Work, Eat, Shop, Return

In Lonely Planet’s just released Blue List (which my friend Albert describes as “another addition to the slew of things to do before you die books”) Hong Kong’s pithy three word summary (all the places listed have ‘em) is Work, Eat, Shop. As a denizen of Hong Kong, I propose that a fourth word be added to the summary – Return. In other words, return at least half of the crap you acquired following the third word – specifically electronics – within three months, as chances are good that the damned things have stopped working by then. I do a lot of this. Whether through humidity or just shoddy workmanship, electronics do not live long, useful lives in this thick and busy climate. The Creative brand Zen Micro lasted two months before giving up the ghost, so I headed up to Kwai Fong to get it fixed. (Creative gave me a new one, and even threw in a new battery, bless ‘em.) The CD door on the Hyundai CD / DVD player that PCCW (the local phone company through whose wires and good grace this screed is being transmitted) gave me as a sign-on bonus neither opens nor closes, making it more of a paperweight than anything else. Somewhere in a stack of papers is a warranty, and somewhere in the New Territories is an office where said warranty may or may not be honored, since its been six months since I got the damned thing. And of course, the battery life on the Asus laptop I’m writing this on is slowly dribbling off into the sunset – good timing to, as I still have a week and a half left on the warranty, meaning a trip to the Kowloon Asus office is on the agenda by Friday at the latest.

So yes, Work, Eat and Shop, that’s what Hong Kong is all aboutt. But for electtronics geeks, shop needs tto be followed by retturn, witthin 3-6 montths.

Uh-oh…hope the keyboard is sttill under warrantty…