With no cleaners on duty over the three-day weekend, the Mid-Levels Escalator has accumulated a noticeable veneer of dandruff, so I stroll into Central this morning by a detour that takes me through Lan Kwai Fong � the world�s only nightlife district with a constant stream of garbage trucks trundling in and out. Peering through the door of Hardy�s, the neighbourhood�s last authentic pub, I see piles of cash all over the floor and, in the gloom, the manager still counting the takings from Saturday night, when the establishment closed for ever.
What will replace the earthy, unpretentious, 22-year-old institution? Of the rumours floating around, the most intriguing is that it will become a self-described �exclusive� members-only club, with all-blonde, Western waitresses and a lengthy waiting list of extremely inadequate people with shriveled genitalia clamouring to be seen within its high-class, marble-clad portals. Whatever the location�s fate, the result will be fake and overpriced, and therefore in line with the vision of Allan Zeman, who set off the process that turned the area from a neglected collection of godowns � I recall the days when bales of cloth sat in the middle of the street � to a brand name that attracts tourists. Up and down they wander, clutching their maps in one hand and their faces in the other, as the huge, aromatic vehicles haul another load away from the glamorous Refuse Transfer Station.
Global, esoteric fads always arrive late in the Big Lychee. We were among the last cities in the civilized world to get sun-dried tomato, the girl�s name Fionnuala and all those serious-looking Indian shysters peddling bizarre variants of yoga. So it is little surprise that in 2007 we have only just succumbed to the mental health problem known as �climbing Mount Ararat to find Noah�s Ark�. The tragic victim of this affliction is one Andrew Yuen of Media Evangelism, the company whose Creation TV on Cable channel 15 would no doubt inspire me with greater forbearance through its divine grace if only I had a television.
Like the countless thousands of deranged pseudo-archaeologists who have ascended the Turkish peak before him, Yuen has selfishly desecrated what should in theory be a scientifically valuable, not to say sacred, site by helping himself to what he claims is petrified wood from the vessel that carried all those animals two-by-two 4,000 years ago. Hong Kong Baptist University is hosting his display, presumably so its biogeologists can investigate how wood can petrify in less than millions of years. Bearing in mind Noah�s advanced age at the time he built the boat, academics must also want to know more about a 600-year-old�s carpentry skills, let alone his methods of collecting and housing so much livestock.
The Standard quotes Yuen as saying, in essence, that his discovery could bring the theory of evolution into doubt. Millions of years of natural selection should surely have enabled us to develop brains capable of rational and enlightened thought. So maybe he�s right.
How dirty could the two-month fight for the Legco seat get? Pro-Beijing elements are already digging up the immensely tiresome Kwok Ah-nui case from 1986, in which then-Social Welfare Director Anson Chan ordered that a small girl be forcibly removed from her home. Then, as now, I failed to understand what all the fuss was about. In a society where the taxpayer is expected to pay to clean up the mess left by incapable parents, the state has a fiduciary duty to break down bad families� doors and take children away. Ideally, the kids will be given to nice, barren middle-class couples to bring up, while the deficient mothers will have their tubes tied so no more burdens on the public purse spring from their loins. But when the normally mild-mannered Choy So-yuk of the Democratic Alliance for the Blah Blah of Hong Kong talks of Anson�s �utter disregard for the basic tenets of human rights,� I must be missing something. As apparently is the girl herself, whom Dame Conscience says has since thanked her for sending the jack-booted social workers in.
AS USUAL, I have been given the job of setting the questions for this evening�s South China Association of Millionaire Playboys pub quiz. And, as always with a SCAMPS night out, subjects will be not be merely intellectual but downright obscure, testing participants� tolerance and patience as much as their general knowledge. I wonder if anyone will get this one�
My question-setting skills must be weakening. Even Percy Ratbone�s quiz team last night managed to identify Stanford University master�s degree candidate Regina Ip as the author of the moving assertion of the Big Lychee�s suitability for democracy.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong�s highly accountable and visionary leadership cuts and pastes from a month-old press release in order to provide our elected representatives with the official, definitive explanation of one of its more recent unfathomable acts of weirdness�
Some might complain that the think-tank�s recommendations on making Hong Kong a creative metropolis are noteworthy for the sheer lack of imagination that has gone into them. Essentially, they propose that the Government do what local communities, civic groups, volunteerism and public-spirited companies do everywhere else in the developed world, plus �Use Cyper Port also as a knowledge incubator,� and �Take a top-down approach.�
Sesame Street today was brought to you by the word �incubator�.
