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Hope you didn't try to drop by the Hong Kong Securities Institute late yesterday afternoon.

If you did, you were out of luck. Its office shut early.

This we learned from Hong Kong's campaigner against boardroom  malfeasance, David Webb.

He read about it in a pop-up notice on the outfit's Web site.

'Notice: Office will be close at 4:30PM on March 5, 2001 (office opening ceremony).'

In other words, the office is closed to celebrate the fact that the office is open.

Sock shock:  Now Lai See has received some weird e-mails in her time.

But we just got one that really takes the prize. It comes from some man who wants photos of Lai See 's socks.

'I am very much into the ultra thin socks that are made in China,' author W. West declares.

'I love the ones with intricate designs embroidered onto them. The trouble is I cannot find them to buy them.

'Please help me . . . I can find what you want in America. Do you have any pictures of your collection?'

Forget it. Lai See 's 'collection' consists of a ParknShop bag jammed with hole-riddled gym socks.

And even if she did possess a fine pair of foot coverings, you wouldn't catch her stripping them from her feet for a stranger.

Lai See isn't the sort to bare her sole.

Sleeping habits bared:  Think Asia Ltd just sent us the results of a hotel industry survey. We're told Sleep Inn researchers set out to discover 'what the guest really wants in a hotel bedroom'.

Easy. George Clooney and a couple of those nice pillow mints with the gooey centres.

But it turns out Lai See  is in the minority on that one.

When asked to name the person they most wanted to wake up beside, 40 per cent preferred their partners to all the stars in Hollywood. At this point we should probably mention that 96 per cent of the respondents were female. Most were under 30.

More than half of those polled sleep naked, and lots have slept in really odd spots.

One woman was prostrate in the back seat of a hearse . . . complete with corpse. Another eluded security cameras for a night in the toy department of Harrod's.

Hmmm. Now Lai See doesn't mean to sound suspicious or anything. But we can't help but notice that things seem to have gotten a little off topic.

The survey's main aim is supposed to be 'to discover what feature in a hotel bedroom is considered to be most important to guarantee a good night's sleep'.

We're not quite sure how this is achieved by asking a lot of twenty-something women: 'Who do you want to shag, what's the weirdest place you've spent the night, and do you sleep naked?'

These days, it's getting harder and harder to tell the obscene phone callers from the hotel industry researchers.

Monumental exaggeration: We've been following with horror the news of the assault on ancient treasures in Afghanistan. It's terrible the damage religious zealots can wreak.

Lai See  thanks God she's an atheist.

But reader David O'Rear thought the Asian Wall Street Journal 's coverage was a bit . . . blase.

Their sub-heading declared that the destruction of the statues at Bamiyan and other treasures is 'arguably the worst cultural terrorism this century'.

Guess it's been a quiet 14 months.

Graphic: whee06gbz



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