Random Musings from The Middle Kingdom (by the other half)

This blog is supposed to be primarily Trish’s recap of our adventures in the Far East, but given our one month anniversary of arriving just came and went, I thought I’d weigh in with a guest entry.  Which will be severely lacking in photos, because I don’t really know how to do that.  So, it is probably better suited for an email than I blog, but I’ve never blogged before, and it is the year 2012, so I’m feeling deprived.  But I digress…

According to my friends at Wikipedia, Canada is the 230^th most densely populated country in the whole world (out of 241, and that includes Western Sahara, whose status as a real place is in dispute).  So, after 31 years and 15 days of living with more space and trees and fresh air than I knew what to do with, we decided to pack up and move to country number three on the densely populated list.  And it falls behind only Macau (which is next door), and Monaco (which is kind of a made up place too).  Singapore is number four on the list, but at least Singapore is clean.  Like, really clean. 

So, here we are in this little country, absolutely jammed packed full of people.  And malls.  My God, the malls.  They are everywhere.  And naturally, when trying to jam that many people and malls into a tiny space, with a bloody mountain in the middle of it all, the only place to go is up.  Those that are afraid of heights need not apply.  The amount of skyscrapers is actually mind boggling. 

Of course, there is nothing I hate more than a good crowd, so safe to say, it has taken a bit of time to make the adjustment.  What I do like, however, is gadgets, and there are plenty of those around too.  We live in a 500 square foot apartment, and have four remote controls for our air conditioners alone.  We have three remotes for our tv (four, including the Apple TV).  I have a remote control for my online banking.    There is a remote control for our space heater.  Throw in a couple of iPods, laptops, blackberrys, iPads and an iPhone, and you’d swear you found Duracell’s happy place.  You want to know why China is taking over the world?  They embrace technology.  And I dig that.  Had I moved here two years ago, I could have told you to short RIM stock aggressively, because everyone here has an iPhone.  Everyone.  I’m almost embarrassed to peck away at my little blackberry in public.

Another thing there are lots of is taxis.  Loads of them.  Google tells me there are 18,138 licensed taxis in Hong Kong, versus 12,779 in New York City.  And given their abundance, it makes them a bargain.  The minimum fare in a cab is HK$20, which is $2.50 Canadian.  But, the meter won’t move for about 10 minutes of driving, so it is super cheap to get anywhere.  And the cabs need to be cheap in order to compete with the public transportation, which by all accounts, is awesome.  The subway system is ALWAYS on time, is essentially 100% automated, and charges based on distance travelled (are you reading this, Mr. TTC Chairman?).  To travel from one end of the island, all the way to the other, is HK$7.50.  Less than a buck.  Amazing.  Of course, you have to do it with 19 people pressed up against you into your armpits, but you can’t have it all.  At least my height affords me a clear sightline of the length of the train.  Just a few other random white guys poking up out of the crowd here and there.  And, all the signs and exits are very well marked in both English and Cantonese, making getting around this chaotic city quite a bit easier than it otherwise could have been. 

The business district, and my office, is in ‘Central’, which is not unlike the downtown core of Toronto (but with more British people), including lots of interconnected buildings, and an oversupply of Starbucks.  In fact, if anyone can convince the CEO of Tim Horton’s to open a store here, I’ll run it for him.  I think the coffee here is terrible, and with 300,000 Canadians living in HK, I’m pretty sure it’s a slam-dunk opportunity.  Also, did anyone know the stock market here actually closes for 90 minutes at noon??  They have changed the rules, so that it will ONLY close for an hour starting next month, which was of course met with a protest and walk out by the exchange workers.  But, our middle office people don’t seem to mind, as 30 of them totally vanish at about 12:01, and aren’t seen again until early afternoon.  I seriously don’t know where they go, but it’s kind of creepy walking around the other part of the office in the middle of the day with no one there.  If Scott Adams were here, he’d have a field day.  Aside from that, I just passed my licensing exam last night (barely… it was brutally tough.  I suddenly understand why there is a 58% pass rate…), so real work and mining for clients will only really start up next week.  Given my unadventurous nature, I have managed to find a Longos equivalent just a few minutes away for lunch, and since I ate there three or four days a week back home, at least that aspect of this experiment has been a pretty soft landing.  I did have one lunch with a co-worker at a hard-core Chinese food place (they just call it food), where it was essentially a banquet hall filled with 499 Chinese people… and me.  There were a total of zero English words on the menu.  So, that was interesting.  I did survive, but now have a very healthy fear of my first client lunch that I’m at without backup.  That will be a whole blog entry by itself.

Our new apartment is great, and nicely furnished with only the finest Ikea had to offer, while we wait for the rest of our stuff to arrive, which is currently somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.  Trish has already run through the escalator situation, which makes getting to and from work easy, and is quite civilized and orderly given the amount of people using it.  Visitors have been more plentiful that I expected, with Danielle and Keith here as we arrived, a few beers with Sash (from high school) and brunch with Dave Thomas (from work) last weekend, and Lauren and Lauree en route for the beginning and end of March, respectively.  So, good times all around. 

Thanks again for all the emails and updates over the past four weeks, especially as Linsanity descended upon Toronto the past few days.  It hasn’t become a frenzy here yet, but I suspect the clock is ticking (he’s from Taiwan, which is part of the Republic of China, but not the People’s Republic of China.  I know.  It’s confusing.  I don’t understand either).  Anyway, it seems to me that when the Chinese find something they like, they grab hold and promote the hell out of it.  So, he’ll be all over the buses and subways and buildings soon enough.  What a great story.  

Off the top of my head, that’s all I got for now.  The punchline is that we are doing great, and becoming more settled/acclimatized by the day.  Stay tuned for your regular programming from Trish, which will include a lot more cool pictures of everything we are experiencing.  Hope things are great with one and all. 

  Mike