The Hub of Happenings

It never ceases to amaze me how this town gets gripped by a new scandal or sensational news story every other week.

Thanks to a free press and a thriving publishing scene, Hongkongers can look forward to new revelations on companies, tycoons, government officials or celebrities every morning when they walk past a newsstand or convenience store on the way to work. It seems as inevitable as the arrival of new fashion collections at their favourite designer boutiques.

I started thinking about this last year when eccentric billionairess Nina Wang - she with the pigtails and the kidnapped, still-missing-but-presumed-dead husband - passed away.

"There goes a newsmaker of our time," I had thought.

Oh, no. Within days, a previously unknown fengshui master/businessman, Tony Chan, was filing claims to be the sole beneficiary in her last will, and launched a legal challenge against Wang's family and charitable foundation to secure her US$4 billion fortune.

The case is making preliminary rounds in the Hong Kong courts and it looks like the press can milk this story for years to come.

Some of the juicy stories that have dominated watercooler chit-chat since the start of the year :

- Tycoon Peter Lam successfully challenged the laser gun readings of the Traffic Police that asserted that he had been doing 114 km/h in a 50 km/h zone in his Ferrari. After mounting a million-dollar (HK$) legal defence, he got the cops to blink - they admitted that there might have been mistakes with the handling of the laser gun and reduced the alleged speed to 79 km/h. As a result, Lam was fined a mere HK$450 (S$80) instead of getting his licence revoked.

- David Li, chairman and CEO of the Bank of East Asia, settled out of court with American regulators and paid US$8 million in fines, albeit without admitting any wrongdoing, to extricate himself from an insider trading investigation. Li had been accused of passing confidential info to his friend regarding the takeover bid by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp for Dow Jones, where Li is a board director.

- The Edison Chen nudie pic saga - enough said.

- Walter Kwok, chairman of property giant Sun Hung Kai Properties, was forced to take a leave of absence by his mother and two brothers - who are controlling shareholders in the company - after he tried to bring a female friend into senior management.

The scene in Singapore is utterly tasteless and bland in contrast. It's not that Singaporeans are oh-so prim and proper and that there's no misbehaviour. I'm sure that we have our fair share of naughty celebrities and people in the Establishment with skeletons in their closets (or hard drives).

But with a controlled press and libel laws that hang over journalists and commentators like a heavy sword, Singaporeans can only look beyond their shores for juicy news stories.

CX New Business Class

Recently, a few people wrote in to the local English paper to complain about the new pod-like business class seats in Cathay Pacific's new Boeing 777-300ER planes.

The seats were cramped and claustrophobic, they said, and look like coffins. Compared to the old business class seats, the new ones offer much less space to store items like reading materials and laptops. It looks as if Cathay Pacific (CX) is trying to cram more seats into the business class cabin to milk more money from each flight.

While those letters attracted a handful of "Got Business Class to sit you also complain" type of retorts from other readers, after getting a chance to try it last week when I flew back to Singapore for Chinese New Year, I think the complainants have a point.

The Wife and I had gotten our tickets by redeeming some air miles that were soon to expire so we were in a more experimental mood, but had I or my employer paid HK$12-13K (S$2,200-2,300) for my ticket and I got less space than before, I'd be really annoyed.

The view from the CX Business Class lounge, "The Wing", at Hong Kong International Airport.


On board, the new Business Class seats are arranged in a 1-2-1 configuration, in a "herringbone" arrangement. The Wife and I had a pair of seats in the middle but the partition made it difficult for us to talk to each other during the flight.


My seat. The colour scheme looks pretty cheapo to me.


The view when I was seated. During takeoff and landing, you have to put the TV screen back in its position so it was weird to have to view the safety videos on your neighbour's screen ... ... not that most passengers care for the videos anyway. There was also no view out of the window for those passengers sitting in the middle two seats.

The metallic, oval object on the top right corner of the TV screen is a coat hook. Big deal.

On my right - the handset/entertainment controller, seat controls, reading light and in-seat power supply. The power socket looked like it accepts commonly-used plugs like the Type G 3-pin plugs that we use in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong. Much better than the power sockets in some airline seats that require you to buy a special adaptor.


On my left, the pocket for newspapers and magazines. I had to lift the arm-rest to access it and as you can see you cannot even put a normal-sized paperback book in it.


The handset has a pretty cool display that shows the flight number (very handy for those filling in immigration forms), remaining flight time, and weather at the destination.


There's a keyboard on the reverse side of the handset. For upcoming web browsing and email/sms services ?


The 15-inch TV screen gets in the way during meal service, and the picture quality of my movie was only average.





CX has explained that the seats were re-designed after an extensive survey of passenger requirements, and privacy was at the top of the list. But they have definitely screwed up by sacrificing so much space for privacy. The only nice thing about the new seats is that it turns into a flat bed, but CX business class just does not feel luxurious any more with the cramped space that each passenger has to spend hours cooped up in.

They should seriously consider stopping the rollout of the new seats if they don't want customers defecting to SQ and EK.

Girl Stuff ... Help Needed

No, no, no ... ... not the earlier type of girl stuff.

The Wife would like to buy some coloured glass pebbles for her floating-candles-in-a-water-bowl thingamajig. There used to be a chain of shops named InnerPeace that sells candles and aromatherapy products, with outlets at Ngee Ann City and Suntec Mall. Are they still in business ? Any other places where I can find such things ?

Thanks.

Saving Private Ryan on a budget ... ...

An amazing clip showing how a handful of guys managed to recreate the Omaha Beach landing opening scene in "Saving Private Ryan" :

Le débarquement d'Omaha Beach avec 3 personnes en 4 jours
Uploaded by BriKO

Link

What the hell ... ...

"Relax ..." the Wife said. "It's just a curling iron."

"..."

"For the HAIR !"

"Oh, sorry ..."