A Snow-Snubbing Snog
By Chip Tsao | published Dec 30, 2010
Should the SAR government have been dispatching extra flights with taxpayers’ money to rescue those few hundred Hong Kong overseas academic wretches stranded at Heathrow Airport as London was paralyzed by the most severe snowstorm in a hundred years?
Still traumatized by the Manila massacre, Hong Kong people had every reason to be appalled as the Heathrow airport lounge was reduced to something like a Vietnamese
boat people camp.
Frustrated flight-awaiting passengers wriggled on the floor in their sleeping bags, with some Asians cooking their instant noodles or, in the case of the Chinese, even helplessly cutting their toenails on the benches in the airport lounge. It is unfair to let one’s kid—for whom a Hong Kong parent pays an average of HK$400,000 in annual tuition fees to get him into Winchester College to be trained to look like Prince William—wander among starving and half-frozen refugees, going nowhere, witnessing yet another living episode in the decline of Western civilization since 9/11, as one of the greatest crossroads on earth grounds to a halt.
But to find a silver lining in the blackest cloud, wouldn’t it be the best time (if a Hong Kong Chinese kid is bright enough), to hand out some ketamine to the young Russian teenage girl snuggling next to him, also stuck at Heathrow waiting for her Moscow home-bound flight? He would be able, if his boarding school enlightenment has worked on him so far, to say a seductive “hello” to her in an Etonian accent. He would further engage the young blonde in an interesting conversation with his knowledge of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” or recite a few lines of Pushkin in broken Russian with an enchanting, Tony Leung sort of smile. It’s what English aristocratic education is all about—an ability to endure accidental hardships in life, while maintaining an outstanding ability to improvise with a gentlemanly wit and humor.
It would prove value for money if your Hong Kong kid texts you a long-distance mobile message which reads something like this: “Hey dad, I got stuck in this snowbound third-world airport named Heathrow. It’s anarchy, just like David Cameron’s coalition government. But don’t be taken in by the CNN news scenes relayed by TVB Pearl to your bedroom in Repulse Bay. No, it’s not the end of the world. I’m surviving better than those buried in the Sichuan earthquake and having a good time. Guess what, I’ve just got hooked on this young daughter of a Siberian natural gas tycoon. She’s just invited me to her Black Sea villa after New Year’s. Give me another 48 hours here, and I’ll propose to her. I wish to thank the inefficient Heathrow airport authorities. Don’t wait for me for dinner this weekend.”
Should the SAR government have been dispatching extra flights with taxpayers’ money to rescue those few hundred Hong Kong overseas academic wretches stranded at Heathrow Airport as London was paralyzed by the most severe snowstorm in a hundred years?
Still traumatized by the Manila massacre, Hong Kong people had every reason to be appalled as the Heathrow airport lounge was reduced to something like a Vietnamese
boat people camp.
Frustrated flight-awaiting passengers wriggled on the floor in their sleeping bags, with some Asians cooking their instant noodles or, in the case of the Chinese, even helplessly cutting their toenails on the benches in the airport lounge. It is unfair to let one’s kid—for whom a Hong Kong parent pays an average of HK$400,000 in annual tuition fees to get him into Winchester College to be trained to look like Prince William—wander among starving and half-frozen refugees, going nowhere, witnessing yet another living episode in the decline of Western civilization since 9/11, as one of the greatest crossroads on earth grounds to a halt.
But to find a silver lining in the blackest cloud, wouldn’t it be the best time (if a Hong Kong Chinese kid is bright enough), to hand out some ketamine to the young Russian teenage girl snuggling next to him, also stuck at Heathrow waiting for her Moscow home-bound flight? He would be able, if his boarding school enlightenment has worked on him so far, to say a seductive “hello” to her in an Etonian accent. He would further engage the young blonde in an interesting conversation with his knowledge of Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment,” or recite a few lines of Pushkin in broken Russian with an enchanting, Tony Leung sort of smile. It’s what English aristocratic education is all about—an ability to endure accidental hardships in life, while maintaining an outstanding ability to improvise with a gentlemanly wit and humor.
It would prove value for money if your Hong Kong kid texts you a long-distance mobile message which reads something like this: “Hey dad, I got stuck in this snowbound third-world airport named Heathrow. It’s anarchy, just like David Cameron’s coalition government. But don’t be taken in by the CNN news scenes relayed by TVB Pearl to your bedroom in Repulse Bay. No, it’s not the end of the world. I’m surviving better than those buried in the Sichuan earthquake and having a good time. Guess what, I’ve just got hooked on this young daughter of a Siberian natural gas tycoon. She’s just invited me to her Black Sea villa after New Year’s. Give me another 48 hours here, and I’ll propose to her. I wish to thank the inefficient Heathrow airport authorities. Don’t wait for me for dinner this weekend.”
Labels: Politically Incorrect, 陶傑
posted by Gemini Saga at 12:00 AM
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