Hong Kong Ham

Those of you who know me will know that I have an impeccably good sense of humour (and an improbably large ego). Those of you who know the internet will know that is a fertile ground for things that are amusing. In this special post, I will combine these two elements to bring you a sampling of things I find funny, from the internet.

It is likely Friday when you read this. That is a good time to view funny material. I encourage you to watch and read the following in office time.

Funny Thing 1

Gabe and Max’s Internet Thing — An infauxmercial for beginners: “How to get the dream life of your dreams using the internet”

FT2

Homestar Runner’s Teen Girl Squad

FT3

Flight of the Conchords — ‘If You’re Into It’

FT4

The Onion brings us the hard news: US Blowjobless Rate At All-Time High (from 2005)

FT5

Stephen Colbert discusses his (South Carolina-only) presidential campaign on Meet The Press

FT6

Drew from Toothpaste for Dinner describes his adventures in Second Life, the massively over-hyped virtual world that recently took the fat, sex-starved, sad parts of Germany, and the New York Times, by storm

My friend K had been developing a relationship with an attractive young woman — a one-time classmate of his ex-girlfriend — online. They would chat on instant messenger and through social networks, and they came to really enjoy each other’s virtual company. The conversation was easy, the connection genuine. Clearly, there was chemistry, but K couldn’t act on that. She had a boyfriend.

K’s friend, a 23-year-old, is a flight attendant, and the two happily carried on their entirely platonic relationship online whenever she wasn’t working — which, as is apparently the case for a flight attendants, was often. But one day earlier this year she had bad news. One of her relatives had died, and she was due to work on a flight to Beijing that night. K consoled her, and she joked that he should go to Beijing that evening to see her.

That was 2:30pm on a Monday, while K was at work. Thoughts danced in his mind. He called his travel agent. Too late to get tickets that way. He waited until 6pm, the end of his work day. Told his boss he had to leave right away — he was going to Beijing, for family reasons. The boss protested he didn’t have family in Beijing, but K was out the door.

At the airport, he managed to buy a ticket to Beijing on the last flight of the night — with the airline his friend worked for — just before its departure. The ticket was expensive, costing him half a month’s salary. He was running as the crew was preparing to close the plane’s doors for departure. Just — just — in time.

On the plane, his friend was surprised to see him and smiled broadly as she served him dinner in a small tinfoil container. He enjoyed his flight.

At Beijing airport — K’s first visit to the city, and the first time he negotiated an airport alone — his friend wrote down the name of her hotel. He handed a taxi driver the note, but he didn’t know where the hotel was. It was a potential disaster, because K’s Hong Kong phone wouldn’t work in China. Eventually, however, about thirty-minutes’ drive away K spotted the name of the hotel shining in bright lights on the side of a building.

He met his friend at the hotel, and they shared a room together. But what happened next is not what you might think. Though the two both felt they were right for each other, they slept in separate beds. Relations were strictly G-rated, but they didn’t sleep a wink — they talked through the night.

The next day, they shared a flight back to Hong Kong (K was later in trouble with his boss for impulsively taking a day off), but soon after, the girl said to K that it was best they broke off contact. There were complications: the boyfriend, and K’s ex. K agreed. She was worth waiting for.

That was six months ago. Since then, the girl has recently re-established contact. She’s still with her boyfriend, but K is holding hope for the future.

His verdict: “Even if I never get to be with her, she must always remember me.”

He told me this story over dinner tonight. It made me smile and remember why human life can be wonderful.

One of the pleasures of being involved with Asia Sentinel is to see the thing evolve.

Since it began life as single, bland, page of stories halfway through last year, the Sentinel has now grown to be a slick, if not sleek, beast with interactive content, a slideshow, bloggers, a podcast, and, crucially, a lot more readers.

Last week, it quietly launched a new page for subsidiary content, including its podcast, a wine review, two new exclusive blogs — including the respected Hong Kong blogger Alice Poon, and Derrick Chang’s superb photoblog — and other reviews.

It’s a good step forward for the Sentinel, but it is by no means the final step. Coming soon: Sentinel for mobile, and online video.

In the meantime, its journalists continue to churn out top-notch stories from around the region. Here are some to chew over:

We’re Sorry Singapore, Says the Financial Times, by John Berthelsen

Singapore’s Lee family once again finds an insult where there appears to be none, and collects money for it

Hong Kong’s Olympic Racism

Only Chinese need apply for the territory’s Olympic team

Wall Street’s Accident Waiting to Happen, by Philip Bowring

US Treasury Secretary Paulson tries to outrun potential disaster for the bulge-bracket firms

A beautiful blue-sky day from atop a very steep section of the Great Wall.

A small indicator of the Wall’s scale. Must have been hard to lug the bricks up.

Five great reasons to visit Beijing. These dishes cost just a little more than US$2 each.

Of course, the street food is also good.

Especially this fried stuff…

And the dumplings are worth a nibble.

I was contemplating going to the zoo, but the conditions of entry were too stringent. I prefer to queue subconsciously.

The Forbidden City was cold and rainy. It might not always be like that.

The Summer Palace was a much classier, and warmer, proposition.

And a nice place to let your thoughts float away.

On Monday, I’m going to interview the president of Tencent. If you live outside China, there’s a good chance you’ve never heard of that company, or even its instant messaging service QQ. If you live in China, there’s not a chance you haven’t heard of it (unless you happen to be an illiterate peasant, in which you’re not reading this post. So stop doubting me).

QQ is used by more than 160 million people (though there’s probably some account duplication that would muddy that figure). That’s 40 times the number of people who live in my home country, New Zealand. The service’s virtual currency, the QQ coin, has become so popular it threatens the yuan. And that’s just a slice of what Tencent offers. Online games, e-commerce, communities, a blogging platform, online video, virtual pets — the company has a smorgasbord of value-added services that make it money and pull in eye-balls to help it sell advertising.

I was surprised to learn in my research that advertising only accounts for a small chunk — about 13 per cent — of Tencent’s revenue. They’ll be looking to that as a growth area, along with search, where they’ll face a tough battle with Baidu and Google but stand to make some headway if they effectively tie it into the QQ messaging platform.

If anyone reading this has questions they’d like to ask Tencent — perhaps something related to the arrest of the creator of ad-blocking app QQ Coral — I’d be interested to hear them.

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While in Beijing, I’ll also be attending ad:tech, a major digital marketing conference featuring some of the heavy-hitters in China’s internet and mobile businesses. It’s the one industry event of the year I’ve been looking forward to for some time, if only for the chance to meet some of my good China contacts in-the-flesh. I was asked if I was interested in being a moderator on one of the panels but turned it down, chiefly because I don’t fit my suit anymore.

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I’m also excited because this will be my first trip to Beijing. I’m spending the week up there, so I intend to take in the typical tourist sites — Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Great Wall and its lesser-known cousin the Very Good Wall — as well as a lot of dumplings. If anyone out there has some tips on what to do, please send ‘em in.

The hot story in Hong Kong at the moment is Macau. ‘Asia’s Las Vegas’ is a haven for loaded Chinese gamblers, who come to relieve their wallets and seminal parts of their anatomy, courtesy of ostentatious casinos and opportunistic hookers.

Entire magazines — such as Destination Macau, and Macau Tatler — have sprung up to leach off the dregs of the gold-rush. Aside from that, the major dailies and other lifestyle titles (see: the South China Morning Post, which never fails to put a casino opening on the front page) are augmenting their content to ensure they don’t miss out on the ad dollars leaking out of the loose pockets of the gleaming new mega-businesses.

But few stop to ask how the money got there, what it does once it is there, and who’s really getting rich from it. As a mass public protest on National Day seems to indicate, it’s not the ordinary Macanese. Instead, as Philip Bowring points out in Asia Sentinel, it’s the foreign casino operators, corrupt officials — in Macau and the mainland — and businessmen with family and government ties, and/or those with ill-gotten wealth, who are the real winners from Macau’s boom. Even the building contracts and unskilled jobs are going to Hongkongers and mainland Chinese, respectively, with the latter having the spin-off effect of depressing local wages at a time when living costs are likely rising.

It’s refreshing to read a story critical of Macau when all too often all we get is smiling tycoons beaming out at us from the thick, glossy pages of magazines that are all fizz and no bang — a neat metaphor for the city itself, I think.

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Also, I highly recommend checking out the new podcasts on Asia Sentinel. The podcasts are produced by experienced international news journalist Matt Driskill. In the latest instalment (linked above), Driskill talks to the editor of the Irrawaddy News, a Burmese newspaper-in-exile, about the confrontations and conflict in Burma.

Robert Scoble is a tech blogger. Or, as he keeps reminding everyone, an A-list tech blogger. He used to be a ‘technial evangelist’ for Microsoft. (Not kidding; he got paid to do that — that’s the only way anyone will evangelise for Microsoft.)

Today, Scoble is vice-president of media development for PodTech, a technology entertainment network. He’s also author of the highly regarded Naked Conversations, a book about how blogs can change the way businesses interact with consumers. In general, he is very smart and, when it comes to technology and Web 2.0, he has many interesting and useful things to say.

But I’ll never watch his videos.

And it’s not because of the people he’s interviewing as part of his Scoble Show. On that show, Scoble frequently interviews the top figures from the top companies in the top stratum of the tech industry — something I take great professional and casual interest in — as well as entrepreneurs doing exciting new things in the digital space.

I won’t watch Scoble’s videos,  because they are, essentially, home videos. He arrives at an interview, sets up a camera (or has a cameraman shoot it), and then has a conversation with his interviewees. That could be alright — intelligent and knowledgeable techies talking to each other about the latest and greatest has its appeal. But Scoble does three things to ensure I’ll never give his videos the time of day:

1. He doesn’t edit — so we’re left with all the fat around an interview: the introductions, the digressions and hesitations, the off-topic musings and interruptions. Often, the crux — the meaty stuff — is lost amidst all the noise.

2. The interviews go on and on. I’m a big fan of online video, but you’re not going to get me to sit in one place to watch three poorly-framed talking heads gab on for half an hour or more. Again, this is largely an editing problem. Pick out the 10 minutes of gold and give me that — I don’t need the rest of the fluff, and I certainly don’t have the time to deal with it. Especially when I’ve got YouTube, a million other tech blogs, and well-written and neatly-edited news videos and reports to read online.

3. No text summaries. Most of the time, I have no idea what I’m getting myself into, because Scoble doesn’t summarise in a neat paragraph what is discussed within the video interview. Telling me who the people are and what is the company isn’t enough. Before I commit my precious and much-competed-for time to such a lengthy video — which requires my undivided attention — I need to have an idea of what’s going to be covered. Otherwise I’m scared the whole thing will be a waste.

Scoble might consider this link-baiting, but it’s not. This blog is too insignificant, and I’m too small-time to care about that. I just wish he’d change the way he does his videos. I hope he reads this and does that.