The Correspondent, January - February 2006

CORRESPONDENT

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

THE OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB, HONG KONG

THE

ANALOGUE R.I.P. • London’s New Press Club • Cordingley on SARS and PR

THE 3

CORRESPONDENT contents

Cover Story – The Digital Metamorphosis

13

Now and Then – Central Looking West

19

Sailing

– The Princess and the Prawn – Captain’s Log: Dateline Philippines

16

Asian Tsunami – Sri Lanka One Year On

19

Watering Hole – London’s Frontline Club

22

Travel – Where Not To Go in Mexico

25

Books – Ken Ball’s Homage to the Female Form

28

Club Events – The Party of the Year

30

FCC People – Heard and Seen

33

FCC Merchandise

34

Professional Contacts

36

Out of Context – Peter Cordingley

Going digital on the cheap

Sri Lanka: the scars run deep

Crossing to the Dark Side

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

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Letters

House/Food and Beverage Committee Convener: Dave Garcia Membership Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama Constitution Committee Convener: Kevin Egan House/F&B Committee Convener: David Garcia Freedom of the Press Committee Convener: Francis Moriarty

THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS’ CLUB, HONG KONG 2 Lower Albert Road, Central, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2521 1511 Fax: (852) 2868 4092 E-mail: <fcc@fcchk.org> Website: <www.fcchk.org> President: Ilaria Maria Sala First Vice President: Jim Laurie Second Vice President: Kevin Egan Correspondent Member Governors Paul Bayfield, Keith Bradsher, Ernst Herb, Keri Ann Geiger, Ramon Pedrosa-Lopez, Chris Slaughter, Nick Stout, Hugo Restall Journalist Member Governor Mark Clifford, Francis Moriarty Associate Member Governors David Garcia, Steve Ushiyama, Andy Chworowsky, Ralph Ybema Hon. Secretary Ramon Pedrosa-Lopez Hon. Treasurer Steve Ushiyama Finance Committee Convener: Steve Ushiyama Professional Committee Conveners: Jim Laurie and Ernst Herb

Wall Committee Convener: Ilaria Maria Sala General Manager Gilbert Cheng

The Correspondent © The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong The Correspondent is published six times a year. Opinions expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Club.

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Contributions The Correspondent welcomes letters, articles, photographs and art-work (in soft-copy only, please, no faxes or printouts etc). We reserve the right to edit contributions chosen for publication. Anonymous letters will be rejected. For verification purposes only (and not for publication) please include your membership number (if applicable) and a daytime telephone number. Contributions can be emailed to fcc@hongkongnow.com.

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Material will not be returned so please make your own back-ups. FTP is also available and is encouraged for large files. Please e-mail us for the settings. The deadline for the next issue is Jan 10, 2006.

Cover picture: Patrick Dunne

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Cover Story

KUNG HEI FAT CHOI

and welcome to the Year of the Dog. According to the Chinese almanac, dogs are open, generous, honest and loyal, keen to offer kind words, support and advice. So in the spirit of the new Year of the Dog, Chris Dillon generously shares some insights into the rapidly developing open source software sector, developed by enthusiasts working gratis, which now in terms of function and reliability offer software applications rivalling expensive commercial programs. Patrick Dunne looks at the pros and cons of the various free e-mail systems now available and Pat Elliott Shircore offers some tips on how to get the best out of your digital camera.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

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Cover Story

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Open Source

Software Is it Ready for Your Desktop?

After years of work by (some) computer companies, legions of hobbyists and more than a few ideologues, open source software is coming of age. Today, its reliability and overall quality has improved to the point where open source software can replace many commercial applications. But is it a viable alternative for those of us who donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have (or want) a computer science degree?

Chris Dillon investigates.

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hat is Open Source Software? According to the Open Source Initiative (www. opensource.org), open source software

must be available without charge; the underlying source code for the program must be freely accessible; and the software licence must allow for derivative works and permit the software to be modified and redistributed. The software licence must not discriminate against a person, group of people or field of endeavour, and it must not restrict other software or be dependent on a technology or style of interface.

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Cover Story

A brief history The open source software movement began to take shape in the early 1990s, when Linus Torvalds, a Finnish university student, began developing a free variation of Unix, a computer operating language invented at Bell Laboratories. Torvald’s program, known as Linux, an alternative to systems such as Microsoft’s MS-DOS and Windows families, was noteworthy because it was not created by a centrally managed team but by a group of volunteers who collaborated to write, test and refine the software. New versions were released frequently and bugs were identified and fixed quickly.

Linux rapidly gained a following among hardcore programmers who valued its reliability and its tight, economical structure. The development of Linux closely tracked the Internet’s transition into a modern communications tool and today, Linux is a mainstream operating and server system.

A defining moment for the movement occurred on January 22, 1998, when Netscape announced it was giving away the source code for its Internet browser. While not a major news story at the time, the gift had important consequences because the Netscape code became the basis for Firefox (www.mozilla.org), an open source browser that is now challenging Microsoft’s dominance in this segment. Firefox recently achieved a 10 per cent market share – an impressive accomplishment when you consider that Internet Explorer is pre-installed on many new computers.

Crazy like a (Fire) Fox If you’ve been thinking of trying open source software, Firefox is a good place to start. It runs on the Windows, Macintosh and Linux

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operating systems, and will happily co-exist on your desktop with Internet Explorer, so you can compare the two programs without making a long-term commitment. And, like all open source software, it’s free.

One of Firefox’s strengths is that it is impervious to many of the virus-

A defining moment for the movement occurred on January 22, 1998, when Netscape announced it was giving away the source code for its Internet browser.

es, spy-ware programs and worms that have been written to exploit security flaws in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Firefox also includes a feature called tabbed browsing, which lets you open multiple websites with a single click, and has a built-in, customisable link to a range of popular search engines. It also includes a popup blocker that makes the browsing experience much more pleasant.

Firefox is being continually improved and several hundred addon programs, or extensions, are available to add new functions to the browser. For example, you can download extensions that display

multiple time zones or the weather forecast on your browser. You can also install an extension that automatically tracks UPS, FedEx and DHL shipments.

While all of these features are nice, what really makes Firefox attractive is the fact that it works well and is simple to use. In fact, the only drawback I’ve found is that there are a few web sites (typically operated by banks and by Microsoft) that are built to accommodate Internet Explorer exclusively. Otherwise, it’s been my default browser for the past year.

Creative tools To appreciate the breadth of open source software that is available, your first stop should be Sourceforge (www.sourceforge.net), which bills itself as the world’s largest open source development web site. With over 100,000 projects, Sourceforge is a clearinghouse for everything from basic applications to specialist programming tools.

One popular category is creative tools. Inkscape (www.inkscape.org), for example is a graphics editor that offers many of the functions available in programs such as Illustrator, Freehand and Draw. Gimp (www.gimp.org) is an image editor, similar to Photoshop. Both are sophisticated packages that rival commercial software costing thousands of dollars.

In addition to graphics, Sourceforge offers powerful audio software, including Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) a multi-platform software package that lets you record, edit, mix and modify digital sound samples.

Sourceforge also offers tools for using Really Simple Syndication (RSS).

With an RSS reader such as Owl (http:// sourceforge.net/projects/rssowl) you can subscribe to CNN, BBC and other news feeds, and to your favourite web

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

logs (blogs) and other content providers. Owl aggregates information from multiple sources in a single location, saving you time and helping you to stay on top of the news that is important to you.

You can also find a large selection of productivity tools on Sourceforge.

These include Password Safe (https:// sourceforge.net/projects/passwordsafe) an encrypted database for storing passwords; 7-Zip (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sevenzip/) a filearchiving program that supports many common file compression formats; and PopFile (http://popfile. sourceforge.net/) a trainable e-mail filter. Another favourite is Freemind (https://sourceforge.net/projects/freemind), a mind-mapping program that is useful for brainstorming and planning projects.

And that’s just the beginning.

Sourceforge also includes links to games, educational programs, business and scientific applications and more, with new projects added on a daily basis.

one of the company’s more profitable businesses.

Unsurprisingly an open source package, Open Office (www.openoffice.org), has appeared to fill the void.

Developed by Microsoft rival, Sun Microsystems, Open Office includes word processing, a powerpoint-type

The recently released Open Office 2.0 is a major improvement over earlier versions.

It has a look and feel that are very familiar, making it easy for long-time Microsoft Office users to switch.

Why do they do it?

Open source software is created for a variety of reasons. Some companies do it to undermine a competitor, or to showcase their programming skills. Individuals write open source software out of a desire to tinker and experiment, and from discontent with commercially available products. Hackers also enjoy the community and personal satisfaction that comes with collaborating to produce code that is elegant and well written.

Running for Office While Firefox and Linux challenge Microsoft’s browser and operating system franchise, the big prize lies in creating a competitor for Microsoft’s Office software suite, traditionally

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

presentation system, spreadsheets, drawing, mathematics and database programs.

The recently released Open Office 2.0 is a major improvement over earlier versions. It has a look and feel that are very familiar, making it easy for long-time Microsoft Office users to switch. I installed Open Office to write this article. The installation was straightforward, and I was able to use it without difficulty or major adjustments.

Open Office includes a number of thoughtful touches. For example, in

the latest version of Calc, Writer and Impress – Open Office’s spreadsheet, word processing and presentation programs, respectively – the save to PDF files function has been radically improved. Calc also includes a decent spell checker, a helpful addition for those of us who use spreadsheets for mailing lists and other text applications. Writer, however, lacks MS Word’s grammar checker, and its mail-merge capabilities are not as easy to use as those of its MS Office equivalent.

The programmers behind Open Office have also addressed compatibility, one of the issues that prevents many people from switching.

In addition to allowing you to open and modify documents created with Microsoft software, Open Office lets you save documents in Microsoft formats, as well as Open Office’s native formats.

User support – an area that has long been a source of frustration with commercial software – is available through FAQ (Frequently Asked Question) lists, user forums and a growing number of books. And while Open Office’s primary language is English, both the software and supporting documents are available in a number of other languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese.

So is open source software ready for your desktop? As someone with an interest in technology but without a lot of time to spend tinkering, I found these packages surprisingly easy to install and use. And while I am not sure how appropriate they would be for a large organisation, for my small business and home use, the open source software worked very well. And the price cannot be beat.

Chris Dillon (www.dilloncommunications.com) is the principal of Dillon Communications Ltd, and is a recent convert to the open source movement.

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Cover Story

E-Mail, Free-Mail

is it worth it?

It’s been eight months since Patrick Dunne wrangled a Google e-mail account from a friend and cut his traditional e-mail service. How has it withstood the test of time?

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ell, I’m still using Gmail as my main e-mail account but there have been days when I wished it wasn’t free so I could call customer service and vent my frustrations. Moving from a traditional, application-based e-mail account such as Microsoft’s Outlook to a webmail service like Google was a big step for me. Most of my work as a magazine designer is done through e-mail, so trusting a free webmail service with my livelihood took a serious leap of faith.

Free webmail has been kicking around nearly as long as the Internet itself. Hotmail – the granddaddy of the services – and Yahoo! are the most widely used variations on the theme. But Google’s Gmail shook up the market last year by offering one gigabyte of storage, an amount that generated serious buzz on the Internet and caught the competition by surprise.

Yahoo! responded by matching their rival’s bet with their own gigabyte of space. But when Google raised their storage to two gigabytes, Yahoo! folded and pulled out of the space race, saying one gig was enough and anything more was just plain silly.

Google has since adopted an everincreasing storage scheme that is now approaching 2.7 gigabytes per user. Not bad considering some webmail accounts offer only two or three megabytes of storage.

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AIM Mail uses a more conventional mailbox system (above) compared with Gmail’s one giant inbox system that uses labels to organize messages into different categories.

Who’s winning the space race Provider

Free Storage (MB)

Maximum file size (MB)

Internet address

Google

2500+

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www.gmail.com

Gawab

2048

50

www.gawab.com

AIM

2000

16

www.aim.com

Yahoo!

1000

10

www.yahoo.com

Hotmail

25-250

10

www.hotmail.com

Mail.com

<30

<4

www.mail.com

Fastmail

10

10

www.fastmail.fm

Lycos

5

5

www.lycos.com

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Gmail’s interface has an important difference from the other services: it didn’t adopt the commonly used mailbox method of sorting messages and went with one giant inbox.

‘Labels’ can be applied according to parameters such as the sender, subject line and message text, but messages are still lumped into one central storage bin.

Let’s be honest though, massive storage is great but I don’t think I would suffer much if a server in middle America crashed tomorrow and I lost the 1.2 gigabytes of long forgotten e-mail I refuse to delete. So why do I stick with Gmail?

On the plus side, it’s normally fast and dependable and it allows me to transfer files as large as 10 MB. Spam is effectively filtered out and messages are automatically scanned for viruses. I can also use it to pick up e-mail from pop accounts and configure it to display a different originating address.

But then there’s that little problem of robots reading your e-mail. Google isn’t providing Gmail as a community service. All e-mail is scanned and text advertisements that allegedly match the context of your message are placed on the right margin.

It’s a bit creepy in a Big Brother sort of way but hardly distracting. In fact, if I had a choice between Gmail’s text ads and the standard banner ads on most other services, I would prefer Google’s solution.

Gmail’s interface has an important difference the other services: it didn’t adopt the commonly used mailbox method of sorting messages and went with one giant inbox.

“Labels” can be applied according to parameters such as the sender, subject line and message text, but messages are still lumped into

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

one central storage bin. Often the best way to find a message is with Google’s unrivalled search capabilities. It works, but not as well as the more common, hands-on mailbox system.

One feature I find helpful yet annoying is Gmail’s trick of collecting related messages in one long thread.

It’s great until too many messages force the thread to collapse so that subject lines aren’t visible.

But here’s the bottom line: as much as I like Gmail’s quirky, minimalist idiosyncrasies, I still keep a Yahoo! account for when Gmail goes offline, as it occasionally does. I don’t know if Yahoo! is more dependable; I would probably keep Gmail as a backup if I made Yahoo! my main service.

And recently, I signed up for another free account at an Egyptian company called Gawab.com. It also offers two gigabytes of storage and allows users to send huge 50MB files.

A great feature if there’s someone out there who can receive files this size.

If anyone would like to try Gmail, send me an e-mail at patrick. dunne@gmail.com. Google won’t let you sign up directly, you have to be invited by another user. A cutting edge marketing technique that may be backfiring because Yahoo! seems to be blocking Gmail invitations sent to their subscribers.

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Cover Story

Farewell

My Ageing Pentax

The death-knell for the analogue camera has sounded, says Pat Elliot Shircore. Now it’s time to get to grips with coaxing the most out of your digital device.

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year ago Kodak announced the discontinuation of its black and white printing paper then, omigod, Nikon came out in January saying no more development of film cameras, digital only, thank you very much. Do I look at my two ancient Pentax SLRs sitting in a dark and seldom-opened draw with love and nostalgia? I certainly do. Do I ever use them? No. Will I ever? Will I ever!

So it’s official; the visual digital age is here whether we like it or not. Luckily, most of us do. The sheer physical convenience of the tiny electronic brick, and the freedom from film costs combined with immediate results, have made these cameras such an indispensable tool that even professional photographers carry at least one amid the paraphernalia.

Major world disasters have made us all aware of the important role played by casual digital snaps in locating and reuniting people torn asunder by catastrophe, and in the ghastly process of forensic identification. Traditional cameras, retrieved later, often carry ruined film, while digital ones may still record the last moments of

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the dead or missing. Survivors have found snaps that carried precious records of their belongings, including travel documents and passports, or serial-numbered valuables. Even pictures of luggage can provide evidence for insurance claims.

This smart box of tricks turns out to be extremely versatile, not least as a portable record-taker. Apart from

the insurance aspect, applications are growing at a rapid pace. Many companies now send instant photos to back up manuals, designs and specs, or check on production accuracy. “Should it be like this?” “No, like this.” Shipping companies visually itemise inventories, and security organisations use the technology for instant access verification. If you’ve been to Hong Kong Immigration for your smart ID card you’ll see it at work – out with the dingy queues and death-mask photos and in with the personal service, the hi-tech look, the “Do you like your photo? I can easily take another…”. Where am I, a beauty salon?

All these things can be applied to your own situation.

It’s a myth that you should wait to buy the highest megapixel camera you can afford. I did, but what I had completely misunderstood was how integrated my digital camera would become in my daily life for purposes other than pure photography.

The emergency services use digital cameras for data exchange, so taking my cue from them I showed my vet a photo of my wounded beagle, who was pronounced nearly healed. If you’re worried

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

about that swelling or rash, but don’t want to move the patient, show the vet or doctor a photo, it may save a journey. Or use it for those ailments that, without fail, subside the minute you walk into the doctor’s surgery.

I recently moved house and learned a few lessons. Snap the new place – you’ll be amazed what you don’t remember, like placement of plugs and pipes. Snap the old place – it’s a detailed reminder of how you squeezed everything in before. Make a visual inventory of anything you really care about so you can hit careless removal men over the head with the pictures later.

In fact every time you’re dealing anything of importance take pictures, because storage on a digital camera is negligible. Keep what you need and throw the rest away.

You might think that the advent of digital cameras means there are no bad photographs anymore, because the lousy ones get erased. Well, not quite, because the digital camera isn’t just about good photography. For taking records, all you want is information, sometimes content wins over quality. Added to which, results from your camera provide a lot of fun.

There’s a bunch of ways to use your best photos. Just remember that printing at home is not cheap – printers are, but paper and ink are expensive. It’s often cost-effective to use a service bureau. Try Mirama or Fingerprint in Central, or Fotomax everywhere. In general, the further from Central you are, the cheaper. And many provide ways of individualising your environment, which make life less dull and more organised.

Get up close and personal: prepare something unique for friends’ special occasions, print your own coffee mug, T-shirt or handbag, make custom invitations, print calendars incorporating your pets, organise a digital travelogue, start a blog diary, crack open the art supplies – recently I saw a Christmas tree with home-made decorations added each year, incorporating photos of the whole family spanning

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These four image show the significant improvement you can achieve by correctly setting the white and black points of each image. a decade; a family tree. For work purposes a custom CV cover, or any presentation report material, without a Micro-boring-soft template, catches the eye. If you exchange work on CD, give it a cover.

Since your camera makes small movies too, all your data can be on show, so use one of the web-based photo organiser sites to see your results properly laid out. Often you’ll change your mind about a shot when viewed in the right setting, and the golden rule is “if in doubt, chuck it out”. Edit ruthlessly. There are many

websites to help you get started and a wealth of resources on the net.

Flickr.com will store photos for you, and make screensavers as well. Picasa for Windows provides an additional presentation CD gift, complete with custom cover. For the Mac, iPhotos stores, organises and – the big new thing – photocasts pictures which lets users share photos easily.

The communication era has arrived, especially with the advent of camera-equipped mobile phones.

Handy for language barriers, fill it with pictures of taxis, buses, toilets,

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Cover Story

I recently moved house and learned a few lessons. Snap the new place – you’ll be amazed what you don’t remember, like placement of plugs and pipes. Snap the old place – it’s a detailed reminder of how you squeezed everything in before.

McDonalds, whatever you may need.

And maps, bus routes, train or ferry schedules. Or memory aids, like your passport number.

If you’re not confident about your ability to get the best from your camera there are some things that will really make a difference.

Buy enough memory so you can click now prune later, read the manual (boring but essential), then set up your system – camera or phone, computer and printer – to understand each other.

Make sure the printer profiles match.

Calibrate your monitor, especially

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if you think the pictures on your camera don’t match the computer screen version. It’s probably not your picturetaking, more likely it’s just bad but correctible screen colour interpretation.

Then set your image-editing software for the new monitor profile. Calibration is the subject of an article in itself but to get started check out http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/colorcalibration/a/ cal_monitor.htm for some useful tips.

Try not to use flash, set for a high ISO number instead. Don’t use digital zoom, it just magnifies. Optical zoom adds pixels, the more the better,

even for the web; information can be downsampled later.

Even if your camera is el cheapo or old, you may find that setting the white and black point makes a huge difference. Your manual will guide you through it, but it consists of showing your camera lens something you consider to be white and telling it, “see, that’s what white is!” and then doing the same for black. This single adjustment can bring out a much wider variety of greys which will give richer colour tones and better lighting. This same adjustment can also be performed by your photo-editing program, so if you or your camera didn’t get it right, the photo-edit should sort it out later. Establishing the colour endpoints will improve almost anything provided the information is there in the first place.

And that’s what the digital camera is all about. Good photography, good information and good fun.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Photography

Then

Now

IN 1978, Bob Davis was commissioned to shoot a series of black and white photographs of Central for the Hongkong Land Annual Report.

The photo at the top of the page was chosen for the cover spread. The lower picture, shot

by Bob in January 2006 from the same position, shows how Central has changed in the intervening period.

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Sailing

The Princess and the Prawn Despite a series of nightly parties and/or a dubious prawn or two, a predominantly FCC team managed to carry off a prize in the King’s Cup regatta in Phuket, reports Philip Bowring.

H

elmed by an ex-president into the final race on the Saturday exposed as a hoax intended to underPhilip Bowring, a crew that it was a tight contest between three mine the sterling reputation of the included FCC members Andy boats for second, third and fourth sailor in question.

Chworowsky, Christopher Slaugh- overall. The FCC team looked well In addition to the FCC members, ter, Howard Winn and Mike Burrell placed for second when disaster Princess Sharda’s crew included expropelled the chartered boat Princess struck – the fitting holding the spin- Hong Kong sailor Kim Gudgin, UKSharda into third place in the Sunsail naker pole to the mast broke at a based Jeremy and Anne Vines, AmanOne Design category. This was the critical moment. All seemed lost until, da Green from Hong Kong and Tom only design class – in which boats thanks to remarkable efforts by the Waller’s wife, Oscar. The team is keen compete directly against each other foredeck team of Andy and Bangkok- to return to Phuket next year and take rather than in a handicapping system based Tom Waller, the pole was jury- Princess Sharda to first place – and to – in the annual regatta, inaugurated rigged back into position and the boat beat a German team that has won the in 1987 to celebrate the 60th birthday was able to hang on to third place in One Design class two years in sucof the King of Thailand, and held each the race and thus finish third in the cession.

December. series.

Meanwhile, two other FCC The team got off to a disastrous That earned a podium place and members also participated in the start in the five-race King’s Cup. a prize from the King’s Representa- race, with Adrian Bell and John In the first race they were in sec- tive – followed by a night of revelry of Marshall sailing on the good boat ond place when the wind died and, which there is now thankfully little Rhythm Stick. They placed fourth after a two-hour drifting match, fin- record, although an internet-based overall in the IRC 1 division in an ished last. But in the next day’s race campaign (with its origins in Scotland, equally colourful outing, although they recovered and were in the lead of all places) alleging the involvement reports of “owner’s-wife-kicking” are from start to finish, though it was a of a donkey has subsequently been strenuously denied. nervous finish as the wind PHOTOGRAPH: GUY NOWELL died again.

It should have been a repeat performance the following day, with the FCC team well in the lead from the starting gun, but three critical mistakes cost Princess Sharda a place, and the poor girl wallowed across the finish line an embarrassed fourth. Crewmembers blamed the day’s lacklustre performance on the copious quantities of free (yes, FREE) Beer Chang provided by organisers the night before, although Howard Winn spent much of the day muttering darkly about a dubious prawn.

In the next race, Princess L-R: Philip Bowring (skipper), Kim Gudgin, Anne Vines, Jeremy Vines, Oscar Waller, Howard Winn, Sharda took third, so going Tom Waller, Andy Chworowsky and Chris Slaughter.

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

CAPTAIN’S LOG:

The South China Sea

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Subic Bay

SOUTH

Manila

Puerto Galera

CHINA

Pandan Island

SEA

P HILIPP H IL I P P INES IN E S

a

Next: Kota Kinabalu

la

w

a

n

MANILA

P

JANUARY 2006: We are now moored just off Pandan Island – a private resort about 50 miles down the west coast of Mindoro in the Philippines.

Had a pretty good run down from Hong Kong to Subic, although we nearly ran into a tropical storm. Our Orange satellite phone wasn’t working at all for the entire trip (thanks, Li Ka-shing!) so we were without up-to-date weather info till we got close enough to the coast to pick up a mobile phone signal.

Saw quite a bit of sea life, including one whale about 30 yards from the boat, plenty of flying fish and a pod of about a dozen dolphins that surfed ahead of our bow wave for about 20 minutes as we were heading down the Luzon coast.

Where we’re at now is beautiful and we’ve been here for a few days relaxing and doing a little snorkelling and diving. The place is owned by a Frenchman who used to work for the railways but decided owning a little tropical island paradise was a better bet. Can’t say that I blame him.

We wound up spending about six weeks in Puerta Galera and were glad

From: Hong Kong

o or nd Mi

Former Reuters journalist Paul Caine dumped his job last year in order to take off into the wild blue yonder.

Paul and his wife Anna aim to sail from Hong Kong to the Mediterranean, via coastal Africa and South America, aboard their yacht, Bogart.

They have competed the first leg of their ocean-journey across the South China Sea to the Philippines.

to leave when we did, although we were very impressed with the yacht club, which was exceptionally friendly. However, the weather was pretty average for much of the time we were there, with plenty of rain, so we hardly sailed the boat. We did however take part in a couple of pursuit races over the Christmas holidays, coming third overall out of six boats, which meant we won a bottle of Tanduay. Just what we needed!

There are quite a few expats there, some of whom seem to have lost the plot entirely, and it wasn’t unusual to see guys having their first beer at eight in the morning. We decided it was definitely time to leave after one happily beer-soaked regular, a Danish

AREA OF DETAIL

guy, fell off his dinghy and drowned just after Christmas and then shortly thereafter a Kiwi managed to blow the tips of his fingers off lighting fireworks whilst plastered.

Anna did some diving, but wasn’t too impressed with the dive outfit she was with or the town of Sebang where most of the dive operations are based. Seems the place has really gone downhill over the last few years, and is now overrun with strip joints and girlie bars catering to sex tourists – not really our scene.

We plan on heading south to Busuanga and then on down the west coast of Palawan, ending up in Kota Kinabalu in a month or so.

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Region

PHOTOS: KEVIN SINCLAIR

Fishermen on a beach near Galle haul up their net.

The Scars Run Deep 16

At 9.26 am on Boxing Day, 2005, Kevin Sinclair observed a minute of silence as he stood on a Sri Lankan beach in remembrance of those who died a year earlier in the Asian tsunami. In the following days he saw for himself how recovery in the southern region of the island near Galle has been a slow and painful process.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Muharam Peirera with the shattered door that saved her life.

T

Muharam Peirera’s unique monument is one of many memorials guest house on the beach at Unawatuna, near Galle. Mounted girding the scenic coast of the glorious Indian Ocean island. There’s no on the whitewashed wall is a fragment of fractured door. escaping them. Shattered houses The proprietor of the 10-room establishment, stand empty, wooden shacks and tents are home for Muharam Peirera, raises a wan smile as she explains tens of thousands. There are ominous gaps in the lines its significance. When the tsunami smashed through of restaurants and family-run guest houses that line her beachside hotel-restaurant on Boxing Day, 2004, popular beaches; many have not been rebuilt. Large the water hurled her like a cannonball down the lobby. hotels with gaping vacant windows stand barred and In the churning chaos of crashing vehicles, collapsing empty. Shrines along the 120 km seaside road between houses and roaring water, she clutched hold of a length Colombo and the southern port of Galle recall some of wood. Grasping it, she was whirl-pooled, dumped far of the 35,500 dead. There’s no danger of forgetting the inland along with piles of debris and then dragged back sunny morning when death came calling. to sea as the waters receded.

For me, the most forlorn sight were the empty founBut she survived, clinging to the narrow slab of wood. “It dations. There are hundreds of them. These rectangular saved my life,” explains the softly-spoken hotelier. That’s pads of concrete were the sites of homes, shops or small why it stands, with an explanatory plaque, in her lobby. businesses. Near the popular beach resort of Hikkaduwa,

here’s a strange piece of décor in the lobby of the Sun’n Sea

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

17

Region

AFP

Unawatuna Beach, near Galle. A survivor places an earthenware lamp into the ocean.

my wife Kit and I stopped the car and wandered through what had once been a village. Under the tall, slender coconut palms, there were dozens of empty foundations.

I imagined the women and children inside these homes a couple of hundred metres from the Indian Ocean as the waters withdrew from the shores and then came surging back with the force of a million bulldozers. Sturdy brick houses were simply demolished as though hit with a giant wrecker’s ball. The people inside stood little chance.

There is now mounting anger over inept official relief efforts.

In her lobby, Muharam Peirera says government has done nothing for small business. It’s a claim that echoes angrily throughout the travel industry.

The vital small tourism businesses, the family restaurants and guest houses got no official aid; hotel guest figures were about half in December 2005 what they were in 2004.

“We’re very angry,” said Kunara Panditha who runs the Royal Beach seaside bistro in the resort of Hikkaduwa. Like many small businessmen he’s gone deep into debt to rebuild and get his restaurant running again. Another 50 km down the coast at Weligama, the owner of the Nep-

18

tune Resort, Yamuna Stein, shrugs and sighs. She and her German husband opened their neat 12-room property in November 2004. A month later, it was destroyed; two British tourists died. It took the Steins 11 months and expensive bank financing to re-open. When they did so, there were few tourists.

One glorious tropical sunset outside Gallle, we watched fishermen hauling a deep net on to the beach.

The kilometre-long net is taken out deep into the bay by a paddled dugout and then hauled laboriously ashore by 30 men toiling in unison. The catch seems pitifully small for the enormous effort.

I get chatting to one of the fishermen. Yes, he says quietly, the tsunami affected him. He lost his wife, two sons, a daughter and his boat. He speaks softly, manages a weak smile.

I turn away in tears.

We walk past a pathetic collection of tents. They have been erected on concrete foundations where homes once stood. Dazzling smiles of welcome come from children; despite disaster and suffering, no matter the grim economic outlook and the lack of jobs, the Sri Lankan politeness remains a constant.

Everybody has a story. We go to the tourism information centre,

bereft of brochures and furniture.

Tourist guide V.R. Chandralal tells me it once had a large screen on which he played films of local attractions. The centre had nine terminals hooked up, providing visitors with information on local tours and accommodation. That all disappeared in the great wave.

A few yards away is Galle’s main bus terminal. The toll here was terrible. The incoming wall of water was diverted by the massive walls of the 400-year-old Dutch fort, compressed by a headland and funnelled towards the square. It hit like a mighty hammer, spinning the packed buses like dice, discarding them up to two km inland.

Passengers were battered to death; at least 500 died.

Two km away is the Sanbhodi Home. It is painted a brilliant yellow.

Psychologists advised on the bright tone; it’s meant to cheer up the mentally and physically disabled residents.

Of 102 inhabitants, 46 died. Therapists take residents for excursions to the nearby beach hoping that games next to the sea will help relieve the terror instilled by the great wave.

It seems to be working. As we leave, two mentally retarded boys who lost their friends in the tsunami farewell us with a wave and smile.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Watering Hole

PHOTOS: THE FRONTLINE CLUB

A London

Home away from Home

E

ver since I first walked into the FCC a decade or so ago I’ve been wondering why London didn’t have such a club, writes Tim Heald. In the old days when Fleet Street was still in Fleet Street, it wasn’t necessary. The whole place was one enormous FCC. Every paper had its own pub and there were communal watering holes such as El Vino and the Cheshire Cheese. There was even a dedicated Press Club though I remember it only as a place of stale food and memories, remarkable only for extraordinary lunches where Derek Marks, then editor of the Daily Express, would follow up his El Vino champagne aperitifs with a main course of kippers and Scotch.

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

The club is the brainchild of award-winning cameraman, Vaughan Smith – a career army officer, sometime captain of the British Army rifle team, who ended up after eight years service as a captain in the Grenadier Guards.

Come the Murdoch-inspired diaspora and that rackety conviviality all but vanished into a sanitised world of desk-bound mineral water. High time too, thought sensible people though some of us who guiltily enjoyed that raffish era regretted the loss of long lunches and tall stories.

I joined the Groucho in Soho — a reward for bringing the great Denis Compton to the club’s annual cricket dinner — but though I love the Groucho and you do occasionally bump into the odd hack there, it isn’t really a press club. After a memorial service at St. Bride’s there is a nostalgic get-together in El Vino but most of the time the old wine bar has become as ghostly as the Press Club used to be.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

London journalists simply don’t seem to hang out together any longer.

Now, at last however, I detect a glimmer of hope and familiarity in a converted warehouse just round the corner from Paddington Station.

The Frontline Club is miles, one has to admit, from any newspaper office or broadcasting station but if you’re coming into town from the airport it’s just a short walk from the end of the Heathrow Express line. It’s a godsend for people like me who live near the other end of Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s Great Western Railway.

Last July, for instance, I found myself hurtling towards London in an almost empty train, the day the bombs exploded. Almost the only other

inhabitants of my coach were my wife, Penny Byrne, whom older members will remember from her long association with the FCC, and, coincidentally, the veteran foreign correspondent Trevor Fishlock and his wife, also called Penny. The police at Reading had warned there would be no public transport in London but it didn’t matter. The Frontline was a pedestrianaccessible haven even though it was only a few hundred yards from the carnage of Edgware Road and almost opposite the hospital where many of the victims were taken. Sitting in the club and hearing the wail of ambulances and police cars plus the clatter of helicopters overhead, it really did feel like the front line.

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Watering Hole

The club is the brainchild of awardwinning cameraman, Vaughan Smith.

Vaughan was a career army officer, sometime captain of the British Army rifle team, who ended up after eight years service as a captain in the Grenadier Guards. In 1989, together with three colleagues, he set up an independent TV news-gathering agency called Frontline. In its short life Frontline pulled off an extraordinary number of daring coups. Not the least was Vaughan’s own unauthorised footage of the first Gulf War in 1991.

To get this he put on his old army uniform, forged an ID card at the British Embassy tennis club in Dhahran, and bluffed his way to the front. He commandeered a British Army Land Rover, took some Iraqi prisoners and told American soldiers how to do their job. Later in the Balkans he managed a fleet of armoured vehicles and developed unprecedented links with the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Actions such as this came at a price. In 13 years of running the Frontline agency, Vaughan lost eight friends and colleagues including two of his original partners; one murdered in northern Iraq and the other gunned down outside the Ostankino TV station in Moscow.

The Frontline Club is dedicated to their memory and has been going for two years now. On the ground floor there is a restaurant open to the public, which helps subsidise the club itself. Members enjoy discounts there and it’s a suave oasis in an area otherwise dominated by mildly grotty Italian and Indian restaurants and eccentric Middle Eastern cafés.

The club itself has two very reasonably priced attic bedrooms and has negotiated some great discounts with neighbouring hotels. One level down on the second floor is a wellequipped meeting room where a seriously ambitious programme of talks and screenings by journalists from around the world is held. On the first floor beats the heart of the club; a bar area with scattered tables, sofas and chairs. It’s unpretentious, comfortable

20

The club itself has two very reasonably priced attic bedrooms and has negotiated some great discounts with neighbouring hotels. and relaxed. A shorter and cheaper version of the restaurant menu is available.

There is a wireless internet connection that works throughout the premises. The service is friendly, members’ books line the shelves, tribute photographs of journalists killed on duty hang on the walls, but, best of all, members talk to each other.

The other day I got a round-robin from Vaughan Smith and it was slightly alarming. He said that the club had done really well in its first two years but that “while interest in the Club grows apace, the membership is still too small to ensure Frontline’s viability”. More members are needed. “Our ability to run Frontline effectively – an ambitious 2006 Forum programme in particular

USEFUL LINKS www.the frontlineclub.com www.timheald.com

– may just depend on it.”

In recent months the Forum has put on discussions about the reporting of Burma, the Bush plot to bomb Al-Jazeera (with the Arab channel’s Director-General) and an evening with Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the British Liberal Democrats, who until January 2006 was the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. The club is planning a session on “the Cult of the Suicide Bomber” and another to mark the issue of the Committee to Protect Journalists’ annual report, Vaughan said. He added a PS: “We now serve Sunday roast in the restaurant.”

I make no apology for this enthusiasm. I’m not saying it’s perfect but, for anyone in love with real journalism, the Frontline is the proverbial good deed in a naughty world. It’s a natural London haven for the archetypal FCC member. Overseas membership is somewhere around £100.

See you there.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Travel

Bordering on Ken Jackson takes a taxi “tour” in the Mexican borderlands ILLUSTRATION BY PAT ELLIOTT SHIRCORE

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

C

iudad Acuña is a small Mexican border town near Del Rio, Texas. Day-tripping Americans come for shopping, cheap booze and a shot at depravity in the compact tourist zone

near the international bridge. Occasionally, a misguided traveller will think Acuña offers more than these predictable attractions and ask a taxi driver to show him the “Real Mexico”.

I was misguided when I ran into Diego. He was a short, strong-looking

Sumbitch still owe me 150 bucks for that TV I got him.”

Mexican with a thick brown mous-

“How did you ‘get’ him a TV,

tache and about three days of stubble.

Diego?” I asked. “You sure you’re a

I knew he was a taxi driver because

taxi driver?”

he wore a DON’T MESS WITH TEXAS

“That Sumbitch still owe me 150

baseball cap. (Why else would he pre-

bucks, Amigo, what else you need to

tend he liked Texans?)

know?”

We agreed on a US$20 tour of

A seriously upset Mexican taxi driv-

“everything to see in Acuña” and he

er who can’t see through his windshield

pointed to a 1960-something Chevrolet

is a tricky proposition, so two blocks up

that he swore was a taxi. The car was

the road, when Diego suggested we stop

as scuffed and dirty as Diego’s boots.

for a beer, I agreed. Inside an unpainted

“Hey, Diego, when’s the last time you washed this thing?”

concrete-block box decorated with pictures of naked women on last year’s cal-

“Hey, Amigo, when’s the last time

endars and illuminated only by what-

you try to keep a car clean in Ciudad

ever light the door let in, Diego ordered

Acuña?”

two Tecate Beers. After a few seconds

“Why don’t you replace that busted windshield, then?”

silence, I knew it was my round.

Diego relaxed a little and said:

“If I replace the window every time

“Last night, you know, my wife, she

some rock comes through it, I’m even

really piss me off. So I go out to drink

more poor, my friend.”

beer and shoot pool. I drink beer all

All this made sense, so I got in and

night. This morning I sleep an hour

we bounced up the road for nearly a

in the taxi. But now I feel tenso. You

hundred yards before he stopped at

know…um…shaky.”

an open-air foundry and, without so

Then he swallowed half his Tecate

much as a “wait here a second,” or an

poured the rest in a plastic cup and

“I’ll be right back”, he got out of the

said, “Let’s go. I show you some more

car. A welder shut off his torch and

things.” After a welding shop and a

he and Diego sat down on a wooden

bar, what else could Diego show me?

bench to smoke cigarettes.

After two or three cigarettes, Diego got back in the car and said: “That

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

A seriously upset Mexican taxi driver who can’t see through his windshield is a tricky proposition, so two blocks up the road, when Diego suggested we stop for a beer, I agreed.

In three minutes I knew. “We got some big factories in Acuña. Wanna see?”

23

Travel

The “wanna see?” was clearly rhetorical because before I could ask “why would I want to see a factory?” we were looking through a chain-link fence at a 200-foot long windowless metal building and a couple of snarling, scabby dogs that hoped we might be lunch.

“There!” Diego said. “Acuña got lots of big factories. I show you another one.”

place new” was another lightless, concrete Tecate dispensary. But the new place did feature a jukebox repairman testing whether he could play mariachi music loud enough to shatter bricks. Otherwise, though, everything about the new place, right down to the “gringo pays” rule, was just like the old places.

Before we settled into the music, Diego shouted something at me.

tender grabbed a nightstick and came over the bar.

Right then it was time for Diego to get the Gringo-Who-Hasn’t-Paid-MeYet out of the Ladies Bar and into the taxi. A few minutes later we were standing on the dusty street where fate first brought Diego and me together.

“You like my tour of Acuña?” he asked.

“It was special,” I said. “Here’s your

Several hundred pesos later he suddenly remembered he had a taxi passenger somewhere in the bar and challenged me to a game.

Before we found the next big factory, though, Diego started feeling a little tenso again, and he stopped at another concrete-block building. It was bigger than the first one and it had electric lights and this year’s naked-women calendars. It also had pool tables, and Diego confessed that in this upscale place he had found refuge from his wife.

Several guys were shooting EightBall for a lot more than fun and companionship. As Diego handed me a beer and waited for me to pay, he started shouting encouragement: “Fifty pesos you miss, you Sumbitch!”

Several hundred pesos later he suddenly remembered he had a taxi passenger somewhere in the bar and challenged me to a game. “You break, Amigo.” I scratched on the break.

Diego won. I bought two more beers and we resumed the tour.

Diego was now much less tenso than when we’d left the welching welder. But even though he was feeling better, I was starting to have bigger concerns than just a smashed-in, mud-streaked windshield when he said: “I think you don’t like factories, Amigo. Let’s go someplace new.”

I wasn’t surprised when “some-

24

There was no chance I could hear him, but when he picked up two plastic cups, I knew we were leaving.

About 90 seconds later, Diego fishtailed the Chevy to a stop in a cloud of dusty gravel, downed his beer in one noisy gulp and said: “You’ll like this place. It’s a Ladies Bar.” The Ladies Bar was the first place we’d been that looked really threatening. The bartender might have been a lady, but you’d have needed a DNA test to be sure. Six guys were arguing and pushing each other to emphasise points of major disagreement.

I was beginning to wonder what attraction this place could hold even for Diego when a female who definitely did not need DNA verification appeared at the side door, stepped over a chicken and walked into the bar. She put her arm around Diego.

He kissed her and ordered three Tecates on the usual payment plan.

He took the girl into a corner and left me alone with the angry men.

Diego didn’t put his beer in a cup.

In fact he was starting to look pretty comfortable when one of the debaters got shoved hard to the floor and was reaching into his pocket as the bar-

money. I think I’ll walk back to Del Rio.” “Oh no, Amigo. This is only twenty dollars. The price is twenty dollars AN HOUR! We been gone more than two hours. You owe me fifty dollars.”

“Dammit, Diego,” I said, “we spent nearly two hours in bars and I bought all the beers. You only showed me a factory fence and a welding shop.

And I just about got killed at that last place you took me. I know there’s more to see here than that.”

Diego looked pensive for a moment and then he said, “Sí, comprendo. Why you don’t tell me you want to see a sex show? Let’s get some tequila. We go right now!”

“Diego, I’ll give you twenty-five dollars NOT to go to a sex show right now,” I said handing him the money.

He took it and said, “Thanks Amigo.

Yeah, you right. Too early. We go tomorrow night.”

Leaving Diego to look for his next victim, I ducked into Pancho’s Regular Tourist Bar to work out my own case of tenso. An elderly American retiree was telling the bartender he was in Mexico “just killing time waiting to die”.

“If he gets tired of waiting,” I thought, “I’ve got just the man for him.”

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Books

Impression of the Female Form Former FCC Vice President Ken Ball has published another fine collection of “Impressions” , reports Saul Lockhart.

K

en Ball decided that in his second tome, he would study the female form. After all, he said over a glass of Cab Sav at his exhibition of photos published in the book in Sydney’s Blender Gallery, why should the nude be restricted to only painters and sculptors? Indeed.

The late Jack Spackman, in what must have been one of his last e-mails, agreed: “I must say I like the idea of your latest subject even better than those sunshine-

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

on-leaves offerings.” He was referring to Ken’s first book in the series, Impressions of Nature.

The 168 photos were shot in Australia and New Zealand. The book is offered in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. Archival prints of most images are available for sale.

The third volume in this Impressions’ trilogy, Impressions in Passing, is due out in mid-2006.

For further information: Ken Ball P.O. Box 8274 Bathurst, NSW 2795 Australia kenjball@hotmail.com PB. 84 pages US$35/A$40/£20

25

MAN Hong Kong Internatio John Banville

Eric Stone

HONG KONG Monday, 13 March

HONG KONG Friday, 10 March 12:30pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$90 Event code: 10A Literary Lunch: Hong Kong Makes its Mark -- Former LegCo member Libby Wong, former regional journalist Eric Stone and former newscaster Peter Maize, talk about their new novels, all inspired by living and working in Hong Kong and the region.

From Tiananmen to the Handover and Russian prostitution and organised crime in Macau -- these authors share the stories of our city. Ticket includes a light lunch served from 12:30-1:00pm.

5:30pm | Hong Kong University, Rayson Huang Theatre | free Event code: 13C The Man Booker Prize Distinguished Lecture: Fiction and the Dream -- His profoundly moving, beautifully crafted prose has led to Banville being heralded as ‘a master at the top of his game’ and ‘one of the great fictional stylists of our time’. Hear John Banville, winner of the 2005 Man Booker Prize for his novel The Sea, as he shares his reflections on the power and unique language of fiction. There will be a book-signing and reception following the lecture.

Tuesday, 14 March 12:30pm | The Hong Kong Club | HK$385 event code: 14C Literary Lunch with John Banville (Friends of the Festival exclusive event) -- An intimate lunch and readings with 2005 Man Booker Prize winner, John Banville. Ticket includes a buffet lunch.

6:30pm | The China Club | HK$280 Event code: 14E Man Investments The Art and Science of Haunting Literature -- John Banville, who has just scooped the Man Booker Prize, is one of the most talked about names in writing today. The writer of serious, haunting compositions, often about history and/ or scientists, talks about his unique contribution to modern literature.

In conversation with top Canadian novelist Charles Foran. This event includes a champagne reception and a signed copy of The Sea, available on the night.

Reception starts at 6:30pm; talk at 7pm.

SHANGHAI Thursday, 16 March 10:00am | Fu Dan University Distinguished lecture at Fu Dan University, organized by The Irish Consulate General 5:00pm | M on the Bund Book talk

Saturday, 11 March 3:30pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 Event code: 11I The Next “Da Vinci Code” -- The incredible success of The Da Vinci Code showed that popular thrillers are still the killer megagenre. How do you write a good suspense book? Join mystery writers Eric Stone, Colin Cotterill and Chris Tao in a session chaired by Nury Vittachi.

SHANGHAI Saturday, 18 March 11:00am | M on the Bund “The Living Room of the Dead: From Russia Without Love” Book talk BEIJING Tuesday, 21 March 7:30pm The Bookworm “The Living Room of the Dead” Book talk

Mike Dash Friday, 10 March 4:30pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 Event code: 10G The Craft of Writing: The Non-Fiction Bestseller -- Learn how to make nonfiction as gripping as any novel with Mike Dash, one of Britain’s most celebrated writers of popular history. Mike’s books include Tulipomania, Batavia’s Graveyard and more recently Thug, a book about the professional murderers of India.

Saturday, 11 March 5:00pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 Event code: 11K When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction-And Sells Better -- Join two of Britain’s leading historical non-fiction writers as they share what it takes to create page turning non-fiction from the amazing true events of history. Mike Dash is the bestselling author of Tulipomania and Batavia’s Graveyard and Tom Standage of The Economist magazine is the author of The History of the World in Six Glasses, and The Victorian Internet. They will be joined by local historian and writer Nigel Collett, author of the acclaimed The Butcher of Amritsar to help direct the discussion.

Saturday, 11 March 7:30pm | FCC | HK$250 Event code: 11Q Tulipomania: Mike Dash -- Join the bestselling British author, Mike Dash, known for his wonderful works of historical non-fiction as he shares the true story of Tulipomania, the first great stock market boom in history. He will take us to 1630s Netherlands where rare tulip bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house. A fascinating parallel to the frenzy over internet companies.

Tarun Tejpal Saturday, 11 March 11:30am | Fringe Theatre | HK$120 event code: 11E Making Waves in Asian Literature: Double Bill -- Asian authors are causing a stir. This double bill starts with Tarun Tejpal, the iconoclastic Indian journalist, talking about his novel, The Alchemy of Desire. In part two we focus on new writing from southeast Asia, with Filipino poet-author Krip Yuson, taboo-busting Indonesia author Ayu Utami and new novelist Chris Tao, whose work spans Hong Kong and the Himalayas.

Sunday, 12 March 3:30pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 event code: 12G

2006

onal Literary Festival Post-Millennial Reportage -- Top journalists from around the world identify breakthrough trends in modern heavyweight journalism. Featuring India’s Tarun Tejpal, Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska, Indonesia’s Ayu Utami, and former editor of Time Asia, Karl Taro Greenfield.

Spanish author whose dazzling, multilayered literary crime stories are now available in English. Tom Standage, technology editor at The Economist, is the author of four fabulous non-fiction works, join him for this talk on The History of the World in Six Glasses.

names. Ma Jian and Mian Mian talk about their amazing-and controversial-journeys to literary success.

7:30pm | FCC | HK$250

Saturday, 11 March 10:30am | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, LT-C, Academic Concourse | free event code: 11C The Real Digital Divide -- How developing countries can most effectively benefit from information technology has been controversial - is the access to personal computers the most crucial? Tom Standage, renowned writer on science and technology, argues that developing countries will not necessarily follow the same path as the developed world and looks at what kind of IT could close the “digital divide”.

event code: 09A Lunch with Elena Poniatowska -- A special literary lunch with Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico’s most celebrated writers and journalists and the Festival’s first Mexican writer. Elena Poniatowska is the first woman to win the Mexican National Award for Journalism. She has written more than 50 books, including Frida Kahlo: The Camera Seduced, Dear Diego, Massacre in Mexico, Nothing, Nothing, Nobody: The Voices of the Earthquake, and The Skin of the Sky, which won the Alfaguara Prize in 2001.

event code: 12K The Power of Words -- Tarun Tejpal founded Tehelka.com, a corruption-fighting Indian website. He co-founded IndiaInk, the first company to publisher Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, and his first novel, The Alchemy of Desire, was described by V.S. Naipaul as “brilliantly original”.

Nell Freudenberger Tuesday, 7 March 7:00pm | Olympic House | HK$160 event code: 07G From Youth to Experience -- This unmissable double bill starts with two of the world’s hottest short story writers, Nell Freudenberger and Rattawut Lapcharoensap, both of whom are scoring big at a young age. Then legendary poet Seamus Heaney, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, will talk about his work in conversation with top Canadian novelist Charles Foran.

Wednesday, 8 March 3:30pm | The China Club | HK$150 event code: 08E Half the Sky: A Celebration of Women’s Writing from Around the World -- Enjoy afternoon tea at the China Club with top women writers from around the globe: Irish writer Marie Heaney, ChineseAmerican Gish Jen, Indigenous Australian Doris Pilkington; young American Nell Freudenberger, and Filipina poet Marjorie Evasco. Ticket includes afternoon tea.

Tom Standage Friday, 10 March 7:00pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$120 event code: 10I New Frontiers in Writing -- This doublebill explores exciting new directions in literature. Jose Carlos Samoza is the

5:00pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 event code: 11K When Truth is Stranger Than Fiction-And Sells Better -- Join two of Britain’s leading historical non-fiction writers as they share what it takes to create page turning non-fiction from the amazing true events of history. Mike Dash is the bestselling author of Tulipomania and Batavia’s Graveyard and Tom Standage of The Economist magazine is the author of The History of the World in Six Glasses, and The Victorian Internet.

They will be joined by local historian and writer Nigel Collett, author of the acclaimed The Butcher of Amritsar to help direct the discussion.

Ma Jian Monday, 6 March 7:00pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$120 event code: 06G SCMP China’s New Iconoclasts -- In a remarkable double bill, two of the most talked-about authors from China’s mainland reveal how they made their

Elena Poniatowska Thursday, 9 March 12:30pm | FCC | HK$180

7:00pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$120 event code: 09E Consulate General of Mexico Autores al atardecer (In Spanish) -- Dos autores de lengua española, hablarán de sus obras, vidas, y fuerza creadora: José Carlos Somoza, escritor español nacido en La Habana, Cuba, ganador del premio Café Gijón por ‘ La ventana pintada’ y el premio Fernando Lara por ‘ Clara y la penumbra’; y Elena Poniatowska Amor, autora mexicana de más de 50 libros, Premio Literario Xavier Villarrutia, México 1971, Premio Nacional de Periodismo México 1979 y galardonada por el Gobierno francés con la Legión de Honor en el 2003. (Sesión conducida en castellano.) This session is in Spanish.

Sunday, 12 March 3:30pm | Fringe Theatre | HK$80 event code: 12G Post-Millennial Reportage -- Top journalists from around the world identify breakthrough trends in modern heavyweight journalism. Featuring India’s Tarun Tejpal, Mexico’s Elena Poniatowska, Indonesia’s Ayu Utami, and former editor of Time Asia, Karl Taro Greenfield.

Club Events

Happy New Year!

The FCC’s New Year’s Eve Celebration once again lived up to its reputation as the best party in town. Photographs by Hugh van Es.

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THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Zach Prather on guitar, backed by Alan Youngblood and his Jazbalaya combo, play in the new year.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

29

FCC People

PHOTOS: KEN BALL

Toasting Jack at the September wake.

To Absent Friends Jack Spackman was well remembered Down Under, writes Saul Lockhart.

J

ack Spackman, who died last August, was honoured Down Under with not one, but two dinner/wake/reunions in Sydney, plus gatherings in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.

John Ball organised the first gathering on September 11 and two dozen old Hong Kong/FCC hands filled a couple of tables in the Friendly Chinese restaurant in Sydney’s Haymarket (Chinatown) area. This was an ad hoc group, still in shock about the news.

When Maria, Jack’s daughter who lives in Brisbane, announced she would be in Sydney on November 5, a second gathering was arranged. With the long lead time, friends from as far away as Hobart and Perth, as well as Melbourne and Brisbane, flew in

30

Maria Spackman leads the toast at the November wake. for the event. Thirty-six of us gathered to honour our absent friend, in the presence of a half dozen members of the Spackman family, including Jack’s ex-wife

Maggie. Maria led the toast: “To Absent Friends”.

The memorial book from the FCC reached us in time and so we signed in the same book. Tall

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

FCC People

Santas All

PHOTO: ALISON LOCKHART

Top: Kevin Egan edits down his Christmas card list.

tales were told and retold, many of which were probably true, or had their base in reality.

The reunion aspect of these dinners was important as these two events became a focal point for old Hong Kong/ FCC hands from the 1960s and 1970s.

To the new FCCers who were not even born in those bygone days, let alone resident in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, this reminiscing is almost over.

The reunion aspect as important in Hong Kong too. Maria flew in to attend a gathering arranged by Ray Day at the Kangaroo Down Under Pub, attended by among others, Peter Cordingley (Manila) and Derek Curry (Bangkok).

Back in Sydney, Maria was so chuffed at the turnout and how the dinner went that she suggested an annual reunion where old friends can get together to toast absent friends, and it looks like that’s just what we Down Under will do.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Centre: The FCC has cornered the Santa market in one small corner of Sydney. (L-R) Saul Lockhart, Mike Throssell and Mike Foote all worked in the same department store grotto.

Bottom: Terry Finch, out shopping at Christmas in Sydney, confides her wish list to a vaguely familiar Santa.

It is unknown if Santa Saul was able to make it down Terry’s chimney in her new Shanghai flat.

31

FCC People

FCC Members Sweep the World Crown of Horse Racing

C

ongratulations to members David Ferraris and Anthony Delpeche who swept the World Crown of Horse Racing on December 11.

They were crowned World Series Champions by winning the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Cup on odds-on favourite, Vengeance of Rain, against a strong international field with horses from Britain, France, Germany, Ireland, Dubai and the US. Taking the Derby, The Queen Elizabeth II Cup, the Chater Cup and finally the Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Cup, gave them a clean sweep for the International Trophy.

The duo are the first trainer and jockey in Hong Kong racing history to win all four races in a row.

David Ferraris had been a four-times champion trainer in South Africa before giving it all up to come to Hong Kong in 2003. “For the moment, relief is the major emotion I’m experiencing,” he said after the race. “The lead-up to this race has been very intense but as the race came closer, I’ve never been more confident of winning a big race.”

Anthony Delpeche, also a South African, said of Vengeance of Rain, “He is the best horse I’ve ever ridden and I don’t think I’ll ever ride one like him again.

Horses like him come around just once in a blue moon. We

32

Top: David is congratulated

by Sir Donald Tsang. Left: Anthony on Vengeance of Rain.

found a nice position one off the fence and he was cantering at the final turn and really fought

hard. He has it all – class and courage”.

David and Anthony celebrated by attempting, with the help of friends and family, to drink the FCC dry of champagne that evening.

— Dave Garcia

Absent member Sally Brandon ties the knot with David Trigg at their new home in Sardinia a few days before Christmas 2005. Sally says she hopes to visit her old FCC haunts in the spring.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Travel

FCC Collection Fiction

Check out the wide range of FCC products

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A Land Without Evil

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I was Misquoted

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Umbrella (golf ) . . . . . . . . . . .$200

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New Umbrella (golf ) . . . . . .$165

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FCC postcard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $3 I Love HK postcard . . . . . .$13.50 I Love HK poster . . . . . . . . . .$250 THE THE CORRESPONDENT CORRESPONDENT MAY/JUNE JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2005 2006

Bowtie: $145

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33 33

Professional Contacts FREELANCE PHOTOGRAPHERS BERTRAND VIRGILE SIMON — Editorials and corporate brochures Tel: 2526 4465 E-mail: info@red-desert.com.hk Website: WWW.RED-DESERT.COM.HK RAY CRANBOURNE — Editorial, Corporate and Industrial Tel/Fax: 2525 7553 E-mail: ray_cran bourne@hotmail.com BOB DAVIS — Corporate/Advertising/Editorial Tel: 9460 1718 Website: www.BOBDAVIS-photographer.com HUBERT VAN ES — News, people, travel, commercial and movie stills Tel: 2559 3504 Fax: 2858 1721 E-mail: vanes@netvigator.com ENGLISH TEACHER AND FREELANCE WRITER

Royal Asiatic Society The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society welcomes new members interested in the culture and history of Hong Kong, China and Asia. We arrange monthly talks, local visits and overseas trips to places of historical interest.

An annual Journal and a bi-monthly Newsletter are published.

For information: Tel/fax 2813 7500, email membership@royalasiaticsociety.org.hk or go to www.royalasiaticsociety.org.hk

MARK REGAN — English tuition for speaking, writing, educational, business or life skills. Also freelance writing – people, education, places, entertainment.

Tel/Fax: 2146 9841 E-mail: mark@markregan.com Website: www.markregan.com

FREELANCE ARTISTS “SAY IT WITH A CARTOON!!!” Political cartoons, children’s books and FREE e-cards by Gavin Coates are available at <http://wwwearthycartoons.com > Tel: 2984 2783 Mobile: 9671 3057 E-mail: gavin@earthycartoons.com FREELANCE EDITOR/WRITER CHARLES WEATHERILL — Writing, editing, speeches, voiceovers and research by long-time resident Mobile: (852) 9023 5121 Tel: (852) 2524 1901 Fax: (852) 2537 2774. E-mail: charlesw@netvigator.com PAUL BAYFIELD — Financial editor and writer and editorial consultant.

Tel: 9097 8503 Email: bayfieldhk@hotmail.com STUART WOLFENDALE — Columnist, features and travel writer, public speaker and compere. Tel: (852) 2241 4141 Mobile: (852) 9048 1806 Email: wolfthale@netvigator.com SAUL LOCKHART — All your editorial needs packed neatly into one avuncular body. Projects (reports, brochures, newsletters, magazines et al) conceived and produced.

Articles features devised, researched and written. E-mail: saulinoz@hotmail.com MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT SERVICES MARILYN HOOD — Write and edit correspondence, design database and powerpoints, report proofing and layout, sales and marketing, event and business promotions.

Tel: (852) 9408 1636 Email: mhood@netfront.net SERVICES MEDIA TRAINING — How to deal professionally with intrusive reporters. Tutors are HKs top professional broadcasters and journalists. English and/or Chinese.

Ted Thomas 2527 7077.

34

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Travel

Unique, personally-selected quality furniture Exclusive line of designer cushions, bolsters, tablecloths Pottery, outdoor/indoor (Earthenware, Celadon & Modern) Tableware (cutlery and exclusive Glassware) Baskets, Lamps, Weaving, Statues & Decorator Pieces Shop G101, The Repulse Bay, 109 Repulse Bay Rd. Now open in 2/F, The Galleria, 9 Queen’s Rd, Central enquires@asianartworks.com Tel: 2606-7093 Fax: 2602-4485

❖ PROFESSIONAL CONTACTS The Professional Contacts page appears in each issue of The Correspondent and on the FCC website at www.fcchk.org.

Let the world know who you are, what you do and how to reach you. There has never been a better time.

Listings start at just $100 per issue, with a minimum of a three-issue listing, and are billed painlessly to your FCC account.

THE CORRESPONDENT JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

Mail or fax this form to the FCC advertising team ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒ ❒

Copy attached 2 lines @ $100 ❒ 3 lines @ $150 ❒ 4 lines @ $200 ❒ 5 lines @ $250 Small box @ $300 per issue x 3* / $250 per issue x 6 Large box @ $600 per issue x 3* / $550 per issue x 6 Large box w/ colour @ $700 per issue x 3* / $600 per issue x 6

* Minimum of 3 issues

For more information E-mail Sandra Pang and Crystal Tse at advertising@fcchk.org or call 2540 6872 or fax 2116 0189

35

Out of Context

What members get up to when away from the Club

From Hack to Flack Peter Cordingley speaks to Jonathan Sharp

L

ife changed radically for journalist Peter Cordingley early in 2003 when the World Health Organisation’s Western Pacific Regional Office in Manila offered him a one-month job to edit material about children and the environment. “In the middle of it, the boss called me in. ‘I don’t know you,’ he said. ‘but I hear you’re a journalist.

And we need help. The media are calling us about a respiratory disease we think is circulating in China. Can you take the calls?’”

That disease was, of course, SARS and at its height Peter was giving 70 to 80 interviews a day as WHO’s front man in Asia. “Once I did a TV interview in the middle of dinner at home, shirt and tie above the table top and shorts below.”

Quite a change in lifestyle, indeed, but Peter has been accustomed to variety during a career that has ranged from covering the fall of Saigon for AFP, to being the lone male sub on the women’s page of the Standard (“perhaps a low point”), to editing this august organ.

In 2000, after 23 years in Hong Kong, Peter moved to Manila when his wife, Ann Quon, landed a senior job in communications with the Asian Development Bank.

Hurled into the deep end as a WHO spokesman during the SARS crisis, Peter found that being the person who answers reporters’ questions instead of being the inquisitor was not easy.

And he had to endure a certain amount of derision from members of the journalistic fraternity who refer dismissively to public relations as “the dark side”.

He recalls Jon Marsh writing “a very funny and very stinging piece in the now-defunct Spike magazine about what a fraud I was”.

“It was a difficult period at first,

PHOTOGRAPH BY BOB DAVIS

not so much because I had crossed over to the dark side but because I knew bugger-all about public health and absolutely nothing about viruses that cause respiratory collapse. I spent quite a lot of time in the WHO reference library.”

Peter retains a lot of respect for Hong Kong journalists, most of whom he says are professional, dogged and good fun. “During the early days of SARS, they fed me a lot of information we didn’t know about what was

ing irritated me more than people I had interviewed bleating that they had been misquoted or taken out of context.

“I take a very British view of journalism, which is different from the American approach. For me a cock-up is a one-day event and it’s best to forget and move on to the next cock-up.

Americans tend to beat themselves up too much.”

With alarm bells ringing over avian influenza, Peter’s day is still full of interviews and phone calls, the oddest being a live interview with a Spanish-speaking radio phone-in in Caracas.

“I didn’t understand a word they were saying and I doubt they got much out of me.”

One consequence of being on TV is that he gets contacted by long-lost friends who typically ask: “Are you the same Peter Cordingley who…?”

“My thinking is, if I have changed so much in the intervening years that old friends can’t recognise me, I wonder what they must look like now. Best not to find out, I suspect.”

He had to endure a certain amount of derision from members of the journalistic fraternity who refer dismissively to public relations as ‘the dark side’.

36

going on in China and Hong Kong, particularly Amoy Gardens. They actually played a role in helping WHO understand how the virus was behaving and in the end stopping it.”

Inevitably he has been misquoted, or at least misrepresented, plenty of times. “But I’ve kept my mouth shut.

When I was on the other end, noth-

THE CORRESPONDENT

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006