Trent's Turn

I haven't had too much to say until now - I've been too busy doing a man's job. You know buying the groceries, doing the washing, setting up the house ;-)

After almost 4 weeks in Honkers, it's starting to feel like home (at least for the next couple of years anyway). To bring you all up to speed, we've moved out of our Serviced Apartment in Causeway Bay and into our 2 bedroom unit in Kennedy Town (which is at the western end of Hong Kong island). Also, it looks like I've found a job (although I haven't signed a contract yet).

The unit is pretty cool. As I type, I can see a vast flotilla of ships and ferries moving around the harbour. It's an impressive site and it's no wonder they say this is the busiest harbour in the world. Our unit is in a block of 3 x >50 story buildings, constituting "The Merton" urban renewal development in Kennedy Town (previously an industrial area). The buildings are only a couple of years old and the facilities here are impressive: lounge, reading room (newspapers and magazines supplied), piano room, karaoke room, aerobics room, yoga room and a reasonable gym (although the dumbbells only go up to 50 pound).

We were previously going to try and find a place in the Mid-levels or in Soho (SOuth of HOllywood road) with all of the other gweilos (what the local Cantonese call us westerners) but it was pretty hard to go past Kennedy Town. Soho and Lan Kwai Fong is where all the western cafes, restaurants and pubs are, hence why they're popular places for gweilos to live (it's also where we'll most probably take you for a night out, if you happen make it here). Soho's been designated a historical area, so the buildings are quite old and not nearly as tall as other parts of Honkers (which means there's almost no units available). The Mid-levels is also popular because it's up on the side of Victoria peake (so views tend to be better) and adjacent to Soho and Lan Kwai Fong. The popularity also means it's ridiculously expensive (if our place was in the Mid-levels, it would probably cost an extra $AUS2-3k/month!!!).

To close out this post, I thought I'd tell you a little about my new job.

Leaving Australia, I didn't really have a firm idea of what I wanted to do in Honkers (I was too busy trying to pack up to give it serious thought) but over the last 4 weeks I managed to firm up my preferences. There's a massive number of Banking and Finance jobs going over here but unless you have previous experience in that industry it's pretty much a closed door. Also complicating the job front is that many jobs require you to be billingual, usually English and Cantonese but can also include Mandarin, Japanese and Putonghua - this tends to narrow the jobs down to Western, non-banking companies (which use English for business). After establishing these 2 barriers, I was fairly certain I wanted to have a crack working for a western IT consultancy as a project manager, where I could partake in many projects and obtain a good cross-section of experience before returning to Australia.

In the end it was rather simple to find a job. All the westerners already here are too happy to offer suggestions for finding work (mainly because they were all in the same position when they arrived), providing names of recruiters, sending your resume around their network and inviting you to local business events - we were even invited to an Australian Chamber of Commerce networking session (which was quite useful but somewhat strange too).

One of the recruiters that I had contacted when I first arrived, Robert Walters, called me in for an interview. I must have said something right because they then put me forward for an interview with Getronics as an Infrastructure Project Manager. The interview was quite informal and consisted mainly about my boss-to-be giving me some background on IT in Hong Kong. Coincidentally, the Manager for Greater China was in the office, so he also came by to give his approval. Later that day, I got their offer and the only thing left was to negotiate terms.

I can't say I had heard anything about Getronics before I came to Hong Kong but the story goes that they're a multi-national company our of the Netherlands. You might be more familiar with one of their aquisitions from the lates 90s, Wang computers. There's some more info in Wikipedia if you're interested.

Anyway, that's probably enough from me for now.

Cheers!