okeyshopping

Three years ago, Arthur Yung and Erica Chan went on holiday to Berlin, met a mutual mate who deals vintage furniture and decided to open Mooi Shop back in Hong Kong. ‘We had the passion, so that’s how things started off,’ says Mr. Yung, who along along with his co-owner Ms. Chan, still works in the marketing business.

The shop, which sells Danish and spanish furniture and accessories from the 1950s to the 1970s, sits on a dead-end side street in Causeway Bay. Mr. Yung says only six to 10 people visit the shop each day—but we come armed with expectations. Mooi Shop has a weblog and photograph site with 914 pics of its stock. ‘A lot of our customers will look online first, go through everything and then contact us,’ says Mr. Yung.

The shop’s vintage aesthetic is in line with the recent trend of ’60s fashion, spurred in part by the popular tv show ‘Mad Men.’

‘No one comes in to the shop and tells us ‘because of ‘Mad Men’ we’re purchasing this,” says Mr. Yung. ‘But we make it look so good in the show.’

What’s not: Vintage accessories like elderly cameras and plastic chairs. ‘Plastic doesn’t age well; the color fades and the cracks are visible,’ says Mr. Yung. ‘People tend to buy investment pieces [instead].’

What’s selling: large cabinets and lounge chairs. we have an inclination to be very different in style and shape compared with modern furniture, and the workmanship is unusual now that everything is made in a production line, Mr. Yung says.

Shopping tip: Do your research, Mr. Yung says—some vintage pieces in a shop may be hidden treasures. ‘Often, we will buy a piece and with further research, find out some story or history behind the piece,’ he says.

Bargain buy: Most vintage Danish furniture pieces are handmade and created from high-quality solid wood—’that is a reason why these treasures are still around these days,’ says Mr. Yung. With excellent care, the wood ages nicely.

Next trend: Vintage Brazilian furniture from the 1960s and ’70s. ‘They have strong South American and European influences; we’re even rarer in this part of the world,’ says Mr. Yung.

When he told me he was leaving I felt like a vase which has just smashed. There were pieces of me all over the tidy, tan tiles. He kept talking, telling me why he was leaving, explaining it was for the best, I could do better, it was his fault and not mine. I had heard it before many times and yet somehow was still not immune; perhaps one did not become immune to such felony.

He left and I tried to get on with my life. I filled the kettle and put it on to boil, I took out my old red mug and filled it with coffee watching as each coffee granule slipped in to the bone china. That was what my life had been like, endless omissions of coffee granules, somehow never managing to make that cup of coffee.

Somehow when the kettle piped its finishing warning I pretended not to hear it. That’s what Mike’s leaving had been like, sudden and with an awful finality. I would rather just wallow in uncertainty than have things finished. I laughed at myself. Imagine getting all philosophical and sentimental about a mug of coffee. I must be getting old.

And yet it was a young woman who stared back at me from the mirror. A young woman full of promise and hope, a young woman with bright eyes and full lips just waiting to take on the world. I never loved Mike anyway. Besides there are more important things. More important than love, I insist to myself firmly. The lid goes back on the coffee just like closure on the whole Mike experience.

He doesn’t haunt my dreams as I feared that night. Instead I am flying far across fields and woods, looking down on those below me. Suddenly I fall to the ground and it is only when I wake up that I realize I was shot by a hunter, brought down by the burden of not the bullet but the soul of the man who shot it. I realize later, with some degree of understanding, that Mike was the hunter holding me down and I am the bird that longs to fly. The next night my dream is similar to the previous nights, but without the hunter. I fly free until I meet another bird who flies with me in perfect harmony. I realize with some relief that there is a bird out there for me, there is another person, not necessarily a lover perhaps just a friend, but there is someone out there who is my soul mate. I think about being a broken vase again and realize that I have glued myself back together, what Mike has is merely a little part of my time in earth, a little understanding of my physical being. He has only, a little piece of me.

Andrew Stevens: 33% roughly is consumer spending in China compared that with US which is about 70%. When realistically can you see China getting to its own target of about 50% consumer spending?

Fan Cheuk Wan: Yeah, indeed, we believed the robust consumption growth in China is going to drive this rebalancing process, urh, we expect China, is likely to overtake the US to become the world’s largest consumption market by 2020. And we also expect the contribution from private consumption to reach the target set by China to be 50% of GDP in the next decade.

Andrew Stevens: So next ten years, sorry..

Fan Cheuk Wan: Yeah, in the next ten years and this will be mainly driven by the distribution income reform that has been mapped out in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, and this is going to be the most important structure reform for China.

Andrew Stevens: Ok, so talking about this new Twelfth Five-Year Plan, how a redistribution of income , very difficult though isn’t it to wean themselves off this export model because it has been so successful. And there is a lot of powerful voices in Beijing, saying, if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.

Fan Cheuk Wan: In fact, China is very determined to drive this rebalancing in its growth model especially after the global financial crisis, as China is now facing the multi-year deleveraging of the US, and European consumers, especially in the US. So China cannot rely on the indebted consumer in the developed economies anymore as its key growth engine to drive growth in the next decade. So the income reform in China, this will go together with more substantial growth in labor wage, this is going to be powerful catalyst to support private consumption expansion in China.

Andrew Stevens: Yeah, a lot of people say that people won’t start spending until they feel there is a proper social safety net. They have their healthcare costs at least partly met by government that if they lose their job, the government is going to help them somehow. We don’t have that social net there in environment. Isn’t that stopping people spending and won’t that take a long time to put into place?

Fan Cheuk Wan: The social security net is definitely a critical social infrastructure that the government need to put in place, to give people the financial security to spend, but on the other hand, we also identify the significant accumulation in household wealth as an important driver of private consumption, as we observe from the key findings of our critics with global wealth report. We recently launched our wealth report which shows that China is currently the third largest global owner of household wealth. And this significant accumulation of personal wealth is providing the financial security for consumer to develop the increasing propensity to spend and with the strengthening local currency, this will also strengthen the purchasing power of Chinese consumer as it is. It will become less expensive for Chinese consumer to import consumer product.

MGM is looking towards entering bankruptcy soon.

The U.S. film studio, full name, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer Inc. says it has received enough votes for a reorganization plan to go ahead.

The studio said MGM creditors “overwhelmingly” approved what amounts to a prepackaged bankruptcy plan, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

The plan includes having Spyglass Entertainment co-founders Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum take over as co-chief executive officers, the Journal said.

The pre-bankruptcy dramatics included a failed bid by activist shareholder Carl Icahn to buy enough shares to turn MGM over to rival Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. rather than Spyglass.

In recent months, Icahn has been trying to gain control of Lions Gate, which filed suit against the investor this week, alleging he had bungled the MGM bid by secretly purchasing MGM shares after first coming out against an MGM-Lions Gate merger.

Imran Farooq, 50, a senior member of the MQM party who had lived in London since 1999, was stabbed to death outside his home in Edgware in September.

Public gatherings in Karachi have been banned and security heightened amid fears that the funeral procession could be targeted.

Hundreds of people have died in political unrest there since January.

Incidents of violence have been reported across the city and cars and buses have been set on fire.

All markets closed down early on Friday and public transport officials said services would be suspended on Saturday.

To quell potential violence, paramilitary troops and police have been deployed and checkpoints have been set up across the city.

The government has appealed for calm from all political parties.

MQM leaders say the funeral will take place at mid-afternoon in the Azizabad district of the city and they have called on their activists to exercise restraint.

Prayers were said for Dr Farooq at Hendon Mosque in London on Thursday.

The former parliamentarian was one of the founding members of the MQM (Muttahida Qaumi Movement), an opposition party which is now part of the ruling PPP-led alliance.

He had sought asylum in the UK as he was under “threat” and he was living in London with his wife and two sons.

Dr Farooq died after suffering multiple stab wounds and head injuries. A kitchen knife and brick used in the attack have since been recovered by police.

Dr Farooq’s body will be accompanied by his wife and children on the flight from London’s Heathrow airport.

Danes the happiest people in Europe: survey

Danes are the happiest people in Europe

Scandinavians may spend a lot of the winter in darkness but they are the happiest people in Europe, according to a study released this month.

Countries like Denmark and Finland scored highest on the study of happiness in Europe carried out by Cambridge University, which also found that the sunny southern countries of Italy, Portugal and Greece got the least joy out of life.

The survey entitled: “No Man is an Island” revealed that countries where people enjoy time with friends and family, have trust in government and national institutions were more likely to be happy than those living in a sunny climate.

The study rated respondents on their overall sense of happiness and life satisfaction on a scale of one to 10.

Danes — who expressed a high level of trust in their politicians and public institutions — came top of the field at 8.3. Italians — who reported lower levels of satisfaction with their national quality of government — came last at 6.49.

“Italy, Greece, Portugal, Germany and France report the lowest levels of happiness whereas the Scandinavian Countries, Netherlands and Luxembourg report the highest,” the study said.

Although Europeans are generally four times wealthier than their fathers and grandfathers, their levels of happiness are either equal to or lower than 40 years ago.

The study also looked at factors contributing to happiness within countries and surprisingly found that an interest in politics actually increased happiness.

Lead researcher Luisa Corrado said tax cuts and throwing money at social problems appeared to have no effect on the happiness of citizens when compared with government policies which strengthened and supported wider social networks.

“People are less naive than one would expect, politicians need to tailor their policies and target specific problems in specific areas,” she said.

Buying instead of renting isn’t the right move in every situation.

We’re rather radical when it comes to finances. We live on a cash budget, we don’t have credit cards or debt, we just finished up saving up to pay cash for our first home—oh, and we’ve also rented our entire marriage—all seven years of it so far!

Now, let me reassure you that I’m not here to make the case that everyone should rent, or that you should only buy a house if you can pay 100 percent down. Our circumstances were unique: We had a really good head start—we went into marriage without debt, and we also had all the money saved up to pay cash for law school. Because of these factors and the good income we now have, we have been able to live on significantly less than we make, which has allowed us to save enough to pay cash for our first home.

While I don’t expect many people to follow in our exact footsteps, I do think renting gets a bad rap. In fact, I’m going to make a counterintuitive statement: I think renting can be a really wise choice for some situations.

When You Can’t Afford the Payment and Expenses

Do the math yourself—don’t go by what your real-estate agent or loan officer says you can afford on your current income. (They get a commission off of how much house they sell you, remember?) According to Dave Ramsey, the financial advisor and radio talk-show host, “Your mortgage payment should not be more than 25 percent of your take-home pay.”

Also, keep in mind that your expenses could be as much as 78 percent higher pay every month when you buy than when you rent.

When Your Financial Situation is Unstable

If there’s a good possibility you’re going to lose your job, take a significant pay cut, or move to a different area of the country, buying a home is not always in your best interest. In fact, buying could make you very strapped financially, if you are making payments on a house you can’t sell, or which your decreased monthly income can’t support.

My husband lost his job unexpectedly after law school, and we ended up moving to another city so he could accept a different position. If we had had to mess with trying to sell a house, it would have added a great deal more stress, and could have thrown us in the hole financially had we not been able to sell.

We’ve now saved up enough to pay cash for our first home—thanks to the flexibility renting has given us to move where the job market was good—and we’re eagerly looking forward to being first-time homeowners. However, we don’t regret renting. Not in the least. In our situation, it was definitely a wise choice.

What came first, the chicken or the egg? Scientists in Britain think it was probably the chicken, after using new computer technology to try and crack the age-old riddle.

Researchers at the Universities of Sheffield and Warwick, in northern and central England, say the secret lies in the eggshell — specifically the vital role played by a chicken protein in forming it.

Scientists already knew that the protein, ovocledidin-17 (OC-17), plays a part in eggshell formation, but the new technology allowed the team to demonstrate exactly how the protein makes it happen.
In a computer simulation, the OC-17 protein acted as a catalyst to kickstart the formation of crystals that make up an eggshell by clamping itself on to calcium carbonate particles.

The OC-17 protein then dropped off when the crystal nucleus was large enough to grow on its own, freeing up the protein to start the process again.

Eggshells are created when this happens many times over within a short period of time.

“Understanding how chickens make eggshells is fascinating in itself but can also give clues towards designing new materials and processes,” said Professor John Harding from Sheffield University, one of the authors of the research.

“Nature has found innovative solutions that work for all kinds of problems in materials science and technology — we can learn a lot from them,” he added.

Ministry of Finance data released Sept. 19 showed that from January to August this year, the national state-owned and state holding enterprises realized total revenue of 19.4016 trillion yuan, an increase of 37.6% in August compared with July, Central, up 4%; accumulated profits 1264470000000 yuan, up 46.7% in August than in July rose 6.8% qoq.

Among them, the central enterprises (including central management of enterprises and departments owned enterprises, the same below) accumulated total revenue 12.21843 trillion yuan, an increase of 36.7%. Central management of enterprises realized total revenue 10.52912 trillion yuan, an increase of 40.3% in August compared with July by 5.4% qoq growth. Local state-owned enterprises realized total revenue of 7.18317 trillion yuan, an increase of 39.1% in August than in July increased by 2.2% qoq.

1-8 months, the central enterprises realized profits of 877.27 billion yuan, an increase of 39.1% in August than in July grew by 9.4% qoq. Among them, the central management of enterprises realized a total profit of 722.82 billion yuan, an increase of 50.1% in August compared with July up 11.8% qoq. Local state-owned enterprises realized profits of 387.2 billion yuan, an increase of 67.5% in August than in July rose 0.6% qoq.

1-August data show that state-owned enterprises Taxes payable 1.61715 trillion yuan, up 28.8% in August than in July were down 0.7%. 1-8 months, the state-owned enterprises have to pay taxes 1.63837 trillion yuan, up 24.4% in August than in July were down 29.6%.

January to August, total cost of state-owned enterprises 18.24127 trillion yuan, an increase of 36.6%. Of which: Operating costs increased by 39.2%, sales expenses, administrative expenses, financial expenses increased by 21.6% year on year, 17.6% and 15%.

Sales profit rate was 6.5%, up 0.4 percentage points; cost margin of 6.9% year on year increase of 0.5 percentage points; Net assets profit margin of 6.9% over the same period last year increased by 1.5 percentage points.

Central enterprise sales margins, cost margins and net assets profit margin was 7.2%, 7.9% and 7.6%, the local state-owned enterprises were 5.4%, 5.7% and 5.5%.

Situation from the same period last year, in addition to the tobacco industry, the other major industry profits continue to maintain a rapid growth trend. Situation from the chain, construction, real estate, automotive, trade, steel, machinery industry showed varying degrees of decline in profits; coal, power, petrochemical, petroleum, nonferrous metals industry showing growth in profits.