Ordinary Gweilo

It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writiing (mainly) about Hong Kong

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  • Should I stay or should I go

    The SCMP sometimes manages to find interesting stories for the Sunday edition.  Not often, but it does happen.

    Today they report the strange tale of a man trapped in Hong Kong because he hasn’t paid his tax:

    Bill Heywood, a plumbing and piping contractor, was stopped at Hong Kong International Airport last September when he was leaving the city after a three-week holiday. He was told by immigration officials that he could not leave until he had settled his bill for HK$50,782.

    He has now been stuck in the city for a year, unable to pay the bill and yet unable to find a job and escape his plight.

    Heywood said he wanted to find work to pay for the debt, as he did not have enough cash left at the end of his holiday. “But the Immigration Department staff won’t give me a work permit. I have talked to them many times, and each time they said I couldn’t get one.”

    The IRD spokeswoman said “the issue of a work permit is not within the purview of IRD”.

    To obtain a visa, Heywood was told he must first have a job offer. The Immigration Department said a work permit may be issued to an expatriate applicant if he had no serious criminal record and a degree or otherwise good technical or professional qualifications. And there should be a genuine job vacancy and a confirmed offer for a job that could not be readily taken up by the local workforce.

    The best bit comes at the end of the story:

    “My friend has now offered me a job,” he said. “I wrote to the Immigration Department a couple of weeks ago for permission to work.”  The problem now is that Heywood’s visa has expired. He was last allowed to stay until April, but Heywood said he did not seek further extensions because he could not afford the fees.

    “I asked for a longer extension to sort things out, but they only gave me one month and they charge me HK$160 each time,” he said. “I don’t have HK$160 to pay each month.”

    While declining to comment on Heywood’s situation, the Immigration Department spokeswoman said people who had breached their conditions of stay, including overstayers, would be repatriated as soon as possible, or, if they were prosecuted for overstaying, after they had served their sentence.

    As usual with the SCMP, the story is not well-written.  The intro should say that he has finally found a job but is not allowed to take it and may be deported for over-staying. 

    Incidentally, whilst on the subject of Hong Kong’s finest English language daily, they appear to have quietly dropped ‘Education Post’, only a few months after re-designing it and moving it to Friday.

  • Tea and abalone

    Being English, my afternoon is not complete without cucumber sandwiches and a nice cup of tea.

    I was horrified, yes horrified, to discover that afternoon tea in the over-priced cafe at the Landmark includes a Sui Mei topped with abalone.  What's that all about, then?

  • The H1N1 panic continues

    Earlier in the year we had the spectacle of people being placed in quarantine for 7 days if they had been on the same plane as someone who had H1N1.  Then all primary schools were closed for the summer break several weeks early.

    Where I live we had a solemn announcement that there was a case in another tower of the estate, and the management were stepping up the clean and disinfecting of every known surface.  For a while, the security guards were all forced to wear masks, and (quite splendidly) they even insisted on the lifeguards in the outdoor pool wearing them.  Because you never can be too careful.

    Similar nonsense applied to the building where I work, with periodic emails coming around about cases in other offices.  Then we got a case in our actual office.  Can you imagine the panic this caused?  Visitors were warned not to come here, and if they were brave enough to ignore this advice they were instructed to wear masks.  HR have issued stern warnings that we must report any flu-like symptoms, and minions are despatched to clean everything that can be cleaned.

    Schools encourage students not to attend if they have those "flu-like symptoms", and then when enough of them heed this advice they close the place down for 7 days.  Since "flu-like symptoms" includes coughs and sore throats and other everyday ailments, this is over-reaction on a grand scale.

    And, yes, the government is still wasting its resources collecting health declaration forms at airports (and even at Lo Wu, apparently).  What do they hope to achieve? 

  • RSS – win one, lose one

    Well, well.  I see that Hemlock has fixed his RSS feed, a mere 3 or 4 years after it stopped working.  I’m afraid that I can’t be bothered going to a website to read a blog, so I have been missing his words of wisdom for quite some time.

    Fumier’s RSS feed disappeared some time ago, and I suppose this must be a policy decision (because he also deletes old postings after a month or so).  Still, the old fool usually sends me an email if he makes a reference to this blog, so I guess I’m not missing anything.    

  • No business like SCMP business

    What’s up with the SCMP business section today?  It only has 6 pages, several of which are share prices. 

  • Where’s Ronaldo gone? European football on Hong Kong TV

    Someone added a comment to my post about Cable TV’s HD service asking where Spanish football is available this season (on TV in Hong Kong, that is).  The answer seems to be that it isn’t, which seems odd given the amount of money Barcelona and Real Madrid have spent.

    So what is available?  Based on my brief research:

    • English Premier League – we all know that Now Sports have these rights
    • Champions League and Europa League (previously UEFA Cup) – Cable TV
    • Italian Serie A – Cable TV and Now Sports
    • German Bundesliga – Cable TV
    • Portugese League – Now Sports
    • Scottish Premier League –  Goal TV (TVB Pay Vision, also available on Now TV)
    • Dutch League –  Goal TV
    • English FA Cup – Probably still on Star Sports (Now Sports)
    • English Football League –  Goal TV

    Goal TV also has selected programs from various club channels (including Barcelona, so there’s some Spanish football for you).

    Updates and corrections are very welcome.

  • Progress

    I see that HSBC are going to stop sending paper statements (unless you are either old or willing to pay).  I subscribed to this service a year or so ago, and I have probably only downloaded a handful of statements since then. 

    Why?  Because it’s a complete nightmare to use, that’s why.  I have no idea why they couldn’t simply put the statements on the Internet Banking service for customers to view or download, but instead they came up with a bizarre system where they send you an email with a link, you click on it, enter a password, click on another link, and (if all goes well) you can view your statement.  Did I mention that you have to set up a different password to the one for Internet Banking?  Well, you do.

    In an all-Microsoft world, where you use Outlook and Internet Explorer, it’s possible that this all works seamlessly.  Possible, but unlikely, I feel.  However, if you are reckless enough to use other email clients and other browsers, then it certainly doesn’t work very well.  Windows pop up, curious messages appear, and no statement is available to download.

    I was rather looking forward to the squeals from anguish from Mrs Wong in Tuen Mun and Mr Chan in Fanling when they discovered hoops through they which they would have to jump in order to get the statement that used to arrive in the post.  But someone in HSBC has come to their senses, and in future they will indeed put downloadable statements on to their existing Internet Banking site.

    Better late than never (oh, and HSBC are still sending me paper statements for my bank account).

  • More sandwiches

    Gerald Ratner famously compared one of his company's gold earrings to a Marks & Spencer prawn sandwich, saying that it was cheaper "but the sandwich will probably last longer".  When the newspapers reported his attempt at humour, it became a big story and he ended up losing his job and it virtually bankrupted the company.

    Well, the Marks & Spencer prawn sandwich has finally come to Hong Kong – along with salads and wraps and a few desserts.  So far they're only in 4 selected stores, but presumably they'll roll it out to a few more if it's successful.  Prices are a bit lower than Pret a Manger (who have a similar range, but make all their sandwiches in each outlet rather than in a central food factory).

    I have one free piece of advice for M&S.  The "handwritten" labels look very lovely, but please get some large signs to go on the shelves so we can see clearly what is on offer.

  • HD – finally

    Well, better late than never, I suppose.

    Cable TV have finally launched a (very limited) High Definition service, and football seems to be the main reason behind it.  Although they lost the English Premier League rights to Now TV, they now have the Champions League to add to the Europa League (previously the UEFA Cup) and are making the best of this by setting up an HD channel.  Of course they also have the rights to the next World Cup, and that will now be available in HD, but presumably without the on-demand service that Now had for the European Championships last summer.

    The only other channel on offer seems to be ASN, a US sports channel that is also available (in HD) on Now TV.  No word on whether Discovery HD or National Geographic HD might be available at some stage.

    Presumably Cable TV have hopes of winning back the EPL rights – the new deal will be be effective from the start of next season, and bidding must be due to start soon – and having HD could help. 

    Interestingly, the EPL have apparently decided that it was a mistake to sell the Chinese rights exclusively to a pay-tv channel, and are re-thinking their approach for the next contract – but they probably feel that it isn't doing much harm in Hong Kong, so expect Now and Cable to be the main bidders, with the possibility that ESPN-Star Sports might join in as well.  Though I suppose they could insist that a highlights show would be available for terrestrial TV (as was the case many years ago, when TVB Pearl showed highlights from the previous week's games early on Saturday evening). 

    In the UK, ESPN has just started its new channel (set up after Setanta collapsed) showing EPL games and other football.  Rather than really competing with Sky, they are co-operating with them as much as they are allowed – Sky actually produce the coverage for them, as well as offering the new channel alongside their own package.  This is the type of 'competition' with which we are very familiar in Hong Kong.

    Of course Disney (owners of ESPN) and News International (owners of Star TV and part owners of Sky) already operate ESPN-Star Sports as a joint venture in Asia.   

  • Ashes to Ashes

    Andrew StraussWhen England won the Ashes 4 years ago it seemed like an amazing achievement after so many years of disappointment (OK then, humiliation), but doing it for the second time doesn’t seem quite so exciting.

    Maybe it’s because it has seemed like a contest between the teams ranked 4th and 5th in the world (which is how they stand after this series).  Of course, it’s always good to beat Australia at any sport, but don’t they normally put up a better fight than this?clip_image002

    Or is it because things could have turned out very differently.

    • Australia could easily have won the first test, and how might that have changed things?
    • England’s margin of victory in the Oval test match was rather flattering, and it was really decided by Australia’s batting collapse on Friday afternoon and their poor bowling in England’s second innings. 
    • What might have happened if the England selectors hadn’t taken the inspired (as it turned out) decision to replace Bopara with Trott.  And, yes there were some very dodgy umpiring decisions. 

    Or is it just that I have missed out on the live TV coverage and all the media hype in England?

    Gotta love the Google contextual advertising.  Ashes, you see.