Good Friends

Good Friends

This past week has been great! Rob was here in Hong Kong on a work trip, but thankfully left some time open in his schedule to spend the day with us on Sunday (and part of Saturday night too). It was wonderful to see a familiar face … even if we don’t see that face enough!

We went to see the light show over the harbor. It was a beautiful night. There was a breeze right over the convention center where we watched from. I think Rob got some great pictures. We did not take many pictures from this past weekend, because, when he’s around, we have a professional photographer with us. His pictures will be about a billion times better than anything we could do.

Sunday was a whirl-wind tour of HK. We started with breakfast. We were walking down one of the streets of Causeway Bay. One of my little rules is, if no one is in the restaurant we are not stopping to eat there. We passed several and then I saw one with food in the window that I liked and people in it. We made a bee line for it, when I opened the door; I immediately knew that we had eaten here the first week. Jonathan had wanted beef noodles, and this place had them just the way he liked it. I ordered breakfast for all of us, by pointing to what we liked and telling them how many of each thing we would like.


After breakfast, we got on the MTR to go to the Peak which overlooks the whole city. I wished it had been a clear day, but there was some fog/mist/rain at the very top. We walked through Hong Kong Park and then up to the tram. (We saw a sign that said, “sub way”. Jonathan told me that this did NOT mean underground railroad, what it meant here was, an under the road walkway. ) We bought the tickets and took a rail car up to the top of the peak. Think of going up a roller coaster with no seat belt. It was that steep.

We got off, walked through all the trinket shops to get to the Peak. It was foggy, but you could still how beautiful the city was. While walking down a path, we found this:

So I took the picture because the Bennett’s, Jonathan and I were discussing Gabby getting a job here running with a rickshaw. It was perfect.

After walking around, having a nice little brunch and dessert, we road the railcar back down. It is still steep as ever, except, you are facing up the mountain, and now going down backwards. It was a bit odd, but it works.

We took a bus to Central to take the Star Ferry over to the Kowloon side. It was just quick enough that I couldn’t really think about getting boat sick. After we got off, we back to the MTR to take it Mon Kok. This is where the Ladies Market and the vendor’s are. When you think of the hustle and bustle and bargining, this is the area that you think of. After walking around this area, and sweating buckets, we left and took the MTR back to Kowloon and the Avenue of the Stars. This is where the famous Actors and Actresses put their hands in concrete. We did get to see Jet Li’s hand and a statue of Bruce Lee. At this point, I was cooked, and ready to be done for the day. It was around 7 pm. The last thing we wanted to show Rob was where our apt was. We took a cab to Happy Valley, found some place to eat and then showed him our apt building.

We had a lot of great conversations over the course of the time we got to spend together. As a former expat himself, he commented that it looked like we were happy and embracing this experience. Coming from him, this was a complete compliment.

As we (Jonathan and I) have reflected on our first international experience 10 years ago, we tried to think about why we weren’t that happy with it, and why it didn’t go as planned. There were many factors, but these were the big ones.

• We were young. I was 24, JC 28 and had a 5 month old. We really only had been married for 3 year and still were figuring things out.
• We had a baby and the people who we were friends with were not married, let alone have a family. They all could go out at night and do what they wanted on a whim on the weekends
• We only really met other American’s and didn’t get integrated into the company in Melbourne or meet any other Australians
• I was pregnant and pretty much insane

This is a picture from 10 years ago:


I tell people these things because we want to be positive about this whole experience. This expedition will teach us many things about ourselves and what we can and can’t handle. More importantly it show us how to deal with these obstacles as a family and overcome them. Jonathan has run into a couple of expats from different countries that really just hate it here. They really haven’t embraced anything about this being different. I feel bad for them, and so does JC. The funny thing is, when he talked to them, they said that they wanted to do a rotation in the States … Good luck with that Buddy!


The time with Rob was too short, but it reminded us how important friendships are ... even from half way around the world. Both Rob and Kelly's friendships mean the world to Jonathan and I. We both so lucky to have them in our lives!

The Good and the Ugly

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The Good and the Ugly

Tomorrow is officially 3 weeks here. I had a great post written out last week, but trying to upload to the blogger site has been difficult because it is in Chinese. So needless to say, I lost it. I am going to try to re-create it …

The Ugly

Opening a bank account (at the 2^nd bank):

There are so many pieces of paper that you need to get this done, it’s crazy. Jonathan needed to show his employment letter, which he thankfully had, but needed to modify, because they couldn’t accept a hotel address on it. When she asked me for my employment letter, I told her that I wasn’t working and that I was a dependent. Well, guess who can’t be on the account now! Not a huge deal until she says, “If you come back the next day, we will be able to add you to the account. Does this make sense? Not to me either. After the company faxed the letter, we could finally open the account – most likely the next day. She then says to me, “Mrs. Collins, you don’t need to come back”. Jonathan just shook his head at me, because he could see that this was not going to be good. Thankfully, I kept calm and didn’t cause and international incident.

The price of American Products:

I found that the purse that I had been carrying around for about a week was just too small for what I needed. I really wanted a new Coach purse and after moving to the temporary apts, found that the outlet mall near us (a 10 min walk) has one! SCORE! After doing some research, I knew that I wanted a large tote or the Diaper bag. I know this sounds weird, but I would really be great with all its holders and compartments. I found the one that I wanted, but it was close to $800 US. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? This was at the outlet. No go. I went to another outlet and found an $11 purse that seems to be doing quite well. (UPDATE: I went back to the outlets yesterday and now it is 40% off. I may ask JC if I can get it now. At $400, I don’t think I could get it here cheaper after shipping).

Hallmark Cards: $8 US … not going to happen

Apartment Hunting: Apartment hunting here is much like buying a house in the US. We wanted a 3 bedroom 2 bath apt with a washer and an oven. We originally looked in Discovery Bay on Lantau Island. When we toured it, it didn’t have the feel that I wanted to get from HK. It didn’t have any wet markets or even Chinese restaurants near by. It felt more like a combination of Panama City beach and Disney World. We looked at some apts in Happy Valley, and almost instantly, decided that is the place we wanted to be. We found an apt that we wanted, put an offer in that was $HK2000 less than what they wanted. They ended up rejecting our offer for one that was $HK2000 over the asking price of the apartment. I didn’t want to get into a bidding war, so we just moved onto our second choice. This had everything we wanted except the oven. They have accepted our offer and even are giving us a new washing machine. Everything happens for a reason.

Transferring Money from the US:

Total debacle. Next time we will find out how much cash we can bring into a country and travel with that. This was a time consuming and gut wrenching process. We had to get my parents involved along with Western Union. Just as an FYI, Western Union is the way to go if you ever need to send money internationally. (Make sure you have the name spelled correctly and include their full name as it appears on their passport. This is a bit of info that they passed along to us, not one that we got to experience first hand … thankfully.)

The Good:

This place is CLEAN: I have seen a ton of people cleaning around here. You don’t see trash in the street, cigarette butts anywhere (you can get fined here), or graffiti anywhere.

Public Transportation:

What an awesome thing. We take the MTR everywhere. When we move to Happy Valley we will be taking a mini-bus (seats 16 people), tram and bus along with the MTR.

Cabs:

Super cheap. Jonathan will be able to take a cab from Central to our apt for about $HK40 (about $6US) when he comes home late.

Food:

Awesome! We have been going to restaurants that are more commercial along with the Mom and Pop shops. The Mom and Pop ones are the best. They don’t always have English menu’s or pictures, so we either point to someone’s food that looks good, or I know just enough to get us stuff that we will like.

People:

Patience. The people here have the patience of Saints. I think that you have to knowing that a gazillion people all want to get to the same place around the same time. For example, when a full MTR gets off at a stop, there are only so many escalators to go around. People merge together nicely; no one’s pride is hurt if someone cuts in front of someone else. The only time that this has really been a problem is when I have been separated from the girls and can’t see them.

Money:

Other than the cost of apartments, (which really depends on where you want to live) things are not much more expensive here.

Grocery:

They have wet markets that sell fresh seafood, veggies and meat. These are great places, and the girls and I usually go to them 3 times a week. The regular grocery is nice too. They have many items from the US. The only thing that we haven’t found that we are looking for is Syrup. (I did make my own the other day with brown sugar and water).

And we begin ….

A few weeks ago, Jonathan had these great plans to pack up the house while he was not working and going into the office. Those plans quickly changed when other things came up for the move, reading and working out. So when we thought that the last days would be spent relaxing, that just wasn’t the case. We did, however, get everything done, on time … and I guess that was the outcome that needed to happen.

Wednesday morning was another story. We spent the night at my mom’s house, which was great for all of us. I was awake by 5:15 with my Dad and then started to wake up everyone around 6 so that we could all shower and eat breakfast. Mom had made French toast and some bacon … two of the girl’s favorite things. We actually left the house around 7:30, which has to be a miracle for 6 people to do all that in 1.5 hours. We got to the Hillbrooke house around 8:15 after a quick stop at Target. We had a few friends stop by to say some tearful goodbyes. I had asked my friend Tammy to help take us to the airport. She took one for the team, and helped out!


When we finally got to the airport, we had to check 9 suitcases, 8 carry on’s and 4 people. It took us around 30 minutes to get it all checked in. I had called Delta 3 days prior to check to see if we could be upgraded. Score.. We could, and it only cost us 25K points, per person. This was well worth it. I told Jonathan that we should keep it as a nice surprise for the girls. We told my parents and a couple of other people, but the girls had NO idea. Jonathan really played up the fact that we were going to be sitting in the back of the plane, near the toilets (which originally wasn’t far from the truth). When we got to the airport, Gabby asked if she could buy a neck pillow because her bags were so heavy and she NEEDED one. I kept telling her no. and then as we were standing in line for boarding, she started to cry. As we boarded, I started up the stairs in the 747 … She immediately knew what that meant … we were in business class. The tears stopped as soon as she saw the pillow, blanket and travel kit.

The flight was not really bad at all. We were flying Atlanta to Tokyo (around 13 hours) and then onto Hong Kong. The first leg of the flight, we had no, I mean ZERO audio. This makes it really interesting when you want to watch a movie. Luckily, the girls had the laptops and the itouch’s. They ended up sleeping for around 5-6 hours each.. They gave us a money voucher for each of our seats to use on our next flight. We got to Tokyo with just about a 2 hour layover. The Delta crown room here is pretty nice. It had showers, food and beer. We boarded the plane again, heading to our new home.

As we touched down in HK, I told the girls … “We’re home”. They gave me a funny look and I think that had I not smiled at them, I would have puked a bit in my mouth.

We got through immigration pretty easily then it was onto grabbing our bags and then going through customs. This, by far, was the easiest custom’s I have EVER been though. We saw a sign that said, “If you have something to declare, enter here” that was it. Everyone else went through the other side, and then we were free to enter. We found out taxi man, packed up the mini-van (which was really pretty nice --- almost even nicer than the Odyssey) and moved into our hotel at around 1AM on Friday. As it goes, most of the time we arrive and need to eat right away. McDonald was right across the street … our first meal in HK! We ate and finally went to bed around 2:30 AM.


We set the alarm for 5:30 so JC could go out for a short run and scope out the area. We had made an apt to get an employment letter from JC’s company and then another apt 11 to get our HK ID card. Now, onto the bank … we opened an account at HSBC … which we later found out was a bank we could NOT bank at because KPMG audit’s them. Damn … 2.5 hours down the drain
Interesting Fact: People in Hong Kong really like to stamp things. They just don’t stamp with a “copy” stamp, but also stamp their names, company names ect. When we opened our account there were no less than 15 stamps on all of our papers.

Interesting Fact: Don’t bring all your money in Amex Travelers checks. Most banks can only cash in $US1000 at a time. This does NOT help if you are opening a bank account.

We made it until 6 that night and then woke up around 2 the next morning. This was not so great.

Saturday we were set to meet up with the Realtor that KPMG recommended to us. His name is Thomas, and really is a great guy that has helped us tremendously. We started looking in Discovery Bay. After taking the Ferry over from Central, we walked out and it looked and felt like we were at some kind of resort. There were SO many white people, I almost couldn’t believe it. I was shocked. I was told that there were a great number of expats here, but this was really crazy. We sat down in the plaza had some coffee an then walked around for a bit. I have a hard time trying to describe the feeling, but it was kind of like Panama City beach and Disney world combined. We saw around 8 -10 apt and really liked 2 of them. We were ready to put an offer in for one that was close to the pier and close to the plaza. The other realtor told us we needed to do it soon, because the landlord had already received an offer. JC and I discussed it and decided that we weren’t going to rush into anything, and weather this was a ploy or an actual event, we hadn’t seen enough of the areas in HK to make that decision.

On Sunday, Thomas took us in his car to look at some other areas on HK Island. We had already explored Happy Valley earlier in the day and found that we liked the area. It was close enough to Central for Jonathan, but still gave us a little more space and still felt like we were getting the HK experience. We drove through all three Mid-levels, Cyber Point and Aberdeen. We really felt like Happy Valley was the place we wanted to be. We took a look at one apt that day, and asked Thomas if he could find us a 3 bedroom 2 bath apt there … that also had an oven.

We also got cell phones on Sunday. This was quite an adventure. I had to decide if I wanted an I phone or a Blackberry. I chose the I phone. So, we bought that, we also bought the girls cell phones. I would have normally objected to this if we were back in the States, but here, after seeing the amount of people everywhere, I felt it was a necessity. While Jonathan was figuring out all the plans and such, I made my way outside to just stand and watch. (I really love people watching. I think that you can learn so much from it!) I found out Sunday is the day the Ama’s (Nanny’s) get off. Most of them are from Thailand and Philippines and they gather together on their day off. I guess they gather in Causeway Bay because there were gaggles of them in all the stores.

I can’t remember Monday … I’m sure it involved Eating, sleeping and the MTR

Tuesday – We moved to a serviced apt near the airport. This is on Lantau Island, the same island that Discovery Bay is on. During this move and after looking around the area, we thought that being on HK Island was the right choice. (If you look back in the blog, you will see this was one of our first choices when we were researching things in HK). We chose this serviced apt because it was really the only thing in our price range that offered 3 bedrooms. It also has a pool area for the girls and some other rec areas.

The rest of the week has been spent getting one more cell phone for us and then just exploring the area.

Today, Saturday, we are now at the pool and don’t really have much planned for today. Rob is coming here next weekend (on business) and so hopefully we will be able to go and do some things with him next Saturday night and Sunday.