Travography - Travel Writing and Photography

Self confessed nethead, Roderick Eime, reminisces on the birth of the ‘net and examines pitfalls its flourishing future.

It wasn’t that long ago when the Internet was derided as an esoteric plaything for geeks, nerds and the socially incompetent. I remember extolling the virtues of email to my friends and clients in the early ‘90s and triumphantly displaying my first web page in 1994. Some immediately saw the possibilities while many others, even the majority I must say, had to be dragged screaming to the computer. Now, over a decade later, it’s hard to imagine life without a tollpass for the Information Superhighway.

We all remember the first “clunky” web pages full of flashing text and naff rotating graphics. Now the art and science of web design is as much about the back-end architecture as it is the slick graphics. Web implementation, search engine optimisation and data streaming is now driven by near incomprehensible protocols like PHP Hypertext Preprocessors, Perl CGI Common Gatew…

A quick and dirty guide to Hong Kong bargain shopping

Hong Kong is a city renown for high finance, bare knuckle banking and cut throat commerce, but nothing comes close to its reputation for retail. Roderick Eime rolls up his sleeves for a free market melee.

Ever since the Portuguese started trading with indigenous Chinese as far back as the 15th Century in nearby Macau, this special region of China has been a hotbed of haggle. The British routed the 19th Century Qing Dynasty Chinese in the Opium Wars and secured a long-term foothold on the continent gaining them access to the rich trade in spices, silk and ceramics. The players and the politics may have changed, but the game remains the same.

The apparent genteel art of retail now replaces much of the steamy dockside banter of years gone by, but in truth, the quest for goods and trinkets at the right price is still very much alive in the high-rise malls and chrome, marble and glass gallerias of the 21st Century.

Even though Hong Kong may…