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Jackhammer breakthrough in Hong
Kong
By A Ghoti
HONG KONG -
Acme Pneumatic Hammer Ltd, the publicly traded
jackhammer production company, announced on Tuesday,
April 1, that it will begin sale of a revolutionary new
drill bit that will open concrete before it has
hardened.
Tung Chee-hwa, chief executive of the
Hong Kong special administrative region (SAR), hailed
the development, saying "this will give us the resources
to dig up streets even faster. We have been frustrated
for decades by the problem of allowing the surface of
streets and sidewalks to set before we can dig them up."
Manuel Bangus, the Filipino chief executive
officer of Acme Pneumatic, said the new pneumatic hammer
comes with an optional floodlight that renders the area
around any drilling site "brighter than daylight" so
that workers can see what they are doing, as well as
lighting up flats in surrounding buildings. It also
comes equipped with a computerized alarm system that
alerts workers to the optimum time for digging up Hong
Kong's streets - between 3 and 5am on Sunday.
Yue Kim-ng, utilities analyst for Kim Eng
Securities, said the new development could be expected
to drive Acme Pneumatic's share price to new highs and
could well lift the Hang Seng Index from its three-year
doldrums. Acme Pneumatic's price-equity ratio, currently
hovering near 15, is expected to fall to 1 over the next
three years, Yue said. Hong Kong already sells more
pneumatic drills, not only per capita but in total, than
any other country in the world.
Spun off from
consortium
Acme Pneumatic is a subsidiary of Acme
Consolidated Diversified Ltd, a consortium of some of
Hong Kong's biggest companies, including Cheung Kong,
Hutchison Whampoa, Swire, Wheelock, Wharf, Pacific
Century Cyberworks and a number of public agencies
including the Environmental Protection Department and
the Hong Kong MTR Corp.
Acme Con, as the
consortium is known, spun off Acme Pneumatic into a
separate company after another affiliate, Acme Applied
Research, developed the jackhammer bit to meet
construction needs.
The consortium was formed in
the mid-1990s to market a radical new
earthquake-protection system developed over several
decades. It was discovered that Hong Kong's complex
underlacing of wires, conduits, pipes, tubes, channels,
ducts, tunnels, supports, cables and other subterranean
construction and deconstruction actually had knitted the
territory together and resulted in progressively
diminishing Richter Scale readings since the 1950s. The
SAR is in effect so comprehensively bound together
underground that temblors have become a thing of the
past.
The consortium has been aggressively
marketing the earthquake protection system under the
trade name of Acme Seismo-Stabil in Vladivostok, San
Francisco, Beijing, Ankara, Tehran and other
earthquake-prone cities. However, a spokesman said,
business has been slow because few other cities can
match the essential central core of Hong Kong's system.
Physics of system complicated
To
simplify the physics behind the system, the spokesman
likened it to the construction of an American baseball,
which consists of a dense core surrounded by yarn, then
rubber bands, then a leather cover, rendering it
uncommonly resilient when struck repeatedly with a bat.
At the heart of Hong Kong's system, he said, is
the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC) vault, which,
when it was built, originally stretched from Causeway
Bay to Pok Fu Lam to Ap Lei Chau. However, he said, the
vault's physical properties very much resemble the
"black holes" in the universe described in the physicist
Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.
Almost immediately after construction and upon
being filled with money, the HSBC vault shrank to the
size of a gallstone. As with black holes, the vault was
so dense that no light could escape, and certainly none
of the deposits. At the core of the vault is believed to
be US$2 billion deposited in the 1980s by Ferdinand and
Imelda Marcos. The funds have never been seen since,
despite repeated surreptitious attempts by the late
disgraced Philippine president's bereaved widow to
retrieve the money. The vault's properties are so
foreboding, the spokesman said, that the last three
Philippine governments have never even attempted to
reclaim the money.
Wrapped around the vault is
the wiring for the Hong Kong Jockey Club's totalisator
board, the biggest computer in Southeast Asia, which
daily computes odds for a racing handle seven times that
of Tanforan Race Track in New York. Then, stretched over
that are the wires for cable television and for PCCW's
telephone system. In fact, the spokesman said, the wires
for the telephone system themselves are so densely
packed that no more can be added. For that reason today,
virtually every one of Hong Kong's 7.3 million residents
is equipped with a mobile telephone, and sometimes two,
rather than a land line.
One unexpected
side-effect of the earthquake-prevention system is that
it sucked the former British crown colony together to
become the most densely populated area on the planet,
averaging 17,490 persons per square kilometer. In some
areas, such as Mongkok, population density rises to
427,080 persons per square kilometer.
Other
developments
Acme Con's laboratory, Acme Applied
Research, has created storied systems besides the
pneumatic drill and the earthquake-protection system. In
the mid-1980s, Acme Applied Research created the Acme
Gyro-Secure system for aircraft to solve the problem of
instability during landing at Hong Kong's international
airport.
It had been long thought that the
breathtaking dogleg turn and lurch on descent into Hong
Kong International Airport at Kai Tak, which closed in
1997, was because jumbo-jet pilots were attempting to
escape flying into Lion Rock, which looms above Kowloon,
while navigating between balconies that were almost
obscured by charcoal smoke from cooking braziers filled
with barbecued pork. However, it was discovered that the
stomach-churning bank and drop was actually due to the
fact that all of the Hong Kong passengers aboard were
out of their seats, suitcases in hand, and running for
the exit on final approach, causing the plane to tilt
precipitously. The lurch was the pilot's desperate
attempt to right the craft on approach. The Cathay
Pacific Pilots Association threatened work stoppages,
alleging repetitive strain injury.
The Acme
Gyro-Secure system solved that problem. But when Hong
Kong's new international airport opened at Chek Lap Kok
in 1997, it was thought that the Gyro-Secure system was
no longer necessary. However, on August 22, 1999, a
China Airlines flight from Bangkok caught a wingtip on
final approach, cartwheeled, skidded for more than 800
meters and ended upside-down between runways.
Miraculously, only three of the 208 persons aboard were
killed.
It was first thought that attempting to
land during Typhoon Sam, a No 12 Signal tropical storm,
had something to do with the crash. However, it was
later determined that the Italian pilot, Captain
Gorgonzola Pesce, was unfamiliar with the habits of
those on the DC-10 who were running for the exits. Acme
Gyro-Secure has been mandatory on every aircraft
carrying passengers into Chek Lap Kok since.
Acme Applied Research is now rumored to be
working on a handheld device to be sold to the general
public that, when activated by users running for lifts,
can prevent passengers already inside from closing the
doors before the late-comers can get on. It also
recently developed a super-hardened finish so that the
"close door" buttons on Hong Kong elevators only need be
resurfaced once, instead of fortnightly.
(©April
1, 2003, Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved.
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