I cut my rant a little short as I had my Cantonese lesson. I'm getting better - I can now understand when I get a wrong number that the person is saying. Sort of. As an aside I find it amazing that Chinese has something like 90 dialects but it is written exactly the same way. The expression "Englishmen are sore winners" is written the same way but pronounced completely different in each dialect. Not just accent, but completely different words.

So to finish the ranting. There I was, deflated that the news had finished and I was none the wiser as to what was going on in the world. The sport report consisted of a couple of soccer results with no pictures and then a cut to some local tennis tournament press junket, complete with shoddy camerawork and cardboard cutouts. Then it's time for the weather. I kid you not, the lady says "Let's see what Freddy thinks." Then Freddy, a 1986 computer animation, trots across the screen, turns to the sky and awaits some other 1986 graphic to demonstrate sun, showers, cloud or something looking like a steroid-induced flower. Then he trots across the rest of the screen. I immediately drafted an invoice for TVB to try and at least reclaim some monetary compensation for the 5 minutes of my life that was wasted. But THEN the weather lady proceeds to repeat that tomorrow will be fine/cloudy/flower attack. Lastly they give a run-down of global weather, picking out appropriate places like Ulan Baator, Alexandria and Port-au-Spain (apologises to readers from these cities). Finally we get vision of the weather in various German provincial cities. WTF?

That is the irony of Hong Kong. You can buy some of the greatest TV sets in the world at great prices, but there's nothing to watch.