Month: Nov 2005
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Simon Jordan’s excellent fortnightly column in The Observer offers a fan/owner’s view of some of the things that are wrong with modern football. This week it’s spoilt players: The wider issue, though, is addressing the source of the problem: the over-protection of players through weak management and nannying. Last April a Fulham player liaison officer…
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Does it make any sense to buy a DVD of a programme that is broadcast on TV in Hong Kong? That I could watch or record for free (well, maybe the cost of a DVD-R disk or two)? Obviously the answer is yes. For a few reasons: (1) Laziness (remembering to record the program) (2)…
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I was (you will be unsurprised to learn) more than a little intrigued to see that ATV World were showing a programme called "Cheese Wars" on Monday night. What would it be about? Well, yes, cheese. Though it was decidedly light on actual cheese, and was more the story of a group of West Country…
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It’s November, so it must be time for my annual anti-Symantec rant. I needed to renew my subscription for Norton Internet Security, so (after finding my way through their badly-designed website) I discovered that for a few dollars more I could upgrade to Norton Internet Security 2006. Well, why not? It seemed like a bargain.…
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Just an ordinary day on Hong Kong’s roads. Watching drivers frantically and pointlessly changing lanes before entering a tunnel where (gasp) they have to stay in one lane for a few minutes. Sitting in a bus that was trying to pull out from behind a broken-down vehicle, watching drivers doing all they could to stop…
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Well, season 3 of The Apprentice is coming to an end on Star World, with two women (Tana and Kendra) the last two left standing. I have to admit that around week 11, my shortlist would have included Tana (and Bren, Alex and Angie) but not Kendra. Somehow she and Craig seemed to have coasted…
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The credit card business in Hong Kong is incredibly competitive. There’s no need to pay an annual subscription – most cards offer one or more years free, and then you just have to threaten to cancel to get them to waive the annual fee. Apart from the introductory gifts there are a variety of special…
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You may have noticed that I am fascinated by the Atkins Diet and why (or if) it works. Obviously Robert Atkins himself didn’t know the answer, and so he came up with scientific mumbo-jumbo instead, but in spite of that it clearly is an effective diet (for some people, if you are sensible). I think…
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Where I live, they have some speed humps in the road. Damn stupid things – many drivers (especially taxi drivers) drive fast and then brake just before the speed humps. Drivers of small vans just ignore them completely. So, what’s the point? This report in The Observer says that it’s much better to replace speed…
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There’s a splendid letter in today’s SCMP Technology section from someone called Jay Bhatt. I read your article "Desperate wait as industry fumbles with TV distribution" (October 25) on the entertainment industry’s problems with television distribution in Hong Kong. One solution would be to get Now Broadband to cut a deal with the Big Four…
Ordinary Gweilo 