Quick bites

1. Cultural bias / diversity on foods of different traditions

From Dan Waters:

"How can you expect the Chinese who cannot, usually, stand the smell of cheese, be able to understand the complex English. But you can argue too, how can the British, who cannot enjoy a succulent chicken's foot for breakfast, understand the Chinese?" (from Eve Lam's "The Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch): The Faces, The Stories and the Memories", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 42, 2002, p. 142)

This humorous remark reminds me of my favourite (but not quite sometimes) Discovery travel channel's Anthony Bourdain No Reservations and Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. I think the way we Hongkongers / Chinese see bizarre Latin-American / African (less known anyhow) foods is just nothing different from how Europeans see Chinese foods.

2. HK historical photos lost

Tim Ko had done some researches at the Housing Authority office. He accidentally found 20,000 negatives dating to 1962 in a back room of the office. As a semi-professional and well-known HK photographer who has been snapping HK history in the past few decades, he then proposed to catalogue the entire collection to the HA but, not surprisingly, ended with disappointment because of short-sighted bureaucratic practices. A staff of the Government Information Service even told him that a lot of photos had been discarded in the past decade, "because the less they possess, the less they will need to do". (also from from Eve Lam's "The Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch): The Faces, The Stories and the Memories", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 42, 2002, p.151-2.)