Bad Indian

This evening friends invited us to a new Indian restaurant in Central, which had been advertising through Groupon. This was the first time I'd encountered Groupon being used in Hong Kong; until now, it's only registered for me as somewhere to get discounts on things I don't want to buy.

Nothing much doing in Shikoku

This morning I woke from strange but prosaic dreams, wherein the Hotel Okura in Marugame was charging me like a wounded bull for internet access, to discover that it was foggy outside and cold, although as I was incompetent with the air conditioning the inside of my room was a miniature sauna. I snaffled down the strange raisin bread I'd purchased last night, gagged a little on my instant cream of onion soup, and then faffed around doing nothing much at all for a few hours before taking the train to Tadotsu, going for a walk round town and finding there was nothing at all to eat apart from hash browns at the bakery next to the station.

Unspoiled Brats

After the club last night, we wandered down Elgin Street to a birthday party at Ontourage, which may be a spelling mistake, or may be an intentional piece of wordplay, or possibly both. Within the bar were several of our friends, including the lady who has agreed to act the part of the femme fatale in my rabbit epic. I couldn't face the idea of tacking straight into a gale of booze, so I detoured to the adjacent establishment, Brat.

Brat is an upmarket hot-dog joint. This does seem like a ridiculous idea and one doomed to failure, but I was completely charmed by it. Unlike the horrendous over priced hot dog joint in London's Soho (where that seemed to be the whole concept - flog over priced, horrendous hot dogs to people) Brat is more like a distillation of all that's good about Holland and Germany. Well, it's high-class sausages and beer, there's no BMWs or thumpin' techno involved.

Marriage jokes

In Hong Kong it's possible to have your marriage in a McDonald's "restaurant", which is strange, because McDonald's "restaurants" have precious little to do with attaining a state of wedded bliss. Now if it were possible to get married at a McDonald's drive-through that might be more appropriate:

• It would start with you talking to somebody who couldn't quite understand what you were saying
• You might suspect they weren't well-qualified for the role, otherwise they probably would be doing it somewhere else
• It would be over faster than you expected....
• A few miles down the road, you'd discover you hadn't receieved what you'd expected
• But by then it would be too late to go back and ask for what you wanted in the first place
• And you're not allowed to throw it out the window.

Of course, some people say it's bad for your health, or that the government should regulate it more carefully.