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Reacon Property Ltd Hong Kong | Credit Rating : Very Poor

Reacon Property Ltd (匯港置業地產有限公司), which is a registered Hong Kong company, has a very low credit rating and the registered address is:-

WORKSHOP 02, 3/F, IPLACE, 303 CASTLE PEAK ROAD, KWAI CHUNG, N.T., HONG KONG

The company incorporation number is 2742051 and it was registered on 4 September 2018.

The main director of this company is Mr Yuen King Pan (袁敬彬) with Hong Kong ID : Y???727(9)

TOWER 2 SAN PO KONG PLAZA NO.33 SHUNG LING STEET ,WONG TAI SIN ,KLN, HONG KONG

Reacon Property Ltd lost in small claims court case SCTC044617/18 of over HK$ 10,000 which they have still not settled since November 2018.

Reacon Property Ltd 匯港置業地產有限公司

Any party that does not settled small claims court cases within 90 days are given a credit rating of “VERY POOR”.

Seraphine Gutekunst owes HK$95,584.50 in Rental Arrears

The Swiss, generally speaking, have a reputation of honouring financial obligations; but there are occasionally a few rotten apples and Seraphine Gutekunst is one of them. She decided not to pay rent for almost half a year. Her landlord is not a well-heeled property mogul with thousands of units but instead is a single mum who suffered stroke a few years back and has become hemiplegic. The rental income goes towards this old lady’s care home fees. Ms Seraphine Gutekunst is well aware of this situation. She exploited it and precipitated the old lady’s son to go through the rigmarole of applying to the Small Claims and then Lands Tribunal to recover the unpaid rent. With advice from property agent friends Ms Seraphine Gutekunst knew that any application would take a good few months so she stayed in the flat without paying rent until the bailiff application finally came through.

The below are the court orders:-

Small Claims : SCTC029026/18 (HK$ 32,820.50)

Seraphine Gutekunst Small Claims Court Order

Lands Tribunal : LDPD2023/18 (HK$ 62,764.00)

Court Order – Seraphine Gutekunst

Lands Tribunal Order – Seraphine Gutekunst

The information presented herein is factually correct and as of writing the total amount of HK$ 95,584.50 (~US$12,254) is owing. The reader should make their own decisions on Ms Seraphine Gutekunst’s ethical and moral position. The Swiss Benevolent Fund paid for Seraphine Gutekunst’s flight back and all other expenses to Switzerland but have declined to help settle any of the outstanding rental arrears racked up by Seraphine Gutekunst.

Arrest of Huawei CFO | It’s just Karma

Arrest of Huawei CFO. When the communist party abducted the bookseller Lee Bo on Hong Kong soil in 2016 they did so illegally and they kept him under arrest for months without allowing him to communicate with the outside world. Upon his release, he was so frightened by the ordeal he dared not to mention a word of what happened to the media or press. It was illegal because it contravened the laws of the Hong Kong SAR, it contravened one country two systems and violated his basic rights as a human being.

Whilst the US and China are engaged in a trade war, the arrest of Huawei CFO (Meng Wanzhou) for most political observers would be throw a spanner in the recent trade ceasefire but for many in Hong Kong the arrest of Huawei CFO is seen as karma. It makes me laugh when I read this on the BBC “A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told reporters: ‘The detention without giving any reason violates a person’s human rights.'” because it is hypocrisy in the purest form. Lee Bo the missing bookseller has rights too no different to the CFL of Huawei so why is the detention of one a violation of human rights and not the other? Meng Wanzhou is already 100% better off than the missing bookseller; at least she’s been given legal representation – Lee Bo just disappeared from the world for a couple of months.

For many of us in Hong Kong who saw the abduction of Lee Bo as a direct affront to our legal system (yet were powerless to do anything against the violators i.e. the communist party) view the arrest of the CFO Huawei as just karma. In fact when the Chinese foreign ministry spokeperson said that the detention violates a person’s human rights I think the reporter should have responded with “when did the communist party ever respect a person’s human rights unless it was in its interest?”

So in closing, for the communist party to know what it feels like to be on the receiving end on violations of human rights I think we should extradite this miscreant to the US, lock her up for 2 months without any communication to the outside world or legal representation and then maybe release her if the powers that be feel like it. When this is done then karma would have gone the full circle.

Typhoon Mangkhut | First Hand Account from Hong Kong

2 weeks on and we are still clearing up the mess from Typhoon Mangkhut. We are based in Hong Kong and have lived here for almost 2 decades and this typhoon is the most powerful and devastating one yet. The Hong Kong Observatory even gave it an unofficial T11 which was higher than the highest signal ever given. We live on the South side of the island which was quite badly affected and the typhoon effectively hit us head on because it was coming from the Southerly direction.

Repulse Bay Damage – Belleview Drive

The reparation efforts are ongoing, I have never seen so many trees felled by a single typhoon and the whole area where we are is still to this day in a bit of a palaver. The narrow lane of Belleview Drive is just wide enough for two small cars and the accessibility by the industrialised vehicles needed for clear up is limited hence the somewhat lacklustre clean-up effort.

Damage from typhoon mangkhut

The above is a view looking up Belleview Drive a week after the typhoon; it is already a lot better because now you can drive through before the road was virtually blocked. Half of the beach in Deep Water Bay had moved inland and the roads were covered with a thick layer of sand which made driving difficult.

South Side Damage from Typhoon Mangkhut – Repulse Bay

On the day of the typhoon, I tried to leave the house to assess the extent and the ferocity of the typhoon first hand but the wind was so powerful that I could barely open the front door using my full strength so I decided that it would be better to stay indoors. From inside the house you could hear the immensity of the wind beating relentlessly at the windows and hear this whirring sound; occasionally you thought the windows would crack any moment under the pressure but fortunately they held and for us we were fortunate that no damage was done to our property.

Trees Felled – Belleview Drive – Typhoon Mangkhut

Rubbish in front of Circle Lodge Sign Rubbish in front of Circle Lodge Sign

Rubbish in front of Circle Lodge Sign

Typhoon Mangkhut – Repulsey Bay

Transunion Hong Kong probably Hacked

I am very worried that Transunion Hong Kong’s site (transunion.hk) has been hacked because my original login and password no longer work and also the forgot password function does not work.

transunion accounts all locked out

After entering the correct login and password, I get this screen:-

transunion hong kong locked out

It’s quite possible that their site has been hacked since there was no notification to users that all of their login / passwords have been changed. I had used the correct login and password to login and I had previously been successful in logging in but as of today (4 August 2018) the login and password seized to work. Transunion Hong Kong did not contact me about the fact that they had changed my login and password at all so I can only come to the conclusion that either their site had probably been hacked and the hacker had tampered with all user’s logins and passwords.

I filled in all of my personal details and was returned with the following:-

transunions hong kong probably hacked

With no means of contacting them; I wrote to them by email and didn’t get a reply. I called them on +852 2577 1816 and couldn’t get through to anyone.

It is very troubling that Hong Kong people’s sensitive data are being handled by such an unprofessional team of amateurs. Nothing on the site works and I think Transunion owes the public an apology for this complete screw up.

The decline and fall of Cathay Pacific

There is good reason why Cathay Pacific’s earnings have declined so much whilst others in the industry have seen earnings growth.

My wife and I flew to Bangkok from Hong Kong today on the CX635 flight; we booked a connecting coach to a resort area near Bangkok; this is the second such trip in the last 8 months or so. The flight was late departing by exactly the same amount of time as the last time we took the CX635 flight. The cabin crew were generally professional but the equipment and the cabin had dated fittings; none of the seats actually reclined – they just slid under. It is hard to describe what happened but it amounted to the upholstery on the seat semi-detaching from the back of the seat so that your body slid down with it – which sort of gave you the illusion that the seat was reclining.

The flight was delayed by 1 hour which meant that the coach we had booked was missed and we were in limbo for 3 hours waiting at the stuffy airport to catch the next one. The same thing happened last time because we didn’t book our coach tickets ahead of times but this time we did but forgot to account for the delay from Cathay.

Thanks to Cathay the holiday starts off on the back foot.

We take many flights and Hong Kong Express, albeit a budget airline, is much more on-time and is much preferred.

So, this is the last time we will be taking Cathay Pacific.

Property Search / Property Listings Portals Comparison Hong Kong

We have been looking for a new property to move into in the next month or so; we tried to go online to do some research and to shortlist a some properties and arrange viewings during weekends. Incidentally we are based in Hong Kong.

We went on SquareFoot (http://www.squarefoot.com.hk/), Spacious (http://www.spacious.hk), 28 House (https://www.28hou se.com) and Oneday (https://www.oneday.com.hk).

SquareFoot looked nice and the website looked generally professional but out of all of the properties (about 10) that we called up only 1 we found to be available and all of the others were out-of-date so we decided it was too much trouble. We then went to Spacious; the whole experience was dizzying; we were harassed on every page to send them our email address and the search feature didn’t really work so we didn’t even to get to the search results and gave up.

We thought the 2 best websites were Oneday and 28 House; both were easy to use and showed relevant listings. If the listings were expired, these two websites would clearly indicate that which we thought was quite good.

Here’s the screenshots for these 2 websites:-

Oneday.com.hk – Property Search Hong Kong

This is the one for Spacious:-

Hong Kong Property Prices continue to Rise

Hong Kong’s Property Prices have continued to rise every month this year. 5 years ago the prices were already at levels that would unnerve even those with mild vertigo; but now the prices have gone stratospheric and if it carries on on the current trajectory it will leave earth’s atmosphere and enter space – the unknown – the void – a point of no return and quite literally “out of this world”.

One can longer look at economic indices or co-efficients to try to predict where the markets will go; where the markets go are now controlled entirely by central banks – if they decide to print more money inflation will continue, the wealth gap will continue to widen and the world will continue to pull apart. If they decide to increase interest rates and cease their expansionary monetary policy we will enter a recession and the property bubble in Hong Kong (and other parts of the world) will just explode.

So, the only chance that the crazyiness we are going through now where inflation has been double digit every year since 2008 will cease is if there is a revolution whereby those central bankers are removed from office and exterminated. The world is not at that juncture yet but we are moving towards it faster than most people would like to believe. All the threats about “tapering” – as in reducing the balance sheet and giving the money printing regime a break will not happen; why – because printing money is like a drug – not a soft drug like marajuana but a much harder one like heroin – one that will require serious cold turkey to kick. The addiction is just too great. The impartial observer will notice that the threat of tapering has been motioned regularly since 2013 yet money supply keeps expanding year on year; we have been threatened for 4 years already yet the exact opposite has happened so I am pretty sure these threats are hollow.

QE – expansionary monetary policy- property prices to keep going up

I predict that money printing in the US will continue for the next 3 years at least – until people start to get violent and start assassinating central bankers and bankers in general.

When US prints money, China prints just as quickly – the difference being that China does not have to make public anything and even when they do the figures are not reliable. So in many of China’s smaller cities, property prices have risen as much as 50% in 2017 alone and the debt bubble is growing fast; and the traditional mentality of saving for the rainy days is changing to leveraging as much as you can.

Although, I worry about the stability of the world and Hong Kong greatly, I think money printing will continue in the US and around the world for at least another 3 years. The only thing that will put an end to it is some kind of revolution – therefore I predict that property prices will continue to rise for the next 3 years and when this bubble does burst it will be the biggest downturn ever resulting in a catastrophe – ie. a global war. The other thing that could put an end to the insane rise in property prices is a global epidemic, a meteorite hitting us, Kim Jong Un firing a missile that hits the US; in the absence of some of kind of force majeure the music will continue to play to the Fed’s tune.

Hong Kong Independence | Why Not?

I was never a proponent of Hong Kong independence. I think being part of China offers greater stability to Hong Kong.

However, with all of the recent political developments; with the abduction of Lee Bo the bookseller on Hong Kong soil and the abduction of the billionaire Xiao Jianhua at the Four Seasons Hotel I think we should reconsider whether the benefits outweight the drawbacks. The Communist Party stole the land from land owners in 1949 so their legitimacy to governing China is tenuous; the party is riddled with corruption and openly promotes inequality.

Hong Kong has declined with every passing year since the handover; socially mobility completely wiped out, wealth gap at an all time high, rule of law is getting eroded, the economic significance of the special administrative region ever declining. Freedom of speech is being eroded.

So, with independence, there are several issues to iron out before we tread down this path:-

1) Water supply – at the moment supplied by China at a commercially expensive rate; we should tender out this contract and re-visit whether we should buy water from other countries and have the water shipped? Desalination is another option. We should also continue to build reservoirs like the we had up until 1964.
2) Armed Forces – this could be outsourced like most things; tender out the requirements and engage the country/company that provides the best service with the lowest cost
3) Electricity – some of our power is being provided by China at the moment; we can increase production and not buy from China

The above form the problems, the below will be the fun part:-

1) Control immigration so that we do not allow 150 new immigrants from the mainland China to gain citizenship
2) Depeg from the US dollar and peg to a basket of currencies so that we can float the Hong Kong dollar freely
3) Change the political structure so that the chief executive is not being elected by an Election Committee of 1,400 cronies instead we implement universal suffrage and allow one man one vote
4) We can increase the powers of the Hong Kong Monetary Authorities to adjust interest rates based on how the economy is doing

Wouldn’t the above be great? No longer would we have to suffer the general bad manners of mainlanders; no longer would we be unable to protect our citizens; no longer would we have to waste vast sums of money building useless infrastructure projects to China that benefit only a few cadres.

Undersecretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin’s Son Commits Suicide

Karma, for those who believe it, is a simple equation that explains how the universe functions – where there is cause there is effect. Each and one of us are governed by the laws of Karma.

For a mishap to happen to somebody, that person would have done something in the past to deserve it. If I dedicate my life to helping others, sharing and spreading positivity to the world good things will come back to me and the same works in reverse. When something extraordinarily good happens to a person and you attribute their success or good fortunes to the great work that they have done it is socially acceptable. However when something extraordinarily bad happens to a person and you attribute their misfortunes to bad deeds that they have must committed it is socially a taboo.

The students at Chinese University Hong Kong have expressed publicly the social taboo that should have been kept to themselves; even though what they were saying effectively implied that for such a misfortune to be bestowed upon somebody – that somebody must have committed some grievious deed to deserve such a retribution – i.e. losing a son. Regardless of what happened – only she will know what she did and it is not for outsiders to speculate.