City notes:

As I rolled into za' Park (Zhongshan Park!) this evening, I saw those new "civilized passenger" kids they hired to stand around in suits and look polite pasting notices on the escalators that say "the left side is a walking zone". That's GREAT; one of my deepest impressions of Hong Kong is still the crowd of people at the bottom of the escalator lined up to get on the right—standing—side of the escalator while the left side was left relatively free for me to walk up... Then again, signs don't get much attention here. Hopefully they station staff will add a little "spine" to go with their "sign". If they do as good a job as they guys with megaphones do at rush hour, we should be good to go in a month or two.

And second, who said the market always gives rise to unsafe conditions? As I exited the metro station by the Cloud Nine Mall, I was met at the top of the escalator by a greeting line of moto-taxi drives waving spare helmets at me. I'm guessing the Zhongshan Park white-collar MM show preference to moto-taxis with helmets for passengers.

And today's Xinmin Wanbao had no metro news. I was disappointed.