At Last, A Chance To See Some Breasts

You can say what you want about South East Asia’s biggest outdoor sitting bronze English-language newspaper the South China Morning Post, and many people do.

But one thing it doesn’t do is rely on breasts to sell copy.

The local newspapers, on the other hand, are not a monopoly and therefore in strong competition with each other. They need at least one breast per front page, every day of the week, to move their merchandise.

It is by now pretty much impossible for the press to get more mileage out of the Edison Chen and the Bonkstresses saga without looking like money-grubbing exploiters of the female shape. The local media must therefore be thanking on their knees the “serial killer of South Asian appearance” who single-handedly brought the breast back to the front page by strangling women for pocket-money.

Now every front page is bursting with undulating flesh and plunging cleavages again, and the fact that their owners are
1. Prostitutes and
2. Murdered,

makes it even more tantalizing. Apparently a man has been arrested, so unless he’s innocent or a new killer strikes, the local papers will have to resort to boring old photos of jumping suicides and meat-cleaver hacked corpses again.

All we can hope for is that other celebrities have been filming each other while engaging in “sex acts” or murder, and that there are still computer technicians with social conscience who will step forward with the evidence.

Hong Kong’s Excellent Legal System

A snippet from yesterday’s South China Morning Post: A policeman and his wife (of course not “an accountant (or whatever) and her husband”) have been arrested for assaulting their domestic helper.

Apparently, and of course, “allegedly” the couple had been imprisoning the Indonesian maid in their flat for six months and beating her with “hands, knees and slippers” as well as depriving her of food, because “she didn’t take proper care of their nine month old daughter.”
Way to go, people: to ensure superior treatment of your child, beat up the helper!

This woman is shown in a photo with cuts on her face as well as bruises, and according to witnesses, a “swelling on her face the size of a fresh egg,” whatever size that might be. I think: Rather large.

It is interesting and a good example of how Hong Kong’s legal system has improved since the handover, to see that this slap-happy couple is immediately released on bail, whereas for example the guy who (allegedly) showed the world that Hong Kong celebrities engage in (shock horror) sex acts was held in custody for two weeks without bail and without being charged with any crime.

In a different case, another Indonesian maid (so much more malleable than the irritating, feisty Filipinas, wouldn’t you say? ) was found hacked to death, a piece of news relegated to the “dog run over by irate trucker” pages way at the back of the paper and never mentioned again. Meanwhile everything to do with Edison Chen’s pecker has been commanding front page coverage for a month.

Man posts nude pictures on internet: Locked away forever! Couple keeps woman as slave and beats her up: Out on bail immediately! Nobody can say the HK legal system doesn’t work well.

It reminds me of the time a couple of years ago when someone suggested we should have an anti-racism law in Hong Kong. True to form, the government put the thought out to tender, as in, they sought public consultation in the new caring, sharing HK government way. And who (whom) did they consult about the alleged racism in Hong Kong? The Chinese Chamber of commerce, where no non-Chinese is allowed to be a member. Allegedly.

Not very surprisingly, this hallowed Chamber declared that racism doesn’t exist in Hong Kong. So that’s okay then.

The Truth About South China Morning Post

A couple of days ago, in the middle of reading yet another dreary SCMP article about boring old Edison-boy and his many consorts, I found the truth about SCMP at last.

It is written entirely in Chinese and then translated by computer, just like those pirated DVDs some people buy in Shenzhen. You know, those films where when the actor says “Frank, come here!” the subtitles read: “Across come, law orchid can!”

Now the SCMP has thrown itself on the compu-translating bandwaggon. Or how else would you explain that, when Edison says he hopes the public will “give him a chance”, it’s translated as “offer him an opportunity”?

Downsizing, downsizing. It really works. Now I have to spend HK$ 95 every Tuesday to buy The Sunday Times, because I hunger so to see some sentences in a newspaper that don’t look as if they’re put together by chimps – and, of course, the computer translation machine.

Again With The Edison!

Is anybody else tired of reading (and writing) about the sexual exploits of a not very talented man named after a lightbulb?

Hong Kong’s English language South China Morning Post, priding itself on being more highbrow than the Chinese newspapers, writes about this tired story on the first page every day; mostly, it seems, to comment on how obsessed other newspapers are with the “scandal.”

Me, I’m wondering why Hong Kong people have this obsession with using surnames as a first name. Mandela Wong, Einstein Leung and, yes, Edison Chen, is the order of the day here.

I know they probably think that some of the greatness of the scientists, matemathicians and what have you will rub off on them (I still haven’t come over someone named Shakespeare Cheung) but really? You never meet any Europeans called Edison Hanson or Johnson Thomson, do you?

The best “surname as first name” I’ve ever come across was in IKEA in Causeway Bay. The surly, dumpy, spotty checkout-girl with greasy hair who unenthusiastically served me when I wanted to pump another few dollars into the swedish economy, bore the name tag SMITH.

But back to Edison. What’s with the saying sorry? Excuse the pun but what the fuck’s he done? So he likes to see his own scrotum in extreme close-up. What’s wrong with that? It certainly looks better than his face.

I would really have respected him if he’d immediately called a press conference saying: Yes I filmed myself in bed with … some people whose names I’ve forgotten. Do you have a problem with that?

And as for the writhing bints, if they’d given interviews saying: “Yes we did it with Edison. It wasn’t much because he was too busy checking his hair, but hey, we’re on TV innit! You have a problem with that?” I would have applauded them.

As it is I despair to live in a town where adults have to apologise to the public for having had sex in the tasteless comfort of their own homes.

But I think old Thomas Alva will be proud knowing that somewhere there’s a man who’s named himself Edison, and who has made the ultimate sacrifice to atone for the sin of following his biological urges: Leaving the Hong Kong entertainment industry forever.

Ghastly Defeat

Forget about the new year storms in China and the lives and billions of yuan lost. Forget about the not very handsome Edison Chen and the way he lures women who have promised to stay chaste before marriage into his bed by means of a gigantic teddy bear (or similar toy. but gigantic.)

No, I have more pressing concerns, namely the terrible choice I have to make every morning: Should I or shouldn’t I wear tights under my trousers?

Tights – in Hong Kong! What a defeat. I thought tights under trousers belonged firmly in the freezing hellhole of Norway category, but now I find myself wearing the same kind of clothes in Hong Kong in 9 degrees as I did in Norway in minus nine degrees.

Can any mathematician, physician or other pedant please explain? And no, it’s not the humidity. My hometown, Trondhjem (home of the moustache) is as damp as a beggar’s dishcloth (as “they” say.)

Tights! The scourge of, well, most things.

Not only do they make you look hideously fat the way they bulge out here and there, as well as make the trousers cling to them in an unbecoming fashion, but because they are made of tiny little metal (or something) threads, they create static electricity.

Thus not only does my hair stand up after any decent length walk, but every time I touch something vaguely connected with metal or electricity (like an escalator railing) I get a not insubstantial electric shock.

Damn you, the law of physics! (Or is it chemistry? Whatever it is – I hate the sciences!!!)

Another Day of Forced Emotion (Warning! This posting contains pictures of a lewd nature not condoned by the Royal Communist HK Police Force)

The poor things are at it again.
Thousands if not millions of put-upon Hong Kong guys trudging aimlessly around Central clutching the requisite flowers, (show your girlfriend you love her in a completely new and creative way: By propping up Hong Kong’s Useless and Tacky Gifts industry and leaving yet another huge and indelible carbon footprint! Yee-ha!) showing off the fact that they can afford to spend $1000 on something that actually costs $15.

Another victory for lemmings.
Another opportunity for shopping malls to cover their shop windows in useless crap; a couple of weeks ago all red and gold, now pink. There’s no need to rant on about how ridiculous Valentine’s day is and how it forces poor mugs to part with even more of their hard earned cash to satisfy the three or four geezers who own Hong Kong.

No, I want to draw your attention to an interesting little aspect of the other big seller of the day apart from imported flowers (apparently the militia had to be called in to guard the export of roses from Kenya) – chocolate.

What better way to tell your girlfriend you love her than making her fat and setting her up for a heart attack and diabetes? And what chocolate could be better than the one I found in the over-priced, packed to the rafters City Super, (Hong Kong people are so brand conscious that they are willing to pay four times the price of a normal household product just to be able to carry it home in the feted City Super bag) called
“romance chocolate:”

Romantic, wouldn’t you say? I mean, what woman wouldn’t get all warm, fuzzy and in the mood by watching other women undress?

Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against porn. Many of my closest relatives are porn stars. Still, although chocolate is supposed to be wildly erotic, as a heterosexual woman I kind of think the wrappers take away most of the joy eating a $150 piece of chocolate, if any, I would have felt.

Yeah yeah, sour grapes. Yes, nobody bought me one rose wrapped in so much paper a street sleeper could have lived under it for years, nor any chocolate costing the monthly budget of a Hong Kong family. But if anyone should attempt such a thing, what’s wrong with March 23rd? June 7th? October 17th?

Or just any day of the year, as long as it wasn’t dictated by cynical, money-grubbing, faux emotion-inducing HK industrialists that he should do so?