Roughly once a week, someone sticks up a poster featuring the apparently 15-year-old Dr Vienna Lau next to the front door of my building – and no doubt others in the neighbourhood. Within the day, it is removed. The valiant lady is now stuffing her publicity materials into everyone’s mail box…
A quick Google search reveals that she is a dentist. But she is not advertising her medical services – just herself. By her own admission she is known for her ‘charisma, willpower and ample compassion’…
And she is seriously into Central. In fact, rather too into Central, claiming to spend time ‘promoting’ the area…
…when all it really wants is to be left alone, with commuting office workers returning to their suburbs swiftly and promptly every afternoon, and hordes of Korean and other selfie-stick-clutching tourists keeping well away.
The leaflets feature a map of the area, in which she strictly (and quite rightly) excludes the surrounding districts like Sheung Wan, Mid-Levels and Admiralty. Anywhere up the hill from Caine Road or east of City Hall – forget it. She also recommends a list of restaurants, which it has to be said is a rather clichéd guidebook selection, including the inevitable Yung Kee roast goose place and the local branch of no-frills Tsui Wah.
What – if Dr Vienna is not offering to look after our teeth – is all this for? Although she isn’t labouring the point (yet), she clearly intends to run for District Council in the coming election, which is in November. She will be up against some equally fresh-faced and energetic pro-democracy candidates and, in my ward, the slimy pro-Beijing guy who masquerades as an Independent because it’s the only way he can get the classy sort of residents we have around here to vote for him.
I declare the weekend open with a bit of friendly advice for the Financial Times, now being bought by Nikkei, which is apparently prone to self-censorship in deferential Japanese fashion. Indeed, this goes for all the overseas media in town…
For the umpteenth time, you correspondent people: 1) Hong Kong’s Election/Nomination Committee is a mere rubber stamp – the outcome is decided in advance by Beijing; 2) being drawn from cartel owners, ‘Agriculture and Fisheries’ and assorted New Territories ‘Societies of Associations’, it does not comprise any sort of elite. Unlike Central…
Come off it. You’ve got the hots for her.
Is “ample compassion’ a euphemism for derriere? Anyway, “Dr” Vienna (often taken by upstart dictators) should go easy on the antidepressants. Funny how medical people in this region always look the least healthy.
Have a nice weekend.
Counting Crows? Surely Ultravox would have been more apposite?
What a veritable GuanYin /sarc. Why would she produce a guide to the area for people who erm, live there? Better on the eye though than the buck toothed nerds with names like Cyrus, that most other areas get.
@Maugrim – maybe the restaurant recommendations will win her a few votes from their owners. Or perhaps she is trying to show that she is familiar with the area, not just parachuted in by some political party.
@PD – no need for the quotes around “Dr” if she’s a dentist, unlike with the Quat Doctor in LegCo.
I thought Yung Kee’s char siu was quite nice myself…
She can offer Lufsig a family package for dental work in return for a slice of West Kowloon, or Kaitak. It’s a fair deal, because she’s risking her fingers, hell probably her whole arm, any time she get’s near the mouth of anyone in that rapacious family.
Abraham Shek only has to take a turn to lick polish CY’s shoes one a week and make a regular money transfer to the Caimans in order to get his slice from being the gatekeeper of the ESF privatization.
Vienna is a DAB clone. She will be running against the DP in the district council elections. The modus operandi is to plaster a district in illegal posters and banners in order to achieve a certain degree of familiarity. Expect more now that they have been ordered to win two thirds of seats in the Nov elections.
My advice, make a report to FEHD under Cap 132 104A
1) No bill or poster shall be displayed or affixed-
(a) on any private land, except with the written permission of the owner or occupier thereof;
(b) on any Government land, except with the written permission of the Authority.
As she does not hold any current office her material is all illegal until election time.
Otherwise do your civic duty and bin them.
Don’t suppose she will declare any of this in her election expenses.
Ha,ha, – Good one, David.
Loop-holes are put there for the oligarchy and it’s minions, let anyone else try to use them and watch the machine come alive. This is the local version of a PAC fund.
Mary: my bet is she’d welcome the publicity of a challenge, which the FEHD will be told to throw out in the end.
Point of Order.
When did dentists start routinely to enjoy the appellation “Doctor”? In my day, these over-priced, over-paid piggy-banks were granted no such distinction, and, in my opinion, should not be so dignified today.
Have you noticed that if you consult two of these characters, you’ll get two distinct opinions as to the correct course of treatment, and that if you consult ten, you’ll get ten? All predicated, of course, on the highest possible remuneration for them.
Imagine if the medical profession were so cavalier with their diagnoses.
Odd, too, why the “Doctor” in question chose the name Vienna. She looks more of a Buda-Pest to me.
You are all anti-dentites !
What’s the difference between a dentist and a sadist ?
Answer: newer magazines.
Someone please bring a civil action, so we can have a decent Vienna Tort in this cow-town.