Apologia.

I'm a little exhausted, so my writing is going to be particularly uninspired, unrevised, and basically dry and explanatory.

...I haven't really had a good chance to post anything in the last week, although, for the first time, I will have to say it's been fairly eventful...at least in a "living in a crazy-ass new city" sorta way...

Let's begin with some observations...

Hong Kong has one striking similarity to the US. It's filled with Mexicans....sorta. It's extremely bizarre to interact with the service industry and wander the streets of Hong Kong, because it feels intensely familiar to the US in the sense that there seems to be a burgeoning, ever present group of Filipinos and Vietnamese women. They are the waitresses in the restaurants, the clerks in the lower end stores, they wear different clothes, and they are noticeably darker in skin ton. On several occasions, I unconsciously identified people I saw on the streets as Mexican or Hispanic...when I realized I was in friggin' Asia, and it made no sense for huge numbers of Hispanic folk to come over here. All I will say, is that the dynamics of brown skinned southern brethren working and living amongst a more light skinned northern bunch is so familiar and so similar to the US that I am constantly surprised.

The one really interesting outgrowth from this population is something like a Sunday picnic for all of these women. Every Sunday, all day, in every shaded area (in covered walkways, in large covered plazas, on stairs underneath the trees, under bridges), there are huge congregations of Filipino women eating tons of awesome looking food, gabbing away, giving each other makeovers, playing cards, or whatever else consumes a lazy Sunday afternoon. Here's a shot I found on the net (because I feel somewhat shameful taking pictures of this phenomenon)...but looking at the picture, I can tell it is the HSBC building, exactly the spot I walked by today. This is what it looks like (times about 30).
To be honest, I find the whole thing to be really wonderful. I know it's the typical American reaction to see ethnic community bonding and partaking in exchange, food, and the pleasure of company as exotic and wonderful...but I really do think it seems like a great phenomenon and great way of life...even if the truth is that each of these people aspires to own their own car, house, and air-conditioner so they can sit at home alone and watch their flat screens. In any case...nice. (It was explained to me that since they are mostly in-house maids and the like, that they essentially have no place to live on Sundays...so they simply go outside and congregate in public because there's nowhere else to go.)

Another observation, which I've probably made several times...is that Hong Kong is fucking HILLY. This is the hilliest, steepest, most treacherously unflat city I have ever seen in my entire life. It is as if the curvature of the Great Wall of China (likely comparison, eh?) in all its mountainess steepness and brutally steep slopes were crammed together as the streets of a 10 square mile city. Besides my typical bitching...I find it insane how much uphill walking I have to do these days. (Buns of Steel eat your heart out.) What that means, in addition to the 99% humidity and 100 degree weather...is that I'm sweating ALL the time. The humidity makes the weather here far more brutal than it ever was in India...

So onto what's been going on....

Monday Night:
The firm took us to a barbecue seafood joint for the welcome party. Nothing spectacular, but it was a nice little get together where I overate, and then overdrank. At 9:30, I promptly came home to my apartment and dialled into the conference call for the deal I'm working on. 5 minutes into the conference call with a super high ranking NYC partner and several HK lawyers, I fucking fell asleep from the mass volume of beer I had consumed the few hours earlier. Now I don't know if I snored, or if I was asked any questions, or even how long I was out. Needless to say, the heartracing panic of waking up drunk in the middle of my first conference call was not good.

Tuesday:
I woke up early to join in the second conference call at 9:30...and I stayed awake the whole hour!!!

And luckily, Tuesday was a holiday. It was Dragon boat day! So the three of us summer associates took a bus down to Stanley Beach and watched the Dragon Boats race! The races, although incredibly Asian looking, are actually done in large part by large groups of white people racing with their respective corporate groups. So banks v. banks v. corporations v. consulting groups. In other words, white v. white v. white v. asian. Here's a shot of that...

Work:
Office work has consisted of hours of poring over the world's most boring prospectus and making markups and editorial changes in pencil. (Note: Chinese English, although often technically correct, fucking blows.) I tried to stab my pencil into my eye.

Actually...I'm getting way too tired now to write anything interesting, so I'm going to cut to the chase.

Saturday was a fantastic day. We all got up early as balls and set off for a long hike on Dragon's Back.
Before this trip, I had no idea that Hong Kong was this beautiful, tropical, lush mountainous island. I always imagined it as a concrete jungle with glitzy skyscrapers. Not so.
(Those are the two other summers) So we set off on a 2 hour hike through this beautiful mountain terrain, surrounded by the oceans on all sides, sun beating down on our necks. Actually, as the picture below demonstrates, the sun was so vicious and hot that I didn't let the sun touch my neck. (I do sorta like the enormous mountain man look I have going though)

We trekked all the way until we hit a little beachside town called Shek-O. We found a Thai and Chinese seafood hole in the wall, gorged ourselves on fresh fish, shrimp, veggies, several enormous Tsingtao beers, and very refreshing Coca-Colas. Here's a shot of the aftermath of the meal. That's the other summer Patrick.

There we basically lazed around on the beach, swam in the clear green waters surrounded by green peaks, and rocky outcrops far out in the ocean...and completely had the chance to unwind and relax. (Actually, I ended up wandering out into the ocean by myself after they passed out asleep on the beach.)

After all of that, we were soaked, covered in sand, salty, disgusting, smelly, out of clothes, sore, severely sunburned, and exhausted. But content. So what did we do?

We went to Jolly Foot...to get foot massages. For an hour.

Then afterwards, in a strange twist of fate, we ended up with people who appeared to be the Paris and Nicole of Hong Kong, and ended up in super exclusive hidden clubs hounded by the paparazzi. (It really had nothing to do with us. I barely spoke to the girls, and thought the clubs were overpriced, overlame, and underwhelming in every respect except the lavishness of the decore. That basically means the people sucked.)

'Tis All. I'm tired. I'm going to bed