Foxymoron

The Macau trip

Visiting Macau was one of the things on my "Things To Do Before I leave Asia" list so I was happy to take the ferry trip to Hong Kong's western neighbour yesterday. The city is best known for its casinos and with new investors from overseas, it is rapidly growing into its title as the "Las Vegas of Asia."

Most Hong Kongers will tell you there's  not much to do in Macau ("Oh Moon" in Cantonese) outside of gambling, eating and visiting prostitutes. I was only interested in eating and eat we did!

Lunch at Seng Chong: crab congee and banana pepper salt fried fresh shrimp. Dinner at Fernando's: roasted chicken with salad (and red wine and sangria). We also managed to try some durian ice cream in between. Durian is the infamous smelly fruit that many love to hate or hate to love. I thought I fell under the latter category, but it turns out I'm of the former group.

I wish it didn't me more than year to visit Macau because it's a good place to go for a relaxing time away from the more chaotic Hong Kong. As usual, I enjoyed the cultural mix in food and street-level culture. Mmm food...

Hungry Heart

I want to go to bed, but I couldn't do that without telling you about Sonya Thomas. Perhaps you already know her as the "Black Widow" champion eater, but I just witnessed her eat more than 11 lbs. of lobster in 12 minutes on television. It's old footage from August, but she beat out dudes two, three, even four times her size as she's only 100 lbs. Turns out she has broken a number of world records for eating. As of last month, her favourite records are:

a. Acme Oysters: 46 dozen (552) in 10 minutes.
b. Hard-Boiled Eggs: (1) 65 in 6' 40 seconds. (2) 52 in 5 minutes.
c. Downtown Atlantic Cheesecake: 11 pounds in 9 minutes.
d. Maine Lobsters: 11.4 pounds of Lobster meat (44 soft shell lobsters) in 12 minutes.
e. Buffalo Wings: 162 (5.09 pounds) in 12 minutes.
f. 84 Lumber Baked Beans: 8.4 pounds in 2' 47 seconds.
g. Zocalo's Tacos (Soft-shell Chickem): 48 in 11 minutes.
h. Cheese Quaesadillas: 31 1/2 (four-inch size) in 5 minutes.
i. Phillips Seafood 3-oz Crab Cakes: 46 in 10 minutes.
j. Lulu's Crawfish Jambalaya: 9 pounds in 10 minutes.

I'm not sure how I feel about eating competitions in general but admit I am captivated by this woman and this so-called sport. First, I envy her metabolism (but I don't jog for two hours/day) and second, there's something fascinating about people eating as much and as fast as they can. It's like a car crash: it's sick but I can't look away. Then again, I've been gluttonous so who am I to judge?

Bloc Party - Like Eating Glass

Jason Mraz - Too Much Food

Arrested Development - Give A Man A Fish

The Greatest Love of All

I've been experimenting with a food blog this week. Since Mom's been here, we've been eating out a lot (and even when she's not,) and since many folks back home want to know about food you can find some of my experiences at new blog Bites By Bytes. Reading what I've eaten in the past week is also a good way to motivate me to go to the gym. Feedback welcome.

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.