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Thursday 3 Sep 26 | |||||||||||||||||
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"'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the courtesy to thank her for it. " W.C. Fields |
BOW WAVE 277Bow Wave Issue 277--Fragrant Harbour Editionnews and views on trade, insurance and riskBow Wave homepage
In this issue:1. Welcome 1. WelcomeNew Readers this week include: Wouter Colomier of Vanbreda Risk & Benefits in Antwerp Mike Peters of Xtra in NZ AfterOfficeHours News This week's additions to the new on-line directory designed to list people and companies who can be called upon in emergencies includes:- The American P&I Club Register Now. Free Trial Period. Very Reasonable Rates. http://www.afterofficehours.com Quite a lot this week with a Hong Kong theme. Enjoy. 2. CH TungThe career of CH Tung as the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR has come to an end with his resignation last week after eight years in office. Many Readers of Bow Wave will have known CH first as a shipowner, the head of OOCL and certainly it was in this capacity that your editor took the benefit of his support and advice as a then member of the Board of Directors of the TT Club. His assumption of a highly visible role in Hong Kong public life was never going to be an easy one, but many of his character traits made him a strong candidate for it. His sense of duty would have played a major part in his motivation as the son of CY Tung, a major figure in the Hong Kong Shipping scene. Indeed, during the long colonial era in Hong Kong the firm was the only "Chinese company" in the local container scene and the choice of many aspiring men. But it would also have been his openness to new ideas and his ability to go with comfort between the East and the West which made him into the leading candidate to head the new SAR during the transitional years in Hong Kong. It is unlikely that duty done, he will be greatly thanked for his efforts, nor will this greatly surprise him. Certainly the shipping scene will hope that he turns his mind to what may seem--after the passage of these turbulent political years--pastures fresh and new. We can think of few people more capable of understanding the new realities of shipping than the newly retired Tung Chee Hwa. 3. New Courses in Shipping RiskBill Lines writes: The Baltic Exchange and the Centre for Shipping, Trade & Finance at London's Cass Business School unveiled plans today (10 March) to deliver a series of executive courses focusing on the management of a range of financial risks in the shipping markets. The two day course "Shipping Risk Management" will cover freight, bunker, ship price, credit, foreign exchange and interest rate risk and will be held in London, Hamburg, Athens, Hong Kong and Singapore during 2005. The course will be delivered by the Centre for Shipping, Trade & Finance through Cass's Executive Education division, CassExec. for more details go to:- http://www.balticexchange.com/default.asp?action=article&ID=1513 4. HK Ferry CrashA picture of the high speed catamaran, bound for Panyu City in Quangdong Province tied up in HK after a collision with a China-registered coaster during a foggy February day in Hong Kong harbour has appeared in the on-line Shenzhen News. Voices in the local surveying scene say that both the equipment and the crew standards coming out of the Pearl River are not always as good as they ought to be. To see the rather crumpled catamaran go to:- http://www.sznews.com/n2/cal437276.htm 5. Naked Roads and StreetsThe following passage appeared this week in the esteemed Michael Quinion's World Wide Words--the ezine for people interested in the subject of words and their origins:- Turns of Phrase: Naked Street A PR person's dream, this term is bound to make anybody sit up and take notice. Rest your beating pulse, this is all about the unsexy subject of traffic management. To disrobe a street, you remove all the conventional methods of controlling vehicles and keeping them separate from pedestrians. Traffic lights, barriers, signs, curbs, and pedestrian crossings are all taken out. The idea behind it is to make the road space less predictable. Instead of drivers being able to rely on road markings and charge along on the assumption that pedestrians are all corralled safely out of the way, they will have to continually interact with people, make decisions about how fast to drive and generally take more responsibility for their actions. London is trying the idea in Exhibition Road, Kensington, in which some of the capital's biggest museums are sited. The idea sounds extraordinary, so much so that the British tabloid newspaper the Sun wrote in an editorial: "Have you ever, in your whole life, heard of anything more stupid? Apparently the idea was conceived in Holland, where everyone is on drugs and drives slowly anyway." It was indeed pioneered in the Netherlands, but by the soberest of traffic planners, who claim success in significantly reducing accidents. An interesting notion for port and harbour authorities? 6. And Finally...Another Fine Contribution from Sydney lawyer Frazer Hunt I OWE MY MOTHER 1. My mother taught me TO APPRECIATE A JOB WELL DONE. BOW WAVE is published each week to over 11 800 Readers in the transport,insurance,shipping and finance industries. Thanks for reading BOW WAVE | Sponsors: Links: | |||||||||||||||||
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