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SCMP Reporter

At Ponte 16, Stanley Ho sings of vitality and being prepared
The hills are alive with the sound of ... gambling. Or so a speech by casino magnate Stanley Ho Hung-sun marking the grand opening of his Ponte 16 resort seemed to suggest.
The new property's location in Macau's old port district, surrounded by Unesco heritage sites and colonial-era buildings, appears to have put the gaming tycoon in a nostalgic mood  as he addressed several hundred guests seated on benches in the  cold evening air on Friday.
'The digit 16 not only stands for the iconic Pier 16 clock tower sitting next to our property, it also signifies a sweet age of youth and vitality,'  Mr Ho (left) said. 'But unlike Liesl in The Sound of Music who was 'totally unprepared', we are 'fully prepared'.'
He was referring to a sequence in  the classic 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein  musical  where the teenage debutante Liesl sings:
I am sixteen going on seventeen
Innocent as a rose
Bachelor dandies, drinkers of brandies
What do I know of those.
Totally unprepared am I
To face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared am I
Of things beyond my ken.
While Mr Ho's newest property is indeed a sweet  16, Lai See reckons that after almost five decades in the casino business, he knows a thing or two about the world of men. We'll take him at his word on preparedness.
Cementing weather woes
Speaking of preparedness, the mainland's incredible lack of it has been  exposed by some of the worst snowstorms the country has seen in five decades. The crippling blows dealt to essential services such as  the power grid and transport networks show how fragile mainland infrastructure still is, despite 30 years of stellar economic growth.
Investors, however, are always one step ahead of the news - especially in Hong Kong.
Anticipating a wave of new government spending in  coming weeks and months of cleanup and rebuilding, punters pushed Anhui Conch, the mainland's biggest cement maker,  to a record yesterday.
The stock surged 20.71 per cent to  No10 on the list of the day's top 20  gainers in percentage terms. Its share price added HK$9.90 - well above  the gains by the other 19 counters combined.
Comfort for the snow-stuck
Hundreds, if not thousands, may have been stranded in  cars  on  snowbound expressways of the central  mainland last week, but at least they received a sort of consolation.
For a while the traffic bureau in southwestern Guangxi province  waived all highway tolls  for incoming vehicles  from hard-hit  Hunan province.
Some 3,000  cars entered Guangxi toll-free  on a single day,  said a state press report. But  those  unable to move likely found the  offer  difficult  to accept. As the Beijing-Zhuhai expressway reopened yesterday, it was unclear whether the toll exemption was still in place.
Room for year-end surprise
Tomorrow is the last day of trading in the Year of the Pig, so the question is: will local stocks end with a flying leap or wallowing in the trough?
If yesterday's performance was any indication, things may be looking up as we roll into the Year of the Rat.
However, it is interesting to note that, in terms of benchmarking the Hang Seng Index's annual performance, the lunar year has been bested by the calendar year for the past two years.
Stocks rose 34.2 per cent in calendar  2006 compared  with a 30.6 per cent gain during the lunar year.
During the  last calendar year, the blue-chip index soared  39.31 per cent. But the lunar year, because it captures last month's sell-off,  has gained only 21.7 per cent to date. Still two trading days  to go.
Red packets galore
Lastly, it is that time of year  when Lai See's mailbox is stuffed with envelopes - and all of them are empty.
Each year, we get so many  red packets that we could send a small village on a shopping spree for a week - if we only had the cash to fill them with.
So far this festive season, we have collected more than 20 shipments of red envelopes from companies all around town. Not surprisingly, banks and property developers are prominent among the senders.
A hundred Kung Hei Fat Chois to you!
Ben Kwok is on holiday



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Stanley Ho

Lai See

Lunar New Year