Run for cover, this place is a ghost town.
Hong Kong What do you get when you take three million people, one island, and a typhoon named Koppu? The answer is a ghost town and an “end of the world” theme party consisting of five invitees in about 170 sq ft. Wait, five people in 170 sq ft sounds like the end of the world, but that wasn’t the idea behind the theme. Here’s the scoop: September is typhoon month in southeast Asia. Hong Kong has an impressive warning system that rates each storm’s intensity and aims to warn the public before storms make landfall. Koppu happened to raise the warning to Level 8, which means that government agencies, most businesses (except McDonald’s and 7-11, thank God), and public transportation shuts down. Included in this mix of closing venues was my Monday night class, which also meant that my first exam was postponed. Like any responsible students would do, my friends and I decided that it would be appropriate to celebrate this most fortunate postponing of exams. Not knowing just how intense the storm would be, we stocked up on provisions at the grocery store just in case it, too, would close early along with the other stores and restaurants.
Having started our action movie and junk food soiree rather early, by 8:00pm I was ready for something a little more substantial. The important thing here is not what I ate, but rather that by 8:00 the rain had not yet started so we went outside to see what we could find. The streets were absolutely empty. It looked like the end of the world scenes in so many films. It still had not started to rain by the time I got back to my apartment and I went to sleep as usual. In the early morning I was awakened by the sound of wind and rain. I had slept through the worst of the storm, which was apparently a pretty big deal. When I went out in the morning there were bits of garbage strewn across the streets, a fallen tree outside my building, and a collapsed sign on a store across the street from where I live. The end of the world party appeared to be completely justified. If I was going to blow away to the sea, I wanted to go happy and full of junk food.
It’s still rainy, but rain makes for a cozy study environment. The first term is nearly over, so the work load is catching up a bit. I’m also working on job applications with banks in Houston and NYC, and I plan to start meeting with some industry people here in Hong Kong to get some career advice. Maybe I would stay here, but the offer would have to be pretty darn good. My latest interest is in debt financing; syndicated loans seem really interesting, many thanks to the fabulously French Veronique, my Raising Debt in Financial Markets professor. If you’re thinking about studying in Hong Kong, I would recommend the course. I would like to see how I can mix financing with the energy industry. I think that would be a winning combination.
