Weekend in Hong Kong

This weekend we stayed in Singapore and just relaxed. Last weekend we went to Hong Kong.


An old friend of Omar (Dave) was visiting family and friends at that time, and we decided to meet up with him. Dave introduced us to some friends who live in Hong Kong, and he also showed us around Kowloon on Saturday. I took Friday off to go early and had a flight at 8 in the morning. To my surprise I could share a taxi to the airport with Jason, with whom we had spent NewYears eve in Bangkok. He was also on his way to Hong Kong, but only as a stopover on his way back to Canada. My journey took about 4 hours, his 25!!

My first impression of Hong Kong was that it had changed compared to two years ago. The city looked even more modern and cleaner than I remembered it. Just until I stepped out of the MTR and went searching for our hotel. I had booked a hotel on Hong Kong Island because we both wanted to experience HK from the other side (we stayed in Kowloon last time.) The hotel was close to Sheung Wan, an area I found out later that resembles most to old HK. It looked very much like Kowloon with all the small shops, dried products (smelly dried fish) and butcheries selling fresh meat on the streets. Luckily our hotel (Novotel Century Harbourview) was extremely modern and our room on the 20th floor had recently been refurbished and modernized. This was one of the hippest hotelrooms we had ever had, overlooking the harbour with all its activity.

After I checked in, I walked up the hill to the University of Hong Kong. The campus is big and because many buildings are at a different height there are steps and escalators everywhere. All university buildings are scattered around the place, and are on top of a hill... I saw many non-chinese faces at HKU, which correspond with the brochure. My reason for visiting HKU was the MSc in Finance. I may be very interested in pursuing a Master degree in Finance, and HK has a good one. I spoke to some of the faculty members and they were all very nice.

Omar arrived after his classes on a comfortable Singapore Airlines flight... he was so positive about SingAir, that I think he is never going to fly anything else anymore...


Friday evening we met with Dave and his fiends in the Dragon-I (read dragon eye) currently the place to go in HK. It's a Japanese-Chinese fusion restaurant until about 23h, when it transforms into a trendy and fashionable club-bar. They played a lot of music from the 90ies and we had good fun. Dave’s friends were very nice, so it was great to meet them. Dave stayed with his friends Emily & Frederic. Emily is Dutch and has lived in HK for about 7 years now, Frederic is Belgian. His other friends were from HK, France and the US, and they all have been living in HK for several years now.

On Saturday Omar and I went shopping. This is very easy considering the fact that you have to divide the price by roughly 11 to convert to euro's and then you end up with a figure that makes you say “sold”! Especially when you think of how much everything costs back home in NL. In the afternoon Dave took us to Mong Kok. We started the afternoon in a place where many locals go for a healthy snack. We could choose between jelly with icecream, jelly with birdsnest saliva or jelly with fruit. It tasted good and was a fun experience. We had dinner in a nice small noisy place, where we had a great selection of dishes, both vegetarian, full of fish, meat and lots of peppers.

HK is an amazing place. Omar loves it. Even though I personally prefer Singapore, I also liked it and I was glad that it was a lot cleaner and prettier than I remembered it. Who knows, we might decide to live here at some point in the future.

Singapore is great!

Classes in P3 are amazing. 

"Venture Opportunities" is so interesting and challenging that you wish you had more time to spend on this elective. 

"Negotiations" is fun, very active, and you can already see how much you will learn. 

"Intl Politics" is taught by one of the best professors in the field, and the course is full of controversial topics and debate. 

For the "Intl Development Project" I'm going to work on a very exciting project in Kenya. I seriously hope that the tension in Kenya quites down quickly. Could politicians for once act in the benefit of their country?? The story of Africa should not always be painted with violence and blood, but it's so sad that it's so often the case... why???

This week I will also get my first class of "Strategies for Asia PAC" and I will officially start with"Macro-economics." I look forward to both.

On another note: A warm welcome to all the new P1's!!! have a great time in either Fonty or Singa! (I can't believe we are the senior class already...) 

To everybody back in Fonty: we miss you guys! Take care and have fun!!!

Singapore

The 2nd of January marked the start of my 6 month contract in Singapore, and was my first working day after having had a 4.5 month holiday. I think the fact that I had worked in Singapore before in 2005 and that I new the MRT, and how to get there made it easy to start working again. The office has not changed much except for the people. There were many new faces, also in audit where I work. Outside of the office the street has also changed; some of the little restaurants in Robinson Road have changed names, Lau Pah Sat had a refurbishment and looks more modern than 2 years ago, and next to where I work they took down a large building and are busy with the construction of a new one.

While I was working Omar spent his last days before the start of P3 at the “Club Med” type pool of our new apartment, occasionally he moved to unpack our suitcases, and thought about what to put on shopping lists. At the moment of writing (7th of January) Omar just finished his first day of P3 and he is very enthusiastic. He started off with Politics and he likes his new professor and the course material. This evening there were already some parties and get togethers with the Singaporeans, however I decided to stay at home (I already call it home after 1 week ☺) do some reading and go to bed early. I am so tired every evening, apparently I'm not completely used to working 8 hours a day anymore...

Omar, well he went to have a quick drink in the other tower, and will later on prepare his 2 classes for tomorrow. The weather is fantastic, nice, warm, so life is good here in Singapore…

Bangkok & New Year's Eve

Our stay at home was short, but we had a great time with friends and family.

After exactly one week it was time to pack our bags again for our flights to Asia. By now a week has passed since we arrived in Singapore. Well, technically we arrived on Saturday the 30th of December but we stayed only 2 hours because we took a direct flight to Bangkok to celebrate New Years Eve with Insead friends Li Ran, Anita, Alex, Steven, Ken and Jason.

The 31st we spent the day being tourists, sightseeing Bangkok. We visited the Royal Palace, the Laying Buddha at Pranon Wat Pho and we took a boatride on the river. In the evening we ate delicious Thai food after which we went to the Latitude bar on the Banyan Tree hotel. The view from the 52nd floor was beautiful, you could see all over Bangkok. The fireworks however, were a bit low key in the opinion of many people. We had expected that big fireworks would erupt as soon as the new year would kick in but the first fireworks started about ten minutes before 12 and they were so dispersed that it actually looked rather small. The ambience, view and music at Latitude more than made up for this though!


The first day of 2008 we had our first Thai massage. It was an interesting and sometimes painful but also very vitalizing experience. Especially when the masseuses sat on your back and used their elbows to work on your cramped muscles.
We enjoyed Bangkok and the great hospitality of Li Ran, Ken and his parents, and we would have liked to stay a little longer. However… Singapore was calling, so we kindly boarded our Air Asia flight towards Changi airport.