Sometimes you know it’s just good to be alive. I won’t say everything in my life is rosy but I’m damn sure lots of people are much worse off, and then there are others who are just plain… well, I don’t quite know how to describe them. A good friend has just fallen head over heels in love, I mean movie-style love complete with all the sappiness. They’re both over 40 yet walking around on Cloud Nine. They radiate happiness – I mean, they’re like two mini-novas walking down the street and it’s wonderful to see. The cloud, and it’s a deep black Category 10 hurricane, is her ex-husband. A man who walked out on her and their two kids for another woman – leaving a note on the table to be read when she returned home to Hong Kong after Chinese New Year three years ago. He squirreled his companies millions away into offshore companies, trying to hide the money from any financial settlement, flicked his proverbial finger at the Hong Kong courts and their rulings declaring German courts superior. The now blissfully happy and in-love ex-wife – who has devotedly raised two young children without much of a life outside of them until that fateful night her divorce came through and she met someone new – received a ‘lovely’ lawyer’s letter from her ex-husband last week informing her that he was cutting off her allowance and evicting her from the house and that she and their two children would be living on the streets in a little under three weeks. Life was perfect for him: a new woman and a new baby, an ex-wife living like a nun and raising his two children and millions in his bank. How it must crush him to find out that his ex-wife could find happiness with another man, that he could be replaced. Yes, I’m certain there are two sides to this story but there are also words to describe a man who would kick his own pre-teen children onto the street…

On a lighter and happier note, everyone here at bc magazine would like to wish all our readers and advertisers a happy and prosperous year of rat. Kung Hei Fat Choi

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