To Boldly Go into a New Decade - or Not

The recent debate about so-called split infinitives has unwittingly provided the springboard from which I can launch this blog (described by Rory Boland at gohongkong.about.com as "utterly cynical, thoroughly grumpy and completely fun" – can you do all my publicity, Rory?) into the New Year and the new decade. Or not.

For, of course, flame wars are currently raging over whether a new decade actually starts in 2010. It all goes back to whether there was a year zero or not, to Roman and Hindu numbering systems, and to different types of calendar, including the Julian, the Hindu and the Gregorian – not forgetting the Mayan, which predicts Woody Harrelson's rapture in 2012.

I'm not sure where I stand on this dispute. I vacillate between taking the commonsense view that it's crazy to call the 1960s the decade that spanned 1961 to 1970 and taking the dissenting view (always more fun, anyway) by pointing out that the "60s" didn’t actually get under way until The Beatles released Revolver in 1966 and, after a number of false starts in 1968 – the Prague Spring, the Paris May, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Free Huey movement, Cliff Richard's Congratulations being robbed in the Eurovision Song Contest – didn't really get going until 1970, when Tiny Tim appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival.

Back to "split infinitives", the fetish surrounding their use has been blamed for the incorrect administration of the oath of office at the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the US and A. Chief Justice John Roberts guaranteed that he'd be remembered by future generations as more than just a faceless lawyer by trying to get the new man to recite back to him "that I will execute the Office of President to the United States faithfully" rather than the correct version "that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States".

As an American destined to be far more famous than either Roberts or Obama when the rapture finally comes once put it, "You pays your money and takes your choice". And there's no arguing with Popeye the Sailorman.

The Narrowness of the Specialist

I'm not sure what C.S. Lewis would have made of the rather ridiculously named International Baccalaureate, which is fine for all-rounders but a terror at Diploma level for those who excel in one area but are pretty hopeless in another (like Maths).

One thing I do know about I.B., which my girl is taking, is that it reduces school reports, traditionally the source of magnificent irony and skilful wordplay, to a mélange of meaningless phrases like "reflection", "inquiry", "exploration" and, oh my lord, "care" and – pardon me while I puke – "compassion".

And they say they're trying to encourage children to be creative!

As always, Lewis is a splendid antidote to the tendency towards the abolition of thinking. Here he is, from the essay "Our English Syllabus", stressing the importance of specialisation while causing us to question educational standardisation by focusing on the personal, "power" element which inevitably underpins it:

"Do not be deceived by talk about the narrowness of the specialist. The opposite of a specialist, as you now see, is a student of some one (sic) else's selection."

The End of Human Life

One of C.S. Lewis's least known works is a short piece called "Our English Syllabus", which was published in Rehabilitations and Other Essays in 1939 and which, because of its somewhat esoteric subject matter (the role of the "English School" at Oxford), has not to my knowledge been republished since. To read this essay, I had to make the journey to the Radcliffe Camera in Oxford, surely the most beautiful library in the world, although the neighbouring Duke Humfrey's Library (used in the Harry Potter films) was Lewis's preferred place for reading.



As always, Lewis has some interesting things to say, coming at an issue from a different direction from how most people would do so. After all, he was no technocrat, no "expert" on education. His vision took in the whole wood, rather than the individual trees that were strewn across the paths. Nor was he of the temperament to succumb to despair and conceive of anything – least of all education – as an impenetrable forest or a trackless waste.

As with many of the great writers and thinkers, some of the best nuggets are to be picked up en passant, when he's taken you off on an apparent detour. In a passage in which he takes a position against religious education – as, for example, today, in Islamic schools – he encapsulates in two sentences his thinking in respect of both our natural life and our supernatural life.

"Human life means to me the life of beings for whom the leisured activities of thought, art, literature, conversation are the end, and the preservation and propagation of life merely the means."

To which he adds as a footnote:

"The natural end. It would have been out of place here to say what I believe about Man's supernatural end or to explain why I think the natural end should be pursued although, in isolation from the supernatural, it cannot be fully realized." (emphasis added)

Seventy years on, and religious fundamentalists – Christians included – will look to C.S. Lewis for support for their views in vain.

National Traits

The other day I overheard a clip from Rising Damp, which my wife was watching again. It was that part where Miss Jones – that archetype of the aspiring lower middle-class female – was confusing Rigsby with her pronunciation of "traits". Like my mother, Miss Jones pronounced it "trays", confirming all that research in the sociolinguistic literature which shows that it is women, and women of that rank, who drive linguistic change.

Before returning to Marchant's Life of Byron, my thoughts flitted to a comment made by the multilingual English football manager, Roy Hodgson, currently of Fulham – who I will be cheering on tonight against Chelsea – arising from the nine years he spent in Sweden in the 1970s and '80s.

"The Swedes don't even hide it: jealousy is their national trait. We are more civilised but it is still in our nature."

Now I know very little about Swedes apart from what I've seen in some pretty grainy 1970s films, and am in no position to argue with the former Halmstad and Malmö manager. But, I wondered, if jealousy is the Swedish national trait, what about the British? Hypocrisy, I would hope. The French? Arrogance? The Germans? Humourlessness. The Canadians? Earnestness? The South Africans? I'm not sure where to start.

Where does that leave the Asian nations, I wonder? Answers on a postcard ...

Nip in the Air

What a way to end the year! My company has just been named first runner-up in the "Highest Service Hour Award 2009 (Private Organisation – Customer Participation)". As if that wasn't enough, we received the award from the Director of Social Welfare, one Mr. Nip.

And I won HK$1,000 in Mannings coupons in the lucky draw. And I hear Santa has a Dell laptop waiting for me if he can get past the security guards on the ground floor. Can it get any better than that?

Here's wishing all my readers a very happy Christmas wherever they may be. Having recently broken through in French Polynesia, Liberia and Mongolia, I feel that a more commercial approach may be warranted, as the Ulaca brand seeks to turn widespread penetration into global domination.

Brace yourselves for a completely new look in the New Year.

Build It and They Will Crash

One thing the HKSAR Government has yet to cotton onto is that while you can add lanes to a highway, you cannot add brain cells to a Hong Kong driver.

If you're looking for a good crash, all you have to do is check the calendar (or just look out of the window). For, as sure as eggs is eggs, if there's a shower of rain or a festival in the air, there will be more collisions to be found than on the dodgems track at the Runnymede funfair.

Yesterday I was privileged to witness two accidents in perfect driving conditions within the space of one minute and 200 metres in lane 3 of the 4-lane Tolo Highway. Significantly, both comings together occurred at 18:18, which just goes to prove that the double 8 isn't necessarily auspicious, unless you happen to be a panel beater.

The problem with learning to drive in Hong Kong is a fairly simple one (no chance that the Government will do anything about it, then) – driving instructors imbued with the local ethos, once described in a book called The Ethos of the Hong Kong Chinese as "egotistical individualism", or "I'm all right Jack" to you and me. Every day they pass on their accumulated non-wisdom to a bunch of would-be Alphard and Toyota Hiace drivers, whose one ambition is to use their vehicles as weapons in the free-for-all jousting that passes for driving in Hong Kong.

(Are there any other hopeless romantics out there who look back longingly on the days of their youth when people didn't drive, they "motored"?)

As police motorcycles screamed down the four – or is it five? – south-bound lanes all ready to take photos of the scene of the crime, paint white lines on the tarmac and tell the morons to remove their cars from the third lane and park them on the hard shoulder, I continued on my way with, I must confess, not a little trepidation at the prospect of what awaited me.

This being "Jou Dung" (or the winter solstice), I was heading for the family reunion dinner in a village in the wilds of the Lam Tsuen Valley. My spirits had been lifted somewhat by the report on the news that every chicken in the territory had been sold out shortly after dawn. Was it possible, I wondered, if every duck had likewise been snapped up? Every tin of abalone, every packet of dried mushrooms?

My resolution wavered for a moment, as I considered a quick detour to the After 5 Sports Bar in Tai Po, from which I could phone my wife and explain that they'd closed the Tolo Highway because of a multiple pile-up and I'd been forced to head back home. In the end, though, a vision of my beloved in Mirka-mode broke in upon my reveries and I soldiered on to my destination.

I arrived at the indigenous three-storey Spanish-style villa just as the soup was being finished and in time for the first toast. Thoughtfully spared the Aussie Shiraz I had brought, as I was driving, I was given a glass of something yellowish.

"It's not cream soda?" I asked suspiciously.

Assured it wasn't, I joined in the toast. Even worse than cream soda, it was that execrable sugar cane drink. Trying to avoid the eye of the poultry gazing triumphantly up at me from the table, I helped myself to a sprig of broccoli and thought ahead to Christmas Day, when they will get to eat dry turkey, overcooked brussels sprouts and rock-hard mince pies, all washed down by Warnink's Advocaat.

The Nutcracker

It says as much about the dearth of talent in Hong Kong as it does about the depth of talent on the mainland that of the 22 top dancers listed in the programme for this year's performance of The Nutcracker at the Cultural Centre not one was born locally. Indeed, besides the PRC, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Russia, Australia, South Africa and the Philippines are all represented among the principals and soloists.

The Nutcracker was the third and final ballet composed by the Russian melody-machine Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. As the excellent programme notes tell us, the composer was distinctly underwhelmed at first by the prospect of setting a dark, violent and disturbing German fairy-tale to music. In fact, he remained distinctly underwhelmed throughout the process of composition, complaining that it was "absolutely impossible to depict in music the Sugar-Plum Fairy". Shows how little he knew.

One of the strengths of The Nutcracker as a performance piece is the contrast between the two acts: in the first act, you get the traditional (affluent) Russian Christmas at home round the tree; in the second, the adventures in the Land of Snow. This in turn hands the ballet an advantage over many other works (think The Magic Flute) in that the second half is better than the first.

The highlight of the Hong Kong Ballet's production was the Arabian Dance – performed by Wu Fei-fei and Nobuo Fujino at the matinee we attended – a veritable feast of sensuosity, culminating in the wafer-thin ballerina clamped to the upright legs of the supine Japanese. Less successful was the Russian Dance – whose bizarre use of whips caused my daughter to turn to me and say "Is this meant to be sexual?" – but that was a mere irritation set against the Chinese Dance, the tweeness of which would have caused even The Mikado's Three Little Maids to throw up.

Performances continue each day over the Christmas period until Sunday 27 December, with matinees on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

All Greek to Me

If you have any information on the accidental shooting of a man dressed as a policeman, please contact us immediately

Band of Brothers

Band of Brothers is one of the best series to be made for television. Having just watched the ten one-hour episodes first broadcast in 2001again, I can even forgive it for petering out somewhat, given that the war in Europe was doing very much the same thing. Unless, of course, you were a member of the Soviet army returning "home" (or being forcibly returned by Allied troops) or any of the dislocated peoples depicted so graphically in The Third Man and Primo Levi's novel If Not Now, When?

The scope of the series is simple enough: it follows the members of one company of one regiment of the 101st Airborne Division from two years of training in the American south and in the south of England (covered in the first two episodes) through a year of intermittent, often gruesome hand-to-hand fighting in western Europe (covered in six episodes) to the concluding weeks spent witnessing at first hand the various outcomes of Adolph Hitler's particular brand of lunacy – the concentration camps and the Eagle's Nest, Hitler's hill-top home in his beloved Bavaria.

The executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks (who had already collaborated on the powerful though ultimately less satisfying Saving Private Ryan) get most things spot on in the series from characterisation – we get to feel close to the main protagonists – to realism – we can't get close to many others because they die first. Another nod to authenticity is provided by the decision to show the less savoury aspects of war, such as looting and, most memorably, the killing of unarmed prisoners of war by American troops.

The producers' decision to start each episode with pre-recorded interviews with Easy Company survivors is another masterstroke. The matter of factness, lack of sentimentality and humility of these largely working class men, together with the enduring sadness they feel for those who died, work not only to humble the viewer but also to constrain the actors.

Fans of Band of Brothers will be pleased to learn that Spielberg and Hanks's sequel series The Pacific is set to premiere on HBO in March.

Number Twos

In a bizarre turn of events worthy of Number 2's most fiendish mind games, it turns out that the SCMP reproduced Monday's format for weather forecasts in its Wednesday edition.

My interest piqued and my powers of observation sharpened to Sherlock Holmesian levels, I note that Monday and Tuesday's Posts gave "total rainfall since January 1st" as 0.0 mm and 0.1 mm respectively, before they finally spotted the mistake for yesterday's edition and reverted to this year's measurements rather those presumably projected for 2010.

Are they sending some sort of coded message? I advise all lovers of liberty to keep an eye on the SCMP's Weather section on – and here's the clincher– page Number 2.

Time Travelling SCMP-style

Casting my eye over the wretched South China Morning Post, as I must do for 20 minutes once a month before sallying forth for the FCC quiz, I thought for a moment I was reading a copy of The Village broadsheet Tally Ho.

For there on page 2, in the Weather section, there was a time-line giving the weather forecast for the next four days:

Tomorrow > Wednesday > Thursday > Friday

As Number 6 might say, "You won't break me!"

Swiss Watchmaker Set to End Affair with Tiger Woods

Did you put a Tiger in your Tag?

With Gatorade and Accenture (whose parent Arthur Andersen was no stranger to controversy) having already pulled the plug on Tiger Woods, and Gillette and AT&T "considering their position", timepiece makers Tag Heuer are keeping a close watch on proceedings.

Head of spin at the Swiss horologists, part of the giant LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) group, Françoise Bezzola (above), was quick to rebut an underling, who had earlier gone off-message by telling the world's media that the personal life of their pin-up boy was none of their business and the relationship had always run like clockwork in the past.

Bezzola was quite unequivocal about things, "We are not announcing that we will keep Tiger and we are not announcing we will drop Tiger Woods. We are still considering it and we haven't taken a decision yet."

Avec amis comme ça ...

Talk of the Toon

What a time to be a Geordie! Newcastle United are top of the table – will we see Sir Donald Tsang in a stripey black and white shirt jumping up and down next to Mike Ashley if they go on and beat the Japan Under-12s in the final of the Unibond Trophy (North-East Division)? – and Geordie Joe has just won the X Factor.

Here he is with Michael Douglas masquerading as George Michael.



If you can take any more – and the fellow's got a very good voice – here he is singing the winning song The Climb, written by Jessi Alexander and Jon Mabe, with a nod to Robert Louis Stevenson ("to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour").

They Don't Tell the Truth Even When There's No Need Not to Tell the Truth

These words, spoken to me over tea at the Peninsula by a British businessman of Middle Eastern extraction some years ago, were his take on the business style of the Mainland Chinese.

Personally, I prefer the Hong Kong style of always answering a question with another question.

"So you'll be in the US for Christmas?"

"Have you been to the US?" etc. ad infinitum ...

Pour me rapprocher de Marie

Alfredo Kraus – arguably Spain's greatest tenor – sings the aria from Donizetti's Fille du Régiment which translates as "In order to bring Marie closer to me". Better in the French, really.

Memories Enjoyed Because They Focus on Ourselves

One of the more obscure places my C S Lewis reading has taken me is to the Gifford Lectures given at Glasgow by the philosopher Samuel Alexander in 1916-1918, which were published in 1920 as Space, Time and Deity.

The Alexandrine idea that Lewis most frequently drew on was his distinction between contemplation and enjoyment. Alexander argued that it isn't the object of our thought that we enjoy but rather the thought itself:

"... the object of the mind in any mental process is something non-mental, which is contemplated, while the mental process is enjoyed." (Vol. II: 10)

Or, put another way, "... in sensation there is besides the sensum (the object sensed) the mental act of sensing it, and it is this, not the other, which is enjoyed." (Vol. I, 102)

Still on the theme of enjoyment, I rather like this bit on the role of stories and other memories in our lives, especially in so far as they function to keep the focus on what we most enjoy - ourselves:

"The reason why we use introspection so much is that in memory the enjoyed condition is free from those practical urgencies of the present moment which take our attention from ourselves and turn it on the object with which we are concerned and make the accurate record of what we are enjoying difficult or impossible." (Vol. II, 90)

Which all goes to show you can find gems in the most unlikely places.

Tiger Hunt

I don't think you've slept with that one.

We Give Good Bed

Malcolm McComb shows no signs of slowing down as he works out his notice at the South China Morning Post. The latest email marketing campaign – a joint venture with Luxe City Guides – gushes like a fire hydrant that has been rammed by Tiger Woods under the heading "Win LUXE-urious prizes from LUXE City Guides".

If bad wordplay is your thing, then you can win three nights at the Peninsula in Bangkok. All you have to do is write a 50-word review of a hotel, restaurant or shop in Hong Kong or any one of another 11 cities in Asia. But there's a catch: you've got to write the review in "snappy LUXE-style words".

For those of you fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with Luxe's "style", Luxe City Guides' blog is called LUXEtasy (as in ... sorry, absolutely no clue) and its website is "choc (sic) full of unique and useful features just for you ... and a grand-slam of other cool stuff".

Valour overcoming discretion, I clicked the link to the Luxe website, only to be confronted by the following banner headline: We Give Good Bed.

I have a simple challenge for my readers. Write just ten words of utter pap each and I'll stick it together and send it off to our Malcolm. If it proves to be the winning entry, I'll be scrupulously fair and write down the names on a piece of paper. The name to be eaten first by Fletcher (above) will be on the plane to Bangkok.

If you still haven't picked up the Luxe (oops! LUXE) vibe, here's something to help you along – their Tokyo twaddle:

There're tons of designer label faddle, but we show you the exquisite and unique, like ink bar Ito-ya, where you can custom blend your ink to match your hubby's undies, and Ginza Motoji's custom made yukata dressing gowns – you'll never wear terry again, Terry. Just one touch of a button on those famed Japanese wash and blow loos however, and you may never want to leave the lav, let alone your room. Crikey!

SCMP : The Edge of Reason

One of the perks of being in possession of the company's online subscription to the South China Morning Post is that it gives me enough material for an entire conference, as the Psychiatrist remarked to his wife in the Fawlty Towers episode of the same name.

While other newspapers compete with each other to provide well written, thought provoking and original content free of charge over the ether, Hong Kong's finest contents itself with seeking out new depths to plumb, and then pats itself on the back when it finds them.

The latest unguided missile to be shot off by those remarkable people in the SCMP's Marketing & Communications Department is called "Help Us Chart the Future". Rather like the Titanic, the missive was split in two, with one part arriving in November and the other a week later at the beginning of December.

Now, the more attentive of you may recall that the first effort enticed potential respondents by dangling the carrot of a "FREE and IMPORTANT Discussion Group". The accompanying questionnaire asked a few questions about the type of recruitment publications you read, along with the standard personal questions (How old? How rich? How much sex? – you know the thing). They reckoned it would take a minute to complete and they couldn't have been far off.

As for the second effort, I knew something was up when I read that my "valuable opinions" would require "four minutes". Not five minutes, not ten – but four. I have to confess I never got even that far after I came across the following passage, at which point I shouted out like Peter Finch in Network, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

Stress Relievers

As you climb up the hillside behind Wong Tai Sin the sound of traffic fades to a soft hum. Plunging between trees thick with green, other things fade too - thoughts of meetings you have in the coming week and tasks that need doing.

Hiking is the perfect way to escape for a few hours from the stresses in everyday life. And now that autumn has arrived, the temperatures have dropped to cooler levels perfect for exploring the many trails here.

"I go hiking most weekends," says Chester Chan, who works in the financial industry. "During the week, my life is so hectic. I like to get away and go at a slower pace."

The MacLehose trail behind Wong Tai Sin MTR is one of the most easily accessible. Just follow the Shatin Pass Road uphill, watching for the footpath on your left. The path quickly turns to steep steps that carry you up to the ridge above.

Here the path flattens out, diving through shady clusters of trees as it leads along to the famous peak of Lion Rock.

The views from here are fantastic. Peer down over the edge of the cliff to see the vast hazy expanses of Mongkok and Kowloon bay. And also there you will find the rare thing in Hong Kong – complete silence.

Beyond this the path continues through a forest towards the Shing Mun reservoir. Trees crowd together and plants spread out giant glossy leaves. Occasionally there's a rustle as monkeys swing through the branches above.

When they asked me "What do you think about the level of English in the above three articles?" I shot them one of those looks Tim gives when Gareth's being a cock.

When they asked me "If ClassifiedPost is going to have the content similar to the above three articles, how do you think your reading frequency of ClassifiedPost will be?" I unsheathed my ceremonial paper knife and tried repeatedly to fall on it.

You don't believe me? Check this out.

Gas Free Inspectors

As regular readers will know, the magazine of the Hong Kong Occupational Safety & Health Council, Green Cross, is the source of literary nuggets.

I didn't have to dig too deep this issue for a splendid contribution from the Marine Department – motto We are one in promoting excellence in marine services – entitled "Working in Confined Spaces on Vessels".

As you may imagine, it's pretty exciting stuff, so I'll be quoting just the one sentence in case anyone gets hysterical and comes running after me with a 3 iron and a fire hydrant.

"In order to ensure that a safe atmosphere, the proper ventilation of workplaces and the protection against fumes have been in place before carrying out works, a Code of Practice that outlines the basic elements of the work that shall be carried out by the person in charge of works in order to protect the workers from harm will be drafted for consultation."

Aware no doubt that the prose needs a bit of pepping up, the author starts introducing his own characters in the next paragraph:

"The Code also outlines the basic conditions for a safe atmosphere and the related tests to be conducted by 'Gas Free Inspectors'."

Now that's what you call tongue in cheeks.

A Couple More Years

Top Dr Hook number written by Shel Silverstein and Dennis Locorriere:



"I've been to somewhere and found it was nowhere at all."

Rachel Uchitel's Lawyer Gloria Aldred Speaks

I vehemently deny that my client has been gagged by Tiger. Bound, yes, but never gagged.

Safe Haven?

Amid all the companies who send me emails trying to flog me wine – I don't know why I don't move them into Junk – or spam – I really must unsubscribe from the South China Morning Post (more on them next week by the way) – it's nice to get a little culture in the Inbox.

Haven Books' latest missive was an invitation to attend the party for the release (their word, not mine) of a new Hong Kong guidebook. In an attempt to generate a bit of interest, Haven provided testimonials from half a dozen people I'd never heard of, one, who rejoices in the name Rochelle Sneddon, being the Hong Kong International School's New Parent Mentor Program Person. Every school should have one.

But the plug that really caught my eye was penned by "Sonya Madden, fashion designer", who gushed:

"A one-stop life-simplifier with a huge impact on the value of my time. I'm getting the best advise in town so I don't need to look anywhere else. A household staple!"

If I may offer a bit of advise to Haven Books. Time to get a proofreader?

Meanwhile, the response to my Abba poll was so overwhelming that, like Tiger, I'm sticking another one up.

All Aboard for Baby Blue

One of my favourite lunchtime spots, Baby Blue, formerly of Mei Foo Plaza, has been replaced by a branch of the Yeh Lam Kok chain, which I'm told sells distinctly average "Malaysian" food.

But it's not all bad news for fans of the purveyor of decent nosh and serviceable coffee: it's due to open down the road (the Lai Chi Kok Road, to be precise) later this month. The venue alone should be enough to attract the anoraks who collect comics and drool over pictures of plain Chinese women with small boobs and big make-up licking ice-cream cones: Baby Blue will be opening on the fifth floor of KMB HQ.

With the ground floor already occupied by Yoshinoya and Pizzahut (takeaway and delivery only), it may be only a matter of time before your bus ride is enhanced not just by TV infotainment but by meals on wheels.

Light Up a Life Concert at St John's

The Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care does a great deal of important work in line with its motto "adding life to days when days cannot be added to life". Each year the Society organises a concert at St. John's Cathedral in Central, the focus of which is the lighting of the Christmas tree in memory of those who have been loved and lost.

Half a million Hong Kong dollars are raised at the Christmas Concert, which this year features once again the Filipino Fellowship Choir, the Pro-Musica Chorus supported by the SAR Philharmonic Orchestra, and the stalwart Hong Kong Welsh Male Voice Choir, who'll all be reporting for duty next Tuesday (8 December) at 7.30pm.

Besides the traditional congregational carols and après-show mince pies and mulled wine, there'll be excerpts from Handel's Messiah, including And the Glory of the Lord, For unto us a Child is Born and, of course, the Hallelujah Chorus, as well as a couple of Tagalog numbers.

The boys in the garish scarlet shirts will be giving their own special interpretation to four seasonal songs: Angels We Have Heard on High, the Coventry Carol, The Holly and the Ivy and O Holy Night.

The last-named, written by Adolphe Adam of Postillon de Lonjumeau fame, has been recorded by a whole bunch of singers, including 'N Sync, Celine Dion and Josh Groban. But the definitive version belongs to French tenor Georges Thill.

Tickets are HK$100 in advance from the Cathedral Bookshop or available on the door on the night. It's best not to leave it to the last minute, though, as this event is usually a sell-out.

Tiger Update

How's the lie, Tiger?

I dunno – I leave that to my PR people.