I've just read a blog post on the Hong Kong Economic Journal Forum that laments the lack of good radio music programs and the lack of professional DJs nowadays. It is said that the newer generation of DJs tend to use the air time and platform like Hyde Park Speakers' Corner rather than share their passion for music with the audience.
Late last year I discovered a Radio HK music program (Radio 5, channel AM 783) that is currently broadcast every Sunday from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm, and which has become my favorite radio program because I love the nostalgic English oldies that the program host selects. (Prior to June this year, the program used to be broadcast every Wednesday night when there was no LegCo Meeting, and there used to be both English and Chinese songs on the program.)
Here's the link to the program archive:-
http://programme.rthk.hk/channel/radio/programme.php?name=radio5/music_of_my_life&p=5275&m=archive&page=1&item=100
Have a pleasant trip down memory lane!
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
French Film Festival 2013 - Michael Kohlhaas
Last weekend I watched "Michael Kohlhaas", which is based on an 1811 novella written by German author Heinrich von Kleist about a true event that had taken place in 16th century Germany.
The story is about a horse dealer Michael Kohlhaas who, while passing a border, had two of his newly purchased horses unjustly taken from him as a road toll by an overbearing lord, at a time when road tolls had already been banned by law. Those two horses were worked mercilessly till they bled, and one of his loyal servants was also beaten up badly by the lord's men. When his attempts to seek justice through court proceedings repeatedly failed, his wife decided to take his case to the reigning princess but she was brutally murdered in the process at the behest of the powerful lord. Driven to blinding rage, Kohlhaas formed an army out of his servants, was forced to take his young daughter along for the ride, and attacked the castle of the lord, killing many of his men. The lord's escape into a convent did not stop him. He incited peasants to rise up in rebellion against the aristocracy. His action enraged the princess, who at first seemed forgiving and generous towards him, but who subsequently ordered his arrest and execution by beheading. To show him magnanimity, the princess ordered the judge to award him, before his execution, the justice that he had been seeking, that is, to return two healthy horses to him, to grant him compensation for bodily injuries that his servant had suffered and compensation for his own loss, and to sentence the culpable lord to two-year imprisonment.
Although the story is somewhat straightforward, the film is still quite enthralling with the gripping atmosphere created by skillful cinematography of the vast windswept and barren wilderness, accompanied by a somber sound design (with flies buzzing, wind howling and horse hoof thumping) that highlights the unforgiving countryside, plus the dark charm of the wronged hero role played by Mads Mikkelsen.
In the midst of Kohlhaas' acts of vengeance, there is a short dialogue between an old clergy and him in which the former tried to dissuade the latter from further committing acts of violence on account of faith in God, but failed, as the latter insisted on seeing justice done. The conversation has an unmistakable premonitory ring to it.
Few rational beings would risk their own lives unless they feel totally trapped with no way out. The tragic element of the story is that Kohlhaas' vindictive action resulted in creating even more victims (his own daughter being one as she was becoming an orphan), even if he finally got the justice that he had sought, for which ironically he had to pay with his own life. But then, in those days of the "ancien regime", when the royalties held all legislative, administrative and judiciary powers, what options did an aggrieved commoner have other than rise up and rebel?
The story is about a horse dealer Michael Kohlhaas who, while passing a border, had two of his newly purchased horses unjustly taken from him as a road toll by an overbearing lord, at a time when road tolls had already been banned by law. Those two horses were worked mercilessly till they bled, and one of his loyal servants was also beaten up badly by the lord's men. When his attempts to seek justice through court proceedings repeatedly failed, his wife decided to take his case to the reigning princess but she was brutally murdered in the process at the behest of the powerful lord. Driven to blinding rage, Kohlhaas formed an army out of his servants, was forced to take his young daughter along for the ride, and attacked the castle of the lord, killing many of his men. The lord's escape into a convent did not stop him. He incited peasants to rise up in rebellion against the aristocracy. His action enraged the princess, who at first seemed forgiving and generous towards him, but who subsequently ordered his arrest and execution by beheading. To show him magnanimity, the princess ordered the judge to award him, before his execution, the justice that he had been seeking, that is, to return two healthy horses to him, to grant him compensation for bodily injuries that his servant had suffered and compensation for his own loss, and to sentence the culpable lord to two-year imprisonment.
Although the story is somewhat straightforward, the film is still quite enthralling with the gripping atmosphere created by skillful cinematography of the vast windswept and barren wilderness, accompanied by a somber sound design (with flies buzzing, wind howling and horse hoof thumping) that highlights the unforgiving countryside, plus the dark charm of the wronged hero role played by Mads Mikkelsen.
In the midst of Kohlhaas' acts of vengeance, there is a short dialogue between an old clergy and him in which the former tried to dissuade the latter from further committing acts of violence on account of faith in God, but failed, as the latter insisted on seeing justice done. The conversation has an unmistakable premonitory ring to it.
Few rational beings would risk their own lives unless they feel totally trapped with no way out. The tragic element of the story is that Kohlhaas' vindictive action resulted in creating even more victims (his own daughter being one as she was becoming an orphan), even if he finally got the justice that he had sought, for which ironically he had to pay with his own life. But then, in those days of the "ancien regime", when the royalties held all legislative, administrative and judiciary powers, what options did an aggrieved commoner have other than rise up and rebel?
Friday, November 29, 2013
French Film Festival 2013 - Hiroshima, Mon Amour
It's that time of the year again - the French Film Festival kicked off last Wednesday and will last until December 12. For the past four years, I've been one loyal fan of the festival. At the 2011 festival, I was most disappointed for being too late to get a ticket for the musical "Beloved" starring Catherine Deneuve. Luckily this year I've already booked one for her 1967 film "Beauty of the Day".
The day before yesterday I watched the 1959 film "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" in black and white, which is named a Cannes Classics at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival. The scriptwriter, Marguerite Duras, who had her first venture in the world of cinema with this film, was nominated for an Oscar.
The story is about a French actress doing filming work in Hiroshima, where she meets a married Japanese man and falls in love with him. The timeline is about ten years after the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima. At the end of the three-day affair, the actress decides to leave her lover. The couple struggle with the pain of imminent separation. The camera oscillates between the past, with images of the aftermath of the bombing, and the present, with images of the lovers' day-to-day activities together with the actress's recollection of a tormenting end to a love affair with a German soldier at Nevers, France, during World War II, when he was killed.
I'm glad that I had stumbled upon a book about Marguerite Duras earlier in the week and was given to understand a little her unique literary style, which centers on the coexistence of past and present, memory and oblivion, love and death, which elements are readily identifiable in the film. In this film, she also departed from the conventional literary model by being sparse with descriptive details and shifting from single-voice narration to dialogue. The lack of descriptive details is intended to invoke in the audience the power of imagination. In the first fifteen minutes of the film, a male and a female voice converse with each other in the background, with the female trying to remember horrific scenes of the bombing and the male trying to negate her, representing a conflict between memory and oblivion. For the rest of the film, the protagonist's pain of memory and the pain of her inability to forget coexists with her lover's unrelenting effort to make her forget her past so that he could have a future with her.
Ten years after the bombing, Hiroshima is already back to normal life with a bright future. At the time of the lovers' encounter, the actress had also left Nevers to begin a new life in Paris. Towards the end of the film, the actress says to the Japanese man: "You're Hiroshima", and the Japanese man says to her "You're Nevers". After all, it is just a matter of forgetting and letting go of pain.
This film won the International Film Critics Award and the Film Writers Award. It also shared the Prix Melies with Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows". In 1960 it won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film.
The day before yesterday I watched the 1959 film "Hiroshima, Mon Amour" in black and white, which is named a Cannes Classics at the 2013 Cannes International Film Festival. The scriptwriter, Marguerite Duras, who had her first venture in the world of cinema with this film, was nominated for an Oscar.
The story is about a French actress doing filming work in Hiroshima, where she meets a married Japanese man and falls in love with him. The timeline is about ten years after the atomic-bombing of Hiroshima. At the end of the three-day affair, the actress decides to leave her lover. The couple struggle with the pain of imminent separation. The camera oscillates between the past, with images of the aftermath of the bombing, and the present, with images of the lovers' day-to-day activities together with the actress's recollection of a tormenting end to a love affair with a German soldier at Nevers, France, during World War II, when he was killed.
I'm glad that I had stumbled upon a book about Marguerite Duras earlier in the week and was given to understand a little her unique literary style, which centers on the coexistence of past and present, memory and oblivion, love and death, which elements are readily identifiable in the film. In this film, she also departed from the conventional literary model by being sparse with descriptive details and shifting from single-voice narration to dialogue. The lack of descriptive details is intended to invoke in the audience the power of imagination. In the first fifteen minutes of the film, a male and a female voice converse with each other in the background, with the female trying to remember horrific scenes of the bombing and the male trying to negate her, representing a conflict between memory and oblivion. For the rest of the film, the protagonist's pain of memory and the pain of her inability to forget coexists with her lover's unrelenting effort to make her forget her past so that he could have a future with her.
Ten years after the bombing, Hiroshima is already back to normal life with a bright future. At the time of the lovers' encounter, the actress had also left Nevers to begin a new life in Paris. Towards the end of the film, the actress says to the Japanese man: "You're Hiroshima", and the Japanese man says to her "You're Nevers". After all, it is just a matter of forgetting and letting go of pain.
This film won the International Film Critics Award and the Film Writers Award. It also shared the Prix Melies with Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows". In 1960 it won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
More Land Is the Answer, Or Not?
(Note - My recent idea was to blog about light-hearted topics like
music, films and books on this blog, while keeping more serious subjects
on my Asia Sentinel blog. But lately the Asia Sentinel has been
undergoing a change of server, and links to my A.S. blog posts don't
seem to work any longer. So I'm re-posting my two latest A.S. blog posts
separately here for interested readers' convenience.)
Here's the second last post "More Land Is the Answer, Or Not?":-
Here's the second last post "More Land Is the Answer, Or Not?":-
Amidst Hong Kong’s
clamoring for sky-high property prices to be reined in, there have been
incessant calls for the SAR government to increase land and property supply. I,
for one, was at one time besotted with the thought that releasing more land
could eventually dampen prices, if still skeptical over the prudence of dishing
out more land to the same cartel that is already sitting on huge land banks
(because highest-bidder-wins-policy would ensure that deep-pocket developers
would, more often than not, end up the winning bidders).
Having observed this
year’s government land tender results, it seems the larger tracts, like always,
have fallen into the hands of leading developers or State-owned mainland
developer (to quote a few examples: a sizable Yuen Long lot went to Sun Hung
Kai Properties; two large Tseung Kwan O lots went to Wheelock Properties, two
Kai Tak lots went to China Overseas Construction). Owing to bidders being able
to use nominee companies (whose parent companies may also be nominee companies)
in land tenders, it is impossible to know from officially announced tender
results who actually got the other sizeable plots.
As for the land tender
prices, they are, as always, marked closely to the property market, where
prices have barely fallen from the historical peak. The palliative buyer stamp
duty and special stamp duty – the so called “piquant measures” – have so far only
managed to reduce property turnover, but hardly the prices. But already
property vested interests are nagging for a repeal of those measures, which
have been introduced for only a few months.
It would seem that my
earlier tinge of optimism about increased land supply being an effective impetus
to eventually bring property prices down to more affordable levels seems misplaced.
I unwittingly overlooked the crucial fact that the government and the leading
developers have never ceded their firm grip on land and property prices, simply
by virtue of their collective ownership of almost all of Hong Kong’s buildable land.
They have a common interest in keeping prices high, though for different
reasons. The former wants to maximize land sale revenue for its fiscal health,
so that it can continue to trumpet to the world that Hong Kong has the unique
advantage of a low-tax regime. The latter want to continue to fatten themselves
with development profits and rents. They are no different from a clique of
bakers who have monopolized the supply of wheat flour – they naturally have the
power to manipulate the price of bread.
It is apparent that, as
long as the high land price policy that the Hong Kong government embraces with
all its life force remains intact, no matter how much land is released into the
market, it’s not going to have the desired impact on property prices, much less
on the entrenched status quo. History shows that every market dip in the past
was caused by an external event or internal chaos rather than an increase of
land supply (of course the property cartel would try to dupe the public into
believing the latter being the culprit). On the other hand, past experience has
taught many of the older generations (including civil servants) that their best
bet is “if you can’t beat them, join them”. Such an attitude towards buying and
owning properties has been institutionalized over the years, and is deeply
embedded in the social consciousness. Naturally, homeowners would want to see
prices stay up, whose expectation can be self-fulfilling. Homeowners would
rather use all their savings to buy more flats for their offspring than see
property prices fall significantly for the greater and long-term good of
society.
The only problem is, at
least some clear-thinking and independent youngsters and individuals who have a
sense of justice are finding that this game only favors those already with
capital (equity in homes) and is grossly unfair to those without at the
starting point. They can see that Hong Kong’s addiction to properties is
stifling healthy innovation and creativity, the lack of which is taking a toll
on its economic development. For those who are grassroots and those who by a
stroke of bad luck have slipped onto the lower social echelons, living in decrepit
sub-divided flats as well as enduring bitingly high rent is their only option
until subsidized flats become within reach, if they ever will. These
unfortunate have-nots, along with the haves, all need to pay a lot more than
would have been necessary for their daily needs and consumer goods because of obscene
rents.
The SAR government’s vacuous
vows to increase land supply or to search for more land to build affordable
flats are at best a feckless attempt to teach guileless Hong Kongers simple Economic
theory about supply/demand equilibrium, and at worst a red herring aimed at
diverting the public’s anger away from its perpetual collusion with the
property cartel (which should now include powerful mainland developers).
Thus, CY Leung and his
administration, knowing full well that the Gordian knot to Hong Kong’s social
and economic ills (including the much condemned wealth gap) lies in the government’s
high land price policy, its addiction to financing itself with land revenues
and the regressive tax system but lacking the courage to touch them, can only
put “band-aids on top of band-aids”, as one internet commentator jeered. At the
same time, society’s institutionalized belief in the magic wand of properties
is providing good excuses for inaction on government’s part.
An Irrelevant Population Policy
(Note - My recent idea was to blog about light-hearted topics like music, films and books on this blog, while keeping more serious subjects on my Asia Sentinel blog. But lately the Asia Sentinel has been undergoing a change of server, and links to my A.S. blog posts don't seem to work any longer. So I'm re-posting my two latest A.S. blog posts separately here for interested readers' convenience.)
Here's the latest one "An Irrelevant Population Policy" (the other one "More Land Is the Answer, Or Not?" follows in another post):-
Here's the latest one "An Irrelevant Population Policy" (the other one "More Land Is the Answer, Or Not?" follows in another post):-
Chairing the Steering Committee on Population
Policy, the Chief Secretary for Administration Carrie Lam put forward a
consultation document that at least shows she is very much a part of the
blinkered, stubborn and backward-looking bureaucracy.
There was a time when Carrie Lam struck me as an
outspoken, capable civil servant having some sense of mission and having at
heart struggling Hong Kongers’ interests, who readily outshone the coterie of
mediocre and self-serving top-ranking bureaucrats. My confidence in her started
to wane, though, when she pushed through LegCo the amendment to the Land (Compulsory
Sale for Development) Ordinance, lowering the triggering threshold from 90% to
80% of units in the building in question, which effectively makes it easier for
developers to encroach on private property rights in the name of urban
redevelopment. Public opinion that showed strong opposition to the amendment
bill was simply ignored. I began to harbor doubt about Lam’s true colors, but
was still willing to believe that she was probably overpowered by her boss who
was always all ears towards the powerful property oligarchs.
Hong Kong society has been screaming for some sort
of population control, which indeed, judging from all kinds of prevalent social
problems ranging from (lack of) housing to (poor) quality of education, inadequate
medical care, and fast-declining quality of life, seems well justified. When
society is plagued by overcrowding from the individual travel scheme, by a
general lack of decent living space and a host of other unresolved issues,
daily life pressure has already been building up to a boiling point. Then this
Steering Committee went and poured oil on fire by saying that Hong Kong needs
to squeeze in yet more people, just for the sake of pandering to the business
sector by importing more labor (apparently so as to keep wages down). The
document shows at every turn that the administration is still saddled with the
outdated mindset that economic growth is overridingly more exigent than
anything else, including but not limited to, decent and affordable living space
for everyone, a more level playing field for all entrepreneurs, a cleaner
environment and a narrower wealth gap.
Setting vacuous objectives for a population policy
without having regard to urgent social issues will not help anyone, because
those objectives would only sound totally irrelevant.
Why is the Committee not more concerned with quality
of citizens, quality of life, quality of living space and quality of
environment, which should all weigh far more than business growth, in its deliberations
about a sustainable population policy? Why hasn’t it occurred to Committee
members that in an already well developed economy like Hong Kong’s, quality of
growth and quality of labor is perhaps much more important than quantity? To
achieve some improvement in the quality of life for the existing population, is
placing a cap on population growth, when there’s already an acute shortage of
land and housing, such a bad thing after all?
Has the Committee ever asked the questions why young
couples in Hong Kong are less and less willing to have babies and why more and
more foreign-passport-holding families are thinking of returning to their
adopting countries? To panic over a shrinking working population and to blindly
recommend import of labor will do nothing but exacerbate existing problems. Is
it not obvious to the Committee that those problems include, but are not
limited to, a chronic lack of affordable housing, a lousy education system, an
over-concentrated economy, limited upward social mobility for young workers and
a rotting environment? Economic growth is not a panacea and in fact slower
growth couldn’t hurt and could even be helpful in letting society have the
chance to fix its more urgent problems. Hong Kong’s GDP per capita is already
on a par with most economically advanced countries. It is certainly rich enough
to do a lot more for the aging population (mostly taxpayers in their younger
days who contributed much to Hong Kong’s prosperity) and for the less
privileged.
The administration has to set its priorities
straight. The Steering Committee on Population Policy needs to treat people as
human beings rather than robotic units of production.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Wednesday, October 2, 2013
Thursday, September 19, 2013
"My Uploads" Playlist
This is the playlist (with automatic updating) of all the song videos I've created so far for sharing. Hope you'll like them!
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
A Good Movie for Parents - "Firelight"
Recently
I watched a 1997 movie on YouTube called “Firelight” starring Sophie Marceau
and Stephen Dillane. The film was written and directed by William Nicholson. I
was very touched by the movie and would like to share it with those who haven’t
watched it.
Briefly,
the story is about a woman who agrees to bear the child of an English landowner
in exchange for money to pay her father’s debts. When the child is born, the
woman gives up the right to her as agreed. Seven years later, the woman is
hired as a governess to a child on a remote Sussex estate, whose father is the
anonymous landowner…….
What
impresses me most about the film is the part about how the mother is determined
to teach her child to behave so she can be loved by people other than her doting
father. I’m sure there’s something here to be learned by young parents in Hong
Kong or elsewhere.
“It's
a kind of magic. Firelight makes time stand still. When you put out the lamps
and sit in the firelight's glow there aren't any rules any more. You can do
what you want, say what you want, be what you want, and when the lamps are lit
again, time starts again, and everything you said or did is forgotten. More
than forgotten - it never happened.”
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