I do like Australia more than Hong Kong. The people here are just nicer, more positive, friendlier and much less materialistic. It's easier to talk to people here. The thing in Hong Kong is that even if you find someone you can talk to, it's hard to find time. People are just less important. People don't seem to make ways to people. Maybe that's just my experience. I find myself bending for others and not much people getting out of their way for me. And I got sick of it.

Some people in Hong Kong are like black boxes. You can know them for like 3 years and still don't know them. I don't know what is wrong with them. Selfish in a way, that they can't even get out of their ways or habits for others. Hong Kongers are also very subjective. Just this weird Hong Kongness.

I love Hong Kong but I must say it's hard to love it. It's like a helpless spoiled child who can't even help himself.

It's like a crazy zoo, everybody are busily running aimlessly while the boat is heading towards a waterfall.

A better analogy would be people on a sinking large boat are all individually trying to dry their spot on the boat yet no one is trying to cover up the hole that is letting the water in and sinking the boat.

It's selfishness. It's short-sightedness and narrow thinking.

Recently, actually just last month in March, the HK gov't is proposing to lower pay scale of some civil servants and teachers. I was pretty upset and pissed about it. The government's logic is that since the economy is bad with average salary of the private sector dropping, the government can do so as well. It figures that gov't jobs are still very attractive and competitive against the private sector even if a downsized pay scale. It's true. Government jobs are still very attractive especially with more regular hours, good salary comparatively and relatively much more stable.

It all look very reasonable, so why am I upset? Well, because cost of living has not necessarily gone down. For those of us who have been living in Hong Kong for the past 3-4 years or so, we saw a huge jump in cost of living, mainly from the cost of food and housing. Simply speaking, it cost more to maintain the same standard of living now than 3-4 years ago so by lowering salary, hundreds of civil servants and teachers will see their standard of living compromised by a rather rich government.

What's upsetting is that the Hong Kong government does have money. It, by no mean, a poor government unable to maintain the same salary level. It has billions of dollar stacked up in its foreign reserve. Don't get me wrong, I am not for HK government to spend recklessly or any type of fiscal irresponsibility, but the gov't can definitely afford to keep the salary level. It actually should adjust salary with inflation. Why be so cheap?

I am particularly angry at the Hong Kong government for lowering the pay scale for new teachers. I find it disrespectful to the profession of teaching. This is an opportunity, a good time to recruit talents to becoming teachers. In northern Europe and Australia, teacher is considered to be a profession of high esteem, especially in northern Europe. The top graduates of universities go and become teachers and even ex-teachers are highly sole-after by companies, the private sectors. The society respects teachers and hold them in high esteem. One reason is that teachers are paid well. The best want to be teachers. I think it's more than just the attractive salary but that is definitely part of it. But you can see that those government view teachers in high esteem and importance, and they are. Education is vital to the future of any place, and Hong Kong is no exception.

The contradiction with Hong Kong is that its people are great believers in education like many other Asians. Parents in Hong Kong are crazy about their kids' academic performance and success, yet the government is clueless on education. In the past decade, Hong Kongers see a government that has done more harm than good to the public education system by creating complex and experimental choices while ignoring simple truth and the advices of the people who know how to teach best, the educators.

You would see that the Hong Kong government has been consistently making choices in neglecting opportunities to improve public education, and in the meantime, made everybody from students, parents, civil servants and teachers running around crazy trying to simple do what they are suppose to do.

If you talk to people who work in a school, they would tell you that it's like they are fighting a war against the EMB then the EDB. What has the government been doing the past decade? Changing the education system continuously with educators, parents and students running around like confused laboratory experiment mouse. It forced many experienced educators into retirement with fantastic retirement packages (at the same time getting a lot of senior educators out of the system), forcing veteran teachers to pass high-stake standardize exams on subjects they have been teaching for years (and when they don't pass, they either can't teach anymore or do a master), killing schools (putting well-trained and educated teachers out of work as well as deserting multi-million dollar school campuses into useless buildings) and along other things.