HK Week 1

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The last time that I came to HK, there was this terrible tragedy where some lunatic in the Philippines took hostage a bus full of Hong Kong tourists. And so it was only appropriate that this time round another world event took place on my first day in HK; yes Mr. Bin-Laden was found.

I’ll include more about my actual internship in another post, but I can say that I have a feeling it is going to be much better then my one in Beijing. I suppose it’s easier for a foreigner to slip into the already paved way of working in HK. What stood out most to me when looking in retrospect is that I have a variety of work in HK and there are no daily doubts of my sanity and counting down the hours until I can go home – I believe the word is “enjoyment”. In Beijing, there is not really an established work culture per se, and though it comes with its freedoms, sometimes it can really drain the human spirit. An example of this was limited human interaction: when someone literally a meter away from you wants to ask you a question or wants you to do something, they send you an e-mail instead of speaking. And believe me, it happened on a daily basis.

I’ve been here for almost a week, and still haven’t got over the bright lights and skyscrapers. Tying to get a 3 dimensional experience of the city has lead to me almost been run over a few times, as I ignore the road and daze towards the skies like a country bumpkin on his first day in the big city. On checking the streets out at night, I often let myself drift away from the main ones, and wander down the back lanes or alleyways to oldies washing up behind a restaurant, and Nepalese migrants playing chess on the street.

In the midst of this, there seems to be an unusually large number of tattooed people walking around to be equaled by the number of “Spas”… the lights of the main roads were no where to be seen now. My heart jumps a beat as I’m convinced some man with a knife is about to attack me from the back when actually it was a pensioner throwing out the rubbish. It’s not my fault I have a creative imagination creative imagination. However the guys slicing up their meat have unusually large and sharp knives which sends my mind into innocent alertness at the vibrations of steel meeting meat, bone, then wood ringing in my ears. I assure myself that I’m a poor student with nothing valuable on me… therefore no need to unnecessarily fret. And as quick as that thought conjured up, so did the fact that I was a healthy 18 year old male, with a functional kidney with an assortment of various other organs.

With this in mind, I scurried past obstacles of tough looking people, down alleyways of Hong Kong of years past, and back into the comforts of tourist friendly Hong Kong, in a matter of 5 minutes.

Another notable experience was a few days ago where I had had a long day at work and was looking forward to get home, which required me to leave Hong Kong Island via some mode of transportation, which for me is the subway. However I encountered a minor problem that turned into 2 hours of irritation. Knowing I had had enough money on my octopus card, I made a pit stop at a bakery where I bought a coconut bun, for 4 HKD’s. It was pretty unsatisfactory, and so I threw half away. 2 minutes following as I routinely scanned my card to enter the station I was politely reminded that I had no money left on it. Damn, I spent my last 4 dollars on an excuse for a pastry. So in short; I spent the next hour and a half walking around trapped in Hong Kong Island. I decided the best option was to try every ATM on the island to see if I could draw money out of my Chinese Bank account. When I just about concluded that this was a lost crusade and that I would have to become homeless, the wonders of Standard Charted Bank saved me. I’m so grateful I'm compelled advertise their service as below:

http://www.standardchartered.com/home/en/index.html

And so bathed in this relief I decided to treat myself to a cross-harbor ferry ride. I’ve been on it a few times, and the beauty of metropolitan HK is stunning. I must say it was marred slightly by the crazy half naked person sitting in my proximity, telling commuters off. He seemed quite upset at something, but I couldn’t quite figure out.
On the bright side I learned some new Cantonese profanity, perhaps not very useful though.

Looking forward to a chill weekend

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