NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof offers ’15 tips for traveling to even the roughest of countries.’
Here’s number 10. ‘Don’t wear a nice watch, for that suggests a fat wallet and also makes a target. I learned that lesson on my first trip to the Philippines: a robber with a machete had just encountered a Japanese businessman with a Rolex — who now, alas, has only one hand.’
Rain, Hong Kong, 2008
Sizzling heat, pouring rain. Looks like Al Gore was right.
Of course the one day I step out of the house without an umbrella (I’d assumed the folding umbrella was in my bag, forgetting that I took it out the previous day because I was lugging the big umbrella) it starts pouring rain. But I love the rain. Bring on the dark skies, gray clouds and distant thunder. I like the lighting.
Reminds me of a conversation I had years ago. The scene is a bar in the late afternoon. It’s raining small mammals, big drops that go splat on the asphalt.
Scrat: I don’t like the rain.
Me: Because you see yourself dead in it.
Scrat: Because it reminds me of boarding school.
Me: And it was full of the biggest morons and phonies you’d ever seen.
Scrat: It was cold and wet.
Me: Then Burgess and Philby tried to recruit you as a spy for the Russians.
Scrat: Very bad food.
Me: Poor upper class types. I studied right here and we had nothing but blazing sunshine.
Scrat: And yet you’re the one who’s drunk and standing at a 45-degree angle.
It’s mildly funny if you like books.
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The great thing about Brillante Mendoza’s Kinatay is that for once we’re fighting over an idea of Cinema rather than whether Nora is greater than Vilma.
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Today in Noel Orosa-ness: ‘There should be a Senate hearing on why there is a Senate hearing on Hayden Kho.’
Ponder this: A sabong-themed store at Maul of Asia. Le coq sportif.
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