talk 486

HK, the Special Administration Region (SAR), has come down with SARS, an airborne communicable disease.

I happened to make a short trip to U.S. last week. When I returned to HK last Saturday, all my family members in U.S. strongly advised me to cancel the trip. Finally they went out bought ten boxes of Ben Lang Gen, a Chinese herbal drink, hand sanitizing towels and solutions, and a dozen or so surgical masks that took about half of the space of my carry-on.

The UA flight from San Francisco to HK is less than a third full but with the full crew as they are needed for the return flight, understand that is fully booked. While most ethnic Chinese worn masks when landed, most "Fan Kwai Lau's" strangely did not.

I immediately noticed the streets were deserted and the restaurants were nearly empty. The next day, at the regular get together of Lighters at Yau Yet Cheung Club every Sunday morning, SARS is the only topic we talked about. At the dinning room, we all suggested, and WT Pang immediately instructed all the employees there to wear masks. For quite a while, we were the only table there for the normally crowded dinning room required a reservation.

Understand SARS in HK started from an infected guest stayed at 9th floor of Hotel Metropole, across street from Pui Ching, and a few Lighters stayed there for the union. The latest facts are that about 700 people in HK have been infected and about 16 have died. There is no known cure. One of the largest hospitals, where the guest stayed afterwards, has many health care professionals infected and almost closed down. About 700 residents of an entire apartment building Amoy Garden have been quarantined. Several businesses, after discovering having infected staff, shut down temporarily, have the staff examined, and have the area disinfected. That includes HKSB in Central. Several multinationals, including Intel HK have advised people to work from home. All the schools have been suspended. Rolling Stone, Andy Williams, and several sports and entertainment group have cancelled their trips. The worst is that the number of infections is still increasing. More information is available at http://www.who.int/csr/sars/en/

Today, the US consulate advised American to avoid HK, and allowed the family members and their non-essential staffs to leave HK. The World Health Organization has issued travel advise for people to avoid traveling to HK. Many airlines have cancelled many flights to HK. The Swiss watch fair has denied HK businesses to participate. Thailand, Japan, Singapore and several other countries have instituted special arriving procedures for visitors from HK.

SARS is HK's 911. Everybody in HK is concerned or scared. We are advised, and all have tried to minimize going out, avoid crowded areas, and touch anything touched by others such as handrails in subway, doorknobs, or elevate buttons-a difficult thing to do in HK. While I do not know the status of movie theatres, subways, or Karaoke bars, I understand businesses of all sorts are down significantly. At 7PM, Nathan Rd is more like 6AM in the morning with a few "Fan Kwai Lau's" still doing the window-shopping. Guess if you spent hundreds dollars to come, might as well take the chance make the best out of it. I live in a service apartment, part of a hotel. The swimming pool is closed; the children's play area is closed, there was not a single customer at the lounge bar-restaurant this afternoon. While they will not tell me, understand the hotel is less than half full, and expect more cancellations to come after the WHO advice. While nobody has an accurate guess on the impact to HK, all forecasts are negative.

For a few days, masks, bleach, atomizers, and various disinfectants and herbal cold medicines were sold out. At the April Fools day, somebody posted a notice on the web saying HK is declared an infected area, a run on canned food, rice, and other dry foods ensued. It took an hour to pay the bill at supermarkets even everybody were doing everything possible to avoid crowds. Many foreigners decided to let their wife and children to leave HK. Understand a few businesses have decided to leave HK.

Personally, I took the ferry to work instead of the crowded subways even it takes 15 minutes longer, and now decided to work from home. I try not to go out, wear masks when I have to, wash my hands as often as possible, and not to touch my face. I live from frozen foods, and instant noodles-something I learned to do when I was single, but now is easier with microwave. I have asked the part time cleaning woman not to come at full pay. Sprayed the whole apartment with bleach (ran out of Lysol), and my shoes when return from outside.

For some enterprising HK people, SARS is a business opportunity. In addition to selling standard masks at 5 to 10 times normal prices, there are those designer masks for label conscious HK residents. Here is an excerpt from a news item:

On Saturday, Louis Vuitton in Hong Kong released a limited edition atypical pneumonia mask, specially for the Hong Kong market, in super-soft Connolly leather with a monogrammed sterling silver clasp. This luxurious and unfeasibly comfortable mask comes with a matching protective case to allow its users to store it away safely in their Kelly bags without contaminating their shatoosh shawls. At a retail price of HK$1,800 (approximately US$230), one would have expected these to be more of a publicity stunt than a serious retail proposition, but by Saturday lunchtime, all 88 limited edition masks had been sold.

Across town in the sprawling Gucci boutique, the company spokesperson said that they would be shortly releasing a designer mask as an addition to their summer 2003 accessories range. She declined to mention details, except to say that it would of course be in black and would incorporate the Gucci buckle. A Hong Kong tai-tai (the local equivalent of ladies-who-lunch) in the store at that time said that she was eagerly awaiting its release and had put herself down on the waiting list, adding "Everyone knows that black is the new Burberry".

Burberry … … .

HK was sick before. It was declared as an "Infected Areas" in 1961, 1963, 1979, and 1986 due to cholera. I love HK, and wish it a fast recovery.