From bad to verse

If you go down to Queen's Road in Central at lunchtime on a week day, you'll usually see ten or twelve bored security guards outside the Standard Chartered bank, standing around while an angry voice screeches at them in an infinite loop of pre-recorded Cantonese. This is because of all the money some people lost in 2008, which some of them think will be returned if they just deafen enough poorly-paid security guards.

As well as the tape of screeching, there are various decorations; mostly pictures of the boss of Standard Chartered, painted to look like the Joker from The Dark Knight, which brightens up the middle of my day no end. There's also usually a large black banner with, in white letters, the slogan "Give Us Back Our Money Please - We Are Chinese."

If it's a Boeing, you're still not going

So last week the engines on A380s were falling off or spurting oil all over the place, and instead of embracing the romanticism and adventure of potentially fatal flights, Qantas and now Singapore Airlines have grounded their fleet of A380s. It's not like the good old days when planes were made of cloth and string, men were men, and the ground had plane-shaped holes in it.