Lai See

At Ponte 16, Stanley Ho sings of vitality and being prepared

The hills are alive with the sound of ... gambling. Or so a speech by casino magnate Stanley Ho Hung-sun marking the grand opening of his Ponte 16 resort seemed to suggest.

The new property's location in Macau's old port district, surrounded by Unesco heritage sites and colonial-era buildings, appears to have put the gaming tycoon in a nostalgic mood as he addressed several hundred guests seated on benches in the cold evening air on Friday.

'The digit 16 not only stands for the iconic Pier 16 clock tower sitting next to our property, it also signifies a sweet age of youth and vitality,' Mr Ho (left) said. 'But unlike Liesl in The Sound of Music who was 'totally unprepared', we are 'fully prepared'.'

He was referring to a sequence in the classic 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical where the teenage debutante Liesl sings:

I am sixteen going on seventeen

Innocent as a rose

Bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandies

What do I know of those.

Totally unprepared am I

To face a world of men

Timid and shy and scared am I

Of things beyond my ken.

While Mr Ho's newest property is indeed a sweet 16, Lai See reckons that after almost five decades in the casino business, he knows a thing or two about the world of men. We'll take him at his word on preparedness.

Cementing weather woes

Speaking of preparedness, the mainland's incredible lack of it has been exposed by some of the worst snowstorms the country has seen in five decades. The crippling blows dealt to essential services such as the power grid and transport networks show how fragile mainland infrastructure still is, despite 30 years of stellar economic growth.

Investors, however, are always one step ahead of the news - especially in Hong Kong.

Anticipating a wave of new government spending in coming weeks and months of cleanup and rebuilding, punters pushed Anhui Conch, the mainland's biggest cement maker, to a record yesterday.

The stock surged 20.71 per cent to No10 on the list of the day's top 20 gainers in percentage terms. Its share price added HK$9.90 - well above the gains by the other 19 counters combined.

Comfort for the snow-stuck

Hundreds, if not thousands, may have been stranded in cars on snowbound expressways of the central mainland last week, but at least they received a sort of consolation.

For a while the traffic bureau in southwestern Guangxi province waived all highway tolls for incoming vehicles from hard-hit Hunan province.

Some 3,000 cars entered Guangxi toll-free on a single day, said a state press report. But those unable to move likely found the offer difficult to accept. As the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway reopened yesterday, it was unclear whether the toll exemption was still in place.

Room for year-end surprise

Tomorrow is the last day of trading in the Year of the Pig, so the question is: will local stocks end with a flying leap or wallowing in the trough?

If yesterday's performance was any indication, things may be looking up as we roll into the Year of the Rat.

However, it is interesting to note that, in terms of benchmarking the Hang Seng Index's annual performance, the lunar year has been bested by the calendar year for the past two years.

Stocks rose 34.2 per cent in calendar 2006 compared with a 30.6 per cent gain during the lunar year.

During the last calendar year, the blue-chip index soared 39.31 per cent. But the lunar year, because it captures last month's sell-off, has gained only 21.7 per cent to date. Still two trading days to go.

Red packets galore

Lastly, it is that time of year when Lai See's mailbox is stuffed with envelopes - and all of them are empty.

Each year, we get so many red packets that we could send a small village on a shopping spree for a week - if we only had the cash to fill them with.

So far this festive season, we have collected more than 20 shipments of red envelopes from companies all around town. Not surprisingly, banks and property developers are prominent among the senders.

A hundred Kung Hei Fat Chois to you!

Ben Kwok is on holiday