Wyclef Jean @ MO bar

I had been chatting one day with DA and she was telling me about the TOHK launch party preparations. She was telling me that she had spoken to Wyclef Jean's promoter and they had offered to have Wyclef appear at the launch party and play a few songs as a surprise. But Wyclef would only be able to perform on 21 April, so she would have to pass since TOHK's launch was slated for 23 April. "What?" I shouted down the phone. "Move your launch date! Do you have any idea how cool it would be for Wyclef to show up and surprise the crowd with a few songs???" Anyway, to cut a long story short, DA tried to re-jig the gig, but in the end it was not meant to be.

Fortunately for me though, as a result, the TOHK got invites to the invite-only performance at Landmark Mandarin's MO bar last night (MO did a promotion earlier: for every HK$1,000 spent on Veuve Clicquot, they gave away a lucky draw ticket for a chance to win tickets for the night's show). I had only expected Wyclef to play an hour max. That was what he was supposed to do. In the end, he gave an awesome 2-hour performance! I was dancing in the wrong shoes and my feet were killing me, but it was worth it.

Wyclef is a great performer; he had the crowd all worked up and was constantly bringing people to the stage. At one point, he shouted, "I've found my Hong Kong Wyclef!" and dragged a guy up to the stage who then held his own in the rap-along. For all I know, it may have been a Canto-pop star, but I am hopeless at recognising them. The concert started pretty chill, with Wyclef on stage strumming his guitar. But then as he got into Sweetest Girl, he really amped it up and the crowd went crazy. He went from the stage to the top of the bar and, at one point, he was moving through the crowd sitting high on top of the shoulders of one of his crew members. The crowd loved it. He went through a bunch of songs from his latest album, Carnival Volume II: Memoirs of an Immigrant, some Bob Marley, old Fugees tunes, a very crowd-pleasing medley of 80s hits running from A-Ha (Take On Me) to Cyndi Lauper (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun), as well as songs he's done with other artists such as Shakira's Hips Don't Lie and Santana's Maria Maria.

Unfortunately, I only had my iPhone camera, which has no zoom and takes horrible photos in low lighting:

Chat with Desiree Au, TOHK Publisher

Hong Kong finally gets its own Time Out next Wednesday (23 April). Desiree and I go way back. All the way back to her days as a tai-tai journalist covering the arts beat of Hongkong Standard to her evolution into a hard-nosed, whip-cracking editor (typed with a ;-) of course), though never one to compromise on her sense of humour, style or fashions.

I have to blog about TOHK not because I know Desiree, but because, as fate would have it, Little Cream Life has a bit role in the story behind TOHK. Towards the end of 2006, I got an email from AF who had come across Little Cream Life while doing a search for Ingredients (the restaurant). I ended up planning her family's holiday and in the process she mentioned that her husband wanted to bring Time Out to Hong Kong. He was willing to invest, but did I know anyone suitable to get it off the ground, up and running. Basically, he needed a publisher and a team. I sat on it for a little while. At the time, I couldn't think of anyone and I wasn't sure how serious DE really was about the whole thing.

A few months later, AF mentioned it again. By that time, I knew Desiree had left her post as editor of SCMP's Sunday magazine and was finding life as a lady of leisure a bit dull. So I floated the idea to Desiree. While sceptical at first (those who have been in the biz have a healthy scepticism about the profitablity of starting an English-language magazine in a predominantly Chinese-reading city), Desiree agreed to meet DE at a group dinner I had actually organized for an out-of-town guest from Tokyo at China Club last May. DE & DA hit it off and the rest is history. Along the way, I've heard a lot of the birthing stories and am constantly amazed at what ingenuity, tenacity and just plain hard work she and her team have put into this whole endeavour. From the investors to the writers to the ad sales team, there has been no lack of passion driving them to deliver a Time Out magazine for Hong Kong that readers of TO London or New York City would expect. Just a week before TOHK launches with a party at The Pawn, I checked in with Desiree to see whether the office was a circus or war zone:

3:05 PM desiree: actually it's been amazingly calm. we've been pulling 14 hour days but everyone is still joking around'

3:06 PM think of it as gallows' humour, except i don't think anyone is getting executed

3:07 PM me: i think we're all pretty excited about TO finally landing in HK...how long did it take to get here?

desiree: the whole idea started back around May last year, at a small dinner

one thing led to another and we worked with the TO team in London for quite a while.

but the whole basic framework was started around december.

Then the team flew to London to work with the Time Out staff

3:09 PM me: actually, that's pretty lightening speed

desiree: We rented a huge flat and I felt like we were participating in some MTV reality show

well, you know what they say in HK, get this done by "yesterday"

so I guess we've already got the luxury of time

3:10 PM me: what was the funniest reality tv show moment

i.e. trailer moment

desiree: probably me in rollers in the morning

me: no way!!

desiree: i just refused to let any amount of shame get in the way of my hair

me: did the whole team see you in rollers??!!

desiree: hahahahahaahha

3:11 PM probably. but i had no choice

i get up pretty late in the morning and my routine usually encompass putting on my rollers and eating breakfast

let's just say my secret to bouncy hair is out

3:12 PM i have no idea how a conversation with a publisher about to launch a magazine led to hair. this is not good PR

me: who's "the team"?

desiree: well. the "team", and we are also an official football team as of today.......

the guys signed up to play league

me: of course it's good PR...you'll get ads for shampoo, hair salons, etc.

3:13 PM desiree: that wouldn't be half bad!

anyways, going back to the team - Paul Kay is the editor

me: you should post your football team's results in TOHK and open up for betting

hk's fave past time!

desiree: Angie Wong is at the helm of food/lifestyle

Clare Morin is the arts writer (we go way back at the scmp)

3:14 PM Dennis Lai , whom you also know, is art directing

me: yeah, me and Dennis go way back

desiree: and some new faces I've had the pleasure of working with!

me: way back to an obsolete mag

desiree: yeah. remember YA!

me: anyway, have to mention this whole fate/destiny thing

desiree: Actually i wrote two of my best stories for YA

one on Lee Lai Shan

3:15 PM and one on the founder of APC, Jean Touitou

remember?

me: wow, can't believe you remember...i hardly do...but this chat's not about YA

back to fate and destiny

since it's played such an interesting part in the birth of TOHK

desiree: totally amazing

me: what do you think is TOHK's destiny?

3:16 PM desiree: that's a loaded question

can u clarify?

do magazines have a destiny?

most of the time i get asked about "position" or "niche"

so this is a rather interesting question

me: of course! but they may not be immediately apparent...or perhaps your destiny in all this

i bring this up

because there are rumours that Asia City is selling

3:17 PM desiree: well. i don't know what TOHK's destiny is, but I do hope I make some $$ so I can eventually open an animal shelter

whatever I do in publishing, and i usually work pretty hard at stuff, is a means to an end

3:18 PM in the meantime, i hope the magazine will do some interesting features and champion some causes that may not be the most fashionable thing

although i stress that i still aim to do that while remaining fashionable.

i hope that doesn't make me sound too shallow

3:19 PM the fashion reference, i mean!

me: no, not at all...and since we are on fashion

desiree: hahahahaahhah

me: what will you be wearing on launch day?

desiree: oh, funny you ask. i've been thinking

i will attempt to dress in TO colours

red/black/white

i hope i won't look like an extra in High School Musical

3:20 PM me: i don't think you could even if you tried...haha

desiree: thanks for your compliment! it made my day!

me: oops...sorry...just realized that can be taken another way...but i meant it as a compliment on your style

rather than...

3:21 PM desiree: a girl can accomplish anything really, when sh'es got the right wardrobe.

oops typo

me: and hair!

desiree: YEAH, HAIR!

boy, i hope no one reads this.

me: just don't show up in rollers...otherwise, it'll be a bit like hairspray

desiree: i was hoping to engage in some deep conversation about arts and culture

me: this is culture, my dear

desiree: since it's so close to my heart, when i started as an arts reporter in 1994

3:22 PM thanks to YOU!

me: ok, enough...time's ip

up

desiree: ok

see you at the party!

me: it's gonna be a blast!!

desiree: look for the mascot in Red/white/Black

that would be me........

3:23 PM it will be a blast with all our friends and everyone who's been so supportive of TOHK

me: too bad wyclef's not gonna make his special appearance :-(

desiree: i can't thank them enough

yeah, he leaves the day before

but New Pants is cool!

u should watch them on You Tube

punk disco electronic

absolutely a blast to watch

For a special friends & family pre-launch annual subscription rate of HK$128, fill out the subscription form below:

Central's Alluring UFO

The UFO appeared in the distance, a vision of alluring beauty. Its pristine, white skin glistened amidst the pulsating coloured lights that are the life of this city. I walked towards the structure, perplexed and intrigued. What could this sleek, sensuous structure parked atop the old Star Ferry car park be? What lied within?

As I approached, I saw the name on the signboard that inspires in me the kind of delight akin to a teenage groupie finding out that her favourite band is about to roll into town: Zaha Hadid. The UFO in question is the Chanel Contemporary Art Container, containing works by the likes of Daniel Buren, David Levinthal, Michael Lin, Sophie Calle among others. The artists are all interesting, but what I really wanted to see and experience was the space.

The approach to the container, on this particular overcast day, made me think of Chris Marker's La Jetée, the image of the woman standing at the end of the jetty. The memory of the woman that comforts the protagonist through a post-apocalyptic present, we later find out, is actually the moment of himself, as a child, witnessing his own adult death.


Once inside Hadid's container, though, it was a warm and welcoming cocoon, with echoes of Eero Saarinen's TWA terminal. The deep, sultry, accented voice of a woman on the audio guide begins: "I was waiting for you...so impatiently...torn between pleasure and pain...I have such an overwhelming need to open up...to display my fantasies...open up my pack as the French would say...".

And so the show begins, 20 artists and their vision of what desires, insecurities and longings lie within a Chanel quilted bag.

Hong Kong is the first landing site for Mobile Art. From Hong Kong, it heads to Tokyo, New York, London, Moscow and finally Paris. The show runs here until 5 April 2008 and tickets (HK$10) can be booked via HK Ticketing.

Evolution: The Handstand Challenge

"But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever
So I think I'll be Six now for ever and ever."
- Now We Are Six, A.A. Milne

I was green with envy when DT said he had managed an unassisted headstand the other day: "First time since I was 6 or so...Felt like a kid". I've been wanting to do an unassisted inversion (headstand, tripod headstand, handstand, whatever...) since I started yoga, but just not there yet. After one class with Patrick where we were practising the different stages of a headstand, I actually had a dream where I kept trying, and repeatedly failing, to do a handstand. I woke up feeling like Sisyphus, except Sisyphus would actually get to roll his rock all the way up the hill before having it roll back down; I never managed a handstand, even in my dream (I don't even want to think about what Freud would have to say about all this!). It was such an annoying feeling, especially knowing that, even in my dream, the one thing that kept me from doing the handstand was fear -- visions of myself landing on my head and breaking my neck would race through my mind just as I'm about to kick my legs up. I'd love to have that fearlessness of a 6-year-old again.

So yesterday, to help me overcome my fear, I dragged LP, MP & PW to the Evolution: Asia Yoga Conference (none of us actually ever imagined ourselves attending a yoga conference!) to take the "Inversions Demystified" class taught by Jason Nemer and Jenny Sauer-Klein, founders of Acroyoga. When we arrived, we were all just a tad bit intimidated. Most of the people in the class seemed like such serious yogis, many having attended classes since the start of the conference on Friday. Even MP & PW, who could do handstands, were looking a bit weary.

In the end, I didn't quite manage to do a completely unassisted handstand. I used the wall to get my legs up, but there was a split-second when I managed to hold the handstand on my own and that already got me on a thrilling high. I never imagined myself attending a yoga conference full of serious yogis, but there we all were, having such fun. There was one particularly entertaining moment watching MP & PW execute an exercise with one of them in downward dog and the other attempting a handstand off the back of the one in downward dog (I leave it to the reader's imagination to work out the technicalities). LP, who was least enthusiastic to begin with, actually walked out of the 2-hour class saying we should attend next year's conference and sign up for more classes! I walked out of the class with the inspiring realisation that I wasn't going to break my neck doing a handstand. So I'll just keep trying. And one of these days, it will just happen and I might just be able to be 6 for ever and ever.

Hong Kong: Support a Better Central Waterfront!

A message from Designing Hong Kong:

If you care about a quality harbourfront for Hong Kong, please read on...

There have been many public forums and organisations to get community feedback on the new Central waterfront. The response from all these has been very clear. People want:

Less density
More greenery
More diversity
A boulevard instead of a six-lane highway running through the middle

These wishes will require changes to the current Outline Zoning Plan, but the Government refuses to countenance any changes. It is sticking to the current "big block" footprints and a "thundering thoroughfare" (the so-called "P2" passing right through the middle. This does not reflect public's wishes and will result in a sub-optimal harbourfront. Since this is the last reclamation on the Central harbourfront, it is the last chance for us to get it right and create something we can all love and be proud of.

Designing Hong Kong has now taken the initiative to make its own
application to the Town Planning Board to revise the existing Outline Zoning Plan to reflect what people want. THIS APPLICATION NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT.

To support this initiative, go to the link below, click "Express Support" and send the signed Support Form to the Town Planning Board.

Please take the time to do something for our future harbourfront. Please forward this message.

GO HERE: http://www.designinghongkong.com

Designing Hong Kong is an alliance of four individuals:
* Christine Loh, former Legislative Councilor and CEO of the non-profit think-tank Civic Exchange
* Peter H. Y Wong, Chartered Accountant, Past Chairman of the Business and Professionals Federation of Hong Kong, and member of the Greater Pearl River Delta Business Council and the Executive Committee of the Commission on Strategic Development
* Markus Shaw, Chairman of WWF Hong Kong and member of the Advisory Council on the Environment
* Paul Zimmerman, Executive Director of Jebsen Travel, Convenor of Designing Hong Kong Harbour District and Vice-Chairman of the Coalition on Sustainable Tourism.

Click here for the English press release.
Click here for the Chinese press release.

Green T House: E-fu noodle surprise

Cyberport is not one of the most exciting malls in Hong Kong. So when I first heard about Green T House (T: +852 29896036) I was not in a hurry to go check it out. But then, Saturday's plans for a outdoor BBQ dinner on Jumbo's Top Deck got nixed due to stormy weather and so our group of 8 ended up at Green T House for dinner.

Cyberport is a very quiet mall. Even on a Saturday night, the mall was practically empty. I was looking for the restaurant and actually walked into the wrong restaurant. Fortunately, one of the waiters pointed me in the right direction: "It's opposite, see the white wall." I saw the white wall, but i didn't really see the restaurant. It was only when I got closer that I saw the very subtle entrance to the restaurant. Inside, the decor was dramatic, like a theatre set. It's a bit Robert Wilson meets The Hempel, very white. There is one very long dining table. For most of the evening, aside from us, there were only 2 other diners.

Green T House is actually quite well-known in Beijing (it's actually even harder to find there), conceived and founded by Zhang Jin Jie, who in addition to being a chef of "modern Chinese" cuisine is also an accomplished classical Chinese musician. It's a combination of tea house/restaurant/art gallery/events space.

We all ordered the 8-course tasting menu at HK$880 per head. The food, while beautifully presented, and competantly prepared was slightly lacking in the Wow factor on the taste buds. There's not much risk-taking nor playfulness with the flavours. Someone in the group mentioned that, for a Chinese meal, we were lacking carbs, so asked the waiters if they could serve us some rice or noodles. The waiter then suggested they prepare some E-fu noodles for us. To which we agreed without any thought to cost. Afterall, how much can E-fu noodles cost? Well, it turns out, that a side serving (it was served with the lobster course) cost HK$140 per head!! To be fair, the truffle-flavoured E-fu noodles were the most memorable of all the dishes served, but HK$140 for a small portion of noodles is just silly. The total bill including wine came out on par with a meal at Pierre or Robuchon. Rents at Cyberport are way lower than Landmark; Green T operating on very healthy margins (but then again, they're not exactly pulling in the crowds. at least not on this particular saturday night).

Green T House is a stunning setting for a party, but be forewarned about the price of a side of E-fu noodles.

Hong Kongers: Please Join the Clean Air Foundation!

I returned to a very grey, gloomy, hazy, rainy Hong Kong after 4 days of blissful blue skies and fresh, clean ocean breeze. We, in Hong Kong, all complain ad nauseum about the poor air quality and visibility, so here's our chance to do just a tad bit more constructive than complain!

Please join the Clean Air Foundation (please see below for brief summary of what they are doing) by taking just 1 minute of your time to click this link and fill in your basic contact details.

The Clean Air Foundation is a recently created not-for-profit Hong Kong company aimed primarily to promote and protect the right of the people of Hong Kong to breathe clean air. The Clean Air Foundation will pay particular attention to local sources of air pollution and to the role of Hong Kong in both causing and solving local environmental problems.

The air in Hong Kong is killing us slowly but surely.

The government of HKSAR is not fulfilling its most basic responsibility to provide clean air for its citizens. The aim of the Clean Air Foundation is to galvanise the support of citizens and concern groups to find appropriate recourse to exhort the HKSAR government to leave behind its empty promises and hollow rhetoric. We must immediately begin to address the many local sources of air pollution for which something can and must be done.

Please join the Clean Air Foundation and be part of promoting and protecting the rights of Hong Kong citizens to breathe clear air. To make your voice heard, please press "reply" and fill in the information below and send to: info@cleanairfoundation.hk or visit our website and fill in the form online at www.cleanairfoundation.hk

Membership Applicant Information

*Last Name:

*Given Name(s):

Organisation:

Address:

Contact Phone:

*Email:

* Denotes required fields

Dinner with Filmmakers

It's not every day that I get to have dinner with an Academy Award-winning film director, so I was really excited when TN & FY invited me to a dinner they were hosting for their filmmaker friends in town for last week's Entertainment Expo. Filmmakers at the dinner included: Stanley Kwan, Anne Misawa, Corey Tong and Ruby Yang (still recovering from all the Oscar parties).

I arrived at Ning Po Resident's Association's restaurant pretty much at the same time as LC and SK. The thing with filmmakers is that you often know their work, but you don't really know their face. To my slight embarrassment, I actually didn't know that the guy I was sitting next to was the SK, one of Hong Kong's more respectable directors. He was talking about a project that he had been working on, but has since been passed on to Chen Kaige. He had been pushing for Tony Leung to take on the lead character, a Peking opera star, but to no avail. CT and AM are in town finalizing financing for their upcoming feature film, a triptych of love stories spanning three cities around the Pacific Rim. RY is on her celebratory PR rounds for The Blood of Yingzhou District, which won an Oscar for Best Documentary Short:



We were all extremely entertained by her photos from the Vanity Fair Oscar party. There were snaps of her with Penelope Cruz, Leonardo di Caprio (who she says only took a picture with her because she had an Oscar in hand!), Forrest Whitaker and a whole host of other Hollywood celebs. She never thought the film would get nominated, let alone win. On the night the nominations were to be announced, she even told her team to go home and not wait for the call (fortunately, they didn't listen). I tried to get her to convey how she felt at that moment at the ceremony where they announced her film as the winning film, but I suppose it's not something that can be reduced to a one-liner; all the blood, sweat and tears of so many people involved in that one ephemeral moment. When you watch the trailer for her film, indeed, the Oscar and all the glamour surrounding it all gets reduced to a mere triviality. The Blood of Yingzhou District is actually part of a larger project to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS in China through PSAs produced by their organization, The China Aids Media Project.

For those in Hong Kong interested in screening the film and meeting Ruby Yang, FCC has organized a dinner this Friday, 30 March 2007 at 7:30pm. If you miss this one, there'll be a fundraising screening in May.

Eat Right; Nobu Revisited

People often start businesses out of necessity, because the market isn't addressing their own needs. Years ago, when my friend DH was still living in Hong Kong, we had talked about a nutritional food delivery service. Back then, Atkins and South Beach diets were still all the rage. But we lamented that it was hard to stick with any kind of a healthy diet when we were constatly eating out. The best solution would be for someone to work our the meal plan, cook up delicious food and deliver it straight to your home or office. We never did start the business, of course. And these types of businesses started popping up in NYC and Singapore. Hong Kong, the norm these days, is arriving late to this trend. But better late than never! Eat Right, just across the street from Pure's Kinwick gym offers exactly this service. My fitness bet friends and I were meeting up with Martin Lorentsson, who is also a trainer at Pure, at Eat Right to see what kind of menus he could concoct to help us meet our 3-month fitness targets and win our bet. There's a questionnaire about current health state, daily eating habits and a list of foods to choose from to give them an idea of the kinds of foods you like or dislike. Then you let them know how many meals you want delivered each day and they work out the rest. So far, the fitness gang has tried out the food. We're waiting for the taste factor to improve a little bit before we sign on. But it's a good service in the making!

Thanks for the pics FS (taken with her SonyEriccson phone)!

I am sort of ambivalent about Nobu's restaurants. I've had some great meals at Matsuhisa Aspen, but I also had a truly awful meal at Nobu London in Berkeley Square (we ordered the tasting menu and the cod was over-cooked and tasteless). So when FS suggested we give Nobu in Hong Kong (2/F InterContinental Hotel; T: +852 23132323) a try, I wasn't super enthusiastic. We had an 8:30pm reservation. By 9pm, there was still no table. I kicked up a bit of a fuss and by 9:15pm, they finally offered us the private room with the HK$15,000 minimum charge waived (we were 9 people and our final bill ended up not being far off from that). Fortunately, the meal was much better than the one I had in London. We had the yellow tail with jalapeno, toro tartare with caviar, seared toro salad, seared toro with yuzu miso sauce, monkfish pate, all of which were delicious. We hardly ordered any cooked dishes though, probably for the better since the London meal that I so disliked had mainly been cooked dishes. While the food was good, to be honest, the evening was really more memorable for the entertainment we created for ourselves (good thing they gave us the private room!).

Shop for Little Cream Book at these Christmas Fairs!

Tis' the season to shop, shop, shop! Come visit Little Cream Book at these Christmas Fairs (Bring a copy of this post for a 10% DISCOUNT):

Tomorrow-Thursday, 28-30 November 2006, 10am - 7pm @ the lawns of IFC Mall , Central
3 December 2006 (Sunday), 11am - 5pm @ main lawn of Hong Kong Country Club, Deep Water Bay
5 December 2006 (Tuesday), 10am - 8pm @ ballroom of Conrad Hotel, Admiralty

Read about Little Cream Book in the 25 November issue of mpw (Ming Pao Weekly's lifestyle book), the November issue of Zip and the January 2007 UK edition of Harper's Bazaar!

L'Atelier du Robuchon (they're opening everywhere!) is opening on 3/F Landmark (T: +852 2166 9000) tomorrow night (Tuesday, 28 November). Wonder if it'll be as good as the one in NYC. BL's booked it for his b-day dinner on Wednesday. Since it's only 2nd day of operations, I don't expect it to be in top form yet. But, I'm still hoping to be pleasantly surprised!

ThreeSixty: Starting a health revolution in HK?

Over the weekend, I got some sad news about one of our ski instructors in Cortina. Apparently, M would not be able to join us for CNY skiing since she has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. Perhaps BI, who has just completed a course of chemotherapy and is now undergoing radiation therapy and will be joining us in Cortina, can offer her some support. In any case, I wish M a very speedy recovery and return to the slopes!

So over the weekend, health was on my mind. As I was working out in the gym with PT, she mentioned having just checked out ThreeSixty, the new food store on the top two floors of Landmark. At first, I wasn't all that interested, thinking it was just another City'Super, Oliver's, Great or Gourment. But then, she mentioned it was like Whole Foods. Those who have read my post when I was in D.C. will know that I love Whole Foods. So of course, I jumped at the bait and immediately went to check it out after my workout.

ThreeSixty just opened last Tuesday and when I got there, it was bustling with people. In many ways, it does try to be Whole Foods, except ThreeSixty is still a whole lot smaller. And the fact that it's in Landmark makes it a lot less accessible to the masses (so I guess their health revolution is starting from the affluent. For the launch, though, they are partnering with three NGOs: Oxfam, WWF and Changing Young Lives Foundation, but I couldn't quite figure out what the partnership entails, i.e. whether part of proceeds are donated or whether it's free publicity for the organizations etc.)

Like Whole Foods, ThreeSixty has done a lot of work on their labelling. On fresh produce, country of origin and farming style (conventional or organic) as well as brief description of health benefits were marked on the label along with the price. Same with meats. There were lots of educational and informational pamphlets explaining the difference between conventional, organic or naturally-raised livestock. At the moment, though, I would say that the majority of the offerings are marked "conventional" (i.e. no different from what you might find at your local Park'N'Shop). But credit has to be given to ThreeSixty for clearly marking everything and for making consumers more aware of the differences of conventional vs. organic farming methods. It also uses labels to indicate which foods are suitable for certain diets (i.e. low-sodium, low-carb etc.) or when certain allergens are present (XTC's gelatos had milk marked on the allergen labels).

In the non-food area, I was happy to see products such as Seventh Generation toilet paper (free from chlorine bleaching) and non-toxic cleaning products. They also have the Wellness Centre that has a naturopath on hand to guide customers in their choices of health supplements and natural beauty products.

ThreeSixty probably has one of the nicest supermarket shopping environments in Hong Kong. Though, I imagine, they'll be wanting more space very soon. I took a couple of photos with my new HP iPAQ hw6965 (I am still waiting, with baited breath, for Apple's iPhone, but I just got fed up with Nokia's word completion on the cheap, basic Nokia I got in India that I just had to spring for a phone with a full keyboard and wifi) so please excuse the grainy quality of these pics:

25 Nov: Shop at Tod's to Benefit Mother's Choice

FY just forwarded an email invite to a Tod's special day of shopping in Hong Kong to benefit Mother's Choice. For tomorrow only (Saturday, 25 November from 10:30am to 7:30pm), "a special discount can be enjoyed and part of the sales will be donated to Mother's Choice". Participating stores are: Tod's Landmark in Central and Tod's Pacific Place in Admiralty only.

Connie's Private Kitchen: Worth the Wait

EC is a serious foodie. He knows all the nooks and crannies in Hong Kong where good food can be found. He found a great laksa place while wandering Tin Hau the other day. So leave it to him to manage to get a table at Connie's (6/F, 186 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai. T: +852 60548244). I first heard about Connie's a couple years ago from DH, must have been a couple years ago. He told me it was great food, but also told me it would be difficult to book with only one table of 12 per night. So I never bothered to try. So when EC invited me to dinner at Connie's, I jumped at the chance. He had actually booked for last night's Thanksgiving dinner there a year ago! But Connie says it doesn't take a year's wait. She decided not to let people book so far in advance. So currently, she is only taking reservations for the first few months of 2007.

Having dinner at Connie's is like having dinner at a friend's simple home in Wan Chai. The apartment is small. The round table, which seats 12 comfortably, took up the whole living area. One of the walls was covered with framed photographs of Connie and her guests. There was no shortage of celebrities, socialities or political figures. She loves recounting stories of some of her high-profile guests. Like how bodyguards had to stand outside in the un air-conditioned hallway, how paparazzi were hiding out in the stairwell, etc. But the real highlight of the evening was the food. All the dishes were great. The most memorable were: mushroom (bak ling gu) with shrimp served up in a garlic and roe (crab and shrimp) sauce; rice (she uses japanese rice to imitate sticky rice) with all sorts of tasty ingredients (chinese sausages, dried shrimp, dried scallop, etc.) wrapped in turnip cake; an amazing soup made from 3 chickens, 15 pork marrows (we all wondered how she can manage to secure all those marrows!), lots of ginger and papaya and hairy crab cooked in it for a short while. She also served up 5 apetizers. My favourite of those was the fried pork chop, which was amazingly tender (she doesn't use corn starch. Instead, she soaks the meat overnight with the skin of papaya, which acts as a tenderizer). Apparently, one young client requested her pork chops for a birthday party, so the mother had to order 50 pieces! The dessert was also perfect -- pieces of pomelo or strawberry with floss of coconut candy (she bought the machine from Taiwan; it's a bit like a cotton candy machine) and a mint leaf; very refreshing after the big meal!

Connie loves talking about her food, how she came up with the dishes, how she shops for the ingredients and prepares them. She'll tell you everything. After the dinner, she passed out her cards with the date written on the back. It's so guests can remember which date they came. When they re-book, Connie can then make sure not to repeat any previously tasted dishes. Her dishes are really quite distinctive and refreshingly different from anything you could find in a proper restaurant. That's because a restaurant that caters to more than 1 table a night, can't really afford to serve up the labour and ingredient-intensive dishes that she does. And Connie is adamant about not expanding beyond the size of her current space (which at its maximum can host 20 guests, but she does so reluctantly), because of her concern for the quality of what she can serve.

Connie is a self-taught chef. When we asked her what she used to do, she replied, "I'm just a regular housewife". She didn't like any of the food she ate in restaurants -- too much MSG and other artificial preservatives, unsanitary cooking environments, uninspiring dishes that were all too common. So about four years ago, she decided to start her own private kitchen and people have been begging for more of her food ever since.

I have friends who think that I don't like Chinese food, to which I can now respond, "but I like Connie's!"

Connie's -- 6/F, 186 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai. T: +852 60548244

Mandarin Grill

Went to Mandarin Grill for the first time last night since its refurbishment. I like the new look a lot more now, a lot less stuffy with the open kitchen and beige chairs. It must be strange for my grandfather though, to go through one institutional update after another. When I first came to Hong Kong (...dare I say it?) 13 years ago, I never shopped at Lane Crawford; it was my grandfather's store. He would walk into the Queen's Road Central store and the sales ladies would know him. Ever since the Lane Crawford IFC opened though, that's changed. Grandpa stopped shopping at Lane Crawford and I started. For Lane Crawford though, that may or may not be an entirely good thing. An insider commented that a lot of the loyal (i.e. those who spend often and spend the most) customers were turned away by Lane Crawford's image change to appeal to the younger shopper (i.e. myself). Compared to my grandfather, I would definitely be considered a lower value customer. But then again, if they managed to keep me interested, my future shopping flow probably exceeds Grandpa. Such is reality I suppose. Same with Mandarin Grill. My grandfather used to have regular luncheons there. But then, those in the luncheon group slowly faded. My grandfather tells me that one of the regulars is still a regular even though he has to use a walker and is accompanied by a helper. And when we left the restaurant, the staff encouraged Grandpa to come back with his friend. I wonder if he will, it must feel like a totally different restaurant to him now. But I hope he does. As for me, I liked the new look and feel. The food tried hard to stay true to its traditional grillroom roots while offering more contemporary accents. Afterall, curry ice cream (which, incidentally, was delicious in an interesting way) isn't what you'd expect for an accompaniment to a crème brûlé (in this case, mango flavoured). I had turbot in a saffron broth and beetroot with butter and almonds for a side. Both were of a standard one would expect. I had to taste my aunt's lobster risotto with white truffle, which was very tasty indeed! But with that combination of ingredients, it would be hard not to please.

While I have no complaints about Mandarin Grill's food, service or ambiance, it's still not really my kind of restaurant. While no longer stuffy, it's still feels like a business lunch and dinner kind of place. For thrills, I would think that Pierre fits the bill more (although I have yet to go). For comfort food, I much prefer Chinnery or the Hainan Chicken rice in the coffee shop.

SCMP Harper's Bazaar Style Awards 2006

Another email worthy of congratulations today. This one from BL at G.O.D. Douglas Young, who wrote Little Cream Book: Architecture for us, has just been nominated (along with Allan Zeman and filmmaker Wong Kar-wai) for the Stylemaker of the Year award! You can cast your vote online. My vote of course goes to DY! May he with the most style win (Note to the selection committee: why are all the nominees men??). Awards will be presented 19 January 2007.

From Chancery Lane, Hong Kong to Quito, Ecuador

The last time I strolled along Chancery Lane must have been on an Art Walk a few years back when I popped into 10 Chancery Lane, a gallery owned by Katie de Tilly, wife of an INSEAD alum. I've always liked the feel of this little lane, an oasis of quiet in the midst of busy Central in the area between Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo. I had reason to visit again when I found out that Kim Chung (owner of One Thirty One, one of my favourite restaurant retreats in Hong Kong that feels like you've escaped to a house on a European lake. 131 Tseng Tau Village, Sai Kung; T: +852 2791-2684) had just opened up a new gift/home accessories shop called just 2 girls (5 Chancery Lane, T: +852 2810 1488). KC had contacted me because they wanted to stock our books in their shop. It's a charming space and they sell a lot of really cute gifts for dogs and cats (KC even bakes dog biscuits!) as well as fashion and home accessories for their human owners. A great new addition for Christmas gift-shopping season! The best part is that they'll host a happy hour or aftyernoon tea party for you and your friends. It's a way for them to bring in more traffic to the otherwise quiet Chancery Lane and it's a fun way for you to spend some time with your friends drinking, chatting and shopping.

From this side of the world, our books are heading to another side of the world. The power of the internet to help small businesses expand globally never ceases to amaze me. While it's quite ordinary for us to sell our books to a shop in Hong Kong, it's quite exciting to get an order for our books from far-flung Quito! Actually, I guess it all started when we had requested permission from Quito Tourism Office to reproduce a picture of Quito's Church and Convent of San Francisco in our Little Cream Book: Architecture. When the book was published, we sent a complimentary copy to their office as a courtesy. A little over a month later, we got an email saying that the mayor's office wanted to place a bulk order of the book to give as gifts. Needless to say, I was quite excited. We sent off an invoice via paypal.com, the transfer was made and received and we're about to send off the shipment next Monday. The whole transaction was done in cyberspace and with so little fuss! I never even spoke with anyone in Quito; quite amazing really.

The coolest thing...

...happened just now. I was going through today's mail and came across the brochure for this year's Asia Cultural Cooperation Forum (9-12 November 2006). They usually manage to bring in some pretty interesting speakers in the creative industries, even though the format of the whole conference is anything but creative. This year, they've got a 3-hour session on "Measuring Creativity, Happiness and Well-Being", but the session that caught my eye was "Experiencing Architecture", since I'm a bit of an archi-buff. I was going down the list of 10 speakers and stopped abruptly at "Mr Charupan Khak WIRIYAWIATT, Director, Naga Concepts, Thailand" (Naga Concepts, you might remember, is the company I mentioned in an entry back in August that will be working with Andre Balazs, Christian Liagre and John Pawson on a residential/resort project in Anguilla). So I immediately call BL; as we both go skiing with Khak (after one intense day of skiing, Khak spent the morning at breakfast moaning, "paaaiiinnn" every time he moved. BL and I have taken to imitating that each time we go skiing/snowboarding now.). BL had no idea that Khak, who's based in Phuket, would be in town next week. As I was browsing through the brochure to give him the details of the talk, I notice, "hey! your company's sponsoring this; you should know about this!".

Life's full of funny surprises. Unfortunately, I will miss the talk since I will be in Tokyo that day. Major bummer.

New Hollywood Road Haunt: lazy Sunday morning brunch @ Classified

It's been ages since I walked along Hollywood Road beyond Peel Street. When I used to work around the Hollywood Road/Wyndham Street area, I might venture towards Sheung Wan in search of new lunch spots (i.e. Gough 40, Song...yes, it was that long ago). But since setting up shop in Causeway Bay, I've not gone beyond the imaginary boundaries of SoHo. It's a very urban phenomenon that we get stuck in our limited neighborhood mindset. Hong Kong people don't venture to Kowloon (even though it's just a 7-minute Star Ferry ride across the harbour), Upper East Siders get stuck within a 10-block radius, Parisians in the 6th don't really see any reason to head to the 4th, etc. When we live in a city, we all get neighborhood myopia, which is really just laziness. But once in a while, a great shop, restaurant, spa or club opening will jolt us out of our contentment zone and send us trekking to unchartered neighborhoods in search of cool, new experiences.

Such was the case with Classified. Which was how, on this rare, blue-sky Sunday morning, I found myself strolling down Hollywood Road in the Sheung Wan direction hunting for this awesome cheese, wine, ham, coffee shop and its soon-to-open bar-brasserie, The Pressroom. I had received an sms from dy raving about this place opened by one of his friends. He said it was below m1nt, a private club concept ("the world's first shareholder's club") which I find a bit hokey. The location sounded a bit iffy, but if dy (who hardly ever gets excited about food) raves about a food place, it's must be worth checking out. And I was not disappointed.

I spotted Classified's canopy a block away (the name pays homage to the building's former life as a newspaper press). The space was beautifully done. In the ground floor space, coffee, ham (think 33-month aged Joselito ham, absolutely delish!) and cheese platters (mainly U.K. cheeses, but I had a heavenly Brie de Meaux) are served. The also sell luxuriously-packaged jams, teas, honeys and olive oils. On the mezzanine floor, there is a temperature and humidity-controlled cheese room, where customers are encouraged to sample their selection of cheeses. Outside is a wine section (didn't pay much attention to the stock since it was before noon on a Sunday morning, but at a glance, there seemed to be a few Alsatian wines). In the wine room, there's a large wooden table that makes for a perfect venue for private wine and cheese tastings. In fact, I was looking was a fun place for another INSEAD gathering next week and this seemed like the perfect place (just wish they carried more smelly, French cheeses like epoisses though)!

While I waited for dy, bl and py to show up, I finished off 24g of Brie de Meaux (only HK$10!)with bread and samplings of their blueberry and buckwheat honey. I sat at the square wooden tasting table with benches (seats up to 12 people), which kind of reminds me of Le Pain Quotidien's communal tables. On the table were 2 olive oils, 2 honeys, jam and cubes of Comte with bread for passers-by to come in and try. With the doors open, the weather beautiful, it was the perfect leisurely, Sunday brunch experience.

As the Michelin guides put it, Classified is worthy of a detour/special journey. Owners AA&P are on their way to creating a new destination neighborhood, but I am hoping success will also allow them to branch out and open up closer to my neighborhood. I could use a new canteen.

INSEAD Slacker Six mini-reunion at Hong Kong's ingredients

INSEAD was where I was schooled in the art of living the Little Cream Life. It didn't hurt that I found myself sitting in an amphitheatre with 70-odd other like-minded individuals. INSEAD's admissions process prides itself on selecting people from diverse and international backgrounds. Somehow, they also managed to figure out early on who all the slackers in the promotion would be and stuck them in Section Six (our promotion had 3 other sections: 5, 7 and 8. One of these sections prided themselves in having the most people on the Dean's List). Ours was the s