Day 60

Recently I got a little sick. Not really sick - actually, I was only momentarily sick, and then felt fine in less than half an hour. Given the circumstances I've decided to write some about health in Hong Kong.

Before coming out here, I read/was told a lot about different diseases particular to the East/Southeast Asia region. I was warned most thoroughly about Hepatitis A and Malaria. These two are spread by bacteria in food and by mosquitoes, respectively. Where I'm going in Yunnan, medical professionals have advised me to take precautions for Malaria (especially outside of the cities). Recently, I felt intensely and painfully sick in my stomach less than 10 minutes after eating. I couldn't vomit, but when I tried to move I passed out and fell over. A short second after my head hit the concrete I got back up (checked the time) and sat down for a second; five minutes later, I felt fine. I'm not sure if this is a symptom of a bigger problem or if I just handled having an ulcer or something like a boss. (Given my experience there's a good chance it was the latter).

I'm not a doctor at all, but I understand some requisites for public health - things like public sanitation (of air, water, and land) and mass health education are important. In Hong Kong, one of the most crowded [countries] in the world, it's easily feasible for someone to get sick from a number of communicable diseases (airborne pathogens or otherwise). In some respects, the city is dirty (walking around for a weekend was pretty bad for a pair of white shoes). In another example, I went to lunch with my co-workers yesterday. Before eating, they poured the tea into the soup bowls ("But I thought those were for soup?") and washed them, then threw out the old tea. This precaution never would have occurred to me, although in Beijing I've eaten from dinnerware that was shrinkwrapped before being set on the table. So, when going to Asia, watch out for the damn mosquitoes.

The day before yesterday, I went to see Chelsea (an international European Premier League team from the UK) (Look at all that Barclays sponsorship! See?!) play Kitchee, a local Hong Kong team. The match was sponsored by the financial firm Barclays Capital. As my friend works there, he was able to get me a ticket. I couldn't find him, and by the time I got there from work it was 8pm (30 minutes before the second game started) and the seats were almost completely taken (see "world's most crowded city"), but it was excellent to watch. Guess who won? Of course.

I've described the commute here, but I have something else to add. In 2000, Disney produced Fantasia, an iconic manifestation of the past century of art and culture. Therein there is a music video for the song Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin which, while maybe representing concentrated urban New York in the 1930's, is now visible in Hong Kong. The video itself is over 10 minutes long, so if you don't want to be culturally enlightened (or you're at work), the parts I'm talking about that relate to HK are here and here. See how the people go from the subway into the building in a huge clump? That's my commute. There are crowds of people to get off the train, to go down the stairs, to walk down the sidewalk, and to get into the elevator. It's like Times Square, if the foot traffic there reversed depending on whether it was rush hour.

Also, here are some pictures. There won't be work on Saturday this weekend! Maybe I should take a trip to see that Buddha.

Day 56

Didn't go see the Buddha this weekend.
I want to see it, but I'm a busy guy. I had work on Saturday, so after that this weekend was spent mostly relaxing and seeing friends. First, my friend Angel came from the mainland. She lives in Dongguan and came to visit with her mom. We just went to McDonald's and chilled and talked a little bit. Kevin, the exchange student who stayed with me for a week last year, had some sort of visa issue so he might come next week (the 30th) instead. Anyway, that was part 1 of 3 of catching up with people.

Eve, a friend of mine that I met in Puerto Rico, came back to Hong Kong (her hometown) last week, so we got to see each other on the weekend. We went to Mong Kok to eat street food and catch up. Mong Kok is close by where I live, and it's famous for its street food, atmosphere, and being the most crowded urban district in the world. I tried to live there when I got here, but I couldn't find a place. Anyway, going places with someone who knows what they're doing is fun because I actually get to experience more cool stuff and good food. Also, I don't have to try and communicate in Canto because I can't. In short hanging out with someone who knows the place is more culturally enriching than not. Next week I'm going to try Chop Suey, which I didn't even know was a real thing here.

That's Saturday evening. On Saturday night, another friend came from the mainland again (because Hong Kong is, in my experience, easily 3x as fun as the mainland) and we hit Lan Kwai Fong hard. On Sunday I went back to Mong Kok to eat because it was cheap and delicious. I also watched Harry Potter... seeing the last one was weird.

As of now, I only have three more weeks in Hong Kong. I still have a couple of things to do to wrap up (see day 52) my stay here, buy stuff, etc. I'm starting my last full week of work now.

Three things I wish I'd known before coming here are:
1) The language barrier. Having proficiency in Mandarin is almost useless on the streets here in Hong Kong. It's useful to do big business with manufacturers/sellers in the Mainland, but here its usage is dead in the water.
2) To make as many friends as possible. Living anywhere new is much, much better if you have friends. People that will take you around and show you things are invaluable in a city you don't know. I wish I'd realized sooner the value of going out and actively meeting people.
3) To have a plan for things you want to see and do in Hong Kong. Planning for travel is harder than it sounds; outside of logistical setup, I didn't really arrange for how to see the city or things to do on lazy Sundays.

With two and a half weeks to go here it's almost the end. I'm excited to go for the wedding. I'm having a suit made, too, and I'll write about how it's going to cost me and things like that. Until then.

Day 52

Okay.. That fire was not a big deal at all. The girl who told me about it was exaggerating as girls will do. When I got back to CKM at the end of the day everything was chill; I'd expected it to be a lot more severe/dangerous than that. I think it's something about money that keeps these people from really fearing for their lives in the event of a fire, if braving it means they can make some cash.

This weekend I'm going to visit with my friends from the Mainland who came to stay with me (as exchange students) when I was in high school in 2010. I think we'll go to Lantau Island to see the Buddha there. I'm really looking forward to hanging out to them... Better if I don't have to work on Saturday. After that I'll still have a week and a half in Hong Kong, and then I'm going to Qujing to attend a wedding, and then going back to Hong Kong by the 8th for my flight on the 10th.

The last thing is a short bit about my work. My assignment abroad may have broadened my perspective on what I want to do in the realm of international affairs from being a liaison for a large company to starting my own company to take advantage of the commercial opportunities between the US and abroad. Alternatively, I've been considering working for the government's foreign service. I think that working out here has affected me personally, but the change is as yet impossible to sense. When I get back is when I'll really be able to select the differences. My lifestyle is certainly much different here. I expect home to be as I left it (almost) when I return. I know that, from this experience, I plan to spend the next summer near home, in order to be closer to home and family. I've probably changed; I've definitely learned a great deal more about the export and manufacturing business, but it's difficult to say what's changed without looking back. In reflection, I know Hong Kong now; that's more than I could say when I left. Hopefully over the past 7 weeks I've helped my audience get to know it a little, also.

Day 45

I haven't been writing much lately. Not because I don't have time, but because nothing new has happened to me, really. One interesting thing is that me and a partner of mine that I met here just sent a sample phone to Gambia to test its marketability. We have it on good word (from people currently living in Gambia) that it can fetch twice its asking price in Hong Kong.

The next most interesting thing, and the main reason why I'm writing today, is because today apparently there was a fire at Chungking Mansions. This is a huge place of business for the area where I live, Tsim Sha Tsui, and the effects of this fire on the economy remain to be seen. Apparently there have been medical evacuations and some property damage, but no further casualties. I might update later with more information if the situation is crazy. The fire is such a concern to me because, having lived in the area for almost 7 weeks, I have a lot of friends and business contacts in and around Chungking Mansions. It's the centre of TST.

Day 40

Update from last time: I went onto my roof again. On top I met some people who made cocaine... Right there on the open-air, semi-indoor terrace on the 17th floor of my building. When I asked them why they would tell me that, they told me it was legal in Hong Kong (it's not) and that they had a cocaine visa. Who would've thought...

There is nothing interesting to report since this weekend, but I have to write for DoPP about the leadership in my office.

Where I work, the direction is not very lateral at all. The people who work in departments are told what to do by their supervisors, who in turn are directed by the leadership (executive board). Because of the nature of the business, there are not a lot of group projects; although we merchandisers help each other with something from time to time (it's my job mostly just to help people) the work is rarely done in groups. Furthermore, the individuality of our work leads to our having fewer meetings than I expect an ordinary American company would have. Finally, each department represents a different service that the company does for its customers (with the exception of administratives like IT and accounts) and as such works independently from the other departments.

Having never worked full-time at an office in the US, the differences I perceive are skewed; one thing I do notice is a level of cohesion between coworkers that I haven't seen as often in American companies.

I enjoy working here. The involvement, learning and significance of my job far exceeds any other job I've held (self-employment excepted).

Day 37

This weekend has been crazy.

Shortly before I came hear I found out that Kowloon, Hong Kong (where I live) was featured in the massively popular Call of Duty: Black Ops. The level, "Kowloon", featured a lot of buildings, connected at the roof by bridges or makeshift passageways and with lots of secret stuff to hide behind, good for firefights. It's the sort of environment you'd only expect to encounter in a place built with that purpose in mind. Since my first weekend here when I went to look for an apartment, it's begun to occur to me that these programmers didn't base their design of Kowloon on a stereotype, and did some research instead. After this weekend, I don't even have any disbelief to suspend when comparing their rendering of Kowloon with the real thing. Half an hour ago, I went to the fifteenth floor of my building by elevator, climbed two more stories of stairs, and then climbed a ladder, and I was on my own roof. No locks, no doors. I went to the edge (there was a railing) and looked straight down into the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui. Rooftops are so cool. And of course, the rainy climate (still talking about this game) made sense, because it rains a lot here and sometimes results in Typhoon Warnings.

Over the weekend also my friends from the mainland came, of which one is teaching in Guangzhou, and one is working as a concert promoter in Shanghai. They're both from the States; I met one in Puerto Rico and another at Georgia Tech. The three of us reuniting in Hong Kong made it an excellent night.

To a student who is preparing to work abroad in the coming summers, I would recommend:
1. Find things before you need them. When I got here I had a problem finding a laundromat for a while, for example. If you find things that you think will come in handy, keep up with them for when/if they do.
2. Don't be a paranoid foreigner. Being careful in new places is all good and well, but don't be mistrustful of people for no reason. Be careful not to alienate people that could be trying to help you (see 1); talking to strangers instead of brushing them off is how I've established myself here, from finding an apartment to planning business ventures.
Lastly, 3. Pay attention to your surroundings. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." "When in Hong Kong, get money." Wherever you are, however, it's important to take stock of what is going on around you and adapt. If, for example, I watch other people to realize that the chopsticks are in a drawer underneath the table, then I'm learning from my surroundings and fitting in better. When you fit in better, you can assimilate into the culture, and be much more effective at your work as well as better understand the culture. Learn by doing.
[This includes assignment #9 for DoPP.]

Day 33 - Differences between US and Hong Kong Work Culture

Some notable differences between the two work cultures are:

Lunch. We almost always eat lunch together in the office. In contrast with lunch in the United States, employees always take almost the full amount of time, if not to eat then to rest or talk on the phone or socialize. In my understanding, in the US/West, you're expected to eat and then go back to work, usually in under an hour, and most people eat alone or in pairs.

Workday. The workday here is 9-7, every day. Sometimes (I said this before) we work on Saturdays too. In America most people don't do that; the workday is usually 9-5 or 5:30. The workday here ends when the work is done, but never before 7, so workers may stay until 10pm. Unfortunately the AC shuts off at 7, and the office gets hotter and hotter thereafter.

Relationships. People in the office seem to be a little closer with each other than in the average American work place. They laugh a lot and socialize during lunch and so on. This difference is probably due to the more departmentalized and categorically-focused work; for instance, we all eat lunch, work, have meetings, and leave (sometimes) as a department, not an entire company.

This is an entry about work culture written for the GT Department of Professional Practice.

Day 31 [Beijing Part 2]

Pictured: "Shenzhen Int'l Airport", "Police Van Man"

This is the second part of my two-part entry on my trip to Beijing (2011). It's not necessarily in chronological order, it just fills in the blanks that are left around the description of what happened on Saturday.

To begin with, the journey from Hong Kong to Shenzhen was very long. The cities are so close together but yet so (politically) far away. I had to take the subway out of Hong Kong, which took about an hour, and then immigrate to China through the border control gate, and then take the Shenzhen subway across the city for another hour and a half. By the time I got to Shenzhen airport almost three hours had passed and it was near 11 pm. I slept in the airport, which was like camping and not very dangerous, because there were about nine or ten people doing it with me, on some benches at the end of a terminal where the authorities allowed us to stay.

In the morning, I managed to find my way to the gate and onto the plane (in Chinese. But real Chinese this time.) I was excited, because by leaving at 8 in the morning we'd get to Beijing by 11am and I'd be afforded almost three whole days to enjoy the city.

We were then promptly detained for two hours because the tower wouldn't grant us takeoff clearance. Typical of the bureaucratic mainland.

I finally arrived in Beijing at around 3pm. It was enough time to go to the places I'd missed the most, go back to the place I lived when I studied there in 2009, and to visit the very same baozi stand that I frequented when I stayed near it back in high school.

Fast forward to after I left from hanging out with APSA on Saturday. I went to see a friend of mine who is living in Beijing and attending engineering classes through a program offered by our university. The area of town where he lives, adjacent to Tsinghua University (清华大学, a leading Chinese university), is necessarily a hotspot for students and people our age to hang out. We went out for a kind of expensive (by Beijing standards) dinner of hot pot; the restaurant was a cultural experience of its own, food notwithstanding. An example of what I'm talking about is that the restaurant is divided into smaller rooms where four or five parties each will sit together and eat (kind of like Hibachi). The wait, however, had us sitting at a small table drinking lemon juice and playing Chinese checkers for ten minutes, while ten or more other groups waited at identical tables.

After eating, we went to the bars nearby. I'd heard good things about the nightlife in Beijing, but when I showed up to meet some of my friend's classmates, I forgot for a minute what country I was in. The crowd in Beijing was very social and heavily contrasted the vibes I felt in other places with lots of people. Places like these bear testament to the modernization and redefinition of the psyche of China's inhabitants. As I re-explored the city, I came to find that it had grown and changed in many less superficial ways.

The next day, I went to visit a friend of mine, the philanthropic businessman helped set the APSA program in motion back in 2008. We caught up and talked, and I asked him how business was. Having been a consultant and entrepreneur in Beijing since the 1990's, he said that business was great, but that he was concerned about an imminent decline; he, and other knowing interests in China's tertiary economic sector, believed that there was only so much 'good business' to be done before things became more difficult.

As I moved around the city that day, I noticed marked differences that corroborated his point. At the pearl market, for instance, which I visited on multiple occasions in 2009 to buy several things at arguable prices, several stores had closed, prices had increased, and the crowds had thinned. The Chinese renminbi has been rising on the dollar since the last time I was here; that, combined with lower tourism (I'm guessing) and possibly government influence have come to bear on the merchant economy in Beijing.

The last thing I did on Sunday was go to Wangfujing to get dinner, and then show up at the airport too late to fly. In my distractions I had forgotten that Beijing to Hong Kong is an international flight (unlike the one I flew in on from Shenzhen) and I had to check in an hour in advance. How sad. I made my way back to my friend's place on Zhengfu road, got some watermelon to bring as a consolation prize/housewarming present, and popped a squat for the night.

And at 5:30 this morning, I got up, panicked because the sun was up, remembered that the sun arises extremely early in Beijing, and set out for the taxi that I had arranged to be picked up by the night before*. I made it to the airport and onto my plane, sat on the tarmac for an hour and half again while I stewed (I watched the time that I was supposed to arrive at work pass me by on my watch) and finally made it to Hong Kong only to wait in more lines, sit on more trains, and arrive at the office no earlier than 2:15 in the afternoon to put in a legit half day of work.

Now, Monday night, is my first time being back 'home' since Thursday morning. I think I'll have some sleep.

*Here is a great time to mention (again) how convenient it is to be able to actually read, speak, and understand what is going on around me. In Hong Kong i have about half a clue what's happening at any given time; that'd have to be one of the few things I didn't miss about HK. 普通话.

Day 30 [Beijing part 1]

This weekend I went to Beijing, and it was incredible. Going to a place that size only twice in two years offers a lot of perspective on long-term change that might not be perceptible to someone who takes it all in on a daily basis. This entry is going to be done in two parts. In this part, I will detail the day that I spent with APSA, the organization that introduced me to China for the first time in 2009.

Since my program ended two years ago, APSA has undergone a lot of structural and organizational change. The JUMP Foundation, a nonprofit group that stands for leadership, personal development, and teambuilding, has taken a larger role than ever in the organization of the program. As such, there is a great deal more interactivity than when I participated in 2009. The leadership of the program has added components to influence the students' experience even more thoroughly than before.

APSA has expanded to receive 32 new students from across the country, up from the 28 (only 20 new) that were my classmates. Students from all over the country have come to Beijing, organized into teams, and accepted challenges organized by the JUMP facilitators designed to teach Chinese and build relationships.

On the day that I joined the APSA scholars (it was a Saturday), the activity was a race around Houhai. I went to Houhai in my day but I don't think I blogged about it. Anyway, the race involved six teams of 5-6 students moving around the lake, collecting photos, experience, and culturally significant items (such as snacks and goods) in a competition for the most points (which was in turn calculated by the amount of objectives collected & the promptness of the groups' arrivals at the checkpoints). For me, participating with the groups offered insight into how competition and the group dynamic could serve to bring people together and identify strengths and weaknesses. I also realized that the students this year seemed markedly more enthusiastic about the challenges/activities/things they were doing than my classmates and I had been. I think that several of the differences in attitude and relationships were due to different orientation and preparation in Washington, D.C.

Aside from the challenges and activities of the day, and because APSA was excellent enough to put me up for Friday night, I had some opportunity to meet the students. This sounds stupid, but the personalities and attitudes of some members of the group I saw as reflective of some of my classmates from 2009. In every group there are the same types of people; the difference in this year was how Beijing was presented to them.