Night out with Mixie-san



My Italian friend Trixie ( see her blog link off to the right) put me in touch with her friend and colleague Mixie who despite being of Japanese origins spends a fair amount of her time here in HK. I haven't had much time to get out and enjoy myself or see much of the town so when Mixie offered to show me around I jumped at the chance.

We meet up next to a small temple in Kowloon and I was a little shocked to see how timid and reserved she was, especially knowing Trixie, however as the evening went on I got to know the real Mixie a little better...

and it wasn't long before we were out on the town, hopping between restaurants and bars with me having trouble keeping up with her little legs.








And by the end of the night that shy, reserved demeanour had crumpled...

Searching for..The sound of Silence...

So last weekend, with Arnaud in town, I took the opportunity to do something touristy and hopped on a ferry boat to Lamma, an island a half hour or so from HK, know for its tranquility, lush green vegetation and calm. Here I was hoping to find some peace and quiet, something thats rare in HK. I was also looking forward to the opportunity to see some green, maybe a few birds and some wildlife. Basically to escape the concrete jungle for a couple of hours. Instead I discovered a mass of people, pathed hiking paths (prefect for pushchairs) and an enormous electric power station....





I hadn't come with any intentions to go swimming and the sight of the Mr Burn's-esque power station would have quickly dissolved any I may have had but to some being able to bathe in the shadow of this monster seems a treat, I even think an attraction! Maybe its the amazingly warm water, or curious underwater plants and animals ...

Mind you, except swmimming there is very little you can do here if you follow the rules laid out on the public information boards.




Although there may be no silence and the scenary may leave much to be desired the seafood on the island is great, although check carefully the name of the restaurant before deciding where to dine.

WORK...WORK...BOWL

Blah...Blah....Blah... yep, I know you're all skip of me banging on about the stupid amount of work there is to do here but you know some of that effort is starting to pay off - for example the team that we're training here is really starting to come up together.

Last Friday when we were all feeling worn out at the end of the week we decided to surprise them with the afternoon off. (This was sold to them as a reward for all their efforts, which in part was true, but was mainly due to the fact as trainers we'd not prepared anything special and weren't feeling either imaginative or motivated!)
To cut a long story short we overheard that rather than all squirreling off to their respective homes for the afternoon they were going to go bowling, so I decided to step in and pick up the tab (ie, charge it to the company).

I'm not going to tell you how crap I was at bowling but we did manage to get some good team photos... this ones my favourite.



Yep, everythings funky in HK, even the bowling shoes!

x

Summertime, and the living is easy...

'Merry Christmas' blinks the building across the harbour each night, it's lights flashing out a series of festive messages into the warm evening air. It reminds me of my first christmas in Sydney with shops playing 'White Christmas' and 'Frosty the Snowman' tunes whilst outside the temperature topped 30c.
It seems to be that i'm having another of those 'perpetual summers' giving that its been summer since June for me now, and i'm really starting to crave some cooler weather.

Despite work being incredibly difficult the living here in HK is incredibly easy. My apartment is on top of a shopping arcade, with supermarket, bakery, chemist, bookstore, obligatory Starbucks etc etc. There is a gym on the 42nd floor of the apartment building, free to all residents. All the shops are open late at night, and all day Sunday and all you need to do is think about needing a taxi and there will be a string of them around the next corner. All this comes with a soft but dependable layer of customer service, for example the dry cleaning service picked my clothes up from my apartment Saturday afternoon, and delivered them right back to my door Sunday afternoon. I have a horrible feeling its going to be tough for me to adjust back to Paris in this respect.

Although the practicalities of daily life are easy actually having a life here is not, especially when work comsumes most of your waking and sleeping hours, and you know you're only there on a temporary basis, making potential friendships incredibly short term on a face to face basis. When I do get time to rest and relax its then that I miss my friends and Paris, where after 6 years of effort life now really is very good, very easy.

So instead of going out and making friends i'm tending to invest more time in myself. That incredibly expensive spa membership takes up a good couple of hours ever Saturday (and its worth every penny of it), i'm continuing to try to learn Cantonese, i've started using that gym on the 42nd floor as often as possible and i'm also spending time researching some of those countries that i've always wanted to travel to. This weekend I also finally managed to get my act together and book some flights for a long weekend in Beijing. Its going to be a flying visit given the amount of time I have and the sheer number of things to see, but it will at least give me a taste of China, and an opportunity to escape HK (and therefore work) for 72hrs. Lets face it, whilst my work-head and work-soul is firmly here in Hong Kong, my real mind, body and spirit is clearly with my friends back in Paris, or preparing to continue that perpetual summer in S America.

K

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Having got out of bed horribly early I found myself on the MTR heading for Central with an entire army of knee-high Ninjas. Yep, it appears that every Sunday morning hundreds of 5-8 year old wanna-be Jackie Chan's head off to class, dressed in kung-foo pyjamas and armed with PS2s, fighting sticks and probably the odd throwing death star (or whatever those things are called). Since i've been here i've never once felt threatened or scared, however I have to admit that seeing those kids jabbing, killing and maiming anything that moved on their portable Nintendo and Playstation screens knowing they were all armed to the teeth was a little disconcerting...

Not only did I survive the train into Central but I also survived my first R&R session at the spa. Its an incredibly well organised and luxurious place with big fluffy dressing gowns & towels and plenty of free healthy foods & drinks whilst your waiting or for inbetween treatments. Today I opted for the Chinese deep tissue massage, designed to help ease tension & stress which I though would help my shoulder thats suffering from late nights sat up working in bed and long days carrying laptops and files. I've yet to decide if it has helped but all I know is that the massage woman knew exactly where it hurt and she focused her hands just so as to induce the maximum amount of pain. If I could have screamed 'Get your hands off me bitch' in fluent Cantonese I would have done so, but i've only reached chapter 1 in the 'teach yourself' book and we haven't covered that phrase yet.
All in all though it was a good couple of hours spent resting and completely locked away from the hustle bustle and noise of the city.

The weather here has been great the last couple of days, cooler than before (about 20-25c) and bright and clear, so I decided to wander around the quartier and find a quiet place to work outside. The light was cool and luckily I had my camera with me so I took a heap of snaps to give you an idea of the place:



(Big thanks to Emma for introducing me to Picasa to create the funky collage)

Best dash now, its back to the crazy work schedule tomorrow so I'm going to pack myself off to bed.

x

Mission Impossible

After just 3 days training the new team between 9h-15h, then working with Paris between 1530h-22h, before clocking in another 3 -4 hours of preparation time for the next days training its pretty clear that this isn't just a large project, its pretty much Mission Impossible given that i'm running it as a 1 woman show.

My life has been stripped down to the absolute minimum. The minimum amount of time it takes to have a shower, the minimum amount of time in which an email or phone call can be handled, in order to maximise the possible amount of time left in which to sleep. At the moment i'm managing about 4-5 hours of sleep a night and so needless to say i'm exhausted.
Its also obvious that i'm not going to be able to keep this rhythmn up for very long so i'm hoping someone in Paris is right now hooking up with those Christian Scientists and getting Tom Cruise choppered in to help me out.


When i'm really stressed and/or tired its a long hot bath that usually helps me put myself back together again and so all week i've been dreaming of this:



so I dragged myself out of bed this morning in order to spend a huge amount of money on a 3 month spa membership promising a range of relaxing and repairing baths, massages and treatments. This is the first time i've ever spent this much on such a luxury, but i'm hoping the financial investment will force me to at least partake in at least an hours pure R&R once a week.


I also managed at somepoint this week to pop by the People's Republic of China Resource Building and pick up my 3 month visa:


all I need to do now is find time to go!


There are two other things i've been trying to slot in around all this work:

a) Learn Cantonese... I've only spent about 30 mins with the CDs and the book so progress is almost non-existant.

b) Continue with Riddley Walker.
Here i'm doing better than with Cantonese in that i've probably managed a page or two each night before I fall asleep. The language is tough but its roughness help add to the imagery of the post nuclear planet and communities.

Its funny also in that Friday turned out to be a pretty nuclear day.
I drempt about a HK post 'the big 1' (no doubt influenced by Walker). Then during the day I read about how the USA had posted on the web documents from Iraq that could be used to build an atomic bomb (very smart those Yankies).
Finally whilst eating dinner I watched a programme about a guy who'd photographed atomic bomb shelters.
He explained that some states and countries were so paranoid about the A-bomb back in the 80's that they built more than enough shelters to house all their peoples. Therefore if you do ever find ourselves in a Riddley Walker-esque world its very likely your fellow survivors will be the Isreali's, the entire population of Switzerland, most of Texas, Cheney, Bush and the cockroachs.
Personally in the event of all out nuclear war i'll follow the advise of the SAS survivors guidebook:

a) dig a hole
b) stand in it
c) put your head between your legs
d) kiss your ass goodbye

I just hope I get to get my money's worth out of that spa membership before either Korea or Iran finish downloading those docs !