Sing-a-ling

I have been working with local HR and a Fragomen consultant in order to extend my Hong Kong working Visa beyond the current expiry in August. The paperwork has been completed and is scheduled to be processed closer to the date. The extension is something I have been working with and it came as a surprise upon leaving Hong Kong through the E-Channel that the second gate did not open after submitting my thumbprint. The officer came by, looks at my Hong Kong ID, looks at his PDA, looks at me and mutters something in Cantonese, as by default I retort, "huh? sorry?".

"Your Visa has expired". 
"You must be mistaken, it's May and it says in my Passport that my Visa expires in August". 
"Follow me, come this way".

Drama. Long story short, Hong Kong Immigration has in it's database that my Visa had expired a few days ago, the story goes, because I had transferred my Visa to my new company (having been there for one year now) it had reset the duration and I was now allegedly working unauthorised. My protests fell on deaf ears, and the officer would not have a bar of my appeal. Despite the severely of this breach, the penalty was a reasonable ~130 HKD fine.

Again, Singapore was for another friend's 30th Birthday. We would stay with the Birthday Boy in Siglap and the nice thing about the trip was that two friends from Sydney would be making the journey over to Singapore for the weekend too. I'll spare you the details, of a Birthday weekend trip in Asia, in short it was: Fenix, Mink, Late night Buh Kuh Teh and becoming familiar with 'The Inbetweeners'.

The weekend was marred by a typical Singapore experience at the Marina Bay Sands restaurant, Mozzo. Most of the diners had traveled from different places, Singapore, Hong Kong and Singapore and transferring money in between party members would incur transfer fees and overhead, so we requested that we split the bill evenly between each person. Not capable of splitting a bill more than three-ways we had our credit cards thrown at us along with a contract stipulating that we had indeed broken the contract that we had agreed to by dining at the restaurant. The experience epitomised the Singaporean mentality and the culture bound and protected by rules and protocol. I had experienced this working with our Singaporean Office and despite the abrasiveness I convinced myself that I was not at all surprised in how it was handled. To the restaurant's credit, the manager came out and profusely apologised for the manner in which the staff acted and smoothed things over (we ended up paying on one card). Despite this, the weather was amazing and the food delectable; still haven't ruled out a short stint in Singapore.

Fatigued and tired I was once again pulled up by immigration on the way back into Hong Kong. Lining up for with the regular folk, in the regular non-HK-resident line. First thing tomorrow morning, I'm contacting HR and sorting this "expired Visa" situation out!

Currently Reading: "Flash Boys"

Thirty, too!

The problem, with not immediately blogging events is that, you forget details. I've been trying to catch up on the events of the year and admit that the 2014 Nudierun accounts aren't exactly "realtime". So, as I go through what looks like an endless list of "draft" post I can see for this entry titled "Shanghai" that the prompts I left myself are "Birthday weekend" and "lightning storms"; they do little to stimulate the writing.

So, here goes, from what I remember, this was the celebration of Lewis' Birthday in Shanghai. It has been over 10 years of knowing Lewis. In fact one of the first conversations I had with him was when we were in our early twenties. The conversation went something like this "Hi, I'm Lewis", "Hi, I'm Derek", "I'm twenty", I'm twenty-two", "Oh, me as well, I'm twenty too". We had a laugh and I would never forget the age gap. Fast forward now, and 5 days ago, Lewis had surprised everybody by proposing that his 30th Birthday be celebrated in Shanghai. On a last-minute whim we booked our flights and hotels and headed to Shanghai.

So, that's the first prompt. The Birthday Weekend. Second prompt. I had arranged to fly from Hong Kong to Shanghai at 9:15 pm, scheduled to arrive at 11:40 pm. The plan was to meet the first group of people who had flown in the night before as well as the 7:15 plane earlier than me. It just so happened, that the weather wasn't going to let that happen. An evening of severe lightning storms had  all incoming planes in holding zones and outgoing planes backed up and delayed for hours.

I boarded the Dragon Air flight at 9:00 pm and proceeded to sit on the tarmac for the next two and half hours. By the time I finally arrived at the Astoria, it was 3 am. The earlier flight had been also significantly delayed and those who had arrived the night earlier were obviously drunk from all the waiting and preparation. Thankfully, Hollywood provided a haven for those looking to revel past 3 am. We stayed out and eventually called it quits at 7 am. We were shocked as we left the venue, not by the early rising locals walking their dogs but by the clearly anachronistic group of people still lining up to get into the club. It was a long weekend.

"I'm thirty, too!" - Lewis