There are some buildings that simply divide opinion. And this is one of them. Its divided opinion so well that I am now completely confused about whether I like it or not. I simply cannot make up my mind.
Hmmm
Built in 1967 and rising to 22 storeys this was one of around 160 different projects that the architects P & T Architects & Engineers Limited have been involved in. Many of the their later buildings are spectacular, pushing boundaries and making use of modern contemporary materials and I guess for this reason alone I probably should like this building. In 1967 was a 22 storey building that hides inside a concrete shell pushing the boundaries? I guess it must have been. But for some reason I am just not sure.
with all due respect to The Animals I have always wondered what that house in New Orleans looks like. I’ve been to NO but nothing looked right and it was only the other day that I realized that we have the very house here in Hong Kong.
If you take a look at the building known as The Pawn (after the bar and restaurant that occupies floors 2, 3 and 4) it looks just like what I imagine the Animals had in mind. Although if they can really remember if be surprised.
It sits in the middle of modern high rises shrugging its shoulders at the neighbors as it stares down Johnston road – looking like a throwback to times that many people who were there will have no recollection of. This feeling of a history that is perhaps not as salubrious as it could have been is reinforced as you climb up a narrow staircase that snakes round to the bar.
I know the building is traditional but to me it just looks well a little seedy. I love it.
One of my favorite buildings in Hong Kong – The Peak Tower. According to the the tourist guide the tower sits at 396 meters above sea level and is one of the most stylish architectural icons in Hong Kong. And situated at the top is the Sky Terrace 428 the ‘highest 360 viewing platform’ sitting at ‘and you probably guesses this already 428 meters above seal level.
Hong Kong
Its a spectacular building sitting like some upturned boat dominating the sky line. Or at least it used to dominate the skyline but this is Hong Kong and now at least 3 buildings have appeared between us and the Tower; in just 18 months.
But what I find so interesting about this building is that it performs a trick that only seems possible in the movies. Its bigger on the outside than the inside. A remarkable feat of building and engineering leaves us with a huge edifice sitting on the top of the Peak and a range of small scale shops and coffee houses more suited to the back streets of Wanchai.
It is one of my favorites from the outside. The inside has gone missing and I’d like it to come back.
I have to admit that I probably take too many taxi journeys in Hong Kong. And the only justification I really have is that they are a very easy and cheap way to get around town. I know that they are not the most environmentally friendly alternative – although even in Hong Kong there are now a few Prius taxis, and that they clog up the highway but I still take them.
They work and that’s very important. And not only that, as I have discovered taxi’s are a great way of learning a bit about a different culture.
Like taxi’s all over the world the way the Hong Kong system works remains a mystery to me. Why for instance does a taxi driver need 6 or more phones on the dashboard? Apparently to make sure that they can give a personal number to a preferred client who can call them directly. I suspect no client is ever going to know that someone else is also using the same number but that’s Hong Kong for you.
I am fortunate to live in an area where local taxi drivers tend to park overnight. Great news in the morning if you get your timing right. Hint, leave at 7 to 730am. Get it wrong and you can be waiting for a while. Just don’t think about trying to get a taxi at 4pm as this is shift change time.
And if you’re in Hong Kong I’d really recommend you download the Hong Kong Taxi App which is an absolute lifesaver.
Oh and sit in the back.
In Sydney however sit in the front. It took me a long time to work out why when I got in a taxi the front seat was pushed so far back. Coming from the UK where you actually can’t sit in the front of a black cab I’m afraid I always sit in the back. Which in Sydney is the wrong thing to do. For some reason the driver wants company; and wants to talk to you. Now taxi drivers in London are known for being talkative but I’m afraid are just not in the same league as in Sydney – and I never thought I would say that. So be prepared to talk. And being new to the country and not knowing anything about local politics/sport/celebrities/weather etc. is no excuse for silence.
In Italy, where I have just come back from, sit in the back, put a seatbelt on and if I may suggest, a crash helmet and full body armor. Now I know stereotypes are dangerous but I have not been as scared in the back of a taxi for a long time, nor as close to the car in front. I thought we had actually got into the back of the car in front at one point. I wonder if you order your dents at the same time as you order your car to save the hassle of actually crashing into someone.
New York is of course a completely different experience. You either climb into the back of an old Ford Crown Victoria or the slightly newer Ford Escape. Remarkably both are rubbish which is quite an achievement. The Victoria has no suspension and the Escape (never was a name less deserved) has no room in the back. Literally no room, as the screen that is installed between the front and the back takes up all the room. Cutting your legs off is the only way to fit. And both taxi’s come with a driver who will almost certainly have no idea where you are or where you want to go. In a city like New York that is largely a grid pattern it is a mystery how authorities manage to find so many people with no sense of direction. I really think I should have been paid by the driver in some cases.
However the prize for the best taxi service goes to (drumroll please) Bangalore.
I suspect some might be surprised by this choice but let me elaborate. As service goes picking my bags up from the front desk of the hotel isn’t that uncommon. Nor is getting my cases out of the back when we arrived at the airport. What was slightly unusual was the insistence of the taxi driver to accompany me to the check in desk, and then thru security, and then thru the gate and onto the plane, and finally waving goodbye only after providing me with a glass of champagne. And then only accepting what the meter showed.
Taxi’s teach you something about a country and its people. If you want to know more get a bus. But that’s a whole different story.
While elections are becoming more of a beauty parade (subsidized with a lot of cash in the USA) I thought is share this article for its commentary on Hong Kong. It will be interesting to see how the debate in Hong Kong goes from this point on.
When in NYC I had an early day aspiration to play some cricket – regrettably the Indian and Caribbean diaspora is just too good. Really it was like watching a professional game. Even one of the Dr’s I saw in NYU was a previous Jamaican first team player. If the US, like Soccer, gets the hang of Cricket we have a lot to look forward too. Oh well back to watching my son on the village green.
Couldn’t help reposting this one – Having lived in NYC I can relate to it. Now living in Hong Kong I can only comment that there are a lot more people here!
I have had one of those weeks where I can’t quite work out if it went well or not. And as is sometimes the case, this particular concern is based on a difference between my perception of myself and that from people around me who I trust.
And from my wife who I trust and who sees everything.
The issue that has caused me to stop and reflect is how I go about building teams.
From the feedback I have got there is little doubt that the people who work for me understand what I want them to do and actually spend a fair amount of time and effort getting on with it. The question is what happens when I am no longer there. Have I created a team that works well together even if individually people are pulling in the right direction.
Stopping, reflecting and deciding to look at what you do is probably something we all know instinctively we should do but I suspect we find it incredibly difficult to do. I know I do. And I know that my typical reaction to being told something that I don’t understand is to ignore it or take it personally. Or both.
But the word at the end of the first paragraph is key. I’ve got feedback from people I trust and if they are saying something I probably ought to listen. Its taken me a long time to get to this point but I do feel ready not only to listen to the advice but to do something about it.
I think we all know we need to do some things better or differently. No one (and maybe not even me) is that good. But actually recognizing it and then doing something about it is difficult.
Oh goodness this is sounding like a self help blog. Its not its meant to be about business.
Finding people you really trust, listening to them and then acting on their advice isn’t easy. But in business it take so much to just keep going and keeping your head above water that we don’t do enough of it.
And we should do more.
Its a lot easier than looking back and realizing what you should have done.
Let me know what you’ve stopped to reflect on? And what you did about afterwards.
At the office I work sits one of the most fearsome devices known to human kind. Well, me anyway. The automatic coffee machine.
Image courtesy of Vichaya Kiatying-Angsulee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
You would think getting a coffee is a fairly easy thing to achieve. Yet it has taken me more than two years to finally get the coffee I want. And it was, and I am sure you’re ahead of me at this point, all my own fault. I kept saying to myself, ‘how difficult can it be to get the right coffee?’
Well actually very difficult.
The coffee machine has a number of buttons. At first glance (and for the next 300) it looks simple; if you push the top button you get decaffeinated coffee and if you push the second one down you get regular coffee. It all seems simple so far except that when you push the top button nothing happens. Push the second button and you get a hot cup of something that smells and looks a little like coffee. But not something I want to drink.
The trouble is I want decaffeinated. And over the two years that I have pleaded with and begged this machine, it failed to deliver what I wanted.
Last week I went through my usual ritual and nothing happened. I pushed the decaf button and nothing, zip, nada, nowt (that’s a North of England term – see even my blog is globally educational). I stabbed the button again in the hope that somehow it was all in the timing of the button press but nothing happened.
At this point, spying the maintenance man, I did something that men typically find very difficult to do. I asked for help.
‘Read the instructions on the front’ was the reply. Well if it was that simple I would have sorted it out a long time ago so really what use was that? Except it was very useful indeed; standing back from the machine I took a look. And there in front of me were instructions on how to get the coffee I want – press the top button followed by the second button. Sure enough two presses later I had a cup of decaffeinated coffee. Almost two years to the day and after asking for help, reading the instructions, and pressing the buttons in the correct order, I finally had what I wanted.
And a thought struck me – how many times do we do things in a way that is more complicated than necessary (or just give up) simply because we have never asked for help, or read the instructions? I recall that during my time as a COO I was always struck by the fact that the same process, for example issuing an insurance policy, could vary between 20 minutes in one office and two days in another. People would blame the process when in fact it was more about the lack of training, a refusal to ask for help, or lack of clarity around the instructions.
So what?
If you’re responsible for a customer service, whether its a coffee machine or an insurance policy, spend as much time on making sure instructions are clear and on training your people correctly, as you do on developing the product you sell. And, whatever your role in an organization, take responsibility for training yourself. Shout loud and long when there is a lack of support or training. You might be surprised when people actually listen.
While my lack of decaffeinated coffee didn’t impact customers it probably impacted my colleagues – my having three cups of regular coffee is not going to make their lives any eaiser!
So I can now get the coffee I want. Shame I haven’t yet mastered my laptop with its 500 page instruction manual, all on-line and in most parts completely unintelligible.
And thats a story for another blog.
Anyone else out there ever gone against their natural tendencies and asked for help? What was the result?
The BBC recently published an article describing how the Japanese are now taking to smart phones with a passion. Its always interesting to me how a country like Japan, viewed as technologically advanced by many, is actually a very slow adopter of the technology they develop.
Appearances can therefore be deceptive.
But I have to say that while the article is a good piece the author really needs to come to Hong Kong. If you want to see a society that is now attached, literally, to their mobile that somehow manages to get around without too many crashes then Hong Kong is the place for you.
The business world has so many opportunities to reshape itself and drive better outcomes - we are only scratching at the surface of the change agenda and all the possibilities open to us. What ever happens next must embrace how we all work better together, how we are organised, the things we do and the many tools we use to make the change. Let’s make good things happen
The Burble 
