Tag Archive for 'Donald Tsang'

Caring and Sharing

Published
by
cecilie
on September 1, 2010
in Media
. 3 Comments

I want to share something with you today. You know how difficult it is to get the plastic wrapping off CDs? Well I think it’s difficult anyway. For years I’ve been plucking and scraping at these covers with my fingernails, taking ages to nudify each CD. But yesterday I went to HMV and saw how the professionals do it.

1. Hold the CD in a strong grip.

2. With one swift movement, drag it along the edge of a table or desk. (It must be a sharp edge; rounded ones won’t do. At all!)

3. The plastic will now have been half torn off and you can complete the process with your hand.

4. Put the disc in the CD player and listen with rapture to for example, as in my case, Amadou and Mariam.

5. Cover your nose with tissue paper and always see a doctor when you feel plague symptoms coming on.

Maybe you already knew this and have been using “one swift movement” for years. But for me it was a revelation. Now there will be a music-listening the like of which the world has never seen. Seldom.

I Am A Total Racist

Published
by
cecilie
on August 28, 2010
in Cantonese, China, Government, Injustice, Uncategorized, language and religion
. 5 Comments

I have a vice. Yes, people, a guilty, stinking VICE! After I stopped shooting up mary-hooana as well as crossing the street on red light after I got fined $300 for “jaywalking” (sounds like “joyful walking” doesn’t it) in Central in 2003 - there were so many policemen there telling me not to walk that I just had to do it for the sake of it because nobody can tell me what to do (yes I have father issues) - I have only one tiny little vice left: I spend HK$100 every week on the Sunday Times.

I know, I know. The SCMP is only 7 dollars so why pay an extra $93 for just another English language paper, right? It’s just that I need to read some well written articles that don’t praise Donald Tsang occasionally. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago there was a six page article in that paper’s magazine that really caught my eye.

The headline was: England’s Green and Prejudiced Land, and it was about racism.

Naturally, that touched a nerve with me as I had just been called a “racist cunt” in this forum for saying - oh, something about how I don’t want the world to become islamic. Anyway, the article was written by one David James Smith who is obviously a writer for said newspaper; if he wasn’t (weren’t, I always forget which) I doubt if he’d ever got such a badly written and deeply boring piece through the hallowed doors of the Sunday Times.

It was all about him (a white guy) being married to a black woman and moving to Lewes, a small town in England, after having fled London where they had felt “a vague unease at the potential for urban crime.”

Well, unfortunately Lewes was even worse, for guess what happened? Their neighbour turned out to be a member of the BNP!!!! After this lead-up, I naturally expected a harrowing story of how this fascist nazi had racially harassed them, but no, he “never gave us any trouble. He ignored us.” He also seemed “strange, withdrawn,” but that could have been down to his wife having “died sometime earlier.” After this non-event, the BNP neighbour eventually moved away.

Riveting stuff indeed, but the real drama had been how this BNP member had been sitting not two feet away from Smith, separated only by a “wafer thin wall,” spewing out racial hatred on his computer. Smith assumed.

But then things started to happen. Smith’s wife had gone for a drink with some local women and been assured that there was no racism in Lewes! What can be more racist, Smith asks.

Worse: People would sometimes mistake Petal (his wife) for the other black woman in the village.

Yes, yes, I impatiently thought, reading through page after page looking for the good racist tidbits. Mistaking black people for each other, deeply insulting to be sure, but where is the good stuff?

It was this: His daughter had been told by a teacher that she had “frizzy hair.” In another incident, when the students at his daughter’s school wanted to give each other nicknames and someone suggested “chocolate-brown bear” for his daughter, that girl had said NO, that’s racist. Way to go, girl, stand up for yourself. But not really a cause for daddy rushing to the school to complain?

In another incident “Mackenzie (Smith’s son) was under a desk while he and another boy cleared up some paper at the teacher’s instruction. Mackenzie has a male teacher, part time, that year and the teacher asked him to come out. Mackenzie didn’t hear him, the teacher became exasperated and grabbed Mackenzie’s leg and yanked him out.”

Smith feels this is also racism and immediately goes to the school to sort things out with the teacher, concluding that “it seemed certain that [the teacher's] perception of who or what Mackenzie was had got in the way of normal teacherly conduct. ” Yes. A teacher yanks your son’s leg - racist!

In fact, according to the article, Smith spends most of the time when he’s not writing badly, running around between his children’s schools and various local community centres, complaining about people saying words like “frizzy” and “coloured” and teachers’ “preconceived idea that [black or mixed race children] fare worse than their white counterparts in secondary school.”

The next week there was a storm of letters to the Sunday Times, mostly from black British people telling Smith to get a grip, so all is not lost.

Yes, I laughed many times when I read that article.

I thought about how many times Hong Kong people have told me Cantonese is “too difficult for me” (but not for Indonesian helpers) how people call me a devil every day, ( yeah, I know HK people prefer to translate 鬼 (gwai) as “ghost” but really, is it any better?) how I’m always served jasmine tea without anyone asking me what tea I would like because all whitey drink jasmine and jasmine only, how people don’t want to sit next to male whitey (of course not me - that would be too much) on the MTR, how people treat me like a dog that can ride a bicycle every time I say “hello” in the local language, how Hong Kong people rejoice in telling me that all westerners are sluts and how, if I for example ask them to pick up their dog poo I keep stepping in everywhere I go, that I should “fuck off back to England.”

I wonder what Smith would make of that? But then of course, anything directed at whitey isn’t racism. Everyone knows that. We just have to suck it up and laugh about it. And you know what? I think we should. Racism is something that only the people who are hysterically over-aware of the colour of other people’s skin keep blathering on about. I don’t think it’s in any way helping Smith’s daughters - whose hair definitely isn’t straight - that he keeps running to the school every other day to complain about people saying they have frizzy hair.

I know, I know, a parent wants to keep his children away from harm, and it is indeed awful to be called names at school. We all know that. But - according to the article it seems this guy is on the hyper-alert 24 hours a day. “You said black? You said frizzy? That’s not how we did it in London, multi-cultural capital of the world! I demand that this little village in Sussex becomes like London but without the vague unease about potential for urban crime!”

Racism is awful and we should all fight against it. But as “they” say: The best revenge is to live well. I’m sure we all, as this Smith geezer’s children, will be much better off if we just forget about the racism and start to genuinely live as if we’re “colour blind.”

That means that you can criticise somebody for what they do and how they do it without being called racist. It means that you can criticise Obama without being called racist. It means you can say Donald Tsang looks ridiculous “mourning” the victims of the hostage tragedy in the Philippines wearing what seems to be a dinner jacket, without being called racist.

And it means I can say that I disagree with the ludicrous notion that the whole world will be better off if we would only wear tents with only one to two eyes showing, stone people to death if they’ve committed adultery, hang homosexuals and rape nine-year olds, without being accused of being racist. If being against any totalitarianism is racist, then I’m definitely a total RACIST. And proud of it.

The Use of a Storm

Published
by
cecilie
on April 11, 2010
in Beauty, Environment, Hong Kong and Pollution
. 2 Comments


Fog fog fog foggie foggie fog, and then, last week, a huge bloody rain. As soon as the last raindrop had fallen, sleepy backwater Pui O snapped back into action:

One thing I love about Hong Kong is that there is never any shortage of weather. And coming down to Pui O beach after a big storm never ceases to bring a sense of gratitude about the islands of the South China Sea still being around after all:

Forget about Donald Tsang and his murderous, Le Corbusier*-style vision of a Hong Kong consisting solely of motorways and high-rises, as long as it never snows here I’ll keep loving at least my little corner of this marvellous metropolis.

*HK’s as indeed China’s governments, of course, have mostly only taken aboard the worst aspects of Corbusier’s vision. Ring roads interspersed with mega high-rises and and endless stream of cars .. with the occasional human thrown in as a afterthought.

Roll On, New Decade

Published
by
cecilie
on December 31, 2009
in China, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice, Media, communism and corruption
. 9 Comments

So that was the end of 2009 - The Donald berated by Wen Jiabao for Hong Kong’s “deep rooted conflicts.” Being a cretin, or maybe because he’s catholic, the optimistic Chief Executive takes this to mean: Hong Kong must sort out its economic problems.

What is he ON? Has he never been in, or near, China before? Did he notice that just the week before, one of China’s most high profile and outspoken pro-democracy activists was sentenced to 11 years in prison for mildly suggesting that perhaps rampant corruption and gagging of anyone critical of the government isn’t the best way forward for China, and in fact that a higher degree of democracy …THUMP!

Upon which he was immediately gagged by a government which prides itself of being pro-democratic, having a high if not 100% degree of free speech, and being anti corruption.

This again came two weeks after all private internet sites and blogs were banned, amid talk of registering all mobile phone owners.

So yeah Donald, the Chinese government, all they care about is the economy, right?

Everybody else can see the noose tightening yet again in China around the neck of media freedom. If he doesn’t read into this stern warning what it really means: Keep the garrulous, relatively independently thinking population of Hong Kong under control, or else! he is even less with it than I thought. Then the talk of “harmony” started, which the D, not surprisingly, interpreted as: Hong Kong needs to make more money! And wash its hands after coughing and sneezing!

Ha. When these sinister, black-laquered helmet-haired geezers start talking about “harmony,” it’s time to start putting your head down and falling in line, for what they mean is China China uber alles, and everybody who doesn’t agree can go hoover themselves up.
Or some nice, if basic, accommodation will be provided for them, courtesy of the Chinese government, for 11 years for example.

If Donald still prefers to dig himself further down into La-la Hole in the Ground, he may well find himself in Tung Chee-wha’s position in a few months. This would be a great thing for Hong Kong … but that’s what we said last time, so maybe we should be careful what we wish for. My guess is he’ll get the sack within a year and a cadre from the Central government will be brought in to bring us some real harmony mainland style, as HK people clearly aren’t fit to rule themselves.

So happy new year, yoo-hoo, new decade, people! Isn’t it exciting? I’ve only just come to terms with it not being 19 - something anymore, so 2010 will be a cinch!

Groggy Nogs

Published
by
cecilie
on November 12, 2009
in Beauty, Environment, Home, Hong Kong, Norway, Pollution, politics and property
. 0 Comments

Early this month I had some Norwegian friends visiting and they were of course wildly impressed with Hong Kong, living as they do in a small town with wooden houses and cobble-stoned streets.
It was good for me to see HK through their eyes, through the adoring eyes of a newcomer. I could see how scenes like the one above could appear beautiful to them - it did to me! I think it looks like one of those views from a medieval turret: “One day, son, all this will be yours.”

I should appreciate the Hong Kong skyline and outstanding features more, instead of always trying to find fault with our excellent Chief Executive Sir Donald Tsang Excr. Excr. and the way he seeks to root out and exterminate every building older than ten years.
Yes, even post-annihilation Hong Kong can be beautiful in a certain light:

These two were taken from the 55th floor of The Center. I tell you, if the windows could be opened and I fell down, I’d seriously hurt myself.

One thing the Norwegians said again and again was that Hong Kong is so clean! So very clean! Well that’s hardly surprising. After all we have about 300 000 servants to pick stuff up for us almost before we’ve dropped it. What surprised me is that Norway is now so dirty.

But it’s the opposite of here really; here the city is kept spotless and rubbish free while people bring sacks and sacks of crap to the countryside (notably sleepy backwater Pui O, Lantau Island) and leave it there. What’s the problem? Nobody lives there anyway!
In Norway the countryside is kept clean and the “city” full of rubbish. But they don’t have servants of course. Call themselves a rich country!

The Noggie visitors also praised highly Hong Kong’s tap water. That’s right! Norway has fantastic tap water it has to be said, and now I feel vindicated after these 20 years of drinking from the tap here in Hong Kong while people around me recoil in horror - IT’S DIRTY!!! spending thousands of dollars a year on bottled water. I mean - buy water? What a scam!

So yeah, I love Hong Kong. Again. But I will still keep an eye on that nasty little bow tied rodent, just in case. He’s still hellbent on making his mark as the one who single-handedly generated the most cash for Hong Kong’s property developers, and don’t you forget it.

Charles Dickens, Champion of Walking and Putting Things Right

Published
by
cecilie
on October 1, 2009
in Charity, Government, Home, Hong Kong, Piles, language and politics
. 5 Comments

When I was a child, the first “adult” book I ever read was Oliver Twist. I must have read it about 50 times between the age of 7 and 10. I naturally read it in Norwegian, and an excellent Norwegian it was. The lines of the poorhouse woman helping Oliver into the world only to see his mother expire after which the old crone stole the only thing Oliver’s mother possessed, the crucial locket, were conveniently translated into that of the Bergen dialect. (which, believe it or not, actually sounds even better than the Cockney Dickens gave her.)

After Oliver no other work of Dickens’ could really cut it with me. (Although I did go through most of his works in books and films later.) There was super-evil Bill Sykes and his too-faithful yellow dog, the bludgeoning to death of Nancy and not least Fagin in all his glory - I ask you, what other work of Dickens can even touch them? None, I say.

Today, in the Sunday Times literary section, I read an article about a new biography about Dickens (Charles Dickens by Michael Slater.) Dickens didn’t only write “Dickensian” novels, no, he was a champion of his times fighting against all that was wrong with society. According to the article, he: “ran a home for destitute women, organised amateur dramatics for various charities, agitated to make it illegal for women and children to work underground in mines; he campaigned for Great Ormond Street hospital for children; he accompanied the police detective branch on night-time forays into thieves’ dens.”

As you can see, he not only documented the awful reality of poverty-stricken Victorian London in all his books and numerous articles and papers, he actively tried to make it less “Dickensian” - an adjective which now doesn’t even need inverted commas.

Hooray for Dickens! And then I came across an interesting sentence after the ” … forays into thieves’ dens” one: “And still he had energy left over to “walk my 15 miles a day constantly at a great pace.”" Energy “left over”? Hasn’t it occurred to the author of the article, John Carey, that it is precisely because Dickens walked 15 miles a day at a great pace that he had the energy left over to do all the other things?

Energy spent begets more energy, hello! We could all benefit from taking a leaf out of old Dickens’ book. If every lazy fcuker in this town who thinks even walking 200 meters to work, as documented last week when the Donald for political reasons (car free day) had to suffer the indignity of walking to work (less than 200 meters as the cockroach flies) and afterwards claimed that it wasn’t “convenient,” did a bit of 15 mile walking every day, perhaps they too would have the energy to come up with something vaguely resembling brain work.

As it is, they sit, then sit in cars, then sit some more. Then they sit with their feet on the toilet ring, wondering why they’re constipated.

You Don’t Know How Good You Have It

Published
by
cecilie
on September 17, 2009
in Charity, Government, Hong Kong, Injustice and politics
. 0 Comments

Take the HK legislators for example. Complain, complain. Squabble, squabble. Universal suffrage by the year 3001, or was it 6049? So tedious! People asking to be allowed to buy their own houses without worry that two years later Li Ka-shing, the owner of all he surveys, will kick them out? So yesterday.

No, you should look to cool and happening ACEH region of “moderate” muslim country Indonesia.
They’ve got their finger on the pulse.

Adultery, if not married: A hundred lashes! If married: death by stoning! Homosexual acts: A hundred lashes and eight years in prison! (Or it could have been 80 lashes and a hundred years in prison; I’m so bad with numbers.) Rape: A hundred (again with the hundred) lashes and … hang on, surely that must be for the rape victim, not the rapist. Fair is fair. She was asking for it, what with walking around and all.

You see, lawmakers: That’s what you should be looking at: Some real lawmaking, not petty squabbles about democracy this, accountable government that.

Put your whips where your arses are and start some real law-making in Hong Kong too, I say.

Here are some suggestions:
Looking at the Donald without permission: 68 lashes of a particularly nasty whip and made to eat dog poo!
Asking impertinent and unprepared for by Donald questions in Legco while making threatening gestures with bananas: Death by drowning in polystyrene chips!
Suggesting that current administration isn’t god’s gift to the world: A number of lashes hitherto unknown by man and not dividable by 1! And to swim unprotected across Victoria Harbour!

Those muslims have got real lawmaking down pat. Now it’s time for our brave, unelected government to show some real bottle. The people have spoken. Why should everybody else in the world have monopoly of being killed in a cool and interesting 1462 way?

Sr Dnld Tsng

Published
by
cecilie
on August 17, 2009
in Cantonese, Environment, Government, Home and Hong Kong
. 0 Comments

Wei, hoi hoi and grolsch, my irate readers! If you were bow-tied wonder Sir Donald Tsang for one day and could do any 5 things you wanted, no expense spared, what would you do?

Me, I would:

1. Get rid of all private cars, extend and modernise tram lines and put most of HK’s choked multi-lane highways into tunnels

2. Get rid of all railings unless they are on balconies or protecting you from a real fall

3. Get rid of all public announcements unless they are informing you of something you genuinely don’t know, such as a plane being delayed or Hong Kong being a target of nuclear attack. We already know how to walk and sit, get on and off transport and not throw ourselves head first down escalators

4. Get rid of URA (Urban wRecking Arseholes) and put a five year moratorium of all knocking down of buildings until a group of city planning minded non-government people could be found and a real plan for conservation and enhancement of what’s already there could be made

5. Get rid of (fire) myself

One Second Without Noise

Published
by
cecilie
on August 13, 2009
in Eyesore, Hong Kong and language
. 9 Comments

Is it too much to ask for? It seems the ferry company I donate $1400 to each month in order to be lectured about giving up smoking and “bringing my belongings before leaving the vessel” and “walking over the “gengplenk” carefully” at one tenth of a decibel short of eardrum perforation, has installed more loudspeakers in the ceiling of the vessel, so that now, no matter where you sit, you’ll be sitting directly beneath one. Charming!

The public announcements on that particular journey now take more than ten minutes, what with the encouragement to “wash your hands with liquid soup” and “see a daughter” if you should feel a whiff of you know what porcine mammal disease. As Blog is my witness, I bet 5 dollars they will include the endless announcements in Mandarin before the year is out.

Not to be outdone by the MTR (there is now not one single second without some kind of screechy bint talking on any given journey - not one), the ferries and of course the buses and trains, now even the taxis on sleepy old Lantau Island are joining in the “who can fill more empty seconds with meaningless noise” fun. 

As I got into one of these trusty old bangers this evening, it started up. Not a screechy bint this time but an equally irritating male voice. “Wall-come to Lantau Taxi, blah blah blah…seatbelt, blah blah …”

Why! Why must you be told you’re in a Lantau taxi when frankly, there are no other taxis around? It’s an island. And don’t you think, when the bugger stopped, it started informing me that I had reached my destination? 

It’s a conspiracy. After 1997 and especially since the bowtied wonder took over, it’s been decided that there can’t be a single second without incessant noise anywhere in this city. I really envy those who can zone out audio disturbance, but I can’t. Sir Donald Tsang is a muppet? Fine. I can choose not to think about him for days at the time. Especially now that he’s hiding from the public again since his latest gaffe about representing everybody in Hong Kong.

But people screeching right into my ear about holding on to the handrail, minding the gap between the train and the platform and not throwing children overboard - I just can’t shut them out! Their voices go straight into my brain like knives. Ahhhrghhhhh

The worst thing is that it’s so eye-out tearingly, kneecap-smashingly bloody patronising. 

Full Of Sport

Published
by
cecilie
on July 24, 2009
in Cantonese, Hong Kong, food and language
. 2 Comments

Yesterday I visited Sportful Garden restaurant in Causeway Bay again. After a struggle, I have finally made them not make me pay for snacks I haven’t ordered and don’t eat. They put them out hopefully each time though, along with the jasmine tea although I’ve ordered soi sin - all foreigners must drink jasmine. It’s the law! 

But now we all just laugh when I make them change the tea and deduct the extra 10 dollars from the bill, so I like Sportful now; not least for its name. And when it comes to your personal safety, well, you just can’t beat them:

 

 

Careful, slippery floor, the sign says in Chinese. But where is the safety in that, you’ll be more than justified in asking?
When a landslide starts thundering through the room, slippery floors will be the last thing on anybody’s mind I say.

As you walk down the stairs you’ll notice a tiny sign right at the bottom of the staircase, 2 cm above floor level, saying Beware of stairs. Is it for people crawling up the stairs, or for people who have already fallen down the stairs to act as a badly needed dose of written schadenfreude?

Whatever the reason, Sportful Garden has prepared for every eventuality, except that of a foreigner not drinking jasmine. And it has to be said: The food is great! They also don’t throw you out when you pull out a video camera and start filming a guy dressed up as awful gnome Donald Tsang, unlike a lot of other yam cha restaurants I have tried filming in. So ten points to Sportful! It’s full of sport.