The Problem with People

The headline on today's Oriental Daily read "Blah blah blah, blah blah. Daughter of Hong Kong, Anita Mui". I vaguely remember our windsurfing queen Lee Lai-shan claiming that title in 1996. I hadn't realized that the glory of claiming the first Olympic gold medal for the city on a skill trained since the age of 12 was quite equivalent to that of making multi-gazillions off the city with a talent discovered at the age of four and spending most of it on friends.

Showing on TV yester day and night were endless footages of celebs and semi-celebs approaching the funeral home. The only one that kept my eyes on the screen for longer than two seconds was Mui's mother taking what must have been half an hour to get from a car parked right at the front to the elevator in the lobby of the funeral home. The swarm of photographers and their professional equipment hovering over the old lady's head reminded me of my daily commute on the MTR. Coincidentally, on that exact same morning at the Quarry Bay transfer, I had to shout at certain barbarians in suits for shoving me into the train when someone was clearly trying to get out.

What amazed me most was how the crowd of 150 or so reporters all decided that taking a few shots of a person walking from point A to B was so important as to risk crushing each other, or perhaps the old lady herself, or her grandchildren behind her, on such a mournful day, at the entrance of such a respected place.

Having browsed through entertainment news pages on most major papers today, I only spotted one picture of Mui's mom, and it was clearly taken at another occasion.