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: Jul 2008

  • In praise of….GMail

    In the past I have expressed my puzzlement about people who use work email or shared email addresses rather than having their own personal email.  The solution is obvious – use a free online email service. GMail is free and it works very well, so why bother to use anything else?  You can easily set…

  • Those Secret Dentists get everywhere

    I keep coming across a Google ad that reads “The Secret Dentists don’t want you to know about yellow teeth.”  The thought did occur to me that they are being clever by putting in random capital letters to attract my attention to the secret dentists, but it seems unlikely (and I refuse to click on…

  • The HDTV con

    Now that we have high definition (HD) television in Hong Kong (well, one channel plus ATV’s pathetic two hours per night), retailers want to sell us HD televisions. You will find that you have a choice between so-called ‘HD ready’ and ‘Full HD’ screens.  Both are high definition, but so-called ‘Full HD’ is a higher…

  • Shoppes

    When I was at school, I remember a classmate getting told off by the teacher for his picture of life a few hundred years ago because it included captions saying “Ye Olde Shoppes’ or some similar bit of Middle English whimsy. So I was amused to see that there is a new shopping arcade in…

  • Not a leg to stand on

    An amusing mistake by The Sun newspaper, from Photo Shop Disasters via The Guardian. The Sun carried photographs of a member of the royal family in a boat (he was actually on Royal Navy manoeuvres off Montserrat). For some reason, they decided the local who was actually driving the boat (see right) should be removed…

  • Don’t bother with Catchup TV

    Last week I mentioned that TVB Pearl has introduced a service for watching TV shows (well, one particular show) online.  So I had to try it out, but I have to say that I was totally underwhelmed by the experience.  The show plays on a tiny embedded screen surrounded by black bars (it’s the plane…

  • HK Photo Competition

    I have been asked to mention HK Photo Competition, a new blog to publicize, well, a photo competition.  Go take a look.

  • Coming down but still over-priced

    I thought the Magic TV 5000 was hugely over-priced at HK$4980 (as per their website and Post Magazine), and so I am not surprised that Fortress is now selling it for HK$3999 – which is more reasonable but still too high. There’s another similar box from Topcon, at HK$2199 for 160gb and HK$2599 for 250gb, and…

  • On second thoughts

    The government is apparently thinking of bringing forward the start date for the concession on the domestic helper levy.  It’s often a mistake for a government to announce something too far in advance – the classic example being the abolition of dual mortgage tax relief by the UK government 20 years ago.  People rushed to…

  • Another fine mess

    They didn't think this through, did they? On Wednesday, the government announced that the current domestic helper levy of HK$400 per month would be suspended from 1 September for 2 years (which is the length of a domestic helper contract).  However, this concession only applies to contracts signed on or after that date, so if…