Emergency. Emergency. The king of junk mail, Wilson Wong of 'Oxford International Publishing', is at it again. He sends endless junk faxes to innocent people inviting them to pay to advertise in a book of listings that nobody I know has ever seen. It is called The Directory of Hong Kong B & I. None of his faxes explains what B & I stands for, so we are left to make our own guess. Bull**** and idiocy, perhaps? Multiple copies of these faxes have been received by this writer. Tony Craig of the Westminster Group in Hong Kong received 16 pages of it one morning recently. No doubt widows and orphans are having their precious last scraps of fax paper used up by this firm. The normal method of getting rid of junk faxes is to report the sender to Hong Kong Telecom. But Wilson has sneakily put no return fax number on his faxes. There is no phone number, so you cannot call and abuse him. His company name is not listed with Hong Kong Telecom, so even that company, with its God-like powers, cannot trace him and stop his terrible trade. The only contact on his faxes is PO Box 90557, Tsim Sha Tsui. Does anyone know how we can stop him? I thought about a letter bomb, but they are inconveniently illegal. Mind you, one could always use a defence of justification . . . Irritated by people who won't stand on the right of MTR escalators? Well, MTR Corp has put up posters urging patrons to 'be a model passenger'. They are illustrated with little icons demonstrating correct behaviour. One of these depicts a person on an escalator . . . standing on the left. There were odd happenings at a lunch on Friday organised by Arts Optical International Holdings, a Hong Kong maker of spectacles. Chairman Michael Ng Hoi-ying was excited. He accidentally let a document about the company's new share offering (scheduled to be announced today) into a reporter's hands - and staff had to demand it back. Another hack noticed that one of the pairs of glasses on display was labelled 'Montagut' - a brand exclusively distributed in this region by First Sign International. The scribe asked Mr Ng if there was some deal in which his firm was making Montagut specs. He said that he would reply to the question 'on Monday', and later added: 'The glasses accidentally slipped into the display box.' Two slips at one lunch? Maybe he needs new glasses. Now who was that Legislative Council member who was widely quoted making approving comments about the mass sackings of engineers on the Western Railway project last week? Oh, yes, it was Samuel Wong. Who is Samuel Wong? He is the Legislative Council representative for . . . erm, engineers, actually. Hong Kong Property, a new real estate company formed by Li Ka-shing's Cheung Kong and Landpower, has been advertising a 647 square feet flat in University Heights, Pokfield Road, at $3.88 million. Odd. There are no flats of that size in that building. The nearest is 627 sq ft. On Tuesday last week, a would-be buyer phoned the company, and a staff member agreed that the size listed was wrong. The price listed was also wrong, the actual price was $4.88 million. It was still advertising the wrong size, wrong price flat in newspapers on Friday. I am reminded of the man who was asked whether he liked a certain pop song. 'I like it fine,' he said. 'Except for the words and the music.' Would-be Chief Executive Simon Li Fook-sean came out with a humdinger of a mixed metaphor the other day. In a single soundbite, he said the relationship between Hong Kong and China was closer than 'lips and teeth', so the mainland won't 'cut the nose to have a better-looking face' and 'rock the boat'. The Government has revealed that the Hong Kong Museum of Art costs $68 million a year to run and last year had 140,000 visitors. This means the real cost of admission is $485.71 per visitor. As a concession to the Urban Council, I will happily cancel my planned trip to the museum this week if they pay me, say, half that amount, thus saving them more than $200. God is clearly in a mischievous mood. Why else would He tell the Pope to appoint a Roman Catholic official in Hong Kong who goes by the name of Zen? What next? A Zen master called Virgin Mary? A Pope called Atheist? A Cardinal called Sin? Just a thought: 'You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him or to him.' (Anon.)
