Big Lychee, Various Sectors

On the top floor of S-Meg Tower, deep in the heart of the central business district of Asia’s most throbbing and pulsating international financial hub, a spotty, greasy-haired youngish man in unfashionable spectacles struggles to type on a computer keyboard while having a 15-inch, wooden-handled, World War II Japanese ‘last ditch’ bayonet pressed tightly against his throat. It is a six-monthly ritual, and he knows that if he obeys every command his life will be spared.

“Put it back to the old password,” his calm but weary assailant tells him. “The old one was fine. No-one knew what it was, and I can remember it. If you make me change to a new one, I will have to write it on a bit of paper and stick it on the wall, which defeats the whole point – and kill you.”

Task completed, the scrofulous systems administrator stumbles from the Company Gwailo’s lair just as Ms Fang the Hunter-Killer Secretary comes pouting through the door. “He wants to see you,” she announces.

Seated at the triangular feng-shui table in the conference room, the Chairman of S-Meg Holdings is wiping drool from his mouth while flicking through a glossy magazine. Not just any magazine, but the latest edition of Every Big Boy’s List of Obscenely Rich People in Hong Kong. Without looking up, he barks for Ms Fang, who is next to him in a flash.

“Tell Mr Huang I want to send a hand-written letter in, you know, that old poetry, to congratulate Li Ka-shing for, um, coming top again.” The older he gets, the more compulsively the Big Boss needs to shoe-shine.

Peering over the great man’s shoulder, I notice that the head of Cheung Kong and Hutchison might not exactly appreciate glowing respects in classical verse or any other style. “It says here that his wealth last year declined from 24 billion to 22,” I point out. “US dollars, of course.”

Miffed, the Big Boss turns the page. His part-envious, part-admiring eyes alight on Cheng Yu-tung, 86-year-old head of the New World empire. He licks the saliva from his lips as he reads out a sentence declaring Cheng’s worth to have risen from US$9 billion to US$15 billion in 2011. He looks up in triumph. “Haven’t seen him for a while. I think a friendly note to recognize his achievement.”

Of course, Cheng – purveyor of fine bus and ferry services to Hong Kong’s teeming masses – did not really enjoy a massive boost to his pile last year. He floated the venerable Chow Tai Fook chain of jewelry stores (whose founder’s daughter I would have married had it been me), thus converting a private holding into a publicly listed one that the Forbes radar picks up.

The Big Boss is perfectly aware of this. Though he is not in the same league as the Big Lychee’s Top Ten Plutocrats, his wealth is also divided into the visible and the invisible. It is a matter of great frustration. List assets on the stock market, and you have to let the whole world know all about your personal finances. Keep them secretly tucked away in your own private vehicles, and no-one will ever know how disgustingly rich you are, never deeply hate and resent you for it, and never be tormented by burning jealousy – all those things that define success and make life worth living.

The octogenarian Mr Huang shuffles in carrying his ink and brushes.

It is almost 24 hours to the minute since I became trapped in this elevator at the new Government Headquarters at Tamar. I had a quiet night spent dozing on the floor, sipping occasionally from my Hello Kitty water bottle and working out a way to keep my laptop battery from dying. At long last, I can hear footsteps and voices above my head – a rescue team coming to save me from this dangling tomb.

The access panel in the roof suddenly opens, and I find myself staring up a Dolce & Gabbana mottled grey skirt enveloping a very shapely pair of legs, with voluptuous thighs and dainty, lace-trimmed undergarments (pale blue). With a swirl of unlined wool, the limbs shift aside and an even more charming sight presents itself as radiant Administrative Officer Winky Ip peers into the lift.

“Sorry it’s taken so long,” she says. “All hell’s broken loose here with this Legionnaire’s Disease thing. People are wearing facemasks, washing door handles with rubbing alcohol, gargling with boiling bleach. Just like old times!”

Ah yes… SARS. Without which there would have been no Rolling Stones and Neil Young Harborfest concerts on this very site, and – very likely – no grandiose, two-legged Government Palace here today, either.

“The workmen will get you out soon,” the opulently clad bureaucrat tells me. “And, um… what have you done with Ricky of Constitutional and Mainland Affairs?” She points at the Deputy Principal Information Officer (Sichuan). With his left hand clamped over a grille to ward off deadly bacteria, a finger of his right hand jammed into a power outlet near the ceiling, and a toe taped to the plug of my charger, he does look rather odd. I assure Winky that he’s fine, and indeed admirably conductive. “Well I have to go and fill in my air-conditioning allowance claim form,” she says. “Oh, and I thought you might like this.” Today’s Standard drops through the hole. Starved of news from the outside, I hungrily devour it.

It is amazing how the world seems to change in just a day when you have been trapped in an isolated metallic cave suspended eight floors up. Yesterday, Hong Kong people denounced government infrastructure projects as worthless, environmentally damaging and designed primarily to channel public wealth into the pockets of the tycoons. Today, the Standard eagerly reports, they are marching in the streets chanting “Death to dolphin scum!”, “We want more aircraft flying in and out!” and “Give HK$136 billion of our money to the construction industry now!”

Another big turnaround concerns one of Hong Kong’s most cherished historic monuments. Just a week ago, we all assumed its days were numbered; after many decades of service, it was physically crumbling and considered beyond repair. Now, a thankful city learns, visionary, innovative, lateral-thinking Education Secretary Michael Suen is out of hospital and looking forward to serving the community for another 51 years.

The elevator jolts slightly and descends a few feet. To the sound of gently sizzling acne, Ricky the Deputy Principal Information Officer (Sichuan) slides to the floor. A crowbar is working the door, and through the widening crack I can see the corridor. An elderly man with white whiskers is doing cartwheels and shouting something about how everything is fine because all the correct procedures were followed. And as I prepare to regain my freedom, I see that some things never change. A time-honoured Hong Kong tradition, granted UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status along with Mongolian circular-breathing song and Iranian Lenj boats proudly continues: landing on passers-by…

Click to hear ‘White Room’ by Cream!

The morning starts with my first visit to the new Government Headquarters at Tamar. I have been looking forward to seeing Rocco Yim’s newly opened HK$5.5 billion complex and its amusing-sounding teething problems. The two towers joined by a crossbar at the top bring to mind the image of a pair of deformed legs, perhaps dangling from a tree branch after a lynching. I’m sorry – I’ll rephrase that: the two towers joined by a crossbar at the top bring to mind a doorway, representing the openness and accessibility of the Big Lychee’s government. That’s it.

The security system is dedicated to countering the threat of news reporters sneaking in to show how pitifully inept the security system is. After a minute or so, I am admitted in good time for my 9am appointment with ever-enchanting Administrative Officer Winky Ip on the 10th floor, where I intend to investigate the inhabitants’ morale.

Apparently, the civil servants who have been transferred here from the old CGO on Lower Albert Road are deeply unhappy. Some of the mid-ranking ones no longer have parking spaces for their black, seven-seat, luxury ‘Alp Hard’ mega-vans. No longer can Mr Important Official clog up the streets while looking immensely smug inside his cavernous lounge-on-wheels. It has shattered their self-esteem. Meanwhile, some smaller departments now have to share facilities. Mighty section bosses who used to be able to display their power and influence by commandeering a meeting room at the snap of a finger must now wait until it suits some cunning, empire-building fool from a rival department hungry for other people’s budgets. The loss of face before underlings is intense. In short, I have been drawn here by the bureaucrats’ misery. It gives me a warm, inner glow – a conviction that there is, after all, both a God and a Santa Claus. I have even brought some presents: plastic bags of charcoal briquettes, with the suicide-prevention phone numbers erased.

But disaster strikes. As it rises between the sixth and seventh floors, the elevator makes a strange screeching noise, shudders, and grinds to a halt, swaying slightly as if in a breeze. All is silent. An acne-racked Deputy Principal Information Officer (Sichuan) from the Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Bureau stands frozen in the corner, his mouth agape. A metallic voice from downstairs comes on the intercom to curtly announce that help is coming, then disappears with a click.

I am stuck, with nothing but a copy of today’s Standard for approximately intelligent company.

The front page tells the distinctly news-free story of a woman who will donate part of her liver to save her baby, the operation to be performed by a Queen Mary Hospital surgeon called Chan…

Chan said the baby has an 80 percent chance of survival. But if he gets through the initial period and takes his medication regularly there will be no impact on his growth and intelligence.

I must say, I am somewhat concerned about whether an eight-month-old can be trusted to take medication regularly, especially straight after major surgery. But I am especially intrigued by the doctor’s last comment, at least as reported by the Sing Tao people. By ‘…no impact on his intelligence’ I take it that the little mite will get into the right kindergarten, thence to the right primary and secondary schools, and so on to a suitable university, followed by a career as a high-flying accountant or lawyer. It is a huge relief and very moving, even though the family are strangers.

Over on page 5, TVB is whining about the fact that Mainland censors have banned highly intellectual drama series When Heaven Burns from Chinese television screens. This is a country where people who write essays complaining about persecution by corrupt officials are imprisoned for a dozen years for subverting state power, and you complain because your soap opera (apparently conceived with the 1989 Beijing massacre in mind and featuring, as you would expect from the city that brought the world Womb Ghosts, cannibalism) has been pulled mid-season by communist control freaks? The sense of entitlement among Hong Kong’s tycoon-owned semi-monopolies is a wonder. Screw the dictators of 1.3 billion desperately trying to keep their regime from crumbling – where are our advertising revenues?

Page 6, and with a Year of the Dragon approaching, young couples eager to rear budding accountants and lawyers who play piano and own big apartments are preparing to have babies. More words of wisdom from our healthcare professionals…

“Couples seeking medical advice for pregnancy have increased by 20 percent these past few months,” obstetrics and gynecology specialist Anita Chai Hei-lam said. “However, I strongly recommend that couples think twice before planning to have a child as being parents is a lifelong responsibility.”

How true. They seem so cute and cuddly when you look at them in a shop window, don’t they, with those cheeky grins, pleading eyes and wagging tails, but when you get them home…

Hang on – what was that I saw back on page 3? A familiar looking building, and the headline ‘Ancient civil servant succumbs to deadly Tamar pestilence’. Legionnaire’s disease, right here in this very building, in which I am trapped in this lift.

Taking a close lose look at the small ventilation duct, I notice a strange mutant greenish-slime colour. I remove the Deputy Principal Information Officer (Sichuan)’s spectacles and take a closer look. And there they are. Millions and millions of nasty microbes, wriggling about and multiplying.

I try pressing the emergency buzzer, but the people at the other end have gone to apply for their kids’ overseas education allowance or something. I could stuff the air vent with the Standard. But that would be a waste. I move the Deputy Principal Information Officer (Sichuan) over to that side of the elevator, and place his hand flat over the grille. Now all I can do is record these events for posterity on my laptop, and wonder… will I be rescued by this time tomorrow?  

Click to hear ‘Government Center’ by the Young Lovers!

The mood on the Mid-Levels Escalator this morning is one of calm resignation. Hong Kong’s industrious and uncomplaining middle class may or may not be on the verge of calamity as Europe’s visionary cheese-eating surrender currency collapses and some rich-kid half-wit prepares to play at governing the city. Their mortgages are largely paid off, their portfolios are overweight in cash, and their kids are already in the right elite kindergarten – what more can they do?

I decide to break the ominous silence by asking my neighbours, Mr Chan the investment manager and Ms Woo the marketing manager, a brain teaser: “What do Canadian singer Celine Dion, Indian musician Ravi Shankar, former Irish Minister for Agriculture and Food Joe Walsh, British author JK Rowling, American film director David Lynch, Panama’s ex-dictator Manual Noriega and Hong Kong’s former Chief Secretary Anson Chan all have in common?”

The pair look slightly puzzled, but not much – as if whatever the answer is, it cannot be very interesting. For example: they’ve never been to the Moon.

“Here’s a clue,” I add, pulling an invitation card from my pocket, “Self-effacing Bank of East Asia boss David Li is about to join them…”

“I suppose,” I continue, “it’s in recognition of his contributions to, er, philosophy, the cinema, literature or maybe neurosurgery – who knows?” Looking through the whole list, you really have to wonder about the French and their rather promiscuous approach to venerating foreigners. And the rank within the Legion de Honneur that Dr the Hon Sir Li JP is being awarded is Commandeur, not just your riffraff Chevalier or lowly Officier.

Mr Chan takes an envelope from his jacket. “Yes, I’ve received one of those invitations,” he says. Ms Woo pulls one from her puce Louis Vuitton handbag. “Me too – came yesterday. One for everyone in the family.”

We are gliding through the rat-infested nether regions of Soho when wild American friend Odell and his Thai wife Mee join us on the world’s most amazing urban transport infrastructure. Recognizing a couple who do not fit into the higher echelons of society when they see them, Mr Chan and Ms Woo melt away behind a group of early-rising Japanese tourists.

“Jeez – I thought I’d worked out a really neat way of getting the retard staff in Starbucks to serve up an organic gingko biloba and oil of tendaberry cappuccino in less than 45 minutes,” the ex-Mormon excitedly tells me. “Bribe ‘em with one of these!” He shows me an invitation to Dr Sir the Hon Duke Li’s investiture. “We got half a dozen each. The Starbucks kids could hang out with this Dr the Hon Admiral Sir David Li, the President of Planet Finance and the guy who looks like a horse. Like really high-class, right? But, um… like, they weren’t interested.”

Mee shows me her collection of the invites. “They already have,” she explains.

A Filipino maid approaches, pulling a basket on wheels. Mee, a former domestic helper with permanent residency through marriage – thus of a less lowly echelon of society – slyly holds her prestigious high-society invitations where the minion will see them and be duly impressed. But as the girl passes, we catch sight of the shopping list she is clutching, a familiar-looking 6-inch by 4-inch cream card, with a dark blue italic request for the pleasure of her company at a January 9 bestowal on the reverse. 

Click to hear Laura Nyro’s ‘New York Tendaberry’!

The delicate, crisp crunch of Ferragamo black patent-leather low heels on frosty pavement heralds the break of day in an otherwise silent Central. In a swirl of cold breath, cashmere and fur, beguiling Administrative Officer Winky Ip opens the door of Yuet Yuen Congee and Noodle Palace and steps into the warmth. Teeth chattering and torso shivering from the bitter cold outside, she sits opposite me at the almost stain-free Formica-topped table near the window. She is too frozen to talk and stares at the little television on the wall. Property tycoon Thomas Kwok of Sun Hung Kai is being interviewed.

To our amazement he is telling people not to buy apartments at the Wings, the developer’s latest exciting mega-luxury, opulent, exclusive, tasteful living residential project. “We’ve been asking around 8,000 bucks per square foot on average for these places,” he says, “and incredibly some people are dumb enough to pay it. But in all conscience I have to say that there is a huge difference between the price of something and its real value.”

Kwok mutters something about being a Christian. “Obviously,” he goes on, “we round up the size of the apartments by including space in the stairwells and clubhouse. But more to the point is the ridiculous overall price tags. This Wings project, for example, is in Tseung Kwan O, for heaven’s sake! It’s a dump. Seriously, its actual value, if you strip out market distortions, can’t be any more than a couple of thousand dollars per square foot, maximum. I tell the good, hard-working people of Hong Kong, don’t waste your money – live somewhere older.”

As I order extra hot congee to thaw out my bureaucrat companion, a chef from Cecconi’s Italian restaurant in Soho comes on the screen and starts warning people to avoid his eatery. “It’s nothing special,” he laments in an earthy Australian accent, “just the usual overpriced crap you get in that neighbourhood. The rents are so high we have to cut corners on ingredients and portion sizes, and of course the tables are tiny and jammed up against each other, so it’s hardly comfortable. The so-called service and tacky décor are supposed to detract from that, and amazingly we do get customers – but you have to wonder what their problem is. Bottom line is it’s lousy value for money. Mate, you’d be way better off having noodles in the daipaidong a few streets down the hill.”

The interviewer turns to the show’s third guest, rock singer Elvis Costello, who starts insisting that the price of a new boxed set of his works “appears to be either a misprint or a satire.”

As we cradle our glasses of tea to warm our hands, I ask Winky if there is any chance of the Hong Kong government joining in this wave of brutal honesty suddenly breaking out everywhere. It turns out that there is.

“Donald is desperate to leave a grand legacy,” she tells me. “In terms of policy, that is, to augment his achievements on the hardware side, like the Huge Bright Shiny Government HQ at Tamar, the world’s largest bridge with three immigration checkpoints all in the same country, and the tunnel to Shenzhen to house a high-speed rail link to the place near Guangzhou we can never remember the name of.”

Before I can guess what it will be, she blurts it out. “Dogs!”

“You mean they’re going to let us eat them again?” I ask.

“No – we’re going to ban them. As pets. We’re admitting it: they’re disgusting.”

Under the new legislation, she explains, possession of a dog will be an offence punishable by 10 years in prison, a fine of HK$500,000 or both. As a concession, to enable the community to reach a consensus and move forward, there will be a special canine reserve in the New Territories where people who crave the sight of dog excrement and the sound of incessant barking will be able to visit and watch the creatures pant with their tongues hanging out and sniff each other’s bottoms.

“We’re rolling out the new policy in Tuen Mun,” she says, pulling out a photograph of a poo-free park. “The Department of Putting Signs Everywhere has produced these rather fetching items.” She pauses while I absorb the colourful barriers. “Note the impact of having lots and lots of them,” she points out.

Where have I seen this design before? A black symbol on a white disc set against a red oblong background.

“It starts tonight. The first ones will be rounded up, loaded onto special freight carriages on the MTR and…” she stares at me intently. “…taken away.”

Thurs, 30 Nov 2006

So joyous is the mood on the Mid-Levels Escalator this morning that everyone bursts into song.  “Here in Hong Kong we are one big family,” we chant, “and we’re proud of this place we all call home.”

It was the unofficial Big Lychee national anthem back in the days when the city was confident, happy and prosperous, before it became self-doubting, miserable and prosperous.  It was a rousing tune – an anti-littering ditty that stirred the heart of free men and women of all colours and creeds, rejoicing in their good fortune to live in a land of liberty, where the Government’s idea of intrusion into people’s lives was to urge them to place their Hello Kitty ice cream wrappers in the garbage bins provided at 10-foot intervals the length and breadth of our colonial paradise.  Like the people, the bins were rugged and sturdy – crafted of steel and painted a bold and defiant orange.

Today, we put our used tissues and half-eaten quarter-pounders into effete, cheap, plastic purple receptacles – a reflection of the pitiful, childlike weakness and meek subjection to authority to which we have been reduced.

In the old days, you could hire anyone you wanted and be open about it.  You could announce, “I want a clerk who is young, able-bodied, female and Chinese,” and fire her the second she got married.  You could say, “I want to rent my property out, but not to an Indian because they will cook curry,” and get a blond-haired, blue-eyed British tenant who cooked curry.  There was an unwritten rule.  No-one started up hate or supremacist groups.  No-one got lynched, beaten up or spat on.  In return, we were all free to loathe each other in peace and harmony.  It was too good to last.  The great libertarian experiment succumbed to lawyers, activists, do-gooders and bureaucrats.

Being civilized and progressive, we will now be able to sue each other for race discrimination, except under circumstances carefully chosen to avoid any serious inconvenience to decent people with perfectly understandable reasons for favouring or rejecting persons of one particular hue or another.  Indeed, I already feel that a trip to the Equal Opportunities Commission might be in order.  Under the proposed law (Urdu version, Nepali version, Bahasa Indonesia version and Thai version coming soon), racial harassment and vilification will be an offence.

Is this not what I face in my own workplace?  Barely a day goes by when I do not hear some snide remark about the Company Gwailo – an island of Anglo-Saxon DNA in an ocean of the seed of the dragon – and the way he is allowed to turn up late, go home early, skip the excruciating annual dinner, not wear the puce and lime-green company tie on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and enjoy all sorts of other privileges and immunities.  Just because he is white, reports directly to the Big Boss, and the Human Resources Manager is petrified of him.  The next expression of hostility or intolerance about this situation – Ms Fang the Hunter Killer Secretary is a frequent complainant – and I will see to it that my persecutors are struck with the full might of justice.

Wed, 29 Nov 2006

The Big Boss drags me into a meeting with a fellow tycoon, ‘Dr’ Tai.  The proud owner of an honorary doctorate from a little heard-of university in a distant land, Tai straddles the generations of the current and former Chairman of S-Meg Holdings.

“My father always told me to be nice to him,” mutters our illustrious leader, “But they’re nothing now.” The Tai family made its fortune trading durians back in the 1950s, then lost much of it by going into property at the peak of the market in the ‘70s.  The fading company is ripe for asset stripping, but face overrides commercial sense in these circles.  “This is a bit embarrassing,” the Big Boss whispers before we enter the reception room where the gentleman is waiting. “Hopefully, when he sees you he’ll, um, go away.”

Unfortunately, Dr Tai is unfazed by the appearance of S-Meg Holdings’ most exotic staff member and eagerly gets down to business.  He wants his son to be made a Justice of the Peace.  Many of his friends’ sons sport a ‘JP’ tag after their name, and he thinks it’s unfair that his own boy, now in his 40s, should be left out.  He reminds us that he was one of the first members of the business community to start saying rude things about Chris Patten in the early 1990s, and the family donated generous sums for Mainland flood victims a few years ago.

We sit and nod politely.  The Big Boss says he will speak to Donald about it.  You can tell you’ve been in Hong Kong too long when you find nothing remotely strange about a man feeling that his loyalty to the Communist Party and the Chinese motherland should be rewarded by the symbolic appointment of his first-born to an English public office dating back to 1361.

TO ATONE for their spelling mistake in a headline last Saturday, the South China Morning Post today comes up with Most Deadpan Photo Caption of the Week…

The scene is one of the ferry piers in Central. It is somehow noticeably less shabby than the rest of these mostly indistinguishable facilities. The plastic seats seem a bit classier, the floor a little less dusty. A shiny Perspex case on the wall is stuffed with glossy brochures and leaflets from the real estate agents, pet groomers, tutors, masseurs and other entrepreneurs doing business at the other end of the route, including one ‘Adequate Health Care’. It is clear that you are about to enter a land of dog-owning, tanning enthusiasts who spend a lot on their nails and kids. A noticeboard contains announcements in English only. The most prominent warns evil, undisciplined school children with too little homework to do to behave themselves on the boat.

Yes, it’s time for the annual state visit to Discovery Bay. Disco Bay SAR (Special Anglospheric Region) is a constitutional curiosity of Hong Kong: a semi-independent, feudal principality barely the size of Liechtenstein. The enclave’s official language is English, and it – and it alone – is spoken by 92.4% of the population. A further 6% speak Filipino as their native tongue. Cantonese speakers are advised to bring an interpreter.

The place is ruled by an evil despot who keeps his ruthlessly exploited subjects calm from day to day by granting them the right to indulge in some of Hong Kong’s most anarchic and reckless taboos, like alfresco dining and letting thousands of toddlers zip around on scooters among foul-smelling trees. As with all such medieval arrangements, the serfs receive protection in return for their lifelong fealty and production of large numbers of babies. Of course, no-one ever actually says out loud that they live here to avoid the Chinese, but you don’t hear them complaining about the relative absence of Hong Kong’s 95% ethnic group. The proof may be in the little colony’s own minority Han population: they did not come to DB because they desperately wanted to be surrounded by gwailos.

The resulting local lifestyle is thus slightly Sinicized Anglo-Saxon as opposed to the somewhat Westernized Chinese culture found in the rest of Hong Kong. The Asian population have been absorbed into the white majority’s practices, such as standing en masse in shorts and sandals outside bars staring dumbly at rugby games on big TV screens; the whites speculate in the HK$2 million golf carts (the only permitted personal mechanized transport) and stir-fry their Marmite.

In fact, this is my first annual state visit to Disco Bay for a good 10 – probably more like 15 – years, when I was on a secret assignment to investigate the first reports to reach Hong Kong of rampant wife-swapping in its distant secessionist Lantau territory (in which the practice proved impossible to stamp out and is now indeed a near-compulsory part of everyday life). The settlement has grown since then. In another decade or so it will have merged with that other happy, smiling, quasi-Singaporean Potemkin village, Disneyland, and fulfill its destiny as the ultimate, bubble-wrapped, sanitized, reality-free zone with only three haunted residences.

Click to hear ‘There’s a Ghost in My House’ by R Dean Taylor!

3.07

“I shall now turn to the subject of our six pillar industries in which we have a clear competitive advantage, and therefore the opportunity to develop…” A moment’s silence passes before Sir Bow-Tie utters the word “hubs,” prompting groans of despair from the remaining onlookers. As he sips from a glass of water, the last holdouts escape.

 2.42

“Three more large expanses of concrete each with a big bright gold object in the middle to attract more tourists; five new six-lane freeways running from the boundary into the urban areas to attract more container trucks; seven huge new waterfront museums and cultural centres with no windows to attract more tourists…” Public, press, lawmakers and even one or two government ministers have been visibly edging towards the exits for the last half-hour. Many are quietly slipping out..

2.20

Drag myself back to see that Sir Bow-Tie is approaching the halfway point in his address. “I am very pleased to announce an exciting new series of essential infrastructure projects: 17 more bridges and land crossings to Shenzhen to facilitate the inflow of container trucks and busloads of tourists.” People are nodding off.

1.19pm

A very pleasant, HK$230, organic squid, roasted pomelo and lemongrass panini drizzled with cumin-infused virgin balsamic olive oil over at Pacific Place.

 12.44

A fight has broken out between legislators over whether the Disadvantaged Children’s Footwear Subsidy should be set at HK$1,000 or HK$1,100 per school term. Weary onlookers start to drift out.

12.42

A HK$8.88 million Illegal Rooftop Removal Subsidy to compensate owners of illicit extra floors on New Territories villas. An annual voucher for HK$500 for every man, woman and child in Hong Kong, good for all purchases in Park N Shop, Fortress and Watsons Your Personal Store. “Number 33,” Donald intones. “One month’s paid time off work every five years for all childless employees, because it’s not fair that they don’t get maternity/paternity leave.” He flashes another self-satisfied smirk.

12.10

Everyone is drifting back from coffee over at Admiralty 7-Eleven or in the legislators’ canteen. Despite having an empty house in front of him, Donald has pressed on and is now halfway through his list of 82 measures to close the wealth gap and make Hong Kong into a harmonious society. They stream out faster than I can write them. ‘Carrot Coupons’ for the elderly to buy nutritious vegetables to help them see in the dark. Dependent Domestic Animal Allowance for salaries tax payers’ first five dogs or cats.

11.38

But he adds that there are snags. “If we let people have homes at prices they can afford,” Sir Bow-Tie declares, “it will be unfair to various sectors who make a living from selling concrete at HK$8,000 per 12-inch square. Also, it will make people who bought homes at that sort of price feel bad about spending the next 20 years diverting half their income to the bank while the more recent buyers can afford to send their kids to decent schools, so they will probably throw themselves out of the window. On top of that, the community has not achieved a consensus on the way forward.” He looks up and gives us that cheeky, boyish grin.

11.37

Woops. Seems I fell asleep there. Sir Bow-Tie is announcing his plan to make tiny apartments available to the 50% of the population who don’t qualify for public housing but don’t earn enough to repay the current level of mortgage within their lifetime. “Since the raw materials and labour needed to construct a concrete box can’t cost more than a couple of hundred grand,” he announces, “and land is so plentiful we can give it away to Disney, Richard Li’s Cyberport or a cruise terminal, there frankly shouldn’t be a problem.” One way of looking at it.

11.04

One minute in and he is already blathering on about the motherland and partnership and integra

11.03

The great man himself strides briskly up to the lectern. I pull the woman next to me down as she starts to rise. It’s not a courtroom.

11.00

A security guard is giving the specially adapted 4ft 8in lectern a quick check. And the first senior officials are strolling out into their special Senior Officials Seating Only zone, with new Chief Secretary Stephen Lam leading the way, radiating extreme, almost alarming smarminess. 

10.42

The Standard reports that Donald will officially declare Hong Kong to be a part of Scandinavia, introducing paternity leave, food stamps for the poor, subsidized travel for the aged regardless of means, a bizarre care subsidy and many other benefits Western countries a generation ahead of us demographically are currently having to cut in order to avoid bankruptcy. According to one social worker, “the care subsidy will put the elderly in a dilemma: it’s not enough to hire a foreign domestic helper who can take care of them 24 hours a day, and only enough to hire a local domestic helper for an hour a day.” Maybe if they chuck the money down the toilet they’ll feel better.

10.30

As the first legislators drift in and position themselves strategically with their bananas, I take a quick look at today’s mail. Further to last week’s approach by a film producer floozy looking for a location in Perpetual Opulence Mansions, residents now receive a letter. The action comedy, it says, will star Donnie Yen and Eva Wong, and the former would play a detective who visits my apartment in search of a clue (I’ve lived there for years, and still don’t have one – but anyway…). The company also implores me to support the Hong Kong film industry – in other words, they won’t pay any rent. Presumably, the brief presence of Donnie will boost the property’s market value massively… 

10.16

A lot of IKEA wrapping still strewn around, I notice. Funny burning smell, as well.

10.07

The press and public galleries are already filling up here in the brand new Legislative Council chamber in the heart of the Sir Bow-Tie Executive-Led Government Palace Complex in beautiful downtown Admiralty.

9.52am

Here to do a live report on the Chief Executive’s exciting policy address. This is for the seven people in Hong Kong who will not be able to catch Donald Tsang giving his momentous final State of the Ex-Colony speech on 73 TV channels, 25 radio stations, 10 live webcam feeds and by-the-minute written updates delivered to remote mountainous regions by yak.

Night falls over Perpetual Opulence Mansions, and I have unplugged the telephone to avoid the barrage of complaints from Administrative Officer Winky Ip. That ‘stupid website’, as she terms it, doubted the sexual desirability of female civil servants with extreme bluntness. This, she goes on, was a cheap shot, written purely for effect and with no regard for the facts, which are that these women have a combination of beauty and brains unique to HK University liberal arts graduates who have dedicated their lives to serving the community. With the phone cut off, she resorts to emails: lengthy diatribes demanding to know where else in the world a man can find ladies of such elegant and refined style, dressed in graceful silk plum-blossom cheongsams, fluent in three languages, politically impartial, and with intricate knowledge of inter-departmental policy-formulation procedures?

And then the doorbell rings. Could it be a real estate agent or pizza delivery man too dimwitted to notice or comprehend the numbers and letters on apartment doors? In which case, I will spy on them through the little peephole for a few seconds to enjoy the way they look up and down and left and right, before silently retreating to my living room and leaving them to wallow in their puzzlement. Or could it be Jehovah’s Witnesses? That calls for a weapon – a noiseless knuckle duster is probably best for this quiet time of day – and some help from the Nepalese security guard downstairs in dragging the deranged fiends out of the building and nailing them by the ears to the tree by the entrance. Or has an irate civil servant sent someone round to sort me out?

Peering out into the corridor, I get a fish-eye view of a female face shrouded by an explosion of black hair. This is obviously not a bureaucrat, nor some triad carrying a meat cleaver. I open the door to find an unnaturally pale late-teenage girl in an elaborate dark-crimson ball gown with lace. Although obviously Chinese, she looks at me through weirdly round eyes – presumably an effect of her make-up. Something from a Japanese comic book has turned up at my door.

She grins and holds up a name card. “I am from TE Entertainments,” she announces. “We are looking for flats to make film in.” She smiles at me expectantly. “Would you like to rent your beautiful flat so we can make film?”

I glance back to my disheveled living room with its yards of overcrowded bookshelves and piles of stuff to be sorted by the end of the decade. I doubt they would want it. And, anyway, what am I thinking – no, of course I’m not going to rent my flat to some camera crew. “I don’t think so,” I tell her politely, and off she trots to the next apartment.

As I close the door to compose a piercing, merciless response to the last whining email, I wonder what sort of film or films the girl’s company produces. I don’t think they’re doing an adaptation of Proust.

Click to hear ‘Nasty Sex’ by La Revolucion De Emiliano Zapata!