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TheBuzz

BY ERIKA ENGLE

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

Martha Stewart
doesn’t live here

Whoever set up the interview room in the Asian Development Bank media center at the Convention Center has apparently missed Martha Stewart's interior decorating lessons -- and for that matter any of her KMart commercials.

The tiny interview room is furnished with two chairs and a small sofa, which appear to be hotel cast-offs, a coffee table one might see at a garage sale and the perfunctory potted palms. The walls are bare, bereft of any local color -- there isn't so much as a picture of an anthurium in the room, never mind a real one.

One can only hope any filmed interviews for broadcast or photos for magazine pages around the world will be conducted in more picturesque surroundings outside.

Other small rooms in the media center, on the ground floor "Global Pavilion," are reserved for certain news organizations including The Associated Press, Dow Jones Newswires, Bloomberg and Nikkei news services, as well as the ADB Web site team.

Whither Emma Peel?

The eye-catching ADB anticorruption booth on the convention center's third floor was upstaged momentarily yesterday morning by an episode of the early-'60s era British TV series "The Avengers," playing on a television monitor.

With actor Patrick Macnee on the screen as John Steed, booth attendant A. Michael Stevens explained that the Avengers and the ADB Office of the General Auditor "both fight the forces of evil."

He then confessed that he'd already seen the 17-minute ADB-produced anticorruption video three times by then and replaced it with something more entertaining. Stevens said the ADB takes very seriously any allegation of corruption involving its projects, whether leveled at the contractor, an ADB employee, or the government of the country where the project is underway.

Stevens, the senior audit specialist, said the ADB's Office of General Auditor isn't a guns and badges type of criminal investigative unit. It does have investigators, he said, but other key staff members include an economist and auditors.

It's Stevens' first time in Hawaii -- "I love it here," he said, adding he enjoys being able to breathe the air, a hazard at his home base in Manila.

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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com