Hong Kong King Kong Ping Pong Ding Dong

Once upon a time there was a company called GE Access. Located on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, it was a pretty rare vortex of interesting, creative people and certainly a unique place. (This was actually where Troy and I met, but that is a different story for a different day.) Troy joined the company in the fall of 2000, and worked as a Business Analyst in the IT Department for about five years before deciding to try his hand at a different discipline for awhile. He successfully applied for GE's Six Sigma Quality Program, and began his rotation in early fall 2005.

GE Access had a European branch, headquartered just outside Amsterdam. The two branches of the company operated fairly autonomously, but certain powers-that-be decided that it would be a worthwhile endeavor to start a STIR (Short Term International Rotation -- gotta love those corporate acronyms!) within Quality to promote a better understanding of business processes on both sides of the Atlantic. Our friend John was the first employee to participate in this trial program, so off went he and his wife Sue to Amsterdam for six months (more about them later).

Having whet our appetites with a wee taste of life abroad (Troy when he studied at Oxford, me when I studied in Rome), Troy and I were very attracted to the STIR idea. Plus, it would have been a nice way to finish up Troy's time as a Six Sigma Quality Black Belt (Take that all you creators-of-boring-job-titles!). So by the fall of 2006, Troy was lined up to complete the second STIR when, a couple of weeks shy of a final decision, GE announced that -- surprise! -- it was selling the company and all pending offers were off the table.

Fast forward six months. GE divested itself of the Access business, a company called Avnet acquired it, and, as with all M&As (that's 'mergers and acquisitions' for all you non-corporate types) there were several resulting 'reallocations and redundancies'. Six months of chaos ensued when finally Troy's persistence paid off, and Avnet managed to connect his previous interest in international work with a current job opening in Hong Kong. Though we considered the possibility of a move to Hong Kong remote, we like to be open-minded so Troy went for the interview.

Actually, both Troy and John (remember him, from above?) flew to Hong Kong in July 2007. Interviews were completed, negotiations ensued blah blah blah yada yada yada. John took the job in Hong Kong, and we ended up in Brussels.

Fast forward again, this time to last fall. Troy embarked on a whirlwind worldwide business tour, kicking off a major project with 2 weeks of work each in Phoenix, Düsseldorf, and Hong Kong. Having never been to Asia, and with the added bonus of having friends living there, I decided to accompany him on the trip. And that, my friends, bring us to our story today.

As you might imagine, two weeks in Hong Kong could provide fodder for dozens of blog posts. But, I will try to settle for just a few. We took literally hundreds of photographs, including those in the album linked below. It is a pictorial introduction to Hong Kong and our trip. Going forward, I plan to tackle the story in thematic vignettes. No simple (boring) chronological accounting of our days in the Far East, but rather glimpses into what was a crazy, contrasting, love-it-hate-it kind of adventure. Let's begin.



Hong Kong Photo Album #1 - Click Here

Sunshine!

The following image is:

a) A photo I took of Simone enjoying the beautiful, late afternoon sunshine on the first day of spring while putting the final touches on a fabulous dinner we'll be sharing with some friends this evening.

b) A fake.  I secretly photoshopped sunshine into the real picture because it's not possible that the sun is actually shining in Brussels.

c) An image of a butterfly.  But you never did have much imagination when it came to those inkblot tests so we're not surprised you can't see it.

You Saucy Little Tart!

I love jewelry. Not necessarily the fancy blingin' stuff, but more so funky costume pieces, with bright colors and semi-precious stones. One evening, we threw a party and I was wearing just such a bracelet--a wrist collar made of several strands of bright red seeds from a Hawaiian tree strung between two pieces of dark wood (I bought it at one of my favorite stores anywhere, the Yellow Fish Trading Company in Kauai, which was selling the bracelets as part of an effort to save a tree endangered by a form of blight). My friend Sue, who is among other things a glass artist, came to this party and silently observed my bracelet. A few weeks later, she presented me with a glass ring to match, the exact shades of red and brown as the bracelet, all based on a single viewing! The accompanying card featured the line 'You saucy little tart!', over a funny little rendering of a bright red strawberry tart. I still have the card, along with the ring.

I was thinking of this when I was cooking last week. The first strawberries of the season have arrived from Spain to liven up the weekly fresh markets. Unable to resist, I bought a flat and from somewhere in the mists inspiration hit: why not make a strawberry tart?!? For reasons unknown, I was not satisfied with any of the tart recipes in my cookbooks or on the internet. So, I decided to cobble together an amalgam of my own. And, with pretty good results if I do say so myself. Lemon cream cheese filling, a slightly sour citrus glaze, loads of pretty red sliced berries.



Except....one little thing. The crust. Feeling very chi chi à la mode, I decided to whip up a quick pâte sablée (short pastry) for the tart crust. Using my lovely Chocolate & Zucchini Parisian cookbook, I followed the recipe closely, dispensing with my usual haste and ish measurements (i.e. 2-ish cups). The tart came together nicely, the presentation beautiful. Troy and I indulged in large pieces that evening. We took our first bites, discovering a wonderful taste, but with something slightly....off about the texture. Troy commented that the crust was so moist it was like eating cookie dough. Not unpleasant, just....different. I decided to go back to the cookbook and see if I had missed something. And, merde, I had. In this cookbook the crust recipe opens a section devoted to tarts and cakes and, apparently, is meant to be used in conjunction with other recipes for fillings and sauces. And it is in those other recipes that it tells you HOW TO BAKE THE CRUST!

There were no eggs or other potentially harmful-if-consumed-raw ingredients in the crust that would have aroused my suspicions on a lack of baking instructions. I thought it was just a fancy French pâtisserie pack-and-chill kind of method. Not so much. Just an American girl's funny little way of (mis)constructing a tart.

January, February...March!

The other day Troy was reading the local news on an expat-type website (Expatica.com), and he came across an interesting bit of trivia: this February was the darkest February in Belgium since records began!!! Here's a bit of the article:

"Darkest February in Belgium Since Records Began
Met office recorded a mere 33 hours of sunshine

February 2009 has broken an unusual record. Meteorologists have calculated that it was the most sombre month of February since records began in Belgium. Last month the sun shone for just over 33 hours. The Royal Met Office at Ukkel (Brussels) says the lack of sunshine is "particularly exceptional". Figures like these will only be recorded once a century. During an average February the sun shines for 89.5 hours. This February's figure is just over a third of this..."

Well, that explains a lot. There's something satisfying about having scientific proof that last month's oppressive dreariness was not just in our imaginations. Coming from a state that brags about its 300 yearly days of sunshine, you'd think we'd be ready to jump off the nearest building, but actually we're doing okay. I mean, sure, the gray gets old. It's sort of like being trapped in a really boring room where nothing happens and everything is the same every day. Oh wait, that sounds like an office. Hmmmmm...

At any rate, it's kind of reaffirming to think that we have survived the most depressing climate-month in the modern history of Belgium, and are here to tell the tale. And, we still think it was a good idea to move here to boot! Of course, it's pretty easy to say that when, as today, the sun is shining and meeting a friend at a café for patisseries and travel tips is on the afternoon's agenda. Farewell February, it's on to March!