Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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  • Slow down

    Travelling by minibus is one of the more, er, interesting public transport experiences in Hong Kong. The main advantage is that they (usually) get you to your destination quickly, but unfortunately this is only because the drivers are contractually bound to break at least one traffic regulation for each kilometre they travel. Usually it’s speeding, but you’ll pleased to hear that the government has a cunning plan to deal with this.

    The first part was to install large (and very ugly) digital displays showing the current speed. Well, thanks, but I already knew we were going too fast. The second part is that these wretched machines are designed to emit a loud irritating sound when they go faster than about 75 kph. Well, thanks again, but on the whole I don’t think it improves the whole travelling by minibus experience.

    Naturally, the driver takes no notice. I’m not sure whether passengers are supposed to hear the sound and gently remind the driver that he is going too fast, but I fear this plan may not work. I can only think of two outcomes, and neither would be favourable. So what we have here is just one more way in which travelling by minibus is made marginally less pleasant. The good news is that apparently minibus drivers are able to use their endless ingenuity to disable the loud and unpleasant noise, though sadly they can’t work the same trick on passengers with mobile phones.

    They have had a similar scheme in Singapore for many years. It’s part of the welcome you get to their nanny state – travelling along the highway from the airport to the city centre you hear a bell ringing when taxi is travelling "too fast". This being Singapore, it’s not loud or particularly annoying, the speed is too low, and (of course) it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference. Except that I feel slightly cheated if the bell isn’t ringing, because it means the driver is going too slowly.

    If they want the Hong Kong scheme to work, I have a suggestion. Instead of making an irritating sound, they need a stick with a sharp pointed end that would appear in the centre of the steering wheel if the vehicle is breaking the speed limit. Or, I suppose, fit actual speed regulators, as I believe they have in lorries and coaches in the UK. It would take most of the fun out of being a minibus driver, but it would reduce the number of accidents.

    On which subject there was a piece recently in The Standard on minibus drivers:

    The Environment, Transport and Works Bureau replied that among the 3,146 minibus drivers involved in accidents in the past three years, 2,463 had held a driving licence for more than four years, while only 125 had held one for less than a year.

    The causes of more than half the accidents remain unknown. But two of the most common reasons that could be identified were "driving too close to the vehicles in front” resulting in 266 accidents, and "careless lane changing or overtaking” leading to 211 accidents.

    Any minibus driver who doesn’t drive too close to the vehicle in front or change lanes carelessly probably hasn’t been a minibus driver for very long. They soon learn the tricks of the trade!

  • In case you were getting bored waiting

    The latest brilliant idea from the advertising industry…

    I guess we all spend time every day waiting for a lift to arrive.  Well, now you can spend that time watching advertisements.  There is a company in Hong Kong installing LCD televisions in lift lobbies, and their slogan is

    "Reaching business executives in a captive environment".

    I guess that sounds better than "watched mainly by couriers and harassed office workers".  Or "nobody really watches at all".      

    It’s all getting out of hand.  They have TVs on buses on minibuses and in KCR trains, and on the platforms of MTR stations, mostly pumping out adverts, though the Roashow thing on buses does also have some cheap programming (promotional puffs for new films, highlights of obsure English football matches from several seasons ago, idiotic competitions that require you to call a premium rate number, and other general rubbish). 

    Periodically people (well, OK, let’s be honest, gweilos) write to the SCMP complaining about how disturbing they find the TVs on the buses because it prevents them sleeping or reading or shouting in to their mobile phones or whatever it is that they want to do, and declare that they really cannot travel by bus any more. 

    Well, whilst some of it is entertaining in a bizarre kind of way, and watching some of the ‘miracle slimming’ ads can be kinda distracting, I really don’t have any problem reading whilst it’s on.  Actually, I’d have thought that anyone who lived in Hong Kong would need to develop this ability or else they’d go mad.  Or perhaps I already am mad.   

  • Asia Blog Awards (2)

    Well, that wasn’t quite what I was expecting! I mentioned last week that I felt somewhat indifferent towards the Asia Blog Awards, and one reason was that I felt fairly sure who the top five or so would be, and reasonably confident that I would be somewhere around the bottom of the top ten. Nothing to get excited about, right?

    Well, Simon has now announced the ten blogs that have been shortlisted for ‘Best Hong Kong blog’, and I am mildly perplexed to find that only two (Gweilo Diaries and Shaky Kaiser) of that "top five" are included!

    No BWG, no Flying Chair, and no Simon World. Also missing is Chase me ladies, I’m in the cavalry, which is certainly the funniest blog I read regularly (in Hong Kong or anywhere). However, the latter two have been shortlisted in other categories, presumably because of the limitation of ten for each shortlist. Nevertheless, the absence of the first two is surprising, as they have both been around a long time and have each built up a loyal following (not to mention appearing on TV to frighten the children).

    I’m pleased (but slightly surprised) to see Discombobulated Mia in the list, and Spirit Fingers is an impressive piece of work that deserves to be there. I can’t argue with the inclusion of Hemlock’s Diary (if you treat is as a blog), and Ordinary Gweilo seems to have scraped in as well.

    It’s amusing to see Glutter there next to the Gweilo Diaries. Not company that Yan would wish to keep, I think. I read and enjoy Glutter, but Yan has deliberately estranged herself from the "circle" of Gweilo blogs because she disapproves of Conrad and others, and feels that the rest of us are guilty by association because we link to them. I have to admit that I don’t read Yoga Yuga so I can’t comment on it. I think it used to be a Taiwan blog but the author has just moved to Hong Kong.

    The shortlist is as follows:

    and you can vote here

    [post updated because Simon has added EastSouthWestNorth]

  • Paint your way to peace

    It’s sometimes hard to make sense of what is happening in Northern Ireland, but the absurdity of the situation was rather nicely captured by this leader in The Guardian.  In case you haven’t been following the story, the DUP (led by that cuddly religious chap, Rev. Ian Paisley) wants the destruction of IRA weapons to be photographed, whereas Sinn Fein is against it.  The Guardian has an idea:

    Photography is too literal a medium for representing events that mean such different things. The key is thus to find a more flexible means of portraying the weapons destruction.

    The answer to this lies with visual artists. For instance, both communities have vigorous traditions of wall painting. If a unionist painter and a republican painter could witness the act of weapons destruction – alongside the generals and clerics – they could each then paint it as they saw fit. The destroyed weapons would have to be represented accurately, but the remaining depiction would lie with the artists.

  • Let them build whatever they want

    I see that Simon Patkin has graduated from writing letters to the SCMP, and is now a contributor. Still the same old nonsense (subscription required), of course.

    He is arguing in favour of the preservation of "property rights" in the context of the (now abandoned) redevelopment of Hunghom Peninsula and reconstruction of Central Police Station.  I haven’t been following the saga of the Central Police Station, but I have to agree with Simon that the power of property developers and their impact on Hong Kong is certainly coming under closer scrutiny. Simon is concerned that environmentalists and community activists are influencing the decisions made by property developers:

    The rational alternative to the heritage and other conservation policies is to remember that property rights are exactly that – rights. Just as one person has no right to place masking tape over the mouth of another just because they disagree with his or her views, non-owners have no right to expect the government to threaten force against the legitimate owner to stop him or her improving the property.

    What Simon seems to have forgotten is that the basis of the capitalist system is the balance between the rights of capitalists to make money and the rights of everyone else to enjoy such things as security, health, and a decent environment. The way this plays out varies from one country to another, but there is always an element of government regulation coupled with an awareness by large companies that they have to take heed of public opinion and give something back to the community. It’s fairly clear that in the case of Hunghom Peninsula, the developers backed away from their original plan because it was so widely criticized. Simon apparently feels that sets a bad precedent, whereas I view it as a welcome sign that large companies are taking note of public opinion. I wonder if he felt equally upset that the government bowed to public opinion and withdrew the Article 23 legislation?

    (more…)

  • At least it’s not run by a drunk

    This piece from Harry made me laugh:

    The British Council is better than most language schools. It’s run by the UK Foreign Office: all the other language schools I worked at were run by drunks. They could use this in pamphlets as their "unique selling point." It would be an improvement on “Creating Opportunity for People Worldwide,” which is the current slogan.

    THE BRITISH COUNCIL
    At least it’s not run by a drunk.

    I suppose Britain hasn’t really had a drunk as Foreign Secretary since George Brown nearly 40 years ago, so I guess this claim is quite valid.

    Harry is planning his return to Hong Kong to resume his old job of teaching English, though I can’t help feeling that travelling around South America creates more promising material for a blog.  However, teaching English presumably pays better (unless Harry is also smuggling drugs on the quiet).   

  • On second thoughts…

    Well, that was a surprise.  The two property developers involved in Hunghom Peninsula (Sun Hung Kai Properties and New World Development) have announced that they will be bowing to public pressure and upgrading rather than demolishing the apartments:

    The developers said they had abandoned their original plan because they did not want to foster discord in Hong Kong society. 

    It seems that SHKP (who have a good reputation in Hong Kong for the quality of their housing developments) realize that the bad publicity could be quite damaging to them.  This is unusual in Hong Kong, where companies usually take the cynical view that public pressure can be resisted and that most Hong Kong people will not be surprised or upset that a company is trying to maximise its profit.  Plus, of course, we don’t have that much choice – for example, if you want to buy a new apartment there aren’t that many developers to choose from, and if you want to shop in a supermarket there is even less choice.

    After last year’s government climb-down on Article 23, now we have a large company taking notice of public opinion.  Is this a trend?

  • Asia Blog Awards

    Phil is too busy, so Hong Kong’s most hyperactive blogger has temporarily taken over the Asia Blog Awards.  I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this, but honestly I’m not.  I’m not doing this in the expectation of winning any awards, and if I were then I would go about it in a different way.  It’s easy to see that other people are posting more regularly, are funnier or sharper or better informed or just do more crowd-pleasing stuff – and they are the ones who are are likely to win whatever prizes Simon has on offer. 

    Anyway, how exactly do you choose your favourite blog?  There are several that I enjoy, and others that I admire for one reason for another. 

    The other thing I don’t like about this is that it seems impossible to stop people "cheating".  Phil tried last year, but what can you do when someone claims that one whole building has a single IP address?  This year Simon is allowing people to vote once per day, which just seems plain weird to me.  As I can’t imagine that "ordinary" voters would be bothered to vote every day, it surely means that real votes will be swamped by a small minority who are probably using multiple IP addresses as well as voting at least once a day.

    If you can summon up the enthusiasm, there may still be time to nominate a blog.  Last time I checked there weren’t very many nominations for Hong Kong, and so far no-one has nominated their own blog. 

    This is not meant as criticism of Simon, who does more than anyone else to promote Asian blogs.  I just think this is the wrong way to go about it.

  • Excuses, excuses

    Sorry for any inconvenience, as they say when they don’t really mean it.  Too busy at work, and sitting in front of a computer in the evening writing more of this rubbish isn’t always the most attractive option.

    Odd goings on elsewhere.  HkMacs has been unavailable (to me, at least) for several weeks, apart from a couple of days when it briefly flickered into life and I could reads his posts plantively complaining about the lack of comments.  Then it was gone again.  Phil seems to have lost a month’s worth of posting when the company that hosts his site had a crash and then discovered that their most recent backup was five weeks earlier.  Oops.  There are some very unhappy customers out there – Phil was understandably not happy, but what about anyone who was running an e-commerce business?   

    The Gweilo Diaries has temporarily disappeared (or perhaps Conrad is lying low so that George Galloway doesn’t sue him), and after I added Hello, Kitty to my blogroll (oh how I hate that word) it seems to have been updated precisely once, more than a month ago.

    Elsewhere, I’m really not sure what’s going on in the Shaky-Mia-Platypus triangle, except that Shaky sent Mia a dodgy movie…of his fridge.  Er, right.   

  • Weaselwatch: Credit Cards

    I got a phone call the other day to remind me that I had forgotten to pay one of my credit card bills. That’s funny, I thought, I don’t normally use this card. It turned out that there was an admin charge of HK$60 for their “free” dental coverage. To this they have added HK$100 as a ‘late charge’, and nearly HK$700 in ‘finance charges’. Yes, that’s right, more than ten times the overdue amount!!

    I think it’s time to cancel this card.

    I have to admit that many years ago, when I was first issued with a credit card, it seemed like free money. I could spend up to my credit limit and only had to make a small monthly payment. No problem! I then discovered that if I used my card and made regular payments they would increase my credit limit – more free money! What’s not to like about that?

    Eventually, of course, I had to stop deluding myself and take a more sensible approach. Making the minimum payment each month means that you give a lot of money to the credit card company but never pay off the debt. Not such a good idea. So these days I pay off the full balance every month, and don’t pay any interest. Well, normally – if my “foolproof” system for filing away bills and paying them a day or two before the due date doesn’t descend into an untidy pile of paper. Which it normally does, but give me 10 minutes and I can normally dig out the statement on the due date. If I remember, of course.

    I think it’s fairly obvious that these companies make their money from these charges, and not from people who use their card and then pay the full balance by the due date. In fact, when you think about it, the whole credit card thing is subsidised by people who use their cards to borrow money (deliberately or accidentally). By and large, that means that the poor and the feckless are subsidising the richer and better organized. Which, I have to say, seems a fairly agreeable state of affairs – just as long as they cancel those nasty charges when I forget to make a payment. Which seems to be what they do (if you ask nicely), so at least the story has a happy ending.

    They’re still weasels, though.