If it's true that in life it's the little things that count the most, then these two blogs count a great deal. One of these two blogs is kept by a Canadian expat, the other by his wife. Judging by their writing, the husband is a bit formal, though not stuffy, and the wife is more outspoken and carefree. These blogs are like a community bulletin board, friends and family in Hong Kong or aboard join in, reporting and commenting on the latest happenings in their lives. These bloggers mostly write about their everyday life in Hong Kong, and their four little kids, three of them shared the same birthday --- triplets.

        Although they have two live-in domestic helpers to take care of the children and household chores, they're very much involved in raising their brood and spend a lot of time with them. The seemingly trivial little things these little ones say or do are recounted in these two blogs in a colorful way with wonderment by a pair of loving parents. Reading these blogs, the readers can feel the love this couple has for each other; for their offspring; for their friends and family; for their church (the oldest one in HK); for life and God. These bloggers are devout Christians and caring people.

        Sham-Shui-Po Boy says, read these blogs; love in any form is beautiful. And he asks, what's more important, meaningful, and pleasurable than to hear or see those wonderful things our loved ones say or do everyday --- even though these things may be viewed as small or ordinary?

        The expression, "beyond the pale" means a behavior that is considered as outside the bounds of being proper, which is improper or unacceptable. This saying appeared in The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens, dated 1837. Sham-Shui-Po Boy would have kept his opinion to himself if he was born in Mr. Dickens' time or earlier in a different generation. Now Hong Kong is embarking on a new era, he feels if something is unacceptable to us, we ought to make it known. The blogs he reviewed below are truly "beyond the pale" --- "beyond the pail" for our American readers:

        Of course not all of the blogs that ended up in the bottom of the barrel here are exactly the same --- none of them are completely alike. In some ways, they're quite different from each other. They're on this list because they all have enough similarities to be in the same category. However, keep in mind that only a small number of expat blogs belong to this category.

        There is one barrister (lawyer) and one airlines pilot in this bunch. The barrister often writes needlessly in double-speaking legalese or 19th-century English with a pretentious vocabulary; he's unfeeling and complaining constantly --- to him, the natives cannot do anything right (this blogger has deleted all previous entries in his blog prior to this review). And every so often, the pilot throws in some airlines jargon and writes about women, sex and the good old days. Most of these bloggers, for lack of a better word, can be described as carpetbaggers of one sort or another.

        The tones of their blogs are more or less the same, irreverent, insolent, sarcastic and arrogant. The contents of these blogs abound with disparaging remarks. Some of them are pornographic and racist. They're generally dismissive about the natives, their culture and language, or ignore them altogether. Some of these bloggers are consistently talking about cars and driving. In Hong Kong, owning a private vehicle is a status symbol, not a necessity.

        What attracts these expats to Hong Kong is money, jobs, and a lifestyle they cannot afford back home --- England is no longer an economic power house it once was --- and to some, it is sex (Asian women), or both. They have minimal emotional attachment to this place; they couldn't care less about what the natives really think of them. In essence, these expats (not all expats) are ungrateful guests; they need to know that Chinese are not foreigners in their own home.

        Sham-Shui-Po Boy says, the same attitude and mentality of the old order are still there, only now it is a tad less blatant. These bloggers are relics of our colonial past.

        They are far beyond the pale.


        * There are some more ungrateful guests as those mentioned above, however, they are not listed in this review. Expat bloggers of their ilk and the worse ones deserve to be on the same list, but they do not deserve the world-wide publicity that Hong Kong Blogs Review provides.