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SCMP Reporter

MOST people bring T-shirts home as souvenirs from trips. Not our friend Paul.

  After a trip to Ho Chi Minh City, he decided to bring a deadly Vietnamese cobra back to Hongkong.

  The thing had long been dead, but was perfectly preserved in a large jar of chemicals.

  The Vietnamese use snakes as an aphrodisiac, but Paul insists this was not why he wanted it.

  So there he was at the airport with the jar, carefully sealed and placed in a polythene bag, on the floor.

  Suddenly, a blundering fool with a trolley comes by and rams the jar, which shatters.

  The cobra, still soft and pliable, unwound itself slinkily on to the floor of the airport, looking very much alive.

  Paul drew a veil over the scenes of mass pandemonium which followed at the airport.

  Shortly afterwards, a colleague from the same firm was scheduled to go to Vietnam. ''Buy me a snake,'' said Paul, whose full identity we promised not to reveal.

  The colleague bought a new cobra in Ho Chi Minh City, and took extra-special care negotiating his way through the airport. He carried it on to the plane and safely stowed it in the overhead locker.

  Along came a Taiwanese businessman with heavy, hard briefcase, which he threw into locker.

  Crash. Tinkle. Splash. Slither.

  The ex-cobra uncoiled, hurtled out of the overhead locker and plonked itself across the laps of several passengers - once again giving an excellent impersonation of a healthy killer serpent in a playful mood.

  Our informant again drew a veil over the ensuing scenes of terror, panicky evacuation and the lengthy postponement of the flight.

  (Sounds like the normal ingredients of a Vietnamese Airlines trip to us.)  Green lobby  POPPED into Immigration Tower in Wan Chai and found that signs had been put up in the lift lobbies.

  The signs read:   This building is now carrying out a series of procedures to cut down the energy consumption in order to SAVE THE WORLD.

  Just imagine. Hongkong immigration officials are on some sort of thrilling James Bond-type mission.

 Just So story QUENTIN Kilian of the Diary Company, Wyndham Street, was tidying up his database when he came up on a girl called Fanny Sit who works for an office in Central.

  Then there was a gentleman on his books by the name of ''Mr S.O. So''. It is incredibly tempting to refer to him as Mr So-and-So.

  A friend of ours knows a secretary by the name of Nausea Yip.

 Capital offence  FRED Mills-Winkler of Applause Inc, Harcourt House, Wan Chai, has just received a letter from Sears, the giant US retailer.

  Sears requires suppliers in all parts of the world, including Hongkong, to comply with business and labour practices to a standard compatible with US laws, it says.

  ''Wilful violation of this policy will result in the termination of the offending supplier,'' it thunders.

  Fred, who is enjoying life and would not wish to be terminated, commented: ''This is really getting tough.''  Grape shot  WANT to increase the efficacy of a new Chinese medicinal pill? Wash it down with booze.

  That's what the instructions say on Yunnan Paiyao, a product from Yunnan province sent in by Toni Phillips of Caldecott Road, Kowloon.

  The stuff is good for gun-shot wounds and irregular menstruation.

  (No, we can't work out the connection either, except both could be linked with pre-menstrual tension.)   ''This red pill should first be taken with wine in case of serious wounds,'' says the instructions.

  Toni said: ''If Yunnan Paiyao doesn't work, at least you'll die happy.''     You should not eat a broad bean within 24 hours of taking the pill, the instructions warn.

  Mortally wounded broad bean fanatics will just have to drown their sorrows with alcohol.

 Cold calling  ANDY Hickl-Szabo of the Hongkong office of London Oil Reports sent us a couple of ideas for gadgets not yet invented, sent to him by a friend in the United States.

  The Fonesick Illness Replicator is a proposed device to stick over the mouth-piece of your telephone when you don't feel like going to work.

  You phone your boss and the device digitally inserts colds, flu, pneumonia, and so on into your voice patterns. It can be adjusted to simulate gradual recovery.

  The Eisenhower Video Degrader is for nostalgia buffs. Clip it over your TV screen and it not only turns colour into black and white, but inserts picture wobble, jerky movements and static ''snowstorm'' effects.

  Actually, a simpler way to get the same effect is to buy your TV aerial in the Temple Street night market in Mongkok.

Bard timing  RESTAURATEUR Barry Kalb of Il Mercato took issue with one of the recent twisted titles.

  ''I always thought The Timing of the Shrew was the film rendition by a Melbourne company of one of the plays of William Shikespeare,'' he said.

  Barry suggested making a film called Basil Instinct, about chefs with an innate flair for Italian cookery.



Snake in the glass causes a right pickle