I WISH to clear up some misapprehensions which appeared in the Diary page of (Sunday Morning Post Magazine, November 14).
The section I take exception to was titled ''High Tidings''. In this section your columnist claims a man living on Lamma Island has built a nine-metre catamaran so he can escape from Hong Kong, which he hates and despises.
As I am the only man on Lamma who has built such a boat, I presume I am the person referred to. I have never said I despise and hate Hong Kong. On the contrary, I have often said Hong Kong has been good to me in that it has enabled me to do things I couldn't otherwise have done, such as build a boat.
On occasion I find life in Hong Kong exasperating, but then I imagine so do a lot of other people. That hardly amounts to hatred and contempt.
Spending 41/2 years building a boat is surely a perverse way of escaping from a place you hate and despise. I wish to leave Hong Kong on a boat because that seems to be the most appropriate way to leave a city whose history and development has been so tied up with the sea.
MILES SPINK Lamma Island
