My stay in Shanghai, London, Milan and Hong Kong

Road to Bangkok...

...is almost there. I confirmed my trip to the travel agency today. My travel documents shall then arrive at my office by tomorrow morning. I can hardly believe that I've done that to be honest. I will arrive in Bangkok the day after tomorrow at 15:00 Bkk time. So I will hopefully enjoy my four days trip before getting back again to HK late Sunday evening.

Now it's even more important to read the LP in order to know what to do, how to behave and especially to read the "Don't do!" section. Holy cow...

UPDATE 01/09/2004:
I just received my flight tickets and my hotel voucher. I can still hardly believe it ;-)

Bangkok Update

Hmmm this is going to be a real last minute action....shall I book or better not and save the money? At least I bought myself a Lonely Planet book, Bangkok version in order to have a brief look on what's going on in this city/country I have never been before.

I already looked for some offers and I have one last one in my pipeline. Tomorrow will be however the day to decide whether to do this trip or not....

Shenzhen & Ghost Festival

I just arrived back from my one daz trip to Shenzhen...after hours at emmigration and back immigration to China we finally arrived in the so calles Special Economic Region of Shenzhen where we did some shopping. Again it was raining most of the time but no problem for us, experienced rainmen.

These days we have the "Ghost festival" going on here in HK. Once a year HK residents make some fireplaces along the streets and burn some paper and stuff. The reasoning behind this procedure is, well, they intend to scare away all the invisible ghosts suspected to be around the city (perhaps they are also going to work every morning just like me, who ever knows) :-)

Trip to Bangkok

Ok things seem to be sorted out. My boss allowed me to take next Friday off in order to undertake my trip to Bangkok.

For price reasons it would be better to travel with someone else since offers for 2 pers. are much cheaper than for a single person. Well we'll see if I find someone to join me.

HK dragon

copyright DPA

Macau & Shenzhen

This weekend will be my penultimate one here in HK...ya really weird! Anyways I am sorting things out what to do with my last "free" days and I decided to finally do my trip to Macau this Saturday (after several unsuccessful previous attempts) and to the city of Shenzhen on mainland China in order to shop a little around for the last time in Asia this year.

How to get there? Keep on reading...

Furthermore I am thinking of flying to Bangkok on my very last weekend (3-5 Sep) as there are very cheap travel packages and who knows when I will be back in this region again.

Well, one step back:
To get to Macau you just need to get on one of those Macau Ferries, starting at the Macau Pier in Sheung Wan. I was told a one way journey will take about an hour or so and will cost about 150 Honkies.

To get to Shenzhen you simlpy take the KCR (Kowloon-Canton Railway) somewhere on Kowloon side/New Territories. A one way ticket by using your Octopus card will cost about 30 Honkies.

Skype Update III

After several unsuccessful attempts to buy credits for my skype account in order to being able to make phone calls to mobile and land line phones over the internet, I succeeded in the end.
With the help of my friend Mugel in Germany, we simply set-up a new user account and tried it again. It finally worked!

After that I briefly tried to call Mugel at his land line in Germany and it worked out as well. He could here me quite good, however, to me, his voice seemed to be very far away if you understand what I mean.
Anyways I then tried to make another call to a mobile phone in Europe. Again it went fine, although there seemed to be a minor time lag in the course of the short chat.

Oliver's in Hong Kong

Mmmmmmmmmmmmhhhh this place is really awesome! Oliver's is a shop trading with every kind of delicatessen from around the world....fresh fruits, French cheese, Italian pasta and tomato sauces, hors d'oeuvres/antipasti, wines and spirits.....ohhhhhhhhh. each time I go there to get my lunch sandwhich (as it is the cheapest item to buy in there) I would love to personally fall in this fruits and french cheese depot...if I could I would buy the whole market ;-)...well, unfortunately I just woke up again from this little dream.

Anyways enjoy your days, buddies! We'll have our monthly end drinks here in the company tonight....will see what this is like tonight. After that I am heading to Wan Chai to meet other interns remembering that Wednesday is our inofficial trainees night ;-)

Rainy season / Typhoon Aere

Damn...it's been heavy raining now for days....all due to Typhoon Aere coming over from the Pacific and which seemed to have already hit Taiwan. Schools, business offices are already closed for security reasons. The up-to-date report may be found by using this link.

Boat excursion

We've been out on a boat excursion yesterday. Although it was raining almost the whole day it was an exciting event. We met at Queenspier (about 12 people) and walked on board of the WestLB company boat; which was organized by another friend of mine here in HK.

Then we drove across the HK harbour and stopped at a small bay somewhere around HK. It was impressive! After a couple of beers and some swimming exercises in the bay we drove back to HK late in the afternoon.

Actually today I finally wanted to go to Macau, but my mate who wanted to come with me, seems to have had a tough night yesterday..he is not reachable...so once again, no Macau this week ...

Smog alert in HK

Uhhhh, officials yesterday reveiled that recent smog level exceeded the defined burden. No wonder why breathing was so difficult yesterday and even today. You are not even able to look from HK Island to the New Territories! Gosh...

My former boss from Shanghai in HK

I just received the message of my former boss in Shanghai that he is going to be in HK this Friday, which is great in fact.
I am looking forward to seeing him again. I think we will go have some drinks with a lovely skyline view at "Felix" the bar ontop of the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon. After that I assume we will get some drinks in LKF and Wan Chai.

Katja's arrival in Hong Kong

This morning, Katja should have arrived in HK together with her boyfriend. Katja is a friend of Munich, used to be the ex-girlfriend of a very good friend of mine, Juergen aka Mugel. She decided to completely move and settle to HK since her swedish boyfriend was already living here quite a time for working purposes.

I am curious to meet her again since I last saw her just the day before my flight to HK in June.

Market study (Update)

Hmpf...you wouldn't believe it, but I was still working on this market report; until today. After several reviews and updates we finally sent out the most recent version to our Global Brand and Design employees at our office in London. Hopefully they will not complain too much about the way we (actually I) wrote and designed the report....we'll see, I keep you up to date.

As next task or project, I shall examine the Chinese or in a broader extend the Asian market for wine and spirits....so again, the ugly sounding words "market study"....arg.

Shek O

My temporary flatmate just moved in today...

I will go to Shek O beach this afternoon. There is going to be a small party of some friends. It's good to get around a bit, especially since I realised that I am only staying less than 4 weeks....so hurry up :-)

New flatmate?!?!?

Holy...!

I just received a phone call today saying that somebody (Italian guy) should stay at my place until my current roommate comes back from his holiday trip in Europe in September....gosh it feels like weird, that somebody is moving in immediately without even knowing him.

He just visited the flat...hmmm...strange...seems to be ok this guy, about 23 years old, studying at the same university in Milan as I did and...I shouldn't mention it but.....he is not straight. Well I have nothing against gays, as long as they keep off from me...I simply have had bad experiences with gay guys. Nothing happened to me, so don't worry but I just made bad experiences....

Strange day...

I need a rest...

puhhhh after having been out for drinks the past two evenings, I am going to stay at home tonight and I am at least trying to get to bed early.

Sorry this does not sound that exciting, apologies for that.

First sex exhibition in China ever...

Yesterday the first ever sex (adult) exhibition took place in Shanghai. The feedback I got was quite scary, since people weren`t used to deal with dolls, dildos, etc. It was simply forbidden for them to know, to use them.

Read this German article to get more insights....

Sorry I got pissed...

...things happened in a strange way...sorry I got pissed after work hanging around for some beers with one of my bosses....tztztztztztztztz.....

Training end and diploma thesis update

Hi,

I just finished my training course and it was good to see and get to know other interns working for the company I am working for. Gosh, basically I was the only western (=gweilo) guy, which was no problem at all. The funny thing about it was that all HK interns where basically studying or living in the UK...actually I did not know that there were so many Asians during my stay in London...anyways, it was a good experience and I am waiting for the group picture being send to my by email within a couple of days.

In addition to this, I just received written confirmation and the contract for the diploma thesis offer next year. The four months job should involve a two months stay in Shanghai to conduct interviews and do lot of research....anyways I haven't signed it yet. I will see what my other opportunity might be.

1 1/2 days training course

I just wanna drop a line telling you that I will be on a one and a half days training course with my company from tomorrow. So please do not expect to get quick e-mail replies since I only will have the chance to read through my mails when I come back home in the evenings.

Have a good start of the week buddies...

China lost AsianCup 2004 Final

This year's AsianCup host China just lost its first ever final in a large international football championship against Japan with 1-3.

Lufthansa premium flight to Barcelona

Since I collected enough Lufthansa premium miles the past years to get a free European roundtrip ticket, I decided to make a four days trip to Barcelona over All Hallows in November together with my sweetie pie ,-)

Hamburg 25 degrees, Munich 29 degrees

Summer in Asia means high humidity, dangerous sun and sweating like a pig. And what about my home country? Is it raining all day or great Beergarden weather? Well, thanks to the Munich Webcam on this site, you may get a broad answer to this question. In addition to this, I just put another (almost) live picture underneath which shows the current temperature throughout Germany. Enjoy! ,-)

My weblog @ unicum.de

It seems that creating new weblogs became a real change in society behaviour....surprisingly I found out that the German University magazine "Unicum" is currently offering to create your own weblog on their server....well no worries, I am not going to take care of another blog, but, at least I created one and referred to this small cute weblog :-)))

Market study, market study, market study

....argghhh..... I cannot stand this word anymore! Good thing about the market study I am currently working on is that I am never ever going to work in a market research, marketing department or as an journalist or writer.

Since I was quite lazy the past weeks, I really got into trouble this week (and still I am), since I have to finish one major milestone by tomorrow evening. As a consequence, busy working till late in the evening became nothing unusual this week.

Furthermore I decided to meet some German interns yesterday for dinner and then went to Wanchai to have some drinks...in the end I got to bed again not before 1:30 am. ;-(

What a wonderful day...

Nothing unusual...whenever you are busy working, the weather condition is most likely to be at a very high level. Today, for instance, you will hardly find a cloud on the Hong Kong sky.
Since my digicam is broken, please have a look on this webcam pic, isn't it awesome?

SkypeOut

I already mentioned this online tool, called Skype, which enables you to conduct online voice conversation with friends from all over the world.

The software producer just released the most recent version 1.00.10 where you may additionally make pc to land line/mobile phone calls to almost everywhere in the world.
This sounded great to me since I am keen to find a suitable way to make affordable calls to Europe to speak to my girlfriend. Of course, this supplementary service is not for free. However it seems to me that their rates are at a very competitive price.

Nonetheless there have been some problems with raising some telephone minute credits when submitting the credit card details. Hope they are going to fix it soon though to be asap be able to make calls.

I'll update you as soon as I get more feedback.

Couple jumps out of Hong Kong skyscraper

Horrible scenario...a couple just jumped out of the window on the 34th floor of a skyscraper in Hong Kong....they didn't see another way out of their personal financial crisis.

Read more (German)!

Back in Hong Kong

After two and a half weeks I just arrived back at my home in Hong Kong. My roommate already left for his summer holidays in Spain for one month.

Good news from the company in Shanghai. They accepted my requirements for writing my diploma thesis with them. This is great since it will give me the opportunity to be back in Shanghai next summer. However I am still hesitating to sign the contract since I am still in negotiation with another company to see what incentives they may be able to offer me...we'll see.