Quick (food) recap of Japan

It's been a busy few days as I try to finish up my pre-work, pack, play Wii Sports, and veg out in front of the TV, so I've haven't had a chance to recap my Japan trip. Well they say a picture's worth a thousand words, so here's a few thousand words... (SOOOO LAZY!!)












Ok so we did do a lot of other stuff other than eat, but I thought that I'd start with the food first to make you all jealous, and to show how much of a glutton I am! MORE FOOD!

I'm off to Rome, Venice, Paris, and then Mumbai and New Delhi now. I'll keep posting when I can get online. Cheers.

Awww yeah it's my birthday

Partying like it's my birthday... well just more food.

Back to home base

Just got back to HK last night and still suffering from withdrawal symptoms of not having my ChunSa around. Ah well, distance makes the heart grow fonder.



There's a ton of pictures from the trip, and I'll post up some later when I have a chance, but I'm trying to be productive today and work on the pre-work for my new job. Just finished the pre-assessments and now I have to go through all the individual study modules. They weren't kidding when they said it would take 35 - 80 hrs for all of this stuff. Lots of good finance stuff that's bringing back memories of accounting and finance back at school... nice...



Of course, once I start trying to do work, I end up also finding ways to distract myself from accomplishing the said work. As such, I've just started checking out Penny Arcade courtesy of an article in Time, and my wonderful sister has introduced me to Dlisted, as part of her education of websites NSFW (not suitable for work for the non-gen whatever we're on now).




This comic in particular caught my attention since this is the type of ridicule typically reserved for Microsoft services - and to be honest, the Xbox Live and Zune Marketplaces have pretty similar purchase processes - but it's pretty darn great to see someone else get smacked around for once.


Three cheers for crappy user experiences!

Age++

At what point does one stop celebrating birthdays and instead starts dreading them? I've finally reached the upper twenties and I must say, I didn't quite expect to be where I am doing what I'm doing at this point.

It's all about the next 8 years. Time to get those engines roaring - it's now or never.

(Of course, that can all start 5/4. I'm still on vacation travelling the world until then...)

Too much good food... must... stop.... ugh

The past 3 days have been a non-stop face-stuffing extravaganza. First sushi, then special McD burger, then curry, then yakitori, then more sushi, tako balls, beef skewers, okonomiyaki, more curry... omg.

Can't wait for the next 5 days of more food. Japan rocks.

Chinese Copycats

Went to Shenzhen today to make some clothes for my new job. Went to Luo Wu Shopping Center, which is 5 stories of about 100 little stores, all specializing in copying anything you can imagine. Movies, TV shows and video games are a given, but they also have purses, watches, and jewelry of pretty much any sort. What's even more amazing is that they can even copy clothes. Bring a picture of something you like, pick the fabric, take down your measurements, and viola, in a week, you have a custom tailored copy.

I am having 2 Western suits, 1 Chinese suit, 12 shirts, and 2 pairs of paints made for me. The suits are about US$200 each because I'm using some material from Italy. The shirts are US$20 each. And the pants, are about US$30. The shop keeper is going to come down to HK the week after for a fitting, and then have the clothes delivered the week after that. A friend of mine mentioned that he actually knew a lady who had 20 suits made, so she didn't have to repeat a suit for a whole month. I can see the attraction of doing that...

I also got 2 dresses made for my girl based on the pictures she sent. We'll see how that goes. If it actually turns out well, that may be the new avenue for shopping for her. I could see how it gets pretty fun, especially if you actually start designing your own clothes. Too bad I'm too old to wear any clothes that are more adventurous.

Talk about fanatic...

Can 300 fearless volunteers trained for battle really hold back a hundreds of thousands of unwilling foot soldiers? Doesn't that sound a lot like the troops in Iraq?



If 300 is any indication, the U.S. is in a world of hurt. Makes you think if this is what Frank Miller was thinking when he wrote the comic.

Yeah ABC!

Chinese rapper word up! Too bad there's all these phrases in Cantonese that lose their meaning when they are translated in English. Nonetheless, good to see. There's some other random rap group in HK that sings funny rap songs about making instant noodles and stuff... Kel was blasting it in his car. Hilarious.

Immortality

I just watched the "making-of" 300 special (thank Tim for the telling me about it). They talk a lot about how the Spartans spent their whole life looking for something worth dying for, and it got me thinking. I wonder if the world was given a choice, would they trade not having anything death in return for not having any new life? Everything was just here, and you could live forever, as could everything else, but in return, nothing was ever born. That seems like it would be a pretty boring existence. Maybe that's why the creator made life the way it is - to have a more fulfilling and entertaining way to pass the time.

9 ways to tell things are getting out of hand...

My friends thought it would be pretty fun to pre-celebrate my birthday last night. Clearly, things got a little out of hand...

• Shots are ordered by the tray full and are told to keep coming
  


• Your friends are hiding to avoid drinking any more
  


• Your friends are playing with Casper the Friendly Ghost
  


• Your friend's girlfriend follows him to the men's room to make sure he's ok
  


• Your friends have fallen asleep at the bar

• Your sleeping friends are being drawn on



• Your friend sneaks out the back entrance so he can leave earlier to avoid drinking any more
  
• You end up treating the bar like your living room since you're the only people left
  
  
• The sun is coming up when you leave and it's 7:30am
  

A moment of silence

It's strange reading about death in the news - seems like every day something happens and you just see a new number... 22 in Indonesian plane crash, 30 in Iraq cafe suicide bombing, 70+ in Indonesian earthquake, etc. Not the mention the countless people dying from starvation, disease, and war in Africa which has gone on for so long it doesn't even get reported.

Travelling around and visiting new places really helps me appreciate how similar people are despite what seem like insurmountable differences. It's sad more people don't get this opportunity to appreciate global citizenship.

The Asian twin towers

Check out the Kuala Lumpur Commercial Center (KLCC) - they were the tallest buildings in the world at one point. View from my hotel throughout the day:

Hopefully nothing ever happens to these towers as they really are quite magnificent.

We stayed at the same hotel as last time when I was there with my other half which just made me miss her more. At least I'll be seeing her in a little more than a week. :)

Got to witness an intense hotel development, purchase, and management contract negotiation with 4 lawyers representing each side over a 2 day period. Extremely interesting and educational.

The new Tokyo: Shanghai

My first day in Shanghai was pretty amazing. We arrived at Shanghai after a 2 hour plane ride and was whisked off to the hotel where my dad had a meeting and I got an in depth tour of the hotel from the hotel manager. I got to meet the director of HR, Sales, Reservations, Housekeeping, Guest Services, F&B, and got to see how security and the kitchen staff was run.

Some interesting things about the hotel:

• The hotel employs about 800 people and they each of their own uniforms, locker, and are provided 2 meals a day
• Each hotel designs their own uniforms, since the owners differ and they want to be unique. This seems rather inefficient, although it is mostly a one time cost
• The industry attrition rate is in Shanghai hotels is about 40% and staffing is the biggest issue for hotels. The hotel has been able to lower it by sponsoring various training programs and growth opportunities, but that in itself brings issues as this makes the staff even more valuable if they want to do something else
• Employees are not given an ownership stake until they reach the GM level, which is surprising as this would be a good way to lower attrition
• The margins on hotel rooms are about 80% since the primary costs are housekeeping, electricity, and service. This dwarfs the margin from restaurants which is about 35%, and so some hotels are now just not having restaurants at all. They don't actually have an estimate of how much incremental revenue from services and F&B a guest brings in though, which is a little surprising
• 70% of the patrons of the hotel restaurants are local - in other words only 30% of hotel guests actually dine at the hotel, further bolstering the argument for not having restaurants
• The spa business also has high margins, although this spa actually brings masseuses from Thailand to work here and pays for their living expenses
• Shanghai is very much a commercial center, with 90% occupancy during the week, and only about 60% occupancy on weekends
• Accounting requirements in China are pretty ridiculous - most documents need to not only be printed, but stored indefinitely/permanently
• Each hotel is pretty much it's own business, with revenues exceeding $15M a year, the owner acting as the board of directors, and the GM acting as the CEO
• All renovations to the hotel have to be approved by the owner, as well as any expenditures over 2000RMB ($225)\nAll rates are negotiable
• Although there are 6 (and soon 9) hotels from the same chain in Shanghai, they all compete since the owners are all different. This brings up interesting conflict of interest issues, although to some extent, the chain would want to maximize profits for each individual property

Some interesting things about Shanghai:

• 20 years ago, there were no international hotels in Shanghai, and the hotels were crummy and insect ridden. 10 years ago, PuDong area was farmland and undeveloped. Today, PuDong is like the financial district, and 2 of the tallest buildings in the world are there, and you don't see any farms at all
• There's a bunch of European style (gothic) buildings recently restored left over from the colonial days, which adds to the craziness
  
• There are 22M people in greater Shanghai, which is equivalent to the population of Taiwan...
• Shanghai feels very much like Tokyo - a mix of the super new with the super old
  

  From Shanghai 2007

  From Shanghai 2007

• Traffic lights are only guidelines - people ignore them when they want

My appointed tour guides Rachel and Matthew. They got to have a half day at work in return for taking me around Shanghai for the day. They're a ton of fun and were kind enough to take me to get some awesome food and see some cool sites.

From Shanghai 2007

Oh and welcome to the year of the pig Shanghai style

From Shanghai 2007

And talk about your bad ass soup dumplings - so much soup you have to use a straw. Awww yeah.

From Shanghai 2007

And Chinese people like gold so much, they build a fake gold tree and throw money on it

From Shanghai 2007

Finally, here's the Mckinsey office in Shanghai. You can't see it here but there's a pretty big logo at the top and they have like 5 floors. The office is in XinTianDi, the expat bar/club district. Sweet.

From Shanghai 2007

home sweet home... kinda

After a long sleepless flight, I arrived back in Hong Kong Friday night. Usually I'm pretty good about sleeping on the plane since I stay up the night before, but although I stayed up the whole night playing Crackdown, somehow I couldn't sleep. Instead, I ended up watching Happy Feet (7/10), Night at the Museum (5/10), and A Good Year (4/10). They were also show the new Rocky movie, but eh... come on... I was bored, but not that bored.

Got home and just had a relaxing weekend - eating good food, playing some basketball, getting drunk with my buddies, playing some video games, seeing the family - the usual home coming activities. But strangely, I'm starting to feel less at home in Hong Kong now. Maybe it's because I'm missing my other half, or maybe, god forbide, I'm starting to think of Seattle as home? brrrr.... scary thought. ;)

how do ppl come up with this stuff?

Sweet.

The bar keeps moving up…

Ever since my parents got divorced I would get to spend a few weeks with my dad every year, and I always had mixed feelings both before and after the visit. Before, I would dread the boredom when he inevitably had to work (I knew all the plotlines for Another World and Days of Our Lives) or having to be on my best behavior for church/relatives, but excited about getting to hang out with my dad. After, I would feel guilty for not being more grateful for my dad going the extra mile to make sure I had a good time, and seeing his lone figure at the airport waving at me made me pray that he could start another loving family so he wouldn’t be so alone when I’m not around. At the same time, I would be happy to go back to my “normal” life and be with my mom and hang out with my friends.

Although the circumstances have changed, I still have mixed emotions whenever I visit my dad, and this past week was no different. On one hand, it makes me super happy to see my dad’s family doing well, and watching my little brother and sister grow up is truly amazing. On the other, I end up feeling a little sad because I always get the impression that my dad was unable to live up to his expectations for himself, and although he is constantly telling everyone how proud he is of me, I know that I have yet to live up to his expectations for me as well.

It’s always nice to have something more to strive for. Maybe I can still go be a doctor…