Tokyo

The last stop, at least for now...

Or is it?

I met with Bill and Stephane last night, and it all went really well. The position has expanded from being a South East Asia Operations Lead to APAC Operations Lead, which is, obviously, a larger role, and I should be getting an offer this week. I could even potentially be starting as early as August 1, in Singapore!

I just sent them a list of things I'd like included in the package, something that, strangely, I'd never done before. If it all comes through, I should be a pretty happy little fella. I shouldn't jinx myself, but I think I've got a pretty good chance at getting everything I want.

So, it could be Singapore in 10 days... and I even told them about Roger and Vero's wedding in Italy that I'd like to go to end of August, which they were fine about.

Tokyo was just as crazy as I'd expected it to be, though it it wasn't as alien as I was expecting. Certain things were in English, and there was some level of spoken English too. There were more recognizable Chinese characters than I'd expected too. But, I was disappointed to not see vending machines for the wild and wacky (e.g. used panties) . Staying in Shinjuku, a red light district was just as colourful as Manchiu and Makiko had promised. Love hotels, 'gentlemen's clubs', aggressive touts, and curtains that hid kinkiness for sale from plain view. Girls in crazy gothic outfits with ghostly pale makeup. Punks with tatoos and piercings. Intricate hair-gelled dos all around, and plenty of cowboy boots. All this of course mixed with the ubiquitous suited and brief-cased salary-man.

It rained almost the entire time was there, but I managed to wander around Shinjuku as soon as I'd dropped my bag off at the hotel. I searched for ages for just the right kind of place to have some dinner; would it be sushi, deep fried goodies, noodles, tepanyaki, Japanese curry. You can see how making a choice was hard! Eventually, I settled for a little sushi place, nestled between a couple of nightspots for the lonely male. It was also interesting to see clubs where women go to talk to, and be flattered and flirted with, hosts: handsome young fellas that I couldn't help but call rent boys (the customers were definitely women though).

Well, I've only got a minute left, so I'll wrap it up.

Until the next stop, adios!

New York

After 2 cancelled flights and plane swapping because of mechanical faults, I finally arrived in New York and headed to Manchiu's place; my crash-pad-of-choice when I'm in New York.

I almost didn't recognize the apartment: I couldn't believe how clean it was! This, I came to learn over then next 2 days was all thanks to Makiko, his very nice (and very clean and tidy) girlfriend. She's an installation artist - I've seen some of her work and it's a really interesting mulitmedia experience that mixes very soft, organic shapes created by fabric and fabric wrapped lights and forms, with patterns projected on and through them. Apparently it's all got to do with birth canals and wombs and things like that.

Anyway, Manchiu's sister arrived from London, and so I decided to check into a hotel, which for the week is costing an arm and a leg. But, considering that a friend of mine is staying with me, it was too much to ask of my other friends for us both to stay.

It's been a nice relaxing time, visiting old restaurants and a few old hangouts. It's amazing that they're still there after 6 years. There are still a few places left on the list, one of which we're going to hit tonight. I think it may actually end up being a bit of a celebration. Why? Well, I had my interview today, and I think it went very well. So well in fact that when I'm in Tokyo, I'll meet again with one of the interviewers from today (Bill, the global head of HR) and one other person who I believe is in charge of Asia.

Because the whole interview thing came up when I was already in Mexico, I hadn't packed any decent clothes. This gave me an excuse to blow a ton of money at Ted Baker (great clothes) and Kenneth Cole. The outfit was brilliant, thanks to my friend Claudia, who loves to shop vicariously through anyone willing to spend a lot of money. Although, the trousers were altered maybe a quater inch too short - something I'll have to get fixed once back in HK.

Anyway, I met with Lisa first, who was the Global Microsoft HR Director then with Bill and Joan, (VP of Talent Management... I think that was her title). They seemed to have heard some good things through Jessica, and so I really didn't spend much time talking about my past, but more about what I wanted to do. To be honest, it's all a bit vague - there are perhaps more than one position that may be a good fit, all the result of an organisational decision to restructure the whole of Asia for the Microsoft account, and part of the reason why I'm going to talk to them again in Tokyo.

In any case, it will most likely be operational, with possibly some client facing responsibilities. I think Bill was actually trying to get me to go back to Beijing but I was honest with him and told him straight up, no, I wasn't interested! I also told him that I wouldn't be as well dressed. Ha ha!

I'm heading off to Tokyo on Monday, which I'm very excited about. My friends have suggested Shinjuku because it's fairly central and pretty interesting - apparently because it's a bit of a red light area! The hotel is rated as a 4 star, but I'm a little dubious about that, seeing as I'm paying less than USD100 per night. I was going to book a capsule hotel, but really, it didn't seem very convenient at all, especially with my ridiculously heavy bags. Anyway, I'm really looking forward to simply wandering the streets having ramen noodles and gyoza in little streetside stalls and checking out all the whacky things you can buy in vending machines.

Calamitous Caye Caulker, Belize

We crossed over the border into Belize by bus from Merida, via Chetumal, after a gruelling overnight journey.

Bad-luck-event 1: Right from the minute we even tried to get into the country, we started having problems. Rhi wasn´t allowed in because her son Mac was on her passport, and so the other 4 of us went through. The reason the fishing-hat-wearing immigration official gave was that the lady who dealt with those cases didn´t turn up until 6am: she´d have to wait for an hour. Unsurprisingly, she never did showe up (after waiting more than an hour). The fishing-hat-wearing immigration guy finally said "Oh, I can take care of that... for $50 US". As if that wasn´t enough of a slap in the cheek, she didn´t have enough money on her, and he told her that she´d have to go back to Chetumal (back the way we´d come) to get cash. I mean, this is 6am, Rhi is travelling with lots of heavy bags and she has a 4 year old. Give the girl a break!

Belize City was much poorer and less developed than I´d expected. To be fair, the area around the bus station wasn´t a good area anyway, but at 8am, all the rough edges were glaring, front and centre. It was grey and drizzling, the roads all seemed to be deeply pitted dirt roads and the station itself swarmed with fare-hungry cab drivers. Our Jamaican driver seemed friendly, only to add ridiculous charges for stopping at an ATM while we withdrew cash.

We crossed over an unbelievably murky river to the water taxi pier, which again was swarming with people looking to cash in on tourist confusion. Interesting characters though - white guys with Creole accents, Mennonites (kind of Amish, visually kind of cowboy), Jamaicans, Chinese, East Asian Indians and everything in between.

We arrived in Caye Caulker, which is an hour´s boat ride away (a boat powered by three-250 horsepower outboards) to be greeted by a rain storm that lasted half an hour and left the sandy streets with deep pools.

Bright spot event: After 2 days of saturation from rain and reggae we finally were able to dive the Blue Hole, the main reason for our going to Belize in the first place. This was a 3 dive trip, the first to the Blue Hole atoll, then Half Moon Caye and finally The Aquarium. All were spectactular dives: we saw grey reef sharks, eagle rays, turltles, plenty of Southern stings, file fish, blue parrotfish (and lots more I don´t know the names of) and lots of weird and wonderful coral formations that we didn´t see in Mahahual. There were sponges that could fit at least 2 small children into, some long ones 8 feet long... Simply spectactular diving. We went through some deep swim-throughs to pop out onto an amazing reef wall covered in coral larger and more dense than anything I´d seen. Ah, if only the whole trip was like this.

Bad-luck-event 2: After a night out, one of the girls, Kirsty (she was actually a staff intern in Mahahual) broke her arm. Interesting circumstances, but I´m afraid I can´t divulge them here. She had to go back to the mainland to see a doctore, who told here that she´d need surgery to fix a damaged nerve. Scary news, especially when you´re away. To add to the bad luck, Kirsty had already organized to do her diving intructor´s course in Honduras, but she now has to fly home to properly set her arm, which was broken in four places.

The third piece of bad luck was the most serious. Bel, who had gone to Mexico City while we were in Merida (and so missed out on our Blue Hole dive) booked herself to go a couple of days after we´d been. Some other GVI folks who happened to be there at the same time were also booked to go, all of them set to leave at 6am. Meanwhile, the rest of us were in bed, only to be woken by the most frightening lightening storms I´d ever been in. It turns out that while we were in bed, Bel´s boat was struck by lightening, knocking out the radio and the engines. All of them were thrown several metres and when they came round, the captain and one of the divemasters were unconscious. One of the other divemasters swam 400m to shore to get help, the rest took it in turns to do CPR. Luckily, a British army helicopter was nearby - still an hour and a half away - all the while they performed CPR on the captain and the divemaster. I can attest to at least the physical aspect of how tiring this is: I can only imagine how traumatic it must have been to do it in a real situation. The helicopter took them to a nearby resort, those with less serious injuries returned to Caye Caulker with stitches, bruises, torn eardrums, and scorched skin from metallic jewellery, while the captain of the boat and the other seriously injured crew member were taken to a hospital.

We found out the next day that the captain was fine, but couldn´t see out of one eye due to a splinter. The other crew member didn´t make it. It may sound like an abrupt way to say it, but I suppose that´s the way it must be, especially for a second-hand account.

I´m now in Playa del Carmen, again, and even simply recounting the story of the lightening strike seems surreal. Tomorrow I fly to New York. And on a brighter note, I have an interviews lined up for July 12th with the global HR people in New York. Time to make some money again.