So I went out last weekend and had a TINY BIT TO DRINK...

I was done!

I posted my photos... I was in the middle of putting a caption on each one when I began to think... "This is taking a long time... I have over 400 photos here...".

So - I stopped.

Also, I took photos from three different cameras on my trip. The Treo600, the 2mp sony ericsson, and the 4mp olympus. FYI: They aren't in chronological order.

I like to keep ya'll guessing!

Check 'em out!

Some random shots:


Right outside of Times Square in Hong Kong



At a place of worship in Canton. In the building to the right, there were over 100 Budda statues. I said 'hi' to all of them.



Yours truly rocking out with a 50 year old banjo that his Grandpa played back in the day.



A shot of a boat deck in HK.



Ditto above



I'm sure most of you have heard about the fires up north. I came home last night and actually saw the fires from the road just outside of my house! Wow! You'll have to thank my wiggling hands for the slightly blurry photo but if you click the image, you'll see the fires just peeking over the mountain ridge in the middle.

Since I’ve returned from HK, I keep thinking that I go out too much and that I want to hang out at home and enjoy my house for a change. The only problem with that is I don’t really get to hang out with anyone if I'm at home... The only way for me to have it both ways is for me to have people come over to hang out. It’s kinda hard to do that without a big TV though.

All my friends are married or have serious girlfriends!!!

Argh.

If it wasn't for my job, I think I would probably just up and move. Move to where? CA? WA? GA? NV? HK? haha!

I love how I amuse myself...

So I remember reading an article in Business 2.0 about acquisition offers coming from China and low and behold, this morning I hear about a Chinese firm offering to buy Unocal Oil.

In the article they state that China might go on a $15 billion shopping spree. You can read the screenshot I took here.

Turns out Unocal's purchase price - if it goes through - by the Chinese firm will be $18.5 billion (screenshot)

Haha - ONE deal! And it's $18.5 billion - cash.

Wow.

This just came out. (Hong Kong is 15 hours ahead which is why the date is 6/21/2005)

Microsoft stirs free speech debate

Remember that statistic I mentioned earlier? According to the South China Morning Post (scmp.com), China had 94 million internet users at the end of 2004 and the figure is expected to rise by 29% by the end of 2005.

That’s a lot of censorship.

It's early in the morning Sunday - Happy Father's Day!

I haven't slept since last night at 8:30pm. I have so much to write about and am currently working on putting together a photo album from my trip. There are over 400 photos so please be patient.

Here's an image that I took on my trip.



Ok- time to catch some sleep before I go to church.

Coming back to the US...
As I write this, I am flying over Japan to the US from Hong Kong.

I have seen so much in Hong Kong - it has really refreshed my brain and made me analyze what I have come to accept as the norm in my daily life in Arizona.

5 key differences off the top of my head.

1) Hong Kong is a lot safer than the US. I wandered all over the Causeway Bay area and didn't spend more than an hour in the hotel room unless I was in for the night Not only did I feel safe because half of the city was also roaming around but I noticed 10 to 12 year old kids were wandering the streets with their friends at 10pm too!. I was shocked since no parent in their right mind let's their child roam a busy city like HK in the US.

To keep up with the local news I found two english papers, The Standard (mainly an HK oriented paper- (thestandard.com.hk) and the South China Morning Post (scmp.com) and didn't read much about crime in the city. I'll concede the fact that The Standard was flooded with news about the demented wife who killed her Merrill Lynch investment banker husband after serving him a poisoned milkshake but you'll also have to take into account that they were ex-patriots originally from the US.

Other than the 'milkshake murder', crime is low and the people are generally nice in HK. The reason why I make a point about this is because guns are illegal to own, sell, buy in HK - which I think is great and I wish the US could follow their example but the NRA is too big to stop and well- that's another story...

Along the same issue of life being safer in HK, I firmly believe the key is the upbringing of the youth and the television programming they watch. The content is a lot more value oriented as opposed to just pure entertainment and when it is purely entertainment, it's simple playful fun like talent shows with local celebs as judges. Definitely a good thing compared to Jackass and other shows that push the envelope of acceptable content by defining 'entertainment' for the majority of teens and twenty somethings watching MTV.

2) China really needs to develop their infrastructure. I agree with the masses that there is a lot of opportunity to make money there and I'm sure you'll agree after I share these interesting facts that I picked up over the past two weeks:

- Some cities in China have water pipes that leak 20% of the water it delivers.

- Canton is one of the 5 richest cities in China.

- The average worker in Canton makes $1,000USD a year.

- Official figures show the country had 94 million internet users at the end of 2004 and the figure is expected to rise by 29% by the end of 2005.

Taking the first three things into consideration, it's frightening to wonder about the quality of life in the rest of China. Although the workers don't make a lot, things are quite affordable and keep in mind that 1K is an average. Also, there may be a huge (i'll say "humongous" for my readers in HK) gap between the wealth and quallity of life between China's richest and fifth richest city but I'll have to find out next time when I visit Shenzen and/or Shanghai.

With the fourth fact in mind, Shenzen and Shanghai currently have a lot going on in the technology industry. Especially with the need to connect the billions of citizens in one way or another. From a business standpoint, it's hard not to see anything other than dollar signs.

3) I would take a hot and dry day over a warm and humid day ANYTIME! If I lived in HK, I don't know if I would golf. I had a fantastic opportunity to go golfing (thank you William) at the Clearwater Bay Country Club but the humidity drained me of my energy and about 80% of the necessary fluids my body needs to thrive. But then again, if I lived in Hong Kong, I would be better aclimated to the humidity.

4) Don't examine your food. Although I try to be careful of what I eat since I cannot have shellfish, it never occured to me that it can be perceived to be very rude. I like to think that I'm careful as opposed to being rude but we all have our different points of view.

5) We need to use our land more efficiently. It's amazing how much we Arizonans rely on cars and how we have become so wasteful with the land that we are already occupying. Urban sprawl has definitely taken its toll- since land is so abundant, we've failed to come up with more efficient uses of the land. If we had taller buildings for malls and denser residential areas, we wouldn't use as much fuel and we would develop a better public transportation system out of necessity which would definitely make Phoenix more advanced and help us keep up with the top 4 cities in the US..

My first proposal...
So I was checking in at the airport ticket counter and I noticed the woman helping me had the last name "Whong" as opposed to the popular spelling of "Wong". I made a little comment on how unique that was and said it was cool and went off to eat dinner after getting my boarding pass.

Hours later as I was boarding the plane, she appeared again and was taking tickets at the gate. I gave her my ticket and commented about the "Whong" again and she smiled and surprised me with "Why don't you change it?"

I must have surprised her back when I replied with "Oh so you want to get married?" because she just blushed and smiled back.

So yeah- i'm already getting proposed to and I haven't even left the country yet. :)

I am so disgusted with my musical tastes. I was in the car this morning- jamming to this cool tune. It's a good song - check it out.

Cool Song

And guess who sings that song?

Click here to find out.

Yeah! That's right!

It just goes to show that a song writer can make a million dollar song and then sell it to the highest bidder who may put in SOME effort to sing it... mix it up with the computers a bit and make it sound spectacular. The song title: One Word.

Man, I love the Internet! ... and apparently, so do recruiters.

Check out this article in the WSJ.

In other news, HK sounds fun this time of year! Mmmmm- check out that humidity!



In other news:

You may soon have the ability to share the music in your car with others without blasting your tunes and opening the windows.

It's a somewhat new idea called 'roadcasting' where you broadcast your tunes so properly equipped radios in other cars can tune in.

Related links:

Wired article
Roadcasting.org