Well, I'm sure you'll all be happy to know that, as before, everything actually works in Hong Kong. I took my little jaunt to the South China Sea, and what couldn't possibly be achieved in a week in San Francisco was courteously accomplished in 75 minutes in Hong Kong. I was issued a visa with less hassle than a BART card (try feeding that machine grungy bills, you feel like you're in that Pepsi commercial). Now everyone is wondering, I'm sure, about whatever became of Dave's Second Battery for the laptop. Amanda spent quite a while determining that no store in the Bay Area has a replacement battery for the IBM 755 CXs. Just to waste time, I decided to call Fry's (which is an endless fount of electronic surprises), who claimed to have one. Of course they didn't, but it sure was fun of them to tease me that way, what with their being only 15 minutes from my house. So I showed them, and went to the local electronic junkyard and bought the Mother of All NiCads--a stack of super-D's that displaces more volume and out-weighs my laptop big-time, but keeps the thing powered for six hours with the disk spinning and the air conditioning on. We're talking macho battery here, and the thing looks like it's a terrorist incendiary device (particularly with the aligator clips and colored wires). So far, the security guards haven't confiscated it...but I'm just now heading to the mainland, and am beginning to feel a bit more nervous. To be truly pointless, however, these musings must touch on the subject of the dregs of socialism.China is, well, not a place you really need to go to. Now, I'm not exactly in a good mood about this visa thing. But when it comes to drab, it's just hard to beat a nationally-owned and operated airline. I've made it a personal mission to not fly Aeroflot until every last one of their aircraft is dismantled or crashes. But now, I've been cornered into flying China Air Lines (which goes by "CAAC", onamotopoetically linked to wretching)...and it's just the greatest crummy airline I've been on since Continental. All the right symbols are there, but the overall experience is pretty empty. They have a series of wacky MTV-esque videos AND the requisite China's Funniest Home Videos segments AND the industrial travelogs AND the how-could-you-not-have Chinese acrobats cum spinning plates..........and it's NOT on your headphones because you don't have any headphones so they pipe it over the PA system. See ya in cyberspace... dave