Qing James

Ugh. LeBron James, possibly the greatest basketball player of all time, has sold out to the Chinese communist party. When asked about the controversy over Daryl Morey's tweet about Hong Kong, Le Bron basically put money before free speech and democracy.

NPR

He could have just said nothing but that would maybe jeopardize his merchandising revenue in China. There's been a huge backlash in the US regarding his comments, and rightly so. I think a lot of the outrage comes from his past efforts to portray himself as some kind of social justice warrior, speaking out about injustice and supporting charitable causes. Now it looks like it was all fake. LeBron should have taken a lesson from Michael Jordan: be an asshole all the time so expectations are low.

-Injustice Anywhere Is A Threat To Justice Everywhere- Our Lives Begin To End The Day We Become Silent About Things That Matter- #ThankYouMLK50

-LeBron James (Twitter), 2018

Pathetic.

"New" CX Lounge

I went looking for the showers at The Wing lounge and saw a sign that they moved them downstairs. After asking three people, I found the showers and a new extension to the lounge. There is a small room with several lounge chairs, pod chairs, and armchairs, along with a small food section. No noodle bar though.


My flight home from HKG to LAX is not listed on the board yet but I saw this at gate 3. Hopefully the gate assignment holds so I don't have to walk that far from the lounge to my flight. 4 1/2 hours left...


New shower suite. It feels a bit smaller than the old ones. There is a larger ceiling shower-head but you have to stand under it to turn on the water... cold shower until the water warms up. There is a touch panel on the wall to flush the toilet.


View from the downstairs lounge. This is the non-runway side of HKIA so no planes. :(


Lounge interior. There is another room down the hallway that has lots of computers. I didn't see if they were Macs or PCs.

To get on the Internet, there is a new AP called "CX - The Wing" which has a very good signal. There is one problem though... I tried to refresh my Mousehunt page on Facebook and got this message:

Juniper Web Filtering has been set to block this site.

Dang. The rest of Facebook works fine though. I wonder why only the Mousehunt app has been blocked by Cathay Pacific.

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Good grief, there's a Chinese family in the lounge with a small child who is screaming and playing Angry Birds on an iPad full blast. It looks like they also have a Filipino nanny with them. I hate to say this but I hope they're not on my flight. :(

Geography FAIL

(CBS didn't allow embedding on the video so I had to download it then upload directly to Blogger)

Three clues that it's not Hong Kong...

1. It clearly says "台北101" at the beginning of the video.
2. The reporter is speaking Mandarin instead of Cantonese.
3. Hong Kong skyline at night looks like this:

2010 Asia Trip, Hong Kong Airport (again)

Wahhh! I'm going to be so sad next time I travel to Asia. My Cathay Pacific elite status expires next month and since I haven't traveled that much this year, I don't have enough miles to renew. No more showers in the Hong Kong lounge. :(

Last night, dinner was only me and John. We walked around for 10 minutes behind one of the Sogo department stores while he tried to find a specific noodle shop. Just when I had enough of walking and sweating, he found it. It was pretty good and each bowl of noodle was ~NTD110 or ~$4. Since we got a late start, we finished around 10:00pm and I just went back to the apartment and slept. I think the warm weather wears on you if you're not used to it.


The noodle place also served a lot of dishes but I think everyone just got noodles. We also got some Shanghai-style steamed buns.

Traveling is tiring. I feel like I've been on the go the entire day. I left my friend's apartment ~11:00am this morning. I grabbed some lunch in the underground mall and took the MRT to Taipei train station. There I bought a ticket on the HSR train to Taoyuan and then took the shuttle bus to the airport.


Lunch: hot and sour soup + 10 dumplings (total = NTD80)

When I walked in to terminal 2, I couldn't find my flight on the board... strange. I finally found the Dragonair counter and they said that my flight was canceled, and they need to get me on a Cathay Pacific flight. The only problem was that the CX flight departed from terminal 1. They swore they can get my bags on the flight and since the terminals are connected, I can clear immigrations in terminal 2 and walk to my new gate. I looked at the time and my flight was boarding in 7 minutes. When I went through the immigration counter, the border agent looked at my boarding pass and said I was at the wrong terminal. I told him what happened... he shook his head and said I had a long walk.

I made it to my new gate and the flight was boarding already. Instead of a Airbus 320, the Cathay flight was a Boeing 777-300, the same type that they use on transpacific flights. The flight was only ~70 minutes and they served us a ham/cheese sandwich. Since I need photos for my blog, I tried taking a picture of the flight attendant with my Samsung phone. I was trying to be discreet but I guess it was kinda obvious... she wasn't very happy and yelled at me to delete the photo. That camera is very slow so I didn't get anything in the picture anyway.


Ham and cheese sandwich... blah.


I asked a flight attendant (the one who's picture I didn't take) for some water and she gave me this. It was only 100mL and a total waste of packaging.

Arriving early, I took a shower in the CX lounge and now have about 2 hours before my flight to Beijing. My friend in Beijing says she will pick me up at the airport and bring me to my hotel. It's only ~5pm and I'm ready to sleep again.


Hong Kong International Airport. Almost every gate has a plane parked.

I just heard an announcement for KA824 to Chengdu. This is the flight I took a week ago. They moved the flight to gate 524 which is a remote gate... poor suckers. My flight leaves in 40 minutes from gate 30... I hope they don't change it. Time to leave the lounge and back behind the GFW again.

2010 Asia Trip, KA824

Our flight was delayed for about an hour in Hong Kong due to China airspace issues so I’m not quite sure where we are or when we’ll arrive in Chengdu. At Hong Kong, I only had about an hour between flights but I decided to hit the lounge and noodle bar anyway, even if it was only for 15 minutes. I originally wanted to upload the last post before crossing the GFW but I had connection issues with the computer, though the Samsung phone managed to connect.


Wonton noodles and a BBQ pork bun at the CX lounge near gate 65

The demographics of the KA flight to Chengdu is much different than the CX flight from Los Angeles; it’s almost all Chinese people on this flight. I haven’t been to China for about a year and I am quickly reminded of how rude and inconsiderate Chinese people can be. Since our flight was delayed on the tarmac, everyone was already seated, along with the flight attendants. One guy in front of me decides to get up to grab a magazine… while we were slowly moving. A flight attendant told him to take his seat since we’re about to take off, and he said something back at her, while taking his time. Meanwhile, about 3-4 people around me turned their phone back on and started making calls. Sheesh, can’t anyone follow instructions? Even though it’s a two hour flight, Dragonair served dinner anyway. After eating dinner, they same rude guy called a flight attendant to collect his tray immediately, while they were still busy serving the rest of the cabin (we’re seated near the front). Then he immediately reclined his seat all the way back, while people are still eating. Of course, none of this is a big deal, and it could be that this guy is “special”, but I’m starting to get that annoyed feeling about rude Chinese people again.

I talked to Leon while transferring flights in Hong Kong. He said the hotel we’re staying at has no power from 11:30pm to 4am. Great, I think I probably won’t get there until 11:30pm. Why would they to this? There has to be less power consumption at night. Do they need to do maintenance or something? Good thing I brought a small flash light with me.

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The rude guy was at it again when we arrived at Chengdu. His bag was a few rows behind his seat so he forced his way back while yelling at everyone to back up. Some lady told him to just wait a bit since we just got to the gate but he turned and yelled at her too. Charming... probably has two wives.

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I'm at the hotel now. It took a little bit longer since the Taxi driver had to stop and get gas (CNG). Of course he didn't deduct the 3 yuan of waiting time (me standing on the curb waiting for him to fill up). It's now 12:28am. The power was supposed to go out at 11:55pm. I have the A/C on full blast and still I'm sitting here sweating. If the power goes out, I'm dead.


Hotel room. Still smells a bit like smoke but that's a given at any cheap hotel in China (even Taiwan). The internet connection seems to work since I got these two posts uploaded. I think Blogger is still blocked as well as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc so I using a VPN connection from work.

2010 Asia Trip, CX885

What you see when you first board the plane... :(

Arg, only 9 hours to go. The flight is not full at all. Almost every section of three seats (Boeing 777) has the middle seat open, and some people have the entire row to themselves. On previous flights, I’ve always boarded at the low numbered gates (i.e., 101,102, etc)at LAX. Today, we boarded at gate 123A which is the newly constructed double-decker gate designed for the Airbus A380. I didn’t get to see one up close though.


Quantas A380 from far away


Some major construction going on at LAX

So far, we were served lunch (blah) and I’ve watched two movies. The in-flight entertainment system was messed up at first so they had to reboot which took about 20 minutes. I got bored so I watched Salt on my netbook (R5 version). It was pretty good… much better than Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I also watched Iron Man 2 on the plane’s system. It was okay… the special effects were cool but the ending came too fast. The final fight sequence was really short and kinda lame; did they run out of money or something?


Black bean chicken with rice... not that good. For dinner, the dessert was some kind of apple pastry that was really tasty, though the rest of the meal was about as bad as lunch.


Entertainment system reboot... Linux OS (there a little penguin at the top left)

Next to me (across the aisle) is what appears to be a family returning to Hong Kong. The husband has a business class seat so his wife, two kids, and their Filipino nanny is seated in the 3 seats (I guess one kid is <24 months old). I wondered if he offered the business class seat to his wife. He is coming back to check on them every hour though… maybe out of guilt.

Sigh… 8 hours and 48 minutes left. Let’s see what other movies are available:

Alice in Wonderland
Brooklyn’s Finest
Clash of the Titans (I’ll be watching a legit copy!)
Green Zone
Hot Tub Time Machine
How to Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
and… Hard Boiled (under HK Cinema)

I was hoping for Inception or Despicable Me. I can watch 4 more movies if they’re ~2 hours each.

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Yawn… we are now close to Japan and about 4 hours away from Hong Kong. We were served dinner and I managed to watch another movie (How to Train Your Dragon) and Invincible Youth #39. I also took some Tydenol PM during dinner which was a bad idea; I’m really tired (11:36pm back in Los Angeles), but still unable to sleep.

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Yay! I think I fell asleep for an hour. Now it’s only 1 hour and 23 minutes to Hong Kong. The computer says it’s 2:01am or 5:01pm in Hong Kong… so we should get in at 6:24pm or ~20 minutes early. Leon warned me that some Dragonair flights were departing from a remote terminal so any extra time is good since the flight to Chengdu leaves at 7:40pm. We’re about to fly over Taipei according to the flight map. I’m going to try and nap the rest of the way.


Ha ha, SNSD's Oh on the inflight entertainment system. I have ~80% of the music under the Korean category.

China Family Trip - Back to Hong Kong

Aah, back to Hong Kong and civilization. I'm here on my 7-hour layover before flying home to LAX. Even though it's supposed to be a part of China, Hong Kong is different, at least the airport. Just at the CX lounge, there's non-spicy food, air conditioning, unblocked Internet, and hot showers (more on that later). I can only take so much bad air and rude people before wanting to go home. Speaking of rude, there's an Indian guy in the next lounge "cubicle" playing some sitar music out loud... oh well.

I'm parked in my usual corner at the Cathay lounge near Gate 3. Unlike other trips, it's actually bright and sunny outside and the sun won't go down for awhile. I really want to take a trip into town and go up on Victoria Peak. However, I heard that the temperature outside is 33°C and probably 100% humidity so I'm hiding out in the lounge. Maybe next trip in November. I also missed an awesome photo opportunity coming in from Chengdu. I usually sit in an aisle seat but this time I sat in seat A which is the left window seat. The flight path into Hong Kong took us around Hong Kong and Kowloon and you could see all the crazy tall buildings. I blew it though by taking my camera out too early and getting busted by a stewardess (cute one though). If I had waited until they all sat down, I would have got some good shots. :(


"Put the camera away." At least she remembered that I don't speak Cantonese.

Anyway, the Chengdu portion of the trip was mostly work. My parents and I arrived in Chengdu on Tuesday (9/1) night on our delayed Air China flight (on a borrowed Macau Airlines plane). Since it was late, we took separate taxis. It was hot and humid and the taxi line was crazy long. In any kind of line in China, there's always people trying to cut in and this was no different. There was one couple that ignored about 20 people telling them there was a line and jumped into a waiting taxi. Sigh...

The only sightseeing I did in Chengdu was when my sister and Rebecca came to Chengdu after their Tibet trip. We spent a couple of hours in the Giant Panda Research Station just outside of town near the Chengdu zoo. It was pretty cool since we got to see three pandas playfighting for about 30 minutes. The rest of the time we stayed near their hotel on Chunxi Road. They're in Guilin now and will head out to Hong Kong in a few days.

China Family Trip - Flight/Hong Kong

Yawn. Only six and a half hours to go until Hong Kong. I think I slept for at least three hours on this flight so far which is pretty good though now my back is a bit sore. This flight is not that full. I’m sitting on the left side of the plane and there is an empty seat next to me. The plane appears to be only about half full. Only two movies so far: Monster vs. Aliens and Star Trek XI. I think I’m going to watch Wolverine next.


My parents’ China Airlines flight boarded on time. It was pretty weird to look out the window and see their 747 parked at the gate.

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Three hours and 2500 km left to go. We’re somewhere just south of Japan. I think our flight path takes us over Taiwan again. If my parents’ flight left on time, then they’re about 500 km ahead of me. I have about a two hour layover which is not too bad. Depending on which gate we arrive at, I’m going to try an take a shower at the lounge and upload these posts and some pics.

I haven’t watched any more movies but instead I watched 4 episodes of FLCL, a strange Japanese cartoon series.

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There's always a Cathay 747 parked at gate 4061.

I arrived in Hong Kong about an hour ago. The first thing I received when I turned on my phone was a text message from my sister that their PDX to YVR flight was delayed and they will miss their YVR to PEK flight. Fortunately, they were able to get on an Air China flight that arrives about 2 hours late so no biggie. Good thing for airline alliances (Star Alliance in this case). Meanwhile, my flight docked at Gate 65 so I'm at the lounge near gate 63 (The Wing?). I took a quick shower, which was nice, and have about 30 minutes before my HKG to PEK flight leaves. Maybe I'll steal some more cans of beer or something before I go. :)

Metropark Hotel

Due to the swine flu epidemic, there are 274 people quarantined for a week inside the Metropark Hotel in Hong Kong. Evidently, a Mexican guest in the hotel was infected with the H1N1 virus.

I stayed one night at that hotel on my first trip to Chengdu back in 2007. The hotel was relatively inexpensive and near the Wan Chai MTR station. The rooms were rather small though; I can't imagine being stuck in there for a week.

BBC News

Chengdu Trip #7 - Back in Hong Kong

I just landed in Hong Kong from Chengdu. Typically we get a landing gate but this time they parked us on the tarmac again; at least it's close to the terminal.


Chengdu airport. An old Air China Boeing 737 is being towed out of the gate.


The same plane (missing 3 engines) has been parked here (Hong Kong airport) since my first trip to Chengdu two years ago.


Cathay Pacific Catering Services building in Hong Kong. This is where all the yummy food comes from.


Old school deplaning. We parked pretty close to gate 1 so the bus ride was only ~3 minutes.


They fit everyone from the flight on to one bus.

I have almost 7 hours to kill. Not sure what I should do. I wanted to go to Victoria Peak but I just checked the weather and it's 22°C and 87% relative humidity. That means I'm going to start sweating like crazy once I step out of the airport. Also, it looked really cloudy as we were landing so there's probably no view once I get up there. Dang it... I even checked in my bag in anticipation of walking around in Hong Kong.

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Bah, I'm in the lounge. Since I don't even know which gate my flight will leave from, I went to the lounge near gate 3 (The Wing). It's ~6:15pm right now and my flight leaves at 11:45pm. Maybe I'll take a nap and a shower later. Meanwhile, off I go to the noodle bar. :)

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A huge group of Taiwanese people just showed up at gate 3 for flight KA488 (Dragonair) to Taipei leaving at 20:10. Interestingly, flight CX468 (Cathay Pacific) is also going to Taipei from gate 2 at 20:00. Both airlines are run by the same company (Swire Group); not sure why they need two flights from Hong Kong to Taipei departing 10 minutes apart.

At least I get to play MouseHunt during the long wait. I just broke 600,000 points... that puts me in 64,405th place for now!

Chengdu Trip #7 - Hong Kong Airport, Day 2

When in Hong Kong, you have to eat dim sum somehow. Since I'm stuck in the airport, I'm eating breakfast at a Maxim's Chinese restaurant inside the terminal. It kinda sucks eating dim sum by yourself because you don't get to try many dishes. I've ordered (and finished) three so far: fried turnip cake, lotus wrapped rice, and seafood wrapped in tofu skin. I can get free food in the lounge later but since I have a HK$40 voucher from Cathay, I thought I'd use it. I probably spent more than that but it's worth it.


Yummy, even for an airport restaurant. I had dim sum in Irvine Wednesday and it was US$15 per person; not sure what the $$$ damage will be for this.


I'm eating, blogging, and playing Mousehunt at the same time.

Last night was pretty uneventful. I got a snack from 7-Eleven and went back to the room to sleep. This is the final leg of my long trip; hopefully nothing else will go wrong. Here are some photos from last night:


Hotel hallway... lots of pretty colored lights.


Hotel lobby


Hong Kong airport taxis. From my last trip, I think the red ones are the ones that go to Hong Kong and Kowloon. There are also blue and green taxis.

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The bill came out to HK$114.40 which is pretty close to what I paid for lunch in Irvine. The food is probably even better and cheaper in the city.

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Arg! I think I've been on the road/air for too long. I just noticed that I'm wearing my t-shirt inside-out... had to run to the washroom in the lounge to change. :(

Chengdu Trip #7 - Hong Kong Airport

Finally arrived in Hong Kong. Cathay said that there are no earlier flights than tomorrow morning so they gave me a room voucher for the Regal Airport Hotel right outside the HKIA terminal. Since the entire airport has free wifi, you would think that the airport hotel would have free Internet as well... nope. I just unpacked some stuff and I'm going to head into the terminal again to get something to eat and access the Internet.

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Well, I'm in the HKIA terminal and uploaded some blog posts and photos. It's weird seeing the same people for the past two days at the LAX lounge, Westin LAX, the actual flight, and now at the Regal Airport hotel.


Room at the Regal Airport Hotel. It looks similar to all the Hong Kong business hotels I've stayed at before. I'm still a bit upset that Internet is not free.

Chengdu Trip #7 - 6+ miles above Iwo Jima

It's now 1:20am Pacific Time and we're about 4 hours from Hong Kong. As usual, I've had a difficult time getting sleep. So far, I've watched The Day The Earth Stood Still (so so), Slumdog MIllionaire (awesome), and six episodes of CSI. The flight has been pretty smooth so far, other than 5 minutes of really bad turbulence. Looking at the moving map display, we definitely took a more southern route than the most efficient Great Circle route. We're couple of hundred miles south of Japan whereas the normal route goes between Japan and Korea. Maybe they're taking crazy Kim Jong-il's threat to shoot down civilian planes seriously.

Earlier this afternoon, Leon came to LAX 12 hours after he first dropped me off to get lunch with Fred. Since my delayed flight was scheduled to depart at 2pm, we only had time for some fast food. After lunch, I didn't have time to go to the lounge so I didn't get a chance to upload the previous post. While waiting at the gate, I saw a coworker walking to her gate. She told me that the part-time MBA program at USC was departing on their international trips. She was going to Japan on Japan Airlines but there was about 30 people going to Singapore and Thailand on my flight. We didn't have this trip 14 years ago when I was in the USC MBA program, but I probably spent a lot less on tuition back then.


Japanese high school(?) kids at LAX. I guess there are still people with money in Japan.

Sigh... another 3:45 left to Hong Kong. This is the worst part of traveling to China: the 15 hour flight from LAX to HKG. This is the first time on a Cathay Boeing 777; usually I'm on one of their older 747's. The only noticeable difference is the 3-3-3 seating configuration in coach vs. 3-4-3 in the wider 747. This plane also has the newer interior with individual entertainment systems and working AC outlets at each seat (which only has enough power to run the computer but not charge the battery).

White Rabbit Creamy Candy

Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety is testing food items that come from China for melamine. On Sept 23, they tested a 227g bag of White Rabbit candy and found 4.6ppm of melamine (item 8). Interestingly, the 454g bag tested the next day had 16ppm of melamine. Not sure if the two bag sizes come from different batches or if there's a lot of error in the testing method.

The New Zealand Food Safety Authority said that consuming 5ppm should be safe for adults. The bag of candy I bought in China was 227g so from the data above, it's safe (barely) to eat at 4.6ppm! Good thing I didn't start passing the candy out to friends and co-workers before I found out the bad news.

Chengdu Trip #6 - Hong Kong Airport

I got a call at around 11pm last night from Cathay Pacific telling me that my flight back to LAX from Hong Kong was canceled. Since there are only two flights out of Chengdu to Hong Kong, I had to get up real early this morning to catch the 8:20am flight. I was a bit pissed off since I had to rearrange my shuttle from LAX and coordinate with my parent's friend to pick up my car at their house. I thought that perhaps Cathay Pacific canceled the flight because there weren't enough passengers on it since it's a Tuesday. However, I just found out that there is a typhoon due to arrive in Hong Kong around midnight so I'm actually glad that they got a hold of me and put me on an earlier flight home.


Typhoon Hagupit, currently ~100 miles from Hong Kong with 130+ mph winds.

There was a huge thunderstorm this morning in Chengdu. It started at around 3am and continued on and off. At times, the lightning was pretty much continuous. I had to run out in the pouring rain to catch a cab at 6am; actually my friend went out with an umbrella and hailed a cab for me while I hid in the building lobby. The cab ride was pretty freaky since we could only see out the front windshield. Of course, people still drove crazy; someone honked at us from behind because we did not run a red light.


I was bored this morning so I tried to capture some lightning with my point-and-shoot camera... not very successful.


Starry Night function with 15 second exposure

I'm sitting in the Cathay Pacific lounge waiting for my flight to leave for LAX. Normally I have a 7 hour layover in Hong Kong and sometimes Leon and I go into Hong Kong Island for dinner and meetings. This time, it's only a 2 hour layover, just enough time to get some food from the lounge.


Won-ton noodles and some steamed baos from the Cathay Pacific lounge. The Noodle Bar is not French/Italian food at the IFC but since Lehman filed for bankruptcy, I'm not sure if we'll get any more dinners from Leon's cousin. :(

Beijing Trip - Hong Kong Airport

Just arrived in Hong Kong after a 14 hour flight. Unlike Leon's flight earlier this week, the interior was still old and it was a packed flight. Sometimes I need to go to the bathroom a lot on a trans-Pacific flight; however, this time I didn't have to go at all. I did need to get up and walk around a bit to keep my left leg from swelling too much.

Since the plane arrived so early, I was able to take a shower in the Business Class lounge. The layover this time is only 2 hours so I need to start walking to the gate soon. After all the Olympics frenzy, it's easy to forget that the Paralympics are still taking place. Our plane arrived at gate 1 and right when you walk out, there is a media credential center. I didn't know there were equestrian events at the Paralympics though.




I take this same shot every time I'm here... there are a lot of planes this early in the morning (6am).

Back to LAX, Cathay Pacific did not update the departure board in the lounge so I went to the gate at around 11:00pm for my 11:45pm flight. The departure gate is 102 which is way on the south end of the Bradley Terminal. They are still renovating the terminal so none of the people movers are working. It a LOOONG walk from the lounges to gate 102; it took me about 15 minutes. Imagine my dismay when I read on the departure board that boarding was delayed until 11:40pm. We ended up boarding at almost midnight and the plane did not take off until 12:45am, an hour late. Amazingly, we still got to Hong Kong on time. There must be a lot of slack in the schedule. Maybe they fly slower when there's more time available since Cathay flights seem to always arrive on time in Hong Kong.


Everybody sit down... it's not time yet.

The girl (Sandra Chen) at the business class check-in counter at LAX was pretty friendly this time. She tried to make small talk, and we ended up talking in Mandarin. Turns out she's from Hainan Island in China; I was just there this past February. I thought most of Cathay's counter people were from Hong Kong so they can speak Cantonese. Maybe I should have asked for her phone number or something.

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I just got an email with links to photos (here and here) taken by other NewSong people that are already in Beijing.

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I also tried calling Leon. He was checking in for his flight from Chengdu to Hong Kong at 8am. I think our flight leaves at the same time though my flight is from Hong Kong to Beijing.

Random Pics of Hong Kong Int'l Airport