I got the chance to go to the Hong Kong Jockey Club coun­try club today, which was quite a priv­i­lege. They own the only two horse tracks in Hong Kong, which is home to quite a pop­u­lar gam­bling habit. It’s the cheap­est coun­try club to be a mem­ber of, but also the most exclu­sive. There’s a max­i­mum of 200 vot­ing mem­bers (one has to be a horse breed­er to be a vot­ing mem­ber), and each vot­ing mem­ber can only spon­sor two peo­ple every year. To be accept­ed into the club, one needs two spon­sors, which my uncle was lucky enough to have many years ago. The tread­mills in the work­out room all have per­son­al tele­vi­sion sets with head­phones and cable. Just from park­ing at the club­house, there were tons of Mercedes, Porches, and Audis.

I had some rib eye roast there for lunch. It was the most ten­der, most juicy, most savoury piece of meat I have ever eat­en, well worth the tab I ran on my uncles account. The Cabernet Sauvignon was decent, with a light taste and mel­low fin­ish. I thanked him for the meal, and promised him that I’d take him out for lunch one day when I had a job. He looked at me as if such a thing was unnec­es­sary, and that he was sim­ply glad that I had such a plea­sur­able lunch.

I went to din­ner with Sonace tonight at the Black Tomato. I ordered what I nor­mal­ly get there, and rec­om­mend­ed a seafood dish to Sonace, since he’s a big seafood eater. I had a very inter­est­ing red wine with my red meat, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I for­got the name of it. There was a slight­ly sweet start with an unusu­al fruit flavour, some­thing I did­n’t rec­og­nize. The wine was burst­ing with taste and had an amaz­ing, mel­low fin­ish. I want­ed to see him before I head­ed off to Hong Kong, to see what he’s been up to. He lost a lot of weight when he stopped play­ing foot­ball, and was sport­ing a slick pair of glass­es. Now he looks like a smart guy, going for his law degree.