Naive Zebra Welcome Guest | Login or Register

it’s like the Masque of the Red Death…..As the markets swoon and jobs are lost, the carousing goes on.The demographics of Hong Kong have been skewed over the past week with an influx of middle-aged white men – virtual strangers for the rest of the year who have been making token, and extremely brief, appearances in their local offices. Many have creatively concocted business trips that coincide with the rugby event.

At the preliminary rugby dinners earlier in the week, Hong Kongers were mortified at the sight of 40-something gweilo gentlemen dancing together, singing along with pride to It’s Raining Men, in ebullient displays of bonhomie usually confined to the more bohemian districts of San Francisco.

To the Stadium….where getting in was worse than entering the former Iron Curtain. The gestapo working as front-house security were binning inflatable plastic hands that kids were trying to bring in, with no more explanation than “No, no, NO!”. Shame on you Hong Kong Stadium for making kids cry. It’s not illegal for children in a free society to carry an inflatable hand – irrespective of the slogan it carries.

The executive level greeted us with a flourish of themes, costumes and freebie handouts, but making our way between the investment bank boxes we also got a feeling that the party was somewhat apparently less rowdy than in previous years.

Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the coveted box passes were harder than usual to come by and that some boxes were only possible to get into if you were lucky enough to be on a pre-determined guest list[ Like Me ….. ].

For people in the outdoor areas of the boxes, the absence of Sweet Caroline in between the games may also have played a role as there appeared to be less spontaneous dancing and singing going on this year.

Inexplicably this long-term crowd favourite was played only once in two days.  

Whilst at the HK 7’s I bumped into my old boss from the training team on holiday watching the HK7’s.  

Just For Junya – The Nihon Team doing Sumo

Big Dilemma In This Match :Who Do You Support ? – As a Brit V.Hard

The fella dressed as a chicken of course , this was one of just 1000’s of outfits , photographers dream , I decided to watch rugby instead.Alas it was over too soon but I saw the hallowed ground that Chris Redman made his own .

Trackback this Post | Feed on comments to this Post