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Charlotte Parsons

It's terrible how some companies seem to think journalists can be bought.

They invite them to a results press conference, reel off a bunch of figures . . . and bring out the loot bags.

'Take one,' they whisper. 'Go on. It's just a little gift . . . you know you want to . . .'

But one SCMP hack yesterday refused to be bought.

She had ethics.

She had firmly entrenched beliefs in the sanctity of her profession.

Also, she didn't really need a bag of pantyliners.

That's what Hengan International Group was doling out yesterday.

Lai See  has to give them credit for originality. In all our years as a journalist, not once have we been offered a sack-full of sanitary napkins.

Admittedly, the firm does make the things, along with Elderjoy adult diapers.

No word on whether any of those were included with the take-home treats.

The all-female press contingent also received copies of the company's 2000 annual results.

It informed them that 'low-end sanitary napkins continued to slip'.

That might explain why they didn't sell very well.

Sage words lost in translation: For a minute there, we thought Rupert Murdoch was getting all humble on us.

We read about him in a Reuters story headlined 'Media mogul Murdoch firm in the saddle at 70'.

In it, he mulled over prostate cancer's impact on his life.

Said he of defeating the disease: 'It convinced me of my own mortality'.

Wow, thought Lai See. All that power, those billions, the trophy wife . . . none of it means anything if you don't have your health.

Clearly Mr Murdoch's brush with the Big C had left him shaken and contemplative.

Still, we were surprised that he'd been willing to open up like that and share his feelings of vulnerability.

Lai See felt a rare rush of tycoon-sympathy.

But that was before the next Reuters bulletin came through.

It said: 'Correcting to 'immortality' from 'mortality'.'

Author has good jeans for poetry: Lai See  has been reading the thoughts of a man who hopes 'to bring all of us together with a sense of familiarity that each of us share'.

He's sort of a poet/philosopher.

We stumbled across his musings online.

'There are many things that we all take for granted,' he said. 'When the Sun rises in the morning, it isn't often that we watch and think how beautiful it truly is as it spreads its fingers of light all over the world.'

That is just so true, thought Lai See, getting out her diary and scheduling 'Sun Appreciation' for 10:45.

But our new hero had more wisdom to impart.

'Bearing this in mind, I ask you this. Do we really understand the importance of our pants? What would happen to our lives if it weren't for these simple textile constructs?'

He goes on to break pants down into categories: pulling pants, lucky pants, fantasy pants, silly pants and worst pants ('They look horrid on you. You would have gotten rid of these pants long ago if it weren't for some bizarre sense of loyalty that binds you to them').

At the end, there's a guest book, a chat board and a place to 'pay homage' to the author.

Lai See  left a message telling our fallen idol that we started out thinking the site was going to be a source of great wisdom.

But it turned out to be pants.

Graphic: whee13gbz



High ethics really not necessary