A few weeks back I asked if our air pollution is getting better or worse, then answered myself: worse over the last 18 years, but possibly getting better slowly in the last one or two years.

Then I went looking for some more numbers to back this up, but found that ... well, see if you find them as surprising as I did.

I will warn you: this whole article is a cliché: US air travel bad; Asian air travel good. Those of you who have traveled in both hemispheres will know all about this, and no doubt have your own stories, but I can’t resist telling mine.

How did you get your first job in HongKong?

Some of the most popular pages on our site are about finding work in Hong Kong. So if you didn't already have a permanent Hong Kong ID before you started working in Hong Kong, how did you find your first job and visa? We're hoping your stories will help others who are looking for ways to move to Hong Kong.

MrB's story

You don't need a chemistry degree or expensive monitoring equipment to tell when the pollution is bad. When the view from the window shows the harbour shrouded in a smoggy haze, you know that whatever is in the air can't be good for us.

But how do you tell if it is getting better or worse?

I was surprised at how far the old RAF Kai Tak hangar was from what I thought of as the airport area. So here is a sequence of maps and aerial photographs over the last 100 years or so, showing how the area has changed.

Hello again, happy parents! In this installment of my series on applying to primary schools in Hong Kong I'll pass along some tips parents might find helpful in getting their children prepared for the actual interviews their children will be dragged to and suffer through -- uh, I mean, will accompany their smiling parents to, and participate in joyfully!

There are some shopkeepers in Hong Kong who seem more interested in ripping off tourists than making an honest sale. Don't let them spoil your holiday - if you're thinking of buying electronic or A/V equipment in Hong Kong, take a few minutes to read these guidelines.

Last week we introduced the new Places feature. They help you find your way to a place in Hong Kong.

That's great if you know where you want to get to. But what if you've just got a vague idea? eg 'I expect to be working in Central, which serviced apartments are nearby?'. Or "I'm staying in a hotel on Nathan Road, any friendly pubs nearby?".

Pools? Ponds? Pubs? Pillboxes? Playgrounds?

What's your favourite place, and how do you let others know about it?

I've been thinking about how to make it easy to share a place: write a few short notes about it, show where it is on a map, and save it to the web. I've had a first try at making this work, and would like your help to try it and let me know any problems you find.

Up to this point, my series of articles on choosing a primary school in Hong Kong has remained quite impersonal. I've alluded to some of the things we Talls encountered in our own school search, but avoided saying how that search turned out. Well, in this article, here we go with the details .