No Overtaking

Continuing the bus theme, the following item caught my eye on this morning's news service:

"A Shenzhen Bus Group bus driver beat up a taxi driver after his bus was overtaken. The taxi driver was seriously injured. Shenzhen Bus Group said it will set up a mechanism to counsel its bus captains in case of need."

Not even a bunch of flowers for the poor cabbie?

KMB Puts Pigs on Notice

It's reassuring to see one Hong Kong company unfazed by the unfolding pig flu drama. As a precautionary measure, sticking a note on the wall at the Star Ferry bus terminal must represent one of the more, well, "measured", measures you could possibly imagine:

"As a precaution against the possible spread of swine flu, KMB has today undertaken a number of precautionary measures. These include the issue of an internal staff notice on swine flu precautionary measures and the increase in the stock of face masks in case of need."

Having put on that universal panacea, the face mask, we are ready to go on a trip down memory lane with that other elixir of life beloved by cookery teacher cum SARS health supremo, Margaret Chan, 1:99 diluted bleach:

"KMB will continue the practices of cleaning bus compartments daily and cleaning the air-conditioning filters of buses weekly with 1:99 diluted bleach."

Finally, it wouldn't be Hong Kong if there wasn't that irritating preachy bit that combines a crashing glimpse of the obvious (in this case, two crashing glimpses) with a good dose of condescension:

"KMB takes this opportunity to remind its passengers and staff to practise good personal hygiene and stay in good health in order to prevent the spread of disease."

Michel Thomas

Has anyone tried learning/improving a language using Michel Thomas's tapes/CDs? For those that don't know of him, there are no books as such – he teaches by using explanations, drills and repetition.

Milking the Motivation

Political satirist Stephen Colbert, of Daily Show fame, recently dubbed his alter ego, a blustery, self-obsessed cable news pundit described as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed high-status idiot", Sir Dr Stephen T Colbert, DFA.

In all seriousness, a Singaporean called Peter Low, or rather Sir Dr Peter Low, God-fearing choirmaster of the Cathedral Choir of the Risen Christ, styles himself in the same fashion. And you have the chance to listen to the good Sir Doctor, as he's coming to Hong Kong to strut his stuff at a series of Edward de Bono seminars offered by the Hong Kong Management Association, wearing his hat as Executive Director of Edward de Bono Training Pte Ltd, as opposed to the silly hat he dons when he's conducting his choir.

The knighthood, Knight Commander of St. Gregory the Great to give it its full title, was conferred not by the Queen but by the Pope (the Polish one, not the German one) who also thus ennobled Bob Hope, Roy Disney and Rupert Murdoch – which just goes to prove how catholic Catholics can be, given that all three of them were non-Catholics. Very rich and munificent non-Catholics, but non-Catholics nonetheless.

Returning to more mundane matters - the upcoming de Bono programme - one of the seminars is called "Simplicity", which is interesting, as a testimonial in the HKMA blurb merits any number of descriptions, but "simplicity" is probably the last that comes to mind:

"One can try to escape from the original basin by means of a random perturbation – for example Edward de Bono recommends trying to apply to a problem, whatever it is, the last noun on the front page of today's newspaper."

Another devotee makes a valiant effort to salvage the transparency of the method, only to find his grammar buckling under the strain of handing out all that praise:

"It is a function of clarity of de Bono's approach that thinking course works well with school children or executives."

Even our old friend Tom Peters gets in on the act, even if he inadvertently makes himself redundant in the process:

"These are time tested techniques for milking people's wackier ideas ... invest heavily in using such techniques to solve all problems."

Meanwhile ... over at the University of Hong Kong, still desperately clinging to its vision of becoming one of the top twenty universities in the world, yet another motivational speaker is about to sally forth. Not your usual run-of-the-mill bloke, naturally, but, in terms of motivational speakers, pretty much par for the course: "exceptionally gifted communicator ... one of the world's top motivational speakers ...".

This fellow, whose claim to fame is that he has walked to both Poles (but not, I assume, on the same trip), has, the poster proudly tells us, "inspired audiences from Fortune 500 CEOs to schools children (sic)".

As I walk on towards the library, I hear the faint ringing of a bell – a discordant, ungrammatical bell, perhaps, even a strange and wacky one, but one that chimes with the sound of a particularly hungry cash register.

If Only I Could Sing Like Nicolai Gedda

He may not be as masculine as Susan Boyle, or as podgy as Paul Potts, but Nicolai Gedda possesses for me the best tenor voice in the business. Here's the Swede singing the magnificently lyrical "Au fond du temple saint" from Bizet's opera Les pêcheurs de perles with baritone Ernest Blanc.

Obtaining Real Concessions

The skilful play on people's weakness, their snobbery, their need to feel special, in order to manipulate them to one's own advantage, still played out in boardrooms throughout the world, has never been put better than in Lion Feuchtwanger's Jew Suss:

"If he Karl Rudolf [regent of Württemberg] wanted to obtain a real concession from Marie Auguste [his co-regent], he annoyed her in matters of etiquette, disputing one of her titles, perhaps, or sending her a subaltern instead of the usual staff officer to act as her guard, or tormenting her darling, the fine, fashionable librarian. When she protested, he demanded some political concession as the price of rectifying these delicate matters."

SCMP Downgrades Financial Tidal Wave

It's official. The financial tsunami is no more. The South China Morning Post tells us. And it doesn't get more authoritative than the Quarry Bay news room that is at the epicentre of investigative journalism, a place Bernstein and Woodward, even Randy Shilts, would have held in awe on account of the quality of the exposés regularly printed by C.K. Lau and his intrepid team, as the fate of Little Egrets in Penfold Park and those guys who live in cages in Mong Kok and earn their living by cycling the wrong way down one-way streets with 16 gas bottles strapped to their Flying Pigeon are brought to public attention.

Simply put, and the SCMP is best when it's being simple, we are no longer "heading through the most significant economic turmoil since World War II" . Unlike that 1980s television ad for Prudential Assurance, Robert Kuok's organ is busy turning its drama into a crisis, an "economic crisis", to be precise, which it, of course, can help us overcome by "converting economic crisis into business cash".

All this from the latest email promo for an "interactive workshop" (would a "non-interactive" workshop be one where no one turned up?) by one Tom Peters.

But credit where credit is due. The Post has obviously employed a sub editor, its own contribution to the "recessionary age" in which it tells us we are living. Gone is the following sentence produced by the fifth-former on the government-sponsored work experience scheme in the 5 March email proudly signed by Michael McComb, Director, Marketing & Communications:

"Join world-renown management expert Tom Peters for one day interactive workshop and get valuable insights on opportunities for your business as we head through the most significant economic turmoil since World War II."

In its place, we have "Don't miss this opportunity to learn from the world-renowned management expert Tom Peters."

Can you imagine The Times or The New York Times adding that kind of value? Another reason they could never be Asia's world newspaper.

Lion of Judah

When war broke out in Europe in September 1939, Lion Feuchtwanger was the most widely read novelist writing in the German language.

Reading his first major novel, Jud Süß, (known as Jew Suess in England and Power in the US), it isn't hard to see why. It is chilling and disturbing – the kind of book that offers no hiding place for the reader, no comfort, no character with whom you can identify or wish to identify to score a hit of vicarious heroism.

A Jew himself, Feuchtwanger was a marked man from the moment Jud Süß was published in 1925, since here was a book which incisively portrayed Jewish themes and thus validated a group the National Socialists wanted to invisibilise. The story may be set in 18th century Stuttgart and based on historical characters and events, notably Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, financial advisor to the Duke of Württemberg, but it is really about pride, avarice, stupidity and the lust for power, in a word, weakness.

Irony permeates the book, as in this description of Isaac Landauer, the older, non-showy "Jewish" Jew, who, though presented as a counterpoint to Süß, is possessed of plenty of moral ambivalence of his own:

"His countless business interests had given him a keen eye for the connections between things, and he was aware, with a good-humoured and mocking awareness, of the absurd and subtle limitations of the great. He knew that there was only one reality in this world – money."

Feuchtwanger could be commenting on the current legal wrangle in Hong Kong over PCCW share-splitting.

Feuchtwanger followed up Jud Süß with Erfolg (Success), published in 1930, which brought the author to the attention of Goebbels, in whose eyes he was an un-German Jewish evildoer, archenemy of the Nazi regime. (Despite this, Goebbels found a use for Feuchtwanger ten years later, when he ordered a film very loosely based on Jud Süß to be made, which was seen by more than 20 million people and became arguably the most successful anti-Semitic feature film ever made.)

Success, subtitled "History of a Province" (Bavaria), tells the story of the fictional Rupert Kutzner, a man with thin lips, a faint dark moustache and hair plastered across his forehead. Founder of the party of "The True Germans", Kutzner was given to declaiming "in a high and sometimes hysterical voice" about an international ring of Jewish financiers set on destroying the German people, "as a tubercular bacillus tries to destroy a healthy lung".

Feuchtwanger left for the US in November 1932 on a lecture tour, never to return to his native Germany. A year later, the Reichsanzeiger, or official gazette of the Nazi government, published its first list of those whose German citizenship had been revoked because of "disloyalty to the German Reich and the German people". Lion Feuchtwanger's name was number six on the list – a fitting testimonial to a remarkable man.

Everything Seems too Large to a Mourner

Beowulf is the kind of book everyone reads in translation nowadays – unless they're the type of Eng Lit student with dank hair and glasses who cycles in from Lady Margaret Hall to sit at the feet of someone like Seamus Heaney.

Since I got into the habit quite early of reading boring Latin authors in Penguin translations (the Greeks were much more fun), I can't fault this approach to learning, and I have to say Heaney's translation of the classic Anglo-Saxon poem is exceptional. The Irishman took nearly 20 years to complete the project, learning Old English in the process, and he captures the mood and the metre of the alliterative "epic" brilliantly.

I say "epic" because this is just the charge against which Tolkien defends the poem in his masterly short study, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". Tollers was notoriously parsimonious in his literary output, being too busy learning Finnish and inventing not just languages but whole histories and biographies for his stories, but this represents him at his best. There are the occasional lapses into prolixity to which he is prone, but in general he presents his position clearly and makes his case persuasively.

"Slowly with the rolling years the obvious (so often the last revelation of analytic study) has been discovered: that we have to deal with a poem by an Englishman using afresh ancient and largely traditional material." (emphasis added)

The poem is relatively short for an "epic", 100 pages, and well worth a read if you like your dragons and monsters raw. The heros underwater mission to search and destroy the monster Grendel's mother is especially memorable.

But this is as much Heaney's triumph as the unknown "author of Beowulf's", as is shown in this extract, where the age-old theme of the unutterable sadness of a parent being predeceased by his child is described:

"Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed
and sings a lament; everything seems too large,
the steadings and the fields."

One-Two-Three-Four – it's David Garrett

David Garrett has had to overcome many obstacles in his rise to fame. It's been a hard slog from the back streets of Aachen to the hard seats of the City Hall Concert Hall in Hong Kong, where the violinist played two sold-out concerts over the weekend.

First, there was the embarrassment of having a name called Bongartz – solved by using his mother's maiden name. Then there were the inevitable comparisons with another crossover fiddler, Vanessa Mae – solved by an ability to resist the urge to wander into the sea in a T-shirt carrying an electric violin. Finally, the most serious of all the impediments, there were the comparisons with David Beckham – solved by demonstrating that he's good for more than just set pieces.

The Hong Kong Sinfonietta's well earned reputation for an acute commercial as well as musical sense was further enhanced by Sunday's matinee, as they served up a programme expertly tailored for spinster music teachers, 5-year-old Menuhin wannabes and Tom Lee Music Co. Ltd. alike.

It's difficult to attend a concert in Hong Kong nowadays without hearing Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, so it's just as well that it's such a fine piece. While Grieg is famous for two compositions (his piano concerto regularly tops the charts at Classic FM – praise comes no higher that that), Bizet is famous for only one work, Carmen, which is a pity, since his Symphony in C, composed when he was just 17, is a delight.

If any piece has more tunes per square inch than the Peer Gynt Suite then it's the Carmen Suite, which made it a perfect choice to kick off the second half, given the attention span of the average Hong Kong audience, never mind those who'd been dragged along in their nappies on the off chance they would one day set the family cash registers ringing as the next Mae or the next Nigel Kennedy without the annoying attitude and the Aston Villa scarf.

But no one had come to listen to the Sinfonietta play, and the man who supplements his income by modelling for Calvin Klein didn't let his audience down. He bounced his way through a repertoire of well known pieces (the sort of things you've heard on the radio or as ads on the telly but couldn't put a name to), engaging in banter with the orchestra not just between items but during them as well, transitioning from a "three-four" at the start of one piece to a full "one-two-three-four" half way through it. Not since Sir Thomas Beecham was hamming it up with the Royal Philharmonic has chuntering your way through a performance been so in fashion, with Brahms, Sarasate, Strauss and Bach all getting the Garrett treatment.

As did Antonin Dvořák, though you wouldn't know it from the programme notes. There must be something about this fellow that makes the bully in us want to kick sand in his face. Rory Bremner lampooned Classic FM in its early days with the line delivered in the half-witted tones of Henry Kelly "And that was Dvořák, but I'm not sure who it was by!", and now the poor Bohemian had his Humoresque stolen from him and attributed to Brahms.

La Stupendissima

Introducing Susan Boyle, frumpy spinster from Scotland, with a voice to die for.

Already a star state-side after her appearance on last Saturday's Britain's Got Talent, she's about to appear on Oprah and will go a lot further than William Hung for sure.

All YouTube embedding disabled by order of ITV (sorry, fumie), but catch her perform here.

You won't regret it – and some of you will cry.

ianal

i know a lawyer who always writes his emails entirely in lower case. like many hustlers and hucksters he supports chelsea fc, even going to watch them lose to manchester united in the european cup final in moscow. thanks jt.

then the other day i received an email from him and it was properly punctuated.

"what happened to the ee cummings look?" i asked him.

"oh i was in a hurry," he wrote, "i didn't have time for that."

"you mean it takes more time to write everything without caps?"

"course it fucking does," he responded like someone who'd spent his formative years in the shed*.

"then why do you do it?" i asked.

"impression management," he wrote back. "seems like you're busy."

what a chelsea fan.

* if you want to know what the shed is or was, this semi-literate fan, who's learned what capital letters are but not yet how to use them, will fill you in.

especially if you're a tottenham fan.

Mozart Stub'N

Before taking in a French film at the City Hall last week about a male prostitute who looked like David Brent and was unaccountably attractive to the birds, my wife and I tried out Hong Kong's only Austrian restaurant, Mozart Stub'N (literally, Mozart's Parlour or Snug).

I first heard about this place from a colleague in pre-handover days but never got around to trying it out. Partly as a result of that negligence, no doubt, the restaurant tucked away on Glenealy just up the hill from the Fringe Club closed down before re-opening in anticipation of my visit a couple of years ago.

Even though it was the evening before a public holiday, the place was pretty empty (just three other tables were occupied besides ours). The disquiet brought about by the lack of hubbub – such an important part of a restaurant's ambience – was intensified by the Mozart that played non-stop like the Cantonese commentary on a Premier League football match. And not a representative cross-section of the composer's output either, but a continuum of chamber music that made me long for the Dies Irae from the Requiem or the final scene from Don Giovanni. At least we were spared Eine kleine Nachtmusik.

For all that, the food was pretty good, a reward I reckon for eschewing Viener Schnitzel and Apfelstrudel in favour of something a bit more adventurous. Well, not really, as I can never resist fried camembert with cranberries, while my wife plumped for the snails and avocado in a white wine sauce. This was okay even if it reminded me of the Four Yorkshiremen who were glad to have the price of a cup o' tea. A cup o' cold tea. Without milk or sugar. Or tea. In other words, there were very few snails.

For the main course, we went for the grilled chicken with brandy pepper sauce with the trimmings and one of my favourites, calf's liver with roast potatoes and assorted veg. This was excellent, though nothing can compare to lamb's liver.

We still found a little room for dessert, and my courage in venturing off the beaten track was repaid in full with the pancakes stuffed with cream cheese and raisins, piping hot from the oven, a meal in itself.

Mozart Stub'N doesn't come cheap, but if you're willing to spend HK$500-plus a head and listen to Mozart string quartets all night, it's well worth a try. Just let the management know that Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms and the Strausses all have strong Viennese connections.

On second thoughts, forget the Strausses. I don't think I could survive an evening of wall-to-wall waltzes.

A Petisqueira and Restaurante Platao

Our annual pilgrimage to Macau saw us take in a couple of new sights as well as a new restaurant. The cable car ride up to the Chapel of Our Lady of Guia, dating back to 1622, and the lighthouse, built two hundred years later, may not be the most spectacular in the world, and at around 200 metres it must be one of the shortest, but it has its own appeal. At two patacas for a one-way trip, it must be one of the cheapest, and it gives you a good excuse to walk one way, i.e. down.

I hadn't been back to Coloane since it stopped being an island some years ago, but the circular Coloane Trail is well worth doing, especially if you start at the dingy "zoo" (two stops after the Go Kart track, if I remember right), where you can talk to the animals, if that's your thing, though don't expect much by way of a response.The beasts look as lifeless as if they've just sat through a plenary session of the National People's Congress.

We first visited A Petisqueira, situated near Dumbo in Taipa Village, in the mid-1990s. Since then, absolutely nothing has changed, except the prices and the need to book in advance. If you like octopus, then the octopus salad is a must (half the price of the one at Uno Mas and twice as good). For our other starter we ordered the Portuguese tapas plate, which is pretty much a meal in itself. I particularly liked the cheese, and the chorizo and ham were good too.

For main courses, the three of us once again shared two dishes. I wanted the Macau sole, but had to settle for charcoal-grilled sea bass, which was good, though my wife (ever the Cantonese) would have preferred it with a sauce, in particular, a sweet and sour sauce. The grilled pork ribs were as tasty as you might expect, and we washed the meal down with an excellent bottle of rosé, which isn't on the menu but is available on request. The bill for three came to around HK$700.

The Restaurante Platão is just off the Leal Senado Square in the centre of peninsular Macau, in the same street (Travessa São Domingos) as La Bonne Heure. We'd walked past Plato's place many times – even taking a business card on one occasion – but this was our first visit. We chose to sit outside, which proved to be a good choice, as the temperature was perfect for alfresco dining and the strains of Mendelssohn's Elijah, which I sang with the Weald Music Society 25 years ago, drifted by from São Domingos Church.

As with all Macanese eateries, the bread was perfect (why can't Hong Kong people make decent bread remains one of the mysteries of modern life) and the plates didn't disappoint either. Picks of the evening were the vegetable soup with Portuguese sausage and the baked pork loin with parma ham and cheese, which knocked spots off the "pork loin" served up at La Bonne Heure on our first night, which looked and tasted like a Cumberland sausage you buy at Sainsbury's.

Mural from the Chapel of Our Lady of Guia

Nanking

The 2007 HBO production Nanking pulls no punches. But then neither should it, considering its subject matter. Around 200,000 Chinese people were murdered by Japanese soldiers in a two-month period starting in mid-December 1937.

Some of the testimony from Chinese survivors (all of them children at the time of the atrocities) is so sad and so chilling that no words of mine can do it justice. The same can be said for the contemporary 16mm film images showing among other things the attempted decapitation of innocent Chinese civilians.

The documentary also highlights and pays fitting tribute to the courage of a group of just 22 European and American expatriates, many of them Christian missionaries, who ignored orders to evacuate and instead set up a Safety Zone, an action which ultimately was responsible for saving up to 200,000 lives.

Rather than the Chinese and Japanese governments getting together to cobble together a joint version of what happened in Nanking, it would do far more good if people in both countries watched this film. If such a day arrives, we might be able to say with some degree of confidence that such events will not be repeated. The continued and wilful refusal to face facts bodes as ill for the health of nations as it does for the health of individuals in our daily lives.

Shoah

On the day when Christians remember the death of one Jew, one of the most moving testimonials to the suffering inflicted by the Nazis on the Jewish people in the death camps.

Abraham Bomba, the barber at Treblinka, interviewed by Claude Lanzmann for his extraordinary film Shoah:

Episode 7: Abraham Bomba


Ignore the ittirating commentary. It's worth watching to the end.

I-Ching to Know

One of the surest indicators the worldwide global recession has really bittten is when wine sales start to plummet. From bimbos in Basildon to slick-haired Sindhis in Chennai, fewer cries are going up of "One more bottle of Leibfraumilch babe!" or "Another Margaux right now boy!"

One of the more predictable effects of any slowdown is that "marketing professionals" leave the comfort of their cubicles to think outside the box. And no one has mastered the art of thinking outside the box quite like Virgin Wines. In fact, like cuckoos hatching to find themselves surrounded by worrying reminders of normality, Branson's Boys not only flew the coop, they developed a craving for attention that will be displaced for the rest of their days into a psychotic urge to destroy all nest-like structures – all boxes – in an ultimately futile attempt to obtain the attention they never received from parents who stuck them in front of the television to watch Barney the Dinosaur.

Jay Wright, MD of Virgin Wines, no less (Hi, Jay! How's it hanging?), continues to gush from my Inbox like Old Faithful gone chav. Here's his promo for "Mammoth Aussie Reds":

Brilliant for barbies, superb simply for socialising.

Step over Beowulf, move aside Sir Gawain – the alliterative poem has finally come of age.

The relentless email assault continues with the Hong Kong Management Association. They've taken a break from trying to sell me such improbable courses as a Master of Management in General Management from some cowboy university in Australia and one-day seminars on Dealing with Difficult Customers (like Jay, I guess) to bombarding me with ads for wine-tasting workshops.

For just $2,800 I can "learn how to taste" claret, or, if I throw in another couple of hundred dollars, I can listen to Danny Wong, proud alumnus of Hong Kong Poly U, who's been engaged to talk to "executives who want to know more about Italian wine".

How to decide whether I should invest in these opportunities to impress my friends with my newly acquired knowledge that Lazio is more than an Italian football team and with my pronunciation of Chateau Lafite?

Only one thing for it: I must enrol on the 2-session I-Ching Tarot course being run by the Hong Kong Cricket Club for $1,080. For the chance to learn about the world of Yin-Yang, the eight trigrams, the 64 hexagrams, the theory of divination, psychology and synchronicity, I have to say to Master Cheung, in the immortal words of Virgin Wines, "Best value on the planet? You betcha!"

Tongue Action

You have to feel sorry for a horse called Sohna (Hindi for "gold", I'm told), which has done very well to win a race given the significant handicap it runs under. According to the SCMP's Racing Post, the "adddition of a tongue could be significant" for the five-year-old's chances.

I wonder how it gets its oats, eggs and Guinness? Intravenously?

Bonsai, You Bastards!

I get to my office to find an invitation to attend "The Bonsai and Orchid Show cum Environmental Conservation Planting Exhibition 2009 in Celebration of the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of The People's Republic of China and The Taoist Hong Kong Ching Chung Koon".

Sadly, I can't go as I have a subsequent engagement. However, I still found time to pen them a response:

"It is regretted that the undersigned will be unable to attend in person the above-mentioned event. Notwithstanding this, I have assigned one of my staff members to attend said show cum exhibition cum celebration cum waste of time in my stead."

Zheng Jie's Mokkels

It's said that you can add any word you like after "She's got big ..." and people will understand it to mean tits.

When I heard this theory, I thought of course you will, as the string "She's got big ..." automatically cues the response knockers, in the same way as "He's got a big ..." will trigger the word schlong.

Which is all by why of saying that I'm getting a growing number of hits from Dutchmen (or Dutch women – mustn't be sexist) searching for the People's Republic of China's Wimbledon semi-finalist Zheng Jie, and her mokkels.

So, lest anyone say I have anything against the Dutch, or indeed Zheng's mokkels, check this out:

You Know Things Must Be Bad When ...

Forget definitions such as "the economy chalking up two consecutive quarters of negative growth", "unemployment climbing by 1.5% in 12 months" or simply "national income contracting", here in Hong Kong we know we're in a recession when our national snoozepaper quits charging mugs six grand to listen to an old bore or, with no apparent sense of irony, $5,400 to hear someone drone on about doing "business in a recessionary age", and tries to flog a free seminar.

The individuals the SCMP does not deem it worth paying to listen to include David Leung, described as a "professional MICE organiser", Vincent Huang, who looks after Hong Kong and Macau for the Singapore Tourism Board (Singapore?! our great rivals – is this why the Post is declining to charge for this extravaganza at the swanky Sheraton?), and Nick Walton, the paper's very own travel editor.

What, I know you're asking, is a MICE organizer, let alone a "professional" one? Well, in common with many acronyms, it has more than one long form, so you can take your pick between "Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions" from the International Congress & Convention Association and "Meetings, Incentive Travel, Conventions and Exhibitions" from the Singapore Tourism Board. Since I don't want to get on the wrong side of Harry Lee Kuan Yew, I'm going with the Lion City's version.

MICE-man David Leung is anything but a shrinking violet when it comes to promoting himself. His blurb reveals that during a 14-year stint with Tourism Queensland, he successfully transformed the state from a backwater to a popular destination with travellers from Asia. Now, in case you feel that selling the Great Barrier Reef and Gold Coast casino facilities to the Chinese – I guess that's the "incentive" travel he refers to – isn't much to boast about, it pales next to his claimed "achievement of bringing close to one million annual visitors from Asia which contributed over A$500 million to the Australian government".

Moving along to Singapore's man in Hong Kong, Vincent Huang's blurb proudly proclaims that his job is to "promote Singapore as the premier destination for leisure, education, healthcare, business travel" – and, of course, MICE.

In the meantime, not to be outdone, Hong Kong has launched its own MICE bureau, led, appropriately enough, by Hong Kong's very own Mickey Mouse.

Hong Kong's Most Exclusive park

Bored with Victoria Park? Fed up with the one where you can take your dog to do a poo? Why not try the Manhattan Hill Public Open Space in sunny Lai Chi Kok? Just walk out of the Detention Centre and it's right in front of you.

Head to Block 6 of the swanky Manhattan Hill apartment complex and ask the nice man in the security guard outfit to take you up in the lift to the second floor (or the fifth, if you fancy starting from the top).

To make the visitor feel at home, all your favourite activities are banned at the park, so don't bring your bike, your pet or your fags, and stay on the concrete at all times.

The open space operates, like our old Chief Execrable Tung Chi Hwa, after whom the concept might have been named, from 7 to 11.

Where's There's Muck There's Brass

What is it about the People's Republic and khazis?

A perusal of the Chinese-language press shows that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well across the border (oops! boundary) in Shenzhen, where cleaning ladies have been supplementing the income derived from pointing a hose at a hole in the ground and turning it on full blast by charging bus passengers to use the bogs at bus terminals.

The bus company sidestepped the issue (we've all done that when near the dunnies in the PRC) by stating that the thunderboxes at the above-mentioned bus terminals are for staff use only. They added, however, that they would tell the "cleaners" to stop collecting fees from travellers – or cut them in, at least.

In other news, a bus company in Hubei Province held a ceremony at which its bus drivers pledged to drive safely and "in a civilized manner". Apparently, each charioteer took the pledge in the pose favoured by bus drivers on the Mainland, one hand gesticulating madly as he expatiates on his ongoing feud with his neighbour, while the other makes occasional and irregular contact with the steering wheel in order to jerk his lethal weapon round obstructions on the road such as bicycles and pedestrians.