By SARUN SAELEE
Before the hosts in Hong Kong Forum will allow you to join their arranged badminton sessions, they will usually ask you to send them your contacts, especially mobile number in Hong Kong, through the personal message system or PM. If you miss this required process, they will certainly not provide you, particularly non-Chinese speakers, with any games.
You may ask why it must be made via PM only. The answer is simple. The website does not allow you to post and show any email addresses as well as telephone numbers. Why makes it important? That is because the hosts just want to make sure that you will certainly show up on a court.
However, the PM process becomes more puzzling as only users who have successfully contributed more than 50 posts in the discussion within the website are allowed to PM others. In other words, you, as a new member, cannot PM anyone since you have never posted any comments or anything in any threads yet. Moreover, the requirement of 50 posts is not easy for non-Chinese speakers to pass at all as local users use only Chinese to communicate with one another and set topics of the discussion.
Nevertheless, the website administrators have realized the problem, so they have provided the new users with a special service to raise the number of your posts to 50 temporarily. You will receive free 50 posts lasting for one month by following these steps.
First, let’s go to Hong Kong Forum by taking this URL: http://www.discuss.com.hk/viewthread.php?tid=13900758&extra=&page=1, and then do login.
Second, after logging in, you will see the page below, and then scroll down to the bottom to find the reply box.
Third, insert your username and preferred game information with its URL in the box and click “post (發表帖子)”. Just simply copy and paste any games you would like to attend.
Fourth, once the website administrators have increased the number of your posts, a sign “thumb up” will be shown.
After you finish the process, now you are ready to join badminton games in the Hong Kong Forum. Let me remind you that the free 50 posts will be removed after one-month registration, so I do suggest you increase the number of your posts as fast as possible. However, the game organizers who have already received contacts via PM, will not require you to do it again if you want to join them in the future.
It comes to an end of this part. In the next final episode of “How to play badminton in Hong Kong”, I will show how to register yourself to the game organizers and PM them your contacts. See you again soon.
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