More paintings by Tamara...
I just received an email from the webhosting co. of this website:
Final reminder: Pay by tomorrow or we'll switch off
Lamma.com.hk!
OK, let's see ... $190 in my wallet (which I'll need for another hospital outpatient
visit tomorrow), $200+ in the bank, no savings, no stocks or investments, no assets to sell, no credit
lines or cards, no loans, no monthly salary or retainer, cheques for two small recent freelance jobs long
overdue ... not
enough left to settle this small, yearly, but top-urgent US$59.95 invoice,
just below HK$500.... Being poor but happy and free can feel great much of
the time, but there are severe downsides....
Also, the yearly bill for the 2nd webhosting (for historical, practical,
legal and technical reasons) for this site is 25 days overdue: HK$1,440.
I hope they can wait for a while longer while I fully recover from my
second (hopefully last) stomach skin surgery a month ago.
There are also two domain name registrations: $500
and $552
for 3 years each.
And my 10+ year old colour inkjet printer, used almost
exclusively for this site, is at the very end of its useful
life, not able to print in colour anymore, replacing it will
cost at least $500-$1,000. And the power supply's fan in my
antique Lamma- zine PC just stopped working (again), crashing the
PC repeatedly....
After 9 years of self-exploitation and still shrinking ad revenue (losing
two more top advertisers this year so far), it's really getting harder and
harder to keep this site up and running. It all gets a bit too much and
depressing sometimes, when I wonder about the future, if any, of this
community site. It's the people, content contributors and friends offering
moral support that have kept this labour-of-love- cum-almost-fulltime-job
going for so long. It's still not financially viable at all, far from even
covering my home office rent which just went up again a lot.
If you've liked this site over the last 9 years, how about helping out
with some of these urgent bills above, with a simple
donation ($500?)
or a private or company sponsorship
which would be so gladly and gratefully accepted.
Email me, please!
TVB
has been filming in Yung Shue Wan once again today, along Main Street and at
the ferry pier, another soap opera episode for "Be Home For Dinner"
on Jade, 8pm, 5 times a week. Alarmed and introduced
by Lamma-Por, I had a great little chat with very friendly, jovial actor,
martial artist, TV presenter and TVB senior artiste Stephen Au Kam-tong.
Both of us being Bruce Lee fanatics - he's even been running
a non-profit Bruce Lee museum before - we had a lot to chat about. He
referred me to his website for more info. It's a fine and comprehensive
artiste site:
StephenAu.com. Have a look at his impressive profile (scroll down
for English):
Profile.
9th Anniversary today: from a little community forum to the website you see
here
nowadays. Over 2,500 Lamma-zine stories, hundreds of photo galleries, tens
of thousands of Lamma photos from many hundreds of people.
Forum started: Tue, July 23, 2002, 10:07
- No. of posts: 50,860
- Average # of posts per day: 15.46 - No. of topics: 5,579 - No. of registered
users: 7,887.
I still find it amazing personally that it has survived for so long,
despite many adversities, attacks and problems over the years. Will it make
it to a full decade? Maybe, hopefully....
This is currently running on the TVB Jade channel, a new
Chinese commercial for the Prime Credit moneylenders. The story shows
Christopher Columbus visiting the courts of Europe to borrow money for this
voyage to the West-Indies (which led to the re-discovery of the Americas,
you might have heard).
In this TV commercial, another one of his growing number of
TV appearances (look out for his next appearance as a shopping cart-pushing
hobo in another commercial soon), Nick plays a doctor at the French court
when Christopher Columbus visits trying to borrow money (unsuccessfully).
Blink and you'll miss his very short background appearance. It's quite
amusing for Nick to be in this moneylender ad as he would probably never
qualify for a loan from them himself.
Full TV commercial and photos provided courtesy of the
production co.
Mr. Wan
(third from right) presents a $1 million cheque to
representatives of fishermen groups [in Aberdeen], symbolizing
a milestone for applying Renewable Energy in the
fishing sector. (Photos and captions by HK Electric.)
HK Electric's
Director of Engineering (Planning and Development), Mr. Wan Chi-tin (left)
said about 500 fishing vessels and mariculture rafts
will benefit from the programme sponsored by HK Electric to install micro
photovoltaic panels to harness solar energy for daily operations.
Work is in
progress to expand the 550 kilowatt solar power system
at Lamma Power Station, the largest of its kind in Hong Kong, to a
one megawatt facility which can generate over 1.1 million units of
electricity a year.
The existing system has generated
over 730,000 units of electricity in its first year, exceeding design
targets by 18% and reducing CO2 emissions by 610 tonnes.,
while the Company's offshore wind farm project has
also made good progress and a wind monitoring station will be set up at the
site in August.
If you own a "fishing vessel or a mariculture raft"
yourself, maybe you can apply to get one of these nice solar panels for
free? Their costs seem to be become quite reasonable these days, 500 panels
for HK$1 million, only $2,000/panel?
The same media release mentions the Lamma offshore wind farm
project. The fishermen were originally almost the only vocal opposition to
the project, worried about losing some of their traditional fishing grounds
off Lamma Island. So this big solar present and the smiles all around in the
photos, do they mean that they've made up now and the fishermen accept the windfarm, I hope? Peace,
Love, Lamma (with Renewable Energy!)
By the way, we Lamma residents also
just got a HK$1 million present from HK Electric, to build our
new covered Activity Centre later this
year. It'll be located close to the Cargo Pier behind the Football Pitch and
will be available for fun and games to all residents.
For more on this story, see HK Electric's media release:
Fishermen go low carbon with HK Electric-sponsored micro PV panels
There are a full nine years; worth of Lamma photos on this website,
selected from hundreds of talented photographers, plus
loads of even older and historic photos, not even counting the tens of thousands
of photos uploaded to our forum. Have a look at some of (mostly) my own
photos, "randomly" selected by Google's image search of the Lamma-zine
(click below):
This year we might get a very interesting, maybe
even exciting election for District Councilor for
Non-Indigenous Residents. This important office has been
occupied by Lammadonna, Yu Lai Fan, for the last 8 years. Back
then, she had a single opponent in the elections, from the Civic
Party, but he lived off-island and managed a respectable 30% of
the vote. In the last election, 4 years ago, Yu Lai Fan ran
unopposed and won by default (similar to almost all recent
Village Representative elections.)
This year, in the Nov 6 elections, there might
be another opponent, maybe even two! No new candidates have been
announced yet, but
People
Power (Chin.-only website) and
Living
Lamma (bilingual website) seem to be trying to recruit,
promoting new voter registrations via various channels, even on
the ferry pier. They've got till mid-Sep to find a viable
candidate who has to be reasonably bilingual and live on Lamma
to stand any chance, in my humble opinion.
Register as a voter by tomorrow, July 16!
It's quick and easy, any HK permanent resident can register,
even if you have lived on Lamma only for a short time!
Registered voters can update their particulars, for example
their Lamma address, till Aug 29. Pick up a form at LaLa
mama's or Green Cottage Restaurants.
Click here for all the info and online registrations:
Read more in our forums
and post your questions and comments:
Please register to vote in the District Council elections
People Power on Lamma:
-
Swipe your Octopus card in the Lamma ferry piers to get a
$1.50 credit on your next MTR ride on the same day,
starting today till Jan 2012!
-
The
new 2:30am ferries from Central-YSW ferries on
weekends seem to be picking up reasonable business already,
over 20 passengers the first Sunday morning. Tell your
friends and make it worth the ferry co.'s while to put up
these late and expensive ferries at the same, regular fare,
no surcharge!
Tell us if you've tried them already!
-
Results from the YSW-Pak Kok-Aberdeen ferry service survey,
organised by Yu Lai Fan's office: Option 2 of the
new schedule won out, to be confirmed. There also
might be a new, late ferry at 9:30pm from Aug 14, to be
confirmed. Click here for
detailed questionnaire results.
-
No fare increase on YSW-Pak Kok-Aberdeen ferry for 3
years from Aug 14!
RTHK, Radio 3, Tue, July
12, 2011 (wait to
load fully, click on 2011-7-12, then on Around Town:
Recommendations for visiting Lamma Island. (Photos by
RTHK):
"Hello there, Teen Timers, it's time for this week's Around Town
with me, Andrew Dembina.
This week we head out to Lamma
Island and speak to a group of young adults, who spent their
childhood and teens growing up there. We get insider
recommendations on what to do and where to go from Yolanda
Miller, Saheb Ambekar and Andy Peterson."
P.S.
Congrats to all the 4 Lammaites above. When Andrew Dembina
contacted me (again) to be interviewed on RTHK, on his weekly
Teen Time, I politely declined this time as I'm definitely
not a teen anymore! I recommended several of my "Friends" and
gave him the contacts. All of them agreed to be interviewed,
fortunately, even Outrigger Canoe Club's Claudia.
I've just received Andrew's email today about his
programme being broadcast, right in the middle of me listening
to it online already, after just having been alerted on Facebook
by one of the proud dads! Yes, proud dads are faster than radio
presenters and Facebook's faster than emails once again....
