And the company's announcement, from its Hong Kong Marketing department: 'Yahoo! Hong Kong, the No 1 Web site in Hong Kong in both users and traffic, is proud to launch the first-ever awards recognising brands' emotional ties with consumers - the 2002 Yahoo! Emotive Brands Awards. We received votes from close to 10,000 consumers - HOW VERY EXCITING' (capitalised by Lai See, but you get the point).

The voter profile tells us something about Yahoo's customer base.

It is 60 per cent female and 60 per cent between 18 and 34 years old.

Best of all is the sign off: 'Yours very fervently, Yahoo! Hong Kong Marketing.'

Industrious Irish: A big Lai See welcome for Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Industry president Victor Haslett, who heads a trade mission of 26 companies beginning today.

Meetings, briefings and networking are the mission's goals.

It has been organised by the development agency Invest Northern Ireland with the support of the British Consulate-General in Hong Kong.

Now the companies, or about half of them due to space limitations: Greetings to 3D Lingua and its 3D virtual immersion language learning software. Andor Technology brings lots of information about its multi-channel detectors and camera systems for spectroscopy (small hole operating) and scientific imaging; and Arca Technologies, a designer and developer of telecommunications test equipment, displays its wares.

We have been to New Zealand so we know all about wool and sheep. How about a bit of traditional Irish knitwear in pure new wool and merino wool from Callan, a design-led woolly Irish company? Out of nowhere comes Beaufort Air-Sea Equipment, maker of safety and survival equipment for aerospace, defence and marine uses.

Randomly skipping many equally worthy companies we come to FM Environmental, plant supplier to the waste-water industry and Harland & Wolff Technical Services, designer and consultant to the marine, offshore and civil engineering industries.

Best of luck to all in making contacts and researching the market.

And after hours, Victor and friends, we recommend Delaney's in the Wan Chai entertainment district for extended networking sessions.

Number perfect: The Mark Six winners we selected last week proved an excellent investment.

We bought two tickets which we have hung on our living room wall as a monument to the inaccuracy of the Hong Kong Jockey Club's super computer. It picked just one of our winners, and so we have decided to call for international assistance.

We contacted professional numbers authority Sabrina Rony, who, as with many Indonesians, uses several different names and lives in Singapore.

'I have some very special numbers for all my good friends in Hong Kong,' Sabrina told us.

'I now live on the 18th floor, but in Hong Kong I stayed on the 28th. I am 24 and have two children. The number 65 is special to me, but as this is outside the Mark Six range, I must be referring to combinations with two and three: 26, 36, 25, 35.'

If Sabrina is on target she will make her followers happy. There was no first-prize winner in last Thursday's Mark Six draw, and so HK$18,567,502 jackpots into tomorrow's draw for Lai See readers.

Graphic: whee25gbz