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How much ferry do we need? The limiting case would be a continuous service like that of the MTR, where you show up and wait a known maximum of time (in the case of the MTR during most hours, at most a minute) for the next vehicle, or a truly continuous service in the form of a bridge, or the extension of the MTR to Lamma Island.
As an American (who speaks of my nation?), I am amused by the calls, in a situation of rationing, for more, because in America, when we want "more", we "can" pay for it, always assuming har har we have the money.
Essentially, the HKKF rations service below a continuous service convenient at all hours to barflies and other romantics who can't or won't check into the Chung King, or beat their ass down to de YMCA, or beat their Mammy on down to de YMCA.
Thus like the National Health services of western European countries, it attracts the scorn of romantics who have, paradoxically on the face of it, moved to L'Isle du Lamma as a way of escaping, as an escapade from the degringolade, but who won't pay the piper...even as my lovely and intelligent friend was discontent, on Sardinia, at the long wait she had to endure when preggers for the Italian health service.
We need, hell's bell's I need, to explore the feeling of discontent with public transportation, representing as it does the necessary horizon of laissez-faire. In American cities of the late 19th century it was found that to organize public transportation using private companies caused chaos as competing trolleymen, drayers and Teamsters fought pitched battles in the street for their right to provide an inferior product, so the services were socialized into "authorities".
Those authorities were then suffered to mismanage service below a point of pain which would cause discontent and the result in Chicago is you freeze your butt on the platforms of the CTA.
Just as you bewail Fate when you miss the last ferry to our island, one bewailed the Injustice of it All when it was twenty degrees below zero (which is damnably cold whether measured in Centigrade, as is the case here, or in Fahrenheit, as is the case in America) and the train was delayed.
However, the alternative is you buy a car, or in the case of Lamma Island a boat and trash the environment.
The philosopher doesn't treat commute time as dead time but only as more experience. The philosopher uses commute time productively and refuses nay begrudges the theft of this time.
I have been riding the ferry for a year six days a week. It's as if I'd been in some minor way Shangai'd, like Jack London's hero in The Sea Wolf, for an hour or so a day to live, upon the waves, the life of a roaring boy. I have overcome my seasickness (I was literally sea-sick a couple of times during the early months, like Nelson) and I consider it a hoot and a holler to have to ride the ferry so often.
Last night's ride was exciting. We were five minutes late because we had to pause for a supersized containership and spent some time, with engines idling, pitching in the swell.
Basically, by asking for all-night service, you have to realize as a politician just who your constituency is, and unfortunately it is barflies and those who serve their needs. This is a gay crowd (both in the old sense and in some cases the new) of Bright Young Things, who have called for madder music and stronger wine, and it is far from me, who has himself heard the chimes at midnight, to condemn them.
However, if you are truly Bohemian, and given sufficient cause, swimming the channel should be nothing. Just watch out for the larger containerships: their draft is quite deep and you will have to hold your breath as you dive under their centerline.
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Publish and be damn'd
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