Hollyer Than Thou

Hi Tumblr, I have failed at keeping up here! While I read my feed every day, I do more and more of my random-thought-spewing on G+. But I have to say that I don’t follow quite the same entertaining mix of anime/cartoon enthusiasts and extremely active politicos on G+. It’s just not as fun.

I am alive. Today I went to a meetup in a new neighborhood for me, and listened to a few business folk present before chatting with a few locals about living in Hong Kong. A surprisingly large percentage of people I talked to work in private equity. This city seems to be all finance, even in tech circles.

Then I got MacDonald’s as it is kind of late here and try finding protein-heavy “food” faster/cheaper than that on a Monday night. HK$27 (US$3.47) for a “big n tasty” or whatever — including fries and a drink? Yeah, not going to beat that.

I do miss home a lot though, not like my house per se but football and people from more than just two ethnicities and chocolate soy milk (the only kind of soy milk they don’t have here) and loaves of bread — here you can only buy 8 or so slices at a time.

But I’m getting on, as they (Brits) say, and I’m getting continually more used to it. I have reached my 3/8 point today. I.e., I’ll be leaving 5 weeks from today. My hope is that I will use my time successfully, and not wasted it. How often do you get paid to camp out in a foreign metropolis for a few months? Not often.

Executive summary: I’m working in private equity in Hong Kong from July 1 to August 29. It’s cool here, I’m getting used to it, but I’m lonely.

Hong Kong, at least most of the parts I spend time in, is vertical: skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. I work on the top floor of a 78-story building, the 4th tallest in the city. It has a killer view, as you can imagine. 

More than half of the Hong Kong region is actually protected, undeveloped rainforest spread over steep and picturesque mountains. The rest is impossibly packed with people, taxis, and dense buildings (mostly shopping malls—so many shopping malls).

The food is more tolerable than anticipated, and I’ve made it through two extensive dim sum meals without making a total fool of myself. I can use chopsticks OK, but that was practiced a lot before I got here.

Everyone speaks English who needs to, usually just enough to sell you something or give directions. I manage to get lost a lot, because in the great English tradition streets change name every three or four blocks. The subway here is space-age, cheap, and jammed slightly less than sardines. It’s humid and terribly hot, hence the rainforest and the shopping malls.

Reasons the experience isn’t completely positive: my job is a little boring, at least so far. It’s only been a week so I’m not exactly doomed to a tedious existence, and at least I have the other intern to entertain me. I’ve learned enough to know that any finance less interaction-based and more desk-chained than private equity is not what I want to do with my life.

Secondly, I have no friends here besides my fellow intern and his girlfriend! I was on the subway with these 4 American girls and I said hi and I was so stupid not to have gotten their phone numbers or emails. I feel so dumb… seeing them together rushing to a party reminded me how much I would like to have companions here.

So… do you have any friends in Hong Kong? Share them!

Don’t whine about it on the internet with a poorly and unsoundly argued—but educated-sounding—rant, plug your own sort of ludicrous solution, and then hope people don’t see the lack of common sense behind your message.

If you want to change the way an industry works, the best way to do that is to establish your own industry, not make some petition with no target—who are you trying to convince anyway?

Don’t try to regulate through Congress because that’s not even giving the people who are doing it wrong the opportunity to fail when someone does it right. Regulation restricts people from doing the wrong thing, but it doesn’t teach them to do the right thing.

Common sense, people.

themetropoliskid:

whatsajuthika:

kinda iffy about the word stupid but yes

this is not true! indigenous populations were not immigrants! slaves forcibly brought over against their own will are not immigrants! we are not a nation of immigrants

We are like 85% a nation of willing immigrants. And I think that the gist is almost every single person here was once an outsider. Pilgrims were, and thousands of years ago, “native” tribes were too. 

Human life didn’t begin in North America. Everyone had to get here and adapt (whether by force or gumption) from somewhere else. Most everything we have comes from the traditions and practices of places far, far away.

(Source: beautifulqalb)