Sublime similes

We have learned in school that using figurative language such as similes and metaphors can our writing or speech. Here are two examples of excellent use of simile:

The first one is quoted from Gandhi's biography:

"...all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise... truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom."

The second one is from the newspaper. After Arsenal was so soundly beaten by Barcelona in yesterday's Champions League quarter-final second-leg match, manager Arsene Wenger gave Barca's four-goal hero Lionel Messi probably the highest compliment one can give to a football player by saying:

"He is like a PlayStation player, he can take advantage of every chance."

Another unenviable number one

On 31 January I wrote about an unenviable number one spot Hong Kong occupied - being China's "most toilsome city". Actually, we have an even more disgraceful title of being the shark's "number one killer". According to a report by Oceana, an international ocean protection and restoration environmental advocacy group, Hong Kong imported 10,000,000 kg of shark fins in 2008 and was the world's largest single market for the product. That means each Hong Kong person consumed over 1 kg of shark fins per capita, although it is also likely that part of the shark fins were re-exported to China. So it is definitely heartening to see that some Hong Kong young people have awakened to the cruelty and irresponsibility of eating shark fin and are campaigning for newly-weds not to serve shark's fin soup at their wedding banquets and for the guests to express their disapproval if they do.

As I wrote on 23 January, whenever I attend dinner gatherings and banquets and see shark's fin soup being ordered or served, I so dearly wish to tell them about the harm but I lack the moral courage to do so. The fact that the 'no more shark's fin soup in banquets' campaign is on the front page of a leading newspaper in Hong Kong should go some way towards raising people's awareness about the selfishness of bringing suffering to other lives and even driving them to extinction just to satisfy one's own gastronomic cravings.

Whose one less worry?

You have to hand it to the businessmen and the creative teams of advertising agencies for coming up with brilliant ideas to boost sales of their products.

There is this recent series of advertisements, first on TV and now in MTR compartments, by Wyeth the milk powder producer. Entitled "One Less Worry", the advertisements for their Biofactors line begin with by saying "Mothers have countless worries". On the surface, this is just an illustration of how mothers are concerned about the growth of their babies. But considering that, as said in yesterday's blog, melamine milk products have recently resurfaced in China, prompting many Mainland mothers to rush to Hong Kong and frantically snatch the more dependable milk products here off the shop shelves, this perfect timing cannot be mere coincidence. The businessmen are cleverly and foxily playing on their worries and fears. In that sense, the advertisements, are actually targetting at the China market and not as innocent as they first look.

And I'm sure the ploy will work. There is nothing mothers will not do to protect their babies.

Mother and child (3)

What is in common between the women in these two photos? They are mothers. They are from Mainland China. They have been shopping in Hong Kong. They have come to buy milk powder.

Since melamine-tainted milk products have resurfaced in China recently and what little confidence consumers might have about milk products produced in the country has been completely shattered, Mainland mothers have been flocking to Hong Kong to scoop up imported milk powder. This apparent mad dash actually makes perfect sense. How else can the mothers protect their children from being intoxicated by the poisoned milk products which in 2008 killed six babies and made 300,000 others sick (Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently admitted that the actually figure was about 30,000,000, a hundred times more than what was originally claimed), many of whom developed kidney stones?

What is worse, the parents of the sick children are not even given the chance to fight for justice or their rights. A group of parents founded an organisation called "Home for the Kidney-Stone Babies". The founder has been arrested and charged with "quarrelling and stirring up trouble".

Parents of children whose deaths during the Sichuan earthquake in 12 May 2008 were linked to the allegedly shoddy construction of school buildings met a similar fate. Those bereaved parents who attempted to investigate the allegations of corruption and shoddy school construction have been routinely kept under surveillance, harassed, detained or put under house arrest.

Maybe the animal mothers as shown in the photos in the blogs of the last two days are a little more lucky.

Mother and child (2)

Mother and child (1)

"Truth is inconsistent with business"

April Fool's Day is a good time to talk about truth and lies.

This piece is a following up on my blog on 17 March in which I talked about how Gandhi's view on truth may be incompatible with the business world today. In Gandhi's autobiography he wrote the following about the first public speech in his life, one that he gave during a meeting of all Indians in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1893:

"I went fairly prepared with my subject, which was about observing truthfulness in business. I had always heard the merchants say that truth was not possible in business. I did not think so then, nor do I now. Even today there are merchant friends who contend that truth is inconsistent with business. Business, they say, is a very practical affair, and truth a matter of religion; and they argue that practical affairs are one thing, while religion is quite another. Pure truth, they hold, is out of the question in business, one can speak it only so far as is suitable. I strongly contested the position in my speech and awakened the merchants to a sense of their duty, which was twofold. Their responsibility to be truthful was all the greater in a foreign land, because the conduct of a few Indians was the measure of that of the millions of their fellow-countrymen."

Gandhi's insistence on and courage for speaking the truth was certainly admirable, but I cannot help wondering how many of the Indian businessmen in the audience would agree with him. Chances were that they thought the same as his merchant friends that "truth is inconsistent with business". Advertisements are a perfect example. I remember that in an issue of the MAD comics magazine years ago contained a parody of how advertisements would be like if they were stripped of the sales pitch or gimmicks and only allowed to tell the plain truth and they looked rather ridiculous. Today, with such powerful technology and creative talents at their disposal, businesses are so good at producing mesmerising advertisements containing illusions that border on being blatant lies. Advertisements about property developments are classic examples. They not only stretch imaginations but also the limits tolerated by rules and regulations.

It would be interesting to see how Hong Kong's business tycoons would react if Gandhi were to deliver the speech to them today.