Category: Life in Hong Kong
-
The SCMP sometimes manages to find interesting stories for the Sunday edition. Not often, but it does happen. Today they report the strange tale of a man trapped in Hong Kong because he hasn’t paid his tax: Bill Heywood, a plumbing and piping contractor, was stopped at Hong Kong International Airport last September when he…
-
Earlier in the year we had the spectacle of people being placed in quarantine for 7 days if they had been on the same plane as someone who had H1N1. Then all primary schools were closed for the summer break several weeks early. Where I live we had a solemn announcement that there was a…
-
I see that HSBC are going to stop sending paper statements (unless you are either old or willing to pay). I subscribed to this service a year or so ago, and I have probably only downloaded a handful of statements since then. Why? Because it’s a complete nightmare to use, that’s why. I have no…
-
Gerald Ratner famously compared one of his company's gold earrings to a Marks & Spencer prawn sandwich, saying that it was cheaper "but the sandwich will probably last longer". When the newspapers reported his attempt at humour, it became a big story and he ended up losing his job and it virtually bankrupted the company.…
-
Today West Rail is extended, through the new Austin station and the existing East Tsim Sha Tsui station, to terminate at Hung Hom, where it finally links up with East Rail (the original KCR line from Kowloon to the border with mainland China). This means that East Rail trains have stopped running to East Tsim…
-
Another weekend, another typhoon signal. Looking at the predicted direction of Tropical Storm Soudelor it never looked likely that it was going to come anywhere close to Hong Kong. Yet the Observatory raised the no.3 (strong wind) signal – and on the basis that you can never be too careful the management here closed our…
-
A 76-year-old man gets the flu, and is now in a "serious condition". It's swine flu, so this is news. People get flu. Unfortunately some of them do die, especially if they are elderly or sick. This is nothing new – flu is much more serious than a cold (even if most people get them…
-
Wellcome are currently running a promotion which features Paddington, the bear from Darkest Peru who lives in London (at 32 Windsor Gardens) with the Brown family. What shouldn't have surprised me, I suppose, was that people in Hong Kong wouldn't have any idea about Paddington or that there are a whole series of books about…
-
The government is apparently very cross with the good people at Hong Kong Disneyland, who took advantage of the closure of all primary schools by announcing a special offer (for children) of unlimited admission for two weeks for the normal price of a single entry ticket. Predictably there were big crowds of children there on…
-
Good grief. Does the government really believe that closing primary schools and kindergartens is going to help? Do they actually think they have special powers that will make it possible to keep H1N1 away from Hong Kong? With the number of people who arrive here every day from Australia, the US and the UK, that…
Ordinary Gweilo 