Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong

recent posts

Archives

Categories

Month: Jan 2006

  • Kung Hei Fat Choi

    Enjoy the cookies

  • On the buses

    Last Saturday the SCMP published a letter from New World First Bus in response to a letter last Wednesday that said that they "get completely free use of the roads" (whereas the MTR and KCR have to pay for the railbeds).  It was quite a short letter, but it made two splendidly ludicrous claims:  In…

  • Still in the dark ages

    My ATM card has been slightly broken for several months, but I’ve never quite got round to going to the bank to request a new one.  Well, it worked,  so why bother? Until Sunday, that is, when the machine swallowed the card and was unable to return it to me.  I stood there for a…

  • A small misunderstanding

    The government has come up with an altogether more sensible explanation for what they are trying to achieve with new legislation about discrimination and expat salaries, as the SCMP reports: Provisions for expat packages in the proposed anti-racism law will help rather than hinder companies’ recruitment of the best employees for the job, the deputy…

  • Letter of the week

    The letters published in the SCMP are a constant source of amusement to me.  Today they have come up with another gem: Have the chief executive or financial secretary given any thought to the tremendous cost to taxpayers of a five-day working week being introduced for the civil service in Hong Kong?  The shorter working…

  • Memoirs of a Geisha

    I see that Mr Fumier and Mr Harbour have both been to watch this movie recently.  Me too.  As you may be aware there seem to be two schools of thought on this one, or maybe three if you include Fumier’s perspective: Criticism has also been made of the crappy dialogue, historical inaccuracies, failure to…

  • What they don’t want you to hear

    In Saturday’s SCMP, Albert Cheng was complaining about the government’s lack of plans for digital radio in Hong Kong (subscription required): In Hong Kong, a steering committee was set up in 1998 to look into digital radio. It was assigned to co-ordinate trial tests by public and commercial broadcasters. The test results have been satisfactory,…

  • It still doesn’t make any sense

    Still on the subject of expat pay, Simon points out that David Webb has a letter on this subject in today’s SCMP.  He points out is that although it is widely-believed that Hong Kong has a simple flat-tax system there are actually plenty of ways to pay less tax, one of which is to provide…

  • Discriminating expats

    The most puzzling story of the week is the one about the government outlawing expat pay packages. The SCMP ran this story (subscription required) on Wednesday: Hong Kong companies will have to justify their offers of generous "expat packages" to foreign employees under an anti-racism bill now in an "advanced stage of drafting". They will…

  • Five and a half

    In Hong Kong it is common for offices to be open on Saturday morning, something that you would not find in the UK (or most other countries as far as I know), and hence we have public holidays on a Saturday (the cause of moaning from those who don’t have to work on Saturday). In…