Hong Kong - Day 4 - Final Day

Today was my last day in Hong Kong and last overall in Asia. I am heading back to Grenoble in a couple of minutes after spending over 6 hours in the airport. I left the hotel around noon went to central station and register my suitcases. You can directly leave everything downtown and they take care of everything. You just need to show up for boarding. This done, I finally end up going to the airport by train and took from there the bus. I wanted to visit Lantau Island and mainly see the Tian Tan Buddha.

I took the cable car and 30 min later you end up in the Ngong Ping village. I saw 2 shot movies, well more animation movies, on Buddah and one about a monkey tale. You have then 10 minutes walk to get at the bottom of the stairs. Humm I did not count but under the 2pm sun and the heat, it seems a lot, a lot!!!

After visiting I went back the same way to the airport and since then I have been waiting…

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Hong Kong - Day 2/3

HK was the last stop of this trip. We spend 2 days in the office for architecture training and review on 2 ongoing projects. The office is located in one builing split between different floors. The guys sit on the 21st while most of our meeting were on 12th floor… and to go from one to the other you have to go down and change elevator. That is so weird, well, this is HK. Not a city really spread but quite high! 

Even when you are looking for a restaurant, you have picture on the first floor and you have to pic where to go. From there it could be any floor, and you got to use the elevator. Do not count on stairs. As you can see they use it to store goods. You better not be in a building if a fire starts! This is so secure :) 

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Hong Kong - Day 1

OK! Hong Kong is really amazing! I have never seen such a city. When I passed through 2 weeks and a half ago I was not impressed. Is that the city everybody told me about? Well what I had seen was nothing.

Imagine hills and huge building! Every thing is build on top! Up to now I have only been to places where you had couple of buildings but spread in a huge city. Seoul is impressive as well as you do not see an end but here… everything is concentrated and high so high. My room was on level 43. I took less than 30 seconds to go from the lobby to my floor. This view was taken from that room. In Hong Kong, well it is hot. But because you live in skyscrappers you have air conditionning everywhere…

Also in HK, you can smell the money! Cars, fashions,… everything is there!!

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Seoul - Day 5/6

“Time flies”… this is such a cliché but it’s true. Tomorrow I am already leaving Seoul for Hong Kong. I had once again a great time with the guys. The target if this trips is to give some classes, answer some questions, do some project reviews but also meet people. We work a lot over phone, emails, IM so it is really great to once in a while see the guys face to face. I had the change as well to finally meet Keith, another architect from my group, chief architect for APAC ( Asia, Pasific ). He came a bit less than 2 years in London for the International Architect conference but I was in California at that time. How could I miss the MySQL conference?

I think the almost only had Korean BBQ… famous… yes… for a reason!

Finally I would like to present my buddy Mic All the training I gave were recorded. I had to carry a wireless mic but for the big meeting room we wanted to be sure that everybody could hear me properly. So…

Yes! I use lot of them in Seoul, for karaoke, for training,… it is quite difficult to have to both to give training with all this equipement on you. You are aware that everything you said is taped… is like being on watch… I feel much more confortable when it is not as I can more focus on the audience.

That’s all! Let’s get ready to leave again!

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Seoul - Day 5

Nothing much today! Bruno arrived last night. We went for breakfast then as 2 real geeks back in our hotel rooms to code/hack “what else?” like will say George… I started by the ground foundation of my new project. A tool I am building for the boys in Asia, they requested it. I am guessing it will be wildly used internally, open source yes but distribute only at Y!… for now. Well I started the architecture diagram and the specs. Later on, we go for lunch…

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Seoul - Day 4

The guys in Taipei, already told me about it, Korean like to drink and party. This is so true On my first night here, they took me to dinner and then to a bar. We enjoyed couple of beers in an underground pub. You notice the ‘u’ and not ‘U’ on underground. The pub was 2 floors below. This being done, another collegue joined the party, we ended up in a japanese place having sake.

Friday night, no exception! After the office we went to twotwo chicken, to have well chicken and beers. We went then to something particularly famous in Asia, a karaoke bar. From what I am aware, karaoke is not very famous in France. I am guessing may be a cultural problem. I knew in place back then in Marseille, well over 10 years ago what was providing karaoke services. You could stand up in front of everyone and start singing with the stress that most of the people in the audience will make fun of you. In Asia, it is different. You go to a karaoke bar, they have many separated rooms, and you rent one. You can be sitting, driking and singing with you friends without having to worry about anything. Sure the level of alcool in your blood make you even care less after a while. Bottom line, if you have the chance to be around with local people, never hesitate. GO! You will have so much fun! Thanks you guys, it was a great experience.

Finally, today Saturday, after a nice sleep in the morning, my friend Kyle advise me to visit Insa-dong. So I took a cab and 30 mins later I was in this nice area. It is a very touristic place but also an artistic spot. You can find many galleries, many exhibitions going on, painting, music,… many shops also, told you it was touristic… and finally traditionnal tea houses. I bought myself something very traditional and common for tourists, korean masks. It will complete my collection after the nice elephant I got in India last month. That was all for the day, back to the hotel, couple of emails and reading…

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Seoul - Day 1/2/3

What can I say about Seoul? Humm… it is a very impressive city. Everything looks huge, over 20 million people, you can see many big buildings everywhere. The traffic is awful as well, cars everywhere, so much that to cross the main roads you usually need to use a tunnel. You get the feeling of a very active city, lot’s of things going on.

I tried to find my way to the office by myself, it was not that easy, with the number of towers around here. This being made, I spent some time with my fellow collegues and they are all great First lunch we went to bono bono, a famous restaurant around here, that my friend Alex advise me to go to as well. This place is a seafood buffet with everything you can dream of.

My schedule is different, while in Taipei I was giving class in the morning, consulting the afternoon, here it is the opposite way around. Jinho is in charge here, amoung other things, to organize training even and he is going it very well. All the training rooms are booked for the whole week. You get there, he has prepared the room, the projector is ready, all the needed slides as well. Then, as he is using a sofware to record your voice and the presentation you are giving, he connects you to a wireless mic… you are ready. No camera are used, later on one can replay the recording watching the slides and listening to the voice. This is definitly something we ought to be using everywhere. Now, the cherry on the cake, the poster to advertise the training you can even see the goatee. Sweet!!! I had some bad comments already about the shape of my face being… humm rounder… but hell. This is also use as a cover of a book he made with all the slides. A copy is distribute to all the trainees, in order from them to take notes. Well I was really impressed by the organisation. Well done.

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Taipei - Day 8/9

It’s been a couple of days since my last post from Taipei. There is simply just not enough hours in a day. Last day was busy, shared amoung training and meetings. I end up in my hotel room around midnight, packed my suitcases and went to bed. The next day, I left the hotel around 9:30am to go to the airport. I was told to take at least 3 hours… humm 10:10am I was already waiting in the airport, waiting for 10:50 and the opening of the registration desk. This done, I visited inside out, the airport… so cool, no access to the lounge… my blackberry was still not working, could not even read my emails. Finally, catched my plane, no delay, great… 5:30pm I landed in Seoul.

You pass the gate and taxi drivers queue in the airport to hunt foreigners. One came after me, speaking a bit of english, proposing his services to take me to my hotel. How much? 130.000 won! Well I am not familiar with the money here… but it looked bloody expensive at the time. Nicely refused his offer,  went to an ATM, got 200.000 won… and try to understand where to go. Hopefully it was not too late and the sun was still shining. After walking around, I found outside a booth where they were selling bus tickets… I knew my hotel was close to the COEX, the Seoul convention center, among the korean characters I was able to distinct COEX, this is want I want. Final, 14.000 won much better deal. I was a “deluxe” bus, high profile… a bit more than a hour later, I was downtown, near the COEX. Sadly there are 2 intercontinental hotel surrounding the place… I start obviously by the wrong one. Well, after so much waiting, plane and bus, a little walk could not be bad.. It is about a 10min walk between the 2, less funny with my 2 luggages and backpack…

Finally, I made it. Hotel is not bad and I have a nice view… Just time to rest and be ready for the next day.

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Taipei - Day 7

What’s new today? same old same old…work all day, it went pretty fast… had my first bubble tea which is kind traditional in Taiwan…and weird in the same time. My boss joined me today in Tapei, we manage to finally go out by ourself without any local help and we had quite some fun. Imagine going to a place where you can not communicate and we do not know what you have to do. Basically the idea here, you get a pan with 2 kind of boiling soups… one spicy one normal, they give you some meet and you have a free buffet with plenty of weird thing… so actually we can not be sure what we actually ate and we were very lousy in handly the whole cooking part… The waitress took puty on us, and had to show us the basic moves… but what is the fun of travelling if you can not get lost in a city completly in the unknown!

One word… AWESOME! Like my friend Po would say “No Charge for Awesomeness or Attractivness”

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Taipei - Day 5/6 - Week end time :)

So let’s say you want to have a fantastic week end in a foreign country, what do you do? Well either you invite me to join, lol, either you have local friends to show you around. I spent the saturday with Winson, Wilson and Tim and it was great! They picked me up at 10am in front of my office, we took the metro to go to the sea shore… oh nice Taipei is real hot this time of year, the wind next to the sea (well actually the river going to the sea…the sea is slighty further) helped a lot. We had a nice walk, followed by a coffee, a meal, a visit of some crowded streets… This done, we went to the museum where I learned a lot on Taiwan’s history. The night caught up pretty fast, ideal time to go to the night markets… more food and crowd but a must seen in Taipei… with the illegal vendors running away after the rumor of cops coming, which spead quite fast among them… This done, I was back to my hotel by 8:30pm… with great memories and lots of fun. I can not thanks you enought boys!

As for Sunday, well I had set my alarm clock to 10am…but forget to change the “week day only” setting… meaning… well I woke up at 12:30pm… shame…

30 minutes later, so time to get up, have a shower and get dressed…I was in a cab (btw watching the olympics while driving) direction the Taipei 101. Up to now the tallest building in the world, as in 2009 the Burj Dubai should take over. What to say? humm well it is quite tall… I love the architecture, the elevator is impressive. From the 6th floor to 89th in a couple of seconds. It stands at 508m. 101 stands both for the address and the 101 floors it got. You can visit the 89 and some days (sadly not today) you can go outside on the 91st floors. You can grast the view of all Taipei from each side of this tower.

You have many companies in the building and a fantastic great mall at its base. Well it is mall like many others, with the same big brands as usual.

The latest big building I was in was last year in Toronto’s CN Tower with its 533m, but it’s just a tower not a building per say. After that back to the hotel for some rest and chill out before starting work again on Monday. Great weekend!

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