It is December 31 - one day before the millennium bug is expected to strike. Hong Kong's banks are nervous. Depositors, fearing banks may lose their deposit records because of computer malfunction, have begun stampeding branches and automatic teller machines for hard cash.
The withdrawals are putting pressure on the money supply. Interest rates have climbed in recent days in tempo with the demand for cash, and the economic costs are beginning to mount.
Across a spectrum of Hong Kong life - businesses, public transit and utilities, communications, hospitals, households - the impact is being felt as we become caught up in a global crisis.
That is the worst-case scenario of the millennium bug - the inability of old computer programs to tell the difference between 2000 and 1900. Programs written for some older computers and electronic devices encode the year using just two digits - thus 1999 would be recognised as 99. The problem is that the year 2000 would be recognised as 00, and interpreted by the computers as 1900.
But SAR companies have spent literally billions of dollars attempting to avoid a nightmarish start to the next century.
CLP Power, the monopoly electricity provider to Kowloon and the New Territories, has spent more than HK$60 million.
Cathay Pacific Airways has paid out more than HK$450 million since 1996 to make sure it will not be caught unprepared, while smaller rival Dragonair says it has committed HK$30 million.