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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  • Showing his true colours

    George Adams claims that his stupid website is in favour of press freedom and against censorship. Except, it seems, when China blocks access to some blogs (in case you missed the story, Typepad blogs such as this one are currently blocked in China):

    From QQ in Peking

    China’s on-line community breathed a sigh of relief today as the communist government announced that it would block access to blogs published using the TypePad and blogs.com systems until further notice.“This is in line with president Hu Jintao’s ‘people first’ policy,” said a Xinhua spokeswoman, noting that the excruciatingly boring output of bloggers was deterring people from using the Internet, and adding that she only ever looked at NTSCMP.

    Student Zhou Guo-an expressed her approval of the measure.“I love surfing the net to practice my English,” she said, “but I keep finding these terrible columns by really dull people, going on about their pets and their families, or cutting and pasting things I’ve already read in the newspapers and making childish comments about them. President Hu is a great man for protecting us from this tedious tide of trash,” adds Ms Zhou, who plans to become an advertising copywriter and has been reading NTSCMP since the 1990s.

    A visit to the Great Wall Cyber Café, revealed that some dire blogs are still getting through. Within 10 minutes QQ encountered a bizarre piece by Big White Guy, expressing shock that a spastics association would use the word ‘spastics’. “ When you try to close the window,” said Mr Deng, the dwarfish, chain-smoking proprietor, “you have to expect some flies to still get in.”

    Is it possible to be more idiotic than this? The other aspect of this is that George’s argument is that blogs are silly, pointless, things. True enough, of course, but most bloggers are honest enough to admit this rather than pretending that what they are doing is important and worthy, as George does with NTSCMP. However, there can be no argument that many blogs (particularly about and from China) contain informative and incisive commentary on what is happening in the PRC. Some of it is wrong and misguided, of course, but it is certainly constitiutes freedom of expression. Something that the government of the PRC and Mr George Adams obviously find unsettling.

  • Use it or lose it

    Another slightly puzzling story about Hong Kong business. And guess what – it involves a Li Ka Shing company!

    A long time ago, there was a mobile phone operator (whose name escapes me) offering services on the TDMA network. Eventually they sold the business to Hong Kong Telecom CSL, who rebranded it as 1+1 and then seemingly forgot about it. Even if you had been into a CSL shop in the last 2-3 years, you would probably still never have known this network existed.

    Around the same time, Hutchison Telecom had a CDMA network (with a funny name that I have also forgotten) that never really took off. Like CSL they acquired a PCS network and started offering dual-band phones (using the Orange brand name), and the CDMA network was left high and dry.

    Now the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (Ofta) is planning to revoke both these licences and re-advertise them. Hutchison and CSL (now owned by Telstra) are complaining:

    Hutchison Telecom senior legal counsel Oswald Kwok said Ofta needed to consider how its decision would impact on local and overseas investors. Hutchison said yesterday that its legal team was prepared to fight for the licence. Kwok said if Ofta unilaterally revoked an operating licence, the move would only scare off prospective investors, ultimately defeating the government’s aim of developing Hong Kong into the region’s mobile services hub.

    “I don’t think Ofta has given any consideration as to whether it has given investors a fair chance to break even on their investment,” Kwok said. Managing director Agnes Nardi said Hutchison’s CDMA network has cost the company about HK$1 billion.

    On Tuesday, CSL chief executive Hubert Ng said Ofta did not have the right to stop his company from using the 800 MHz frequency, the band on which both TDMA and CDMA operate.

    Hutchison has allowed subscriber numbers on its CDMA network to fall to about 40,000 (compared to 280,000 in 2000), and CSL’s TDMA network now has only 30,000 subscribers.

    Ofta, reasonably enough, thinks that it would make more sense to use this part of the radio spectrum for newer 3G services. So, rather than extend the licences when they expire next year it has announced that it plans to revoke them. Why are CSL and Hutchison upset? Presumably because this move may allow another operator into the market to compete with them.

    What they need to remember is that if they were still actively marketing these services and had more than a handful of subscribers the licences would almost certainly have been renewed (as will happen with the existing GSM & PCS licences). They brought this upon themselves, and no amount of incoherent babbling about this “setting a bad precedent” will make any difference. Typical of so many Hong Kong companies, I’m afraid.

  • Everyday Stranger

    I am amazed that some people manage to read so many blogs. No criticism of anyone else intended here, but I don’t spend my time at work reading blogs or updating this one (except for the very rare occasions when I post before I start work, and the odd comment or two here and there). When I get home, I don’t want to spend every evening in front of the computer, and obviously it takes time to write this rubbish.

    So, as a result, there are several blogs that I look at only very rarely, and one or two that I really should make more effort to read regularly. One is the astonishing Everyday Stranger. When I last read it, Helen was not having a good time, and in truth I found it a little uncomfortable to read about the breakup of her marriage and other problems. Now she is separated and has moved to London, where she has a ‘dream job’ and a boyfriend, and life is good.

    She writes very well, which certainly helps, but you can’t help feeling happy for her that things seem to be finally working out well. The only problem I have is that I am amazed that anyone should write so openly about their life, and as a result the cynic in me can’t get rid of the nagging doubt that perhaps it isn’t all true. Ignore me, though, and read this blog – it’s fascinating stuff.

  • The Gweilo whinge

    p6 of Spike – “Expat TV”: a list of made-up TV programs, having fun at the expense of local TV and whingeing gweilos.

    p8 of Spike – regular column by whingeing gweilo Liam Fitzpatrick.  Past subjects have included pollution, the state of the harbour shoreline, Chinese New Year, rudeness, queues, shotcrete and film censorship.  You get the idea.

    This week’s is a classic, though, being a wistful piece about the imminent closure of Bottoms Up, a long-established (i.e. rundown) girlie bar in TST that once featured in a Bond film. Fitzpatrick notes that business has not been good for several years, but seems surprised that this should lead to the bar’s closure.  Without a hint of irony, he notes that it is a perennial favourite for journalists looking to fill up column inches.  Er, yes.    

    The really odd thing is that he seems to be deadly serious.  He apparently believes that it is actually important that a tatty bar in Tsim Sha Tsui should be preserved for the benefit of the few remaining regulars, a scattering of tourists, and feature writers in search of a colour story.

    Talking of whingeing gweilos reminds me of someone I used to know who always had something to complain about.  He was (in true Hemlock style) the token gweilo in the Hong Kong office of a British-owned business, and everyday he had his lunch in the coffee shop of a nearby 5 star hotel.  The company provided him with a house in Hong Lok Yuen, a company car, etc, etc.  Not bad, you might think, but he complained that because the company provided the house he had missed the opportunity to buy property and benefit from rising prices!  Go figure.

    He also some weird ideas about the reluctance of Park n Shop to stock some products because they were “too popular”, and warned me at the start of a typical Cantonese ten-course banquet that we’d probably leave still feeling hungry and need to visit McDonalds afterwards.  I certainly didn’t.

    I have to admit that I have been in Bottoms Up once, several years ago when a manager came from the UK office and insisted on being taken out on the town, and even then it seemed seedy and rundown.  The next evening we went to another expat favourite that has since closed down, Harry Ramsden’s in Wan Chai.  I wonder if Liam Fitzpatrick wrote a eulogy for that? 

    Next week’s Expat TV:

    11.30 pm – midnight  Make Mine A Double

    A group of pissed hacks explain the cultural significance of Bottoms Up, the girlie bar in Tsim Sha Tsui that is about to close down, and argue that it is a more important part of Hong Kong’s heritage than the Stanley Police Station, Wedding Card Street or any of those boring old temples.  Hic!

  • Drinking water found on Mars

    After my recent mention of Dasani (bottled tap water with added bits, most of them not harmful to humans), this amused me.

  • ESPN, Cable TV and the English Premier League

    The Sunday Morning Post reported that Cable TV has won the exclusive rights to show the English Premier League (EPL) in Hong Kong for the next three years. On the face of it, this means (as the SMP pointed out) the end of the intelligent pre-match coverage on ESPN and the return of hysterical fast-talking presenters in brightly coloured jackets. Or does it?

    An open letter to Cable TV

    Dear Sirs,

    I have read that Cable TV has won the exclusive rights to the EPL for the next few years, but hope that you will bear in mind the wishes of all expat (and many local) football fans. The coverage provided by ESPN and Star Sports is now excellent, with intelligent pre-match and post-match discussions involving former players and managers, and highlights and discussion programs during the week.

    I assume that you paid so much for the rights in order to prevent your rivals such as Galaxy and Now Broadband TV from being able to show EPL games. I hope that you will not spoil this triumph by depriving Hong Kong viewers of the coverage from ESPN and Star Sports that rest of Asia will continue to be able to watch.

    Perhaps you can agree a deal with ESPN whereby you continue to have exclusive rights to their channels. If not, perhaps you can offer Cable TV viewers a different version of ESPN and Star Sports with full EPL coverage, whilst anyone watching the channels on other services would miss out. Obviously you would be able to offer your own EPL coverage in Cantonese so that viewers have a choice.

    In what is becoming a fiercely competitive market, Cable TV needs to have an edge, and exclusive EPL coverage give you that, but you will also be aware that viewers now have alternatives that may be significantly cheaper and so Cable TV also needs to offer a premium service. For most football fans, the EPL coverage from ESPN and Star Sports would constitute a very strong reason to subscribe. Its absence might constitute a compelling reason to cancel.

    Best Regards
    Ordinary Gweilo

    ++++++++++

    Update: Giles thinks this might be good news for rugby fans. In truth, it’s anyone’s guess what might happen to ESPN and Star Sports.

    The history is something like this. For a long time, Star Sports was available free of charge by satellite and covered the Five Nations/Six Nations, Formula One and other sports. When the EPL deal was signed, the channel was picked up by Cable TV and for a few months they had two different services (with EPL soccer on Cable, without on satellite) before they terminated the satellite version. ESPN had the rights to the Monday night EPL games (early Tuesday morning here) up until 1998 or thereabouts, and the channel was on Cable TV. Then when Cable TV won the exclusive rights, ESPN ceased to be available in Hong Kong, returning only when they won the EPL rights (in 2001?).

    One question is whether Cable TV will continue to carry ESPN and Star Sports, and another is what they will do in Hong Kong when they are showing EPL games in the rest of Asia. It may not be feasible to offer a totally different schedule just for Hong Kong, so you could find that the Six Nations matches still get shown with a delay! Or you might even find that Star Sports is only available through Galaxy or Now Broadband or not at all. Anything is possible!

  • From Bad to Good

    After seeing what a mess a large government organization can make of setting up a website, compare and contrast a simple blog: The Sassy Lawyer. The blog’s not bad, either!

  • Not a drop to drink

    Many years ago, when I first went on holiday to France, I was told by friends that the tap water wasn’t safe to drink.  When a Frenchman of my acquaintance heard that this was a common view amongst Brits, he was most upset and insisted that French tap water was just as safe as English tap water.  Which it is. 

    Hong Kong’s tap water is is also safe to drink, but only because after it is imported from China it is treated with chemicals.  Most people then filter and/or boil the water (to remove the chemicals).  We do both, as this picture shows.  The thing on the left is a ceramic filter, and at the other end is the pot in which we then boil the water.  In the middle are the jugs of chemically treated, filtered and boiled water fresh from the rivers of Guangdong.

    Given the state of many of China’s rivers, bottled water is understandably quite popular, but here most of it is distilled rather than natural spring water.

    One of the oddest products is Bonaqua (from the Coca-Cola company), which is described as ‘mineralized water’.  At first I assumed that this was just a strange piece of wording and that it was mineral water in the accepted sense, but actually it is distilled water with added minerals.  The picture of the mountain is obviously intended to make you think that it is clean and natural, and I guess I’m not the only one who was fooled.  Coca-Cola recently launched a similar product (Dasani) in the UK, but have had to withdraw it because there was a problem with some of the calcium they added.  It’s very popular in the US, and both Pepsi and Coca-Cola are, of course, keen to diversify away from their flagship products into healthier products such as water and juice (Pepsi own Tropicana, Coca-Cola own Minute Maid), snacks, etc.

    In Hong Kong, Watson’s Water decided that they had to compete with Bonaqua, but Watsons Water with Minerals doesn’t pretend to be something that it is not -they simply give you the choice between distilled water with or without minerals.  Incidentally, I have been told a few times that distilled water is not good for you, and a few years ago Watsons Water took out adverts in the SCMP and elsewhere to counter these claims.  If I recall correctly, they also argued that the minerals in most so-called mineral water were of no real value, a point they presumably ignored when launching their new product!  Personally, I always drink tap water if it is available, safe and palatable, or otherwise natural mineral water.

    Still on the subject of water, a few years ago, Perrier suffered a major setback when it was discovered that there was benzene in its product, which in turn led to the revelation that the bubbles were not totally natural but added as part of the production process (from gas that occurs naturally in the spring).  In some countries you will notice a very convoluted description of the product because they are not allowed to describe it as naturally sparkling.  Sales have never recovered from the PR disaster accompanying this problem. 

    Talking of product claims, I am always amused to see that in Thailand, Evian mineral water is described as coming from “thousand year-old hills”.  Modern hills presumably being better than ancient rock formations.  Meanwhile, one popular brand of purified water in Thailand is called Carlsberg, just to add to the confusion.  Which is enough about water for one day, I think.

  • Book your ads now

    Following on from my mention of advertising on blogs, here’s a piece from The Guardian Online Blog saying that some people get serious revenue from this source and can afford to hire staff!!

  • Don’t lose your passport in China!

    Ron has a very interesting post about the dangers of losing your passport in China. This time it wasn’t him that had the problem, but apparently something similar did happen to him a long time ago, so he was happy to help out.

    The SCMP has published a few horror stories about people who have lost both their passport and Hong Kong ID card in Shenzen and been stranded there for several days. It’s obviously not a good thing to have happen!