It’s always interesting to get a different perspective on life in Hong Kong, and I found one this week in Simon World. Simon is recently arrived in Hong Kong from Australia, and his blog is mainly intended for family and friends back in Australia, to let them know about life in the modern city of Hong…

The English Schools Foundation is still making headlines, this time over the election of a new Chairman and Vice-Chairman.  The new chairman is, gasp, a woman, an outsider (having had no previous connection with the ESF), and Chinese, but has considerable experience in the education sector.  Professor Felice Lieh-Mak was apparently approached after ESF parents concluded that they needed to find…

Every now and then when I am going about my normal business in Hong Kong, I am approached by students armed with notebooks and voice recorders.They politely and hesitantly enquire whether they can ask me a few questions in English, to assist them with their studies.  No, they don’t want to know my opinion on the importance of…

Spotted today in Nathan Road – a rather large Chinese gentleman driving furiously round a corner in a Rolls Royce. Hardly the under-stated elegance that Mr Rolls and Mr Royce were striving to achieve when they started manufacturing motor cars…

Today’s newspapers report a very strange story that is a direct result of what passes for housing policy in Hong Kong. The government appears ready to forgo nearly HK$800 million in lost revenue to get out of a controversial subsidised housing project in Hung Hom that the developers could either tear down and replace with a more…

There’s an interesting piece in this week’s Spike magazine about McDonalds, and it mentions childrens birthday parties as one key part of their business model. Having attended no less than two birthday parties in McDonalds this weekend (both in the same branch, as it happens) I feel well qualified to comment on this subject. According…

Blockbuster is giving up on Hong Kong because (they say) shop rentals are too high. As the leases on their existing shops run out over the next 18 months, they will close down. Blockbuster came to Hong Kong after the KPS chain went bust, and took over many of the locations and most of the…

This should be positively the last mention of Chinese New Year here (until next year). Promise. This week I have managed to attend two company post-CNY lunches and witnessed the giving and receiving of Lai See packets on a fairly large scale. The amount of enjoyment that people get out of this ritual is quite…

When I first came here, one of the things I found quite strange was the way that people would start shouting in meetings. Not understanding any Cantonese, I assumed that they were getting upset, but I was assured that this wasn’t the case. So why do it? Subsequently I discovered that it was a normal…

In the fairly short time I have been here, one of the traditions of Chinese New Year seems to have been eroded quite significantly. There was a time when almost everything shut down for several days, but in recent years more and more restaurants have stayed open – even though they aren’t as busy as…