Monthly Archives: March 2004

Hong Kong Rugby Sevens 2004

29 Mar 2004

We spent an entire weekend in Hong Kong Stadium watching rugby, as the world’s best teams (and several of the world’s mediocre teams) competed for the coveted HK Sevens Cup. England were the hot favourites, having won the Sevens for the last two years and the Rugby World Cup last year, but New Zealand are always highly fancied, and Argentina were looking good too. Of course, I was supporting New Zealand – it’s something to do with my genetic make-up. (Though I don’t usually wear make-up.)

Actually, I had another reason for hoping England wouldn’t win – their fans like to sing, and their enthusiasm is matched only by their tunelessness. And why do they choose “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” as their theme song? It has as much to do with rugby as it has with inorganic chemistry. I guess they’re not called the Barmy Army for nothing.

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Chet Lam + The Pancakes + Ketchup — live in Hong Kong

8 Mar 2004

This was meant to be nothing more than a concert featuring three local singers. But it turned out to be lots of fun, if often incomprehensible, and had more strange, unexpected moments than you could shake a stick at, unless you’re really good at shaking sticks at strange, unexpected moments.

As a nod to the independent pop music scene in Hong Kong (such as it is), the Arts Festival included this show, featuring three local singer-songwriter types performing with a four-piece backing band.

Most of the time they were all on stage together, doing versions of their own songs and each other’s (or should that be others’?). The interaction between them was great. The on-stage chit-chat was absolutely hilarious, going by the audience reaction — I didn’t understand a word, since they spoke in Cantonese the whole time. (Strange, since half the songs were in English.)

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Ella Minnow Pea — Mark Dunn

4 Mar 2004

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

This fun novel is also a puzzle and a fairly impressive display of linguistic virtuosity. The book is a progressive lipogram – it starts off normally, but its alphabet shrinks as the story goes on. It’s not too hard to write without using Z, but things get more interesting as letters like D, A and even E vanish. We see more and more creative synonyms being used and invented.

This book consists entirely of letters written by the characters to each other. I like the way the sentences are written – the story is set in a land that esteems words and literature above all, and it shows in the way the characters play with language.

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