HK Blues

This entry has been a little delayed (how do you bloggers keep up to date on your writing)? Late Sunday night / early Monday morning, I made the mistake of checking e-mail (yes, I sleep with my Blackberry!) and found out that the firm won’t be fully providing housing for my portion of stay in HK. This created probably one of the first of many feelings of panic and anxiety!

Let me back up a little bit. EY would like me to start work middle of October. We mutually agreed that it would make sense to base me out of HK for the first two months as this is a critical time for me to get up to speed on the HK project as well as do as many of the country visits before the busy season (which starts in January). From a personal perspective, Sandra and I thought this would work out great for us. The two months in HK will be a chance for me to get as much travel done so that in January, we can settle down some roots and build some local relationships in Taipei. We liked the idea of heading to Taipei together formally January 1st, going through the adventure of finding an apartment we can call home together, etc. For those of you in HK and area, I was looking forward to having some time to catch-up with each of you, rebuild relationships and just see what’s happening in your life! (Secretly, I breathed a sigh of relief that I wouldn’t be on my own trying to negotiate apartment leases, navigate through cell phone packages and run other errands in Mandarin!)

From a practical perspective, we deferred my one month serviced apartment allowance to January. This would give Sandra and I some time to look for the “right” place, host my mom and my sister, as well as a very good friend visiting from Toronto as part of her sabbatical. On Monday morning, I received the confirmation that the firm wasn’t providing me full accommodation in HK. Their rationale was that I was to have one “base” city and the travel and accommodation costs in the “base” city would not be subsidized. I suppose this means that trips to Taipei in October through December will be paid for by the firm, and then future visits to HK, while we’re based in Taipei will be paid for. There’s obviously two perspectives, is it fair or unfair? Either way, that’s the reality of the situation and Sandra, after reminding me not to check e-mail in the middle of the night, prayed for the situation and insisted I go back to sleep!

Does Anyone Know of Short-term Accommodations Available in HK?

So.. if any of you out there know of short-term, affordable accommodation in HK for October 15 through to December 20, please let me know. I did send out a call out to a few people on Monday morning and the last 24 hours has been filled with friends and family providing various options. It’s a nice feeling to know that there is so much love and support out there. This “journey” has really helped us be humble enough to ask for help and rely on others. Thank you to each of you who has spent time and energy to help look.

Here’s some background on my approach to what I’m looking for in these two months in HK. I want to spend as little as possible because I really don’t see this as a place I would call home. It’s a practical place to sleep, store luggage and even an optional place to cook. We’ll share more about our dream for a place in Taipei in a separate entry… but this is basically the opposite of what we call “home” in Toronto or even Taipei. I’m looking for no frills place. Based on what I’ve seen in the last few days, it seems like no frills is what I’m going to get. Many of these “studio” apartments (more like rooms) are 150 to 200 sq ft. I believe that’s just about the size of my Toyota Sienna!

Will cut those short for now, otherwise, won’t get to ever posting anything. This has been sitting in my outbox for a few days now. Will share some background and thoughts around finances on this trip shortly. In the meantime, if anybody knows of value accommodations, please let me know!