First things first: When Joao Moreira won the 2012 Longines International Jockeys Championship, this was the first time many of us in Hong Kong had ever seen the person known as “the magic man” ride though he was champion jockey in neighbouring Singapore. Never had many of us who are not “horsey” people seen a rider so in harmony with a horse and so aerodynamically born to ride. It really was wonderful to watch something almost balletic. I remember after the races that night,

What no one knew at the time, including the person I was living with at the time was an idea racing through my head when being shown the beer garden at Happy Valley racecourse and which I turned into the Happy Wednesday brand for the Hong Kong Jockey Club.  Some things are best kept in one’s hip pocket and being taught when in advertising that timing is everything. With the Hong Kong I once knew and where I met and married the American Wrangler girl and our daughter was born

I’m writing this early in the morning with the Beatles playing in the background, listening to some of their earliest originals and wondering how they wrote and produced all the music that they did and swept many of us up in a groundswell of awe and joy while also asking us why we couldn’t write a song like “Girl” or “I’ll Follow The Sun” or the very much overlooked “I’ll Be Back” or, well, just something that came even close to what they were doing before Strawberry Fields F