Of birthdays, rebirth days and Hong Kong coming together

Maybe it’s just me, but the Road Runner and Wile E Coyote have been giving us life lessons for decades. Beep beep. So have Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd, Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Daffy Duck and almost every cartoon character one can think of.

Most of all, they’ve been teaching us resilience, and, no matter how bad things might be, nothing is so insurmountable that it means giving up. Just think of Wile E Coyote.

Their thinking reminds me of the city with the funny name called Hong Kong, my Hong Hong racing photographer friends Wallace and Donald, and, in his own way, the man many of us know as E.B and the CEO of the Hong Hong Jockey Club.

It’s E.B’s Birthday today, and it makes perfect sense that he should have his party at Shatin Racecourse on the biggest day in the Hong Hong racing calendar and surrounded by what he’s truly passionate about.

Despite his frustrations when things don’t go exactly as planned because he’s a perfectionist and cannot tolerate imperfections, well, one becomes a good listener and agrees things were perhaps not nearly fine. We know that he wouldn’t trade any of this for the world.

As for my friends like Wallace Wan and Donald Lee, they travel down a different road by documenting everything happening on course with their cameras and quick thinking and working to make things happen despite various hurdles in the way. It’s part of meeting the challenges head on.

Here’s where the very different worlds of horse racing come together and a one team support system is formed. This shouldn’t be neglected or allowed to get lost by those in the corporate world.

Me? Like music or movies or the thought processes of different women, I write about everything I observe, have learned over the years, and try to make sense of it all.

Sometimes, I get it, many times, everything goes over like airplanes, but in the end, it’s about how, in life, everyone has a role to play in today’s Looney Toons world.

Here’s where we’re constantly trying to make sense of it all. It’s where there are always lessons to be learned and a reminder how we never ever stop learning about and from each other.

It’s about keeping an open mind and realising that if everyone fell in line and did the same same thing every day, this would be Groundhog Day and there’ll be no point getting up. Just let the alarm clock ring and to hell with it all.

This is when resilience magically kicks in along with creativity, motivation and inspiration.

It’s realising the importance of not living and getting lost in the past and making one good thing happen every single day we’re here in the real world.

Happy Birthday, Winfried, and here’s to the best ever Hong Hong International Races. It will be more than nearly fine.

To Wallace and Donald and the others who have enormous pride in their home and understand the importance of having the world class horse racing taking place today in Hong Kong, do what you do best. It’s very much needed and appreciated.

Remember that for those who can’t be at the races, your photographs will take us there and live on after today becomes tomorrow.

It’s not just about horse racing. That would be too easy.

It’s about giving Hong Kong something to cheer about-win, lose or draw.

#HKIR #hongkong #life

But who and what’s going to make Hong Kong rattle and hum again?

It’s going to be a very tough task for the Mauritian Magician Karis Teetan to ride three winners tonight.

This is what he needs to do to overhaul and take Alexis Badel’s position as one of the four riders representing Hong Kong at the upcoming International Jockeys Championship next month. Of course, as Yoda would say, Impossible is nothing.

Being the fierce competitor that he is and with even more challenging daddy duties ahead, the very popular rider will no doubt be singing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” to himself. We wish nothing but the best in all his endeavours along with those of Alexis Badel.

Alexis Badel is a success story that’s still not fully appreciated or understood by many. He’s consistently riding winners and is in demand by almost every stable.

What’s most impressive is how seamlessly he has settled into Hong Kong racing.

Whereas so many others have found it tough to break into what is, more often than not, a quirky racing jurisdiction rather than a competitive one, the Frenchman shows all the signs of being a stayer- IF he wants to stay the distance.

These days, more and more even longtime residents are leaving these shores. Plus with little or no international tourism, the one-time cosmopolitan and vibrant vibe of Hong Kong is pretty much MIA.

Horse racing carries on, but until this city is finally unshackled from so many restrictions on having fun, and somehow becomes a tourist destination again, we’re pretty much surviving in a Deliveroo driven world watching Adam Sandler reruns and thinking these formulaic cornballs to be funny.

Unless one has grown up, down and sideways in Hong Kong and made it here without a silver spoon up their backsides, they will not understand just how this city came to rock the casbah and the world in the Eighties, Nineties and early 2000s.

These were times when strong friendships were formed. There were strong and supportive women who some of us married- and not because they were a designer brand handbag from the five and dime.

There were brilliant restaurants and every type of club imaginable and with everything and everyone needed to pack out these pleasure domes.

If this wasn’t enough, a helicopter ride to Macau for dinner and a walk through the Mandarin Bar after midnight was a distinct possibility and Tuesday turned to Friday.

The thing is this: People- fun loving people-make any city. They give it their DNA whether it be London, New York, Copenhagen or Ibiza.

Without good people needing better people, it’s either living in fear and in a Blade Runner and Orwellian society or being part of a Facebook scrapbook family reliving the past with “Traces” by Classic 1V playing in the background.

Tonight, there’s an eight race card at Happy Valley. For those interested enough to watch these races, this will either be while channel surfing on television or streaming them ‘live’ while having dinner and if one’s partner is au fait with these table manners.

Looking at the card, but with zero interest in the first few races, Joao Moreira looks to have the chance to ride 3-4 winners.

It’s a well-known fact that his usual flair and magic somehow disappear at the city track. Zac Purton is certain to chip in with at least a winner and that that man Alexis Badel seals his position for the Hong Kong International Jockey Championship.

Personally, far more important than who wins what and how much is where my next port of call might be. There aren’t a helluva lot of choices.

Better yet is to see Hong Kong once again rise like a Phoenix from the ashes and be the multi dimensional city it once was with talented entrepreneurs young enough to make good things happen.

Where instead of being ruled and drooled by money when there’s nothing worth spending it on, Hong Kong stops being the pathetic superficial plastic fantastic bubble it often is today.

Bubbles are soulless. They burst and disappear.

Remember Bubbles, Michael Jackson’s chimpanzee bestie?

#HKracing #hongkong #life

Getting back to the Beatles...and the magic of music

It refuses to play second fiddle to anything and anyone. It will never ever go away, and it cannot be silenced. That’s because Music lives within and without us, and, as we should know by now, it is the soundtrack to our lives.

For some of us, we have a reason to be excited about something because there’s a new and different wave of “Beatlemania” waiting ahead next month.

This is when the epic version/revision titled “Get Back” that director Peter Jackson has been painstakingly working on for years using unused footage from what was “Let It Be” is released.

For the first time, the doco shows what was going on with the band members during rehearsals and before that historical final performance as a band on the rooftop of the Abbey Road Studios.

Already released are timely teasers so that some of us can perhaps come together as the Christmas season approaches and embrace life as it’s meant to be.

Let’s face it, for almost two years, life has not exactly been a celebration of joie de vivre. It’s been very tough times where we’ve often been surviving and not living. It’s been way too much of Hello, Goodbyes to family and friends.

Those Nowhere People are still on social media with Eleanor Rigby and all the other lonely hashtag people. There are plenty of blackbirds and bluebirds trying to take their broken wings and learn to fly again. Others are waiting for that Sun King and more sun, sun, sun.

Of course everyone has their own priorities. For myself, what’s difficult to understand is being around those who claim to be in music, but who don’t show any passion for it- to go back and understand its origins and the great talent who led the way so that we and music are where we are today.

Yes, it’s not exactly a great place, but one hopes things will eventually change for the better, better, better...

Music has been a great teacher. It’s taught me so much- lessons in love, appreciating friendships, letting go of all the Sexy Sadies, how to better understand what my emotions are saying, and to accept the good with the bad and the knowledge to know the difference.

Certain songs are my personal serenity prayers. They help me unravel any cross wires short circuiting the thought process.

They also offer an intuitive ability to see through the blah blahs and where those Nowhere People use social media to pretend to be what they’re not.

If we spent more time listening to music and making music and far less time talking about the same old negative things and trying to outsmart each other, we just might be in a happier place and with more productive people.

This isn’t me refusing to face the truth and being a Pollyanna. It’s just not subscribing to coming together online and offline to be part of single minded thinking that always comes back to being about one’s self. There’s a word for this: Selfish.

At least, this is not what music was ever meant to be or do- be selfish.

Music was put here to make us think and feel and share new and artists no longer with us and understand ourselves and the world around us better.

It’s about finding something that makes us feel alright and then help find those other moments to make these feelings even better.

During World War Two, Vera Lynn offered optimism to Britain during the bombing of London when she sang “We’ll Meet Again”.

Decades later, John Lennon would invite us to Imagine.

Paul McCartney mentioned how in his hour of darkness, Mother Mary comes to him offering words of wisdom and telling him to let it be.

George Harrison was positive that the sun was about to appear after a long cold lonely winter.

Sinatra and Ella, the music of Motown, Carole King, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan offered life lessons through their songs.

These were different takes on life that one never learned at school- and which will never be learned or taught online.

Music reminds me of my father, an amateur musician in Ceylon who hosted his own radio programme called The Melody Maker.

If not for him, I would not have met the Dave Brubeck Quartet as a kid, learned the lyrics to “Autumn Leaves” and grown up listening to his collection of 78RPM vinyl records by everyone from Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Errol Garner, Fats Waller, the Glenn Miller Orchestra to Sarah, Billie, Dakota Staton, Buddy Greco, Benny Goodman...

I think of my Auntie Prim, a music teacher in Hong Kong, and just how much she cared about her students and how teaching them was her calling in life.

If not for the girl who became my wife- Trina- I would never have known that Joni Mitchell wrote the line, “Trina with her wampum beads”...We walked down the aisle to “Our House” by Crosby, Stills and Nash.

As a journalist, music led me to interviewing Sammy Davis Jr, Bhaskar Menon, Ahmet Ertegun, Quincy Jones, Billy Joel, George Harrison, John Lennon, Bowie, Phil Ramone, Norah Jones and so many others.

During these times, I was inspired to at least try writing my own music. Many remain my personal diaries. I don’t need them on Spotify.

As for the Beatles, what can be said about them that hasn’t been said before?

We each have our own stories of what first captured our interest in them- for me, the count-in to “I Saw Here Standing There”, the opening chord to “A Hard Day’s Night”, the Rubber Soul record, the creativity of the album cover to Revolver...

And in the end, this new old documentary is a reminder about four young lads from Liverpool who, somehow, found each other and came together to create some of the greatest popular music.

They were hardly perfect, but maybe that’s what attracted some of us to them. How, even with their imperfections, they were able to produce the music they did with such honesty and knew when their work was done.

“Get Back” promises to offer a new and unfiltered look into four individuals who only ever wanted to be musicians and ended up being messengers through their songs whether they liked it or not.

“Get Back” shows the Beatles returning to being a band and, perhaps, after learning something new about each other and why they became what they still are today.

Maybe by “getting back”, we shall find something new about ourselves that will make us better people and realise how all we need is love.

#getback #music #beatles #hansebert #life #honesty