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: Aug 2007

  • Euphemisms

    I love it when companies try to get away with whopping great lies. A drive-in cinema opened in West Kowloon at the end of last year, and it has had an advert in the SCMP for several months.  For the last few weeks the advert has solemnly announced that the cinema is closed for a private…

  • Slightly better – EPL on Now

    After months of hype, the Now coverage of the English Premier League is finally here – and it’s both better and (slightly) worse than I had expected. The first big surprise for me was that none of the games are being shown on ESPN or Star Sports.  I am sure that when the deal was…

  • Out through the window

    New Scientist (subscription required) asks why so few eco-friendly buildings are being built.  Good question. In Hong Kong (and large parts of China) that means designing buildings that can be kept cool in the summer without excessive use of air-conditioning.  It’s not happening, is it?  Developers prefer to throw up apartments with thin walls and…

  • F Off

    I see that Fumier has closed down his blog.  It just disappeared on Monday evening, with not so much as a word of explanation, and without any warning.  Where will I be able to read about the poor standard of driving in Hong Kong?  As if I cared… Does this mean that Freddie Fumier will…

  • Boston Legal on Star World

    I’d just about given up hope of Boston Legal season 2 (which I wrote about recently) appearing on Star World, but they have finally got round to showing series 2 on Wednesday nights (10 pm), just as series 4 is about to start in the States.  Meanwhile, TVB had Desperate Housewives (Season 3) in their…

  • Bunk Beds in the sky

    A few years ago there was a TV programme, putting forward an interesting idea about how to make better use of the space available on board planes.  I didn’t watch the programme, but I came across a summary of it on a website (though of course I can’t find it now). The idea was a…

  • More choice, more confusion, more money

    Tim Noonan in the SMP on the strange business of sport on pay-tv in Hong Kong (subscription required): It all started a few years back when ESPN and Star Sports left Hong Kong Cable for Now TV. Cable subsequently bid for the rights to broadcast the coveted English Premier League (EPL), which was on ESPN…

  • Do you take Sugar with that?

    The UK version of The Apprentice gave the impression that Amstrad (run by Sir Alan Sugar) was a large successful company.  It was once, but not any more.  Now Sugar has sold the company to BSkyB for £125m (of which he will personally get £34.5m).  Not bad, but at one time the company was supposed…

  • I think it must be time to take a short break, and rather than simply leaving the last few posts sitting there for most of August, I thought I would put together a brief summary of what I write about here and maybe encourage you to take a look around. Naturally, I write quite a lot about Life in Hong Kong, on subjects such…

  • Do it yourself

    This comment about a recent post reminded of an article some time ago in The Economist (subscription required as this is so old): MEET your airline’s latest employee: you. You may not have noticed, but you are also now working for your phone company and your bank. Why? Because of the growth of the self-service…