Friday, May 18 2001

American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong Journal Entry

Today went a lot smoother. I had more to do so time flew by. I started to notice today the different personalities in the office. Frank Martin being the basic pessimistic banker in my view. Ioanna Martin the mother-like Canadian. The very friendly New Zealander with a cool accent. The always on the edge Irish woman Rosheen. Then there is the burly and blunt Scott that works on the computers. These are all very interesting people.

Anyhow, I got into finding the import/export numbers and the FDI numbers right away when I got to work. I then found them all and put them into spreadsheet form. It took me quite some time to find the FDI numbers that Mr. Martin was looking for. Before I gave them to him I went to lunch.

I went to KFC and got my meal and then tried to find a place to sit. There must have been nearly 2 or 3 thousand people in the food court of the Pacific Place. There was not one place to sit. If there was a place it was quickly jumped on by people hovering to save seats for their friends. I then went into the McDonalds to find a place to sit, but failed. Then the McDonalds attendant came to me telling me that I could not eat in the McDonalds with KFC food. At that point I felt like throwing my food away and just not eating.

However, the very friendly New Zealander saw me and told me that I could sit with him. So we talked about where he had worked in Hong Kong and why he came there. He has apparently been in the publishing business for all his life and came to the c/c to do the c/c gazette that they put out monthly. He is in charge of it. We talked about how much housing costs in Hong Kong and how the prices have been going down. Apparently a lot of people have lost money in the real estate market.

I got back to work and gave all of my stuff to Mr. Martin and he told me to just email it to him. He said that he was going to email the numbers to a bunch of people that needed them. I was kind of taken aback by this because, wow, he was really going to use these numbers for an important reason. I felt pretty good about that. I am still a little uncomfortable with the formal business setting. It is kind of impending. I feel kind of weird walking into the “bosses” office to give him something.

Also, today I had a really good conversation with a guy named Mark who is in charge of governmental relations. He really wants to go into research for the c/c. He is Chinese and so we talked about his career path and such. He used to work for a securities firm doing credit checks. He is a political science major. He told me that someone can do just about anything in Hong Kong because of the on the job training and pick it up pretty easily. The conversation went pretty well and so we are going to go to lunch next week to talk some more. I am looking forward to it. I feel like I am being more integrated into the work place and so I am feeling more comfortable.

It rained today too and I got my jacket wet going to work. This week overall has been pretty gloomy weather-wise. I hope all this smog will clear up some time. I don’t know what I am going to do tonight but I don’t think it will be much because I really want to go to bed and would be happy with that. Tomorrow I will go and do some stuff though.