Passion comes in many forms. For hundreds of visitors to Cuba this month, it's brown, rolled and good with brandy.
Cigar fanatics, deterred by neither money nor distance, travel across the world and pay thousands of dollars to experience the supreme stogie at its source. Those making the pilgrimage to Cuba for the annual Havana cigar festival say the smokes bring them pleasure, peace and, often, big bucks.
"This is my life," said Jimmy Ng, a Malaysian who left the travel business to become a cigar merchant some 10 years ago.
PHOTO: AFP
Ng, 46, spends most waking moments devoted to his new trade. He owns hundreds of books on cigars, and smokes from five to seven stogies a day.
At his La Casa Cubana in Singapore, he only sells Cuban cigars -- "I'm a purist," he says -- to a clientele that is 75 percent foreign, including officials and businessmen from Indonesia and Thailand.
Ng started smoking cigars when he was in his 20s, for "status" and to attract women. "But after five or six years, you get the right crowd, and you learn to really appreciate cigars from the brothers, the other aficionados," he said.
PHOTO: EPA
Ng meets with a group of 30 friends every month in Singapore for a cigar dinner.
"Even with the SARS outbreak, there we were, still puffing away. We believe cigars actually give you immunities," he laughed.
Extolling such virtues is common among fanatics. Frenchman Guillaume Boudin says cigars helped him quit smoking cigarettes. He considers it a form of meditation.
PHOTO: AFP
"I know if I'm going to smoke a cigar, I have to take time to do it properly," he said. "It really clears my mind, and lets me come up with ideas and answers to problems."
The afficionados in Havana scoff at those who throw down large sums of money for cigars but don't know how to smoke them.
"It should not be smoked like a cigarette, and it should not be smoked in a disco," Alvin Leung, a chef in Hong Kong, said.
"It's just like at a fine restaurant, you shouldn't eat something as if it were a hamburger, or drink a fine glass of wine as if it were Coke."
Leung said real connoisseurs need to come to Cuba to learn about the history of cigars.
"You really want to appreciate the effort that goes into making it," he said.
Participants get to visit cigar factories and plantations and network with distributors at trade fairs and seminars.
Multimillionaire businessmen and mysterious figures who decline to reveal their full names mingle with publishers, musicians and engineers.
The Cuban ballet and British actor Joseph Fiennes opened the festival on Monday, and some 850 people attended, including Cuban Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon, Vice President Carlos Lages and several of Cuban President Fidel Castro's sons. Elaborate humidors signed by Castro were to be auctioned off for charity.
Cigars are one of Cuba's most important exports, worth about US$340 million annually.
Spain is Cuba's top customer. Europe in general buys up 66 percent of the island's cigar exports, followed by countries in the Americas -- not including the US -- and the Middle East, according to Habanos S.A., Cuba's cigar marketing firm.
Trade restrictions against Cuba prevent the island's cigars from legally entering the US market.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) plans to make advanced 3-nanometer chips in Japan, stepping up its semiconductor manufacturing roadmap in the country in a triumph for Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s technology ambitions. TSMC is to adopt cutting-edge technology for its second wafer fab in Kumamoto, company chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said yesterday. That is an upgrade from an original blueprint to produce 7-nanometer chips by late next year, people familiar with the matter said. TSMC began mass production at its first plant in Japan’s Kumamoto in late 2024. Its second fab, which is still under construction, was originally focused on
DETERRENCE EFFORTS: Washington and partners hope demonstrations of force would convince Beijing that military action against Taiwan would carry high costs The US is considering using HMAS Stirling in Western Australia as a forward base to strengthen its naval posture in a potential conflict with China, particularly over Taiwan, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. As part of its Indo-Pacific strategy, Washington plans to deploy up to four nuclear-powered submarines at Stirling starting in 2027, providing a base near potential hot spots such as Taiwan and the South China Sea. The move also aims to enhance military integration with Pacific allies under the Australia-UK-US trilateral security partnership, the report said. Currently, US submarines operate from Guam, but the island could
CSBC Corp, Taiwan (台灣國際造船) yesterday released the first video documenting the submerged sea trials of Taiwan’s indigenous defense submarine prototype, the Hai Kun (海鯤), or Narwhal, showing underwater navigation and the launch of countermeasures. The footage shows the vessel’s first dive, steering and control system tests, and the raising and lowering of the periscope and antenna masts. It offered a rare look at the progress in the submarine’s sea acceptance tests. The Hai Kun carried out its first shallow-water diving trial late last month and has since completed four submerged tests, CSBC said. The newly released video compiles images recorded from Jan. 29 to
EMERGING FIELDS: The Chinese president said that the two countries would explore cooperation in green technology, the digital economy and artificial intelligence Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) yesterday called for an “equal and orderly multipolar world” in the face of “unilateral bullying,” in an apparent jab at the US. Xi was speaking during talks in Beijing with Uruguayan President Yamandu Orsi, the first South American leader to visit China since US special forces captured then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro last month — an operation that Beijing condemned as a violation of sovereignty. Orsi follows a slew of leaders to have visited China seeking to boost ties with the world’s second-largest economy to hedge against US President Donald Trump’s increasingly unpredictable administration. “The international situation is fraught
RSS