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: Mar 2004

  • 2 + 2 = 9

    Interesting to see how stories bounce around various blogs picking up steam along the way regardless of whether there is much truth in them. Adam at Brainysmurf admits that he made comments about France’s military exercises with China based on a rather misleading story from Reuters without checking all the facts. What Reuters did was…

  • Full Metal Spike

    As promised, I did subscribe to Spike magazine. What has happened since has hardly inspired confidence. I used their website to subscribe. This re-directs you to Quamnet which has a secure site that will accept credit cards, and it appeared to work but I didn’t receive any confirmation, and neither did I get the ‘instant’…

  • Boring, boring cricket

    Foreigners often complain that cricket is boring, and I have to admit that sometimes they are right. However, in the last few days we have had a couple of examples of what can happen. On Sunday we had England bowling out the West Indies for 47 runs and winning the First Test by 10 wickets.…

  • The cash economy

    Hong Kong has a number of tunnels (and one bridge) that you have to pay to use. If you want to drive from Kowloon to Hong Kong (or vice versa) or from the New Territories to the Airport (or Tung Chung) you have no choice but to pay for the privilege. The other tunnels offer…

  • Spain’s General Election

    Simon mentions the general election in Spain and the reaction to the results. It was certainly a surprise, and the right-wing bloggers are horrified that the terrorist bombings in Madrid may have influenced the result and could do so again. As Simon says, one of the features of democracy is that it sometimes throws up…

  • Piqued

    A story in today’s Standard about a more imaginative response to the ‘problem’ of falling numbers of school-age children: With a decline in enrolment, the Buddhist Bright Pearl Primary School in Sha Tin started small-class teaching in Primary One for the 2002-03 school year with financial support from the Hong Kong Buddhist Association. Class sizes…

  • Desirable demographics

    Giles (see below) has two advertisements from Google below his post – one advertising BBC sport’s coverage of Arsenal and the other for cheap calling cards. I have read about advertising on blogs, but I think this is the first example I have seen. It’s hardly intrusive (the ads only appear if you click on…

  • Local TV + International Football = ??

    Giles over at Misohoni mentions the coverage on ATV World of the Arsenal vs Celta Vigo game in the Champions League. It was a great win for Arsenal but what spoiled the match for me were the local Gweillio commentators who seemed to be a “poor man’s” Andy Gray and Alan Parry. I didn’t watch…

  • Email on the move

    Still on gadgets, yesterday I met my former boss, and we were talking about the Blackberry device which he was recently issued with (I think Simon also has one). He was last seen walking away from the MTR station where he was supposed to be going, engrossed in reading his latest emails on this toy.…

  • TV on the Internet

    It’s often interesting to look back at what was expected and compare that to what has actually happened. For example, the convergence of the Internet and traditional media has happened rather differently (and more slowly) than many expected a few years back. The Internet is not on TV, but TV is on the Internet (PCCW’s…