Wong's Weblog

Fun Time All The Time

Saturday:
The next morning was the wedding reception.  I spent the morning ironing some of my shirts. As I was ironing, I noticed that it was extremely hot outside.  Ruh Roh. Bad sign.  It turned out to be miserably hot and humid out that afternoon. This was not an ideal day to be wearing semi-formal clothes (or as my friend calls it, “smart-casual”) outdoors.

People were to meet up by the MTR station to board a bus to take us to the reception at New Territories (which is pretty much China). I was a bit concerned about who I was going to know at the reception but I found some of my old friends from Island ECC on the bus.  I was much relieved.  It was good to catch up with them on our ride there and at the reception.

When we got to the reception, my mind was blown away.  We were at this country club and it did not feel like we were in Hong Kong at all.  It felt like the Hamptons or something like that.  It was a bit funny though at the reception. It was so insanely uncomfortable in the heat that some people were hanging out indoors. When I went to use the wash room in doors, I felt instant relief (not just from actually going to the restroom although that was relieving as well, sorry, too much information?) for it felt like I was inside an ice box.  I thought to myself, would it be weird if I just hung out inside the wash room? Yes of course it would so I didn’t do it…well maybe just for a little bit…

As the reception drew to an end there was some singing, some dancing, and then some music, and then all of a sudden I heard a very familiar song and my jaw dropped.  Are you serious? Can this really be happening right now? Well i’ll give you a little hint.  It was from an SNL digital short film. A song with a word that starts with a J and ends with a Z and then some thing about it being in your pants…Thats all i’m going to say. As I sat there in horror, I gazed out to the distance seeing if any body else realized what was going on.  All I could think of was, “Do chinese people know what this word means?” And then I locked eyes across the room, downed my drink as the rhythms boom. Saw one of my friends, he shook his head in disbelief, Along with me, utter shock was plastered on both of our faces. The song finally faded out. I didn’t know what to say. Did that really just happen? Is this real life?

Sunday:
I joined up with some of my friends again in the morning to attend the new sister church of Island ECC, Watermark, which now meets in Cyberport. Cyberport is really far away. Like really far away. Anyways, it was great to see the church just starting out and the mission that it has to develop the community and to bring Jesus to unchurched areas in HK.

After church, I met up with family to get lunch.  We went to a Japanese ramen restaurant. I’ve got to tell you, Japanese ramen is amazing.  It was one of my favorite things that I had in Beijing and Hong Kong 2 years ago and a specialty that I missed having in the states.  It is not your typical Top Ramen.  It is ramen fit for Kings.  It is so good I may just need to bring it back home since PHX is seriously lacking in this cuisine.

The day before, some of my friends had invited me to go play soccer with them that night.  I’ve had the itch to go play soccer for quite some time after watching the World Cup.  I had really started to develop a new found love in the beauty of the game and how plays develop in a soccer match.  The last time I played soccer must have been in grade school so this was definitely going to be interesting to say the least.  We got to the fields, well they weren’t really fields.  They were miniature sized concrete courts made for soccer in the city.  I really wish they had these in the states.  It was actually really fun running around playing.  When I got there, I met a couple of new friends. One of them was a Brit named Damian.  He was telling me about how they were filming a Hollywood movie and how he was taking the day off to go be an extra in it.  He told me I should totally be in it.  After he named off some of the stars in the movie such as Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow, I was somewhat convinced I should do it.  Then he told me they were filming that morning at 3 am which was just a few hours away.  I was a bit reluctant to go and then he got a follow up email that said it had been pushed to around 6 am.  I told him to give me a call in the morning to see what happens.

The first match, we scored first and ended up tying. Then we got kicked off the court and moved to another court where we ended up waiting for about an hour before we got to play another match.  When we were finally let on, we didn’t have enough players to field a team so we got the two kids that were maybe in middle school and then this old man.  The other team was beyond confident and made remarks about how they were going to wipe the floor with us.  10 minutes in, we scored the 1st goal.  These two kids were pretty darn good.  They definitely had skills. The other team is a bit perturbed. 15 minutes in, the kids are playing a 2 man game and score again. The other team is definitely pissed at this point.  They are yelling at their goalkeeper.  25 minutes in, we throw the ball in and the old man heads it in.  The other team is beyond irate now. 35 minutes in, they finally score a goal and call the game and walk off the court.  They were not happy.

We ended up playing a mini game with a few other guys for another hour before we headed back to my friend, Kelvin’s home, where his girlfriend graciously prepared a delicious Thai meal for all of the boys.  It was joyous time of filling our bellies and telling stories.  Our conversation covered a gamut of topics from angels to psychological tests to determine if we fit the profile of being a serial killer.

During dinner, I got a call from my friend Damian. He told me that if I wanted to be in the movie, that I would have to send this casting agent a picture of me to guarantee me a spot the next morning during the film.  By this time, with the logistics and the timing of everything, it seemed more and more unlikely that I would be going through with this.  I left my friends place around 11:45 pm so the likelihood of me honestly following through was slim to none. So am I telling you there’s a chance?? Stay tuned…

Excellent Adventure Pt 2

Well, I haven’t written for a couple of weeks even though I had material to write but my attention was back in PHX so I blogging about my random thoughts was the last thing on my mind.  I’m writing here from the Hong Kong International air port about to board my plane to Beijing.  Free airport internet = pretty freaking cool. Anyways, a whole new adventure awaits and I can’t wait for what the next 3months ahead.  Summer Palace, The Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, there is so much of my Chinese history to see.  I’ll try to keep you guys posted about everything thats going on and hopefully i’ll be able to post some cool stories and pics.  Thanks for all your prayers and support so far, the past 4 months have been a truly great experience for me and in my growth in faith and as a person.  HK peeps, it’s been truly a blessing having been with you the past few months.  I didn’t think I would develop such great relationships in such a short amount of time.  We will meet again soon.  PHX peeps, start the countdown for 3 months, I’ll be back soon.

p.s. I found out the chinese character for my name actually means yellow…Fantastic, I can just hear Karen laughing out loud. I’m officially giving you a head start to come up with new jokes, and they better be good.

Futurists…

So I told a few of you about this crazy speaker I heard at a real estate convention back in January.  He was a futurist which means he speaks about the future Duh… Well some of his ideas and concepts were wild beyond belief and while it may have sounded good to some, it scared the living crap out of me. Crazy ideas of nanotechnology and how one day you won’t have to wash your clothes but with this technology, your clothes will have memory sensitive fibers that will tell your clothes to return to original shape and there will be a sprayed coating on the clothing that once a device is activated, dirt will shake off the clothes and make the clothes clean.  Another idea was a device that allowed you to send emails and communicate telepathically.  Just that idea alone made me think…uhh are you serious?? Am I the only one sitting at this conference wondering where the heck this guy is going with these insane ideas?? Does this guy realize we are at a real estate conference… Anyways he started talking about these 3D printers that printed stuff out in 3D.  Yes, that means 3 Dimensional.  He was talking about how this technology already duplicated a cell phone and the cell phone actually worked (which was all very confusing to me because after I subscribed to his newsletter, which was a temporarily free of course, it explained that these events may or may not have actually happened, once again very confused).

So at this point you’re probably wondering, why is Mike using a million run on sentences and constantly rambling about this.  Firstly, I don’t know how to explain the insanity of these ideas without using run on sentences and secondly I found a rather shocking article about 3D printers…

Could what this guy was talking about really be real? What about the other idea of telepathic absurdity? Yikes, I just don’t know what to think anymore.

Here is a transcript of the speech I heard if you want to know what i’m talking about in more detail:

Wolfgang Grulke,
<http://www.futureworld.org/PublicZone/News/20020110Winn.aspx> is a
futurist, formerly of IBM and recently the author of “Ten Lessons from
the Future.” <http://www.futureworld.org/PublicZone/Store/Storeorg.aspx

>
It’s only appropriate that he spoke at the Urban Land Institute’s Real
Estate Trends Conference, because technology will influence every
message he gives this audience.

A dear friend of mine, Chris Cole <http://www.colecapital.com/> ,
sponsored the talk. I’ve known Chris for over twenty years, through real
estate upturns and downturns, and he has always been one of the most
intellectually curious men I’ve known in real estate. (He’s introducing
Wolfgang Grulke by saying that real estate is 1/3 of the world economy.
Of the $6 trillion net worth of America, 40% is in real estate. And more
will come as the Baby Boomers age and look for income and value. Real
estate as an asset class, he says, is in its infancy.) And technology in
the real estate space is also in its infancy.

Grulke begins by saying it’s way more important to learn from the future
than from experience, because breakthrough innovations always come from
left field.

Exploring the future:

Culture will be determined by economics:From the 1970s to now, there
have been major changes . In our personal lives, every step change —
birth, growth, death –is a major surprise. That’s also true about
social change, and about business. We can never plan for the future. How
can you plan for the things you DON’T know?

The pace of change in the past forty years has been astounding. In 1969,
we sent a man to the moon without microprocessors.There WERE no
microprocessors. But by the 70s, Woodstock was a mirror or a nation at
war with itself. Woodstock was the start of individual rights, civil
rights, women’s rights, environmental rights, and consumer power. Within
the course of 18 months, everything changed, but we only see the extent
of the change in hindsight.

Woodstock was the start of the culture of the individual, which has now
progressed to YouTube.

The Baby Boomers invented the idea of growth and change every year.
Their parents wanted one job with a large corporation for life. They
were the Silent Generation. The next Generation, Generation X, is as
different from the Boomers as the Boomers were from the Silent
Generation. But Grulke says these generations are not about when you
were born, but what kind of economy you were born into.

Kids born into a flat economy will behave the way the Silent Generation
did. The behavior they will exhibit will reflect the economic conditions
around them. The rising economy gave us the cult of the individual.
There are 25-year-old Baby Boomers in Bangalore, because the economy is
booming. The culture of the individual comes from affluence. “Life is
short. Play More!”

Generation X has never known a world in which the product is important.
The idea that quality is a differentiator is gone forever. This
generation isn’t about quality; it’s about spirit.

Technology is everywhere. Changes in technology will take many companies
out of business. Survivors of the last period of technology change will
miss the next wave. SONY and Phillips, who pioneered the personal radio,
missed downloadable music even though SONY had the technology before
Apple. But SONY didn’t use it because they thought they would
cannibalize their own Walkman sales. But now, in the music industry,
retailers will be displaced by downloadable everything.

Connectivity and the ability to communicate with everyone on the planet
is becoming a basic human right and is given away for free. By 2020,
there will be no TV channels, newspapers, or magazines. There will also
be no consumer appliances. Appliances will be replaced by services.

You will no longer need a device to connect with the infrastructure. (No
Blackberry or laptop). You will not have a washing machine. A new
wardrobe closet, made of nanotechnology, will take the dirt and grime
out of your clothes, and because the clothes are made out of smart fiber
they will return to their original shape. This wardrobe will be given
away free. Traditional fields like appliances and apparel retailers
can’t compete with this completely new paradigm that they can’t even see
coming.

Even wireless handheld computing devices will go away.An invisible chip
will store more than you can read in your lifetime. The chip will be
implanted under your skin and connected to your nervous system. “In
2020, when I send you an email messge, you will really get it. The email
message goes right to your visible cortex.” The cost of the network?
Free.

There are already twelve scientists in the UK who are wired up this way
and can communicate with each other directly.

“Neither you nor I will ever feel comfortable with this level of
technology, but our children will never know a world without it.”

In biotech, we will have better foods, new drugs, new materials, and
longer lives. But these advances in genetics are not about biotech at
all, but about information technology. We are now in the Second
Information Revolution.

Clothing will not be manufactured, but will be printed out by a 3D
printer. There’s a printer today that can do this, but it cots $40,000.
By 2015, the cost of this printer will be $40, and by 2020 it will be
zero. Even food is being printed now.

Business will be changed completely: “Eat yourself before someone eats
you first.” In a business cycle, companies start up with a concern for
customers. Then, in the second half of the cycle, most of the energy is
spent internally. They fail to see the killer coming out of left field.
Read “The Black Sawn” about the influence of the highly improbable.
Innovation is always revolutionary, but sustaining innovation is
evolutionary.

Successful companies never innovate, and are victims of their own
success.They try to maintain the status quo. That’s why the cell phone
was not invented by the phone companies. Businesses don’t innovate
because they are afraid their existing business will be cannibalized.

You can’t run your business tomorrow with the same people and systems
you have today. All products, services, and infrastructure are becoming
commoditized because of a boom in technology. Every business plan should
assume that things will be cheaper every year.

(Automating their economy to stay competitive will mean that China will
have an incredible unemployment problem in ten years.)

In the future, fewer people will be employed by large corporations than
now. One person businesses will dominate, everything becomes fractal,
and leadership changes from command to “invite.” Anyone can be anyone’s
business partner when the world is networked. The differentiators are
not products now, but services. Information is more important than your
business. Networks are your most important assets. Relationships are the
most important assets.

This world is full of new opportunities. The future will be very
different. Bring it on!

Sunday June 22, 2008

So I thought I would share with you a typical Sunday in the day and the life of Michael Ryan Wong.  Start off by waking up (I figure that’s a good way to start the day) around 10 (late because of a previous night of Karaoke but that’s a whole other story..) Got some breakfast which consisted of a ham and egg sandwich on white bread (chinese people don’t really eat much wheat).  Took the elevator downstairs and walked out to encounter a beautiful, clear day.  I was extremely excited because there have only been a handful of days where I could see the blue sky.  I take a short 10 minute walk to the pier and get on the ferry that takes me across Victoria Bay to North Point.  It takes another 10 minute walk from the pier to get to church (church is by that greenish building on the left).

After church I take the famous trolleys toward Causeway Bay where I go and meet up the family for sushi.

The trolleys are great for traveling through downtown.  It is also extremely inexpensive at $2 HKD.  The light rail in Phoenix will be similar to this.  I just can’t believe how much it is costing Phoenix to build it though.

Today, we are out on a hunt to look for the best deal on Wii for my little cousin so we head take a taxi to the pier in Wan Chai and take another ferry back across the Victoria Bay to Tsim Sha Tsui which has a pretty big mall right on the Harbor.  After we shop around for a bit I leave the fam and walk around and take pictures on this gorgeous day.

I feel so alive in this city.  The streets are always full of people walking around the city.  There is just so much energy when you see people walking around in public.  I’ve definitely grown to a liking of the urban enviornment as opposed to suburbia of driving everywhere.

I walked down the boardwalk and got coffee at what I would like to say is the best Starbucks in the world.  I got a Shaken Iced Venti Lemon Passion Tea.  It was fantastic.  I sat outside for 3 hours while I read a book,  while enjoying the incredible view of the bay and a nice cool sea breeze.

Afterwards, I took a walk to the MTR got on the train and met my family for dinner.  Took some more pictures and went home and called it a night. Actually this was not that typical of a Sunday as usually I don’t have such a beautiful day but this was truly one of the best Sunday’s I’ve ever had.

Helllooo!!

Hello there my friends. It’s been quite some time since I’ve posted on here.  My bad. Mi Mal. Wo Bu Hao.  There you go, I said “my bad” in three languages (techincally 4 because of Mandarin and Cantonese).  Well I’m guessing you’re wondering what’s been going on the past few weeks…Well to tell you the truth not too much.  I started private 1-on-1 tutoring sessions for Mandarin to get me a little head start before I head to the “real” mother country.  So far the lessons are going great.  I’m getting postive feedback form my teachers that I’m learning and speaking quite well so that is definitely encouraging.  They start off teaching you pin yin which is like reading english but obiviously some words are pronounced quite differently.  In general, Mandarin consists of 4 tones (techincally 5).  The tones vary from a high steady pitched tone, a rising tone, a tone that falls and then rises back up, a tone that drops from high to low and lastly there is a neurtral tone.  I’m really enjoying learning how to speak.  I definitely want to go on and learn a lot more languages now.  Now the difficult part at the moment is learning the chinese characters.  Did you know there are over 80,000 seperate characters in the chinese language.  80,000!! Um, English has 26…. Well I’m glad to say that I will not need to learn all 80,000.  Most of the 80,000 are seldom used in this day and age.  If I can learn 3,000 to 4,000 then I will be very good.    It is very difficult to study these characters though.  Some are similar and it’s like staring at pictures hours on end trying to match pictograms to an english definition.  It has gotten frustrating at times but I’m working hard to see how far I can get in this short time.

Other than the fun of studying, not too much has really happened.  The weather has been pretty terrible for the most part.  It has either been non-stop rain or hot and humid. When I’m talking about rain, I’m not talking about Phoenix rain, I’m talking about it’s some dude in the air pointing a fire hose down at you.  I must admit though, frolicking in the rain just isn’t as fun here in HK.  It’s not like the good old days of slipping and sliding all over the smooth concrete in front of the AMC at Desert Ridge.  So when it isn’t raining, it’s pretty darn hot and humid out here.  It’s about 33-34 degrees Celsius which is about 88-90 degrees Farneheit (i’m going to rant about Farenheit here in a bit) with about 90% humidity.  It feels like I need to shower every other hour and if you know me, you know how often I “normally” shower… So I guess humidity and I have a love hate relationship except for the fact that I don’t love humidity and the fact that I hate it.

First Rant: So about Farenheit..  Guess how many countries in the entire world use Farenheit?

Answer = 1

Guess which country that is.

Answer = Good ol’ USA

Second Rant: How many countries don’t use the metric system?

Answer = So, that is the end of my rant.  Anyways, I’m still enjoying my time out here.  Trying to keep busy with Misc things.  Thanks to everyone that still checks up on the blog and for the birthday wishes if I didn’t get back to you.  I miss you guys back in the US but I’ll be back before you know it.

Live Life, Don’t be a Spectator of it

I read this article in the Washington Post shortly before I left the States and it really made me think.  It is about Joshua Bell, a world famous violinist.  The Post arranged for him to do a little experiment in the New York City Subway.  He went in normal clothes and his $3.5 million dollar violin, propped open his case, put some change in it (a little trick to get the money rolling!) and started, playing seeing how many people would pay attention.  According to the Post:

In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.

Here you have a musical prodigy playing some of the most beautiful music ever created and not even 1% of the people that heard it stopped to even pay attention to it.  It makes me wonder, how many times have we been so caught up in our day that we miss an instance of beauty, of magic, of brilliance…

Me No Speak English

So last Friday, I went out with my sister and our old friend Claudia and her boyfriend Kevin (a new friend). We had a great night out going to dinner and then grabbing drinks.  Afterwards, we had to grab a taxi because it was too late to take the bus back.  The name of the landmark that identifies where I live is Zung Fu, which is a Mercedes dealership on the 1st floor of our building.  Now the proper pronunciation of how to say this is “Yen Foo”.  I was pronouncing it “Young Fu”.  Needless to say, the way I was pronouncing it was not correct.  So instead of saying take me to this Mercedes dealership, I was telling him to take me to “my unfaithful wife”.  Boy that would have been a disaster.  Luckily, Kevin told me to call home to get the location and saved me a world of embarrassment.

Also, my pics can be viewed online now at http://www.picasaweb.google.com/mwong.az so that people don’t have to be on facebook to see them.  

Hmm..

So there I was sitting at the Hong Kong Immigration office bored out of my mind trying to figure a way to get get my identification card for easy access into the country.  Then I thought, hmm I have playing cards in my backpack.  BUT wait, these were no ordinary playing cards.  These were American Flag playing cards (thank you Karen Scheffe)  So there I was sitting playing the old Red, White and Blue trying to get into another country. Irony? Yes sir.

I’ve posted pics onto facebook so Erica, yes you will need to join the darkside once again if you want to see pictures.  Otherwise, I need another outlet to post pics because posting one by one on here is way too difficult.  Any ideas from you guys would be great (that means you Britt).  

I will post some 2nd week observations of this new fantastic culture in the next week so until then go out and cheer for Planet Orange.