DAWN broke gently over Victoria Park on a chilly morning in January 1993. Spasmodic shivers ran along the long, straggly queue of people, like zephyrs through a cornfield. Chris Kaufman, a 20-something reporter, was dazedly casting his eyes around when he saw a heavenly vision of beauty, waiting a few yards away in the queue for Rugby Sevens tickets. His companions, John Jarman and Eddie Naylor, dared him to go up and introduce himself to her. He baulked at the idea. Spending a drunken night sleeping rough in the park rarely produces that certain tough but elegant je ne sais quoi which makes a woman weak at the knees. Jarman, proprietor of Rogues Gallery, was carrying a gallon container of Jarman's Bloody Mary, a liquid that jolts the human body into acquiring superhuman courage and forgetting all physical discomfort. 'Go and offer her a cupful,' he said. Chris strolled over and gave her the drink and a gift - the sight of the latest Calvin and Hobbes cartoon from that morning's South China Morning Post. The young woman was deeply moved. Chris Kaufman, now a reporter for Reuters Television, is today happily married to Carolyn Dougall, a young Scottish lass who leases flats at Parkview. I heard this tale yesterday, when asking for true tales of quintessentially Hong Kong romances. 'The traditional overnight queue for Sevens tickets threatens to become a more significant social occasion than the tournament itself,' a regular participant told me. MICHAEL Wood of Stanley Main Street yesterday told me there is a notice on a toilet door at the MTRC headquarters in Kowloon Bay which says: 'Beware of man behind the door.' Who is this man? What is he doing there? What happens if he catches you? DID you notice a curious little item in this newspaper yesterday about a woman who claimed she had been raped by a man with whom she had hired a bedroom in a Yau Ma Tei villa? Villa is Hong Kong-speak for what might in other countries be referred to as a short-time motel. It was an odd tale, albeit one on which I do not wish to comment specifically. A caller yesterday was reminded of a possibly apocryphal Hong Kong tale. A young woman dressed in PVC bondage gear walked into a Mongkok shop and tried to buy something with a $1,000 note. The shopkeeper blinked at it. 'This is a forgery,' he said. 'Oh,' said the woman. 'Help. Help. I've been raped.' FOLLOWING my defence of the word gweilo, an anonymous caller said I should then logically use words such as a-cha for south Asians and chink for Chinese people. First point - try not to be anonymous unless it is really important, such as if you are phoning while being held hostage by a crazed gunman. Second, the caller missed the point of the argument, which is that a group can steal the power from a term of abuse if they use it about themselves. ON a related subject, I was delighted to have my spelling corrected by a young person. In modern rap-speak, the plural of 'nigger' is 'niggerz'. Yo, brother, don't mean you no diss. WAKE up there at ATV World. Several readers, including Karl Derek John and C A Bennett, point out that the weather report in the evenings has the main cities wrong. Kuala Lumpur is spelt Kuala Lumper and Ho Chi Minh City is given as Ho Chi Ming. I once ran these through an automatic spellcheck and they changed to Koala Lumpier and Hot Chic Minx City. Sounds enticing, no? I HAVE no sympathy with people in Britain who spend more than they can afford on lottery tickets, nor on people who waste their money in Hong Kong on Mark Six tickets. As someone once said: 'A lottery is a tax on fools.' Send ingredients to the Spice Trader by phone: 2565-2624; fax: 2565-2626; or e-mail: spice
