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SCMP Reporter

You've got to hand it to Hong Kong retail mastermind David Tang. His timing is good.

 Cigar-smoking centres just like the one he has opened in Hong Kong are all the rage in New York and Los Angeles.

 A pair of United States movie executives, sucking stogies in such a room, realised there was a new social phenomenon here - the emergence of places for powerful men to hide out and talk about business and women.

 Actor Jim Belushi has agreed to appear in a film to be called Blowing Smoke. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Danny De Vito and Jeff Goldblum, all Cuban cigar-chompers in real life, are to be approached to appear.

 I think our Mr Tang would be excellent on the Hollywood screen, being so much larger than life anyway.

 Oops. Hold the back page. Maybe the timing of the movie-makers is not so hot.

 US Vice-President Al Gore has just announced that he has met with top film executives and asked them to instigate a policy promising not to glamorise any smoking in movies.

Scott Minick was shopping for CDs at KPS Video Express in the Prince's Building in the centre of Hong Kong.

 He picked up an Eric Clapton CD and was mulling over it when a member of the sales staff approached.

 'Are you going to buy that?' he asked.

 'Yes, I . . .' Scott began.

 The staffer whipped out a label gun and slapped a new price on it, $15 higher than the sticker it was carrying.

 What an interesting sales technique.

You can get a hefty breakfast of eggs, sausage, croissant and orange juice for a bargain $17 at Delifrance in Stanley. But if you order a second orange juice, it costs you another $17.

 Lai See's advice to gluttons: Leave after breakfast, don a false moustache, and then re-enter to order another breakfast.

The financial downside of Hong Kong's new Octopus travel card is that you have to pay a $50 deposit when you buy one, which is returned when you leave Hong Kong. (If you die here, your descendants can collect it.)  Also you don't get special deals on the first and last ride.

 The advertisement for the thing features the older MTR tickets in a glass jar labelled 'Nearly extincted'. One has to wonder whether this has anything to do with the fact that the MTR Corp decided to save money and cancelled its in-house English teaching operation.

Here's a good trick, which you can only do now, while the Octopus is relatively unknown.

 1. Slip your watch on to your right wrist.

 2. Tuck the Octopus card under it.

 3. Tell your friends that you can open the turnstile with 'magic'. Wave your arm over the turnstile, say a magic word, and the thing will beep and open, amazing your friends.

Silvia Cavallini of the Los Angeles Times and other correspondents in Hong Kong received a letter from the Hong Kong Government's Director of Information Services.

 Security searches at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre 'will be done by Explosive Detective Dog', it said.

 What a great name for a new canine superhero. I suggest the Government copyright it for sale to Hollywood.

 A similar mutt was featured in an article about animals being used to sniff out ammunition at Chek Lap Kok, in which a police inspector was quoted as talking of 'the advantage of using explosive dogs'. (Spotter: Joy Ottway.)  A friend of mine used to have an explosive dog, but it became more sociably acceptable after he lowered the fibre in its diet.

You know that recent Hong Kong wedding where sales prospects, er, I mean friends, had to pay $450 into the bridegroom's bank account and send him the receipts?  One invited guest failed to meet the RSVP deadline because she was out of Hong Kong. When she phoned the bride to be, she was told that she could still come - as long as she paid the $450 and, as a punishment, turned up early to arrange the chairs.

More on the Australian Women's Weekly , which is published monthly.

 When it was re-launched by Kerry Packer's Australian Consolidated Press, the entrepreneur reportedly suggested it should be re-named the Women's Monthly but then backed off - realising it sounded like something to do with menstruation.

Just a thought: There are three kinds of people in the world today. Those who can count and those who can't.



Gore may send movie plans up in smoke