(with apologies for encroaching on Fumier‘s territory) To the driver of a people carrier, registration LL 1380 (or similar): The reason that large white KMB bus was stopped was because of the red traffic light. The reason that several people on the pedestrian crossing looked at you incredulously (not that you noticed) was that you…

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There’s an interesting article in today’s Independent about Chinese attitudes towards education and the achievements of ethnic Chinese in UK schools.  Their parents are first-generation immigrants, most of whom moved from Hong Kong ("the impoverished enclaves of the New Territorites") to the UK, and they all believe education is very important:  "The answer to the…

Ordinary Gweilo is on vacation. Normal service will be resumed at the start of September. In the meantime, please visit the archives, where you can read about going to the doctor, compulsory holidays for domestic helpers, getting lost, childrens parties at McDonalds, and all manner of other worthless trivia. Including, as Fumier points out, more…

It’s uncanny how often alarmist stories in newspapers prove to be totally wrong. Thinking back to 1997, I was in the UK shortly after the handover and everyone who knew I was living in Hong Kong asked me how things had changed. My answer was that life carried on as normal, and the only thing…

Least surprising news of the week is that Cable TV is dropping ESPN and Star Sports from the middle of next month. Oh, sorry, what I meant to say was that Now Broadband TV has beaten off stiff competition from Cable TV to secure ESPN and Star Sports (more in the SCMP if you are…

I don’t drive in Hong Kong, but I do take buses, so traffic jams do affect me. One of the more baffling things about traffic jams is that there is sometimes no apparent cause – no accident, no roadworks, no car broken down in the middle of the road. The M25 (London’s orbital motorway), especially…

At the start of last week, Shaky was wishing Typhoon Mindulle on Hong Kong so that he could get a day off. Didn’t happen, and comparing the actual track of the storm with what the experts predicted is quite interesting – an even more spectacular miss than David Beckham’s: (click on the image to see…

Some of these made me laugh.  Lifted from the Daily Mirror, which took them from a new book, The World’s Stupidest Instructions, published by Michael O’Mara Books.   All examples of “funny English by foreigners” have been removed, but you can find them in the link.   BEWARE: Sledge may develop high speed under certain…