In the UK, if you are celebrating something (a birthday, a wedding, leaving the company, David Beckham scoring a penalty, Tony Blair being found to have done nothing wrong after all), it is traditional to buy cakes. In Hong Kong, we have snacks. French toast, chicken wings, hot dogs, all sorts of junk. Plus drinks.…

When Yeoh Eng-kiong resigned from the government, I expressed doubts about the logic of this. I will freely admit that I did this without having reading any of the reports into last years SARS outbreak, basing my argument on the general principle that it is a bad idea for people to resign simply in order…

Hong Kong had its first no.8 typhoon signal of the year today. Almost everyone leaves work and rushes home, and some people join long queues in supermarkets. Wait an hour or two and the streets are clear, public transport is still operating (but with few passengers) the supermarkets are still open (and largely empty), and…

Grandpas in pyjamas. In public. Nothing more needs to be said, I think.

Henry is moaning about the increases in the tolls for the Western Harbour Crossing, questioning the intelligence of this when the tunnel is already operating significantly below capacity. I agree that it sounds odd, but I suppose that they are hoping that drivers will carry on using the tunnel and pay the higher tolls rather…

Tempting as it is to buy things from Japan Home Centre (the $10 shop) because of the low prices, the stuff they sell is cheap for a reason. Don’t be fooled by the fact that most of their products have “Design by Japan” printed on them. Japan Chow is a 23 year-old Hong Kong resident…

Having lived in Britain for many years, I was thoroughly indoctrinated with the line that the National Health Service (NHS) is the best healthcare system in the world, and when I went on holidays overseas I worried that if I fell ill I might have a very expensive brush with a local system that imposed…

Now that the really hot weather is with us, one of the hazards of walking around on the street is catching sight of men wearing vests who have decided that they need to keep cool by exposing their stomachs. Needless to say, men who dress in this peculiar way tend to have large beer guts,…

I may have given the impression that I thought that HSBC’s new automated queuing system was a good idea. I apologize for this – I was wrong. I went to the bank today and picked up my ticket with its promise that I would probably have to wait 6 minutes. As they were currently serving…