This year, the local media is saturated with HKSAR 10th anniversary commemorations, the July 1st march still draws crowds, the June 4th vigil still lights up, and popular polls still rate 'pollution' among Hong Kong's worst problems.

In other words, as much as Hong Kong '10 years on' loves its motherland, Hongkongers still believe they deserve much better than their censored, oppressed, polluted northern neighbours.

Compared to terror bombs in an increasingly distant Britain, this year was business as usual in the former colony, with a few extra frills thrown into the birthday bash:

We cheered on our special guest Hu Jintao playing a mean ping-pong match against a local 13-year-old.

We witnessed our fearless leader Donald Tsang Yam-kuen swearing himself in hand above bowtie, and we sniggered at the otherwise faultless MC, who first uttered 'Dong' (as in Tung Chee-hwa) instead of 'Zeng' (as in Tsang Yam-kuen), although our own putonghua is pathetic.

We hailed the new border bridge over Shenzhen Bay.

We queued up by the thousands to be the first to greet young pandas Le Le (Lok Lok) and Ying Ying in Ocean Park.

We watched dozens of PLA paratroopers parachute over Victoria Park, respectively waving red China and pink bauhinia flags.

We listened to monks toll the bell before midnight, and then we oohed and ahhed the following evening beneath the mandatory wealth-exploding fireworks.

Meanwhile, the Taiwanese are 'not impressed' with how Hong Kong has defended itself over the past decade.

But, of course, we marched.

As a people, we even marched twice: first, from Happy Valley to Wanchai, in a low-profile 'pro-Beijing' (Hu's on first) parade that included 58 dogs from the SPCA and excluded some 1,000 tail-enders who were barred from joining by police; second, from Victoria Park to the government offices, in the high-profile 'pro-democracy' procession that included not only prominent democrats Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, but also former Chief Secretary Anson Chan (though we know now she won't run for Chief Executive), popular media mogul Jimmy Lai and 75-year-old Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun. By that time Hu was already in Shenzhen, but we marched anyway.

As usual on the road to Central, 'universal suffrage' (literally, "one person, one vote") was the primary focus, with 'freedom' and 'democracy' coming in close second and third. Behind them, were represented causes ranging from freeing jailed journalist Ching Cheong (his wife was there too), to saving RTHK, to establishing a minimum wage.

This year's street fashion featured the traditional white T-shirts for protestors, orange for organisers and plenty of police troopers in neon yellow vests and smart black berets, while the demo soundtrack included such megaphone hits as Les Misérables' "Do you hear the people sing?" with Cantonese lyrics.

And as infallibly as every year, nobody agrees on how many of us were out there. The Civil Human Rights Front organisers claim 68,000 were revved up for departure in Victoria Park, but police set their ballpark figure at less than 20,000 participants. Understandably, more than a few of those marchers had trickled out by the time the party reached Admiralty (yes, we saw you, Anson).

As a personal eyewitness with a privileged moving tram view, I would aim for the lower estimate (although I was never good at guessing the number of jelly beans in the jar either). Each year, officials offset the figures to less than half of the organisers' tally, so much that the famous 2003 'half a million' of organizational estimate has now become myth - a benchmark to set the example for generations to come: If only we march hard enough, we can oust an Article and our own CE out of office.

Hong Kong is now a city of close to 7 million people, with approximately 95 percent of that population 'ethnic Chinese'. Ten years on, other widely ranging figures tell us that the 'cosmopolitan' expat community is shrinking. How will we live up to our self-proclaimed reputation of "Asia's World City"?

Like Singapore, Hong Kong wants expats - but not the Filipino, Indonesian, dark-skinned manual-labour kind. No, what we really want are more wealthy, fund-investing, cash-spending gweilos to add 'color' to the territory - as well as some returning overseas Chinese, to raise the level of English in HKSAR. After all, we pride ourselves on overexhausting the "east-meets-west" cliché.

So in supposed celebration of the Special Administrative Region's 10th birthday, our undaunted chief Donald Tsang told the Financial Times that Hong Kong can "comfortably" accommodate 3 million more people. Sure, why not? But on one condition: We'll take the limo from now on, Don, and you can take the tram.