At sixes and Sevens

Once again it's the weekend of the Rugby Sevens in Hong Kong, when there's a traditional influx of drunken Westerners to Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai. Which isn't that different to any other weekend in Hong Kong.

St Patrick's Day and nudity

Today is St Patrick's Day, the time of the year when it's traditional for Americans to pretend they're Irish, drink Guinness, talk about 'the craic' and dye the water going through Boston green. Or some such. I'm not well versed in this, because my knowledge of Irish Americans comes solely from films where they're either salt-of-the-earth blokes or dodgy tattooed scratters who'll feed you to their dog. Coming from the impoverished European island that is England, I had to content myself with Irish Irish people, rather than the ostensibly more glamourous American version. Irish Irish people are a bit like Irish Americans, except they don't go on about 'the craic' one day of the year, because they're all boozed out of their heads on Guinness. All of the year. And besides, I'm pretty sure that 'the craic' is something you get if you freebase 'the cocaine'.

Sort Your Life Out

Tonight was all-star night at the TakeOut Comedy club, and I got to do ten minutes in the middle of the show. It was a good sized crowd, although not always too forthcoming; in a way that's good, as it makes you work harder to earn your laughs.

I've improved my joke about going to the gym: the last segment just didn't make sense, and now it's fixed. It's strange that I find it rewarding to revise my comic material, yet really struggle to go back over my Great Hong Kong Horror Novel and tighten it up for publishing.

Maybe I need some sort of motivational coach. Or just a tape recording of an angry man shouting "Sort Your Life Out!" that I could listen to when I start slacking off. Well, perhaps an angry woman. A lady, with a posh Edinburgh accent. Threatening, but not scary. Just enough to get me worried.

Arriving in Toronto

After watching the first ten minutes of Dinner for Schmucks, the in-flight entertainment system died for the row in the plane that we were sat in, so we spent the rest of the flight in darkness (even the lights failed for our row). Still, it wasn't all bad; I've heard that Dinner for Schmucks wasn't that great, and we did get a $50 voucher each as compensation for not being able to fill our minds with televisual pap, and it wasn't like all the toilets broke down, like some earlier Cathay Pacific flights this year.

Switzerland is not a boring country

They say Switzerland is boring, but these are the people who invented the cuckoo clock. How mad in the head do you have to be to think "Maybe I should build a timekeeping device where a small wooden bird is integral to its function? Yes, that'll be a good idea"

Christmas is coming

They're playing Fairytale of New York in the supermarket, which either displays wonderful irony or a complete lack of comprehension. It's hard to say which, as this is the same shop that's flogging gingerbread men for 65 dollars a pop, and they're not man-sized gingerbread men, and nor do they appear to justify that price in any other way. Maybe if they danced or played the banjo or offered lifestyle advice then I'd pay that much, but for a merely man-shaped piece of biscuit, I think not.

Hong Kong Bierfest

This evening I went with everyone from the office to the Hong Kong Bierfest. This is the largest Bierfest in Asia, apparently, although given the less-than-farflung reach of the German Empire in the East, it might well be the only one east of Germany.

What do they *do* all day?

Every so often, the tram at Happy Valley is filled with Japanese tourists. I wish I had been more diligent in learning Japanese, so I could have asked them what they were doing on it. It seems a little bit of a strange way to spend a holiday - up at 8am and bouncing out of your seat on a ramshackle tram - but they seem happy enough with it. Usually it's a bunch of middle-aged or elderly Japanese, but today there was one in full kawaii-regalia; a little fur jacket round her shoulders, a short white dress that looked like she was a bridesmaid, and her face made up with huge eyelashes and all the other warpaint you might expect for a night out.

This was preferable to the bored businessman in a suit who is now sitting opposite me, but really I'm a bit confused, not so much because she must have chosen to get up early to prepare her face. It's more to do with where they disembarked the tram; right in a filthy part of Wan Chai. What attraction can that hold? Perhaps there's something of historical significance that Japanese people, young and old, want to see. Perhaps they're on an excursion to Dusk Til Dawn. (If that's the case, I'm both impressed and intimidated: what kind of person can manage to start partying at 8:30 on a Monday morning?) Or maybe there's a ferry crossing, although that last, most prosaic possibility seems far too rational to explore.

I think one of these days I'll follow them when they get off the tram and find out where they go. Or be mistaken for some sort of stalker (who only stalks groups of Japanese tourists) and then I'll get beaten off with a tourguide's umbrella. Sometimes research is tough, you know.

Generating geographically appropriate material

Performing at the only stand-up comedy club in Hong Kong has its advantages and disadvantages; english-language stand-up has never had the huge potential audience that it would in a big city like London or New York. On the other hand, the barrier to entry is lower, and there's less of the explicitly confrontational aspect one sometimes sees in London.