genman’s blog

Sunday was a "rest day" in theory, but I went to Stanley for swimming.

Stanley was the only major area on Hong Kong Island that I hadn't cycled the day before and I wanted to see it.

There are two beaches and I managed to go to the one I didn't want to go to. Signs talk about protecting your valuables but as there are no lockers, good luck with that! A nice couple explained that it was safe, so I left my wallet and phone and everything under a towel and headed off. (With all the prisons on the island, what were the prisoners guilty of? Tax evasion?)

I got in a number of laps and wore myself out as usual. Lunch was at some cafe along seaside area that's obviously a big main tourist trap, but whatever. I went to the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, an obvious tourist destination, and learned about Chinese sailing history and the more recent history of Hong Kong itself and things like container shipping modernization, etc.

There was a fundraiser outside where people attempt to "fly" from a pier over the water on homemade wings, but they all pretty much flew like rocks. So I suppose the draw was to see them wreck their aircraft. I took a couple of videos out on some rocks (breakwater). Kind of seemed like a waste, but I guess it was for the kids so that makes it okay.

I went out for an afternoon swim at a different beach but ended up hopelessly lost.

Ending up back in town, I wandered around the market, which was closing up about 7PM or so. Still, there were a number of restaurants still open. I ended up in a high-end Chinese place that looked somewhat out of the warring-states period, with dark wood and medieval. This being Monday and the off season, only a few customers were present. I ordered a number of dishes and was told I was ordering too much, and suggested to substitute my noodle dish, but ended up hungry at the end of the meal which isn't great.

Next day I was getting up around 6AM for the ferry to Lantau Island. Again, not a lot of traffic before 7AM, and even the first ferry wasn't until about 7:30AM.

I expected it to be a nice difficult ride, but it turned out to be a very difficult ride. The morning part was great, since it was quite cool and almost no cars were around. I rode to the "Big Buddha", part of Po Lin Monastery. A group of old ladies were walking part of the road up and needed directions, so I tried to help them, though I spoke no Chinese. Anyway, they were going the right way--which was uphill--but seemed confused. (I took some pictures with them later.)

I arrived before the gondola started bringing the masses up. There wasn't much to do but walk around. There was some Buddhist chanting on the PA system, which was too loud and bad quality. I wandered into the temple, clad in bicycle shorts etc., and was told not to enter the ceremony area. The place was kind of shabby and according to the signage they were soliciting donations to build some new buildings. Already a new gate was being constructed.

There's a ton of incense getting burned it seemed, so much that there are huge areas set aside, containing just metal racks for holding incense sticks.

As the sign explained, no meat or alcohol was permitted in the temple area. And having bought a ticket to enter the museum of the Big Buddha, I was entitled to a vegetarian snack. They give you three or so gelatin and mochi cakes, with a plate of noodles for your snack, plus a drink.

Post breakfast, made my way to Tai-O, on the west, the "Venice of Hong Kong." It was a steep and huge descent from about the top of the island to sea level. Tai-O is a village, in the Hong Kong sense, meaning not a lot of tall buildings, but they're all buildings packed in cheek and jowl. There's no cars to get around, and no roads wide enough for a car anyway. It seems everyone either walks or bikes with carts from house to road.

It's called "Venice" but mostly a lot of buildings on pilings, canoes and a handful of draw bridges, some manually operated with ropes or chains. I think to be called Venice you'd have to have floating buildings, at least. It does have a tourist draw, as there were a few white tourists walking around. Normal people would take a bus, I guess.

According to Crazy Guy on a Bike who talked about riding the island, there's a trail from Tai-o to the next town west, but I discover it's really a hiking trail with lots of stairs, not even suitable for mountain biking, I would think. (Can mountain bikers ride up stairs?) Still, carrying a 20lb bicycle isn't too big of a deal for a mile or so.

I get to the Sham Wai, which is a hamlet but at least there's a restaurant, run by an octogenarian couple (or older?) who isn't serving much from the menu but instant ramen with some add-in meat. Still, I'm hungry and need the sodium. Then I realize I had dropped my map of the island out of the back pocket of my jersey.

I spend about an hour hiking back along the trail, but all I see are discarded tissues from some littering hikers. I really was concerned not having the map to get from Sham Wai to Tung Chung, since it was all little trails. Anyway, I make it back to town and attempt anyway to figure out the trails in the jungle.

The trail is all concrete, no stairs, and about 4' wide, so not an issue for riding, though still a bit steep for my compact double gearing, so I walk the bike at some points. And although it's a "trail", it's really just a walking path, as there's plenty of houses to either side much of the way. (And no road access to these houses, so I assume it's this path that's used to bring goods in.)

Tung Chung is subway accessible to the mainland, so it's basically been built up to contain about 30-40 or so mega apartment buildings. It overlooks the airport, which was built on reclaimed land. And although its maybe home to 250,000 people, there's just one little two lane road out of there, back into the rest of the island.

Now this little road is quite steep, and signs explain the grade is about 1:8 to 1:6, which is roughly 13% to %17 for about 2-3 miles. Killer hill! Stalling before the end, I walk up the last 100 feet, hopping off my bike, walking, and praying not to cramp up, especially for the descent. And it's no trouble: The descent is amazing, especially with the road surface as smooth as it was, and with no traffic, I could hit some pretty high speeds and curve some nice turns.

But even back to the south side, there's still many steep hills to beat. I make it to Poi beach and take a refreshing swim, though it's getting on to evening and it's quite cool. The beach is occupied by children (foreigners) from the states (based on their accents) and they're doing some sort of group games, like you'd do at Summer Camp. When I'm out about 100 yards, and nobody else is around, I worry briefly my legs are going to cramp up and I'm going to drown, like in the movies. But there's no issue, minus that I had no towel with me.

I make it back to the ferry area and consider dinner. There's nothing really open, and the ferry had just arrived so I head back to town. From the ferry, I get to enjoy an amazing sunset overlooking the city. I try taking pictures but they are so-so.

It's rush hour, and dark, in Hong Kong and not a great time to be riding a bike. I make it to a tram station, then see what other riders are doing, which is riding their bicycles, following the tram line. I make it back to Wan Chai no problem this way. Then it's a shower, dinner--I'm starving!

It's probably best I catch up to present time...

I left Shenzhen by subway, arrived at the border, got through about four clearances. I had an easy time getting to Hong Kong Island itself, though it was about four transfers in all. A little practice with subway maps in general helps, I think.

I'm in a hotel in Wan Chai, which is about as central as you can get, on Hong Kong Island. I'm on Wan Chai road and about two blocks away from the famous trams, as well as the subway etc. The room's pretty nice. Problem is, there's no elevator and I'm on the "third floor" which is really about the 4th, or 5th since the street floor is about 20 feet below the "first floor".

First day I bought about four or five maps, for bicycling and future reference. There's a lot of parks and hiking paths. There's basically three, maybe four types of land in Hong Kong: Fully developed (or nearly so) land filled with skyscrapers or condos; park land; (poor looking) villages; and shipping industry. And roads, of course, full of red taxis, double decker busses, mini busses, commercial/construction vehicles, and expensive cars. I've seen more Mercedes, Ferraris, and Bentleys than anywhere else I've been. Not that many cyclists, a few motorcylists, and no car that hasn't been washed in the past week.

I also bought a cell phone, which was a lot less painful than in the U.S. You buy the phone, you get a sim card, and about two minutes later you can start talking. Unlike the U.S., in that you basically sign your life away, and forget about getting an unlocked phone.

First day I visited Victoria (?) park, a temple, and walked around endless shops and restaurants. Sidewalks are crowded with people everywhere. I'm not much into shopping but I was curious to poke around. I spend some time trying to get my bearings straight but in the maze of buildings and twisty roads, I can't tell east from west or actually any compass direction really.

I did manage to find a bicycle shop, to by a lock. I needed one, I thought, for the bit of eating (really) I would do during my rides.

So, early on a Saturday I start out on the ride around the island and inevitably go the wrong direction. I attempt riding some side streets but they're often one way and turn me around. So I decide to use only the main roads, which are actually pretty empty around 7AM. (Do Asians sleep in more than we do?)

I came up with a cue sheet for all the turns: Roads change names all over the place and I suspect the maps don't always match the (often hidden) street signs. But I make serious progress and I'm quite pleased. The views from the road are almost always amazing: If you're not surrounded by buildings, you're often exposed on a hill looking down on buildings and water. Given the scale and height of the residential villages, it's almost like seeing something from a science fiction illustration. Especially the actually named "Cyber Village". There are little cut-outs in the floors that appear to be common areas. There's something cool about holes through buildings.

Difficulties arise arriving in Aberdeen, where the traffic volumes grow and I'm on the road, quite confused sometimes understanding how to continue my trip. Very few side roads go anywhere at all, or worse, turn you around. But I have a quality map, so it's just a matter of finding where I am. Again, the road signs are often tucked away, which makes it tough to navigate in the midst of traffic.

I do a side trip to one of the south islands by bridge. And then I make it past most of the big roads, and there's more climbing as I go into the sparsely populated southeast area. It feels great going downhill, but the uphill sections I sweat profusely as now it's midday. My gloves are soaked with sweat and start to chafe.

I stop at a beach (Recluse Bay) and consider a swim, but I have no suit.

I start heading east. There's a bit of thinning of traffic as buses can't go the way I'm going, which is over the reservoir road. I see another rider and he points out where I need to go, which is Shek-O.

Shek-O is probably the best road for a cyclist on Hong Kong Island, because it isn't terribly steep, has great views, and has less traffic.

I head down to the peninsula, on a closed to non-local traffic road, and it's like being in a different country. I go through a village of mostly one- or two-story houses and then end up in a land of radio antennas and underground cables--their endpoints anyway--and I get stopped at a guard house by a man who waves me back to where I came. Supposedly there is a marine preserve, and it's well preserved since there's no road to it that I could go on.

Next stop was Big Wave Beach. I park my bicycle, walk down, and see lots of surfing and ex-pats. A lot of shops in the area but very little business it seemed as it was the off season. Who goes to the beach in winter? Waves didn't really compare to Hawaii's, but still not too bad. Bought soy milk (Vita Soy, unofficial drink of Hong Kong cyclists?), and headed to lunch at Shek-O Village.

Saw a couple of high-end ($5k+) racing bicyclists and a couple of HK'ers who, as it turned out, looked quite casual, at this very casual Western joint. This is where I ate lunch. Lemon Coke (with real lemon), and an egg sandwich. Could have eaten more but I still had a lot of riding. There was a hiking route off to some island, which I wanted to see, but got confused by the map and street name correspondence, as usual.

Headed back to town: Lots of hills again.

As an aside: Every few miles, you'd pass (or be stopped at) a construction site where they were working on erosion protection. Every tiny road had tons more concrete pored to stabilize the up and the down side of the hill you were on, lest it simply wash away. Still, I suppose they needed periodic replacement. Construction crews all looked like immigrants from poorer countries.

Heading into town was exciting, as it was just a fast downhill from the south to the north, and you were plunging into a maze of skyscrapers and roads. In the thick of it, though I was trying to make it back up again, as I wanted to get to Victoria Peak.

Forgetting it was Saturday: Lots of traffic to the peak as incidentally, there was a huge mall built up there for all the rich tourists to enjoy. And I was getting really overheated as, hey, it's afternoon. Eventually once I reached the tourist spot, and headed up to the actual top in a park, I experienced some extraordinary cramping. It wasn't a hydration issue, I suppose, but the result of too high a gear for the riding I was doing. (And as I would soon discover, to ride in Hong Kong, granny gear is definitely required. Mountain bike gearing is not a bad idea.)

Post-cramp, I headed up for a picture at the viewpoint. You go through another mall to get up to the top, by the way. View was good but definitely hazy at the time of day--or polluted?--so I was a bit sad. I had another lunch (pre dinner?) then cycled the remaining 100-150 meters to the actual top, almost cramping again. I rode down spinning the whole way so I wouldn't seize. My legs were shot, so I decided the next day I'd rest.

As I blogged a few blogs ago, it was supposed to be going to China, but those plans had been changing up until about two weeks ago. Eventually it was decided I'd be going.

Hitomi came back that same week (Sunday) and I had less inclination to be anywhere without her. Plus I'd be missing out on Halloween. In some ways it was my fault, in that I was asked by work to give reasons why I was needed in Shenzhen and I came up with a pretty convincing e-mail, I suppose.

(By the way, I'm typing this in Hong Kong. China blocks pretty much all the blog sites out there. So that's why I hadn't posted any updates to Facebook or here.)

I'll need to update this as time goes by.

Flight: Eva Air leaves around 2AM for Taiwan from Seattle, and pretty much nobody's in the airport, so it's a pretty lonely affair. I was flying business but for whatever reason it was tough feeling comfortable sleeping. Shoulder room was great but I experienced the usual leg fatigue and being by a window of course I had to pee every few hours it seemed.

Felt pretty good in Taipei. The airport terminal I remember from my last to Taiwan with Hitomi brought back some good memories. But there was no Hitomi this time around. And though I had plenty of food on the flight in the middle of the night, I enjoyed breakfast yet again.

Hong Kong airport: Felt like a step up from Taipei. I was taking the ferry to Shenzhen and the ferry service will transfer your bags from the airline directly, which is a help. While waiting for the ferry, I bought some books and coffee. The ferry sounded better than it was: For one, you're inside. For another, there's a lot of waiting and being transferred.

Mainland China landing: Definitely pretty ghetto and strangely what I expect to see. Luckily, customs and immigration was efficient and not at all pushy like in the U.S. I exchanged some cash and proceed to the taxi area.

It was about 350RMB (Chinese money) to the hotel, and basically I was ripped off (again) by third World taxi drivers. Alas, it was only about $50 US, so no great harm. I thought I learned my lesson in Thailand: Never, ever ride in a taxi with no meter running. Plus I should have realized when the driver said he liked the U.S. I should have realized I was being conned.

Of course the first thing I do in the hotel is assemble my bicycle, which actually was difficult this time around. It's been awhile but also the front brake (caliper) was misbehaving. Somehow the nut on the middle of the screw got loose or something causing the head to get loose. A lot of knucle banging later and it was okay. Then: Where to ride?

Speaking of screws loose, yes I rode in Shenzhen, where the drivers are insane. Shenzhen, in short, is like a heavily polluted and spread out version of Hong Kong where the roads are bigger and traffic perhaps more vicious. In some ways, it's all a reflection of life is worth less and standards of living are sacrificed in the name of advancing progress. Some suspect Barack Obama may be Communist, but the Chinese are Communist, and the Party is more vicious and heartless than even your most avaricious right wing Republican's fantasy.

I highly value my life, yet paradoxically ride a bicycle in this sort of shit. Anyway, where should I go? I bought a map of the city, which was designed to work okay for drivers who take major roads, but I wanted to find minor ones, which tend to be more interesting. But the way the city was designed, there are basically islands of huge towers and communities and they are like islands surrounded by big roads. Taxis are thankfully cheap (for us foreigners) and there is a subway which provides refuge for pedestrians.

In terms of traffic safety, here are some things to note: Pedestrians must yield to motorists. Motorists never signal. They can drive however they want, as fast as they want. Note: There are bicycle lanes, but motorists can and will use those for parking or driving if they feel like it. If you are more than 1 second late accelerating, they will honk at you. They will honk when passing on the left or right or if you are in front of them. Seatbelts are optional, especially in taxis where the buckles might be broken or missing. If the driver wears one, he will likely be sitting on the shoulder strap.

First ride I did: Came back exhilerated but my lungs hurt from...something in the air. And in addition to the persistent pollution, which scarily blankets the sky with a dull brown on even a sunny day, a lot of places smell like old garbage, ala Ho Chi Min City. What am I doing here?

Hitomi (who's in Japan) called me out of the blue. It was good to talk to her. I hadn't talked to her since Friday. I was in the middle of work, unfortunately and had to keep the conversation short.

Something threw me off about her phone call. For whatever reason, I didn't really want to talk. Isn't there a rule when you're on vacation you're only allowed send postcards, letters, or e-mail? But I understand her position. More frequently, I'm out of town and Hitomi's at home. And being alone on vacation feels incredibly alone.

Last weekend I was out hiking with friends. We went off to Manning Provincial Park in B.C. Admittedly I didn't think too much about my wife while freezing in the mountains. I wasn't struggling to survive but the cold took my mind off a lot of things back home. And let's not discount the great scenery: Where we were camped probably has one of the best views of the North Cascades than anywhere else.

Also to keep my mind of Hitomi, I was busily ordering a bunch of manga. I kind of got shopper's euphoria there for a bit. Lately, I've gotten into girl's love manga (often called "yuri" in the West) so I ordered a couple of those sorts of titles.

From what I hear, Hitomi managed to assemble her bicycle and is getting ready to ride on her own through Shikoku. I wish her luck. She's only riding about 40-50 miles for a few days, but she said it was pretty warm so it might be difficult in the heat.

Things have gotten extremely busy (comparatively) these past few weeks thanks to a new project/demo we're putting together for a Chinese company. This is all good but I've been less motivated to spend my day in an office due to the incredibly fine weather as of late.

Most of the difficultly, project-wise, has been finalizing requirements. So, you build what you think you need but then expect some of that work to be wasted.

Anthony, a young Momoist who've we've met in Japan, San Jose, Vegas, but never in Seattle, came by our house on Friday. We watched/sampled a bunch of J-Pop concert videos as well as Evangelion 1.11, on Blu Ray. Dinner was nabe, not really appropriate for the warm weather but almost always good. Plus we had moon cakes. (Moon cakes are kind of like Christmas cookies that you do like them once in a while but wouldn't want to eat them all year long.)

Bedtime was around 3AM for me, so Hitomi and I spent most of Saturday morning in bed. Worked on my Chinese project at home: Not sure why I felt compelled to spend the day hacking. Maybe because of the weather. Didn't want to cook, though we had tons of leftovers, so went out to Malay Satay Hut.

Sunday was Tim's birthday. I rented a bunch of movies. Tim, mom and I watched one. Alone on the Pacific was about the first single-handed sailor from Japan, Horie Ken'ichi. Movie probably exaggerated and changed the order of events of his 94 day sail, although I'm sure there were numerous challenges. (Note: Ruriko Asaoka is incredibly sexy. Would not leave Japan with a sister like that!) Then I spent the evening hacking away at JBoss deployment configuration.

Monday I spent dealing with more configuration issues. JEE is like that.

Tuesday (and until Friday) I went into work, either the whole day or part of the day.

I went out two a couple of movies. First was 9 (3D animation). Animation-wise, and aesthetically, it was quite well done. However, it lacked pacing or something like it, since it was mostly scene after scene of crazy rescues and fights. Too much action and you stop caring. I was with Ian, and he suggested the movie, so walking out of the theater, I wasn't too sure if I should say anything bad about it. (It's easy to complain and that ruins the fun for people who enjoyed the movie.) But still, there were really good aspects.

By the way, I'm not big on celebrity voice acting for animation. Sure, it sells tickets, but well-known celebrities aren't necessarily qualified for voice acting. And rather than the celebrity sounding like the character, the character tends to be changed to fit with the voice actor. And celebrities are often famous because of how they look not because of their acting skill.

Eureka Seven (anime) was much more entertaining. There was a one-time screening on Thursday at Pacific Place, though it was unfortunately sparsely attended. The story was really too intricate and complicated for its own good. (Anime can either be inextricable or overly dense, it seems.) Fortunately, the character interactions were good and animation and action was high quality. The dub actors were good but the writing wasn't agreeing with my ears. Dub translation scripts often add extra words, so dialog often seems unnaturally wordy.

I managed to get out for a swim September 22nd. Water's been getting colder but, hey, mid-eighties temperatures should not be squandered.

Friday I left work early and shopped Uwajimaya. We had Sanma Hiraki, a fall-appropriate fish. If I stopped eating animal meat I'd probably switch to eating fish like this. These guys are really oily, which you'd think would appeal to Americans, but there's just something about oily fish which Americans don't like I guess. Plus, Hitomi made a bunch of interesting side dishes.

I watched two movies that night, since they were due Saturday. First was The Warlords, which was an interesting take on history but seemed to drag on. Spoiler: Everyone dies. Then I saw a classic movie, The Great Escape, which was a lot more entertaining but since it's based on a real event, it was sad at the end. Spoiler: Almost everyone dies. So I get to bed really late.

And then there's this hike the next day. It was a Sakura-con guest relations hike, plus a couple of friends of friends. It was just a short trip to Baring, then Barclay Lake and back again. We manage to start a fire out of embers left over from a fire pit. It kept us warm. I can't say the mountain (Baring) impressed as much as the glaciers on Rainer from Paradise but it was less than half the drive and a much easier hike.

I went to Ian's birthday party in the evening. Since Ian is poor, people were asked to bring their own food, though he did have some chicken, rice, and sauce but maybe enough for about 5-6 people. (About 15+ came.) I got him a massage gift certificate, since he walks around like a crippled old man with bad posture, and maybe a massage might help some. (Exercise would help him, but he's not too into anything intense enough to make much difference.) I pick on him some but he has lots of nice *other* friends, okay? And his mom's a yoga instructor, so it's not as if he couldn't do yoga for free.

Sunday (today): Slept in, or tried to. We have an obnoxious (old?) cat who doesn't let us sleep in on Sundays it seems. Left a little late for a football game. To this fan, football's much more interesting than baseball. I tried explaining the game to Hitomi but she got busy with crocheting and ignored the second half. Nintendo had a suite for this game, which included free food and drinks. It must have cost about $200 per person, times about 20 or so. Seahawks lost, of course, but I enjoyed the game.

We biked back: Beautiful weather again.

I inherited a Maytag Neptune front loader washing machine with my house.

It's been mostly fine until recently. But now the front door no longer unlocks and the washer does not stop when the washing cycle ends.

I got a Maytag Repairman (sort of) to come by and 20 minutes later (at the cost of $150), he discovered the main circuit board was shot. Apparently by design, the circuit board will short out (and burn out) when the wax motor goes. So repair this mess would cost about $400 plus.

Which would still be cheaper than a new washer, but the bearings are also shot. To repair this would cost probably another $400 or more. $400 to repair bearings--and presumably bearing races--since the bearings are sold as part of a large assembly.

So much for repair. I'll need a new washer. For now, I can force the door open, but eventually the machine will seize.

I asked the repair guy what sort of washer to buy. He suggested a top-loading machine with a mechanical timer. Basically the repair guy suggests a non-electronic washer. (Not sure I'd want to go that way, as top-loaders use a lot more water.)

I wonder if there's a washing machine that has user-serviceable bearings. I joined Consumer Reports online ($12). Looking at the top rated machines, it seems most still have bearings that will last about 5 years at most. So get an extended warranty.

Back to work on Tuesday. Heard some more about my project at work. I'm going to China! But when?

Spent some time working on patches for Verizon. Nothing big but the change required fixing about 4-5 build scripts and migrating source repositories. And getting all the build configurations right through a GUI is a chore.

Most of the work for China so far has been pulling out code from existing places and making separate modules.

On the domestic side of life, I had my 10th wedding anniversary on Thursday. Hitomi's still quite the charmer. I put together a card and we had sushi at Village Sushi, which is always reasonable and good. There's probably better sushi places around but there's something I like about this place. Maybe it's the affable owner? Or that it's in a remodeled house with bad wiring? If you go, order the Omakase. At around the $60 level there's a lot of good stuff in there for two.

Friday we drove over to my parent's place and spent the night. We were doing a ride on Saturday which started at around 8AM so it was nice to be closer to Mount Vernon. The ride was beautiful. I liked crossing the Deception Pass bridge and the little bridge they have from the refinery over to Anacortes. On the way back, I was harassed by some random local. I was riding off course, so no other riders were around. Apparently the first time I wasn't harassed enough (by horn), so she pulled over, I passed by and then she came up behind me and leaned on the horn one more time.

In the evening, we had Yakiniku (BBQ) at Eugene's place. He lives in a condo in the U District but, like in most anime, his parents never seem to be around. Being the manager, he has access to the roof and so we had BBQ on the top of the building, in view of Downtown Seattle, and Mt Rainer, etc. Hitomi and I brought over the shaved ice machine, toppings, including fresh fruit from Skagit Valley, and we eventually got sleepy and went home.

Sunday was another BBQ at Ryan and Emi's place in (The People's Republic of) Wallingford. Again, we brought over the shaved ice machine. They have a nicer place than their old one in Magnolia. They're in a duplex and have a nice yard. They have a tortoise, named Isoroku, which seems considerably more active than our cat, Rei.

Monday I went to the DOL. The DOL in Greenwood's closed so I had to go to the Downtown office. In the waiting room, with my things, I smelled cat pee on my bike bag. Actually, I had realized Rei peed on it, and cleaned it up early, but I hadn't really noticed the smell hadn't really gone away. He peed on plastic--nylon--which couldn't absorb a liquid, but what do I know?

(I mentioned being kicked out a concert over the weekend on Facebook. A little background on this first.)

Halko Momoi is a very popular singer and voice actor, at least in the anime community in Japan. Definitely one of the top five performers of her genre. She's my wife's most favorite performer.

Momoi was approached by Mr. O (not his real name) to perform at this fairly small event. Mr. O with the chairman of Anime Vegas, helped bring her to the event. This decision was made at the last minute. Her dedicated fans, mostly from out of state, including Hitomi and I, made special last-minute travel arrangements (flight, hotel, etc.) as well as worked on a "call book", brought hundreds of glow sticks, etc. We dedicated fans also make an effort to do live internet broadcasts, translate material, etc.

As it so happens, we were allowed to internet broadcast some of the performances at Anime Vegas. But not the concert for Momoi. And although the connection (through an EVDO modem) was physically disconnected, someone it was reestablished again automatically. (Or deliberately?)

Contractually speaking, free live broadcast was not allowed, although live recording was. As it turns out, the chairman got informed that the live broadcast was active. (By whom?) And then convention security was upon, at least, some of us. The guy manning the computer was kicked out immediately. And--by being in the front row with an Momoi t-shirt on?--some of us other guys were told to get out as well. (Not Hitomi, who looks innocent I suppose.)

I had nothing to do with any of the broadcast. I'm just part of this fan club, and I didn't know what was going on. Still there I was out in the hall with the chairman and a couple of other innocent and angry fans during the middle of the performance. Two or three songs later, we were let back in. Hitomi was a bit confused by this and you can read her blog, if you can read Japanese.

Needlessly to say, us fans were upset at all this, and vow not to return. Especially since she was only performing a short one hour set and here I was spending three days in Las Vegas, which is like Los Angeles but a lot more miserable.

...I could also fill this post with a list of things that weren't cool about the event but I will keep it to this.

To make up for all this I did have a lot of fun at meals with her fans. Monday, since Momoi wasn't showing up at all, Hitomi and I went and enjoyed a few short hikes on the outside of town, at Red Rock Canyon.

I wonder why I still use Yahoo! as an RSS reader. A lot of the time my.yahoo.com looks like this screenshot:

Oops-yahoo

Spend Saturday cleaning house, with a vacuum strapped to my back. Hitomi was out getting a haircut, eating fresh peach crepes and getting a massage and facial.

I was alone and so I had Ian come by early. We went out and watched Ponyo, which was amazing, and a fortunate return to the Miyazaki storytelling we saw in Spirited Away. The dub was pretty good, minus the rock and roll send up of the ending theme song.

House cleaning was primarily for a draft tournament I was hosting later that day. As it was my first draft tournament, I didn't know what to expect. Greg Marques, an employee of Wizards of the Coast, brought over a box of the popular Magic: The Gathering "M10" core set. (I had bought a box online back at the start of the month but it was back-ordered.) He also brought a box of Alara to draft.

We started late. Probably around 8:30PM. Originally conceived as a small get-together, I somehow ended up with about 8 people. (And at one point I expected about 10-12.) Games take some time to run, as what you do is first draft cards--that is pick cards out of packs and pass the pack around--and assemble a deck. So it's about 9:30PM when we start our first set of match. Each match you may play up to three times.

I drafted really well. I basically ended up with a green-white deck, where I chose green mana acceleration spells, big green, and white control and white evasion, i.e. flyers. I drafted a Serra Angel, Overrun, Might of Oaks, the new Great Stable Stag, and Birds of Paradise, plus a couple spells like Silence. I lost once to a black/red control player. I made a few bad choices on control cards, and a couple of bad plays, which probably cost me in that game.

Half the players left around 12:30AM. I had won second place, but not definitively. I was sharing second with about 2 others. I did win some cards.

We then ran another draft. And I was tired and it was a hard series to draft for: Mostly two-, three- color cards. So I wasn't winning very much and we only got through a few games until it was about 2:30 and it was time to shut down.

Slept in on Sunday. Was tired much of the day anyway. Walked Greenlake with Hitomi and had a good dinner. Then I "beat" Fallout 3.