It's your birthday… It's your birthday...

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I was invited to a dinner tonight jointly celebrating the birthdays of a happy couple.  We gathered at Wagyu Kaiseki Den, one of my favorite places for kaiseki cuisine (懐石料理) in town.  There would of course be wine, and our thoughtful hosts had not only wines from their birth vintages, but also those of the attending guests.  The last time I had a similar theme at dinner was when Frédéric Engerer hosted us at Château Latour…

While the wines were being decanted and we waited for everyone to arrive, we had some snacks to nibble on… edamame (枝豆) was an obvious choice…

…as was grilled dried puffer fish.

TEDxVH 2013

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Last year I had the honor of speaking at the first TEDxVictoriaHarbour, and trying my damnedest to throw some inspirational messages out there.  I'm not sure at all that my feeble attempt met with any success, but I'm real happy to have been part of the event.

One year later, I have moved myself back to Hong Kong, and naturally found myself supporting the event in its second year.  I decided to go with a couple of friends and collectively take in the inspirational messages.  I'm not exaggerating when I say that I had been looking forward to this for the last 2 months, waiting for this day to arrive.

The venue this year was the Sunbeam Theatre (新光戲院大劇場), a theater with a 40-year history famed for being one of the last performance venues for Cantonese opera.  The place has faced multiple threats of closure within the last 10 years, but has received a temporary reprieve until 2016.  It's my first visit to the theater, and I'm glad that there are efforts from the community to preserve a part of Hong Kong's cultural history.

The theme this year was "E-Motions in Travel and Tourism", and an interesting roster of speakers came up one by one to talk about their personal experiences, to try to inspire us to do better.  My memory is a little hazy in my old age, but I don't recall watching pre-recorded segments at the event last year.  This year there were a few of them, but they certainly were inspirational.

Playdate with Uwe

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It's been a while since my last dinner with Fergie, and I thought it'd be a good idea to arrange another get-together.  This time, though, I pulled in a couple of mutual friends to make the party a little bigger... in the hope that it would be even more fun.  I think that turned out to be a pretty good call, if I may say so myself!

I had been wanting to go back to the Mandarin Grill + Bar for a proper meal, and my lunch last month provided a glimpse of what such a meal would be like.  Thinking that we should do something a little special, I called on my VVIP friend Tigger to set me up with Chef Uwe Opocensky, who very kindly arranged a special tasting menu for the evening.  I think we'll all remember this meal for some time to come.

We started with a few nibbles:

Ketchup cookies with shaved Parmigiano - I must confess that I found the Parmigiano shavings really yummy and full of flavor.

Mandarin duck

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For the last week or so, just about all of Hong Kong has been going ga-ga over the giant rubber duckie designed by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, including yours truly.  This cute, inflatable duckie has been parked in front of Ocean Terminal since May 2nd, and has even swum around a little in the middle of Victoria Harbour.

I've been pretty excited about the arrival of this duckie, and have gone to see it twice during the first two days.  I did take a break yesterday, but went back today for the third day in four so that I could take my godson to see it.  The little guy apparently really took to the yellow duckie, and at one point refused to leave the waterfront... Well, I'm glad he likes it as much as I do!

I had originally made plans for us to lunch at the No-Brain restaurant Al Molo, since it has a perfect view of the duckie.  However, we came to see the duckie a full 90 minutes or so early as we wanted to avoid the crowds, and we had exhausted all options for activities by 11 am...  With a full hour until the restaurant opened, Tigger made the last-minute to decision to go back to the Hong Kong side for a little dim sum.  I guess there would be no duck-shaped cookies for the little one today...

We arrived at Man Wah (文華廳) about half an hour before Al Molo was due to open, and even managed to order up some food for the little tyke while en route.  Yes, being a VIP (not me) certainly has its privileges!

Die Roboter von Kraftwerk

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I can't believe it's been nearly two years since my last concert.  I guess these days its easier for me to find a group of people to eat and drink with, and much harder to find people who share the same taste in movies and music.  When I first found out that Kraftwerk was coming to Hong Kong, I wanted to go but really didn't know who I could go with.  They're kinda esoteric… and probably unknown to many under the age of 30 to 35…

So I resorted to a little trick I've been employing lately: posting about it on Facebook and see if anyone would respond.  Luckily, someone did.  My friend Susan and her husband already had tickets, but since they were standing tickets on the floor, there wouldn't be any issue for me to buy an extra ticket and join them.

Before the concert, Susan very graciously invited me over for a quick dinner at their home.  After a quick round of delicious Thai food, involving just enough heat to get my blood flowing faster, we crossed the harbor to the Kowloonbay International Trade and Exhibition Centre for the event.

Since we're in Hong Kong, the band mostly performed the English versions of the songs.  I attempted to write down the order of the set, although since some of the songs are mixed together I may have missed a couple as they may be mere segments in the show...