Apparently I was UNfashionably late for “A Royal Dinner” at FINDS last week (Hello? just 30 minutes!) and consequently, 30 other starving members of the press were waiting for my precious late ass to arrive. I must apologize for my insolence. How absolutely unbearable it must have been to mingle at the bar and sip FREE champagne for half an hour.

Yes, Hong Kong’s first and finest Scandinavian restaurant is presenting “A Royal Dinner.” Finnish Chef Jaako Sorsa (who’s cooked for the Swedish Royal Family, Saudi sheiks and presidents like Chirac and Clinton) has decided to recreate the menu he had served earlier this year to Her Imperial Highness, Princess Takamado of Japan, and let us plebs savor a meal fit for a himesama. I really enjoyed his platter of Nordic sashimi—cured scallops with pink peppercorns; salmon roe on a creamy egg custard seasoned with thyme; mildly smoked shrimp and a salmon “pastrami” seared with fennel. The food porn I posted on FB created a lot of hateful jealousy. My absolute favorite was chef Sorsa’s melt-in-your-mouth king crab leg confit seasoned with yuzu. I’m very grateful that Asia Tatler Dining’s Lynn Fung is a petite little puppet who prefers duck to crustacean, for I got to reach over and spear half of her untouched crab confit.

After dinner, I went to Volume to talk to former Pussycat Doll Kaya Jones (the blonde one who’s not Nicole Scherzinger, if you need clarification). I had missed the show as I was still stuffing my face at FINDS with princess food (stole half of Lynn’s parsnip-potato tartine as well… mmmh), but I heard that Miss Jones friggin’ WERQ’d it, opening with “Don’t Cha” (which predictably got the crowd off), followed by her new single “Waiting for Saturday.” You can see the video of her wicked performance on Volume.com.hk (or YouTube it).

LOVED her Guns N’ Roses jacket, which she wore even in the sweltering heat on the steps outside Volume as she chatted to everyone. Kaya was super sweet, and so was her manager. I found out later that they were Canadian—of course they’re friendly! Everyone from Canada’s friendly, except for the Chinese Canadians. Kaya told me she was going to head up to Guangzhou or some other zhou in China (she didn’t quite know which -zhou it was) the next day, and by the time you’re reading this column, she’ll have had performed at L.A. Pride already. What a busy bee. As her manager said, Kaya’s “fun, fierce and focused.”

Afterwards, I went to Hyde with an impromptu entourage to check out Funkdamentalism—presented by Ultralounge, i.e. DJ Kulu and Mr. Sit—for some rare grooves like old-skool hip-hop, Northern soul, Brazilian beats and jazzy shit. Two tourist boys from Manchester followed us from Volume and one of them kept asking Mr. Sit for Lady Gaga. Now as y’all know, I’m a Gaga fanatic, but I swear to God, we heard FOUR fucking Gaga tracks at Volume already—would it kill you to NOT listen to Gaga again at another club on the same night?

I certainly wasn’t missing Born This Way when I got to listen to Bananeira.

As DJ Mr. Sit was in a deep funk and DEATH jazz mood, he got rather exasperated at the boy’s requests. Sadly the boy then requested Beyoncé. The other DJs there were amused at the situation, but not Mr. Sit, who then enlisted me to tell the boy to STFU. It was his first time traveling around Asia, so I refrained from screaming: “STFU!” at the child. But people, please: NO REQUESTS for Top 40 at a club night with a non-pop theme. Wanna hear all the latest hits one after another every night? There’s the fuckin’ radio, bitches. Oh and Lan Kwai Fong.