Heat Wave - yacht club

The heat wave is in full swing and I am sweating. 

Saturday we went to the beach. We tried out a new beach, South Bay Beach. This may be a new favorite beach for me in HK. Nice, clean, not too busy, and the water was wonderful. 

Saturday night I got invited to the private yacht club on Middle Island for BBQ. You must take a small boat from HK Island to Middle Island... Very James Bond-like. 

Sunday morning Lisa and I went to our favorite American diner in HK. The Diner! 

Rainy Weekend - Cantonese movie

This weekend was rainy. We had rain red warning which means heavy rain and flooding. The system of warnings goes amber, red and black.

Friday I went to the dentist after work (exciting stuff) and then to the spa for a massage (much better than dentist). My friends Amber and Sophie are back in Hong Kong after spending the summer visiting their families (US and Norway). They are both teachers so have summers off. So Clare, Amber, Sophie and I went out for Thai food Friday night.

Saturday was really rainy so Clare, Amber and I had lunch in the mall and then decided to watch a movie. We selected Monster Hunt which we had seen a trailer for. It's a Cantonese movie with English subtitles. It's about the human and monster worlds trying to live together. Was quite an experience and interesting movie. It was hard at time to watch the action and read the words. It also gave me time to practice listening to Cantonese. Here is a movie poster for your enjoyment.
 


Sunday I went to the gym and then had brunch with friends who had friends visiting from UK. Then relaxing afternoon/evening.

All in all a pretty low-key weekend because of the rain.

Shenzhen Visit

Wednesday I went to Shenzhen office to visit my team and attend a town hall meeting there. 

Here is view of the bay as I cross from HK side to Shenzhen side. This is from the bus window.

Hasbro in Chinese is translated to "Haaih Ji Bou" which means "children's treasure". I also learned that haaih is very close to the word for shoes so sometimes people in China think we are a shoe company. That works for me too!

Here is my team working with model shop and vendor on an item.

The lead for Hong Kong Takara Tomy team was in the Hasbro office that day so I stopped by to meet her, Regina (far left).

Weekend and Hottest Day on Record

Friday afternoon Hasbro has a friendly basketball match with one of our vendors and then we all went to dinner. I didn't play but went to watch and support the teams. It was slightly unfair because we had almost 30 people rotate in to play and they only had 10-15 people. So their team was much more tired than ours.

 

Both teams in the photo.

 
 Hasbro team and spectators... I am in the front row (pretty easy to spot me).

  Some of the spectators (Irene, me, Josephine and Carol).

Then we went to local hot pot restaurant for dinner. Here is my boss holding dinner.

This was the Cantonese speaking table. We had one specific English table for Americans, Indians and Indonesians as well.

 

Emir on left is Hasbro Indonesia country manager, then Amit who is head of HFE office, me, and Julie from Kam Hung vendor.

In hot pot, they bring you the raw food and you cook your own food in the boiling broth in the middle of the table... yes, you pay to cook your own food. Genius business idea.

Saturday was the hottest day on record since they started keeping records 130 years ago. At the observatory the temperature hit 36.3 C (97 F), some areas though reported 37.9 C (100.9 F).

Saturday Natascha and I ventured to Sham Shui Po to do some shopping. I wanted a DVD player and then we found a road with a bunch of DIY craft stores. I decided to embrace my crafty side and made a few purchases. The time pieces in the upper left I am going to make pendants and I bought chain to make necklaces for them. Then the flowers are going to become brooches to wear on my suit jackets. Let the crafting begin!!!
 

Oooo shiny things - I love the bling! Swarovski crystal creature and me. I'm on the left if you can't tell.

Sunday Natascha, Allison and I went to Ping Sham in New Territories to walk the Heritage Trail. 

Me, Allison and Natascha before we started (aka minimal sweat).

Do you see the Michelin man?

They used to build these walls around their houses to protect themselves from pirates.

Cool ceiling woodwork.

Where kids bikes go to die.

This lady yelled "hello" and we were immediately hooked. She then proceeded to make us handmade pork and onion dumplings.

Yum!

Fishy!

These are white trees and the first like it I've seen in HK.

View of Ping Sham area.

And another picture at the end. Aka this is the sweaty pic!

I need more days in the weekend!

Jared Goodbye Lunch with Development

We had a goodbye lunch for Jared yesterday with all the development directors and managers.

We had a record 19 course meal. Dim sum, appetizers, soup, entrees, sweet soup and then dessert. We actually skipped the rice AND noodles and had them packed up because we couldn't eat that much food. It was crazy! 2.5 hour meal to get through it all.

The gift they made Jared is actually a photo of Lisa and Jared but made up of pictures of the HFE staff. So you see the photo looks like little dots but it is actually all of our pictures really small to make the larger image. Pretty cool!
 

Best wishes to Jared! We know you will be back to visit often.