else who as the technical knowledge and/or power to block websites at the workplace. I'll keep this short, because there are no accompanying pictures (all websites blocked).

Now, I'm not talking about blocking websites with questionable content -- I'm talking about Gmail, Hotmail, Evite and any other website that extends my social interaction with white (or similar) people beyond the familial glance on the escalator. The company I work for has some policy that prevents me from accessing practically any website worth going to (gmail, hotmail, evite, gawker, perezhilton). I'm so irritated. How am I suppose to feel connected to my former life?

I can't email people at work using my personal email, so if I want to email someone I have to either wait until get home from work (because after 9 hours of looking at a computer, I just can't wait for more) or I have to use my work email address. Why do they do this? It's so annoying. I actually think I work less because I can't access those sites. I spend more time trying to figure out ways to get around them than if I just could go to my email sites and write to people.

So a word to the bosses out there --- just let the internet be free.

Also, nothing really exciting is happening here in Hong Kong (or nothing that I can tell). I'm heading to LA on Saturday and John is going to Vietnam on Friday, so maybe there will be something to talk about after that, but for the time being we're pretty boring.

I know I said I wouldn't post pictures, but I couldn't resist --- this is how I feel

Century Eggs

Ok, so we're getting better at posting more about Hong Kong. Katie has had a couple of posts recently, so now I figured I'd write about some of the food here, this one focusing on the bizarre and disgusting.

This brings me to the Century Egg. The first time I heard about this crazy food was at a dinner with my manager from Japan and another co-worker who is a Hong Kong native. We were at an authentic Chinese Restaurant, and before we ordered they brought out 2 eggs cut in half that looked hard boiled, except for the minor detail that the were BLACK! The yolk was a dark, opaque black and the egg "white" was a transparent shiny black. At this point, both my colleagues sang the praises of the century egg, how delicious the were, how they had such unique taste, etc. It was all love for century egg.

Now I'm all for trying new foods. Since moving here, I've had chicken feet, cuttle fish balls (this is cuttle fish rolled into balls, not actual fish balls), frog legs, abalone, and more things that I can't remember at the moment. I try to keep an open mind about this stuff and have even grown to like some of it. But now on to the century egg.

IT WAS GOD AWFUL.

It tasted like eating a rotten egg with an aftertaste of ass. Sitting with my two local colleagues, talking up this delicacy while I sat there with a sick look on my face. It was one of those moments where I really wondered what I was doing in Asia. Whatever happened to having a work dinner at a steakhouse? You know, when you're excited to go on a "work" meal because you can try a new place or go somewhere you wouldn't go on your own (in a good way). Upon further questioning on this bizarre food, I learned that regular eggs are buried under ground for decades? in some sort of clay pots.

When I got home that night and talked to Katie about it, we started raising all these questions that I still don't know the answer to: How was this food discovered in the first place? Who found a 40 year old egg with dirt all over it, opened it up, saw it was black, and said "yeah, gimme some of that!", Who buries the eggs knowing that they likely won't be around when the eggs are "ready"? How do they remember where they put them? How does anyone think it tastes good?

The following weekend, while walking around with Mitch and Erin (our cousins on Katie's side) at a wet market (see the pics from the Crabby Katie to get an idea of what a wet market looks like) I saw an older chinese guy selling a huge basket of century eggs. Ever since that dinner I had been talking about them incessantly so I was determined to show Katie, Mitch, and Erin exactly what I had been talking about.

So I gave the older Chinese guy my 2 Hong Kong Dollars (about 25 cents) and grabbed a century egg. Throughout the post are the pictures of me taking the thing apart.

By far the highlight of the demonstration was when I squeezed the egg and some black sludge shit came spurting out.

Yum yum, gimme some!

Remember when the yolk was the best part?

Here is the black sludge shit on the sidewalk, where we left it for someone to step in or for some random dog to lick up.

Nothing like some streakers to make sports more interesting

This past weekend was one of the most popular sporting events/drinking parties in Hong Kong - the Rugby Sevens. The Sevens is a weekend tournament of rugby games where the teams play 7 on 7 and in 7 minute halfs. Now, this is another area where I don't know much about the history or the rules - but I do know that it lasts all weekend, that New Zealand is really good, the US is not so good (I think they're still better than Canada), and there were STREAKERS! Nothing adds excitement to an event where you don't really have an interest in who wins or loses like some middle-aged, out of shape drunkards running across a field into the hands of authorities.


Aside to the streakers, it is also tradition to attend the game dressed in costume. We saw a huge group of guys dressed as the Harlem Globetrotters, the Dallas Cowboys (in full pads), Superman, and pretty much anything else you could think of. Here are some pictures of the people dressed up

We were lucky enough to be at the Rugby Sevens with my cousin Mitch and his wife Erin who were visiting from Chicago. We had an absolute blast with them here. Below are some pictures of all of us, Hong Kong Stadium, and John dancing with these chicks in ill-fitting costume with eye-balls as heads.

Oh yeah -- in case anyone was wondering...New Zealand won the tournament.