First of all, for any of you commie fuckers who can't read English, Martin Lee's article in the Wall Street Journal was quite optimistic, and I didn't see any slight mention of the word 'boycott'.
And since how does inviting a foreign state leader to open dialogue with one's own leaders can be alleged as traitorous? From the pro-Beijingers point of view, they seem to see it as inviting 'foreign agressors' to China, hellbent on wreaking havoc.
Read the goddamn article and get a proper translator for fuck's sake.
Today the WSJ issued their comdenation against Lee's critics, saying it's an attack on free speech. But that's a tad hypocritical... after all the pro-Beijingers and state-backed newspapers are also exercising free speech, right?
Irregardless, it's hard not to see if this sudden overture of backlash against Lee is at least part of a smear campaign against Anson Chan's by-election race. Martin Lee was one of the main proponents to her running after all.
But like most scandals here, people love them but they're quick to forget too. What's next, secret nude photos taken of Regina Ip backstage? Eww...
Speaking of Regina, just saw her recently on my ex-boss's horrendous talk show, and I'm getting sick of her boasting about her 'overseas' education about democracy and what not. You want a fucking medal as well?
Apologies to William Louey for putting up 2 pics of his balcony on my blog, having assumed I was a papparazi trying to expose his abode to what miniscule viewers I get. It was entirely on my own part and didn't involve the newspaper. If it weren't for the lovely view, I wouldn't have bothered taking any pictures, or writing anything about it.
I also retract the comments about the view being better than the Peak Lookout's. After intense tantric meditation, I reckon the Peak is be better as the higher angle gets you a better picture of Tsim Sha Tsui.
My meeting with film director/producer Barbara Wong Chun-chun was probably a bit too enthustiastic on my part. I had hoped to chat with her more about filming, show her my past film work and make some contacts, but she was in a hurry to leave! But yeah, great to meet her after I had struggled finding a copy of her 'Women's Private Parts', which is probably the only decent Hong Kong-made documentary so far.
It's cool what they did with the 'honours' system (even though they totally spelt it wrong). Now we can see better how really fickle viewers are...
Oddly, a vid of ATV English News accidentally (though not surprising) putting up their old logo at the end of the newscast became the third most rated show this week. Hehe, even my old boss didn't know till I told him.
I was very unimpressed by the new Elements shopping centre by MTR.
You know their ads, goes on something like 'a new shopping experience' or 'why be normal' tag lines. Well, I can see MTR were pretty desperate in hyperbolating the place... because it looks just like any other bland shopping centre!
Below is a vidcast I did at its HMV store when they officially opened their digital kiosks. Each reporter got a free 1 gig USB and 6 free songs to download but its in crappy WMA format and doesn't work on my comp for some reason.
It's rare we get to produce our own stories (as in without tagging along with reporters), so hopefully we'll get to do more.
Just a little background on this: the story of Lan Fong Yuen, a little green dai pai dong on Gage Street is well known by now - the government will not extend the DPD licence to it when its original owner dies. His son, Lam Chun-yip now runs the place, and although Lan Fong Yuen has two more interior 'cha chan tengs' behind the original DPD, it would be a loss for both the establishment as well as local heritage. Oh, and it's famous for 'silk stocking' milk tea (or pantyhose for you yanks), also dubbed Hong Kong-style tea for its roots here. Personally, having grown up with Tetley's tea bags, this kind of tea is a tad strong for me... plus I'm more of a coffee drinker.
Interpol has launched a worldwide campaign to track this alleged paedophile. But look how German police 'unswirled' the original image to produce this image. It must've been an excrutiatingly long exercise. This muppet apparently was trying to 'make friends' with other paedos on the Internet, and posted masked images of himself to prove his worth. But I reckon Interpol shouldn't have revealed it like that... I mean if they can find ways to unmask such images now, paedos will stop posting such images in the future, therefore less leads for police. Make sense don't it?
It's all about the organisers says, police says, bullshit
Goddamn it I hate when the media quote from both sides when it comes to numbers... is it not coincidental that police's numbers are always remarkably lower than what organisers say? Who's the antagonist here? And what's the logic between the constant battle of numbers?
Take the case for the universal suffrage rally today - in which I ironically missed because I was covering the other side - 5-thousand something say organisers and police put it at 4,500. Either way it is much smaller than expected - which is a shame.
Every time I here newscasters say something like "Organisers put the numbers at xx..." and I'm like ooh, I wonder what the police have to say... yep, much lower. Seriously, what is the point. Every media organisation should hire special 'people counters' for scenarios like these. Then we'll see how the numbers measure up! Lazy fucks.
Last week we accompanied our senior colleague to an interivew with Ms. Anson Chan Fang On-sang at her house on Stubbs Road. I've heard a lot about the intense borgeoise pads along there, and the they got more and more ridiculously lavish as I travelled up the road. Reminded me of those notorious 'gated' estates. If you've seen Ms. Chan on the telly, you know she's quite pint-sized, but heh, in real person she's like a hobbit, with some extreme fro action going on. She was quite taken aback at the amount of equipment and crew that barged into her home, as she assumed it was just going to be our EAL. Turns out the eejit forgot to tell her that we were doing a vidcast and suddenly the former No. 2 got all antsy and well, pissed off. After five minutes of awkwardness, we we managed to get things moving eventually. I mean, here we all were, cameras all set up ready to go and throwing a hissy fit wouldn't be the most pragmatic thing to do. Being a seasoned veteran with the media of course she perked up and went ahead with our vidcast. The whole scenario left me with a bitter taste for some reason. Maybe it's because this whole by-election frenzy is just so.... 'blah'
Sorry, it's the best expression I could come up with. At least I know what I mean, heh.
Tomorrow we got a date with another pseudo democrat, Regina Ip. Should be around the time the other dems go on their rally. I remember reading a byline quoting Anson asking Regina join the rally but Regina replied saying she had "other things to do"... yeah, a fucking vidcast with us!
...But despite what many of Beijing's black residents feel is increasing discrimination, few say it is bad enough to make them leave China.
"When I lived in Ireland, I had eggs thrown at my house, dogs set on me and stones hurled at me by kids. You don't get that in Beijing," said Ama, a 29-year-old Ghanaian-Irish teacher. "I feel a lot safer here than I did in Ireland. There's a lot of racism, but it's because people ... don't know anything about Africa."
It'd make more sense if it was 'Northen' Ireland. But alas, I'm not surprised to hear something like that happening in the good 'ol Republic.
