Women are odd. I really mean that. A woman doesn’t know the effect she has on a man. Any woman affects every man with instant global tonnage every single time. But women all go about teaching each other it isn’t true. God knows why. They reach for doubt, where we blokes go for hope. This accounts for much of their behavior.

The exhibition gobsmacked me. I’m not ashamed to admit it. Here was quite a small building, not many people about, getting little attention. And inside they’d pulled together a staggering display of Regency furniture. I’ve seen most of the stuff that matters. I simply stood there, gaping.

The exhibition gobsmacked me. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Here was quite a small building, not many people about, getting little attention. And inside they'd pulled together a staggering display of Regency furniture. I've seen most of the stuff that matters. I simply stood there, gaping.

Forgery, being the weirdest form of creativity there is, like antiques, costs lives. Why is it that antiques demand sacrificial victims? Dunno, but if they don't get enough, forgery does. You want proof? Here it is: Once a faker's found out, he dies. Truly. It always happens.

America's phones are bliss. Their habit of actually working is very disconcerting: Put in a coin, and speak to whoever answers. I truly hope it catches on everywhere.

Women are odd. I really mean that. A woman doesn't know the effect she has on a man. Any woman affects every man with instant global tonnage every single time. But women all go about teaching each other it isn't true. God knows why. They reach for doubt, where we blokes go for hope. This accounts for much of their behavior.

The Mologai. The sun shines less in the Mologai, but heat gathers there in the shade and smoke. Steep cramped dwellings, shops oldish. Oddly, smoke pervading the whole area. The streets cling to contours. You clamber up steps from one narrow alleyway to the next, among the stalls. It's an antique hunter's paradise - or rather purgatory, because the promise of heaven takes time to realize.

Affluence isn't affluence at all. Hong Kong is the benchmark; everybody else's affluence is mere tat. Until you've experienced that perfume-washed air as polarized glass doors embrace you into a luxury hotel's plush interior, you've only had a dud replica of the real thing.

Remember preconceptions? Even though I'd landed hoping simply to somehow scrape the transatlantic fare home, I'd been an arrogant swine, imbued with that Old World toffee-nosed attitude: The United States of America's got no culture, not deep down.

The Theory of Sexual Understanding is mine. I created it. It works between a man and a woman. It's this: Everything's up to her.