On the way back from Hong Kong.

Hong Kong, the second destination in a month of work-travel was, as expected, very much more eventful than Vietnam was. But that was only because it was so much more work in a city noisier and demanding of one’s energy.

That, coupled with the fact that I had a couple of people bringing me around during leisure time and a three-day conference (as opposed to the usual half-day seminar and 45-minute interview) which tried to outdo its own previous years’ efforts, delivering presentation after presentaton, all while shuttling you about site visits.

The first site visit was to where else but Disneyland. Admittedly, I was completely captivated by a talking trashcan, all throughout a couple of the onsite demonstrations. Look. Talking trashcan versus the wireless integration that allows Disneyland’s online ticketing solution? Talking trashcan.

Presumably equipped with a camera and mic, controlled remotely, it was scooting around talking to park visitors. Turns out it’s appropriately named, Push.

I’m sure they have its counterpart in other Disneyland venues, but being in Hong Kong, with China so nearby and the Japanese maniacally flooding each Disneyland in every part of the world just to thrust two fingers in a V-sign at a camera, it had to be somewhat trillingual.

“Nihonjin!” it squealed at a bewildered tourist. Rushing over to a Chinese child, it asked politely, “Ni hao ma?”

And I was sold.

The next day, they took us to Dragon-i, essentially a lounge that serves dim sum. Or it could’ve been a dim sum restaurant that looks like a club. Either way, it was all very Shanghai Tang. They had an interesting toilet though, which will, like so many other places, anchor the memory of the place in my mind (going to show you where my priorities lie).

I took a couple of pictures of the metallic-tiled unisex toilet, paired with transparent-plastic toilet bowls and dimly lit in a pinkish light. Will post those tomorrow. But what will stick in my head will be the (perhaps) unintentionally off-coloured remark made by another Singaporean lady queueing for the stalls. Gesturing to the last cubicle—different from the others, housing three urinals instead of a bowl and sink—said to the three men behind her, “Go, go! You can kill three birds with one stone.”

If you’re like me, and you take a special interest in badly-cobbled, loosely-connected crude Hokkien jokes, then you will see what’s just so darn funny about birds and urinals. Ho ho ho.

And somewhere, inbetween all the talking trashcans and fancy dim sum, there was time for work. No, really. I filed a story at three in the morning yesterday, so you know I is meaning the biznez.

(Update: Do we really need another Asian Disneyland theme park?)

Having just packed for Hong Kong, everything was running like clockwork—count the number of days, the itinerary the conference people have planned, what I’ll need to bring, and so on—only stopping short at the usual question: Which camera shall I bring and how many lenses is too many?

The correct answer, of course, is you can never have too many lenses. But I’ll be bringing a fair bit of elektronik ekwipmunt so I don’t really want to risk accidentally falling off the next random high-rise bungalow while somehow carrying my ekwipment hand luggage, so the D70 will have to stay at home for this round.

The circumstances (and my innate paranoia) will force me to bring a delightful FM2 instead and restrict me to a 35mm and 50mm prime lens. I think this’ll be good for me. I’ve found that inversely proportionate to my explosive quantity of pictures churned out digitally, the quality of the shots have likewise plunged straight down. I need to be forced to think through my photography again. Sad, but it’s about time.

This evening, I sold my old laptop off ultracheaply via Yahoo! auctions, so that’s a well-timed bit of pocket money for the trip. I had to back everything up from the old laptop in a jiffy though, so I just copied chunks of interesting-looking folders to a memory card.

Not sure which was important, I clicked through random songs and poetry I had written, and found myself utterly disgusted and depressed at both the quality and subject of these creative outbursts. I mean, songs entitled “Slowmotion Wreck” and “Altogether Vacant” speak of the self-pitying overemoting so characteristic of my creative floods (when they happen) and listening to all of them back, I felt like everything inciting them—every one of them—was re-happening to me.

I guess time heals all wounds, but records scrape them out again.

Oh, but with my new digital multitrack recorder, at least you can be assured that future self-pitying overemoting shall be digital quality self-pitying overemoting. Huzzah.