Ordinary Gweilo
It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writiing (mainly) about Hong Kong
about
Category: Life in Hong Kong
-
One piece of free advice I give to visitors to Hong Kong is to buy an Octopus card when they arrive at the airport, and then hand it back just before they fly home. You pay lower fares on the MTR and KCR and can get special discounts (mainly on buses and the Airport Express),…
-
Yes, it’s that time of year again. Gweilos think the weather is great, whilst locals dress up warmly and are deeply puzzled by people like me walking around in shirt sleeves. What puzzles me is why these same people also insist on having the aircon turned to freezing in the office, and the wear coats…
-
On Sunday, a man jumped to his death in Ap Lei Chau. It goes without saying that this was very sad, all the more so because he took his six year-old son with him. So, as you might expect, Hong Kong’s popular press treated this story with all the respect and dignity they could summon…
-
It’s a common sight to see couriers waiting by the exit gates at MTR stations with a parcel or some documents. They hand the items over to someone standing the other side of the gates, and go back on to the MTR. Maybe they then pick something else and take that to another station, and…
-
The new KCR extension to Tsim Sha Tsui was open to the public yesterday for the first time. The full service starts next Sunday afternoon. Predictably, there have been complaints about the fares. Idiotic politicians have argued (amongst other things) that the fare from the New Territories to the new TST station should be the…
-
If you’re looking for comedy on the two local English language TV channels, you have to be fairly resourceful. With Friends having ended, I believe the only comedy show in prime time is “Living for Lydia”, which is produced in Singapore and stars Hong Kong’s very own Lydia Shum (“Fei Fei”). I’m sure it’s rib-ticklingly…
-
Simon recently highlighted an interesting report about Domestic Helpers in the Standard, trying to calculate their value to the local economy. The Asian Migrant Centre have attempted to calculate the economic benefits to Hong Kong of having a large number of foreign domestic helpers. They have arrived at a figure of HK$13bn (which sounds a…
-
I have to confess that my Cantonese is still not good enough to really understand the news on TV. Worse than that, my simultaneous translation service is sometimes quite unreliable. So I sometimes find myself trying to imagine what might be happening. I recently watched the story about the old blokes who were organizing cricket…
-
I have to confess that I have never taken the trouble to really understand the intricacies of the tax system, either here or in the UK. I understand the basics, and if things ever get complex then I employ an accountant to offer advice and fight things out with the authorities. It so happens that…
-
Tonight is Mid-Autumn Festival. As an antidote to the curmudgeonly Fumier, I feel I must point out that it is actually a happy time of year, especially for children. Where we live there is a fair amount of open space, and at Mid-Autumn festival hundreds of children gather here (with their parents and/or helpers) to…
Ordinary Gweilo 