As I enjoyed a quiet lunch last week, the waitress commented “You’re still having a $69 set lunch, I guess you didn’t win the $65million” …sometimes I’m so transparent – I’m not a big gambler, the casinos in Macau and Las Vegas are unlikely to fly me out to their tables to lose my $100; although going to either city and giving yourself an amount to lose and trying to have as much fun doing so is a great way to approach these adult playgrounds (and playgrounds they are as the casino moguls have discovered). Keep people happy and they’ll spend money. – and damn I didn’t win, not even $20. The HK Jockey Club, what teasers they are – for that 2 second gap from when the quick pick card slides into the reader, the LCD screen goes blank, fantasies and imagination run riot as time slows and sixty five million possibilities jump across the space time continuum… “Next!” - Reality bites…
Maybe our esteemed public servants and elected officials could learn something from the casino moguls if they ever managed to get their heads out of the sand and do something constructive. Let’s not even mention the T word. Using prime waterfront locations for government offices, which unsurprisingly will cost more than three times as much per square foot to build – the most expensive offices in the territory – is a harebrained idea and a complete waste of space. And lets not forget it will spend two days of every seven completely empty (not counting the two and a half months summer break that legislators get). But rather let’s look at Kai Tak, while its only seems like yesterday when we could enjoy the most amazingly voyeuristic - did you see what Mrs Chan in 8B is having for dinner, and wow Susie Wong in 11D looks like she’s having fun - landings in the world. Actually, and this surprised me when I googled it, Kai Tak closed over eight years ago. If we’re nice and assume that the concept of Chek Lap Kok and its construction took eight years, we find that it’s taken 16 years for the government to come up with a concept and a plan for the area and now we’ll have to wait another few years before we get to not use what looks like another white elephant. More than 20 years - entire cities have been built in less time. China has transformed from an impoverished backwater to an economic superpower – how happy the mainlanders must be not to have a democratic government; they’d still be eating dust wondering what electricity was… I love my hometown but the lack of vision shown by all levels of government – especially the elected ones, whose main objective seems to be to stay elected rather than achieve anything – is worrying. We are a concentrated mass of rabid consumers living in one of the most vibrant cities on the planet; we love the latest gadgets and the hottest brands, we work our socks off to earn money only to find that Asia’s world city is not all it could or should be.
s.d. |
