Human Rights and Money

I read this from Yahoo! News: 港女生「推倒」深工廠招怨 (http://hk.news.yahoo.com/070213/60/21s7a.html)

It is also quoted from the ESWN website with the link to Nanfang Daily. The workers claimed that because of the publishing of a Hong Kong university student about the poor working environment of their factory, Disney decided not to place orders to their factory and it caused the wound up of the factory. They felt that because she published the news which is disadvantageous to the factory which caused the wound up. The manager of the factory said that the requirement from Disney is not applicable to China. Personally I do not think the requirement of Disney is unreasonable. These requirements include the following:

调查报告中的整改措施要求企业员工在公共场所摆放的卫生用品要无限制供应。“比如肥皂等，你不限制地无偿使用，一放出来，马上会被工人拿走。”

另外，整改措施要求员工工作期间离开工作岗位，不需要进行登记。也不可以对员工进行小额罚款。而企业认为这在现实中不可实现。员工去上厕所等很正常，但是，如果按照此整改措施，员工一天去5次厕所，每次半个小时，这让企业很难进行管理。

I guess these could be done by improving the processes... maybe educating the factory's management with the appropriate management skills and the concept of human rights it'd help China more. Now the workers' concept is that they have to live. The concept from Disney is that they have to have a quality life...

It's making me more interest in learning more about Human Rights. It recalled a book I read a few years ago about Child Labour: Free the Children

To be a millionaire

百萬富翁去年增2千人
is definitely a very eye-catching punch line. Being a millionaire has been difficult when we were young where the purchasing power of money is low. Now its different. According to this survey, there are 276,000 millionaires in Hong Kong and the average age is 48 with average capital HK$560m.

It is not too surprising actually. I did a quick calculation on how long I need in order to be a millionaire. The calculation is simple. If I save up HK$17K per month then in 5 years time WITHOUT doing any investment and even you do not need to put them in bank for gaining interest, I could be a millionaire. HK$17K is not a overwhelmingly big portion of many people's salary nowadays esp. those who have been working for 5 or above years. Think: if I graduate from university at 22 and I save up diligently since I started working I should be able to be a millionaire when I am 32. Of course, if you buy a flat during this period, you might need to save up, say 5 years more, in case you use all these to purchase your flat (but HK$1m can't buy a real decent flat). Probably you'd use HK$1m and your partner contribute another HK$1m for the flat, (it makes more sense) you'd be able to save up HK$1m even more easily by saving up HK$8.5K per month from each of your partner and yourself and then you both would share HK$1m.

However, if you do not know the right way of getting the right salary or you simply do not have this aim in mind and you want to spend as you earn, you couldn't have the 'handsome' saving.

I also mean that the gap between the wealthy and the poor is widening. Many people could even have difficulties in earning about HK$17K per month...

Kaspar Hauser

I found that I've been having strong interest towards some mysterious things. Sometimes these things could be quite dark in general. I've just read from news about that 3 girls in Austria were locked up by their mother for 7 years in an apartment without running water and with excrement accumulated for 1 metre height. That's really terrible.

What induced me to know further under the news is that the specialists think they have the Kaspar Hauser Syndrome. Kaspar Hauser is an European boy who was found in 1828 in Nuremberg who had been locked up for a long time since he was 3 with mysterious fate afterwards. Endocrinologists and Psychiatrists later called those children whose growth in stature is impaired, often to a dramatic degree, consequent to serious abuse or neglect with 'psychosocial dwarfism'.

However, I found that Kaspar Hauser is a v legendary and intelligent figure with mysterious fate. I would co-relate that if someone was locked up, no matter since childhood or adulthood, what would happen? Just like as I used to hear from priest in my sec schools Catholic Priests in the Mainland China under the sovereignty of the Communists were locked up with 'brain washing' - it'd cause more than mental breakdown. It seems that it really depends on the person who got locked up how (s)he faces this. To gain support from God, in the case for adults, or to keep his / her firm belief on that he(r) could escape some day?


About the news of the Austrian mother who locked up her 3 daughters:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1368918.ece
http://hk.news.yahoo.com/070212/12/21oxs.html

To know more about Kaspar Hauser, you'd refer to:

http://www.spartechsoftware.com/dimensions/people/KasparHauser.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaspar_Hauser

Some Wedding Music

I have some wedding music in mind but in order to give ourselves more ideas how the tradition says and how we could choose some special choices without really being too strange, I found the 2 less popular choices in Hong Kong but widely accepted being solemn and appropriate music:

Opening I - Jeremiah Clark's Trumpet Voluntary (Trumpet / Violin / Organ)




Opening II - Jeremiah Clark's Trumpet Voluntary (Organ only)



Opening III - Pachebel's Canon (Brass Quintet)
I love the brass quintet version. But hiring a brass quintet could be expensive and its rather difficult to play it :p This video's quality is high and it'd be the famous Canadian Brass.





Conclusion - Widor's Toccata from Symphony No.5