Capsule toys are really popular in Hong Kong, and all over the region you’ll see Japanese capsule machines outside of convenience stores selling various little toys, usually for dangling on your mobile phone.

These little trinkets are usually based on popular anime series, Gundams, video game characters, and food, etc. but one in particular came across as a little bizarre: “Cute & sexy” Minney Mouse Disney panty ornaments. WTF?

If this were Mainland, I would just say “whatever, copyright infringement, nothing to see here” but this is Hong Kong where that sort of thing doesn’t fly as easily. So, either this big distributor is selling knock-off bizarre toys, or Disney has some pretty different rules for its IP in Asia.

A few weeks back, our lovely cat Dosa decided to completely chew up our Wii’s sensor bar, rendering it completely useless. Besides playing games and emulation, we used the Wii a lot for watching movies we downloaded; not having it working was a big pain.

We went to a few game shops to look into buying a replacement sensor, and prices for a “real” Nintendo one ranged from 150 to 250 RMB. Considering we got the whole Wii package for 1000 RMB, paying that much for only the sensor just didn’t make sense. Online auction site Tabao has a ton of them for sale for as little as 35 RMB, but at that price one can only wonder if they even work.

Luckily, Ellen found a decent solution online… using two candles!

Apparently the Wii sensor isn’t actually a sensor at all – it just sends our infrared signals, and the Wii remote has a camera to capture these signals. Through triangulation, the position is determined.

To be honest, I’m still not completely sure how this works – I guess the flickering of the candlelight is similar to the light signals sent by the ‘sensor bar’… but who cares. It works, and not only that – it works just as well as the sensor bar!

My new favourite snack: Pee Pee coconut chips from Thailand! Second only to dried mango.

China’s interest in US President Obama never ceases to amaze me.

First it was Obama’s alleged endorsing of the Blockberry handset. Then, he was endorsing real-estate in Shaanxi province. Then there was the short-lived Obamao-mania souvenir frenzy prior to his visit to China.

Well, all of that is topped with the announcement of something so bizarre, I couldn’t make it up if I tried: a new Obama Entertainment Club is opening up right here in Shanghai. And with that playful pink leg dangling out of the “O”, I’m sure it will be quite the classy establishment.

This started off innocently enough. The odd baggage scanner at a few select metro stations (I only saw it myself at Zhongshan Park). Now, it’s been implemented at every station in the city, all in the name of Expo 2010.

To enter a turnstyle at any station now, if you have any baggage you must pass it through an airport-like conveyor belt to be scanned and inspected. On the other side are security staff staring at a couple of monitors.

I didn’t mind this at first, but it’s grown to really irritate me. I take the metro to work every day, so twice a day I have to pass my laptop bag through this stupid machine, wait for it to come out the other end, and have the strap get caught on the other side.

To add to the fun, people in Shanghai are not exactly known for being orderly or waiting their turn in line. During rush hour, you often have to fight to get your bag in, and then rush to the other side to grab it through the crowd of people waiting for theirs. If you have groceries, expect a few items to roll out of the bag before the end of its conveyor belt journey.

When you take into account that the personnel are often not paying attention, some machines are (or at least were) apparently not staffed or even turned on between 6 – 7 AM, and couriers still hand deliver packages over the railings to their counterparts waiting in the station, this is security theatre at its worst and it rivals anything the west has to offer.

I’m hoping that this whole thing will be over when the Expo is, but something tells me the city didn’t spend a fortune to put scanners in over 200 metro stations with the word ‘temporary’ in mind. We’re still taking our shoes off at airports in North America, still unable to bring a few ounces of liquid into a departure area, and the “terror alert level” will never be green. Once implemented and publicly accepted, security measures like these rarely get reversed.

The only upside is that all the security staff I’ve encountered have been very friendly, and none of them had the self-inflated sense of importance/authority that rent-a-cops and TSA staff in the west have. To be fair, as one anonymous security staff member allegedly posted online recently, it’s not exactly fun for them either.

I never noticed it before, but HanZhong Road metro station has some pretty wild Tron-style lighting happening from the ceiling.

Finally got around to picking up a pair of Hui Li (回力) shoes the other day on Xiangyang Road. Like the popular Fei Yue brand of sneakers, Hui Li are cheap but durable and super comfortable Chinese shoes.

Not as rich in history as Fei Yue sneakers (which were first made in Shanghai in the 1920s), Hui Li (known as “Warrior” in English) came out in the 1970s to meet the local demand and budget for popular western-style shoes like Nike.

I got them for 49 RMB, and luckily they had my size. Dosa likes them too!

I’ve heard a lot about this restaurant Commando Chicken that serves – of all things – Mediterranean food (I’m not sure what I associated the name with, but it wasn’t gyros and schwarmas).

Curiosity finally got the best of me and I decided I had to try it out… and holy hell, am I glad I did! It’s probably the best bargain in the city, and the food – while no means gourmet – is great!

For 80 RMB (or around $12) we got:

- HUGE Chicken schwarma with potatoes and salad
- HUGE Rotisserie chicken pita with potatoes and salad
- Two orders of fries
- Chicken wings

Seriously: there was so much food we couldn’t come near to finishing it. And it was all really damn good!

Fast food pics always end up looking gross – it was way better than it looks:

Commando Chicken, you rule.

Christmas came early – or late, depending on how you look at it – for someone. Ellen just got a brand new iMac!

Gotta admit I’m a little jealous, but my trusty ol’ MacBook Pro still has at least a couple of years of life left in it. But the wireless keyboard and mouse are so damn nice I just may have to get a pair of my own.

Also, New Egg China has proven to be awesome: we ordered it late Wednesday night, and it arrived first thing Thursday morning. There was no delivery or service charge, and we paid the courier for it using debit card. It was also cheaper than anywhere else in the city. You can’t get much more convenient than that.

Now to upgrade the RAM to 16 GB…

I love reading Shanghai Daily. It’s full of news about Shanghai and China, but even better is that it’s full of off beat and weird news (like the article in the image).

Compared to other publications, it isn’t as tightly controlled by the government and is less biased.

That said, I still find it odd that their site displays a banner ad promoting users to follow them on Twitter, considering Twitter has been blocked in China for the last year!

Could this not be considered encouraging users to break the law?