WHAT'S YOUR POISON?

'I WAS eating dim sum when it landed on my chest. I flung it to the floor and squashed it with my boot. I am going to offer up a gift to the gods because it was such a bad omen.' Twenty-five-year-old Mr Yip, a regular diner at a Taipo restaurant, told Oriental Daily how his lunch was rudely interrupted on Wednesday when a poisonous centipede fell from the ceiling. Mr Yip later took the crushed centipede to hospital where he was given four injections. When reporters asked the restaurant manager about the incident, he replied, 'It was an accident. I've apologised to Mr Yip and let him leave without paying the bill.' COPS AND RUBBERS THE manager of a department store in a Tuen Mun shopping centre told Apple Daily reporters how he chased a shoplifter for three blocks last week before the thief finally abandoned the plundered merchandise and escaped. 'I don't know if he managed to get away with more stuff,' he said, 'but when I looked inside the bag, all I found was a packet of condoms. He must have been too embarrassed to take them to the counter!' HOSING DOWN A FIREMAN suffered a nervous breakdown while on duty on Thursday and had to be restrained by his colleagues who tied him up with rope. One of them told an Apple Daily reporter, 'We were having a meeting in our Mongkok station when Yip suddenly stood up and started screaming, 'The territory's in trouble and there's not enough water to save it!' He was running around the station like a headless chicken. I've known him for a long time and never seen him behave like this.' Yip, 42, has been in the fire service for more than 20 years. His breakdown has been attributed to work pressure.

LOCAL HERO 'IT wasn't the first time I've done it - people often try to top themselves by jumping into the harbour at North Point - but it was certainly the hardest,' said Yuen Yum-hung, 62, who was awarded a certificate of bravery by the Marine Department last week along with 14 others. He was recalling his rescue of a drowning woman last September. 'The water was cold and there was nobody around to help,' he told Oriental Daily.

'And she was so fat and heavy. I used one hand to grab hold of a bamboo ladder, the other to pull her up. I had to use my leg to hold her head up out of the water. I hung like that for 20 minutes waiting for the police to show up!' Onlookers said Yuen ignored the cheering of the crowd who had witnessed the rescue, quietly returning to his post as a bus terminus manager as if nothing had happened.

LIGHTNING BOLT A MAN was badly injured when a 90-kilo bolt of compressed cotton fell on him last Saturday morning. Oriental Daily writes that 36-year-old transport worker Tsang X-kwong was walking in front of a Tsuen Wan garment factory when the cotton rolled off its two-metre-high platform and fell on him, crushing his hip bone and lower jaw and causing him to be rushed to hospital. His colleagues apparently heard him murmur: 'I didn't know cotton could be so heavy.' LET THE TRAIN TAKE THE STRAIN APPLE Daily writes how a Hong Kong man with high blood pressure almost lost his life catching his train. Lee Chi-ching, 40, had to run along the Guangzhou city station platform in order to jump aboard the departing Shenzhen-bound train which was quickly gathering speed. He collapsed immediately after landing in a heap on the train, gasping, 'I can't make it!' Two doctors fortuitously occupying the same carriage as Lee were quickly able to administer first aid to the breathless passenger who is now recovering in hospital.