Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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Month: Jul 2005

  • Windy

    Here’s a story that combines food and weather. Perfect. Tornado wreaks havoc in suburbs of Birmingham Roofs were ripped off houses, cars hurled across roads and trees uprooted after a tornado struck high street shops and suburban streets in Birmingham yesterday, injuring at least 12 people. Rows of houses were left with gaping windows as…

  • Here we are again

    Sorry for the recent lack of postings.  I promise to try harder in future (well, maybe). A few odds and ends from the last couple of weeks, then. Former British prime minister Edward Heath died at the age of 89.  The obituaries all seemed to say the same thing – he was a grumpy old…

  • Hot hot hot

    Today the ‘Very Hot Weather’ warning is in force.  This is provided as a nannyish service for anyone who was not expecting it to be hot during the summer in a sub-tropical climate.  The invaluable advice is to drink water, take a rest, wear a hat and use sunscreen lotion.  Er, thanks… OrdinaryGweilo.com has its…

  • Good egg guide

    An educational and mildly amusing guide to poaching an egg.  What more can you ask? Cling film is best, apparently.

  • Battle of wits

    One big difference between shopping in the UK and Hong Kong is the degree of consumer protection that exists. For example, in the UK shops cannot advertise a price reduction unless the goods were sold at the higher price for a certain period, and they must state the price per kilogramme or litre for food…

  • Better

    A curious postscript to my recent rant about trying to order stuff from companies with websites that don’t work very well. The goods that were sent to the less well-known New Territories in Canada have finally turned up with ‘try Hong Kong’ scrawled on the label.  Good thinking, that man.  After my complaint they had…

  • London

    I guess I have to say something about what happened in London yesterday. The British government have been saying for a long time that it was a matter of "when" rather than "if" there was a major terrorist incident in London, and sadly they have been proved right.  Anyone who lived or worked in London…

  • Hong Kong Storm Warning

    Regular readers may know that I am not a big fan of thunderstorm warnings.  What’s the point of them?  If the storm is actually in progress you can probably work that out for yourself, and they usually only issue a warning when the sky is already dark, minutes before the inevitable downpour (such as at…

  • How things work

    A familiar story in Hong Kong:  You call the ‘customer service’ number, select English and then listen to all the many options that you don’t want.  Eventually you are allowed to speak to someone.  They decide that speaking to a gweilo is far too scary, and promise that an "English speaking" person will call you…

  • The pain comes later

    Well, London won.  We can now look forward to seven years of stories about construction delays as they struggle to build all the facilities they have promised.  Then many more years of paying the bills for all those facilities that really aren’t required, as residents of Sydney, Athens, etc., now realize that perhaps it wasn’t…