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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  • Slow news day?

    I found this in the ‘In Brief’ section of today’s SCMP:

    Wasps sting six hikers

    Six hikers from two separate groups were attacked by wasps in Tai Lam Country Park yesterday. They were stung on their heads and hands. Police said a group of three men and two women were hiking near Ho Pui Reservoir at about noon when the wasps suddenly appeared and stung them. At the same time, a group of nine hikers were also attacked by wasps.

    People being stung by wasps?  Can anyone tell me why the police need to get involved?   Or why the SCMP might think it a newsworthy event?

    Maybe they were illegal immigrant bees from the Mainland.  Coming over here, stinging our hikers…

    And yesterday the lead story in the Sunday Morning Post was about a Korean child who had been adopted at the age of 4 months and then brought to Hong Kong.  Last year, when the child was 7, the adoptive parents decided to hand her over to social workers because it hadn’t worked out.  Yes, that’s right, this all happened last year.   

    It’s a moderately interesting human interest story, but I’m sure this can’t be the only example of a child who has been adopted and then “handed back” by the adoptive parents.  So what makes something that happened at least a year ago into a front-page story?  

    And, yes, this is another ‘Barclay Crawford’ investigation. 

    Update: the story seems to have been picked up by other news outlets, who have named the diplomat involved (he turns out to be Dutch).  This gives the SCMP an excuse to run a follow-up story, though there is no new information except for the name of the diplomat and a photograph of him and his wife. 

  • Neither of the above

    Business Week report that Blu-Ray may have the upper hand in its battle with HD-DVD (Next-Gen DVDs: Advantage, Sony):

    It’s a fight with more plot twists and intrigue than a Hollywood thriller. For two years now, rival camps have been battling over which new DVD format will prevail: Blu-ray, which is backed by Sony and a consortium of 170 other companies, or HD DVD, which is being championed by Toshiba, Microsoft, and others. Both technologies promise crisper video that looks better on the new generation of flat-panel, high-definition TVs. And the winner stands to control a lucrative new market worth billions. Each side has been competing to win the backing of the major movie studios. Only Warner Bros., which currently uses both formats, is still playing hard to get.

    I hope this is all irrelevant.  I don’t want to pay HK$250 for a DVD, even if it’s high-definition. 

    Why not?

    Well, firstly because DVDs are so annoying.  I don’t want fancy menus or stupid extras.  I don’t need a large box that takes up space.  I just want to watch the film or the TV show.

    Secondly because I am paying for the packaging, the distribution costs, and the effort involved in making it look fancy.  If you deduct those extra costs and the retail mark-up you must be left with less than 30% of what the consumer pays.  So they could charge us HK$75 to download the film and still make a good profit.  Divx seems ideally suited for this purpose. 

    Most modern DVD players can play the Divx format.  It supports high-definition, and a feature film easily fits on a DVD – though that seems like an interim solution, and it makes more sense to download direct to a hard disk and play it from there.

    So, rather than wasting money on a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player you can buy a device that could be linked directly to a home network so that you can play DVDs, music and downloaded films on your TV, as well as recording TV to watch later.  It seems like a no-brainer to me. 

    Yes, I know that the movie studios will have to overcome their irrational belief in DRM, but it’ll happen before too long.  They have no choice.

  • Run for your lives

    I see that Fumier is back, back, back.  Same old nonsense, but this time the old cheapskate is on Blogger.

  • The merry-go-round continues

    My worst fears about Graeme Souness, Joe Royle and Peter Reid turning up in the Premier League seem not to have been realized.  On the contrary, we even had Derby seriously considering Paul Ince, which would have been an encouraging development – but they finally settled on Paul Jewell. 

    Following in the footsteps of Lawrie Sanchez (who left Northern Ireland for Fulham), we had Alex McLeish quitting Scotland for Birmingham.  I’m sure there was a time when the national job would have been the pinnacle of a manager’s career, but now even middle-ranking Premiership jobs seem more attractive. 

    Even the England job seems not to be very attractive for British-born managers in the Premier League, several of whom have ruled themselves out.  Two who didn’t were Steve Coppell & Harry Redknapp, but they might just as well have done.   

    I have huge admiration for Steve Coppell, but the last thing he needs is a high-profile job with a lot of pressure.  He has thrived in jobs where expectations were relatively low and the chairman was very supportive.  No, I don’t think so.

    Even before he was arrested last week, Harry Redknapp looked a highly unlikely candidate.  He has acquired a reputation as a "wheeler dealer", and whilst his success at Portsmouth is highly impressive it is hard to imagine him having what it takes to be England manager. 

    Anyway, if reports about the shortlist are correct it seems that the FA are not going to make the same mistake twice (FA ‘makes approach’ for Mourinho):

    Reports suggest the FA’s shortlist will include Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello, Martin O’Neill, Marcello Lippi and Jurgen Klinsmann.

    In brief, Capello seems very keen, O’Neill keeps ruling himself out, and Mourinho likes the attention but is hoping to join Real Madrid or Barcelona. 

  • The spin cycle

    Before Sunday’s by-election, Lau Nai-keung offered this “simple” analysis (End of the line for the pan-democrats? – subscription required):

    All eyes are on the turnout rate for this Sunday’s Legislative Council by-election. There are roughly 600,000 registered voters in the Hong Kong Island constituency. Judging by the results of the recent district council elections, the “loyalists” can be expected to rally upwards of 140,000 voters. Thus, Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee – backed by the pro-Beijing camp – can count on these votes.

    Therefore, a turnout of below 280,000 – or 47 per cent – would mean defeat for Anson Chan Fang On-sang, who has the backing of the pro-democracy camp. The logic is so simple that it almost defies further  analysis.

    The turnout rates of most by-elections are low; in the last Legco by-election, in 2000, the figure was less than 34 per cent. If that were to be repeated, Mrs Chan would suffer a humiliating defeat.

    Well, as we know, she did not suffer a humiliating defeat.  Perhaps more Interestingly, Regina Ip, somehow contrived to get only 137,550 votes.  If we accept the figure of 140,000 “cast iron” votes for pro-Beijing candidates, she somehow managed to misplace 2,500 of them.  Hardly a success story. 

    Yet the spin that is being placed on this is that the “normal” result is a 60:40 margin in favour of the pro-democracy candidate, and as Regina Ip got more than 40% of the vote she can be judged to have been a success. 

    Predictably, that was exactly the line that Lau Nai-keung took this week (Hello and goodbye):

    The result of Sunday’s Legislative Council by-election falls into the category of what I call a “humiliating victory”. This is especially so in light of the extraordinarily high turnout rate of over 52 per cent which, according to conventional wisdom, favours the pro-democracy camp.

    A winning margin of just 12 percentage points for Anson Chan Fang On-sang over Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee broke the long-held 60/40 rule (traditionally, democrats should expect 60 per cent of the vote to the pro-establishment’s 40 per cent). This gave the “loyalists” ample space to declare their own victory. Isn’t it nice to have a win-win outcome?

    You can’t have it both ways.  If you argue before the election that Regina Ip was guaranteed 140,000 votes and that Anson Chan could suffer a humiliating defeat, how can you describe 54.8% as a “humiliating victory”?

    It’s also bizarre to hear Beijing loyalists say that the democrats will always get 60% of the vote – all the more so after District Council elections when the DAB did well.  The democrats are surely entitled to be satisfied with the by-election result, as Chris Yeung points out in today’s SCMP (A split decision):

    The jury is still out on the election debut of what has been deemed the joint ticket of Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and the pro-Beijing, pro-government force in the Legislative Council by-election. Pointing to her 42.9 per cent vote share during a self-appraisal, the former secretary for security proclaimed her success in smashing the so-called “60-40 rule” for Hong Kong’s direct elections.

    She was referring to the widely held, though not necessarily accurate, notion that democrats should expect about 60 per cent of the total vote share in a “one person, one vote” election. The remaining 40 per cent would go to pro-Beijing, pro-government candidates.

    Mrs Ip argued that, in view of by-election winner Anson Chan Fang On-sang’s popularity, and her previous senior position in government, the former chief secretary should have been expected to garner around 70 per cent of the vote. In the end, Mrs Chan won 54.8 per cent.

    Yet, Ng Hong-mun, a veteran adviser to the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, expressed disappointment with the result. He concurred with analysts that the margin of Mrs Chan’s victory was larger than had been expected.

    The Chinese-language Apple Daily quoted him as saying that they had predicted Mrs Ip would lose by no more than 20,000 votes; the actual figure was about 38,000.

    But of course politics is like this all over the world.  Politicians are experts at finding highly-nuanced arguments that they they think make their party look good or their opponents look bad.  And we don’t believe them.

    Not sure why the SCMP bothers to print this nonsense, though…

  • Honey and Lemon really does work

    As a child, I was always taught that lemon and honey was a good remedy for coughs, sore throats and colds (or URTI as they now seem to be known).

    Big drug companies spend fortunes trying to persuade us to buy their various concoctions, and yet it seems that honey is as good, if not better, than the stuff they want to sell us:

    The study, published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, found that children who received a small dose of buckwheat honey before bedtime slept better and coughed less than those who received either a common over-the-counter cough suppressant (dextromethorphan) or nothing at all.

    “This is the first time honey has been actually proven as a treatment,” says lead study author Dr. Ian Paul, a researcher at Penn State College of Medicine. He adds that honey has been recommended for ages by grandparents in certain cultures.

    Paul says that the type of honey plays a role in the treatment.

    “Darker honeys have more antioxidants than lighter honeys, and we wanted the best chance to see improvements,” he says, noting that lighter honeys would probably also benefit kids. “At least locally [buckwheat honey] is available. I can get it here at the local supermarket.”

    Honey is also generally less expensive than over-the-counter medications, he says, and bring none of the side effects like dizziness or sleepiness.

    The current study was inspired by an earlier investigation by Paul and his group. In 2004, they showed that the two most common active ingredients in cough syrup, dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine, had the same effectiveness in treating cough symptoms as a placebo ingredient.

    I can’t quite believe that this is the first time that honey has been proved to have beneficial effects.

  • Caution – no driver on board

    It’s always interesting when ‘science fiction’ turns into reality (‘Aggressive but safe’ SUV wins robotic street race):

    A sports utility vehicle with a mind of its own was declared the winner of DARPA’s urban robot car race on Sunday. It travelled autonomously through traffic for six hours and 60 miles (100 kilometres) around a ghost town in California, US, to scoop the prize.

    Nicknamed Boss, the vehicle developed at Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, won a $2 million prize in the third such race sponsored by the US Department of Defense, which wants military supply vehicles to one day drive themselves.

    The entrants included several station wagons and a huge green military truck decked out with flashing lights, warning sirens, spinning laser range finders and cameras. Only six of 11 finalists finished the course, at an abandoned military base, on Saturday.

    The winners of the DARPA Urban Challenge were decided overnight, based on their ability to steer safely around the course, as well as their speed. Stanford University, which won a 2005 race, came in second and Virginia Tech finished third.

    The New Scientist followed up with another story (but this one’s behind a pay-wall)

    It’s a gruelling race through unpredictable moving traffic, parking lots, construction sites and even an excursion down a dirt road into southern California’s high desert. Despite a couple of fender benders, the results are encouraging. Driverless cars on our highways might be closer than you think.

    The UC isn’t the Pentagon’s first foray into robot racing. In the Grand Challenge (GC) of 2004 and 2005, robot cars had to navigate a dirt course across the Mojave desert (New Scientist, 19 November 2005, p 48). That race, in which robots had to avoid stationary obstacles and follow a list of GPS coordinates known as waypoints, was simple by comparison, though. According to veteran robot racer William Whittaker, whose Carnegie Mellon University team built the UC’s winning car, Boss, it consisted of nothing more than “barbaric, flat-out charges with big rooster tails of dust”. The UC, on the other hand, introduces much more sophisticated challenges.

    As the vehicles race together around the track, they must detect and avoid moving objects. If another vehicle stops, the robot cars must work out why and then decide whether to change route, drive around it or simply wait for it to move again. They must also obey the rules of the road, such as who has right of way at a four-way stop sign, and demonstrate skills such as parallel parking.

    There’s also this warning:

    Driverless cars won’t be reaching our streets any time soon, however. One of the main reasons is that people might find accidents caused by driverless vehicles particularly unacceptable. That means robotic navigation skills and obstacle avoidance will have to be as near to perfect as possible before we see any driving around. “The first person that gets killed by an autonomous vehicle is going to set the field back 18 months,” says William Kehaly, team leader of Axion Racing. Apart from anything else, who would be liable in such an accident?

    18 months?  I think it might set it back rather longer than that!  Driverless cars will need to be extremely safe before they are allowed on public roads.

    Also, the Hong Kong version will need a robotic arm to wave in a cheery way after cutting you up… 

  • Only in Hong Kong

    A high-profile by-election in which the two main candidates are former civil servants (Democracy woman wins HK poll as the BBC rather strangely puts it).

    How exciting is that?  In other places it might be a TV or film star, or at least a big-name politician, but not in Hong Kong.  No, we get two former civil servants, though admittedly both are very well-known.

    One was widely reviled for her attempt to introduce security legislation (the so-called Article 23) that prompted 500,000 people to protest on the streets of Hong Kong.  The other ("Democracy Woman") is perceived as being unacceptable to Beijing, as if an elderly woman who ran the government under Tung Che-Hwa could really be any threat at all. 

    Not that it matters, of course.  Members of the Legislative Council don’t really have much power, so this amounts to an opinion poll on whether to press for democracy as soon as possible, or to be patient.  Which might explain why a meaningless by-election involving two former civil servants has actually been fairly lively.  Feelings do run high on both sides, and the two candidates represent what each side dislikes about the other.  Meanwhile, the rest of us look on somewhat perplexed.   

    I suppose it’s a classic ‘chicken and egg’ problem.  We don’t have real democracy, so we don’t have real political parties.  And life carries on fairly well in spite of that. 

  • Two for the price of one

    Today is Rail Merger Day.  The government has engineered a deal whereby the MTR (which used to be government-owned but is now a public company, albeit still controlled by the government), will operate the railway services and manage the property of the KCR (which is still government-owned).  That means that all the rail services in Hong Kong are run by the MTR.  Well, apart from the train that goes round the outside of Disneyland…

    The main impact has been that fares have been reduced, with the biggest reduction being for any journey involving interchange between the “KCR” lines and the “MTR” lines.  Predictably, there have complaints that they could have offered bigger reductions, as is often the way in this fine city. 

    Some MTR shareholders (notably David Webb) have complained that this is a bad deal for the MTR – mainly because it is now subject to a new formula that is intended to limit fare increases.  There was even the suggestion that people sympathetic to the government bought up MTR shares in order to vote through the proposal. 

    My main concern is that it seems as if a lot of time and money have been spent on making changes of the most superficial kind to mark this transition.  image

    For example, KCR East Rail has been renamed the East Rail Line.  Why not just East Rail, I wonder?  Mong Kong KCR station has become Mong Kok East, to avoid confusion.  Plus there are new colours for the newly renamed lines.

    However, one distinct improvement is the new map, which not only shows all the lines, but is also more geographically accurate.  No longer does it appear that Tsim Sha Tsui is a short walk from Wan Chai, as used to be the case on the maps on the MTR trains – though at the other end the New Territories has been compressed to fit in to the space available, so it is not perfect. 

  • A picture is worth, er, £225,000

    I can’t help smiling at this story. 

    Firstly, that Wigan should want Steve Bruce as their manager, after his earlier stint lasted 7 weeks, and secondly that the deal should be held up because of a dispute about, er, image rights.

    Birmingham manager Steve Bruce

    Cash row halts Bruce’s Wigan move

    Steve Bruce is being prevented from becoming the new Wigan manager by a financial dispute between himself and former club Birmingham.

    On Wednesday, Wigan had to postpone plans to unveil Bruce, who has left his post at Birmingham, as their new boss.

    The delay has been caused by a dispute over £225,000 that Birmingham say they are owed by Bruce over image rights.