It was an unusual week, with two general holidays sandwiched between two weekends, which makes planning and living rather challenging. I heard that some company entrepreneurs had simply asked their staff to close down for a week to save the overheads, knowing that no one would be geared up for any real work during the…
I can’t be sure who had it first – Su or I – but since Su said it was me, so it must be me. We have been nursing our cold for the third day now; and we expect to shake them off by weekend; for we have lined up some heavy stuff next week,…
It all began towards the end of June when we were required to relocate our personal effects in storage from five units to one big unit with the same combined gross floor area on the same level in the same building. Amongst the prized collection are scores of vinyl records mixed up with laser discs…
Have you ever asked yourself what a perfect day would be like? I have read about descriptions of such from the perspective of a man and a woman respectively, laced with such details that are best reserved for private consumption, which make it unfit for publication. I had asked myself the question at various stages…
As Su had predicted, the article I posted yesterday attracted only a handful of likes. Su had said one needs to put photos with everything one posted on Facebook to get more likes. But those of us using Facebook would know that the number of likes is at best an indication of how many people…
Bernadette Tsui sat on the front row at the Sam and Tam Concert last night, had a great time and had Part One of her Sam and Tam and Carrie article published this morning in her column in Economic Journal. She also sat on the front rows at Slava’s Snowshow last week at Hong Kong…
Su’s parents were second or third generation Indonesian Chinese. They were high school classmates in a famous school in Jakarta and both came from well to do families. In 1951, they responded to calls from the Motherland to return to China to build up the country. They were then 19. They went to universities in…
I did not tell many people I was visiting DPRK before the trip, partly because I had been traveling and partly because I don’t want to make it an issue. I have always tried to keep an open mind on many issues and am mindful that conventional and populist views may not necessarily reflect the…
DPRK is often described as a secretive country that is not open to the outside world, let alone tourists; is hostile to the West, in particular to imperialist America; is poor and where the people have insufficient food and are dying from hunger; and so on. In practice, a lot of what have been and…
Where do I begin, to talk to you about a country on which most people in Hong Kong and in the West have very little to no firsthand information? Partly because of this and partly because a friend dared me to join him for a one-week trip, I took up the challenge, packed a suitcase,…
