Not if one is an atheist, then the best that one can do is thank one's luck stars that one lives in a place where the only bombs one has to worry about are at the local theatre -- not even the local cars are bombs, let alone car bombs, for they are all so new: Mercedes is the black Ford of this town and BMW the workaday Holden. And where stoning is done around the trees, not on the screaming veiled heads of thirteen-year-olds. Yet citizens will become heated by local issues, as much as -- no, more than -- international affairs. So one sometimes has to remind the local residents' committees (on which one has served as Chairman for 8 years) that complaints, say, about the hedges being trimmed only each fortnight instead of weekly do not rise to the level of national emergencies (and for which perspective one runs the risk of being told one is an unfeeling, uncaring, insensitive do-nothing....)
So when we get a series -- now more than a week! -- of clear days, so rare in Hong Kong, we have to thank our gods, our lucky stars, that we live here in this peaceable, well-run town, where the greatest concerns are about hedge-row trimming scheduly, or housing prices, or slightly more seriously: how many seats in the new legislature we will be allowed to vote for directly in 2012. But not earthquakes, tsunamis, suicide bombers, stoning of teenage girls.... Those we don't need to worry about. Thank you, Oh stars!
That's the photo above, from our pool, Club Siena, about 100 yards from our front door. The building on the horizon just behind the palm on the left is the International Commerce Centre of 110 floors. And on the right on Hong Kong island is the 88-storey International Finance Centre (IFC2), with The Peak, a premier residential neighbourhood immediately to the right, just behind the lamp post.
And walking in the park to the pool, John and I come across yet more of Hong Kong's wonderful butterfly life. The Pak pai on the right is pursuing the lady on the left, doggedly; till we leave them in peace, assuming the male will eventually achieve congress. (otherwise, how come so many?). And we wonder, with such frantic beating of wings, will there be a tornado on the other side of the world as a result?
