Hong Kong’s handover was all gloom and doom for me for one night

I don’t know about everyone else, but I had a miserable night on June 30, 1997, when the world stopped to witness Hong Kong’s historic return to Chinese rule.

I had been assigned by the newspaper I worked for back then to cover the British colonial government’s farewell ceremony at Tamar, complete with grand military parades and governor Chris Patten’s last goodbyes. It went quite well, I heard, despite the rain. I wasn’t there.

What happened was that all journalists registered to attend the handover ceremonies were required to sort out their accreditation and secure their media passes weeks in advance, which I had dutifully done.

But when I arrived at the venue that evening, I was suddenly confronted with the fact that I had missed an extra procedural formality whereby those who were already accredited for the event were still required to reconfirm their registrations that morning.

I was blissfully unaware of it and so was my news editor, who would nevertheless hold me solely responsible for missing such a critical assignment.