Catch-up Wrap-up I

Hey folks, I've been pretty slack with my blog lately. So I have to do some catching-up.

Week 9 - 15 April
On Saturday I went to Shenzhen with a colleague from work. It's the first Mainland city across the border and a shopping paradise, well at least in terms of prices and range of stuff you can buy. The shopping experience is only mildly pleasant. Had a headache afterwards.
At night, Jeff and I went to FINDS for a house party, yeah Hed Kandi (Ministry of Sound) was in town. Jeff, me and especially Philipp had been looking forward to it for weeks. Philipp, for SOME (ever changing) reason, pulled out ;). Had been the craziest night so far. A German girl kept on offering Moët Chandon (bought with daddy's credit card). As polite as we were, we never refused :).

Week 16 - 22 April
On Friday was the grand opening of the Mercedes-Benz Performance Studio in posh Repulse Bay, the dedicated outlet for AMG models. Hence, I had quite a lot of work that week. For instance, on Wednesday I had to wait in Repulse Bay for the cleaning company to tidy up the showroom after the big renovation. They finished after midnight instead at 22.00, so I had a long chilling evening in RB.
The opening event as such was pretty cool. An AMG mechanic from Affalterbach (D) was flown in. He assembled a 12V bi-turbo engine live. Quite impressive. Most of the time I was standing next to one of our classic cars, the original 450 SLC which won the South American rally in 1978, in case anyone had a question about the car. Luckily enough, nobody came up to me coz I had no idea about that car, eigher :). After the event, there was plenty of food and champagne left. Never waste food and drinks, right? ;)
On Saturday, I met the AIESEC trainees in HK for the first time. We had a farewell dinner for a Dutch trainee first and then I introduced them to the PI club ;).

Week 23 - 29 April
On Friday, there was an afterwork cocktail gathering co-organized by the Swiss and the Swedish Chamber of Commerce :). Well, the Swiss were highly outnumbered, 4 Swiss vs. the rest of the bar full of Swedes. So, more Swedes for everybody :). After a couple of drinks (happy hour), I parted from the big Swiss delegation and went on to Goccia with some of the sweet Swedes. Goccia, a fake Italian bar where they also cool down red wine to 4° (!), was apparently the place where the HK Swedes hang out (Good to know!). After some more drinks, we decided to move on to Drop. I had never managed to get into that place, I always had to put up with some lame excuses not to let me in. But guess what! Have a cute blond girl right next to you and they lay out a red carpet for you (only metaphorically, because literally there is already one, and most probably more for the blond girl than for me). Anyhow, the place wayyyyy doesn't justify the fuss they make at the entrance. As for the Swedes (I don't wanna generalize as I'm interculturally sensitive after all), it seems that they are quite sociable at the kick-off stage, but there is no follow-up, I mean just judging from my first experience. Hence, another pile of business cards for the dumpster and phone numbers that use up storage space of your mobile. Anyhow...
On Saturday, beaching for the first time. But the water was still too cold for me. So no dipping for me that time. In the evening, I went out with Jeff, the AIESEC trainees Hilton and Faisal, and Mani, a local girl hanging out with the AIESECers. First we went to Dragon-I, a fancy place for bes and wanna-bes or wanna-be-seen-by-the bes, whatever. Paid 150 bucks for the most boring place ever. At least one highlight, we saw Jackie Chan's son, yay. We then went on to the PI (again, as far as I can remember), but it was dead. So we moved on to Wanchai and to good old From Dusk till Down, never a disappointment.
On Sunday, I was surprised to receive a SMS from Katrin, an AIESEC St. Gallen alumni. She did two internships in HK and couldn't get enough of this city. I had dinner with her and some more AIESEC trainees I had not met before. Cool night, but incredibly hot Indian food (It took me the whole next day to recover). Katrin and I went on for a drink in the fancy Aqua Rome where you can sip at your well-priced drink and enjoy the harbour view.

Beijing, here I come!

Easter holiday and I got five days off. I took that opportunity to visit my good old mate Chris from university who is doing an internship in Beijing right now. One remark before I start me recount: When I told my colleagues at work that I was going to Beijing for Easter holiday I got reactions from shaking of the head to "what the hell are you going to Beijing for? There's nothing to see, it's just a waste of time and money and it's full of mainlanders, I can't stand them". Apparently, Hong Kong Chinese tend to dislike the mainlanders, as they call them. It goes so far as statements like: "They are a disgrace to my race". Sociologically interesting and kinda sad at the same time.
Anyhow, I haven't seen my friend Chris for ages and it was great to catch up and reminisce. He made to the effort of planning my stay to the very detail. Cheers on you, mate! I didn't have to care about anything. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to stick to his schedule coz I spend to much time on shopping. Everything was soooo cheap there that I spent more than I had ever before. Among others (lots), I got myself two taylor-made suits and a cashmere coat, really stylish! But of course I did do some sightseeing. I saw the Forbidden City, Tiannamen Square, the Temple of Heaven, but the best of all was the Great Wall. We hired a bus for a whole day to drive to Simatai, which is about a 2.5 hours' drive outside of Beijing City. It was really worth it because there were hardly any other tourists on the wall. Funny enough, I met Marco and Matell, two interns from Hong Kong.
Some notes on Beijing: There is much more space than in Hong Kong, so I really appreciated not being pushed around all the time. What's more, the flats are way, way bigger than those in Hong Kong. I was really jealous of Chris' apartment. His room is like 5 times as big as mine, no kidding. However, pollution was worse and the air was really dry as opposed to the humidity in Hong Kong. So instead of dehumidifiers they would have humidifiers in their flats.
I was already surprised by the fact that many people in HK don't speak a word of English, but in Beijing English is as useless as any other language. I could make myself understood with my lousy Mandarin, hooray, good on me. But the thing is, I wouldn't understand their responses :). But people really appreciated my poor attempts. Anyone going to the Olympic games next year? You'd better start studying Mandarin now!

Rugby Sevens, yeah

Already during the week, you could notice that something special is going on in Hong Kong because the streets were (even) more crowded than usually, particularly in Lan Kwai Fong. And many wore shirts with strange colours, mostly strips and squares. We were looking forward to this for weeks, Hong Kong Sevens 2007 was coming up (sponsored by Credit Suisse, by the way), three days of stout sweaty guys looking for an egg (Easter is drawing near). We didn't have a clue about rugby, but we knew it would be the biggest party in town. As there was no way we could have get on hold of officially sold tickets, we decided to take our chances and rely on the flourishing black market.
But, let me put everything in chronological order. On Friday, we went partying (of course). We started off at FINDS, where we usually get free drinks as the management is Swiss :). Then Gigi managed to get us into one of the fancy clubs in Hong Kong, club 9. But first of all, she told me to go home and change my shoes as I was wearing sneakers. She convinced me that this club is really worth the hassle so I went home blabla just to find out in the end that EVERYONE was wearing sneakers in there apart from me. Anyhow, the club was indeed not bad. Good music, nice intereur and stuff. Even so, we decided to move on to From Dusk Till Dawn in Wan Chai. Like in Insomnia in Lan Kwai Fong there was a Filipino band playing there and they just rocked the house. The grand finale of the night was breakfast at the Flying Pan again.

We had actually planned to get to the stadium quite early, but after the night out there was no way we could have done that. I'm still proud of us that we made it to the stadium by 1pm. Cheers to the black market, we got in just in time to see one my favourite team, the All Blacks (New Zealand), play. As it was sevens rugby, that is, only seven players per team, playing for 2 x 7 minutes, we saw all teams, some of them even twice. The All Blacks qualified for the cup finals on Sunday, so I had to support "my team". However, it was way harder to find tickets at a reasonable price on Sunday. The first offer I got was 1500 HKD! Around the stadium the prices hovered around an "equilibrium price" of 500 honkies. Those black market dudes had a cartell agreement, I'm more than sure. I was at the point of giving up when I family guy with his to kids was leaving the premise, and I got my got my ticket for as little as 50 honkies :). The Sunday games were of course much better because the good teams would play against each other, there were more fans and the atmosphere was just great. The All Blacks beat England in the quarter finals but got defeated by Fiji in the semi-finals :( As a footnote, the cup was then won by Samoa. On the way home, Philipp suggested having "one drink":) We had another good night at From Dusk Till Dawn. The best weekend so far. (Apologies if I bored you with the rugby stuff)