First day in Hong Kong

Some quick thoughts before sleep overtakes me:

- Hong Kong smells like Brazil. more on this later
- the views from both my apartment and my company's offices are spectacular. Overall, the building in which IMC's Hong Kong offices are in looks like it came out of some spy movie.
- I planned this morning to walk in what I thought was the general direction of the office until I attracted the attention of a cabbie. By the time I found an available cab, he pointed me to the office a block away.
- Based on one day, reports of Hong Kong's crowdedness are greatly exaggerated. Many people and things are vertical, yes, but I was envisioning packed packed sidewalks, and I haven't seen that yet. (disclaimer: sample size = 1 day.)
- the pedestrian escalators are quite interesting
- I went to McDonalds for dinner. Double cheeseburgers here are almost indistinguishable from their American counterparts.
- I still need to get used to the fact that the Hong Kong dollar is worth about 10-12 cents. Most other foreign currencies I have dealt with (euro, pound, Brazilian real) have much closer value to the dollar. But here a double cheeseburger is listed as $30, which really is just $3-4 US.
- Smoked chicken with noodles for lunch. If you had ordered pulled chicken nachos in an American restaurant, the chicken on my order would not have been out of place.
- The streets smell richly of different generically-Asian spices, among other things. The only one I isolated today was ginger.


Pics and more narrative style comments later. I'm going to bed.

Going to Hong Kong (eventually)

I am currently waiting in the United Red Carpet Club in the C Concourse of Chicago's lovely O'Hare International Airport, hoping that soon I may board a flight to Hong Kong. My flight was scheduled to depart at 12:40, but now the estimate is 6pm.

I will be working for a month in the Hong Kong office of my employer, IMC financial markets. I have fielded multiple requests to document my trip, and I plan to do so here. Fortunately this blog is named broadly enough to cover any trip to anywhere. If I ever happen to take a trip to Mars, rest assured it will be logged in this space.

Now I will return to eating chilled cheese cubes and yogurt-covered raisins, waiting for this flight.

Cargo bikes

I came across a post about the rising use of 'cargo bikes' across the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland. The variety of bikes pictured is quite interesting. While in Amsterdam last year, I saw many similar models on the streets.