last week in hk

well, this is my 10th week in hong kong, which all means one thing -- my LAST week here. hooray! it gives me somewhat of an unsettling feeling to know that at the end of this week, i'm heading back to ny. don't get me wrong, i'm excited to go back (mostly to see my friends) but i'm also looking forward to having my simple life back..being a simpleton doesn't sound so bad at this point. looking back in this past 10 weeks, i have met a lot of new people..some people i'll definitely keep in touch with, and others, i'll probably never see again.

anyway, last week, i saw "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" with some of my colleagues. i really liked the movie! it was awesome..i really liked how the story revolved around chocolates =D johnny depp did a pretty good job in that movie as well. my favorite line from the movie:

"Everything is edible in here -- Even me! But that would be called cannibalism, which is heavily frowned upon by many societies" Hahaha.. that line cracked me up! There were other lines from the movie which i thought was hillarious too. overall, the movie was great fun....wouldn't it be an ultimate dream come true to inherit a chocolate factory? definitely for me anyways..would be even better if its a ferrero rocher chocolate factory =D

anyway, i shop and get massages every weekend, so this past weekend was no different. i did that on saturday and tried to catch up on my shopping.. man, i'm severely behind on shopping, no joke. then on saturday night, i had dinner with friends and alums from cornell. afterwards, we had drinks at the grand hyatt. it was pretty cool. then came home and started packing..didn't realize how much stuff i've accumulated over the past 10 weeks -- i hope i dont get fined few hundred dollars for having overweight luggages. ohh, on friday, i had dinner with my colleagues in soho at this mexican restaurant -- it was muy bueno! the food was pretty authentic (or as authentic as you can get in hk) and the drinks were good.

one of the items i bought this weekend is this brain teaser book called "Sudoku".. have you guys heard of it? its basically like a mathematical version of the crossword puzzle. i started looking at it yesterday and it's quite challenging..there's about 80 different puzzles in this book so i'm looking forward to doing it all on my plane ride back to ny =D

since its my last week here, i'm going to be quite busy this week with lunches and dinner with people one last time. last night i had dinner with josh in causeway bay at this malaysian restaurant..the food was pretty good but i think we slightly went overboard with ordering. anyway, back to packing! see you soon...

catching up

apology for not keeping my blog up to date for the past two weeks. so much has happened and so much to blog about..except i haven't had the time or motivation to do so lately...looking at my outdated blog, i barely blogged about mary's visit to HK! although its slightly old news now tht she left over a week ago...so here's my attempt at capturing the last week or two in a nutshell...

one night after my work, mary, tony and I went to this excellent restaurant in causeway bay called "Opia". the food and the ambiance was just incredible. it was one of those ultra fancy and decadent place with a kick of rock-star chic all rolled up into one kind of a deal. i really liked the place.. the place made it feel like i was in a dream of some sort (or maybe it was just the alcohol). anyway, the food was delicious and if you are ever in HK, i strongly recommend it. there's also a more casual place downstairs by the same owner called 'Y's' which i had blogged about before (the food is delicious as well).

the saturday before mary left for germany (2 saturdays ago), mary and i had long been planning a trip to shenzhen..actually i was the one who told her that she might be interested in the place since there are tons of good shopping to be had right after you cross the border..so i wanted to take her there for the real 'shopping' experience..lol. anyway, few years ago, when i first went to shenzhen, i remember getting my china visa right at the boder..so saturday morning comes, we wake up extra early to go cross the border..45 minutes of train ride later, we finally got to the hk/shenzhen border with ten million other people there. when we go up to the visa office to get her a visa (i already have one - got one in the states before i came to hk), we were told that they now give same-day china visa to everybody (and their mom) except US passport holders!!! i was so surprised because all we wanted to do was cross the border and help out their economy a bit... the whole irony to this incident is that we were getting rejected from entering china!! isn't it usually the other way around?! anyway, we had to turn back and go through some immigration hurdles (literally) to come back across to the hk side. at first we talked about having me go in and buy the stuff while mary waited at the hk border..but i couldn't leave her there all alone..

although we got rejected from entering china, there's always a first for everything.... BUT we did accomplish our mission that day by shopping and buying a heck of a lot of things (mainly mary) back in hk. she even bought one of those huge mother-of-all suitcase at the end to lug all of her goods back to berlin. i have never seen anyone buy so many purses in a day.... mary you're quite the s-h-o-p-a-h-o-l-i-c = ) but i really like the sword set that she bought in hk.. i must find me one of those to bring back.. altho i probably can't carry that on the plane 'kill-bill'-style...ohhh, i would never forget this one house that we went for shoe shopping... it was one of those places where the street vendor would take you back to their house to sell you things.. of course, mainly "real" things.. lol.. anyway, when we got to this guy's place, he showed us this small room/closet where all the shoes were kept..OMG.. I kid you not, the room was literally covered floor to ceiling with SHOES EVERYWHERE!! i mean it takes some skill to pile shoes up like that.the room was barely big enough for one person to stand...i have never seen anything like it. there must have been enough shoes for a small 3rd world southeast asian country. i wanted to take a picture but held back. anyway, we left right after because just looking at it made me dizzy. anyway, mary left for germany that same evening.. overall, it was a lot of fun having the "ex-tokyo party girl' come visit in hk =)

the next day, i didnt do much except my usual - 3 hours of body massage and 1 hour of foot massage and then, just hung out.. but i have to say, watching mary buying up a storm in hk made me realize that i haven't bought too many things in HK yet!!!! and time is running out.. in the beginning, when i would see things, i always say i'm here for another 2 months and i can always buy it before i leave..but now i realize that i only have 2 more weeks left so i better hurry...

hanging with mary & company in hk

last night was great fun..before leaving work, i went to the gym for a quick workout before i met up with mary and tony for dinner. we first went to a bar called fong in lan kwai fong for a drink before we headed to a nice thai restaurant also in the same area. this was actually mary and tony's first time in lkf and i think they enjoyed it (i guess it would be kind of hard not to like lkf). of course, the food was awesome. my favorite was the softshell crab with chili sauce, and the pineapple seafood fried rice served in a whole pineapple was just delicious. great food and great company, what else can i ask for? we had a blast talking and laughing endlessly.

afterwards, we continued the night with more drinking by walking over to soho. we randomly stopped at this nifty bar with its interiors decorated in this quasi-chinese and quasi-british influence design. it was quite cool. there i had another drink before i left mary and tony and called it a night.

here's an interesting website... www.simplyfired.com ..its basically a site with all the true stories about how people were fired from their job

new week

monday night i had to work a bit later...11:30pm to be exact. it's a been awhile since i worked this late and in a weird and twisted workaholic way, i sorta miss working late. mainly, i had to stay late because the quarterly earnings result of a company we're covering was being announced and so we had to stick around for that. its too bad because i really wanted to join mary for dinner at Felix in the penninsula hotel that night..maybe next time.

last night i had dinner at this fancy malaysian/singaporean restaurant right in the heart of lan kwai fong. the food was good and the place was nice and quiet. afterwards, i was invited to a friend's friend's birthday get together at a bar (boca)in soho. there i met more new people who are either doing their summer internship at various i-banks, or people who are currently working here. it was quite an interesting hodge-podge mix of people. after talking to some of them, i quickly realize that we have several mutual friends...such a small world, eh? the i-bank world is so small especially in hk. all of us working for i-banks seem to know a friend of a friend. we're probably separated only by a degree or two of separation.

so from this group of people, i met an interesting guy who i end up talking to a lot. what's interesting about him is that he's pretty much what we call an "abc", who grew up in LA and did his undergrad in CA -- but now he's doing his MBA at Tsinghua University in Beijing. usually people from china come over to the US to get their mba and not vice versa. so i thought it was quite interesting to hear why he chose a chinese university over traditional US business schools. in case you're not familiar, tsinghua is one of the best university in china (probably the equivalent of stanford and MIT of china?). hearing him talk about his mba experience was quite interesting because it's significantly different from my US mba experience. what was more interesting to me was that this whole talk reminded me of my senior year in high school when i was in the process of deciding where to go for college...at the time i was already accepted to berkeley and few other UC's...but my dad was trying very hard to convince me to go to the prestigious Beijing university instead....beijing university is like the "Harvard of china" which is a very tough school (imagine the billions of people you have to compete against to get into the university!). apparently my dad did lots of legwork in trying to get me into the university. he also showed me all the brochures and i remember seeing pictures of the dorm rooms (and like any normal 18 y/o - i was not too thrilled of what i saw). to make story short, of course i decided to go to berkeley in the end. looking back, sometimes i wonder what i would be like if i decided to listen to my dad and went to beijing university instead?! probably nothing...but with far better chinese pronounciation when speaking chinese.

6 weeks down, 4 more to go.

i can't believe i'm more than half way finished with my summer internship. it seems like i just started only couple of weeks ago. time seem to fly by week after week. although i'm glad that its slowly ending, i get this big knot in my stomach thinking about it because this all means that i have to finish up on my two final internship presentation projects in which i have to present in front of all the heads of various departments. bleh. but i guess it shouldn't be too bad since its only about 20 minutes per presentation. i hope i don't get too nervous and start talking all fast like a maniac.

last friday, i went with my coworkers (calvin, janice, derrick, and ken) to a brazillian bbq. the food was not bad and we had fun talking and catching up. did i mention it was all you can eat and drink? man, i was mad drunk. afterwards, some of us went to hei hei to hang out. calvin and i stopped over at hh for some drink..but didn't stay there too late since we were waking up early the next morning to go to sz for some dvd shopping.

saturday was pouring like crazy...it was probably from some of the leftover rainstorm from either the typhoon that was in asia or the monsoon in india. the rain didn't really bother us since we just shopped for dvds, had sushi brunch, and got a foot massage and came home. man, i was so tired that day..so i came home watched more DHW and took a nap. i'm almost done with the first season of DHW.

last night calvin and i went to see "The Island' (starring Ewan Mcgregor and Scarlett Johansson). i really liked the movie because of the great story line and the awesome special effect. its been awhile since i last saw a movie that made me go "wow" afterwards. i highly recommend this movie - didn't feel like 136 minutes at all.

so i had a long discussion with a friend this weekend on the phone about working in hk versus working in tokyo or ny. i've been constantly thinking about this day-in and day-out to the point of obsession sometimes..for real. s ome days, i absolutely love this place and i can totally picture myself living and working here after mba..but other days, i just absolutely don't think i can.

generally, the reasons why i don't think i can live here is: 1) its WAAAY too crowded here..everywhere i go there's people..tons of them. you think tokyo was crowded, try hk. (2) noise pollution - very noisy everywhere.. whether its the noise of cars/trucks honking in the street, people yelling (probably just talking), or just random noises everywhere. i honestly cannot hear my cellphone ring whenever i'm outside and that bugs me (3) small city and feel confined. there's just limited things you can do in a small crowded city. seems like other than shopping, eating, drinking, there's not much to life here. maybe i need to venture out and do more stuff? (4) bad weather...this one also applies to tokyo as well but its more extreme here. i guess the extreme weather makes it a less than an ideal place to live.

on the flip side, there are tons of reasons why i think hk is a good place to live/work: (1) work wise - access and experience working with the chinese market, one that i would never get if i work in tokyo, and its something that i've always wanted. (2) delicious and cheap food (although this also applies to tokyo); (3) easy/cheap to travel to neighboring south east asian cities - bangkok, KL, bali, ho chih min, etc for quick vacay; (4) lower income tax (a big factor for me); (5) cheap massages; and (6) more westernized feeling..like being able to watch american tv shows on tv or watch new american movies in the theatre and not having to wait few months to be released..not to mention access to all the latest shows on dvd at a subpar price = )

anyhoo, there are (+) and (-) about all three cities...i guess it depends on what my priorities are and what i value the most in life. but i'm also not ruling out moving back to CA either. hmm.. all this thinking is giving me a headache so i'll stop and think about it some more later.

funny because when you're younger, you think the world is such a huge place..tons of cities where you can live...but as you get older, your choices starts to narrow down and you realize that the world isn't that big.there's really only couple of cities in the world that i can live in. so in that respect, its not quite as big as i had thought.