New trainee in Headway!

On the 1st of January 2009 to the Philippines arrived new trainee. Her name is Karla and she is from Peru! She will be part of Headway Process Logics and her role is to be Business Consultant, she will be stating here for One year!

All of us are very excited to see fresh blood :P It is nice experience to welcome someone new to introduce everything and shared everything. Sometimes it is strange because you have someone of whom you should take care and you already have your life  but all in all it is nice experience.
I’m sure Karla soon will write something on the blog and shared her first impressions. Look forward new posts!

Cheers,
Dorota

New Year's in Hong Kong

Happy New Year to everyone! :)

One of the most attractive things of The Philippines is the feasibility to travel across Asia Pacific. So, in the previous posting we profiled Thailand. And now I will be profiling Hong Kong.

Some basic data about Hong Kong:

1) Population rate comparing to the total HK area.

2) Chinese heritage, very marked, people feeling proud of it, but at the same time very open for tourism and commerce.

3) Cantonese Chinese language, very unique and impossible to understand. As far as what I know, its more complicated to learn than Mandarin chinese; so people in a way feel prouder to have this unique language as an asset.

4) Free visa access - Man, this is real talk about globalization. You can enter the country with free-visa from 10 to 180 days depending on your country of residence.

It was an amazing time there, not only for meeting people in the consulting business, all talking about economic growth, business trends, China and opportunities with Latin America. But especially for meeting friends, walking around Koolon and having amazing fireworks in front of the IFC (International Finance Centre); this well remembered tower screened at The Dark Knight .

The funny thing was that we were photographed by a professional photographer who was taking pictures in the front line. Lucky us :) You can check out some more pictures here.

Other highlighs

Food. You can find food everywhere all day long. A nice thing to know, was that the goverment took all the street food and constructed like a food court, so that they could still sell their food but with higinical conditions and with tables and chairs to enjoy it as much as possible. It looked and tasted ok. And of course are plenty of spots to visit and unique flavors to try, I played it safe, though and had some noodles, I highly recomment them.

Ferry trip. You have to take it, its cheap and the view of Hong Kong is priceless.

Transportation. Very very neat.

Streets. Crowded - of course because of new year's eve; but also because people usually take off from work and walk the markets. Some avenues looked like Time Square in New York City. This city looks cosmopolitan and commercial at the same time; but commercial not only for the shopping sense (which was big), but also the high trade, the global business is in the air in Hong Kong. Which amazed me the most, was how safe it is. Really you feel secure.

Go to Hong Kong, either for business of placer, you will find it a great destination.

New Years in Thailand

For New Years Eve, there are two choices... stay in manila and watch some nice fireworks and drunken filipinos or go to Koh Pha-Ngan and party every night until 5am with 40,000 backpackers from all over the world!! 

Koh Pha-Ngan is a small island in the southern part of Thailand that I traveled to at the end of December.  The main attraction for this island is partying for sure.  Every night they party like it is New Years!!

There are fire dancers everywhere, fireworks exploding left and right, tons of drink stalls lining the beach, huge 6 foot speakers blasting out eclectic house music until 8 or 9 in the morning and of course, thousands of people. 

It is a really amazing experience that anyone who is in south east Asia needs to take up.  

There are a few funny things that needs to be noted.  1)  The lack of toilets is made up for with the thousands of people just pissing into the sea.  2) Fireworks are cheap.  Not only in price but in their manufacturing.  Lots of them are just exploding on the beach or only 10 meters above the beach making quite a show as drunk people dive for cover. 3) Thai guys really dress up well to look like girls... its frightening!!  4) One of the funniest displays is the fire jump rope where most of the people are just getting hit in the face with this rope thats on fire. 5) Taking the boat over to the island can be sickening!  half the people were puking because the boat rocked so much.  one of the worst experiences of the trip but I didn't puke... but listening to people puke for 4 hours is not fun.  

In Bangkok for my last day, I only had about 5 hours to tour around the city, eat and get a world famous thai massage.  So I power walked around to see about 5 wats... once you see two or three, you've seen them all.  I stopped taking pictures after awhile since it was all the same.  But below you can see a cool picture of some of the buildings in the Grand Palace.

The 350 Baht entrance fee is sort of a rip off but its still worth it to go in and see.  Tons of nice buildings, murals and buddha's to photograph.  The McDonalds in Thailand was not so impressive.  Quite slow service.  But the Thai food was unbelievable.  I definitely would rate that a 5 out of 5.  The red curry, green curry, whatever curry!! all extremely tasty.