Tomorrow is the 16th anniversary of Bitcoin Pizza Day. I reread the three pieces I’ve written on the topic over the years — nothing to add, nothing to correct. Rather than rehashing the same tune, I’ll just relink the old pieces for anyone interested:
- We Are All the Protagonists of Bitcoin Pizza Day
- Thinking Fast and Slow on Bitcoin Pizza Day
- Bitcoin Pizza Day, 15 Years On: The World Has Learned Not to Buy Pizza with Bitcoin
Besides, with Bitcoin’s price in the doldrums right now, writing about Bitcoin Pizza Day probably isn’t what most people are in the mood to read. The topics I want to write about and the topics readers are interested in are often separated by a chasm.
Last week’s newsletter, on the absurdity of Hong Kong’s ticketing systems, was a piece of grumbling I hesitated a long time to write — and it racked up the most Comments, Likes, and Shares in the newsletter’s history. Truly “CLS”. Being detached from the ground is meant to be a feature of me, not a bug. But I get it — caring about local, on-the-ground topics is simply human nature.
In last week’s P.S. I mentioned my eMPF experience, and quite a few readers wrote in asking for more. So here, by popular demand, is the even more granular grumble.
First, a quick primer on eMPF, especially for overseas readers who haven’t yet been driven away by Hong Kong-specific content.
MPF stands for Mandatory Provident Fund. Launched in December 2000, it’s exactly what the name says — mandatory. Employers and employees in Hong Kong are each required to contribute 5% of monthly wages, which can be withdrawn after age 65.
eMPF, then, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mandatory Provident Fund Schemes Authority, which became operational in June 2024. While MPF forces employers and employees to contribute, eMPF forces the banks and insurance companies that manage MPF schemes to use its system. Per the official website, “The eMPF Platformcentralizes and digitalizes all MPF schemes’ administrative processes, allowing users to manage MPF online at ease.”
Sounds beautiful. The reality is this: before HSBC — my MPF provider — was forced onto eMPF, I had been using my regular HSBC online banking account to handle everything in the same interface with just a few clicks. After being forced to switch to eMPF for no good reason, I became one of countless Hong Kong victims — two trips to the bank, multiple calls to customer service, several new accounts opened, and a wait of over two months. After all that back-and-forth, I finally completed my first successful contribution.
Here’s my experience log. Any resemblance to your own story is purely unfortunate.
- Late February: Planning to make a tax-deductible voluntary contribution before the financial year ends on March 31, I found the original HSBC MPF interface was no longer accessible.
- Early March: To register for eMPF, I was first forced to sign up for “iAM Smart” — something I had been deliberately avoiding. During the eMPF registration, the password generated by Proton Pass was rejected for being “too long”. One small saving grace: at least they didn’t force me to install a mobile app — but I had to install “iAM Smart” first, which is effectively the same thing.
- March 5: I initiated a contribution on the eMPF website and received an invoice. Different MPF providers support different payment methods, and after rereading the instructions where “I understand every word but not the sentence,” I still couldn’t tell what payment methods I could actually use besides a cheque.
- March 5: Logged into HSBC online banking, selected “Pay Bills,” and could not find the MPFA or HSBC MPF in the payee list.
- March 6: Asked AI. Gemini told me to call customer service. Figuring that intra-system problems are best answered by intra-system AI, Deepseek told me I could just transfer the money to AIA for collection. Thank goodness I didn’t follow that advice.
- March 6: Called several MPFA-related customer service lines. After being bounced around like a human pinball, I was told the safest method was a cheque, or that I could ask HSBC if there were other supported payment methods.
- March 6: I do have an HSBC cheque account, but I hadn’t used it in over a decade(?) and couldn’t find the chequebook. I asked AI which banks could issue e-cheques and learned that only Bank of China, CMB Wing Lung, and Fubon Bank support them — HSBC personal customers can only deposit e-cheques, not issue them.
- March 7: On the rare Saturday off, I went to the MPF counter at an HSBC branch to ask. They confirmed there was no other option — cheque only — and even suggested I mail it (oh god). The bank staff, by the way, seemed pretty resentful of eMPF, exuding a “we’ve been sidelined, what can we do” vibe.
- March 9: Activated the e-cheque function on my dormant Bank of China account, transferred money in, issued an e-cheque, and uploaded it to the eMPF website. The upload page had a bug, but I worked around it and submitted successfully. Anyone who knows me a little can probably imagine how out-of-character the scene of me issuing a cheque was — but to survive in Hong Kong, I compromised, one indignity at a time.
- March 10–19: Assumed it was done. Forgot about it.
- One day in March: Received a physical chequebook from Bank of China. A waste of planet resources — apparently activating e-cheques automatically gets you physical ones too. Such warmth.
- March 20: Received an email from eMPF reminding me to make a contribution. Taking 11 days to process an e-cheque is a bit much, but whatever, I’d wait and see — I no longer had the energy to call customer service.
- March 27: Received a final notice from eMPF reminding me about the contribution. -.-! Done playing. I figured, forget it — I’m not obligated to make voluntary contributions anyway, and given how much money Just Books has lost, maybe I’m not even qualified to be paying taxes.
- March 27: Logged into my Bank of China account to withdraw the funds I had deposited — only to discover the cheque had been cleared on March 23. WTF, is this a scam?!
- April 9: Received an email from eMPF saying the contribution was complete, but logging into the website still showed no transaction, and I had no way to tell whether it had cleared before or after March 31 — i.e., which tax year it counted toward. Mentally exhausted, I let it go.
- May 15: Received an email from eMPF, finally confirming that the tax-deductible voluntary contribution was processed in the previous financial year. From initiating the contribution — thinking it would take a few clicks — to receiving confirmation, it took a full 71 days.
Readers may have an appetite for local content, but writing up this account leaves me agitated and conflicted. There are so many more important issues — why am I venting about these trivialities?
More importantly: MPF is a basic safeguard for people’s retirement. The infrastructure was already built, working effectively for years. Why does the government insist on starting from scratch — centralizing what was once distributed across individual banks, and replacing it with a system that feels 20 years behind?
P.S. Last week I talked about the absurdity of buying tickets to Sandy Lam’s concert. This week, the joy of actually being there.
From the moment it started, Sandy — looking like some kind of mind-body-spirit guru — lay down and gently sang “Breathe In… Breathe Out.” Then, without a single word, she sang 18 songs nearly in one breath. Only before the “final” song, “Goodbye Sorrow,” did she finally speak. Choking up, she said she had been holding back tears for a long time. Throughout the tour, people had constantly asked when she would perform in Hong Kong. The delay had been because Kai Tak Stadium was hard to book — and Hong Kong was the stop she most cared about, the one she had been looking forward to the most.
“Not really a stop — because this is my home.” That line of Sandy’s hit me right in the heart.
The concert was officially titled Resonance: Reconstructed Hong Kong Exclusive. I hadn’t paid much attention to the title, but after the show I realized — unlike the cookie-cutter touring concerts, this one was designed specifically for Hong Kong. One segment recreated Sandy’s childhood home in North Point, with a tram passing by. The setlist, too, was tailored for Hong Kong fans: after opening with an English song, the next 19 songs, plus two encores totaling 7 songs, were all Cantonese — all freshly arranged by Anthony Lun.
It’s not that I’d feel cold without Mandarin songs — I’m not that fragile. Honestly, I would have loved to hear live renditions of “At Least I Have You,” “When Love Becomes the Past,” and “I Heard Love Has Returned.” But Sandy, with 40 years of work behind her, has such a vast catalogue that to fit in early-career songs that were never popular in Taiwan or the mainland — “Love Doesn’t Age,” “Day and Night,” “You Are My Man” — the kind whose mere intro gives me goosebumps — meant giving up some of the songs from her overseas-development years.
This Cantonese setlist, belonging to Hong Kongers, wasn’t about expressing “what we are not.” It was about defining who we are through the work itself, singing into the hearts of the audience and producing Resonance.
I’ve never been so moved by a concert. Thank you, Sandy.
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