What did you say?

I occasionally get comments from people who do not understand some of the terms and abbreviations I use. So I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of these terms so that curious readers can know who or what I am referring to.

A
APGW – Anthropogenic Global Warming, a fraud.
ATV - Asia Television, a TV station in Hong Kong

B
Broom Head –Regina Yip a local politician
Brylcream, Brylcreemers, Brylcreemites – The D.A.B. a Pro Beijing political party in Hong Kong, from a men’s hair care product from the 1940’s and 50’s that used the phrase: "A little DAB will do ya” as a slogan. Some of us can do without even a little dad of the DAB.
BUHK or HKBU – Baptist University of Hong Kong, a second tier university in Hong Kong that was formerly run by the Baptist churches

C
Christina Chan – Local activist, an idiot
CUHK – Chinese University of Hong Kong the first rate university in Hong Kong

D
D.A.B – The first three initials of the pro-Beijing HK political party. The whole name is: The  Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Advancement of Hong Kong through the Adoption of the Socialist Struggle for the Enlightenment of the Masses Pursuit of a Harmonious Society as Set Forth in Inerrant Laws Handed Down to Us Mere Mortals from our Gods of Political and Social Knowledge in Beijing.
Dia Pai Dong – A street restaurant
Dim Sum – various types of Chinese dumplings eaten for breakfast
Disco Dungeon – A night club, generally in Wan Chai
Domestic Helper - A maid, Amah or Au Pair, generally from the Philippines, Indonesia or Thailand who work in Hong Kong. There are over 200,000 helpers in Hong Kong. Their duties often include child rearing since the parents here are more concerned about their careers than their children, cooking, and cleaning not to mention helping teenage boys in the homes where they work with homework from their sex education classes. Many times they also serve as the husband's low cost mistress though the frequency of this is unknown. They have better benefits, less opressive working hours, more days off and higer pay than many jobs than then locals can get.
Doremon –  A “cat like” Japanese cartoon character or John C. Tsang the Financial Secretary of Hong Kong
Dust up – A fight

E
Egg Tart – A local bakery product or a low cost professional woman
EMSD – The Electrical and Mechanical Services Department
EDB -The HK Ministry of Education
F
Fangs or She’s got fangs on – Anson Fang On Chan a retired Hong Kong Politician

G
Girlie Man – A coward or the Hong Kong Police

H
Hair Dye Brigade – An official from the mainland
HKHA – The public housing authority
HKU – The University of Hong Kong, a second rate high school with pretentions
Hoity-Toit or Hoity-Toity – A snob or to engage in habitual snobbery
Hot&Tot – A drunkard, someone who is habitually debauched.

I
I-Ed or HKIE – The Institute of Education, a teacher’s college in Hong Kong
I-cable - An Internet provider in Honmg Kong, poor quality, bad service cheap price, better than PCCW

J
Jusco – Local Department store like Sears

K
KMB – Kowloon Motor Bus, a mass transit bus company in Hong Kong
KCR - The above ground part of the MTR


L
Legco – The city Council of Hong Kong
Long Hair – A Hong Kong politician, a Trotskyite

M
Mainland Boy – A person from the Non-SAR parts of the PRC, a derogatory term
Maroon – A Moron, idiot, stupid or ignorant person
Mini-Bus- A 16 seat vehclle, part of the transportation system in Hong Kong that serves routes without enough people for the major bus companies to bother with. Often driven by maniacs who run red-lights speed and take courners on two wheels.
Mrs. Captain Kangaroo – Diana Lin a reporter and producer for TVB
MTR – The Mass Transit Railroad, the subway in Hong Kong

N
Nina Wong - Deceased golddigger who married a wealthy tycoon and had him murdered when he didn't die soon enough. She stole his fortune and then had it stolen from her heirs by a disreputable Fung Shui practicioner Tony Chan
Nurry Vitachi - Local columnist and writer

O
Origami – the Japanese art of folding paper or the way the HK government can write a report of 1500 pages and say nothing understandable.

P
Panda Eyes – Black circles or wrinkles under the eyes
Pack Away or Pack it Away – To eat
PCCW - Pacific Century Cyber Works, the slowly failing company owned by the playboy son of Li Kai Shing. It provides Internet services and cable TV in Hong Kong as well as laundering money for various shady dealmaker types
PIAPS - A Pig in a Pant Suit - Hilary Clinton a US Politican
Poky – Jail or Prison
Professional Woman – A prostitute
Punch lights out – to administer a beating

Q
Queenie – Celina Chow a Hong Kong Politician

R
Running Dog – Someone who is a mouthpiece for either the former colonial masters or the PRC

S
SAR – Special Administrative Region, the designation for Hong Kong in the PRC because we are not part of a province
Satan's Prom Queen - Audrey Eu a Hong Kong civil servant
SCMP –The South China Morning Post, an unreliable, often biased source of news in Hong Kong
Shenzhen - Suburb of Hong Kong up North. requries a visa to visti if you are a non-Chinese citizen
Shoe Polisher – Someone who sucks up to Beijing, DAB members
Skunk – A cat like animal in North America that is black with a white stripe down its back and can spray predators with a foul smelling musk. A middle-aged woman who hasn’t kept her hair dyed and has a white stripe down the part in her hair.
Sogo – A Japanese Department store like Neiman Marcus

T
TaiTai – A rich housewife, normally used in a derogatory manner
Teddy Girl - A young woman who has an overly well developed sense of fashion
THBT – The Human Bow Tie, Donald Tsang
That Woman – Emily Lau, a local politician
The Big Lychee – Hong Kong, a city in Asia
TOMboy – Tung Chee Wah the previous mayor of Hong Kong
TSB – The Stumble Bum, Chris Patten the former governor of Hong Kong.
Tycoon – A property developer, a criminal, Li Kai Shing
TVB – Television Broadcasting, another TV Station in Hong Kong

U
Up North – The NonSAR parts of China

V, W, X

YYum Chai – literally to “drink tea” another term for eating dim sum


Until Next Time
Fai mao
The Blogger who should probably use fewer slang terms

Don't you wish you were related to someone rich and famous?

I saw the tape of this on TVB. To paraphrase Bugs Bunny, she made the HK Police look like total maroons. I think back a couple of years ago when actor Mel Gibson was stopped for drunk driving in the US. He launched into a profanity laced tirade at the police and they quickly controlled him by grabbing his hair and banging his face into the top of his car. He had bruises on his face. A contrite Gibson later apologized to the police and his fans.

Contrast the treatment Mel got with Amina's performance last night in Hong Kong. A drunken woman who is maybe 1.6 meters tall and weighs 65 kilos pushes the cops around, refuses to cooperate, pitches a hissy fit and is only controlled when she actually assaults a police officer. Holy Cow, if you see the tape of this the way the cop who was slapped reacted was comical. You'd think he'd been shot with a 9 mm pistol. The fall down and pretend it hurts works well for a person wanting to sue it is simply not appropriate for a police officer.

Evidently this is not the first time this hoity-toit has engaged in this type of behavior because she was fined and had to pay restitution to a taxi driver in 2008 though the amount was trivial. She obviously has an anger management problem, maybe and alcohol or drug problem that needs to be dealt with as well. Or maybe, she is a grown up version of nearly psychotically spoiled brats that Hong Kong's wealthier denizens seem to produce like bakeries do egg tarts. Maybe she has simply never been told she can't, thinks manners are for servants, never had to take responsibility for anything, lives off daddies fourtune and has no respect for the well being of others. If that is true I bet her family wishes she had a drug problem!

In any event, the police should not tolerate this type of behavior from a suspect. When she refused a breathalyzer test she should have been handcuffed and placed in a police car. The tape clearly shows that she was hostile and threatening. It never should have gotten to the point where she COULD slap an officer. What if she'd pulled a knife out of her handbag and stabbed the officer? She certainly looked angry enough to do that.

She shouldn't have been given bail. She should have had to spend the night in jail.

Until Nex Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who belives that the police could have handled this better

Five quit as promised

I am really tempted to run for one of these seats.

I am not real happy with the government's proposal that they are so upset about but it isn't like anybody in the "Pan Democrats" have a brain either.

I'd be better than these people because:

I do believe in limited government.
I do believe in a government that actually represents the population
I do believe that people and organization are equal before the law and that the tycoons are not more equal
I do think that it is possible to solve many of the problems in Hong kong without hiring consultants from the UK
I do think the government is bloated with huge numbers of civil servants who should simply be made redundant.
I do think we should become more integrated into China
I don't worshp the British
I don't worship the PRC
I don't have a degree from HKU

Until Next Time
Fai Mao

The wheels on the bus should go round and round

There was a story on the news this weekend, I believe it was on ATV about a proposal by the Transportation Department to eliminate many buss routes and scale back others. The putative reason for this was that buses contribute 60% of the vehicular exhaust in Hong Kong and clog traffic. This is so typical of the civil service in Hong Kong. I have come to believe that one of the requirements for a government job must be that you are a snide elitist with an IQ on par with a less intelligent breed of dog or a very smart parrot. (Actually they seem more like parrots because dogs are generally friendlier) I think I would have a hard time in Legco if I had to deal with idiots in the civil service like this everyday. I have been very critical of Legco members like Long Hair Leung who throws plastic fruit and paper microwaves at THBT but I must admit I’d probably throw punches at civil servants who made such asinine recommendations if I were a Legco member. So maybe I’ve misjudged the man.

Both of the reasons for curtailing bus routes in Hong Kong fail to stand any type of logical scrutiny. Additionally, there is, I believe another reason for this proposal that the government did not voice that amounts to a lie of omission that demonstrates the conflict of interest that the government here regularly engages in.

Problem number 1: That pesky pollution in bus exhaust.
Why not simply require the buses here to run on LP gas like the taxis? This is done in many large cities all around the world, including New York and even London where the local civil service still go to genuflect before their former colonial gods and masters. This would go probably 90% towards eliminating the exhaust fumes the transportation department is complaining about. This would be a rather easy conversion, could be subsidized by the government as is appropriate when requiring private companies to implement a radically new standard and would be applauded by the population. It would be a win, win, win scenario. It could also be done rather quickly. That this was not suggested tells me that the real reason the civil service wants to eliminate bus routes has nothing to do with pollution. I mean after all, if the government can finance a ONE-BILLION-dollar-per-kilometer high speed rail link to help us integrate with the barbarians up North then couldn’t they could pay for new, LP gas powered, buses? No, the pollution issue is a classic Red Herring because it could be better addressed by other means.

Problem 2: Traffic congestion caused by buses.
Here we come to the real issue though I believe a secondary one. If one looks at the buses in Hong Kong it is easy to see that the bus drivers help each other. They block lanes at times to allow other buses to enter and exit the stops and to merge going into and out of tunnels. This is good for the bus riders but slows down people in private cars. But let us examine this a bit further. According the figures given on the news there are 3.8 million people in Hong Kong who ride the bus at least once everyday. If you assume that those who ride the bus to work also ride it back home you can probably cut that number in ½ to 1.9 million. That is still 1 out of 4 people in Hong Kong. There are, at least I have read somewhere, less than 400000 private cars in Hong Kong or one car for about every 20 people. So, if you were going to streamline the transportation system in a city with those demographics which would you think would be of more use; one person in one car or a bus, even a bus with only 4 or 5 people in it? If you don’t think that most of the people who drive to work in Hong Kong are not driving by them self you haven’t looked, but I think you see what I mean.

Here we the real issue. Miss What-is-her-name, the nameless, faceless, mindless, soulless bureaucrat, life time civil service employee, who makes probably 18 to 20 times as much as the average wage earner in Hong Kong and never rides the bus is irritated because it takes her 5 minutes longer to get from her palatial government quarters flat to Central than if there were no buses. The poor and middle classes and even somewhat well off who have to get to work and don't drive be damned. The people who are really bothered by the congestion caused by buses are drivers of automobiles. In other words, my bus bothers her even if her car does not bother me.

Problem 3: Cutting service is effectively taxing the bus companies out of business
This was not list be the Transportation department as a reason for reducing bus frequency and raising the fares but is, I believe the real reason the government wants to implement this policy. By eliminating some routes and making other routes less frequent the transportation department’s proposal would effectively put the bus companies out of business. It is the equivalent of a tax on the bus companies because it makes it more difficult to operate and less likely that people will ride a bus. Maybe miss know-nothing bureaucrat hasn’t considered this. Maybe it never occurred to her that if I have to wait 40 minutes rather than 15 minutes for the next bus I’d maybe take the train instead. This would mind boggling dumb for even them but it is patently obvious that curtailing service is going to reduce bus ridership will then result in even more cuts in service by the bus companies.

It would be worse if she did realize that and I cannot believe that the snobs and elitist in the civil service are really this stupid. Even parrots should be able to figure this one out. Therefore, I am going to say that this is worse. It is a deliberate, if rather clumsy and transparent attempt by the government to put the bus companies out of business without saying so. The reason the government would consider this is that government does not OWN the bus companies but does own a controlling interest in the MTR. Thus, this proposal could and SHOULD be seen as an attempt by the government to increase the revenues of the trains which it owns at the expense of the bus companies which it does not.

It gets yet even worse. There are a couple of MTR lines that lose money. The Airport Express and the Disney Land line are unprofitable. The new high speed rail link being built at the cost of ONE-BILLION-dollars-per-kilometer will also probably never pay for itself, at least not in the lifetime of anybody living in Hong Kong today. What if the Transportation department has looked at the figures and said: “Aye-ya, the MTR is going broke unless we find a way to get more people to ride because we’ve built too many unprofitable lines.” What if putting bus companies out business is a way to save their sorry, under worked butts so that they can keep their cushy, over paid jobs lording it over people who are more productive, smarter and better looking than they are?

I admit, this is a soapbox issue with me. If I ride the train from Causeway Bay where I live to Ma On Shan where I work everyday I have to change trains four times and it takes an hour and five minutes. If I ride the 680 bus it takes 30 minutes and I ride more or less door to door. The MTR is not appropriate or convenient for everybody.

I think this proposal is simply one of the worst I’ve ever seen the Hong Kong government make.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The blogger who rides the bus everyday, twice

Hugo Chavez Mouthpiece Says U.S. Hit Haiti With 'Earthquake Weapon'

Gee, after oil one of  largest Venezuelan exports is cocaine. Do you think the guy who said this may have done one too many lines?

I think I need to start a tin foil hat factory. I could make a mint selling them in South America!

Until Next Time
Fai Mao

Owning the road

This is always sad. I am actually surprised that there are not 100's of people killed by being run over in Hong Kong every year.

I find that the drivers and pedestrians are equally to blame.  The pedestrians here, especially the elderly simply do not look. They will attempt to cross the street at the worse place in very busy traffic. I can understand them not wanting to climb the stairs to get to a pedestrian bridge but I wonder if their life is worth the risk of crossing the street?  It is also true that the drivers here are awful and seem to be getting worse.

When I first moved here late last century I used to ride my bike on Hong Kong Island. I'd always try to get behind a China Motor Bus or a commercial vehicle because they'd protect me from Mr. Tycoon-want-to-be who never looked, never slowed down and drove like he was the only person, not mention vehicle in a 100k radius. But boy, the delivery trucks have gotten dangerous. That's odd because the traffic isn't really any worse than before just the drivers that make up the traffic. The mini-bus drivers are the worst!

I also put part of the blame for this on the Bloody British who did not have the foresight required or care enough to begin building roads that would handle the traffic into and out of particular areas. They should have either built wider roads in places like the Mid-Levels or restricted the amount of development there to what the roads could handle. But no, they allowed 60 story residential buildings to be accessed by a two lane country road with no shoulder and no way to widen the road because there is another 60 story tall building on the other side. I guess there is a measure of blame for the idiots who purchased flats in 60 story tall buildings serviced only by a two lane road. But that is another post for another time.

However, in Sheung Shui the roads are fairly wide and straight because the new towns in the New Territories are better laid out than the Island. This driver was simply speeding and the mother didn't look.

It would help if the police here would actually stop people for speeding once in a while. We used to live on Pok-Fu-Lam road and the drivers there regularly seemed to double the speed limit. I never saw a cop with a radar gun there.

When it comes to motor vehicles the government seems to have a really schizophrenic policy of building roads to promote use and taxing drivers to prevent use. Honestly, they need to take a position. Are they going to make Hong Kong like Houston or L.A where cars are King or are they going to make Hong Kong like New York with the great mass transit system? It is really impossible to do both. Until they do one or the other they will continue to have more than their fair share of horrific pedestrian vs. motor vehicle accidents. Holy Cow! I've been to Mexico City and it has better traffic laws than Hong Kong.

Police and criminologist will tell you that traffic fines should not be used as a form of government revenue but if the police simply started issuing tickets for speeding and reckless driving here the income tax could be abolished. I don't see any difference between that and the huge surtax they put on automobiles and gasoline. In any case, the government needs to restrict the routes that heavy vehicles can use and the times that deliveries can be made. There is no way that this truck should have been allowed on that road, in front of a school at that time of day.  But in Hong Kong the government cares more about the driver being able to deliver a ton of toilet paper to Wellcome or Park-n-Shop, than a four-year old boy and his mother crossing the street.

That's a shame but that is the way it is.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who does not drive in Hong Kong

Almost

We are almost past the chilly weather again this year. That is good. Generally sometime in Februrary the weather in Hong Kong turns really pretty. It isn't so hot and hasn't started raining yet. I was out on the bike yesterday for the first time since before Christmas. What a wonderful ride.

This has actually been a very chilly, for Hong Kong  winter. We've had years with colder weather but this year it got cool earl and stayed cool. That means the average temp was lower and statistically we had a cold winter but we didn't have any days that were really cold.

I guess that's why they call them averages


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The blogger who actually likes hot and dry weather

That road that's paved with good Intentions leads where?

I didn't go to the protest this weekend in front of the Legco building over the government's proposal to build the world's most expensive railroad that will link Hong Kong with the greater Chinese high speed rail system. I am to old to be pepper sprayed and find local activist like Christina Chan to be such a repulsively shallow loud mouthed whiner that it would be a waste if the police sprayed me and her when they could spray her twice if I wasn't there.

The price tag for this rail link is 68.8 BILLION and that is just what the government will admit too. The finished product will likely be much more expensive than advertised. There are lots of reasons to dislike this rail link besides cost but the riotous nature of the protesters just legitimized the government because they agreed or at least did not disagree with the under lying assumption that everything, or most things in Hong Kong belong to the state. That is the real issue and that is what should be being protested. Until that presumption changes nothing else matters because we cannot be a truly free society until the government acknowledges our right to property.

The protesters should be out jousting with the police over the fact that the government of Hong Kong lays claim to almost every square inch of land and water in the SAR. The railroad is a symptom of the fact that we live in a feudal fiefdom that is ruled by a laird who is subject to his liege in Beijing. We are the manor serfs who till the land and produce income for the Laird and his liege. The government doesn't sell land they give long term leases for buildings to be constructed on the manor's estate. Even those disgusting money grubbing, triad controlled villagers in the New Territories that have a "right" to build their own house can only do so because the government allows them too. I am not sure this isn't a relic of the treaty signed with the Empire of China which was, in the 19th century still a feudal state. The population of the PRC is freer than we in this because they can OWN the land their house sits on. The right to property is, along with the freedom of association and conscience one of the three pillars of human freedom. Without all three a society is not truly free and generally where one is curtailed the others are too or shortly will be.

In Hong Kong, we live literally as serfs of the feudal manor. The civil service, or Royal Retainers, believes it is our place to live as they see to provide for us. The government does not view the rights we exercise as citizen to be inalienable but rather to be bestowed upon us by the benevolence of the Laird and we have those rights only so long as his munificence’s avails. Until THBT and his cronies and successors realizes that we have rights because we are human not because the government gives them to us we will never be free and that is true whether we vote for the laird from a alrger or small class of nobles.

Instead of being merely dissatisfied serfs demanding that the government give money to them rather than build a railroad the protesters should be clearly and plainly talking about how rights are bestowed not by a government but by God, or Nature, or History or Culture. But since they are HKU graduates I doubt they belive in God, history or culture and Al Gore says nature does not apply in Hong Kong. You can make the argument in any number of ways but it must be made that rights do not come from the government and exist externally to the government. Without doing that, the protesters will only be replacing one tyrant with another, probably worse one. I've never cared for either Stalin or Mao. What the protesters are actually wanting is that someone else, probably themselves should be the Royal Retainers. I guarantee that is what Beijing thinks whether it is what the "Post 80's" generation thinks or not. As such the protesters are worse than useless because they are simply legitimizing a more repressive response from the lord of the manor and his supporters. Remember, Machiavelli was absolutely right when he said that the primary objective of the state is to perpetuate itself. The Liard is not about to see himself replaced by a committee of serfs without a fight or to allow his leige to replace him because he cannot control his serfs. Especially since the serfs would do no better a job than he and probably worse.

What went on here Saturday probably brought us a little bit closer to the time when the PRC tanks, God forbid, come rolling down our streets. That is just an opinion but I think it is a sound one. Here is another. If you are going to start a revolution, make sure it is for a cause worth dying for. I wouldn’t die for the MTR. I don’t think many others would either.

I don't care how much they "Care" The road to Hell Hell is paved with the good intentions of people that cared. I don't want Christina Chan to make Hong Kong a Hell on Earth.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who thinks the issue is bigger than a railroad

Movies!

Holy Cow. It has been nearly a month since my last post on this blog. I took a break for the holidays but didn't mean to be gone this long. It also isn't as though nothing has happened that I might want to write about and that people might want read about. But, instead of writing about stuff I spent the holidays with my really-pretty-looks-25-years-younger-than she-is-very-smart-hard-working-and-loving-Chinese-wife watching movies on the DVD.


We also went to see the movie Hachiko: A Dog's Story at the cinema in Times Square. That is the rarest of movies because it contains no cursing, no violence, no nudity, no inappropriate situations, no bathroom humor, no politics and it isn't a kiddy movie but is a really satisfying adult movie. It was probably the best thing we did over the holidays. The predicable evil white guy marries beautiful, blue, close to nature, barbarian princess, PC filled Avatar is one I'd miss if I were you. If you want that type of thing then go get a complete three movie set of The Pirates of the Caribbean or maybe Kung-fu Hustle with Steven Chow.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who really needs to post more