Beijing

A man making the never-ending noodle

The original Peking duck

In a Hutong

The Olympic Headquarters

A relatively 'clear' morning from my hotel window in Chauyong

Singapore and Hong Kong in Pics

Durian

mmmm...durian cream puff
Truth in advertising - the moment of the durian

A parrot store at Dempsey - parrot eating my shirt

Me & Mao

Sentosa with Charif, Tomoko, me, Sky, Pax, and Molya

View of Singapore from my hotel

Thai curry in Singapore

Fishing Boats, Hong Kong

Stanley Beach, Hong Kong

View from the Hong Kong hotel window

Beijing

Reporting in from the "Silicon Valley" of China

Soon leaving the office to explore the ex-pat hang outs in this spread-out city of 16 million people.

Top 10 Things that Surprise me that Shouldn't:

1. Beijing is really, really big
2. Chinese is really, really hard
3. The air is really, really polluted
   
4. Car names and Coca Cola cans are written in Chinese (including American cars)
5. There are Buicks everywhere
6. Most people don't speak English (remember, these are things that shouldn't surprise me)
7. The food is very different from Chinese food in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the US (including authentic food like Cupertino Village)
8. The Sheraton is crappy (as is, apparently, every Sheraton in the world)
9. There are no animals in the streets (thanks to India for that expectation)
10. There are some trees in Beijing (although still not many)

Top 5 Things that Surprise me that Should:

1. It is cold here even though it's the middle of May
2. The streets aren't nearly as crowded with people as you would think
3. Thanks to rain, the weather is much clearer than normal and you can actually see the sky through the haze
4. The city is very spread out and doesn't really have a core center of tall buildings like Hong Kong
5. The airport was clean, new, extremely efficient and the customs people were really nice
   

More to Come Later...

From the Plane From Singapore to Beijing

Singapore

While I was in Hong Kong, everyone kept telling me how the weather in Hong Kong was sooo much better than the weather in Singapore and how horribly hot Singapore is. So far, I am excited to say, they were incorrect.

Singapore is 2 degrees from the equator, which is much, much closer to the equator than other famous tropical places like Hawaii, French Polynesia, and Fiji. But it has nice sea breezes that at least while I was there, kept the humid weather pleasant (and very similar to Hawaii in Spring and Fall). The air is infinitely cleaner than the air in Hong Kong. I was told by one proud Singaporean that ‘Singapore is safe from all natural disasters’ (famous last words…I did a lot of knocking on wood after that one while waiting for the earth to open up in a freak earthquake/tsunami/tornado/blizzard disaster of epic proportion).

They are only plagued by a cloud of pollution that apparently gets blown over from Indonesia once a year that my new group of friends (which included Indonesians) referred to as “Singapore’s tax to Indonesia for its gracious absorption all of the other natural disasters that would otherwise plague Singapore” (including, but not limited to: Tsunamis, hurricanes/cyclones, earthquakes, and volcanoes – all of which can be experienced in abundance in Indonesia). Indonesia served as a barrier during the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, and thus kept Singapore untouched by the devastation that started next door and travelled all the way to Africa.

The office is in a sufficiently tall, ostentatious building with a bunch of investment banks, and that was pretty much all I saw of Singapore on weekdays (plus a number of underground shopping malls that connect practically the entire city).

This weekend I did some exploring around Singapore and managed to stumble into a new great group of friends. Charif, one of my colleagues from Initech, invited me to Sentosa (a ‘resort’ type island that is part of Singapore and that you can reach by bridge) to meet up with some of his friends. We were quite an international bunch, and I was the only westerner in the group (and was represented proudly by the Australian college students drinking in the pool and dancing on the poolside bar). There was Charif (from Lebanon), his fiancée Tomoko (from Japan), his friend Moliya (from Indonesia, living in Singapore), Moliya's girlfriend Pax (from Jakarta visiting him), another friend Sky (a Chinese Singaporean who lived in Doha for two years as a stewardess for Qatar airways), another friend Ferai (from Zimbabwe, living in Singapore), and a few other people. Everyone was connected to everyone else by one person - Kevin Bacon would have been proud.

We ate dinner, including the biggest prawn I’ve ever seen (much larger than a Maine lobster and definitely not a 'shrimp'…) and then relaxed on big beds on the beach and talked about all sorts of cultural things (Thanks to NPR for allowing me to have a slightly intelligent discussion of Mugabe and Zimbabwean politics and the situation in Lebanon and thus demonstrate that I am not a stereotypical ‘do you mean Iran and Iraq aren’t the same’ American).

It is times like this that I always like to stop and think about how awesome it is that I am spending my Saturday night discussing Zimbabwean politics with a Zimbabwean and the situation in Lebanon with a Lebanese person on a beach in South East Asia. In case you were wondering, the situation in Zimbabwe is tough and Lebanon is more dangerous by the minute and some Lebanese family friends who were visiting Singapore are now unable to return to their home in Beirut and are stranded homeless in Singapore. These are always the types of circumstances where we have the opportunity to transcend our normal opinions of cultures, history, and politics that are put together by any number of media, and actually talk to people who actually have experienced something firsthand.

I like to think of these situations as amazing opportunities to demonstrate to one person at a time that not all Americans are ‘World Cowboys’ like Bush, prancing around the world picking fights with no understanding or appreciation for other cultures. If only everyone had the desire to learn from other people and cultures, we would probably be in a much more peaceful world. I consider it my unofficial duty to engage in this kind of micro-diplomacy as much as possible, and I love it when other people want to do the same. Once upon a time, it was a situation like this that allowed me to ask my Muslim friend how she feels wearing a full burkha and later on to experience it myself, and for her to ask me how I can get up every morning without my extended family to guide me and take care of me when I'm down. It's possible that more understanding between cultures happens in these moments than happened in the entire UN general meetings in 2007.

We had so much fun on Saturday night that we all met up on Sunday for brunch at a place called Dempsey, near the botanical gardens. Dempsey is a lush area with restaurants and shops among big tropical banyan and firangi panni trees (If you read HyderabadAdventures, you may remember that in Hindi 'firangi panni' means 'gringo water.' I asked the Singaporeans about the origin of the word and all they could say was that it is said that the trees are haunted by spirits. Firangi panni are also used as funeral flowers in India. Interesting etymology - funerals, spirits and white people are all related). Dempsey is also a favourite among expats and the whole area looked like an expat bomb had exploded and left millions of curly toe-head British and Australian children running around half naked as their parents lounged drinking the bar clean of mimosas.

Afterwards we all wandered around and I went with Sky in her family’s Mercedes to Orchard Road (the Beverly Hills of Singapore). Interesting fact – to just have a car in Singapore you must pay SNG$70k (about $50KUS) just for a 10 year license to have a car. That means that the only cars in Singapore are luxury German cars, Italian sports cars, and luxury Toyotas (for the families), since you have to be able to afford the tariff before you even buy the car. This also means that cars are generally communal and shared by the entire extended family.

I went with Sky to the Goodwood Hotel because Sky really wanted me to taste the famed stinky durian fruit, and she thought that a durian pastry would be the easiest introduction. Lucky for us, the Goodwood Hotel has a ‘Durian Fiesta’ (their term, not mine) somewhat similar to the Gilroy garlic festival, except taking place in the posh patisserie in a 5 star hotel, where they make cakes, pastries, and other concoctions out of durians. The smell is so strong, that they have to keep everything frozen and package it immediately to prevent the entire hotel from smelling like a high school boys locker room.

Suffice it to say, even in cream puff form, the moldy-cheese scented (and flavoured) durian was not my cup of tea, and indeed, after a cup of tea (and a coffee, and a coke, and dinner...) I could still taste and smell that little bastard.

Afterwards I went with Frenje, a Singaporean friend of a friend from Stanford, to some ‘suburban’ public housing neighborhoods to get a sense for how most people in Singapore live (despite the condition of public housing in the US, almost everyone in Singapore lives in public housing and it is infinitely nicer than public housing anywhere else).

We were quite voyeuristic, and just went up elevators of random buildings and walked around looking into open doors. Women were cooking spicey food with the windows open, old men were sitting in front of TVs on leather couches. Floors were tile or marble, furnishings were modern, incense burned outside some doors and crucifixes hung on others. All signs were in Singapore's 4 official languages - Malay, Tamil, English, and Chinese, and some elevators were more modern than others. Some buildings were 6 stories and others more than 20. Air conditioners hung in boxes outside each window.

All throughout our walks I could identify when we were coming upon a stand selling durians, since the scent in the air matched the scent stuck in my body – a scent I hope will only be E² (external and ephemeral) in the future and not permeating through me like garlic after an Italian wedding banquet.

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Overall, I’m super excited about Singapore. It is a modern version of that 'melting pot of culture' that we always heard about studying American history. It has an extremely diverse population, including many, many new immigrants from all over the world. It is a center of commerce and wealth in Southeast Asia, and in many ways demonstrates some of the positive effects that a socialist government can have for its people (draconian gum-chewing penalties notwithstanding). It has amazing food (including every kind of curry imaginable), multiple spikey fruits to choose from, linen is always in style, and you can drink the water, which means you don’t have to constantly be worrying about ice and unpeeled fruit like you do almost everywhere else in Asia.

Oh, and it is a one hour boat ride to luxurious tropical Indonesian islands that cater to Singaporeans in their cleanliness and safety. With a slightly longer boat ride you can reach more authentic bastions of Indonesian and Malaysian culture; that is, if you don't get held up by pirates - an interesting prospect, but, I am told by my Vietnamese friend who was actually captured by Southeast Asian pirates as a refugee on a Vietnamese fishing boat 20 years ago, disappointingly lacking the Johnny Depp type of pirate and instead featuring the toothless, dirty, AK-47-carrying pirate of the modern era (proving once again, that sometimes newer isn't actually better...)

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Just had breakfast. An odd concoction of western and Thai 'fusion.'

Breakfast on Thai Airways:

Main course: Pad See Ewe Chicken or fish cakes

Lychee and melon

Croissant with jam

German yogurt

Tea (with powdered creamer)

The Singaporean Chinese ladies next to me have been popping chinese herbs for the last 20 minutes. They just ate some sort of brown cube. I hope the herbs aren’t for ‘cleansing their systems’…

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Now that I have finished the tales of my most recent travels, I am now sitting in the airport in Bangkok next to an enormous group of Former-Soviet-Republic tourists who make up the majority of this flight, and give the distinct impression that this is 1978 and we are flying on the Air Orient Express from one communist country to another. The news is flashing images of the devastation and 100,000 dead in Sichuan from the earthquake, pushing the 100,000 dead in Myanmar in the aftermath of the cyclone to second page news.

When tragedy hits in Asia, it hits big – can you imagine 100,000 dead in the US? The world trade center was a few thousand. The world as we know it would collapse (knocking on wood again).

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Thinking about America, I would like to switch gears and take this moment to reflect on the recurring masochism that is the experience of trying to explain American politics abroad.

Long ago and far away, for 4 years I was able to say ‘Bush stole the election, I didn’t vote for him and the majority of Americans didn’t either.’ Then for 4 years all I could say was ‘I’m from California. We’re a blue state. We know the Iraq war was wrong and I was against it. Blame Texas.’ Now imagine, after all of that, if I have to say, ‘Oh yeah, the Iraq war, we just can’t get enough of draining our national resources to keep a country who doesn’t want us there in total anarchy. Oh yeah, and we’ve decided that global warming doesn’t exist, we’re not in a recession, the earth was created 8000 years ago in 7 days, ours is the supreme and only acceptable form of government, and the sky is now purple rather than blue. Oh yeah, and we’re right and you’re wrong – didn’t you get the memo?’

The fact that John McCain at least claims to be more reasonable than Mike Huckabee and Dubya doesn’t change the fact that the party and interest groups that he represents carry a platform that is not only amoral and masked in the shroud of ‘religious morality’ but is dangerous for the future of the US and the world. We are at a pivotal juncture in history and by continuing to make policy choices that are entirely focused on the now rather than the future, we are ruining our entire nation’s hope for a future equally prosperous to the last 70 years of success that we’ve seen since WW2.

America is in the midst of a PR disaster, which is particularly dangerous, since one of the major factors in America’s success has been that people want to be our friend. In case people weren’t aware - other countries don’t like us. And other countries have very good reasons.

Did you ever wonder what would happen to the ‘popular’ bitchy girl in high school if her cronies who followed her around suddenly stopped supporting her? She would go from the ‘popular’ girl who people hate but elect prom queen because of her image, to the most detested girl in school – and how many of those people she was mean to will be willing to go out on a lim for her if she needs help? Not one.

Well, America, you’re walking a fine line. Even when you think you’re on top, you’re only on top because other people want you to be. When they stop (Europe, for example decides to stop backing you up in the fights you pick on the playground), you will be sitting alone, clutching your homecoming crown from last year, weeping about the glory days and wondering why Britain has stopped calling you (“was it something I said?”). The next thing you know, Europe and China are fighting it out for your vacated seat on the homecoming court, and everyone in the class is choosing sides between two new superpowers that aren’t you. Uh oh.

Our only hope is to really show that we are not that mean, vindictive girl - we were misguided and forgot to think about your feelings when we were picking on you. We're really sorry will now be represented by a reasonable person who you need to be friends with. John McCain winning the election will prove that we like being the bully, and we have no desire to change. Screw what you think, we don't need you anyway (except we do...). We will bully and push until we alienate all our supporters, and then we won’t have anything left but an enormous deficit and a world who has continued on in economic development without us. Have no doubt, much of the world can go on just fine without us. It will be tough, but they will figure it out while we are still regrouping from the trauma of being kicked off the homecoming court.

I just hope that the majority of people who are only concerned with the present and the irrelevant, petty issues that dominate our politics, are finally getting the understanding that our standing in the world is important, and it will be our downfall if we can’t get it together soon and prove, once and for all, that we are the moral, thoughtful, noble country that we think we are.

Hong Kong By The Numbers

Posting from Beijing what was written yesterday:

Writing in on the plane from Singapore to Bangkok (and then on to Beijing). In Hong Kong my hard drive gave me the blue screen of death and I was without a working computer until I got to Singapore (talk about feeling like you’re missing a lim!).

Now I’ve run the risk of doing so much that I won’t write, because once I start, I won’t be able to finish. Therefore, I have opted to use some creative techniques to put across the highlights of my trip so far.

Hong Kong Highlights by the Numbers:

Number One Site: The view of Kowloon from my desk in our office on a very high floor of a very tall building overlooking Victoria Harbour

Number of days the sky above was blue but the buildings across the harbour were surrounded by smog blown in from Southern China: 3

Number One Weirdest Food Consumed: Jelly Fish – doesn’t taste like chicken, and has the consistency of cartilage – truly heinous.

Number of times learned that jelly fish was jelly fish after consuming said jelly fish: 1

Number of times dim sum consumed in 4 days: 5 (yes, twice on one day)

Number of times dropped food on table due to attempts at authentic chopstick technique: 3

Number of times guy next to me ate said food dropped on table: 2

Number of shanghainese dumplings consumed in one meal: 5

Number of ducks consumed: 3

Number of dim sum cravings since leaving Hong Kong: -2 (have currently sworn off dim sum)

Number of days plagued by emperor’s revenge: 3

Number of nights drank champagne for dinner due to lack of appetite from emperor’s revenge: 1

Number of imported Belgian cracker choices at CityCenter ex-pat grocery store in the basement of IFC: 32

Average price of imported Belgian cracker box: 72HKD ($9USD)

Number of times I drove past the Christian cemeteries layered up on hills: 8 (to and from hotel, every time)

Number of times I have watched a man carving a gravestone from my taxi window: 1

Number of taxi drivers who asked me for directions to my hotel: 3

Number of times I have been forced to check a bag that weighed less than 8 pounds by overzealous airport staff: 1

Day 1

Yesterday I went to Repulse Bay with Shuo and saw an entirely different side of Hong Kong. We took a heart-pumping ride on a double-decker bus along a windy mountain road (all still in Hong Kong, of course), to an area with beaches and markets and waterside cafes. In true Hong Kong style, above the beaches were skyscrapers and mountains - in huge contrast to the beach-place revelry. There were sunbathers (white people), budgy-smuggling/banana hammock-clad men covered in a thick white layer of sunblock (all asian), and families carrying umbrellas to shield them from the sun (all asian) - the contrast between the asians trying not to tan and the white people trying to burn to a crisp was fascinating.

We wandered around a market at Stanley and then got tapas and corona at a cafe over the water as we wre saranaded by an asian mariachi band singing Louis Armstrong music. The weather was perfect once we sat down, Shuo and I both pointed out at the same time how 'colonial' the atmosphere was with white ceiling fans going, with the humidity and sea breezes. We both thought it was odd though, that in a place that was colonized, the people would seek a trip down memory lane- when in real memory lane they were the ones who were colonized. I suppose everyone wants their turn at sipping a mojoto under a fan at the beach wearing a white linen suit and talking of cigars and your time at the racetrack.

Shuo and I then hopped from the beaches to the absolute opposite part of Hong Kong - downtown Kowloon with the neon signs, designer stores, and tons and tons of people. We had cantonese for dinner and then I headed back to my hotel.

On the way to the hotel, rather close to central hong kong, on a windy uphill road, we came upon an overturned taxi with a body hanging out the window. I think the body was the passenger. I used all of my energy not to barf right there in my car, and pedestrians and other drivers were standing there just staring, covering their mouths in horror. My driver slowed down and said something in cantonese that I didn't understand and then he just drove on. An ambulance came our direction a few minutes later, and all I could think about was how that ambulance wasn't going to do any good for anyone and someone wasn't going to be coming home tonight, or ever.

Even in one of the most civilized, developed cities in the world, you still see life and death right on the streets. I've never seen anything like this in America, not up close, since any time there has been a fatal car accident, the police have blocked it off. I don't ever want to see anything like it again. And once again, I am reminded never to take even a simple taxi ride for granted.

And when I arrived at the hotel safely last night, the gratitude for my safe journey was mixed with the overwhelming knowledge that someone within a couple miles of me right now, would be receiving a call that night their son/husband/brother would never be coming home.

Let The Adventure Begin

I'm writing from Le Meridien Cyberport Hotel in Hong Kong. It is around 8:30am Hong Kong time, and so far the sky is blue, and there are puffy clouds floating across the sky. My room has an amazing view of the water and the luxury apartments and tropical foliage of the hills of the 'Peak' and I'm lying in bed, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows at lone fishermen in little fishing row-boats out on the sea as shipping freighters sound their horns in the distance.

I'm on my first business trip to Hong Kong, Singapore, and Beijing, and I'm really glad I'm in Hong Kong first - it can ease me back into Asia ;) I took the train into central Hong Kong from the airport like a pro, since that's how I got into the city the last time I was here visiting Shuo. Then I took a taxi, with a driver who spoke enough English to understand where I wanted to go, who got me to the hotel in one piece.

I'm feeling quite cosmopolitan at the moment, since I'm meeting up with Shuo today and Andy later this week - just meeting up with my friends abroad ;) I'm not sure what we're going to do, since I've already done a lot of the touristy stuff the last time I was here on my way home from India. I'm sure Shuo has a few places up his sleeve that don't make it into Lonely Planet. I'm also curious about how I'll find the city now that I'm comparing it to the US rather than India - last time I was here I thought it was the most modern, convenient city in the world - let's see if that opinion still stands compared to San Francisco rather than Hyderabad.

I flew on Cathay Pacific non-stop, and the airport was an absolute graveyard when I arrived. Literally, I was the only one going through passport control - two flights had just arrived from SFO - one on Singapore Airlines (I ran into some of my buddies from the Hyderabad office who were heading back to India from SF on that flight), and the other on Cathay, and apparently I was the only person of the 600-700 people on those two flights who was actually staying in Hong Kong - weird!

I've been stressing out over the last few days since I wasn't able to reserve a seat on my 14 hour flight because I had to change my itinerary last minute (I was booked to go to Beijing first, but because of Chinese holidays, I wasn't able to get my visa in time because the consulate was closed). I knew with all the online check-in options available to everyone but me, I would be stuck with a 14 hours in a center seat, a fate so drab that I woke up in a cold sweat on Friday morning thinking about the impending 14 hour squeeze.

Indeed I was assigned a center seat, but when I got onto the plane, it turned out that a couple was sitting in my row with a window and an aisle seat, and when I reached my seat they asked me if I would be 'willing' to take the aisle seat so that they could sit together. Stifling a "HELL YEAH! Are you serious?" with an "Absolutely, I would be glad to," I took my aisle seat and tried to hide the overwhelming sense of relief and happiness at barely dodging my impending fate as the middle of a two stinky old man sandwich. Once again, I am reminded never to take any detail for granted- had I been assigned an aisle seat to begin with, I wouldn't have fully appreciated how lucky I was for my comfort on the aisle.

And on that note, I will now embark on my first adventure as an 'important businessperson' let loose on the streets of Hong Kong :)