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: Dec 2007

  • Jasmine

    I see that my esteemed colleague Ulaca is recommending Jasmine (a Chinese restaurant in Festival Walk) to unsuspecting readers.  Perhaps I took against this restaurant because I was quite satisfied with its predecessor, Zen, which upped and left for The Peak one day (one day they cheerfully took our reservation and then called backed a…

  • Slow news day?

    I found this in the ‘In Brief’ section of today’s SCMP: Wasps sting six hikers Six hikers from two separate groups were attacked by wasps in Tai Lam Country Park yesterday. They were stung on their heads and hands. Police said a group of three men and two women were hiking near Ho Pui Reservoir…

  • Neither of the above

    Business Week report that Blu-Ray may have the upper hand in its battle with HD-DVD (Next-Gen DVDs: Advantage, Sony): It’s a fight with more plot twists and intrigue than a Hollywood thriller. For two years now, rival camps have been battling over which new DVD format will prevail: Blu-ray, which is backed by Sony and…

  • Run for your lives

    I see that Fumier is back, back, back.  Same old nonsense, but this time the old cheapskate is on Blogger.

  • The merry-go-round continues

    My worst fears about Graeme Souness, Joe Royle and Peter Reid turning up in the Premier League seem not to have been realized.  On the contrary, we even had Derby seriously considering Paul Ince, which would have been an encouraging development – but they finally settled on Paul Jewell.  Following in the footsteps of Lawrie…

  • The spin cycle

    Before Sunday’s by-election, Lau Nai-keung offered this “simple” analysis (End of the line for the pan-democrats? – subscription required): All eyes are on the turnout rate for this Sunday’s Legislative Council by-election. There are roughly 600,000 registered voters in the Hong Kong Island constituency. Judging by the results of the recent district council elections, the “loyalists” can…

  • Honey and Lemon really does work

    As a child, I was always taught that lemon and honey was a good remedy for coughs, sore throats and colds (or URTI as they now seem to be known). Big drug companies spend fortunes trying to persuade us to buy their various concoctions, and yet it seems that honey is as good, if not…

  • Caution – no driver on board

    It’s always interesting when ‘science fiction’ turns into reality (‘Aggressive but safe’ SUV wins robotic street race): A sports utility vehicle with a mind of its own was declared the winner of DARPA’s urban robot car race on Sunday. It travelled autonomously through traffic for six hours and 60 miles (100 kilometres) around a ghost…

  • Only in Hong Kong

    A high-profile by-election in which the two main candidates are former civil servants (Democracy woman wins HK poll as the BBC rather strangely puts it). How exciting is that?  In other places it might be a TV or film star, or at least a big-name politician, but not in Hong Kong.  No, we get two…

  • Two for the price of one

    Today is Rail Merger Day.  The government has engineered a deal whereby the MTR (which used to be government-owned but is now a public company, albeit still controlled by the government), will operate the railway services and manage the property of the KCR (which is still government-owned).  That means that all the rail services in…