Hong Kong (1/22 - 1/26): My New Home

When I arrived in Hong Kong on Monday afternoon it was just in time for a meeting we had scheduled with Terence’s aunt, who is a very accomplished journalist/writer who would be working with us on Chinese language content for AnD.  We met and then all had dinner at a nice little restaurant around the corner.

I won’t get into too much detail about what happened every minute of the 4 days I was in Hong Kong during the week but here are some highlights:

*I paid the first month’s rent on my new apartment and got the key!  It was quite a nice moment.  I had a new home in Hong Kong.  I celebrated by measuring every square inch (and there aren’t that many) and going through Pat’s Ikea catalog to figure out some furniture options.  There is a sofa couch that would work perfectly, but the other furniture I can probably find at a local-type place.

*TY was nice enough to record a video greeting for YoYo and Zhu Wen Jun (who are fans of his) at the office.  They’re going to flip.

*I did manage to get a mattress for my new bed.  I tried it out and ended up sleeping through a planned outing with the AnD guys.  When I finally woke up I cleaned up my apartment (such as there is to clean) and now it’s quite orderly (if not extremely sparse).

*I got a lot of work done and was super productive during the week — mostly as a result of revamping my Treo-Desktop organization methodology.  Gotta love the OCD in all of us …

And so, after a fairly jam-packed week and my first night in my new apartment it was time again to head back to Shanghai.  I did the standard train/taxi trip but while I was in Shenzhen something rather disturbing happened to me.

Typically I’m a fairly safe traveller.  I often will keep my backpack on my front instead of my back — or I will push my luggage ahead of me instead of letting it trail behind me.  But it was one of those times I just wasn’t paying attention.  It was after I had gone through the border and was approaching the taxi area in Shenzhen.  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted someone very very close behind me.  When I turned I saw a man with one hand in my backpack and the other holding my new camera.

I grabbed his hand holding the camera and said in a very angry voice “That’s mine!”  I had my tripod in my other hand and I think that might have scared him a bit (it looks like a small bat with sharp points on it) so he just nodded his head and walked away.  I quickly scanned my backpack but luckily he hadn’t taken anything.  He probably saw my camera case and grabbed that, but then saw my ipod underneath so though he would double his pleasure.  Fortunately I saw him, but I could have easily not caught him and would have been out some rather expensive equipment.

I’m definitely going to increase my “beware-of-scams-o-meter” in the future and not take any location for granted.  Catching someone in the act of trying to pickpocket you is pretty shocking and while part of me thought I should have chased him down and smacked him with my tripod, the rest of me realizes that he probably has a group of about 50 guys standing just out of range to take me down in case things get ugly.  For all I know he had compatriots that he would hand things off to once he took them from me — sort of like in Indiana Jones.

Anyway, I just counted my lucky stars and became 200% more careful after that.  I advise anyone else doing some international travel (or just in general) to be equally careful about your things.  You never know what might happen.

But aside from having that experience go through my head I managed to make it to the airport fairly unscathed.  In fact, I made great time.  I left the office at just past noon and managed to make it to the Shenzhen airport by 2:15.  That’s just 2 hours from office to airport, with plenty of time to check in and board my 3:00 flight.

I was going to Shanghai for 10 days to help TR get settled with her training in Shanghai and to also take care of some things on my own.  But as it turned out I spent most of the first several days battling a very nasty flu.  But I will save those details for the next entry …