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: Jul 2004

  • Getting closer

    I don’t drive in Hong Kong, but I do take buses, so traffic jams do affect me. One of the more baffling things about traffic jams is that there is sometimes no apparent cause – no accident, no roadworks, no car broken down in the middle of the road. The M25 (London’s orbital motorway), especially…

  • Heads roll

    So the health secretary Yeoh Eng-kiong has finally resigned. Simon seems to be happy about it, whereas Fumier is less impressed, writing (to paraphrase slightly) that “The mob marches; a head rolls, the baying crowd has been appeased” and that perhaps Dr Yeoh was correct that SARS was less of a crisis than many seemed…

  • Blogjet – still not quite there yet!

    Typepad is reasonably user-friendly, but I still have to key everything in using a web brower, which is not ideal (and makes it all too easy to lose your work). So I’ve been testing Blogjet, which is a small application that allows you to create posts offline and publish them. There are others, such as…

  • Verging on the ridiculous

    This week I received a letter from one airline telling me that they will be renewing my membership of their frequent flyer program and simultaneously discovered that my membership of another program has been downgraded from silver to ordinary.  The first airline is one I have used twice, first for a return (short-haul) flight in…

  • First the congestion charge, now this!

    I couldn’t quite believe this, but today is not April Fools Day, and this news is from the BBC, so I guess it must be true.  It seems that there is a serious plan to run a Formula One Grand Prix on the streets of London!! Apparently they set up a demonstration circuit as a…

  • New HK blog: Wanbro

    Hey, this is a bit spooky. For the second time in a few days we discover a new Hong Kong blog that has kind things to say about Ordinary Gweilo. This time it is Wanbro: seemingly self-deprecating but actually fairly insightful Ordinary Gweilo. I suppose if I tried really hard I could track these people…

  • Scapegoats

    Now we have yet another report on the SARS crisis, and this one attributes blame to certain individuals (which the previous two did not), specifically Yeoh Eng-kiong, Lam Ping-yan, Leong Che-hung, Ho Shiu-wei and Chan Fung fu-chun. They have offered their apologies, but so far no-one has resigned. Many, including Simon, think that’s not good…

  • Tunnel vision

    Henry is moaning about the increases in the tolls for the Western Harbour Crossing, questioning the intelligence of this when the tunnel is already operating significantly below capacity. I agree that it sounds odd, but I suppose that they are hoping that drivers will carry on using the tunnel and pay the higher tolls rather…

  • What’s the point?

    7:39 Thunder and lightning 7:40 The Hong Kong Observatory issues a Thunderstorm Warning, effective until 8:40 Two points (1) Not much of a warning, is it? (2) The thunderstorm lasted only a few minutes, but the warning lasts for an hour. The reason I care is that when there’s a thunderstorm warning they close the…

  • Free advice

    Tempting as it is to buy things from Japan Home Centre (the $10 shop) because of the low prices, the stuff they sell is cheap for a reason. Don’t be fooled by the fact that most of their products have “Design by Japan” printed on them. Japan Chow is a 23 year-old Hong Kong resident…