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: Mar 2006

  • Whoops – wrong airport

    When travelling, I always have this slight worry that I’ll end up at the wrong place.  It seems that this risk is increased with Ryanair – the pilot on one of their flights got confused and landed at the wrong airport. It’s difficult for passengers to get on the wrong plane, but I suppose no-one…

  • Gotta be better than TVB Pearl

    According to The Guardian, the BBC is testing testing a commercial version of their Interactive Media Player, which makes it possible to download BBC programmes to a computer in the seven days after they are broadcast.  This service is available free of charge in the UK, but the rest of us will have to pay…

  • Only one winner

    The fourth series of The Apprentice has been notable for the number of times that Donald Trump has broken the rules, so it was not really a surprise that he considered hiring two people. It had been obvious for a long time that he was going to choose Randal unless he did something really stupid,…

  • Cheese

  • 212 runs

    This week I am mainly…watching a DVD of the last Ashes series – to celebrate England winning a Test Match in India for the first time in 21 years.  In case you missed the news, England beat India by 212 runs. As I refuse to pay HK$168 a month for the cricket channel, I am…

  • Thanks

    It’s a simple word, but what does it mean?  We should be happy when someone writes "thanks", shouldn’t we?  Except that it is often used in emails to mean that someone expects you to do something, rather than expressing gratitude for a job well done. I suppose it has grown out of the weasel phrase…

  • Char Sui Bau

    #2 in the Dim Sum series is Char Siu Bau 叉燒包, and please don’t tell me I’ve romanized it incorrectly* because I don’t want to know. It’s a fluffy white bun filled with BBQ pork (i.e. pork in a barbecue sauce) and, as you will see from the picture, you normally get three in a…

  • Designed by a genius

    If you do nothing for a few minutes and then try to log off from H**C’s Internet Banking, you get this marvellous message: Please log on before you access our Internet banking service. So I have to log on so that I can log off?  Brilliant…

  • All Washed Up

    It seems to be a well-established tradition in Hong Kong that when you sit down at the table in a restaurant you use hot tea to wash the cups, bowls and chopsticks. The theory is that the water has been boiled, so it is safe. Well, maybe, but what about the people who wash the…

  • Third time lucky?

    Seeing the announcement about the new Intel/Microsoft Origami handheld PCs I feel overwhelmed by a sense of deja vu.  About 4 or 5 years ago, I bought a Samsung Nexio, which claimed to be a PC that you could hold in your hand.  It ran a version of Windows and you were supposed to be…