Ordinary Gweilo

The English Schools Foundation (ESF) has chosen a new chief executive. His name is Mike Haynes and he is the chairman of the Parent-Teacher Association at West Island School (details here) and an ESF executive committee member, but other than that he appears to have no previous experience in the education sector.

The story is covered in today’s SCMP by education correspondent Katherine Forestier, who happens to be a member of the same PTA commitee (but neglects to mention this in the story). Inevitably the story has a quote from Nury Vittachi, chairman of the Parent-Teacher Association at Kennedy School (and one-time writer on the SCMP).

This all seems a bit puzzling. The most urgent priority is to implement the budget cuts, and specifically the pay adjustments for teachers. According to Jal Shroff, the ESF (acting?) chairman

The ESF was not necessarily looking for an educator and that there had been a “slant” towards someone with financial experience, as well as knowledge of Hong Kong.

The general assumption was that they would bring in an experienced outsider to sort things out. Instead of which they have appointed someone who is already part of the ESF Executive Committee (the body that ultimately determines who will get the job) and whose previous background is in the insurance industry!

I have never met Mr Haynes, and he might be the perfect man for the job, but if you want to persuade the teachers to accept a pay cut and inspire confidence amongst parents then surely you need someone who knows what they are talking about. The logic is presumably that his experience on the PTA and the Executive Committee give him that understanding, but if you wanted to appoint an insider wouldn’t it have made more sense to appoint a professional (for example, one of the ESF headmasters who applied). Or if you were looking for an outsider to come in and shake things up, find someone who is genuinely independent?

The latest news on the pay cuts is that the 10% reduction for new appointments and the 4.42% cut for exisiting staff when they next renew their (2 year) contracts will go-ahead, but the 3% cuts in each of the next two renewals have been put on hold (details in this PDF file). According to the SCMP, teachers are unlikely to agree to this new deal, and will continue to withdraw their goodwill.

Are there any ESF teachers reading this? I’d be interested to know what you think. If you don’t know anything about the ESF, start here and then look here.

One of the great unresolved mysteries about Hong Kong restaurants is why some of them think their customers want icy blasts of cold air with their food – even in the middle of winter. Today I had lunch in a dim sum restaurant that really excelled itself in this regard – one of my colleagues was wearing a fleece jacket with the hood up and still complained that she was cold. I wasn’t wearing a coat or jacket – because oustide it was mild and quite pleasant, but inside the restaurant was another matter. The only small consolation was that by sitting back in my chair I was out of the direct line of the aircon (though I couldn’t eat my lunch either, which rather defeated the object of going there).

Apart from the discomfort, you also end up with cold food. I used to go to a small restaurant which didn’t have the normal heated trolleys for dim sum, and you could almost guarantee that most of it would be stone cold by the time you were served. Even in restaurants that do have the trolleys (or ask you to order dim sum from a menu and then bring it to you), the pressure is on to finish the food quickly before it gets cold!

Why do they do it? I can only assume that the staff, who are rushing around serving people, like it to be cooler and don’t realize that the customers, who are sitting still, find it uncomfortable. Or do they want to dissuade you from staying too long?

Whatever the reason, it really is a ridiculous waste of money and energy.

When I lived in London, I spent a large part of my life never having to use an elevator. In fact when I was a child, one of our small amusements on a Saturday was going on the bus to a large new shopping centre and travelling up and down in the car park lifts. Sad, I know, but true.

My apartment in London was on the first floor and, although it did have a lift, it had been broken for many years (and who really needs one in a four-storey building?). Most of the offices where I worked there either didn’t have a lift, or there was no need to use it unless you were really lazy.

However, here in Hong Kong, almost everyone uses lifts several times a day, at home and at the office. Unfortunately, this brings with it many frustrations and much aggravation. Plus it gives me something to write about in my blog.

I’ve got used to people jabbing the lift button repeatedly in the strange belief that this will make the lift come more quickly; pushing in to the lift before people have a chance to leave. and pushing the ‘door close’ button rather than waiting for the doors to close. It can be quite amusing getting in to an occupied lift and not pressing the ‘door close’ button – someone will usually make clear their exasperation and press the button whilst looking at you as if you were an idiot.

Fumier has recently written about this, and is complaining about another thing people do.

People will press both the up and the down button and get in whichever lift comes first. They may therefore travel up 4 floors and then down 5 floors in order to go down one floor. The lift therefore makes twice as many stops, goes twice as slowly, and is full of people going in the wrong direction, thereby preventing people going in the right direction from getting in, and hence building up the backlog of passengers, and thus encouraging them to press both buttons and get in whichever lift comes first, and so on and so on.

Yes, that happens in my nearest large shopping centre. The reasoning is that the lift is often full, so it is quicker to get in whenever you have the opportunity and go down before you go up (this happens most often when there is only a single lift in a particular location).

Something else that annoys me is that everyone wants to select their floor the precise momeny they enteri the lift, rather than waiting to get inside or asking someone else to press for them. Then, of course, the doors start closing as people are still waiting to enter the lift (presumably they respond so quickly because otherwise the buttons need to be replaced very frequently).

Beyond this, we get to people who behave in a very selfish way. It seems quite rare for people to actually keep the doors open so that someone can get in to the lift, and some people actually push the ‘door close’ button when they see people coming to try to ensure that they are not kept waiting!

Fumier says that Game Theory explains the way individuals behave, by which I think he means that each person will do what is best for them rather than worrying about anyone else. Fair enough, but what baffles me is when security guards in buildings are instructed to do things that actually makes things worse overall.

One building where I worked had a security guard on duty from around 8.30 to 9.30 just to press the lift buttons and to hold the doors open so more people could get in. I was never convinced that this helped very much, and if they’d really wanted to do this efficiently they could have directly controlled the lift.

An even more puzzling example of this is in the industrial building where I now work. It has three passenger lifts, one for the odd-numbered floors, one for the even-numbered floors, and one for both. Like the Hopewell Centre, it has entrances at different levels. I normally enter through the main entrance on the upper ground floor, and the security guard stands there during the morning pressing both the ‘up’ and ‘down’ buttons on all three lifts. Yet I have never seen anyone get in the lift when it was going down, and if they did, it would be inefficient, as Furnier correctly points out. In spite of this, someone has specifically asked the security guards to stand there pressing the buttons. It’s madness, I tell you!