Hong Kong horsies

We wandered into the race book at Foxwoods Resort Casino a little after 1 a.m. Sunday, just a minute or two after the first simulcast race from the Hong Kong Jockey Club's Sha Tin racetrack had ended. Announcers switched off between English and Cantonese and there seemed to be some dispute in regards to the outcome of the race, the first to be broadcast as part of a brand-new, five-year agreement.
It looked like a lovely afternoon in Hong Kong, 12 hours down the clock from Eastern Connecticut. At the track, women in pastel suits watched as the next race's equines paraded before them.
While it was a new experience for my visitors from Boston, I had been to the race book before - a massive, darkened room with huge screens, ever-changing track lists to rival the world's most busy airports and train stations, dozens of carrels with monitors and a handful of bettors hunched at their desk considering all of the information scrolling around them. Unlike the rest of the casino, the race book is quiet and free of the electronic slot machine chatter that soaks the rest of Foxwoods. If the rest of the casino is like the floor of a mercantile exchange, the race book is more like a NASA control room or the war room of a bunker deep inside a mountain. Dr. Strangelove, anyone?
And, at 1:15 on Sunday morning, it was near empty. Even the cocktail waitress had stopped making her rounds. My friends and I sat down, played with the touch-screen monitors and found the horses we'd root for - but not bet on - in the second race. I chose Pleasure Pleasure, my friend, Abigail, went with Glorious Rhythm.
Neither came remotely close to winning and we left the race book to the handful of night owls placing bets on horses half a world away.