"Where the skies are blue"

Someone sent me the link above.

It induced one the rare bouts of homesickness I still get.

I am going to the UK to be with our daughter this Christmas. But my family is originally from the other Birmingham; the one in the US state of Alabama.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who won't be home for Christmas

Civil servants fight for post-retirement rights

I guess if I were them I'd do this to. Well, no I wouldn't I'd be too ashamed of the amount of money I'd taken while orking for the government. These people are so over paid it isn't even funny. Why do they need a pension at all?

In related news there appears to be an epidemic of brain tumours in Hong Kong. I guess it would be too much to expect that they would all be found in (un)Civil-Servants?

Until Tomorrow
Fai Mao

Told yah

If only the HK Government would read this

Here Comes Kim Jung-Ill

My fake Christmas Carol this year is a bit greusome. It is sung to the tune of "Here comes Santa Clause"


Here come Kim Jung-ill, here comes Kim Jung-ill
Right through the DMZ
Tanks and army they’re a blitzin’
Right towards you and me
Bombs are falling, children screaming
It’s real scary tonight
Grab your gun and say your prays
Cause Kim Jung-ill comes tonight

Here come Kim Jung-ill, here comes Kim Jung-ill
Right through the DMZ
He’s got a bag that fill with missiles
Pointed at you and me
See the shells explode and bodies splatter
Oh what a horrible sight
So jump in the shelter and cover your head
Cause Kim Jung-ill comes tonight

Here come Kim Jung-ill, here comes Kim Jung-ill
Right through the DMZ
He doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor
He hates you just the same
Kim Jung-ill thinks we’re all Jimmy Carter
Cowards who will never fight
So lock and load and take good aim
‘Cause otherwise he is right

Until Tomorrow
Fai Mao
The Blogger who seems to like gallows humor

Mack the knife and North Korea

One of the problems with leftist is that they don't believe in the law of unintended consequenses. A prime example is the Wikileaks web site which released a massive amount of diplomatic documents over the week-end. These were embarrassing to lots of governments and lots of government officials. The publication of these documents was also in violation of any number of laws and the colaborators who funished the documents to the webpage are probably going to spend the rest of their lives in prison when found. The problem is that these dispatches reveal sensative material that could cause millions of people to die. The best example of this the memos that talk about changing attitudes concerning North Korea by the PRC government. How much did these documents add to the tension in Korea right now when we find from Wikileaks that the Chinese are possibly willing to sell out the North Koreans?

(Courtesy of Sister Toldjah)
The leaked North Korea dispatches detail how:

■South Korea’s vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul’s control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing.

■China’s vice-foreign minister told US officials that Pyongyang was behaving like a “spoiled child” to get Washington’s attention in April 2009 by carrying out missile tests.

■A Chinese ambassador warned that North Korean nuclear activity was “a threat to the whole world’s security”.

■Chinese officials assessed that it could cope with an influx of 300,000 North Koreans in the event of serious instability, according to a representative of an international agency, but might need to use the military to seal the border.

In highly sensitive discussions in February this year, the-then South Korean vice-foreign minister, Chun Yung-woo, told a US ambassador, Kathleen Stephens, that younger generation Chinese Communist party leaders no longer regarded North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk renewed armed conflict on the peninsula, according to a secret cable to Washington.

So if you are the "spoiled child," psychotic dictator of North Korea and you just found out from the international press that your only friend was getting ready to double cross you what would you do?

I think there is a very good possibilty that Kim Jung-Ill decides to take as many people down with him as he can.

Until Tomorrow
Fai Mao
The Blogger who is glad he does not live in Seoul

Lawyers, they never change

This falls into the "You can't make this stuff up" catagory

Untill Tomorrow
Fai Mao
The blooger who does not steal ladies underwear

You can't make this stuff up

A plane crash in Africa was caused when a crocodile that had been smuggled onto the plane as luggage got lose and starter attacking passengers. How do you do that? Who would do that?

Kane West has his teeth replaced with diamond implants. Quick somebody lone me a club and pair of pliars!

A three-year-old and five-year-old are engaged in Syria. What do you expect?

The Yankees are getting beaten like a rented mule in the playoffs. Its about time!

Sombody thinks that the Hong Kong realestate market is not bubbled up. Just goes to show you that idiots live everywhere.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who enjoys odd news

Hong Kong and Tripods

Part of my job is reading juvenile literature. I’ve been reading the Tripod books by John Christopher the past few days and found them quite thought provoking in a number of ways. It is always interesting to be able to see the way that moral issues are handled in books for teen-agers; especially in what is left unsaid at times. It is also interesting to see how often I think people who review books, not just these books but most books completely miss the point.

Fiction is often a way for us to explore what might be and to clarify our moral and ethical horizons. It doesn’t have to do this and it is perfectly appropriate for it to simply entertain us but it often does so much more than entertain. The Tripod books do more than entertain.

The plot of these books is a pretty basic one. The Aliens from space land, they take over and a small band of humans manages to overthrow the alien oppressors despite what would appear to be insurmountable odds. Like many books of this type there rather huge gaping, holes in the plot and more than a few rather incredible coincidences needed to allow the good guys to win.

What sets these books apart for me and makes them a book I’d recommend to students is the discussion in the books of what it means to be human and what constitutes good and evil. The space alien bad guys in these books view themselves as morally superior good guys. On their own planet, in their own society, they don’t have crime, don’t have wars, they cannot lie and don’t have social problems like over population. They also don’t have art, humor, or friendship.

Yet, these same beings that live in peace with each other practice racial genocide on planets that they conquer. The vices they avoid with each other they inflict upon those weaker than they.

The idea of political elites that believe they have the right, or responsibility to force a population to do good always devolves into a tyranny that is upheld by force. Political elites resulting from education, wealth or heredity are, in effect, a “Might makes right” argument. The idea that government control is better than individual freedom is a particularly virulent and widespread form of this.

A particularly damning aspect of the Tripod books was how even after the mind control device had been turn off many of the people who had been "Capped" were unable to function normally. They still needed the protection of the tripods.

When governments win the support of the masses through the use of subsidies then they have just as effectively “capped” the population as the tripods ever could. The use of housing subsidies proposed by THBT and the HK government will simply mean that the government has moved from enslaving the poor to enslaving the middle class. Governments like to have a population dependent upon them because people who are dependant upon the government support the government even when it oppresses them. They have no choice. The rent to purchase scheme proposed by THBT will accomplish just that. It also does so without addressing the root cause the high cost of housing in Hong Kong; namely, the corrupt monopolistic practice of the property developers who actually control our government with the tacit approval of the Shoe-polish-hair-dye-brigade in Beijing.

So how should THBT have approached this problem?

Require developers to build on the land they buy. Right now they build the “luxury” flats and mothball the developments slated for more affordable housing. Simply tell them if you don’t have a building up in “Nth” number of months you must pay the equivalent of the rates (Property Tax) that the owners would pay.

Do not allow real estate agents to engage in price fixing of their fees.

Pass an anti-collusion law so that developers cannot collude with each other to keep prices high and quality low. This would also bring food prices down.

Require developers to advertise the actual internal size of the flats they sell with out adding part of the elevator lobby, bay-window and imaginary rooms.

To curb speculation place a 50% capital; gains tax on any property re-sold within 180 days

Limit sales of flats priced below 3 million dollars to people with valid Hong Kong residency

Until Next Time
Fai mao
The Blogger who  thinks Hong Kong is looking and more like a bad Sci-Fi novel

Dollar for dollar?

THBT almost gets some points from me on this one. Almost not quite.

How about this. How about he, personally, Donald Tsang, gives two months salary to the coause helping the underprivilged and challenges the business comunity to do the same?

He seems to be mighty generous with tax dollars but I doubt he is as generous with his own funds.

Come on Donald, shell out a few million, you've got pleanty.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao

China Tells Norway What to Do

When I first moved to China in the early 1990's China was becoming a freer place. Under the leadership Dung Xiaoping and then Jang Xiamin China it looked like that China would make the transition from a dictatorship to something approaching a free nation. Hu JingTao has reversed that process

This kind of thing actually makes me nervous. It seems that they have reclaimed the position of the old Empire that they are "The Middle Kingdom" and the true rulers of the whole Earth. It could also be that they are still assuming the eventual inevitable triumph of dictatorship, err, I mean Communism.

There has been a noticeable increase in the uneasiness I feel over the actions of the Chinese government over the past several years.

This is a scary time to live in China

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who hopes for a free China

Finally!

Fans of bad teams sometimes get some love

Please Accept My Humble Apologies

I have over the years made rather well deserved fun over the strange first names you find in Hong Kong. While giving lip service to the idea that other people in other places might have names as strange I never really believed it.

Well Marijuana Sawyer takes the prize. Chocolate Cake Wong, Swim Ng and Shampoo Chan are a distant second. (Yes those are actual people I've met.)

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who in real life has a normal name

Remembering Grief

I remember when I was watching television with my wife ten years ago and the phone rang. It was our friend from Singapore and he asked if we'd seen the buildings? Because TVB was slow to the disaster we hadn't and then Jenny Lam broke into the evening show and TVB cut to footage from ABC just as the second plane hit the second building.


We watched in horror for the next several hours. We saw the collapse of the buildings I walked as zombie for several days afterward, unable to sleep much or concentrate. I watched as Muslims in various cities celebrated over this and called it a great act of Jihad. I literally prayed for every Muslim I saw for several years after that; I prayed that they'd find true peace and abandon their filthy cult of death. My prayer was that by September 11, 2051 800 million Muslims would come to Christ. I still do. If that makes me less than politically correct or unenlightened then so be it. The current wars the the US fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are not, as the Islamist claim Crusades. Would that they were, the world would be a better place without the followers of that false prophet who announces the anti-Christ

I am generally apathetic about US politics. But I saw the speech below when it was televised later that week. I wept then. It still makes me weep. On that evening at least I was proud to be an American




Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who has nephews and cousins in Iraq and Afghanistan

Playing with dogs

Just because it's fun

The T-Shirt Patrol Strikes Again

I saw a young mother this morning walking her primary school age child up to school. She had a T-shirt that said "Work Hard & Party Naked" Not that I necessarily have any problem with that but I wonder if she could read the shirt? You don't see as many weird T-shirts here as you used to. Several years ago I'd see one every couple of days at least and sometimes several in one day.  I don't think that is a reflection on improving English standards in Hong Kong so much as an improving level of not selling overstocks from adult book and gift stores in the street markets. I think the retailers are getting a little more sophisticated.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who still looks for strange T-Shirts

Reading

One of the things that seems to have gotten harder over the years is pleasure reading. In a way that is odd since I work as a librarian you'd think I read all the time. Well I do, but only in a professional capacity. I try to read at least four or five juvenile novels a year so that I have some idea what middle-school and high school students are reading. That means that I seldom read anything that I appreciate as an adult. Most  of the books read are written for students aged from about 10 to 17 and while they are sometimes very good indeed, most of the time they are are not very good at all.I don't count those because I am reading them as part of my job. I don't have a great deal of time to simply read something because I want too.

I ran into an exception this week. I read The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa.I read it because it is a book that is read by the high school students in the school where I work in the 11th grade.

I was absolutely stunned by this book and it will haunt my thinking for weeks to come. I am sure I will read it again. It is a lovely book.

Like all really good books it is utterly unbelievable.  I think that is why the book works so well. While the themes and ideas presented are simply stunning; generally speaking only talking animal books, Watership Down, The Book of the Dunn Cow or The Wind in the Willows can deal with subjects in the way this book does because we know humans too well to talk like this. In a normal novel the professor would be contrived or corny and he isn't in this book.

The basic plot of the book is that a 28 year-old, unmarried mother who is the daughter of an unmarried mother is sent to work as a housekeeper for a retired professor of mathematics, a genius, who has only 80 minutes of short term memory because of brain damage in an automobile accident many years before. After 80 minutes he forgets everything and everybody. The professor can remember everything in his life until 1977 but has to write note to himself for important things in order to live. He does not remember the housekeeper from day to day; or even from morning until after lunch.  The housekeeper has to struggle to find ways to deal with this most eccentric of old men. In the process she becomes his friend and he becomes something of a father figure to her son. And yet, because he cannot remember them from day to day cannot return their affection.

Something that I found especially odd about this book is that only one of the main characters is named and he never speaks. A main character in the book is a famous Japanese baseball player Enatsu, who was a favorite of the professor before the accident. The housekeeper's young son is always referred to by the nick-name the professor gives him "Root" never his real name. You never find out the name of the housekeeper, the professor, Root, the professors widowed sister-in-law or any of the other people in the book. In a sense that helps the reader to internalize this book and makes it more personal. It is just assumed that you know every-bodies name.
 
You'll learn a lot about math from this book and wish knew more.

You will also struggle to be thankful fort being able to wake up and know your name.

To say more would be to spoil the book for you.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a read that is more than simple entertainment.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The Blogger who should really read more

The Long Road Home

After a summer of traveling we returned home to find jobs waiting for us and a buyer for the Causeway Bay flat with cash in hand. The really-pretty-looks-25-years-younger-than-she-is-smart-hard-working-Chinese-wife and I were suddenly in moving mode.  We'd purchased the flat in Causeway Bay as an investment and never really thought that we'd live there. It turned out to be the place we've lived longer than any other place since we've been married. We owned that flat nearly 10 years and there were a lot of memories tied up in it but I was still glad to leave. Sometimes we see stories on the news or in the media about people that have lived in one place for 40, 50 or 60 years. This is presented as some sort of virtue but I wonder about that.

I think it is good to move house every so often and this was the time for us to move.

We invest the places we live with part of ourselves. The pictures on the wall the paint on the door, the curtains and even the scratches and wear on the floor become comforting and make us feel secure. A home home also ties us to our past and as we age it becomes important to move on or we may find that we cannot move at all. When I was younger I used to live up the road from an old woman, in her 90's, who had one child, a son and he died in accident along with her husband when the son was about 8 or 9 years-old. She never remarried and still had her dead husbands clothing in the closet and the little boys bedroom just as it had been 65 years before. She'd grown old but hadn't really noticed because she was trapped in the past. She should have moved on past those tragic deaths but couldn't and I think that after awhile it was the house that trapped her.

Mrs Mao and I have had nothing that tragic happen to us but as empty-nesters it was time to move on. Our kids are grown, married and gone. All we have left besides photographs is the occasional Email and even rarer visit. That isn't a sad or bad thing, it is life. They have their own families and their own concerns. They are doing well enough and I guess I should feel thankful that they seem to be happy in their lives and done bother us for huge piles of cash. Yet, in the Causeway Bay flat we were tied to an earlier time. Symbolically moving was a way to start again; to move on into the next phase of life.

Because we both work in the New Territories it made sense for us to be there rather than on Hong Kong Island.

Until Next Time
Fai MAo
The Blogger with a new home

More lies - But then they never tell the truth

Nothing these people say is true. They are all liars, all the time.

Hold on to your Hats

I thought that I was the only one who could see this coming.


The Chinese boom is actually a Chinese bubble. Not only for the reasons listed in the article but because of the one child policy which will mean there are fewer workers to work in the coming years thus each worker will be worth more; but also the fact that 1/2 the smokers in the world live in China and what is going to happen when those 30 year-old  smokers become 50 year-old cancer stricken coughers?

This is actually a huge oportunity for Hong Kong if the government and people here are smart enough to see it.

Until Next Time
Fai Mao
The blogger who still lives in China

On Patriotism

As a Hong Konger who is from somewhere else I find the expression of and lack of expression of patriotism by the general population in Hong Kong to be quite odd. It seems that either the population is somewhat rabidly pro PRC or distrustful of it and have a suitcase packed in case the tanks roll down Queen's road. There is no in between. We are either fully supportive or just here for the money. Indeed, perhaps the most loyal Hong Kongers that I have met are the expats from really slimy and oppression places like Rwanda and London where they understand the problems that come from living in a society that lacks respect for basic human dignity. Thus, I am not sure how much the article I've linked too above can be extrapolated into similar feeling about Hong Kong. I would still  like to know how many citizens here describe themselves as "patriotic?"

I watched the parade and demonstrations here in "The Pearl of the Orient" on July 1st. Since I live in Causeway Bay I had very little choice! Group against group and party insulting party. What should be a day that is a celebration of the return to China, which no matter how imperfect a nation is the proper place for Hong Kong to be part of; has instead become a day that has been turned into just another chance to show how intolerant and childish we are of others.Why can't we have a holiday where we simply express how happy we are to be Hong Kongers; where we put aside, if only for a little while political differences and squabbles and celebrate the good things about each other and the city where we live?


Until Next Time
Fai mao
The Blogger who likes where he lives