Hong Kong: Part II

It's been a few days already that I left HK and I kind of miss it. Me and my friends have long discussed whether we would eventually take a job in Asia. I feel like I could move to HK for a year or so with a company's commitment to send me back. I doubt I would be able to come to Shanghai. And after talking to some people I feel like the same thing is gonna happen with Beijing.

The experience in HK has been good. The "Doing Business in China" course that I have taken has been fine but there are some things that must be improved in the future. It's been the first year that this course has been offered and there is room for improvement.

The first criticism is the daily schedule. In the end, everybody who has taken this course has spent more than $3.5k, including tuition (2K), flights and pocket money. We all definitely wanted to learn a lot about China, but when you spend such amount of money you also expect to have time for leisure, sightseeing and so forth. And we have lacked the latter. It doesnt make sense to have class from 930am to 530pm everyday.

The quality of the lectures has been pretty good, including some given by the former China CEO of Walmart and a presentation by a big shot of Pepsi China. We have covered cultural issues, business issues and corporate visits (not super interesting, though) to three companies.

Overall I think that I have learnt some good stuff. And now I can say that whenever somebody says "company X should go to China b/c it is the future" I will have some thoughts to qualify such a statement. It is not that obvious and many things must be assessed.

The other main criticism is the hotel. It was ok, not luxurious, but the location sucked. It's a pity b/c it has made things more complicated in terms of walking around. We could have easily shared room with another person - instead of having individual rooms - and get a better location for the same price.

On the leisure side, I have had fun. The group of people who traveled with me was very nice. I have had the chance to meet people I had never talked to back in Stern and to strength my ties with some others. I have gone out a couple of nights, I have had delicious Chinese foods (eg. coconut rice, pineapple rice, tasty noodles, fish cake, curry, coconut milk, papaya salad), I have bet on horse races, I have seen big panda bears playing around, I have walked around flea markets like the one in Mong Kok (without a doubt, the word of the trip...note the funny phonetic connotations from French and English), visited a big Buddha (is it bigger than the one in Nara, Japan?), I have seen one of the most beautiful skylines I have ever seen (HK island from Kowloon), I have known about "Edgar se cae" (please, check it out on Youtube) and I have met a super cute HK-brazilian girl...

As you can see, a lot of good things. It has been a very good trip. Maybe the only big thing that I missed was Macau but I do not feel it is a big deal since I will be traveling to Vegas in March with some friends.

Overall, great trip and some great memories and pictures to take away!

Later