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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  • Old names, new names

    As a rule, I try to avoid mentioning so-called news stories that are actually just press releases, but this one struck a bit of a chord with me. I suppose it’s fairly obvious that names go in and out of fashion, but when a friend of mine pointed out several years ago that you could probably guess someone’s age from their name I was quite impressed with this insight. But then, as we know, I am quite a shallow person.

    Now it seems that there is company trying to make some money out of this concept. The Guardian and The Scotsman both seem to have had a slow news day and decided that this press release was worth printing. Virtually unaltered, by the look of it, though two journalists have put their names to the stories!!

    The Monica system is used to identify consumers. It takes five-year age bands and calculates the chances of the person’s age being in each band. Unless an organisation specifically collects information on customers’ ages, it is very difficult to target people according to age.

    Some names have spells of popularity and decline, according to the research. The name Tracey was relatively rare 50 years ago, but it began to appear about 45 years ago and remained popular for 15 years. Similarly, Daren appeared in 1964 and remained popular as Darren for a decade.

    Needless to say, these “rules” don’t apply in Hong Kong. In fact, it is quite common to come across people here with first names that it’s hard to believe that anyone under 70 would have in the UK. For example, my grandmother’s first name seems to be very popular here, for some reason, but it certainly doesn’t feature in the top 100 names from the UK (or the top 300, either, I’d bet).

    Out of interest, in the UK one hundred years ago, the top 5 names for baby girls were:

    Mary
    Florence
    Doris
    Edith
    Dorothy

    I’d say that Mary is a classic name that doesn’t sound particularly dated, but the other four certainly sound quite old-fashioned. That doesn’t stop them from being adopted by Hong Kong people, but that must be better than the outbreak of Ellies, Chloes, Sophies and Megans that you will currently find in the UK, or the totally eccentric first names (such as “York”, to take a topical example) that some people here choose. There’s nothing wrong with good old-fashioned names.

  • Running to keep up

    If you’re looking for comedy on the two local English language TV channels, you have to be fairly resourceful. With Friends having ended, I believe the only comedy show in prime time is “Living for Lydia”, which is produced in Singapore and stars Hong Kong’s very own Lydia Shum (“Fei Fei”). I’m sure it’s rib-ticklingly funny, but most unfortunately I always seem to miss it when it’s on.

    The other highlights include the unfunny “Becker” in the middle of the night, and “Pingu” and “Mr Bean” – if you’re six years old.

    Fortunately there is an alternative. Hilariously bad government propoganda films (APIs) and woeful trailers for upcoming shows.

    I’ve mentioned APIs before, but a TVB trailer caught my eye last night. It shows a guy running through the streets of Hong Kong with what turns out to be a video tape. Apparently each episode of the 2nd series of “The Apprentice” is despatched by surface mail to Hong Kong and then TVB send a guy down to Clearwater Bay Post Office (open every Tuesday afternoon from 2-5.30 pm) to bring it back to their studios. He runs, though, just to make sure we get it as soon as possible.

    This way they are able to show us “The Apprentice” a mere 7 weeks after it has been shown in the States, discussed endlessly on the Internet and downloaded thousands of times through Kaaza and BitTorrent.

    The trail informs us that TVB are doing all of this so we can be the first to watch it in Hong Kong. How kind. I hesitate to point out that anyone who really wanted to watch it earlier could do so if they had a fast Internet connection, and (more to the point) I believe that ATV manage to show “Survivor” in the same week that it is transmitted in the States, and David Letterman less than 24 hours after it is first broadcast. Their guy must run really, really, fast.

  • Helping the economy

    Simon recently highlighted an interesting report about Domestic Helpers in the Standard, trying to calculate their value to the local economy.

    The Asian Migrant Centre have attempted to calculate the economic benefits to Hong Kong of having a large number of foreign domestic helpers. They have arrived at a figure of HK$13bn (which sounds a lot until you realize that it is about 1 per cent of GNP):

    Each worker is believed to spend about HK$800 a month in the local economy, the AMC calculates, which generates more than HK$2.3 billion in direct consumption annually. Thirty-six per cent of workers take care of children. This saves employers more than HK$2.1 billion yearly in private preschool fees, which are often more than HK$7,000 a month, the AMC estimates. Ten per cent look after the elderly, sparing families more than HK$2.5 billion a year in nursing home costs.

    I think they’re using the wrong argument here. The real economic impact is that it allows more Hong Kong people to work, rather than looking after children or the elderly. In families with helpers, children still go to kindergarterns, so parents haven’t saved money at all. To be fair, the AMC do also argue that employing helpers (on low salaries) enables people to work, but of course it’s almost impossible to put a value on that, so they don’t attempt it. However, the economic advantages to Hong Kong must be quite substantial (though there is a certain irony in the fact that many helpers are very well-educated and could actually do those same jobs themselves if they were allowed to do so).

    Anyone who reads the letter column in the SCMP will be well aware of the counter-argument that is usually put forward. Slightly surprisingly, this is echoed in the report:

    Hong Kong’s policy of a minimum wage is magnanimous compared to rights offered by other Asian countries, says Kitman Cheung, managing director of the Overseas Employment Centre. He says the the Indonesian government is hoping for even lower [maids’] salaries in Hong Kong so that more people will be motivated to employ workers from there.

    It is quite odd that Hong Kong has a minimum wage for foreign domestic helpers, but for no other group of workers. Cynics suggest that this is done not to protect Filipinas, Indonesians, et al, but to discourage Hong Kong people from hiring helpers. In fact, the minimum wage is quite widely flouted, especially for Indonesian helpers, and it is obviously difficult to enforce (and probably not given a very high priority). In an ideal world, workers would be free to come to Hong Kong and negotiate a contract with their employer, but I suppose that the current arrangements are a reasonable compromise.

    I am convinced that it almost invariably benefits a richer country to allow people from poorer countries to take jobs that the local population have shunned. There is, of course, a long history of this – for example, 40-50 years ago the British government actively recruited people from the colonies in the Caribbean to work in the Health Service and on public transport.

    The “guest workers” (or whatever you call them) will enjoy (or can provide their families with) a higher standard of living than if they had stayed in their home country. In many cases, the economy of the home country also benefits from the money that is sent back to relatives – certainly this is the case for most of the Filipina Domestic Helpers working in Hong Kong. Pretty much a win-win situation, because they also make a significant contribution to the local economy (both directly and indirectly).

    Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, the “guest workers” are often treated quite badly. The case of the Chinese cockle-pickers is perhaps an extreme example, but it does demonstrate the level of desperation amongst the workers and the degree to which they exploited by their employers. I guess it’s too idealistic to hope that everyone who enjoys a better standard of living or quality of life as a result of these “guest workers” would be grateful rather than resentful, but at least we ought to treat them fairly.

    Hong Kong really couldn’t operate as it does today without the help of long-suffering domestic helpers. Putting a monetary value on that is next to impossible, but the basic point is surely beyond dispute.

  • Spam

    I’ve recently received a lot of very helpful emails.

    I have lost count of the number of emails I have received telling me that my SunTrust account is suspended. I don’t even know what a SunTrust account is!

    Dear SunTrust client,

    We recently reviewed your account, and suspect that your Suntrust account may have been accessed by an unauthorized third party.Protecting the security of your account and of the SunTrust network is out primary concern. Therefore, as a preventative measure, we have temporarily suspended your SunTrust account.

    In order to regain access to your account please click the link below:

    [link deleted]

    You will be asked for some sensitive account information to establish account ownership and avoid Credit Card Fraud.

    For more information about how to protect your account, please visit Suntrust Security Center.

    Sincerely,The SunTrust Security Department Team.

    Then there’s the email telling me that there might be a problem with my eBay account. Amazing as it may seem, I don’t have an eBay account:

    Subject: TKO NOTICE: eBay Registration Suspension – FIELDS LEFT BLANK

    Dear valued customer,

    Our records indicate that you haven’t submited the correct information to update your account. Please re-update your account. You HAVE to fill all the tabs in the form.

    Do not respond to this email, as your reply will not be received. If you would like to update your eBay account please use this link: [link deleted]

    Thank you for your patience in this matter.

    Regards, Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
    eBay Inc

    Thanks a lot, guys.

  • Mr Dumb or Mr Haughty?

    I watched part of the first Presidential debate on Friday morning. No surprises, really – Kerry is the better debater, whereas Bush has that folksy thing that you either love or hate. I doubt that it changed anyone’s mind about Bush, whereas Kerry probably convinced a few undecided voters that he would make a decent President. Initial polls suggest that he may now have closed the gap on Bush, but there is apparently a long history of the candidate who ‘wins’ the first debate going on to lose the election

    Don’t worry, I’m not about to start pontificating about the election. Well, not really, but I do find the contrast between the two main candidates quite intriguing.

    Maybe George Bush really is dumb. Maybe John Kerry can’t make his mind up. Perhaps Bush has the “vision thing” whereas Kerry doesn’t. Perhaps Kerry is a good (but dull) public speaker whilst Bush is much better (as long as he remembers his lines).

    However, these characterisations strike me as being the product of lazy journalism (probably influenced by spin doctors). Of course it’s easy to portray Kerry as someone who can’t make his mind up, but the reality is that these are complex issues and his biggest problem is that he thinks out loud and then fails to communicate his conclusions in a simple, easy-to-understand way. Equally, although it’s easy to characterize Bush as an idiot, you can’t deny that he has achieved a great deal (whether you approve or not).

    In truth, I’m not sure I care whether politicians are intellectuals. In fact, many of the most successful politicians of recent years haven’t really been intellectuals. It’s not hard to see why Tony Blair is Prime Minister rather than Gordon Brown, and equally easy to see why Michael Foot lost the 1983 election by such a wide margin. Yet Foot and Brown are obviously intellectuals, whereas Thatcher and Blair have different strengths. Blair, like Alec Douglas-Home, is said to be fairly hopeless at economics, and Thatcher had other people to do her thinking for her.

    And I haven’t even mentioned Ronnie Reagan.

    (more…)

  • Minor Gaffe

    I have to confess that my Cantonese is still not good enough to really understand the news on TV. Worse than that, my simultaneous translation service is sometimes quite unreliable.

    So I sometimes find myself trying to imagine what might be happening. I recently watched the story about the old blokes who were organizing cricket races and that had me fairly puzzled until right at the end. Then I rememberered that Hong Kong people will bet on anything and it started to make sense.

    Tonight, the main story on the news was about DBS bank, which seems to have some rather unhappy customers. I was trying to guess what might have happened from the pictures, and my theory was that someone had set up a fake branch of the bank and people had been fooled into depositing money. It was a good theory, I thought (well, it happens on the Internet, right), but I did start to have my doubts when I saw that the people being pursued by the press were a bunch of well-fed Singaporeans getting into their expensive cars, rather than dodgy-looking Triads with newspapers over their faces. Turns out I was wrong.

    Phil has already mentioned the real story, which is reported here. Do Singaporeans do irony? I’m not sure they do, so I think I’m going to assume that they are trying to be supportive of their fellow countrymen:

    SINGAPORE : Southeast Asia’s biggest bank DBS has admitted to a minor gaffe, saying it accidently destroyed 83 of its customers’ safe deposit boxes. The boxes in one of the bank’s Hong Kong branches had apparently been selected for scrapping by mistake while the branch was undergoing renovation.

    But DBS stresses that the gaffe is an entirely isolated incident and does not affect the bank’s services in Singapore or elsewhere.

    So that’s alright, then. However, this so-called “minor gaffe” seemed to fill the first seven minutes of the news on Cable TV. Which I must say I thought was a bit excessive, but I can see why people are upset, however much Channel News Asia might try to play it down.

  • Another waste of time!

    The BBC’s virtual reality coverage of Premiership goals is a great way of wasting some time.

    As well as seeing the goals from all the normal camera angles, you pick any player and either see the goal from their view or observe them from close up.

    Very clever stuff.

  • How things work – tax

    I have to confess that I have never taken the trouble to really understand the intricacies of the tax system, either here or in the UK. I understand the basics, and if things ever get complex then I employ an accountant to offer advice and fight things out with the authorities. It so happens that I currently have one relatively complex issue that needs to be resolved (preferably in my favour)

    Unfortunately I appear to have found an extremely lazy accountant. His advice is that it would be best to simply pay the tax and forget about it. If we try to reduce my tax liability, the Inland Revenue might follow it up and start asking questions and demanding to see paperwork.

    Well. er, that’s rather why I sought the help of an accountant. If it was straightforward I’d do it myself.

    Fumier thinks he has the answer – keep quiet and wait for the Inland Revenue to issue an assessment for a tiny fraction of your real income. Then pay it without complaining.

  • Googling

    One of the complaints about blogs is that they tend to subvert the Google search algorithm. These days if you do a search you are very likely to find something from a blog, simply because of the number of links that are floating around.  Harry discovered that he came up 29th if you type British National Party in Google.  Shaky mentioned this, including gratuitous links to the British National Party (that’s the British National Party) and now he is 3rd!

    Amusingly, the 5th site listed is for the Conservative Party, where they seem to have the words ‘British’ and ‘Party’ on the front page, and the word ‘National’ in links pointing to their site.  How could anyone confuse an unpleasant right-wing party that wants to reduce immigration with the BNP, I wonder?

  • Mid-Autumn festival

    Tonight is Mid-Autumn Festival. As an antidote to the curmudgeonly Fumier, I feel I must point out that it is actually a happy time of year, especially for children.

    Where we live there is a fair amount of open space, and at Mid-Autumn festival hundreds of children gather here (with their parents and/or helpers) to celebrate. I have to say that the first time I saw this I was amazed by the number of children and the fact that they all have their lanterns and those light stick thingies. The noise is also quite something – not because people are shouting, but just because there are so many of them talking at the same time.

    I can’t think of any equivalent in the UK. I suppose that Guy Fawkes Day might be a bit similar, but these days people are very concerned about the safety aspects, and either go to large-scale organized demonstrations or don’t bother at all.

    Enjoy your Mid-Autumn festival, and don’t eat too many mooncakes!