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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  • Fools

    Last week I mentioned that Jake van der Kamp had been caught out by an April Fool .

    He was big enough to apologize for this the next day, and not just as a footnote but in the headline and first few paragraphs of his column.

    Yet if you go to the SCMP website you will find that the original column is still there with no mention that it is nonsense, and the following days’ column with the apology is not there (because it was published on a public holiday).

    Serious newspapers ensure that if they make an error they correct it, either by withdrawing the article or by adding a prominent note to explain the error.   

  • Why?

    Apple have announced that it is now possible to run Windows XP on an Intel-based Mac.  The question is why anyone would want to do that…

    Windows XP is the best operating system Microsoft have produced (so far), but when you can run it on any old PC you buy, why pay a premium for a Mac?  It would surely be cheaper and better to have both a PC and a Mac (sharing a monitor if space is a problem) rather than doing it all on one machine.  Or buy an XBox or Playstation (or whatever) to play games.  Or anything, really (unless you’re a geek). 

    The BBC quotes a comment from Slashdot which summarizes it quite well:

    "You get the stability of Windows with the value-of-money of Apple hardware. Sign me up."

    Hilariously, someone (thank you "Swindmill from Louisville") thought that this remark was meant seriously and criticized the BBC for repeating it:

    Since when is Window stable? Someone at BBC should have done light research before printing that comment. It is well established that OS X is the far more stable operating system.

    Er, yes.

  • April Fool

    Poor old Jake van der Kamp was caught out rather badly by an April Fool played by the Lion Rock Institute.  Phil spotted that the press release was a spoof, which is actually fairly obvious if you look at their list of anti-trust behaviour – there are some silly Hong Kong examples (McDonalds predatory pricing on ice cream, Ocean Park & Disneyland, Hospital Authority predatory pricing) and then some from overseas (iTunes and Boeing/Airbus) that are a bit more plausible, but the whole list looks like a joke. 

    To be fair, the Lion Rock Institute had gone to a considerable amount of trouble in copying the real Civic Party website to make it look genuine if you followed the link on the press release, but they had also sprinkled the document with clues, which Jake managed to miss.  Perhaps he can persuade the SCMP to provide him with a researcher.

    The Guardian always runs an April Fool story, but sometimes real stories seem so absurd that it can get confusing.  Saturday’s paper had Alex Ferguson saying that the Premiership race was still open, but it turned out he really had said that; and a bizarre story about an artist (Gnarls Barkley) who doesn’t exist but who would go to number one in the charts without selling a single CD.  That was also true.

    The real April Fool was obvious when you read it, but it appears that the Labour Party may have been fooled, along with some bloggers. 

    (more…)

  • More options

    It doesn’t seem that long ago that the choice of direct flights from Hong Kong to London was Virgin’s midnight flight, one of Cathay’s midnight flights or one of BA’s midnight flights, all of which arrived at Heathrow in the early morning (the following day).

    Now there’s a much wider choice.  BA still have 3 flights around midnight and Virgin have one, but Cathay have a number of flights at different times of the day, and Qantas are now promoting their service that leaves at the bizarre time of 7.40 a.m. (arriving in London in the early afternoon).  They have just started operating this service 7 days a week, and are advertising a special offer to celebrate this.

    I can see two problems with this.  Firstly, 13 hours is a long time to be stuck on a plane during the day, and it seems like a waste of a day (though I suppose you are actually losing a day in Hong Kong and gaining an afternoon and evening in the UK).  Secondly you need to leave home in the middle of the night to get to the airport on time (but I suppose the roads are clear and buses and trains will be empty).

    And yet…if you could sleep for a few hours after the plane takes off then I suppose it might be a good option.  If you managed to sleep for 4 hours and wake up at, say, 2 p.m. (6 a.m. London time) then your body might be able to adapt to the time difference more easily.  Equally, if you can’t sleep on planes then it’s also a good option – though Cathay’s slightly later flight would be better, except that Qantas do seem to be offering a cheap fare!

    Meanwhile, it seems that Qantas are investigating the possibility of flying non-stop between London and Sydney, but aren’t having much luck so far.  The problem is that although it is technically possible, the amount of fuel needed for the return journey would greatly reduce the number of passengers and/or cargo they could carry.

    British Airways think that it is not viable, and Virgin Atlantic believe that 20 hours or so in the air without a break would be too much.  Well, yes, certainly in economy.

    If you can wait a bit longer (well, maybe 20 years) there’s this rather madcap idea that you could fly from London to Sydney (or, I suppose, any two points on the planet) in two hours.  I’m a bit nervous about being shot into the air by a rocket, and landing looks a bit dodgy as well, but perhaps they can sort that out later.    

  • Whoops – wrong airport

    When travelling, I always have this slight worry that I’ll end up at the wrong place.  It seems that this risk is increased with Ryanair – the pilot on one of their flights got confused and landed at the wrong airport.

    It’s difficult for passengers to get on the wrong plane, but I suppose no-one checks the pilot’s ticket or passport.  A few years ago I was sitting onboard a Virgin 747 at Heathrow waiting for the plane to leave for Hong Kong.  Then the pilot and co-pilot emerged from the cockpit in something of a hurry.  Apparently they had got on the wrong plane by mistake.  Ooops.

    Even less interestingly, I was once on a bus in London that went the wrong way.  The passengers noticed very quickly, but it’s not easy to do a 3-point turn in a double-decker bus…

  • Gotta be better than TVB Pearl

    According to The Guardian, the BBC is testing testing a commercial version of their Interactive Media Player, which makes it possible to download BBC programmes to a computer in the seven days after they are broadcast.  This service is available free of charge in the UK, but the rest of us will have to pay for it

    I’ll go for that.

  • Only one winner

    The fourth series of The Apprentice has been notable for the number of times that Donald Trump has broken the rules, so it was not really a surprise that he considered hiring two people. It had been obvious for a long time that he was going to choose Randal unless he did something really stupid, and so perhaps the only way to inject some tension into the proceedings was to have the possibility of two winners.

    (more…)

  • Cheese

    100_0511_1

  • 212 runs

    This week I am mainly…watching a DVD of the last Ashes series – to celebrate England winning a Test Match in India for the first time in 21 years.  In case you missed the news, England beat India by 212 runs.

    As I refuse to pay HK$168 a month for the cricket channel, I am reduced to following it on the Internet, where The Guardian sits someone in front of a TV and gets them to write about what they are watching (and what the commentators are saying).  Which is better than nothing, I suppose.

  • Thanks

    It’s a simple word, but what does it mean?  We should be happy when someone writes "thanks", shouldn’t we?  Except that it is often used in emails to mean that someone expects you to do something, rather than expressing gratitude for a job well done.

    I suppose it has grown out of the weasel phrase "thanks in anticipation", which is supposed to look polite but really isn’t.  Shorten it and you have "thanks" as an instruction.  Yeuch.

    An exclamation mark can help to convert it from an instruction back to its original meaning, but who uses punctuation these days?