It was 20 Years ago Today.....

Well not quite today (9th March 1987 to be precise), that U2 released their 5th albumn - The Joshua Tree, which is still probably the best albumn they have written to date. It is also 20 years ago that I first managed to get tickets to see them play live, (after several years of trying), at the old Wembley Stadium, with the Pogues and Lou Reed in support.

After the trauma of our coach breaking down on the way (and fear of missing the gig altogether), it turned out to be a rather excellent day, and out of the hundreds of concerts I have seen, it still probably remains the best I have been to. It was that good I can remember the set list (see below), and recall that they included Help by The Beatles within their performance. This leads me to ponder that if The Beatles had managed to keep going for as long as U2 have (nearly 30 years now) without falling apart due to the excesses of a rock and roll lifetsyle, then perhaps they also could have ended up being as good!


Saturday, June 13th 1987 - U2 Live at Wembley Stadium, The Joshua Tree Tour
1. Stand By Me
2. Pride (In The Name Of Love)
3. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
4. MLK
5. The Unforgettable Fire
6. Sunday Bloody Sunday
7. Exit / Riders On The Storm (snippet) / Van Morrison's Gloria (snippet)
8. In God's Country
9. C'mon Everybody
10. Help
11. Bad / Walk On The Wild Side (snippet)
12. October
13. New Year's Day
14. I Will Follow
15. Gloria

encore(s):
16. Where The Streets Have No Name
17. Bullet The Blue Sky / The Battle Hymn Of The Republic (snippet)
18. Running To Stand Still
19. With Or Without You / Shine Like Stars (snippet) / Love Will Tear Us Apart (snippet)
20. Party Girl
21. 40

Buenos Dias!

Dismayed by the thought that nobody may actually be reading what I post from time to time, I have added a statcounter (as you may have noticed) to the blog. This lets me know how many 'hits' my site gets each day, as well as highlighting from which country the visitors are viewing from. This week saw my first visitor from South America - Chile to be precise, as well as readers from Japan and Spain. The US count was down, however as of last night I had 10 or so 'hits' from all over the US, but this is not reflected in the table below, which shows the details of the last 100 page views as of Friday morning. Anyway, wherever you are from, thanks for visiting -even if it is only by accident!

Muchas gracias!
Domo arigato gozaimas!

Linkin Park - In The End

Blowing One's Own Trumpet!

Those of you who are fortunate enough to know me will know that I am a modest chap and not one for blowing my own trumpet (I much prefer someone else to blow it for me), however yesterday I was awarded the Outstanding Employee of the Year Grand Award by the parent company of the construction firm that I work for, which I was rather chuffed about.

New Blog Features

You may or may not have noticed that I have made some changes to my blog over the past few days, including making the photos section easier to navigate to, as well as adding a 'featured video', which plays at the top of the main page after clicking the link. I'll change this fairly regularly, or when I get bored with whith the current selection. Currently showing Linkin Park - What I've Done (not the best track they have written, however not bad either).
Usually around now I post an update on how the day's dragon boat practice session has gone, however as I have written on this quite a lot recently I will spare you the full vesrion of the events. I will highlight though that the Police have now split from our training session as the HKADBA are a bit too extreme for their liking. Today's paddling included the advance technique of switching up on to one knee at full speed (which takes some doing - trust me), and finished off with some 'speed' trials, the last of which saw us hitting 97 strokes in 1 minute from a standing start. To put that into perspective, that is hitting 2 strokes a second as you speed up. Try sitting in your chair and paddling through the air at 2 a second, never mind through water, and see how hard it is (although I suggest chosing a moment when no one is likely to see what you are doing). The morning ended with us being advised by our drill seargant that as from next week the training will start to become hard (!), focusing on anaerobic exercise. No alcohol is allowed from now on (you would spill it otherwise), and you must advise the leader if you are taking any medicines or if you are feeling under the weather as apparently this increases your chances of collapsing during the session (read previous post 'A Whole World of Pain' - no wonder nobody paid too much attention at the time!).

First Class Post

A week on from the 7's finds me writing this post from the Cathay Pacific First Class Lounge at Heathtrow, waiting for my return flight to Hong Kong after a short trip back to the UK. As a birthday treat, the very kind people at Cathay Pacific decided to upgrade me from business to first for my return leg - which was nice (and I did not even have to ask).

Although it was only a short trip back to the UK it was good to catch up with some good friends who I have not seen since the wedding. Reedy Boy - thankyou for the music (nothing to do with the Abba song), great to see you and Niki. I must say that I particularly like Kasabian and The Kaiser Chiefs, however you missed off The Arctic Monkeys from your selection!

Dickie H, thanks for the beers and the birthday kebab. Now hurry up and propose to Alison!

See you all again in September.

Cheers,

Hoj.

The Liver is Evil and must be Punished (and it was – well and truly)!

An apt T-shirt slogan I first saw at the 7’s a few year’s back, which seemed to be doing the rounds again this year. Quite befitting for Hong Kong’s premier ‘sporting’ event.
I mention sporting as there was actually some rugby played, although there will be quite a few people out there who will not be able to recount any of the games from over the weekend.

The South Stand was home to its usual goings on over the weekend (below right) and the streets of Wan Chai were scenes of the normal post match carnage.

All in all there were some very good matches. As for England’s attempt of making it 5 HK tournament wins in a row, well that’s not something I want to go into, however, lets just say that the wheels well and truly came off the ‘Chariot’ during the match against the Kiwis, early on Sunday afternoon. I have posted a photo below taken when the score with New Zealand was level - which it was for about the first 30 seconds following the kick off. Things went rapidly down hill from thereon after.

Finally, a special thank you must be mentioned to Sean’s missus for providing us with all the free beer vouchers (courtesy of a certain delivery company), which kept us well ‘watered’ with jug after jug of Heineken throughout the weekend. One small request though - any chance of getting us vouchers for Carlsberg next year?