Dubai may be positively insane but then Hong Kong is absolutely shameless in its display of wealth and consumption, especially now that it is christmas time. Now x-mas is not only taken as an excuse for excess shopping but there are special x-mas themed stages all over the place. Passed by the one in central tonight where they had a chinese band playing covers of pop songs and while i passed there the (very attractive, young) lead-singer announced the next song (i am a survivor or i survive or something like this) by telling the crowd that

… two months ago she had a really tough time, because all three of her boyfriends had left her on the same day – on the same day get this! – but this experience only made her stronger because [song starts]

Meanwhile the the lcd screen that displays txt-messages send to santa changes from ‘i wish i had 2.000.000 dollars to spend’ (not specific whether HKD or USD) to ‘i wish all the people in the world had a gun and would kill themselves’.

Although i have a really beautiful mahjong set at home (but not enough friends that know how to play) i was looking for mahjong sets here in Hong Kong. The whole operation was kind of disappointing as they only seem to have cheap plastic sets (the gift shops all have one bone/wood set, but that is exactly the same as the one my late grand-aunt once brought us back from China, claiming that is was ‘unique’).

However there was one set on display in a small shop next to temple street market that really caught my eye. on this set the white dragon tiles (which i have always detested) are decorated with the microsoft office logo:

Click on image for larger version and here is another shot

Unfortunately the guy in the shop did not speak english so he could not explain how microsoft office 2003 has become associated with white dragons (which – i guess – is better than dancing paper clips) and what the fuck Microsoft has got to do with Mahjong. Maybe licensing there logo for mahjong sets is their attempt to generate a bit of revenue from this corner of the city which is otherwise known for getting pirated versions of just about any Microsoft product.