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SCMP Reporter

WE know our readers will be desperate to go when they hear what the Urban Council is hosting at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre at the end of this month.

    Part of the centre has been booked for the Asia Pacific Seminar on Public Toilets 1994 - an event which has hitherto received little publicity and is certainly more cultural than a good deal of what goes on in Hong Kong.

  Hong Kong is lucky to be hosting this, especially after the success of the First International Toilet Symposium held in Kobe, Japan last June. Hong Kong will also be hosting the Second International Toilet Symposium next February.

  The fact that Hong Kong is being honoured with hosting both this year's public toilet extravaganza and the total toilet experience to follow next year is certain to put the territory on the map as the toilet capital of the world.

    And while overseas visitors will have to shell out an $800 registration fee, locals will not have to spend a penny more than $500.

  And that includes the highlight of the conference, and possibly the year - a guided tour of Hong Kong's public toilets.

  Delegates are sure to get their money's worth. It looks from the programme as if the tour lasts all of the final day of the conference.

  That part is bound to be fully subscribed as hanging around public toilets is so popular an activity that it is illegal under normal circumstances, probably because they would be so crowded with sightseers otherwise.

  If that isn't enough, there is also an exhibition being run in parallel with the seminar. The Urban Council promises this will entail ''displays and demonstrations''.

    The speeches that have been planned look pretty exciting, too. Dr Ronald Leung, chairman of the Urban Council, will reveal a hitherto unsuspected area of expertise when he delivers a speech on ''Research and Development of Public Toilets in Hong Kong''.

  Lai Kwok-tung, assistant director of Regional Services, is also going to speak. He will talk on ''Provision of Toilet Facilities in Rural Areas'', which presumably means tree planting.

  Professor Durkjoo Chung of the department of Public Administration at Dong-A University in Korea will be discussing his ''Analysis of the Citizen's Satisfaction on Public Toilets in Korea''. The mind boggles.

  Beijing is sending Shaozai Mai, director of the city's Environment Sanitation Administration Business Division. His speech is on ''Practical Means to Eliminate Bad Smell in Public Toilets''.

  Another speaker, Ms Felicitas S V Ureta, a director at the Philippines Department of Health, will be extremely grateful her name was spelt correctly.

  Sitting pretty   WE also thought our readers would like to see the logo for the conference.

  Two points to note. Firstly, just because the conference is on public toilets, that doesn't mean it is actually on public toilets.

  Secondly, look at the stylised figures on the logo and ask yourselves why they are apparently clutching their midriffs. Could it be they are searching for the subject of the seminar on the MTR?    Guesswork HERE'S another body which sends letters to ''Hong Kong, Japan'': the World Travel and Tourism Council, based in Brussels.

  Isn't that in France somewhere?    True story  UNLIKE their counterparts here, fund managers in the United States have to be super-honest with their customers or they'll end up in court.

  And here's proof. A Hong Kong investor last week received a letter from Steinhardt Overseas Management, which manages one of those leveraged bond funds. It began: ''Gentlemen . . . as you know, our performance in February was terrible.''   Inside job  THE latest edition of Hoffmann Detectives' Tips for Business & Industry , the useful little magazine which regularly advise Lai See on how to commit corporate fraud, is fairly short on exciting and innovative money-making opportunities. The frauds are all too mundane to repeat.

  But one story did amuse us. This detective firm normally maintains regular contact with a single trusted employee at each of its corporate customers, who will supply the detectives with information on the company's working practices and personnel if required. The employee will also tend to keep his or her own board of directors informed of the progress of investigations.

  One such employee invited the investigators to his office for an update on a case.

  ''Any idea yet who has done it?'' the employee asked.

  ''Yes, we have. As far as we are concerned the case is finished,'' came the reply.

  ''Go on then, tell me who it is,'' asked the contact person.

  ''It's you,'' the detectives said.

  ''Absolutely right. Good work I must say. Pity for me of course.''     Going places?  OBSERVANT readers will have already noticed a change of staff. Gren Manuel has been called away on urgent business, contrary to stories circulating that he has succumbed to a nasty bout of apathy, the condition to which all journalists are prey.

  I've been deputised to stand in. Which is hardly fair, given that I have been in Britain for a month where you could be forgiven for thinking that Hong Kong does not exist.

  It certainly never makes the papers, although Chris Patten does, in long Sunday magazine profiles on what a good leader of the Tories he will make after John Major is sacked.



Chain gang gathers at Cultural Centre symposium