It started with the networking meeting Monday and Tuesday on the Kowloon side of the city. Lots and lots of information and input from the more than 50 people (and potential customers) from all over the world. Tuesday evening I moved to a cheaper hotel on Hong Kong Island. A 4-star hotel in central Hong Kong for what equals USD 40 per night. Sometimes you are just lucky!
Since then I have basically just been doing one thing. Meeting people! One after the other, non-stop. Meetings that have been set up through IMD classmates, old colleagues, friends, connections on www.linkedin.com or through people from the network meeting. A good share of the people I have met have been Danes. I guess like most other nationalities we stick together and help each other whenever we can.
When I first got to Hong Kong I felt that everything was so rushed, too much efficiency to really be enjoyable. Somehow this efficiency absorbs you and you become part of it. You are grabbed by the flow and fall into the rhythm of the city. I have never done so many meetings in such a short period of time as here. Everything is so close, you never spend more than 15 minutes going anywhere, very often it is just around the corner. At the same time everything is so focused on business that you can set up a meeting in a matter of hours. I have met people here who makes their living out of ‘just’ knowing and connecting people. Like Nokia! One meeting constantly leads to the next, “I have this guy you need to meet” people say all the time. It is like you find a little piece of rope in the sand, but as you start pulling it becomes longer and longer and eventually turns into a net. As you try to reel it in it just gets bigger and bigger. I have discovered an amazing amount of things the last week – a whole new world, actually - and still I suspect that I have only seen a fraction.
Today I took the one-hour train ride to the Chinese border, got a visa and then ventured into Shenzhen, a city that in 20 years has transformed itself from a sleepy fishing village to a fifteen million people production facility! I had set up two meetings in Shenzhen, one with a local company and one with an multinational company with an office there. Of course I wanted to get the information from the people that I met, but most of all I wanted to get a feel for China. I have heard so much about this place the past ten years, but I had never been there. There is only one way of experiencing these things and that is by going to see for yourself. As a foreigner in China you are a completely blind and deaf. You cannot understanding anything people say and you cannot read the sings. Neither can they understand you. You just hand over a note or a business card to the taxi driver with the address written in Chinese and then hope that he takes you to the right place. Today he did.
Tonight we went for a few drinks with an amazing 25th floor view of the Hong Kong skyline. It beats Manhattan by miles. It is just such much wider, bigger, more colourful and spectacular.
The hotel is fully booked tomorrow, so in a few hours I need to pack my things again and go to my friend Morten’s place, where I will spend the last night. We are heading out on an all-day boat trip tomorrow arranged by the Swedish community here. The smart thing would be to stay back, sleep and get some work done, but I don’t want to miss this chance. Tomorrow night there are new parties waiting and Sunday morning I head off to Singapore. I might actually have another very early morning meeting on the way to the airport, so is the Hong Kong way! And in Singapore there is another 5 meetings lined up so far with more on the way.
I guess I have said before. The second half of the year is no less intense than the first, it is just much more fun because you are doing it to yourself. It is still only a few hours of sleep per night, but it is OK because you are in charge yourself. It is happening because you cannot stop chasing opportunities. It is driven by excitement, not by force or fear! I love it!
LIVING IN LAYERS
You are not in doubt that Hong Kong always has been in lack of space. Everything is in layers. The places where people live...
… and where they work.
Even the trams….
the busses….
and the boats are in layers!
Business, business, business!!
Sunset over Hong Kong Island seen from the Kowloon side…
and a part of the Hong Kong skyline just as the lights start to come on.
At the Bruce Lee platter on the ‘Walks of fame’.
In Shenzhen. Five years ago this area was a swamp!
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