PeterRS

Hong Kong is used to heavy rainfall. Following the collapse of part of the Island's north facing hillside in the 1970s, massive underground reservoirs were constructed to hold excess rainfall and route it into the sea to the south of the island. On Friday, though, it suffered its heaviest rain since records began 140 years ago. Apart from major flooding, the north shore of the island escaped with relatively little damage. On the south side, though, it was a different matter. The torrential rain resulted in part of the hillside in front of the expensive privately-built residences in the Redhill development collapsing, leaving some housing in imminent danger of collapse into the water. It is thought that illegal construction of a swimming pool and an underground car park weakened the retaining wall. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/12/hong-kongs-multimillion-dollar-cliffside-mansions-on-brink-of-collapse-after-record-rains

In the early-mid 1980s both Northwest and PanAm provided biz class trans-Pacific passengers with free helicopter trips to/from the mid-town Manhattan terminal. They saved so much time. I think they stopped when United took over PanAm's Pacific routes.

Just for info, the fast speed train from Vientiane to Kunming stops at Luang Prabang. On the present schedule it departs at 08:08 and arrives at 09:53 (but this might be Chinese time which is an hour ahead of Laos). Return train to Vientiane is late afternoon.

Hopefully more than 51% 😵

AOT think 180 mock passengers is sufficient to see that all is working smoothly and to iron out any kinks? I remember before Hong Kong's new airport opened, they had 10,000 volunteers for a day of test runs. Everything was working perfectly we were told. Then the day the airport opened, it was absolute chaos. Flight information displays crashed. Even the underground train taking passengers in the evening from check in to the far gates suddenly stopped mid-way and slowly backed into a siding. It could then not be moved for 3 hours, resulting in hundreds missing flights. It took a week before all the problems were more or less sorted out. With SAT-1 being part of an existing airport, it is unlikely teething problems will be more than minor. But with 28 gates and a planned capacity of 15 million, something will go wrong!

Long ago - and I mean at least 25 years - Northwest served both Dom Perignon and Krug in trans-Pacific business class (they had abandoned first). Cathay also used to serve several excellent chateau-bottled Cabernet Sauvignons. I especially liked Chateau Lynch Bages. Eventually they realised they were spending too much on biz class wines and that one was moved up only for first class passengers.

That may be your experience. I have flown Qatar long-haul business annually for around 10 years and I find the food quality has both improved over that time period and been very consistent in recent years. Its wine list remains one of the best in the sky.

This has definitely been available on Qatar for at least the last 2 years and I believe also on Singapore. Cathay did trials on two long haul routes in 2021 but received a lot of dissatisfaction - from the flight attendants! I like it if only because you know the meal will arrive fresh. And I have rarely had anything other than excellent meals on Qatar. I don't eat dinner on a late departure long-haul overnight flight, but definitely have a nice breakfast and several courses for lunch! QR's wine list is also better than most other airlines in my experience.

We all know the problem lay originally with the moguls who ruled the major studios in Hollywood. For the same reason that decades ago they went to remarkable lengths to hide Rock Hudson's overt homosexuality - and many others like Richard Chamberlain and Sal Mineo, present day studio executives are only marginally less terrified that public reaction might affect profitability. American-made movies generally depend on American cinema-goers for the bulk of the revenues that cover the costs of production, distribution and marketing. Particularly, the opening week-end 'take' can still sometimes make or break movies. And unfortunately the majority of that audience comes from a huge largely conservative church-going bunch settled in Middle America. Slow burners which build audiences over time remain in the minority. Thankfully, things are slowly changing. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain is one of the most obvious in terms of theme. Earlier serious US-made movies included the 1969 Midnight Cowboy, 1970 Boys in the Band, 1971 Fortune and Men's Eyes and arguably in 1972's Deliverance. But it is the independent companies that are much more to the fore in promoting gay-themed movies and gay actors. One of the most viewed in recent years has been Call Me By Your Name - made by independent producers, although later distributed by Sony Pictures. FIlm Festivals are a key indie outlet. Not surprisingly, Call Me By Your Name made its debut screening at the Sundance Film Festival. Incidentally its cinematographer was Thai. But we need to remember there were older movies which bcame classics of their kind and which did feature gay themes and/or gay or bisexual actors, whether out or not, like Murray Head in Sunday Bloody Sunday (that deep lips-on-lips French kiss with Peter Finch was the first on screen), BD Wong (I thought superb in the Broadway stage production of M Butterfly in the role played far less effectively in the movie by John Lone) and Alan Cumming. Producers in other countries, particularly continental Europe where sex is far less a taboo subject, have been bolder than their American contemporaries. Homosexuality is strongly hinted at in Ken Russell's 1969 Women in Love during the nude wrestling scene between Oliver Reed and Alan Bates. Sunday Bloody Sunday was made in Britain in 1971. 1974's A Bigger Splash about the break-up between the openly gay artist David Hockney and his then partner Peter Schlesinger is also British and featured both frontal nudity and a naked love scene. Openly gay Derek Jarman's 1976 Sebastiane shocked many but still found an audience. As long as the movie industry in general is run by executives whose bottom line will always be more important than the artistic end product, greater change will continue to depend on independent producers and the money men prepared to finance them.

It's not mandatory that you read any posts. 😵 And I think you must be aware that mine do tend to be on the longer side!

Indeed I do. That was John WImbush, the senior partner of the territory's most prestigious law firm, Deacons. If I recall correctly, he was caught up in the extensive Carrian scandal and was due to testify that day before the ICAC. When he didn't turn up, he was eventually found at the bottom of his swimming pool. I believe his neck was tied to the grille but the manner is not important. The fact that he was fully dressed in his immaculate 3-piece suit with his polished black shoes placed at the side made it all even more weird and totally unlike a suicide. Yet that was the Coroner's verdict. I actually had had drinks with the judge who was to preside over that Carrian trial, Justice Barker. We had a mutual friend in the UK who asked if I would meet with him. We met in the old Bull & Bear pub when I thought he drank rather a lot! That trial turned out to be the longest and costliest fraud trial in HK history. Barker seemed unable to follow all the arguments and finally called a mistrial after 18 months. He was savaged by the government and the legal profession for that judgement and had to leave Hong Kong in disgrace. He retired to Cyprus and died six month later when he wrapped his car around a tree! The manner of Wimbush' death was in some ways similar to the allegations over the 1980 death of Police Sergeant John MacLennan who had discovered a great deal of information in police files about harrassment of homosexuals. He was found dead in his locked government apartment with five bullet woulds to his torso. It was alleged by his bosses that he had shot himself. At the delayed inquest, an expert witness proved it was impossible to do that by turning his particular revolver to his body and firing five times. The recoil was too pronounced. Yet the coroner ruled suicide. The public furore which resulted and lasted for months was eventually to lead to the repeal of the old colonial anti-sodomy law.

From the BBC website today. The poor man cannot remember if he asked boys to "eat his saussage" or not. I know what I think! The new boss of a J-pop agency disgraced by the extensive sexual abuse committed by its late founder Johnny Kitagawa has also been accused of sexually assaulting young boys. Noriyuki Higashiyama said he could not remember the reported acts which he said may or may not have occurred. He was named the new boss of Johnny and Associates after Kitagawa's niece stepped down on Thursday. He will lead the agency's efforts to compensate victims and seek amends. However, on Thursday at a press conference announcing Julie Fujishima's departure and his appointment, he was also faced with questions about his own reported abuse. Journalists asked him if allegations published in a book saying he massaged the crotches of boys, exposed his genitals and told them to "eat my sausage" were true. He replied: "I don't remember clearly. Maybe it happened, maybe it didn't. I have trouble remembering." Alluding to claims that he had bullied younger performers, the 56-year old added it was possible that he had been stricter with them, and that he may have done things as a teenager or in his 20s that he would not do now. More at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66748236

I don't understand why when I press 'Quote' on your last post, absolutely nothing happens! That's totally unusual. So I'll just have to copy and paste the relevant sections. I've still never heard of Nicholas Galitzine or Mary and George! Nor do i know what TZP is. Sounds like something you gargle with! Sorry! You are probably right. And certainly there are more openly LGBTQ actors now in the business. But if they do not want to lie, then they can tell the truth. It's an issue only they can face and those of us who are not in the acting profession can't do a thing about it. Nor should we, in my view.

Agree I was probably a bit hard on the UK, but not the US. But when I lived and worked in the UK, I saw and heard about plenty of corruption at local Council level. But that was a very long time ago. As for Thailand - No! In 2021 the outgoing PM stated he would drive out corruption "in the public sector" within 20 years. No one believed him then and no one believes it now. It does not take 20 years to drive out endemic corruption. Hong Kong effectively did it within 2 or 3 years. Its then governor, Sir Murray MacLehose, was perfectly well aware that many in the civil service, the police force and in the judiciary were corrupt - especially the police, many of whom were in the pockets of triad gangs. Hong Kong was in essence a cess pit of corruption. In 1974 he set up the Independent Commission Against Corruption, a body that had its own police force, civil servants and selected judiciary. Put simply, if anyone was charged with corruption, they were guilty until provded innocent. The ICAC was independent of all other law enforcement agencies and answerable only to the Governor. At that time, 8 out of 10 public complaints were against the police. Soon the ICAC had forced 119 police officers to leave the force and others were charged with corruption. A history of the Hong Kong Judiciary from 1841 was commissioned in 2013 and the manuscript delivered in 2016. The book has never seen the light of day because the Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma Tao-li is worried that scandals involving some colonial judges will reflect badly on the institution, according to the South China Morning Post. One gay judge in the 1970s was regularly called 'Brenda'. He fled Hong Kong. https://today.line.me/hk/v2/article/e9YoRn Corruption still exists in Hong Kong but it is a fraction of what it used to be. Thailand could do the same, but there is neither the political will nor the personal desire. It is essentially a society that lives by corruption from to top of the government to the lowliest of village dwellers.

Quite agree. I have never actually used miles for economy tickets as they are just a waste of miles - now incresingly so. And on some airlines business class mileage tickets are starting to come with options. If you want what always used to be offered in business class along with more space, reclining seats, better food and bigger TV screens, some airlines are charging for access to lounges and seat selection.

Wow! There is so much in that post I do not know where to start with a response. Unfortunately, I have never heard of most of those individuals and movies you mention! That aside, in principle it doesn't matter to me in the slightest if a gay part in a movie is played by a gay or a straight man. I see no reason why we should know. We are watching a movie, not a gay man acting in a movie. The case of Bernstein's nose is not quite the same. I don't care that the actor is straight when Bernstein was, as his wife acknowledged in a letter soon after their marriage, "a homosexual and will never change." The nose was an attempt to make Cooper look more like Bernstein, which to me it doesn't! Going way back in time, were average (perhaps all) movie goers aware that matinee idol Rock Hudson was an out-and-out gay when away from the silver screen? Of course not, because these were the times he lived in. Moving over to the general entertainment business, we can turn the quesion on its head. The highest paid entertainer in Las Vegas history for many years was Liberace. He did a lot to hide his status as a gay man, even suing and winning a law suit against a UK newspaper by telling lies. Yet those in his audiences were mostly middle-aged ladies who, if they did not know, surely all guessed that he was not straight. Did that affect his popularity? It probably helped it! Yet not many years earlier, the gay actor, singer, playwright, and general man of so many talents, Noel Coward, had told his biographer that he did not want to be known as gay - even though like Liberace he often seemed more gay than many gay men. His reason? He believed that most of the middle-aged ladies who would come in buses to see him in matinees - essential to the profitability of many plays in London at the time - would be put off if their suspicions were found to be true. This was the actor who had had a 20-year affair with a member of Britain's Royal Family, Prince George the Duke of Kent, the fourth son of King George V. George had started one letter, "Dearest, darling Noel." The government and society of the day were determined that no word of the relationship leaked out - and not only because under UK law at the time it was an offence to be gay. After George's death during WW2, Churchill himself authorised a break-in of Coward's home to steal the letters between the two men. One of Coward's many quips concerned two other in the closet UK actors, one gay and one very bisexual. With a friend he was crossing London's Leicester Square in the 1950s and noticed the cinema was showing a movie billed as Dirk Bogarde and Michael Redgrave in THE SEA SHALL NOT HAVE THEM. "Why ever not?" said Coward. "Everyone else has!" You mention Asian movies. Given the cultures in Asian countries, the lack of gay-themed movies is understandable. I have seen neither of those you list, but am surprised that the movie made from Taiwan's most famous book about gay men Crystal Boys published in 1983 is not mentioned. This was penned during martial law at a time when there were no gay venues in Taiwan. It concerns a group of boys who sell themselves by being available in the famous New Park. This was made into a movie in 2003 and also a popular tv series. It's 20 one-hour episodes are avaiable on youtube. Now, of course, Taiwan has become arguably the most open country in Asia for the gay community. So it is hardly surprising that Your Name Engraved Herein was such a success. I find it interesting that it is set in 1987, the year when martial law was finally ended and slowly a gay scene began to emerge. In some ways, Hong Kong cinema was further ahead than Taiwan. Arguably Hong Kong's best-known gay-themed movie is the gritty and very gay 1997 movie Happy Together starring gay Leslie Cheung and straight Leung Chiu-wai as a gay couple who travel to Brazil to try and reignite their relationship. It was nominated for the Palme d'Or in Cannes and its director Wong Kar-wai won the prize as Best Director. It also received many accolades at Film Festivals. In 2016 it was ranked the 3rd greatest LGBT movie of all time by the British Film Institute. Leslie Cheung finally came out as gay during a long run of concerts in Hong Kong in 1997 when he stated he had been in a relationship with an old schoolfriend for about 20 years whom he called "the love of my life". It had absolutely no effect on his fan base - other perhaps than to increase it. His earlier gay-themed movie hit Farewell My Concubine was also a major success. It was the first Chinese language movie to win the Cannes Palme d'Or and won the Golden Globe as Best Foreign Film. That Leslie died by suicide aged only 46 was tragic. But I suggest the knowledge of his being gay was not merely a result of his being effectively a mega-star. It was a realisation among his generally young audiences that gay/straight stereotypes were gradually changing. Going back to your main theme, I am totally against outing anyone. As you suggest, the popular media will always want to know about 'stars' lives and who they are sleeping with. That's their business. If a gay man says "I have dated girls but am not ready to marry" it will do less harm to his career than "fuck off, it's none of your business." Who are we to say he is being unfair to other, perhaps younger and struggling LGBTQ actors? Acting is a dog eat dog profession. Everyone knows that. If that was not the case, there would likely have been no Bill Cosby, no Harvey Weinstein, no Kevin Spacey and no Johnny Kitagawa Japanese movie mogul raping Japanese boys for almost 50 years (see the thread Japan's Boy Band 'King' a Serial Sexual Predator under Theatre, Movies, Art and Literature). We live in an increasingly unfair world. Those who fall into the LGBTQ category have to fight just like everyone else. We need understanding. We should not expect nor ask for favours.

Like the USA and the UK, for example! 😵

This is far from uncommon with the airline alliances and mileage programmes. One airline in the programme 'charges' different numbers of miles for the same route and/or at a different time of year. Equally, I find it is becoming more common for members of an airline's loyalty programme to have advance booking for mileage seats. This was always the case with Qantas when I wanted to fly, as I did annually, from BKK to Sydney. Granted it was a popular route but even when I tried to book a ticket on the first day seats were made avaiable, none were ever left. The same was true when I spent a month in South America using BA flights from BKK to Buenos Aires via LHR. I booked the outward sectors 51 weeks in advance on the first day seats were put on the market. I was told I could not book the return because I'd have to wait for another 4 weeks for the 51 week in advance opening. When I repeated the exercise, again on the first day, I could book Buenos Aires to LHR but there were no seats LHR/BKK. I had to return to HKG and pay for a ticket from there. I later realised that BA withheld mileage seats on popular routes hoping to sell them before opening them for mileage redemption. In general, though, I shouldn't really complain because I have had many dozen long-distance free mileage tickets and upgrades over the years since they were first introduced.

There's a lot missing in that article. The researchers, their methodology, number of participants, where were they are living, how measurements were taken . . . and so on. But if we click on "press release" we find more info. "In a study published Feb. 14 in The World Journal of Men's Health, Eisenberg and his colleagues compiled data from 75 studies, conducted between 1942 and 2021, that reported on the penile length of 55,761 men. The team found that the average erect penis length increased by 24% over 29 years, a trend they saw around the world." Yet I find these 'findings' somewhat spurious despite the expertise of the team's lead author, Michael Eisenberg. 75 studies over 79 years does not seem to indicate an extensive sampling. Nor does that sample of 55,761 men. They cannot have been the same men measured each year. So they must have been different men spread over the full 79 years. In theory that makes 706 men per year. In other words, a tiny sample. Also, were men from the same group of countries sampled every year or were the samples taken from a much wider group of countries. That would render the results even more 'flaccid'! It all seems a bit like those surveys that appear every few years giving the average penile length of men in all the different countries in the world. These may give an indication, but most of us can usually give many instances where those results are equally 'flaccid'.

It's not just social media. Any well-known personality is often hounded by the national media and assumed to be guilty. Of course some are - but then some are not. There was a famous case in Thailand a little more than a decade or so ago when one of the world's most famous classical pianists and conductors who happened to visit Pattaya where he had a house outside the city was accused of being a pedophile. A 14-year old boy alleged the man had molested him. In Thailand the police have three attempts to question a potential law breaker. Failure to do so results in an arrest warrant being issued. With a very hectic worldwide concert schedule, he only visited his Thai house for a week to 10 days maybe three times a year when he was en route to or from countries like Japan and Australia. He was never in his house when police tried to talk with him. Accordingly the arrest warrant was issued. When arrested in the summer, the police, as is usual in this country, were accompanied by a posse of news media. He was taken to the local police station. He denied the accusation. Being someone obviously very wealthy, he could have passed around a few large brown envelopes and immediately left the country. The world would have known nothing. From the outset, though, he stated he was innocent and would prove it in Court. Remarkably for anyone accused of being a pedophile, he was not thrown in prison. He was bailed for less than $10,000 and given his passport back so that he could take part in upcoming concerts. He promised he would return every 12 days for bail renewal hearings. Rumours quickly spread that the police had discovered a pedophile ring providing underage boys for expats and tourists. It was then claimed this man was its ringleader. And so on it went. His "arrest" was on the front pages of most world news media. His concert contracts were cancelled and social media had a field day. "No smoke without fire" was one of the most common. Another was "why spend short vacations in Thailand if he was not a rampant pedophile?" The fact that his career regularly took him to many of the world's cities with a gay scene went totally unremarked. It turned out he was gay and he had a boyfriend aged around 25. That was enough to brand him as a child molester. After he had left Thailand the first time, the Deputy Director of Immigration was quoted in banner headlines in the nation's newspapers, "He'll never come back!" It was then announced that he was on a blacklist and would not even be permitted to return - despite the Court mandate that he had to return! It was all b/s! True to his word, he returned to Thailand at his own expense for the six bail renewal hearings every 12 days. Each time, the judge renewed his bail. And each time there was a media scrum outside the Court. On five occasions there were between 15 and 20 media reps waiting for him including the main news agencies. Except once. For the last, the police had informed the judge that they had informed the Publc Prosecutor they had no case. After all the media furore and the damage to this man's career, the case was dismissed. When he left court that day a totally free man, all the media had disappeared. Not one media rep was there to hear the verdict. Who had issued the order for "no media" is not known. What has never been answered is what happened to the 14 year old boy. He was in the custody of some family child-care facility. But he disappeared and was never found. Then it was discovered that the day before the "arrest", an internet cafe owner who lived close by had been stopped by the police and discovered to have underage porn DVDs in his motorcycle. He was arrested, admitted that he had had sex with the 14 year old boy who worked in his internet shop at least 20 times (and also with the other underage boys who worked there), but then immediately escaped and could not be found. He was eventually discovered some weeks after the musician's case had been dismissed. He was watching a movie in a Pattaya cinema. He had been under the police noses the whole time. The whole affair was obviously some sort of set up, but by whom and for what reason has been open to speculation. The internet cafe owner seemed to know of this man's reputation. Was his name given up when the jerk was arrested in the hope this might get him a lighter sentence. It was also known that a publlic service organisation which received funding from a United Nations agency was applying for additional cash. If it could show more activity by snaring a well-known personality, might this help release more funds? Who knows what the reason was. All we do know is that one man's career was severely affected in the short-medium term and goodness knows what else it did to his reputation. In that case, all media and the Thai authorities have a great deal to answer for.

This case has been before the National Anti-Corruption Commission for about a decade. And it has done absolutely f--k all! For the very simple reason that the government, the rich and the elite did not want it to do anything, and no doubt some of the Commission members received very substantial brown envelopes. This whole case stinks! The man at the centre of the charges has been seen both in Thailand and overseas several times - and nothing has been done. The government alleged it had had Interpol put him on a Red List. I went through the nearly 8,000 profiles on that red list. Guess who was not on it! His family is one of the richest in Thailand. Yet it paid a pittance to the widow of the motorcycle policeman this criminal mowed down and dragged along Sukhumvit doing what was then alleged as 200 or so kph at around 5:00 am. The family would not permit the police access to its compound until mid-afternoon, by which time the drugs in his system could have dispersed. It also at first alleged he had not been driving and tried to set the family chauffeur up as the driver. They are a bunch of disaceful crooks. If Move Forward ever gets in to power, I hope it uses all its powers to find this criminal and put him in jail for deacdes for outright murder - with additional years for having failed to turn up for about half a dozen court appearances.

And think of all the land that has to be appropriated and then sold to the goverment at hugely inflated prices!

In Japan, the name Johnny Kitagawa was until recently revered. In the 1960s he had started up the all-male agency which went on to manage most of the country's mushrooming boy band entertainment groups. He was arguably the most influential and powerful figure in Japan's entertainment industry. His agency was the gateway for many thousands of young men hoping to become stars. When he died in 2019 aged 87, his death was a national event. Even the Prime Minister sent his condolences. For those not clued in on Asian pop prior to K-Pop, J-Pop was its predecessor and a huge favourite both in Japan and around Asia for decades. When I worked in Japan in the 1990s, it was almost impossible to turn on the television without at least one programme featuring J-Pop bands. Now, thanks to an investigative team of reporters from the BBC, it has been discovered that Kitagawa was a sexual predator of the worst kind even before starting his agency. In the new documentary Predator: The Secret Scandal of J-Pop, the reporters uncovered a scandal that is at the least on a parallel with that of Harvey Weinstein in the USA - only it seems to have gone on for much longer and involved many more individuals, in his case boys. As with Weinstein, there were many in the know - but no-one dared to speak out. Several singers openly tell the BBC they were scared their careers would be over if they did not give in to Kitagawa's sexual demands. One states the abuse started when he was 15 and lasted four years. When Kitagawa was alive, some of the allegations against him were proved in a civil case. But Kitagawa sued for defamation on more than one occasion. Japanese media failed to cover the allegations against him for decades. The reporters discovered that Kitagawa's family management knew of the abuse and allowed it to continue for decades. Even his niece knew what was going on. After his death, she took over the management of his company. She finally resigned today. But in her place is Noriyuki Higashiyama. He was one of the first talents recruited by Kitagawa's company. He states he was never abused by Kitagama. The future of the agency which was once known for fame and glamour which has been so publicly disgraced will no doubt be a matter for a long public debate as more and more men tell their stories of sexual abuse at the hand of a monster. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66737052

I have never looked up Spacey's past. But there are plenty of other people who have been "tortured" in one way or another as they were growing up, often by relatives. I do not think that necessarily means their lives are "ruined". Therapy helps a lot of people who have endured often shocking childhoods. Did he seek any? I have no idea. I just know from the basis of what friends who have met him have told me that he is not someone I would wish to meet or whom I admire as a person. As an actor, I think he has shown many fine qualities. It is, I suggest, interesting that today we have news from the BBC's website of a massively long string of abuses of underage boys by the founder of the agency which had the largest stable of boy bands in Japan. In view of the depravity of this man, I have started a new thread. It's interesting, I think, that the legal system in Scotland is different from that in England and Wales. Under Scottish Law there is a third verdict a jury can deliver - Not Proven.

If that was for a return ticket, it was an almost unbelievable deal! Under the standard Asia Miles award scheme, that should be a minimum of 170,000 miles. But then other One World airlines often have different mileage requirements.