Teenagers

There are a bunch of Swiss teenagers trying pot for the first time right outside my crib.  I live in a little house that is on a hill and in the back there is a garage that is hidden from the street so they are down there at this very moment coughing their little lungs out and laughing like a bunch of Swiss hyenas.  All the windows are open and I decided to start bumping some Notorious B.I.G. which I assume is totally blowing their minds.  Kids, if you ever read this, you're welcome.

America's Youth

The best part is at the very end when she says "I think."

Liechtenstein

I've been going to Liechtenstein the past couple of days for meetings. Liechtenstein is a tiny 'principality' between Switzerland and Austria. They use the Swiss franc and I think most of the laws are basically the same as Swiss laws. It is a little surreal, almost like a movie set or Disneyland or something. There is a big castle up on a hill and everything. Oh, and the public transport is really racist. I was shocked.

Saving Money

Apparently I am entering an undervalued market:

Next Stop: Malaysia

I'm moving to Malaysia. On May 9th, I will leave Western Europe and go live in SE Asia for the summer. I've been to KL before, and I am really looking forward to moving there. It is clean and cheap, sort of a combination of all the best parts of Singapore and Bangkok. I will have friends working in Indonesia and the Philippines, so I will probably take trips to those places, and I am already planning a trip to Bali. I'd like to visit Laos and Burma too, since I didn't make it to either of them when I was living in Singapore.

Paris

I took this picture.

For a long time, I had no desire to go back to Paris. Traveling around Europe is expensive, so I like to spend my travel bucks on seeing places I've never been before. However, I found out that a bunch of my friends were going to Paris for a weekend, so I impulsively bought a plane ticket, as I am wont to do. It was really fun, and I am very glad that I went even though I've seen all the Paris crap before. We checked out the Louvre, where we looked at the Mona Lisa and the winged something. We scoped out the Eiffel Tower and ate a crepe.

Stylin and Argylin outside the Louvre

We hit up all the hottest night spots in Paris. Except for one because the taxi driver that dropped us off there tried to double the fare and when we wouldn't pay he took out a flashlight and tried to hit us with it. One of my friends took one of the metal posts that holds up the red velvet rope at the club and ran down the street swinging it like a lunatic, so they didn't let us in that club. We did end up going to Cab, which is supposed to be like one of the best places in Paris or whatever. It was pretty fun, except the drinks were the most expensive drinks I've ever heard of. At one point my friend bought 2 drinks, and the bill was 60 euros. I bought a round of 5 shots, and it was 75 euros. That's a lot. But the music was good, and the people were nice. The next night we went to some place called Kong, which is apparently the new spot to be seen at if you are a model or rich. We had to bribe the bouncers to let us in because we only had half a girl for each dude with us. The inside of this club was designed by Philippe Starck, and I know who that is because one time in my previous job slanging cribs in L.A., I was trying to sell a house owned by this wacky lady who insisted that we tell everyone about the bathroom faucets which were Philippe Starck designed. Kong was sweet, but crowded.

Kong. Looking hard.

On Sunday before our flights we hit up the Champs Elysees and ate escargot and drank liters of beer.

CERN

I went to CERN, the place with the Large Hadron Superconducting Supercollider that is going to possibly create miniature black holes. It was shut down for maintenance and because I told them I am a journalist (which I most certainly am not) they let me hang out with a really smart physicist who made some of the detectors in the collider. He took me 100 meters underground into the guts of the collider itself. It was pretty sweet.

You have never been here.

Notice the pocket square. I realize it might have been overkill for CERN since it's all scienists and no fly models running around or anything, but that's how I roll.

I'm getting deported

That's right. They are throwing my black ass out of Switzerland. Because my company is shady and cheap and Filipino, they do not provide business visas, but instead require me to lie to customs officials. The Swiss are not easily fooled, however. They got ahold of my apartment lease and called me up to come down to city hall, where they asked me a bunch of questions about what I'm doing here and told me I have to leave after 90 days or they will throw me in the slammer. I ain't trying to see the inside of no Swiss prison, so I have to leave April 23. I was supposed to be here until May 9, so I am missing out on 2 and a half weeks of awesome. During that time I will be going to Vienna to hang out with my company's team there, where I will be sleeping on a couch. They really value their employees here. But I get paid to travel and I am not going to get laid off any time soon, so I can't really complain. I will be sharing an apartment with the dude I lived with in Amsterdam, and I will actually have more privacy in Vienna living on his couch than I did in Amsterdam, because the apartment in Vienna has a door on the bedroom. This is a nice, luxurious feature that my Amsterdam apartment didn't have.

I went to Vienna the other weekend to party, where I got to see a LOT of ginormous old buildings and statues and shit. I also went to a superclub which is supposed to be the biggest club on Earth or something. Here's a picture:


Now I'm back in Zurich, which is sweet but is getting expensive. I went to Q Club last night for a huge party celebrating their 8th anniversary. One of my friends that lives here got me into VIP and I hung out with a bunch of rich people who are probably bankers. Apparently, the credit crunch hasn't really been socking it to their pockets recently because they were drinking Belvedere and Moet like it was water. After paying 30 francs (1 franc = 86 American cents) to get in and then 16 francs per drink all night, I spent up all my cash by 3am and went home. The party lasted until 9 though. They had these party dancers on party stilts from Ibiza there and were setting things on fire.

Money Mouth McGee

The Rest of Asia and Prague

The latter half of my Asian vacation has faded into distant memory, so the zero people who read this blog will never hear of my hijinx firsthand. For a recap, check here.

Here are some highlights/lowlights:

-Eating not one, but two partially developed duck embryos straight out the egg.

-Filling up a loud snoring friend's mouth with about $50 worth of dirty Asian coins from 5 different countries. He sleep air karate chopped for about 10 minutes and then went right back to sleep. I have a video.

-Taking 15 of the nastiest shots I've ever taken and getting a free T-shirt and my name on a plaque on the wall in the 15 shot place in Boracay. On the plaque, they make you write down your name after you've taken the shots, so apparently I wrote for name: Shane wuz here and for country: booga and for date: booga. Shane wuz here booga booga. Clever, I know.

-Renting a fighting cock from a confused Filipino at 6am and throwing it on all my co-workers' beds whilst videotaping their reactions. It was hilarious. Almost pecked an eye out.

I went to Prague last weekend, where we ate pork knee, pork shoulder, goulash, lamb rump, and wurst. It was all delicious. Every building in Prague is like a work of art. We found an army surplus store where my friends bought absurd Soviet era war hats and I bought a Soviet general's duster. I assume the person who wore it before me is now dead. Later I purchased one of those big furry Russian hats. When we left I hung up the duster on a street sign because I didn't want to carry it on the plane and it wouldn't fit in my bag. Some Czech meth addict is straight stylin' in that shit right now.

Week 2 in Zurich

I've been busy. I am taking a kickboxing class a few times a week so I can get totally ripped while at the same time becoming the most efficient killing machine known to mankind. I went to Bern the other day, and yesterday I spent the day in Geneva. Geneva is sweet. It is basically part of France which is cool because I got to butcher the pronunciation of all the words I learned in 11th grade French class. I also ate a baguette.


Tonight I am leaving for Prague for the weekend, which should be pretty awesome. I am going to this place: http://klub.roxy.cz.

Macau

From Hong Kong, we took a ferry over to Macau. This was just after an Asian ferry capsized (as Asian ferries have a tendency to do) in Indonesia, killing a bunch of people. "But," we told ourselves, "that happened in bad weather, with high seas, so there's no way that will happen to our ferry. right? RIGHT?" The ride was uneventful until the weather got bad and the seas got high. Luckily our captain was a little more wave savvy than his Indonesian counterpart, so we made it there safely. We got lured into a free bus ride and accidentally went to the wrong island, and whilst there we saw the new Venetian which is massive, even by Vegas standards. Then we took another free bus ride back to the real Macau and did some tourist things. First, we stopped by the Ruínas de São Paolo, which was built during Portuguese colonization a billion years ago. This is it:

Then, we walked down a street that I think is called Meat Street, because every store had huge piles of squares of jerky in the front, and they all gave you free samples and then tried to bamboozle you into buying pounds of it to take home. They had tons of different kinds such as ostrich, wild boar, and spicy piglet, but lets be honest. It was all dog jerky. It was just delicious enough to get you to buy a pound of it after the free sample, but after a few more bites it got really really gross. We all ended up throwing some away I think.

After Meat Street, we went to the casinos. This is what Macau is famous for. Rich people from Hong Kong come to Macau to gamble, because Asians love gambling. But they don't take ferries with the poor people, they take helicopters. They fly just low enough so that you can see them out the window of your ferry on the brink of capsizing when they give you a look that says "Maybe if you'd worked a little harder..."

Anyway, Macau is like a big Asian Vegas with casinos like MGM and Wynn everywhere. I lost a fistful of Hong Kong dollars at the blackjack tables, but it was a good time overall.

First days in Zurich

Zurich is a pretty nice place to live. But don't take my word for it. Here's a recent survey that agrees: http://www.mercer.com/referencecontent.htm?idContent=1307990#Top50_qol.

The Swiss apparently know what they are doing when it comes to quality of life. That explains why everyone is so friendly. Zurich is clean and safe, and public transportation is really easy. My house is up on a hill in a neighborhood called Hongg. Everything I could possibly want is within short walking distance, and there is a tram stop right in front of my crib that takes me to the city center in about 15 minutes.

Last night I went to Zurich's most happening nightspot, Kaufleuten. Supposedly this is the place to see and be seen, and celebrities go there all the time. There may have been celebrities there last night, but I wouldn't know because I have no idea who any Swiss celebrities are. It was a pretty sweet place, and the vibe was cool. Swiss people are very friendly. There were probably 200 people at the bar and of those no less than 150 were banker types in suit and tie with slick back Gordon Gekko hair. I avoided that crowd and made friends with the other non-suit wearing people.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong skyline seen from Kowloon

Hong Kong is really, really cool. It is my new favorite city and if I had to stop having the most awesome life ever and live in one place for a while, Hong Kong would be on the short list. It is like a combination of Singapore and Bangkok. It is easy to get around and clean and anything you want is there, but it still has a lot of history and culture which I thought Singapore was lacking. Also Cantonese sounds way cooler to me than Mandarin. The downside of course is that it is much more expensive than a place like Shanghai. So we went from staying in the lap of luxury at the Broadway Mansion to staying in a tiny hostel room. At least they had free wifi. We had some recommendations from a friend but these included all of the most exclusive members only clubs where 3 dudes with no connections have zero chance of getting in. We tried every bit of our charm and charisma, but had no luck. Instead we just went to some normal bars around Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo and had a blast. Everyone was pretty friendly and there were a lot of expats and tourists.

The next day we took a drop top bus tour around the city and saw all of the historic sights including a gold plated lily that is important for some reason and some old colonial buildings. The tour culminated in a trip up the cable car to the Peak, where we took the requisite Peak Pics. We also checked out the Hong Kong laser light show, which is hyped up as the largest laser light show in the world according to the Guinness book of world records, but it is basically a couple of overly excited Cantonese narrators talking and the cheesiest, worst music you have ever heard playing while a single green laser turns on and off from the top of each of the 5 tallest buildings. Total blue balls.

The day after that we took the drop top bus tour around the Kowloon side and saw a few other sights and listened to the most annoying audio tour voice guy ever say all kinds of stupid crap all day long. We got out and went shopping for electronics and ate some delicious Asian food. That night we went out in Knuttsford Terrace, which is supposedly Kowloon's answer to Lan Kwai Fong, but it looked more like Kowloon's answer to Afghanistan: bombed out and depleted.

We learned on the bus tour that after Hong Kong was handed back over to the Chinese in the late 90's, they had 50 years to keep ballin' before China was going to come in and end the 'one country, two systems' policy and take it over. I guess the first thing they will do is bring in a supertanker full of poo and hose everything down, then get rid of everything awesome and make it more like Shanghai. I recommend that everyone go to Hong Kong now, before that happens.

Next: Macau

Random Shanghai Pics

Monks doing monk stuff

This establishment is a butcher shop, but also a cell phone store.

$12 Fumas

nap time.

This poison is 65% alcohol, and the company that makes it is ISO 9001 certified.

Yes, that says Dog meat Clay Pot.