Category: Life in Hong Kong
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One of the more intriguing sights in Hong Kong is a taxi equipped with an array of mobile phones. The driver then has a Bluetooth headset in each ear, or a collection of earpieces ready to plug in as required, so that he can answer any of his phones. These are the people you call…
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HSBC are now promoting their electronic statement service to replace the paper version sent through the mail. Good idea, poor execution. Why does it have to be so difficult? They send you an email, with a link to a webpage. You then have to sign in using a different password to the one you have…
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Sun Gai Gweilo was complaining recently about the price (and availability) of English language books in Hong Kong. And, yes, I am sure I will be criticized for writing this, but English is an official language of Hong Kong, so you might hope that books would be readily available at a reasonable price. And they’re…
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I have been asked to mention HK Photo Competition, a new blog to publicize, well, a photo competition. Go take a look.
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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…
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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…
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One of the weirder things that our government has decided to do to celebrate the Beijing Olympics is to waive charges for public leisure facilities. However, the SCMP reported on Wednesday that people didn’t seem to be aware of this concession (Swimmers surprised they can use pools for free – subscription required) Many swimmers got…
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Another day, another no.8 storm signal in Hong Kong. This one was somewhat unexpected, because Tropical Storm Fengshen was originally supposed to be heading towards Taiwan, but it changed direction and went right past Hong Kong. The no.8 signal was raised late last night, and early this morning it was very windy and very wet,…
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Thunderstorm warnings still annoy me. There’s been one in force all day today, but actually if you look at the Lightning Location Information from the Hong Kong Observatory you will see that there hasn’t been any lightning over Hong Kong for nearly two hours (up to 7pm). So what are we being warned about? I…
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A reader has sent me a photograph (left) of my favourite development. You can see Fo Tan Industrial Estate to the left (sadly obscured by shruberry in the official artist's impression). Then there is KCR House, the black building in the foreground that is dwarfed by The Palazzo, which just disappeared from the artist's impression.…
Ordinary Gweilo 