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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  • Saving the environment, driving you crazy

    HSBC are now promoting their electronic statement service to replace the paper version sent through the mail.  Good idea, poor execution.


    Why does it have to be so difficult?  They send you an email, with a link to a webpage.  You then have to sign in using a different password to the one you have for Internet banking, and it opens a pop-up window to display a link to the statement (if your browser will let it – and in Firefox it appears as gibberish).  Only then you can download a pdf file to your computer.


    This is all very puzzling.  Why can’t I simply have my statement(s) available for download when I sign on to Internet banking? 


    American Express have a similar service, and it is only slightly less frustrating.  They send you an email, but if you click on the link it doesn’t work because you aren’t signed on.  Then you sign on with your password, but there is no option to download the statement!  You have to select the option to display the statement and then click on the Acrobat logo, and then select the latest statement from the list.  Frustrating, but at least there’s only one website and one userid and password.


    Here’s the thing I don’t get.  Why not have all your transactions for a year available on Internet Banking?  Why do they delete old transactions from this service?  Why don’t they provide a method to download this information to Excel or MS Money or Quicken (or anything similar).  Wouldn’t that be the simplest solution?  Sending an email to get a link to a pdf file that is no more than an electronic copy of a paper statement seems a very complicated way of doing it.

  • Closed book

    Sun Gai Gweilo was complaining recently about the price (and availability) of English language books in Hong Kong.  And, yes, I am sure I will be criticized for writing this, but English is an official language of Hong Kong, so you might hope that books would be readily available at a reasonable price.  And they’re not.


    In Hong Kong, it’s standard practice for bookshops to convert US Dollar prices to HK Dollars 10:1 (rather than than the actual exchange rate of 7.8), and a similar mark-up applies to British prices – though the fluctuating exchange rate makes this more difficult to track. 


    The thing is that even if they used a fair exchange rate, you’d still be paying more (for most titles) than anyone would actually pay in the UK – discounts of 30-40% are widely available in the UK, particularly on new titles and from online booksellers. 


    The answer ought to be online, but once again we seem to be poorly served in Hong Kong.  You can order from Amazon, but delivery charges are quite steep.  However, their service is excellent, and books arrive a few days after ordering.  Paddyfield only charge a modest amount for delivery, and use the real exchange rate, but delivery on many titles takes up to 4 weeks, and they don’t offer the range of titles or the discounts that you can get from Amazon.


    The explanation is simple enough – lack of demand and lack of competition.  If you go to other major cities in Asia, such as KL, Bangkok and Singapore, you will find a better choice of English books at more competitive prices than in Hong Kong.

  • Coronary spaghetti

    Spotted this dish on a menu in a “western-style” Hong Kong restaurant.  It turns out to be Spaghetti Carbonara, so the name is rather appropriate what will all that cream and egg and bacon in the dish.

  • Reach for the mosquito fish

    One of the things I love about The Economist is reading stories that tell me things I didn’t know, and which I didn’t know I didn’t know.  I had never considered that the collapse of the housing market in the USA might increase the spread of the West Nile virus, but apparently it does, as the Economist reports (Meet the new neighbours):

    THE empty house, in a middle-class corner of southern California, is two storeys high and boasts a three-car garage. Roses bloom around a kidney-shaped swimming pool, which is green with algae. Bill Bobbitt, a county inspector, dips a ladle into the water and brings up half a dozen wriggling larvae. Mosquitoes, and the West Nile virus that some of them carry, are thriving in California’s plunging property market.

    West Nile virus arrived in America in 1999 and made it to California three years later. Since then it is known to have infected 2,300 people in the state, of whom 76 have died. In Orange County this is the worst summer yet. By this point last year officials there had discovered nine birds that had been killed by West Nile virus and not one infected mosquito. So far this year they have found 219 infected birds and 75 infected mosquitoes.

    Some of this rise is due to better testing and co-operation with the animal services department, which receives most reports of dying birds. But a much bigger cause is the housing crunch. Fully 63,000 homes were foreclosed in California between April and June, according to DataQuick, a property data services outfit. In the past year the number of Orange County homeowners who have defaulted on their mortgages has more than doubled. Empty houses mean untended pools. Untended pools quickly breed mosquitoes.

    Dead birds are also piling up in neighbouring counties like Los Angeles, San Diego and San Bernardino, which also have high foreclosure rates. Last week 170 infected mosquitoes were discovered in the state as a whole—the highest tally ever. So far this year 13 human infections have been reported in California, but the numbers are expected to grow rapidly as the summer moves on. John Rusmisel, president-elect of the board responsible for killing the critters, says a peak in infected mosquitoes is generally followed, two or three weeks later, by a peak in human cases.

    In theory, owners are supposed to keep their properties in decent shape whether they live there or not. California has even passed a bill fining banks and mortgage companies that seize properties and then allow pools to fester. But Mr Bobbitt isn’t waiting for the lawyers. He has treated the pool in Santa Ana with oil and synthetic growth hormones, which will keep the mosquitoes adolescent, preventing breeding. Then he tips in a few dozen mosquito fish (Gambusia affinis), which begin happily munching larvae. You can buy a lot of the fish for what a lawyer charges per hour, and some authorities, with commendable creativity, even provide them free to help control the pests.

    And again, I never realized that there were such a thing as a mosquito fish, but they seem to be a very practical solution.

  • In praise of…the BBC 5

    In the beginning there was BBC Prime, and the people paid their subscription but found that it was not good.  Then it became BBC Entertainment, and the people wondered where Top Gear had gone and why they were still showing such very old sitcoms. 


    Then the “BBC 5” was launched, and now we have Top Gear available all day every day (or so it seems), and plenty more besides.  The five channels are BBC World News, BBC Entertainment, CBeebies (kids) plus two factual channels – BBC Knowledge and BBC Lifestyle. 

    BBC Lifestyle is a unique destination offering inspiration for home, family and life. It is the ultimate viewer’s guide to getting more out of life. Serving up six programming strands covering food, fashion and beauty, home and design, parenting, personal development and health, BBC Lifestyle offers a truly international “window on the world”.


    BBC Knowledge showcases the best of the BBC’s award-winning factual and documentary programming. Explore and experience the world like you’ve never seen it before, with in-depth storytelling and state-of-the-art production. Available now in Asia, this is the channel where facts from the past, present and future come together to broaden viewer’s horizons.

    According to their website, the BBC Knowledge programming strands are The World (that means Michael Palin), Science & Technology (that’ll be Top Gear, then), People, The Past, and Business. 

    Well, up to a point.  Business-based shows such as The Apprentice and Dragons Den are on BBC Knowledge (as you might expect), but similar shows about running a hotel (the Hotel Inspector), a restaurant (Ramseys Kitchen Nightmares), or a shop (Mary, Queen of Shops) are on BBC Lifestyle.  Interestingly, none of those three programmes are shown on BBC channels in the UK, and it’s noticeable that they don’t make any claim about BBC programming.

    BBC Entertainment is mainly BBC shows, but there are other shows that are on ITV (such as Footballers Wives and the upcoming Moving Wallpaper/Echo Beach).  And far too many old sitcoms for my liking, if we are going to complain.

    However, the point was not to complain but to praise, and there’s a lot to like about the “BBC 5”.

  • In praise of….GMail

    In the past I have expressed my puzzlement about people who use work email or shared email addresses rather than having their own personal email.  The solution is obvious – use a free online email service.


    GMail is free and it works very well, so why bother to use anything else?  You can easily set up multiple GMail addresses if you need them (and forward all the mail to one account if you want to make life easier).  You can also receive messages in Outlook, Thunderbird or any other email client if you prefer to work that way.


    GMail also has a very effective spam filter, whereas I gave up on Hotmail precisely because I received such huge volumes of spam.  Of course Hotmail have been forced to up their game since GMail came along, and have abandoned their crazy idea of charging for POP3 access and extra disk space and whatever else it is they used to do.


    Yes, there’s also Yahoo Mail, and I’m sure that’s also wonderful, but none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for GMail.

  • Those Secret Dentists get everywhere

    I keep coming across a Google ad that reads “The Secret Dentists don’t want you to know about yellow teeth.” 


    The thought did occur to me that they are being clever by putting in random capital letters to attract my attention to the secret dentists, but it seems unlikely (and I refuse to click on the advert in order to find out).

  • The HDTV con

    Now that we have high definition (HD) television in Hong Kong (well, one channel plus ATV’s pathetic two hours per night), retailers want to sell us HD televisions.

    You will find that you have a choice between so-called ‘HD ready’ and ‘Full HD’ screens.  Both are high definition, but so-called ‘Full HD’ is a higher specification:

    720i – 1280×720 interlaced 720p – 1280×720 progressive scan (HD Ready)
    1080i – 1920×1080 interlaced (HD Ready) 1080p – 1920×1080 progressive scan (Full HD)

    The catch is that there are no broadcasts of so-called ‘Full HD’ television in Hong Kong or anywhere else.  The best you can get are 720p (Now TV) or 1080i (TVB & ATV).  So the only way you will get 1080p is if you buy a Blu-Ray player and discs.  And we know how popular they are…

    Perhaps even more importantly, very few people can tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p, and only on sets larger than 42″.  And how much sense does a really large TV make in the average Hong Kong apartment?

    And if you have a really large set with all those pixels and you watch standard definition television (which is still how most programmes are made), or watch a VCD, it looks pretty horrible.

    So save a few dollars and buy an ‘HD Ready’ set.

  • Shoppes

    image When I was at school, I remember a classmate getting told off by the teacher for his picture of life a few hundred years ago because it included captions saying “Ye Olde Shoppes’ or some similar bit of Middle English whimsy.

    So I was amused to see that there is a new shopping arcade in Macau called “The Shoppes at Four Seasons” – as advertised in today’s SCMP.

    What really struck me was that their advertising makes great play of the fact that the White Tiger and Java Rhinoceros are endangered species.  Quite what this has to do with a new shopping arcade or a “limited edition Versace Couture snap bag” is hard to fathom.

    Unless it’s something to do with one of the reasons why tigers and Java Rhinos are endangered species, perhaps? 

    Both rhino horns and tiger bits are much prized ingredients in Chinese Medicine, so people will pay a lot for the horn of an endangered species and also for a Versace bag.  Is that it?

    They also seem to have got their facts wrong – according to my research there are actually estimated to be only 50-60 Javan Rhinos alive today.  None of whom are to be found in Macau, as far as I know.

  • Not a leg to stand on

    imageAn amusing mistake by The Sun newspaper, from Photo Shop Disasters via The Guardian.

    The Sun carried photographs of a member of the royal family in a boat (he was actually on Royal Navy manoeuvres off Montserrat).

    For some reason, they decided the local who was actually driving the boat (see right) should be removed from the photograph.  This can be clearly seen by comparing the photograph in the newspaper with the same picture in other newspapers (and on The Sun’s website).

    imageThe really funny part is that they didn’t actually remove all of him –  his knee and lower leg.are still clearly visible in the photograph (see left) even though his arm and body – and his lovely hat – were all lovingly erased.

    They also removed the boat’s engine, presumably because having removed the man they were left with half of the engine, and that looked a bit weird.

    Though not quite as weird as a stray leg, it has to be said.