"I have always loved reading your site precisely because you don't act like you're an expert, and you don't brag about how much you know about Hong Kong. "

Notes

Or Maybe I Just Hate Loud People

I'm no luddite, but the longer I live in Hong Kong, the more I detest mobile phones.

Sure, they've made communication easier, but they've exterminated manners. Those of us old enough to remember the age prior to the cellular revolution bask in the memory of how enjoyable it was to have dinner in a restaurant free of electronic trilling and babbling idiots.

Before mobile phones, making or taking a call was considered a private matter. If you were dining with a surgeon or obstetrician, you knew there was a chance the doctor could be called away, and if an emergency arose the maître d' handled the situation with discretion. In other words, he didn't tear through the restaurant, flapping his arms and screaming at the top of his lungs.

Which is more or less the equivalent of what some Hong Kongers do when the phone rings, such as the social Neanderthal I saw heard in the Sha Tin New Town Plaza: he was standing in the rotunda adjacent to the train concourse and BELLOWING into his phone, his voice pinging off the high ceiling and bouncing through the far reaches of the mall.

Now imagine that in the confines of a bus or train. And the older the person is, the louder he tends to be. My mother-in-law is bad for this; when she gets on the phone, her volume rises exponentially, and God forbid she should get excited. When that happens, birds three miles away are startled from their perches.

I am aware that people all over the world misuse their phones, but considering Hong Kong's 140% market penetration rate, the level of abuse is significantly higher. The rationale for allowing mobile phones to be so intrusive is that an incoming call could be a chance to make money, and in this town money is king.

But the reality is that intense competition has given Hong Kongers access to monthly airtime packages with thousands of minutes, most of which is spent either gossiping or asking the most-overheard question ever: where are you right now? (at one time listening in on someone's conversation was considered eavesdropping; these days it can't be avoided).

People have become slaves to their phones and thus have discarded basic civility. It's gotten so bad that I've come to loathe any ringing phone; half the time I won't even pick up the land line when at home. And if I don't recognise your number on Caller ID, I won't answer. Period.

I may hate mobile phones for wreaking havoc in polite society, but they do have an upside: they make me appreciate e-mail.

E-mail is quiet.

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Wet, Wet, Wet

It's official: June was Hong Kong's wettest month ever, breaking the record set in May 1889 (records began in 1884).

The Observatory's tally was 1,346.1mm, which for my North American friends is about 53 inches of rain, or 4.4 feet.

That explains the new webbing between my toes.

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More Be Nonsense

Painted on the wall outside the Choco Cat Café in Tsim Sha Tsui is a slogan in English that makes no sense whatsoever:

Time to more be chocolate

If they prepare coffee the way they advertise, I'm not drinking there.

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Sounds Offal

He's back, with a vengeance.

Well, maybe not the same guy, but one with the same idea. Only this time the guy got pinched with 280kg of pig intestines.

The problem isn't so much that people eat them (if you've had a sausage, you've likely ingested offal and not known it; in the American south people have been consuming pig innards, otherwise known as chitlins, for centuries), it's just that as with any type of animal guts, they have to be fastidiously cleaned before cooking and serving: you know ... all the poo has to be scraped off, and that's time-consuming, as is boiling for five minutes to sterilise them.

But some dude with cobbled-together cooking equipment in a rural parking lot doesn't quite fit the image of cleanliness that Hong Kong's FEHD is looking for.

The worst part is not that this guy was running an illegal food business, but that his choice of delicacy was based on consumer demand and oodles of trust.

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Thinks He's Secret Service

Dear Mall Security Twerp,

When I pause at the escalator to allow a mother and child to precede me, it is not a signal for you to surreptitiously squeeze yourself through the six-inch gap between my back and the handrail, just to save four seconds of waiting.

Do that again and I'll make you eat your ridiculous ear piece.

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