Weekend Update

With the new Beyond the Pale 2.0 up at running for a week now its time for my first Weekend Update.  Weekend Update is my taking the liberty each week to go off topic and muse on politics, news, living in Hong Kong, movies…and pretty much anything else that strikes my fancy.  So first up:

Life in Hong Kong

Lu Ping, China’s old representative to Hong Kong back in the 1990’s, told people that were displaying the old British Hong Kong flag at a recent protest that they should renounce their Chinese nationality. (No word apparently on what non-Chinese Hongkongers are supposed to give up)  It has given rise to the accusation by Lu and others that an “independence movement” is growing in Hong Kong.  Hasn’t anybody informed these guys that if the protestors were advocating independence they wouldn’t fly a colonial flag?

No, the protesters know that the Chinese government is super sensitive to to the issue of British colonization of its former territory and use it to drive home a point.  Put more simply, its like a wife who is ticked off at her husband and so pulls out pictures of her old boyfriend.  Its sure to drive the husband crazy…especially when the old boyfriend is still viewed by many as much better looking.

Baseball World Series

Kudos to my Detroit Tigers for making it to the World Series this year…even if they did get swept 4 straight games by the San Francisco Giants.  For game 1 I was actually finishing business in Shanghai and my flight left at 2:00 that afternoon.  The game started at 8:00 AM here on this side of the planet so I figured I could watch the game before heading to the airport.  I found a sports bar online that was advertising that they were showing the game.  (Yes, you know China has reached a new level of development when you can watch Game 1 of America’s pastime there 🙂

 

Of course I arrived just in time to watch the melt-down of star pitching ace Justin Verlander. (He had just started dating super model Kate Upton so apparently something else was going on in his head)

It didn’t help that the bar was filled with Giants fans that seemed to just get louder as Detroit disintegrated before our very eyes. (The baseball team…not the city, which has taken a little longer to disintegrate)  Oh well, as we say in baseball…”Maybe next year!”

Doctor Who

Have I said how much I LOVE Doctor Who?  When the new episodes started up in 2005 I didn’t really get into it.  A few months back though Gabriel started getting addicted…which led to Tammy watching…which meant I needed to.  It was funny watching Tammy’s inner transformation on it which went something like this:

Stage 1: “No way are we watching Doctor Who tonight!”

Stage 2: “If you guys want to watch Doctor Who, I can do something else.”

Stage 3: “I suppose if there is nothing else on, we can watch Doctor Who.”

Stage 4: “Hey, what if we watch Doctor Who tonight.”

Stage 5: “I LOVE Doctor Who!  Don’t you dare watch any episodes while I’m gone!”

The sad part is we are almost caught up to season 7 which is where the series is at which means we’ll have to WAIT for new episodes to come out instead of watching them at our leisure.  Intolerable! 🙂

U.S. Election

Because of my background in politics people keep asking me what I think about the upcoming election between Romney & Obama.  My prediction:

1) Very close race

2) One of them will win

3) Not much will change

4) Jesus still gets to be King

5) Repeat cycle in 4 years

Well, as Dennis Miller used to say on Weekend Update:

“That’s the news…and I am outta here.”