Finally Mr Shallot and I have been to the cinema in Hong Kong. We saw The Bourne Ultimatum and as far as an action movie final goes, it was pretty good. Far better than Terminator 3 – that series should have stopped at two films. Incidentally, I’ve just read there’s going to be a Terminator 4 – what are these people thinking or did they not read the last reviews?

I digress. We arrived at the cinema 30 minutes early to find there were only 10 tickets left. The seats were all pre-allocated and the remaining ones were at the front on the sides. We knew this because HK is very good with technology – there are screens which show each movie and the seats that are currently available. Next time we’ll purchase online. As we were standing in the queue, we debated whether we should leave and see the film the following day, or stay and settle for the neck stretch (the irony of the film title and what we were experiencing was not lost).

Obviously, we stayed.

HK establishments offer discounts for using particular credit cards from time to time so we paid that way for a 10% discount and also received a voucher for HKD8 off any value combination in the Candy Kiosk. Value Combination are generally not two words that reflect anything at a cinema kiosk but we were to be pleasantly surprised.

Not only is there hot popcorn, but you can also choose to have sweet popcorn. For me, the cinema is purely a hot popcorn experience and this kind of choice is totally unnecessary. Any sweet craving should be overcome with either Jaffas (not readily available in HK) or Maltesers (the Kiosk did have these) or even an ice cream. For HKD55, we had a popcorn that could only be described as ginormous and two Pepsis. This is a bargain in any man’s language.

With our booty, we moved into the tiniest cinema theatre that we have ever entered. Ten rows with 15 seats and incredibly comfortable chairs as well as the coldest air-conditioning that I have been in. What were we thinking wearing shorts and t-shirts in HK? Clearly we were dressed for the outdoors.

The curtains opened and then a preview for a Chinese film called Lust and something or other screened. Slightly unusual as there was no talking, only music. Looks interesting and I may see it at some point.

Then a cartoon screened reminding us to be quiet, turn off our mobile phones and don’t video the movie (this is China after all).

The movie then started.

Of all things, I missed Val Morgan’s cinema advertising.

* Thanks to Moby for the title to this post. His is one of the more unusual concerts that I’ve seen. It ended with him hanging on a cross. Really had the impression that the whole thing was more about his ego than the music which was quite disappointing. Good show, great music, bizarre attitude to the audience.