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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  • Piqued

    A story in today’s Standard about a more imaginative response to the ‘problem’ of falling numbers of school-age children:

    With a decline in enrolment, the Buddhist Bright Pearl Primary School in Sha Tin started small-class teaching in Primary One for the 2002-03 school year with financial support from the Hong Kong Buddhist Association. Class sizes were reduced from 32 to a maximum of 25 students. Teachers were instructed to adopt interactive teaching practices, including language games.

    After the first year, the average scores of its students in the English test of the Hong Kong Attainment Test (a standardised measure for primary school students) increased by 22.7 per cent.

    What really caught my attention was this phrase:

    A school survey revealed that parents were supportive as the initiative appeared to pique their children’s interest.

    Pique their interest? Pique is normally only used to mean that someone is upset, as in the phrase ‘a fit of pique’ (or to describe a type of fabric). Yes it can also mean ‘arouse’, as here, but only really when you have done something provocative or challenging. Without knowing the details, it is possible that this is what they mean, but what is wrong with using the simple words ‘arouse’ or ‘stimulate’ so that it is clear what is meant?

    It’s one of the things I find most frustrating about the way English is used in Hong Kong – simple straightforward English is replaced with over-complex (often flowery) prose that is difficult to understand. Often the words are technically correct, but frequently the language is so archaic or obscure that even native English speakers get confused, and unsurprisingly these words often get used wrongly – presumably because someone misunderstood the meaning when they were used “correctly”.

    In the UK, there has been a fairly successful ‘Plain English’ campaign, aimed mainly at companies who come up with highly confusing legal agreements, but also directed at bureaucrats who publish ‘explanations’ that leave you uncertain what you are being told. However, it is good common sense that if you want people to understand what you are telling them you should keep it clear and simple.

  • Desirable demographics

    Giles (see below) has two advertisements from Google below his post – one advertising BBC sport’s coverage of Arsenal and the other for cheap calling cards. I have read about advertising on blogs, but I think this is the first example I have seen. It’s hardly intrusive (the ads only appear if you click on the extended entry, not on the main page) but is it effective?

    I was thinking about the demographics of blogging, and I reckon advertisers should be going for the bloggers themselves, rather than their readers. At this rate, I reckon we can do a lot better than the South China Morning Post (which is currently claiming that 50% of its readers who earn more than HK$25,000 a month have platinum credit cards, or something else equally meaningless).

    Think about it: Conrad is a rich lawyer who can afford to jet off for short breaks to tropical islands, but I can neither confirm nor deny that Fumier is another rich lawyer (though he has admitted to driving a Mercedes), Ron owns a string of factories in China, the other Giles has a place at The Peak (with a carport, so I’m guessing it’s a house) and is buying an apartment in Kennedy Town for investment. Shaky just bought a Plasma TV, and Phil is a renowned actor on Hong Kong TV.

    Simon buys cheap Chinese DVD players and then takes the MTR to Ngau Tau Kok to get them repaired, so I guess we can count him out, and I don’t suppose freelance web designers earn all that much these days. But not bad, overall, I reckon. Book your advertising space now.

    On second thoughts, of course, who reads blogs most avidly? Yes, other bloggers. So let’s look forward to adverts for something a bit more aspirational than BBC Sport and a stupid calling card!

  • Local TV + International Football = ??

    Giles over at Misohoni mentions the coverage on ATV World of the Arsenal vs Celta Vigo game in the Champions League.

    It was a great win for Arsenal but what spoiled the match for me were the local Gweillio commentators who seemed to be a “poor man’s” Andy Gray and Alan Parry.

    I didn’t watch that game, but I caught a few minutes of the PSV v Feyenoord game on TVB Pearl last night. Their commentating team is Andrew Sams and Mark Grainger: Andrew Sams is an Australian who has no interest in football but does commentary on every sport imaginable for Pearl, and Mark is a Brit who knows his football (he used to play for the Hong Kong national team – but we won’t hold that against him) and he fills the “Andy Gray” role tolerably well. Andrew Sams tries hard, but is a very poor imitation of Martin Tyler and does little more than read out the names of the players.

    It is somewhat strange to see an hour and a half of primetime on a Sunday night given over to a game from what must be the 4th or 5th most interesting league in Europe, but the cynic in me assumes that it is very cheap TV and possibly attracts a larger Chinese audience than ‘Malcolm in the Middle’ and whatever else they would otherwise be showing.

    Welcome to the crazy world of English language TV in Hong Kong!

  • Email on the move

    Still on gadgets, yesterday I met my former boss, and we were talking about the Blackberry device which he was recently issued with (I think Simon also has one). He was last seen walking away from the MTR station where he was supposed to be going, engrossed in reading his latest emails on this toy. Frankly, it seemed like a horrible idea, and brought back bad memories of my previous job where I wasted a lot of time on emails – especially because he used to be my big boss and is still with that organization.

    He claims that it is a great help because he can scan his emails on his way to work and deal with the most important ones before he arrives at the office. It also works all over the world, which means that he is never out of touch with what is going on. I suppose that if you really are a slave to email, then it’s better to have the latest technology, but I can’t help thinking that something’s wrong if your life is so dominated by email.

    One boss who apparently managed without email is Bernie Ebbers of WorldCom, and according to The Economist (subscription required) he has therefore not left much evidence relating to the alleged fraud at the company.

    Back to the gadget angle, I see that the new XDA II mobile phone (sold by O2 in the UK, and 1010 in Hong Kong) will include Blackberry technology. I have to admit that I do like the look of that device, but if I were to buy a new phone/PDA it would probably be the latest Handspring Treo.

  • TV on the Internet

    It’s often interesting to look back at what was expected and compare that to what has actually happened. For example, the convergence of the Internet and traditional media has happened rather differently (and more slowly) than many expected a few years back. The Internet is not on TV, but TV is on the Internet (PCCW’s Now.com.hk and free services offered by the BBC and others; PC hardware is being used to replace the video recorder (TiVo & Sky+), and broadcast TV is being delivered to the home over the Internet (Now Broadband TV).

    This article is specifically about what is happening in the UK, which is ahead of Hong Kong in terms of having Sky+ (a digital video recorder that lets you record any of the channels on satellite TV to a hard disk) but slightly behind in that PCCW’s Now Broadband was available before BT’s Home Choice.

    Incidentally, Now Broadband TV did eventually write to me to say that their service is finally available where we live, but I am considerably less keen after seeing how much hardware they install and discovering that you can’t record the programmes. And I’m still waiting for the price of digital video recorders in Hong Kong to come down to something more reasonable.

  • Tom Offline

    The wheels seem to have come off the IP bandwagon (at least slightly), and anyone who bought shares in Tom Online would make a loss if they sold their shares immediately. The Financial Times connects this to what happened at Vanda, where the share price has fallen substantially since it became the proud owner of Hutchison Global Crossing.

    As ever, investors need to beware. Li Ka Shing is mainly interested in how he can make money for himself and his companies, and it isn’t his concern if people choose to buy shares in his companies in response to what he does.

    Incidentally, Tom Online was over-subscribed 100 times.

  • Beware of the lion

    From Mozambique (allegedly):

    MozLionWarning11.jpg

  • Made to Measure

    I have had a very frustrating day.  We ordered some tailor-made furniture a long time ago, and it finally arrived yesterday, followed today by the people who install it.  We imagined that this would take a couple of hours, but in fact they spent all day here and it still isn’t finished.

    Prior to coming to Hong Kong I wouldn’t have thought of going into a shop and ordering furniture to be made specifically for my apartment. There are companies in the UK who specialising in fitted kitchens, bedrooms or home offices (which I believe is quite expensive), and on a much smaller scale there are ‘handymen’ who can do jobs such as putting up shelves.  However, I’d say that most people in the UK buy furniture from companies such as IKEA or MFI that comes in standard sizes and which you often have to assemble yourselves.

    In Hong Kong, there are a large number of shops offering to make furniture to fit your apartment.  If you like something that is on display (or in the large number of books of designs they have available), they will discuss your requirements and then send a designer to measure the space in your apartment.  If you eventually agree to purchase the item, the design is faxed to a factory in China and the finished items are delivered a few weeks later, to be assembled and fitted in your home.

    As far as I can see, they are willing to do almost anything.  Obviously the size of Hong Kong apartments makes it important to make the best use of the space you do have available, and a well-designed piece of furniture can make a big difference. 

    The first such item we had was a shoe rack that fitted very neatly into a small space in our small apartment.  As I remember, the man was only around for a few minutes to slot it into place and then he was gone.  Now we have a larger apartment, and prior to this week we have had a bookcase, a shoe cupboard and a TV and video stand installed.  All have been as we requested and none of them have fallen apart yet!

    This week’s job is slightly more ambitious, including a proper home for my computer, but unfortunately a few things went wrong somewhere along the way.  One of the parts was just too big to get into the room, and has had to be taken away to be broken into smaller pieces, and other components didn’t fit together as they were intended.  Plus my desk didn’t have the promised slot for all the cables.  I suppose it will all be OK in the end, but I wasn’t very happy this morning!

    This is one of the many benefits that we derive from having China on our doorstep.  If the furniture was made in Hong Kong I’m sure it would be a great deal more expensive!

    IKEA still seem to do good business, though I guess a lot of people pay the extra 10% to have the items delivered and installed (a service that isn’t available in the UK as far as I am aware).  Their flagship store in Sha Tin is virtually surrounded by other small furniture shops, which initially surprised me because I thought that IKEA would blow them away.  Presumably the reverse is true – people may be attracted to IKEA but if they can’t find exactly what they want then they can go to one of the other shops and get it made, probably for a similar price.  Or perhaps they visit one of the other stores first and never get to IKEA.  Anyway, both seem to be thriving

  • The Li family do it again

    Another slightly puzzling story from the somewhat unusual world of Hong Kong public companies. After the recent shuffling of assets by Hutchison Whampoa, another member of the family is following suit according to The Standard.

    It seems that PCCW will revert to being a fixed-line telecom and Internet company, and that Richard Li will end up with the property assets. To paraphrase what the Standard has to say:

    That would leave the original Hong Kong Telecom business largely where it was before Li took it over and renamed it as PCCW in 2000 – an ailing fixed-line telecommunications company with nowhere to expand to.

    It’s not that long ago that PCCW was rumoured to be about to take over Cable & Wireless, but now it looks more likely to be a takeover target itself. Are Singapore Telecom still interested?

    As far as the property deal is concerned, it seems that the government won’t stop it:

    It is understood the government would allow any transfer of Cyberport as long as Richard Li holds at least 35 per cent in the project. The total cost of developing the 24-hectare project was estimated at HK$15.8 billion and PCCW said it had funded HK$4.5 billion so far.

    I suppose that having given Richard Li the opportunity to develop an important high-tech hub for Hong Kong, it would be risky to trust this important job to someone less qualified…

    Funny isn’t it, how the timing of these deals work out. It reminds me of the deals whereby Harvey Nichols ended up being owned privately by Dickson Poon rather than by his public company Dickson Concepts (which is however going to open a Harvey Nichols store in Hong Kong).

  • NTSCMP update

    From the moribund and moronic NTSCMP forum, we hear from someone who believes what they read on IceRed:

    Steve  posted 2/29/04 6:13 AM    
    ——————————————————————————–
    On one of the forum some one boasts of drugging and raping women. Would that not require the ICERED site to inform the police and supply an ISP    ?

    Supply an ISP? What does that mean? Oh, IP address…

    IceRed was the forum where NTSCMP’s “founding editor” tried to promote his blog and made a total fool of himself. Mysteriously, all the links from NTSCMP disappeared very quickly. IceRed is probably even sadder than NTSCMP, with about as much credibility.

    Meanwhile, the wannabe bloggers from NTSCMP are now offering to host blogs for 3 months:

    SERIOUS OFFER. LIKE TO HAVE YOUR OWN INDEPENDENT BLOG HOSTED ON NTSCMP? WE WILL POST, MAINTAIN, ILLUSTRATE AND LAY IT OUT FOR YOU FREE FOR THREE MONTHS. REALLY. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS SEND THE COPY. WE WILL DO THE REST

    I cannot begin to imagine why anyone would want to have their blog hosted by a website that thinks that all blogs are boring, still less to have it laid out by people who are obviously colour-blind. Very puzzling. Really.

    The latest hilarious photo joke is based on the highly original idea that Henry Tang resembles a horse. Biting satire, eh?

    Incidentally, you’ve got to love a site that is “dedicated to press freedom” but which prints a disclaimer and copyright notice like this:

    DISCLAIMER: Dedicated to press freedom and free expression. Right of reply and correction guaranteed. Published in the public interest in New York, NY, USA. Dr George Adams, the founding editor, is not to be identified as author, editor, publisher or distributor of all or part of this publication. He is not the owner or controller or editor of the web site. © 1995-2004 NTSCMP.

    I’d be fascinated to know who is the owner/controller/editor of this site if it isn’t George Adams, and why, if someone else is in charge, George felt the need to warn his dozens of readers when he went off on holiday to Switzerland.

    It’s a blog, George. Just admit it and you’ll feel much better.