Happy Halloween from Hong Kong!

Halloween 2009—my last weekend in New York before moving halfway around the world. Five days down the road, I'd be flying to London and then onto Hong Kong. And there I was, so busy that I hardly gave any thought to my costume or plans. Around 4pm on Halloween, I went with my roommate from Villanova, Ryan, to a costume shop in Midtown and had to settle on a creepy plastic mask. As fun as that night was, I was determined to make my first Halloween in Hong Kong as well-planned as possible.

It’s been about a month now that we’ve been getting in the Halloween spirit out here. At the beginning of October, spider webs and ghosts started making guest appearances in all the restaurants, bars and stores around town. The costume shops began opening as well, and people started to think about their disguises for the big night. Still, as much as Halloween is popular out here, there were several Halloween traditions I struggled to observe.

A staple of Halloween for many Americans is carving a jack o’lantern. But I just couldn’t seem to find a suitable pumpkin in Hong Kong. I searched the expat websites, but I was unsuccessful in locating a ‘pumpkin patch’ or a store that sold reasonably priced, attractive pumpkins. The only ones I could find were either stupidly expensive or looked more like orangey-brown tumors than pumpkins.

Luckily, I found a last minute solution in the form of the Thai restaurant downstairs from my apartment. Their 'red curry with seafood' entrée is served in an already-hollowed pumpkin, so I ordered the dish one night last week and asked the waitress if I could please take the pumpkin home. She proceeded to wrap it in a doggy-bag for me, and although I had to give it a thorough wash in the sink before carving, I was very pleased with my ingenuity!

My jack o'lantern, formerly a bowl of Thai curry.

Before Solène moved out of the apartment, we hosted a Halloween party as a sort-of “going away” celebration. Solène, being from France, had never properly experienced Halloween and was very much looking forward to it when she got her surprise job offer in Bangladesh. Now that she had to leave Hong Kong prior to Halloween, we decided a fitting solution would be to have an early Halloween party. We bought a spider web, some creepy candles and black balloons to create an appropriate atmosphere, and we also visited a local Halloween market to search for costumes.

Friends at Solène's Going Away/Halloween Party

Farewell, Solene!

A few months back I also bought tickets for a Halloween-themed concert on Saturday, October 30th, the de facto celebration night since Halloween itself fell on a Sunday this year. The traditional Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra played The Sorcerer’s Apprentice and three other Halloween-themed pieces that were commissioned for the concert and were receiving their world premieres. I went my roommate Valentine and two Dutch friends named Hayley and Jeroen, and we wore our costumes to the show before heading out for a night on the town.

After the Halloween concert in TST

Although I dressed as a pirate for our early Halloween party, I decided to be a bit more subtle with my official Halloween costume. I read an article in the New York Times in which the author mentioned that a friend once dressed as a ‘Venetian blind’ and wore dark glasses and an “I love Venice” t-shirt and carried a walking stick. I decided that would be my costume. I went to Mong Kok, an area chock full of markets, and found sun glasses and a cane easily enough. But the Venice t-shirt proved more elusive. Eventually I found a stall that had dozens of t-shirt logos to choose from and the option of adding additional letters for $5HK each. After a bit of haggling, I got the price down to an acceptable level and was all set for the night.

With Valentine on the 'Star' Ferry...

(Note that she recycled my pirate costume from the previous party)

After the concert, we spent a bit of time at my friend Jason's apartment, in the company of a police officer, an Indian, G.I. Joe and several other characters, before heading out to join the crowds. Lan Kwai Fong was unbelievably packed this Halloween, a veritable parade of showy costumes ranging from zombies to teletubbies to superheroes. As usual, the crowds spilled onto the streets creating a carnival-like atmosphere—an unforgettable sight.

And as if Halloween wasn’t exciting enough by itself, I got to add a new roommate to the mix! Alex moved to Shanghai on Saturday afternoon, and Pietro, an Italian from Milan, moved in, becoming my seventh roommate in the past year. (Sometimes I feel like I live in the European Union, as I’ve lived with a German, a Dutchman, two French, two Swiss and now an Italian!) It was great getting to know him in such a fun setting, and I hope both Valentine and Pietro stay on in the apartment for a good amount of time, because the three of us get along great.

With new roommate Pietro, from Italy, and some teletubbies near Lan Kwai Fong

The Roommate Game

Over the past ten months that I have been keeping this blog, I have written a lot about my various roommates. First there was Jurre, from the Netherlands, who was my first real friend out here. A few days after meeting him, we both met Julian, from Germany, and the three of us got along great. Our three bedroom, one bathroom apartment in Wan Chai is small by American standards, but it's a veritable palace in this part of Hong Kong, especially for the price we each pay. We rent from a local company called Top Action, and they have a bunch of apartments of varying quality scattered all over Wan Chai and Causeway Bay.

Way back when... the first day at the races with Julian and Jurre

After Jurre finished his internship and moved back to Europe, Guillaume moved into his old room. He stayed on for over five months, but he had to return to college in Switzerland. When he left, Alex moved in. A week or so later, Julian returned home as well, opening a spot for Solène, from France. Now, Solène's time in Hong Kong has come to an end, too.

With Alex and Solène during the Mid-Autumn Festival

But empty rooms don’t last long in this town…

Last Friday night I had no plans to speak of. I was a bit tired and just looking forward to a quiet night in the apartment. But, as often happens in Hong Kong, my plans were thwarted and suddenly there was something I had to do: play the roommate game!

See, Solène, my French roommate who had become very good friends with both Alex and me, suddenly had to leave Hong Kong. She only moved in about two months ago, at the end of August. We got along great, but one night while she and I were having dinner at a Japanese sushi restaurant near the apartment, her cell phone rang. Her eyes lit up, and she anxiously answered, knowing full well what the reason of the call would be, even though she had kept it a secret from her friends. She recently interviewed for her dream job, and during that phone call, she discovered that the company had decided to hire her.

On November 1st, she flies to Bangladesh for a two year ‘expat assignment’ working for a major textile company—a career she is very interested in pursuing! She flew back to France last week for training before the big move.

Ordinarily, the landlords will handle vacancies like this by themselves. You see, I pay for my own individual room, meaning that when someone moves out of the apartment, Top Action is responsible for finding a replacement—not me and whoever else stays on. If we wanted to, we could have somebody all ready to move in and put them in touch with the landlords. But I consider myself pretty easygoing and wasn’t too concerned about who would move in, especially since it’s always worked out fine in the past. Besides Guillaume, whom Julian and I found ourselves, all my other roommates have found the place through Top Action. But Alex was a bit more apprehensive about letting a random person move in. He really wanted to meet him or her beforehand.

After discussing with the landlords, they said they would bring by four or five people, let us meet them and chat with them, and then let us choose who we most wanted to live with. Since I wasn’t home when three of the four potential candidates came around to view the apartment, I made plans to meet two of them in Lan Kwai Fong that evening, and it felt like I was conducting interviews for Blue Key all over again! I really got along with the first candidate. And after meeting the second, I realized how hard the decision was going to be. At one point I jokingly texted Alex that both of them were keepers, and one should take the bedroom and the other should stay on the couch.

The next morning, we found out that one potential roomie had viewed another apartment in Tin Hau that was both cheaper and larger than ours, and she had opted to go for it. Our decision was made for us, and honestly, I was very relieved by this development. Iris, the one who found another apartment, said she wants to keep in touch and meet all of our friends, so it’s not the last we’ll be seeing of her.

Sitting at an outside table on the balcony of Tony Roma's, an American rib restaurant right by the apartment, I made the official phone call to invite our new roomie to move in.

Meet Valentine: our Swiss roommate from Geneva. She is twenty-five years old and looking to work for a hedge fund out here, so for the first time since Jurre left I’m again living with someone else who works in the world of finance. She also has several cousins (five, to be exact) who already live here in Hong Kong, and her brother works in Kuala Lumpur.

As the one year mark creeps closer and closer, playing the roommate game gave me a chance to look back on the five previous roommates I’ve lived with over the past eleven months and remember all the good times. First moving in with Jurre and Julian last December and discovering Hong Kong together; then meeting Guillaume in March and getting friendly with a vast circle of his French amis; and of course getting to know the newbies, Alex and Solène over the past two months.

Me and Guillaume

I look forward to keeping in touch with them all, and now building a friendship with Valentine. With less than a month remaining until I go home for six weeks, I'm sure these last days will be fun-filled and memorable. Halloween is just around the corner, and I'll probably have some sort of celebration marking one full year of living overseas in early November. And as I've said all along, I just can't believe how fast the time has flown!

Technical Difficulties

I have often lamented that my official blog for VSB, meant to vividly describe my exploits as a cunning young businessman fresh on the international financial scene, often delineates into non-corporate adventures, usually involving travel to neighboring countries or cultural events occurring here in Hong Kong. Now, for a change, comes a bona fide ‘business’ installment that is actually about life in the office.

My company is based out of New York. There are about fifty employees who work in the three offices spread between Lower Manhattan and Central and Northern Jersey. After the success of the original desk in the Financial District, our founders ventured into the international market by setting up a desk in London, which over the years has grown into about fifteen brokers and supporting staff. Of course, the obvious next step was to get involved in the blossoming emerging markets of Asia. But regardless of the location of the branch offices, the company’s soul is in New York. We all report to the New York heads, and, ultimately, it is New York that keeps us running.

Since it's still only Kevin and me here in Hong Kong, we rely on New York and London to help us out with all our trade support, as we are not yet big enough to hire our own staff. This includes booking tickets, facilitating settlement and—most important of all—managing technology.

London and Hong Kong’s business days overlap (our afternoon is their morning), so the back office staff in London handles the booking of Hong Kong’s trading activity. However, even London is not a big enough office to have its own tech division. The company’s entire tech department is based in Manhattan, and they never cease to amaze me.

I can pick up my company phone here in Hong Kong, dial the three-digit extension of any colleague in one of our worldwide offices, and immediately speak to them (so long as they are at their desk, of course). I can contact Dimitri (or just 'D' for short), the head of the tech department, with a problem at midnight US-time, and he is manipulating the mouse on my computer, solving the problem from literally halfway around the world, in the comfort of his own home.

It seems there is no issue that can’t be fixed in a matter of minutes. The crew, especially D, has to be among the most underpaid staff in the world—literally on call constantly for a company that has an office doing business somewhere in the world every hour of the day.

This morning, the Hong Kong office was again saved by a man in his pajamas in Brooklyn, and I was again impressed by how flat the world has become in the modern age.

For the past couple of days, our Bloomberg terminals have been sporadically disconnecting several times a day, usually about every hour or two. In addition to the annoyance, it can really screw things up during the heat of the moment, with trades coming together and vital information flashing upon our screens. It's kind of like a cab driver's taxi breaking down while he's searching for a fare. This morning, the “every hour or two” turned into “every five minutes” and eventually Kevin and I realized that we had to call D.

He talked me through some technical issues I had to correct here in the office, and then he told me to just sit back for a minute while he did his thing. A few moments later, the cursor on my screen was moving by itself, a computer turned on in another part of the room, our Bloomberg shut down and then restarted, and our phones rebooted. Here I am several hours later and everything has been operating perfectly since!

It makes you wonder how much easier things will continue to get as technology improves over the years. But for me, this is good enough!