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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Category: Life in Hong Kong

  • Did he really mean that?

    This made me laugh:  “Knocking down somebody’s home is not a simple matter, although we use professional social workers to help.” – Tsang Cheung-chuen, Assistant Director of Buildings I wonder how they help?  Maybe they keep a large sledgehammer in the office for just such an occasion, or perhaps they are trained to use wrecking balls…    

  • Your closed ones?

    The BBC had a story last week about the Beijing authorities efforts to improve the quality of English (Beijing stamps out poor English) and a follow-up with some examples sent in by readers (Signs in ‘Chinglish’). This is indeed a rich vein of comedy, but one that is fraught with difficulties.  So I try to…

  • More fresh air

    I was slightly surprised to see that France is going to ban smoking in public places (including bars and restaurants). About 15 years ago they introduced a law which was supposed to make it mandatory to have a no-smoking area in all bars and restaurants, but my experience was that this was largely ignored (at least in…

  • You have been warned

    As you may have noticed, I have a strange fascination with Hong Kong’s bewildering array of weather warnings.  Yesterday we had a typhoon pass by Hong Kong.  Although it’s initial track was towards Hong Kong, it then turned west and was always heading away from here.  The no.1 (standby) signal was raised on Tuesday afternoon,…

  • Crazy reductions

    Someone in the management of Park’n’Shop has clearly gone mad.  They have decided that what shoppers really want is reductions on all “yellow label” products (please don’t ask me what a “yellow label” product might be, but there are a lot of them). The problem is that a large number of these reductions seem to be a nominal…

  • Wrong again

    One of the facts I know about Hong Kong is that St John’s Cathedral is the only freehold property in Hong Kong.  It must be true – if you search in Google for St. John’s Cathedral freehold Hong Kong you will find several references to this, starting with Wikipedia (as usual according to The Guardian),…

  • A lot of hot air

    Yesterday when I was standing waiting for a minibus I was very conscious of the hot air being pumped out by a succession of KMB buses as they waited to pick up passengers, and today The Standard has a story today about the over-use of aircon that makes passengers too cold and pedestrians too hot. …

  • Lights Out

    Just a reminder that Lights Out Hong Kong "want to plunge our city into darkness for three minutes" on Saturday today.  From their website: Turn your lights out on the 8th of August at 8pm for 3 minutes 於8月8日下午8時關掉電燈3分鐘 Watch out, though, it’s a "slippery slope" and who knows what it might lead to.  Cleaner…

  • Bring an old bag with you today

    Today is No Plastic Bag Day.  The first one was such a success that it has now become a monthly event, but on the first Tuesday of each month so as not to inconvenience too many people. I went to the supermarket during the last NPB day, and was fully prepared to pay $1 for…

  • The SIMs

    There has been a lot of fuss in Europe about the cost of mobile phone roaming. Some poor unfortunates have taken their phones to Spain on holiday and come back to find that their mobile phone bills cost more than the holiday.  The catch being that whilst there are no charges for incoming calls when…