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

  • Definition of an optimist

    I subscribe to a few email lists, and you always find a few people on them seeking help. Mostly the requests are reasonable and others try to help, but this guy seemed to be asking rather a lot: Hi All,Would you be kind enough to help me to understand the functionality and technical flow regarding…

  • Idiots and Email (pt 2)

    This is a belated follow-up to my earlier post about emails. Another thing that idiots do with email is forward messages with all the earlier messages still attached at the bottom. Lotus Notes does have separate buttons for ‘Reply’ and ‘Reply with History’, whereas all that Outlook offers is a global option to do one…

  • Grandstanding

    The local news still seems to be dominated by the rather tedious debate about democracy and patriotism. I am at a disadvantage watching the TV news because my Cantonese is nothing like good enough to understand what they are talking about, but I think I recognize those sinster guys who are wheeled out to tell…

  • Country Boy comes to the big city

    [When I first posted this short piece, it was featured on NTSCMP’s dreary Blogwatch and generated both positive and negative feedback.  However, when the comments started turning into a battle between those who wanted to defend Simon against my “unfair” attack, and those who agreed with me, I deleted the post and replaced it with…

  • Hong Kong’s excellent public transport

    It’s always interesting to get a different perspective on life in Hong Kong, and I found one this week in Simon World. Simon is recently arrived in Hong Kong from Australia, and his blog is mainly intended for family and friends back in Australia, to let them know about life in the modern city of Hong…

  • Stopping piracy or stifling competition?

    I found this article in the New York Times interesting because it appeared to offer a counter-argument against the current copyright laws and all the fuss about people ‘stealing’ intellectual property: The entertainment industry’s pursuit of tough new laws to protect copyrighted materials from online piracy is bad for business and for the economy, according to a report being released…

  • A lot of fuss about nothing

    The English Schools Foundation is still making headlines, this time over the election of a new Chairman and Vice-Chairman.  The new chairman is, gasp, a woman, an outsider (having had no previous connection with the ESF), and Chinese, but has considerable experience in the education sector.  Professor Felice Lieh-Mak was apparently approached after ESF parents concluded that they needed to find…

  • Not such a good idea

    Democracy is a good thing, and free markets are a good thing, so it stands to reason that every country should be moving as quickly as possible towards full democracy and a free market system. Obvious really? This is a very interesting piece, arguing against the conventional wisdom, and suggesting that we shouldn’t be in…

  • I didn’t know that

    I didn’t know this until I read about it in The Guardian, but apparently in France it is legal to marry someone who is dead. About 20 people do it each year, but you have to ask the President for permission. You can’t just choose to marry anyone – the authorities only allow it if…

  • They’re watching us

    Hats off to BWG for noticing this amazing photograph of Hong Kong taken from space.  As he says, if you have a fast connection then you should certainly look at the high-resolution image.