HONG KONG: work hard, but play harder

Arrived in Hong Kong I find myself this Saturday afternoon on the couch in Theo’s home. My head is this a bit dizzy from the endless bars and discos of last night. Theo made an effort to show me the nightlife of Hong Kong in one Friday night. He came far. I spent a small fortune and lost probably a few months of healthy live yesterday, but I feel no regrets. I can tell you from my own eyes that the Hong Kong night life is booming and great fun. However, I’m looking forward to a quieter Saturday night. I find my body also needs some time to relax and rest.

Tuesday night I arrived here in Hong Kong. Originally I needed to come here to extent my Visa, but as I wrote down in my previous posts I already found a solution in Shanghai. Luckily there’s where no problems with my visa application and I got my passport back on Tuesday morning – just in time to catch my plane to Hong Kong in the afternoon. Right now I have a six month business Visa with ‘multiple entry’. Until the 17th of May I don’t have to worry about my Visa anymore and can leave the country and come back without any problems. I was quite happy to find this beautiful little paper in my passport – Yeah!

My time here in Hong Kong is very nice and it's great to spend some time with my good friend Theo. I know Theo since primary school, but we actually became friends when we where 12 years – but still we go way back. Theo lives here with his wife Carol since two years and is enjoying HK a lot (no plans for leaving yet). Last summer on my first China trip I also came to Hong Kong – so it brings back memories of those days. However, last time I was here for holiday, now to do loads of work. I’m writing a report for de Baak in which I summarize my work of the last two moths in Shanghai and make an outline for thing-to-do the coming six months. It will be my blue print when making the steps towards a brighter future for my company. Changing your surrounding always helps my concentration – so it’s good to be away from Shanghai for a bit. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday I spent the mornings and afternoons alone in Theo’s apartment behind my laptop, working on my project outlines. I got plenty of work done. Theo and Carol make long working days too, so this helps my motivation and I don’t really have to force myself to get started – which is good.

The motto of Hong Kong is: “Work hard, but play harder”, as I’ve been told by Theo. This means people make long hours in the office. Working until 7 or 8 pm is quite normal, but still people play harder: restaurants, bars, clubs, etc. etc. it never stops. And when you feel everything gets too much you can go hiking in the beautiful nature on the other side of the mountain. A life style that fits me well (not too different form the Shanghai style), so I can easily adept and enjoy this Hong Kong way of living. So next to intensive focus on work, there has been plenty of fun and games the last few days.

One of the highlights was the horse racing on Wednesday night. This is the only legal way of gaming in HK, so it is totally packed with enthusiastic gamblers …. When you arrive you’ll see a big stadium with thousands of people enjoying this game and try to make some money on a Wednesday night. When looking around you’ll see two kinds of people. Firstly people that walk around with magazines containing all the horse-information you can image. You hear their brains working out the strategy on which horse to bet next, and more importantly how much to place. And secondly, there are people holding a beer in their hands, paying hardly any attention to the actual race and place some random bets based mostly on their gut feeling or just a lucky number. I found out I belonged to the second group. I lost all my bets, but had good fun and enjoyed this new experience.

Ok, that’s it for now. It’s time to make a nice little walk and catch some fresh air. I’m in need for that. I will be here one more week – that’s a lot in China-time. Then I’ll enter my second period in Shanghai – wow! Time flies extremely hard …. …. ….. especially in a place like Hong Kong!