Castita Caskey picked up her little girl Jessica at the Woodlands School in Caine Road on Tuesday at 11.30am. They saw a minibus passing by on the way towards Sai Ying Pun, and stopped it. Castita, who is seven months' pregnant with child No 2, clambered into the bus holding child No 1 by the hand. The driver slammed the door shut - on the hand of Jessica, aged four - and started to drive off. 'Stop, stop,' said Castita, originally from Indonesia. The other passengers took up the cry. The driver stopped. As any siuba passenger knows, these vehicles only have two modes: stationary and too fast. So the bus stopped dead - and Castita was thrown about, ending up as a heap, upside down in the stairwell. At this point the driver opened the door, sending her flying into a puddle in the road. She hit her head and saw stars. So there she was, semi-conscious in a pool of water on the ground. Jessica was still inside the bus. What does the driver do then? Of course. He drives off, with the small child screaming within. After all, there might be another fare-paying passenger further down the road, mightn't there? This horrific tale was related to me yesterday by Castita's husband, David, safety manager of the Western Harbour Crossing. The story has a happy ending, I'm glad to say. The passengers and some nearby police managed to stop the bus and reunite mother and child. I understand the driver received quite a stern little lecture. A police report was being filled out yesterday. One sympathises a bit with Chinese athletes in Atlanta complaining about bad food, bad traffic and their hotel having thin walls. Although one might churlishly say that all three are remarkably common in hotels in China. However, I can understand their complaint about being woken up in the middle of the night by a fire alarm in their hotel. This doesn't seem to happen in China. Andrea Mia Saturno-Guile was watching the Olympics opening ceremony. The camera zoomed in on a Filipina in a green dress. 'And here is Corazon Aquino, President of the Philippines,' announced the presenter, confidently. Somebody must have elbowed him in the ribs, because he corrected himself. 'No, it's Imelda Marcos. Oh my God, Imelda Marcos is in the stands.' I just hope Fidel Ramos' wife doesn't get to hear what they've been calling her. Don't you just hate the way journalists refer to any religious people they don't like as 'cultists'? The Church of Zion members are described as 'doomsday cultists' because they believe Jesus Christ is returning soon, as indeed do many members of mainstream Christianity, which I suppose is another 'doomsday cult'. I recall using hydrogen peroxide with my friends in the 1970s punk rock era - Asians needed it to burn colours into their black hair. Paul Claughan of the EPD said yesterday that if the police really wanted to lock up members of the Church of Zion, they could charge them with 'bleach of the priest'. If you borrow $10,000 at the rate of 200 per cent every 10 days, as Hong Kong loan sharks were reportedly charging yesterday, the money grows fast. In 280 days you would owe them $18,530,230,000,000,000,000. I would like to have worked out the rate for a year, but couldn't find a calculator with a big enough screen. I wonder what the loan shark company's year-end predictions were like, considering they could budget at least a million trillion dollars from each customer? Once the court case is over, these sharks will no doubt be snapped up by members of the Hong Kong Association of Banks for their credit card businesses. The junk fax perpetrators are among those hoping Hongkong Telecom's bid to limit free local calls will fail. One of the techniques junkmen use is to hire unskilled minions to phone hundreds of numbers to see which are faxes and which are not. The result for you and I, dear reader, are those mysterious calls which we answer only to have the caller immediately ring off. The Asia Pacific Management Institute in Wan Chai is advertising for people to sign up for an '18-mouth' MBA, I hear from reader Rakesh Dwivedi. I guess it teaches you how to earn enough to have a big family. Shenzhen Xinou Electronics Co is sending out brochures urging people to buy its portable air-cleaner, I hear from Vic Krishnan. It says: 'Add a few perfume into the water tank, sweat smell will be full of the whole room.' Great. If you want your office to stink like a locker room.
