Hong Kong (4/16 - 4/19): All Work and No Sleep Makes Mark Something Something

If anyone ever tells you that all the works ends when a website launches, do me a favor and punch them in the brain.

After the festivities and our "launch" party, I ended up getting home around 7 or 8 a.m.  I decided to sleep as much as I could before going in to the office ... and that meant I woke up 12 hours later at 7:30 p.m.  I got in to work just before 9 p.m. and started at it. There was a LOT of stuff to do.

I won't get in to the specifics here, but I pretty much worked non-stop from Monday night until 24 hours later at around 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday night.  Then it was time for a pre-scheduled company dinner.

Hiro (whom some of you might know as the bad guy's main henchman in "Rob-B-Hood" was working at one of JC's restaurants in Happy Valley for a few months to help out a friend -- sort of like a meeter and greeter and a make-sure-you're-happy sort of person.

We went there with Etchy and two of the dancers from the HK Ballet.  Also the regular culprits from the office as well as Terence and Siu But Dim.  We had some super amazing food and Hiro took really good care of us so many thanks to him. 

The dinner sort of morphed into karaoke (the big private room we were in had a KTV set-up).  Since I had been suffering from a throat thing for so long it had been literally 4 months since the last time I even attempted to sing.  So I thought, now that my coughing was all gone, that I would try it out.  I sand a couple songs, but my voice was still a little pitchy.  Meh ... practice makes perfect.  I'll just have to do more singing in the shower.

After a while I was effectively OUT of it ... so after we left I went home and slept a long long long time.

Terence and Hiro

From Left to Right: Siu But Dim, Boon and Jack

Stephen, Crystal and Etchy

Nice salad!

Super good sushi

You're hungry now, aren't you?

The full spread

Delicious Kobe Beef!

Wednesday afternoon is when I woke up .. around 2 p.m. if I recall (12 hours of sleep).  I went to the office to do some work and during the day Pat was talking about taking a trip with Jack up to Shanghai.

I realized that this was a perfect opportunity for me to take advantage of a couple of well-meaning friends.  I still had a lot of stuff at my Shanghai apartment that I wanted to move to Hong Kong, but when I go on my own I have a two check-in limit.  However, with the two of them going up and down for the weekend, only carrying small bags, I effectively had 4 more check-in bags I could bring down to Hong Kong with me.

I would be cutting it rather close financially, but I decided on going to Shanghai along with them.  Plus, that way they could crash at my place and I would save them a little hotel money too ...

It was already pretty late on Wednesday evening when I decided this, so after going to LKF to grab a bite to eat with Pat, I decided to just stay up again and then sleep on the plane the next day.  In Shanghai I wasn't planning on doing much more than cleaning and packing so I didn't feel like I needed to be up for any particular schedule while I was there.

Plus, if I was leaving Thursday that meant a day I wasn't working so I tried to get a little ahead with my work before we took off.

Thursday morning around 8:00 a.m. I met Pat and Jack at the office and we headed over to the Kowloon Turbo-Jet ferry terminal to head up to Shenzhen airport.

But, once again, this is where I end this blog and say "to be continued ... "

By the way, for those of you who are keeping track, since Monday when I woke up at 7:00-ish p.m. to Thursday night at 7:00 p.m., a total of 72 hours, I actually only slept once (plus a nap on the plane).  The first stint I was awake for about 31 hours and the second stint (aside from a 45 minute nap on the turbo jet and a 90 minute nap on the plane) I was up for 28 hours.

So that's ...

72 hours - 12 hours of sleep = 60 hours awake .

A very, very exhausting week.