傾城The Fallen City

 

熱情就算 熄滅了

Even though our passion dies.

分手這一晚 也重要

It still matters, our final night.

甜言蜜語 謊話嬉笑

Sweet words, lies and jokes,

都給我一點 不要缺少

I want it all and nothing less.

話題盡了 也不緊要

and if we’ve nothing more to chat,

吻我至淒冷的深宵

Just kiss me til the night goes dead.

繁華鬧市 燈光普照

Lights still shine in thriving town,

然而共你 已再沒破曉

but we know we’ll have no more dawn.

紅眼睛 幽幽的看著這孤城

With red eyes, looking at this isolated city,

如同苦笑 擠出的高興

It’s like a joy out of sickly smile.

全城為我 花光狠勁

As the whole town goes wild for me,

浮華盛世 作分手佈景

hollow prosperity is our final scene.

傳說中 癡心的眼淚會傾城

In legends, lovers’ tears make castles fall.

霓虹熄了 世界漸冷清

Dimming neon, quiet-down world,

煙花會謝 笙歌會停

dying fireworks and fading symphony,

顯得這故事尾聲 更動聽*

make an enchanting end of all.

Repeat *

紅眼睛 幽幽的看著這孤城

With red eyes, looking at this isolated city,

如同苦笑 擠出的高興

It’s like a joy out of sickly smile.

瓊樓玉宇 倒了陣形

Those jade palaces, and turncoats within,

來營造這 絕世的風景

make this ending the greatest scene.

傳說中 癡心的眼淚會傾城

In legends, lovers’ tears make castles fall.

霓虹熄了 世界漸冷清

Dimming neon, quiet-down world,

煙花會謝 笙歌會停

dying fireworks and fading symphony,

顯得這故事尾聲 更動聽~

make an enchanting end of all.

=================================================================

If you know it, you'll understand it.  If you don't understand it, you may even not bother to know it. We have ended up coming to a time when something cannot be spoken but just be understood. However a song composed some twenty years ago but how coincidentally the lyric echos the scenario nowadays. 

A fallen city, a relict.

This city is dying

There was a TVB drama production in 2011 when the line "This city is dying, you know?" went viral, after the social movement in the past few years, many people recalled this line. Amid the Covid latest stage say these weeks, people can't help but recalled this line again, but for another context.

Hong Kong people just puzzle why the SAR health officials always lag behind against the situation and made always mis-timing health policies? When the Covid emerged, the HKSAR government was slow in quarantine the inbound travellers as well as slack in the counter-measures in late November 2020 which was known as the Fourth Wave, a tragic death toll of 9000+, was recorded. Among the many mistakes and errors, in a nutshell, a wrong perception on the pandemic as well as the wrong attitude in the key health official, namely Sophia Chan, is the culprit.

With the sixth term of HKSAR administration inaugurated since this July and new Secretary of Health, Prof. Lo Chung Mau, is in place so people expected new official could bring new insight and not only new but effective as well as timely measures. Unfortunately honey-moon is always short-lived. Lo is again slow in coping with the rapidly changing Covid situation here in HK and comparing to that in the rest of the world as well. 

While our neighbour like Singapore, Japan, Korea...have lifted, if not all then most of, the inbound travel restrictions, many countries in the rest of the world also relaxed many of the inbound restrictions in order to resume the people flow in light of the social and economic activities. Hong Kong is still shy in joining the bandwagon though. The former Chief Exective, CY Leung, advocated Hong Kong as a Super-Connector between China and the world. However, as the ressult of the outdated stringent inbound restriction, the world has already abandoned Hong Kong as a partner of the global game. The recent detoured international sports events and exhibitions are just some good evidence. Super-connector became an empty slogan only.

Naturally being the head of the Department of Health which is responsble for policy making, Lo was under fire for the failure of coping with the global trend. Lo played rhetroic on the death rate as an excuse to the failure. Perhaps he is only a scapegoat though. When China still holds tight on the zero-Covid policy, just being a local health official, Lo dares nothing but just sticks closely to the national policy to avoid the blame on rocking the national security through a relaxed inbound control. This is the dilemma perhaps who being an HK official must face as what the advocate puts it that Hong Kong must integrate into the national development setting.

The former Chief Executive, Tung Chee-hwa, once said Hong Kong will see its well-being when the country prospers. Many people believe but most of them do not realize that China places collective well-being above individual as well as national vs regional. While zero-Covid policy works in the mainland does not mean it is also beneficial to a particular city, especailly an interantional city where flows of people is as important as flow of blood. Hong Kong is suffocating. She will soon lose the status of international hubs of travel, transportation, businesses as well as finance. While foreign businesses avoid passing through Hong Kong, the local businessess are also starving to death due to the existing health policy.

This city is dying, you know?

A tale of Chai and Tyler

Stories usually starts from once upon a time. Ok, so once upon a time there were two brothers who lived in the same abbey but as time went by the younger brother, Chai, grew stronger and expelled the elder brother, Tyler, to leave the compound onto a hut at the fringe of the abbey. Since then Chai and Tyler were strangers to each other for decades. Chai owned all the properties in the abbey so his living was getting better and better while Tyler was confined in his small hut so he could barely make ends meet. Yet Chai, from time to time, sent his henchmen to threaten Tyler because the latter tried to get his hut out of the control from his younger brother. Chai saw Tyler's movement as a stealing of his property so he kept threatening his elder brother that he would reclaim the hut or in the last resort to smash the hut if Tyler dares to claim the hut's ownership. Their confrontation lasted for decades and the tension kept on.

On the other hand, amid the brothers' struggle their rival neighbour, Sam, was watching opportunistically trying to intervene into the affair for a profit so he teamed up with Tyler so that he had the excuse to step in the siblicide. Under the shear pressure from his younger brother, Tyler had no alternative but to align with Sam whose plan was to stir up the confrontation and if Chai does send his henchmen into Tyler's hut then he would back Tyler up to fight with Chai. Sam's idea was to drain Chai's resources through a prolonged fight to eventually take down this rival.

Chai realized Sam's plan so he has been unhappy on Tyler's mingling with this rivalry under his nose. He repeatedly warned the two from further interaction. Chai also warned Sam not to visit Tyler's hut as he saw such move as a challenge of trepassing on his abbey. However, in order to lure Chai to fall into a fight with Tyler, Sam kept doing nuisances and till one day, a servant of Sam climbed over the fence of Tyler's hut at night and pissed over there. Chai bursted into furious anger and blamed Tyler on his failure in safeguarding the fence as well as Sam's trepassing. Despite in rage, Chai condemned Sam's behaviour but all he did over Sam was limited to condemnation only. However, to punish his elder brother, Chai sent henchmen to smash the fence of Tyler's hut. 

The above story was found in a long lost broken manuscript so no one knows what happened next. Because of the open ending, some readers find it interesting in speculating how the author would complete the story. However, most readers puzzle on why Chai would react in a rather unsensible way that Sam was indeed the culprit of the incident but he remained unscraped. Despite of the prior serious warning but when things did happen, all those warnings just sounded more bark than bite. From Sam's point of view, it was nothing but a big slam on Chai's face in respond to his serious warning. On the other hand, poor Tyler was the scapegoat. The author did not reveal whether Sam's servant was a solicited trepass or not but the point is that it seems even if it was an unsolicited one Tyler was unable to say no to Sam. No matter what, Tyler's fence was smashed by Chai's henchmen anyway after the incident. Poor Tyler!

Are you kidding?

When the COVID-19 cases in Hong KOng rose to tens of thousand a day and the infection rate doubled in every 2-3 days, apparently people is panic and became a bit of unrational in some behaviour like the buying spree of self-testing kit. 

In my post enough is enough I doubt the effectiveness of self-testing kit when Carrie Lam's administration rolled out the idea of sending the self-testing kit to all Hong Kong people as a measure to detect the stealth infected in the community. The reason of my doubt rests on two premises, ie., mis-administered testing procedure leading to wrong result as well as human nature that some people might choose to remain silent even if on the positive result because they just do not want to disclose it due to quite a numbers of personal consideration like no work thus no pay. 

The recent buying spree on the self-testing kit does not prove my doubt is wrong. The buyers fall into mainly three categories, the first and very big chunk is that they need a positive test result to keep their jobs valid but the public testing capacity falls short in great extent, the second group is concerned on whether they are infected while the last group is just blind sheep under the herd behaviour. The buying spree demonstrates that the society is in panic state so people overreact on whatever seems to be useful. Naturally Lam's bullshit idea might also put fuel on the fire as well.

Lam does not seem to realize her bull shit idea's problem but even put it to an higher level that the government is building a system to accept the citizens' testing result via the self-testing kit. The incapable secretary of food and health bureau, Sophia Chan, said the System can help the government to evaluate the community infection status thus devising the corresponding measures. 

Chan's statement not only is a big joke in light of the drawbacks of Lam's bull shit idea but demonstrate how incapable she is. The result of self-testing kit is highly unreliable which is not the kit per se but due to the uncertainty of people's correct testing procudure like the sampling with swub and the waiting time thus is the result. On the other hand, when any one can tap on the system and input whatever result in it then how trustworthy the findings of this System can be? What reliable insight thus effectiveness measures can be generated when the castle is built on the sand? People should doubt Chan's intelligence in light of her such big joke. Are you kidding, Madam? No wonder Hong Kong fell into such a chao and disastrous situation when the chief responsible official of Hong Kong's health policy is an idiot.

God bless Hong Kong!

Help yourself

When native English speakers say help yourself, it means the guest can just feel free to enjoy whatever offered. To the people in Hong Kong, help yourself carries another totally different meaning now when they are facing the recent spike of CONVID 19. They really need to self helping themselves because the HKSAR government is at the brink of collapse on addressing the current surge of over thousands verified cases a day. Not only the public health system is highly overloaded but all kinds of anti-plague measures like the quarantine facility and testing facility as well as home quarantine support services all fall short to demand in a large extent.

As I mentioned my earlier post enough is enough  the reason is due to the absence of contingence plan arising from the lack of foresight, if not the worse case, malfeasance, of Sophia Chan, Secretary of Food and Health, Caspar Tsui, resigned Secretary of Home Affairs Bureau and of course the Chief Executive, Carrie Lam. They are inevitably the culprits of poor management of this spike of plague. Tsui resigned under the blame of his attendance to a birthday party which is a violation of the social distancing policy. However, the other two are still in their positions but most likely their days is numbered. Anyway, no matter what their political future will be, the fact is that the public is the victim of their wrong doings. When the public services are at the brink of collapse, Hong Kong people can only help themselves but not depend on the government.

Despite of the relatively low fatility rate of Omicron but when the infection cases rose, so was the daily death toll which climbed to a couple of dozen in the recent days. As getting infected is not a low probability event, the number one self-helping is to remain survive after infection. Getting vaccinated is the proven measure. Vaccination cannot prevent infection though but remaining alive after infection is the bottom line.

While the bottom line of stay alive by vaccination is secured, the next self-helping is to avoid getting infected. Naturally wearing face mask is the basic and mandatory step. However, as far as observation reveals that many people do not pay enough attention on their hand hygiene. Many passengers in the public transportation still grab the handrail with their bare hands. Shoppers also pick up merchandise with bare hands as well. No doubt many people carry a bottle of hand sanitizer but the point is that in most of the time they did not clean their hands in time after each and every touching with these objects. Those objects could be contaminated and very likely they would touch their own belongings afterward thus spreaded the virus onto their belongings. When they touched their nose, eyes or mouth unconsciously right after toughing these contaminated belongings thus be infected. Wearing disposable plastic gloves before touching these objects seems to be paramount. This helps avoiding infection in the first place.

For those unfortunately already infected, depending on the level of symptoms, self-helping is also more practical than seeking medical services from the public health system. There are already numerious cases that those verified infected being stranded at home awaiting for hospitalization or quarantine. Those patients with mild symptoms as long as they have already received their jabs do not need to panic because the fatility rate on the vaccinated is quite low. Most likely most patients will get well even if without medical treatment. Sleeping in open area in the chill nights awaiting for hospitalization could bring more risk exposure than can the disease per se be. Let alone the public health system is extremely overloaded so reserving the capacity for those truly endangered not only help ease the overloading but save one self by avoiding possible cross-infection in the hospital.

Naturally despite reducing social contacts, avoid visiting unnecessary premises sounds like platique but are truly practical self-helping measures. When the government fails their job to protect us, self helping yourself seems paramount than ever.

Enough is enough

In my last post omicron oh my god 2 in last Thursday I said when Beijing expressed its concern on Hong Kong's plague situation and said it would extend its assistance, that is actually a signal to Carrie Lam's administration saying Beijing is not happy on the then latest development in Hong Kong. Beijing would not stand sideline and let Lam and her bunch of incapable bureaucrats further jeopardize Hong Kong's well-being.  Today there came a news which explicitly mentioned that the President of State cum General Scretary of the CCP, Xi, laid an instruction that the HKSAR government must do by all means to suppress the plague and make sure Hong Kong returns to the right track. This news came in time just one day right after yesterday's verified infection cases rose to 5400+. Apparently Beijing is keeping a very close eye on the development and react promptly.

Lam and her bunch of related incapable bureaucrats are in hot soup now. An direct instruction from the State President is an absolute order which must be complied and failure is not an option. Having said, thing is not optimistic to Lam because with the existing measure there is literally no hope to turn the situation around in short time, or at least in a month or so considering the plague is in its full boom stage. Thing will just be worse but not the otherwise. 

It was said prior to this outbreak Lam was eagerly seeking the second term of her capacity of Chief Executive but judging what is happening now she literally will have no luck to run the election any more. There is a Chinese wisdom of word saying fortune and misfortune are twin and they inter-dependent with each other respectively (福兮禍所依，禍兮福所倚).  Lam have made a big mess in Hong Kong during the anti-extradition bill three years ago and when the judgment day was about to come then there came the plague in Wuhan, China and finally spreaded to Hong Kong in early 2020. Beijing kept Lam for the sake of stability in fighting the plague so it is the plague that saved Lam. Unfortunately it is the same plague which is very likely to put an end on her political future two years later. She just ran out any more of her luck.

In fact it is not about luck but Lam's character. Her character dictates her decisions which in turns led to the outcome of her doings. Lam was once characterized as very fighting when she was still the Secretary in the Development Bureau. It is her such personality that shapes her to be what she is today. Lam is self-confident and high in pride on what she does. There are pros and cons though. The price could be very high when she misjudges the circumstances because of her persistence. In the 2019 anti-extradition bill event Lam created a huge societal chao due to her persistence on the non-withdrawal of the proposed bill. In this plague she insists not wearing a face mask in the press conference appearance. She sees this as the standing up of her doings and pegged with her pride. This gives her a way of no return.

Whether to wear a face mask in press conference seems to be a minor issue but in fact it reflects Lam's mentality. She insists she take testings frequently and wore mask in all occassions so the likelihood to infect others or got infected is slim. It may be true but she neglects the psychological impact to the public on the stringent adherence to the anti-plague measures set up by her administration. People might follow to relax on the adherence to the measures as long as they think they are confident. Lam just set a very bad model to undermine the effort of the frontline personnel. The impact is far from the outcome from those press conferences.

Lam's pride also led her to wrong decisions. She believes in what she does and thinks they are all right but are they? Amid this recent spike Lam said her administration has ordered a hundred million of self testing kits and she thinks it is an effective measure to spot those hidden infected. Lam truly believes so and literally rests a big hope on the kick off. Unfortunately her persistence and pride will definitely give her another big blow on top of the other failure of her measures. Let alone whether all recipient can correctly administer the testing so an accurate result is viable but just image for people whose livelihood will be impacted if they are verified positive then will they honestly report to the authority so that they might lose their jobs? For many grassroot their wages count on their daily working and a no work day means a no pay day. This is reality and human nature but Lam overlooks it.

Apart from the many highly blamed operational flaws in different functions in the anti-plague measures, the key point lies on Lam's adminstration's lack of foresight and the corresponding contingence plan. In the past two years the HKSAR government has only been facing the development of the plague with reactive approach. Things were marginally manageable because of the relative smaller scale in the past but the table turned when Omicron mutant strikes in the beginning of this year. Yet Lam's administration still takes chance hoping things will be alright by luck but did not take a pre-emptive approach to prevent the worse scenario from happening.

The Omicron mutant emerged in the end of last year in S. Africa and before long it was classified as a highly contagious variance. Therefore it is not whether or not but just when this mutant will strike Hong Kong. This was a known high probability event. On the other hand, it is also a well in advance known high probability event that the existing facilities will largely fall short to demand when Omicron strikes Hong Kong judging from the high contagiousness. Yet from what have been done by the Lam's administration amid the spike in the past two weeks literally nothing has been planned and no preparation whatsoever was done to address what is happening now. Simply speaking there is no contingence plan at all. In fact the latest existing stringent measures came only fews days ago after there were 600+ case a day in straight three days when the Lam's administration woke up suddenly! This is a total failure being a government.

Enough is enough!

Omicron, Oh my god (2)

Two months ago my last post omicron ohmygod!  I wrote about the Omicron virus which its hostility to human was still unknown yet by then. Two months passed by luckily it turns out to be a much milder variant but on the other hand highly contagious unfortunately. It became the main culprit of the novel corona virus spreading in the world now. With no exception Hong Kong also is hit by this variant especially after the CNY holiday. The verified infection cases reached a staggering 600+ in straight three days followed by record breaking of 1000+ cases in yesterday. The infection rate grows exponentially as exhibited earlier in the other countries.

The HSAR government, Carrie Lam's administration, rolled out the ever strict measures including closing down businesses or tightening of the numbers of customer in Scheduled Premises. There are 6 newly added premises on top of the existing 17 ones and as usual the catering business is most hit one in terms of the number of businesses as well as the people employed. Having said, the other businesses and their employees are equally hit in this latest measure.

A plague is a natural disaster. It brings damages to people mostly life losses but when the plague is ill-managed the damages from this poorly managed measures could add to the public's woes. Unfortunately poor management seems to be a common symptom of most administrations, Hong Kong is no exception. What's more is that most of the responsible bureaucrats of the public health control are still feeling well and self-contented on their stupid doings. A typical example is Carrie Lam's explanation on her face mask off during the press conference as she wants to let the public to know her emotion. What an idiot and a bullshit! Naturally a bunch of self contented and self-claim elites bureaucrats under the leadership of such an idiot Chief Executive, Hong Kong is doomed to fall into this scenario.

Today there is news that the Central Government expresses its concern on the Hong Kong situation and will extend its assistance. This should be the sign that Beijing has thought enough is enough. It is time to stop Lam's administration further jeopardize Hong Kong's well-being. After all, its China's Hong Kong but not Lam's Hong Kong. As per China's political practices, a regional chief should has been removed long earlier when he/she failed to manage his/her turf properly. It seems Lam's days is numbered. 

Oh My God! says Lam.