What Kills Us This Week!

Chinese are saying that The Great Duke of Jupiter, the very mean god Tai Sui, will arrive at midnight tonight for a year-long reign of terror where "No woe is the only blessing."

And with  midnight being the projected E.T.A. of Cyclone Yasi - "Bigger than Tracey and More Deadly than Larry!" -  and with so many friends and family members in North Queensland, and including my own house, currently staring down the barrel of this gun ...

... and the previous arrival of Tai Sui co-inciding with the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Tarawa and Hong Kong (undoubtedly deliberate) ...
 
... this week I'M NOT LAUGHING!!!

However, the way to go to spare ourselves any horror, so we're being told, is to greet midnight wearing RED!!!  This is a message to Tai Sui to spare you!  The other way, so we're also being told, is to go to your local Tai Sui Temple, write your own name and d.o.b. plus the names and d.o.b.s of your loved ones on different pieces of paper, put them in a red bag, light incense, talk to Tai Sui asking him to spare you and yours and then you burn the bits of paper so he knows who to spare.

If you too have loved ones in North Queensland and want to know what's happening, here's the link:

CYCLONE YASI

So there we are, in the taxi today, going down to the R.H.K.Y.C. for lunch, and I'm reading this out of the Communist Party newspaper and I say to the others, who are all laughing at the absurdity, "Where would you even find a Tai Sui Temple?" and the taxi driver snaps at us ... but in his barrage of angry words all I caught was that the temple in question was the one in Hollywood Road ...

... which is in Central just off The Soho Escalators and thus very easy to find ...

... so now I have to make a choice ...

... do I greet Chinese New Year down at the Harbour watching the fireworks with all the sane-ish people (and given the millions who've poured down from China for the occasion surely choosing to be trapped among them at the waterfront would hardly count as completely sane) or should midnight find me in Hollywood Road in the Tai Sui Temple burning the names and d.o.b.s of everyone I know who will be there in North Queensland, all battened down and expecting the imminent arrival of "Bigger than Tracey and More Deadly than Larry!" Cyclone Yasi?

So that will have to be my choice for this week:

THREATDOWN

Being in Hong Kong so long,

you start to take it all far too seriously!