(And my own personal failure, a series of errors last night that screwed up 2 hard disks badly. Spent all night recovering data from one. Now need to see if 2nd can be recovered. Then need to reinstall Windows and all apps. Imagine my mood today.)

From Sunday’s SCMP:

#1 Great public hospitals: “A new mother mistakenly put her baby into another baby’s cot at the Prince of Wales Hospital and a nurse gave her baby a dose of antibiotics meant for the second baby. The nurse did not follow the standard procedure of checking the baby’s wrist tag before giving the injection.”

#2 The impossibility of staging cultural events that might have international appeal and bring in tourist dollars but wouldn’t appeal to locals: “Three days before Hesham Therwat was to throw his dream bash on Lantau Island, he was contacted by police. Mr Therwat was told that his application for a temporary liquor licence for a large-scale Full Moon Beach Party had been denied. During talks with the police, he learned it was because of safety, drug and noise concerns. Mr Therwat, 38, was baffled. He had hired security and technical professionals to oversee the event. He also thought he had the support of two other agencies, the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department and the Fire Services Department.” ““The Hong Kong government is not supportive in any way, shape or form,” he said, noting the difficulty of obtaining liquor or public entertainment licences and the worries with noise pollution, drug use and other safety issues.

#3 “Celebrity” tutors earn up to HK$1 million per month. Parents give their kids the money and let them choose which afterschool tutor to use and the kids choose based on advertisements and image. It’s good that there’s a focus on learning and good grades but this massively competitive, image-based industry strikes me as a Hong Kong anomaly and just wrong. And parents give up any responsibility in raising their kids other than just handing them money? “Schools use a web of incentives including star performances, free gifts and gift-redemption points that have children pressing their parents to send them to tutors who have become as much of a status symbol as a designer handbag, and just as expensive.” “Some tutors in their twenties claim they have been executives of multinational companies … only kids would have trusted them.” “The money that can be earned by a star tutor was illustrated by a recent court case involving Karson Oten Fan Karno, popularly known as K Oten, who was ordered to pay HK$8.8 million in damages for breaching his contract with King’s Glory Education. The court heard he had earned an entitlement to a HK$2.65 million share of its profits in just six and a half weeks in the spring of 2006. “

Hongkie Town
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