Kid size 出前一丁 instant noodle

Interesting discovery during leisure grocery shopping. Good to eat less to reduce some weight (well, shouldn't eat instant noodle at the first place).

Merry Christmas

Sara's graduating from her master...

...so Mom had collected all her three masters...

I was wearing shorts in winter! Well, I had a doctor's appointment before that.

陳日君主教對世貿和平示威者被捕的聲明

2005年12月19日, 10:30 a.m.

本人昨晚收到本教區勞工事務委員會、正義和平委員會及其他兩個亞太區天主教組織的新聞稿，抗議警方不人道對待被扣留的反世貿示威人士，並要求政府立即釋放他們。

本人知道勞委、正委職員正在灣仔，就馬上去了馬師道為了解情況，有不少傳媒也在那裡，本人向他們發表了一些意見，現在更準確表達如下：

『本人早已說過本港政府根本不宜請世貿來此開會，因為以這個小城市的警察力量並不一定能應付像在別處發生的反世貿抗議行動。政府既已作出邀請，也該適當準備，但事實證明政府根本沒有做足功課，警方很不恰當地處理了這件差事。

警方說本來還有九龍區豐富人手沒有出動。為什麼不用更多人手保證警員安全？在部份示威者用暴力時又未能立即拘捕他們，卻在事後拘捕大批和平示威者。拘捕行動竟用了十數小時！有被拘捕者竟被困車上數個小時，看來警方根本沒有準備地方安置他們。

警方嚴重疏忽了對被拘捕者應負的責任：食物、水、防寒物、衞生需要。警方拒絕向被拘捕者的伙伴，友好和社會交代被拘捕者的所在。也拒絕讓志願律師及翻譯員探訪被捕者。還有善良的修女受到侮辱性的待遇。這一切是我們香港人的羞耻，我也向韓國和平示威者道歉』，這一切嚴重損害我們國際都市的名譽，有關人士應為此負責。

警方既提不出控訴，應在今天下午3:00時前釋放所有被拘捕的和平示威者。

本人今晨前往觀塘法庭尋找被拘捕的修女，受到警方高級官員的粗暴待遇，並在等待兩小時後也不得知悉修女和兩位神父的所在。本人保留對此提出控訴的權利。

陳日君主教
天主教香港教區主教

灣仔淪陷

今天明報的頭條竟然是「灣仔淪陷」！

真不知所謂。若果灣仔真的淪陷了，一定是淪陷給警察，因為昨晚「警方控制了灣仔」(這可是警務署署長李明逵說的)！

香港的傳媒真令人嘆為觀止，先有電視台記者做直播時帶頭盔(當時場面平靜，她後面的途人還可以在鏡頭前行來行去沒有事)；接著就來個「灣仔淪陷」(這份知識份子報連日來到會議內容的報導比蘋果還要少)、「港島大暴動」；還有「鐵腕清場」、「鎮暴清場」、成報的副題則是「武力清場」(那些被「拘留」的士威人士可是排著隊等警察拉上車的)。

唉。怪不得香港的傳媒(以至警察)給人笑。

倒是蘋果的頭條最沒有加鹽加醋。(What a surprise.)

Urgent appeal by Hong Kong People's Alliance on the WTO

Dear friends,

Urgent appeal by Hong Kong People's Alliance on the WTO

We write to request your immediate solidarity action against the Hong Kong government’s mass arrest and violence against the anti-WTO demonstrators on 17th and 18th December 2005. On the 5th day of the WTO MC6 in HK, thousands of local and overseas demonstrators marched from the Victoria Park to Wanchai Convention and Exhibition Centre where the WTO meeting was being held. They were stopped by thousands of HK Police around 5 PM. Soon the police used pepper spray, fire hose and subsequently tear gas bombs were fired upon the demonstrators without any warning. 60 demonstrators suffered injuries and 3 were hospitalized.

All of them were detained by the Police soon after discharged from the hospital.

Around 900 demonstrators peacefully sat in at the Gloucester Road but were surrounded by hundreds of armed police for ten hours. They were denied of food and other backups. Subsequently they were all arrested around 3.30AM of 18th December 2005.

The HKPA is trying our best to continue our struggle against the WTO and to plan more local and international actions for the immediate release of those who were/are being arrested, who are mainly non-HK residents.

18th December 2005

Suggested action:

Please send protest letter to the following persons:

Mr. Donald Tsng
Fax :(852) 2509 0577
E-mail :ceo@ceo.gov.hk

Mr. Pascal Lamy
General enquiries
Tel: (41-22) 739 51 11
Fax: (41-22) 731 42 06
email: enquiries@wto.org

cc to HKPA secretariat

For more information, please contact:
Mabel Au (pawto2005@yahoo.com.hk)
Phone no. 852-93250030

Victoria Park on 17 Dec 2005

These are pictures I took at noon, way before the unhappy event. (Well, I won't call it a "riot" as the newspapers do. The "event" was very well organized and targetted only to the police. No one on the street was hurted and no store damaged.)

Police's banners in different languages telling you the "do's and don'ts".

Yellow and red ribbons making up the most frequently shouted slogan "down, down, WTO".

Many local vistors were at Victoria Park yesterday.

Mad Cow Disease: A pair of scales, eight meters high. On the one arm a dead cow is hanging by its legs, on the other a number of Africans (in copper). A symbol pinpointing that the rich world is spending five times the amount of their development aid to subsidise their own agriculture.

Survival of the Fattest: A huge fat woman from the West sitting on the shoulders of a starved African man. The 3.5 metres high sculpture epitomises the imbalanced distribution of the world's resources, preserved by a biased and unjust world trade.

Hunger March: Twenty copper sculptures of starved children. The March will appear as a mobile manifestation in the many demonstrations during the WTO summit.

One-quarter of the NGO activities site, only the site for flower marker during Chinese New Year and many major rallies.

The main stage.

Another main stage.

When the agriculture part is almost done, the WTO will seriously enter into the "service" stage, in which, the HK service industry will be affected too.

Store just across the road from Victoria Park -- wooden boards blocking the display windows.

South Korean university students expressing their anti-WTO stance in Causeway Bay.

My blog

I know there are not many people reading my blog, but I also know my blog has regular readers. I know it from the number of people concerning my knee in the last few months.

Lately, it's an very effective mean to communicate with my cousins in Canada. They know what I am doing, and I also know how they step into different stages of life by reading theirs. Most importantly, I can now show their pictures to my mom so that she won't keep asking me about my cousins any more...hahaha...what a relief.

Blogs and other cyper world media also help me to understand more about what's going on inside the WTO MC6. Although there are tonnes of WTO coverages on various media every day, the local media focus almost only on the protests. Some local NGO workers that take part in the lobbying and some local citizens helping or participating in NGO activities write in their blogs or to other internet media what they see inside the conference hall and on the spots of various NGO activities. They give us a wider view of MC6 than the "simple, sometimes naive" local media.

WTO MC6

This is the third day of the sixth ministerial conference of the WTO. While protests, seminars, cultural activities, etc. are being staged outside the conference hall days and nights; there is still no sign of any successful negotiation inside the door.

Well, for me, no deal is a good deal, especially if it's not going to do the poor any good. Just the same as the current polictical reform in HK, status quo is better than any change that turns our political system backward.

My first "encounter" with the WTO was my one-month stay in CUHK. My job there was to organize a conference on "Beijing + 10 meets WTO + 10", i.e. how WTO is going to affect women, with an aim to remind the negotiators and advocates the gender perspective. It turns out that I left CUHK quicker than I ever thought, but my interests keep going on.

If you are living in the Kowloon side of HK and you do not read any newspaper or watch the news, you will not notice that the MC6 is going on just across the harbour. The conference and the related NGO activities (watch out, the NGOs not only stage protests, there are also a variety of other activities from cultural performance, seminars and forums, to launching of a new book) are located from Wanchai (where the official and NGO conferences locate) to Causeway Bay (base of NGO activities), i.e. the northern side of the HK Island. Other than these areas, lives of HK people are rarely disrupted.

My office is located in Central, west to Wanchai. Most of the protests are not extended to Central. However, the security measures of the building are also escaluated. Well, no surprise. Our office located at CITIBANK TOWER! But the so called "escaluated" measures are simply blocking all the entrances except one and every one has to get his/her entrance pass out in order to get into the lift lobby. I always doubt how much more secured it can get, except making us walk longer.

The security measures are more serious at my old office. I went to pick up something from EOC this morning. Where it locates? The same clusters of buildings as the one where the NGO WTO forum is, and just next block to the real conference venue. So you can imagine that it looks like a police state around the buildings. Non-office users will need to get pass the x-ray machine to get going.

There are three more days till the end of the MC6. I will drop by the Victoria Park (an interesting place in HK where old people play tai-chi, youngsters compete in ball games, people shop at the biggest local "flower market" in CNY, and political events from left to right take place) tomorrow and over the weekend to have a taste of the NGO's WTO activities. It is expected that the protests will continue to escaluate if the negotiations are not in favour of the poor.

Sick

I caught a cold, plus the "micro current" thing done by my phsyical therapist make me very tired. I shouldn't have gone to work. I better work quick and go back home early.

Make Trade Fair

Just for a record, it's WTO-MC6 in HK from 13 to 18 December. Make Trade Fair for us all!

WTO official website
http://www.wto.org/

WTO-MC6 official website
http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min05_e/min05_e.htm

Oxfam Make Trade Fair website
http://www.maketradefair.org/en/index.htm

I think I am sort of sick...

...infected by Mom...

12.4

I've been reading others' blogs and viewing others' pictures of the 12.4 rally on universal suffrage. But surprisingly, it seems that I don't have any thing special to talk about, despite the fact that I was at the Victoria Park since 10am last on Sunday and didn't finish my task till 2am midnight.

Since the candle night vigil in April last year, I am always tasked with the job of fund raising at major CHRF rallys, and I was working on the same task again during the 12.4 rally. Although this was already the fourth time I worked on the same role, interestingly, I still found my lesson to learn and room for improvement next time (if there's any).

One thing I don't like about fund raising at rally is that I don't get the chance walking through the route. Everytime I just took the MTR or a taxi to travel from the starting point (Victoria Park) to the destination (usually the government headquarter) so as to wrap up the fund raising at the end point. I missed the fun seeing all the creativity of the public, and also the memory of working with a whole lot of strangers on the same goal. May be next time I should just stay in the crowd.

P.S. My knee didn't get especially worse even though I stood for the whole day on Sunday. But it is not feeling very well these couple of days when the weather changes. I am getting tired of the unstable condition. I think I will stay the same forever and ever.

Ida's News Updates will stay tune for updates on democracy campaign from now till Christmas. Please scroll down for real Ida's News Updates.

See you on 12.4

We Want Democracy Blog

Don't forget about your ribbon!

「12.4爭取民主普選」

團結網上絲帶行動

http://www.hiradio.net/images/action/124_hiradio.html

Last but not least, see you on 12.4!

爭取普選活動時間表

www.rebuildhk.com

Quick updates

I tried out another specialist on Thursday, took x-ray of my knee (finally), and reserved a time slot on 13 December for physical therapy. Not sure if it's going to work this time, but the medical cost sure is EXPENSIVE. My shopping plan was once again postponed :( So sad.

Watched at 17 in concert also on Thursday. I stood half of the concert (well, I had to. everyone stood and they blocked my view.) and needless to say my knee suffered these few days :(