Monthly Archives: August 2006

Meeting the Staff

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Yesterday afternoon, there was a Hong Kong CCC all staff meeting. It was held in a conference room in a hotel on Nathan Road with a buffet afternoon tea – very nice. It was great to meet most of the Hong Kong staff and for them to meet us. Our kids made some friends and enjoyed playing with the other staff kids. Most of the staff children were of a similar age to ours (I think the oldest child there was 8).
Hong Kong CCC has a new National Director and leadership structure, so part of the meeting was explaining this to the staff. They also had a time at the end to welcome and farewell staff who were coming and going, so they got us up to introduce ourselves. It felt a bit weird to have rapturous applause after every sentence – they were impressed that I knew some Cantonese. Anyhow it only lasted two sentences until I changed into English.

Getting Settled

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We are doing our best to get settled in Hong Kong. We have been apartment-hunting and have largely settled on the area we want to live in. It is a place called Tseung Kwan O which is in the New Territories just to the east of Kowloon. Just downstairs from the apartment complexes is a large shopping mall (well, large from a NZ mindset at least) and an MTR station. So it is very convenient. Although the places are advertised as being 796 square feet, in reality they are nearer to 600 as the quoted size includes a portion of the lift lobby! So we are going to fit our stuff into an area about 1/3 the size of our house in NZ – good thing we sold a lot of stuff!
The area is quite popular with young families and there seem to be good schools and kindergartens in the area. There are even some CCC staff families living there, so we should hopefully be able to make friends in the area quite quickly.
The only thing left now is to actually come to an agreement with a landlord to rent a place. We should be able to do that sometime this month.

Arrived in Hong Kong

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Well, here we are in Hong Kong. After a bit of a delay, due to Lukas being diagnosed with a serious ear infection on the eve of our travel, we finally got here four days late, which strangely enough was the date we had originally chosen to arrive in Hong Kong. Our delay allowed us to take a few days at a slower pace and also to finish a few jobs that we hadn’t quite finished. Unfortunately we couldn’t get tickets at the same price we had booked earlier (which was bargain basement prices) but thankfully our travel insurance will get us the money back from our original tickets. So on Tuesday evening after a long (but pleasant) flight we arrived in Hong Kong. It is the end of summer here so it is very hot. Just going‚ outside works up a sweat! We are staying in the 60th floor at my parents apartment in Tsim Sha Tsui. It’s funny living at about the same height as the Sky Tower observation deck.