It's make or break
New Year's Eve, Hogmanay, Ano Novo, San Nin Fai Lok, a complete non-event ... call it what you will. The passing of the old year and the dawning of the new is almost upon us again. It is a time of resolutions made and often broken soon thereafter, of emotions that run high and excesses indulged, promises made but rarely kept. 'Good resolutions,' said Oscar Wilde, 'are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.'
Account or not, we just keep on writing those cheques that our wills can't cash. Festive piggery makes weight loss the most popular resolution of all, although lazy January days laden with Christmas leftovers put even those made of the sternest stuff to the test.
Some vow to give up smoking, guaranteeing grumpy and grouchy times for those around them. Others simply want to get along, and promise to be nicer to each other - which brings to mind the Billy Connolly joke about walking a mile in a man's shoes before you judge him (that way, you're a mile apart and you've got his shoes). Perhaps the most sensible resolution is simply to resolve to make no resolutions.
New Year's Eve is a night that proves there is such a thing as too many fireworks, too much Champagne, too many expectations, too few taxis. But it is also a night - often when you least expect it - that you can suddenly find yourself having a grand, old time.
Wherever you are at the stroke of midnight - gathered with the throngs on the harbourfront at Tsim Sha Tsui, cocooned in some swanky SoHo den or throwing them down in some Wan Chai dive, chances are you will be swept up in a rousing boozy chorus of Auld Lang Syne. But why parrot some tired ditty by a dead Scottish bloke who wrote odes to innards?
This year, see in the New Year with our new Hong Kong version of the old favourite, dedicated to our favourite place - despite being in the throes of a facelift - to celebrate the passing of another annus that was neither particularly mirabilis or horribilis. All together now ...
Should new acquaintance be forgot
From memory banks be gone
Then fear not it was just some twit
You met in Lan Kwai Fong
In Lan Kwai Fong, my dears,
In Lan Kwai Fong.
We'll take a beer and then a shot
In Lan Kwai Fong.
And surely it must be your round!
If not some other one's!
I'll have a glass of Moet then
In Lan Kwai Fong.
CHORUS
Tonight we've run about these slopes
And greasy cobbles too long.
I'm starting to lose my love of man
In Lan Kwai Fong.
CHORUS
We're sinking in a stream of booze
And someone's up-chuck pongs
And where the hell's the taxi stand
In Lan Kwai Fong?
CHORUS
The sun is up, its trusty fire
Reveals the damage done.
Let's wander off to Wan Chai now
From Lan Kwai Fong.
CHORUS
