Speed

Went to Macau with LS - we were both invited to give a brief talk in a scientific conference there.

We chatted on almost everything and somehow our discussion fell on to the out-patient clinic:

"Some residents are just too slow. If we have 80 cases and 5 doctors, and you see just five or six cases in a clinic, how could we survive ?" She sighed.

"But could you ask them to speed up ?" I suggested.

She asked back, "Can I ask you to slow down in your clinic ?"

"No way. That would cost my life. But I could speed up no problem !" I must admit, on average, I spend 7 to 8 minutes for each out-patient, and I could do it in 5 minutes if necessary, but it would be an intolerable torture if I have to face the same patient for more than 15 minutes.

"Exactly !" The rheumatologist explained, "You are the quick type and you could speed up further. They are the slow type and could go only slower ..."

Alas, I see her point. It is in fact the Newton's First Law.

And it reminds me of the teaching by the King of the Round Table: A quick surgeon may not be a good surgeon, but a slow surgeon must be a lousy one.

Letters

Wrote a lengthy letter for certain bureaucratic problem. This is not my cup of tea, but, as people often say, part of my salary pays for it.

Many of my friends know that I have dyslexia and could not stand any letter with more than three lines. Nonetheless this disability reminds me to keep most of my letters short and comprehensible to any recipient with a similar medical condition - which means the majority of our general population.

After all, why do you need three pages for a trivial matter if a president of the United States (alas, that's Richard Nixon) wrote his resignation letter in just one line:

"I hereby resign the office of President of the United States."

It also reminds me of our sister department in the era of the Knights of the Round Table. In one incident, the King wrote the following letter to fire one of his professors:

"Because of well known reasons, Professor X will leave the XX University with immediate effect."

And his Highness had sufficient foresight to provide a Chinese translation of the letter for his faculty staff:

"基於人所共知的理由,X教授已離開X大學."

What else do you have to say ?

PS. The latter letter was shown to me by the man who still had his moustache, when I was his trainee - as an example of how to write simple letters.

LKS

TW asks whether we should invite LKS to be our Financial Secretary - that's an idea (hopefully not in the sense of Baldrick in The Black Adder).

In that case we may expect our government buying all the Lehman minibonds at hell low a price and sell them (back to the current owners !) some years later - when the price is three or five times higher.

Based on the past record, our new Financial Secretary would also approval building new hospitals in every district - provided that the government pays only for the chairs and tables.

And our senior citizens will have their Old Age Allowance (生果金) increased to HK$1000 - but paid in supermarket coupons. (Well, that's at least better than the current proposal of some Mr. Tsang, whose scheme would certainly bring him many sunny days with a clear sky - because there's no more that kind of cloud [浮雲].)

PS. The most famous Chinese businessman who turned Financial Secretary was Soong Tse-ven (宋子文). For those who are not familiar with the history of our country, Soong was once considered the richest man on earth - after he became the Financial Secretary of the formerly Republic of China (not People's Republic). Would you consider that good news ?

Munger

If not because of his age, Charles Munger would be a better choice of the next United States Treasury Secretary than Warren Buffett.

For those who are not familiar with the financial news, Munger is the Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway, and is the business partner of the famous investor for decades. Contrary to Buffett, who devotes his time almost exclusively to business, Munger is not involved in the day-to-day operations of Berkshire for many years.

The more important character of this right-hand man of Buffett is that he is a generalist - investment is only one of a broad range of his interests. He would certainly have a bird's view on the financial country of America (and probably of the world).

One famous piece of his work is Elementary, Worldly Wisdom, which is a speech he gave in the University of South California in 1994. It is no doubt an ideal syllabus of general education.

PS. Before writing this blog, I had the romantic idea that Munger is much younger than Buffett. It just came as a surprise when I looked up the Wikipedia and realized that the former is actually 84-year-old.

As Martin Ruth said: You will find it very good practice always to verify your reference, sir.

Secretary

On the point of giving the public hope in the middle of a financial crisis, Barack Obama is certainly more creative than any of our local officials:

"(If I am elected to be the president,) I would ask Warren Buffett to be the Treasury Secretary of the United States."

It creates a hallucination that the US government could be run like Berkshire Hathaway.

In that case you should expect the government grows with time, but, as a stockholder (or stakeholder), you would hardly receive any dividend.

PS. John McCain made the same suggestion for the next Treasury Secretary a few days later. It reminds me of the sayings that the first man who compared woman to flower was a genius; the rest of us using the same tactics are nothing but Mohohan.

Tactics

Another recent example of how our officials chose inappropriate words was this:

"The SAR government would exhaust the last penny in order to maintain the stability of the financial system of Hong Kong."

No, there's nothing wrong in its literal sense, but it's just against the principle of public speaking (or advertisement). The above declaration, despite of its noble intention, just create an impression that our government is about to, or has a real risk in, spending the last penny.

That's not what (or how) you want to be reassured with in the middle of a crisis.

For those who are not familiar with standard tactics for this problem, here they are:

1. Appear to be confident and know more than the others.
2. Emphasize you have more than one way to deal with the problem (without specifying what these methods are).
3. Point out a simple practical way for the public that could help protecting them.

For the last point, it doesn't matter if the way you advise has no genuine value - no one could (nor would anyone have the courage to) disprove it. One excellent demonstration by our own officials was the advice to clean the floor and furniture with 1% hypochlorite solution during the SARS epidemic. It does not work - the thing was transmitted by droplets, not fomites. Nonetheless it worked well in terms of soothing the public and prevent further panic.

As Franz Kafka said: The lie is made for world order.

團結

With the tsunami our senior officials have been running like chickens with no head.

One said, "Hong Kong citizens must come together and do not lose our unity in order to tackle the worst financial crisis in our history." (Come together for what ? Jewish people did so in the Nazi concentration camp - it just made them easier to be exterminated.)

The other said, "Hong Kong has a small and open economic system; we are prone to hiccups of financial tyrants overseas." (Translation to modern layman English: It all depends on the others; we could do nothing about it.)

And the third commented, "What's going on is just a prodrome - the worst is yet to come." (Do you mean the Hang Seng Index is going to touch the floor, and we're heading level B18 ?)

But, on a second thought, I shouldn't really be too harsh to them. At least they are honest. What they are trying to tell us are:

1. The stock market will continue to fall,
2. and we can do nothing about it.
3. You guys should stay where you are and meet your fate.

I'm sure if anyone says a similar thing north to the Shenzhen river, he will be at once arrested for spreading rumour - with a possibly malicious intention to disturb the order of our financial system. (By the time the case comes up to the court, of course, they will instead be found guilty for leaking national secret. That's another story.)