The Joys of Hong Kong

Life in Hong Kong is as interesting as ever. I think what I like most about living out here is not ever knowing what to expect. Any given day, you are bound to see so many strange and interesting things going on around you. And with the help of a few guidebooks, and happenstance, I have always been able to find something to do.

A few weekends ago, Julian and I decided to go out and try snake soup for dinner. We did an online search and found a place that was highly recommended and described as “very authentic.” And what a dinner it was! We had to wait to be seated for a bit, and then we were given a small table that we had to share with other diners. And the menu was not in English either! Only a small "highlight" section provided translations. I am not exaggerating—we were the only two Westerners in the place, everybody else was a local. So... as you can probably guess, the food was fantastic! The snake soup was delicious, and we had fried snake for our main course. Even though it was difficult to eat due to the tiny bones, it tasted great. It was the first time I had ever eaten snake, and I am still trying to think of the words to describe it.

Snake soup

Last Saturday was a great day. I woke up pretty early and the sun was shining. So I put on a pair of shorts, a t-shirt and flip flops and convinced Jurre that we should go to Aberdeen, located on the southern part of Hong Kong Island, for the day. The harbor at Aberdeen is filled with fishing junks and sampans. The people who live here are known as “boat people” and they actually live on the boats. There was a time when "boat people" were found all around Hong Kong and needed to gain permission to set foot on the land. Back then, it was said that most of them lived 90% of their lives on the water. Those days have changed, but Aberdeen is one place where these traditions live on. As you walk along the waterfront promenade, lots of old ladies try to convince you to board their boats to take tours of the harbor, so of course we did it! Seeing the boat communities up close was incredible.

Aberdeen’s most famous feature is the Jumbo, a floating restaurant. When I first read about the Jumbo, I figured “floating restaurant” was just a fancy way of saying “boat” but I was wrong. It is literally a building permanently moored in the middle of Aberdeen’s bustling harbor. Since it was so nice out, Jurre and I sat out on the top deck and enjoyed a big buffet lunch. It was the perfect way to spend the beautiful afternoon.

On Sunday I woke up with no plan. I opened my favorite guidebook and decided to go up to the New Territories, the part of Hong Kong that is situated between Kowloon and the border with Mainland China. The book suggested a fantastic attraction in Tseun Wan—an old, restored Walled Village that was turned into a museum back in the 1980s. Walking the old lanes between the houses, visiting the Ancestral Hall and learning about life in the old days really gave me an insight into the history of Hong Kong’s more remote areas. Then I took the train to another town where there is a "heritage trail" that passes ancient pagodas, temples, Ancestral Halls and even a real Walled Village still inhabited to this day! In a big, modern city where things are constantly growing and changing, it’s often impossible to find traces of the past without going inside a museum or looking in a book. Luckily, there are places like the New Territories where you can find great reminders of a rich cultural heritage to explore and experience in living color.

A temple on the heritage trail

The ancient pagoda in the New Territories

Now I’m getting ready to go to the Philippines for the weekend. I am flying down to Manila with Kevin and two of his friends after work today. It was a very last minute trip… We only decided to go last Friday! But the airfare was cheap and it’s always great to explore a new place. I am looking forward to checking a new country off of my "to do" list.

As I said, one of Hong Kong’s great joys is the feeling that there is so much to discover. At first I thought that was true just about the city itself, but I am now starting to realize what a gateway it is to the rest of this part of the world. I am going to Thailand for Chinese New Year (when I get a few days off from work) and I am already thinking of trips to Vietnam and Singapore. This is definitely a great place to be!

Tricks of the Trade

Now that the holidays are over, work is getting busier and busier. I am learning a lot and really enjoying my days. My hours are not nearly as grueling as some of my friends’ who also work in the finance industry: I have to be at work each morning by 8am, and I leave some time after 6pm, depending on how busy we are.

And something that’s particularly nice about Hong Kong is that there is a two hour lunch break built in to the middle of each day. It’s not an official rule or anything, but it’s generally accepted that between noon and 2pm, very little action goes on, at least in the corporate bond market. I am free to go have a nice lunch with a friend, get some important task accomplished, meet a customer for coffee or simply walk around to get a bit of fresh air.

I like this schedule because you can work hard from 8am to noon, relax for two hours, and then go at it again in the afternoon, feeling completely refreshed, like you’re starting over. Working in New York was exhausting because each day was long and drawn out, with hardly a minute’s break. Dividing the day into two reasonable halves makes each ‘session’ more productive and interesting. The day hardly ever drags, and it’s usually fun and exciting.

I think I have mentioned before that I only have one coworker here in Hong Kong. His name is Kevin, he is from London and he just turned twenty-four. Kevin is a great broker, and he is trying hard to teach me how things work. I feel very comfortable around him, asking questions and trying to learn from him. Even though I far from know it all at this point, I can still say that everything I do know about the business, I have learned from Kevin. We get along very well and are friends inside and outside of the office. He is just as good about giving me advice on Hong Kong as he is about teaching me how to broker.

In general, there are two types of bond brokers operating in the financial marketplace. One of these is the so-called “big-screen broker” who updates his prices on a computerized screen to which all of his clients have access. If a client sees a price he likes, he can execute a trade electronically and receive instant confirmation. These screen brokers facilitate the trading of tens of millions of bonds per trade and make a small commission on each bond. When hundreds of millions of bonds are trading each day, even a tiny commission per bond can yield large profits.

The second type of broker is the off-screen broker, and that is what I am out here. We specialize in the odd lots and illiquid securities that slip past the screen brokers. The trader’s advantage for using an off-screen broker is that we can often get inside the “screen” market and secure a better execution price on a smaller size—you see, a seller might want to sell ten million bonds at 101.50 but would part with a small scrap of only half a million for less, say 101.40. This way, a trader can save a considerable amount, and for this service, he is willing to pay an off-screen broker a slightly higher commission. So even if we don’t trade that same volume as the big-screen brokers, there is still the potential to earn decent money.

When I arrived in Hong Kong, brand new to the business, I had no customers. Just like every other broker who ever started from scratch, I had to make those dreaded cold calls. I am still in the process of making them. I have to find ways to locate the phone numbers of fixed income traders throughout Asia, and then I have to call them and give them my pitch.

I call banks in Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, China, South Korea, Thailand and any other place I can. Usually the person I speak with is very receptive and interested in being added to my distribution lists. (Honestly, there is no reason for them not to be—they have nothing to lose and everything to gain. If they don’t like the prices they see, they can just ignore them. If they do like a price they see, then they buy or sell bonds.)

However, what can be tricky is getting to speak with the proper person. I have spent hours trying to get non-English speaking operators to connect me with a trader; I have been on hold listening to tacky jingles for what seems like forever; I have been passed from one operator to the next to the next only to be disconnected after twenty minutes and have to start back from the beginning. It’s not the most enjoyable process, but it’s really the only way to get started, even if it is annoying.

Our office, with its incredible view over Victoria Harbor

Speaking of things that are annoying, on Christmas Day we discovered that our pipes were leaking in the new apartment! Although it wasn’t causing a problem for us, the old Chinese couple living downstairs had water dripping through their ceiling in several spots. It turns out the old pipes all needed to be replaced, and to do this the water for our apartment was completely cut off—no running water in the kitchen, no water to shower in the bathroom, no water to do laundry and no water to brush your teeth. We couldn’t even use the toilet! Our landlord owns another apartment up the road, and we had to traipse over several times a day whenever the need arose. Imagine me walking through the streets of Wan Chai with shampoo, soap and a change of clothes… I got some very curious stares. Luckily, though, the workmen have finished and we have water again.

And Hong Kong is still a great city, running water or no running water. I am having the time of my life exploring all it has to offer, from wonderful restaurants to sweeping views of the skyline to the great museums. This place keeps topping itself, and at the end of each day, I love it even more than the day before.

Although I am unsure how many years I will spend out here, I can rest assured that I could live here for the rest of my life and never run out of things to see and do. There's a quote from Myrna Loy that was once displayed at the World Trade Center PATH station—where I used to ride back to Jersey after work many an evening—proclaiming, “Something’s always happening here. If you’re bored in New York, it’s your own fault.” Having grown up just outside of New York and having spent most of my life there, I completely agree with Ms. Loy’s assessment. But it’s nice to know that the Big Apple isn’t the only city in the world that provides a constant parade of fascinating sights, sounds and events. Hong Kong certainly is the New York of the East, and I am very happy life has lead me to this wonderful place.

Away from Home for the Holidays

Happy New Year from Hong Kong! It’s tough to believe the holiday season has come and gone so quickly... and that a new year has already gotten under way!

As exciting as these past few months have been, this was the first time in my life I have been away from my family at Christmastime. To make matters bleaker, for a few weeks leading up to the day itself, it looked as if my Christmas might be spent alone. Kevin, my only coworker here, went home to London for the holidays. He was quickly becoming a good friend, showing me around town, introducing me to his buddies and making sure I got to know how things worked, both in and out of the office. But apart from him, I was not making new friends as quickly as I had hoped. And with him back home, I didn’t have a holiday plan. Hong Kong was all decked out for the season, but I wasn't completely in a Christmas mood.

The Christmas Tree in the HSBC Building

You see, when I first arrived here, my company put me up in an extended-stay hotel in the Mid-levels, a part of town very popular with expatriates. Extremely quiet and residential, the Mid-levels is a tough place to meet other young, like-minded individuals in a similar situation as myself. Don’t get me wrong—my apartment at 2 MacDonnell Road was wonderful and I loved living up there—but it definitely was not the best part of town for a lone twenty-two-year old who had just arrived in Hong Kong to make new friends. If I stay out here for several years, I would love to move back there, but I know that I made the right decision to relocate to a livelier, younger part of the city at this stage of the game.

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My first apartment, in the Mid-levels

Since my second or third week out here, I had been on the hunt for a more permanent apartment. And after dozens of meetings with landlords and lunch-time tours of flats all over town, I finally found what I had been looking for. One Monday after work, I went to an upscale shopping mall in Causeway Bay to meet yet another landlord. To my surprise, I was not the only prospective tenant there that night but rather one of a group.

The last place we saw on that “apartment tour” was exactly what I had hoped for. It had a nice, big living room, reasonably-sized bedrooms (at least by Hong Kong standards) and a low price tag. It was in Wan Chai, a very fun and popular part of the city, and most importantly for me, it was a three bedroom apartment—meaning I would have roommates (read: new friends). In fact, the night I looked at that apartment, I made my first new friend out here. His name is Jurre, he's a twenty-three-year-old from the Netherlands and he was one of the other people on that “apartment tour.”

Afterwards, we went out for a couple of beers in SoHo, exchanged e-mail addresses and ultimately decided to become roommates, taking two of the three bedrooms in that last flat. Before I even moved in to the new apartment, the landlords informed Jurre and me that they had rented out the third room to “a funny German guy named Julian.” That's all they told us about him.

The moment Jurre and I met Julian, a twenty-year-old German doing an eight-month internship out here, I realized instantly that I had struck gold with both of these roommates. The three of us clicked, and on December 17 (the day I moved in to the new apartment), it finally looked as though I wouldn’t be alone for Christmas after all.

With Kevin back home, I was also given the task of running our office by myself for two weeks. Although I knew from the start it would be invaluable in terms of building confidence and teaching me how things work, I couldn’t help but be extremely nervous. I mean, I had been out here for less than two months, and now I was left completely alone to do it all. Luckily, the Christmas season is generally slow in the finance world, so it was the perfect chance to learn the tricks of the trade and get firsthand experience putting things together.

Fear not, the office is still in business, and I feel so much more assured than I did two weeks ago. I have finally moved up to the next level, and I could never have done that without jumping (or being pushed) off the deep end.

With December 25 quickly approaching, my roommates and I bought and decorated a Christmas tree for the apartment, and one of Julian’s coworkers invited us to her rooftop apartment in Happy Valley for a Christmas Eve barbeque, which was wonderful.

Rooftop barbeque on Christas Eve

And at the last minute, one of Kevin’s friend’s, Dan, was nice enough to invite me to lunch on Christmas Day with a big group of his friends, which wound up being more fun than I could have ever hoped. It was a multi-course meal at a restaurant called Wagyu, on Wyndham Street, and the food was delicious.

With Dan for Christmas Lunch at Wagyu

The week between Christmas and New Year flew by, and all of the sudden it was New Year's Eve. “Western New Year,” as they call it out here, isn’t quite as big a deal in Hong Kong as Chinese New Year, but it was still a very fun night. There was a countdown and a small fireworks display, but apparently they are saving more impressive pyrotechnics to celebrate the Year of the Tiger in February.

In the end, my first Christmas season away from home wound up being memorable and very enjoyable. I couldn’t have asked for anything more! I can safely say that 2009 was one of the most exciting years of my life—finishing off my college career with a bang, taking me to four continents and sending me off on a rewarding new journey for the next stage of my life. I have high hopes for 2010 and am looking forward to all the adventures it has in store.