1-7 August 2004
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Hong Kong�s hard-working, overtaxed, disenfranchised middle class glides its way down the Mid-Levels Escalator into the central business district of Asia�s international financial hub in its usual air of moral rectitude, professional probity and financial soundness. But there is a weary silence this morning, almost a sense of defeat. What is it?
�Mauling!� shouts the news vendor. �Mauling!� I reply. He hands me the paper. �Wa! Whore lit ah?� Yes, that�s it. This heat is oppressive. It is 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity. Sitting outside Exchange Square, sipping my chamomile and loganberry slurpy, it occurs to me that the weather is sapping people�s originality. The editorial in HK Magazine on Thursday jokingly lamented the fact that the ICAC hadn�t raided them. The leader in Spike magazine on Friday jokingly lamented the fact that the ICAC hadn�t raided them. Stuart Wolfendale in the Standard on Saturday jokingly lamented the fact that the ICAC hadn�t� I am distracted by the sight of a short girl, aged around 20, jaunting along, pony tail bouncing, wearing a Hello Kitty T-shirt, tight yellow shorts and pink sandals and carrying an expensive-looking black leather briefcase. Interesting. But I have a hangover. It is all the fault of the Big Boss, who gave me his ticket to the People�s Liberation Army garrison�s parade at Sek Kong barracks yesterday.
An idle morning, perusing the news in my office at the top of S-Meg Tower, while a Boccherini cello concerto plays on the PC. Bo Bo the killer crocodile no longer frolics in Yuen Long Creek, but the South China Morning Post reports a barking deer (deceased) with its head stuck in railings in the New Territories. And piranhas have attacked a 14 year old boy in a housing estate fountain, leaving nothing but a small pile of bones and a clump of spiky ginger hair. Sesame Street today was brought to you by the word �biodiversity�.
The good news is that evil capitalists are successfully squeezing every last penny of profit possible from their exploited workers and long-suffering customers. After outsourcing thousands of jobs from the UK to India, and ripping off depositors with 0.001 percent interest rates, HSBC reports record first-half profits and a quarterly dividend that will keep my refrigerator at Perpetual Opulence Mansions well-stocked with Jever beer, kimchi, gorgonzola, chorizo and other little pleasures for the foreseeable future.
From the Mainland, mixed signals about whether the Big Lychee�s days are numbered. In power-starved Shanghai � the city that�s going to take over from Hong Kong � young Red Guards are descending on shopping malls and forcing shop owners to kneel on broken glass for using air conditioning. Guangzhou, on the other hand, apparently poses a real threat to the Fragrant Harbour. By breeding and sending us piranhas, perhaps? No � by opening a new airport. SCMP writer Joseph Lo intones �The timing has led some to fear that Chek Lap Kok�s privatization plans will be irreparably damaged and that it will become a white elephant in the face of competition.� The privatization plans are unnecessary, and the idea of CLK being abandoned by travelers and airlines is absurd. I rack my brain wondering who actually fears these things. Sadly, the SCMP lacks the space to tell us.
Shoeshiner of the week award surely goes to one Greg Brolin, who writes in a letter to the editor�
The last day for nominations for September�s Legislative Council elections. And so the Great Ooze begins, as candidates slithery and slimy wend their way from one corporate lair to the next in an effort to secure votes and win seats representing their little rotten boroughs in our little make-believe parliament. As the Chairman of S-Meg Holdings� many and varied subsidiaries, the Big Boss has votes in more than one functional constituency, and more than one vote to cast in several. They line up to grovel � �I do hope I can count on your support.�
Like a globule of mucus dripping onto the upper lip of a pretty girl, the first odious supplicant emerges from the elevator and seeps across the pristine carpet of Private Office in S-Meg Tower this morning, shoe-shining kit in hand. The Big Boss is there to greet him. Give him face. He might win. He might be useful when a string needs to be pulled. The problem is, with so few votes in the constituency divided among so few voters, it is almost impossible for the ballot to be secret. So the Big Boss will hedge his bets and divide his votes among the candidates.
Within minutes, the pair emerge, all smiles. �I will certainly remember you on voting day,� affirms the Big Boss ambiguously. They give each other a friendly wave. As soon as the lift door closes, he turns to me. �Stupid little man,� he mutters. Ms Fang smirks. �The Mainland officials are saying don�t vote for him, so�� He shrugs.
I wake to find myself in a hotel room with a drab, smoggy, skyscraper-strewn city sprawling outside the window. Where am I, and how did I get here? Early yesterday afternoon, I recall the Big Boss ordering me and fearsome human resources manager Ms Leung Yuk-mei to fly at a moment�s notice to investigate a staff problem at an overseas branch of S-Meg Holdings. By early evening, we had marched into a dusty office and gone into action. Ms Leung was sticking slivers of bamboo up under the fingernails of one or two recalcitrant and under-performing employees, while I stood by being white. This �shock and awe� combination inspires without fail. Back at our hotel, I remember seeing Ms Leung to her room and leaving her alone with a box of her favourite Purina treats. Then I went round the corner to Malone�s Bar, where I was listening to a band playing Smiths covers until the early hours of the morning, hence my slowness right now in gathering my thoughts. Now it comes back to me. This is Shanghai. To be precise, it�s the Portman Ritz-Carlton gwailo ghetto on Nanjing West Road, with its Starbucks, HSBC ATMs, Hard Rock Caf� and convenience store selling Hershey�s Kisses. Ms Leung should be back in the office right now, taking a sledgehammer to an accountant�s kneecaps, which she finds therapeutic. I will meet her at the airport in a few hours for a flight back to Hong Kong.
I am delighted to note that Shanghai is forging ahead in accordance with China�s current five-year plan, under which the city is to join New York and London as a world-class cosmopolitan financial hub, full of lawyers, overpriced wine bars and Somali PhDs cleaning the toilets. In particular, I am pleased to see that the local police are to be issued with pepper spray. They won�t regret it. In my experience, it is especially effective on Jehovah�s Witnesses and yapping dogs. The capsicum concentrate also serves as a man�s version of Tabasco in the kitchen � a single squirt transforms a pot of chili. So far as I know, this makes it unique among personal-defence weapons.
Sitting on the toilet, having what Lord Baden-Powell used to refer to as one�s �daily clear�, could there be any reading matter more fascinating and illuminating to peruse than the latest six-monthly report on Hong Kong from the UK�s Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs to Parliament? I certainly can�t think of any, as my eyes light upon paragraph 56...
