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 2005

  • Nigel Slater: Toast

    Fumier recommended this book to me, and funnily enough I had considered buying it last time I was in the UK, but annoyingly I saw it in a bargain book shop (the hardback for £3 or so rather than the £16.99 cover price) but hesitated – on the grounds that if it was that cheap…

  • Easter is cancelled

    What’s going on?  The Easter programme used to be a key part of the football season, with two matches in four days giving teams an opportunity to boost their chances at the top or bottom of the table.  Even better, it also used to be a time for local derbies.  First the spoilsport police managed…

  • Dash

    Someone in my family is a huge fan of The Incredibles, so we went to the local cinema over Chinese New Year to watch it.  Now, scarcely a month later, it’s out on DVD, even while it’s still showing in the odd cinema or two!  Hong Kong was one of the last countries to get…

  • “I’m on the Northern Line”

    The BBC reports that passengers will be able to use their mobile phones on stations on the London Underground by 2008, finally being able to do something that has been possible on the MTR in Hong Kong for several years. However, there is some opposition to this apparently unremarkable idea: But both the Lib Dems…

  • Going Underground

    Yesterday there was one of those rather pathetic protests we sometimes get in Hong Kong.  The picture in the SCMP shows less than twenty cars driving slowly up to entrance of the Eastern Harbour Tunnel, thus delaying a few motorists out for a drive on a Sunday morning.  They are complaining about the plans to…

  • Up in the Air

    A promotional brochure arrives from a certain credit card company, offering a trip to London for some dollars and some credit card points. It’s described as a “5 days / 2 nights London package”.  Er, hang on.  5 days?  I’d call it 3 days (and even that is a touch optimistic).  The first “day” is…

  • Lowering expectations…or maybe not

    This week the BBC announced that Ricky Gervais is making a new series that will be broadcast later this year.  However, there is some concern that expectations are so high after The Office that people are bound to be disappointed.  So what have the BBC done?  From The Guardian: The new Ricky Gervais series is…

  • Fat lady sings

    Unsurprising news from the UK – Atkins Nutritionals UK is closing down.  Cue headlines about "slim pickings" in several newspapers. As I have mentioned before, I find the Atkins Diet quite fascinating – because it does work, but not exactly in the way that Mr Atkins claimed. My view is that what makes the diet…

  • Punditry

    There’s only one explanation that makes any sense.  The SCMP don’t pay Simon Patkin for his silly little rants, he pays them for the free publicity. Monday’s paper had one of his more banal efforts, starting off with Donald Tsang’s strange suggestion that Hong Kong people should have more children in order to solve the…

  • The foggy day

    This week/month/year, I am mainly…reading children’s books.  In practice that means reading books from either the UK or the States.  Mainly the UK, actually.  Naturally enough, they depict life in the UK.  So you have a family living in a semi-detached house, playing in their garden, going on holiday to the seaside, driving to the…