Emily's drawing, autographed
by Lamma's most famous
local boy, starring in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", incl.
his most fearsome weapon, Emily's Mint Chip ice-cream!
Mouse over picture to see her entire Lamma's Celebs Wall,
click to enlarge the Wall picture.
Hello, lucky
readers living (now, before or soon) on this lucky island!
Did most of you survive Friday the
13th unharmed?
I surely hope so, otherwise you'd
have problems enjoying the e-zine this week (no Broadband for
hospital patients).
You could have neutralised Unlucky
Friday by buying one of my $888
home pages, successfully mixing Eastern ($888) and Western
(13th) superstitions this way!
Somebody wrote to the Editor, after I
asked the person for unlucky or spooky stories:
"You know that I'm a witch. That's
probably why Friday the 13th has *always* been a very good day for
me. Nothing spooky to offer here, sorry. I've never had bad luck
with black cats, either..."
For an explanation of this week's
e-zine headline (the silliest ever?), see the photo caption
above!
Usually,
I would try to publish this e-zine on a Friday, but being afraid of
the potentially unlucky consequences I moved the date to today,
Sunday.
Also, I couldn't get any really
unlucky stories out of people living on this lucky island,
except these haunted-looking houses on the left. The only
unlucky stuff I could find were some silly rumours of ghosts
haunting Po Wah Yuen, but no details and proof! This isn't good
enough for this e-zine's always serious, accurate, fact-checking,
neutral style of reporting only hard news; no gossip, rumours &
silly stuff! Oh, sorry, that's another e-zine, definitely not this
one! Oooops!
Great excuses above for publishing
late,sounding much better than me being late again, due
to paid-for work! But I've decided to move the publication date
permanently to Sundays, so as not to interfere with my paying
work.
New submission deadline: every
Saturday evening!
My weekends will be reserved for the
e-zine now. Also, with a Sunday publication date, I'll never have
to face a Friday the 13th issue again!
Superstitious,
moi? No way, members of "Artsy CyberGeeks United" would
NEVER admit to any superstition! See our new logo (and my new
Avatar) on the right! Lamma-Gung claims to be a charter member &
cheerleader of this new proud, virtual organisation! We don't
accept any new members, except: you'll have to access our website
at www.CyberGeek.com
and hack into our member registration database to add yourself. If
you succeed, then and only then are you worthy of membership!
Hahahahaha!
Several guest writers this week,
my more and more desperate pleas for contributors seem to show
finally some fine results:
e's Taro story, Doggy's Funday
de-briefing, etc.
We don't have enough people posting
in our Chinese
discussions forum yet. So we've put a new Chinese
hyperlink at the top right of our pages now, trying to lure
in the clever & talented people who know how to type Chinese!
Follow-up
on the horrible
death threat received last week:
Obviously, the threat hasn't been
carried out successfully yet, as I'm still typing (maybe only my
preserved CyberGeek consciousness surviving, living inside my PC
now?). I seem to be still alive, barely as Lamma-Poh keeps telling
me, but for how much longer?
My
would-be-assailant FingerNailFixer has dared to submit a really
fearsome picture of herself (right), trying to instill terror (or
lust) in my heart!
But her threats continue!
I've
also just picked up this flyer from HSBC on Main Street, selling
"Year of the Goat Elite Gold Proof Medals". Next Year will be
the Year of the Golden Goat! The threat on my life was initiated by
a Great Goat Colin worshipper! How in Dionysos' name did
Colin get a Chinese Year named after his Goatness (see the
first real picture of the Great Golden Goat Colin (GGGC) on
the left!
We'll
have to do a follow-up on this connection! I smell intrigue
and a really BIG story brewing... or is it just the smell of my pot
of coffee brewing... Yes, it is! Way too much caffeine in my veins,
as you can easily tell from this hyper, disjointed, rambling
Editorial...
I better stop now and hand over to
our creative contributors, posting loads of new, fun, creative
and intriguing messages this week!
Christmas/New
Year party:
We might have found a rooftop (see
right?) to party on, but just a few have expressed any serious
interest in attending at Boxing Day so far. We might make it a
New Year party instead to get a good, mixed group of people
together. BBChris, a true party girl, has volunteered (Yeah! Go,
girl!) to help with the organisation! Great!
One last request:
We'd love to get more readers for
this e-zine. As you can see from the counter at the bottom of this
page, we're up to well beyond 100 unique readers per e-zine issue.
Pretty nice, but not a lot, hardly enough to get contests and new
initiatives going...
Could you
forward the e-zine announcement e-mail I just sent you to all your
Lamma friends, please!
Don't
forget your ex-Lamma friends, as, from our experience, many of
them really would like to hear what's happening in their former
home on a weekly basis, seeing pictures of their old friends and
their new antics. If you want me to send the e-mails, just
give me their addresses for a one-time-only, single-use-then-delete
e-mail shot!
Or include Lamma.com.hk in your
Season's Greetings e-mails!
Cheers from
Lamma-Gung, charter member of "Artsy CyberGeeks United"
E-mails to the Editor:
webdog
(Site Admin):
The e-zine is .... GREAT
!!!!!!
Malcolm:
Grand to see the update on the harbour
development and the new layout. The content is good and the
whole site far better quality than lamma.net, lamma-island.com
etc.
Mr Tough (of
ToughDomains.com):
Thanks for the mention of our domain
name and email Xmas Special in the e-zine this week. You're a
star. It's looking good.
AutumnAuburn (USA):
This week's e-zine is packed! Wow! I've
never seen it so full of information. Being a photog
enthusiast, I really like the pictures. And of course, your
humor is great. Well done!
. (our shortest username):
thank you for putting me in your
splendid ezine.
e (our "Best Contributor of
the Week"):
i have to congratulate you again for
this new issue of e-zine. your magic has moved higher up to
another level - like a magnet drawing my attention to the
e-zine. i have to finish reading it before returning to my
work, risking that my boss might know i'm reading something
else!
Best of the Week:
Nominate messages, members, contributors, local websites for
this section! You can nominate anything/anybody Lamma-related
on AND off Lamma.com.hk!
A
new "Best" category this week, honouring the person who contributed
most to the e-zine!
This greatest accolade will be bestowed upon "e" this week! She
sent in an "E-mail to the Editor", scanned in the LAP Christmas
cards & Funday pics, just submitted her first full story and posted
125 messages so far! A truly worthy winner and possible
future candidate for our future "My Lamma Hall of Fame",
reserved for 3-time winners of "Best Contributor of the Week"!
e
wins a FREE SUBSCRIPTION to this e-zine! Well, everybody can
have a free subscription, but it's the thought that counts and she
has really EARNED it! Hahahahaha!
Flame
Another
new "Best" category ("Worst", actually), for the naughtiest
personal attacks! TWO entries this week,
biker forum!
Leglessonlamma:
Alan, I did, you are just so stupid you
don't understand it. You truly are the original whinging POME
misfit with a brain the size of pea. Have you ever had friends
or have you always been held in contempt as a weirdo misfit?
Alan:
You've occupied yourself inserting stupid
and offensive comments about me in several forums today. I'm
sorry for whatever personal tragedy or chemical imbalance has
driven you to this obsessive behaviour. Perhaps you should look
into getting professional help, or alternatively just drink
yourself to death and end the pain.
Let's
get Alan and Legless together at the Christmas/New Year party (see
above), get them both seriously drunk, so they make up with each
other (or kill each other off, alternatively!) I've adopted a
new e-zine motto ("borrowed" & expanded from DickStock: "Peace,
Love, Laughter, Lamma!"
The
website of local photographer
berrybus (who just joined My Lamma) and his company
BeachHead Studios:
Nice-looking website with some amazing photos and photo-montages!
But, unfortunately, EXTREMELY slow-loading!
Looking at it more closely, you notice that the entire site,
even text and buttons are huge graphics! A most unusual & easy,
but extremely slow-loading way of building a website. Well, looks
count most in the photography business. Most Internet users on
Lamma are on Broadband, over 800 at my last guesstimate...
A
new member with a most intriguing name. Is s/he a foreign body
on Lamma, or has foreign bodies in his/her body, or is it just a
more high-brow, non-gender-specific term for Gwailo/Gwaipo?
Occupation: hunter & gatherer.
Interests: Tuva Throat Singers, Mongolian Men, Philosophy,
Politics, Sex, Korean Food, German & French Funky House, Nu Jazz,
Psychedelic Drugs.
Definitely sounds like a very interesting, active person with
wide-ranging interests, just joined and already posted 7 messages!
Let's make him/her feel welcome on My Lamma and suggest an
Avatar!
About My Lamma:
Let's keep this short
this week, as I've wasted way too much of your time already
with the Editorial!
Just a few superlatives: We've surpassed 100 unique readers
per e-zine! We've also surpassed 2,500 messages posted
and will reach 500 topics and 200 registered members very
soon!
Most Hits ever: 18,059 on Dec 10, 2002!
Search engine terms: Internet users found Lamma.com.hk by
searching for "Husband swapping" (10 people!), "masterbation
parties" (where?), "I love Lamma" (yeah!) and "anti-beer" (?????).
This is to let you know that I have
done an approximate count of the money we raised at Lamma Fun
Day. Not all money is in yet, and there are a few licences
and other things that need to be paid for yet, but from what
I can judge, the total will be at least
HK$26,000
Which is the same amount we raised in
2001, and slightly more than 2000 - incredible if you
consider what a grotty day it was.
So, thanks very much to everyone for
coming along, joining the fun, eating the food, drinking the
booze and chucking money in the donation boxes. It's great to
be able to say that despite cold and rain, Lamma Fun Day 2002
was a definite success!!
The money goes a very long way to
raising what we need to sponsor the nine students at the
JYOTI centre.... but not quite, so watch out for the next
fundraising event in the new year.
BTW - have a look at the
www.lammafunday.com
website, photos from the event should be posted up there any
day now. If anyone else has any corking photos from the day
to share, send them to me, and I will make sure they get put
on the website too.
Here's looking forward to Lamma Fun Day 2003.
A
photo of the Lamma.com.hk stall, raising money for charity
(and for webhosting My Lamma, photocopying flyers and other very
small, occasional expenses in keeping it running).
You've
seen our silly headline this week, seen the cover picture and
read the caption? No? Go back!
This
feature coincides nicely with another visit of the most famous
Lamma Celeb, Mr. Chow Yun-fat, to the Northern Lamma
School this week, school anniversary celebration, handing out
school prizes & taking photos with the pupils. He's visiting
Lamma quite frequently, see my own recent
encounter with celebrity.
Emily,
owner of the
Ice-Cream & Yogurt Parlour in Main Street, is telling the
story of how she got her drawing of the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon" star autographed.
One day, a friend called her to tell her that Mr
Chow was dining in Tai
Hing Restaurant. She rushed over, introduced herself and
got her drawing signed, incl. her name.
It has pride of place in the center of her
Celebs wall now! Who are the other Lamma's Celebs on the
wall? You'll have to find out for yourself...
A well-kept secret is that Emily's can be a
great pick-up place!
Many more women than men are visiting this place,
completely opposite to most of the bars who're mostly men-only.
The women in Emily's are enjoying ice-cream in a relaxed
atmosphere, not reluctant to chat to friendly guys...
See the famous, vivacious
Anastasia of
Anastasia's on the left! So young and already a
restaurant owner and mascot!
Plus her baby sister Rhea, just one
week old! She's rumoured by usually unreliable sources to be
Dan's first franchise holder of soon-to-be-announced "Rhea's
Desserts" take-away!
A special Advent season treat this week, e's
very first story for our e-zine!
It's the first installment of her series
"Stories of Wandering Kittens", sure to overtake very soon
the enduring popularity of "The Journey to the
West" (Monkey King). Interestingly, e is starting her
series with "Episode 3: Taro". But she said, "Star Wars
started at Episode 4, so why not me?" We like her
self-confidence! OK, without further ado, let's hand the e-zine
over to our budding author e:
I remembered the very day I became a
foster parent for SPCA Tuesday, June 6, 2001. I fostered
two little kittens with cat flu, but they were not too
difficult to take care of.
On the weekend of the same week, when
I was chatting away at Borg-Liu store, the store keeper came
back and said that up on the slopes at Tai Yuen, a blind
kitten was sitting in a box next to the garbage bin. It had
been raining on and off all day. If the poor kitty is left
there to sit through another rain, kitty was sure to go.
Running up the slopes, I found a very
thin and tiny white and ginger kitty with eyes tightly
closed sitting in the corner of a soaked carton box. An
opened box of milk was beside him. Perhaps from a kind
passer-by or a last gift from his owner just someone who
did not know that most cats could not take cow-milk.
A few people were standing around the
carton box. "I would like to help but I am afraid that he
might infect my other cats!", "He doesn't have eyes at
all ..". Many were sympathetic, but who would want a blind
cat? There was no time to waste. It could rain again any
time. So I picked up the box, threw away the milk and ran to
the vet. But the vet's office was closed. I had to take
kitty home and wait for the vet the next morning.
When we got home, I had to separate my
foster kitties from this new kitty. Then I carefully cleaned
new kitty's eye and found that his eyes were shut only
because they were too swollen. He also had a wound on his
toes and his fur was very, very thin. Little kitty was still
very frightened and curled up timidly. Well, kitty needed a
name. Looking at his closed eyes, I thought of Katsu
Shintaro, the famous Japanese actor who played the part of
Zatoichi, the Blind Samurai. Shintaro was not blind - he
only pretended to be blind, and so should this poor kitty.
Taro was his name.
Taro's road to recovery was a long and winding one. The
first vet diagnosed Taro as having an eye infection and cat
flu,
but he said that Taro was too young for medication.
Suspecting that more could be done, we went to another vet.
This time medication and ointment were given for his cornea
ulcer and cat flu. The vet specifically said that the eye
ointment had to be administered three times a day, but I had
to go to work.
The only way
was to swap day for night apart from once in the morning
and evening, there was once in the dark of the night. The
alarm clock was set at 4am. A few days later, Taro's eyes
started to show despite a sheer white layer over them. But
two weeks later, Taro started to lose hair on his feet and
tail. Off to the vet again. This time it was fungus. When
the hair started growing back, new eye ointment was needed.
The flu was still not cleared and Taro had a fever. Even the
vet frowned.
Poor Taro.
Endless medicine and ointment, and he was still so skinny.
He had the perfect figure modern ladies crave for. No baby
fat at all. He would only grow longer and never any rounder.
Others would definitely think that his owner was
ill-treating him. He was also an introvert. Other kittens
would be running around, playfully fighting. But Taro would
only sit and watch.
By the time Taro was 2 months old, his
health was still a roller-coaster ride. Only on asking, did
the vet give me an even bigger worry he suspected Taro to
have FIV, the Aids for cats. I felt doomed! The vet
suggested sending a blood sample to the States for analysis,
but needed to wait until Taro's health was more steady. As
the blood test would cost a fortune, I sought a second
opinion. The new vet suggested that a simpler blood test
could be done locally in the clinic. Only if suspicious
results turned up should we consider sending the samples to
the States. The wait for the test result was so hard to
bear. To my relief, the result was negative.
Taro slowly grew
stronger but his eyes were still a problem. Apart
from the scars that cornea ulcer had left him, Taro had
inward-grown eye lashes which poked at his cornea. If left
untreated, he might go blind one day... Taro had already
gone through a cryo-operation to remove the inward-grown eye
lashes, but the problem did not go away completely. He might
need another surgery in a few months' time. Now, whenever I
reach for wet towels or eye drops for Taro, he would start
playing hide-and-seek.
But despite
all the worries I had for Taro, I was glad that I picked up
the box on that rainy day. Even the sickest kitten deserves
a chance.
Just take a
look at these two photos, and I think you would agree with
me:
Before/after: Taro on his first day home and Taro at about 6
months old.
Let
e know, if you liked her story, and if you would like to
read Episode 1 and 2 soon as well! I surely would!
To
thank e for this truly heart-warming & inspiring story, I'm
promoting the LAP Christmas cards here!
It really got our Chinese site admin webdog jumping up
and down! It lead to such a flood of messages that I started
a new dedicated topic:
Lamma.com.hk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=456
Our
"Fortune Chan"-impersonating Gwailo chimed in as well, further
fanning the flames,getting a good discussion
going about "Gwailos", and racism in general:
Fortune Chan (Location: Plastic chair by sewage
pipe):
You silly gweilo people with your silly
beards and silly spoilt children. Why do you not go back to
Luton or wherever and stop bothering us with your liberal
sassy whining. Okay la?
We're all getting very close now to unmasking the mysterious Mr.
(or Mrs.?)
Fortune Chan!
From wife-swapping
chimpanzees, Bonobo orgies, pros & cons of semen donation, Taoist
sex frequency rules to the "nine shallow and one deep theory",
this topic really generates a great deal of sleazy interest.
Check
it out!
On a
related topic, can you guess where in YSW you can find this
"laid" graffiti? You're welcome to contribute more graffiti!
The
location from the photo below is easier, as it might have
been there since Goat Maison's infamous exploits:
Goat Maison (his (very
fitting) Underblurb/motto: "My brain is fried"):
I shagged his (the Great Goat
Colin's) daughter several dickstocks
ago.
La Miglione:
Yeah,
but those guys were not really afraid of the waste of their
bodily fluids, they were concerned for their Qi, whatever
that may be. So the idea was to have sex and get their female
partners to have as many orgasms as possible, so they can
somehow gobble up their Qi, all the while avoiding to waste
their own. Sounds to me like a theory made up by some very
clever girls
DJ:
His
there a monetary incentive to sow ones seeds into a small
plastic receptical? I would willingly sow mine for a little
extra cash for christmas, but I would need something better
than penthouse, perhaps vulcan.
Emily,
owner of the
The
location from the photo below is easier, as it might have
been there since Goat Maison's infamous exploits:
