If you can try and invest money into Valley Vet Care. If Misti the Wonder Dog spent any more time there she'd be pishing on their carpets every night too. Turns out she not only is suffering from allergies but she has an underactive thyroid, requiring more tests, more tablets and more new cars for the vet. At the same time the vet's telling Mrs M all about private villas he likes to stay at in Bali. Memo to the vet - don't tell your clients about your expensive holidays just before they get your bill.

I've told Mrs M to just leave our credit card there and sign it over to them. They may as well have it permanently. If the medication works as promised Misti's lethargy and slightly rotund figure will be things of the past. I'd dearly love Misti to get better as she is our first child and love, but the bills are piling up. And she's not covered by our medical insurance.

The free vending machine at work dispences all variety of product from the Coca-Cola Company. This being Asia, there are several varities of ice tea, as well as Soda, Coke, Diet Coke, Diet Coke with lemon (why?) and so on. It is refilled on a Friday afternoon but with our ever expanding office most of the drinks are usually gone by Wednesday or Thursday. Even in the secret hidden stash. Except one.

Real Coke.

I have no idea why. But there's always real Coke left when everything else is gone. I figure there are two possible explinations. Either the Coca-Cola company deliberately keeps extra cans of Coke in vending machines for such situations; or these days people look at real Coke as something to avoid. Whichever it is, it is not good.

Courtesy of Da: Swat.

There are some laws that even Hong Kong taxi drivers cannot break. One of the is the law of inertia: you learnt this one in science at school. Bodies move in the direction of their momentum unless acted upon by an exterior force. So if you are inside a taxi that is rapidly moving forwards, and the driver suddenly brakes, your body will continue to move forward until stopped by either the seat belt or the windscreen. This leads to the next law. Rapid stopping and starting will inevitably lead to nausea.

These two laws cannot be broken, despite many a taxi driver's best efforts.

Lest you think the West is the fount of all racism, read this from Andres Gentry. Racism - plaguing the world since humans realised they were different from one another.

It's shame Sex and the City just broadcast their final episode. What would they make of this?

What drugs do the marketing people at McDonalds take? Their I'm lovin' it campaign seems to have been created by Martians living in isolation. Which accurately describes many advertising people anyway - except my sister-in-law. She's great. But McDonalds really make me wonder. How many advertising slogans can you think of with two apostrophes, let alone the strange contraction of loving into lovin'? As an attempt to win over the young adult/hip/cool crowd it reeks of trying too hard. In the meantime the mainstay of fast food firms, families with kids, are ignored. The stores themselves make great efforts to cater and pander to younger kids. But the marketing is aimed at the one group most likely to not go or even be interested in fast food outside old age pensioners - young adults.

To young adults McDonalds represents everything they hate. It is a multinational, it is homogenous fried junk food (despite recent attempts to add some "health food" to the menu), it is American imperialism, it is low wage jobs, it is exploitation of farmers and so on. Now while some of that is not actually true, that is how McDonalds is perceived by this age group, especially the middle class ones portrayed in the ads. And using one set of ads and one theme right around the world may save them a fortune but it simply re-enforces the message that McDonalds is the same around the world, rather than localising the company in each country it operates. It seems to violate not just laws of marketing, but common sense.

"I'm lovin' it" isn't going to turn them around.

My bus goes through the back of Wan Chai each day. It stops outside the Hopewell Centre on Queen's Road East. I have seen the big yellow banners on the apartments opposite protesting about inadequate compensation. I know there's something going on with Hopewell planning to redevelop that whole stretch of Wan Chai.

Do any Hong Kong readers know anything more about this? I've tried doing some research (read Google couldn't help) and I would appreciate any light people can shed on this. Is it a typical little guy getting ripped off by massive property developer story? Or is it desperate obstruction of progress by a few die-hards?

I often receive emails from readers asking about the name of this blog*. The name is very deliberately "Simon World" with no apostrophe. I am no so arrogant as to think it is my world that you merely inhabit. Instead this is meant to be the blogging equivalent of Disney World, a place to entertain and challenge but without the queues, fried food and stuffed animals. You can think of it as the amusement park of my mind, brought to you via the net.

The name came about by accident. When I was first getting setup on Blogger, I had read precisely one blog. Being the impulsive type I thought it looked interesting and jumped right in. First thing they ask at blogger was for a name. I figured I'd test it out and entered Simon's World. However in a typographical mix-up the apostrophe was dropped, making Simons World. Not wanting to ruin the English grammar my schooling years had imparted, I dropped the second 's'. It was going to be a test blog, just some mucking around. I'd come up with an appropriately witty name in time, when I was ready for a real blog. I'd setup a special email account and become anonymous, adopt a nom de blog and start afresh.

That was 8 months ago. I'm stuck with the name (and dull tag line). Which is a shame as I've had several ideas since. But like any brand it's a risky proposition to change it once you've established some recognition. And with 3 readers a day I fear I'd completely drop from the blogosphere radar screen, all for the sake of a new name that shows the world how witty/learned/well read/funny I am. There's plenty I'd do differently if I was to do it all again, but that's for another day.

And just quietly, between you and me, I'm pretty darn proud of this lil' ol' place here anyway.

_{* This is a complete lie but it is far too sad to start the entry: "I wanted to tell you about the name of this blog but no one asked."}

Reader Dawn has boldly stated in the comments to this post that "Regardless of the shirt's thread count, no one wants to see man-nipples framing a tie. :P yes, no?"

I'm not so sure. Votes in the comments please.

I have mentioned previously Hong Kong's fascination for lights. Courtesy of my Da I now know who to blame. The whole article has been shamelessly lifted from the subscription only Australian Financial Review as a service to all Hong Kongers and tourists to the Fragrant Harbour.

Turns out the bastards are fellow Australians.

An Australian company has cornered the market by creating light shows thatare wowing audiences in Asian cities. Lyndall Crisp reports from Hong Kong.

About 22 years ago Paul McCloskey was the lighting and technical director at Channel Ten where he worked on, among other programs, the infamous Number 96 , which started a whole new genre of television soapies. He was one of the first people to introduce ``intelligent" lighting lighting which can move, change color and pattern to discos, and in 1986 won the inaugural Australian Entrepreneur of The Year award by the federal government for his vision and tenacity in creating this revolutionary medium.

A bit of a pathfinder is Paul.

Fast forward to today and Laservision, the company wholly owned by McCloskey, has introduced a designer lighting format that's transforming cityscapes and venues across Asia. Its latest project fired up on January 22 when the lights of 18 buildings along the Hong Kong foreshore were switched on. The permanent, fully-automated show, which begins at 8pm and lasts 17 minutes, has attracted so many locals and tourists who pack the promenade on the Kowloon side to watch that when McCloskey tried to see it last week he couldn't get within cooee.

He had to inveigle his way onto the roof of Star House, where Laservision has a small office, to see it. The project began two years ago when the company won a tender with the Hong Kong government Tourist Commission, which was searching for ways to solve the island's massive light pollution problem.

As new buildings were being erected each tried to outdo the other with dazzling lights. In order to be noticed, every time a new office block went up it had to be twice as bright as the one next door. The whole CBD glowed as a result.

Laservision presented the tourism board with a plan to creatively light certain buildings in a way that would be efficient and cheap to run. General manager Brett Starkey said at first some owners were reluctant to embrace the idea, having already spent a fortune on lighting. ``So we went back to the Tourist Commission and said `if you do this correctly you could turn it into a lightscape'," he says. They agreed.

Based in Sydney, 90 per cent of Laservision's income derives from Asia through laser light shows, theme park installations and large scale outdoor macro media events. Before Hong Kong, its biggest outdoor project was Samsung's Everland theme park in Seoul, the largest laser spectacular in the world. Its lighting installation stretches for two kilometres and each viewing session caters for up to 10,000 people. Other major projects include Singapore's Sentosa leisure island, and Darling Harbour and the Opera House in Sydney during the 2000 Olympics.

That's the five biggest projects in the region.

Last Friday, Starkey, who joined the company 20 years ago, was sitting in the crowded office on the 19th floor of Star House juggling mobile calls as staff prepared for the final night of the Chinese New Year pyrotechnics show. (Fireworks are added for special events.) He said early in 2003 the Hong Kong government, which controlled three of the buildings Laservision chose to be part of the original concept, approached the other titleholders to commit.

``As it turned out it came just on the back of SARS and the relaunch of Hong Kong," he says. ``They all knew they had to do something and they saw this as a great opportunity." At that stage 18 of the chosen 21 buildings came on board; another 20 are expected to join by the end of this year. ``It was up to them whether they took our recommendations," Starkey says. ``The ones that didn't are paying for it now. It's noticeable.

``By utilising the lighting schemes that we've implemented, the light is not wasted into the atmosphere. It's there to light the building and that building only. It's enhancing the building and taking less light off the ambient light. They turn down that horrible incandescent floodlighting they had and go to a designed scheme.

``All the titleholders went out to tender to have the lighting installed. A couple came to us, including the spectacular Norman Foster Hong Kong Shanghai Bank , which is our flagship." Laservision designed a concept for each building, supplied the lights and $2 million worth of technology hardware all Australian made to drive the whole operation.

The question then was: how to program the show?

``The individual buildings needed a control system and it had to work across the board," Starkey says. ``The government was originally going to set up a national network, but the Bank of China and the HKSB didn't want a connection for security reasons. ``Laservision has a piece of control technology which allows all the buildings to be synchronised, but with individual elements via a digital data pump. It's a piece of hardware that's installed in each building that controls the main show and their individual shows by touch screen.

``All the information is sent out to each building by fibre optics and we have decoders set out around the buildings which can take information and send it to the lighting booster." The system logs on to the atomic clock via the internet every day and resyncs itself so all the buildings are in exact time. Each building's hardware is monitored from Sydney to make sure everything is working. If there's a problem, a technician in Sydney notifies the control room of that building.

``A nice bit of Australian technology. There's nothing like it in the world," Starkey says. It took 20 staff eight months to design the show. The cost to titleholders of creating a display and attaching the lighting to the exterior of the building ranged from $400,000 for a laser light above the tallest building in Hong Kong the 88-storey International Finance Centre to about $7.5 million for the HKSB building.

The show is accompanied by an audio track broadcast in three languages which can be accessed by dialling one of two telephone networks, or on two radio stations. It's also broadcast live to the promenade. The show has been such a crowd pleaser that Laservision has just signed a consultancy agreement for the development of the West Kowloon Cultural District, which will cover 40 hectares when it is completed in 2014.

Other projects include the Landmark Casino, near completion in Macau, tenders for two theme parks in Bangalore and Hyderabad in India and Shanghai ``wants to talk", a huge breakthrough to mainland China.

Starkey says the company has no plans to move outside Asia. ``We like to keep control of what we're doing. This installation is ours, we set it up and we run it. We're not interested in expansion for expansion's sake. ``Lots of companies want us to come on board and work together, but no. We'll sell hardware and technology, but we won't let them take over the larger installations."

Is there a stretch of 300 metres in any Hong Kong commercial district where there isn't a Starbucks?

Much is made of the "war" on drugs. That's because drugs has become a political issue rather than the health issue it really is. It also means policies such as legalisation are rarely tested because to do so plays into the hands of fear-mongers. Worst of all is the USA, who severely punishes those countries it feels do not "fight the war" in the right way.

That is why progress on this issue tends to be gradual. In my home state of New South Wales they have just extended one experiment which has had mixed results. Instead of the usual court system they have set up special "drug courts" to help with the special issues involved. The article is an interesting walk through the court's first five years and the gradual slide of its members from idealism to reality.

What is it with the curious American custom of the menfolk wearing a t-shirt underneath their business shirts at work? The best the Americans in my workplace could come up with is it prevents sweat getting into their shirts, which worries me for two reasons:
1. that they sweat so profusely in air conditioned offices.
2. that they have never heard of de-odorant.
I understand when it's cold the need for some kind of undershirt. But otherwise it makes absolutely no sense at all.

All countries suffer an income gap. It is a measure of how much richer the rich are compared to the poor. Many see a wide gap as a symbol of a society with large inequalities, massive disparities in opportunity and a potential catalyst of social unrest. For example Zimbabwe has a very high income gap, when measured as the ratio of average urban earnings versus average rural earnings. Want to take a guess at the highest urban-rural gap country in the world?

Communist China.

It's not just the income disparity as China's Eastern coast and major cities roar ahead and leave the vast population still in rural areas behind. It is not the massive move of people from rural areas to cities, creating slums and putting pressure on those cities' services and infrastructure. It is not the lack of access to medical care and social security that farmers lack compared to their city-slicking counterparts. It is that the CCP is scared witless what might happen if the 60-70% of the population still in rural areas realise they are getting the raw end of the deal. That the CCP, who at least in theory are meant to be the peasants' party, have actually left them behind.

The CCP know this is one of their biggest problems and are making baby-steps towards property rights for farmers. From the SCMP

The government has been granting peasants 30-year leases on their land and since 2002 has allowed them to lease their land rights for cash. However, no transaction has taken place because local cadres still have the right to "re-adjust" land holdings if peasants leave their individual allotment to the care of friends or relatives to seek work in the cities.

And so it turns out the biggest gainers from the Communist Revolution in China have been the capitalists and the biggest losers the rural poor. Ironic.

Went to Hutong in TST for dinner last night. For non-Hong Kongers TST is the shoreline on the Kowloon side, looking back at the Island and will be familiar to you as the place where all the postcard photographs are taken from. Good view, great food, fantastic fit-out, average service. There was a waiter to table ratio of 7:1, of whom there was obviously one senior waiter - he was the one with the earpiece. I imagine it's so the kitchen can keep him in touch, but this being HK I suspect he also has his mobile phone plugged in at the same time. The other, more junior waiters, let's call them lackeys, had little idea how to wait on tables other than to hover in a semi-menacing fashion waiting for an opportunity to prove they are attentive. This lead to dishes being whisked away the second they were finished (leave them - we may want to mop up the sauce); the wrong drink being refilled (if Perrier's next to someone's cup, there's a good chance that's what they are drinking already); and that curious habit of the bill being presented and the waiter remaining millimetres away while you sign the slip. Including when you fill in the tip. After the obligatory 10% service charge. But I do recommend the place as a good "special night out" or "impress the out-of-towners" eatery.

Just watch out for the pushy Indian tailors around the Star Ferry terminal. Is it me or are they getting more aggressive.

Finally a lesson learned yesterday. If the phone company sends you a bill, the best place for it is in your husband's hands so he can pay it at work the following day. Waiting until threatening messages and blocked phone calls occur is not a great alternative. And don't leave the bills in the fruit bowl. To us males it is not an intuitive place to put a phone bill that needs paying.

The powers that be at the HK Securities Commission are starting to get worried about the China stockmarket bubble that is spilling over into Hong Kong. The Standard reports

The Securities and Futures Commission is warning that the recent frenzied spate of initial public offerings is in danger of kicking off a bout of irrational exuberance for the SAR's retail investors.

To prove its point, the regulator says more than four of every 10 of the 177 IPOs brought to market in the past two years failed to deliver even mediocre returns for first-day traders.

When cartoons are telling you to sell, you'd better listen.

The old hoary chestnut that 51 of the world's 100 top economic entities are companies is a standard opening stanza in the globalisation debate. Problem is it doesn't stand up to scrutiny. There's plenty more.

From the always interesting Stephen Frost, this is a must read.

To all those restaurateurs out there: if I want a God damn lemon in my otherwise flavourless, colourless and odourless water, I'll ask for it. Otherwise just give me plain bloody water, please.

I don't often offer investment advice, but here's a free tip: sell HongKong Land shares. If the sewerage problem currently stinking out our entire floor is anything to go by, the company is up to its armpits in sh!t.

Damnit! They are not for sale.

In that curious American way the population is getting itself tied in knots over a social issue that hardly registers on most countries' radar screens. The blogosphere being a very US-centric place has the usual pounding of outrage for and against gay marriage. The merits of the issue are not the purpose of this entry. What is far more interesting is the manner of debate itself.

The cliché goes that the USA is a polarised society. Half in favour, half against everything and anything. Almost every issue boils down to being pro or anti. One thing that appears rare in American discourse is shades of gray. A nuanced position takes time to understand and explain and it is hard to put into a sound bite for TV. Everyone can understand extremes; the middle ground is harder. More difficult again is the lumping of such issues into buckets. American politics is divided between Democrats and Republicans but each party covers a broad range of views. There are economic conservatives who are socially liberal, and social conservatives who are economically liberal. The neat duality of politics is in fact an exercise in compromise. How much of your various positions are you prepared to ignore in order to find a candidate or party that matches your overall stance, your broader philosophy? Perhaps in times past, when a lack of mass media meant issues were not much of a concern of the masses, having a simple choice worked. These days it doesn't. Voters are smart enough and informed enough to have opinions on everything. The age of instant everything means making a decision quickly and not necessarily based on facts. Human nature makes a view, once taken, next to impossible to change. Rhyme or reason cannot influenced a closed mind.

So debates denigrate into two opposing groups shouting talking past each other, rather than listening and addressing each point in turn. Choosing between two sides that represent a collection of compromises is a pretty crap system. Unfortunately it's the best one we have. It avoids deadlock between the competing points of view and somewhere in the mess progress can be made. But it means great swathes of voters can feel disenfranchised and powerless because no-one's representing "them".

Let's compare the USA to its political peers - by this I mean economically advanced democracies. Effectively this is Europe, the UK, Australia, NZ, Canada. In plenty of other countries outside this group gay rights aren't even a factor, let alone gay marriage. That's for another time. Why is it that these social issues become such huge political debates in the USA but barely register in most other countries? I contend it is because the USA is the most federal in its structure - it is really a collection of 50 mini-countries (the states). Its peers are far more socially homogenous. That's not to say each of these other countries don't have social issues that spark widely diverging views and debates. But social issues are not as politically contentious in these countries because there is a broad consensus on dealing with them, even if that consensus is it is none of the Government's business or that the status quo is fine. Many of these issues are so far removed from the average punter's life that it just doesn't matter. Each country finds a solution it can live with and moves on. It is part of America's fabric that such issues are part of the daily political (including judicial) battlefield where even past decisions are constantly fought over vigorously. Furthermore America is an adversarial society partly because of the strength of its democracy. That people can disagree so violently without coming to blows or worse (Jerry Springer aside) is a testament to that fact. The status quo doesn't exist in America like it does in its peers.

It is part of what makes America such a troubled and great country all at the same time. It is a mess of compromises and contradictions that sum to a much great total than the parts.

Besides one Frenchman I know, does anyone really like Diet Coke with Lemon?

This is big. There hasn't been much discussion of the new pipeline that Russia is considering building to better serve its customers. The problem is both Japan and China are big customers. They both consume huge amounts of oil. China's demand is rising rapidly but Japan has been the second biggest importer of oil for years. Both China and especially Japan are petrified about their reliance on foreign countries for raw materials. And China still bears a massive grudge against Japan (justifiably in the main) for various historical travesties.

The Japanese appear to have won out in this geo-political poker game by throwing massive amounts of money at the Russians - at least US$7 billion. The Japanese have effectively offered to build the pipline for the Russians, an offer China could never match. The ramifications for this deal are huge economically and politically for all three countries involved and more besides.

It again proves how important oil is in the world.

We have guests in town. They constantly request to see Hong Kong's Chinatown. What's worrying is they are semi-serious. Last night, exhausted by two days of solid shopping, they asked to go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We took them to Wan Chai. After stepping over a drunk and walking past three hookers we made it to the entrance of the American Chinese Restaurant. With lino floors, fluro lights and well used menus we knew it was authentic. Rapid fire ordering of old favourites was met with equally rapid delivery of the food in no particular order (note to the waiter - spring rolls tend to be a starter, not a dessert). The food was good traditional Pekingese style and despite the place being mostly full of expats I can heartily recommend it.

Tourist guides have much to answer for when it comes to HK. Our guests pestered us to see the escalator from Central to Mid-levels. Happily XTC ice-cream is located below said escalator, so one chocolate/honey melon later, we were ascending to the heavens on the escalator. For those not familiar with it, it is actually a series of escalators joined together with concrete paths full of gaudy advertising. You can stand and look into various houses and businesses as you pass within centremeters of their windows. You can have your shoulder dislocated by barging citizens of HK. You can climb stairs because an escalator is being repaired. It may be a novelty to tourists but otherwise it's really an eyesore that doesn't stick out because it's surrounded by similar eyesores, being various apartment and office buildings in varying states of disrepair.

We caught a cab and found ourselves winding along Stubbs Road and looking at the vista of the Island and Kowloon. The haze had lifted and it was an awesome sight. We got the taxi to stop at the Stubbs Rd Lookout, which was mercifully empty of mainland tourists and their massive busses. The taxi driver was thankful to use the facilities while we enjoyed the view. Of course the stand with bright fluro lights, full working PC, crew of 4 and a camera were an interesting sideshow. For HK$20 we had a photo with Hong Kong as a background, instantly printed and a promise of an email with said photo. So our friends got to see the view and a great example of HK's entrepreneurial spirit all at the same time.

Only in Hong Kong. That's the kind of thing they need in the guidebooks.

The now copyright-free SCMP reports Xinhua, China's fair and balanced mouthpiece, has kindly created a checklist for all those not sure if they are patriotic Hong Kongers.

Before we get started, the literal definition of the word is "Love of country; devotion to the welfare of one's country; the virtues and actions of a patriot; the passion which inspires one to serve one's country."

Our friends in the CCP have a few caveats for HK patriotism:

The Xinhua commentary, written by Tang Hua, deputy chief editor of Outlook magazine, spelled out what it sees as "objective and clear criteria" for patriots. They included:
# Pledging allegiance to the Hong Kong SAR;
# Loving China and Hong Kong, upholding the Basic Law and supporting China's resumption of sovereignty over Hong Kong;
# Supporting "one country, two systems".
# Anyone who participated in any action aiming at subverting the central government or changing the socialist system on the mainland would be regarded as failing to uphold and abide by the Basic Law and contravening the "one country, two systems" principle;
# Meeting Basic Law requirements for office such as being a Hong Kong permanent resident with no criminal record.

Ironically the CCP can't make it's mind up which is more important, country or party. From the bowels of the SCMP comes this in the lead up to the National People's Congress, the rubber stamp parliament of China.

Proposed revisions to the constitution have triggered a heated debate in the Communist Party over its supremacy as the ruling party.

The National People's Congress will almost certainly ratify amendments to the constitution at its annual session next month, adding protection of human rights and private property and enshrining former president Jiang Zemin's theory of the Three Represents.

What has proved contentious is whether the party should submit itself to the constitution as the nation moves towards rule of law by protecting human rights and private property. The debate epitomises both the promise and limitations of the leadership of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. When Mr Hu made his first public appearance after becoming party general secretary in October 2002, he chose to speak on the 20th anniversary of the 1982 constitution. The timing of the speech sparked hopes that the rule of law would be the hallmark of the new leadership.

But hardliners closely linked to the General Office of the Central Committee are pushing to maintain the party's supremacy. They argue that the party holds a unique position in uniting the nation...In their eyes, yielding power to the constitution would weaken the party. Without a strong party to guide the nation, the country could disintegrate, they argue. They acknowledge that some party members have abused their power but believe corruption should be dealt with internally.

China is not a nation like any other and the CCP is not a Government like any other. The HK patriotism debate shows that clearly enough.

You sit in an interview. It's for a big job. It's being done by video conference. You've being interviewed by several different people from different areas, all grilling you with difficult technical questions. You need to think quickly and sound professional. You need to come up with accurate answers with little hesitation.

And it's all being done in English, which is not your first language.

One thing that constantly amazes me is how dominant English has become as a language of commerce and communication. The guy I just interviewed is Taiwanese but he was getting the third degree in English. You could see his brain ticking over as he thought about his answers and then translated them. English is not an easy language and is very different to the various Chinese dialects. The effort in doing such an interview is huge; aside from the translation and differing accents you have to cope with you are also dealing with the interview itself.

This is why I get so pissed off when native English speakers assume those who can't speak English clearly and fluently must be stupid. Speaking slowly and loudly makes you look like the idiot. I'm hopeless at languages and always admire the multi-lingual but I make sure I don't prejudice my opinions just because someone doesn't speak my language. Do you?

Indonesia's nearly invisible President Megawati has made a speech saying the US and allies commit acts of "exceptional injustice" against Muslim majority countries.

Mrs Megawati sought to contrast the way Indonesia had used the law to find and prosecute its terrorists with the "unilateral" US-led invasion of Iraq. The remarks opened an international conference of Islamic scholars, which her government partly funded.

"It may be due to either coincidence or intention, but an exceptional injustice is apparent in the attitude and action of big countries towards countries [whose] major populations are Muslims," she told 300 delegates from Islamic universities and governments around the world.

"The act of violence undertaken unilaterally against the Republic of Iraq by certain countries, which are now finding it difficult to prove the existence of weapons of mass destruction there, as the sole justification to launch the biggest military attack at the beginning of this 21st century, is an evident picture of this injustice," she said.

Instead we should follow Indonesia's example.

Indonesia was a genuinely moderate Muslim society that used the justice system to oppose terrorism, such as the bombings in Bali, she said. "The nation resolutely repudiates and legally prosecutes those perpetrating acts of violence against others, despite their conviction that those are religious acts."

Not even those who opposed the war in Iraq get off.

Although France had staunchly opposed the Iraqi invasion, she said it was guilty of perpetrating a "far smaller" injustice towards Muslims by its recent move to restrict women and girls from wearing the Islamic head scarf.

One columnist in the SCMP worth reading is Jack van der Kamp. Today he has an interesting take on the battle by copyright holders (especially luxury goods firms) against counterfeiters. As it's unlinkable I've pasted the whole thing in the extended entry. I don't agree with much of what he says but it provides an interesting point of view. So long as companies can show they make reasonable efforts to protect their products from "theft" (intellectual or real) they have an expectation that the local law enforcement will make sure their rights are protected. If they choose to charge outrageous prices for "illusions" then that is a matter for the company and the consumer. Likewise if HK has laws and treaties that require it to enforce copyright then those obligations must be met.

UPDATE: As Conrad rightly points out in the comments, this very entry engages in the same "copying" from an overpriced good. And people say irony is dead.

Let us cut through to the core of the illusion business. French fashion goods makers expect us to pay with our tax money for police protection of profits made from overcharging us for their wares. This was in effect the long and short of the message from an alliance of 65 French luxury brands, the Comite Colbert, at a meeting last week with our government's intellectual property department and, from what I can tell, the people on our side grovelled as usual and said: "Yes, you're right, that's fair, that's exactly what we should do." It is what they have always said and I see no reason to think that they have stopped standing on their heads and begun to realise exactly what this game is about. It is about money, about the presumed right of foreign copyright holders to take as much of it from us as they would like and about their presumption that we ought to pay the costs of permitting them to do it.

Now I know that you probably do not see it quite as I do. I am in a minority here, the self-appointed spokesman for Copyright Robin Hood in his campaign against a modern version of the sheriff of Nottingham. I know it. How dare I then publicly condone criminality?

There is nothing legally complicated about this, you say. These luxury goods makers have a legitimate claim to ownership of their brands. They have the right to sell them for whatever they wish. They do not force people to buy them. They are entirely within their rights.

True, and if I happen to be a bystander when a gang of thieves breaks into a shop at gunpoint and runs off with armfuls of high-priced merchandise you will find me first to say: "They went thataway, constable, go get 'em!"

But we are not talking of this kind of theft. Luxury goods producers do not make their money from selling us goods. They make it from selling us illusions. Central to their marketing strategy is their aim to convince us that the handbags or pens they sell are of a matchless standard of workmanship and this is why we pay high prices.

It was probably true a century ago. It is not true any longer. Quality manufacture is no longer the preserve of aproned European artisans working with hand tools at a wooden bench with the Swiss Alps outside the window. We are in the machine age. Get the right machines, set them up the right way and it is a job for technicians. It can be done by anyone anywhere.

There is simple proof of this. You can find it on the streets in what Robin Hood will sell you if the police are not looking.

There is also simple proof that these goods are up to the brand name standards. The market thinks they are for the price at which they are offered and this is the only proof that counts.

The difference in price between the pirate product and the legitimate article represents the illusion and this leads to a question. Should the right of the illusionist to a deliberately fostered false state of mind have the same legal protection as ownership of property?

I concede that to push this line of reasoning would suggest that I have some curious ideas about the workings of law. Perhaps, you say, I may want to try them out in a court of law as a defence against a charge of breaching copyright and see how long it takes the judge to bang his gavel down and send me off for a stretch of corrective thinking.

No, I would not try it but I do think that Moses with his stone tablets had not quite got to the stage of thinking about copyright piracy with his commandment: "Thou shalt not steal."

Most of us would agree that the traditional Robin Hood had some good reasons to breach the commandment. Modern society has even more ways of introducing doubt to supposedly cut and dried certainties. When foreign copyright holders scream "theft, theft, theft!" we should perhaps ponder a little more closely just who is being robbed.

They want us to use our hard-earned tax money, not the tax money of their own nationals or, perish the thought, their own revenues, to hire more policemen to enforce draconian laws that are largely copied from abroad and written to enhance their profits at our expense.

Well, fellas, if you want a real remedy to the way that copyright pirates have stuck the pin of reality into the bubble of your carefully crafted illusions, then try dropping your prices to compete with them and stop pretending that your purpose is to improve our moral well-being rather than your earnings.

I see theft in copyright as well as in the breach of copyright with the way you people have convinced lawmakers around the world to cater to your interests alone.

Last night I returned to our Disneyland apartment to find our dining room a mess of bubble wrap and frames. Our artworks had arrived. As part of ongoing program to find creative ways to say goodbye to money we have bought a few pieces of Australian art. The painting is a 2 metre by 1.4 metre Yvette Swan. What this means is it's big, modern and ummm, big. We also bought 3 photographs by Deborah Paouwe and Sharon Green. These aren't photos of their kids. These are 1.2 metres square. That's big. Suffice it to say there's some serious furniture re-arrangement going on this weekend.

There's a moral here. If you're going to engage in a bit of middle class aspirational purchasing of art, make sure you check the sizes first.

The great thing about the South China Morning Post is you don't even have to look at the comics page to get a laugh. Today provides two examples.

Firstly there's that most Hong Kong of problems: technology causing more harm than good.

It may prove a big deterrent to people wanting one of Hong Kong's new hi-tech 3G phones - the prospect of being seen in the wrong place when answering a video call from their spouse. But technical experts at Hutchison Telecom are developing a face-saving solution that would let customers choose a background setting before taking a call.

This means a husband who is enjoying a drink in a bar could appear on screen with an image of an office in the background, while a wife who is out playing mahjong could be "seen" at home in the kitchen. While the image of the phone owner might move, the background would remain static, so users would have to be careful not to have immobile clocks behind them.

Secondly it turns out the esteemed management of HK's gleaming Chep Lap Kok airport have found some taking the name literally.

The Airport Authority is outraged that a Japanese pornographic video company secretly deployed a model to pose nude at various locations at Hong Kong International Airport, officials said yesterday.

The report said the 60-minute video features a model in her 20s wearing only a pair of high heels and a silver raincoat which she intermittently opens to reveal her naked body.

The film includes a 20-minute segment filmed at various locations inside and around Chek Lap Kok. One segment of the video reportedly features the model flashing the camera and engaging in lascivious acts in direct view of the airline counters at the departure level.

Although it turns out these problems are not Hong Kong's alone.

_{* So I've been told. I have no experience with the interior of brothels. Especially Shanghai Cindy's place.}

Want a definition of chutzpah?

BEIJING, Feb 24 (Reuters) - A Chinese woman unhappy with the trousers she had stolen from a shop may have erred when she took them back to be shortened.
"The woman found the pair of trousers too long for her, and hearing from others that the store alters any clothes they sell free of charge, she went there," the China Daily said on Tuesday, quoting the Yangtze Evening Post.
"But the store discovered the trousers were a missing pair and held her until she confessed to her theft."
The newspaper did not say where or when she was caught.

We've got guests in town. The phone hasn't gone at work for an hour. The email box is clear. So why the stupid salesperson from India who's kept myself and Charlie here working on a deal they don't understand for the last two hours and looks likely to not happen this century while keeping us both from dinner and HK's nightlife is a question who's answer is forever unknowable. It's gone beyond sadism. It's gone beyond a joke. It's kept me from my kids. It's unforgivable and sadly all too common.

Here's the final quote: "Just got off the phone with the customer and they want more from the deal and will do it in a few days instead. Thanks and have fun."

Bite me.

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I know things are bad with the NHS in Britain but this is not good. Memo to self - don't get sick in the UK.

He's back.

Saturday morning. Along with every other expat family with children under the age of 7 we dutifully trudged towards the HK Convention Centre. We marched up the numerous escalators to the appointed hall. Disney on Ice was in town - Beauty and the Beast version. On entering the arena two things were immediately obvious - our seats were not good and Disney have refined to an art form the various means to extract every last dollar from your wallet. The seating situation was easily remedied - a quick move ten rows back and across and the view was fine. The problem was the giant sucking sound of Disney drawing money from my hip pocket.

Disney form a three pronged attack on you in this regard. Firstly there is the food. This ranges from sickly sweet popcorn to sickly sweet ice crushes, all kept in cheap but memorable Disney buckets or cups. Second are the assorted stuff toys, play swords and some parts that looked more appropriate for the Mummies and Daddies. Thirdly was the programmes (yes, that's how I spell it, deal with it).

The man selling the programmes was an elderly American who had a superb command of Cantonese. He was miked up and sang two repeating jingles to hook the kids in - the English one was a neat rhyming couplet that went "Come buy a programme or your kids won't love you." Something like that. Being large, colourful and Disney they were in hot demand. Until one reached the counter. For a measly HK$70 one went away with an overlarge collection of photos from the American version of the show. However even more perverse was the programmes were only available in Chinese. There were no English versions whatsoever, despite numerous people asking for it (both local and expat). What is even more strange is the entire production was in English, without any translation.

So the geniuses (or genii for the pedants) at Disney on Ice stage an entire show in English, with English speaking voice overs, characters, and music, but the programmes are only in Chinese. Does anyone else find that strange? I mean besides the 2,000 bewildered patrons on Saturday morning?

Disney have enough to answer for already. They just added to the list.

Email. It is reckoned to have been "a good thing", saving paper, speeding communications, enhancing workplaces and information flows. It is cheap, quick and convenient. It has a lot to answer for.

Email is an excuse for laziness. Its very convenience lends itself to people engaging it without thinking, much like talking. Often email acts as a written one-sided conversation. It has the advantage that you can tackle it at a time and place of your choosing. You can delete, edit, reply, forward, copy, import, export, bend, twist and (sadly) live for it. It's cheapness and format are such that people rarely think about it. That has to stop.

So I hereby humbly present some Laws Of Email:

1. Before adding someone in the To or CC box, ask if they really need to see it.
A sender's instinct is to copy far too many people on emails that may have little to do with the recipients. This breaks down into three main reasons. One is arse-covering - if everyone's been copied no-one can say they didn't know. The second is the arse-sucking - look at me, I'm so good, I just did this, aren't I clever. Lastly is the arse-draining - regularly sent blocks of information churned out and blasted as more information fodder. The best way to think about it is to put yourself in each recipient's shoes and ask if you would read it if you were them.
2. Replies to emails are worse than the originals.
Replies are usually instantaneous reactions. They are rarely well thought out considerations of the issues and topics brought up in the original. Often it leads to a quickly disintegrating cascade of misunderstandings and insults that finally gets sorted out in the traditional manner: by speaking to each other.
3. There is no email in the world that deserves a one-word reply.
Don't send me an email saying "Thanks". It's 3 seconds of my life I can't get back.
4. Just because it's an email doesn't mean the rules of English grammar don't apply.
Little things like punctuation and capital letters are really not too difficult to find on a keyboard. Or so you would think. English grammar is not particularly easy but the basics are. Once you work out how to write complete sentences and where pesky commas should go at least I've got a chance of understanding your intent. Going overboard is a danger too. Three exclamation marks don't make the point any better than one. Smileys and abbreviations have a place but don't go overboard either, unless you want the email look like alphabet soup.
5. Email is not a replacement for the telephone (or other person-to-person interaction).
Email is a static medium. It is not a form of dialogue. It is the modern era's form of correspondence. There's a world of difference. Don't be a lazy idiot because you can't be bothered picking up the phone or walking around the corner to talk to someone. This leads to...
6. Don't call me to tell me you sent an email.
I look at emails when and as I can. I don't need a minute long phone call telling me to look at my email. Especially when you could have told me the contents of that email in the phone call.
7. If you are relying on a spell-checker, at least use some common sense.
Just because Microsoft says a word is spelt wrong, you don't have to agree. Some people are no good at spelling and checkers work for them, but for God's sake use your brain a little and make sure the result is still in English.
8. It is not a crime to read over an email before you send it.
Just because you dashed it off doesn't mean you've got to hit the send button. The email doesn't evaporate. Do the world a favour and read it once. You'll be amazed at the baloney you've written.
9. Make each message brief and to the point.
The best emails have the main points in the first few lines; if you have other guff then add it below. We've all got inboxes stuffed to overflowing so the quicker and more simply you can get the information across the better place the world will be. Here's a hint: why not make the title of your email descriptive enough that people will know the contents before they open it.
10. Don't forget there are other forms of correspondence.
Email can be a great way to keep in touch with distant family and friends. But really the ancient art of letter writing needn't be discarded at the great altar of technology. Handwritten letters, even with scrawling writing and crossing outs, is far more personal. You may even remember how to write with a pen if you use it once in a while. And stamps don't set you back that much.
11. Spam is bad, don't make it worse.
Look at your email and the people you sent it to. If your name wasn't there would you call it useful? Helpful? Or a waste of space.
12. Viruses are bad, don't make them worse.
Don't open attachments unless you are 100% sure you know the source and are expecting the file. Morons who haven't realised that opening that ZIP file from ax123@yahoo.com will get what they deserve, but you needn't join them in the 7th circle of Hell.
13. Etiquette is not a four letter word.
Don't use all capitals. Don't even say "Oops I had the Caps Lock on" half way through. Just use the Backspace button and try again. Just because it is an email being polite is not a crime. You needn't sign off with a Your Obedient Servant, but putting your name at the end is a good start. That said you don't need an all singing signature either. Avail yourself of some pointers and advice.
14. Get organised.
You needn't reply to every email straight away. Many are junk and useless. But not replying at all is the same as picking up the phone but not saying anything. Replying too quickly can get you in trouble (as mentioned earlier) but taking days or weeks to reply certainly doesn't help either. If you're getting overwhelmed with email, do something about it. Start sorting mail into folders. Use the filters and rules. Start asking people to take you off lists. Stop getting Dilbert and Joke-a-Day sent to your inbox if it's getting clogged up. Be diligent and prioritise. Look at the email - does it need immediate action? Can it wait? Can it be deleted without reading? Don't wait for later. Later never comes.
15. Encourage others to follow the rules.
The world isn't go to be a better place if you do it on your own. Encourage others to follow your example.
16. Stop whinging and start doing.
The ritual of returning from holiday and impressing everyone with how many emails you have is quickly replacing other forms of measuring importance such as status, fame and success. Your job competence is not related to your inbox size; indeed the better you are at handling email the better you will be in your job. Everyone's in the same boat so get on with it and stop talking about it.

This is by no means comprehensive. Additions or comments are welcome.

After Singapore tries to show the world it doesn't suck comes some breaking scientific news.

Singapore: even thinking about 'it' gets you down.

Tom the token redneck here at work seems to have hit upon an elegant solution to some of Asia's woes: why not feed chicken to civet cats?

There's been a storm of controversy (in that hackneyed journo cliche) over Gregory Mankiw's comments that job outsourcing was "probably a plus for the economy in the long run". Politically it may not have been the smartest thing to say but back here on planet Earth it's actually true. I was going to devote a goodly amount of time to going into it, but the good folks at The Economist have done a far better job.

Mankiw is a good economist who left academia for politics. No doubt chastened he has quickly realised the truth doesn't always play well with the punters. He also wrote the textbook I endured through university economics and it almost made Macroeconomics bearable. Almost.

There's one more point to consider. Job outsourcing is nothing new. It's been going on for a couple of hundred years. It is obvious the world has only improved for the better in terms of standard of living in that time. There is not mass unemployment in developed countries. There has been no giant sucking sound. The reality is if someone can do the job cheaper (for the same quality) that results in a net gain.

I fully understand that the adjustment process is difficult. Losing a job sucks no matter what the reason. It always helps to be able to blame someone or something, and add in a dash of xenophobia and it's those foreigners taking away our jobs. What makes matters worse is these ideas require thinking whereas those against can simply trot out slogans.

History is the proof that free trade (which job outsourcing is a part of) works. If you don't like it North Korea is open for immigrants. Look how well they've done and they've got no problems with job outsourcing.

"Love is a many splendored thing".

Actually, it turns out it's more of a chemical thing. A small taste:

Scanning the brains of people in love is also helping to refine science's grasp of love's various forms. Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love*, suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting...

Romantics, of course, have always known that love is a special sort of chemistry. Scientists are now beginning to show how true this is.

Walking to work this morning a disturbing thought hit me. I was listening to my MP3 player, thinking how great technology is because I've got my mobile phone and Blackberry for email. Then I realised it simply makes me more available for work, becoming a further intrusion on my time outside of the confines of the office.

More importantly I realised I am a walking radiation hazard. In fact we all are. How the hell can a tiny phone broadcast a powerful enough signal to reach a local cell tower or satellite? The same goes for the Blackberry. It sits in its cradle on my desk next to a speaker and makes that annoying crackling buzz every 5 minutes. That's radiation. And it sits in my jacket for my journey to and from work each day. Even more worrying is my mobile, which tends to sit in my trouser pocket for large amounts of the day. Worse still is everyone else is the same. We are all walking time bombs. Even if you are a techno-phobe who eschews all mobile technology, you are subjected to "passive" radiation, just like smoking. Perhaps it will lead to mobile free zones, where lead-lined walls will prevent radiation just like there are smoke free pubs. One can dream and hope.

It's amazing I don't glow green at night.

Beijing's continuing project to bring Hong Kong to heel is actually a masterpiece of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) control. They've trundled out a mix of academics and politicians to firmly tell Hong Kong not to get ideas above it's station. Local HK worthies join in. Sure in a democracy calling votes "dogs" doesn't help your cause, but in China it doesn't matter. Then you get everyone whipped up into a frenzy over a furphy, for example patriotism and its meaning. Everyone is so busy defending themselves and arguing about meaningless symbols that they forget the important issues that started the whole thing in the first place. So instead of continued debate about democracy and the meaning of the Basic Law, you've got a bunch of HK toadies jumping over one another trying to crawl as far as possible up the CCP's posterior, while the so-called democratic camp are busy trying to work out what they are actually on about.

Luckily the SCMP provides an insight for what HK politicos can look forward to.

Yang Fuwang is happy with his life as a beggar in Guangzhou, but the vocation that has given him a lucrative income is now under threat from plans to introduce a begging-free zone...Thanks to the generosity of residents in the city, Mr Yang makes 30 to 40 yuan a day, a significant improvement on the 300 yuan a year he used to make as a peasant. He has to go to the bank virtually every week to deposit the 50 to 100 yuan that he does not spend. [note US$1 = 8.3 yuan]

However, as with other major cities on the mainland, the good times for beggars may be coming to an end. This week, the city government announced that Guangzhou would follow Beijing, Shanghai, Fuzhou and Jiangsu in setting up no-begging zones.

In other cities, such zones include tourist spots, subway stations, railway stations and busy commercial areas...

Some things I hate:

1. I hate that I leave home before PB wakes and I usually get home after PB goes to sleep. She's cute when she's asleep but she's way more fun when she's awake.

2. I hate that because our office has doubled in staff our vending machine tends to run out of drinks by mid-week, yet it's only refilled weekly. I will not drink green Qoo.

3. I hate when someone says they will send the one email you are waiting for before you can leave immediately. Immediately can mean very different things in different cultures. Normally I'd say 10 minutes for an email is immediate. Others seem to think 116 minutes and counting is close enough.

4. I hate when people use their weblogs as personal outlets for venting rage against things they have no control over.

Just a little tinkering going on with the blogroll. No, it's not something you use in the bathroom.

The philosophy is the same. However it's time to expand a little more. The rolls are really only for myself - it makes it far easier to jump around if I have them listed on my site. Especially as my site is permanently in my browser. Just like you, right? But there is some reason to the listings too.

Fellow Hong Kong blogs get pride of place. I've listed some of them and put the rest in a hidden list, simply to prevent the list going too far. The next list, simply titled Blogs, are those that are regular reads. Mostly. I wanted to keep this list to less than 20 but it's stuck around 24. Some are read more than others, but all are read at least several times a week. I highly commend them all to you.

Next is the alphabetised listing of fellow MuNuvians. This list is slowly expanding and contains blogs of the highest quality. A random pick a day and you won't go wrong. After a few lists and bits for myself, including the referrer log, we get to the new stuff. Firstly is "Look at Blogs". These are blogs I look at semi-regularly, are on the cusp of promotion to the main Blog roll (albeit probably at the expense of an existing main Blog entry - it's just like Premier League for blogs), new ones I want to come back to and look at in greater detail. It's a little large at the moment, because I've just dumped what was in my Favourites into the roll. It will be a fluctuating roll. The next roll is "Other Blogs". These are for those that aren't in the main roll but I've had time to look at. I have looked at all of these in the past and could well promote them again in the fullness of time. This is where "Look at Blogs" go if they aren't destined for promotion at this stage. There are some good blogs in there but with the world only giving us 24 hours each day and the blogosphere growing at an outstanding rate, they've gotta go somewhere.

If I could be bothered I'd refine all of this further. But I can't.

These rolls will all change from time to time. Some sites will move from one category to another. Some will be dropped completely. New ones will be added. Secret recipes may be included.

Comments and thoughts are welcome. Bribes gratefully accepted.

I set aside 45 minutes. I had every scrap of information. I had a working pen and paper. I had stocked up on patience and adrenalin. My weapons were ready; my armour was ready. Time to call the bank.

The automated greeting is an annoyingly cheerful female voice listing numerous options. A flurry of buttons and pound keys (her words, not mine) and I finally find the cul-de-sac I am looking for. I am told my call is important to the bank and that an operator will be with me in less than 4 minutes. Next I am treated to the refrains of a CD ends up as drink coasters in our house. Just as the mind-numbing monotony of the melody mutes my mind I am rudely jolted by a loud reminder of how important my call is, I have progressed in the queue and something about thermodynamics. I may have misheard. Again the deadening dull ditty returns before another reminder, this time telling me the bank knows how important my time is and how hard they are working to get to my call.

Finally the click out of hold and into the world of silence. That 6 second period while the bank's PABX decides whether you are worthy of speaking to an operator, or if you shall be returned to the relooping rotation of random menus. Relief as finally a disturbingly cheerful human answers. Information obtained with disarming ease, politeness and accuracy. The call ends with a "Can I help you with anything else?" My standard "This week's winning Lottery numbers" elicits a slightly flirty female giggle and a biting "I wouldn't be working here if I had them." Heh. Bet she hadn't heard that one in an hour.

Hanging up the phone, a melancholy passes over me. Where was the screaming? The frustration? The endless buck-passing? The relentless non-logic of a big banking behemoth? The "Call back during business hours"? The self-sustaining loop of menu choices?

What's happened to banks? I miss the old ones.

Only a mere few weeks after Pixar finally left the clutches of Disney, the Mouse Kingdom announces another raid on parental sanity.
At the same time some mega-cable company is trying to buy Disney. It just means us parents will be smothered with evermore merchandise, DVDs and other ways to suck money from our wallets for our childrens' sake.

There will be a reckoning one day, my friends. And I'll be going for the mouse.

It's obviously not easy once you've won US$18 million in the lottery.

Michael Carroll picked up his $18 million lottery check wearing a court-issued electronic tracing tag...recently pleaded guilty to drug possession. He also is accused of receiving $2,000 worth of stolen power tools...from the $2,500 fine he paid for ducking $9.50 train fares before he came into his fortune, to the $1,500 he handed over to a transport company whose school bus he had defaced.

His lawyer, Neil Meachem, told a judge after Carroll's most-recent guilty plea that he had been having marital troubles - news reports say his wife left him - and that his 2002 winnings were partly to blame for his many troubles.

Middle class lottery winners do not exist.

But there's good news.

The National Lottery emphasized that Carroll's situation was unusual, saying that 98 percent of the 1,600 millionaires and multimillionaires it's created since its inception a decade ago report being as happy or happier than they were before their wins.

And I hearby offer myself to see if winning millions in the lottery can make you happier. (The answer's yes).

The Hong Kong income tax form is 3 neatly spaced pages that takes approximately 5 minutes to fill in.

The Australian income tax form is actually a book that will now take the next week of my life to fill in.

Due to a happy set of co-incidences and timing I will be receiving a refund from the Australian tax authorities and received a demand from the HK tax office of precisely zero dollars. Both notices are in the process of being framed to remind me of happier times.

Today's proposition: Asian culture reflects and may even be a result of Asian attitudes to child-raising. Protecting, paternalism, strictness, respect for authority, conformity are clear traits of both. Western culture is the same but with different values: independence, doing it yourself, questioning, minimal direct guidance.

Discuss.

Mrs M is off with some girlfriends for a chick flick tonight: Something's Gotta Give, with Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves for the women, and Diane Keaton for those 60 year old males dragged along.

Normally this would be a cause for personal celebration. A quick call to the local pizzeria with plenty of appropriate refreshment followed by a night of DVD watching with the dog. Bone shaking volume, scantily clad heroines, massive explosions and incredible special effects holding together a thinly conceived plot with little characterisation will be the order of the night.

Except the pizza. Damn diet. May as well put on When Harry Met Sally and eat some rabbit food instead. Doesn't help when everyone at work decides today is McDonalds day to follow yesterday's successful curry day.

Damn diet.

There are many reasons why Singapore will never be a true world city.

Here's another.

To my Singaporean readers I have only one piece of advice: Get out. Now. The dead hand of Communism doesn't even go this far.

The wrong thing to do in the morning is to read the newspaper. Stories breakdown into three categories:
1. The Political (i.e. what the CCP thinks is best)
2. The Worrying (i.e. what is the latest disease, or that HK may recognise China's medical qualifications)
3. The Rest (i.e. what people really care about)

The ESF school system is a shambles; it turns out the Health Department dilly-dallying on SARS made things worse; the Jockey Club is offering new soccer betting options; the population of HK hits 6.81 million. Just the regular cacophony.

But there's one story today that did not surprise. From the SCMP comes the news

The average primary school pupil in Hong Kong gets an hour less sleep than they need, a survey has found.

Children aged six to 13 slept an average of eight hours, 47 minutes a day, according to the study conducted by Kwong Wah Hospital.

Paediatrician Daniel Ng Kwok-keung said a 10-year-old needed 10 hours sleep, while younger children needed more...

Many families ate dinner late and children often had a lot of homework to do. Afterwards, they were kept awake by such distractions as television, computer games or surfing on the internet.

There really is no excuse. Put your kids to bed.

Luuka is a visitor from Sweden. She arrived just before we left for Thailand so she decided to come along for the holiday. She's an interesting character. Take a look below...

Firstly she came into the office to do some work. She's a handy bear when it comes to the world of finance.

She earnt her holiday. Her first priority was to get some serious relaxation.

And to work on her suntan. She's now a very nice shade of brown.

She proved to be a popular bear. She made many friends at the Club Med. She swanned around the pool wearing next to nothing. There were many male bears checking her out.

One night we returned from dinner a little early. We found this.

Luuka was surprised.

She tearfully pleaded with us. It was her first time...with a honey coloured bear. She said she really felt things with this bear she hadn't felt in a long time. She thought this might be love. But (JC's) bear broke the bad news: it was just a holiday fling. Luuka meant nothing to him. Just another notch on his checked scarf.

Poor Luuka was heartbroken. She begged to leave as soon as she could. She soon will be on her way to her next destination. Colorado. America. I noticed her smile return when I mentioned the words "Ski bunny".

She's a very naughty bear.

It's always refreshing returning to HK to find the continuing march of the CCP in completing it's embrace of Hong Kong as part of the Glorious Motherland. Take these classy comments by hither-to unheard of Vice-Minister for Commerce An Min:

``Some people have uttered sheer nonsense on the question of patriotism and deliberately distorted its meaning,'' An charged. ``I can't be bothered to argue with them.''

However, the Vice-Minister for Commerce went on: ``There are some people who are deliberately trying to confuse the fact by saying that to love China doesn't mean one has to love its ruling party.

``I can say that China's Communist Party represents the Chinese people. It also represents the Hong Kong people.''

It seems the decision has been made that consequences be damned but the supremacy of the CCP and political control matter more than anything else. Which is really just business as usual.

Oh Wise Gods of HTML - anyone care to tell me why my sidebar seems to be leaning a little far to the left. My brilliantly funny although slightly stale disclaimer is partially hidden from the world.

As usual, a massively fraudulent prize for whomever can help. Not the use of "whomever" - whatever happened to whom in the English language?

UPDATE: As usual Rob's saved the day. Your prize awaits.

One Jersey Cow. Worth mucho grando somewhere in the world. And namesake of your blessed isle.

Our chosen holiday destination was that curious French institution: Club Med. This was my first time, although Mrs M has had previous experience. Everyone is either a G.O. (from the French meaning impossibly happy all the time) or a G.M. (meaning impossible to please).

Being a G.O. means you get paid a pittance to enjoy an enviable lifestyle that passes as "work" - you get to cater to the whims of assorted weirdos while randomly participating in performances that range from pagan-like dances to nightly shows that range from sham to glam. To qualify as a G.O. you must be either impossibly good looking with a body to match or French. Sleaze doesn't hurt the menfolk in their applications either. Womenfolk need to be self confident enough to parade in outfits that occasionally would look more apt in certain areas of Padpong. Responsibles (from the French meaning those who walk around earnestly looking busy and important) make up the ludicrously large management team. Many seemed so busy walk around (mostly from their area to the bar and back) that it was a wonder their staff could work. Until it dawned that perhaps the staff could work because the responsibles were absent.

G.M.s fall into several categories. There are the singles. These are the usual mix of the heartbroken, the desperate and the dateless - usually all in the same person. I imagined they would be fair game for the G.O.s but apparently not. Perhaps the sterile and artificial surrounds took their toll. Next were the honeymooners. The Antipodeans stood out a mile as the kind of white trash that revolve around the men discussing tattoos and beer while the women discuss their weddings and beer. The Europeans have a better idea of what honeymoons are for, using their time by the pool to canoodle and demonstrate to the world they are getting plenty of action and want you all to know it. There were the assorted Asian nationalities, primarily Japanese, Korean and Chinese, who stuck to themselves and did what they do best - harass the innocent children of Westerners for photos while avoiding sunlight at all costs. There were the veterans: those who's imagination is so limited that returning to Club Meds year after year is their idea of tourism. Lastly there were the families. No matter where they were from, they had the common experiences of desperately trying to shuffle the kids off to Kids Club ASAP or prevent them drowning while they demonstrated their prowess in the pool. Oh, and also contend with the occasional sibling squabbles and mealtime madness.

Club Med itself seems to be an experiment in permanent happiness without the use of drugs. I swear at least one G.O. had plastic surgery to implant a permanent smile. The concept seems to revolve around being a self-contained world with no need to leave the safe confines of the prison club. We were in Thailand, but could just as easily have been anywhere in the world that was humid, beachside and 3rd world. From what I was told each Club Med is basically the same. Yes my friends, it is the McDonalds of the tourism world. The rooms were on the tired side and the bed is better described as a plank with sheets. We enjoyed all that Phuket has to offer: beautiful beaches, great weather, plentiful fake DVDs and clothing (note to Diesel - you need to get someone into Thailand quickly) and tuk tuks (motorised, ummm, well, transportation). The Thais have it all worked out - the Baht is at an almost impossible to convert exchange rate and the bargaining can be laughable. There are three kinds of shops in Phuket: DVD stores, clothes/shoe stores and tailors. Nothing real in any of them. Tailors proved to be interesting - while waiting for Mrs M to peruse the flammable polyester pyjamas for the kids I got chatting to one. He broke the customers down into a few key groups. Aussies and kiwis are only interested in cheap t-shirts. Asians are only interested in electronics and DVDs. Europeans are interested in everything. That's what happens when the Euro is strong. Most interesting was the Scandinavians. For some reason known only to the Norse Gods they buy fake suits by the truckload. When I tell you that no suit can look good for US$99, I mean it. Yet there was no shortage of Scandis crowding in for Jimmy Armani and Geroge Versace. Damn weird.

Overall we had a good time and JC and PB thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Kudos to Dragonair who were thoughtful enough to make the flight home half empty even though they forgot the kids' meals. In the space of 10 days Club Med managed to teach me one important lesson above all else: buffet may be a good way to feed the masses, but it turns those masses off buffet for life.

All safe and sound and back in HK, I uneasily open my web browser. A quick perusal of previous entries shows my decision to throw this over to my brother was questionable at best. Although it does show you all what I had to put up with for 20 years at home.

I've returned with many stories and interesting observations. They'll come over the next few days. In the meantime I've hit upon a miraculous new diet that I'm calling the Simon diet. It involves eating less, especially fried and fatty foods; and exercising more. Of course it will never catch on as it requires sacrifice and work.

Finally, most of what my brother said about me is untrue. Most.

Well, that is it from me for now. Simon has returned from his holiday, and is currently powering through his emails in order to feel less guilty about recommencing blogging.

Thank you for being laregly nice to me and hopefully you have been sufficiently entertained in his absence.

I'd like to leave you with a fable. Simon once drove to pick up a coffee for Mrs M one morning on a weekend. Wanting to get back home while it was still hot, he decided it would be faster to have two hands on the steering wheel rather than one. Unfortunately, his car was not sufficiently equipped with cup holders, and he placed the coffee between his legs. While driving home, he was forced to break suddenly, spilling the coffee all over his nether-regions, causing second degree burns.

The moral of the story: If bad stuff happens to you, keep it to yourself. If you can't, try and make sure that it doesn't get spread beyond your family and friends. And under no circumstances give blog access to someone who knows the story.

I hope you have all learnt from this fable.

Once upon a time, Australia was a great place, filled with animals and trees and not much else. The ice age led to some land bridges with Polynesia, and people walked across, happily living off the land for the next 40 or 50 thousand years.

Then the English rocked up and, deciding that the locals were clearly not capable of running the country, preceeded to kill off many of the Aboriginal people. Some were shipped to England as a scientific curiosity, others subjected to cruel tortures, and most were forced to live in ever decreasing areas they once called their home. As recently as 50 years ago, there were programs in place in some areas that forced the separation of children from their parents so the kids could be raised religiously in the hope it would make them nicer people (yes, that is sarcastic, but many religions have been doing just that for 2,000 years).

Around 30 years ago, 'white' Australians decided it was time to do something about the terrible living conditions and high mortality rates of Aboriginal people, so we threw them in jail for petty crimes, at which pioint many promptly committed suicide. After that small hiccup, progress was finally made. Programs were introduced and more money put towards improving standard of living and improving health.

Around 10 years ago, reconciliation took another step with a famous court case known as Mabo, which basically says that if nobody else wants an area of land, provided the region's Aboriginal people can show it was once their home, they can take owenership of the land. Of course, if some farmers want to use it, that's just tough beans. We then renamed Ayres Rock as Uluru and let the Aboriginal people run that as well.

Then on Sunday night, we had a riot in Redfern. It is too easy to say the riot was a 'race' riot. Yes, the riot was fuelled by Aboriginal people. But many of those getting involved where young and drunk and just causing violence and mayhem for the sake of it. Others were just caught up in mob mentality. The police stood back and contained them to let them vent their anger.

On the whole, there is still racism towards them, but I will be blunt in saying that some of it is deserved. The Aboriginal community have the highest levels of unemployment and alcoholism, a combination of which does not make for particularly enjoyable living conditions. While many have gone on to excel in their chosen fields, whether sport, entertainment or academic, many have chosen to live a life on welfare handouts. They are still looked on with suspicion, though in the vast majority of circumstances, it is wholy unjustified.

I don't know where the balance should be between moving on from the past, living in the present and striving for the future should be. How long is the son expected to pay for the sins of the grandfather and great-grandfather? Should the victims over time agree to become part of the society that killed their families?

These are issues that Australia had made no effort to deal with of late, largely due to the curent Prime Minister, John Howard. He has steadfastly refused to apologise to the Aboriginal people for the atrocities committed against them in the past. The man truly believes that if we all ignore the bits we don't like from the past, they will just go away. Another politician questioned the level of welfare given to the Aboriginal people a few years ago, and went on from there to form her own political party that attracted the redneck vote of the country.

Put simply, while most Australians claim to be racially tolerant, there is still a large amount of racisim, but it is important to understand that some people are just bums, regardless of the colour of their skin or the history of their people.

Today we move onto a sporting theme, enraged by the failure of Viduka and Kewell to show up for the Australia v Venezuala friendly soccer match. Both play in the English premier league, and are considered two of the top Australian players.

Australia is a small country in terms of population, and boxes way above its weight in terms of how our country competes in the sporting world. Part of the reason for this is the passion Australian people have for sport. A club game in the AFL between traditional rivals can draw crowds of 90,000 people (though it is in Melbourne and there is sod all else to do down ther). And there is no greater sporting honour than playing for your country.

To be selected to play for your nation is a big event. The press over here has been full of stories for the last few weeks about who will replace Steve Waugh in the test cricket side. Waugh was the third test captain in a row to win the Australian of the Year Award upon retirement. A rookie rugby league player, upon finding out that the tour of England may be cancelled after 9-11, said he would "bloody well play in Afghanistan" if it meant he could play for Australia.

So it is hard for most Australian sportsfans to understand why Kewell and Viduka failed to turn up. Kewell claims he has an ankle injury, not that it stopped him from playing 83 mins for Liverpool on the weekend. Viduka is uninjured, but wants to remain with Leeds, who did just give him time off for personal issues.

At the end of the day, the club pays the player's wages. Performances for a country may get you a job at a club, but to keep getting the big dollars, you have to perform for your club. If you play for your country and get injured, the club suffers as you are not available to play. Financially, there is very little reason for established star players to play for their country in preference to their club.

When you play for your country, you are playing for pride. You are playing to give the kids at school bragging rights. Just imagine the crap we gave the Kiwis after the upset in the World Cup semi-final. Imagine how much worse it was a week later to rock up to work and have a bunch of Brits give us crap when they won the final. Imagine how quickly we reminded them of the 3-1 loss in soccer not so long ago.

Playing for a club is a job. You do it because they pay you. If they don't pay you enough, you quit and go elsewhere. If someone wants to pay you more, you quit and go play for them. But to play for your country is not about getting paid. It is about the recognition that your years of hard work and training, your sacrifices and your skill are so appreciated by your country that they would like you to represent them, to represent all those people too lazy, too lacking in skill or too unfocused.

For my mind, it's not contest. I have seen the mighty Roosters go through losing streaks while our best players are playing representative footy. I watched last year as two of our best players were so badly injured that their seasons ended 6 months early. But at the end of the day, you can't buy representative honours, and while no injury is ever 'worth it', I'd be happy to see the best Rooster's players in the green and gold rather than the red, white and blue.

Not sure if this will make the news anywhere other than Australia, but we had a riot last night. It wasn't quite on the same scale as the riots in LA all those years ago, or even a typical post match celebration for the English soccer team, but it still qualifies.

It was sparked by the death of a local boy, who depending on who you believe, was either fleeing from police or was spooked by the sight of the police and fled on his own volition. An afternoon of 30C+ temperatures and lots of alcohol led to fires being set, rocks being thrown, wheelie bins being wheeled, people jumping on cars and the odd firework being unleashed.

Watching the firework brought back memories. Years ago, a friend was running a camp, and I went along on the final night to help out. The finale of the night involved a firework display. The fireworks were legally bought, all the permits arranged, fire crews notified, the kids all a safe distance. We had lined up about 4 rows of fireworks, and the plan was for 4 of us to light the first row, step back and light the second row, step back and light the third row etc.

Somewhere along the way while lighting them, we decided it would be more fun to run up behind each other and light them, causing us all to run around like headless chickens. In hindsight, it was dangerous and nobody should ever repeat the stunt, but it was incredibly fun and it looked amazing. Then one of the people lighting the fireworks, who I will name G*l, lit a firework that he had not set up properly. Instead of the firework shooting up in the air, it shot across the ground and raced towards the kids. Fortunately, as they were sitting on a hill, the firework picked up enough height going up the hill and went over their heads.

My mum always liked G*l, though she may not trust him with matches anymore.

It has been a while since the newspapers were so filled with important stories. Some people may harp on about the old WMD debacle, the collapse of Enron or the all of the Berlin Wall, but I am talking about stories of such real significance that they can literally change the world.

Firstly, the inevitable has happened. As with all celebrity marriages, Ken and Barbie have had to deal with their share of difficulties, including Ken's alleged homosexuality, his erectile disfunction (ie not having one), Barbie's alleged affairs with GI Joe, Action Man, Malibu Stacy and of course the constant stories on suspected plastic surgery. But finally, the end has come, and toyworld's most celebrated couple have finally agreed to split. JC has so far refused to comment, but a spokesperson has said that she will continue to enjoy her holdiay and worry about it when she gets home.

The world of sport has also been rocked by the most serious of allegations: cheating in a world championship event. The Canadian men's softball team has accused the New Zealand team, who defeated them in the final to win the world championship, of video taping the 'signals' given by the pitcher to the catcher. A New Zealand official was believed to have been sitting in the stands and taping the pitcher, then using a lap top to analyse the signals and convey them (possibly by semaphore) to the batter. The entire world is in deep shock that the world championship final of any event would be contested between Canada and New Zealand.

Two of the most respected people in their fields, entertainer Michael Jackson and boxer Mike Tyson, are both reported to be on the verge of bankruptcy. You can't help but be impressed with the way that these two have spent over US$500m in just a few short years, and if anyone is starting up a collection to help these guys gets out of their financial difficulties, please let me know.

Maybe Yasser Arafat would like to help them out?

Many of you have rightly commented that it is unwise to leave a blog in someone else's hands for any period of time. I suspect some of you have even cancelled trips in the past rather than face the choice of letting your blog be hijacked or letting your hits go down the drain.

In time (and by that I mean by now), Simon probably realises that he chose poorly. If he hasn't realised this yet, and his brotherly emotions are blinding him into thinking that the odd-economic think piece is sufficient cover for his blog, let me tell you another story about Simon. I call this story 'the danger of having long hair'.

Cast you mind back to 1993. Simon had a girlfriend at the time who was overseas, and Simon took advantage of the university holidays to go and visit. At the time, Simon was a member of the nerd revolution of the 1990's. Like free love in the 60's, Disco in the 70's and pastels and mullets in 80's, the nerd revolution was the fashion scene of the 90's. Black rimmed glasses, pony tail and artful facial hair was the hallmark of the modern man in these times.

On his final day overseas before a very long plane ride back to Australia, Simon became ill. It is strange how history forgets exaclty what it was that made him sick. Maybe it was something he ate or drank. It could have just been a simple tummy bug. He may have drunk too much paint thinner. The point is, he was sick.

Now flying while being ill isn't pleasent, and Simon was required to spend much of the trip in the bathroom. This was distressing but bearable, until the point where his hairband broke. And the plane hit turbulance. And at this point, Simon needed two hands to get his hair out of his face, one hand to hold himself stable and another to prevent himself from falling over while beig sick. Do the math.

Simon cut his hair off the next day. He never grew a ponytail again. He still wears the glasses. He was also once sick on the steps of the Royal Palace in Holland. He still isn't allowed back in the country.

I just received an e-mail this morning telling me I had won about AUD$1m in a Spanish lottery. It is amazing - I didn't have to buy a ticket to enter, or even bother to enter as it is done for you. I was lucky enough to have been one of the 25,000 selected from around the world to enter, and there was total prize pool of about AUD$150m.

The full script of the e-mail I received is in the expanded section below. I know this contravenes the agreement not to tell anyone about it, but I was just so happy to win the I couldn’t help myself. I have already informed my boss that I will be resigning once the money arrives, and he has kindly suggested that it is unnecessary for us to wait that long.

Having had both work and non-work e-mail accounts for over 5 years, I am amazed that this is the first time I received this type of scam email. I think I will frame it and put it next to the picture I don’t have of the first dollar I earned.

EL GORDO SPANISH SWEEPSTAKE LOTERY S.A
C / CORDOBA Nº 14 PLANTA 2-A
28089 MADRID, ESPANA
TEL.+34-635-084-228
FAX.+34-654-034-470

FROM:THE DESK OF THE PROMOTIONS MANAGER,
INTERNATIONAL PROMOTIONS/PRIZE AWARD DEPARTMENT,
REF:OYL /26510460037/02
BATCH:24/00319/IPD
DATE...10th feb,2004

ATTENTION> MR PAUL MASNICK.

RE/AWARD NOTIFICATION;FINAL NOTICE

We pleased to inform you of the announcement today,31st January2004, winners of the EL GORDO SPANISH SWEEPSTAKE LOTTEY COMPANY S.A PROGRAMES held on the 25th deciembre 2003.Your email address is attached to ticket number:023-0148-790-459,with serial number 5073-11 that drew the lucky numbers 43-11-44-37-10-43,and consequently won the lottey in the 3rd category. You have therefore been approved for a lump sum pay of EURO 500.000.00 ( FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND EURO in cash credited to file REF NO. OYL/25041238013/02.This is from total prize money of US$80,400,000.00 shared among the seventeen international winners in this category.All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn from 25,000 names from Australia,New Zealand,America,Europe,North America and Asia as part of International Promotions Program, which is conducted at every begining of each year.

CONGRATULATIONS!
Your fund is now deposited with a security company insured in your name.Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants of this program. We hope with a part of your prize,you will participate in our end of year high stakes US$1.3 billion international lottery.

To begin your claims,please contact your agent;Mr. Phillipe Bailen Taylor ( KT,SSS,ACIB )
FOREIGN OPERATION DIRECTOR,
Email,eurocity_trust@yahoo.com
TEL.+34-627-088-881.
For due processing and remittance of your prize money to a designated account of your choice. Remember, all prize money must be claimed not later than 1sth march 2004.After this date, all funds will be returned as unclaimed to the MINISTERIO DE ECONOMIA Y HACIENDA AS UNCLAIMED.NOTE:In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications,please remember to quote your reference and batch numbers in every one of your correspondences with your claim agent.
Furthermore.if there is any change of your address,do inform your claims agent as soon as possible.Congratulations again from all our staffs and thank you for being part of our promotions program.

Sincerely,
Ms MARIANA TAYLOR LOPEZ
SECRETARY.EL GORDO SPANISH SWEEPSTAKE LOTERY S.A
TEL.+34-654-239-685

It is my beautiful wife's birthday on Saturday. Fortunately, we both see Valentine's Day as nothing more than a sales gimmick along the lines of Father's Day, Mother's Day and Love Day, so I don't have to worry about extra presents.

Given we just got married, my Mrs M has just recieved pretty much all of the presents, both practical and decorative, that she wanted. That doesn't give me much to work with.

So please, any suggestions as to gifts for a 26 year old female would be much apprciated.

And to the people who know my Mrs M and are reading this, you saw nothing.

Australia has now signed an historic free trade agreement with our new bestest friend, the US of A. I think the deal went a little like this (Vaile is the Aussie in charge, Zoellick the US guy):

V: How about giving us access to your agricultural sector?
Z: (giggles). Get stuffed.
V: Please? i'll wash your car?
Z: Alright. How about I give you a tiny increase in beef exports, and we phase it in over 5 years?
V: Score! Johny will be so pleased!
Z: Ok then. As a compromise, why don't you give us immediate free access to all of your financial markets?
V: Score again! My turn. This is fun. Can we have something?
Z: We will repair your ships if they are damaged, but you can't use them between US ports.
V: Great! That means we get to pay you money, without being able to charge you for anything! Is this what they call 'rampant union protectionism?'
Z: Now your catching on! Now you let our companies import all our drugs into your country?
V: Touchy subject. Can't do that.
Z: Now the beef imports are over 15 years. Want to keep this up?
V: But...
Z: 18 now.
V: Ok. Can we cover it up by setting up an 'independant' tribunal to adjudicate on appeals by US companies?
Z: Sure. We can get those Pine Gap guys to run the tribunal. They are independant. (smiles to self)
V: What's Pine Gap?
Z: Right. Thats it. You just don't know when to stop. I hereby declare that the US will have free access to all your domestic markets.
V: Can we import stuff to you as well?
Z: What do you make?
V: Um....not much. Some cars and wine?
Z: Have you washed my car yet?
V: No. We are still talking.
Z: Haven't you learnt not to talk back. Now I am imposing wine quotas.
V: Have a free car!
Z: Deal. now get lost.

So this is the price Australia pays for joining in on the was in Iraq. We get to export a few more cars in return for a vast amount of US goods getting imported here instead. No wonder Howard is losing ground daily, but his spin doctors are already hard at work calling this deal a win for Australia.

Can anyone seriously see the US signing a free trade agreement that isn't better for them?

Many things of note happened on the weekend.

Australia again proved their superiority in the old colonial sport of cricket, thrashing arguably the 2nd best team in the world to win the tri-series. That game ends the cricket season in Australia for the year, much to the distress of pretty much every female in the country.

Saturday night was a 30th birthday party for my brother-in-laws fiance. I'm not sure if that makes her a future sister-in-law, or if she will just become the wife of my brother-in-law. Any expert opinions will be greatly appreciated. The party was a 'greek' dress up theme (as the fiance of brother-in-law is Greek). I went as fluffy dice. Nobody commented on my sewing skills.

The rest of the weekend is rant worthy, and hence in the extended entry section.

My first rant relates to the game of soccer I played on Sunday afternoon. My soccer skills are hardly the thing of legend, and I am unlikely to ever get a call up to play for Fulham or even a crappy club in the NSL in Australia, but can play for over an hour without tripping over my own feet. this makes me about 58 minutes more skillful than Simon.

The game I played was training for a club that i have little regard for. I have played tennis, cricket and touch footy for this club, and on every single occassion, i have quit in disgust and told myself I will never play again for them. Essentially, it is a club where there are the 'elite' and the 'plebs'. The 'elite' are the people who are friends with the people who run the club. The 'plebs' are the rest. The 'elite' don't bother turning up to training but will still play a full game whenever they feel like showing up. The 'plebs' have to turn up to every training session, and will only get to play if not enough of the 'elite' have bothered to show up. This happens frequently, however the 'elite' tend to all not show up at the same time, leaving insufficient 'plebs' to play.

I confess to being a 'pleb' in the above heirachy, and am very happy to be. So for training, it just so happened that the 'elite' players from the top division showed up, while the 'plebs' from Division 5 and 6 showed up. So they decided to organise a game of soccer between the 15 Division 1 players and the 10 Division 5&6 players. Spotting a trend yet?

Suffice to say it was a total waste of time, and my fellow 'plebs' were left repeatedly telling me that "it's not usually like this," to try and convince me to continue with training. Not sure why they are so keen to have me play given my level of skill. Maybe it is a cult or something.

And then there are drivers who push in. you know the ones. There are two lanes of traffice that merge into one. Most people will be in correct lane and will wait patiently will the idiots who try and overtake as fast as possible push in from the merging lane.

Quite simply, they have to be stopped, and I ask each of you to do your part. Next time someone is in the merging lane trying to push in because they can't be bothered to wait like everyone else, don't let them in. Make sure you drive so far up the bumper of the car in front of you that it is not physically possible. This is particularly effective if the car trying to push is really expensive. I stopped a Porsche convertible from merging. It made me happy, and just to show my displeasure with how annoying pushy the driver had been, I ensure my acceleration up the rest of the hill was damn slow.

Remember, these people can be stopped, but we all have to work together.

One has to love airport lounges and free internet useage. Of course that lounges seem to be busier than the harsh world of the airport outside is for another day.

I can see that Paul has managed to not break the blog in his first few days. Sure he's doing a great job on my reputation but that's OK, because it's hard to believe a convicted perjurer. I just hope no-one asks Paul about that ugly little "incident" a while back. "She looked 18"still doesn't count as a defence in the Australian legal system.

My co-worker Giles has neatly summed up the Singapore conference. With many of the big cheeses in town the lobby was usually busier than the conference room itself. Singapore again proved it does nightlife politely and early. They could learn a thing or two in the taxi department; restricted numbers of cabs make for some long waits for slightly ineberiated tourists.

For my Hong Kong friends I have only two words for you: Sally Yeh. My God she was good. Her flaky husband wasn't performing so she did a duet with one of the staff members instead, who proved himself to be a Canto-pop King. Karaoke has proved worthwhile after all.

I also had the good fortune to spend some coffee time with Richard who yet again proved how interesting and diverse the world of Asian blogging can be. The conversation was free-flowing and widespread, which is amazing given we had only just met. Visit his site - it's one of the best for news and views on China from the outside.

Off to enjoy the warm climes of Thailand for a week. It's tough but someone's got to do it.

We now return you to your regular service.

I figure most people who read this site are doing so to learn more about Simon and his diverse views on life.

So to give the people what they want, I will present a series of stories about Simon to help you better understand te complex character that he is.

Cast your minds back to 1994. It was a simpler time, one with less fear, where everyone felt safer in the world because the violence wasn't happening to them, to a time when radio DJ's didn't have to struggle to give the decade a catchy name.

Simon and I were both still living at home, and with the parents out for the day and a gale force wind outside, we were forced to play cricket inside the house rather than outside. The rules were simple. The bowler stood at the edge of the bathroom and bowled underarm spin, the batsmen at the end of the hall using a squash racquet to defend the stacked garbage bins that served as wickets.

We had played many times, never doing any real damage, until that fateful day. Simon was in a rare groove in the batting department, and the carpet just wasn't turning that much. A rare loose delivery was bowled, and Simon launched into a powerful rising straight drive, which proceeded straight into a nearby window and broke it.

It is said that in moments of panic, the character of a man (or women) is tested. Some will thrive in these enviroments, taking complete control of the situation. Quickly, a plausible cover story about a rock hitting the window in the wind was created, the repairer called, the insurance company placated. At least, thats what I was doing. Simon ran into his bedroom, closed the door and hid down the side of his bed.

True story.

As for the questions about Simon being asked, no, we never shared girlfiends. He had appalling taste before meeting Mrs M. And as for his favourite movie that he quotes verbatim, it would have to be 'Little Women'.

On behalf of this blog, happy birthday (for tomorrow) to Mrs M Snr, better known as the mother to both Simon and I. Happy 48th and may you have many, many more.

My rivalry with Simon while growing up was never quite this bad.....

Teen survives 20-storey jump
From correspondents in Hong Kong
February 5, 2004

A 15-year-old boy miraculously survived after leaping 20 storeys to escape taunts by his older brother for losing in a computer game.

The boy was taken to hospital pale but unscathed after landing on the awning of a shop on the ground floor of the Kowloon district residential block where he lives, Sing Tao newspaper reported today.

A fire brigade spokesman described the incident as a "miracle and lucky escape".

I’m starting to realise that blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. It usually seems that No.2 Son just blabs on about whatever he feels like, demonstrating to the world that he has a diverse range of interests and way too much time on his hands.

If your blog is only a particular topic, such as sports or politics, it makes it much easier in that your audience already knows what to expect from you. And when you do a diary blog, your biggest challenge is to lead a sufficently interesting life to attract a reader’s attention. But when you have a blog that doesn’t really fit into any category (other than runner-up in Best Newcomer), it makes it hard.

Initially, this blog began as a way for No.2 Son to partially redeem himself by keeping the family back home updated with what was happening, particularly with the family members we missed (i.e. Mrs M, JC, PB and Misti).

As an interesting sidebar, Misti was named by me. The story goes as follows. Misti entered our lives on the 21st birthday of Mrs M, and the challenge was on to find a name for a dog none of us had yet seen, and the problem was invariably that someone always disliked whatever name everyone else came up with. Eventually, in an effort to point out how silly some of the names were, I suggested the dog be called “The Mysterious, Stupendous and Enigmatic Paul”. There was some mild chuckles, followed by Mrs M telling me the name was too long for the collar. “That’s ok,” I quipped back, “you can call her Misty for short.”

And so it was that Misty was named Misti. For the record, Mrs M’s mother didn’t like the name, but was outvoted 1-0 by Mrs M. This story is true, except for the bit about Mrs M having been at her 21st birthday party at the time. It was really her 30th, I was just trying for flattery.

Anyway, back to what I was droning on about. So this blog began as a way to keep people in Australia up to date with what was happening in Hong Kong. From there, it grew into some observations about life in Hong Kong, and from No 2. Son’s free time, other blogger’s blogs and a plethora of obscure newspaper stories.

Being so mixed, it can be hard to come up with comments that are sufficiently interesting for al the diverese groups of readers. Fortunately, I don’t have to tell the family in Australia what is happening in my life as they know first hand, and I don’t have time to read other blogger’s blogs, so I guess have managed to alienate the entire blog’s audience. Bugger.

Then again, at least in typing this I have realised that it is actually not so hard to write a comment, so it wasn’t all a waste.

While No.2 Son is away, now is a great chance for you to find out the truth about No. 2 Son and his past. So if there is anything you want to know about him, ask away, and I will give you as close to a truthful response as I can. Remember, he will probably edit this first chance he gets, so feel free to print off any responses and use them against him later.

Of course, if nobody has any questions, that kind of says something about No. 2 Son as well…..

I guess most of you are wondering what to expect from me. Like Simon (or No.2 Son as he is affectionately known), I work full time. Unlike No.2 Son, I actually do work while I am in the office, and as such will have far less time to spend on the blog. I unfortunately lack the time to read everyone else’s blog each day, so I apologise to Helen and Hemlock and whoever else for not adding to your hits for the next two weeks.

I also am unable to change anything to do with the blog, nor do I automatically receive your witty and funny comments. I will try and read all your responses, but won’t be able to give you the instant responses you have come to know and love.

So a little about myself.

Yes, I am the brother who just got married. No. 2 Son only has one brother, and he is very lucky I have hung around this long. His speech was hilarious in much the same way that watching a body fly from a car crash is hilarious. Fortunately, I long ago learned the art of transcendental meditation, and was able to send my mind to a desert island with Liz Hurley while programming my mouth to laugh whenever No. 2 Son paused. It seemed to do the trick, though I was later told my laughing was inappropriate when No. 2 Son raised a toast to those who have departed.

Married life so far to the other Mrs M is wonderful, though pretty much the same as pre-married life was with Miss Z except we have more cutlery and crockery and a much smaller bank account.

I live in Australia, a country that is remarkably sensible (with the exception of everything that has happened since John Howard came into power). I am left wing politically, though I am itching for those upper class tax cuts. I live about 2 minutes from Bondi Beach, which is one of the best places in the world (with the exception of 12pm to 6am Friday and Saturday nights, in which case on British backpackers keen for a fight would be happy there).

Hopefully that is enough to keep you interested until the next post. If not, feel free to not read for two weeks till No.2 Son returns.

If you have any questions or want to know anything about me, just ask and don’t be too offended when I either ignore you or dob you in to the FBI as a terrorist (there is a sliding scale).

And as a warning, it is probably best if nobody asks much about anything to do with rugby league in Australia, or else be prepared for a very, very long response.

In the interests of seeing what a police state looks like first hand, I am heading to Singapore this evening for a conference. Edge of the seat excitement awaits while hundreds of hung-over attendees listen to various grandees drone on about topics that hardly matter. On the agenda is a visit to Singapore's only night spot worthy of the name: the "Four floors of (rhymes with floors, slang name for female sex worker, often used by the American Navy)". Always an interesting place to visit, given most of the customers are tourists and the "ladies" are not. First timers stand out - they're the ones bothering to talk to the "ladies". Singapore even does sleaze in such a polite and mannered way.

The good news is to follow I will be meeting Mrs M, JC and PB in Thailand to see what bird flu looks like first hand. And to enjoy the delights of Club Med, France's answer to farm-style prisons. It will be a time to relax, enjoy tropical climes, recharge the creative juices and collect numerous amusing anecdotes to regale you with upon my return. Given even poor Hemlock seems to have taken leave of his senses, I fear this holiday is long overdue. Plus it's a good excuse to take Luuka to meet the ladyboys of Phuket.

Obviously I couldn't go on holidays and leave this work of art some call a blog to wither on the vine. How would you cope without something to read here for a couple of weeks? I heard that - "just fine" is not a valid answer. How could I let the momentum drop? So I have found a guest blogger for these two weeks. Someone with many of the same experiences and much the same background as myself, and yet strangely different to me. Someone with an almost unholy love of the Simpsons and an unusual grasp of reality. Someone from a time zone three hours earlier than Hong Kong, allowing more blogging goodness in your day.

So finally we come to the moment you've been waiting for. The envelope please...Ladies and Gentlemen, I have given the keys of the kingdom to my brother Paul for the next two weeks.

Have I taken leave of my senses? Yes. But the deed is done, the passwords have been passed. He's a damn interesting person and he'll be your host. I may drop in from time to time, but the truth is if Club Med is anything like I've been told, I'll be lucky to make back with sensible views of the world. I fully expect to return to a blog that looks much like my bedroom did when I left my brother in charge: booby-trapped, bugged, broken, dishevelled and ratty.

Go easy on him and enjoy.

That reminds me, I need to get a haircut today.

As an unpaid member of the Hong Kong Tourism Commission (I told them the light and fireworks for the tourists of TST was a waste of time) I'm proud to present the one guide you really need to get around in Hong Kong: the Hong Kong Taxi Guide. This has been made necessary as part of my campaign to have Hong Kong taxis listed as a World Heritage item by the UN.

Hong Kong taxis come in three colours: red for the Island and Kowloon, green for the New Territories, and blue for Lantau Island. Theoretically taxis from each region cannot work in other areas. Why this should be so is a mystery lost in the annals of Hong Kong history. However usually it comes down to each area trying to restrict the number of drivers. Each taxi is individually owned which means the drivers tend to work 28 hours a day and consider their cab more like a home.

So to the rules:
1. Not all red taxis are the same. If they have a sign saying out of service on them, it actually means they are in service, but not going where you're going. If they're on the Island they are only interested in going back to Kowloon. Silly you thought they were all meant to service the Island and Kowloon; easy mistake for beginners to make.
2. Your taxi driver can have three conversations at once, and yet not one of them is with you. They have their radios, their mobile phones (complete with wires dangling for an earpiece) and many like talking to themselves.
3. Your taxi driver knows where they are going, but they know a completely different route to the way you know. Hong Kong being a complete rabbit warren with random street placements means all roads lead everywhere. There's no such thing as lost in Hong Kong. You just drive long enough and you get somewhere that gets you somewhere else. (NOTE: there is one exception to this rule. Never get into a lane that says Kowloon if you're on the Island, because you'll be in a tunnel before you can leave the lane. Unless you wanted to go to Kowloon, in which case no-one will let you into the lane you need to get into).
4. Taxi drivers are the masters of HK road etiquette. This simply means they are pushier, more aggressive and more unyielding than regular drivers. Unfortunately this includes busses.
5. Taxi drivers are masters of spacial perception. Their ability to weave a sedan into a space is unparalleled.
6. A taxi's radio will also be on the same station, which seems to mix Canto-pap with some DJs who clearly mixed too many amphetamines into their breakfast.
7. The taxi will have one climate: freezing cold. This is a relief in summer, but a worry in winter. Don't bother asking to adjust the temperature - it's not an option.
8. A taxi driver can only ever change a $100 note at best. This is despite the massive wad of cash they peel off notes from. Sure the guy next to you in the bank depositing thousands at a time is also the same guy who dropped you at the bank in the first place, but a $500 (or worse $1000) note is like doing a fart in the cab. It's just not done.
9. Taxis work only by distance travelled, rather than time (except for waiting time). This means a taxi has an incentive to get you to your destination as quickly as possible. Obeying road rules is optional.
10. If you've had a big night out, and there are two ways home, the cab will take the twistiest, windiest and most convoluted route possible. They will invoke the random braking provisions of their licence to induce nausea.
11. Taxis have automatic doors on the passenger side only. The driver's side is locked. This means the door, in theory, can be opened for you by the driver. It won't be. But it could. On the other hand, the door will tend to swing open before the cab actually stops at your destination.
12. Seat belts are highly recommended. Even if your driver isn't wearing one. In fact that's a better sign you do need one.
13. A taxi's boot is like Dr. Who's Tardis. While seemingly limited in size, a taxi driver can in fact fit a family of 6 into their boot. This is despite the boot also containing assorted car cleaning items, some assorted personal gear and lunch.
14. The taxi driver knows your destination. They just don't understand you and your cr@p Cantonese.
15. It is a taxi driver's right to add random charges at the end of your journey: tolls, return tolls, luggage charges, passenger charges. You cannot argue these - they're in the fine print somewhere.
16. A taxi driver looks nothing like the photo licence they have on the dashboard. Usually because it is someone different driving the cab.
17. Never question a driver's personal hygiene or driving ability.
18. Respect the wisdom of your driver. He's been studying the form guide for Wednesday's races far longer than you have.

There are plenty more rules but that's enough to go along with. Feel free to add more.

For all the complaints people have about Hong Kong and its lack of service culture, one thing they manage to get right is logistics. I've alluded to how good the postal system is - letters have been known to arrive the same day as they were posted.

I found myself at the Airport Express this morning. The checking-in process took literally 60 seconds. It was so fast I didn't have time to fill in my SARS form. And that's despite checking in two hefty pieces of luggage. The lady was quick, helpful and friendly.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a SARS form to fill in.

The times they are a changin'...there's a mighty big change heading to this blog tomorrow.

One of the best parts of expat life is the people you meet. Be it on the bus, around our apartment or through the school we are constantly meeting interesting and varied people we would never meet any other way. Much like this blog, I suppose. It is a narrow group in some ways: generally they are professionals, people who are good enough at what they do that companies are prepared to move and keep them in a foreign country at extra expense. Some are in their third or fourth postings; others like us are in our first (and my mother-in-law hopes last). By no means is it a perfect group. There are some we've met who quite frankly repulse me. It is a small circle, not representative of anything much at all. But on the whole it makes for an eclectic mix.

What this group has in common is they are not in their home country. The difference between expats and others is expats are in a country temporarily - it may be years, but in the end the goal is to return to some other place. It certainly changes one's mindset. It forces one to do as much as you can as quickly as you can because of this temporary status. Visit places, see the sites, travel, meet, eat, greet. This also means all of these people are located away from family and friends, from the familiarity of their points of origin, from their support network. Hong Kong is not a difficult place to live, far from it. But it is still a foreign city. It's not our city.

Being away from your support network is a big deal with kids. Even without kids it's certainly not the same being away, perhaps for better, perhaps for worse. Having a live-in helper certainly goes some way to making up the gap. But even that is not enough to cover the gap. So far in my experience much of the gap is made up through the friends you make instead. Everyone is in the same boat. Everyone goes through the same trials and tribulations. Those that have been here longer can help with advice. The main thing is everyone is there for everyone else.

This sense of community leads to strong bonds. Friendships form quickly and they can quickly become deep. It also leads to the problem. By its very nature an expat community is a transient one. Families are coming and going with frightening regularity. We're approaching such a time now - this year we already know several families heading out of HK. While being all happy for them and blah blah, it hurts to put in such effort into friendships only to find them disappearing. We will stay in touch of course and may even see them again one day, but it won't be the same. And one day it will be us that is leaving. It is not a question of blame or pity. It is a fact of life. It doesn't make it any easier.

Another part of the strange life that is being an expat.

With eager anticipation I raced home last night. My mail order Swedish bride had arrived. Sure she's a little different to your average Swede (click the extended entry to see what I mean).

What is amazing is the speed with which Luuka arrived. She was sent from Sweden on January 29th, last Thursday. She arrived her in Hong Kong at our apartment in the mail on Monday, February 2nd. Regular mail. Not express or courier. Regular mail.

Which lead me to think why is that so amazing? After all, the flight from Sweden to Hong Kong is perhaps 14 hours. With a window to get the package from the post office to the plane, and another window from plane to post box here in Hong Kong the whole process really shouldn't take much longer. But Post Offices, for years, have managed to get away with slow delivery. Why should a package take more than a week to go by air mail from Sydney to London? The flight takes 24 hours - the rest shouldn't be more than a day either side.

I'm going to use Australia as an example. I know in Australia the Government forbids competition with Australia Post in packages under a certain weight (I think 100 grams). In other words the vast majority of letters. Yet in areas where Australia Post competes with couriers, they are no cheaper or faster than the competition. So what benefit is there in having a monopoly provider of postal services? None, except it enables the Government to keep open post offices in places (read country towns) where they otherwise wouldn't survive. That's not to say that Australia Post is slow - most letters arrive within 2 business days and stamps are not expensive. But why should they maintain a monopoly? Why should my letters take a week to get to London? In areas where Postal companies compete packages seem to take a lot less time.

It's another example of a Government monopoly that could do with a dose of competition. But then the Government couldn't extract large "dividends" each year.

Goddamn, she's a cute Swede, isn't she?

It's the biggest thing since Brittney and Madonna briefly touched lips. Yes, amazingly, Janet Jackson has a breast. Sure she's got seemingly shocking taste in nipple rings but the hoop-ala over Boob-gate is going way over the top. Is it really so difficult for millions of Americans to cope with a breast on national TV? Will it lead to the collapse of modern society? Will it result in kids across the land ripping their shirts open in the school cafeteria (probably, actually, but that's besides the point)?

Americans seem completely contradicted over sex. Violence is fine. But anything related to sex brings out the Puritanical heart in the American soul. Is it so difficult for Mum and Dad to explain to junior that Janet Jackson is a woman and has breasts, just like Mummy? I agree it's not the kind of thing you want to see every day in prime time and there's a time and place for it (i.e. after 11pm on those cable channels that seem to be blocked). But for God's sake, it's only a breast with a weird ornament on it.

The real problem is where do pop-stars go from here. Lesbian kiss, then half nudity. They're fast running out of places to go in order to achieve "shock value". That's the problem with shock - once it happens it's not so shocking anymore. Imagine a couple of tartlets got up in an awards show now and snogged - it's all so last year.

The real scandal would have been if talented musicians captured the hearts and minds of millions during the Super-Bowl halftime. I shudder to think what treacle will be doled out next year.

Let me ask you a quesiton. When was the last time you changed your mind about something?

It could be as trivial as the colour of the couch you want to buy, or as profound as the merits of the war in Iraq. But I would say that most people find it close to impossible to change their mind about anything once it's made up. Even in the light of incontrovertible facts to the opposite people are desperate to cling on to their beliefs. Something deeply seated in the human psyche compels us to become rigid in our beliefs. Therein lies the problem.

In modern times we are constantly bombarded by information. The net, cable news, radio, newspapers, phones - we have too much information coming at us too fast too often. The human mind is good at blocking out much of this as it can. Yet there is a constant demand on the brain to make quick decisions and move on because that is a fast way of dealing with information. Decisions as simple as for against? Yes or no? You are asked your opinion and unless you want to look ignorant you need to form one fast. And once you do it becomes difficult for your mind to rebel against it.

Let's use the Iraq war as an example. Plenty of people had strong opinions on the war and its merits. There are those who have been completely against the war and those completely in favour. There is very little middle ground. How did you make your decision. Did you research the background, checking the UN documents, the weapons inspector reports? Did you rely on various media reports to decide? Did you take into account the bias of those reports? The agenda of those making the report? Did you accept what friends said they had heard? Did you decide because someone you respected said their position?

The point is the same. The method people take positions on such things is random. But once made it is solid. Further research usually does little to change one's mind, particularly because once a decision is made people prefer to find facts that suit their chosen view.

The principle applies widely. Which is the most disturbing part. If you are George W., or Tony Blair, or any senior decision maker, keeping an open mind is the key to being effective. They have advisers who have agendas. They have their own pre-conceived notions. They need to make decisions often and more importantly they need to get them right. So when it appears that Iraq has no WMD they have clearly made decisions based on bad advice. That doesn't make the original decision incorrect. It does mean the information gathering process needs serious examination. Because decisions these people make effect everyone.

Finally what about you. When you next take a stand on something are you going to rely on your gut instinct, your first impression? Or will you take the effort to do some research to try and make a more informed decision? Use the net, blogs, the library, the media to try and get a fairer picture?

I thought not. That's the problem.

One fad I cannot understand is the craze for roller shoes with retractable wheels. There is not a shopping centre in Hong Kong where kids leaning back on their heels and gliding around like Disney on ice are not a feature along with overpriced shops and difficult to find bathrooms. It's another one of those pointless crazes that seem to exist only to baffle those of us with functioning brains.

Hong Kong's World Carnival finally finished yesterday. It's a traditional fun fair, with rides that seem to push the limits of physics and more stuffed toys per square foot than in an Asian stuffed toy factory. I don't quite know what the fascination is with stuffed toys in Asia, but when you see people literally pulling bag-loads of toys they have won you know that this is not a normal city.

We decided to take JC and PB as a way to get out of the house and fully revel in another Hong Kong experience. IT was crowded. There were meaningless signs pointing the wrong way. There was copious amounts of fried food, loud music and flashing lights. And there were the stuffed animals as far as the eye could see, all willingly spending their hard earned cash on real stuffed animals. The carnival organisers know their stuff: you buy tokens instead of using cash, because copper tokens don't feel the same as $5 pieces. And 3 tokens sounds better than $15 for some crappy carnival game. We duly won our stuffed toys for the girls. PB was even given one by a passer-by. Finally the girls are earning their way.

Though I would have preferred a few tokens.

Fiction is based on the premise of willing supsension of belief. That is, you are prepared to set aside things you know in order to go along with the story. For example, it is clear that an actor is acting - they are not the actual characters they are depicting. Likewise often the events of the story are so unlikely they could not be true, but you go along because it is entertaining. But enough of English 101.

Mrs M and I went to a movie on Saturday night. Going into such a movie with extremely low expectations means they are highly likely to be met. And they were. We saw Paycheck. If after the first 5 minutes you can believe Ben Affleck is an expert electrical engineer and Uma Thurman, depsite a shocking haircut, is actually a doctor of biology, you're well on your way to enjoy the preposterous plot. I even managed to restrain myself from thinking too much about the massive holes in the story.

What I did think about was this: The Evil Henchman's Guide. Read it and never again let a henchman say they weren't warned.

The good people from the Disneyland apartment complex where we live often posts notices in the lift well. Mostly they are they the mundane: changes in bus timetables, events, fines for throwing objects off balconies. But every now and again there's a notice that, well, makes you take notice. The best was one titled:

Pellet Guns and Balconies

I wish I had taken a photo. It went on to explain that it was not only illegal but also dangerous to shoot pellet guns off balconies at passing wildlife. Just in case you hadn't already realised that yourself. I shudder to think what prompted such a notice. But suffice it to say the pellet gun hasn't been out of the storage closet since.

Mrs M and I have just come from the doctor, checking up on Ubul. All is fine and well. The little critter can't stop moving. Our doctor is from the sceptical English school. You know, "Don't worry about that rubbish" kind of thing. In order to dispel a myth, I asked him if it is any way possible to catch bird flu by eating cooked chicken. "No way at all" he replied. As the grin spread across my face in a self-satisfied, I know-better-than-everyone kind of way, he uttered the one word you never want to hear from a doctor: "However..." I stopped mid-grin. "However?" I asked. "However, if today's story is true, we're all in deep trouble."

Two sisters in Vietnam who died from bird flu may have contracted the virus from their brother, the WHO said yesterday. If confirmed, this would mark the first human-to-human transmission of the disease.
The finding came as the mainland reported five more areas with suspected cases - a sign bird flu is spreading quicker than expected.

...

While the source of infection for the two sisters cannot be conclusively identified, the WHO said it "considers that limited human-to-human transmission, from the brother to the sisters, is one possible explanation".

However, it also added that there was "no evidence of efficient human-to-human transmission of H5N1 occurring in Vietnam or elsewhere".

The health agency has already warned that the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain could combine with a human flu virus to create a lethal new strain that could kill millions of people across the globe through human-to-human transmission.

Nice cheery way to start the week.