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

  • Wasting my time

    A while back I mentioned the HSBC ‘Instant Gift Draw’ Well, I managed to qualify for this stoopid draw by spending over HK$500 in Park’n’Shop, and so I called their hotline to register. As I expected, it is a painful process – the first time something went wrong after about 3 minutes so I had…

  • Hits and Misses

    I added a site counter, but so far it is not giving me the same results as the TypePad statistics, and I’m not quite sure why! I get very confused by the stats anyway, because I assume they are calculated based on the day from midnight wherever the company is based to midnight the next…

  • More on Hong Kong property

    My post about the effects of the government’s land policy prompted a lively debate over at the Gweilo Diaries [it was a blog run by someone calling himself “Conrad”] Predictably, it has caused outrage from at least one property owner, who assumed that (i) I don’t own property and (ii) that I was advocating that…

  • Distasteful

    The Sun (a British tabloid) puns about the death of a serial killer: I may be alone in this, but I find it very hard to rejoice about anyone’s death. I felt similarly about the coverage of, and reaction to, the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, especially the gruesome photographs released by the US…

  • Cold as Ice

    One of the great unresolved mysteries about Hong Kong restaurants is why some of them think their customers want icy blasts of cold air with their food – even in the middle of winter. Today I had lunch in a dim sum restaurant that really excelled itself in this regard – one of my colleagues…

  • Going Down

    When I lived in London, I spent a large part of my life never having to use an elevator. In fact when I was a child, one of our small amusements on a Saturday was going on the bus to a large new shopping centre and travelling up and down in the car park lifts.…

  • So far, so good

    Before I started this blog, I had a few nagging doubts 1. Would I be able to find anything to write about? 2. Would anyone read it? 3. How much of my time would it take up? Finding things to write about is actually the least of my worries, and in fact I have a…

  • HK$28 to travel from Central – Causeway Bay?

    From The Guardian, a story about the latest fare increases on the London Underground. The flat fare for any journey in the central zone is now £2, which at current exchange rates is HK$28. Compare that to the cost of travelling on the MTR in Hong Kong, which is much lower – for example HK$5…

  • Lady Mouse

    Thanks to Jim for sending it to me, but I’m not sure where it originates from.

  • The back of beyond

    Simon is whining about having to move to a new office, wait for it, right on the edge of Central. Not Tuen Mun, or Tseung Kwan O, or the Tai Po Science Park, just another location in Central that doesn’t have a view of the harbour!! His complaint is that the large bank that employs…