ONE of Mid-Levels' most popular oddities has disappeared. Martin Smillie of Princes Terrace took some friends to show them the road name plate for Rednaxela Terrace, a tiny lane famed mainly for the fact that the first part of its name is an ordinary name written backwards.
But the sign had vanished. An unpainted rectangle marked where it had been. I suggest you write a protest slogan on it, Martin: '!ngis ruo kcab gnirB'.
Funny thing, geographical names in Hong Kong. A new office block has opened in Des Veoux Road West, I hear from Fred Fredricks, called King Kong Commercial Centre. This is ideal for businesses who want the prestige of being in a tower named after a dyspeptic, overgrown gorilla.
Are you sick of gushing titles such as 'Celestial Garden Mansion' that Hong Kong developers stick on their boring, identikit housing blocks? Well, Susan Sisko Teed of Clear Water Bay tells me that the huge construction project near the Tsuen Kwan O tunnel is known simply by the name on the signboard outside: 'Sandwich Class Housing Scheme.' She suggests the individual blocks be called 'Ham and Cheese Court', 'Tuna Melt Tower' and so on.
Don't joke, Susan, the developers may take you seriously. I'm told there's a block in Discovery Bay called Greenish Court after the sickly morning-after complexion of the party-loving gweilos who largely infest the Lantau settlement.
AT the Bull and Bear pub in Central at lunchtime on Wednesday, a gweipor found a young local woman washing her private parts in the sink in the women's toilets. The foreign woman complained loudly in the bar about improper goings-on.
The local girl emerged and argued that it was nobody's business what she did with her nether regions. They managed to involve the entire pub in the debate.