Several weeks ago, I was invited by one of Amway’s business groups to take photographs at one of their major events held in the name of one Enosh Tse. They had booked the community hall of the Baptist University and had decked the place out with flowers, receptionists and there there must have been over at thousand five hundred people milling around the carpark, most in formal wear.

Amway is a gargantuan multi-national company with over US$8.4b in revenues and, together with its affiliates, owns Fulton Innovation as well as Metagenics. I was truly honoured to be part of its team that day.

Enosh arrived in a black limo amidst great fanfare and I held my breath to stabilise my camera as people crowded in front of the car to shake His hand. I ran up the steps leading to the double doors to catch him walking up the stairs from the limo. The ushers had a terrible time sorting the tickets and the line simply grew longer and longer. I took a moment to talk with some of the audience in the front rows.

I learnt that the event was hosted specifically for Enosh as he had, well below the age of 30, helped over 6 people obtain a stable income of over 12,000 a month. It wasn’t just the charity of doling out funds, as most charities do, but he took an active part in helping others achieve more than they could on their own. Consequently, he had improved their quality of life, confidence and had lifted their hopes. And business was getting better.

Amway is in the business of selling relatively high quality products such as organic nutritional supplements and skincare products, and together with a distribution model that benefitted ordinary people, it had taken off in places such as China, Russia, India and Malaysia, places where opportunities were rarer and people more willing to spend time sculpting their future.

Enosh’s team went up on stage to tell their tales of working together and with him. There were merchandisers, investment bankers, dentists, students, personal assistants… generally all sorts of young people from a diverse range of backgrounds. They had lent their experience to the group and together, they had started to help many more people around them achieve or start to achieve a second source of income derived from depriving long-standing supermarkets of their monopolised revenue. In a city where an extra income is always welcome, Enosh’s team is doing well.

At 1pm today, we went through our digital archives to retrieve a rare moment in history, when news coverage of Haiti exceeded that of coverage in USA and Iraq. Here it is:

Triads today are a shadow of the past. Constipated with members without decent education and upbringing, they have no choice but to reduce their entry barriers, removing the poetry-reading requirements and worshipping ceremonies. Moreover, their business practices are impacted by the lack of foresight and leadership at the top, limiting the groups to smaller-scale organised crime such as vending pirated media, managing brothels and gathering protection money. Drug trafficking and money laundering – crimes that require extensive logistical support, experience and know-how, have been hampered by the retirement and death of top triad ‘officers’ as well as the refusal of the lower ranks to educate themselves on the subject matter. The recent economic crisis has had little effect on the activities of triad groups…

Contrary to popular opinion, triad activity in international jurisdictions are relatively quiet, shackled by limited oversight from Hong Kong headquarters. The erosion of traditional values such as tight-knit communities and mutual protection together with international recognition of Chinese economic power have reduced triad activity in international jurisdictions. Indeed, many old ties between Hong Kong groups and satellite groups have been severed by the retirement and death of top triad officers.

Politics and law… do not and should not mix. If an ex-preseident is implicated and convicted, the public have no right to use political pressure or social pressure to try to overturn the judgment. Anyone doing so can possibly be charged with perverting the course of justice.

The courts should not be swayed by public or political will in determining the guilt or innocence of an individual. That is the test of the independence of the judiciary and the possibility of democratic government. A fettered judiciary will inevitably lead to turmoil. An example is the Chinese and Burmese courts. You do not want to be tried in those places. Maybe ex-presidents might want to attempt a hearing in those places…

The Mong Kok acid attacks are three incidents in 2008 and 2009 where plastic bottles filled with unknown corrosive liquid were thrown onto shoppers on Sai Yeung Choi Street South, Hong Kong, a popular pedestrian shopping area. The statutory offence is called “throwin’ corrosive fluid with intent to do grievous bodily harm”, s.29 CAP.212 and is punishable by life imprisonment.

Here is a map of the incidents.

1 June 2009: General Motors files for bankruptcy protection, ending an empire spanning since 1908. The filing reported US$82.29 billion in assets and US$172.81 billion in debt.

GM is expected to rise from the ashes within 2 months as a leaner, less loss making machine.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Many older folk like to ask young people this question. Often, they are met with an occupation: I want to be a fireman, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor and so on.

This carries on to tertiary education, where students often like to read subjects that they think might help them get employed. As such, at least in Hong Kong, the faculties of medicine, law and business are tremendously popular. So much so that many businessmen have begun to lament the phenomenon that tertiary institutes in Hong Kong have become employee factories.

University funding comes from taxpayers’ money. Taxpayers, many of whom are parents, often encourage their children to become employees in ‘safe’, ‘stable’ jobs. Conglomerates in Hong Kong also give the impression that students reading a relevant major (有關科目本科生), are more likely to get a job. Given that parents and conglomerates are stakeholders in university education, universities feel the pressure to offer courses that cater to market demand. They offer accounting, business, commercial law… courses that rake in applicants, and among other things, money.

Traditions are inherited, and so are thinking processes. There is a strong belief in Hong Kong that employment is the way to go. Grandparents speak it, parents repeat it, young people implement it: 找一份好工作. Indeed, it is true; survival is necessary, and the easiest way to survive is probably to get a job. But too often, life’s journey stops there. Survival becomes the sole purpose in life. Rarely do we see people with the vision and initiative to peer out of the cloud and retake their lives under their own wing. Some people simply luxuriate in their comfortable pods, yet some people say that they must wait until they have more money until they take risks to jump out of their comfort zone. But would these people really leave their comfort zone after 10, 20 years, or do we more often see these people forced to do so?

Perhaps it is a good thing that we have so many willing employees coming out of the institutions every year, perhaps it is not. The fact remains, however, that other Chinese cities have also begun to churn out vast numbers of willing employees. Will we take change by the throat, or let change take us by the throat instead?

Jellyfish populations have exploded around the world as global warming have affected ocean temperatures significantly. More injuries and deaths have been reported as a result of increased jellyfish activity along coastal areas. Generally acknowledged to be mindless creatures, these poisonous beings float in large clusters along tides and currents wrenching everything swimming in their way.

There can only be one solution: cook and eat them.