Awful Day for HKU But CPAO Calm Collected and Composed

In a day where the media circus covered four court cases involving University of Hong Kong (HKU) staff or students, to their credit the Communications and Public Affairs Office (CPAO) at HKU did not come up with some crazy conspiracy theory unlike a certain crazy Croatian football president.

CPAO exhibited calm, cool composure in a dreadful day for HKU public relations. In order of severity, the four courts cases were:
1) Ex-Dean of Medicine, Professor Lam Shiu-kum, 65, was charged with misconduct in public office and sentenced to 25 months in prison. He was jailed for receiving HK$3.8 million in donations to his own company while knowingly using the HKU letterhead and association as a guise for donations seemingly to the university.
2) Current associate professor of education, Terence Joseph Shortall, 54, was charged with indecent assault and sentenced to 9 weeks in prison and fined HK$5,000 (US$640). He was jailed for indecently assaulting two female students on campus. The judge said Shortall had abused his position and shown no remorse for what he had done
3) A HKU undergraduate student was charged with theft, and fined HK$3,500 (US$450) for stealing knick-knacks worth up to HK$1,000 (US$130) from five shops in Sheung Shui.
4) Two HKU undergraduate students were charged with credit card theft. Both were released on HK$500 (US$64) bail and are scheduled to return to court on September 17 for sentencing.

Yes it was a coincidence that four court cases involving members of HKU converged on the same date. "The incidents actually happened at different times. It is just coincidence that we had three cases today. We are not disappointed as it is just a coincidence," said a HKU spokeswoman.

However, what are the chances there will be conspiracy theorists and Chinese fortune tellers who, in their eagerness to find confirmation bias, will dig up other negative incidents that involve HKU? Did any fortune tellers predict that HKU would be caught up in plenty of bad luck this year?

Also, note how many C’s are used in this blog entry … must be some cynical conspiracy in that too!

Further Reading
HKU shrugs off bad day in court
Bitter pill
Professor jailed for indecent assault
Student escapes prison sentence over shoplifting spree

0222 HKSAR Name of the Day

Bosco Yu (Dr), assistant professor, School Of Accounting And Finance, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation; Substitution; somewhat common in Hong Kong

0221 HKSAR Name of the Day

Alena Chow Yee Wah, Research Centre for Translation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Rare

iPhone 3GS – A New Hope

It’s been over a week since I registered for the new iPhone 3GS in Hong Kong. Does anyone have any experience of how long it took to register for and then receive their iPhone?


So far, all I have received from 3HK is the following text message:

3Notice: Thank you for your registration. We will notify you your handset collection date and location in phrases. Customers should register only ONCE. Orders will be put on a waiting list and processed according to the last registration date for multi-registrations.

Phrases? Like a bumbling Luke Skywalker unable to comprehend the full magnitude of the “Force”, my mind keeps 'hearing' silly little Yoda-like phrases that I believe will be texted to me. Phrases like:

“Receive iPhone will you”

“Sign or sign not, there is no calling”

“That iPhone is our last hope”. “No, there is another”

I’m certain there will be one or two fun iPhone apps about Star Wars!

0220 HKSAR Name of the Day

Aouda Au, Instructor, Department of English and Communication, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Creation; Insertion; Translocation

Birmingham FC Chief Displays Lucid Rationality

Hong Kong businessman Carson Yeung’s planned but prolonged takeover of club Birmingham City FC has further fueled Hong Kong’s already huge interest and following in the English Premier League and in the England national football team.

[Birmingham City colours]

Therefore, I couldn’t help notice a news story about the president of the Croatian Football Federation Vlatko Markovic fabricating a fantastic theory that Birmingham City were deliberately taking out Croatian national team players. Two Croatian players (Luka Modric of Tottenham Hotspurs and Eduardo da Silva of Arsenal) have recently been injured while playing for their club teams, and those matches coincidently involved Birmingham City. Injuries are “part and parcel” of the game, but Markovic is crying foul and appears to be up to mischief. Either that, or he's just plain silly to claim: "I can only ask whether someone did it deliberately on the eve of the game with England. I can only ask myself whether it is a coincidence or not."

England play Croatia in a key World Cup qualifying match on Wednesday 09/09/09.

Despite the cheekiness of all this, the Birmingham chairman David Gold was unperturbed and instead of reciprocating like-with-like with an appeal to emotion and to ignorance, simply said: “To say such things is little short of incredible. For a man of such stature and position in the game to come out with such rubbish is pathetic. His remarks border on paranoia and I struggle not to take it personally when they two incidents he talks about involve my club. To lay such stuff at Birmingham's door is appalling. It's emotive and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny."

Gold was also culturally sensitive too: "We should make light of it - maybe the problem is the statement has been completely lost in translation, maybe he meant to say something different."

Such cogent rational comments are rare these days and stand out like a beacon relative to the usual soundbites and quotes that come through the media.

0219 HKSAR Name of the Day

Apple Chan Pui Yin (Miss), student, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

About Novel HKSAR Names
Name Category: Rare (however, somewhat common in Hong Kong!)

#26 Hong Kong Hocus Pocus

Power points
Kari Schroeder gives a free talk on matrix energetics. 7pm-9pm, Balance Health, 27/F, 3-5 Arbuthnot Rd, Central.

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