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!

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!

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.

Back to work

Hey friends,

So I started work on Monday which means that there's been less time for adventure, but I have been continuing to try the local food. I found out that this office is also moving and that the area will have a much bigger selection of lunch options than the food court at the mall where we are now.

My favorite part about the office has to be the tea ladies. They have ladies that come around and bring you fresh tea and refill your cup a couple of times during the day. They're sweet older ladies and it's super convenient.

I never thought about this, but it makes sense in hindsight. Locals over hear can't instantly tell the difference between a Brit and an American. Most people assume I'm from London. Sure our accents are completely different to us, but it makes sense that to someone who speaks English as a second language, it's not obvious. Little things like this aren't surprising, but I never would have thought about them if I didn't come over here.

Oh yeah, this is another thing I noticed, everyone over here takes almost exactly the same lunch hour. In New York, lunch hour was kind of a floating thing. Not that any one person took lunch for 2 hours, but the first "lunchers" would start around noon and some people didn't eat lunch till after one pm. but around here it's like Ol' Faithful: 12:30 everyone goes and gets lunch or takes their lunch out. Groups all sit together and the tables around the office and then an hour later everyone's back at work. I don't know how this many people can coordinate lunch times this well. It used to be a struggle to get 10 people to be ready for lunch at the same in New York.

I'm starting to look for apartments. I think maybe apartment hunting for the first time in a foreign country where I don't speak the first language is a little daunting. I had it too good in New York. If I can pull this off, I know I'll be set.

So far my favorite thing is the smell of the MTR station in the morning. (In general, the subway system is much cleaner than NYC.) But the station near the hotel has all these little pastry shops in it and every morning it just smells like heaven with powdered sugar on top. This is something NYC has to get in on. Pastry shops > trash/hobo pee.

Alright I'm done rambling.

The weekender: beach, supermarkets, and cellphone service

First some beach shots from basically right outside the hotel. I hit up the beach on Friday; the water was a bit dirty, but thanks to years swimming in the water off Jersey, dirty water doesn't faze me as much as it probably should. There were some old men out in the water too and they seemed fine; I guess this made me feel better about going in. It's probably busier on the weekend. (Note, I wrote that Friday night, it's not true, it was just as empty on the weekend) But it was nice to take a 3 minute walk and end up on small local beach.

I found a supermarket for the first time. Nothing like the supermarkets back home. But there was so much good fresh food; I bought some marinated meats among other things. Delicious. I love the food here so far. They had a bunch of meat available by the pound. They had little plastic baskets with paper bags wrapped around them. You pick the meat you want and put it in the basket and then just take the bag with you. What's not clear is that you have to get the guy at the meat counter to weigh your bags before you check out. I guess I could have figured that one out. Fun fact: I couldn't find a small package of rice. They only sold it in sacks the size of pillows. It would take me a month of eating rice every day to finish that much. And where would I keep it? Come to think of it where does anyone keep that much rice around here?

So Saturday I found some shops on Hong Kong Island, a little more like New York City. I tried this chain of Japanese fast food places that's everywhere here: Yoshinoya. Eh. I also found an English language book store, but the choice of books was somewhat random. I guess I'll HAVE to check back in there from time to time. Twist my arm.

Today (Sunday) was really successful. I found the office. I really liked the area around the office. Kowloon Tong was nice, kind of quiet, a pretty park, clean. This was in the area outside the office:

Now I had heard that it was above a mall, I didn't realize that it was a HUGE, western style mall with all the expensive American and British chains. I wouldn't shop at these places in the States. Most of them anyway. I didn't want to spend too much time there (trying to explore the city and the culture). But I did venture into a music/video store. I loved two things about this.

A)They didn't have a rap/r&b section it was all just called "Urban". China, don't co-opt our racial PC hangups. No one's fooled when something's called "urban" in the States, and no one's fooled over here.
B)They sorted the movies by actor (I know Dad will get a kick out that). I guess if it works... but for instance, Pulp Fiction, one of my favorite movies, was listed as a John Travolta film. That's misleading to me. I think some movies are defined by the writer/director (Tarrantino films, Kevin Smith movies) some by the actor in them (Nick Cage movies, Jet Li movies) and some not at all (Fight Club, The Kings Speech). I think I can understand how this makes sense in Hong Kong though. If someone in Hong Kong is looking for a movie, they're going to think of the actors in it, not its niche in American pop culture.

The best thing about today though was that I found not one but two REAL honest to goodness supermarkets. With some local foods but with most of the day to day stuff that I need. The larger fancier one was in the lower level of the mall below the office. But this made my day. I felt so much more comfortable. So much worry about how I was going to get by completely disappeared. I've never been so happy to find a supermarket. They still only sold rice in apocalypse sizes, but I'm going to guess that Uncle Ben's size boxes are just laughable around here.

I now have a local cell phone number, e-mail me or something if you want it for whatever reason. I'm going to see if I can afford to keep my US number on a super cheap minimal minutes/no data plan just so I can hold on the number. I'll let people know about that one.

And I'll wrap up this long post with a little silliness. Some of you may remember my hip hop alter-ego, Cap'n Funky Fresh. Well like all great hip hop stars, The Cap'n needs to re-invent himself at this point in his career. Funky Fresh is retired and he will now be known exclusively as: