fashion beach

Overheard in Delft, the Netherlands, recently - an American visitor looking at an old church tower with a pronounced tilt to one side: "It's, like, totally leaning!".

Apparently "totally" is American for about 2 metres from the vertical.  Or like it, anyway.

Incidentally the artist Vermeer is buried in the church, which is totally still standing.

Commonly observed in Europe: woman (or sometimes man) sits down at a restaurant table and casually deposits bag on the ground beside seat, down among the doggie doo and discarded chewing gun. Later picks up bag and places it on lap to get something out. Subsequently rests hands on lap before eating with same hands.


I hope I'm not being racist here, just making a cultural observation, but the Hong Kong way of finding a spare chair, window ledge or other relatively clean surface on which to deposit one's bag does seem considerably more hygienic. Yet if you accused the European woman of being dirty she'd probably be shocked and deny it vigorously. Every culture has its blind spots.

Many years ago in 1986 I bought one board lot of shares in the Cafe de Coral fast food restaurant chain when the company had its IPO.  A few years later I sold the shares, but the company still  kept sending me dividend cheques and reports.  I wrote to the share registrar telling them I'd sold the shares, but they replied that the new owner had not registered them and therefore so far as they were concerned I was still the registered owner.  I have no idea why someone would buy shares and not bother to register them or collect the dividends, but the result is that for 20-odd years I have been receiving dividends on shares I no longer own.

Over those years, the company has done well (unlike other shares I have owned - one company went bust; another's shares are so worthless they would cost me more in broker's fees to sell than the amount I could sell them for) - well enough that I wish I'd bought more shares in the first place - 25 years of increased turnover, and continuous profit growth until Hong Kong's minimum wage law finally dented this record.

However, the downside of still receiving the dividends is that I still receive the company's reports.  These have grown with the business - having once been magazine-sized, the latest is 320 pages long and the thickness of a telephone directory, half in English and half in Chinese.  How many of these pages do I read?  Just one - the highlights, to see how the company is doing and what dividend it will pay.

I strongly suspect that many small shareholders only glance at the highlights, which means that most of these pages are totally wasted.  Ironically, the cover of Cafe de Coral's latest annual report depicts a grove of fruit trees - ironic because at least that many trees were probably cut down to print it.  And while my copy goes straight to the recuycle bin, not all shareholders are so environmentally consciopus and a fair percentage of copies probably end up in landfills.

What can be done about this enormous waste of resources, with its negative impact on the environment?  Hong Kong Stock Exchange rules permit a company to print its report in English only, with a separate Chinese translation available to shareholders on request, but so far as I know, few companies take advantage of this.  But even that is not enough - why can't companies do as the London Exchange allows its listed companies to do: send out a brief highlights document only and send the full report only to shareholders who specifically request it?  After all, every company's full report is posted on its website anyway.

If we truly want to be "Asia's World City", shouldn't we be taking better care of the world?.

The official video celebrating the 15th anniversary of Hong Kong's reunion with China - "Memorable Moments" - perfectly illustrates the widening gap between government rhetoric and on-the-street reality in the SAR.  Almost the first shot depicts three goose-stepping PLA soldiers.  Whatever else Hong Kong people may dream about, it's certainly not the PLA, except perhaps in their nightmares on June 4th.

Far more in tune with the city's current mood is the parody version, "Who's Killing Our Dreams?"  It was perhaps with this kind of production in mind that the government recently tried - fortunately without success in the face of fierce public opposition - to introduce an amendment to the copyright ordinance that would have outlawed parodies.  They will probably try again.

Isn't it a depressing commentary on Hong Kong's progress towards the democracy supposedly promised to us by the Basic Law that the annual July 1st democracy march has, after ten years, become a local institution?  Far from moving towards democracy, we seem to be going backwards, with the forcing through LegCo of the government's iniquitous by-elections bill.

One new (to me, anyway) feature of this year's march was the number of people carrying the old colonial flag of Hong Kong - an extremely blunt critique of 15 years of Chinese rule.  I wonder what Queen Victoria was thinking about it, up there on her throne above the masses?

And how on earth do the police come up with their figures for the number of participants on this thing?  Their estimate of 62,000 is roughly 1,5 times the capacity of the Hong Kong Stadium.  Now, visualise everyone in the stadium, plus half as many again, and compare that with the turnout for the march.  A friend of mine was one of the first people to reach the government offices around 5:30 pm.  I didn't get there until 8pm, with at least a third of the procession still behind me.  The organisers' estimate of 400,000 may be overstated, but it's certainly closer to reality than the "official" figure.  Maybe the Hong Kong government wants to avoid frightening the Beijing government by letting them know just how pissed off local people really are with their rulers.

While Europe's economy continues to self-destruct, the continent seems to be ever-expanding geographically.  Consider the evidence:

• Turkey, only a small part of which is in Europe, is applying for membership of the European Union.  While it has no current intention of doing so, it is possible that the Russian Federation, the majority of which is in Asia, could do the same.
• Israel has long competed as a European country in international sports (mainly because most of its Middle Eastern neighbours don't want to welcome it to regional contests so long as it continues to oppress the Palestinians).
• The BBC News website a couple of days ago listed the Qatar shopping mall fire under "Europe" rather than "The Middle East".
• The recent Eurovision Song Contest was hosted by Azerbaijan, which last time I looked was closer to Central Asia, being east of Turkey and just north of Iran..

So where does Europe end?  And where will it end if this process continues?

At least we don't need to worry about what will happen to Hong Kong in 2047 when the "One Country, Two Systems" agreement ends.  At Europe's current rate of expansion, by then we will probably be part of the EU already!