2013-09-24     Five million pairs of water shoes?

Not long after school resumed a few weeks ago, on a very wet morning, I saw some children walking along a footpath of many puddles and then through a flooded park on their way to school. I thought to myself that being in wet shoes through the day might mean they would have a cold that night.

Look around Hong Kong on a wet day and you'll notice how parks, tennis courts, basketball courts, school playgrounds, footpaths, even over-head walkways have large puddles that can't be avoided....that people have to walk through.

After observing this phenomenon in Hong Kong for more than twenty years I have come to the conclusion that the wet-day-puddle problem has two solutions. I hope the government will use one of these solutions to solve the problem.

One solution is to make sure that all footpaths, walkways, parks etc have a slight gradient, so that water, being a very clever creature, will flow away by itself. The other solution is, each year or so, to buy five million pairs of water shoes for all walking feet in Hong Kong!