In retreat

The teachers of HKU's Law Faculty retreated to The Bea’s River Country Club last weekend for some self-analysis, not to mention self-criticism, and also for what I understand is called bonding. There are now about 70 teachers in the two departments, as opposed to about 25 when I first joined, so it’s easy not to know your colleagues well, or even at all.

We discussed the future of the law school, how we might make our teaching more effective and how to make the school a better place to work. At the moment we’re spread over three floors with staff offices wrapped around the skin of the building and teaching and meeting rooms in the middle, all linked by narrow corridors. The new law building, part of the centennial campus due to open in 2012, is unlikely to be any better on this score since it will mean more teachers on more floors wrapped around a larger core. The best we could come up with was that there should be a more inviting staff lounge with a sophisticated espresso machine.

The Dean, ever sensitive to staff morale, immediately sanctioned the purchase of the espresso machine. But we’ll still have to wait for the lounge.

Very pleasant but rather obscure

Bea’s River, surrounded by hills and the golf course, is very pleasant, though I would say that since it is in my neck of the woods. The club was originally a hunting and horse-riding establishment which after the Second World War got into difficulties and was taken over by the Jockey Club as their rural venue.

On Sundays the approach roads are prone to crawl with top-of-the-range vehicles containing prosperous, perplexed people searching for the club entrance. This is testament to the rarity with which town dwellers venture to the deepest New Territories (or the North District, as the government calls it) and to the strange fact that the club is rarely marked on maps. The difficulty is compounded by the largest and most accessible entrance being treated as the back entrance, barred to traffic – except during the preparation for and holding of the Olympic cross-country event there when the back entrance became the way in for members, the more obscure main entrance with the impressive gates presumably being reserved for passing royalty and other dignitaries.

I warned the organizers of the retreat about the complications of the route and even drew a little sketch to show the way. In deference to the time-honoured tradition that that those who have the shortest journey to attend a meeting are the last to arrive, I pitched up 20-odd minutes late after dropping taitai at her favourite supermarket. The timing was impeccable: the bus driver bringing most of my colleagues from HKU had got lost on the last leg of the journey.

Silence of the blog

The absence of new postings for the past month is attributable to our oldest dog, Happy. She fell ill over the Christmas holidays and completely collapsed on New Year’s Day with what turned out to be tick fever. Don’t be fooled by the innocuous-sounding name: tick fever is very serious indeed, as I can testify after numerous trips with Happy to various vets, an expensive course in medicines (including one anti-malarial liquid they call ‘yellow gold’ that comes at about $250 a shot and needs to be administered three times a day for ten days), a blood transfusion and even an X-ray and ultrasound.

My oldest dog - 'Happy'

Apparently the tick can inject the disease months or years before the dog falls ill. Only when something triggers it, or the dog’s immunity is down, does the disease manifest itself. The dog becomes anaemic, lethargic and emaciated. There is lots of tick fever in Africa and Australia, as well as America. In each place the strains are different. Hong Kong, appropriately, seems to have some of each of them.

Happy was one of the unlucky minority of dogs who get the strain known as barbesia. This attacks the red blood cells and is tenacious. Happy kept making a recovery and then suffering a relapse. This led to the suspicion that some other, underlying problem was also present.

 
'Happy' and me

The ultrasound revealed numerous growths and lesions in her abdomen, probably cancerous. They cause internal bleeding, which would explain the relapses as a new wound opens up, before her body naturally stems the bleeding and she rallies. She’s a tough old mongrel and has been fighting hard but eventually her body will not be able to cope.

At the animal hospital in, of all places, Mongkok (you’d be surprised at how many pets are kept in the old buildings around there -- I suppose those old Deeds of Mutual Covenant contain no ban on keeping animals) they wanted to cut her open to explore and maybe remove the growths. But we said no: she’s fourteen-and-a-half years’ old, so would probably not have survived surgery, and has had a good innings. Besides, she was looking brighter, licked our hands in appreciation and tugged at my arm to go home.

So now she’s lying quietly in the sitting room and her master can catch up with his work.

Malcolm Merry is Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and a Hong Kong barrister. He is the author of Hong Kong Tenancy Law (4th ed, LexisNexis 2003) and co-author (with Paul Kent) of Building Management in Hong Kong (2nd ed, LexisNexis 2008).