From Hong Kong, with love

This is my last layover for the year. It's been fairly entertaining, to say the least. In an already efficient airport like Hong Kong, there apparently is zero foot traffic past 10pm. I flew through security and found myself with way too much time on my hands.

So now I'm sitting in a food court. Originally I was sitting here by myself, but apparently another flight from France must have landed because all of a sudden I'm surrounded by at least 50 french people, all trying to order food and drinks with zero English. There was about a minute of confusion while ordering beer, between 'quatre' (four), versus what the waitress understood as 'three'. A part of me wanted to intervene with my subpar knowledge, but a larger part of me reasoned that these language clashes are healthy for people. It's good for people to be outside of their comfort zones, because at the end of the day, people have universal languages: body language, facial expressions, and most importantly, patience with one another: it wasn't hard to count 'un, deux, trois, QUATRE' on a hand to clarify how many beers they wanted.

But the cordialism practiced over language clashes in an international airport such as Hong Kong are to be appreciated. The international space is an asylum, if you will. Why can't the rest of the world just, well, get along?

If the cellphones could speak

For the longest time, my iPhone 3 worked as an iPod, but now it's been officially demoted to an alarm clock at my brother's place. That's quite an expensive alarm clock. I know there are organizations taking cellphone donations and distributing them to domestic abuse victims, but I hope to God that there aren't as many domestic abuse victims in this world as there are functional, discarded cellphones.

Where have all the cellphones gone? What is this new green movement they speak of?

Are you feeling it, too?

Living Consciously

Have a seat. Line 12 (the green line) was mine. The above was my station. I did a good amount of thinking while I was in that city, but since then, the relationships that I've built with people have burgeoned into excellent conversation and even better times. Treat each substantial conversation as a privilege. You never know where it'll take you in life.

Ever since my roommate mentioned the concept of "living consciously", I haven't been able to shake the idea. The conversation came about during a late-night/early morning tête-à-tête over full mugs of Rémy Martin. We tired of whatever it is we had been doing M-F, and needed to really hash it out. How many people go through life unconsciously? From personal interactions, many people in the financial sector tend to live life without really questioning why they do what they do, and more importantly, what else is going on out in the world. We seem to cover the following topics well: food, leisure, material goods. But when breaching topics such as human trafficking and illiteracy in America, often times, we start to hear the crickets chirping.

And when the Tsunami hit Japan this past spring, the outcry in our sector seemed louder on the financial repercussion front than in any real, human, aspect. Any expression of sympathy was usually followed by a five second moment of silence, before delving into the investment opportunities that may or may not subsequently materialize.

Have we forgotten to be people?