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We moved to our new place in North Point in part to get away from the noise. We loved our old apartment, but it was right below a bus stop and the buses in Hong Kong use bigass Pratt and Whitney jet engines for their get-up-and-go. Plus we could hear the "you can walk now" chattering the crosswalks make here on the street below. Finally, for the year we lived there a construction crew blasted away at the street around the corner from us. They never seemed to make any progress, leading us to think they spent months just going up and down the street pounding away at the pavement.

Our new place is quiet. Very, very quiet. It's up a steep hill from the bustling neighborhood, Our apartment faces the sheer side of the mountain, with nothing looking back at us but a usually empty Buddhist shrine that we've told has been closed. So our view, once the grand sweep of the city, now is rocks, vines and Buddhist swastikas. Not too shabby.

But it was only a matter of time. The work crews found us.

We're still not sure what they were doing, but they showed up at the base of the sheer rock face, somehow found purchase, hoisted themselves up and began jackhammering. Dr. No would call me at work and not say anything, just let the sounds of construction fill my earpiece. It was loud.

I suggested Dr. No take her camera to the roof and publicly film them. Might not stop them, but it would make them very nervous. Unfortunately after the first day they were out of camera sight from the roof.

What I ended up doing is walking around the front of our big window naked. Somebody pointed out to me once that men don't care, that the subculture of people who take surreptitious pictures of naked men and put them online is vastly smaller than the population of peeping Toms who shoot women. I never really thought about it myself until it occurred to us that what these guys deserved was the full Guapo, coffee mug in hand, slapping his bare belly and ruffling its downy coat.

We haven't seen them for a few days. If they return, the Guapo awaits.

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i don't recall when i first noticed it, but i was taking the N into work one day when i saw these strips of light outside in the tunnel and i couldn't figure out what they were. now that i've moved, i'm taking the B or the Q and i get to enjoy the the masstransiscope in all its glory:

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clicking through the related links on youtube can help you learn a lot. for example, until a couple minutes ago, i always thought tell that girl to shut up was a transvision vamp song until i saw this under the related links. that led me to this duet:

(if you want to know modern music that i'm listening to, i like kid cudi. i don't know how i feel about this song, though. the female vocals are by lady gaga.

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on a whim, i youtubed the damned's in dulce decorum. i never watched miami vice, but now i wish i had.

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recently, i signed up for an intro ballet course at the mark morris dance group. this will most likely come as a surprise to all of you, but i've discovered that i'm not very coordinated. you may also likely be surprised by the fact that i'm the only man in the class.

this results in a lot of situations where the teacher (the ballerina in the video above) says things like, "ok, for the placement of the hands, imagine that they're at the edge of your tutu," then looks at me, realizes what she's just said, and adds, "...or something." i'm so margininalized that i don't even get real examples. it's interesting being in an environment where man is the second sex.

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Long underwear

Tube socks

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I came across my first Toynbee tile recently at the intersection of Lafayette and Kenmare.

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We don't get much of it here. Hong Kong's not really a music city, though there are some great songs about it.

Most of it sounds like this:

So we quickly learn to appreciate lovable scuzzballs like DP. It's a drum-and-bass two-piece manned by a couple of hairy, chunky guys. Clearly I can relate.

I saw them last night for the second time, on a bill with the lineup-shifting Sea Monsters, who are just plain weird. This video below doesn't do their odd instrumental prog-rock justice:

We need more bands to follow after the death of the late-but-loved El Destroyo.

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