Infinite Improbability in Hong Kong - Stamped passport

Sometime in Mid 2004...

The heavy shower had eased out a bit when our flight took off. I got a seat in the center wing by the aisle with Santhosh right next to me in the center seat. Its not like its very cushy but the seats of Singapore Airlines flight SQ411 were pretty good by most standards. The LCD display at the back of every seat offered a choice of 5 movies from which HellBoy was the one that I picked. It was a 5.5 hrs flight and it was just after Hell Boy finished, that I must have dozed off. The inflight food was damn cool. Had a choice of the finest liquor (which I did not indulge in) and a great menu to choose from. The great menu however resulted in a rather bland saag with Chicken and rice.

Singapore Airport is really cool. Its big and huge and has travelators covering most of the airport. Travelators are like big moving belts, something of a horizontal escalator. So you cover distances pretty fast. It’s in the shape of a C where the middle of the C has glass instead of walls and you can have a dekho at the aircrafts standing outside; boarding passengers. The ends of the C house the shopping malls. Gucci, Mont Blanc, Dior, you name it – they have it. The Chanel perfume shop is such that when you pass by the place, it still smells damn cool. There is a food court and it houses every kind of food. Santhosh being a vegetarian chose upon a restaurant called the Kaveri where he took some Idli and Dosa.

The check in procedure at Singapore airport is also pretty cool. They ask you to remove everything in your pockets into a tray. Your watch, wallet, even the belt, after which you walk through the metal detector door. In case you still buzz they’ll check you, otherwise if you don’t buzz – just move on.

The flight from Singapore to HongKong is just 3.4 hours. It was a bright sunny morning in Singapore on which our flight SQ462 took off. Here the opulence was even more. The food was more exquisite and there were even larger variety of Liquor (again – No Indulgence). The food was damn cool, it was Chicken Fillet served with Chinese White Sauce. Two Cokes and the best Ice Cream I have ever had. It was WOW.

The easiest way to reach the city from the airport is the Airport Express. It’s the name given to the special train that runs between the Airport and parts of the city. The Mass Transit railway – MTR as it’s called is outstanding. The Airport Express seats are much like the seats of an aircraft. Its got a LCD behind it which houses details of what movies, exhibitions etc are running in the city. Like most things in Hong Kong it’s completely Airconditioned. The scene through which it runs is picturesque. It passes a lot through the sea and hills and has views of a lot of tall skyscrapers. A very large dock – where cargo containers were dumped over one another stretched for almost like two km alongside the railway track. The MTR railway also has the provision whereby you can use their bus which plies to most of the hotels. So we got down at Kowloon and boarded the Express Train bus to Langham Hotel (Chinese its called Long-Ting). There was booking already done in our name and I got room no 517 whereas Santhosh got room no 542. That’s just on the fifth floor. The first look into the room had really stunned me though now it looks pretty Okay. It’s got two beds, a working desk, a TV, two sitting chairs with a center table, a huge wardrobe, a bathroom and lots of table lamps. The bathroom has a shower enclosure (glass) and a tub. The water is thermostat controlled, viz that you just set the temperature and can get the water at that temperature.

The hotel is in a large shopping area called Tsim Sha Sui. Sunday evening itself we were out on the streets. I had a burger at McDonalds and Hot Dog at a Chinese fast food center. A Nestle Ice Cream which pretty much tasted like Amul Ice cream to me. We ended the day with watching “Spiderman II” at a theatre cum mall called Silvercord. The theatres at India – the multiplexes are better than these. Silvercord was extremely long with those at the back seat (that’s me) thinking that binoculars would have been a great idea.

The people of Hong Kong are very helpful. They in fact go out of their way to help you, especially if you are a foreigner. Just today morning itself the cook gave me an extremely large helping of fish and I had to ask him to stop putting anymore.

Fat Hong-Kongites are very very rare. The girls, guys are all extremely thin. They are all pretty small in height and we generally tower over them. They are all extremely fair and mostly all are pink in the face. They are so pink that I actually noticed that to write it to you. They eat anything and ducks seem to be the favourite. It’s considered a delicacy here. You have pork, beef, anything and everything. In fact today lunch time, I was almost going for a dish when I read that it’ll be served with Eels. Went for the fish rather.

Vincent Chiu, the head of Kanbay Hong Kong arrived at the hotel at 8:20 a.m. on Monday and we all boarded a taxi to HSBC. The HSBC office is three 20 odd floor buildings standing alongside each other at an angle. It’s all silver glass right up till the top with a huge HSBC logo on the top. We entered into the second building and immediately met Denny Wong (IT Project Manager) and Kelvin Tong (Assistant IT Project Manager). They were both rather warm in their welcome. We were given the Access cards and taken on the tour of the place to acquaint us with the Canteen, Rest rooms et al. Their work space is essentially a lot of White square tables with two people sitting on either side of the table. Its nothing quite like what we get to see at Kanbay. The dress code is strictly formal, and we wear Blazers to office. There is only one jack for the connection so it’s either I or Santhosh who can connect to the network at any particular time.

We were ushered into the Card Services UAT room. A part of the room has been modified to make into a training area, which means there are 9 tables arranged in a 3X3 matrix and a table facing this matrix. The table facing the matrix is the one which houses the projector and the faculty. There are close to 31 people who are taking on the training and they have a minimum work experience of 4 years with most of them averaging around 8 – 10. We ran them through the agenda of the training and told them what’s in store for them including the Base IIs.

The hours at which they work is 9:00 – 12:00. They have a 1.5 hours lunch break and then working again from 1:30 – 5:30. The first training was on Credit Card Business which got over before time, essentially because they all pretty much knew what we were telling. The next one which was on “Relating WHIRL to Card Services” was where they got their first glimpse of WHIRL and it’s from there that they started asking a lot of questions.


That was all a long time ago... in a city far far away... and I dont remember any more of it..I'll dig into my mails and probably find the rest of it...