What I was doing two weeks ago today (2)

Watching highlights of the weekend's football matches from the major European leagues in The Reggae Bar in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown.

Also, I suffered one of my embarrassing episodes of displacing the rogue cartilage in one of my knees, and having to adopt a kowtowing posture on the floor for several minutes in order to pop it back into place and so regain full use of my leg. (Luckily, it is a Muslim country.)

How is it that almost every country in the world has a 'Reggae Bar'? (I came across another one up the coast in Penang a day or two later, but that one didn't lure me in...)

Not that I'm complaining. Jamaicans tend to be a very hospitable people (not sure if the owners of this joint are actually Jamaican, although there was a Jamaican dude manning the DJ station the couple of nights I looked in here). And I like me some reggae. They were playing some very good stuff here, too: the classic sound of the '60s and '70s, with a judicious admixture of reggae cover versions I hadn't heard before (including a surprisingly agreeable take on China's abiding favourite, Hotel California); none of that ragga and dancehall rubbish from more recent decades.

Apart from that, though, the place is lacking in any great charm or character. There's a broad selection of quite decent food, it has the dark and grungy vibe that I tend to like, and the service is OK (actually, pretty stupendous in comparison to China: I love it that they don't take your glass away without asking, and don't ask if you want a refill until at least a few moments after you've finished... such simple things, but they make such a big difference!). But the pool table is dreadful.  And the place is oddly lacking in soul (I suspect it's because of its location in Backpacker Central: I'd guess at least 95% of its custom must be transient; there are few, if any, regulars). Worst of all, the beer prices really bring a tear to the eye. The cheapest offering is on dull-as-ditchwater Carlsberg, which is 10 ringgit per glass; but that's a very small glass (only 250ml, I think). Stella makes a very appealing (and more cost effective!) alternative at just 15 ringgit for a little 330ml bottle - which is about 35 rmb. And these are "happy hour" prices! A stingily brief "happy hour" of 6pm-8pm, at that!  Ordinarily, everything is 30% to 40% more expensive; 30%-40% more than we'd pay on a full tariff just about anywhere in Beijing. And this is supposed to be one of the cheapest bars in Kuala Lumpur?!  Ouch!

It is, however, the only game in town. Or very nearly so. Kuala Lumpur has very, very few bars (Penang was much better, but still not exactly teeming with drinking options). There are a handful of stupidly expensive places around the Bukit Bintang area and in the CBD near the Petronas Towers. But in downtown KL, The Reggae Bar is it. There are a few streetside restaurants that sell beer (usually at 14-16 ringgit for a 650ml bottle); but there are no other bars. Rather sad. Not my kind of place, KL.

The weekly bon mot

"You can taste baijiu when you're dead.  Especially if you've lived a bad life."

One of my lady friends suggested to me last month that perhaps it would be 'safe' - and a useful money-saving ploy - to switch to baijiu, the rotgut Chinese 'white spirit', after drinking a lot of whisky, because "you won't taste it when you're drunk".  Silly, silly girl!  At least she provoked a good reply from me.

A Tale of Two Bars

Two bars side by side on a quiet street in the middle of Georgetown, the old colonial settlement on the island of Penang, just off the north-west coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

On the left, Monaliza Café (sic), where the cheapest beer (a big bottle of Skol) is only 12.5 ringgit, and where the affable owner is usually sat out front watching the world go by or shooting the breeze with one or two of his regulars.

On the right, Hong Kong Bar, where the cheapest beers are 18 or 20 ringgit, and the owner skulks inside, grouchily resigned to going out of business.

Yes, Monaliza always has a healthy gaggle of customers in it.  Hong Kong Bar not one.  Nope, the place appeared to have absolutely zero custom throughout the four days I was there.  Go figure.

No prizes for guessing where I spent most of my time.

What I was doing two weeks ago today (1)

Watching Everton beat Chelsea on penalties in their FA Cup 4th Round Replay, in a Thai restaurant in Kuala Lumpur's nightlife district of Bukit Bintang.

I don't love the Bintang - it might once have been a quaint night food market, but it's now a seething tourist trap, and not at all cheap.  I found there were many better places to eat (well, cheaper) along the adjacent main road of Jln. Pudu - every third or fourth shop down there was an open-to-the-air 'food court' type of place (it's never very clear whether there is a unified management or several entirely independent vendors sharing the space in these places; and it's never clear who you're supposed to try and order from, or who you're supposed to pay; but it all gets worked out somehow in the end...) selling a range of Indian and/or nonya dishes for just a few ringgit. However, these places didn't sell beer (a predominantly Muslim country: alcohol is very restricted in its availability, and hence very expensive!); so, on my first couple of nights in town, I was forced to venture into the Bintang in search of a beer'n'footie option.

Luckily, that wasn't too arduous a search. Malaysia is football crazy: so, every bar (such few as there are), and almost every restaurant, and all these grungy food court places, and even a few street-food stalls have TVs showing European games - live! with English commentary! - on ESPN. They don't (usually) play obnoxious music over the top of it. They do play the commentary loud enough to hear. They do let you listen to the half-time, pre- and post-game analysis. It was such a pleasant change from the sports bar hell we suffer here in Beijing!

And I later discovered that - later in the evening, anyway - most of the food courts were quite happy for you to stop in to catch some of a game without buying anything (and even finishing off a road beer!)... although I'd order a lassi or a watermelon juice just to be polite.

Ah, I'm going to miss that about Malaysia - being able to watch sports anywhere, everywhere.  Why oh why is it so hard in Beijing??

Gee, Bob!

For that, indeed, is how we are encouraged to pronounce GBOB, the Global Battle of the Bands, the 2010 Grand Final of which was held in Kuala Lumpur last Saturday (and I was there).

My partner-in-drink (and World's No. 1 AIS  fan) Ruby already put up an excellent post over on BeijingDaze a few days ago about how it all went down, so you should go and check that out if you haven't done so already (Badr put up a slew of posts of his own immediately afterwards, so it got bumped way down the page, and was rather too easy to overlook).  I'm now going to add a few additional photos and some brief impressions of my own.

First off, I was very pleasantly surprised by the standard of the music. I had been fearing something like a crappy high school band competition where most of the entrants are pretty dire and you're desperately hanging in there hoping there might be one or two gems amidst all the dross; but in fact, just about all the bands on this occasion were pretty impressive technically (which, I gather, hasn't really been the case in recent years). Second, I was, on the whole, very impressed by the organisation. Although there were inevitably a few hitches and technical breakdowns here and there (most galling of which was the unexplained delay in starting - or even opening the venue doors - which left us scuffing our heels outside in KL's stifling early evening humidity for 40 minutes), but on the whole the event ran amazingly smoothly, and finished pretty much bang on schedule. With 17 bands following each other in quick succession, that was a superb achievement by the sound technicians. Third - nice venue, too: good space, great sound, friendly staff, not too unreasonable prices (I know Ruby bitched about this in her post, but it worked out to 23 rmb for a small beer or 35 rmb for a whisky & coke; you'd pay about the same at any of Beijing's music bars; and KL is, on the whole, nearly twice as expensive as Beijing for most things - especially for bars - so this wasn't at all bad).

On the other hand.... it was not the easiest place in the world to find. Had sharp-eyed Ruby not spotted the poster below hiding away behind a row of palm trees, we might have been vainly cruising the strip with our amused Indian taxi driver for another half an hour.  I'd actually done an advance recce the week before (via the city's monorail: the line runs down the middle of this street for quite a way). The host nightclub was supposed to be in a shopping mall at No. 20, so I was looking out of the train window for names or numbers of buildings: "No. 38, No. 32.... oh, this must be the right side of the street... soon, soon.... oops... the 20 block appears to be one huge building site. That can't be right, can it? No, no, I'm sure I must have missed it somehow. I guess it's next to that building site."  Er, no - it was indeed a building site: the KL Live venue (and the quaint Japanese restaurant on the floor below [aside: KL Live had been advertised as being on the 1st floor, but it was actually on the 2nd or 3rd - depending on whether you follow the British or American convention about these things]) was the only part of the complex that had been completed - and it was very hard to find the way in (Malaysia isn't good on signage!), dodging behind the blue metal screens and the scaffolding.  I suspect this awkwardness of access and near invisibility must have inhibited the turnout rather (although ultimately the crowd was just about right: nicely buzzy, but not uncomfortably dense).  It also nicely cranked up Ruby's anxieties about getting there on time.....

While musical ability was mostly at a high level, musical variety was not. Rubes, much more down with [post-1970s] musical trends than me, claimed to discern suggestions of "alt rock" and "garage punk" and a few other things amongst the entrants, but for me.... two thirds of them sounded very much the same: not quite Metal, perhaps, but definitely at the very heavy end of rock, and all very, very generic. This kind of thing is great fun to play (and guarantees you a fanbase amongst the entrenched subculture), but it's very difficult to play really well; and it's almost impossible to establish a distinctive sound for yourself within such a well-worn genre.  By the end of the evening, I was feeling that I had perhaps just seen 10 of the best instantly forgettable bands in the world.

Amongst these identikit rockers, I liked Thai band Luminasion best. Apart from our own dear AIS, I thought they were the best musicians of the night, and their singer had a lot of presence. Their guitarist was especially impressive, a classic shredder (apparently he's won some title as Thailand's best).  Unfortunately, he had a problem with his lead for a lengthy spell in the middle of their set. His buddy covered for him very well on the guitar-piano (is that what it's called? a keyboard slung on a shoulder-strap, with a stubby handle on the left-hand end like a kind of abbreviated guitar neck, with a touch-sensitive pad on it which allows the player to produce bend and slide effects - I've never seen one before), but I wonder if this unfortunate hiccup cost them a place amongst the prize-winners. It shouldn't have: I can't see how on earth they weren't named amongst the top 3 or 4, at least. Being on first may have worked against them a bit as well; but the judging was, erm, eccentric, to say the least (more on that at the end).

Second up were Aussie youngsters, The Tillegra Damned. I'm afraid I didn't manage to get any decent pictures of them.  They were a dauntingly youthful crew, with bags of energy; and also the least experienced band in the competition, having only played together in public for the first time at their local GBOB heat last summer (I had thought the ethos of this competition was supposed to be to foster 'new' bands - but there doesn't seem to be anything in the rules about this [I would have expected perhaps a requirement that their first public performance should have been not more than 2 years before the closing date for entries], but some of the contestants have been knocking around for years!). Their lead singer was very athletic, but more of a yeller than a singer. And their only notable gimmick was adding a classically trained keyboardist to the mix - but this just didn't gel for me: his little introductory bits didn't seem at all integrated with the rest of the songs (although there may have been a sound issue here; I'm assured he was playing - and doing some backing vocals - almost throughout, but you just couldn't hear him). Ruby loved their demos she'd heard, but she's an honorary Aussie; I'm afraid their live show didn't really do anything for me.

Third on the bill were Beijing's finest, The Amazing Insurance Salesmen.  They put on a great show (watch the official video of one half of it here), but I always feared this was not really their sort of competition.  In terms of pure musicianship, they were clearly in a different class to almost everyone else, but... they're just not really a very 'commercial' sort of band: a bit too thinky, rather than the sort of barnstorming rock-the-crowd outfit that a 'battle of the bands' contest tends to favour.  I think it may have been a tactical error to go with a conventional set choice of doing two short songs - just like everyone else; if they'd just soloed their arses off for 8 minutes (which they typically do in a full set, closing their performance with an extended improvisation on Duke Ellington's Caravan), the difference in class would have been more apparent - even if they still weren't the kind of thing the judges were looking for on the night.  I also think their compact line-up was a bit of a problem for them.  The stage was huge - one of the biggest I've ever seen outside of a stadium gig.  Almost every other band had at least 5 or 6 members (one - I can't remember which it was now - had three guitarists).  It was almost impossible for a trio to fill that space.  Never mind - it was great to see the lads play overseas for the first time; and, with a bit of luck, this may pave the way for one or two tours for them later this year.  (And I gather they received a lot of flattering commendations from the other musicians taking part, which should more than compensate for any unfortunate ego-deflation the judges inflicted on them.)

Ruby had got hold of a Chinese flag to drape over the safety fence at the front...

Next on were ExNN (Ex Nihilo Nihil - a bit of Latin for you!) from Moldova, a bit more mellow and folky than anything else on offer that night, and distinguished by their very sexy frontwoman Gala in a stunning gypsy outfit (Malaysian boys behind me were yelling "We LOVE you!!" within seconds of her taking the stage).  Unfortunately, their music left very little impression.  I fear they may again have been the victim of set-up problems: from the the post-gig interview (and their demos, too, I gather) it would seem she has a really gorgeous voice, but it just wasn't coming across very powerfully during this set.

Romania's White Walls were more generic rockers.  Their singer was much better than most, but he didn't have a very commanding stage presence (most of the time he just walked round and round in tight little circles - which soon got kind of irritating). The judges - astoundingly - placed them amongst the runners-up. They wouldn't have made my Top 10.

Indonesian band Strangers just didn't look the part: they all turned up wearing pullovers and cardigans!  I hope it's not just that that turned me against them, but I felt their performance was kind of insipid as well.

Belgian hard-rockers Experienced (and they are: they've been together 8 years or something) were much livelier. I'm told they overran their allotted 8 minutes, and may have been severely penalised for that (although I didn't notice: it didn't feel as if they'd played significantly longer than anyone else). They also swore quite a lot (all the performers had been asked not to swear, nor to reveal too much naked flesh or show off their tats excessively, in deference to the prudish sensibilities of the predominantly Muslim host nation), and there was a rumour that marks might be deducted for this as well (but if that's so, something very funny was going on with the judging standards: last band up, Shenaniganz from Germany, swore almost continuously and were still placed 3rd). Their second number, the catchy singalong Bad Girls Burn In Hell (I can just imagine Kiss doing this one!), really got the crowd on their side; and - although there wasn't anything very distinctive about them - I can't understand how they didn't make the top 4 or 5.  Something going wrong around here...

And then.... well, then, we had Nope from Morocco, who were (along with Tillegra Damned and Shenaniganz) the babies of the competition, barely out of their teens. They were also the least categorisable act of this - or any other - night.  They had two vocalists: one a very slight and effeminate figure carrying a bullwhip and shrouded in a Red Riding Hood cowl; the other very buff yet still strangely feminine, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, a man-skirt... and a single ice-hockey glove, with which he enacted a series of cat-like stretching and clawing gestures. The pair, both wearing harlequin masks, put on an elaborate pantomime of... something-or-other (fraught with sexual tension, but no clear narrative emerged).... while spitting out ultra-high-speed vocals in a sort of rap style (I couldn't even make out the language: a mixture of French and Arabic, with maybe just a little bit of English thrown in, I suspect).  It was strange, creepy, but utterly mesmerising.  They were a tight band, too, and their song structure and musical style was quite unique. They were big favourites with most of the crowd, and would have been in my top 2 or 3; even the judges - in perhaps their one populist gesture of the night - gave them a nod as fifth runners-up. I believe one of the criteria - perhaps the overriding one - was something like "potential to gain international recognition"; and these lads, fantastic though their live show is, are probably never going to find a mainstream audience outside of North Africa (and perhaps not even there).

There had been a bit of buzz about The River Raid from Brazil. I'd been hoping they might marry some rock'n'roll energy with the luscious rhythms of their native samba, channel a little Carlos Santana for us... but no, they were just another cookie-cutter hard rock band. And after the acid-trip vaudeville of Nope, they fell completely flat.

The UK's Scarletta were the nul points entry of the night: a fairly ho-hum band fronted by a Lady Ga-Ga wannabe with a screechy voice and a ridiculous Alice-In-Wonderland costume (and wearing teetering platform shoes which rendered her almost utterly immobile). I decided to spare my camera battery - and my eardrums - for a few minutes.

Sonsteek from South Africa seemed to generate a very warm response from the crowd (though perhaps they were just grateful that Scarletta was finished).  They had three USPs: they had a pair of [ginger!] identical twins on guitar (one of whom was very Angus Young in his mannerisms, though not, alas, in his sound); they sang in Afrikaans (ever heard that before? me neither); and they had a lead singer who looked as if he worked in an IT department or a comic book store. Apart from that... the cookie-cutter again. The judges placed them amongst the runners-up; I couldn't help thinking that this was tokenism ("Oh, only one entry from Africa? We'd better give them something, to encourage more interest from that continent next year. And they didn't sing in English - how brave!"  Yes, yes, quite so; just not a very interesting band.).

The Malaysian champions Bombers naturally got a huge lift from the home crowd, but.... for me, they didn't do anything with that. They whipped the excitement to a peak while the previous band Sonsteek were still doing their post-gig interview at the side of the stage (not the best manners!), and it seemed to ebb away a little during the set itself. I felt that, as with AIS, they had a little bit of a problem filling the stage; although there were quite a few of them, they were tiny guys (well, apart from their elephantine drummer) and they seemed a bit lost in the space. They were a bit poppier than most of the other acts, which didn't endear them to me. And many people seemed to think the lead singer's brief breakdancing interlude was the highlight of the show.... which didn't endear them to me. Next!

Well, I didn't manage to get a picture of Magua from the Ukraine. They were one of the few bands to have a really distinctive approach and sound, but it didn't work for me. The use of a screeching harmonica seemed promising, but their tune-up sounded better than the set itself - and their songs seemed to lurch schizophrenically between psychedelic blues rock and throbbing metal... without ever really going anywhere.

I joked the other week that Voodoo Vanity from Norway were probably going to be corpulent and whiskery dirge metal rockers (just because every other band I've ever seen from Norway has been....), but in fact they were all young, slim, and clean-shaven.... and disturbingly effeminate, with their stage make-up transporting us back to the early '70s heyday of glam rock. A tight band, and the most outright fun of the night: it was mystifying that they didn't make it into the judges' top 5 or 6.

The bizarrely named Salvador from Russia (or was it vice versa?? Either way, no explanation was offered...) were on next. Maybe I was getting a little weary by this point - but they just seemed like yet another run-of-the-mill heavy rock band being angry about something I couldn't understand; their only point of interest was the fact that their frontman played an amplified acoustic guitar; I'm afraid they lost my attention early on. The judges, of course, rated them top runners-up!

At this point, my camera battery gave out on me.  The last two bands were Dubtonic Kru from Jamaica and the (much derided for their name) Shenaniganz from Germany.  The Dubtonics had an excellent drummer, but otherwise seemed like the kind of house band that you might find at any decent club or bar in Montego Bay. Neither of their singers impressed that strongly, and their bongo player was... well, I can play the bongos better than that (it would appear that, like all good rasta men, they had been partaking heavily of the sacrament before they went on). Still, it was nice to get back to the 'roots' sound of the 1970s rather than all this hip-hop and dance music flavoured garbage we've had to endure since. And it made for a mellow round-out to an evening of mostly fairly indistinguishable hard rock.

Shenaniganz, on last, were a very pleasant surprise - yes, more cookie-cutter hard rock, but one of the better exponents of the style we heard that night; and at least they weren't hip-hoppers or a boy band, as their name had threatened they might be. They were, however, likely lady-pleasers: good-looking, and very, very young - only just into their twenties. A good, tight unit, though; they've been playing together since they were in high school 5 or 6 years ago. Boy, did they tear up that memo about the no swearing! They were scattering the f-bombs around freely throughout their 8 minutes on stage, including one in the title - and chorus - of their second song. One might have expected that to count against them.

But no, the judges made them second runners-up.  And the I've-heard-better-reggae-bands-than-that-busking-on-Clapham-Common Dubtonic Kru were the winners. Well, good luck to them. They seem like a nice bunch of fellas, and they can play a bit... and I suppose reggae is due for a bit of a comeback in the mainstream, after a decade of dormancy (I gather it is suddenly becoming very popular again in America lately; so perhaps the judges were shrewdly calculating that they had the best commercial potential in the current climate). But really - WTF?? That announcement was met with stupefied silence by the audience; I don't think many people there would have placed them in the top 10, let alone the top 5. You can't help but feel that - whether or not the organisers are openly conniving at this - strategic factors have some influence on the decision-making: the GBOB brand would like to establish more of a presence in the Americas and Eastern Europe... so, we get awards for Russia, Romania, and Jamaica. Then again, maybe it was just fatigue: the judges - all Scandinavian, all in their 50s or 60s - looked catatonic with boredom throughout most of the show.... and then awarded the top 3 places to the last three bands to go on. Hmm, you think maybe they just couldn't remember any further back??

Never mind. Apart from the dodgy judging, and the lack of deserved recognition for AIS and a few others, it was a very entertaining night. I might even get tempted to head out to Casablanca for next year's Final....

[More photos of this event here and here.]

HBH 223

Beer tastes colder, smoother,

In hot sun, after a long day.

Drinking in the tropics.

I've given up counting....  Sue me.

New Picks of the Month

Two more picks from three years ago this month....

From Froogville, I choose Roll Call - a 'classic' post illustrating the perverse inventiveness of Chinese students in choosing 'English names' for themselves (all examples completely genuine, I promise).

And on Barstool Blues, I go for A little taste of Hell - an unfortunate bar experience which reminds me most powerfully that I must never allow myself to become a middle-aged drunk.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for February

Ah, finally I've achieved the sort of scaling down of output that I've long professed to aim for in my blogging habits.  But February is a very short month.  And I was out of town for the last 10 days of it.  So, we shouldn't get too carried away just yet.  Given that this was, in effect, only about 65% of a 'normal' blogging month for me, I suppose my rate of production was about as profuse as ever.  Oh well.

Anyway....

There were 37 posts and just over 10,000 words on Froogville.

There were 27 posts and nearly 7,000 words on Barstool Blues.

Oddly enough, the visitor stats held up remarkably well over the past week or so that I was away (and not posting), with 50-60 'unique visitors' daily on The Barstool and over 100 each day on Froogville. Were people just checking in to see if I was back yet, I wonder?? If absence makes the blog reader more curious, perhaps I should give up writing new posts altogether; maybe then I'd suddenly attract a vast readership to my extensive archives... (Well, that's always been my 'master plan'; but I think I have a year or two of wittering left in me yet.)

Not much news this month, other than that I appear to have picked up new 'regulars' in Canada (for Froogville) and Australia (for The Barstool - possibly my bar owner mate, JK), and have added Uganda, Kenya, and The Bahamas to the list of countries who've looked in just the once.

I wonder what the mad month of March will bring us?

Dampened spirits

Be careful what you wish for!

Over on Froogville, I noted just this morning how sorely in need of some rain we were (after a 6-month dry spell in Beijing!), and how welcome it would be.  But, you see, I was looking forward to the regular little spell of 'April showers' we usually get here in another week or so; I hadn't been anticipating that it would start pissing down almost immediately, ruining my weekend - on a Friday evening in the wet, our taxi availability plummets from scanty to just about non-existent!!

I haven't been to much music this past month, or indeed this year, so - despite falling so heavily out of love with 2 Kolegas over the last 18 months - I had been planning to head out there tonight to hear Ricky Sixx doing his ebullient 80s Hair Metal tribute show (with rumoured support from Jacky Danny, one of the best new bands to emerge on the scene lately).  But then I heard gossip that the even better Almost Famous, my favourite recent discovery, might be playing at What Bar - and that's much less hassle for me to get to.

Alas, in current conditions - it's not only pizzling with rain, but arse-freezing cold - I don't think I can stir my stumps even to check out Gulou 121 or Jiangjinjiu, which are but a few minutes' walk away from me.  Oh dear, another music-less weekend.....

Springs eternal....

Yes, indeed, I usually am hoping Guinness - but most of the time I am disappointed. The black velvet isn't widely available in these parts; and, when it is, it's almost always dauntingly expensive.

[Can you guess where I was yet?? Yes, MALAYSIA - the "home of Guinness" in Southeast Asia. It's about the only country in this region advanced enough to be accorded some trust on matters like quality control and respect for IP, so for a long time now Guinness - and a number of other European brewers (surprisingly enough, Skol - an unremarkable and even derided brand back home in the UK, but a completely different animal down there: clean-tasting and unexpectedly strong in alcohol - is the most appealing of the several familiar names available there) - has established one of its largest overseas production facilities there, supplying most of Asia Pacific. Unfortunately, only the bottled stuff was on offer, not draught; and, despite proximity to the factory, it was no cheaper - in fact, a smidge more expensive - than it is here in Beijing, so I only indulged the once.

Mr Ho Ping's café is in Penang.]

Now, I REALLY have seen everything

I have found a bar where Tsingtao is more expensive than Guinness.

Well, not quite in the headline price: the Guinness (the stuff imported from Malaysia, 330ml bottles) was being advertised at 48 HKD, whereas the Tsingtao was a mere 45.  However, this was draught, which around here is rarely or never a superior product to the bottled variety; and it was being served in tiny 250ml glasses.  So, overall, significantly more expensive than the Guinness.  WTF?????

OK, yes, this was a restaurant rather than a bar.  And it was in Hong Kong, probably the most expensive city in China (although Shanghai is certainly running it close).  And it was at the airport, and airside.

Even so, those prices are monstrous - well beyond what you'd be asked anywhere but the most outrageously up-itself cocktail bar or nightclub here.  I tell you, I nearly passed out with shock.

And thirsty though I was, I did not partake.  It didn't look like anyone else was either.  Although this area of the airport was pretty busy, and it was lunchtime, there were only a handful of diners in there - and none of them was drinking anything.  Way to price yourself out of business, guys!!

[By contrast, I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the restaurants airside at Beijing's new Terminal 3 offers Tsingtao - and the rather better Yanjing - in 330ml stubbies for just 10 rmb.]

The weekly bon mot

"It is important to have something to do that has no purpose."

Sister Agatha Fitzgerald

Jia you, AIS!!

I'm away down in Malaysia this week.

As it happens, I had other reasons for being here (apart from escaping Beijing - although that was a BIG one), but it was serendipitous timing that I managed to get down here for the Grand Final of the 2010 Global Battle of the Bands  -  in which Beijing's very own The Amazing Insurance Salesmen are representing China.

I had worried that I was going to be their only fan here; but I think their even bigger fan Ruby is going to jeopardise her finances and her job by coming down for the weekend.  Jean-Seb has promised to reserve us some tickets, so I guess we'll both be down the front trying to teach all the local kids to yell 牛屄 at the right time.

The contest will take place tomorrow night, Saturday 26th February, allegedly running from 7ish until LATE (well, there are a lot of bands to get through!) at a club called KL Live, which is on the 1st Floor of the Life Centre at 20 Jalan Sultan Ismail, 50250 Kuala Lumpur.

The following bands and countries are scheduled to be taking part:

Brazil                  THE RIVER RAID
Jamaica               DUBTONIC KRU
South Africa        SONSTEEK
Morocco              NOPE
Norway               VOODOO VANITY
England               SCARLLETTA
Belgium               EXPERIENCED
Germany             SHENANIGANZ
Romania             WHITE WALLS
Moldova              ExNN
Ukraine               MAGUA
Russia                 SALVADOR
Nepal                 JINDABAAD
Thailand             LUMINASION
Indonesia           STRANGERS
China                 THE AMAZING INSURANCE SALESMEN
Australia            THE TILLEGRA DAMNED

I can't help feeling that Norway have the best band name (and Morocco a close second); but, being Norwegian, they'll have ludicrous facial hair and will probably be turning out turgid Viking dirge metal, and so will not be among the leading contenders.  The Germans have the worst name: they sound as if they're going to be either hip-hop or a boy band; perhaps a hip-hop boy band - they're NOT going to be getting my vote!

I gather there is also to be a Malaysian entrant, yet to be selected.  I imagine that means there will have been a local final going on this week.  I couldn't find out where when I was pre-cooking this post before my departure.  With a bit of luck, I will have located it, attended, and put a hex on the winners by the time you read this.

Best of luck to Jean-Sebastien, Maikel, and Mao Mao!  

Rip the place apart, boys!!

Amuse yourselves

Sorry.  I'm away for the week.

You'll have to contrive your own distractions from here on.

I have just put up a bumper 'Best of....' list for the last quarter of 2009 over on Froogville (that seemed to be an especially fertile time for me, for some reason).  See how long you can keep yourselves busy with that.

See you soon, darlings.

The 'Campaign' begins?

I gather one of my blog friends 'tweeted' last week's post about the price of beer etc. in Beijing.

Ordinarily, of course, I strongly disapprove of Twitter and all its ilk, but it does have a proven usefulness in fomenting revolutions.  If the Egyptians can get rid of Mubarak, I think WE can defeat the boogeyman of overpriced booze in our bars.

Get busy, people!

I expect to return next week to a blissful utopia of 24/7 'happy hours' and 'every third drink free'.

Get busy!!

Bon mot for the week

"The world is a book, and those who will not travel read only one page."

St. Augustine  (354-430)

The last days of Redback

I'm not usually a fan of the 'wheat beer' style, but the crafty lads from Matilda Bay seem to have  found the knack of maximising flavour while almost entirely eliminating the cloudiness that usually deters me from drinking these beers: Redback is one of my favourite imported beers here in Beijing, possibly the favourite.

I don't indulge very often, because at 30 kuai (or more) for a small bottle, it's straying into that price resistance territory I  griped about the other day.  However, it is one of the only beers that seems to me to justify that level of expenditure.  Sam Adams and Brooklyn Lager and Coopers and Sol and the rest are only worth 25 kuai.  VB ain't really worth more than 20.  (I'm talking about value as an experience for the drinker here; I don't give a damn how much they're costing the bar owner.)  But Redback..... it is, I think, worth dropping three tens for - every once in a while.

So, we must make the most of it while we may in Beijing.  I hear its distributor is dropping the product from its catalogue.  Not sure if the problem is at the Oz end or the China end or what; I suspect it's just that the distributor feels that it's not selling enough to be worth his trouble.  That's very sad.

Stephen down at MaoMaoChong tells me they have one case left, and after that - there'll be no more.

Unfortunately, I won't be around to help them finish it off, since I'm away on a long overdue holiday.  I enjoyed my farewell Redbacks a couple of nights ago.

Stop me - I'm tearing up.....

Now I've seen everything

Last night, outside El Nido, Xiao Shuai, the genial proprietor, addressed a problem of unexploded ordnance - a major misfire on a HUGE box of rockets - by..... pouring absinthe into the box to revive the feebly fizzling fuse.

It worked!

And the young chap went about it so nonchalantly, he gave the impression he must have used this trick many times before....

HBH 222

Dreaming of escape,

The wild joy of being elsewhere,

Anywhere but here.

Soon, very soon....

The price issue

I don't want to pay more than 30 kuai for a drink, ever.

Well, unless it's a premium spirit, or a cocktail, or a very generous measure....

But, basically, I don't want to pay more than 30 kuai.  That's where the serious price resistance sets in.

I mean, Christ, that's nearly £3 back home.  I don't think we're yet quite paying that much for a single measure of booze in the old country; and only a little more - in London - for a pint of draught.  OK, so, maybe a few premium brews are getting up towards £4 now.  But that's the UK; that's London.  There's no way drinks in Beijing should be anything like as expensive as they are in the West.

Really, I don't even want to pay 30 kuai.  My gut feeling is that - in this town - a standard spirit or mixed drink shouldn't really be more than 20 or 25 kuai; or an imported beer in a 330ml bottle, come to that.  And a stubbie of Tsingtao - or even of the rather better Harbin or Yanjing - NEVER ought to be more than 15 kuai.

And yet, a lot of places have inched up their prices in the last year or so, are now starting to charge 20 or even 25 kuai for local beers, and 30 or 35 kuai for other basic drinks.... reaching the point where I think very seriously about stopping drinking.  Because I just can't afford it any more.

Take Stella - my principal poison over the past three years.  OK, it's a premium brew, and it has to be imported.  But back in the UK, most of the cost comes from punitive government taxation.  How on earth can it be as expensive here as it is there?  Or anywhere near??  I was complaining the other day that Luga's Villa now charges a whopping 40 kuai for its Stella (which is not, on the whole, well kept); and a considerably less-than-'happy' 30 kuai even during its 'happy hour'.  Nearby competitor 1st Floor charges a slightly less wince-making 35 kuai, but loses brownie points by only knocking a miserly 5 kuai off during 'happy hour'.  I haven't been to The Tree or Nearby The Tree in quite a while, but I think it's 35 kuai there as well.  Oh, I sigh for that great deal they had a couple of years ago at the old Stumble Inn: that 'loyalty card' promotion where, with the progressive discount/every fourth beer FREE, your Stellas were effectively only 22.5 kuai each.  It just goes to show that you can sell the stuff more cheaply and still turn a profit.  My instincts are that Stella ought to be 30 kuai on a regular tariff and 20 on 'happy hour'.  I DO NOT want to be paying 35; and I am certainly not going to pay 40!

Yes, yes, rents are getting crazy in Beijing these days.  But most other costs are negligible (staff?  they work for kibble!); and wholesale prices for booze, even premium imports, are mostly pretty reasonable.  Though we've seen a worrying surge of inflation in the last few years, the cost of living in Beijing is still, for most things, only 20 or 25% of what it would be in the UK - at the very most.  For many things - public transport, locally produced food, a meal in a grungy neighbourhood restaurant - it's only  one tenth or one twentieth as expensive.  It simply does not compute that we should be paying as much - or more - for our booze here in Beijing as we would back home.  (I, for one, am not earning nearly as much money here as I would hope to back home.)

I suspect this unreasonable level of pricing is driven largely by inflated rents (rather than the insane greed of bar owners or drink distributors).  I think it's time to MAKE A STAND.  If we start refusing to pay these prices, staying away from bars, drinking only (as we used to, in the good old days) in restaurants.... maybe bar owners would soon feel the pinch.... and would have to start standing up to their landlords, demanding rent cuts.  This is where we burst Beijing's property bubble!  I have my hat pin at the ready....

I'm not done with that

I think I have complained before about the astonishingly common Chinese habit of removing things from your table - swiftly, surreptitiously, without asking, and quite often without any good reason at all.

Most often, the menu.  This used to be a particular vice at Fubar (although now they seem to have switched to an alternate tactic to achieve the same end - not bringing you a menu in the first place).

The wait staff at 1st Floor have managed to elevate this irritating practice to gobsmacking new heights: last night, they whisked the food menu away from me FIVE TIMES.  Without asking me.  And without offering to take a food order.

I saw which way the wind was blowing and eventually went next door for a doner at Kebab Nation instead.

Last call for Luga...

I had been thinking - after the strange and unexpected failure to open for the Superbowl last Monday (perhaps Luga just didn't know that it was on?!) - that Luga's Villa might have closed its doors for good.

There's obviously something jinxed about that location (and I hear some alarming tales about the landlord!): even The Golden Elephant (one of the better Indian restaurants in Beijing history) and the Handsome Café (awful name, but actually a rather decent little bar in that semi-basement space) couldn't survive there very long - and there have been god knows how many other failed ventures there since.  And the Villa suffers acutely from the 'divided space' problem - with three utterly unconnected floors (and two separate outside seating areas, with little or no service): has anyone ever set foot on the upper floor??

And - for a fairly divey bar - it's just a tad expensive. 40 kuai for a Stella??!!

But its biggest problem, as I've said on here often before, is that Luga keeps on failing to commit to the idea of being a sports bar.

On Saturday, I set out to watch the two big games in the English Premiership that day, the Manchester derby followed by Arsenal v Wolves.  Paddy O'Shea's - labouring under the burden of now being the ONLY (half-way) decent sports bar in town, and being the only place able to offer coverage of the Six Nations rugby competition (albeit a crappy picture from a Slingbox feed) - was completely swamped; when it gets that full, it's really not good for business, because it becomes almost impossible to get a drink!  Hence, I was forced to seek out alternatives in Sanlitun... and discovered - surprise, surprise! - that Luga's Villa was still open after all.

The TVs he's got in there aren't very good, and the small wall-projector he was using for the alternate game produced an unfortunately squashed picture, but... at least he was showing two games at once... and there was plenty of room to sit down.  Things went well enough at first (stupendous goal from Loony Rooney!!)... but then, at 11pm, he unaccountably brought a DJ on (someone I know, actually; lovely bloke - but I can't stand the shit he plays!).  The first 15 minutes of 'tune-up' was excruciating torture, with constantly see-sawing volume and the frequent buzz, crackle, and pop of loose wires in the PA.  Once we got into the set proper.... it was even worse.

I only survived - with difficulty - to the end of the second game by relocating upstairs (which, despite being a more obvious 'party' venue than the basement space, was not where they'd chosen to place the DJ; and which was not, at least at first, playing his godawful 'music' at such a high volume), and then by plugging my ears with balls of paper torn from the edge of a serviette.  It's much harder to attend to  the game and to follow what's happening without an audible commentary (or at least a little bit of crowd atmos in the background); it's practically impossible with the distraction of painfully loud music playing over the top of it (they've started doing this at The Den too - why, why, WHY??).

And if this is a ploy to woo the younger drinking crowd, who actually like this kind of 'music' (and aren't so interested in the football) - well, I think it is woefully misguided.  There were a couple of dozen such youngsters upstairs at The Villa on Saturday - but quite a few of them didn't order any drinks, and they all left at around midnight.  There are too many other bars and clubs in that neck of the woods that cater to people who want to dance - Kai at the low end, Lantern at the top, Kokomo in the middle, and more besides.  Luga isn't going to break into that scene.  And if he tries to attract a pre-clubbing crowd in for just one or two drinks on a Saturday night, he's only going to succeed in pissing off the sports fans.

I like Luga - but he's running this place like a concussed bee.  Luga's Villa, I'm afraid, is DOOMED.

Bon mot for the week

"A man is only as good as what he loves."

Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

Great Love Songs (25)

Now, don't suppose that this posting has anything to do with the date in a couple of days.  I absolve myself of any obligation to be 'romantic' for Valentine's Day - by being truly, madly, deeply, hopelessly, sincerely, spontaneously, passionately romantic on every other day of the year.

But I adore Tom Waits, and this is one of my favourites of his newer songs, Hold On; and it includes (at least!) one of my favourite of his lyrics.

Here's a wonderfully slow and gruff live performance in Atlanta in 2008 (no video), introduced by a bit of his characteristic comic banter - from his Glitter and Doom Tour album.

Oh, and here's a very good quality video of a live performance (allegedly from 1999 - I didn't think Mule Variations was that old!) , but the poster doesn't provide details of where.

I'm too good to you! It's because I love you!

The Superbowl that (nearly) wasn't

Finding a venue to watch the Superbowl has become next-to-impossible.

I had originally planned to try out the (consistently well spoken of since it opened... a couple of years back now, I suppose) Irish Volunteer out by the Lido.  However, despite cruising past that area relatively often (DVD-buying sprees at Tom's or Sunday afternoon walks out to Dashanzi...), I have never yet managed to suss out exactly where it is.  And I hear it's a fairly small venue, so I feared there'd be a serious danger of unpleasant overcrowding.  And I found I just didn't have the requisite will-power to schlepp all the way out there on my own that early in the morning.  The reason I still haven't tried the place out in nearly two years is that it's just too damned far away.

My second choice would have been The Brick - but owner Lee had told me he wouldn't be able to open up because of his competing commitment to help run The Stumble Inn (of which I had better say no more).  Also pretty bloody remote from me, but reasonably accessible via the Line 10 subway: I was disappointed to learn that was a no-go.  I heard belatedly that Chad was planning to show the game at Grinders down that way, but... well, I wasn't confident I could rely on that information (does he even have a TV screen in there, much less a satellite??  I wasn't going to undertake such a huge trek just to watch the local BTV coverage on a small screen!)... and it's not a very cosy venue - more wine bar or bistro than bar.

So, my default option - purely on grounds of accessibility and reliability - became Paddy O'Shea's.  But boy, was that crowded!!  You could scarcely get in the door half an hour before the start of the game.  They were trying to redirect people to the Indian restaurant upstairs, but that didn't have a very appealing ambience (and was rapidly becoming almost as packed out as the downstairs).  Even worse, the audience here seemed to be entirely composed of raucous young Americans - who had played the game themselves in high school or college.  Very bulky lads, most of them.  And not adept at manouevring through narrow gaps; I lost count of the number of times I got barged in the back in just a few minutes.  And the handful of diminutive wait staff were completely lost in this burly throng: it was impossible to get a drink.  And the sound system in there is just awful: despite being boomingly loud, it was too indistinct to render the commentary comprehensible.  Time to try other options.

Sanlitun, alas, proved to be a ghost town: Luga's Villa (scene of my Superbowl bender last year) was... closed!! WTF??!!  (I suspect this means the place is on its last legs, if not demised already.)  So were 1st Floor and Bar Blu and the Saddle Cantina, which are the sort of places you'd expect to make an effort to show this.  (So too, apparently, was the Blue Frog, which had been advertised as planning to show the game; although the place is too pricey and too upstairs in a mall to win my consideration.  The same factors weighed against the Stumble Inn [which had, in any case, ineptly ruled itself out of contention by advertising - possibly misleadingly - a 150 kuai door charge!] and the Union Grille; although a couple of people have told me that the latter - despite being uncomfortably full - provided a pretty good experience of the big game.)

I moseyed by The Den, which - just before kick-off - seemed, surprisingly, to be not that full.  Pretty full, but not jammed-to-the-rafters full like Paddy's.  It might have had something to do with the two goons on the door, who seemed to be trying to extract a 50 kuai door fee.  I understand from someone who went a little later that this was supposed to be a special 'breakfast' deal, and was not compulsory - but that's not what they were saying to me at 7.30am.  He also told me they had a special deal on some of the beers - Beijing Draft and Carlsberg for 15 kuai, or something like that.  Again, NOT advertised outside, or mentioned by the guys on the door.  I hadn't fancied paying an extra 50 kuai (even if I was going to get some free food with it).  And I'd been worried that regular morning prices at The Den would be in force, and thus prohibitively expensive (their 'happy hour' tariff isn't really cheap; just a tad lower than other would-be 'high-end' bars these days, but not CHEAP; the double price they charge most of the time is just outrageous).  But I don't think even the 15-kuai beers offer would have tempted me in: the draught beer there has been disgustingly skanky every time I've tried it in the last couple of years or so.  I rather think they're getting their kegs at a discount because they're beyond their use-by date (and/or they never clean their lines).  No, The Den was not appealing.  Only one more possibility left to explore, and that a very outside chance....

I'd heard that Chicago Bears fans had been enjoying some of the playoff games in secret lock-ins at Hooters (the Chinese owner, apparently, supports the Bears), so I thought I'd give that a try.  Indeed, it was open.  Well, kind of.  The boss still hadn't remembered to open the front door 10 minutes after kick-off, which perhaps accounted for the fact that there was only one guy there watching with him.  And despite assurances that the game was to be available with both Chinese and English coverage, the TVs were only showing BTV (perhaps he meant that you could still just about hear the original American commentary at low volume underneath the inane babble of the Chinese presenters?).  Then I looked at the menu and remembered why I never go to this place - 28rmb for a stubbie of Tsingtao???  No, thank you.

I toyed with the idea of getting a cab out to the Irish Volunteer, but in the middle of the Chinese New Year holiday there are very few cabs out and about around Gongti at that time in the morning.  So, I found myself giving up and taking the subway home.  At least I was able to get a jian bing for breakfast at Dongsi Shitiao, and I made it back just in time for the start of the 2nd quarter (though, of course, I'd missed the Packers storming to an early 14-0 lead).  After a while, I became quite adept at 'tuning out' the distracting Chinese commentary (although at times it could become overpoweringly obtrusive:  "That guy just got kicked in the nuts - HA-HA-HA-HA-HAAAA!!!").

Hell of a game!  The Packers had me sweating bullets in the last couple of minutes - but I had remained robustly confident through most of the game that they would prevail in the end.  Go, you Packers, GO!!!  (I've long had a soft spot for them; an inclination reinforced by fear of verbal or physical battery by my bud The British Cowboy if I dare to express any interest in or sympathy for any other team!)

[I'd been a little surprised - nay, mystified - by the size of the turnout at Paddy's.  It's not a great bar, and not - usually - a very American bar.  I hadn't known that the enormous Goose & Duck sports bar - a staple for Eastsiders - was closed for renovations!!  Or that The Den would have surly doormen discouraging people from entering.  Or that Luga's Villa would be CLOSED.  Or that just about everywhere else would be closed too.  There's been a huge increase in the number of Americans - young Americans, especially - in Beijing in the last few years; but there's been a dramatic withering in the number of sports bars.  I rather fear that I'm going to have to watch the Superbowl at home every year from now on...]