Jonathan Sharp
Hard times? Not in Hong Kong
Thursday 08 September 2011
So embarrassed is the Hong Kong government by its enormous budget surplus (yes, surplus) that it is handing out HK$6,000 (that’s about £480 or US$770) to everyone aged 18 or over who has Permanent Resident status, whatever their nationality. So that includes me, a Brit. living in Hong Kong. You don’t have to be living in Hong Kong now, or come back here, to collect. I know numerous old Hong Kong hands of several nationalities, including one ex-Reuters correspondent (now with AFP), living far away who qualify. To get Permanent Resident status you have to have lived in Hong Kong for seven years continuously, although in my case the authorities were agreeably flexible about what constitutes “continuously”.
Jonathan Sharp
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Jonathan Sharp
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Clare McDermott
Wednesday 06 July 2011
I only came to know about Clare McDermott’s death when Jonathan Sharp called me a short while ago today. We had worked together in Singapore under David Chipp (deceased) and Jimmy Hahn (now in retirement in Vancouver).
Clare was a gentle giant who was not easily perturbed. But I did make him spring up from his bed in a trice, all agitated and throwing down a thick volume of the Spanish Civil War he was reading that afternoon. I was reinforcement from Hong Kong for the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta. He was my room mate in the then showpiece Indonesia Hotel.
My sin was to string, in open view, an aerial for my portable radio in the window. The cautious Clare was aghast that in the political climate of the time, Indonesian security would put us in the cooler as imperialist agents.
But we got along well, worked on other assignments and became good friends, so much so that he and his companion, Jackie, took care of my daughter when she did her studies in the UK.
C P Ho
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Clare was a gentle giant who was not easily perturbed. But I did make him spring up from his bed in a trice, all agitated and throwing down a thick volume of the Spanish Civil War he was reading that afternoon. I was reinforcement from Hong Kong for the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta. He was my room mate in the then showpiece Indonesia Hotel.
My sin was to string, in open view, an aerial for my portable radio in the window. The cautious Clare was aghast that in the political climate of the time, Indonesian security would put us in the cooler as imperialist agents.
But we got along well, worked on other assignments and became good friends, so much so that he and his companion, Jackie, took care of my daughter when she did her studies in the UK.
C P Ho
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