Ordinary Gweilo

Another assortment of stuff I noticed over the last few days…

According to the SCMP’s property supplement, there is a housing estate called “Windows 2000” in Shanghai. Apparently it was constructed before Microsoft started using the name, but it does seem to be tempting fate! Bill Gates once famously tried to compare computers to motor cars – his point being that there has been a great deal more progress over the last few years in the computer world than in the car industry, but some people unkindly pointed out that no-one would wish to drive a car that broke down so frequently (or unexpectedly), and neither would they be willing to upgrade it so frequently.

What would happen if Microsoft really did move into property development? Presumably the buildings would look quite good from the outside, but inside they would be old and ramshackle. Each year the management company would change the way they charge for their services (in response to customer feedback, of course, not to increase their profits). Security would be a big worry, but there would of course be few staff allocated to repairing all the holes in the fence – when someone noticed them. When something went wrong in the building you would receive a helpful messsage apologizing for the problem, though unfortunately you would still lose whatever you were working on.

Still, could be worse I suppose – can you imagine what would happen if an apartment block was built by the open source movement?

Then there was a piece in the SCMP about one family donating a million dollars to their Christmas appeal. What struck a rather jarring note for me was that the person from the SCMP who was quoted saying how pleased they were was…the Marketing Director – presumably because the appeal is run by the marketing department. I suppose that this is not surprising, but it just emphasises the fact that newspapers do these things because it is good for their image, and they’re not even being subtle about it!

One aspect of Hong Kong that often causes me a certain amount of amusement is the English names that people here choose for their children, or sometimes for themselves. I’m afraid I find it difficult to have respect for a High Court judge called Wally (Yeung)! The problem here is that no-one in the UK, US, etc. would be given that name, though they might use it either a contraction of a longer name or as a nickname. However if you became a judge or held any position of authority, you would always revert to their proper name. Not in Hong Kong, though, because people think that Wally is a real name.