Hong Kong History
While cut off the digital world (see
below), I finally found some time to read the highly recommendable "Modern History of Hong Kong" by Steve Tsang on our sunny roof terrace in the midst of crowded HK Central.
The book is very well structured, well written and does a great job of keeping the academic stuff in footnotes at the end of the book to not disrupt the reading pleasure.
Staying in this amazing city with such a short yet turbulent history while reading about it was a great experience. It is a wonderful case how knowledge totally shifts your frame of mind, how you suddenly see the same things and people around you with totally different eyes, starting from street names to the faces of Chinese inhabitants, e.g. when you start to guess in which wave of immigrations did a given person come to HK which was just a barren island of 6,000 fishermen 170 years ago?
Also, it is amazing to see how deliberate history is and how much of it is, while driven by the balance of power between Britain and China, totally incidental and fragile.
Many of the founding and constituting principles of this phenomenon resonate very well with my own: Rule of law, entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility, global outlook.
All this certainly made Hong Kong more attractive to me, both through identification with (some of) its values as well as through familarity.
Taiwan Quake Freezes Pixels
Old dependencies fade away, new dependencies arise for the mobile work and lifestyle: When the earth shook three times on the night of the 26th, making our building tremble and the wine gently swing in the glasses, we figured from
earthquake watch that the epicenter of the 7.1 quake had been more than 500km away from our present location on HK island, so we didn't expect any further impacts - until I fired up my e-mail the next morning to take up my work after the Christmas holidays... Nothing. Opening websites? Nothing. Only local websites (and soon Google and some websites in Australia and NZ) were accessible.
Today, 3 days later, things have improved slightly but are still not normal (yahoo.com is still inaccessible, for the third day in a row). Blogger.com started to work a few hours ago, but I am not sure whether it is because the lines have been fixed/rerouted or whether the upcoming weekend has simply reduced the traffic within the limited pipes available.
The quake damaged 6 out of 7 submarine cables through the southern tip of Taiwan, which is apparently the lifeline to HK (rather than the PRC). News report that it may take weeks for the lines to be fixed, but rerouting was underway. Links to (westbound) worked considerable better (incl. db4o.com's own website) than (eastbound) U.S. based sites.
Well, the quake gave me a better understanding for the Internet's geography and better skills in surfing baidu.com. I didn't know that the web was so vulnerable by being concentrated in certain hotspots which intelligently enough also happen to be the most seismically active regions of the world.
Shenzhen Frenzy
The first week in Hong Kong has passed already and was concluded with a daytrip to neighboring mainland-China Shenzhen city, a 12M metropolis which used to be a fishing village only 30 years ago.
Though only 30km away from HKG downtown (unfortunately for the air pollution spillover) it is still a ~2 hrs. passage to take local transportation and the KCR trains or direct busses, because you have to cross both the HK and the Chinese border. Also, if you don't have it already, you need to obtain a mainland China (or a special 5 day Shenzhen only) visa at the border post, which costs between HK$ 300 (US$40).
At Shenzhen I had the pleasure to have lunch with our local team in a very nice seafood restaurant. We cheered on a successful launching year of db4o in China and were bullish on the opportunities for 2007.
Before and after lunch we went to some of the huge IT shopping malls (picture), where you can buy a lot of cheap commodity electronics but no "latest" gadgets (better to get those in HK, SIN or Taipeh). The visit was well worth it. You walked through never ending halls of little stands selling computers or - mostly - parts. One could get a fresh, cheap and assumingly illegal copy of Windows Vista directly from the copy station.
Like the entire city, it was full of people whereever you looked. Everybody was busy, and people's faces looked very tired (though it was a sunny Saturday).
We concluded the day with a relaxing massage in the Shangri-La Club, a very nice and clean facility with a big spa, body rub, 2 hrs massage, relaxation and food - a full afternoon pleasure for only US$20 per head.
Back in Hong Kong in the evening felt like coming home, though. So civilized and Western... compared to the Shenzhen frenzy.
Settled in Hong Kong
As part of my personal globalization efforts I have moved to HK for a month to find out how it is to live here.
I rented a service apartment in a nice area in Central (Hollywood Rd), conveniently located to the major (OK, OK: expat) venues incl. the Central escalator, Lang Kwai Fong, California Fitness, bars and restaurants.
Yesterday an extensive walk up to the peak (some nice
pics here).
So far, work is going fine, though, of course, the time zone is a bit inconvenient for me and my business partners in the US and EU.
Other than that, life is very nice. Meeting with several friends and acquaintances over the weekend, and making new friends. Tonight dinner with Stanford classmate JNO (it's his B-day tomorrow), tomorrow classical music concert, Friday another dinner with friends, Saturday lunch in Shenzhen with business friends, and so on.
The biggest preoccupation here is space. It is just extremely tiny everywhere and you constantly run into people (literally). I think if you can't afford a large apartment (and it has gotten really expensive again), you'll probably suffer claustrophobia, esp. when you arrive from the US, the supersize country.
Weatherwise we have been extremely lucky: Apparently it was rainy until we came, now we have 3 days of blue sky and temperatures around 18C (65F). And the moment we left SF, the temperature there dropped to the low 40s, I hear.
The air pollution is not so bad this time, but that's probably a function of the wind direction and can change any time.
The food is great, though I eat much less and less frequently while I am here. Also, the food doesn't lend itself so much to alcohol, so in fact, Saturday, though having been clubbing from 10pm to 4am in the morning, I have been drinking only one Gin Tonic (part of my admission to pp) and (my newest discovery) Tonic water and Chai for the rest of the entire evening. Very healthy!
The Internet connection is decent, though a little slower than in the Valley. Some websites seem to be particularly slow, e.g. a German banking site where we have the online banking of ODBMS.ORG. Perhaps they block/filter access from China?
I love the Octopus card/payment system - so convenient - and the ability to shop/eat any time of the day or night (downtown, that is, as opposed to 24 hrs. Safeway shopping in the urbs in the US).
Oh, and, of course, HK is the big shopping town. I personally prefer Singapore, but it is still great and I have replenished some of my wardrobe. IT shopping is still to come, I just need to wait for my next paycheck to clear... ;-)
Allright, I keep you posted about more insights of this concept trip "live in HK like the locals do".
Via Europe, back to US - ready to go to Asia!
Last week in Europe, this week in the US, East and West Coast, all driven by the db4o 2007 roadshow which has now come to an end.
In Europe (Munich, Paris, Berlin and London) also meeting with friends and family, e.g. in the Grissini (picture).
On the East Coast OMG meeting in D.C. and roadshow in Boston. Cool but sunny.
On the West Coast several meetings and holiday parties before...
going to Hongkong on 12/15 for 1 month, enjoying Christmas there, working and attending the db4o Developer Meeting in the second week of January. This stay is part of my concept to live in several homes at the same time. Now trying out whether HKG is a good location to host the Asian one.
While cut off the digital world (see below), I finally found some time to read the highly recommendable "Modern History of Hong Kong" by Steve Tsang on our sunny roof terrace in the midst of crowded HK Central.
