I’m afraid that I can’t say anything meaningful about the death of Anita Mui. Both Ron and Phil have paid tribute to her, whilst George Adams took the opportunity to print a very dubious obituary on his website. The dead can’t sue, I guess! I have to admit that in spite of living in Hong…

From Monday’s SCMP, the most common con-tricks in Hong Kong. Don’t worry – it’s still a relatively safe place. You will notice that apart from the first one, which takes advantage of people’s willingness to help, and the second one, they rely on the greed of the victim. 1. “Help! I need your phone/money” Culprit…

According to the government there are 11,000 older privately-owned apartment blocks in Hong Kong that don’t have an owners’ corporation or management company to look after the building. This means that the individual apartment owners have to agree on any expenditure, and if they can’t agree then nothing will be done. Unsurprisingly, many of these…

January is the month when Hong Kong people pay tax. Naturally, the banks are eager to help!

From today’s SCMP, about 50 years of public housing in Hong Kong: Subsidised housing has become so popular that last year half the population lived in permanent public housing. There are 90,000 people waiting an average of three years for a public housing flat, down from 150,000 in 1997. When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister…

Phil is complaining that eBay’s new Hong Kong site is all in Chinese, following the example set by Yahoo Hong Kong, which dropped its English version a couple of years ago. It is a significant overhead to maintain systems in multiple languages, and one major difference between Hong Kong and Singapore is that here there…

Sunday’s SCMP had a very muddled piece by Katherine Forestier, their education correspondent, about the problems at Kennedy School (run by the English Schools Foundation) and the demand by the staff that the chairman of the school council should resign. I read the story a few times, and I’m still not sure that I fully…

I have to admit that it has been cold these last few days, and I have been wearing a jacket or a coat when I go out. No scarves or hats or any other nonsense, just a jacket. I know that Hong Kong people aren’t really used to cold weather, but I couldn’t quite believe…

This is one issue that doesn’t look as if it is going away. According to today’s SCMP: English Schools Foundation teachers have voted to withdraw goodwill, including extra-curricular activities, in their fight against a proposed pay cut of up to 10 per cent. Teachers’ representatives held six hours of talks with management this week but…

The news that a Taiwanese military researcher managed to infect himself with SARS has caused alarm in Hong Kong, and I am sure that sales of masks will have been given a boost. The SCMP was calm and rational, devoting most of page one and all of page three to the story. They had a…