HK Day 2

are the titles of my posts too boring? in response to reader comments (all two of ya... thanks Eric and Chris :P): Yes, Eric, i've spent lots of time (and money) already on WT stuff; think of dan:WT::eric:tennis. :) it is quite hot and humid. yesterday (day 2) was not as bad as day 1 though. the humidity is kind of welcome since Beijing is so dry. the KFC (and other standard American fastfood fare) is crazy here. they had like chicken cutlet over rice with vegetables and other decent looking plates. it's almost as if you want to get Chinese takeout style food (but less greasy), you have to go to a KFC or Pizza Hut here. i may get adventurous and actually try one of those dishes out... Christopher, what's on lockhart street?

something i forgot to mention in yesterday's post that been on my mind is how just in a day (and reinforced further on my second day) i've come to very much appreciate two things: 1.) the kindness of strangers in helping you know where to get off your bus or get to the MTR (subway), and 2.) the greatness of air-conditioned buildings that you can walk into freely on hot hot summer days/nights.

yesterday i stayed in 'til pretty late, "planning" ahead (read: surfing the web and chatting). i finally left to go meet with Sifu Robin around 3:30 PM but the bus (to the MTR) hit some major traffic. it took me nearly 1.5 hrs to get to the IWTA headoffice. saw some more cool historic video clips (lots of ones from HK news reports) on Grandmaster Leung Ting and WingTsun. instead of going to train at the Leung Ting Gym, we decided to get dinner and head over to Baptist University early to train there before the class started.

we got Japanese food at a good place (don't remember the name) near the HQ, and Sifu Robin was being the overly gracious host and refused to let me pay. he said i could get the next one, so hopefully he doesn't make it too difficult for me to pay next time. :) (fighting over the bill... serious signs of getting older...?)

after dinner it started to pour so we grabbed a taxi to Baptist University. we ended up running late for class, but still made it there before most of the students. there was a decent turnout of students, including all the students who went to Hungary. The class is taught by GM Leung Koon (GM Leung Ting's brother), Sifu Robin, and Sifu Jon (who's apparently in Taiwan for a few days). It was good to see si-suk-gung again, as well as be in a WT class again after having been away from one for over a month.


after the class ended i started training with Sifu Robin a bit, and received some nice corrections and guidance from GM Leung Koon. Unfortunately, the security guard came by and told us it was time to leave. some of students regularly get dinner together after class and asked if i wanted to go, but Sifu Robin and i decided to find somewhere else to train some more. we found an empty (and non air-conditioned) hallway and trained for about another hour. :D

close to midnight, we headed to Mong Kok where he showed me a mini-bus that could take me back to Kennedy Town. we couldn't figure out if it brought me to the area i usually took buses, but it was the closest bet so i jumped on. the bus driver told Robin to have me pay first (everyone pays when they get off) since i don't speak Cantonese.

fortunately on the bus, the girl sitting next to me a.) spoke English and Mandarin, b.) knew where the bus terminal was (where i usually get on buses when i leave). it was actually not bad at all getting back on the minibus, except for the fact that the bus drivers here drive like absolute lunatics. the minibus driver had a penchant for quickly swerving and accelerating whenever possible. at one point, we almost slammed into a double-decker bus. we brake so hard that everyone lurched forward and a guy's small shopping bag either fell out of his hand or tipped over and stuff went rolling down.

so i should probably have said this earlier in the post, but yesterday wasn't a terribly eventful day. :P it was a fun and relaxing one, so thanks for sharing in it with me!

HK Day 1

Despite my hellish "adventure" in getting to HK, I couldn't quite fall asleep my first night. There was some wicked lightning going on that seriously brightened everything. So i did some reverse psycho on myself and tried to stay awake. That seemed to work. i think i slept around 4something am.

i got up around 9:30am and updated y'all on my fun yesterday. then got ready and headed out. stopped by a 7-Eleven to refill the Octopus card Anna had given me to use, then found my way to the bus and rode to Central to catch the MTR to Yau Ma Tei. There I met up with my friend and WingTsun si hing (shi xiong), Sifu Robin. It was raining pretty hard, and the weather all day was pretty gloomy. After he took care of some official IWTA business, we headed back to the IWTA/Leung Ting Company head office. I remember the first time I visited with Mel back in '03; I was totally a little kid in a candy store with all the WT stuff everywhere. This time it was some of that coupled with a joy in returning and seeing Si-Tai (Grandmaster Leung Ting's wife) again. She's the sweetest lady, whom I had actually just seen 4 months ago in Hungary (for GMLT's 60th Birthday celebration).

After a quick pitstop at the office, we went to get Dim Sum nearby. It was a very good meal (esp. since i had skipped breakfast, which reminds me i'm getting kind of hungry now, but anyway...) and we got to catch up a bit. It's funny how you can be close to someone even when you first "talked" through e-mail and have communicated mostly through online means. In this case, i am very thankful that that is the case. After lunch, we went back to the office.

[ALERT: WT-details alert that prob will bore most of you so feel free to skip:]
Robin gave me the second Chi-Sau book that was recently published. I got to read through most of it and found some interesting comments/techniques/gems. :) He works in the head office so he had to take care of business while I occupied myself with the many WT things surrounding me. I bought a pair of new WT pants, two pairs of shoes, and a new T-shirt. It was tempting to buy more, but I had to restrain myself given my lack of income and impending debt.

After Robin was done with work, we stopped by the school and did some training! :D After that we walked down to Mong Kok and he showed me some of the shops and places that a lot of young people seem to hang out. He pointed out a milk tea place that happened to be Mel's favorite (Xiu Liu Shang) that he had brought Alex to when Alex visited. Then a little later I saw my (formerly) favorite milk tea place -- Saint's Alp! There was an awesome one in the village on Bleecker that sadly closed down. The one that still remains (around 10th and 3rd Ave) is not bad, but just not as awesome. I said to Robin that we need to come back at some point. :) I also messaged Mar that we have to go. Hopefully it's not disappointing...

Robin had to go off to teach class so I hopped on the MTR back to Central. I walked around a bit to familiarize myself with the area. Eating by myself and not wanting to spend too much money, I stumbled into a KFC. :P So not the healthiest meal, which is another concern. Afterward I met up with Wendy in the LKF area and we grabbed drinks (she had mango juice i had cranberry) and caught up. LKF is the ex-pat area of HK and it's crazy how many people are there. Ex-pats, foreign visitors, locals... just a big mix of young people looking to get their party on. After Wendy and I chatted a while, Anna and her friend Rob met up with us and we went to this place where everyone who worked there seemed to know Anna's name (as Rob said, it was like Anna's Cheer's). They had this live band that performed some classics of the 90's which was a nice treat. After that, we called it a night.

Overall standout impression today: HK has tons of young people. During the day it seems like the age-distribution is relatively standard, but at night, they're just all over the place.

Comments:
1. Thanks to Chris for the heads up on falling cable cars in HK (fell during testing sans people).
2. I'll get less verbose as the days pass and i'll try to replace them with some pics for your viewing pleasure. :)

The "service" industry in China

I've been meaning to give my 2 RMB on China's service industry and the problems China's ever-growing society faces. But after what happened yesterday (into today), I have to first talk about Flying in China!

Under normal circumstances, it should take around 3.5 hours to fly from Beijing to Hong Kong. But throw in a little drizzle and apparently China's airports/airlines can't handle it.

I arrived at the airport yesterday at around 2 PM for my 15:10 (4 PM) flight. I see the flight has already been delayed to 16:00. At the check-in counter I found out they gave away the seat I had reserved two days prior (an aisle seat in the middle of the plane) and instead gave me a seat in the second to last row. Questions of Why were met with vapid, uncaring looks. Finally, the guy mustered up a "you got here too late." The closing time for check-in was 2:25 PM, so clearly we were not "late". I wished my Chinese was better so I could clearly give him what was on my mind about the absurd situation. Fortunately my dad was with me and contributed sufficiently toward this cause. He offers up a middle seat closer to the front. Uh, gee thanks. I purposefully stall a bit, knowing the flight is delayed. So the great service I got is instead of an apology the guy gives me the second to last row seat and says let me know when you decide and walks away. It confirmed that most of the people in "service" roles in China have absolutely no sense of ownership nor care for customer satisfaction and experience (more on this!).

Proceeding to the gate I see the plane has not yet arrived. I ask the lady at the gate when it's arriving. She tells me 15:25, with boarding 10 minutes after, and tells me not to go too far. Some time after 16:00 I ask a different guy who's behind the counter now what the status is. He said the plane will be here in an hour plus. I ask if the plane has even departed yet. He tells me the plane "just took off". Forward on to 17:30, when the estimated time of departure is still officially displayed as "16:00". A followup reveals the plane is downed in an airport 40 minutes away but has pulled from the gates and is about to depart. Seriously? "Yes, really, so it'll be here in about an hour." Okay. Even though my original arrival time was 18:45, at least an 18:30 or so departure would get me to HK before or at midnight.

Guess what happens at 18:30? Yup. Nothing. Forward on to 19:30 when they finally update the estimated departure time from 16:00 (yes, 3.5 hours after the time had passed) to 20:50. Was this progress? Well, it seemed more "official" than verbal feces that had been provided earlier. I hoped against my better judgment that they (airline, airport, people in China) were being honest this time!

Another flight had been scheduled to depart from our gate and their new time was 20:15. But by 20:15, their plane wasn't here yet. I'm thinking I'll tack on however many minutes onto the time their flight is delayed to 20:50 to figure when our plane will arrive (maybe there's a standard quantity they add to get our hopes up just enough...). Then, a miracle! A concrete update! We were being switched from gate 5 to gate 15. Could our plane actually be here?

At gate 15 it indeed seemed like a plane was parked at the gate. Some of us get in line to wait. After 10 minutes, people come out! Poor fellow travelers who were supposed to get to Beijing 6 hours ago. 20:45 and still not boarding us. Finally, they do. Oh well, we'll miss the 20:50 take off, but hopefully they'll rush to get us going, right? RIGHT?

(I don't think I need to answer that) As we're all buckled in and ready to go, an announcement on the plane along the lines of "Delay due to air traffic control. Appreciate your patience." I decide to just take a nap and hope the nightmare will end. I think we finally pull out from the gate 20-30 minutes later but then sit on the runaway a bit more. When we finally get some speed going and are taking off I check my watch and see that it's 22:00.

We land around 01:30. Get off the plane fairly quickly. I stop and find a courtesy phone to call my unfortunate host that I've finally arrived. I then proceed to immigration (one of the last people), followed by baggage claim. Some luggage are circulating out there but lots of people are waiting. Then no new luggage comes out. There's an announcement in Cantonese. Then in "English." All we could understand was "delay". We ask an airport official what's going on. "Oh, it's the weather. If it's raining the luggage guys can't go out to get the luggage." I am ready to laugh at the absurdity. Some other foreigners start yelling and cursing a bit.

Around 2:30 my luggage appears! I didn't recognize it at first because the luggage strap I used to tie around it isn't on it. Hrm. I wait a minute to see if it comes and realize it's not worth it. I also am annoyed that complaining obviously will get me nothing (compared to in the states where they'll at minimum apologize and own up to screwing up and maybe even offer something to make up for it).

Get to the taxi stand and tried to communicate in English where I needed to go. After 15 minutes and a phone call to my host, the driver said he knew where to go. He was a nice guy from Indonesia and writing a book so he asked me for my thoughts on the topic. I was tired but decided I might as well stay awake and chat with him (and make sure he takes me to the right place).

Around 3:15 I get to my friend's place. Got to bed at 3:50.

On the upside, I made it to a place where the Internet is uncensored and I can access blogspot. =)