Real Brunch Parties Arrive in HK
Real brunch parties, and we’re talking genuine fiestas, have finally arrived in HK. It all started when Avni Jhunjhnuwala went to NY to celebrate her little sister’s 21st, NY brunch style. Being a Hong Konger she was well aware of the city’s love of brunch and decided to take it up a notch on her return. There won’t be a pushchair in sight. Instead there’ll be a DJ and Robobabes trying to eat bruschetta while dancing sexily - an impossible task. Plus, we’ve got a table of 6 to give away.
HK Though an Expat's Eyes
We don’t normally write about something that’s cool and free - that’s a pretty tall order in Hong Kong. Even fornication, god’s great free gift to man, comes at a price here. Men are forced to prowl from SoHo to LKF, filling the coffers of bar owners as they search for a carnal outlet. If there weren’t the moral turpitude associated with prostitution then guys would simply cut their losses and head to Wan Chai. So, it's quite the result that we’ve found something free and fun - Cantonese memes of Expattery.
Baggage handlers at Fiumicino airport in Rome were given a shock by the appearance of a rather unusual item on the screen of their X-ray machine recently. It was the figure of a man (pictured), complete with internal organs on partial display. And no, he wasn't dead, just a drunken Norwegian who had climbed over an empty check-in desk onto the baggage conveyor belt (as you do), where he fell asleep.
When the operator of another check-in desk started the conveyor belt, the snoozing man was taken on a 15-minute tour of the system before passing through the X-ray machine where he was spotted and the police were called. The police, who struggled to wake the man, have denied that his journey indicates the presence of flaws in the airport’s security system.
Learn Wing Chun from Ip Man’s Maestro
Wing Chun is the martial art made famous by Ip Man and now you can learn from one of his tutees at Pangea. Ip Man actually had four in-house students, three of whom have passed away but one remains, 79-year-old Grandmaster Chu Shong Ti. Diagnosed with terminal liver cancer two and half years ago, he was given eight months to live but rejected western medicine and continued to practise. The cancer has since shrunk dramatically - astounding doctors - and he still trains the masters from Pangea every week while also offering valuable seminars. We think he might be the Fifth Element.
Iconic Car Reborn in a Bike
Every man loves a Delorean - even the name sends a tingle to your nether regions - and now the iconic car manufacturer has produced a bicycle bearing its hallowed name. Sure, a bicycle doesn’t have quite the same ring as a flying time machine, but it's still pretty cool. Buy one of these and you go from being a limp-wristed cyclist who can't (or won't) buy a car and turn yourself into a Delorean crusader. That’s a world of difference.
Warm Shoestring is a project where shoelaces are made from a specialized fire-resistant material that can plug into an adapter. The adapter regulates the temperature while the strings warm up the shoes. A great idea if you have to live through the bitter North Korean winter.
Massive Savings on Top Bordeaux
Laithwaites Wine has been in the business for decades and the company is offering NecesCity readers a discount of over 50% on some top Bordeaux. In fact, they're selling a 12-bottle case of Gold-medal winning Bordeaux for HK$999 - that's HK$1,049 below the list price. Just imagine the next time you have the gents round. They'll be applauding your choice of wines (it's a serious matter of pride at any dinner party) while you lap up the applause and hide the receipts.
Early Evening Tours
Ask a Hong Konger what the city is all about and more often than not they'll talk about the sea. It goes without saying that we love junking and watersports, but one of the best things to do on the water in HK is squid fishing. There are a variety of companies offering early evening expeditions to Lamma or Junk Bay where you'll reel in squid by the bucket load. Wash off the petrol and general pollution and you've got yourself a squiddy dinner sourced from your own back yard.
A cancer victim used his own obituary to confess a litany of sins to friends and colleagues, including that he never really earned a PhD. Val Patterson, 59, came clean in an honest retrospect of his life in which he also apologised for minor crimes including stealing a hotel safe.
His self-penned mea culpa was printed, complete with grammatical errors, in the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper in Utah after his death.
Mr Patterson worked initially as a mechanic and went on to become an inventor of products including a type of windmill, and computer software.
He wrote that his PhD from the University of Utah had actually been a paperwork error, and he didn't even complete his undergraduate degree.
In his obituary he said: "I really am NOT a PhD. What happened was that the day I went to pay off my college student loan, the girl working there put my receipt into the wrong stack, and two weeks later a PhD diploma came in the mail.
"I didn't even graduate. In fact, I never did even learn what the letters 'PhD' even stood for. For all the electronic engineers I have worked with, I'm sorry, but you have to admit my designs always worked very well."
Mr Patterson went on to confess: "As it turns out, I AM the guy who stole the safe from the Motor View Drive Inn back in June, 1971. I could have left that unsaid, but I wanted to get it off my chest," He also admitted to kicking rocks into the Old Faithful geyser at Yellowstone National Park, and to being "banned for life" from Disneyland and Sea World in San Diego following youthful high jinks.
After Mr Patterson died of throat cancer on July 10 his obituary was posted on the website of Starks Funeral Home in Utah and those who read it disseminated it across the world on the internet.
One comment on the funeral website read: "This is the best obituary I've ever read."
Mr Patterson's wife of 33 years, Mary Jane, confirmed that the events he confessed to were true.
She added: "He wanted to set a new standard on how obituaries should be written."
More than 40 poles have been bent, buckled or broken in the past 18 months in one area of south Auckland, New Zealand, it is claimed.
The signs, bearing legally required notices such as parking restrictions, are thought to have cost ratepayers thousands of dollars to replace.
"Prostitutes use these street sign poles as dancing poles," said Donna Lee, an elected member of the city council's Otara-Papatoetoe Local Board.
"The poles are part of their soliciting equipment and they often snap them. Some of the prostitutes are big, strong people."
The revelation emerged as the community board published a tell-all booklet detailing frustrations of residents and businesses struggling to cope with the rampant sex trade on their doorstep.
Part of the area Ms Lee represents is Hunter's Corner, which has become notorious as a meeting place for prostitutes and their customers.
Bernie Taylor, a local resident, said: "We had a parcel delivered to us recently and the address was 'Hooker's Corner' and it found its way to us with no problems whatsoever."
Locals turned out with placards to welcome publication of the community board's report, which calls on parliament in Wellington to give Auckland Council powers to ban sex workers from certain areas of the city.
The report outlines other street incidents, including an angry clash in which it says a transvestite rammed a supermarket trolley into a woman's car before lying across the bonnet, and a school-bus full of children observing a transvestite changing her dress.
John McCracken, the board's chairman, said: "We are beyond moral outrage.
"We just ask for some reasonable control of this industry."
But the Prostitutes Collective warned that outlawing popular streets would encourage sex workers to stop carrying condoms in case they are questioned by police.
Co-ordinator Annah Pickering told Television New Zealand: "They'll be expected to pay a fine, which they can't pay.
"They'll go to court, then they have to come back on to the streets and work to pay them off."
New Zealand has some of the most liberal prostitution laws in the world after the sex trade was decriminalised by the previous Labour government in 2003.
HK Video Game with All Star Cast
Sleeping Dogs is a newly released video game for PlayStation and Xbox that's set in Hong Kong and features an all-star Hollywood cast. Key voice-overs come from the likes of Lucy Liu, Emma Stone, Tom Wilkinson and Edison Chan which just goes to show how lucrative gaming has become. The fact is we live in a gamer's world - last year, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 took $775 million in five days. It must be turning the school playground hierarchy upside down.
Men Only Fitness & Massage Specialist
Inspire for Men is one of the few male enclaves in Hong Kong where guys can workout or have a rub down without worrying about looking like a bloated pumpkin. The men-only facility is carefree simply because there aren’t any women to impress. Appearances are about one thing and one thing only (Darwin framed it slightly more elegantly) but at Inspire for Men you can keep your torso under wraps until it’s ready for its HK debut.
Showcase: Eternal Realm of China’s First Emperor
The world renowned Terracotta Army has arrived in Hong Kong, albeit a small selection rather than the whole. In town until November 26, the archaeological gems are mesmerising, partly because the first Emperor (who commissioned them) was such a nutter. A case in point, many of the 700,000 people who built his tomb were locked into the mausoleum upon his death to spend eternity with his fake army. It can’t have been the end of project bonus they were expecting.
Ayers Rock Luxury Tented Hotel
If you're heading to the Australian outback to explore Uluru (otherwise known as Ayers Rock) you could do worse than staying at Longitude 131°, a high-end retreat consisting of 15 tents. The setting is ridiculous. Red and raw, the hotel lies on the edge of the dual World Heritage site with unbroken views of the iconic slab of rock. It's certainly not the type of place to go sleep walking. You'll be dingo meat.
Private Kitchen/Catering/Cooking Classes
Culinart recently opened in Aberdeen, a food specialist that offers private dining, catering, cooking classes and team building. Created by Chef Stanley Wong, who’s served the likes of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise (Scientologists still have to eat) the business is run out of a studio that mixes homeliness with top tier dining. Like Heston feeding people out of a manger.
Dutch Cheese & Wine Shop Opens in HK
The Dutch Cheese & More has just opened at 232 Queen’s Rd. Central, a shop dedicated to Dutch cheese, wine (from South Africa) and accessories. To be honest, we didn’t know much cheese came out of Holland apart from Gouda (and judging by their products we weren’t wide of the mark) but we loved everything we tried. If only they had a shop assistant modelled on Goldmember – it’s hard to be believe that accent exists.
Argentina-based publisher Eterna Cadencia has released El Libro que No Puede Esperar – which translates as ‘The Book that Cannot Wait’ – an anthology of new fiction printed in ink that disappears after two months of opening the book.
Silk-screened using a special ink, the book comes sealed in air-tight packaging that, once opened, allows the printed material to react with the atmosphere. The result is that after two months, the text vanishes. With much discussion currently centering on portable electronic readers and e-books, deemed to be bringing about the death of the physical novel, the creators aimed to add a bit of magic to the anthology, as well as encourage buyers to actually read it once they’ve received it instead of leaving it in their ‘to do’ pile.
As the authors inside are all previously unpublished, the concept, developed with help from ad agency Draftfcb, acts as a way to ensure that readers engage with as much of the material as possible while they have the chance.
Print Your Memories onto Canvas
RobotPrintr is a Hong Kong company that prints your digital photos onto canvas and we’ve got a few to give away. You’ve probably come across similar businesses before but this one’s based in our city, plus we’re a fan of the wider concept. The fact is we take more photos than ever before but unless you enjoy slideshows or celebrating how great your life is on Facebook, there’s no way to share them. And think of poor old Kodak.
HBO and the Game of Thrones producers have apologized for comments made on the season one DVD about a prosthetic head that looks suspiciously like America’s 43rd President.
In the commentary, show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss admit that George W. Bush’s likeness appears in a scene in which King Joffrey shows Sansa Stark her dead dad’s head on a stick. (Check it out on io9.com). The alleged Dubya noggin is the last one on the left — and he’s sporting some pretty bad hair.
“It’s not a choice, not a political statement!” one of the writers say during the commentary. “We just had to use what heads we had around.”
Once news of the Bush head hit the internet, HBO released this statement: “We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.”
The producing duo released their own, too: “We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush. In the DVD commentary, we mentioned this, though we should not have. We meant no disrespect to the former President and apologize if anything we said or did suggested otherwise.”
On the DVD, one of the writers claims that the Bush head appears in a “couple of beheading scenes.”
SexyMandarin.com – whose motto is, "Learning Mandarin in an unconventional way" – has become a runaway internet hit since launching last December, posting online lessons that owe more to Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley than Oxbridge.
The course's first lesson – entitled 'What time is it?' – is conducted by two lingerie-wearing models who make pillow talk while grappling with each other on a bed. So far the lesson has received over 300,000 hits.
Lesson 3 takes on cooking vocabulary and shows a model sucking suggestively on a lime. Another class features female 'tutors' cleaning a black London cab with foamy sponges.
Would-be teachers are asked to submit a full-body photo, as well as any relevant modelling or teaching experience. A touch of gravitas comes from "Mr Fung", a bespectacled cartoon schoolmaster who moderates classes.
Kaoru Kikuchi, the University of Nottingham architecture graduate behind the site, said the project aimed to make Mandarin more accessible.
"If you go the textbook way with all these Chinese characters it just makes you intimidated," said the Toyko-born model and designer. "If you start with the colloquial way … or sexy clips it is a different story."
Mick Gleissner, the Hong Kong-based filmmaker who produces the videos, said he hoped to inspire foreigners facing "the Herculean task of learning Chinese."
"Chinese is intimidating. You look at the characters, the strange melody of sounds. And then you watch a video like this and it's kind of ridiculous but it's also fun," said Gleissner, originally from Regensburg, Germany.
"The fun aspect I think is what is very much missing in the existing approaches to language education."
"If you want to learn to play the piano and you try to play Chopin of course you are going to give up. But if you see a kid trying to play kid's songs … you'll say, 'Hey that's kind of easy and fun.'"
The official language of the People's Republic of China, Mandarin, or Putonghua, is said to have nearly 900m native speakers and up to 1.4bn speakers worldwide. China's ongoing economic boom means it is studied in an increasing number of classrooms across the globe.
"I was blown away when I visited some of my friends in LA and found that their kids are learning Mandarin. It's a cool language because China is now becoming cool," said Mr Gleissner.
Since 2004 Beijing has been promoting Chinese language and culture overseas, building a global network of over 350 Confucius Institutes. In 2009 Xu Lin, head of the Confucius Institute Headquarters told Reuters around 40m foreigners were learning Chinese.
But Xu expressed frustration at how tuition and learning levels remained "very weak" compared to English, French or Spanish.
Users of Youku, China's answer to YouTube, joked that SexyMandarin.com might help change this. "The Americans are so happy learning Chinese," beamed one, using the name Guo Shibo. "We would not go through so much pain if we learnt English the same way."
A user on the video website Ku6 wrote: "So eye-catching and heart-throbbing. No wonder they can learn it well!"
Others are less impressed. Annie Chan, chairwoman of Hong Kong's Association for the Advancement of Feminism, told one newspaper SexyMandarin.com "exoticised" Chinese women.
Sue-Mei Thompson, executive director of Hong Kong’s Women’s Foundation, told the China Daily newspaper her group was “vehemently opposed to gender stereotyping, especially anything that objectifies women as sex objects”. “Sexy Mandarin looks oddly dated,” she added.
Wu Yue, a teacher from Beijing's Mandarin Connection school, said the site's teaching-style was "just about calling attention".
"It is very entertaining, and might be good for marketing and promotion, but [it is] not good for serious language learning," she said. "Students would get easily distracted during a class featuring sexual content."
Mr Gleissner said the website's "viral" success was a sign that global attentions were shifting east.
"When I grew up … the thing that was your goal if you got rich and successful [was that] you could move to the US. Not so anymore. If you talk to young people today they say, 'Forget the US, there's China, there's India, there are all these emerging markets.'"
