First Impressions: Part I

Look at her, isn’t she a beaut?

In our infinite wisdom we decided to go and see our new country with a quick nip around the world for a 10 day stay. Very Long story very short: It’s incredible.  

We flew with emirates to get there, consisting of a 7 hour journey to Dubai, a 3 hour stop over and a further 6 or 7 hours to HK itself.  The return flight was even worse, going via Bangkok if I remember rightly, and extending the journey by about another 3 hours.  If I have learnt one thing from this journey, it is that it is most definitely worth the extra money to go direct (both of my next flights are going to be direct with Cathay Pacific, one business, one economy, so I’ll let you know how they go).  

The journey from the airport is painless enough, with a direct train from the airport to HK, costing about £10, which was clean, bright and not in any way busy.  Tip for new people: Hong Kong stations != Central station; You can walk between them (like Bank/Monument in LDN) but you’ll have to pay a separate fair for getting to your next destination.  However, the fairs are so small it’s truly irrelevant.  The transport is one of the greatest things about HK, everything is quick, reliable and cheap.  There’s currently outrage because the cost of the island tram (The only wooden-sided tram system still running in the world, which goes from one end of the north of the island to the other) is going up from approximately 20p to about 22p per journey. 

Things you might not realise about HK:

- it uses UK plugs

- They drive on the left

The benefits of Great Britains once dominance in the world shines through.  This is particularly of use as it means things like xboxes and laptops will JustWork over there (although DVDs/games are regionalised)

Throughout the week I was struck by how busy HK is.  It’s much, much busier than London, and I didn’t think that was possible.  Having such a large concentration of people in a small space creates such a unique atmosphere.  It doesn’t help that Hong Kongians are sloooow. Members of the “I should be allowed to punch slow people in the back of the head’ Facebook group may struggle somewhat, but some of this rage may be placated by the nature of the people. Everyone’s nice.  To the point where we looked confused and lost at a bus stop, and a lady pointed us in the right direction, then ran 30 yards to us to point us in the right direction when we got it wrong, and then ran another 100 yards after we got it wrong again. 

Other key aspects for wantaways:

- Yes, pretty much everyone speaks English to some degree.  And no one gets angry by your inability to speak the language. 

- Yes, there’s plenty to eat if you’re a fussy eater. I am a VERY fussy eater, but it’s much like London or New York; It’s an international city, you can have any food type you want.  Sure, you’ll pay a premium for it, but you won’t starve.  Also, McDonalds is outrageously cheap (We’re talking a 9 Chicken McNugget Extra Value Meal with milkshake for around £2.50 if my memory serves right).  HOWEVER, if you’re willing to eat locally (which we were able to do thanks to legend Andy Sandbox showing us the way) then you can eat lovely food on the cheap; A lot of the local restaurants seem daunting (no English menu on the outside, animals hung in the window etc.), but if you’re brave (or have someone to push you into it) then it’s totally worth it. Great food for small change.

- One of the greatest pieces from my view is the Octopus Card. Same concept as Oyster, except it works in everything; Bus, Boat, Tram, Taxi etc. If it’s public transport, you can use your Oyster. HOWEVER, you can also use it in pretty much every supermarket, in all the mcDonalds (Im not obsessed, promise), and in lots of other shops and restaurants.  It just makes life  a lot easier than having to mess around with loose change or card transactions.

That’s kind of a mind splurge of general thoughts on HK.  I’ll do a follow up post with what we actually did in our time over there, but that’ll do for now.

1 week to go

In exactly 7 days time I will be flying out to Hong Kong to begin a new life.  Tomorrow is my last day in London, as the rest of the week will be spent seeing family. I’ve done the work leaving drinks, and the leaving party, and everything seems to be coming to a close.

Seen as this blog was meant to be as an informative piece for people who’re going to do this in the future, I figured I’d post my list of Things To Do Before I Go.  At least the one’s I’ve remembered so far:

- Forms forms forms.  Along with the ton of forms I’ve had to complete for my new job, there’s a magical form you need to fill out for the HMRC (I believe the P85), which is effectively the “I’m leaving, not dead, now give me my tax back” form.  Alas, I can’t return it till I get my P45, and gawd knows when that’ll be, or if work’ll be clever enough to send it to me.  Fortunately, both the inlaws worked in the tax system, my mother in law then becoming an accountant, so they’ve volunteered to sort it for us.

- Medical things: Along with needing to organise inhalers (they have ventalin over there, but I have no idea what hoops I’ll need to jump through to get it), I’ve had to sort contact lenses (You can’t buy anymore than 12 months at a time from your last test), and then vaccinations; There’s nothing mandatory for HK, but there’s several recommended; Namely, Hep A, Hep B and Typhoid.  Hep A and Typhoid are free on the NHS, Hep B cost me £100 but can be done at your local pharmacy, and is a series of 3 injections.   You get a vaccination book and stickers though.  But not cool stickers.

- Banks and bills: Mass rush to pay final bills, and change bank account adresses. I’m choosing to keep all of my accounts open, as I imagine I’ll stil be purchasing a lot of UK digital content, and it’s a nice to have.  RBS, HSBC and First Direct have all been amenable to it, with the only slight issue being FD removing m overdraft and reducing my credit card to near nothing, for fear of customers maxing out and running. Maybe the rule only applies to Mancunians 

I also attempted to open up an account in advance in HK, however HSBC wanted to charge me £100 for the privelage.  I’ll open it when I get there.

- Print off a big list of contacts and tickets: Plane tickets, new addresses, and a big sheet of people at my new job to contact when everything goes wrong.

- Student Loan Company: although I could just run away and tell them to stick their loan up where the sun don’t shine for having appalling service and generally just being a bunch of tools, seen as I’d like to come back to the company at some point I have another form to fill out to say that I’m leaving.  However, being tools as aforementioned, they want me to prove how much I’m earning before I start paying them.  Grrr.  However, I now have all this proof, so will need to send this off soon.

That’s all the official-dom I’ve done so far, except for the happy moment of sticking my visa into my passport.  Turns out a visa is a really disappointing sticky label, that has no photo, no shiny watermark or logo. Just a sticky label. Global travelling is no where near as exciting as you’d think.

Everything genuinely seems wrapped up now except for packing.  :)

A long lost update

It’s been a while and with a fair few developments since last time, so I thought instead of putting it off I’d finally get around to posting something.

Our cat’s did go to Wood Green animal centre in the end.  It was about an hour and a half drive from Hackney, involving some rather precarious country roads, the centre was fantastic. Lovely green spaces, in the middle of a remote village, with some very cute animals.  In the time since I posted, they’ve already found new homes.  

In terms of actually getting over to HK, things have moved on a faster than I hoped.  I have a  contract (YAY!), some temporary accommodation on arrival (6 weeks in a serviced apartment, lovely), a flight (which should be booked soon), and a job to do.   The whole process has moved quite quickly, but I’ve learnt the phone up, nag, send email confirming everything that’s been said on the call technique has tended to work a treat and much faster than just email-and-hope.  My visa application is in, so now it’s just a matter of waiting.

All of our possessions have now started their long, long trip to HK now too.  We went with Anglo Pacific shipping, who have so far been absolutely sterling.  Their website has a ton of information on shipping with lots of tips and tricks; They delivered some boxes to us in advance in case we wanted to pack anything ourselves (we packed clothes).  We just piled everything else of importance up, and they came around and swiftly and quietly packed it all on a Monday morning.  It’s all been exceptionally painless, which was unexpected in itself.  

We also went slightly over our limit (aiming at 60  sqft, came in at 68).  This caused no problems whatsoever, which was nice as I was concerned we’d get massively charged for more, but turns out most people go slightly over anyway.  I didn’t get around to taking a photo of all our possessions so you could compare/plan to steal them from our house in HK, but in 68ft we fit:

- A lot of clothes (The missus has a lot of dresses).  About 2 large boxes.

- A fair number of books, DVDs and games

- A load of bits and pieces in bags

- a ton of artwork, big and small (about 7 or 8 pieces)

- Some soft furnishing

- Full set of kitchen equipment

- 2 guitars and 2 small amps

Shipping came in at around £500, but with Marine Insurance that took it up to slightly over £800. The Marine insurance was decided by us: You list your possesions and value to insure them up to; we mostly stuck to the guide price, which resulted in us insuring up to approx £10,000, but you could insure much less and save some money. It’s a pricey affair, so try and get your work to include it in your transfer package (which fortunately mine have).

The other big news is we’ve actually been to HK now! But I’ll write that up (in photo’s) in another post.

Goodbye catsies

I have some very good and simultaneously bad news, in that we have a place for the cats at the Wood Green Animal Refuge, which I mentioned in the blog post.  We only asked 2 weeks ago, and they’ve already managed to find space for us.  the earliest we can get there (it’s an hour and a half drive) is a week on Friday, so that’s when we’ll be taking them. Less than 2 weeks left with the cats.  

The place they’re going to looks lovely. You can do a virtual tour by going to this link.  They should enjoy their time before hopefully finding a new place.

Whilst this is great news in terms of planning (particularly as we need to re-carpet our stairs due to cat-shredding), they are part of the family, and I can safely say I’ll cry like a girl once we give them up.  But, we’ve brought this on ourselves.  Wood Green should hopefully find them a new home nice and quickly and they’ll have forgotten about us by the Tuesday (they forgot their previous owners in no time!).

I’m also glad in a way we’re not giving them to someone we know, as I’d always be worrying about them, and texting/phoning which ever friend took them to check how they are. A complete cut off will be easier methinks.

So, go over to the Wood Green site and make a donation, because they’re awesome.  And animals are cute. 

Once upon a time…

How annoyed am I that tumblr doesn’t have auto-save. Just wiped all of my blog post.  So, I’ll try again.

My girlfriend has a job starting in HK at the very start of August.  I asked work if they could send me over, and everyone so far has (provisionally) said yes.  In the upcoming few weeks or so I need to negotiate my contract and terms (on permanent transfer basis). That’ll all be forthcoming.

So that leaves a few things left to do, that I’m so far aware of:

1) Find a new home for the cats.  Our 2 cats, Ginger and Annie, are awesome. Alas, we can’t take them with us (accommodation in HK is mostly small high rises, no place for 2 cats), and so they need a new home.  Not as easy as we were hoping, as Ginger recently had issues with a blocked urethra. Whilst he’s fully fixed now, he’s on a special diet, and there’s a chance it could re-occur.  Hence no insurance company will cover it, and few people will risk them without insurance.  SO, we’ve been trying to find charities that will take them and keep together.  Most of them are backed up for ages, but we’ve managed to get a couple to help:

• Paws 4 Life: Only had to fill out a small form and attach some photos, and they’ve put up a nice advert.  Which you can see here
• Wood Green Animal Refuge: Wood Green, whilst a bit out of London, have been nice enough to say they’ll definitely take the cats before the end of June. Whilst we’re not moving to the start of August, our house contract is up at the start of July, so we need the cats to go as soon as possible.  

2) Storage.  We have a lot of stuff. A LOT.  Beds, Couches, Shelves, the full works.  We need to store it.  It turns out it’s REALLY PRICEY.  We went and got a quote from safestore  in Stoke Newington, which you can see below (That quote doesn’t include £10 per week for insurance too!!).  It’s not cheap. I’ve looked at a variety of other options, such as non-access long term storage. http://www.yellowmoves.com have given a quote of £200 pcm. THAT’S £2400 A YEAR for 75sq ft of space.  Outrage.

However, we have been saved on this front, as my parents have now offered us their entire spare room for storage.  Whilst I feel very guilty about it, it does save us a lot of cash (we’re moving for a minimum of 2 years.  that’s 5 grand saved right there).

For anyone not lucky enough to have my parents, I’d definitely recommend a trip to Safestore. If you phone and book they give a £20 voucher for you to buy materials (actual no strings attached. 4 quality boxes and tape! Win!).  And also allows you the ability to see how much space you’ll need.  

3) Shipping: We have a lot of stuff to send over too. Clothes, mostly.  And kitchen stuff. And guitars of course, guitars being the most important ;).  I’ll do a blog post on this later as my better half has done the research on this.

So that’s a brief summary of the state of things.  As I know more, you will.  It’s exciting times!!