LONDON, England – This should have been it. The night Michael Jackson returned triumphantly to the stage in London for the opening night of an epic farewell residency and his first concerts in a decade.

Michael Jackson fans write messages to the star on a whiteboard erected outside the O2 Arena.

The tragic pop star may not have made it back to the O2 Arena, the scene of his final public appearance to announce the “This Is It” dates back in February, but plenty of his fans turned up all the same to mark the moment, celebrate their hero and seek solace and comfort in the company of their fellow devotees.

During his life, Jackson's fans were notorious for - and took a certain pride in - their cultish loyalty to the performer. Perhaps it is no surprise therefore that to some Jackson has now become a kind of quasi-religious figure: martyred, misunderstood and mercilessly hounded to his sudden, shocking death.

“To me, because this was where he did the press conference, it was almost like his final performance was here,” said Morganna Bramah. “His final public speech was in this area, so it's a very spiritual place for us to come and pay our respects to the man.”

The 29-year-old Bramah had just returned to London from Los Angeles where she had hoped to attend last week's official memorial to Jackson at the Staples Center. Tearfully, she said the past two weeks had been a “spiritual pilgrimage.”

“I felt like I needed to do it because he has given to us so much and it's the least we can do to show the world how much he was loved, how much he was respected and how much we are going to miss him.”

Gemma White and Terry Shaw, from Kent in southern England, admitted they were both “still in denial” about Jackson's death.

“You can't explain the feeling of seeing Michael Jackson in person, even if it was for one brief second of him walking out of a building,” said Shaw, also just back from Los Angeles. “We came down here for Michael. It was the last thing we could do for him. It had to be done.”

Among the crowds leaving flowers, memorabilia and messages at a makeshift shrine outside the venue were many fans who, with tickets, flights and hotels already booked, had decided to come to London anyway.

“It's like coming to a family reunion where you meet your long lost relatives,” said Jessica Prater, 28, of Harlem, New York. “I'm really feeling the love and I know Michael is here in spirit. I can feel it.”

Italian pair Martin Russo and Enrico Ardifo said they had decided to come at the last minute when they heard about plans for a London tribute via Facebook. “He had a special bond with his fans. Michael cared truly for his fans,” Ardifo said.

Holding a handmade banner saying, “You will never be forgotten,” Sophie Bradley, 25, said she came to say thank you to Jackson. “I've flown in from the Middle East but I had to be here,” she said.

A Jackson fan since she was eight, Bradley said she collapsed when she heard the news of the performer's death.

“He was a father figure and a role model,” she said. “To some fans, it's just about the songs - but to the real fans he was about so much more than the music.”

HONG KONG, China - When Michael Jackson first announced he would be doing 10 shows in July – his “This Is It” concerts – in London starting on July 8, I thought the opportunity to see him live was too good to pass up.

In this photo provided by AEG/Concerts West, Jackson rehearses for the “This Is It” tour on May 6 in California.

OK, so he was 50 years old and maybe not at his prime - and suppose he cancels?

But I’d like to think I would have tried to see Elvis if he were giving what was billed as his “last concert” back in the 1970s. That wouldn’t have been possible for me, since I was three when the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll died.

So this was my chance to see the King of Pop.

I registered for the Michael Jackson presale in March, and when the sale window arrived a week later I tried to get four – then three – then two – then, OK, one, just one ticket – please!  I played a Michael Jackson CD hoping it could help my purchase sail through, given that my previous attempts had crashed because of the system overload.

As if trying to alleviate the frustration for many Michael Jackson fans, an email arrived from AEG with the subject line: “Michael Jackson Presale – Keep Trying!” And try I did until I got through with a single ticket for Sunday July 12, the third concert.

I was going!

My seat was Section BK 417, Row Q, Seat 850 at The O2.

I even bought a ticket to the “This is It! Michael Jackson: The Aftershow” party.

(Total cost, with service charges: 88 British pounds or US $145.)

By the next day, 40 shows had been added through next year, with special hospitality packages offered to include champagne and red carpet VIP check-in on arrival, DJ and entertainment, goody bag and souvenir tour laminate, parking and Thames Clipper tickets and pre-show and after-show parties.

In May, two months after purchasing the concert ticket and one week after buying my plane ticket from Hong Kong to London, I got a “Dear Customer” letter from Ticketmaster/AEG Live that the opening four shows, including July 12, were rescheduled. The first concert on July 8 would be bumped to July 13, while the others, including mine, were bumped to the end of his concert engagement – next March.

The reason given, along with apologies, was to “meet the challenges presented by such a large and technically complex concert.” The rescheduling coincided with rumors that week that Jackson was being treated for skin cancer.

Last Monday, I got another email from AEG Live, with the subject line, “Michael Jackson – Urgent Reminder,” that the July 12 concert has been rescheduled to March 3.

No email from AEG Live came on the day of his death three days later, however. That would not come until Saturday, with subject line, “Michael Jackson – The O2 – Cancellation Information (Please Do Not Reply).” It offered AEG’s condolences to Jackson’s family and friends and noted that full ticket refund information would be given soon.

My plane is still taking off this Friday. And I’m still going to be on it.

I haven’t gotten official information from AEG, but if it’s a choice between a refund or a commemorative ticket, I’ll take something tangible to remember Jackson by. I had wanted to see his last concert.

HONG KONG, China - There I was: An ark on my right, giraffes in the distance and a gaggle of animals beating a path out of the vessel in what appeared to be the merriest of moods.

The glass-reinforced concrete ark abuts a roadway. Organizers are aiming to attract underprivileged groups to the site.

No, I was not at the zoo, nor was it a theme party or a festivity of any sort. Rather, it was one of Hong Kong's latest attractions: A massive five-story Noah's Ark that its creators said was built to proportions detailed in the Bible.

It was surreal. Sounds of music mixed in with the growls of cougars wafted through the park where the ark was perched in the shadow of a bridge and towering apartment buildings in a corner of the city.

Theme park it is not, the organizers said. They wanted it to be "edutainment," noting the signs under the ark's inhabitants (67 pairs of animals in all, designed by a British artist) that describe their habitat, survival skills and if they are endangered. The vessel houses a children's education center that includes information on the solar system, fossils and dinosaurs, as well as a little theater area.

Organizers also said the ark was not meant to be viewed in a religious light, they just wanted to remind people - through a story known around the world - about the worth of certain values, such as loving thy neighbor, respecting the environment and to have a little hope (as these animals seemed to be feeling when they emerged after the floods) in these troubled financial times.

They also noted the venture, which received $103 million, was a private-government-nonprofit endeavor and this made it a unique project in this financial center.

Hong Kong is a city of extremes; lush, mountainous islands bursting with nature and populous, concrete skyscraper districts. Ma Wan Park, which houses the ark, is not immune from this. With planes zooming overhead (the international airport is not far), workers using drills to do maintenance on the ark and the noise from a passing freighter, it was difficult to fully appreciate the calm world the creators envisaged.

I spoke to a few visitors, some who said they were drawn to the ark because it was something new and different. My only fear is that, like all other things "new," the ark would soon become old - thus squelching the enthusiasm in this little corner of the world.

And though I appreciated the efforts of the organizers, especially the educational aspects, I also could not help but wonder why we humans have to go about recreating nature rather than preserving what we already have.

HONG KONG, China– This week I participated in "a run" on hand sanitizers in Hong Kong. On my way home, I stopped by two drug stores and found none. At the third store I found my prize - about 20 small tubes on one shelf. I picked up one tube, paused for a moment, and picked up a second. Then a third.

A government cleaner takes part in a precautionary clean up in Hong Kong on April 30.

There. I had just made a run on hand sanitizers. No panic, no throwing of elbows, just a causal sense of "better get it while I can."

Six years ago, when SARS was terrorizing the city, the scene was far different. The fear was palpable as, for a time, we radically changed the way we lived.

My old employer, The Wall Street Journal Asia, sent us all to work on the story from home. For the first six weeks, what we learned seemed to only heighten our fears. The media attacked the story as if our lives depended on it - which wasn’t far from how it felt.

What we reported was only a sliver of what we researched. Rumors spread faster than the disease. There was word that SARS had now hit the small island I lived on, Lamma (unfounded). As an April 1 prank, a teenager posted online a false report that Hong Kong was shutting down its air and sea space. Religious emails made the rounds citing biblical prophecies of pestilence.

The panic cut across class. There were runs on supermarkets, for people who holed up at home, and runs on private jet rentals, as the rich tried to take flight. Crowded streets thinned; taxis sat idle. Every sneeze or cough garnered startled looks and nervous jokes. I went to a weekend movie to find the theater nearly deserted. When I choked on my soft drink, four moviegoers seated behind me moved to the other side of the theater. Strange days.

Now strange days are here again. The same stories ("Will masks help keep me well?") the same answers ("No –- but if you’re sick, they could help stop the spread") and the same result (face mask sales through the roof). Masks are more a prophylactic against fear, because the best prevention for SARS then –- and the influenza outbreak now – is the same common-sense advice. Avoid large public gatherings. Thoroughly wash, especially your hands. Stay at home if you’re sick. Otherwise, stay well through healthy food, exercise and rest.

Still, it's weird digging through my Rolodex to call the same sources. I hear the same complaints about media overkill and watch as, once again, people hang on every development.

Bu there's one thing that isn’t the same. The sense of panic in Hong Kong is gone.

Our proximity to the outbreak plays a part. We are used to our status as a citadel standing on the hinterlands of disease –- how surprised we are to see this outbreak make a rearguard attack in the backyard of the U.S. Yet it seems the experience of SARS has immunized Hong Kong from irrational fear.

In a "butterfly-flaps-its-wings way," SARS forever changed my life. Working from home during that outbreak, I began socializing with musicians on Lamma Island and we formed a band. After a gig in 2004, a woman asked me out. A few years later, she became my wife. Nine months ago our son, Jonah, was born.

He is the reason I stocked up on hand sanitizers this week.

There's a thin line between paranoia and preparedness. But thanks to the experience of SARS, Hong Kong residents know where that line is drawn.

BUCKHURST HILL, England - I've been to many funerals but none like this before: an intimate service for family and friends but one that was slickly choreographed for those who never met her, as well as the world's media.

Jade Goody had the ability to touch the hearts of people from all walks of life.

Some media commentators have said Jade Goody's funeral - along with the flowers thrown at the hearse and doves being released along the route - is reminiscent of Princess Diana's early death 12 years ago.

The comparison is fatuous in one sense of course - Diana never had to cope with deprivation and appalling drug abuse at home and in her case collective hysteria gripped the country for what seemed like weeks - but both women had the ability to touch the hearts of many people from all walks of life. As Max Clifford said in his eloquent address in church, Goody was "ordinary yet extraordinary" and her legacy may mean more women being tested for signs of cervical cancer, the disease that killed her.

And, for many people too young to remember the princess, Jade, the young woman raised in Bermondsey, in a gritty part of southeast London, meant as much to them - if not more - as Di ever did.

Another comparison is valid: both women left behind two sons, although Goody's are 10 years younger than Princes William and Harry were were they were bereaved.

The father of Goody's two young sons certainly spared them an ordeal by keeping them away from the funeral. While they will of course be grieving for their mother in a way that is incomprehensible to us adults, at least they have not had to appear before a battery of cameras, with every gesture and tear being analyzed by Fleet Street's commentators.

Saturday's service was certainly less stiff and solemn than Diana's service in 1997, and there were none of the public recriminations between grieving relatives that electrified Westminster Abbey then.

Jade Goody was above all an entertainer and she realized that, organizing her funeral with meticulous attention to detail. She may not have been Brain of Britain but she made people laugh and she didn't take herself too seriously. For many of those who attended the funeral service Jade was one in a million.

LONDON, England - Never mind fixing the world economy. Getting all of the world's most powerful leaders into the same room at the same time proved a headache enough for G-20 organizers Thursday.

You might have imagined that somebody would have noticed the absence of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper when the assembled dignitaries lined up this morning for the customary “family photo.”

But the photo shoot went ahead anyway with Harper noticeable by his absence to the left of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Realizing the omission, G-20 organizers arranged a second photo shoot. This time Silvio Berlusconi was absent from the lineup.

Canadian journalists told CNN that Harper had missed the photo because he had been distracted by a briefing with delegates. A spokesman for the prime minister categorically denied scurrilous rumors (apparently emerging from a rival news organization) that Harper had been taking a toilet break at the time.

It was unclear whether organizers would try their luck a third time.

LONDON, England – London has survived plague, fire, bombs and everything else that history has thrown at it down the centuries so perhaps doom-laden prophecies about the extent of damage that a few thousand angry protesters could wreak on the city's financial district were always going to be exaggerated.

The London protests weren't as violent as feared.

Despite the protesters' theatrical threat to "storm the banks," a vast majority came out peacefully on Wednesday, intent on turning the gathering outside the Bank of England into the "mass street party" that organizers had called for.

Those who did come with hopes of causing serious carnage and running amok must have been quickly disappointed by the suffocating and hands-on police presence.

In pockets of the protest, especially as black-masked anarchists pushed up against a police line on Threadneedle Street, the atmosphere was unmistakably ugly. But stepping even a few yards away from the frontline was to move into a different world entirely, more akin to an alternative festival than a riot.

At the nearby Climate Camp protest, where environmentalists set up tents in the streets, police chatted amiably with protesters on rollerskates. It was a day when city workers dressed down and protesters dressed up, some donning pinstripes in a sartorial and satirical nod to their adversaries.

Dozens of public order arrests, handfuls of injuries and the death of one man from an apparent heart attack were indicative of isolated scuffles and bad-tempered confrontations but the citadels of capitalism remained unstormed.

Those incidents of violence that did occur appeared more symbolic and cathartic than genuinely dangerous. Protesters vandalized a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland, whose former chairman Fred Goodwin has become a hated symbol in the UK of the supposed excesses of the high priests of capitalism.

A mannequin strung from a traffic light and set alight late in the day appeared more for the benefit of the assembled photographers and cameramen keen to capture a potent distillation of the day's main message that capitalism isn't working.

For the most part though, it was a day in the carnivalistic and anti-establishment tradition of "the Mob," whose excesses once kept kings and statesmen awake at night and inspired the revolutionary imaginations of the likes of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin.

It is unlikely that Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and the rest of the G-20 leaders enjoying their Jamie Oliver-prepared banquet on the other side of London dwelt too long on similar fears as they tucked into slow-roasted shoulder of lamb and asparagus.

LONDON, England – Wednesday's G-20 protests in London brought together dozens of disparate groups, each seeking to bring their own agenda to the attention of G-20 leaders and the general public.

Protest banners came in all shapes, sizes and slogans.

How do you make your message stand out from the crowd? Bring a banner of course.

Here's a random selection of some of the banners and slogans that caught my eye in the course of the day.

"Once a banker, always a banker"

"Consumers suck"

"Balls to the banks"

"Storm the banks"

"Capitalism isn't working"

"Punish the looters"

"We can stop climate chaos"

"Nature doesn't do bailouts"

"Abolish money"

"Love your mum"

"Children need education and education needs peace"

"Pick flowers not fights"

"Happy birthday"

If you could send a message to G-20 leaders via a banner what would it say?

LONDON, England – In case anyone had forgotten, the electronic billboards and scrolling tickers inside London's O2 Arena as Michael Jackson announced his musical comeback offered a constant reminder of the reclusive superstar's iconic stature in the transient world of show business.

Kim Jong Il, left, strikes a similar pose to Michael Jackson, right.

"Michael Jackson - King of Pop" they declared. But these days Jackson is more the Kim Jong Il of pop. Both are reclusive, secretive figures who have become prisoners of their own mythologies and about whom all manner of strange and apocryphal tales abound.

Like the North Korean leader, the pop star's every public appearance is scrutinized and analyzed for clues as to his physical and mental well being. And both share a weakness for the sort of tightly choreographed public displays of adoration that took place here on Thursday.

Jackson's fans, many of them far too young to remember him in his late 70s-early 80s heyday, turned out in modest force Thursday; several hundred of them obliged him by showing up to scream, some of them dutifully waiting up to five hours to set eyes on their idol.

"As his fans we want to say to him that we love him, he needs to be strong and give us a good show and we will always support him," said 28-year-old Joanne English.

Famously protective, the fans also made clear their disdain for the media, who they claim have vilified and ridiculed Jackson, greeting the arrival of the press corps - admittedly obscuring the views of a good proportion of those present - with boos, jeers and rich expletives.

Yet despite Jackson's obvious affection for his fans, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that his 10-date stand in London – his first concerts in more than a decade - is driven primarily by financial necessity.

The O2 Arena - a clinically corporate entertainment complex on a cold peninsula in an unloved part of southeast London and formerly the near-universally maligned Millennium Dome - has finally found its purpose as the provider of instant pension checks to the gerontocracy of popular music; a coterie of pampered stars it is perhaps fair to say have not always been as careful with their earnings as their accountants would have liked.

Now it looks like it is Jackson's turn to cash in his chips. His "Thriller" album may be the biggest selling album of all time but in an age when music is so easily swapped, pirated and ripped, live performance is now the only surefire banker for musicians looking for a quick return on their fanbase.

With Jackson vowing that these will be his last ever performances in London, the question many will now be wondering is whether the famously frail star will see out his stint by the Thames.

Jackson's best music may still sound as fresh as ever but is it really realistic to expect him to put his 50-year-old body through the sort of punishing dance routines that have been his signature?

DAVOS, Switzerland – For an event synonymous with the sort of blue sky thinking that has become an executive cliché, Davos does a good job of narrowing your horizons.

Speed-dating, Davos-style.

This small ski resort has been locked down for the past few days ahead of the World Economic Forum which officially gets under way on Wednesday.

Police stand guard at regular security checkpoints, helpful but firm, diligently and discretely checking credentials. Somewhere overhead a helicopter can be heard but not seen through the swirling snow.

Out on the streets, pedestrians just in from New York, Beijing or London stare at their feet as if they have just met, investing each shuffling step with ungainly caution as they seek to avoid an undignified slip-up on the perilously icy pavement.

The venue itself is a claustrophobic fortress corralled inside chain fencing and walls of plastic sheeting intended to shield the wealthy and powerful from prying eyes and unwelcome guests.

Once inside, narrow stairwells lead down into a warren-like nuclear bunker temporarily reconditioned as a cramped and fetid media center from which large unmarked white doors could just as easily lead you into a conference room as a chemical toilet.

For the business delegates gathered here for the next five days, Davos is a corporate "Green Zone" offering temporary respite from the economic carnage beyond its high security perimeter - mass job losses across continents, industry bailouts and battered stock markets - and a chance to take stock of what many fear will be even more daunting challenges ahead.

This has been styled as a more chastened, less complacent Davos that is in tune with the desperate times - but everything is relative.

Up on the hill at the exclusive five-star Belvedere Hotel, the new age of austerity hasn't arrived just yet.

As the champagne and red wine flows at the evening's welcome receptions for delegates the mood is upbeat as old acquaintances are reunited, Davos friendships rekindled and business contacts schmoozed. For newcomers, a "speed-dating" session for "young global leaders" has been arranged.

Perhaps the economic crisis can wait until the political heavyweights fly in.