We weren’t exactly ambitious about this. It was a bit cold, Leah’s back was twinging and the idea of pitching ourselves into an enormous crowd when dealing with crowds is everyday life here … well, that held little appeal. We were not going to make an effort to get to the local version of Times […]

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If I’m picking up on this correctly, from the other side of the ocean, 2008 can’t be over fast enough for a lot (most all?) of people. “People” meaning Americans. Or at least English-speakers. Like, everyone is all fixated on this “economy” thing … Letting it get them down. Hey, 2008 wasn’t that bad. Take […]

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Apparently, no one in Asia cares about college football except me. And a few other cranks from America. We have reached a point in the year where the rest of the world is generating almost zero live sports. Pretty much everything is shut down. Making this, of course, a perfect time to show some college […]

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Maybe this applies to all of China. All of east Asia. I don’t know. But I can speak for Hong Kong Island, and here, everyone goes to lunch at the same time. And I mean everyone. From 1-2 p.m. No one starts before 1. No one finishes after 2. Entire sets of logistics are set […]

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Hong Kong is a tight spot. Have I mentioned that? Oh, a hundred times or so? People on top of people. Something like 6.8 million people in the territory of Hong Kong, and something like 1.2 million of them living cheek by jowl in a stunningly narrow band of land on the northern edge of […]

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Three months in, I had done most of the “you gotta go see/do this if you’re a tourist” things in Hong Kong. Dim sum at Maxim’s, Lan Kwai Fong at 1 a.m., the tram to Victoria Peak, the tunnel to Repulse Bay and Stanley, high tea at the Peninsula Hotel, the laser light show over […]

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It’s already Dec. 26 here in Asia. In Hong Kong, it is Boxing Day, a holiday the Hongkongers picked up from the British. Mostly, it’s just an excuse for a semi-serious public holiday and a chance to do more shopping, as if not enough of that goes on around here. But it is a real […]

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Perhaps the subtitle, or even the title, should be “What I did for Christmas, in Hong Kong …” The International Herald Tribune doesn’t publish on Christmas Day, which means that the whole newsroom was off on Christmas Eve. I always have preferred to be off on Christmas Eve. Working, in exchange, on Christmas Day for […]

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I almost didn’t go to the little party on Sunday night. I was caught up editing a story that came in late, a soccer column that required close attention and lots of fact-checking and the insertion of accent symbols in Spanish and French names and, well, by the time I was finished it was an […]

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I believe many Americans are puzzled as to why the National Football League isn’t embraced by the rest of the planet. That is,  when Americans consider the rest of the planet, which we don’t do as often as we should. Well, after three months of seeing lots of soccer and rugby … I can confirm […]

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