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: Dec 2005

  • Sent to a barren rock

    Fumier has already mentioned this, but never mind (from The Guardian): When a middle-aged man swore at airline staff after he was refused a drink on a flight from Manchester to Tenerife, he got a sunshine break he had not bargained for. The pilot diverted the charter plane and dumped the troublesome holidaymaker 300 miles…

  • Phil Space

    You see, I said it wasn’t Conrad, and now it’s official – Phil has owned up to being the man behind Flagrant Harbour, the awfully enthusiastic new blog that suddenly appeared fully-formed a few weeks ago.  He’s a Brit, you see, and spelling is not his strong point.  Plenty of other clues.   

  • Chicken Little

    As for Chicken Little, it’s rubbish, and certainly not worthing braving the appalling AMC booking system. Disney haven’t had a hit for years, and most of their recent efforts have been panned by the critics. Not exactly true, of course – Disney have had several hits in the last 10 years, but all of them…

  • Screen Test

    Animated films are invariably dubbed into Cantonese by local performers, and it is this version of the film that plays on most screens in Hong Kong – without English subtitles. Fortunately, the original English version is available in a few places, which for those of us in the Kowloon and the New Territories means the…

  • The shortest day

    The Winter Solstice is celebrated on the shortest day of the year (i.e. today) and it is traditional to visit your family for a special dinner (no, sorry, that doesn’t mean a Big Mac and large fries).  I think we are celebrating the fact that from here on out the days get longer – though…

  • Digital TV duopoly

    I was rather surprised to read about the plans that ATV and TVB have for digital TV (from The Standard): Television Broadcasts and Asia Television, Hong Kong’s terrestrial TV operators, have pledged to invest at least a further HK$400 million each to roll out high-definition television (HDTV) services in the city by the end of…

  • Things I don’t understand (1)

    Couples who have a shared email address.  What’s that all about, then? I suppose it made sense a few years ago, but these days there are plenty of perfectly good free email services, most notably GMail (more storage space than you could possibly need, and the option to save copies of emails in Outlook), and…

  • It’s back

    I think the word is hubris.  In week 2 of the latest Apprentice, the men’s team were delighted when they were told that the task was to develop an advertising campaign for Lamborghini.  What could possibly go wrong?  Chris works in advertising and the rest of the team are all, er, men. Throughout the task…

  • Noisy

    I don’t want to sound like one of those crazy people who write letters to the SCMP, but… When they introduced Idiot TV on buses, I thought most of the complaints were overdone – yes it’s annoying, but I found it quite easy to ignore. Now they have apparently decided to turn up the volume…

  • Not the full picture

    I notice that E@L has acquired a bargain price Philips Plasma TV, whilst Shaky has already replaced his with something new and shiny from Pioneer.  I still remember the first time I saw a plasma TV on sale in Hong Kong, and I think the price was HK$100k (US$12,800).  Now they start at around one-tenth…