Hong Kong Odds And Ends

Before leaving Hong Kong for the summer, Anna, Sky and I had breakfast at the Foreign Correspondents Club.

It's a lovely place, quiet in the mornings.

We usually eat in the Main Bar. Kids under 18 aren't allowed past the low barrier that you can see beyond Anna.

We have been spending a lot of time at the other club we belong to - the American Club. This is the view from the pool one afternoon just after I took a swim.

A cigar I smoked, slowly, on our balcony. It was an Ashton VSG Torpedo. Ashton is a line of cigars created by a Philadelphia tobacconist named Robert Levin in 1985.

They are manufactured by the Arturo Fuente cigar company, founded in 1912 by a Cuban emigre in Florida. Carlos Fuente Jr., who runs the company now, blends the VSG cigars using 4 to 5 year old aged Dominican tobacco with a wrapper grown on a private estate in Ecuador. VSG stands for Virgin Sun Grown.

The wrapper leaf is taken from the leaves near the top of the plant and matures slowly by sunlight filtered through the region¹s natural cloud covering. The higher the leaves - called primings - the greater the exposure they have to the sun, the longer they stay on the plant and the stronger their flavor.

I lost my camera in a taxi and reported it to the Hong Kong taxi authority's lost and found. A week later, they called to say that it had been found and turned in to a police station in Shamshuipo, a district on the Kowloon side of the territory.

After I went to pick it up, I stopped by a mall for a bite. I ordered xiao long bao - Shanghainese dumplings, also known as 'soup dumplings' because the filling is surrounded by broth. They were excellent - one of the wonderful things about Hong Kong is that there is good food in unexpected places.