Or Chief Executive …..

I had a job interview over at the Bank of China tower today.  High floor.  A few minutes alone in the office and couldn’t resist grabbing some photos of the view of the construction work at the Place Formerly Known As Tamar.  Note that I only had my iPhone camera with me and in too much of a rush to think about Best Camera or any of those, just brought up the basic camera app – maybe not worth clicking on these to see larger versions – and lots of reflection in the glass as well.

My first thought was that if this was my office, I’d shoot a picture out the window and post it every day, a new photoblog documenting the progress on Our New Government Center. (Or Centre.)

My second thought was that if I was Chief Executive, I might have put this prime piece of real estate to different use.  I started thinking about a park.  Well, there will be some park land attached to this, no doubt filled with signs about what you can’t do there.  No smoking, no pets, no ball playing, no skating, no having fun ….   Since the space is rather large, something more than just some park space, some picnic area, some public barbecues.  Maybe an amphitheater for outdoor concerts and plays? A space larger than Asiaworld where superstars can come to town and play concerts outdoors with the harbor as a brilliant backdrop?  (Imagine how many bands that did that would want to release DVDs of a concert in such a special place and how that might boost the tourism industry in other sectors aside from “poor mainlanders on group tours.”)  Shakespeare in the park?  Opera in the park – both western and Cantonese?  Sunday afternoons, duplicate that soap box area in, is it London’s Hyde Park?   The options for what one could do with such a Public space are almost mind-boggling.

Instead, we will get the Donald Tsang Memorial Buildings.  I think that if he doesn’t build one himself, no one’s going to build it for him, not even the mega-billionaires whom he helped get richer at the expense of the average Hong Kong citizen.  So I suppose the best thing about that will be the day that Tsang is gone and we only have to deal with memorials to him rather than deal with the bowtie himself.

What a day for a day dream ….

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