What's in a name?

Sitting in the airport departure area yesterday (don't get your hopes up, I wasn't the one leaving), I found myself in front of a massive information board advertising Morgan Stanley with (curiously) a picture of an Indian temple, presumably to emphasise the worldwide nature of their services. Along the top and bottom of this board were scrolling bars of financial information - currency exchange rates, stock indexes and the like - provided, so the board said, by Thomson Reuters.

I happened to notice that among the Hong Kong share prices listed was one for "Amoy Properties". Amoy Properties changed its name to Hang Lung Properties in 2002. If it takes one of the world's leading banks and possibly the world's largest financial information provider more than seven years to notice that one of Hong Kong's biggest companies (a constituent of the Hang Seng Index) has changed its name, it's no wonder we have a financial crisis.

Nosey Parker Wants to Know

Why is it that most car parks in Hong Kong appear to have been designed by people whi have never driven a car in their lives?

Culture Shock

After more than three decades in Hong Kong, I thought I was pretty well immune to culture shock, but after a couple of weeks' holiday in England recently, I found myself unexpectedly stunned by the sheer density of people in the streets of Mongkok a few days ago - as if I was experiencing it for the first time. A strange feeling.

The best of the worst

There is plenty of competition for the title of "World's Worst Regime". Twenty years ago the Tiananmen Massacre would have seen China in with a strong chance.

Today the Kim Family Empire of North Korea is clearly a leading contender, spending the country's limited resources on developing nuclear weapons while the people go hungry. Robert Mugabe's achievement in turning one of the most prosperous countries in Africa into one of the poorest and most repressive through his greed, arrogance and incompetence also makes him a strong competitor. Saudi Arabia's treatment of women puts it on the list, as does Israel's six decades of trampling on the Palestinians, while Iran is mounting a spirited challenge following the (probably rigged) re-election of Ahmadinejad.

But for sheer out-and-out hypocrisy it would be very hard to beat the unpleasant bunch of aging generals who rule Burma. The BBC reports that they have just jailed two people for 18 months for "insulting religion" after they publicly prayed at a temple for the release of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. This from the regime that showed its deep respect for religion in 2007 by murdering hundreds of Buddhist monks for protesting peacefully!

Be sure to insert your earplugs before listening to the people

A few days ago the government held a "consultation session" with the people of Mui Wo on Lantau Island, supposedly to hear their views on the proposal to allocate a vacant school building in Mui Wo for use by a special school for the rehabilitation of teenagers with drug problems. As it turned out, local sentiment was overwhelmingly against the proposal.

In the few days since then, a series of senior government oficials have made speeches pleading with the islanders to be more understanding of the need for the school, and to accept the proposal. This proces culminated in the Chief Executive himself reiterating this appeal.

Seceral interesting points emerge from this series of events. Firstly, it is obvious that the government has already made up its mind to push the proposal through, and is unwilling to listen seroiously to any opposing viewpoint. In that case, why hold a sham "public consultation" if they had no intention of listening to counter-arguments by the Mui Wo residents in the first place?

Secondly, as I understand it from media reports, the main objection by most islanders is not to the proposal as such, but that they feel (quite reasonably) that any vacant school on the island should be allocated to their own children, who now have to make the long ferry journey to Hong Kong every day to attend classes. The government has apparently given them no answer on this point.

While no reasonable person would deny that teenagers with drug problems need help, the government's rush to move them to this school does not appear to be part of any coherent long term educational planning process. Rather, I suspect it is a panic reaction to several well-piblicised recent cases of young people being found under the influence of drugs in public places, together with pres stories of drug use in leading local chools. The governmen wants to be seen doing something positive quickly about this situation, however ill thought out their response may be.

When are we going to get a government that actually listens to the public, and places long term planning above short term PR exercises?

Why Iranians are exactly the same as Americans

Despite all the political tensions between the USA and Iran, at heart Americans and Iranians are exactly the same.

Proof: the Iranians have just done in 2009 exactly what the Americans did in 2004 - re-elected a failed incompetent ill-informed loudmouth of a president just because he said the right things to appeal to religious conservatives.

P.S. (17 June) That is, if he actually did win the election - clearly a large proportion of the Iranian people don't think so. But then, objections to Bush's election were swept under the carpet as well.

Ten Things Vancouver Does Better than "Asia's World City"

If you're wondering why I haven't posted much recently, it's because I was in Vancouver for two weeks in late April/early May (probably about my 10th visit in 20 years), where I was too relaxed to blog, and I've mostly been too busy to blog since getting back.

Visiting other places does put one's own home into clearer perspective, and much as I love Hong Kong, it has to be admitted that there are many things it could do better to earn its self-proclaimed "world city" status. For example:

1. Welcoming visitors: Canada's customs inspections are notoriously intrusive, but at least BC has successfully handled a few cases of swine flu without feeling the need to imprison several hundred tourists for a week because they just might have been in contact with someone who just might have contracted a disease that just might be dangerous.
2. Brewing: the Vancouver area has a clutch of excellent microbreweries and brewpubs (Steamworks in Gastown being one of my favourites - good food, too) producing beers of great character and flavour. Beers from the longest established of these, Granville Island Brewing, have even surfaced on the shelves of City Super in Hong Kong. By comparison, Hong Kong has one microbrewery, which long ago ceased to brew its sole world class beer, Crooked Island, and today keeps a dangerously low profile.
   
3. Selling booze: for whatever historical reason, liquor is not sold for home consumption in supermarkets and groceries in BC. Instead, there are some private beer and wine stores, but the major outlet for booze is the provincial government's liquor stores. If you know Sweden's drab government liquor outlets, deliberately designed to be depressing in a vain attempt to make drinking unattractive, you may groan at the thought. But BC's liquor stores are very different (though they do promote responsible drinking) - spacious, brightly illuminated, well laid-out, cheerful emporia filled with every type of booze you can imagine from all over the world, from Laphroaig single malt to my favourite Belgian Trappist ale, Orval. Generous shelf space is given to local wines and microbrews, and you may find tastings being offered. Nowhere in Hong Kong comes anywhere near the variety of choice offered in BC - and so far as I know, Orval is only available here with meals at the Grand Place Belgian restaurant in IFC.
   
4. Shopping malls: how many Hong Kong shopping malls have comfortable seats where you can just sit and relax? Free parking? Fun carts to push the kids around in? Even a little train taking them for rides around the mall? (Answer: one, none, none and none, to my knowledge.) The shopping mall is of course part of North American culture, and Vancouver has some excellent ones - the biggest, Metrotown, is so large it even houses two branches of some stores. But it's not just the physical facilities - why are there so many things it's easy to buy in Canada and impossible to find in Hong Kong?
5. Nudity - despite some lovely sunny days which saw hardy Canadians shed their winter fleece in favour of T-shirts and hotpants, it was a little too cool during this trip to visit Wreck Beach (picture). But on fine summer weekends, Vancouver's scenic official clothing-optional beach, 6.5 km long, is enjoyed by thousands of people from all of Vancouver's numerous communities in varying states of undress. Number of clothing-optional beaches in Hong Kong: nil (though there are a few isolated spots where you can strip off if you're so inclined).
6. Cultural diversity: for all its world city pretensions, Hong Kong sometimes seems at heart a conservative provincial Chinese city with a thin overlay of internationalism. Vancouver, by comparison, wears its multiculturalism comfortably. More than half the population is now from a non-English-speaking background (not just Asians), but they rub along peacefully together. Compare the road in Richmond that has a Baptist church, Chinese temple, Tibetan temple and mosque all sitting companionably side by side with the long frustrating attempt by Hong Kong's Muslims to find a site for a new mosque in the New Territories.
   
7. Cycling: even in the heart of the city, Vancouver has many cycle lanes and actively encourages cycling as a pollution-free form of transport. While Hong Kong has some good cycle paths in the New Territories, cyclists are far from welcome in the urban areas. This could be because Vancouver's cyclsists generally wear safety helmets and follow the rules of the road, whereas most cyclists here do not appear to be aware that there are any rules, even less that they should follow them.
8. Recycling: Every home in Vancouver separates its household waste into several categories for recycling, with the result that only a very small proportion ends up in landfills. Cans and bottles go back to the liquor store. If Hong Kong was as serious about recycling, the government wouldn't need to steal sections of our country parks for new landfills.
   
9. Conservation: heritage buildings in Vancouver are routinely cherished and restored, while Hong Kong's government has to be pushed really hard to save anything worthwhile from the past - look at the King Yin Lei fiasco.
   
10. Greek restaurants: there are probably several dozen of these in Vancouver. For some reason, no Greek restaurant in Hong Kong seems to survive longer than a year, and to my knowledge, there is not even one at present.
    
11. Major sporting events: One more for luck - I'll see your 2009 East Asian Games and raise you my 2010 Winter Olympics.
    

A recent Economist survey declared Vancouver the world's most livable city. Hong Kong ranked 39th out of 127 cities included, the second highest in Asia after Osaka. Harare (Zimbabwe) came last.

I Should Be There

Every year I promise myself that I will attend the June 4th candlelight vigil in Victoria Park, and there's always some reason why I don't make it. But I do want to mark the occasion here - if only to tell Donald Tsang firmly and clearly that no, you do not speak for all Hong Kong people in trying to sweep the massacre under the carpet. You certainly don't speak for me.

Song for PCCW Directors

Listening to Bob Dylan's new album, Together Through Life, I was interested to see that he's apparently written one song for the Board of PCCW. "You took all my money and you gave it to Richard Li," he sings in one line of Shake Shake Mama. What could be clearer than that?  

Disclaimer - I get a small commission from Amazon if you buy the CD through the picture link here.

Bankers with a W revisited

Walking through Central earlier this afternoon, I observed that three banks - Citibank, Dah Sing and DBS - had protesters outside them, apparently aggrieved victims of the Lehman's minibonds saga.

We have already seen plenty of evidence that, on the scale of human decency, bankers rate only slightly above lawyers and politicians. Here's another piece: while waiting for a bus in Des Voeux Road, I noticed that Wing Lung Bank has cordoned off part of its broad front steps and has posted no fewer than four security staff there. So far as I can see their primary function - perhaps their sole function - is to keep non-customers from defiling the bank;s sacred steps with their presence.

Even at minimum wage, by the time you take into account MPF, annual bonus and uniforms, this means the bank must be spending close to half a million dollars a year just to prevent those waiting for a bus from enjoying the only spot of shelter from sun or rain in the vicinity. How mean can you get? (If any Wing Lung shareholder is reading this, they might like to question whether this is an appropriate use of the bank's money.)

The Rip-off Files 3B - Getting it right

As a follow-up to my previous post, Wellcome actually got it right for once. As well as matching PARKnSHOP's price cut on the individual cans of Red Bull, they lowered the price of the 4-pack to $48.

On my way to where

In another shining example of the Hong Kong government's dazzling intelligence, the Highways Departmnt (I assume) has covered all the direction signs on the Tsing Ma Bridge with bamboo scaffolding. So if you're coming from the airport and don't know which lane you should be in, don't expect much help in finding out.

And to the driver of the taxi running along the airport highway without lights at close to 10pm last night: the only reason I don't give your number here to tell eceryone what a prat you are is that it was too dark to see it clearly.

Redundant Redundancy

No, not the type that so many employees are facing in the current recession - what I'm talking about today is redundant words in company names.

We live in an impatient age, and companies pander to this by shrinking their names. The model for this is of course International Business Machines, who shortened their long name to IBM and for a while became one of the most successful companies in the world (before making the deadly mistake of letting young William Gates keep the rights to the operating system he created for them).

Every business with a long name now routinely contracts it to something shorter, or just initial letters. So the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation becomes HSBC, and even the venerable Liu Chong Hing Bank ditches the Liu from its name as one syllable too many.

The problem is that this often throws out the meaning of the name at the same time. This is fine if you're a household name like HSBC or IBM, and everyone knows what you stand for anyway. But some companies then start re-exoanding the name to restore meaning to it. So today I saw a van with FedEx Express on the side, and our electricity comes from a company called CLP Power.

What this means is that we now have Federal Express Express and China Light and Power Power. Am I the only one who finds this rather silly silly?

Lemming Fever

Funier today, in his usual inimitable style, castigates the media for whipping up a panic over a few cases of flu in Mexico and the US. A handful of infections hardly justifies those who have started running around like Cassandra on a bad day wailing that "We're all going to die!" We heard the same during the SARS outbreak, and how many of you know anyone who actually died from SARS? The only person I know who contracted the disease is my doctor, and he recovered. It eventually killed just one in every 23,000 Hong Kong people.

This is not to say you shouldn't take the flu threat seriously; just keep a sense of proportion.

One of the funny things about this latest potential pandemic is that they're calling it swine flu, but one expert on TV the other day said it's a new mutation of the flu virus and there's no evidence that it came to humans from pigs. By that logic it could just as well be called wombat flu or polar bear flu , though I think perhaps lemming fever would be the most appropriate analogy - unless the swine they're thinking of are Gadarene.

Update: I've just seen Donald Tsang on the news telling us to be calm, so perhaps it really is time to panic after all! I'm off to Canada tomorrow night.

Britain's oldest teenager

The Daily Mail newspaper has an article on a young lady they claim is Britain's youngest female funeral director. Nothing wrong with that, but since they describe her as being 20 in the heading, then call her a teenager in the main text, she must also be Britain's oldest teenager (Sir Jimmy Savile excepted, of course).

All together now: seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenteen, ...

Bingo!

My email inbox has 666 unread items in it. How beastly!

The Rip-off Files 3A - When will they ever learn?

Undeterred by the Consumer Council's recent criticism from pursuing bizarre and misleading pricing policies, PARKnSHOP was yesterday selling Red Bull at the reduced price of $12.90, down from the usual $13.90. No complaints about that - except that the 4-pack was still at its usual price of $54.80, i.e. $13.70 per can.

In most places, buying the bulk pack of anything gets you a better price, but I suppose that's too straightforward for Li Ka-shing's wonderkids.

If we don't know where you are, we'll write to you there

In yet another example of the Hong Kong government's intellectual brilliance, the Transport Department is sending out a circular to all registered drivers and vehicle owners reminding them that any change of address must be notified to the department.

Whichever civil servant dreamed up this scheme must have been having a Homer Simpson moment, because it doesn't take an Einstein to spot the fatal flaw in it.

The Rip-off Files 3: Nothing super about it

The discovery by the Consumer Council that Hong Kong's cozy supermarket duopoly is routinely misleading customers with false "special offers" will come as no surprise to those familiar with Hong Kong retail practices. In some cases, the Council found, the "promotion" price was actually higher than the regular price!

What this does is highlight the need for long overdue consumer protection legislation in Hong Kong. This could be modelled on the UK's law which requires a "sale price" item to have been sold at a lower price for a minimum period before it can be advertised as a special offer.

Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority''s head has reported that the controversial Lehman's minibonds, which have also raised concerns about inadequate consumer protection here, were classified as high risk by some of the banks selling them, medium risk by others, and low risk by yet others. If even the banks don't understand these products sufficiently to agree on how risky they are, they are certainly too complex to be palmed off on to unsophisticated investors.

The further so-called derivatives stray from any link to real goods and services, the harder it becomes to determine their real worth. For example, a valuer can tell you the price of a house in California. but if the mortgage on that property is packaged up into bits, bundled with hundreds of others, and sold to hundreds of banks worldwide, what is each of those bits worth? Lose sight of the fact that such products have a link to the real world, and the risk that their price becomes uncoupled from the value of the underlying assets increases dramatically. Which is exactly how the credit crunch arose.

Making It Better: The Consumer Council of Hong Kong

Ho Ho, Very Satirical

Spike today has a piece about the current row over an allegedly racist article by local commentator Chip Tsao in HK Magazine. For those who haven't kept up, the Philippines government took exception to a sentence in which Tsao described Filipinos as "a nation of servants", and banned him from entry to the Philippines. Local domestic helpers have become equally overwrought about it and plan a demonstration to condemn him, even though he has already apologised.

As Spike says, the article was clearly satirical, and the magazine's editor should have defended its columnist instead of caving in to pressure by publishing an apology. However, while this may be correct in principle, I think it over-simplifies the matter.

Both Mr Tsao and HK magazine have a considerably larger, and probably more diverse, readership than the small coterie of Hong Kong expat bloggers like ourselves, Fumier, and Ulaca who trade in-jokes online. While it is clear that Tsao intended his piece as satire, the subtleties of saying one thing and implying another are often lost on those for whom English is a second language. For this reason, writers and editors need to take particular care to ensure their intentions are not misunderstood in a multicultural community such as Hong Kong.

I remember some years ago submitting a satirical article on how not to get a job to a local recruitment magazine, based on my years of experience in recruiting IT staff for a major bank. The article - which contained such valuable advice as "leave unexplained gaps in your CV" and "remember not to sign your cover letter" - was accepted, but only after the editor turned it around into a straight article on how to get a job, on the basis that the humour would be lost on the intended audience.

Even if HK's editor believed the intent was clear, there is another problem - once someone influential misinterprets such an article, most of those who subsequently get heated up about it have never read the original piece, only someone else's distorted version of it. Once matters reach this stage, there is little anyone can do except wait for the fuss to blow over - and in Mr Tsao's case, plan to take his next beach holiday in Thailand!