Wong's Weblog
Umm right…
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Come on guys, this girl is totally 16…BAHAHAHAHA ya right!
TACOS!!
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Tacos in China? What? Well you don’t have Mexican’s making them here like back in AZ. You got Chinese making them tacos. Man that sure sounded not politically correct huh…Anyways, my friends told me about this place in TST East that had this great taco deal on Tuesdays kind of like Taco Tuesday back in AZ at Del Taco. Well this was pretty much an all night happy hour with $10HKD tacos which for my American friends comes out to like $1.20USD. Ya, it ain’t as cheap as Taco Bell but what are ya gonna do? So, after months of salivating at the thought of a Chipotle burrito or anything Mexican for that fact, we finally got a group together to go.
So Jeff, Katie, Ben and myself ended up going to this restaurant, Tequila Jacks. It had the atmosphere of a Mexican restaurant with crates of Mexican beer everywhere, Aztec looking wall paintings, a bar and of course futbol on TV(soccer, football, whatever you want to call it). I felt right at home again. I used to eat Mexican 3-4 times a week. Not having any of it for 3 months, was probably the longest stretch that I ever want to go without it. I heart Mexican food. So right off the bat we ordered 3 tacos each and I had a Dos Equis, yuumm Mexican Beer.
The food came out relatively quick. I wouldn’t call these tacos fancy by any means. They were ground beef with a bit of salsa and some cheese. It had a nice spice to it which was well…nice. Finished the 3 tacos off relatively quickly and then I ordered 2 more along with another beer. I wouldn’t hype it up as the best tacos in the world by any means because I could have made the same tacos at home but It was a good meal. I left satisfied and content and in the end, thats really all that matters in a meal. $120HKD for 5 tacos and 2 beers is not to shabby for a dinner. I would give it a 7.5 out of 10 but that is probably because I’ve been spoiled with such fantastic Mexican food back at home such as Chipotle, Filiberto’s, Ramiro’s, Fiesta Burrito and every other hole in the wall place that carries deliciously unhealthy carne asada burritos. I await the next time my taste buds get to taste the sweet sweet taste of Southwest Mexican food.
Me no speak Chinese??
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Soooo you know how I said I was going to try to tutor for work while I was out in HK…well I finally did last week. It took a couple of months after I applied because most kids were still in school so the tutoring center didn’t need extra teachers but summer session just began so it is pandemonium inside the center with kids everywhere. The owner of the tutoring center called me the day before and asked me to show up and discuss and teach the next day so I thought hey, it doesn’t hurt to earn some extra cash. Well I showed up at 11:00 AM the next morning to start helping as an assistant to one of the other teachers who was a young Eurasian college student that lives in HK. First session went great. We tag-teamed teaching 3 kids a lesson on words that end with the letters “an.” It was a joyous time of teaching phonics and saying sentences such as “Emily cooked with a pan“, “Emily stayed out in the sun far too long and got a tan“, “Emily drank from a soda can” and so on and so forth. Good times. Good times.
Second session started at 12:00 pm. There were 8 kids so we split into 2 classrooms of 4. I had 2 little girls and 2 little boys that were around 8-9 years old. Their names were Gigi, Serina, Edison and Kevin. Cute little kids I would have to say but would they stay that way…
Our lesson that day for them was based on reading comprehension and the topic was “The first day of school.” Oh, the wonderful memories of the first day of school. Heck I can remember my 1st day of school pretty vividly. My mom dropping me off at school and me not wanting to get out of the car so I would pull on her hair so I could stay with her. Ya, that first day of Senior year high school was rough, uhhh I meant kindergarten… Anyways, we read a story about these twin girls that were experiencing their first day of school and we talked about what they ate for breakfast and how they were late to school because of an accident and then finally the twist in the whole story was they switched backpacks accidentally when they got to school!! I love these crazy children’s stories with twists.
So, as I was teaching them they had confused looks on their face, then I thought oh yeah there was vocabulary on the front page and I skipped right over it. Stupid me. So we went back to the 1st page and went over the vocabulary. I explained words like accident by using 2 pencils and making them collide. I said to them “this is an accident (took 2 pencils and smashed them into each other), Boom!!” It seemed like a great example at the time but unfortunately I was wrong, yet again… They started taking everything on the desk and made things go “Boom!!” Fantastic, I should get a star for my teaching capabilities.
We got to the word “term” and for the life of me, the most simple word in the world (not really) and I just was not getting through to them. I tried to explain, “a term is a period of time, like right now boys and girls, you are on summer term, and when you go to school in September, that is your 1st term of school.” Right, that makes sense doesn’t it? Made sense to me! So as I kept on trying to explain it to them, I overheard one of the girls, Serina, speaking to Gigi in Cantonese saying “what is he talking about” and Gigi would reply “I have no idea.” Also, by this point, Edison was quite restless and put his head on the ground and then the girls kept on yelling at me to speak Chinese. They kept saying in English, “we know you can speak, just talk to us in Chinese.” Of course I was carefully instructed to say “What are you talking about, I’m from America, I can’t speak Chinese.” But of course we all know that’s a lie haha, oh how devious and tricky us adults are…
So my kids kept on getting restless and did not want to do any of the activities and Edison putting his head down did not help the situation because then Gigi started putting her head down on the table. You may ask where Kevin was during this whole time, well he was the quiet one so we don’t talk about him. The girls kept on talking in Cantonese and of course I understood so I would interrupt their conversations with what they were talking about in English but kids, they are the cutest things, they didn’t even pick up on me understanding their chinese, I was just so sneaky.
We got to the part where they were supposed to write about their 1st day of school. Let’s just say they were not happy to have to write a paragraph now on their 1st day of school after answering questions about the twins from the story before. They kept on raising their voices and I kept on trying to reason with them. I went as far as to tell them what to write exactly and still, barely a budge on their efforts. I would then go on to explain with threats like, “Now Gigi, your parents are paying a lot of money for you to learn here. You need to do the work or they won’t be very happy.” So a tip to you future tutors, the threat of parents usually works on little kids. Class ended, I graded each of them for the day (I was a bit too gracious on their scores, I’m way too nice) and we said our good-byes.
After class, I discussed the schedule of when I would work with the tutor center’s owner (I forgot to mention that at the time I was and currently still am full time volunteering on Mondays thru Thursdays at my church). She said, “I’m going to need you on Tuesday and Thursday from Noon to 1:00 PM.” So I quickly thought to myself, “hmm, 2 hours a week right in the middle of my day” and I responded with a “No, thank you very much.” And that my friends, concludes my illustrious career as a childern’s english teacher.
Futurists…
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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!
Macau
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So like about a month ago I visited Macau with my uncle, aunt, and little coz. Ya, sorry it took me a month to write it. I got quite discouraged with the last post because posting pictures took about forever so I guess it took me a month to swallow my pride and take one for the team.
Macau is quite an interesting place. It is becoming known as the Vegas of the East. Steve Wynn of Wynn Hotels has put in quite a bit of change into this place banking on this idea of it becoming Vegas-esque. It’s filled with some really rich history too which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was once ruled by Portugal and that can be seen through many of the Portuguese street signs and the beautiful European architecture. There were a few really neat old churches there. Beef jerky also seems to be really popular here. Why you may ask? I have no idea but the street vendors give you tons of samples and it is quite tasty. Well here’s some pics of Macau…
Here is the Kun Lam Statue. It’s quite interesting when you get up close and look at the face. It’s supposed to be a Buddhist temple but the face has a Caucasian look to it which was a little different.
They had a lot of this interesting Mosaic tile flooring all over the city which was just interesting to see. It definitely made normal sidewalks look boring.
Here is the old Macau Post Office that was built in the late 1800’s.
This is a picture of one of the most popular areas in Macau. This square had beautiful old architecture and tons of shops to walk through. It was definitely one of my favorite spots in Macau.
These two pictures are of the Ruin’s of St. Paul which was dedicated to the Apostle Saint Paul. It was built in the 17th century but after a fire, all that was left was this stone entrance. I would have loved to see it in it’s original form as a cathedral but was truly amazed nonetheless at the stunningly crafted facade.
Sunday June 22, 2008
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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!!
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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.
Day 4
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I left the mainland on this day but before we left, we played a round of golf. The facilities were beautiful and they had a fantastic clubhouse for the players, which included private lockers, individual rain showers, sauna, etc. The course was very nice also. It was very green with lots of foliage everywhere. When we got changed and ready to play, I was kind of shocked because we each had our own caddie. I’ve never had a caddy before. I had two thoughts, wow this is the coolest thing ever and why do I suck so bad at golf. I started the round off with a pretty shot on a par 3. I got probably 30 feet from the whole so it was an easy chip and at most a 2 putt right? Nope, I shanked my chip and chipped again, then proceeded to 3 putt on some ridiculously slow greens. Great start to the round. My round that day consisted of a lot of draws and then switched to slicing the ball. It was nice to have the caddy position me and even give me the line on putts, which helped tremendously. Near the end of the round of some par-4s I started to actually hit straight so instead of my ball going to where I was hitting before, I pretty much killed some drives they were no where to be found. All in all, I realized that man I am really bad at golf and I should never touch another club in my life but lets face it, that’s not going to happen.
Day 3
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I was rather tired on this day due to all of the late night festivities of the prior day. Most of this day, I just finished reading a book and learned some more Mandarin. Not really too much happened in the day time but at night we set up a basketball game against another factory nearby. Finally, I could see a glimpse of what street ball was like in China. We walked to the other factory, which took about 30 minutes, and when we go there, most of the workers had gotten off work and were standing around waiting to watch the game. Many of these factories have recreational courts in them for their workers, so it was commonplace to see basketball courts, badminton courts and table tennis tables around the factories. When we go there we shot around and actually warmed up like game. I was shocked to see that there was a referee there also. This game was legit. At first my team was dominating. We went ahead by as many as 20 points and then some new guys started showing up and playing for the other team. These new guys came in and they actually took the lead. We played 4 quarters for nearly 2 hours. It was exhausting but at the end we came back and won by 10.
Day 2
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The second day at the factory was not extremely eventful so I finished a book in the morning and then one of the interns taught me how to speak mandarin the rest of the day. She was a very good teacher and afterwards I felt very confident that if I actually get to be put into an environment where I have to use it throughout the day, everyday, I will be able to catch on rather quickly.
That night, there was a company dinner. These dinners happen every other month or so and they are usually hosted by one of the departments of the company. I thought, Yaaay another dinner but this was no ordinary dinner. This was a Chinese business dinner where you drink red wine. It’s both traditional and cultural to have these types of dinners in China. I was not prepared for what this night would turn out to be.
First off lets just make it clear up front, everyone knows that we Chinese can’t drink a lot in the 1st place. In fact, after doing research most Asians do not have an enzyme that breaks down alcohol thus causing the redness in their faces and the quick tipsiness.
So at this dinner, there were around 30 people. The night starts off slowly with a lot of joking around and mingling and then you start off with some appetizers. This is probably a 14 course meal so about 4 courses into the meal, the workers start toasting each other and the boss. They say their toast and then it’s bottom’s up. I should also mention, the night starts off with very little alcohol in the glass but by the end of the dinner things get out of hand. At first, I just sat there quietly and joined a couple of toasts because if you don’t it is very impolite. After a while, people started noticing the new guy (me) and then I started getting toasted.
The fun didn’t end at the dinner, there was much more hilarity that followed this night. We left the dinner and headed to…yes, you guessed it, a Karaoke Bar!!! Like that’s not stereotypical at all… This was no ordinary Karaoke Bar. Us Asians know how to really do it right. These Karaoke Bars are not like the open night mics that we have in Phoenix, they are like private vip rooms. The mics are cranked up all the way and you can barely hear the music, what you hear is a bunch of Chinese people yelling into the mics. All I can say is my descriptions of this event do it no justice. The only thing I could think of the entire time at the Karaoke Bar was, “why don’t I have my camera, why!” And yes, I did sing some songs. I sang “You’ve lost that loving feeling” by the Righteous Brothers and I sang a duet with my uncle “My way”, which I thought was was an Aerosmith song (I was wrong). I also sang a couple Japanese songs. To sum it up, that was a most interesting night and a memorable one.
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