New Perspectives on Old Places…
Wednesday, August 16th, 2006I got on my flight to HKG a bit woozy…there seems to be a pattern forming here. My final night in Japan was pretty intense: a reunion dinner with several long-time Japanese clients, followed by a drinking bout at the Hobgoblin Akasaka pub. The dinner was a lot of fun – we went to my favorite Spanish restaurant in Tokyo, consumed a few flagons of red wine and sangria, and laughed about the vagaries of the Japanese business world. I had worked for these fellows for 6-7 years, had suffered through some tough times with them, and I was happy to be able to come back as a friend and share some war stories. It’s funny…the first couple years I spent in Japan felt like a trench war, making very little progress and wondering if I’d be able to stick it out. After that, things got unstuck in a hurry, and towards the end I felt like I had gained a lot of respect. Hopefully I didn’t lose all/most of that respect by quitting my job…I think the dinner showed that I had turned the corner and was viewed by my ex-clients as a friend and ally.
The Hobgoblin session was also good fun. My friend Miho showed up, Rob was bouncing back and forth behind and in front of the bar, and the last thing I clearly recall was Rob expertly mixing a glass of Czech Absinthe for me. No wonder it’s illegal in most civilized countries. Somehow I got back to Shin and Lisa’s place for a few hours of snooze before my flight.
On my flight to Hong Kong the next morning I reflected on the past year or so. In a way I was feeling between worlds. A year before, I was co-managing the firm’s Tokyo office, selling millions of dollars of work, overseeing projects, and spending most of my time with clients in intense discussions. It was hard stuff…but at the same time, I think I knew my place. Now, I was back in many of the same places, but with less of a compass. Sometimes I wasn’t quite sure how much to really let go…should I maintain a veneer of gravitas, should I let loose and see where that took me? Not sure…perhaps it will take more than a few months, or even a year of freedom for me to gain a firmer footing.
Hong Kong – the Fragrant Harbour. Yeah, right. Well, at least it’s ‘Asia’s World City.’ That’s HK’s marketing slogan, and while the campaign isn’t that great, the moniker isn’t far off the mark. I had first come to HK with my fraternity brother Bryan Wong back in 1989. Bryan’s family had left China after the Communists took over, and were well-established in HK’s Kowloon Tong neighborhood. Bryan and I were seniors and roommates at Tufts University, and as winter break loomed, he told me that his family wanted him to come to HK over the break – but that he wouldn’t go solo, he wanted me to join him. That sounded more exotic than my other plans, but wasn’t sure my folks would fork out the cash. I nervously asked them over dinner soon after, and to my pleasant surprise they agreed straightaway. So Bryan and I went to HK and also mainland China for the break. We were in Tiananmen Square 5 months before the uprising; I have a photo of Bryan and I smoking shoddy Chinese cigarettes in the square on a snowy day.
That’s another story, but my point is that after 1989, I didn’t get back to HK until 1999, when the firm transferred me there. In the meantime, I had often thought of returning, in part to see the changes arising from the handover of the city to the Chinese. I was fortunate enough to live in HK from 1999-2005, although much of my time was spent in Tokyo and Australia. It’s a fantastic city – easy to live in as a foreigner, with endless activities and sights. HK isn’t exactly a relaxing place – when you step off the airplane there’s often a mad rush for Immigration, and people in the streets always seem to be late for a meeting. But the frenetic energy is definitely one of the hallmarks of the city and one of my favorite things about it.
This trip back provided good closure. My final few days in HK while working, in early January of this year, were brutal. I had returned from a couple blissful weeks in Thailand, and now had to pack up my stuff (some of which had just come in from my Tokyo apartment), finalize taxes, etc. The taxes proved to be the main issue – I had somehow crossed a threshold regarding # of days spent in the territory, and was liable for a sizeable tax bill. After going back and forth with the Inland Revenue Department for 3 days, I finally got the bill down and paid it – but the process was exhausting and when I flew away from HK for Boston, I was beat…and also a bit unhappy, as I had hoped to spend my ‘final few days’ in HK going hiking, visiting museums, etc.
It was therefore nice to be back without any of that hassle. I can’t say that I did all of the activities I thought I would. I really didn’t feel like a tourist in any way, and thus spent my time hanging out with old friends, hitting a few bars, and taking care of errands. I stayed with my friend Sam Hilton, his wife Genvieve, and their two adorable sons Ken and Dexter. Sam and I were colleagues in the HK office, and stayed in touch and saw each other after Sam left. He’s free-lancing these days and considering potential career steps. The Hiltons were superb hosts and I managed to get a bit of rest while with them, notwithstanding a very late night (well, morning – I got back at 8 a.m.) in Wan Chai after drinking with Sam and some other Monitor people.
Soon after I landed in HK, Sam and I joined some Monitor friends at a dinner in the Lan Kwai Fong nightlife district. Mark Cho picked a private Shanghainese club and the food was delicious. Of course, business is never far off – during the dinner Ginny Yiu, Monitor’s HK accountant, handed me a letter from the Inland Revenue Department. Thankfully it was just receipts for my earlier tax payments. I had visions of repeating my struggles with the IRD, which didn’t really end until May of this year – it took 4+ months to clear up all the paperwork and get my refund from them.
After the dinner we cruised the streets of LKF and found a good place to sit, sip and gaze at the passing crowds. I was surprised at the number of people in LKF on a Tuesday night. On subsequent evenings I observed the same thing – on a Sunday night in Wan Chai it was mobbed. The economy of HK is hot these days and people have $ to burn. HK is an expensive city – at least if you want to bar-hop and eat at nice restaurants – but there seems to be more people than ever who are doing so. Good for HK…it’s just that the city is famous for its booms and busts…it’s just a single city, after all, with some unique characteristics. I hope that the next downturn – which could be caused by an epidemic like SARS, or by economic cycles – is shallow and not too painful.
I stopped into the Monitor office the next day to see some people. The reader may have noticed that wherever I’ve gone during this journey, I’ve stopped into the local Monitor office – in Manila, in Tokyo, and now in HK. I suppose it’s difficult to truly escape the Monitor orbit in the short-term – so much of my life was connected to the firm. And I do have many friends still there, so I don’t worry too much about having that umbilical cord, I suppose. And I must admit that I’m still addicted to getting a bit of help from my ex-assistant, Jessica – she used to be a real life-saver when I was bouncing /floundering back and forth between HK and Tokyo. This time she helped me make a couple flight bookings, including one to Shanghai. I had agreed to go there for a couple days and help a new Monitor consultant get up to speed on the Japanese pharmaceuticals market. More on that below.
After hanging out at the office I went over to the HSBC branch at Convention Center. I had discovered that Burma, one of my upcoming destinations, has no foreign banks or ATMs, as the US imposed economic sanctions a few years ago and all the banks pulled out. And credit cards are hardly used in that country…so I’d need to get a large sum of US$ and take them with me. The customer service rep at HSBC asked me why I needed so much cash – probably a standard question to weed out drug dealers. I told her about my upcoming trip to Burma, and she was pretty interested. She asked me if Burma was worse off than China for human rights…I found that intriguing to ponder. At least HK is still an open enough place to pose those sorts of questions. I think I replied that China and Burma are fairly similar in that regard, and that Burma has probably picked up a few lessons from its northern neighbor on how to suppress freedoms. She agreed and forked over my cash.
That evening I went to Macau with my former colleague and current money manager Yuhin. We discussed my financial situation on the ferry over, made a few adjustments, and had a huge Portuguese dinner at A Lorcha, near the Maritime Museum. Macau is a cool city – most people know about the massive casino expansion into the city, but there’s also an old feel to the place and you can easily spend a few days walking around the old neighborhoods and seeing the Portuguese and Chinese buildings and joints. We went to a few bars after dinner – to my surprise (and intense disappointment) my two favorites, Oscar’s in the Holiday Inn and Embassy Bar in the Mandarin Oriental were both gone, replaced either by a clothing shop or by gambling tables. I suppose that hard-core gamblers have won out in Macau over hard-core drinkers! I wonder what the Venn diagram looks like – there must be a decent amount of gamblers who like to drink as well?! It’s really something – just 8 months after leaving the area, I return and two places where I’d had a lot of fun are gone. I know Macau is changing by the minute, but it’s still a bummer.
Got back to HK that night. Heard later that I had just missed an exhibition put on by Lebron James in Southorn Park – I was walking around that area hours before. Oh well.
Next day had to scramble to get a typhoid vaccine, necessary for my Burma trip. This was really my foul-up – on two previous occasions I had asked doctors for the vaccine, which they provided me in oral pill form. You’re supposed to take 3 pills over 6 days, keeping the remaining pills refrigerated. Well, with my busy schedule I could never find a good stretch of time to do the course, and quickly forgot they were in the fridge. So this happened twice – at least insurance paid for the stuff. This time I was in a hurry, and preferred to get an injection. The government runs a Travel Centre and they took care of me well there. But they also advised me to get malaria prophylaxis for Burma – I was planning to stop by a pharmacy and get some Lariam, but it turns out that Burma (and some parts of northern Thailand) have Lariam-resistant malaria, so I had to buy some fairly expensive new product (Malarone). At least you can start just 1 day before and finish 1 day after the trip. Despite my honest attempts at creating and adhering to a budget, these sorts of things always come along and surprise me.
As mentioned earlier, I didn’t really do any tourist activities in HK. But on Saturday night I went out with Sam and Genvieve to the Black Sheep, which is an improbably little gourmet restaurant in the tiny Chinese fishing village of Shek O. It’s a long cab ride to get there, but well worth it. Many times before I had hiked the Dragon’s Back trail and then dropped down to the Shek O road, walking by the beautiful Shek O Golf Club before getting to town and the Black Sheep. It was always excellent to sit there after a 3 hour sweaty hike and drink a few cold European lagers and eat foie gras, couscous, and other random specialties. This time we didn’t do the hike first, but it was still very nice. Afterward we went over to the beachside pub, which is also one of my favorite places in HK.
A couple days later I flew to Shanghai. I got to the airport early, as the London terrorist arrests had taken place 3 days before and things still seemed jumpy. I wasn’t looking forward to checking my laptop and other fragile electronics…but didn’t need to. In Asia, at least for now, you can still carry baggage on board, and the only restriction is no liquids. That’s entirely reasonable and I was happy about that – but at the same time wonder if terrorists at large will restrict their targets to the US and UK. No one in their right mind wants to piss off China, but still, terrorists are good at finding weak links and at some point they may decide to make a statement somewhere in Asia. I also wondered how airport security can stay ahead/abreast of terrorists…one can imagine all sorts of ways to get liquids on board. Human blood is always available; or you could swallow a plastic bag with chemicals. Not nice stuff to think about – but I hope someone on our side is doing it. Anyway, the flight was uneventful – and more relaxing than when I flew from Sydney to HK on September 12, 2001.
As I entered the Shanghai Pudong Airport arrivals hall I saw a guy holding a sign that just said ‘Thanks.’ Not too sure what that was about, but I laughed pretty hard as I walked by him. Then I saw a guy holding a sign that said ‘Michael Slone Monitor Group.’ That was obviously for me…but I still did a double-take. Wasn’t sure I’d ever see a sign with those particular words again. A bit scary…
So you’ve now figured out that this trip was work-related – the only real work I’ve done this year. Not too demanding – I basically talked about the Japanese pharmaceutical market for 2-3 hours, and the new Monitor hire asked questions. Of course, we met at the Monitor Shanghai office – the fourth Monitor office I’ve walked into on my journey. It took me about 5 minutes to see that the work hasn’t changed much in the brief time that I’ve been gone – junior consultants were there in full force when I left at 10 p.m.
Then I went back to the hotel, and out to see an ex-girlfriend at a nearby restaurant. It was good to be back in Shanghai – and to be honest, I had really wanted to visit, and the work excuse was very helpful – otherwise I would have had to pay myself, or would have forgone the trip entirely. Years ago I had some projects in Shanghai, and love the city. It’s one of the more vibrant places around, and the city feels timeless – nothing was destroyed in WW2, the city was more or less neglected by Mao and his gang, and it rose up again in the 1990s. It feels half classical and half post-modern. A walk along the Bund and a gaze over the Huangpu River to Pudong is one of the cooler sights in any city. Here’s a shot:
When I was in Shanghai I had a couple thoughts (at least). One was that my journey might be a better-planned version of ‘Lost,’ a program which I’ve admittedly never seen so can’t comment well on. I feel like I’ve been dropping into various spots and then figuring out what to do, until the next ‘episode’ where I’m somewhere else. Another thought is that I’ve been pretty opportunistic about saving a few bucks here and there. The Shanghai trip was financed by Monitor…so I had a few days of free living. I’ve also had to use some Starwood Hotel points or lose ‘em – so I booked a free night at the Plaza Athenee in Bangkok (next stop). It’s been nice to stay at 5-star hotels and replenish my shampoo and soap stocks, and to generally get a better night’s sleep. I don’t miss these sorts of places that much, given how many nights I spent in them over the years for work. Still, when you’re staying in modest places with dodgy mattresses, a night in a 5-star place (like the Radisson Xing Guo in Shanghai) works wonders.
I had a free day to wander around Shanghai. Unfortunately, it was 37 degrees Celsius (about 100 Faherenheit) and just brutal, even in the shade. I decided to cab it down to Yu Yuan Gardens, which bizarrely enough is Shanghai’s ‘Chinatown.’ The rest of the city isn’t particularly ornate – you don’t see many temples/pagodas in the city, so Yu Yuan is where they’re congregated. That said, it’s really a tourist trap with endless shops and touts bothering you (esp. foreign tourists). My favorite place at Yu Yuan is the Nanjing Steamed Bun House – a restaurant specializing in ‘pot-stickers’ of many sorts, including the city’s famous xiao long bao. If you didn’t want to sit down, you could stand in a long line for take-out at a window. The place is incredibly popular – and interestingly enough has mushroomed to other places. There’s a branch in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hills. When I found out about that I was shocked – the original Shanghai joint is very basic and grotty, and you’d never think it was becoming a chain. The Tokyo version is completely different – it’s a fashionable Chinese restaurant. Anyway, when I went this time they had closed the window, so I just grabbed a seat and ate my fill. The xiao long bao come with different contents – the names of which are sometimes more than you’d care to know – here’s a photo with some graphic details:
I was again saddened by the forces of change. As with Macau, one of my favorite places (in this case the Nanjing’s take-out window) was gone, replaced with more tourist-friendly outfittings. But at least it’s not gone entirely…give it time.
After visiting Yu Yuan I went over to the JW Marriott Hotel, my favorite in the city and a wonderful place in every way. I went up to get some view of the city, then walked down Nanjing Road to the Bund. I think this photo helps illustrate the striking nature of Shanghai’s skyline:
It’s a nice walk and certainly demonstrates China’s capitalist desires fully. As I started walking there a Chinese fellow came up to me and started a conversation. He was ‘John’ and asked me where I was from, etc. He told me that Michael Bloomberg was Prime Minister of New York City. He asked me to join him for a coffee and friendly talk. I told him thanks, but was in a bit of a hurry to see the Bund and get back to my hotel. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I started walking faster. That did it – the offer of a ‘girly bar and sexy massage’ came right out. I walked even faster and he finally got the message.
Touts in Shanghai are more aggressive than ever. And I suppose if you’re a single foreign male walking around, they assume you’re looking for some action. After all, what the hell else would you be doing – seeing some sights? Nah…the Asian male mind probably doesn’t process that way. Anyway, I got multiple massage offers on my way to the Bund. One fellow, right next to the famous Peace Hotel, offered me a watch…then when I said no, he offered a massage. At least I could appreciate his wide range of inventory. I think that the Chinese touts have now matched their Indian counterparts in being able to annoy foreigners. The commonality extends to crappy marketing and presentation. If they want guys to go for massages, they should brush their teeth, wear some deodorant, or better yet, have the actual massage girls doing the offering. I don’t think many foreign blokes walking around the Bund are taking the touts up on their offers – it’s just way too seedy and potentially even dangerous.
That night I had dinner with my old fraternity brother Jake, and with my former Monitor colleagues Yi-Chung and Miriam. We went to a nice Chinese place and had some amazing dishes, including a fish cooked in boiling oil and water. You’ve really got to go to Chinese restaurants over here with natives – otherwise you’re relegated to eating the boring old dishes you grew up with. Yi-Chung is working for Pepsi and doing great – Jake is CFO for Cabot Corp. and loving it – and Miriam works for Disney. The dinner was great and I enjoyed catching up with everyone. Yi-Chung and Miriam are getting married in Singapore in November – I won’t be able to make it, but am sure it will be a wonderful event.
Went back to the Radisson, and had a drink with my former colleague George, who picked up many of my responsibilities when I quit. George is a long-time consultant and a real pro – very talented and capable. He had just run an all-day workshop, and got back to the hotel at 10 p.m. We had a good chat – Monitor seems to have the same old problems, which George is trying to work through. The firm always has grand plans – “we’re kicking off X Initiative” – but then it slowly crumbles as resources get picked off for short-term, ‘urgent’ projects. Talking with George brought back lots of memories, and I felt for him. In a sense I left and dumped a load of crap on him, despite my best intentions and attempts to make the transition smooth. In another sense, I was tired of all the bullshit and got out before it made me crazy. George knows what I went through and I think he doesn’t blame me…but my sensitive heart and insecurity always makes me feel responsible for him being tortured these days. Oh well…I’ll get over it.
The next morning I went to the airport to fly back to HK, connecting through to Bangkok. Jessica had gotten me the same driver as before, so it was all very smooth. On the drive I noticed how many streets were lined almost perfectly with trees…and recalled that when I first visited China, in 1989, the drive from the Beijing Airport to the city also featured tree-lined roads. The Chinese are very good at this, and it creates a nice impression. Must have something to do with the Chinese aesthetic…
Flight to HK was smooth sailing – read the paper and my Burma guidebook. When I got to HK Airport, I was able to use the Cathay Pacific Business Lounge…a nice perk from my days of constant travel. I think my Gold Level membership will expire in October, then I’m nothing special and probably won’t be able to use the lounges. At least I’ve had that privilege for the bulk of this trip, and it’s allowed me to sit through some lengthy layovers and check email. The other nice thing is that upgrades are sometimes given on the spot – including this time. My flight from HK-Bangkok, from which I’m writing this post, was particularly comfortable as the airline bumped me from Economy to Business Class. Nice wines, decent food, on-demand movies, etc. I don’t anticipate that happening post-October, so I’d better enjoy it now!
The next 2+ weeks (through September 3) will be entry-less. I’m in Bangkok for 2-3 days, to see some friends and get my Burma visa, and then I visit Burma for approx. 2 weeks. I won’t get much into Burma here…but suffice it to say that it’s a military dictatorship, and that email is difficult to access. So I won’t bother to bring my laptop into the country, nor to post entries – which would very likely be reviewed by government censors and lead to my immediate detention. Let’s just plan on my next post being around Sept. 4-5, with a complete review of my adventures in Burma. See you then.
mbsloney