More to say again...

Okay. This is the first I've written in months. There are multiple overlapping reasons for that. At first it was simply that I was busy but I wasn't doing anything worth blogging about (I mean I know it's exciting to read about someone getting a few drinks with friends regularly on Friday nights, but people will have to use their imagination). So then I got mired in work and was kind of dragging myself though, not particularly interested in writing and sharing anything.

But recently things have been pretty darn good. So what's really brought me back to writing and sharing...
A few weeks ago I was out with a bunch of coworkers having a good bye beer or two with a colleague who was in HK on a short term assignment from the UK. At the pub we ordered some snacks, a bunch of typical bar fare (mozzarella stick, chicken wings, etc). Oh and nachos. Nachos made with Doritos. I don't know, some people might say they've seen it (I'm sure it's popular in a couple of corners of the US.) But it was a first for me. They were... OK. I suppose I'd eat them again in the same situation, but I'm not going to seek them out any time soon.

So what else has been going on? I visited Singapore for a long weekend. Absolutely beautiful city. I loved the area full of restaurants along the water. The city as a whole was clean, lots of space and just a comfortable place to be. I recommend it. Sorry no pics. I know... I know... but my camera didn't make the cut of things to bring with, and my cell phone was off the whole time since I don't have service in Singapore.
On a personal note, I'm really glad I went and saw a great friend of mine and really made some sense of a few things.

What else.. myself and a good friend who's also an American (if you call people from Long Island Americans...) put together a bit of an Independence Day party on the work boat. There were only the two of us and one other American, but the Brits, South Africans, Chinese, Canadians, and everyone else were willing to listen to music about America, eat hot dogs, lunch meat sandwiches, and apple pie, and raise an American flag with us. It's funny how I've been gaining an appreciation for what it means to be an American. Culturally, you know, not in a post-9/11 "These colors don't bleed" kind of way, but more of an "it's all part of our culture, the south, the west, the northeast, and it's all part of our story" kind of way.

I've been taking a Cantonese class that was offered through work. It's free and we meet once a week. It's a slow paced easy going course but I'm finding that I'm starting to pick up a few things, a few phrases. Hey any bit's useful, and if you were wondering, yes I can swear in Cantonese. So that's English, French, Spanish, Italian, and now Cantonese. Anyone want to hook me up with a few more, I'll be back in NYC at some point and you never know when you're going to need to put a cabbie in his place...

So a little over a week after the Independence Day party, we end up back on the boat on a fantastic Saturday trip. We went to a beach, had a few beers, good laughs, it was a complete blast. Couldn't have planned it better. M and I signed up for some more yoga classes together so we'll have that coming up. :-)

Oh yeah I'm all set to hang out with my sister in China this coming weekend. My visa from my Easter trip has one more visit left and since she's in Shanghai, we'll meet up and check out Hangzhou for the weekend. Should be awesome. And I promise to bring my camera so we can take some pictures. Promise.

So while I'm writing this Tropical Storm/Typhoon Vincente is passing quite close to Hong Kong. There was a T8 warning raised late this afternoon, meaning everyone was told to leave work early (well actually leave work on time since it was about 5 or so... ). This means gale force winds and let me tell you, they're not kidding. And this storm isn't even actually hitting the city. It's passing almost 100 miles off shore. I imagine if the storm actually hit the city it would be hell. No worries on my end. I have food and the water and power are still good. Just a really violent storm so far. But it's a first for me. I saw one or two funnel clouds in Colorado (and maybe missed a few that were even closer...) and I lived through Noreasters in NY/NJ but tropical storms are new to me.

Okay. So I don't know what the storm will be like in the morning and if it's sufficiently passed or died down, I will need to go to work so I'll wrap this up here.

I hope everyone's well back in the States, the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Israel, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Canada and anywhere else I've got friends.

Cheers!

Update: As it turned out, the storm was upgraded to a full blown T10 Typhoon with hurricane force winds over night while I was snoozing away. When I finally left to go to work this morning, the trees were all torn up all over the street, there were sign posts knocked over. First T10 since 1999. That's all.

That's more like it.

Work's been quite busy and a little too stressful and a few of you have heard me vent a bit about it. But a real weekend followed by Monday, followed by a holiday on Tuesday and I'm right back where I need to be.
First, I didn't work 12 hours on Monday. Couldn't and wouldn't. More like the normal 9. I've got a new project with a ton of strict technical requirements so I spent half the day reading through all the material and I barely made a dent. More reading tomorrow morning. But it looks interesting and I'm looking forward to getting into it. I have a meeting with some of the other team members tomorrow.

Second, Saturday was  my second trip on the Arup junk boat. It was a friend's birthday so she reserved the boat and brought a bunch of friends. The weather wasn't nearly as idyllic as my first trip back in November, but despite the rough seas, I had just as good a time. We played cards and drank a few brews and some of the group still went swimming. And afterward we went back to the Birthday Girl's place to help finish off the food because there was way too much of it, but we were sorely disappointed to find that the one food item that disappeared between the boat and the apt was the cheese. The one thing a bunch of white people in HK can't afford to lose...

And third, but perhaps most important, I had a great yoga class today that just left me with such a body high. This class was good for relaxing all that built up tension. This work/life balance is a little better. Obviously I won't get holidays all the time, but... well this was much needed.

What else, what else, it was good to see W again and have some dinner with her and some friends of hers. Tasty hot pot.

I had a long conversation with the Kiddo today. Really hoping to see her in China before she comes here to Hong Kong. I'm a little curious as to how a bat (like a live bat) managed to kill our conversation. But it's cool.

Anyway, it's late and I don't have much important to say here. Just checking in.

Cheers!

Tai O and other thoughts

It's spring training down in Florida and Arizona and I couldn't be more in the spring mindset. As far as the temperature is concerned it never got to real winter temperatures here, so it's basically been spring for a while and right now I'm in a springtime kind of mood.
Actually this got me to thinking about why baseball is so perfectly intertwined with American life. Baseball lines up with our own natural calendars. Spring is in general a season of hope, rebirth and renewal, and no ritual is more a symbol of that than spring training. Every team has hope, every dream of a title is reborn. It's great. The season plays out over the summer while we try to relax and enjoy the long nights with our summer heroes. And then just as the weather starts to cool down, the season winds down. Before the coldest days hit, a champion is named the awards are given out, and we pack in and settle down for winter once again. I love it.

And, I'm not just looking forward to the upcoming baseball season*. I've got an excellent opportunity to find out how Hong Kong (or more accurately, the expats in HK) celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Can't wait.

Tai O:
I went out to Tai O, a little fishing village on Lantau Island with W on Saturday. Let's start with the fact that to get there, you're on a somewhat ventilated, large bus going around some windy hilly roads. This whole area is basically coastal mountains (not mountain mountains, Colorado people, but mountains in their own regard). Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, getting motion sick on my way out there. So the bus ride out (and back) turned into eyes closed resting time. It was okay though, W works even more than I do usually and so we could both take advantage of the down time. I was surprised by who touristy the village was. And the people there milk that for all it's worth. Locals set up shop right in front of their house selling treats and trinkets. And they have lots of little shops and places to grab a bite. Seafood that's alive and swimming in till buckets outside the restaurant so you can pick which one you want for lunch. The village also seemed to have a collection of semi-domesticated cats. It seemed like they didn't really belong to any one person or house but just kind of roamed the village, probably helping with pests and getting food from various people. Pretty good deal if you're a cat, fresh seafood and not being locked up in a house all day.
I tried some dried, then grilled/fried seafood. Kind of like a cooked shrimp jerky. Sort off. It was alright.
There were lots of fresh fruit trees too. Bananas and I think mango, we couldn't be sure.
My favorite thing had to be the historic police station that's been renovated and turned into a hotel that operates as a non-profit organization to bring money into the village for preservation and other things. It seemed like a pretty interesting place to stay if not for the fact that it's so remote.



Anyway after getting back to the city it was out to SoHo for drinks and dinner. I'm starting to spend more and more time down in that area. I wish it was cheaper to live in that neighborhood. While walking around before dinner, I found a little sports bar that's a knockoff of "The Keg" chain in Canada. And like anything Canadian, they have hockey. Plus, the guy outside (bartender? manager? friendly barfly?) gave me a program to the CIHL, a local 4 team pro hockey league. Go Kowloon Warriors? Anway, Saturday was a great day.

For full res and all my pics go here.

So at lunch one day last week, for probably the 53rd time, the guys on the team asked me what I usually do for dinner. I never realized that the eating habits of a white guy living on his own in Hong Kong were that interesting. The answer is simple stuff I can make at home: pasta, chicken and rice, spinach salad, etc etc. Now you know.


That's all for now.

Cheers all!

*But it seems like the Hong Kongers have a few details to work out, at least they have the right team?:

Clerks and Chicken Parm

Last night I had to explain what the word cheesy meant to a guy at work. It's definitely a more difficult word to define than I would have thought before I tried.

Anyway, I'm not hear to talk about cheesy things accept maybe the chicken parmigiana referenced in the title.

Today... I had a 9:30 to 4:30 meeting cancelled. (Nothing good can come from a 7 hour long meeting. Nothing. That many human beings cramped into a small room together for that long a period of time with no alcohol can only amount to trouble). But it was only cancelled after getting to the location and being told half an hour later. Fair enough. But this sets the tone for the entire day.

A group of us went out to lunch today to a vegetarian place actually. I only know what half of what I ate was, but it was all vegetarian and some of it was styled like meat. It was all pretty tasty, though. As we're heading back and the folks from the main office have broken off, we start getting notified that we can't go back to the office. There was apparently a big fire in the building our office is in, and a lot of the building was filled with smoke. So myself and the group of friends I went to lunch with walked around the pet stores checking out all the kittens, puppies, turtles, lizards, rabbits, etc. After maybe an hour we decided to do tea and pastry to kill some time. Then we headed to a mall nearby to putz around. Mind you we keep getting updates about the smoke and how we can't get back to the office... finally between 3:30 and 4 they've opened the building and we can go back. Yay.

The building still had smokey smell to it but mostly in the elevator/lobby areas. Our office was fine.

So now I have to try to refocus and finish the calcs I was trying to work on this morning between my cancelled meeting and lunch. Meanwhile everyone's talking about the smoke and the fire and the secretary is telling everyone that they're free to go home if they don't feel well from the smoke.
While I'm doing this, I get asked, even though it's 5 on a Friday, if I could be available to travel to Dublin for meetings on Monday/Tuesday. I have a site visit here in Hong Kong that I don't want to go to, but I've already arranged on Tuesday, but I'm being told that if we can pull off the travel, I should go to Ireland and blow off the site visit. Now it's inching closer to 6, I want to call it a week and get out, I have no ability to focus on the calculation in front of me, and we're trying to see if we want to throw everything together last minute for me to go on on this trip.

The verdict, after a call to Tokyo to talk to the PM and then a call our team leader's mobile, who was out of the office on a personal matter, was to scrap attending the meeting live and just live with teleconference. It was all just talk. The chaos subsided I settle down to finally finish my calculation before I leave the office.

After all the excitement I settle on not going out anywhere and just making my way home. I stop at the grocery store and pick up the necessary ingredients to make myself a nice chicken parm hero. I've earned it and there's not really anywhere out here that's going to make one as good as I can make one for myself. So I settle down, with my delicious sandwich, in front of Clerks, a movie that will bring me home to the shore, and at the same time remind me of the guys back in Colorado with whom a well timed Kevin Smith reference rarely goes unappreciated.

The reason I'm writing all this is to get to a moment I had at one point in a movie I've seen countless times. I was sitting here, thinking, as I had in the past, that I didn't understand Dante. Why was he doing all this? Why was he jeopardizing a good thing? But then I realized, I've been Dante. I know exactly what goes through Dante's mind. And it's kind of shocking because every previous time I've watched this and even the first half of this time, I'm sitting there shaking my head wanting to smack Dante. It was a bit of an eye opener.

Well here's to the start of what's sure to be an interesting weekend.

Cheers!

We're going back to the blog...

Hey friends!

First off, I obviously took a while to blog again. A couple of reasons for that:

A) I've been busy. The act of moving into and furnishing an apartment is really really time consuming. (Plus side: I'm in an apartment and when my couch shows up this week, I'll actually be able to sit down and relax in my own apartment). Also work's been draining, it's been taking so much out of me that it's hard to find the energy to write about anything.

B) Work isn't the only thing that draining. Culture shock and settling in can also take a bit of an emotional toll. It hasn't been an easy adjustment and it wasn't a couple of weeks that I wanted to blog about for everyone to see. But I'm sure anyone who's done anything like this knows what I've been going through. You miss the little things that make home, home. And the little annoyances in your new location just grate on you until you can barely stand it. But you wait and you hold tough and you realize that it's all going to be alright. (A good night out drinking with another New Yorker who can talk baseball can really be a mental reboot. Good to see you Greg!)

C) Most of my expendable mental energy has gone into making sense of my other situation. I spent a lot time in self reflection and making sure I felt alright or if I didn't, why. It really was monopolizing my thoughts (and rightfully so) but again it was nothing to blog about. Despite Facebook and Twitter and all the others, deep personal introspection has no place in the digital public square.

I have no intention of complaining about any of the above, I just wanted to give some reasons for why I've been so quiet.

The big event of note was the Arup Annual Dinner. This is like a holiday party in that it's around Christmas and with everyone from the office. Those are about the only ways however. First and most notably, there is a theme. 2011: Circus Circus. So during cocktail hour* there were clowns and magicians. If your company didn't have anyone on a unicycle at the holiday party, you missed out. But the performers weren't the most noteworthy aspect of the theme. That would be the fact that those attending are welcome to dress in costume. So it's a formal thing (I wore a suit) but you can also wear a costume, there were employees dressed as clowns, monkeys, ring leaders, etc. This isn't just tolerated, there's a costume contest built into the entertainment. (More on the entertainment later). So they're giving out Long Service Awards to people who've been with the company a while and surrounded by well dressed coworkers, there's a guy in a circus monkey costume accepting his award. Now if you don't have a crazy costume but still want to accessorize they had a table with clown wigs, giant glasses, sequin bowties, etc. The Directors were encouraged to don a little gay apparel. I had never seen anything like this.

And the entertainment. They had two emcees (going over everything in two languages) they had Vegas style show girls with the outfits and the feathers, they had professional singers who apparently were old celebrities around here. A number of the locals went nuts!! (One singer sang a medley of James Bond themes...) Of course there was a live band to go with them, too. They had a professional hula hoop girl come do some amazing things! It was a spectacle. And the production value. A huge stage with a professional set. Four giant screens with pro quality video cameras filming so everyone could see from anywhere in the banquet hall. It was stunning!

And breaking up the courses of dinner were silly games. Music Bingo, create the longest chain of balloons, etc etc.

You might ask yourself, "what's the catch? That's got to be expensive." And the catch is booze. There was beer, and wine with dinner. But that's it. No real bar like at an old fashioned party at home. But I suppose you can't have it all.

So other than that, I'm finding more things to make myself comfortable here. Discovering places in the western districts that are pretty neat. There's an Italian Delicatessen that I found that I will probably go back to on regular basis. Prosciutto and Mozzarella!

What else, what else? I have a television but I'm only getting the base set of channels right now which doesn't have a wide range of English language stations. I find myself watching literally anything on the Australia Network. I might buy a BBC package and a sports package (ESPN would be so nice) but I'm going to hold off a bit on that.

I do miss all of you guys and anyone who finds themselves on Skype at an hour when I'm awake here, my skype handle is christopherpsimon.

Also download either whatsapp (+85293002381) or textplus (cpsimon), for your Androids/iPhones and we can text for free.

I'd love to hear from you guys.

Sorry I don't have pics. But I'll get some up when I have a couch and I've sorted things a little more.

Cheers!

*Cocktail hour was cheap beer, orange juice, and coca cola. No real cocktails to speak of. But it was an hour...

Friday's thoughts and Saturday's excursion

It's the end of week 3. I'm already in the groove at work and that's been really good. Have I mentioned that they sanitize the phones once a week? Cause they do that, and the lady just came by cleaning my phone.

Work is work. Pipes, ducts, space proofing and the like. I'm not getting to do my own plant design just yet but we'll see what happens. But it's the little things that make working out here interesting. For instance, I've been working on an educational building at a sludge plant. This place has a pool area with three pools (perfectly clean pools, heated with excess heat). Again this is at a sludge (or sewage) treatment plant. "Kids the field trip is to the sludge treatment facility, bring your bathing suits." If that's your kid, are you signing that permission slip?

Fun fact, unlike Arup New York, here they actually have the Annual Dinner (basically a Holiday Party) in December. What a thought.

So far I haven't found middle class, modest shopping. It's either really high end, fancy-pants malls (which all the same designer stores) or it's cheap stuff on the street. I'm not saying it's not here, but I can't find it. (Sunday update: I found some. More on that later on.)

I haven't seen the giant Buddha everyone's told me about yet. But it's on my list of places to visit.

Okay it's time for a beer and I'll finish up later...

So guess what I did saturday? Saw the giant Buddha. Or the Tian Tan Buddha in Ngong Ping, a Buddhist village on Lantau Island. It was a really cool trip. So at the end of one of the MTR lines, I took a gondola to the village. The gondola trip alone was worth it; the views are stunning! Just these island mountains covered in green, and then the sea. Side note, in the gondola with me was a guy who works in the village and he told us about the emergency rations stored in each gondola car in case of any long stoppage. He told us about a 20 km bridge that's just starting to be built from Hong Kong to Macau and Southern China. I thought that was pretty cool, and I think I know a one time bridge engineer who might also.

So anyway the base of the gondola is a pretty commercial. They're catering to the tourists. But it's nice and I sat outside and had some nice dumplings and a hoegaarden (a real beer!!!!) before continuing through to the Buddha statue itself.

There's a big arch and series of statues of the 12 heavenly generals. Each represents a different 2 hour period of the day and has it's own weapon.

From here I reached the steps of the Buddha statue itself. 300 steps to be exact. I hiked up and got a closer look. There are some great views from the base of the statue!! I took some pictures of the surrounding village and the sun setting over the hills. Again, just magnificent. My favorite part had to be the statues kneeling and making offerings to the Buddha. You can see one of them below.


Inside, there are a number of artifacts that were impressive to look at but I had no idea what their significance was because I couldn't read any of them. Wish I had my sister with me to explain them to me.

I simply loved the afternoon, despite the hour long line for the gondola back. I need to go back to see the Po Lin Monastery. If I have someone to go with me, I might try to hike the trip from the MTR station instead of the gondola...

Well it's getting late and I'll check back in shortly with the news on the apartment and how I found medium range shopping.

My last sentence is about Nic Cage so I have an excuse to use that tag again.

And for more photos check out the album.

Cheers!!

The Junk Boat!!

Sorry it's been a bit of time, but I was waiting for some pics from my friend from last Sunday. I still haven't gotten them so if I do, I'll post my update about the Hong Kong Wine and Dine festival. But for now I'm going to post today's boat trip. It was worth it.

So Arup Hong Kong has a boat that employees can get access too sometimes. One of the expats at the office had it and invited me and some of the guys I was hanging out with last Friday to come along. Best decision I've made in a long time. I'm tired and a little sun baked, and I loved it.

So I grabbed some food and beer to add to the picnic and met the guys at the pier in Central at 10:30. To be honest I don't remember where we went but we went away from the city. I think it was Sham Wan. It was a nice warm day and I sat around with some folks from work on the roof of the boat just relaxing and sipping beer and enjoying it. Let me tell you, when you're on the roof deck of the boat with friends, lounging on the cushions enjoying the breeze as the boat cruises along, life's good. So after we stopped, the swimming started. The jumping in off the top of the boat, and goofing off in the water started. We swam to the little beach and hung out there for a bit. This was really nice, the water was calm and there are all these green hills coming right up out of the water. So beautiful.

We swam back for lunch on the boat. So much food. Mostly just typical stuff, we were pretty much all westerners so not a lot of local food. After lunch the boat heads across the little bay closer to a slightly larger beach. This time some of us stayed in the water around the boat rather than swim all the way in and back but it was more good fun. We played the very appropriate lonely island song "I'm on a boath" from an iphone at this point.

The weather started to turn just as we were heading in. So the wind was picking up and the sea was choppier and we could see a storm coming. We took the calmer route close to the city and then finally as the weather was clearly looking to turn sour we reached the pier again and everyone headed home.

Here are some pictures:













































































































































































































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Thanks for reading!!