8 pm, Regional Command and Control Room, Police Headquarters, Wan Chai THERE are no noisy telex machines, jangling phones or urgent orders barked down a crackling radio line. The control room for every 999 emergency call made on Hong Kong Island is a surprisingly calm place even on an exceptional night, like the last race meeting of the year at Happy Valley.
Chaos reigned at the racetrack one night in late February with 51,000 gamblers locked in before 7.30 pm and thousands of others milling around outside. While access roads were blocked and traffic ground to a halt in Causeway Bay, the atmosphere in the control room was coolly efficient. The emergencies which pass through this room pass through quietly.
'I've just checked and it's the busiest night they've had since May 1992,' said Superintendent Kevin Clancy, glancing at the pandemonium displayed on the traffic monitor screens. 'A lot of the troops on the ground tend to think we've got it easy until they come up here and see things from our side. It's a different kind of pressure we face in here.' And the biggest drawback of working on the emergency hotlines? 'Shift work,' Clancy said. 'It's not good for the body, is it?' 10pm, FIMAT Futures office, Exchange Square SUITS who play the world's money markets around-the-clock play in jeans. Spending nights in almost empty offices talking long-distance to colleagues and clients does not require top-quality threads. Nor does it do much for the brokers' social lives, but at least there's no queue for the lift.
FIMAT, the futures arm of Societe Generale, employs three men on the night shift. Benson Fung Wai-bun, 37, and Lawrence Tso Gar-wai, 32, have been starting work at 6 pm and going home at 4 am for the past eight years. They keep track of market movements in New York, Chicago, London and 'anything in-between'. Broker Darren Burns works even longer.
Starting work at noon, he will stay to 'keep an eye on things' when the US markets open at 9.20 pm. Although most of the frenzied activity happens before 10 pm, he regularly finds himself staring at the screens into the early hours. 'If figures are being released in the United States, there can be anything from 10 to 15 people around,' Burns said. 'It's a herd mentality in this business. People try to tell you otherwise, that it's technically based, but that's not true. It's all emotion-based and when the action really starts you see arms being thrown around all over the place although it usually hits 'snooze mode' by around 1 am.' 11 pm, Anti-Smuggling Taskforce, Victoria Harbour SINCE they came together in 1991, members of the Anti-Smuggling Taskforce have done such a good job at preventing cars being smuggled to the mainland by sea that they have created full-time night jobs for themselves.
'There is work to be done during daylight hours, such as refuelling the boats and preparation work but the successes we have had has forced these people to operate almost entirely at night now,' Senior Inspector John Fairgrieve said.