Beneath the Peak

Corporate media interviews in Hong Kong are usually pretty tame. Last night’s edition of TVB’s Money Magazine, however, was an exception.

The program’s first segment was about Hong Kong people who had invested in a now-bankrupt resort in Thailand. In addition to interviews with unlucky investors, TVB send a video crew to the office of Colliers, which allegedly represented  the Thai project in Hong Kong. And that’s where things got interesting.

First, a TVB crew accompanied a disgruntled investor on an unannounced visit to Colliers’ office. This is a classic TV reporting technique, called doorstepping, but is uncommon in Hong Kong. Colliers’ receptionist and front-line staff were clearly unprepared for this.

Then — in a segment that was almost certainly shot first — TVB interviewed Colliers executive Darien Bradshaw, who had been given a list of questions for the interview.

Bradshaw fell into the neophyte’s trap of believing that a reporter can only ask “approved” questions, and was visibly uncomfortable when the journalist began asking him about Colliers’ role in the Thai development. He then indignantly ended the interview.

There are several lessons here:

• Don’t be lulled into a false sense of security by Hong Kong’s usually meek media.
• As we like to remind people in our media training programs, reporters can ask anything they like. They are not obliged to stick to a script.
• Prepare for difficult questions. That means having intelligent, appropriate responses and being able to handle tough questions gracefully.
• If your business is likely to attract negative attention, brief your receptionist and office manager about how to handle uninvited media.

TVB doesn’t post its shows to YouTube and this segment doesn’t seem to be online. It will air again on TVB Pearl on Saturday at 11:50 AM and on Wednesday at 12:55 AM.

In the meantime, kudos to TVB for an entertaining piece of reportage.

Update: The second half of the Money Magazine segment is now available on YouTube.

In the 2010 budget speech on Wednesday, John Tsang said the administration would consider moving government departments from commercial buildings to industrial buildings.

I wonder how many of Hong Kong’s mandarins would agree to move into places that look like this?

This is the second move the government has made recently to address the issue of excess industrial space in Hong Kong.

In his 2009/10 policy address last October, CEO Donald Tsang:

• Reduced the threshold for compulsory sale of industrial buildings for redevelopment.
• Adjusted the premium system so that developers “pay for what they build” when they redevelop a building.
• Allowed owners to pay lease modification premiums in installments when they redevelop a building.
• Exempt some users from paying a fee for the change in land use if they perform a wholesale conversion.

All of this is good, but each of these measures targets whole-building conversions and redevelopment. That means, at a minimum, getting the majority of a building’s owners to agree to a conversion or redevelopment or selling the building to one of Hong Kong’s developers. In turn, that means a budget in the hundreds of millions of (Hong Kong) dollars and a multi-year time line.

What these plan miss are the small companies who might rent or buy a unit in an old industrial building to open a shop, a restaurant or a bar. These businesses can be opened quickly, for a much smaller investment–in the millions of dollars or less.

The relatively low costs mean that entrepreneurs can experiment. If the business fails, they can close it and move on with minimal loss. If it works, you have the beginnings of an organic, grass roots-level redevelopment.

The irony is that historically, Hong Kong’s success has been the result of entrepreneurs and small businesses that were will nimble and willing to take risks. Increasingly, that model is being pushed aside in favor of large, centrally planned schemes.

My review of Jake Adelstein’s book Tokyo Vice, from the January/February 2010 edition of The Correspondent, is now online.

More here [PDF].

Alex and I completed the 15.7-km hike yesterday in 3 hours and 48 minutes,  a little slower than 2009, when we did the 12-km route, but far from the back of the pack.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and about 400 hikers took part.

Hong Kong’s Financial Secretary, John Tsang (third from left), kicked off the hike.

Thanks to everyone who participated and sponsored this very worthwhile event!

The developers of Foobar2000, an advanced freeware audio player for the Windows platform, have released V1.0.

Foobar2000 is a wonderful piece of software that I’ve used for the past five years. It’s stable, elegant and very configurable., and it plays just about anything you can throw at it. Previous versions had a bit of a learning curve, but that has been reduced to nothing.

Best of all, V1.0 has native support for Microsoft’s .ASX streaming format, which RTHK here in Hong Kong uses.

Following this week’s success with the Kindle, I downloaded my first paid book from Amazon, Jake Adelstein’s Tokyo Vice: An American Reporter on the Police Beat in Japan.

Despite being in Phuket, the download (ordered via my laptop but delivered directly to the Kindle via Amazon’s Whispernet) went without a hitch. And the Kindle’s highlighting / note taking function works well, too.

As its title suggests, Tokyo Vice explores the seamy side of the Japanese capital, including the yakuza, the city’s sex trade, human trafficking and the Lucie Blackman case.

But it’s much more than that.

Adelstein explains how he became a gaijin reporter for the Yomiuri, Japan’s largest circulation newspaper. Along the way, he provides numerous insights into Japan’s reporters and the newspaper and media businesses. This makes the book a worthwhile read for regional corporate communication managers trying to understand Japan’s distinctive media. His experience on the police beat provides an equally interesting look at the workings of Japan’s bureaucracy.

Tokyo Vice is made memorable by Adelstein’s unflinching comments about his personal failings and the mistakes he made along the way. This is not a self-congratulatory memoir.

The book covers nearly 17 years, including multiple postings with the Yomiuri. That span — and the number of police officers, reporters and mobsters covered — means the book could have benefited from the addition of a dramatis personae. But that is a minor quibble.

Tokyo Vice is a fast-paced, intriguing read. Highly recommend.

Adelstein also blogs at www.japansubculture.com

I was one of the many people who received an Amazon Kindle for Christmas.

It’s been an interesting experience. Initially, I was skeptical because I haven’t enjoyed reading books on a computer. In fact, I’ve downloaded several books that I never finished. I’m also a fan of open source software and distrust closed systems.

To see if I liked reading ebooks, I started by searching for and downloading free content.

Several years ago, a neighbor told me about Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle and the effect it had on the U.S. food industry. I found a copy on freekindlebooks.org and was in business. Despite being 103 years old (and the author’s political sympathies) it remains a surprisingly good read.

I also barreled through John Scalzi’s Agent to the Stars, a science fiction story that began life as shareware. By this point, I had been won over and had stopped noticing that I was reading an ebook.

But the real epiphany came while reading Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational in dead-tree format. When I read books like this, I usually take notes. That requires me to stop reading, pick up a pen and jot a few ideas down in a notebook and then return to the book, none of which is easy in a beach chair. Eventually, I transcribe the notes on to my computer. The Kindle makes this process much easier and eliminates the need for me to decipher my handwriting.

But price and delivery are where the Kindle really shines. I paid HK$153 for my copy of Predictably Irrational at a local bookstore. From Amazon, the same book is available for US$11.99 (HK$93.52), and I don’t have to wait for the bookstore to stock it or drive across town to pick it up.

This proposition is even more attractive with niche books that either take a long time or never arrive in Hong Kong. Many English-language books that are mainstream in a place like Toronto (or even Singapore, for that matter) are niche in Hong Kong.

I still enjoy holding a traditional book in my hands, a well-designed cover and the serendipity of a bookstore. And current technology makes ebooks unsuitable for art, design or photography books. But like the convenience / fidelity trade-off between vinyl and MP3s, ebooks are a no-brainer.

Ultimately, this is bad news for local bookstores, many of which are going to disappear, like Tower Records. Big publishers also see Kindle as a threat. But after this experience (and receiving a request for Landed in Kindle format) I think ebooks are a tremendous opportunity for self-publishers.

For readers — whether they are autodidacts reading Shakespeare for free, commuters trying to lighten their briefcase or expats wanting to stay current — the Kindle and its ilk are a godsend.

…is a very talented man.

But why am I not filled with confidence by the appointment of Microsoft’s former chief security executive as the new cybersecurity czar for the United States?

(Insert obligatory BSOD joke here)

As an expat living in Hong Kong for nearly two decades, I’ve made my peace with the the city and (most of) its idiosyncrasies.

But there are still some things that puzzle me, like why we use U.K.-standard electrical plugs. These beasts are big enough to power an arc welder, but are fitted to devices like cell phone chargers that draw tiny amounts of current.

Choi Min-Kyu of the U.K.’s Royal College of Art has designed an elegant solution to this problem: a folding plug and 3-way tap that work with existing sockets.

It’s a very functional, beautiful piece of design.

H/T: Robert Cottrell

…until Hike for Hospice 2010, the annual fund-raiser for the Society for the Promotion of Hospice Care here in Hong Kong.

Hikers and sponsors welcome as always!