See this?

Can't find too many road signs like that in the Philippines. So that means... yeah, uh-huh, exactly. I was out of the country for a little while ;-)

I just came back from a (somewhat spontaneous) extended weekend trip to Hong Kong Saturday thru Wednesday, while the Jay-Man headed to the Northern Philippines to catch a few waves in La Union, becoming red as a lobster in the process. La Union, if y'all remember, is the place where he and I surfed a couple of months back. Jacob has really taken a liking to the place, with all its friendly locals with their laid-back lifestyle. He wants to go back there again in December, hah. Well, I was initially supposed to join him to celebrate his 25th birthday there but then my big brother (actually small brother since he's such a SHRIMP! hehehe) comes into the picture and says I should come over to visit him in Hong Kong. I kind of hesitate at first, showing him the moths that have taken up residence in my wallet, but then we work out a deal that sees me being able to see him. So I says to Jay, sorry dude, I have a chance to go to see John, and Jay is all cool about it and we celebrate his birthday with a fish dinner the night before leaving, where I was supposed to pick up the tab which he insisted on picking. Not that I was about to protest vehemently at someone else paying for my meal :-) Jay was probably just happy I didn't go ahead with a Danish tradition for 25th birthdays and empty a bucketload of cinnamon powder on him - a sort of punishment for remaining unmarried at that age (it gets worse as time goes by: at age thirty you use pepper).

So at any rate we split ways and before I know it I was speeding at high altitudes toward this place I only really knew about through cheap-ass (but kick-ass!) martial arts movies with a whole lotta ass-kicking going on. Bloodsport and Enter the Dragon come freely to mind. So, with me exiting the plane ready to unleash my Crouching Kitten, Hidden Puppy on anyone who might dare so much as to look at me twice, I was eager to check this Hong Kong place out.

A note on John: John is enrolled in the Asian Studies Programme at Copenhagen Business School and is in Hong Kong on an internship just like me. The company he's working with is Danish-owned Dracco, a toy company, where he's been tasked with optimizing the supply chain, or at least the company procedures that might be able to streamline supply chain management. In a sense, I'm doing something similar at SunPower, except the sole focus is on environmental issues. At any rate, you might know of the products that Dracco manufactures - among many others, they make those, well, bratty looking dolls of the Bratz line. You know, the ones that look alot like those loud 14-year-olds on the street with waaaay overdone make-up, the ones you just want to bitchslap for dressing so slutty and acting so retarded. Well you get those in Denmark and they're a royal nuisance.

To be fair, Dracco also produces many other high-profile products under license by or ordered by big name companies like Disney and Marvel. Which is cool because the X-Men rock. *Snikt*.

First night, John took me out for some Japanese which was awesome because he's half-Japanese, speaks Japanese and knows his Japanese shit. We then went straight to drink our brains out, and I hadn't even stashed my bag at his place yet so I had to lug it around. Apparantly there was this closed Halloween party we could get in to, so I was whisked there, just managing a quick glimpse of the impressive Hong Kong skyline by night before going up in one of the skyscrapers, which is apparantly where the clubs and high-end drinking establishments are to be found. The fun then ensued. Below are the pics.

A Chinese dragon among all the spiderwebs and bats and Jack'O'Lanterns and other Halloween decoration. Funny, right. Right?



Sigh. In China as in most other Asian countries, karaoke/videoke is da shit. It's even more unbearable in Hong Kong as the overwhelming majority of songs are sung in Cantonese.



Me getting into the Halloween spirit (pun intended), and posing with the other freaks.









Oh yeah, this is John. John is happy. John just won a drinking competition by being the fastest to drink a glass of orange juice with a straw, and got a 50 Hong Kong Dollar gift certificate to a boutique. Go John.



Actually orange juice is not the preferred drink to get drunk on in Hong Kong. Interestingly it's Chivas Regal and green tea. Quite nice. Below is a couple of pics showing the fucked-up drinking game they play there. It involves two or more people, your open or closed hands and any multiple of five up to the maximum number of fingers between the participants. The aim is to guess the correct number of fingers in two subsequent turns. John lost this one. Note cuteness factor of waitress.





That was Day 1. Didn't do much the following day except sleep off the hangover. Or rather, John slept off his hangover while I saw a little bit of TV and also slept to pass the time. John was drunk as drunk can be, you see - for instance we had to stop the taxi on the way home. Anyways no daytime pics yet. During the night, however, we went out again. This time we went to a birthday party of a colleague of John's, which again was held in a club somewhere up one of those skyscrapers. Here be the pics, including the pics prior to the party.

What would a trip to the laissez-faire capitalist capital of the world be without a picture of me posing in front of a piece of corporate art? So here it is.



Me at the entrance to the building where the birthday party was held.



Pics of the street.





I like my moray eel fresh!



The chill-out room reserved for the birthday party. Comfortable, airconditioned and fully karaoke-equipped. John and I had our revenge by singing Cartoon Heroes by Aqua. Mwahahahaha. (Cough) Yes, I did the Lene voice. For some reason one of the girls present didn't like my falsetto voice though and snatched the mic from me. What's up with that? :-)



The birthday girl with her cake, another pic showing that insane drinking game and some miscellaneous party pics.









I LOOOOVED the food in Hong Kong, so here is a picture section just dedicated to it. Behold the meat section of a cafeteria (we love meat, yes we do) with whole BBQ'ed peking duck - yumminess plus. Also behold a lunch spread of dimsum and other treats. And me.







Fast-forwarding through the rest of the mini-vacation. Here is a picture of me and my buddy, Jackie Chan.



Hong Kong skyline by day.



Um, yeah... containers.



The area where John lives, waaaay up in nowheresville in the Northern Territories, which is basically mainland China. Still, they live in them skyscrapers here. John lives in one similar to those shown here.



They use bamboo for scaffolding in Hong Kong. Funny, right. RIGHT???!



Bah, I got more but I'll just fling them at you at a later date. What else did I observe in Hong Kong... oh yes, compared to most Chinese, I'm big. At least that's what the girl said.

(Smirk)

... Aaah.

A morning dose of Starbucks rocket fuel and a nicotine fix, and the sun rises on another workweek. Blogging feels about right for some warm-up excercise before returning to the other window I have open - the thing I was working on last friday that I hastily aborted as soon as the clock showed 4.30 pm. It seems I was writing about cornucopian environmental discourse. Fuck no, not going to get into that on a monday morning!

Last week was interesting, though, work-wise. An Environmental, Safety and Health committee has now been formed from members in all relevant departments at SunPower, and an inaugural meeting was held. Top priority for the committee this quarter is to focus on ISO 14001 preparation, and in particular assist Jacob and I in the work that we're doing. That's just neat as hell. Oh, here is the Action Register for the upcoming ESH committee meeting this week. You'll notice my name on it.

---

Item No.	Particular	Who	When
1	Provide training on the fundamentals of ISO 14001 for all the committee members	David	Ww 43
2	Create a folder on the common drive so each member can open EHS files i.e. meeting/training presentation and other pertinent docs.	Ranel	Ww 43

---

That's right folks. I've been given an hour and a half to provide an ISO 14001 crash course for the ESH commitee members, none of which have had previous training in the field (except for the guys from the ESH unit itself, and Jacob). I'll be teaching middle aged guys who have entire careers behind them. I'll be doing the same thing as the lecturers at my university but within a shorter time-span. And I'm not nervous... I'm looking forward to it! It's funny - I've always said to myself, fuck no I'm not going to go into a job that entails teaching. Sure as hell not as a university lecturer - it's the downside about taking a Ph.D., which has played in my mind at some point. As a Ph.D. student, you have to teach. I hate the thought of standing in front of a group of disinterested students with their mocking, hateful looks while I do a monologue. Shit, who's ever heard of a small 170 cm Asian punkass kid in hiphop gear (which I'm sometimes prone to wear) teach students up to a decade or more older? Who's going to take me seriously? Who's ever heard of anything more ridiculous? Funny thing is, I've posed the question to former group members during the past year. You know, whether they could see me as a lecturer and all that - totally half-joking. The answer I got was silence, a kind of funny look straight at me, and a 'yes'. My 'fuck you, get outta here' response was always my knee-jerk reaction but I always thought 'WTF? Sweeeeet!' in my head.

I've never thought of myself as a good with oratory skill. I have seen guys poorer at it than myself though. But I suppose after four years training in exactly that sort of thing at Aalborg University, I've found a recipe that works. Or I've begun to find myself comfortable with it. I've progressed to the point where I can improvise or do some straight-up bullshitting that even professors will buy in exam situations, hehehehehehe. I think I can do this ISO 14001 training quite comfortably. My aim will be to keep the committee engaged and get a laugh or two, because ISO 14001 is incredibly dull stuff for a layman!

Enough of the work talk and the disturbing insights into my head. Time for the weekend report. On Saturday Jacob and I hired a car and went off to Manila again, and did some sightseeing. First up was the American World War II memorial. The one in Manila is the largest of it's kind in the world, laying over 17,000 soldiers to rest and dwarfing even the one dedicated to those who fell at Normandy. Now, World War II holds a curious, special place in me. Most people see it as something that happened long ago and distance themselves from it. However, while two generations have usually lapsed between the average person my age and those who lived through the war, I have one. When you have a dad who can tell stories about remembering how they hid a Danish resistance fighter at the farm, or about the time he spat on a Kraut while driving past one on a bike and escaped with his life... or if a friend of your family is Jewish and was on one of the fishing boats that evacuated the Danish Jews to neutral Sweden the night before the Nazis rounded them up... some of that raw emotion rubs off on you. I could go on about how this peculiar bond with history has formed some likewise peculiar positions in me regarding the current world situation, but I promised no more disturbing insights into my head :)

Denmark and the Philippines were both occupied, by the Germans and Japanese respectively, and in turn liberated by Allied forces. I kind of wish I wrote my name down on the guest book at the memorial and wrote the words 'Thank You'. Here are the pics.













Next stop, the original walled city that the Spaniards built - the Intramuros. These are from Fort Santiago, the bastion of that colonial power which is located on the mouth of the Pasig river. The typhoon did some damage do the area as you can see.









Me with my buddy, Jose Rizal. Jose was a dude who sparked Philippine nationalism and resistance to the Spanish. An enlightened intellectual and patriot, he studied in Europe, spoke seven languages and for his troubles, got apprehended by the Spaniards and was executed by firing squad. Ay Caramba.



Some of the goofier pics. Here is Jacob showing some sensitivy and appreciation of local religion.



Me helping out a Spanish guard with a light.



Those damn guards, falling asleep on their watch!



We again showed disregard for all things religious and stole a snapshot of a wedding at the old Manila Cathedral.



Inside the Intramuros, there is a myriad of... shall we say, architectural styles. Well-kept buildings and cobblestone streets and four-storey slum dwellings can be found no more than a block from each other.





Later that night, the highlight of the day... ladies and gentlemen, WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) SMACKDOWN SURVIVOR SERIES TOUR (TM) paid a visit to Manila! Don't you guys just love wrestling?! Waaahahahahaha, it's the best show on earth. It's a throwback to the old days in the Philippines growing up, when we went to the local store every now and then to grab hold of the latest wrestling entertainment action on betamax. They recently started showing wrestling on Danish satellite TV, so I was able to rekindle my interest in the sport. Yes, it's a sport! Kind of. :)

... And hey, how cool was it that I had the chance to see some wrestling action live while in the Phillies?! The Araneta Coliseum in Manila, which originally housed the "Thrilla in Manila" bout between Ali and Frazier, warms up to receive the WWE superstars and shown below.



And the action begins. Lotsa pushing and shoving and taunting and cussing. And of course, the delictable vixen in the background.





This guy wrestled in a dress! ROFLMAO!



Another piece of showmanship. This guy spent a full 10 minutes writhing in pain because of some leg injury. He was helped onto his feet by match officials and was on his way to be helped out of the ring when he suddenly lunged forward and caught his opponent, who was opening the ropes for him to come through, with a cheap shot kick. The opponent ended up landing somewhere outside the ring.







Chavo Guerrero vs. Chris Benoit ("The Wolverine").



THE ONE.... THE ONLY.... THE UUUUUUUUUUNDERTAAAAKER!!!!





Mr. Kennedy has The Undertaker in a figure-four leglock. My brother and I used to play at wrestling as kids (and still do as adults, but don't tell anyone hehe) and those figure-four leglocks hurt like a sonofabitch.



Undertaker goes old school and performs a Tombstone Piledriver at the request of the crowd! (Undertaker is getting old these days and sometimes walks around with stiff legs. Too many Tombstone Piledrivers in his career have taken their toll on the Deadman's knees)





All hail King Booker!



Meet Batista aka "The Animal". Batista is 6 foot 5, weighs in at 290 pounds and is from the Philippines. Yes, we can get that big. Fine, fine, he's half Greek, but we still claim him.



Batista lays the SMACKDOWN on King Booker.



The match developed into something of a farce. Batista was challenging for the World Heavyweight Championship but the was disqualified when he accidently knocked out the referee with a clothesline. In the ensuing chaos, other wrestlers entered the ring and proceeded to beat the crap out of Batista. However, The Undertaker then intervened on Batista's behalf and they both beat the shit out of everyone. I say again, don't you just LOVE wrestling??? :)



After wrestling, Jacob and I went for a meal and a beer in Baywalk , right by the water in Manila Bay, which was a festive place with live band after live band. We then went to check out a shooting that was going on down the road.

Not THAT kind of shooting, stupid. Some sort of action movie was being filmed and a crowd was gathering so we wanted to see what the fuss was all about. As it turns out, there was nothing to fuss about. Movie-making is incredibly boring to watch.

At any rate, the highlight of the story comes as we walk along on the way home and decide to piss on a tree. As it turns out, we pissed right in front of a mobile police station. As it also turns out, there is a city ordnance against pissing in public places with a fine of 1,500 pesos. So we wasted like half an hour detained by the police. The victory of the day was Jacob and I leaving that place without having to pay a fine, and even better yet, without having to pay the bribe that the police were so obviously looking for (Stern-looking police captain: "So... What is your solution?").

That was it, folks. Jacob's birthday is coming up this weekend and we're returning to La Union where we surfed a couple of months back... I'll be back with plenty of bloggy goodness from that trip. Oh yes. We will. We Will. Rock you.