Happy is as happy does, and HK is all right

They say we in Hong Kong are a miserable lot. "They" as in the folks who prepared the latest UN-backed World Happiness Report, released just ahead of World Happiness Day on March 20.

And not only are we sad, we are getting sadder. The report, ranking 156 economies by their happiness levels, shows the city fell three places from last year to 75th, below even the likes of faction-ridden Libya (67th), and followed by - Somalia, a country racked by clan warfare, lawlessness and intermittent famine! We could say we are better off than Syria or last-placed Burundi, but that's really not saying much.

If you needed anything to deepen the gloom of a typically foggy and humid spring morning in Hong Kong, this was it. To be fair, we scored well on GDP per capita and life expectancy, but that immense wealth gap is probably what did us in - as it is a proven fact that income inequality is the prime cause of unhappiness. Crowding into my mind came the familiar tropes about life by the "fragrant harbor" - millions crammed into rabbit hutches passing for homes, long work hours, high living costs, daunting student loans, lack of family time, and those marching armies of mobile phone zombies, young and old, seeming to exist only on the virtual plane. Les miserables? Maybe not such an overstatement after all.