An Ethnic Minority In Hong Kong: A Journography

There’s just way too much information, and when all this everything, especially from the online world that’s often nothing of anything, bombards the senses in the real world, it reduces what’s relevant to irrelevance, which is accepted because it’s free, and what one has is a tossed salad world topped off with the blah blahs. Phew.

Because the technology has been allowed to become the idea, those with access to almost anything seem to just chill out from actually thinking, and, instead produce something or another that’s, more often than not, meaningless, and see themselves as “digital creators” producing “content”. 

But what IS this “content”? How is it relevant? Is it helpful? Is it bursting with good vibes? 

Or is it just one massive soulless blob that sits there or wobbles around like a bowl of jello having a TikTok moment?

Some of us, especially those of us who have been or are still in advertising, had to work damn hard to prove that we deserved our titles. 

These were not just handed out like tortilla chips for random Wikipedia wisdom or being masters of emojis.

Most of what’s seen these days makes one think of how much standards have dropped and serve as a reminder of what was created before so much of everything has been allowed to become the result of being slaves to technology.

Lost in the technological jungle are things like the wonderment of children and adults visiting Sesame Street and the Muppets.

There was the magic of meeting E.T. and before that watching the creativity of Walt Disney and Fantasia unfold.

There were the talents of innovators like guitarist and inventor Les Paul, comedians and acrobats and silent storytellers like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, storytellers like Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, and Bob Dylan, the music from Tin Pan Alley, the Brill Building, Motown, Liverpool, Abbey Road and listening to that Moon River, with my huckleberry friend waiting round the bend. 

I have written about all this and much more many times before, and how, despite all the knowledge and learning that’s available for free, few use these resources to understand the revolution and evolution of creativity and what’s brought us to this point. 

Where exactly are we? 

Sometimes I feel like being inside a Gary Larson cartoon and the Far Side and totally removed from reality.

For some reason, creativity has had its flag lowered and almost everyone appears to be happy doing what everyone else is doing and just streaming in the gloaming with the flow. 

Why bother and create waves, right? 

Wrong.

Earth, we have a problem, because all too often we have our life priorities all wrong- and don’t seem to care or realise it.

Weren’t we told that he who ain’t busy doing is busy dyin’ and if so, what is pretty much everyone actually doing? 

And why and for whom? 

Instagram fame and to be seen as an “influencer”- and influencing who with what?

How big is this market for doing the same old thing and are we saying that numbers don’t lie? 

Or does the truth not matter? 

There appears to be the belief to just do it- whatever this is- and that “they will come” like lemmings and sheep despite there no longer being a field of dreams, and what’s here being the same old thing that’s been hanging around for decades.

Yet, the poohbahs talk of Change to the beat of a shallow corporate narrative while trying to look like they’re busy being sincere. 

It’s often like George Castanza explaining to Jerry and Elaine how if he looks angry, everyone will think he’s busy. 

At least, George was honest enough to admit that he was a loser and a loveable putz. 

Looking back, “Seinfeld” showed four friends who were busy doing nothing and a brilliant television series that was holding a mirror up to us and knowing that these weird post pandemic times will arrive. 

Do I enjoy it here and wherever this is? Nah.

I can’t wait to leave, because nowhere do I have the give and take and honest friendship I had with Daniel Ng, a former aeronautical engineer for NASA, who somehow ended up owning the McDonald’s franchise in Hong Kong and China. 

Not only did we learn many things from each other, we even started our own ELT- English Language Teaching business by starting up Bridgetown Music until our partners on the publishing side were sold at the eleventh hour. 

Less than two years later, after conducting the Boston Symphony, Daniel left us for good.

I think of him often and miss him terribly. He was a visionary disguised as Mr Magoo and a very loyal friend.

If not for him asking me to write a song for the first Ronald McDonald House in Asia, and Keith Reinhard, my mentor in advertising, teaching us young creatives the importance of giving back to society through PSAs- Public Service Announcements- I wouldn’t have entered the music world as seriously as I did and win the prestigious London Advertising Award for the Right of Abode campaign.

This was very much a results-driven campaign that helped over 8700 ethnic minorities like myself in Hong Kong be given the right of abode in the United Kingdom. 

Without this, we would very probably be stateless. 

Where is work and initiatives like these today? 

There’s nothing wrong with making money, but, surely not when it comes out of being fed a steady diet of pure greed?

As is said often, YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU. 

But you CAN leave this world with a beautiful smile by giving without being asked.

How many who are leaders of pretty much everything around the world- business and the politics of power- understand this?