La Belle Vie

Okay, so I've basically booked my trip back to the States for Christmas and New Year's. I'll be in Denver for Christmas week, and New York for New Year's week. I'll send around some details to those of you that need to know. I'm hoping to see the guys (and girls) in Colorado while I'm out there. And I'm planning to gather with all my east coast friends for some laughs while in the City.

What else is going on? I don't know. I've been enjoying the Olympics. Go USA! I was just talking today about how it's been interesting to enjoy the Olympics around a group of friends who, for the most part, aren't Americans. It's like I take a little pride in watching the US do so well, but it's fun to have the conversations with guys who talk about how great it was that Andy Murray won or whatever. It's cool.

Moving on...
Hangzhou with Richelle. Too short. I wish I had more time. We really had some fun though.  One of the biggest attractions of this city is the lake. There's this whole city, but the most tourist friendly, fun part area is around the lake. Like this:


Or, here's Richelle in front of it with a tower in the background:

So we march around the lake in 100 degree weather, constantly trying to follow the maps that we have while Richelle gets bad directions from a cop who clearly couldn't be bothered, stopping constantly for water like two crazy white people who didn't think to bring our own.  We finally get to this temple where, as my friend J told me in her recommendation, there's a tea house in the back where monks will serve you tea. Here's a shot from the garden at the tea house:

It was so peaceful and quiet back there. We snacked on grapes and tomatoes (sure why not) and enjoyed the tea while just bs-ing and relaxing after walking for hours. It was nice.
This was followed by nearly getting lost on the way back only to be picked up by the coolest taxi driver I've had in mainland China. First off, I'm getting all the info second hand. Richelle's the one who speaks Chinese, fluently. So she's doing all the communicating while I'm in the back blissfully ignorant. So he says he has to pick someone else up but as he gets there he decides not to and tells us he'll take us where we're going because he doesn't want to take drunk people home and he likes us. So he and Richelle are chatting away and she tells me about the stories he's telling her about a time he got fined for something stupid someone else did and whatever. He's teaching her a new character she didn't recognize from the map. When we get there he gives us a discount on the fare because he liked talking with her. I guess a white person who speaks Chinese like she does is pretty rare. It was awesome. All in all it was a fun trip. And I got this telling shot that I hope finds its way back to her friends at school in Texas:



The rest of my shots are here, for the curious.

All in all, I'm in the middle of what should be a pretty wild and fun month. I've been having more great times with M. My sister comes into town tomorrow, and we're gonna tear up Hong Kong. I'll get to see another friend from NYC who's coming in and out of HK on either end of a tour in China. We've got another junk trip on the 25th. And I'm plowing ahead at work. My friends and I are talking about where to go for a long weekend in the beginning of October. I'll talk more about that when we've settled on a place and have more concrete plans. I'd say life is good right now.


As always I miss everyone back home a ton.

Cheers. 

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!

March on

Last weekend, I took a walk/hike through some areas of HK near the boarder with China that are only recently opened to the public, Sha Tau Kok. Before last month, only villagers who lived up there could come and go. It was all for boundary protection. Anyway, I saw some old ancestral homes and the oddest part of the area was the fact that derelict abandoned homes and temples are steps away from brand new buildings going up with modern cars of commuters parked out front. Crazy.

My favorite part would have been the old WWII era bunkers from the British Army. They've just been left in the hills around the boarder. These were apparently defense against the Japanese coming in through China.



This an old ancestral home. I'm not sure how old, but it was completely abandoned.



The particular group of people I went hiking with (I was invited by some friends to join their church group that goes on these hikes regularly) went out to dinner afterward and I tried my first taste of feet. Here I am eating a duck foot. It didn't taste bad at all, but there's not enough to it. It's a lot of work for some skin and collagen...



This past weekend I did a little more celebrating. We had another night out with the airport team, expats and locals. It was a ton of fun. Then yesterday I celebrated St. Patrick's day by having lunch and few Guinnesses at an Irish Pub and then going to a friend's rooftop bbq. I briefly excused myself from the party to video check in with friends in NYC, Boston, and Israel. Guys, it was great to hear from you! We ended the night by going to watch rugby. Wales won, which I guess was what most of the British guys wanted. All in all it was a fun weekend! Just what the doctor ordered.

Here are more pics from Sha Tau Kok if you're interested. The weather was kind of gray, but I like some the shots.

I'll leave you with this image, live the dream!

That hurt...

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!

Don't expect me to cry, don't expect me to lie, don't expect me to die for thee

So I'm writing again. It's Monday, I just blogged yesterday, what could I possibly have to talk about?
Dinner.

My landlord invited me over for dinner with her family. It was her and her husband and their son and of course the domestic helper they have.
The food was delicious. Cantonese style food. We had three dishes: a sweet and sour pork dish with peppers and pineapples and other veggies, some kind of a chicken dish with carrots and potatoes, and then scallops with I think snap peas and more carrots and mushrooms. It was all delicious. We had a soup after that and then the chocolate mousse cake that I brought (always supplying the healthy food!).

They were so polite. And they started teaching me how to say a few things in Cantonese. It was a really nice gesture and I greatly appreciated it.
We had a nice conversation about Hong Kong, the culture, they asked a lot about my and my family and America. I just... I feel very lucky. I really like them and that makes my living situation so much more... comfortable.

[The Australian news show just used the word "spifflicated".]

Thursday is apparently the winter solstice which is an important holiday here where most people leave work early to be with family. Our group is all going out to a big lunch all afternoon. (I've got too much work to do to afford the time off, but if everyone's going...)

And of course to tie back into the title of this post:


Cheers all!

closer to normalcy

I mentioned that I finally found some moderate priced shopping. Well it was all part of last weekend.

I met with my real estate agent again (I ran into some road blocks in negotiations with the place I had been interested in previously*) and she had two apartments to show me. Well they were both in a really nice quiet development that's close to work and really practical. One of them was really nice, clean, renovated, had new bathroom and kitchen fixtures. I really liked it. It's a decent size for my needs and there's a supermarket and a small shopping center just next to the complex. There's also a bigger shopping and restaurant area near the MTR station about a 10 minute walk or so from the apartment. This is where I found places to buy the stuff I'll need to fill out the apartment.

I actually just bought a bed and mattress to be delivered on time so that I won't be sleeping on the floor.

So the apartment: two bedroom, about 500 sqft, I'll take pictures later. I don't know what else to say other than I'm looking forward to having a place to live (not a hotel).

I met the landlords. A couple and their son. They were really nice, and they spoke english well which really helped. They asked about me and were in general just nice polite friendly people. They have to move some stuff out that they were storing (stuff like their sons old toys and some sports equipment etc etc...) and they have to finish up the work in the kitchen.

So the details: I finalize the paperwork and get the keys on Thursday. I'll move my bags in on Friday and sleep on my new bed.

But everything's not perfect. The extra time it's taking to get into the apartment pushes me over the one month limit and I'm living in a different hotel. The serviced apartment that work paid for was not available for me to stay in (they were full) so I had to pack everything into a cab and move to another hotel (which is actually a hotel room and much more cramped with all my luggage). The bad news is that the money I wanted to spend on a Christmas trip is going into this hotel, but I'll spend the holiday continuing to get my apartment in order and reading and exploring Hong Kong. This means that I'm going to start encouraging people to come visit. I should have money in my reimbursement budget for second bed...

I haven't had the time to adventure much lately, it's been all work and apartment stuff. Work has me learning plumbing and fire protection on a project that's already so tightly scheduled as to be ridiculous even if I was working in my own discipline. This is going to be a really busy week for me.

I did see this today:





I guess you get your haircut by a quarterback. I would always assume the kicker is most likely to be into cosmetology, but who knows.

Live note: I was watching some English language movie channel. And it's been normal movies. X-files was on at one point, and then some movie with Jodie foster, but now it's "Lesbian Vampire Killer". I can't tell if it's a campy comedy, a really bad sci-fi fantasy movie or something in between.**

Where was I? Oh yeah.
I also wanted to point out that this beer is in all the supermarkets:













It's Ice Smooth!

Thanks again for reading!

*The landlord of the first place I was interested in wanted to avoid paying taxes by renting under the table and not letting on to the government that the place was occupied. Not wanting to wind up in a Chinese prison somewhere with no way of notifying my office that the Terminal 1 work wouldn't get finished... I politely declined.

**So far Lesbian Vampire Killer has it all: dry British humor, profanity, some eye candy...

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!!

Strange things are afoot at the Circle K

It's all I can think about whenever I see one of the many circle Ks in Hong Kong. It's funny Circle K and 7-11 are everywhere.

So Friday I went out with some of the guys from work, Brits and Americans. Just like home. There's a bar in the mall below our office that's really the only place close to go to. It's covered in Americana. Pictures of Gerald Ford and maps of the US, and it's Chicago themed so they have lots of Chicago sports team stuff.
Anyway, I ended up following some of the guys to get dinner and go to a party for an Architect friend of theirs in the western area of Hong Kong Island. We went to this little restaurant. The food was great. I don't even know what we ordered because they ordered for everyone and we just shared. But we had two different types of dumplings and some spicy tofu dish and some noodles and pork and everything was really good. Of course the drinks were a bit sketchy:

Cans of Tsing Tao and paper cups. Style.
After dinner we did hit up this party. Lots of westerners, all in the industry, engineers and architects. Good people, fun conversation, and the place was nice, out on a balcony. But so far I'm not enthralled with the western areas. Very loud and busy. Big party scene. I could hang out there for a while, but I think I'm right to be looking in Kowloon for a place to live.

I saw a great place today. It was plenty big for me. And it was in a really nice clean modern building, good security, quiet neighborhood. The building has a gym, a pool, a clubhouse, really nice. The only draw back is that there's like a 3 minute bus ride to the supermarket/restaurants/MTR but I could live with that. And the price is right in my wheelhouse and I think the agent can help talk it down a bit too. I want to see a few more areas. Can't just jump on the first nice place. But I would probably really like it there. I don't need to be right in the heart of the nightlife. I was never into that NYC.

Okay so I've mentioned that our office here is right above a mall. Walking from the MTR station to the office tower I've seen this too many times:
Yep. They've got Nic Cage's face selling watches over here. That seems like the opposite of a good endorsement, but what do I know.

Tomorrow meeting up with an old friend who used to live in NYC and now I think I'm going to go for an evening swim.

How I got here

For at least two years, more if I'm not deluding myself, I have been somewhat directionless. I was treading water. My career was comfortable though not soaring.

In early summer 2011, my office asked if I was interested in a position overseas. Hong Kong. At the time this seemed like just the opportunity I needed to re-energize myself and reinvigorate my life. So I said yes and waited, cautious and curious. When I started actually speaking with one of the Directors in Hong Kong, I was still a little uncertain if I really wanted this or if I was just telling myself I did. Did I actually desire to go to Asia to live and work or did I have nothing in New York to give me an excuse not to keep the process going? I definitely thought about job security in New York during the early decision making steps of the process. Soon the transfer had so much momentum, I couldn't stop it. I was headed on a two year long adventure whether I liked it or not.

All of my friends and family were incredibly excited. Everyone at work told me how great a city Hong Kong is, how much fun I would have. No matter what, some doubt lingered. I couldn't make it make sense in the deepest part of me. I felt silly telling people. Could they tell what I was really thinking? I love the New York life, I wasn't unhappy with my job or my apartment, or my friends, I was just a little stuck. I only needed...

What happened, not two weeks before I left New York, may be the subject of a different post or it may be left to sing sweet songs in her memory and mine. But as it turned out, the one thing missing from my life was right underneath my nose. I have no regrets, but I don't yet know how to come to terms with the fact that I came so close to having it all in the Greatest City in the World.

Here I am. A kid from a Jersey, a transplanted Brooklynite in Hong Kong. I'm definitely going to have to give this city my all. Let's do this!