a tale of two companies

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
a rainy saturday afternoon greeted my arrival in hong kong. the air was a bit chilly, though it was only august (supposed to be still summer in the island). my friend who greeted me at the ifc terminal of the airport express was wearing a black waterproof jacket with a huge umbrella on hand.
heavy rains seemed to be following me. when i left manille, some parts of the metropolis were still struggling with flood after it was battered by a strong typhoon a week ago.
"welcome to rainy hong kong," he said with a huge smile on his face, while helping me with my two huge bags that contained my entire thirty-odd years of living in manille.
we went straight to the apartment building that was booked by my employer, thomson, through hong kong's efficient red taxi. i would be staying in the flat for my first month in the former british colony for free courtesy of the company. after that, i was supposed to find my own apartment.

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i was impressed by the size of the one-bedroom apartment. it was definitely bigger than my one-bedroom flat in makati. so i thought that all apartments in hong kong were as generous as my first temporary shelter when it comes to floor areas. i was wrong. but i didn't know that yet.
after i checked-in, took a quick hot shower, put on fresh clothes, my friend brought me to a nearby chinese restaurant for our early dinner.  it was still drizzling. a blessing from heaven. while enjoying yang chao fried rice, fried chicken, dim sum, my friend handed me a card the size of an atm. it was the famous octopus card, a debit card that you could use to pay for almost anything in hong kong: fare at the mtr, the tram, everything at seven-eleven or any other stores in the city. how convenient.
the octopus card, which had a one hundred dollar value, was his welcome gift for me. sweet!

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(while i had been in the city a number of times before, those were mostly short visits. this time, i was here to live and work. how exciting can that be?)

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the thomson office was right at the heart of central -- in the same building as the famous landmark mall where louis vuitton's flagship store is located. it was a ten-minute ride via the double-decker tram from my temporary flat (the bauhinia along connaught road). i love riding the trams, by the way, very old worldly. reminded me of my first ever trip to san francisco years before.

in the evening, i used to walk back to my flat from the office. i needed the exercise.
my first few weeks in hong kong went like a blur, a dream. from trying to learn the ropes about covering the hong kong economy, stock market, among others, very quickly; to getting used to communicating -- most of the time, with the use of hand gestures to accompany my passable english -- to locals (the taxi driver, the maids at bauhinia who cleaned the room, changed sheets and took my laundry, the guards at the building, the baristas at starbucks, the cute guys in bars); everything went fast.
even i was surprised at how quickly i had adopted hong kong as my new home, and adapted to my new life in a city that never sleeps. i was also glad that i survived my first few weeks even if i hardly know any cantonese other than "wei" (hello) and "maidan" (the bill).  (i hope i spelled them right).

(at my thomson desk, before the merger with reuters, interviewing a fund manager about stock picks.)

(the cozy thomson office at landmark in central. beside us was the ifr asia office. i almost joined ifr.)

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after office, i would go with my friend and his broker to look for a flat. i told the broker to find for me a cheap flat within central, a walking distance from my office, so i won't have to take the mtr, which was then a challenge given how confusing the signs were, the volume of people that ride the trains, among others. i was scared of getting lost or of falling on the track while waiting for the train.
that was how i got the first taste of life in hong kong.
the flats that the broker showed us were so tiny and so expensive that i almost went back to my old apartment in makati. after several days of hunting, going up and down soho, mid-levels, sheung wan, we finally found one that suited my budget. it was supposed to be a two-bedroom unit, but it was so tiny that in manille, it would have been only a studio apartment. it was an old building at the tip of mid-levels. i had to take the famous escalator (where some scenes of batman, the dark knight was shot with morgan freeman and christian bale), passed through bars and restaurants where gweilos abound, to and from work. but i had no complaints, as long as it was walking distance from the office. also, the bars and restaurants along the way were a bonus.
it was only later that i discovered that the mid-levels is among the most pricey as far as rents are concerned in central.
never mind.

(my miniscule hong kong flat at the mid-levels full of wonderful, precious memories.)

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my first funny anecdote happened when i took a taxi to the office.
it was raining hard. but finding a taxi was never a problem. once inside, i told the driver about my destination -- "landmark" in my most articulate, british slash visayan accent. the driver, in his late sixtys, with balding hair and smelly breath, shouted: "wer?" i was still composed and continued pronouncing "landmark" properly, making sure that the diction and enunciation were perfect the way madame coolerman had taught us at the swiss finishing school that i went to right after college.
he shouted again, showering me with saliva. this time a bit louder and sounding more irritated:"wer?" after four more tries, i finally told him: "lanmak" (pronouncing it very quickly). that's when he understood me. "ah lanmak" then he smiled and the rest of the trip went on smoothly.
upon reaching the office, i asked a hong konger friend to please write down in chinese characters the name of our office building and address as well as that of my apartment building so that i would just show the piece of paper to the driver if ever i would ride a cab again.
problem solved.

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another funny anecdote happened during my fist date with a guy who worked in a bank right across the office. you see, he helped me set up my account when i opened one so that my salary would be deposited there directly every month. the young guy, just like most rich chinese, was educated in london, so i had no problem communicating with him. he was in his mid-twentys, tall, skinny and reminded me of the chinese-japanese actor takeshi kaneshiro. yes, he was that gorgeous.
anyway, when i told him that i was working as a business reporter for thomson covering, among others, the stock market, he became excited. it turned out that just like most ambitious hong kongers, he too was investing in stocks. he asked for my office phone number and mobile number so that, in his words, we could talk about stocks and the market from time to time.
so there. sometimes he would call me to inquire why this particular stock was moving. why the hang seng index was rising rapidly, reaching record highs. i told him it was because of the so-called chinese bullet train, that is, the chinese government is encouraging its citizens to buy hong kong shares or most commonly referred to as h-shares.
then the phone conversations led to coffees. then lunches.
one time, he asked me if i wanted to go barhopping with him in lan kwai fong (a few steps away from both our offices). it was a friday. i immediately said yes.
so we had dinner. then after that, we went barhopping.
around eleven, i was already quite drunk. but i did not tell him. i wanted to impress him. he kept on buying drinks. i kept on drinking. we were seated at the bar, listening to the music, talking. like lovers.
at one point, i went to the toilet. when i came back, i fell on the floor as i was trying to sit on the very tall bar stool. i was so embarrassed. i freaked out. when he tried to help me to stand up, i turned him away. then when i recovered, i left him immediately, leaving him with a few hundred dollars to pay for our drinks.
i know. very drama queen.

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i refused to go out with him after that. that's how embarrassed i was.
but we remained friends. in fact, when he joined a rival british bank as an investment officer a few months after, he took me to lunch.

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thomson was a great company to work for. they pay generously too. most of my colleagues, reporters in other bureaus such as singapore and london, and the editors based in manille, were filipinos and were my friends from way, way back. so it was like i did not leave manille at all. unlike my former employer, another international news wire agency called bloomberg in its manille bureau, work in thomson was a breeze. there was not much pressure to be ahead of the competition in sending out one line headlines or news flashes. there was no pressure to look for juicy stories to outscoop the competition.
even better, since my bureau chief was a long-time friend, i could go home as early as four in the afternoon once i finished everything. at that time, we divided the coverage of the hong kong stock market: i did the preview and the opening stories, someone else did the mid-morning break and another one the closing.
(to date, thomson had offered me my best working experience and remained my best employer.)

(relaxing after a day's work with reuters' colleagues in lan kwai fong.)

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the problem came up after the merger between thomson and reuters. we were all on the edge as to who would be let go and who would be absorbed by the merged company, known as thomson reuters.
for several months, we were all restless. in fact, there were nights when i could not sleep. i was already enjoying hong kong then, and i signed up a two-year lease with my landlord, so i didn't want to go back to manille after just a year and forfeit my two months' deposit.
the pressure and the suspense also tested my friendships with some of the people in thomson. but luckily, we all survived that one intact. still friends.
amid this suspense, thomson's affiliate, ifr asia, the bible of the capital markets, tried to hire me as one of its reporters. after i passed the written exam (a first, because when i applied for thomson, there was no examination. after my soon-to-be-boss interviewed me in manille, she immediately hired me. right there and then. no other questions asked.  two weeks later, thomson hr sent me my contract and then followed by a two-way ticket to hong kong) and the interviews (there were two, i think. one with the ifr hong kong bureau chief. and the big boss in london), i was ready to move to ifr.
but before i could even sign the contract with ifr, it was announced that all of us in the hong kong bureau of thomson would be absorbed by thomson reuters. (the downside was, we all had to move to the reuters office, which was quite far from central. that's how i became an expert in taking the mtr.)
the announcement was heaven. the end of the sleepless nights. of the uncertainty.
looking back, i think i would have stayed longer in thomson reuters had i accepted the ifr job. but that's another post altogether.

(one of my bestfriends in reuters on a weekend drinking session in soho. she has since moved to beijing and is now reuters's top political correspondent and china expert.)

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the worrier and paranoid me kept on worrying about the income tax that i would pay in hong kong. unlike in manille where the tax is withheld on your pay check twice a month, in hong kong it was different. you get your salary in its entirety, it is up to you to save some away so that you have enough money when tax payment time comes in january and in april. i heard of a lot of people who were forced to borrow money from the bank just to pay their taxes.
since i was a big spender and never got into the habit of saving, i was always worried every time my savings dipped below ten percent of my annual salary. a friend said that the best estimate on the amount of tax that i would pay was about ten percent of my salary. yes that low, compared to around thirty four percent in the philippines.
so every time my deposit drops below the amount that i needed to pay for taxes, i would refuse to go shopping, to eat out, to drink in bars. once it exceeded, then i would resume my usual spending habits.
it went on for months.
when my tax assessment finally arrived in my mailbox, it was even less than what i had anticipated. plus, you could pay the amount in two installments. luvly!
to say that i felt like a needle was removed from my chest was an understatement. i went out right away to celebrate and got so drunk that the next day, still hung over, i could not recall how i got home the previous night, and was more surprised when i saw a naked stranger beside me, snoring so loudly.
chos!

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but just like everything else in my directionless life, a few years later, i became restless in hong kong. i felt as if the city was choking me, killing me softly.
it was too small that you ended up meeting the same set of people where ever you go. then work became unbearable too with all the changes being implemented at the company.
i also had my first heartbreak. it was so painful, i nearly went insane. no chos this time.
then my father died and i had to be with my mother in our old home.
so i packed my bags and left. just like that. oh it was a cold, cold, gloomy day when my flight left hong kong. it was a few days after christmas and the airport was packed.
the rest, as they say, is still not yet history.

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that's all, fairies, witches, queens, pa-queens and wannabes. have a lovely week ahead.