Hello all

Well, after wanting to go sailing / biking / drinking on successive previous weekends and not managing, I did all 3 this weekend with results that would most accurately be described as; "tiring."

Saturday morning I was at work; an unfortunate side effect of working in Hong Kong, but them's the rules. Actually, Saturdays give me a good few hours to concentrate on such nicities as filing and; well, filing.

Saturday afternoon I had been picked for crew on Shikari, an 28' Impala class racer-cruiser. Sounds very swish; in fact the Impalas (there are 20 some of them in HK) are all nearly 30 years old and beat to hell. The fun in sailing them is that they are a fairly strict one design, leading to close boat to boat racing and that, for big boats, people are willing to get them very close together because they are old and don't mind the odd bump. All this leads to something akin to a laser race style blood bath, but in bigger boats. Fun. Unfortunately the weather was not very conducive on Saturday as the wind refused to get up (until the race was over, of course) so it was mostly sitting around waiting for the tide to take you to the next mark.

All that finished by 6pm on Saturday and I trundled home STARVING to find Andrea had spent all day alternating between working on her latest paper or avoiding same. I had had the idea to have a kip then go out and get embarassingly drunk in WanChai somewhere, but Andrea was beat so we watched some "Neverwhere" and ate pizza instead.

Sunday we had arranged a champagne brunch. This is a traditional method of getting mullahed at lunchtime for a fixed fee. The buffets are hosted by hotels (in this case the Excelsior) and are "all you can eat and drink" for about 4 hours starting at noon. Andrea coersced me in to going mountain biking first thing on Sunday morning, which is something we have discussed as a possibility before. Early start, van to the top of Route Twisk, ride down hill for and hour (a VERY good trail, although not so good for the fitness, as it is all down hill...) then van back to HK for a shower and noon arrival at the brunch. Andrea decided, however, that her paper had tired her out and that I should test the theory on my own. After being cajoled with the "you'll enjoy it once you're out there" type lines, I booked the van and, sure enough, thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Brunch went predictably; we crawled out of Carnegies (nic; "Carnage") at about 7pm and spent the evening in front of "the Shield" and HBO drama about LA cops. Bloody marvelous.

Andrea has just left for work, leaving me with the parting question; "Why do I always get sick after drinking?"

Go figure

Bomber out