Working with Women is Hard
Okay I need to blow off some steam. Currently in my work environment it is around 75% female. I've had a lot of hardships recently but in a sense I was prepared for it because my friend Rui had suffered through some things that were quite similar. He works in company that specializes in female clothing and hence the majority of the employees are female. For most guys it sounds like a dream being surrounded by girls all the time, but the working environment is totally different. My boss is a bit
emotional at times. I seem to work for a lot of female bosses, but it seems the ones I work for in Asia are prone to emotional outbursts.
Why am I a bit angry? I had a conflict with one of my friends at work. I shouldn't mix friends and work but I've done it successfully in the past and it was quite a rewarding experience. The problem I find is a girl's sense of loyalty is not the same as a guy's. Taken from the experiences of
Donald Trump; Loyalty is the highest virtue. Maybe it is part of the Hong Kong culture, I honestly don't know what it is part of but I felt betrayed. I have two friends working with me, one of them for personal reasons had to leave and I won't question that. I don't know the reason but I TRUST my friend that it is important. If Simon, Rui, or anybody else that is my close friend suddenly had to ditch me and made a point to say it was important I wouldn't question it.
I would cover for my friend.
Okay, yes seems wrong. Though I did not lie out right, a lie of omission is still a lie I suppose. I've been heading up a project related to a brochure cd that we are producing. I've been learning a lot through the experience dealing with employees, dealing with people who just don't perform and that has already been irritating me. I've been waiting on some tasks/deliverables to be handed over to me before I had off the work to my friend. Well, since they were too slow and my friend needed to leave, I made the decision above my boss's head to "let" my friend go for the rest of the day in the promise that my friend would return the next day (holiday) to make up for the time when hopefully the work would be here to be worked on. This sounds more efficient does it not? My choice was duel purpose and I was yelled at for a few reasons. Not that my choice was wrong, but as a show to the others that this type of behaviour is not acceptable.
The problem. Another friend, either out of concern or other reasons, decided to find out what was going on. She contacted the other person and found out the story. She decided to (with the permissions of my other friend) let the whole story out.
Actually there is a bit more background information that people need to know. When I was younger I caused a bit of mischief with my old school computers. I did this with a few friends and we were called down to the office. We had denied the story since they had no evidence but they were smart and they separated us. One kid decided to "take" the blame for the group and confessed. He dug our grave. No matter how good his intention was, I'll always remember how we were betrayed.
I mentioned my feelings to her. I felt this was an issue about loyalty, she felt otherwise. Something about Hong Kong girls needing to be right about everything. She felt it was her business to teach me how to work in a company. I suppose she's the only person who has ever truly worked, my 2 years in an insurance company don't really count.
I've learned a lot working here though. Through the good and the bad. I meet new people, like people from Guangzhou. I had lunch with two girls that came to work for us and they told me that once a year they would have their purses snatched. I have a lot of stress at work, but it is more emotional stress.
Chinese New Years is around the corner. Lets hope everyone comes back a better person.
My First Interview
It has been so busy lately. Recently the work has started to catch up to me, I feel quite tired right now. I don't like the fact that I don't have much time to go out, but I try to make the most of my free time. I've been spending a lot of money buying new clothes and socializing. Lets see, Sunday I met up with Jacqueline and her friend Kelly. They just got back from a trip to Shenzen where they stayed over night after a massage. They always go with Patrick, Raymond, and Connie. Connie likes teasing me because it isn't convient for me to go to China so I never take part in these 1 night excursions. I've had so much Japanese food in the last two days. While Kelly was getting her hair cut in TST I went with Jacqueline to go eat at Sempachi. Pretty good place just down the street from Itame-Sushi. We ended up at Itame-Sushi later on at night.
Yesterday I heard some bad news, Denise had a family member pass away. Originally we were schedule to eat dinner (our Japanese night out) but obvious she could not make it. My prayers go out to her and her family. Japanese night continued with Natsumi being the teacher for the night. Henry had a blast practicing his Japanese for the night. We struggled the longest with the phrase "Only Japanese women say 'Nani Warau No?'." It is nice for Natsumi to meet more friends and hopefully we can make it just as interesting when her older sister arrives in Hong Kong later on the 27th.
At work, the maddness continues as I'm learning all about resource stealing. People stealing my resources, or my workers from me. I have such a tight timeline already but there are so many fires to fight that my people keep getting pulled out. Tiff has been a great worker so far but Connie and Cynthia stole her from me for the day. That's okay I need the other workers to really push to complete their half of the timeline.
Today at work was my first interview. I have been preparing with some help from my father and friends to interview people to come work for us. I was a bit nervous but obviously not as nervous as my interviewee. I feel kind of bad for conducting the whole interview in English. Thanks to Alison I've started on the road of
behavioural based interviewing. I had one no show, and the one that did show up is seriously lacking in experience. Hopefully we can find a few more candidates. I've been learning alot in my new project management role. I think I will stay with this job for a while to take all the experience it has to offer.
A Range of Experiences
I found a penny on the sidewalk today. It was kind of shocking actually, I did not expect to find a penny just lying on the ground in Hong Kong. There was something about finding that penny that brightened up my day. I left it at my office for luck.
The office started to get calls for a Spa service program that they started. My work on an IVR system has been paused to deal with the fact that other people were unable to produce a promotional CD when they should have. I went right into project management mode. I'm a excited about doing this, since we are pushing to have this done, this stands to be the first task where I can get something concrete put out. The time line is really rushed however which is kind of a concern. I'm trying to get Tiff hired in to help. Connie, Raymond, Tiff, and I will all form one big happy family then.
I was a bit worried about getting my phone. I called earlier to chase to make sure Sharon got my phone in today. My cousin Yvonne is visiting to tomorrow so it would be a really bad thing if she tried to call me from the airport and I had no phone. I'm taking here out to meet my boss and Tiff.
I had a friend call me today, a friend who has been telling me about the dark side of Hong Kong. My eyes have been opened on another level based on what I've seen through my friend and the things that I've heard. I hope everything works out for my friend.
An additional sad note is the fact that my camera is broken. Not really serious but very annoying! There is a clip under the battery cover that keeps my battery touching the contact. This has snapped for no apparent reason so the battery tends to slide out. As long as I place the click against the battery and the battery cover it stays in place so that I can take pictures. Already it has been over a year since I bought this camera.
Nothing simple happens here. Life is just a roller coaster in Hong Kong.
Problems Make HK Life Exciting
I'm starting to feel tired. Maybe it is my three (3) jobs getting to me. Lets see what else. So I took my phone in to get fixed. There's nothing really wrong with the phone except I'm a bit picky. The extra "clicking" noise I hear when I open up the phone bothers me. I like hearing the click when the arm of my phone swings into place but I don't like having the extra sound. I dropped by Sindat today to see if it was finished. Nope, looks like another day without my phone. At least it is timed perfectly to go with my billing cycle. I've already gone past my plan for this month. Thanks to Fiona. Well, I had some part in it too.
Debating about 3G service. Johnathan in my Weds/Fri classes showed me a demo of 3G on his phone. I figured if it let me read the latest news for a bit more money then it would be worth trying. I dropped by Smartone today just before work and asked what I would get if I paided the extra $20 to get onto their 3G plan. This is the same as paying an extra $12 to use their
SmarTone iN! connection. So the extra money per month allows me to view the cover page. Yippie! So what if I wanted to read the news? Then an extra $18 a month. Nice marketing tactic, I never saw it coming. I'm hoping
Three in Hong Kong will have a better deal.
Other problems for today, my baby, my Toshiba Dynabook CX is startying to die. It kept crashing all morning. There are whole threads on the internet about Toshiba notebooks dying suddenly. It all seems to stem from overheating issues. I bought a kit and began to disassemble my notebook to see if I can clean out my heatsink. I got quite a bit open and gave the outside of the heatsink a good blow, but my current working CPU temperature is still around 46 C. I'm pretty worried that this notebook will die on me. I'm not sure what else I could do. Maybe wait to see if I can go to Japan when Simon drops by.
My notebook is a big worry for me. I have all of my life on there. But today I was totally floored in class. One of my students asked me to be her boyfriend. I guess it is really common to just ask someone to try before you really get to know them. Surprisingly it was done during my class time, and everyone got involved. I don't know, what should I have done to give her "face"? Her good friend started the whole thing. I ended up treating them out to a drink and chatting with them before we parted ways tonight.
Life in HK is so complicated sometimes.
My Reflections on Hong Kong - 2006
I have a bit of time at work and figured it was a good time to do a bit of reflecting. My travel to Hong Kong has been quite an experience. When will I go back to Canada? That hasn't been decided I will probably extend my stay in Asia. I'm a
green person by nature so I love to learn. There is a lot to learn over here.
Lets see, the first shock was the amount of people. I thought boxing day shopping at Eaton Centre was crazy. That happens every night in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay. The amount of people here is at a point where I don't see people in front of me when I walk, it is almost like swimming. There is a common saying that people in Hong Kong walk much quicker than people in Canada. I'll let you know after I get to Canada but for me I always step on people here. They walk too slow. The worst thing is people here have no sense of traffic rules on the street. They'll form a group and walk slow as hell down a narrow side walk blocking everyone else. I can excuse couples but groups of friends should be more considerate.
English. I came initially because I had the chance to teach English to earn money. It has been an experience being an educator. I've taught adults and children now. Both have taught me alot about how people are when they learn. I've also had a lot of time to reflect about the differences in growing up in each system. The Hong Kong kids need to suppliment a lot of their time with tutoring because they really can't get that much attention in class. The class sizes are between 30-40 students and each class runs for about 35 minutes. That's about a minute of one-on-one with each student per class. Coupled of the late night life here and the children go "bad" easily. What surprised me was the amount of people here who don't know how to use chops sticks. Pretty funny coming from the white-washed Canadian born Chinese.
But speaking of night life, everything stays open until about 11. That makes it really convient to hangout at night, the streets are still busy after 12. The working hours are insane in Hong Kong, people averaging long over-time without pay of course. They can really exploit the labour market here. I haven't even seen much of the PRC but I can expect that to be worst. I enjoy a lot of time hanging around my Canadian friends down in Lan Kwai Fong. My interest in modelling has left me aware of many of the pretty faces that wander through HK. I saw a number of models this morning actually coming to work, probably going for a casting or a shooting. Hong Kong has been pretty nice to me, there's a lot more to talk about but you'll have to meet up with me in a cafe or something to chat to hear the rest.
So far I have a love/hate relationship here. I'm learning a lot of extremes in terms of fun and tolerance but my goal has been attained to some degree. I'm learning a lot and I will continue to learn.
Just a note of interest, did you know some employers discriminate based on your zodiac sign. If you want to do business with China, the cultures are really different.
Project Management
Work has been really frustrating. My boss is so creative it is exploding out of her head. The problem is, she thinks too much and changes her mind too quickly. I can't even get a project objective written out before our product changes. Today it took a change for the better. We started working with the building manager and he is a very capable man. In terms of project management work there's a lot of experience I can hopefully pull out of him. He's acting as a sort of consultant for our project. I finally submitted a draft with a rough budget and timeline so instead of running around in circles I hope to be working on my project by next week.
I ended up buying the same phone the next day. There has been a shortage in stock but I made friends with Sharon at Moshi Moshi and so she has been really hooking me up. There's a slight problem with my phone opening but it is minor and maybe due to the cover being on too tight. Now I need to decide if I should blow money on buying another memory card.
Chinese New Years is coming up! I wonder what it will be like here in China!
I Just Dropped $2.3K
The week has been really busy with my 3 jobs but things have been going well...until just now. I just dropped my new phone, outside my building. People in HK are really quick, basically I was out all today with Natsu and we met up with Gloria for drinks. I probably should've went to the washroom before I left but I figured I could hold it. The problem is today is a bit colder than usual and I started to feel it when I got back to Mong Kok. So the very last 2 blocks I decided to sprint to avoid an accident. Literally I dropped it within one block of my place, like two (2) doors down. I went up and satisfied my call of nature then I noticed my phone was missing. I rushed back downstairs and retraced my steps. All I found was my battery and the back case of my phone. I guess it is a bit much to expect anyone to be nice enough to hold onto my phone. There was no phone lying around the area so someone just scoped it and ran, not bothering to pick up the battery or just decided to remove the battery all together. I'm online with Henry right now trying to get my SIM card number cancelled. My phone is gone, my new mini-SD memory card as well. I spent so much on dress shirts lately that this situtation just makes me feel terrible. Feeling a little depressed right now.
This past year started off a bit slow but snowballed pretty quickly. First to recount the events of the previous night. It was a fun night, the feeling at these events are a little different because I'm not as familar with the people. Raymond and Connie have been great this holiday season, hosting so many get togethers. I was pretty tired after working at Readership but since my last class was cancelled (due to excessive pop drinking on my student's part) I got to leave early. Actually I got paid that day too which I must say is one of the key benefits of working for Readership. Phoebe realy knows how to treat her employees and I would recommend working for her to anyone. I was going to go home early but I decided to walk over to Causeway Bay to do some shopping. I'm in the market for dress shirts.
I already bought some dress pants the other day at
G2000, but I'm looking for some nicer dress shirts. The problem with me is that I'm always demanding, maybe greedy. I want nice shirts but I don't want to pay the high price. I only have 2 plain coloured dress shirts from G2000 right now, they came out to be $158 HKD (about $26 CAD for 2 dress shirts). That is pretty cheap and the dress shirts aren't like a really cheap quality, they are decent but the designs just tend to be plain. For a nicer shirt they average around the $400 HKD mark around the $67 CAD range which is starting to feel a little pricey. We can obviously go higher but I need to buy to suit my budget. Now the tricky part is I'm a bit picky and I have plenty of dress shirts at home in Canada. My parents are sending another 2 with my cousin who will arrive later this month but in the mean time instead of collecting more average dress shirts I've been thinking about investing in nicer ones. Quality versus quantity.
By the time I got home I was feeling pretty tired so I decided to grab an hour nap before getting ready to head out tonight. "Remember to dress up!" Connie kept reminding me, but Hong Kong's style is so casual I felt a little over dressed. That's okay since I had a second location to go to that night;
Volar. We started the night off at
Tribeca night club which is where the old club ING use to be. It was okay, the music wasn't great and people weren't out on the dance floor so much. The worst thing that happened that night was the mic was broken so almost everyone missed the count down. I went to the bar to grab a drink with Fiona and the bar tender was so busy ... well lets put it this way he never got back to us. We heard people counting down at the side and by the time I got to check my watch 2006 had arrived. Oh well, better luck next year. The biggest surprise that night was running into Polly. I couldn't believe Aaron didn't tell me she was in Hong Kong. Apparently she's out at IFC working so I'll probably call her out a couple of times since I'm in Central as well. You know that game you plan when you're not sure if you recognize someone. Well I was staring at her for the longest time and it wasn't until I started to move away when she finally figured out it was me. Maybe I just unnerved her with my staring. The high light of the night was when we controlled "the stage" area. We had a few other abcs/cbcs/etc on stage just partying it up. Someone was shooting a video that night I think Fiona picked up his card so we'll see if she can get the video. We thought he was shooting up her skirt most of the night. As a side note, this is the second time I've had a girl punch me in the face. Sorry Alison you're not special anymore. You can talk to Heidi about techniques next time.
Well here comes the tricky part, I came out with the group but I made a deal with Tiffany to go to Volar. Tickets that night cost $450 HKD for members ($550 for non members) and it was a bit pricey for the rest of the people. I don't blame them of course, but I was hooked up so I got in for free. I was totally willing to stay at the club until they were all finished partying before I left but they decided to leave as well. We grabbed a cab over to IFC and then walked over to Lan Kwai Fong. They ended up getting drinks at a near by lounge and I met up with Tiffany. Tiffany's been great sharing her experiences with me. The music at Volar was great like usual (of course this depends on personal opinion but I like both tech/trans/r&b/hip-hop so I'm pretty flexible) and it was good running into Terrance again. I saw a whole other side of Hong Kong that night. After the party was the after party where Tiff passed out and I decided to leave at about 7:30 am. The music at the after party was good actually the DJs there were pretty decent. I didn't know anyone really when Tiff passed out and one of the girls there took pity on me and asked me out to the dance floor. The first thing she said was that I seem shy.
Almost 8 am I'm getting onto the MTR to head home. All around me are people going to work. I can't help but laugh consider how I am dressed. Actually I saw another girl dressed up so I started talking to her. Steph, the girl, works at Pi actually and thought I was a customer there that night. That's okay it broke the ice. We had a nice chat over to Mong Kok where we parted ways. I grabbed a few buns on my way back to my place and grabbed a quick shower then went to sleep. It was a good party actually.
I should add my thoughts and reflections on 2005 but I'll have to come back to it later. 2006 is starting off busy.
