Go Fish!

I'm listening to Birth of the Cool with a glass of cold Ovaltine before bed. It's a nice ending to a mostly good evening. After a good day of working on a feature for Monday's paper, Ada introduced me to a good Japanese restaurant in Prince Edward. We ate grilled saba, soft shell crab and avocado roll, a variety of sushi, udon noodles and grilled ox tongue in between sips of hot Japanese green tea. We ordered too much but it was delicious. Our conversation paused for a couple minutes when we were distracted by another couple's dish. There was a freshly killed fish flopping on the table sporadically. It's one thing to see a flopping fish at the supermarket. It's another to see it on a plate with a wooden skewer through it, flopping every 10 seconds. It was dead, it just didn't know it yet.

I came home, determined to do some online banking. But no. I'm trying not to be bitter about the customer diservice lines of HSBC. I stayed in the phone queue because the automated voice kept apologizing for the wait every minute and promised that the customer service agent would be with me soon. Ten minutes later, she suddenly changed her mind. "I'm sorry our customer service agent cannot help you at this time. Please call back later," she says. Click. Ten minutes of my life. Gone.

Earlier today, while on hold with one of the local universities awaiting an interview, I listened to "Let It Be" — in mono. For some very odd reason, 99% of all "on hold" music in Hong Kong is a monotonous ringtone. I must admit, "Let It Be" is the best one so far. Ealier this week I got "Jingle Bells" and usually it's just a random, unrecognizable melody. Nothing, however, nothing at all, beats my new doorbell, which is an album of very loud mono doorbell rings. Yesterday, while on iChat with Chelle, we hear three diffferent songs played on my doorbell including something I believe was "Frere a Jacqua."

Anyway, I got 80% of my Christmas shopping done yesterday. I bought seven T-shirts for myself. I'm embarassed to admit it, but hell, they were on sale at Threadless and I'm weak in the presence of shirts with cartoons on them.