Archive for November, 2006

Review : Kanye West Live In Hong Kong

Thursday, November 30th, 2006

 

 

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Kanye West in Hong Kong? Well I haven’t been here long but I think a hip hop artist of such magnitude performing live in Honkers is a rare experience. Even weirder was the venue – an open air drive in cinema on the Kowloon side. Hip Hop started in the parks so it’s not an unprecedented event to have a concert like this outside but it’s unusual for sure. The crowd was an odd blend of hand holding couples, Hong Kong local kids and bemused ex-pats. Not exactly your typical audience but seeing as my last hip hop gig was Cypress Hill circa their first LP at the Brixton Academy I can’t really compare a normal audience in the year 2006. This may be typical these days. (more…)

PSP+SNES+NES+MD Emulator = game pron

Friday, November 24th, 2006

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We are judged on our actions rather than our words. I can tell you about what I intended to do when I moved here and how I was going to learn the language, play Mahjong and take up Dragon Boat racing but it’s all just yada yada yada. One of the first things I actually did after being here for a week or so was to track down the surprisingly hard to find video game ground zero of Hong Kong. Next to food, water and housing seemingly the most important thing on my priority list was to find out where all the computer games be at. I was under the illusion that when I got here that I would be surrounded by games all of the night and all of the day but it wasn’t to be and there are only a very small amount of stores selling a very small amount of games in the shopping areas of Hong Kong. I knew that there had to be somewhere where I could find better product and judging by the amount of people playing PSPs on the MTR there was obviously a market out there so where did they go?

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China In My Hands

Saturday, November 18th, 2006

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I had never been to China before up until a few weeks ago. I was packed off to Wuhan in the province of Hubei which is the middle of China and two hours away from Hong Kong by plane. We landed at Wuhan airport which was very small and very old. The immigration check was weird and it seemed we were being assessed by our reactions to being stared at by the officials as much as by the state of our travel documentation. Oddly our cases were not screened in the usual way but instead a sniffer dog was employed to smell each bag on the carousel as the luggage went round. Tell me, what does a gun or knife smell of? Anyway off we were whisked to an area of town where we had dealings and as we walked around we were again being stared at like we were aliens. Not a nice stare either but glances of aggressive bemusement and fear. Luckily our guides were with us and we quickly scuttled back in the van and off to our luxury hotel.
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