I took this picture a few weeks back from the pedestrian bridge which connects the Prince’s Building and the Mandarin Oriental across Chater Road. What’s going on?

Zooming in…

These folks have their legs tied to others’ in what looks like an attempt to create a record for the longest human ‘millipede’. At that time, I had no idea what really was going on: the stage and backdrop (see the first photo) was too far away. Every minute or so, the huddled participants shuffled about an inch or so forward, reminiscent of the irregular, hobbling motion of those alien ships in Space Invaders.

Finally, upon uploading these photos, I googled a few random words describing the phenomenon and came across a description of the event that took place on 8 October 2006: it was actually a ‘multi-legged walk’ organised in aid of charity. Participants actually donated HKD100 to have their leg tied to a stranger’s and in the process, attempted to create a ‘Most Participants in a Multi-Legged Walk’ world record. No kidding!

Years of bombardment by various Malaysian banal record-breaking attempts must have set the alarm bells ringing.