It's not big and it's not clever, it's just a Brit in Hong Kong writing (mainly) about Hong Kong
Both fumier and Giles have tackled the recent problems experienced by British Airways, but in very different ways.
Giles has come up with a proforma rant against the unions, whereas Fumier offers a rather more interesting analysis of BA’s commercial strategy of screwing its suppliers. I suspect Fumier has a point, and it’s worth reading his insights on the subject.
Spike over at Hongkie Town has an amusing story of the problems of trying to speak Cantonese. Not that it’s difficult to learn (though it is) but that most locals don’t expects a gweilo to be speaking it. So they are straining to understand what they think is English rather than listening to some imperfect Cantonese.
I even adapt to this stereotype myself – although I can say “Joh Sun” I feel that English speakers expect me to speak in English, and that is what I do.
The end result of this is that I don’t use my basic Cantonese enough, and so I find it hard to improve.
Yes, you’re right it probably is just an excuse.
I may not be able to watch the cricket, but I can experience the same weather.
On Friday they had rain at Old Trafford (rain in Manchester – well, there’s a surprise) at almost exactly the time that we had a thunderstorm in Hong Kong.
Then on Saturday we had rain for most of the day (because Severe Tropical Storm Sanvu was passing by) and it also rained for most of the day in Manchester.
By Sunday the storm had gone, and the weather also improved in Manchester.
What to do on a Sunday? Why not take the MTR to Disneyland? Nothing to do when you get there (because it’s not open yet), of course. Not that this seemed to deter anyone.
At noon, trains from Sunny Bay to the theme park were full of people eager to see the new station. Many posed for photographs inside the train.
"Although the flow was larger than usual, our operation was quite smooth," an MTR spokeswoman said.
Did I say nothing? I suppose you could keep a lookout for the wild dogs that are so beloved by the SCMP. They managed to fashion another front page story on this subject:
They have even chased Hong Kong Disneyland group managing director Don Robinson as he drove into the park on his way to work. Other employees also have complained of being chased and frightened by the dogs.
That’s about as dramatic as this "news" story gets. No-one has been even slightly hurt, but it’s still a big worry, I suppose. Or, then again, maybe it’s not.
Possibly if Simon Patkin had his way and concreted over Lantau and Lamma, that would solve the problem. Or maybe the dogs would find their way over to Quarry Bay.
The SCMP had another non-story on Sunday, headlined Why HK air taxes are sky-high. Except that if you read the story (or even just looked at their chart), it was obvious that these "HK air taxes" were mainly fuel surcharges (imposed by airlines) and miscellaneous taxes levied by foreign airports.
As a postcript to what I wrote yesterday, it turns out that Now Broadband’s cricket channel actually wasn’t showing England vs. Australia. If I were a subscriber I think I might just be complaining about that baffling decision.
I’m afraid that I refuse to pay whatever it is that they charge for the cricket channel that is available in Hong Kong, but if someone had offered me a pay-per-view deal for the England vs Australia test match I think it would have been worth whatever they wanted to charge.
As it was, I listened to the BBC commentary for the final hour or so. The English commentators were unashamedly cheering England to victory, whilst the Aussies were being a bit more even-handed. It really was an incredible morning’s play, and the final margin of victory was as narrow as one could imagine. I was reconciled to the fact that Australia were going to win, but somehow England took the final wicket just in time – but the final twist is that it seems that the umpire got it wrong. Still counts, though.
In spite of years of watching Crown Court, Rumpole of the Bailey, LA Law, The Practice and Ally McBeal, I am not sure that I am an expert on matters legal.
So the Kissel case has me rather puzzled. The defence case appears to be that Robert Kissel was – how can I put this delicately – a merchant banker. The prosecution case is that Nancy Kissel used a heavy metal ornament to kill her husband, which she has now admitted under cross-examination. How on earth do juries reach a verdict based upon such conflicting evidence?
I think Hemlock is confused as well.
Continuing the food theme, I found this article from The Observer very interesting. I have long been aware of so-called "Chinese Restaurant Syndrome" (headaches and worse after eating Chinese food) and the other concerns about monosodium glutamate, so I tend to avoid the stuff if possible. Perhaps without good reason:
At the University of Western Sydney the researchers concluded, tersely: ‘Chinese restaurant syndrome is an anecdote applied to a variety of postprandial illnesses; rigorous and realistic scientific evidence linking the syndrome to MSG could not be found.’
Science has still not found a convincing explanation for CRS: indeed, some researchers suggest it may well be to do with the other things diners have imbibed there – peanuts, shellfish, large amounts of lager. Others say that fear of MSG is a form of mass psychosis – you suffer the symptoms you’ve been told to worry about.
Then there’s a rather obvious question:
If MSG is bad for you – as Jeffrey Steingarten, the great American Vogue food writer once put it – why doesn’t everyone in China have a headache?
Indeed. Also, glutamate is lurking in many foods under different names:
Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet. Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce, nam pla (with 950mg per 100g) and the other fermented fish sauces of Asia.
Your mate, Marmite, with 1750mg per 100g, has more glutamate in it than any other manufactured product on the planet – except a jar of Gourmet Powder straight from the Ajinomoto MSG factory. On the label, Marmite calls it ‘yeast extract’. Nowhere in all their literature does the word ‘glutamate’ appear. I asked Unilever why they were so shy about their spread’s key ingredient, and their PR told me that it was because it was ‘naturally occurring … the glutamate occurs naturally in the yeast’.
Heston Blumenthal, the somewhat eccentric owner of the Fat Duck in Bray, which was recently acclaimed as the best restaurant in the world, uses MSG and many other artificial flavourings in his dishes and makes no secret of the fact.
I am very dubious about artifical additives, and I suspect the food manufacturers of using them mainly so that they can take advantage of cheap ingredients and industrial processes without losing all the flavour, but maybe MSG isn’t any worse than the rest of them. Anyway, it’s an interesting article.
Here’s a story that combines food and weather. Perfect.
Tornado wreaks havoc in suburbs of Birmingham
Roofs were ripped off houses, cars hurled across roads and trees uprooted after a tornado struck high street shops and suburban streets in Birmingham yesterday, injuring at least 12 people.
Rows of houses were left with gaping windows as the twister turned the sky a dull brown, tore Victorian turrets off a primary school, and littered the area with glass, bricks, furniture and everything from shoes to fruit, torn from shop displays.
Why food? Well, Ladypool Road is where you will find the original Balti restaurants.
Ordinary Gweilo 