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: May 2006

  • Daft

    The SCMP had a story (War on piracy recruits 200,000 youthful spies – registration required) on Tuesday about children being encouraged to report illegal download sites.  Which is all very well, but where are the legal alternatives?  If you have a phone or PDA with a built-in MP3 player is there any legal way to…

  • Hmmm

    Watched the TVBN (news) channel on Now Broadband TV on Saturday – they were showing scenes from the earthquake in Indonesia whilst at the bottom of the screen they had the Mark Six (lottery) numbers scrolling past.  Nothing incongruous there, then. And to think that it seemed like fairly outrageous satire when Whoops Apocalypse came…

  • Spring Rolls

    I suppose Spring Rolls (春卷) would be the only dim sum that I recognized from my consumption of "Chinese food" in the UK.  Of course, they weren’t quite the same thing, but then what is?  In fact, there are versions of Spring Roll in various countries around the world, notably Vietnam and Thailand, but I…

  • Good intentions

    Via DGNYHK, an interesting site for learning Chinese characters.  You can download a small application that displays Chinese characters – just set it to display a new character every few seconds and be amazed at how many you (kinda, almost) recognize. Two more free sites: Cantonese lessons CLC Or for a laugh, paste Chinese text…

  • No thanks

    Just had someone from my existing mobile phone company trying to get me to sign a new contract.  Would I like 1900 minutes per month and a HK$200 supermarket voucher?  No thanks (what would I do with 1900 minutes a month?). So – would I like to pay the same as I am today but…

  • The wrong guy

    How can it be that newspapers so often get the basic facts of a story wrong?  A couple of weeks ago, computer journalist Guy Kewney was asked to appear on BBC News 24 (er, it’s a 24 hour news channel from the BBC).  Unfortunately someone else appeared on screen instead, and newspapers reported that the…

  • Time and money

    Grrr…I thought I could pop into my local Wellcome supermarket at lunchtime to pick up a few things. Bad idea. When I went to the checkout I noticed there was a queue.  When I looked closer I saw that it was a long, slow-moving queue.  The explanation is that they are offering 10% off everything. …

  • The Southern China

    I try to avoid making fun of the mangled English that is common in Hong Kong (glass houses and all that). However, when large companies choose to place advertisements in Tai Po’s leading English language newspaper, surely they could spend a little time or a few dollars on getting it right.  The sub-heading to the…

  • One rule for them…

    More on the stupid business with the so-called "anti-racist" legislation that is supposed to outlaw generous expat packages for permanent residents.  I’ve covered this a few times. Yesterday the SCMP reported that the bill has been delayed and that there were still concerns from foreign businesses about the implications of this proposed legislation.  Well, yes,…

  • Sign

    We are all used to seeing signs in China with weird English translations from Chinese, but this one is a bit different. For this one (in a railway station) rather than attempting to translate into English, they have provided the Pinyin.  Very helpful if you are trying to learn Chinese, I guess..  (Sorry about the…