This week The Observer had a piece about the problems of parking in the UK: Already eight in ten cars driving through urban streets are not heading to a destination, but instead are manned by drivers roaming in search of somewhere to park, according to research released by the RAC last week. I’m not sure…

I have previously mentioned the way that SHKP, Swire and other developers have started to be much more, er, proactive in dealing with their retail tenants.  Rents are going up and  in some cases retailers are being forced to move (the most famous example being Swire’s decision not to offer M&S a new lease for…

A glass of hot water? When I came to Hong Kong one of the things I found a little odd was that people drank hot water.  I had been used to drinking cold water, or hot tea or coffee, but not hot water.  When I first tried it I wasn’t convinced that it was a…

There was a letter in yesterday’s paper entitled "Insensitive Immigration", from a lady whose husband had died suddenly.  As he was the employer of their domestic helper she contacted the Immigration Department to ask them what she should do: I was told that the helper was to report to immigration…She returned with a notice to…

Yesterday there was one of those rather pathetic protests we sometimes get in Hong Kong.  The picture in the SCMP shows less than twenty cars driving slowly up to entrance of the Eastern Harbour Tunnel, thus delaying a few motorists out for a drive on a Sunday morning.  They are complaining about the plans to…

This week/month/year, I am mainly…reading children’s books.  In practice that means reading books from either the UK or the States.  Mainly the UK, actually.  Naturally enough, they depict life in the UK.  So you have a family living in a semi-detached house, playing in their garden, going on holiday to the seaside, driving to the…

The letters to the editor published by the SCMP continue to be a source of some amusement to me.  Rather too many of the letters are just tedious complaints about matters of little importance.  For example, Friday’s special souvenir "Yes, he really has resigned" issue had one correspondent complaining about the moneychangers at the airport.…

An amusing story from Shaky about trying to buy a phone in Fortress and being offered to a dummy phone to evaluate: The Geeky Kaiser: “I’d like to try out a real one, I want to try out the operating system.” Salesman: “What? It just has a normal system. Same as all phones.” Shaky was…

Simon has noticed a story in The Standard about another clever scheme to fleece tourists.  Apparently some enterprising businessmen have set up a mall in lovely downtown Kowloon Bay specifically for mainland tourists, and called it the “Hong Kong Tourist (Duty Free) Shopping Mall”.  Nothing is left to chance, and mainland tourists are brought to…