Monday 29 March 2010

Disengagements and divestments

It has been just over a month since we were in Hong Kong. In that time I have been to NYC and am planning another trip in just a couple of weeks to Washington DC, and the clocks are now on BST. I am not sure whether I am coming or going or what time it is.
I do know, however, that moving is a lot of work. We are getting our house ready to sell, which seems to have involved me painting about 4 rooms, hiring a man to pain the hall, stairs and landing, and Adrian painting 6 drawers. You do the math on this one.

The actual institutional process of selling ones house in the UK seems a radically more complicated affair than it seemed when we sold our house in the US 11 years ago. First thing is that you have to get something called a HIP survey done. This involves a man (I could only find men who did this) doing a bunch of searches on your property that the solicitor of the buyers will eventually do again. He then comes to the house and measures up and looks at the windows to determine what energy rating is on the house and what it could be if you ripped out all the leaded windows and replaced them with uPVC (plastic) windows. There are all sorts of assumptions about how people will use the house, of course--e.g., that they will leave the heating on all the time, unlike us leave who it off as much as possible. Plus, there is not any consideration of the types of light bulbs used, what the rating of the appliances is etc. etc. This all costs about £200 and is required before anyone can come look at the property. Some estate agents will also do this for you, but the one who came last week to value our house charges £300.

Another element of complexity here is the difficulty one has getting rid of stuff. Actually it is easy to get rid of if you don't want any money for it. I have so far managed to rid the house of an exercise bike, a piece of furniture we no longer wanted, and a bail of straw left over from when we had chickens through freecycle (freecycle is a yahoo group organised by area where you offer things and people email back if they want them--great for circulating goods at no cost. As we live in a fairly affluent area the freecycle stuff tends to be pretty good and so the group is large and as a result it is easy to get rid of things). The exercise bike is now helping a family become fit and the straw is keeping some strawberries warm. I have more hopes for the long term usefulness of the straw. But, if one wanted to sell things like old books, cd's, etc. typically you have to pack all this in your car and go to a designated car boot sale, where you are charged £5 to have people look over your things and argue with you about the price. You don't, as you would in the US, put your stuff in your driveway and advertise as a yard sale. This means that you can only sell what you can bring in your car. As we have a smallish car this means nothing larger than a box, so no furniture. Furniture, it seems, must be sold via posters at the post office or on the community boards at the local grocery store. So what might have been a morning sitting in front of the house selling off everything we don't want to move now involves several car boot sales, the production of posters with photo's of items that are too big to put in the car, and several trips to various places in the hope that someone will be willing to buy. It may be a bit crass, but if you ask me the good old yard sale is a whole lot easier and much more efficient--and you get to keep all that you earn. But this is England, if you can make it more difficult to achieve, then by all means do so, at least you don't embarrass the neighbors. .

On the positive side, the estimate for moving our stuff to Hong Kong is only about £4200 or about £5.60 per cubic foot. When I tried to ask ex-pats in Hong Kong how much they paid for their own moves via a forum, no one wanted to say. I found this very odd. The cost is calculated by the volume, so if you make a guess of approximately how much you want to move, you can work out how much approximately it will cost, no biggie, but apparently it is something one keeps as a secret. I've now probably blown any chance of having friend amongst the ex-pat community in Hong Kong...

It is about 70 degrees (F) in Hong Kong today. It is 43 here with a chance of snow. Despite the effort, I can't wait to go.

Monday 1 March 2010

The visit

What a great trip. What a great place. When can we leave???

It will be hard to write this in whole paragraphs as I am still processing the visit to Hong Kong in flashes of impression. As just a bit of context Adrian and I when to Hong Kong for a few days. We left on Tuesday last week. Arrived sometime on Wednesday in the evening. We then returned on Sunday, leaving quite early in the morning, so just three whole days in the city.

I guess one of my first impressions is that to call Hong Kong a city is really not right. It is more like a region. Hong Kong island itself is not a city as there are quite large areas of non-city and if you travel around the island to Stanley, one feels quite in another place. It takes very little time on the bus to do this. The bus ride involves traveling through a tunnel to get to the other side, rather than following a coastal path. Kowloon, across from Hong Kong, is connected to HK in that there are any number of ways to cross over--ferry, train (under the water), by car/bus over a bridge, but it is also quite separate as in Kowloon you must make a change to another train or bus that will transport you around this side of the water. Also, there are different colour taxis for this part of HK than for the island. Kowloon provides a very impressive vista for those on HK island, but this is mutual. In other words, incredibly tall buildings on both sides. The waterfront on the Kowloon side is a lovely place to walk around--day or night--and there are some wonderful restaurants and museums. Then there is the new territories, which we really did not get into that much. But because of the really great public transport system in this city/region the ability to travel quite far into them is not difficult to do rather quickly.

Second, unlike many other cities I have been to in countries where English is not the first language, I felt very comfortable and confident in my ability to get around. I think this was partially because there was enough that looked familiar, pretty much most things were written in English as well and in Cantonese, and there are enough people around who understand English and can tell you what you need to know if you get lost. So the infrastructure for people who are not Chinese is there. I wouldn't put this down too much to the fact that Hong Kong is a fairly recently former territory. The bodies are very much largely Chinese bodies walking around. I did see a few non-Chinese people, but this difference was not something that was foregrounded. Indeed, I notice the difference much more when I have visited China Towns in the US or UK much more than I did in Hong Kong. This might be the result of apparent middle-classness, though a large proportion of the city does not earn enough to be required to pay the 15% income tax. Moreover, one is aware that Hong Kong is not American or European. It is its own city, but it is a comfortable one to be in. At least it was for me. It is a place that puts you at ease, while at the same time is exciting.

Third, while Hong Kong is very full of people, this again is not the overriding impression one gets. There are amazingly tall building, and looking at them you know the population density is incredible. Some of this housing is quite grim, but that is the same in all cities. So much of Hong Kong is new build, however, so the decay that comes from prolonged use, high humidity, and so forth is not a present. Plus, there is a lot of green space--not really grass, but green: Trees, tropical plants, etc. Quite a bit of Hong Kong is not built upon, probably because the landscape is so steep. Incredibly steep. At times overwhelmingly steep. Exhaustingly steep.

Fourth, this is a very efficient place. I understand that there is as much bureaucracy here as one might think given that it has its roots in the UK and its crown in China, but there is a work ethic and a competence I just don't find in the UK. Maybe this is linked to some degree to an overall culture of humility rather than arrogance and an ethic of consideration for others and open friendliness, rather than a selfishness that seems to permeate British life. I can't comment on the potential differences/similarities between HK and China. While we were there we were able to get octopus cards, which get you on to the transport system kind of like the pay as you go sim cards for mobile phones (you can also buy coffee at Starbucks and groceries with your octopus card and the school uses them for registering the children and for paying for school lunches and printing). We also got a mobile phone that we can use in HK, a bank account, an apartment, almost a school for the children, an amazing amount of intelligence about how to work and live in the area, and some new friends. Adrian and I both commented that this just would not have been the case in any other place were we have lived.

Fifth, Hong Kong is en engineering wonder. Not only are there some (several) of the tallest buildings in the world here, but they are build on some of the steepest terrain. In Hong Kong itself, you see buildings being built and wonder how in the world they got the equipment up the narrow and winding roads to the site. There are tunnels cutting through mountains and under all this there is an underground transport system that is not only extensive but very reliable. Just about every form of transportation is available here--buses, ferries, mini-buses, trams, funiculars, elevated cable cars, subways, trains, and even an outdoor escalator. This last transport mode is particularly incredible as not only can you travel around most of the second and third stories of the central part of the city via passageways through the buildings, which you access via escalator, but you can also travel from the ferry terminal to the upper part of the mid-levels via a half hour escalator ride. This is covered and runs down hill for the morning commute, but up hill most of the day. Not only does this mean that the thing is reversed every day, but because of the high humidity and rain one would think that it would always be broken down. But it is not. Stunning. We noticed advertisements in estate agent windows that there is a rent gradient based on distance from these escalators. Given how steep it is, this makes a lot of sense. We did walk up through a residential neighborhood and this is something one would not want to do out of necessity. Added to all this is the fact that while the tram is several blocks inland now, it once ran along the waterfront. The amount of reclamation is amazing. You would not immediately understand that so much of what is the present day commercial Hong Kong is on reclaimed land, but once you know this you understand why the area where all the tall commercial buildings are is also quite flat.

Sixth, the food is great. Not only is there really good Cantonese food (my favorite type of Chinese), but you can get every other cuisine you want at about any price range. While we were there we ate Cantonese food as well as food from other regions in China, Vietnamese, and Japanese. We had coffee in an American style coffee shop (at 7 in the morning at the nearby mall). We also learned that the restaurants located in the big shopping malls are not to be avoided. Indeed, the Japanese restaurant we ate in was located on the the tip of Kowloon in a shopping mall that was focused on the eating, with shopping interspersed between the restaurants. It was great. We also went to one of the grocery stores. Admittedly this was the posh store--for those of you in the UK it was like Waitrose, and indeed there were Waitrose branded products on the shelves. Prices were largely similar to UK prices, with the exception of things like cheese and yogurt, which are imported from Australia. The equivalent to £6 or $8 for a large container of yogurt. I don't really like yogurt that much so this won't bother me too much. I guess I shall have to learn to enjoy my coffee with soya milk instead of cows milk. I can adjust. I like soya milk. The cheese will be a bit harder to go without, but I am thinking that my waistline could benefit from this. Thankfully, and contrary to what we expected, wine is not more expensive.

While these impressions are largely positive, I don't want to sugggest that everything was rosy. I did learn that it will be quite difficult for me to get a job. I met with one of the heads of department at one university and learned that not only would my research never fit with their idea of sensible and useful work (quantitative, rational choice models, neoclassical), but also that I was not chinese enough and too old! The Chinese bit I may or may not be able to overcome by learning the language, but age is someting one cannot mess with. No such thing as age discrimination there. There were some gender issues at another university that will make it difficult for me. But the third place I visited was very welcoming, and even if I don't get a job with them, I feel that there is the possibility for connection and collaboration. I am very excited at the prospects of doing research in Hong Kong. There is a lot of work that I can envision doing that builds on my existing research and which focuses on sustainablity issues.

Most of the people we met also have some form of domestic help. This can range from what has historically been referred to as an Amah, a term that is now not considered politically correct. Flats for middle class people all have an area off a laundry room off a kitchen consisting of a bedroom and a bathroom for the helper to live. This room in the flats we looked at, but which appear to be equally as small elsewhere was miniscule. Just enough room for a narrow bed and not really anything else. In fact, the room in our flat has no window. There is a window in the bathroom, which has a shower, toilet and sink. I can't imagine living there, so I guess no Amah for us. Others have helpers come once a day or a couple of times a week. Some of these women are doing this work illegally as they are Amahs for another family already. Some are Chinese women. Many people I spoke with said that the helper would do the shopping and cooking for you, which is an advantage because the helpers have the skills to bargain at the wet market, thus saving money on food buying. The wet markets are less expensive than the grocery stores. I shall just have to learn enough cantonese to do this, or pay more at the supermarket, most of which will deliver dry goods to your home for you. I was also told that while some locally produced food is available, culturally the imported food is considered better food, and this is not just because it is more expensive. I expect some of this is linked to the recent health scares over things like tainted milk and beef products.

Overall a brilliant trip. I am really looking forward to going back. I hope something works out for me on the employment front as I am having some difficulties with getting leave from my current employer. I think I just must be patient and keep trying. I will keep updating...