So yes, Hong Kong this time! ~ Cukraus

Hello my dear friends, fellows, buddies and colleagues. Although it wasn't so easy, I’m finally here in Hong Kong, have my visa, room, know how to get to my work and now trying to pretend being a local person.

“Why are you choosing countries where people are so different from you?”, -

asked a friend of mine right before my departure. And to be honest, I couldn't give a right explanation for it. First, it was Sri Lanka, now Hong Kong. Two so discrepant places. But still Asia, still something extraordinary and unusual. I can’t say what really brought me to Hong Kong. Maybe a little seek of adventures, a feel of boredom. Still Hong Kong was never in my Bucket list.

But I came here because of job opportunity it offered to me. In a short way of explanation, I am a project associate in Jockey Club Design Institute for Social Innovation, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (J.C. DISI). Now our main task is to organize huge international festival of Social Innovations (http://www.disi.polyu.edu.hk/socialinnovationfest2013/)

Our future office in this beautiful ship-look-alike Innovation Tower

'Welcome to Hong Kong' and 'You have to leave Hong Kong'!

My first week in here wasn't exactly like I expected. And it all started in the airport. I was met by my new buddy Mildred. She took me to students dormitory where I spent one night. Great thing to have a bed after 2 days of only vertical sleeping.

At the airport, officers didn't check my working visa and gave me visit visa instead. At that time I didn’t know it would cost me few difficulties. First, I had to leave Hong Kong as soon as possible to get my work visa activated. Without it I wasn't able to start my works. Second, my contract had to be revised, again, because of work visa activation delays. There wasn’t any other option than visit closest country or administrative region and activate visa while coming back. For this reason, Macau was suggested as a quickest and cheapest option for this matter.

Visiting gamblers paradise

Macau, another special administrative region of the People's Republic of China (the other being Hong Kong). So two days after me and Mildred went on a trip to Macau - a former Portuguese colony, This city was the last remaining European colony in China. While walking through tiny streets in central area, you see some remains of this period. Buildings really look like been taken from Europe and placed here. With a blend of European look and Chinese living culture, I was about to experience uniqueness in Macau.

All streets are named in Chinese or Portuguese. And no English. Those two languages stay as official ones in this area which gives a bit of difficulties to English or other language speakers. But since I was with Mildred, no problems occurred.

It needs to be mentioned that Macau nowadays is more famous for numberless casinos. Asian Las Vegas or gamblers paradise would be a better name to describe this region. This service is so big that even hotels are providing free of charge shuttles from the harbour to any hotel. You just have to pick one and and in 20 minutes you will come to one of those fancy 5 star hotels with at least 3 floors of casino. No pictures are allowed inside.

Frontier of St. Paul's church

City view with Grad Lisboa hotel peak

Sweet meet

Street food

World's biggest diamond, 218,08 carat weight

A summary of my first week:

Sunday - left home and took a bus from Kaunas to Warsaw.
Monday - visited Warsaw, took a plane to Qatar and spend a night in the airport.
Tuesday - after 8 hr flight safely arrived to Hong Kong.
Wednesday - selected an apartment and went to a new workplace where i was told my visa wasn’t activated and I need to leave HK as soon as possible.
Thursday - first day at office with lots of materials to read.
Friday - Visited Macau and get my visa activated. Met colleagues and few interns in evening.
Saturday - went to see Innovation tower where we will be moving in early September, attended a meeting about Social Innovation Festival
Sunday - slept all day long.