Hand's across the sea

Hu's hand is it anyway?

 This is Hu Chi-yang (胡其揚), a Taiwanese businessman.  Mr Hu visited the PRC recently where he claims he was attacked by a gang which cut off his left hand.  Fortunately, he had taken out over NT$50,000,000 (about £1,000,000) in personal injury insurance just before his visit.

The PRC police investigated the attack.  Anaesthetic was found in Mr Hu's blood.  His DNA was found on a chopper picked up near where he was injured, and the owner of the nearby knife shop recognised Mr Hu as the person who had bought it off him.  After the gang attacked him, Mr Hu went home alone and did not call for help; his wife phoned the hospital later.  Nobody near the crime scene saw or heard anything unusual.  Hospital doctors said Mr Hu had rejected surgery to stitch the hand back on, and that the 16 parallel cuts to his hand would be difficult to explain unless he had held himself motionless and not resisted while the gang attacked.

Mr Hu's daughter is incensed, and says that her father would never sink so low as to try to defraud  insurers by chopping his own hand off.

Perish the thought.  

She has demanded that the PRC police return the hand at once.

Wednesday 30th November update:  Taiwan police have charged Mr Hu with attempted fraud. 

No, nothing's happening

The "big news" is that the next HK chief executive will probably be Henry Tang rather than C.Y. Leung.

Tang

He won't win.

 Tang is gradually gaining more support in public from the tycoons who run HK.  Most people are waiting to see who Beijing wants but Tang seems to have nicked it.  He is way behind in the general public opinion polls, but the general public does not have a vote and so does not matter much.  The winner will be chosen by a committee of 1,200 HK folk once the PRC central government has told it whom to choose. Broadly, Leung is a bit closer to Beijing it seems, and not as rich.  These days this does not seem to cut much ice.

In Taiwan things seem to trickle along... 

There are some minor celebrities doing what minor celebrities do.

There must be more to life than this...

The weather is quite nice.

Is this really all there is?  Crikey.

Is anything happening?

It doesn't seem so.  So what's been going on?  The HK-Macau bridge (apparently 30 km in length) has finally been approved, and it might be built by 2015.  HK had almost no growth in the last 3 months.  Nobody is terribly sure what is going to happen next  The weather is quite nice.  Sorry, there really isn't anything to say.  Oh, Christmas started about a fortnight ago so we have appropriate muzak and advertising in all the shopping malls.  The true spirit of HK.

The ups and downs of HK office life

Nice teeth and hair.  What was that about dollar/yen?

One of the drawbacks to high-rise offices in HK is being captive for a couple of minutes a day in a lift in front of a Bl0omberg TV screen.

BTV is a depressing triumph of form over substance.  A typical start to the day might include an admittedly decorative female spouting: "Bur-reak-king news... China Consolidated down 3 on US trade numbers!  So, Jim, what's going on?", with smirking Jim drawling, "Well Susan, just take a look at this, er, chart, it spiked on October 14th, and what the market, er, seems to be saying is, 'heh, you know, are these numbers actually for, er, real given where we are in, er, Asia-Pacific at this time in the current cycle'...".

They could scrap all this and show a potter's wheel for 1% of the cost.  Or photos of their presenters modelling swimwear for not much more.

曉格蘭特 (Hugh Grant) 初為人父!

The Hong Kong Metro newspaper got straight to the point about unmarried Hugh Grant and Hong Ting Lan this morning:

51歲英國男星曉格蘭特升呢做爸爸！他和19歲華裔演員前女友洪婷蘭戀情雖短暫，但女方仍心甘情願為他誕下女兒！年過半百的他，晚年有混血小女兒陪伴，實在老懷安慰！ 

The last sentence here says: "Having a mixed race daughter in his evening years will really be a comfort to him in his old age".  Not mincing their words here, although do I detect sarcasm?

PS The Metro says she is only 19.  She is, I believe, 19 years younger...

Boned China

Male chauvinist pig

So Hugh Grant got a Chinese starlet preggers accidentally, skipped the birth, dropped in for half an hour the next day and then shoved straight off to Scotland to play golf.  Good to see he's in touch with his feminine side just as much as the rest of us.

The Daily Telegraph reported today that "Miss Hong, 32, gave birth to the 51-year-old’s daughter five weeks ago.  The girl’s name has not been announced".... said the Telegraph, just after it had announced her name as Miss Hong. 

Taiwanese dark horse

Meanwhile, Taiwan's presidential election has become a three horse race with the entrance of James Soong (宋楚瑜).  The thinking is he could split the vote on the right and the talk is that he was put up to it by some folks on the left.  Great fun!  The crazy Taiwan news animators will probably have a story on this shortly...