Living with disruptions and changes

Ben Kwok October 06, 2021 10:03

Life is never perfect. But at least many of us had a good sleep on Monday.

Thanks to the global outage, we did not stay up late for Facebook and Instagram for a change. Of course many would still catch up Whatsapp messages missed in the roughly seven-hour span.

It is not until the blackout that we knew how much we were addicted to the social media apps, as well as to Youtube and Netflix.

Luckily it is only a short-term pain for us and hopefully for Mark Zuckerberg too, who saw a US$7 billion loss as Facebook fell close to five per cent, the most since last November.

But outage doesn’t just happen in cyberspace. Think of the millions of homes and businesses in China that suffered a severe shortage of electricity in the north eastern area ahead of the cold winter.

And of course the truck driver shortage that the British government sought help from the military in an attempt to avoid major disruptions to the logistics and supply chains of retailers such as supermarkets in the run-up to Christmas.

It goes without saying that global travel has been seriously disrupted under the pandemic for more than 20 months, not to mention even the border opening between Hong Kong and China.

Despite two months of zero local infection, it is doubtful if cross- border visitors can travel back and forth without at least two-week quarantine.

Willingly or not, we have to live with the disruptions, as the road to normality might be longer than expected.

In the traditional bad month for investment, selloffs in the equity markets were witnessed in the first week of trading in October.

We knew stock crash could come every few years and anytime. The last stock crash in Hong Kong was in 2018 when the stock market fell a consecutive six-month period.

Then the seemingly invincible property market started to lose steam in the wake of a more hands-on approach by Beijing as the SAR government is determined to increase land supply and build more homes.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam will address details of how to solve housing problem under the title “new Era, new opportunities” in a much-anticipated move of releasing land in New Territories.

No matter what, let’s have faith in ourselves. We are good at tackling challenges and turmoil because we have done so before.

-- Contact us at [email protected]

Ben Kwok

EJ Insight writer