Posted by on Sep 24, 2012 in Personal, Rants | 0 comments

My adjustment back to local time is still taking a while. It’s been a week now and my appetite and digestive schedule is still a little wacky. I’m starving in the morning and at night I can barely choke down a bite or two. Funny how the body sometimes works in a different schedule from your mind.

I gave my initial thoughts about my recent trip to Hong Kong. What I wanted to do to follow that was a post to document what I thought were the bad impressions I got from the city in case I ever forget and decide we want to move there for whatever reason. Let this stand as a reminder why I wouldn’t want to call Hong Kong as a homebase:

  • Opportunities are great there. My wife’s relatives are constantly upwardly mobile with their job prospects. It’s almost like every other month I hear they have a new job with better pay and it seems like they have a lot of income to spend on just about anything. On the flip side of that coin is the fact that it seems the average worker there works till late night. On many evenings back to our hotel we got caught up on a rush hour trip back on the subway at 10pm with people returning home from work. Past 11pm street restaurants were still standing room only for people seeking dinner on the way home from work.
  • If you have kids and a family life, it’s always been common to have what they call “domestic helpers” there either from Malaysia or the Philippines. My mom had a nanny when she was little who she felt more attached to then her own mom and I think today’s Hong Kong community hasn’t changed much from that. If you have to work your ass off till 10pm each night, how else are you going to keep the house clean and your kids fed? My brother and I used to facetiously call these helpers “servants” but I’m finding out these folks are actually paid very well and they can jump from one family to another if the pay is right. So it’s getting to be more difficult to find someone that can help out with your domestic life as well. I personally regret the fact that any society gets the point where work needs to exceed family…it seems like here in the U.S. we’re headed in this direction but let me hope it never gets this bad.
  • Conversation amongst friends in HK quickly turned to our kids. Apparently high demand for schools with limited capacity has resulted in the fact the average elementary school kid has to have accolades and awards just to be considered for entry into many of the schools. The average kid I’ve observed there not only goes to a regular school day there but they then spend either one weekend or after-school evening taking music, sports or language lesson. Taking lessons isn’t enough…school boards require parents to build portfolios and demonstrate how their elementary school child is above and beyond their peers with awards in those programs. Here in the U.S. I’m used to the fact you may need to compete to get into prominent private schools or ivy league colleges…over there it sounds like you have to do that just to get into kindergarten in your neighborhood.
  • On the same note, apparently Hong Kong has turned into a giant Costco for recently wealthy Mainland Chinese people. So much so that you now have to compete to get common things like diapers and baby formula for your own child as many Mainlanders are buying these supplies in bulk to bring back home. Finding a hospital and physician to deliver your baby is not longer a question of shopping around…you just simply have to take anyone available. I even heard the rumor Physicians are favoring C-sections for pregnant mothers there so that they can schedule deliveries to meet the demand.

Nuts eh? Bear in mind I heard most of these details from our friends and family in Hong Kong. This isn’t stuff I made up. A recent article listed Hong Kong as #1 in terms of economic freedom. Which is supposed to mean that citizens do better in terms of well-being. But if that is the case, and Hong Kong serves as the standard bearer of this index, I think we’re better off down a little further down that list don’t you?