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Hurrah for the Internet! Oh brave new world! Oh even braver Alec Tsui! The heroism of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's chief operating officer was revealed to all at the China Business Summit in Beijing.

 The head of Internet payment company Sparkice.com has bestowed upon him the title of 'very brave person'.

 We'll have to take Alec's word for that, since he was the one who told everyone about it.

 Mr Tsui described to an audience of hundreds how he boldly did what no man had done before.

 He bought a painting.

 The US$3,000 piece was purchased on-line last May while our smooth operator was attending a technology expo in Beijing.

 'I was attending that expo at the time and passing by Mr Zeng's booth. So I bought a piece of art from Yunan on-line from them.'  Mr Tsui informed the crowd that Edward Zeng had proclaimed him a 'very brave person' for being the first one in the mainland to try out the e-business services offered by his company.

 Yeah, alright, we get the picture.

 No word on whether Mr Tsui did though.

Did you know that 'BITE proposes a systematic and evolutionary approach for SMEs to adopt IT in a three-step implementation of ERP, EC and KM'?  You didn't? Really?  Lai See is saddened by the large number of readers who allow themselves to wallow in ignorance.

 Anyway, that quote came from an acronym-laced advert spawned by the men of letters ABi Asia's marketing department.

 They are plugging their 'Business IT Empowerment' (BITE) programme. This is supposed to help small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with their enterprise resource planning (ERP), electronic commerce (EC) and knowledge management (KM).

 News of this wisdom-spreading mission has been popping up in the e-mail boxes of Hong Kong business types.

 After sampling this alphabet soup, one of them offered Lai See a BITE.

 We concluded that the firm's invitation deserved some sort of response.

 So we're sending them an e-mail addressing the 'General Overuse of Annoying, Weird Acronyms Yesterday'.

 We'll leave ABi Asia to work out our acronym for that one.

For those of a philosophical bent, Lai See brings you a couple of 'Deep Thoughts' for the day, courtesy of American philosopher Jack Handy:  'I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate.

 'And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it.'  'If you go flying back through time and see somebody else flying forward into the future, it's probably best to avoid eye contact.' We have found a possible explanation for last month's Productivity Council debacle.

 Regular readers will recall how that outfit led a group of paying members on a jaunt to Washington DC, when the Internet conference they were supposed to be attending was in Seattle, Washington.

 Lai See now has reason to believe that the council organised their trip through the Bank of East Asia.

 It would certainly explain the bank's latest promotional pamphlet.

 We've been browsing through it.

 The cover proclaims: 'Europe and Asia sharing from just HK$508!'.

 Not sure what the two continents are sharing, or why they're getting HK$508 for sharing it, but whatever.

 Inside is a tantalising array of holidays to be enjoyed at amazing Bank of East Asia prices.

 There's even a list of cities you can visit, each with a little illustration.

 Topping the list is Rome, which 'with 3,000 years of heritage, offers more than just ancient architecture'.

 Beside this is a pictorial example of aforementioned inspiring architecture.

 Yes, that is indeed the famous Leaning Tower of . . . Rome.



To boldly buy where no man has bought before