Grim portent of the future? Those of you who read the Age might have come across this story about the Great Hong Kong Vegemite Shortage of 2008. Fear not - I realised this was happening about 6 weeks ago when I saw that in my local supermarket the Vegemite wasn't being restocked. I immediately sprang into action and every time I passed a supermarket would go and in and assess the situation. Eventually I managed to snag the last available jar at the Park'n'Shop International in Sheung Wan (it was hiding behind a stack of Marmite - I had to climb the shelves to get to it), and the last two plastic squeezy tubes at the CitySuper in the IFC Mall. I was going to leave one but then I realised that it could be months before normal Vegemite services resumed. And finally we organised for a visiting colleague to bring a big jar over from Australia (which was a good thing - we've already finished the jar I found and Vegemite doesn't taste quite right out of a plastic squeezy tube).

In other news:

• there is a carrier battlegroup parked outside our window (I'd take a photo but they are hidden in the smog);
• I experienced Dragon Boating for the first time when I joined the Bloomberg Dragon Boat team yesterday afternoon;
• China is going mad because of the Olympics and will no longer let people use multiple entry visas.

  ¶ 8:09 PM