I'm still in HK. I'm still enjoying it here, still finding new things and places to do and see. Haven't been on a ferry for too long - must correct it this weekend, if the weather isn't appalling.

I'm still happily non-single. We're at almost 10 months now, which seems pretty good to me. No more to say on that subject here, really.

I bought a new EeePC 901 a couple of weeks ago, having sourced a little spare cash. The differences from the 701 are quite significant, and almost entirely positive, and it only cost me $3150 (£230, US$405 at today's prices) - it's a steal for that price. The screen is bigger, there's a lot more storage, faster networking (wired and wireless, at least in theory), built-in Bluetooth, a bigger touchpad, and much longer battery life. I've dumped the default Xandros completely and installed Ubuntu-Eee on it. I still choose to use Slackware on my own desktop/work machine, but I can't deny that Ubuntu has a nice out-of-the-box experience, and it fits the 'appliance' style of the Eee quite well.

It's a very silly meme and of course I'm late, but here's a photo taken immediately after I first read Jono's post:

Typhoons galore this year - we're under a typhoon warning now, officially, but it's looking like this one is going to miss us, for a change. Look for a longer post about typhoons at some point soon, whenever I finish up writing it.

$98ish seems to be the new sweet spot for mobile service in HK - voice, data and wifi. My existing provider (Peoples) has recently changed my package to unlimited GPRS, unlimited use of their (branded) wifi network, and 1000 minutes of voice, for $98. PCCW Mobile are also offering 60MB of 3G data, unlimited use of their (owned) wifi network, and 600-1000 minutes of voice per month for $98 with no contract, minimum 2 months, so I signed up to check it out - and to be honest, I switched back to my Peoples SIM after about a week. The 3G stuff really doesn't seem that significantly faster for web/mail type stuff, I'm not hugely happy about the 60MB limit, and 3G seems to run my phone battery down much faster. The one bright spot is their wifi network (warning, Flash), so I might just subscribe to that, stand-alone, for $98. Or not...

On phones... I'm living with the SE G900, but not loving it. I'll be happy if I can go to a next-gen PalmOS phone sometime next year - or possibly a second-gen Android one. We shall see how the market bends.

Still in 'processing' for my visa application. Not too much to tell, except for the fact that I gave them a relatively complete CV, and they asked for a reference for my first job out of University. Since that job was with SCO - not The SCO Group, a different company which bought the name, amongst other assets, from my previous employer - I had to reluctantly tell them I wouldn't be able to get them a reference. I really can't imagine they'll be too upset - that job was for less than 2 years, 8 years ago, and I'm only claiming 'credit' for 5 years work in my application.

The economy. Wow, that's a screw-up of monumental proportions, isn't it? I have a mortgage in the UK, and guess what - I didn't get it until I could afford it, until I found an appropriate property, and had a deposit. I am all in favour of home ownership, but any mortgage above about 85%/3.5xsalary is insane - you know what, I'd like a private jet, but nobody is going to lend me the money to buy one, because they would know I couldn't pay them back. It's relatively simple maths. Eh, hindsight and all that. And my flat in London is happily rented, paying off its own mortgage, and I have approximately 60% equity in it now.

We interrupt your regular scheduled waffling about life in Hong Kong and random tech stuff to bring you a plug: Score Five is a website being run by some friends of mine in Hong Kong, a football prediction game against the English Premier League, which starts this weekend. There's prizes - cash, flights and kit - and a chance to compete with people all over the world. If it sounds like your sort of thing, check it out...

One of the things about being an independently-working, rather than transferred-and-sponsored, expat in Hong Kong, is that you start to get a bit into the visa laws. I've had a change of legal status 5 times since I got to HK, and I'm hoping for a different - and more interesting - one soon. Almost all expats will come under one of 4 possible visas:

Visitor

The simplest status, given to most (Western) entrants when we arrive in Hong Kong. This status allows you to stay in Hong Kong for a fixed period (6 months for Brits, 3 months for most other Westerners), and allows you to do business, but does not allow you to work in Hong Kong. Technically, even volunteer work is forbidden, although I'm not sure how well-enforced that is. Leaving Hong Kong - either for a genuine trip, or a visa run to Macau or Shenzhen - and returning will get you a new stamp and reset your countdown, but you can't do it indefinitely, since sooner or later Hong Kong Immigration will decide you are actually living here and will, so I'm told, first issue a short visa (e.g. 1 month) and then formally warn you that it will not be renewed. They are pretty flexible though - after my first Employment Visa ran out in October 2006, I was given enough stamps to stay in Hong Kong until at least December 2007 simply by living my life here, with no 'artificial' visa runs. Many expats enter HK on a visitor visa, later converting it to a...

Employment Visa

I would guess that most expats in HK have Employment Visas, which allow them to work in a specified job for a specified period of time. In theory, if you lose your job, you also lose your visa, but in practice you're allowed to stick around until your visa runs out, partly in the expectation that you'll either get a new job (and apply for a new visa) or leave HK in that time. The first issued visa is normally 1 year, with renewals being for 2-3 years. Renewals are pretty much a rubber-stamp as long as the visa holder is still in the same job. Applications are not too complicated, needing a CV with proof (references, educational certificates, etc.) from the applicant, and business information from the company. The biggest companies in Hong Kong, who employ a lot of expats, can breeze through an application.

Dependent's Visa

This has come and gone over the past few years, but as of now, the situation is pretty simple. If you are granted a Hong Kong visa (e.g. employment visa), your spouse may apply for, effectively, the same rights you have - so if you have the right to work in Hong Kong, your spouse may apply for the same. As long as you have an established relationship (i.e. it's not a quickie marriage to get a visa) and your spouse is 'clean' (no criminal record, etc.) I think it's normally a rubber-stamp. These rights have changed a couple of times, but are generally accepted as a way of encouraging (appropriate) immigration, by making it easier for immigrants to bring their families.

Permanent Resident

After 7 years of continuous residence in Hong Kong, a temporary resident can apply for permanent residency, which allows for indefinite stay, employment and other rights, without having to explicitly apply for them. I think the documentation requirements are quite strict for this, in terms of proving your residency, and it can take a few months to be processed, but once it's done, you are effectively no longer an immigrant. One slight kicker, which has bitten me already, is the 7 years continuous requirement - since I have had periods of visitor status between my employment visas, I currently have 0 time I can put towards the 7 years. Similarly, I believe that you have to have been physically present in Hong Kong for at least 6 months of each of the 7 years, or you are not counted as resident for that year.

In the meantime, I've applied for entry under the Quality Migrant Admission Scheme which - if my application succeeds - will allow me to stay and work in Hong Kong without needing an explicit employment visa for any work I do. More details to follow...

None of this constitutes formal advice, etc. etc. - it's just my understanding of the situation having lived here for a few years and been though a couple of different visa processes.

This is a bit of a placeholder, since I linked to this post from another post before I'd actually written this one. There should be a longer review along soon - no more than a few days.

Like most people, I've been through a bunch of mobile phones in the past few years, keeping at least somewhat up with technology - when I was in the UK, it was funded by subsidies from the operator once I signed a contract, but I've been buying phones retail in HK and been quite happy on a no-minimum-term contract, in particular one which gives me a decent amount of included voice minutes and unlimited GPRS. I don't actually talk on the phone that much, since most of my communication is either online or face-to-face nowadays, but having an always-on connection terminating at a smart device in my pocket is quite nice.

It's small, it's sleek, it's got a smaller but brighter screen than my Treo 680. The interface is a little slow, but the individual programs are fine. The world of UIQ3 software seems very small, even compared with the sadly shrinking PalmOS world. The built-in email software is usable, even if it behaves slightly strangely - Chatter Email for PalmOS is nicer, but that's a dead end now anyway since the author was hired by Palm. The signing thing complicates things a bit and probably contributes to the shortage of third-party software, as does the UIQ/S60 split. The built-in media player is quite nice, even if it doesn't do Ogg - or for that matter, AVI. Getting used to handwriting recognition and a phone-type keyboard rather than a qwerty keyboard is taking a bit of time. The battery life is almost certainly longer than the Treo, but I haven't really stress-tested that yet. I wish they'd just use a USB connector. Full Java support is nice, and makes the software situation a little less disastrous. I'm waiting for the first OS update for what is a pretty recently-released phone, which will apparently have some Flash support - I don't care too much for Flash, but it would be nice if it gets delivered with a newer version of the Opera Mobile browser. Alternatively, there is some work going on to put together a webkit-based browser, which should be able to handle most/all iPhone-targeted sites, which would be nice. I might do some hacking at some point to remove the Chinese support, which might make some of the input quicker. I wish it had the hard soft buttons of the G700, rather than the soft soft ones, but I think the wifi and better camera are fair exchange. Wifi on a phone is nice, but I haven't really had a chance to use it on a public network yet, rather than at home. My mobile network are offering access to their affiliated wifi network for almost nothing if you are already paying for a data plan, so I've signed up and will try it out sometime soon. It's a 3G phone, but my (current) phone network is 2G-only, so I can't comment on 3G at all. It cost me $3780, standard Hong Kong retail price, but I've got a year's interest free credit so I'm paying around $315 per month and the shop threw in: (deep breath) spare battery and charger, screen protector, SE gym-sized bag, a voucher to get some crappy stickers for the phone, a 2GB memory card, a couple of pads and fridge magnets in the shape of the phone, two cans of Coke Zero and a large metal retro-style Coke thermometer. They call it dark brown, but it's really just a slightly 'warm' black.

How's about that for a brain dump then?

I live in a medium-sized apartment, in Hong Kong terms. We've got a reasonably large living room, two comfortable-but-not-roomy bedrooms and smallish kitchen and bathroom. During the change of flatmate, I moved from one bedroom into the other, because the new one is slightly larger and has more storage. Our broadband connection comes into the living room, where there's a file server in the corner and an 802.11n wireless router box thingy, but unfortunately, that puts the bathroom between the wireless box thingy and my bedroom. The bathroom which has thick concrete walls which do a pretty good job of blocking 2.4GHz signals, apparently. In the bedroom, there's a weak, slow and unreliable signal from the wifi box which is only really a few meters away. I'm not entirely happy about this - I've got quite used to having wireless in my bedroom for things like watching TV in bed, late-night IM and so forth, particularly with the EeePC and my new wifi-enabled phone thrown into the mix. Incidentally, a little testing shows that my GSM signal strength also drops significantly between the living room and the bathroom.

So how to solve this problem? I tried moving the wifi router box thingy around a bit, which didn't make much difference, so I decided to throw a bit of money at the problem. I went down to Wanchai and bought a couple of no-name cheap Homeplug boxes for $500 the pair (approximately £32 or US$64). There are more expensive brands and more expensive standards - there are three generations of the technology in use, analogous to 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11n for wifi. There are strict warnings in the short documentation for the homeplug boxes saying that you must only ever plug them directly into the wall, not into power strips, but that simply wasn't going to happen - I'm a techie living in a flat with a real paucity of power sockets and it would be impossible to dedicate two of them to networking. So, I plugged the boxes in and they work - really not that much more to say that that. They are pretty slow, comparable to 802.11b, but that's okay because that's all I paid for. They have some support for on-the-wire encryption, but you need to load up some Windows management tool to do that, so I'm running them unencrypted.

Phase 1 complete - I have a working network connection in my bedroom.

Unfortunately, I'm greedy. I don't just want a working wired connection, I want a working wireless connection. The next thing I tried was to repurpose my old Dell laptop, which has been almost completely replaced by the Eee, as an access point. That was... not a great success. Without a wifi card and driver which supports running in Master mode, you're stuck with an ad-hoc network, which is a lot less reliable than Infrastructure mode, particularly in a dense urban environment where any channel is going to get interference from other wifi devices, not to mention microwaves, TV signal senders and so forth. One notable thing I did find while trying to get this to work was parprouted which does virtual bridging between networks using ARP, rather than actual bridging which doesn't work with wifi interfaces. Parprouted does seem to work, but the network itself let it down.

I finally (?) solved the problem last night. One thing which most techies have is a drawer/box/room/large warehouse filled with spare bits and pieces which were useful in the past and might be useful again in the future, and which are being stored against that possible future use. Deep in one of my storage vats was an old Apple Airport Express, possibly the first 'travel router' designed for use in places like hotels, which might provide a wired connection but not wifi, or would charge extra for it. It can also do streaming audio and run as a printer server, but I've never used those - I have used the wireless bridge before, however. After a lot of faffing around trying to get a copy of Windows XP running under kvm/qemu to see the little AE box on the physical wired network, I configured it up, plugged it all in, and I seem to have a nice reliable wireless network in the corner of my room now. It is even happily acting like a real bridge and routing between the networks, over the virtual cable supplied by the homeplug boxes, rather than doing NAT and running its own DHCP server, which is the usual mode. In the end, I've got two little boxes lying on the floor in the corner of my room, and all is well!

There's also a bright blue network cable running right across the middle of my living room, but there are always sacrifices...