They have sports channels over here, in Hong Kong. You get the basic cable package, and you get a half-dozen channels. Star Sports, Eurosport, a couple of channels labeled ESPN. But college football? Nope. Not live. Never. Not in the nearly two months I’ve been here and not seen this or that college football Game […]

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On other excursions out of the States, I have been vaguely aware of a condition I call “language fatigue.” It comes from struggling to understand another language. One you don’t speak. Hearing it, reading it, trying to make sense of it. At least the basics. Often, I didn’t really notice it until I got on […]

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Supermarkets? Not in this town. You have tiny markets. And tinier markets. Selling small portions of stuff. And smaller. For anyone used to the basic SoCal mega-market (never mind the massive portions of a Costco) … shopping in Hong Kong is to feel like Godzilla going to the store in Tokyo. Everything is bitsy. I […]

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My first month commuting, in Hong Kong, I just rode the subway and walked. Simple. But that was when I was staying a few steps or a few blocks from the MTR/metro/subway. Now that I am in Mid-Levels … getting to the office in North Point is a longer and trickier proposition. Because getting to […]

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I’ve been in a lot of high-rise buildings, here in Hong Kong. Twenty, at the least. Thirty, more likely. And I have yet to see a floor numbered 4. Or, for that matter, a floor numbered 14, 24 or 34. Not a single floor with the number four attached to it. This, apparently, is because […]

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This will haunt me for a while. But it’s not about me. It’s about the pathetic people I have seen the last week or two. Last night, in particular.

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This is my first fall away from professional sports journalism since 1975. And even in 1975, I was covering sports at Long Beach State. That is, I was doing sports for 33 consecutive fall seasons. And the really weird thing is … I don’t much miss it.

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Anyone who travels knows that dealing with money in another country is a tricky business. Trying to figure out what is a good price and what is bad, by U.S. standards, doing conversion rates in your head. That’s challenge enough. Then there’s the physical reality of someone else’s money. Size, shape, weight … dealing with […]

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I had the day off, so we had to do somebloodything other than sit in the apartment and watch last year’s American TV on cable. So, we went for a walk down Caine Street, to the end, where it runs into the Hong Kong Botanical and Zoological Gardens. And we looked around there a bit, […]

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Leaving the Mid-Levels neighborhood of Hong Kong is easy. It’s basically a controlled fall. To get to the nearest MTR (subway) station from the apartment we’re now staying at, I was given one bit of direction: Just keep going downhill. So, down I go. And down and down. Literally one step at a time, because […]

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