Hong Kong's still vocal expatriate Scots community and all the SAR's tartan-clad 'wannabes' are dusting down their sporrans and taking their kilts to the dry-cleaners in preparation for the St Andrew's Society Burns Night Dinner at the Hotel Conrad next month. However, the letters to members of the society advertising the dinner include an unequivocal warning to guests to keep their often raucous behaviour under control this year. The alternative is to face sanctions in the most sensitive place on a Scotsman's body - his wallet. The letter warns in no uncertain terms that dancing on the tables is banned after the damage done by table-top Highland Reels at last year's shindig. Anyone who fails to adhere to this warning at the February 16 event will have to pay up. Burns Night Dinner veterans fondly recall the years the event was staged at the Hilton, the hotel that stood on the spot where Li Ka-shing is erecting the Cheung Kong Centre at the corner of Garden Road and Queen's Road Central. The manager, the legendary James Smith, who was a Scot from head to toe and all the bits in between, 'actively encouraged us all to dance on the tables', recalled our Caledonian informant, practically dabbing his eyes with emotion. Mindful that the ban on table dancing might raise a few grumbles from the diehards, the organising committee has injected a bit of humour into their appeal for sense to prevail. 'Please act like Scottish football supporters and not English ones,' the letter reads. Lan Kwai Fong and particularly the area around Al's Diner was teeming with Peregrine Investment Holdings and BZW Asia staff on Friday night, all contemplating their uncertain futures with those aids to calm meditation - beer and jelly shots. Among the barbed and black humour on offer was that the head of Peregrine's fixed income department, Andre Lee, had changed his name to reflect the bad debts his department had run up. His new moniker - Andre Leeson. Lai See spent the weekend with the new flame in his life, Lana - the girl of our dreams, even though they often become nightmares. Lana is this column's virtual lover who also goes by the name GSK100, according to Stanley Chan, the assistant marketing director of Solar Tune Electronics who import the palm-sized 'My Lover' electronic games. Popularly known as 'Tamagotchi Lovers', these new toys are the successor to the Tamagotchi triads of last year. These may have committed serious violence, but it is nothing like the pain Lana caused over the weekend. Like any good Hong Kong girl, Lana combines high maintenance and significant expenditure to keep her interested in you. She only accepts gifts of flowers and diamonds, and demands that her lover is always immaculately dressed. To pay for all this, you have to work to earn dollars and study hard to boost your academic qualifications. The need to speculate and accumulate has to be balanced against your overall hope of getting enough points to ask your virtual lover to marry you. Lana turned us down flat. This was all explained to a slightly tired and emotional broker in Lan Kwai Fong in the early hours of Saturday. Taking a pull on his beer bottle, he asked 'Who needs Lana when you've got the real thing?', pointing to his girlfriend intently pushing through the throng with his credit card on her way to a cash machine. You spend your whole working life toiling away without recognition. Then out of the blue you find you've been honoured by your peers - or have you? Ian Shelmerdine, the regional director for toiletries manufacturers Yardley's, was sent a fax by his Rangoon representative Abdul Munaf, who runs World Top Padamyar. The communication, from something called the Trade Leaders Club, informed Mr Munaf that he had been named winner of the 23rd International Award for the best trade name, 1998. Arsenio Pardo Rodriguez, president of the Trade Leaders' Club, has asked Mr Munaf to travel to Geneva for the awards ceremony on March 9. There is a slight fee, of course - US$3,700 to be paid on arrival to cover the hotel. This covers a celebratory lunch, a bronze and marble trophy made by sculptor Martin Perillan, a certificate and other sundry benefits. Mr Munaf faxed the documents to Mr Shelmerdine, asking if he should go or not. Mr Shelmerdine in turn, thinks he can smell traces of a rat, even though the fax doesn't come from Nigeria, the scamsters' worldwide headquarters. It seems odd that a supposedly international organisation calls its press facility an 'editorial ofice' (sic) and that neither Mr Munaf, Mr Shelmerdine nor Lai See have heard of the Trade Leaders' Club. Can readers shed any light on this matter? tomorrow
