Officer down, food everywhere

Oh hey, it's looking at pictures of food time. Read this blog entry when starving for maximum annoyance.

There's no real way to take a picture of this without making it look like "some stuff on some chicken", but the KFC Ala King Supreme bowl is amazing. A ton of rice, two decent slabs of chicken and THIS SAUCE, MAN.

Next up, I've been munching on this frozen yoghurt stuff from Red Mango. I don't get to eat this very often, so it's always fun to over indulge and rub it all over my face and limbs until I'm a big frozen yoghurt monster belching frogurt all over your kitchen or whatever.

Beware: this can cause brain freeze like nothing else I've eaten. And I lick frozen pipes in the winter.

I went to TGIF Fridays for takeout, but I was somewhat terrified by the staff breaking into dance routines both inside and outside the building - to the extent you couldn't even get out properly due to ten of them doing a weird Michael Jackson dance battle on the steps leading out. I managed to knock one of their hats to the floor, though that was entirely accidental.

To be honest, the wacky dancing and slightly forced WOO WE ARE HAVING FUN LOOK AT US DANCE WOO thing is off putting, but then maybe I'm just a grumpy old fart.

Next up: some Vietnamese thing, which may well be kung pao chicken and rice. With green bits.

What do we have here? A slightly generic looking "great googly moogly stop with all the rich food and give me something a little bland and crap looking" meal?

Yep.

The red splat was nice.

Kicking it up a gear - which wouldn't be hard, really - we have a place where they set your food on fire and you have to try and put it out before it burns your face off.

I totally dickballed myself in the face with a spoon hotter than the surface of the sun, too. The food itself was some meaty thing with rice and aargh arrgh argh oh god my mouth aaargh etc.

It's okay though, because they gave me this afterwards:

The sand was a nice touch. What? Oh right, cheesecake mix or something.

This is the part where I bring it on home, and show you my grotesque excesses with a stack of cream filled pancakes and the biggest dessert I've ever been handed.

No not the face, not the...oh go on then.

This is like one of those awful meme pics where they zoom in on the image until it becomes funny, except in this case I only have two images and they're both different so it probably won't be.

The only way I could bump up my fatty fat pants food intake here would be if I had a huge root beer float thing going on.

I am worse than Hitler.

This is not the departure date you're looking for

My latest trip to Manila (via Dubai) went horribly wrong within seconds of arrival. Here's a picture of the departure lounge at Dubai, for no good reason whatsoever.

Protip: if you arrive in Manila with a Visa, don't assume the guy on the booth knows what he's doing. I'd heard the usual horror stories of people sorting a visa out, arriving but not showing it to the immigration guy and being stamped with the standard 21 day waiver instead of the 59 day pass they'd paid for.

No problem, I'll wave the visa under his nose from the getgo and that'll be the end of it. Right?

Right?

Nope. At the immigration gates, they want to see your passport, your immigration form and your itinerary / proof of onward journey. I knew I was in for a fun time when he looked at my flight itinerary and said "What's this?" in a confused fashion and gave it back to me without bothering to read it.

Undeterred, I gave him the passport complete with visa and he looked at it, did his stamp thing then gave it back to me.

My spidey sense told me to look at the stamp immediately, and sure enough he'd stamped me for the standard 21 day entry (instead of the 59 that I'd paid for) without bothering to look at anything I'd given him. Considering the amount of messing around a traveler would have to correct this further down the line, this is pretty inexcusable - especially since I showed him my flight plans, waved the visa under his nose and stated repeatedly that I was due to depart around the end of February.

Didn't matter, stamp stamp stamp 21 days see you later. Thankfully they have a person on duty standing behind the booths, and if you have a problem you can go see them and they'll send you back.

Even then, the guy seemed more annoyed than anything else that I'd come back again - when you've been on the road for 18+ hours across two flights and a zillion timezones this is not what you need to be happening.

I've had a few other crappy things happen at entry / departure - back in August, some guy in a guard outfit (there's a whole bunch of them before you reach the booths) "offered" to help me with my customs form then asked for a souvenir (ie money) once done which is a less than fantastic way to enter a country for the first time. On the way out of the country, the immigration guys didn't seem to be aware you could extend your stay and two of them accused me of overstaying. That was....kind of alarming.

I also had a similar problem when trying to obtain the a visa at the embassy in England for this current trip, because - sure enough - the guy on the counter looked at my passport Vs length of stay then decided I'd overstayed while in Manila from August to October. Again. Someone else had to explain to him that yes, you can extend your stay while in the country but really, shouldn't this guy know basic things like this in advance?)

They also told me that I couldn't get the year long, multi-entry visa I wanted and had to settle for the single entry. Why? Because according to them, you can only obtain the multi-entry if you've first been to the Philippines with one of their official visas in your passport. They claimed that turning up with a 21 day waiver, then extending while in country "isn't recommended" anyway and doesn't make you eligible for the multi-entry.

If extending the 21 day stay while in the Philippines isn't recommended, why on earth do they have immigration offices all over the country that do just that? Maybe I'm being stupid, but I don't get it.

There is no mention of having to first enter with a single entry visa to be able to obtain a multi-entry further down the line anywhere on their official paperwork, the forms you fill in, on any notices in the embassy or indeed on their website. Where this rule is written down, I have no idea but please tell me if you find it because I'd love to know. Why is a basic criteria of obtaining the multi-entry visa not listed anywhere? At the very least, it should be mentioned on the Schedule of Fees on the PDF document you print out and take with you but who knows.

Always, always check your passport when it's been stamped because the airport is quite a way off from anywhere, and I imagine you'll have a bit of a nightmare sorting out an incorrectly stamped passport should you look at it about five weeks into your stay then think "uh oh..."

Skyrim on a calculator? Okay then

An urgent security alert....by the way, you can't view it

Zappos.com and 6pm.com are sending out the "we got pwned, change your info" emails.

Not everybody can view them, however - if you're outside the US, then you have a good chance of seeing this: 

Region locked infosec alerts? Uh, yeah I don't think that's the smartest thing I've ever seen. What if you're a customer of theirs but on the road, for example?

You can't see the blog incident linked to by their CEO on Twitter, nor can you see this one as suggested by their customer support.

For now, you'll have to make do with these screenshots, or you can visit the 6pm.com site whose alert page is actually viewable (though the details of the hack may differ from whatever happened to Zappos).

Steam Sale Carnage...

The above image speaks for itself really, but this time around I did damage to my wallet with the following:

Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout New Vegas, Mount & Blade Warband and Fire & Sword, Shogun 2, Unreal And Quake packs, Hacker Evolution Duality, Defcon, Left 4 Dead 2 and the Hitman pack. I also got Swords and Soldiers as a freebie from the coal crafting thing.

Thank goodness it's over for another year...

Salisbury Road, Hong Kong

No trip to Hong Kong would be complete without a visit to the below locations. Here's a handy diorama, or whatever you call them. No idea.

The big round object is the Hong Kong Space Museum. The large building south of that is the Art Museum, and the triangle shaped thing that is clearly a Star Trek vessel in disguise is the Cultural Centre with a gallery, music events and a shop that has a book where Bruce Lee sports the hair of a Werewolf.

On the left hand side is the place where you get the ferry - OH MY UPCOMING BLOG ENTRY FORESHADOWING - but today is all about the arty stuff.

So hey, the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

It's ludicrously cheap to get in, and there's some amazing things on display - all manner of statues, paintings, clothing, calligraphy and more besides.

Unfortunately, I can't show you any pictures from inside the building because there are signs everywhere demanding "no photos due to copyright". I'm pretty sure Han Dynasty sculpture pre-dates Berne Convention copyright laws, but try telling that to the guards who track you like hawks throughout the musuem.

Instead, I'll fall back on cheap laughs gained from insane and / or poorly written signs and posters.

HAHA YOU PUT WHAT IN YOUR BIN etc.

No comment required for that one, really. Anyway, back to the museum - tickets are $10 HK, which isn't even a shiny English pound.

There's about four floors, each devoted to a different kind of..er...stuff. Bottom floor was mostly calligraphy, next one up was a combination of sculpture, ceremonial wotsits and clothing torn from the back of dead emperors. They also had lots of these "pillows" which were actually rectangular stone slabs. Something tells me people actually did rest their heads on these things, to which I can only say "haha".

The other floors were taken up by period paintings, imagery influenced by Renaissance principles and some contemporary artwork which was variable in quality at best and "go back to clown college" at worst.

A tiny sign seemed to indicate you could take pictures, but even then some guard was grimacing at me so I didn't chance it. Random pictures from outside:

This next one is very Hieronymus Bosch.

The Museum Cafe deserves special praise, because the food was amazingly good. It's not inside, it's sort of bolted on the outside of the place close to the above statue things. If you end up in a food place serving food, you're doing it right. If you end up in a large shipping container bound for Europe, you might want to check you still have your kidneys.

This place is so good, we went twice. And I complain about everything, so to get a repeat performance out of me is pretty difficult.

After the Museum, the other sights nearby are a rather large exhibition center which fairly screams "I was built in the 70s, and if I wasn't I'm doing my best drab 70s interior impression so shut up". The exhibition on offer was something to do with trains, which is about as exciting as it sounds.

There was this inverted pentagram Christmas tree, though. All hail the Dark Lord!

Don't get too excited about the space museum, because it's basically a collection of stuff aimed at kids and - as usual - no photographs allowed.

Instead - yes, another instead - here is a picture of what appears to be a space hobo and a young boy.

STEP AWAY FROM THE CHILD, JIMMY. LETHAL FORCE HAS BEEN AUTHORISED.

Once you've seen an intergalactic space hobo it's all downhill from here on out so I'll leave you with a shot of the bay. It was pretty miserable that day so if you're feeling suicidal this isn't the money shot you're looking for.

Or maybe it is!

I have to mash the Nirnroot with the what now?

I have no idea what ingredients make specific potions in Skyrim. At least that was the case until I heard about Potionapp.com. Enter your ingredients and it'll tell you what horrible mess will come out the other end.

Sweet.

A jaunt through the land of Oblivion

I'm about seven hundred years late to the party but I've started playing Oblivion on the PC and am taking random screenshots of my journey through the place that isn't Skyrim.

Link here.

One does not simply walk into Mirador

Given the choice of staying in Chungking Mansions or Mirador Mansion, the clear winner was Mirador due to it not popping up as often in the "something horrible has happened" news report stakes.

Mirador is a huge slab of apartments all looped around a building that's seen better days. Slap bang in the most interesting part of Tsim Sha Tsui, dodging people selling fake watches and working out where the lifts are is your first port of call. Going inside, you'll see security guards everywhere and about three floors worth of shops selling electronics and slightly terrible clothing.

Of course, all of that pales in insignificance when placed next to posters telling you a window fell out.

Enjoy reenacting The Omen, kids!

You're probably bored of looking at storefronts now, so here's a picture of the security screens for the elevators.

If you ever watched Chungking Express - and HOW COULD YOU NOT HAVE - the little monitor thing will be instantly reconisable (unless you went out for a drink at the bit they came on, in which case Christopher Doyle would like a word in your ear).

You line up for an age, watch old people who have lived here for years but still don't understand how to let people off before barging on then ride up - very slowly - to your floor.

Top tip, get a room at least above floor 8 or you'll need some earplugs for the noise below.

Now take in the, er, scenic views from inside once you step out of the lift. Looking over the balcony is rather vertigo inducing, although I'd rather be up here than down there touching it.

Just out of shot is a window that looks like a football went through it, totally blackened by what I can only assume is fire damage. Always make sure the apartment set you stay in has working fire alarms, because if it all kicks off and there's no early warning system in place you'd better have a parachute handy.

I think there are about 16 floors, and each one is packed with multiple "hotels" (just small collections of tiny rooms behind a single door, operated by little old ladies who stick around until about 11PM then clear off for the night) and workplaces that look a bit like they make "almost genuine" footwear and clothing.

There's also the Yip Man Kung Fu school, with Time Travel thrown in for good measure.

Clothing often litters the walkways, corridors and balconies because the chosen method of drying clothes here is "stick them on a pole which may or may not be hanging over something that doesn't get in your way". Again: fire alarms.

If you arrive during the day you won't have any problems getting into the "hotel" that contains your room because the owner will be there. If you turn up at night like we did? You may have problems.

Our introduction to the wonderful world of Mirador was knocking on the door at 11PM wondering why nobody was letting us in (as it turns out, it seems illegal immigrant raids are common but not very popular so perhaps that's why). At any rate, make sure you have the phone number of the hotel owner or make them understand in no uncertain terms that you'll be getting there late (a lot of the owners don't speak any English).

Eventually someone materialised out of the floor and let us in, but I did have visions of sleeping on my suitcase for that authentic "I'm an idiot" experience.

Oh yeah, the room. Don't expect anything fancy - you'll get about ten inches of floor space, a bed and the SMALLEST BATHROOM YOU'LL EVER SEE IN YOUR LIFE. I mean, you have to face sideways to sit on the toilet because the wall is in the way.

You get a "Rasonic" TV with four channels, although typically what was on wasn't very good.

There was a Ben Stiller movie this one time though.

If your room comes with wifi - and it probably does (the main power supply in the corridor which had about a hundred plugs stuffed into it had a poor battered router danging from three wires over a TV set), you may forget to ask for the wifi password seeing as how you're completely knackered. Some of the hotel owners use their mobile number as the password, so that may come in handy if you absolutely have to Tweet "OMG I'm in Mirador, someone sold me a rolex lol" at 3AM.

Final word of warning - if you like to strut around nude, about a zillion people in rooms about twenty feet away will be posting your sorry ass to Failblog quicker than you can blink.

Maybe you'd like that, I don't know.

You have reached the end of my guided tour of Mirador Mansion. Please do not barge into me on your way out of the lift, do not touch my stuff, do not try to sell me a Rolex, no I do not want your cheap Hashish thank you please and stop sounding like you're making a German scheisse movie at two in the morning.