[From Hong Kong…Thursday]
NFL Quiz: 1) Who is Pittsburgh’s single season leader in receiving yardage? [Hint: It’s not an obvious one.] 2) Who are the three to throw five touchdown passes in a game for the Steelers. 3) Who holds San Diego’s record for touchdowns in a season? 4) Who is San Diego’s career leader in receptions? Answers below.
A Mighty Repast…and Piano Man
OK, since I last left you, on Tuesday I flew to Fuzhou, Fujian Province, to visit my friends at Company X, where I have what was once a sizable investment that has now turned into a quite meager one, mainly to see a new plant they are building in Jiangyin. [It serves no purpose whatsoever to mention the name. Many of you already know it, but the last thing I want is to be responsible for touting something, especially these days. If you want to take a flyer on it, say next year when hopefully the economic environment improves a bit, you’re on your own.]
I was last in Fuzhou, April 2007, and you fly Dragonair from Hong Kong, about a 75-minute jaunt that generally parallels the coast. I arrived on time at 10:15 and was told a Mr. Lai, the president’s assistant, would be meeting me and so I came out of customs but, alas, no Mr. Lai. The airport is decent sized so I kept walking up and down the halls, asking men dressed in black if they were Mr. Lai, and after 15 minutes a mini-panic was setting in but I finally picked out Mr. Lai from the lineup. He is my interpreter.
“I thought you coming at 11:00?” “Nope.” So he was actually early.
I knew this was going to be a long day because he didn’t speak English well at all compared to my interpreter the previous trip, the lovely Dora. The big issue is I have tons of questions and management at Company X doesn’t speak a lick of our language, though the CFO, who I knew wasn’t going to be there, does.
Well, anyway, Mr. Lai, who is very nice, and I pile into the company van, driven by a fellow I recognized from last time and Lai tells me the driver recognizes me too, he smiles, and off we go.
The headquarters is about an hour from the airport and I’m saving most details for that other column I do…the one I actually sign…so as not to repeat myself too much. Let’s just say it’s a great way to see what’s happening in one of the underdeveloped provinces in China and a good reflection, at least I think, of general overall economic conditions.
It all looked very familiar, including the duck and fish farms (think bird flu with the former and melamine with the latter), and we are going through this poor town at 11:15 when we suddenly stop and Lai says it’s time for ‘dinner.’
Uh oh, I think. We proceed to walk into a real hovel with a bunch of locals in the back who barely look up. The three of us take a table and then Lai asks me if I drink beer. Well, picture the expression on Charlie Brown’s face when he was asked to be the director of the Christmas pageant. “Me? You want me to be the director?”
“Beer? Why sure.”
So two, 32-ounce bottles of Sedrin Beer out of Fujian are plopped down on the table. The driver, being a responsible sort, isn’t partaking and Lai pours me some into what is little more than a shot glass. To make a long story short, let’s just say what followed brought back memories of college and our fraternity’s North/South drink-offs, which also involved a shot glass and beer.
Lai just kept pouring me more. Of the 64 ounces, I had, oh, about fif@#-six. [See if you can figure out the clue.]
But here was the payoff. The town we were in is right on the sea and while it was as dingy a place as any I’ve eaten in since spending time in India back in 1985, there were two drop-dead gorgeous waitresses and they proceeded to pile on the seafood, beginning with calamari.
It was out of this world! The freshest seafood I’ve had in quite some time. Oh, I wish I had a camera rolling. At one point this local strolls in holding four live lobsters, all bundled up in a flimsy piece of string, to see if anyone in the joint wanted to buy one. [No one took up the offer.]
Meanwhile, Lai kept pouring me the beer and the food kept flowing, including delicious noodles. I felt totally comfortable in the place, until they asked me if I wanted to wash up afterwards and I was shown the restroom. [You don’t want to know.] I knew we were close to headquarters and passed, but what an experience. Out of respect for my hosts, I’m leaving out some other details…but I’ll remember the calamari in particular the rest of my life.
I was dropped back off at the airport, after visiting the new plant another 45 minutes from headquarters, about 4:30 and as my flight wasn’t until 7:30, I plopped myself down at a little restaurant and, err, had some beer. Luckily, the return flight was roughly on time and uneventful.
Wednesday proved to be a great one. I had read in the local paper that Billy Joel was playing at an arena literally a one-minute metro ride from the airport so I headed over to the box office when it opened at 10:00 am. “Do you have any Billy Joel tickets left? You do?” [Cue the Charlie Brown expression.]
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Fired up, I then took the cable car adventure, Ngong Ping, up to the Po Lin monastery high in the Lantau Island mountains and a 112-foot statue of Buddha. It’s a 25-minute, breathtaking journey and something I had missed before because I was staying in Hong Kong Central rather than out by the airport. There is a cool village at the top and it being lunchtime, I picked out a Chinese place and went for it. “Mixed Snake Meat Soup.”
Now I’ve never had this dish before and while I won’t say it was delicious, it was certainly different and I ate it all.
The soup was very hot…which meant one thing. Three TsingTao Beers to put out the fire. In other words, a three-alarm fire. The main course was fried duck and it wasn’t that good as it was accompanied by some kind of paste I couldn’t identify. Then I hopped on the cable car for the ride back home.
So now it’s about 4:00…nap time…as I prepare for Billy Joel. Let me just give you a sense of how easy it was to attend this concert.
At 6:30, I walked over to Terminal 2 (I’m attached to Terminal 1), and went to the Heineken Bar for a ham and cheese sandwich and a pint. The food was slow to come so I had to add a ‘glass.’ It’s now 7:15. Five minutes back to my room, ten minutes to get pretty…sorry, just had to see if you were paying attention. At my age I look like crap and there is nothing I can do about it.
Anyway, at 7:30 I leave my room for the 8:00 show. I never step foot outside and I’m in the arena before 7:45. Sometimes life is good. One small issue, the Carlsberg line was rather lengthy but the show wasn’t starting right at 8:00 anyway.
So I get my Carlsberg (it was the only beer being served), find my seat, and I’m next to a delightful couple from Norway on one side, and two cute Indian girls from Britain on the other and around 8:20, Billy and his 7-piece band come on.
Get this. It was his first concert in Hong Kong, ever, and he proceeded to put on a fantastic show, playing all his old hits, plus one, as he put it, that wasn’t “but it’s just fun to play.” A guess? “Zanzibar,” a terrific tune off “52nd Street.”
He was electric, starting with “Angry Young Man,” on through “Just The Way You Are,” “Allentown,” and so on…finishing up with the encores “Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” and, of course, “Piano Man.”
I was wondering how the crowd (it eventually ended up being a sellout, by the way) would respond and while there were a ton of ex-pats in the place, it was still largely a Chinese audience. At first they were pretty laid back but by the end he had them eating out of his hand. So what a treat for me and while we all packed the metro at one time at the end, the police did a superb job handling the crowd and my wait was all of about ten minutes for my one-minute ride home. Did I tell you I love living at the airport?
Stuff
–It’s Buddha time. What are the four essential truths?
There is suffering in the world.
Suffering arises from craving and attachment.
Suffering can be eliminated.
Right views and the middle way are the keys to eliminate suffering.
[Personally, I would have added, “There is domestic…and then there is premium.]
–There were a couple deaths in baseball the past few days. Herb Score, 75, passed away. Score burst on the scene in 1955 with the Cleveland Indians and was rookie of the year with a 16-10 mark and 245 strikeouts, setting a rookie record for Ks in the process as he led the AL in this category. This mark would stand until Dwight Gooden bested it in 1984. Score then proceeded to go 20-9 in ’56, again leading the league in strikeouts.
But on May 7, 1957, the Yankees’ Gil McDougald lined a ball off Score’s right eye, breaking his nose and a number of bones in his face. As Score lay bleeding profusely on the ground, the Cleveland public address announcer famously said, “If there is a doctor in the stands, will he please report to the field.”
Score spent three weeks in the hospital and was out the rest of the season with blurry vision. When he returned the following year, however, he changed his pitching motion to make him less vulnerable to being hit and he was never the same and finished his career with a 55-46 record for eight major league seasons before retiring in 1962. He was then a broadcaster for Cleveland for 34 years.
–And Preacher Roe passed away. I’ll have more on him later when I return home because I need to go through all my baseball history books to do his story justice, but Roe, who died at the age of 92, was on four consecutive All-Star teams for the Brooklyn Dodgers and was 93-37 for them, including a stupendous 22-3 in 1951. But while he appeared in three World Series for them, the spitballer (and therein lie some of the stories) had retired by the time Brooklyn won its only title in 1955. For his career, Roe finished up 127-84, including his first years at Pittsburgh. [But I just looked up his batting average…yikes, .110.]
–Hey Omar Minaya, general manager of the Mets. Don’t go after K-Rod! He would be another bust. I like the idea of Bobby Jenks if he’s available, though.
–Division I-AA Football Rankings
1. James Madison
2. Appalachian State
3. Cal Poly
4. Northern Iowa
5. Montana
10. Elon
24. Colgate
Just wanted to give some folks their due. Phil W., as soon as ASU posts their 2009 schedule, get the ticket for me. I’ll be on quarterback Armanti Edwards’ bandwagon next season.
–This week’s football picks, as I put my 15-16 record on the line.
Take USC, giving 23 ½ to Stanford
Take Nevada, giving 15 to San Jose State
Take Georgia, giving 8 ½ to Auburn
Take Texas, giving 12 ½ to Kansas
Of course I don’t have a clue about Nevada, but kids, this is a solid hunch and I’m suggesting you ask your parents for $125,000 for this game alone.
–I see my Gateway Gators of Monroeville, Pa., are hanging in there in USA Today’s Super 25 rankings at No. 3. Next up in the state playoffs, mighty Penn Hills. No. 1 is Trinity, Euless, Texas. No. 2 is St. Thomas Aquinas, Fort Lauderdale. You see, sports fans, it’s not just about the beach and babes in Ft. Lauderdale. It’s about church and high school football. [cough cough]
–On November 13, 1833, or 175 years ago, more than 1,000 meteors a minute lit up the sky before dawn, scaring the crap out of most Americans. But astronomers noticed the flashes seemed to be emanating from the constellation Leo, named after Leo Durocher. [Though seeing as how he wasn’t born yet, I’m just not sure how this is impossible.] Anyway, the science folks, in looking through old records, calculated that the Leonid meteor showers, as the phenomenon would become known, peak every 33 years. Now we understand the meteors are the debris from the tail of the comet Tempel-Tuttle. Should the world survive until then, the next Leonids will thrill us in 2031-2033.
–Ripped from the pages of China Daily:
“Monkey and dog act thrilling zoo visitors”
“The sight of a monkey feeding a dog with bananas and scratching it while riding on its back is attracting hordes of curious onlookers to Nanhai Zoo in the city of Chumadian, Henan province.
“The zoo’s animal keepers said the 6-month old female dog named Dou Dou had become a close friend of the male monkey in the past month.”
Memo to Dou Dou. I wouldn’t get “too” close, know what I’m sayin’?
“Wild boar shot dead after 17-hour rampage”
[There are a ton of boars in this area. It’s one reason why I would never hike alone in the parks.]
“A wild boar that charged into a factory was finally shot dead after workers had fought against it using iron pipes and wooden rods for 17 hours.
“The 109.5 kg swine entered the factory from the back door and confronted night shift workers…
“Several workers were injured by the pig before police arrived and fired four shots at 1:30 pm the next day.” 1:30 pm?! I mean to tell ya, Chief Wiggum and his boys could have arrived quicker.
–Uh oh…big news story in these parts is the fact more than 800 cattle herders have been cut off for more than a week by heavy snow in Tibet. Supplies were “probably running low for herders and their cattle.” But no word on the fate of the yak, though I’m not concerned. Yak have always proven themselves under the worst of circumstances. In fact I bet they are leading the snowplow operation to free their cattle brethren.
–From Yunnan – “Wild elephants have destroyed almost 90 percent of banana trees since mid-October.” Bad elephants, baaad elephants.
–Boy, I see there were a lot of pissed off folks at a recent 30th anniversary “Dallas” reunion. “Angry fans complained they did not get the access to cast members they had paid for – while others got close to the stars without paying for the privilege.”
It seems hundreds more showed up for the barbecue and cast party than organizer’s planned on and many just crashed the event. [Bastards.] Many had paid $400 to $1,000 for special access, but others who paid $100 or nothing got more as it turned out.
At least the event organizer, Jason Hardison, said “I’m brokenhearted about what happened and I feel like the fans were cheated out of what was promised to them.”
Have you ever been to Southfork Ranch, where the event was held? What a letdown. Kind of like Graceland, which is also tiny, though at least it has character.
–Phil Mickelson said world golf is sorely missing Tiger Woods and he’s concerned about the impact on television ratings. I would be too, Lefty.
“The reason why we all want Tiger back is because he drives the game of golf. He drives television ratings, the sponsors need him in their events and the fans turn out to see him…We’re very lucky to have the No. 1 athlete in the world.”
But I see the PGA Tour released its schedule for 2009 and prize money is actually up to $222.9 million from $214.4 million this year.
“I’m delighted to say that the demise of the PGA Tour has been overstated considerably,” said Commissioner Tim Finchem. Yoh, Tim, not so fast. The issue with the Tour has always been about 2010. You guys are toast, just like everyone else. Even the NFL has announced it will cut some of its playoff ticket prices 10% this year, while the Nets, who draw 42 fans for each contest these days, say they will start giving out tickets to the unemployed. [I still wouldn’t go.]
–Here’s another cocky sports league. The NHL announced it set an attendance record for October, though I admit it’s impressive the league also hit a record with 94% capacity and even television ratings are up, though up from a base of zero.
–Nice job, the Boss. Springsteen is launching a public service campaign back in New Jersey to bail out the Community Food Bank. “We Can’t Let This Bank Fail.” Bruce has donated to this charity for 23 years.
–Maybe the 22-year-old Dane who just won a record $9.152 million in the World Series of Poker will cough up a little to the charity of his choosing. Then again, all these guys try to do is figure out how they can fool the IRS into believing they have offsetting losses.
Top 3 songs for the week 11/11/78: #1 “MacArthur Park” (Donna Summer) #2 “You Needed Me” (Anne Murray…dreadful…and she reminds me of Suzy Orman) #3 “Double Vision” (Foreigner)…and…#4 “How Much I Feel” (Ambrosia) #5 “Hot Child In The City” (Nick Gilder) #6 “Kiss You All Over” (Exile) #7 “Whenever I Call You ‘Friend’” (Kenny Loggins) #8 “Beast Of Burden” (The Rolling Stones) #9 “Get Off” (Foxy) #10 “I Just Wanna Step” (Gina Vannelli…had big hair)
NFL Quiz Answers: 1) Yancy Thigpen is Pittsburgh’s single season leader in receiving yardage with 1,398 in 1997. 2) Terry Bradshaw, 11/81; Mark Malone, 9/85; and Ben Roethlisberger, 11/07, are the three to throw five touchdown passes in a game. If you got Malone, pour yourself a cold domestic. I’m assuming your portfolio is down this year, thus ruling out premium. 3) OK, just seeing if you are awake. Of course LaDainian Tomlinson holds the San Diego, and NFL, record with 31 touchdowns in a season. The 186 points is a record as well. 4) Charlie Joiner is San Diego’s career leader in receptions with 586, 1976-86.
Next Bar Chat, Wednesday….time to catch up when I return over the weekend, though I may have a blurb or two on Hong Kong Disneyland before then, which is where I’m heading now.
