…it’s because the inundation of inanities that usually heralds the weekend has come early.
Apple unveils the iPhone 23, or whatever number they’re up to. The big selling point is that you can’t plug headphones into it. The interesting thing about people who walk 
around with headphones on is that they can’t hear everyone else’s rude comments about how absurd people look walking around wearing headphones. The new iPhone means that now they can hear these insults – but passers-by will have no need to make them, so it doesn’t matter. This is progress.
Bloomberg reports that the Chinese have seen through this farcical Apple fad and will avoid the things in favour of local brands that are cheaper and – minor detail – better in terms of being more useful, even including headphone plugs. More progress. (Perhaps next, Mainlanders will see the light on Yakult?)
This all suggests that traders will not need to hire hundreds of asylum-seekers and maids to wait in line overnight outside the Apple Store at IFC Mall to buy the devices by the dozen for smuggling over the border for sale at a hefty mark-up. You might think this will help make Central a less congested place. You would be wrong.
The South China Morning Post tells us that traffic jams and disruption are ‘promised’ in Hong Kong’s business district as a result of something called Formula E, which sounds like some skin lotion. The passive-voice-prone paper doesn’t say who exactly is making this promise, but it leaves readers in no doubt that the person responsible is serious…
This is the ‘promise’ Occupy Central never quite honoured. Dozens of bus routes will be screwed up, leaving trips on them ‘unstable’. The mess could 
last up to three weeks. Weirdest of all, perhaps: although this is supposedly a special and exciting event (some sort of car race, by the way), innocent residents are told not to turn up.
This is going to be like having 20 Zhang Dejiangs visiting town at the same time.
The chief malevolence behind this idiocy appears to be one ‘Alan Fang, race organizer’. We might have visions of the bores in silly caps and jackets who can watch cars whizzing round in circles for hours on end – carriers of the same genetic mutation that leads people to enjoy watching golf. But I sense some hidden black hands at work. ‘Alan Fang, race organizer’ says that the transport disruption and civil liberties infringements are justified ‘for the sake of a major event on the harbourfront’. I smell Hong Kong civil servants in this. I smell tourism. Best-case scenario: a fatal pile-up claims the lives of a tolerable number (just double-figures) of spectators (from overseas, obviously), and the Formula E nightmare-extravaganza-shambles relocates to some dump like Shanghai or Dubai where it belongs.
What kind of a sport has a pre-contest ‘vote’ to give some participants an advantage…
Finally, Henderson Land announces the launch of its latest micro-apartments. The bad news is that they cost HK$22,000 to HK$28,000 a square foot. The good news is that they are so small, you can still afford them. In fact, you can buy several, put them on a table and keep fish in them…
How I long for my first flat in Hong Kong.
You could sit on the toilet, take a shower and turn the sausages in the pan for breakfast all at the same time, without getting up.
You know you’re in the Third World when people have fridges in their living rooms.
My Fritzl Flat idea is slowing gathering interest. Lots of room underground in Hong Kong. Why this incessant preoccupation with higher and higher buildings? Go Deep, young man. Just think how many people we could cram under Central. Bespoke boutique accommodation at an affordable price.
Can’t wait for Robert Chow’s video, telling us that the world will come to an end -and worse- if we disrupt the Alphard processions in Central when this Formula-thing takes place. Can’t wait.
Nobody should really be allowed to call 170 sq ft a “flat” or “apartment” in good faith, even with a “micro-” suffix. It’s a very small room at best. Time to opt for a new name that embraces both the traditional and truthful: how about “macro-cage”?
@Martha Stewart
Ha ha, good one! All this micro-flats ridiculousness reminds of the scene in “Zoolander” where Derek is looking at a model of his new school to teach children “how to read good”:
Derek Zoolander: What is this? A center for ants? How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read… if they can’t even fit inside the building?
Mugatu: Derek, this is just a small…
Derek Zoolander: I don’t wanna hear your excuses! The building has to be at least… three times bigger than this!
Singapore has cars racing around the city centre, so we have to follow. Singapore has a big wheel, we must have one. You can see how the minds of our civil servants work.
But chaps, think of all those luverly-jubbely pit girls……
According to the Lands Tribunal’s latest judgment of 7th September, ordering a tenant in Stanley Main Street out, the tenant described his home of 11 years, thus:
No supply of fresh or flushing water
No flushing toilet
An unusable dangerously hanging bathroom basin
Unusable water heater
No useable post box
No light on the stairwell
No lock on the main door
Hanging and insecure metal barrier lock
A warped, rotten and dangerously disintegrated floor
Rotten doors
Peeling moulded paintwork on all surfaces
Unserviceable light sockets in all areas
Blocked water outlets
Insecure kitchen stove extractor fan ….
Maybe we should import an obscure Lee family member fromm SGP to be the next CE and he’ll make the race cars and ferris wheels run on time.
@old git
What was the reported monthly rent? I could be interested.
Boris: great idea. I hear that president Lee has a special needs-child with limited intellectual capabilities. He can replace 689. Who will notice ?
@ Boris and Diana. That’s the spirit chaps … we need mildly benevolent dictatorship in the manner of Singapore. Also, a bit of national service will sort out the strawberry generation and cull all this localist nonsense.
PCC: see case LDPD1593/2016 on http://legalref.judiciary.gov.hk/lrs/common/ju/newjudgments.jsp
Diane Butler
I remember you. The big broad with the diminutive hubby (Alf, wasn’t it?) who, just like Alan Ladd, didn’t necessarily have to stand on an orange box to make you happy. Glad to see you’re still alive. How’s Crystal Li?
Just want to say that you’re mistaken when you refer to the toothsome former Brigadier, Lee Hsien Loong of the Lion City, as “President” Lee. He ain’t. As any fule kno, Harry Lee’s bouncing boy is merely Prime Minister. The President of that plucky little republic is none other than the suave, silver haired thinker, Tony Tan.
By the way, hats off to Georgie Porgie, who, for probably the first time in his life, was, today, almost humorous. Credit where credit’s due, eh?
Oh Dear George. Never mind, I assume you will move to another $7000/month apartment nearby. If not, then sayonara as you cycle off into the sunset…
PS,
Fishing off Blake’s pier for dinner wassit?
@Red Dragon: Not so fast—”Georgie Porgie” has again indulged his long-standing habit of plagiarism, having quoted almost verbatim my description of the tiny flat in Saint Francis Street, Wanchai, where I lived back in the late 1990s.
It was in a “pencil building” with two flats per floor, each of about 19 sq. m. (or 200 sq. ft., for those who can’t grasp metric). It was T-shaped, with a tiny kitchen on one side and a tiny bathroom on the other.
George had visited me there and was amused by my tongue-in-cheek description of how I could use the toilet and cook breakfast at the same time. And yes … there was a small fridge in the so-called living room.
A humourist he is not, but I’ll grudgingly credit him for his memory.
Red Dragon (didn’t we date once ?), thanx for the compliments. Me and hubby (Wilf) have been living happily ever after in Malta, wouldn’t you believe ? I once proudly proclaimed that I was “really a Chinese” but then they told me about Chinese wimmin. No, I am not like that. Malta is great. Almost as good as Taiwan, I hear. My BFF Crystal lives near Marseille. She got into the big time $$$ after Alan kicked the bucket in Bali. How is Stanley ? How are Philippe and Chantal ? How is Bonnie ? Sometimes, after my 3rd bottle of prosecco, I get nostalgic. But then I think of David Tang and I am back to normal. *kissie kissie*
Re the iPhone 7, what most of my local colleagues were talking about and found rather amusing was the different slogans used for advertising it in HK, Taiwan and the Mainland. In HK slang 7 can mean ugly, embarrassing or something worse. Thus China has ‘7 is here’, Taiwan ‘this is 7’, while HK’s slogan is ‘this is iPhone 7’. 🙂
old git
Thank you for the link.
As well as George Harper Adams another “interesting” character is Elijah Saatori.
How’s about another sporting fok to run the place.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/section-news.php?id=173829
Get that man’s lawyers name, he knows how to pay a judge’s golf fees.