Important parts of the Friday speech on creativity by Canning Fok, group managing director of Hutchison Whampoa, were ignored by the mainstream media, which focused on news of Hutchison's 3G service and its new brand: '3'. The speech, a rare event for Mr Fok, used several slides as illustrations. One was of its massive concrete ship at Whampoa Gardens. 'The ship idea reflects the history of the area - the original Whampoa dockyards,' Mr Fok said. 'To build a Garden City was unusual enough at the time. It was the first in Hong Kong. The rest of the area looked like a slum. But the ship caused a sensation. 'Everyone heard about it. It's been in magazines and newspapers all over Hong Kong, and also other parts of the world.' Mr Fok said the ship helped Hutchison recover its investment in Whampoa Gardens in just two years. 'Creativity counted,' he told the Creative Cities Conference. The event was sponsored by the Li Ka-shing Foundation and co-organised by Shantou University. Mr Fok said Hutchison also applied a creative touch to designing the food court at Whampoa Gardens: 'We could have chosen familiar fast-food brands - Kentucky . . . (or Lai See's favourite) McDonald's. But we thought out of the box. We asked a famous food critic to find these legendary hawkers. We invited them to set up business at Hutchison Gourmet Place. The hawkers got back to work. The public loves it. The food court makes money. You can have one snack here, and another one there. There are more than a dozen stalls . . . In fact, I recommend you visit.' I think we will, Mr Fok, thank you for the suggestion. A novel journey: Another ship story: specifically The Shipping News, a wonderful book by E. Annie Proulx set in a fictional Newfoundland. Follow the amazing adventures of the central character, Quoyle, as he moves from discontent to an understanding of happiness amid the physical hardship of life in a cold land, working for the world's most unusual newspaper. Car and shipwrecks are run regularly on its front page and it carries an unusual amount of advertising for a small-town paper. This fascinating book won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize but has somehow only recently come to our attention. Anyway, Lai See's copy of The Shipping News begins its own journey around Hong Kong today, starting with Adrien Ellul, a former journalist and general manager of Pizza Express. Once he has finished reading it, he'll be sending it to another Lai See reader. People on the list will probably be from a shipping or journalism background. We will keep you posted on who is reading it, and when. No more whining: Whoops! Lai See has been counting up negative and positive items on the wine industry and we have found two negative ones and only one positive. In the positive item, we announced a complete change of editorial direction: 'Wine is Fine.' But perhaps more nice things need to be said about Cellarmaster Wines (HK), whose Bon Courage wine dinner press release randomly passed our desk, and Concord Fine Wines whose Chateau Langlais 1988 was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We now find wine extremely fine. Send us in some wine news and we'll write it up. Very nicely. Charged up over promotion: Reader Emanuel Katsidonis sent in an e-mail with the subject: 'Wrong Size Battery in Battery Pack or Wrong Size Torch?' 'My son, Jack was going on a school camp last week and he needed a torch, so I went to Watson's at Pacific Place. The only torch I could find was in a Energiser promotional pack, that is, 12 AAA batteries and a free torch.' 'Now, I really don't need AAA batteries, but I needed the torch so I bought the promotional pack. Back in the office, I opened the package, unscrewed the torch to place the battery in it, and GUESS WHAT??? it takes an AA battery, not an AAA. Fortunately I had some AA batteries, but . . .' Graphic: whee12gbz