Stock up

Last night the really smart, looks twenty years younger than she is, works hard and well dressed Chinese spouse and I went to a dinner sponsored by Credit Suisse for folks that have an account with that august financial institution.

My wife enjoyed the dinner and financial information. I enjoyed the beer.

More than that I can't say. I did learn or actually relearn some things about investing in Hong Kong. The stockbrokers and banks here use the right terminology but have different definitions for those terms. For example: if a brokerage agent in Hong Kong tells you " This is a good medium term investment" they mean it is a good investment for about 6 months. Short term investments are normally on things you stay invested in for less than 60 days. A long term investment means out to about 1 year to 18 months. In other words, they do not believe in long term investing and gear all of their advice to get-rich-quick thinking.

The hotshots they had giving opinions had some advice to buy stocks in various areas but were basically saying "Buy China, make 100% in 12 hours" I found this to be rather odd advice. Not that Chinese stocks are not profitable right now but; I cannot believe that any responsible brokerage house would issue an almost unqualified "Buy" to Chinese stocks.

You can look up the sources for what I'm going to use yourself, and you can believe me or not but here is why I would exercise caution in buying Chinese stocks

1. The Chinese stock market is a speculative market. Even the Chinese admit this. Speculative markets, especially those with lots of investors who have never lost anything are dangerous markets.

2. The Chinese stock market has too many people using unsecured capital to buy stocks. Many small investors in China have taken out multiple mortgages on their flats to buy stocks. If the markets fall those investors will owe several times the value their entire worth. There is no real way of knowing how many people this will affect but the murky banking laws in China make fraudulent loans a real problem.

3. The Chinese stock market has not fully realized the level of anger and concern by US and European consumers over the poor quality of Chinese made goods. Yes, some of this is unfounded and some of it is essentially racist or jingoistic but that doesn't matter because if a significant portion of Western consumers simply say "Nope, if it is from China I don't trust it and will do without it" then the Chinese economy is in trouble and the reasons for them doing it don't matter. By essentially blowing off the concerns of overseas consumers of Chinese goods the PRC is exacerbating the problem. I believe that one or two more big scandals, real or imagined involving goods made in China would result in a spontaneous mass boycott of Chinese goods.

I also found it interesting last night that they didn't mention defense contractors like General Dynamics. I would think, given the war in Iraq and the one coming between the US and Iran that investing in companies that make bullets, bombs and military airplanes might be a profitable move. And, please, don't give me any moral posturing about not wanting to invest in death. Especially if you investing in Chinese sweat shops, factories and coal mines.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who isn't an Investment analyst

Wimp alert!

How do you say Phfffffffft! in Chinese?

What a wimp!

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Cat who likes dogs

Curious and Curiouser

The speculative link in this article to North Korea and by inference the PRC is a little scary.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Non-proliferating blogger

Sports that the PRC would like added to the Olympics

OK I admit it. This is too easy; but I'm in a vile mood today and governments are easier to pick on than individuals.

Here are my top 10 choices for sports that the PRC really excels at and that should be in the Beijing Olympic but aren't.

1. The Green Card Relay race: Normally played by those who attend university in the USA.

2. Square Tanking: Seeing how many Protesters a single tank can crush in a minute

3. The Great Firewall of China: Finding Internet Sites that disparage the PRC government and blocking them.

4. Wokathon: Turning non food items into gourmet foods

5. Violation Derby: Seeing how many building codes can be violated simultaneously in the same building.

6. Death Race: Driving on a Chinese Freeway

7. Litter Skitter: Seeing who can identify the greatest number of different types of empty bottles that people have thrown on the sidewalk

8. The Newlywed Games: Like the Green Card Relay only normally played by divorced Chinese women with older, preferably wealthy Western men

9. Translation Spelling Bee: Finding misspelled words on t-shirts

10. Pick Pocket Obstacle Course: Trying to walk through a Shanghai tourist area with your wallet in your back pocket.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who really does like china more than he lets on.

Going for the Gold in Air Pollution

This was just an interesting article to me. I would be willing to bet that the PRC officials are lying through their teeth. They'll close the factories. They'll probably pump a billion gallons of water into the deserts North West of Beijing to keep the dust storms out.

I wonder how many dissidents they will imprison, torture or kill during the Olympics?

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who is distrustful of the central government

Chinese man dies in an Internet Cafe

So the government in China wants to turn the Internet into a platform to promote the Communist Party and prevent this kind of thing eh? What they might then get is a nation where everybody dies of boredom.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who doesn't play online games

Woman Fights of Giant Python

The Pro-Democracy camp could use this woman. She's used to dealing with snakes

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who is scared of snakes

To Stand and Sometimes to Fall

The SCMP has a headline today about how Anson (Got her fangs on) Chan is "Standing for democracy" in the up coming bi-election to replace the late and un-mourned Ma Lik. This evidently gives Regina Ip who is going to run for the DAB an opponent that she will have trouble beating.

Somehow I don't think old Anson is really standing for anything except her own aggrandizement. But I still would prefer her to the Broom head.

Honestly, I don't think very many people in Hong Kong really understand the sacrifices and burden that it takes to be free. It appears to me that often part of the price of freedom is having people who are not free hate you for being what they are are not and trying to kill you so they don't look so bad.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who remembers where he was and what he was doing on 9-11-2001

Bending the rules

I am now recovered from my cataract surgery sufficiently well to see my computer. Actually I can now see nearly everything. I have some far sightedness but for the first time in my life I have true color vision, true 3D vision, and proper perspective and distance. Wow! All I can say is that the women are prettier, the children cuter, the dogs and cats are fluffier and the men uglier than they've ever been before. The only frustrating thing is having to learn how to look over the reading glasses but I will get used to that in time.

I have been following with some interest the strike by the construction workers here. So far the strike is limited to the guys who place the rebar but they are determined and I wish that the rest of the construction workers would join them . I think it would be great if every construction project (except the new school building for the school I work for) in Hong Kong would come to a grinding halt. The construction companies here are just as corrupt as corrupt can be. They amass huge profits and then basically buy the government to keep land prices higher than they otherwise would be.

This corruption extends to the subcontractors in a funny way that I find particularly galling. The scam works like this. Enormous Construction Company "A" decides to build a building and then calls a subcontractor to clear the land. That subcontractor then calls another subcontractor who calls another subcontractor who then hires someone who hires guys with a bulldozer to clear the land. This process of having 5, 6 or more intermediate subcontractors who do nothing but siphon cash prevents builders from paying the actual workers more. I don't know but I've been told that most of these nebulous subcontracts are brothers-in-law, cousins and friends of the guy above. In other words nepotism. You cannot tell me that Hutchison-Whampoa or Hong Kong Land can't hire someone to call the various workers' associations to hire grunts with specific skills? This would, or so it appears to me, allow the companies to raise wages, increase profit margins and lower cost at the same time. But, that would mean telling the shiftless brother-in-law to get a real job which would violate the Chinese ethic of always doing anything, no matter how dishonest to aid your family And of course maintaining the 7 levels of subcontractors who do nothing except hire another sub-contractor is of great importance to the various subcontractors in the construction food chain.

I am really conflicted about this in one way. I think that most unions in the US and Europe often times do more harm than good. I avoided the union label when I could when I lived in the US. I'd even take it to the point of buying a Toyota or Mitsubishi car, not because they were necessarily better cars but because they were built without the use UAW workers even though they were still built in the US. But, this is different because the companies are just so dishonest.

It really bothered me when I saw the low level US union thug, gangster types marching with HK construction workers last week. Hong Kong doesn't need the local chapters of the WTF&TGIF or whatever other acronym the modern North American and European unions go by. But the workers here do need protection from dishonest employers. I guess the question raised in the old Robert Heinlein book is really valid in this instance. "Would you rather have a government of criminals who are honest about what they are or would you rather have a government that is dishonest about what it is?" I'm not so sure that in Hong Kong we couldn't use Al Capone.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who doesn't belong to a Union

Legless Man, Pal in Drunk-Driving Scrape

Why does this story make me think of Lok Ma Chow?

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who doesn't drive at all

Open my eyes that I might see

Today I will have surgery to remove cataracts on my eyes. The doctor will do one eye today and the other this Thursday. I am kind of looking forward to it. Cataracts are a mixed curse and blessing in that while you have them your vision deteriorates at a rather rapid pace. But the surgery gives you 20/20 vision. As the surgery has become almost routine over the past few years I do not understand why they don't perform it on severely myopic people. Myopia is as debilitating as the cataracts.

It is a shame that there isn't some type of surgery for the political cataracts that the Human Bow Tie has. Indeed it is a shame that the PRC officials and the DAB all seem to suffer from this disease.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who really has been wandering around in a fog

No Straw Monday? That really sucks

Today at lunch I decided that I was in the mood for something from the Worlds' favorite Scottish Gourmet (aka McDonald's) and since there was one near where I was that didn't have a line around the block I said to myself: "Fai Mao this is where you are gonna eat lunch!" So, I walked up to the counter and ordered a #6, dry without tomatoes. Everything was bliss until I reached for the dispenser to get a straw for my drink. The dispenser was empty. All the dispensers were empty. Only then did the counter girl, who spoke very good English by the way, tell me that today was "No straw Monday" to help save the environment.

Only being a rude angry Gweilow in my heart I simply said "That's silly" and because I'd not yet paid for the meal; I turned sharply on my swollen ankle and left through the same doorway I'd come in through three minutes before. I'll let them figure out how to sell the special order sandwich.

What McDonald's is doing should appeal to neither me or the left wing environmental goofs; and that is assuming that they aren't all vegans. The straw is the most expensive or second most expensive part of a fast food drink. Indeed, the cheapest part is normally the drink itself. Drinks are huge money spinners for restaurants because the profit margin is so high. Micky D's is simply not giving you the most expensive portion of the drink, which saves them money, and covering their poor customer service with the banner of saving the environment. That is irresponsible and wrong.

I walked a little farther down the road and got plate of curry at a Fairwood (Local Hong Kong chain) where I received a nice long straw with my Coke Zero.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Accidental Environmentalist

Maybe someone on the HK Judiciary should read this?

However, putting more reckless drivers in prison or keeping murderers in prison for longer than 13 months would mean money that wouldn't be available for the Human Bow-Tie to raise his salary with.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Throw in Prison and Throw-away-the Key Blogger

Another Chinese Food Scam

Somehow this doesn't quite look normal food poisoning to me.

I wonder if the PRC's North Korean Friends slipped something this guys sandwich?


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger whose favorite sandwich is made at home

The List

My few regular readers will remember that I like to do top ten list. This link is actually much more detailed than a normal top ten list and even has an addendum. I think that one of the reasons that I like a list of things is because I work with adolescents. Kids don't have the attention span or desire to know a whole lot of things in an in depth manner and providing a list like this is an easy way to pique interest in a subject.

While informative and funny something that I find disturbing about these list is that they are too Amero-centric. Holy Cow! if they'd looked at the SCMP what would they have found? The China Daily? The Singapore Straights Time? Both ATV and TVB obviously slant certain news stories in various directions but I doubt either would admit to such.

I agree with the author of these list when he points out that the Internet did NOT make journalist less reliable but actually exposed some of them as liars. Matt Drudge didn't somehow make Bill Clinton ask Monica Lewinski for oral sex and the existence of EastWestSouthNorth didn't cause the movie reviews in Chengdu to be censored. Both these blogs (I'm not sure either of these is a blog. They might more usefully be defined as news aggregation services) simply expose what is already there. I'd have a lot more faith in the mass media if they'd do a better job of policing their own and admit they've had problems with trying to push an agenda. Every field has bad apples.

It kind of makes me uneasy when I read about media moguls and prominent journalist arguing for the censorship of the Internet , and make no mistake, that is exactly what Marvin Kalb was advocating in 1998 in the printed quote at the beginning of these articles. How can they advocate a "Free Press " and a controlled public Internet? I guess it is the old "Free speech for me but not for thee" syndrome.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who doesn't really trust Newspapers

Woman Killed by pet Camel

You can't make this this stuff up.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao

Damned if I do and Damned if I don't

This past two weeks is the busiest period of time for my job. That is a shame because there was a lot to write about and I was just too tired to care. Well, better late than never.

Last Friday the HK observatory raised the number 8 typhoon warning for the first time in two years. What a joke. They closed the city down for a mild thunderstorm. However what makes that giggle worthy is that it was an obvious overreaction to their lack of competence over the past two years.

Last year we had an actual honest to God typhoon come through here and they never raised more than a red rain storm warning despite the airport being being closed for a typhoon for several hours. The excuse given on TV was that because the winds never reached typhoon strength over the observatory they didn't feel a higher signal was warranted (that must have been the only place they didn't) was lame even for HK. Several months before that we had another strong storm come through that caused mudslides in the New Territories which killed a couple of people. We didn't get either a Black Cloud (Severe Thunderstorm) or a typhoon 8 signal (Hurricane) raised for that storm either. In both cases the observatory took a lot of well deserved criticism and honestly someone, or several someones should have lost their jobs though this being the HK government nobody did. Now that they are taking so much flak for overreacting to a breezy thunderstorm we probably won't get another typhoon 8 signal hoisted until the wind blows the HSBC building over.

But, not everything was bad new last week. Ma Lik died young of cancer. Oh boy I'll drink to that. Now he can ask Den Xiao Ping how many people really died at Tianamen Square in 1989. Too bad he can't then make a statement of apology in the SCMP.

Lastly I went to the doctor today. God I hate the HK health care system. Lets not even talk about having an 11:00 AM appointment and getting my number called at 12:50 PM. The government doctors here exhibit all the compassion and empathy of a French waiter. Actually the waiters are friendlier. I want to complain about the treatment.

I've been walking around on a swollen, painful ankle for nearly two years. I have to wear high topped shoes and a compression bandage everyday and I take anti-inflammatory medication for it as well. All that while I have been shuffled from one government specialist to another for a definitive diagnosis. Today they told me it was ligament and tendon damage but that they didn't ever recommend surgery on this condition for people not in their twenties. In other words: Take a pain killer and limp you unlucky bastard; because its going to hurt and we don't care!" I told the doctor that was unacceptable and he basically told me to go home and not come back. He came very close to needing some plastic surgery on his nose and possibly some dental implants. If I'd known that he'd have to use the public system rather than a private plastic surgeon in Vancouver or London I'd have hit him more than the once he deserved. But, only being an angry Gweiloh in my heart I didn't punch his lights out; I just left.

I ceased to have any admiration or trust in the HK health system when my Mother-in -Law died several years ago and it hasn't done anything restore my confidence.

What makes it worse is that the private doctors here all exhibit a scary level of incompetence or sliminess that causes me to feel that I have much of a choice. Besides I pay the taxes to support the public health system here I ought to be able to use it. I get tired of being labeled a "Rich Westerner" especially since I'm not.

So, I'm kind of damned if I do and damned if I don't and neither way do I feel I've seen a real doctor.

I really find that I get better treatment and more heartfelt concern for my health from the Chinese clinic across from the Tin Hau MTR station. I wonder what they can do for a gimpy ankle? I may find out soon.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who hasn't had a very good week

The T-Shirt patrol strikes again

This past week has been a good week for t-shirt sightings in Hong Kong.

Last Monday I saw one of the thousands of flat chested, straight hipped local teenage girls walking in Causeway Bay wearing a shirt that said :"Do you like my fat butt?" Down the back. I'd hate to see what she calls scrawny.

Some time this week I also saw a reappearance of the old standby "Just do me" with an upside down Nike swoosh. At times like that I wish my Chinese was good enough to ask the girl wearing the shirt if she really meant that? I wouldn't but I know some guys who probably would "like to do her."

Today the ever lovely, hardworking, really smart and looks 20 years younger than she is Chinese wife and I were in the big Wellcome below the CMA church in North point. There were two really offensive shirts there as well. The first guy I saw in the store was wearing a shirt with a fake eye chart on the front that looked something like this:

IM
AMOT
HERFUC
KINGBASTARD

He had a Bible in his shopping trolley so he'd just come from church. Must of been the Chinese service. But you'd hope that somebody informed him of his shirts' message.

There was also a woman in the checkout line behind us. She had a black t-shirt with a Duncan's Donuts sign on the the front but instead of saying "Duncan's Donuts" it said "Fuckin' Gonuts."

As always, when I write on this topic I'll end by saying: "Never ever, ever, wear clothing with things printed on it that you cannot read.


Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who wears plain T-shirts with nothing silkscreened on them

Shocking photos!

Oh the horror of it!


Until Next Time
Fai Mao

Dog Shoots Owner in the Back in Memphis, Tennessee

This is a more interesting story than the predictable ending to the sit-in at the Queens Pier yesterday.

I was actually surprised that the government let those guys stay that long. It appears to me that the protesters, at least the ones I saw interviewed missed the point. It isn't that the government is destroying historical sites. It is that the government is destroying the British historical sites. They are or so it appears to me, trying to slowly but completely remove references to British rule here. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the British drive me nuts with their condescending, snooty attitudes but to bury the history and legacy of Hong Kong because the Chinese government is still touchy over the weakness of China in the 19th century is simply wrong. Yet, that is what is happening.

The phony "harmonious society" mantra repeated by the Human Bow-Tie should be challenged. How did this action make HK a more harmonious society?

The tycoons and construction barons will happily go along with this because of the incestuously close relationship to the powers that be but that doesn't make it right. Perhaps when the harbor is completely reclaimed and you can walk from North Point to Hung Hom they'll begin to realize what they've lost.

I wonder how long it will be before Victoria Park becomes Jiang Qing Park? Probably not for a while but we'll see.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger with a degree in History