Thursday in HK

Link to Pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/John.Purcell.3rd/HongKongThursday NOTE: comments for this album appear only if you look at the pics one at a time. i put them in the wrong place, sorry.

Thursday we were back to working again. And we had a great meeting with two representatives of the international law firm Hogan and Hartson, based in Washington, D.C. and one of the top 5 law firms in the world. This was a great meeting for me personally because the speakers are attorneys in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and they gave me a lot of insight into doing business in China, including owning your own factory. I really enjoyed that segment.

Next on the agenda Thursday was Invest Hong Kong, and the speaker was very good, too, giving us a pretty frank overview of HK as a business or employment destination. A word of caution—remember the cost of living is way high, and that a lot of the good schools are filled already with expat kids. However, there still seems to be lots of opportunity.

We at lunch, and then the groups split into two groups, one who met with Maquare Bank and one that traveled to the HSBC building in HK; since my group was a presenter for that one, I got to go. They have a very cool building that I’d heard about and seen from the outside, and part of our briefing was to include a tour of the facility, which we really enjoyed. The building is actually a series of bridges and columns. Lots of glass, and very ecologically friendly. The briefing was pretty good, too.

Thursday night, we went to the Hong Kong night market, a whole big contingent including fellows and EMBAs. We had a good time there, and Aaron, Rita and I ate Chinese in a “hole-in-the-wall” restaurant (we walked through hanging plastic to get in). I love these types of restaurants, and we ate like kings. Also, I got to have Milk Tea, which I love. I drank a lot of this in Hong Kong, usually buying it at 7-11 or in restaurants if they had it. Chris, Dave, and Aimee went back to the hotel to eat at Outback.

We returned to the hotel, and before I went up to bed, I saw a group of folks in the bar near the elevators (Pete, Andy, John, Jeff, Aaron, Rita, more?). If I remember correctly, there were still a bunch of people in the lobby hanging out, too.

I popped in to say hi, and asked Pete if our mutual friend Paul had responded to a text Pete had sent him. He said, no, but let’s call. So, we did and I talked to Paul, whom I haven’t heard from (to be fair, nor have I reached out) in quite a log time. So, we chatted a bit, and then I went up to the room.