One bad boss is about to get a good gift

Central Station | Nury Vittachi 1 Feb 2019

A car number plate auction was held in Hong Kong recently. Only eight letters are allowed, so it's good if you have a short name. "KENNYLAU" was sold.

Others had to opt for a single name. "MRS KWOK", "MR YEUNG" and "MR NGA1" were snapped up.

Latest car number plate trend is to buy dates, so "29 JAN" and "DEC 12" were cleared to hit the streets.

I wonder if anyone has bought "JUN41989"? If so, they might like to leave it parked outside the China Liaison Office in Kennedy Town.

Just as a reminder that nothing happened on that date.

* * *

Coming up in Hong Kong's February 23 car number plate sale: "BAD BOSS" and "AL1EN X".

Meanwhile, reader Faizal Careem found car with a message only Cantonese speakers and fans of Teletubbies will get.

* * *

Philip Kenny of Tai Po was intrigued to see in the international news media that entrepreneurs from Bahrain had a plan to sink a Boeing 747 into the sea and leave it there as an interesting item for divers (and fish) to visit.

"The Hong Kong government had the opportunity to do something similar in Hong Kong but balked," he told Twitter followers. "We even identified sites deep enough to do it."

Permission was denied. "The 747 was later sold for scrap," he said.

I suspect government officials had memories of Kai Tak airport, Phil, where 747s would sometimes end up parked on the sea bed anyway, entirely free of charge.

* * *

Hong Kong police officers arrested a bar manager after viewing "lewd activities" in Tsim Sha Tsui, this newspaper reported in court coverage yesterday. The officers visited the bar disguised as regular punters multiple times, staying for about four hours on each visit. "Officers' testimony showed they only touched the women's breasts for work," the report said. The things people get paid to do.

* * *

Jeni Caffin this week saw noble-looking posters all over Ubud, Bali, emblazoned with the words "Never Quit" and signed Surya Pro. "Looked like an exhortation to be strong, to commit, to persevere in the face of all odds," she said - and then found out what Surya Pro was. It's a brand of cigarettes.

* * *

Hong Kong is so crowded now that corpses may have to share morgue storage compartments, staff at Alice Ho Miu Ling Nethersole Hospital said. A printed notice, referred to in this newspaper yesterday, assures family members that corpses will not be forced to share spaces with corpses of the opposite sex. Well, that's a comfort.

* * *

Reader Tracy Lockwood told me yesterday that she had been using the women's toilets in the IFC when a man walked in. The cleaning ladies and the women using the toilet looked at him uncomfortably. "Are you in the right toilet?" Tracy asked. "Yes, I'm female now," he announced. He was definitely male to look at, and was dressed in male clothes, but in these politically correct days, what can you do? The women politely let him be. Tracy said that she was fine with a man wanting to be a female, but it was awkward to have someone with an entirely male appearance acting as if he had "a God-given right to choose which toilet you wanted to use."

Tricky one. What to do?


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