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: Jan 2004

  • Is it too green?

    Sorry, I’ve been playing around with the design. I’ve also re-instated the left column for the search, site meter and the Flippery Fish nonsense, plus the list of recent posts. It’s hard to know what’s best – but it looks fine on my monitor (which is set at 1280 x 1024) and I’ll check it…

  • The Office

    The surprising news from the Golden Globes is that “The Office” has won two major awards.  Ricky Gervais (creator, co-writer and star) won the TV comedy actor award, while the programme won best TV comedy series.It’s surprising not because it doesn’t deserve the prize, but because in the States the show is only on cable TV (through BBC Americas) and…

  • Shouting

    When I first came here, one of the things I found quite strange was the way that people would start shouting in meetings. Not understanding any Cantonese, I assumed that they were getting upset, but I was assured that this wasn’t the case. So why do it? Subsequently I discovered that it was a normal…

  • Geekery

    I blame the Geeky Kaiser.  He mentioned BlogJet, and so I thought I would try it out.  It’s a useful little program for composing posts, and lets you do more clever formatting than Typepad allows.  Like colors and bullet points.  Unfortunately it seems to be incompatible with the Typepad editor, so if you start with…

  • Is it safe?

    I recently mentioned one of the latest health scares, over farmed salmon. These type of stories appear regularly, and they intrigue me for a couple of reasons – firstly because you sometimes need to check who is behind the scare stories, and secondly because you can almost guarantee that another study will appear later that…

  • My Crow Soft

    Strange story from The Guardian about a guy called Mike Rowe who thought the obvious name for his website was Mike Rowe Soft. A very large software company thought that perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea and asked him to hand over the domain name for $10.

  • The luck of the draw

    In the fairly short time I have been here, one of the traditions of Chinese New Year seems to have been eroded quite significantly. There was a time when almost everything shut down for several days, but in recent years more and more restaurants have stayed open – even though they aren’t as busy as…

  • Kung Hei Fat Choi

    Well, yesterday we got our orange trees and cleaned the house, and today we are giving out Lai See and seeing relatives. Wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous Year of the Monkey, and Kung Hei Fat Choi

  • Lowering expectations

    Phil and others have commented on this news story, but I have ignored it so far. A reader has asked for my comments, so here goes. Being lazy, I will quote from his email. Xiao Weiyun, one of the Chinese legal experts who was involved in drafting the Basic Law for Hong Kong has said…

  • CNY

    Two rather different views of Chinese New Year. Over at Voluntarily in China, which is new to me, an American who finds it a happy time of year, and enjoys the traditions. On the other hand, we have Fumier (now officially deemed a Brit unless he specifically denies it), who feels that CNY is part…