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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  • Euro 2004: Rosbifs 1 Frogs 2, Cable TV 1 Pirates 0

    Not such a good sporting weekend if you are English. Beating New Zealand in a rather meaningless cricket test match isn’t much consolation after a heavy defeat to the same nation at rugby and a very cruel end to the England vs. France game in Euro 2004.

    I didn’t stay up and watch the game live, but I can imagine how desperately disappointing it was for anyone who did. Two years ago, I felt very nervous watching England against Argentina, especially after England took the lead. On that occasion, England did hold on to win, but last night it all went wrong. The annoying thing is that it was really two bad mistakes that led to their downfall – a clumsy tackle for the free kick and a terrible back pass combined with a flapping goalkeeper for the penalty. Of course the free kick and the penalty were well taken by Zidane, but he should never have been given those opportunities to score.

    Losing to France is no disgrace, but to do so when a victory was there for the taking is so frustrating! The only consolation is that Croatia and Switzerland look so awful that it’s hard to see how England could fail to qualify from this group, but they definitely have to win at least one of their next two games, and something (else) is almost bound to go wrong!

    Thankfully, although Cable TV have their usual inane programmes, at least the English commentary is unaffected. For the England game they had probably the best football commentator in the UK, the excellent Martin Tyler. I am not sure who was babbling away on ATV World, but it just about summed it up when England scored and neither of their experts seemed to know that it was Frank Lampard who had got the goal.

    Meanwhile, Cable TV apparently managed to disable most of the illegal decoders by switching codes just before the opening game. According to Channel News Asia:

    Most of the unauthorised decoders were bought from the city’s infamous Apliu Street, which sells mainly electronic products — many of them pirated.

    Vendors had boasted they could hack the Cable TV signals by replacing the smart cards installed in decoders for 100 Hong Kong dollars (13 US dollars) whenever the broadcaster changed its signal code, according to the South China Morning Post.

    But a man, surnamed Chan, told Ming Pao, that he spent 800 dollars on a decoder from the market and still missed the game. On Sunday afternoon about 70 frustrated buyers of the decoders gathered at the market hoping to get a refund — but sellers were nowhere to be seen, the reports said.

    Presumably they will eventually be able to hack the new code, but it will take time. Meanwhile, viewers will miss out on Euro 2004 (or Euro 20-04 as they called it on Pearl’s English news over the weekend). As far as I can see (apart from the delayed transmission of England vs. France tonight) terrestrial coverage is restricted to a brief highlights show in the middle of the night on ATV Home.

  • Stupid instructions

    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 snow conditions [on a toboggan]

    DO NOT eat toner [on a laser-printer cartridge]

    CAUTION: knives are sharp [on a knife sharpener]

    DO NOT use for drying pets [on a microwave oven]

    CAUTION: remove infant before storing chair [on a pushchair]

    DO NOT open here [on the bottom of a cola bottle]

    DO NOT take if allergic to aspirin [on a box of aspirin]

    INSTRUCTIONS: put on food [on a ketchup bottle]

    OPEN bottle before drinking [on a bottle of rum]

    DO NOT wash [on a pair of socks bought in Egypt]

    DO NOT spray in your face [on spray paint can]

    NOT dishwasher safe [on a TV remote control]

    NOT to be used for drying hair [on a blowtorch]

    NO small children [on washing machine in a launderette]

    DO NOT use as an ice cream topping [on a bottle of hair dye]

    DO NOT attempt to swallow [on a mattress]

    DO NOT use under water [on a toaster]

    NOT to be used as a hedge-trimmer [on a push-along lawnmower]

    DO NOT put in mouth [on a box of fireworks]

    WARNING! This is not underwear! Do not attempt to put in pants [on the packaging for a wristwatch]

    DO NOT allow children to play in the dishwasher [on a dishwasher]

    WHY NOT not rent out a movie for a dull evening? [sign in a video shop]

     

    He’s written a whole book of these?  Good grief.

  • Where?

    A very puzzling letter arrives from HSBC. They want me to pick up my new credit card “four working from the date of this advice”. I’m not sure why their computer can’t add 4 working days to the date on the advice and calculate the date when the card should be available, but that’s not my complaint.

    My card has been sent to a branch of HSBC (in Kowloon) which is nowhere near where I live or work, and which I have never even visited. In fact, it’s not near anywhere I have ever lived, worked or banked. I’ve been living in the New Territories for about five years, and even when I did live in Kowloon it was nowhere near this branch! I could just about understand if they used the branch where I first applied for an HSBC credit card, or even the one where my bank account lives, but it’s neither of those (and not nearby either).

    Very puzzling. Easily fixed, but I just wonder what made their computer system that this might be a convenient arrangement. Or have I upset them in some way?

  • Here to stay

    Here’s a piece of brilliant timing. On Thursday I got a shiny new 3 year visa to stay in Hong Kong, and then the following day they granted me right of abode, and stuck another label in my passport (right next to the first one). My fault really – I should have applied a bit earlier, and then it would have all been sorted out before my existing visa ran out. What made me laugh was that having been given 1 or 2 year visas previously they should suddenly decide to give me 3 years when I didn’t need it.

    I have to say that my dealings with the Immigration Department have been fairly painless. When I first came to Hong Kong, British citizens were able to turn up at the airport and get a twelve month visa without any restrictions. Which was nice. When that concession ended, I managed to get an employment visa without too much trouble, though it did involve some tedious waits in Immigration Towers. I think the first time I turned up there in the afternoon, picked up a ticket and came back about an hour later, only to discover that there were still over one hundred people ahead of me waiting to be seen. I eventually decided that the best strategy was to arrive there when they opened at 8.30, and I managed to get tag number two or three and was out of there not long after 9.00.

    I can’t compare this with any other country, but I have heard bad things about the system in the UK. In fact, I once worked very close to one of the offices of the UK Immigration Service (or whatever it’s called), and I used to feel very sorry for the people queuing up (outside) first thing in the morning in the hope of being allowed to stay in the country. I also once had a temporary job in another government department that dealt with appeals from people who wanted to stay in the country, and it was clear from that experience that the civil servants in the Immigration & Nationality Directorate had a tough time. A friend of mine with an American wife had to go there to sort out the formalities so that she was allowed to stay, and I know he was dreading it.

    Back to Hong Kong, and these days most of the forms are on their website so that you can download them. However, not all of them. The form you need to apply for Right of Abode is viewable on the website but you cannot download it. I called them to check how to get the form, and after pressing a whole string of numbers before being able to speak to anyone I was greeted with a message saying that I was being held in a queue and might have to wait some time. A few seconds of silence and then I was through, and the guy was very helpful – he offered to send me the forms by post (which I accepted, of course). Needless to say, they ask you a hundred and one things and want evidence of every job and everywhere you have lived, but this was all done by post and I wasn’t asked to attend for an interview.

    One small frustration was that when I was applying to extend my stay they came up with two forms that needed to be signed, but which are not mentioned anywhere on their website and certainly aren’t available for download. The result was that I put in my application on the very day that my old visa expired, though thankfully this didn’t seem to cause any problems.

    Now (apart from going to pick up my new Identity Card) I think my dealings with the Immigration Department are at an end.

  • If all else fails, change the name

    After the idiotic decision to ban stripes on the back of shirts comes another piece of brilliance from the people who run football.

    Time was when everyone knew where they stood. There was a 1st Division, a 2nd Division, a 3rd Division and a 4th Division. Simple, easy to understand, no confusion.

    Then the top clubs broke away from the Football League to form the Premiership, so the 2nd Division became the 1st Division (and so on). Now (just 12 years later) the geniuses have decided to rename the 1st Division to be ‘The Championship’, and the 2nd Division will become League One. This means that the 4th Division as it was a dozen years is now League Two, but nothing else has changed apart from the name. Still, I’m sure all the clubs at the level now feel much better about their status.

    Apart from anything else, it makes historical comparisons very difficult. We do have the rather inelegant "top flight" to represent the old 1st Division and the current Premiership, but how will we refer to the 2nd Division/1st Division/The Championship?

    Madness.

  • Funny story

    A couple of funny things I’ve read on Hong Kong blogs recently.

    Shaky seems to be inhabiting the world of a Brian Rix farce. It’s the old story about someone who is sleeping somewhere unfamiliar and walks out of the front door rather than into the bathroom, preferably naked. Personally, I preferred it when it was Judy Loe in a hotel (in an ITV drama many years ago) but Shaky’s version is here

    The other one also involves Shaky. As mentioned here yesterday, he was making a comparison between the death of the Queen Mother and the death of Ronald Reagan. For some reason, this made Eshin think that she has died recently and he had missed it. To make it worse, he admits that was in the UK in 2002 when she passed away! As I mentioned yesterday, the British newspapers wrote about nothing else for nearly a week.

    Still, at least Eshin had the grace to admit he was wrong, unlike some people, and perhaps I should be embarassed to know so much about the British Royal Family. As Fumier remarked, who really cares?

    I will admit that it’s not always easy to remember whether some people are still alive or not (and I seem to recall a quiz on Radio One a few years back in which the contestants had to say whether a famous person was dead or alive).

    So, thinking about prominent British politicians of a few years ago, I wonder how many people know which ones are dead and which ones are still alive (or, as with the royal family, maybe no-one cares). For example, how may of the following are still alive?

    Jeremy Thorpe, Jim Callaghan, Edward Heath, Michael Foot and Denis Healey

    (more…)

  • Asialand Diaries

    Fumier has found another Hong Kong blog, Asialand diaries, which seems to be written by an American woman living in Hong Kong.

    She has a photograph of the ‘care label’ from a laptop bag, which has different instructions in French and English. You can see the photograph at Asialand diaries, but this is what the label looks like:

    frenchshirt2


    wash with warm water


     use mild soap


    dry flat


    do not use bleach


    do not dry in the dryer


    do not iron


    we are sorry that


    our president is an idiot


     we did not vote for him

    The company claim that it is about their (company) president, but you may think otherwise

  • High profits

    A rather badly-worded summary of a story from the BBC News website:

    Fiji police in record drugs haul

    Police find enough chemicals to make $500m worth of methamphetamines, in a lab outside the capital Suva.

    That should be quite a profitable sideline for them, then.

  • Marks & Sparks

    I have to admit that I have been following the events at Marks & Spencer with some interest. For many years M&S was hugely successful and very profitable, with an enviable reputation for good quality and reasonable prices. Then competition started getting tougher and profits fell, and the unthinkable happened – it became possible that the company could be taken over.

    Now we have something of a soap opera. Four years ago, Philip decided that he would like to add M&S to his collection of retail outlets, but he ended up dropping his offer and the company brought in Luc from Belgium to be the chairman, and Roger the management consultant to be the chief executive. Luc’s other new friends included George (who had built up one of M&S’s most formidable competitors before being forced out, and created a new brand for M&S about 3 years ago), and Vittorio (the big-money signing from Selfridges). Luc made a promising start, but then (rather like England in their game against Japan) he seemed to lose interest fairly quickly, whilst no-one was ever sure whether Roger was up to the job, and the deal with George seemed to be good for him but maybe not so good for M&S

    (more…)

  • Any excuse for a holiday

    Shaky is (I think) complaining that the reaction to the death of Ronald Reagan is out of proportion, especially the day’s holiday for most US civil servants this Friday. He points out that there was no holiday in the UK for the 60th anniversary of D-Day or for the Queen Mother’s funeral.

    True. There was a public holiday when Charles and Diana got married, but nothing when they got divorced, or for Diana’s funeral (which was on a Saturday).

    There was a public holiday for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee two years ago, but not for the Queen Mother’s funeral earlier that year. There was also a Public Holiday for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.

    Oddly, Hong Kong used to have a public holiday to celebrate the Queen’s birthday every year – even though it wasn’t a public holiday in the UK. Don’t anymore!

    As for the Queen Mum, I never understood what all the fuss was about. She had lived to a tremendous age, so her death was hardly a shock or surprise, her main achievement was marrying into the royal family, and she was mainly known for being old and for having a fondness for gin and tonic. Oh yes, and she owned a few race horses. Yet the newspapers in Britain wrote about nothing else for days afterwards, even though there was hardly anything to say. I am pleased to say that The Economist managed to limit itself to a single paragraph, which I thought was commendable (though possibly one paragraph more than they really needed).