When you're somewhere new, find comfort in the familiar

It's certainly been a while since I last blogged - let me explain why right now.

Back in the middle of April, I had talked about receiving a phone interview with the Government of Alberta for an Emerging Technologies Specialist position. They liked me enough to fly me down for a second interview and I guess the second interview was also really good so they offered me a job working in Edmonton. 

To say that the decision was difficult would be an understatement.

On the one hand, I had been looking for work for 4 months and had not any successful job offers during that time though I did have several phone interviews which did not seem to lead anywhere. The job experience that I would get from this position was very good and may even enable me to gain an incredible job afterwards depending on the opportunities available.

On the other hand, to leave Vancouver to work in Edmonton would force me to uproot my whole established life and routine and plant it down in Edmonton where I had few friends, no family and almost no network of people I could rely on for support. 

I believe that the biggest factor for me for accepting this position was the fact that we were still in the recession and job offers did not come easily during this time. That's not to say that the job was bad, it is actually quite a flexible position with lots of ties into technology; I'm saying that given a job offer in Edmonton and a similar position in Vancouver, I would probably have chosen Vancouver. 

In any case, once I accepted the position, I had a few weeks to tearfully say goodbye to my friends, either through surprise dinners, planned dinners, coffees or lunches. The biggest worry that I had before my move to Edmonton was finding a place to live. Although there were many resources online that I used, it was hard to choose a place until I saw it in person. 

Fast forward a week or two and I have a bachelor apartment about 2 blocks away from where I work downtown. Though not as close to all the amenities as I would like, it certainly wasn't a big downside since the transit system in Edmonton was decent. 

Once I found housing, my concerns transitioned from housing to my daily and weekly routine, after all, I had full-time work now. I was terribly homesick, but I knew that once I got into a routine, my life would finally settle down and I would stop thinking about my home in Vancouver.  

It was during the time that I was trying to figure out my routine, I realized that I reverted back to some of my old routines that I went through before. Like cooking extra food for dinner and packing the extra food for lunch the next day on weekdays. Or watching streams of my favorite shows aired the day before while eating dinner. Or even cooking complete meals in my trustworthy and reliable rice cooker so that I did not have to wait around for food to finish cooking. 

Why did I revert back to these old routines I had gone through before? Why didn't I just create new routines given my new environment and lifestyle? 

I guess it was because I found comfort in the familiarity of the routines.

Not only is it the reason I do those things, it's also probably the reason I order the same items (chirashi, sashimi) at all the Japanese restaurants I go to; it's probably the reason I really just shop for clothing at relatively cheap stores like Esprit and Old Navy; and it's probably the reason I cook the same things every week or so. It's easy. It doesn't require a lot of thought. And it reminds me of how comforting life was in the past.

And because of the routine, things are easy now; things dont require a lot of thought now; and things are fairly comfortable now. 

I also think it may be the reason people order the same things at restaurants or go to the same type of restaurants all the time (or even go to the same restaurant and order the same thing every single time). It's safe. It's (probably) good. And any time they become adventurous and order something else that isn't good, it seems to reinforces the idea of sticking with what is good and familar, rather than trying to be adventurous.

As a final note, I had to purchase some laundry detergent yesterday. I went to Shopper's

 Drug Mart, looked around and finally came to some different laundry detergents. As I always do, I compared the prices (locally on the shelves, and not at different stores) and finally landed on the Gain laundry brand which seemed to be cheap compared to the other detergents. There were 2 brands of Gain laundry detergent and I think if you saw the same thing I did, the choice would have been as obvious for you as it was for me. 

How do you feel? Are there routines that you go through just because you're familiar with them? Are there restaurants that you always go to or food that you always order? 

A Day Spent in Edmonton

Today, I just flew back from Edmonton for an interview with the Government of Alberta. I am pretty dead tired, mostly from waking up at around 3:30 in the morning from the heat in my hotel room. Here are some of my random thoughts in somewhat chronological order from the time I boarded my flight to now.

• Headed to YVR about 2.5 hours early and went to the bookstores to find new books to read. After some time spent browsing the books, I went to Tim Hortons for a hot chocolate and to review my book on interview questions. With about 1.5 hours left, I decided to head over to my gate and plug in my laptop to talk to a few people about my interview.
• When I booked my flight online and looked at the seating chart, it showed that seat D out of the consecutive seats D, E and F (I was in F) was taken. Once I was on the plane and they shut the doors, seat D was empty - I wondered whether someone missed their flight, or perhaps the person in Seat D went to sit with others.
• I arrive in Edmonton after trying to lip read about half of the movie "How to lose friends and alienate people"
• As I wait for my luggage on the conveyor belt, here are some of the strange items I see: various pieces of luggage, large crate with marker all over, red tool box and then finally my bag!
• I arrive at the hotel pretty hungry so I drop off my stuff in my room and then head down to Madison's Grill (the restaurant in the Union Bank Inn) for a candy almond crusted salmon. I liked the mix of sweet and salty and want to try making it myself one day.
• Everybody else in the restaurant is dressed quite nicely. I, on the other hand, am dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and try my best to look as inconspicuous as possible.
• After eating the delicious salmon (love seafood!), I head back to my room to try to get some sleep. I totally forget about the jet lag and so I end up falling asleep about an hour after I try to sleep.
• 4 hours later, I wake up from the heat of the room. I had turned the fan off earlier (there was only one fan for the room and no separate fan for the bathroom) so that I could fall asleep but it had gotten so hot that I woke up anyway. I try to fall back asleep with various combinations of fans on / off, blankets on / off and with the window not opening, I get up and decide to prep for my interview by reviewing my questions and answers again.
• Around 7 AM, I get a wake-up call. Before I went to bed, I looked around for the fitness room and see that there is a treadmill and a step machine as well as a few dumbbells. I head down to the fitness room for a 20 min run and then come back up to shower.
• I head down to breakfast and order the West Coast Eggs (smoked salmon, poached eggs and a lemon dill hollandaise sauce with a fresh fruit salad and some taters). After exchanging some kind words with the waitress, I head back up to change.
• As I walk to the Law Courts Building, I realize that I did not bring enough clothing. It is -3 and significantly colder than I thought it would be. (Later on, I heard from my taxi driver that it was -42 a few weeks ago, I secretly feel glad that I wasn't here to interview then)
• I thought the interview went well - I got a tour of the 3 libraries and meet many of the staff working there. I also get a very cool story of the heritage room (built by the grandson of Nelly McClung). It reminds me of the heritage core in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
• At around 11, the manager of the interviewed position, a coworker and I head to the foodcourts through the underground passages. The underground passages are very cool and remind me of the very cool +15's in Calgary
• I get to the YEG and try to find books to read that have nothing to do with interviewing or programming. I mull over buying the Watchmen comic book but finally decide to leave without it (though I feel that if given another chance, I would buy it)
• Once I claimed my luggage, I went to the bookstores in YVR looking for the Watchmen comic but cannot find it (oh well). I head home and now I'm going to crash

All in all, it was a great experience in Edmonton despite the cold and the lack of sleep.

I've ran out of jobs to apply to.. what now?

I have been looking for and applying to jobs for a while now, about 4 months going on 5 to be more exact. Although I wasn't exactly conservative while there were many jobs to apply to, lately, I have been doing more research into potential jobs and the employers to see whether or not I really would be a good fit for that company. As a result of waiting (and the best things come to those who wait), I only apply to a few jobs a week now instead of the few jobs I applied to every day when I started out.

Sometimes, you'll find that there are no jobs which you can apply to, whether the requirements are out of your reach or you don't see the job as a good fit for you and it's a good idea to take a break when potential jobs are low just so that you don't burn out from doing research and applying every day.

But what happens when you just run out of jobs to apply to?

I can think of a few things that I'm doing now that might be good if you're not doing them:

1. Re-apply to those jobs you've applied to but did not hear from

Don't apply to those jobs that are filled obviously, but if they're still hiring, try applying again. This was a great piece of advice I got from a family friend and the worst thing they can do is reject you again anyway so why not try applying again? My one piece of advice is to update your resume before applying again though. While it's possible that you did absolutely nothing between the time you first applied and now, I think it is highly likely that you have accomplished something during that time (for example, building your own site, or starting your own blog, etc.) and you can add some of those things to your resume so that it isn't exactly the same as before.

And if you do get some sort of part time job or you've started to volunteer at a company, update your resume and then reapply to any jobs you really want. Again, employers can at worst only reject you again and maybe persistence is what you need to get that dream job you want.

2. Build your own site or Publish your own blog!

Check out some of these blogs: Jamie Varon, Lindsey Pollak, Cindy Burns.

The one by Lindsey Pollak isn't exactly a blog about someone looking for work but it features all these great articles about your career search and great advice for job seekers in general. The other two are blogs about job seeking.

What I'm saying is blogging about your job search experience is a great way of helping you to remember all the things you've done and to make sure you that you don't repeat any of your past mistakes. By entering the community of blogging and seeking out other job seeking bloggers, you won't feel so alone and hey, this is also a great way of developing your writing skills.

By building a blog or a site, you increase your online presence and make it easier for potential employers to find you on the internet - make sure to include links to your resume or online resume on your sites so that anyone who does make it to your site has an easy way of reaching you if they're interested in learning more about you.

I think the other great thing about blogging or building your own personal site is you develop some web 2.0 skills that are very valuable in a world where the internet is increasingly more important and vital for companies. Don't think of this as time wasted because this is a part of your job search! And this way, you won't be waiting around not doing anything productive while waiting for those potential jobs to come in - you'll be developing your skills, your own personal brand and your online presence all at the same time.

Phone Interviews: Personal Feedback and Strategies for the Future

Just today, I finished my second phone interview ( a pre-screen interview I think) with a tech company. My first was with Google and the second was with Laserfiche. I wanted to take the time to talk about the two phone interviews, how important they are and how I thought they went. Then, I'll try to talk about strategies for doing your best on these phone interviews.

Firstly, phone interviews are so important that you have to take them as if they were real in-person interviews. Especially during this time, companies have too many job applications and they have to filter through them somehow - one of these ways is through a pre-screen phone interview to determine things like technical knowledge, communication and the ability to communicate difficult technical concepts, and basically whether the candidate has the right qualifications and values - all this leads up to, most likely, an actual in-person interview. It suffices to say that if you do not perform well during your phone interview, you will not proceed to the next step in the process.

Google Phone Interview:

First, some feedback on my Google phone interview. I certainly won't reveal the questions they asked me but I will say that this phone interview was the most technical I've had in a while (even including all my in-person interviews with other tech companies). Depending on what position you are interviewing for, you will have to know your stuff inside and out. I certainly did a lot of research on how to prepare for phone interviews, and almost all of them mention that you should practice speaking on the phone, whether it be on your voice mail or with a friend quizzing you.

To prepare for my phone interview, I wrote down some questions that I thought the Google recruiter might ask me and then some sample answers as well. I then tweaked a lot of those answers so that they were focused, talked about my qualifications and how they matched with the job position's needs. I also wrote down questions that I thought would be good to ask Google. What makes Google tick? Well, I didn't ask that but I certainly gained a bit of insight as to what it would be like to work at Google.

Laserfiche Phone Interview

The Laserfiche phone interview focused very much on behavioral questions. Again, out of respect for the company, I will not divulge specific questions, but my recruiter asked me a lot of questions about who I was, why I made the choices that I did, and also a few questions about why I would want to work for Laserfiche and what values were important to me.

Again, to prepare for the Laserfiche phone interview, I thought of and provided sample answers to some of the questions that I thought they would ask. For both phone interviews, I did some research on the company, its products and thought a bit about what the direction would be like in the future. Again, I also wrote down some questions that I thought would be good to ask and I had a really pleasant conversation with the recruiter (we started talking about how I participated in Toastmasters and how she was involved in public speaking).

General Strategies for Phone Interviews:

Probably the most important thing is to get a good night's rest before the phone interview. If you need things like your resume or a note pad, set everything up on a desk where your phone is and make sure you know when exactly your recruiter will be calling (be aware of time differences!).

The next most important thing is to take your time to collect your thoughts before giving your answer. I was quite nervous during my phone interview with Google and it certainly came across as I rushed to orate my answers, but I tried to calm down as the interview progressed and I tried to think about my answers before trying to communicate them to my recruiter (it also helps that the problems were quite difficult and I needed time to think about them :P).

In regards to the above point, you should do a lot of research about the company, its products as well as its competitors (you never know what can come up in a conversation). You should also figure out if you need to brush up on anything (ie. from a technical standpoint, if the position is a development position in Java and you haven't programmed in Java for a while, you should really read up on documentation). I certainly feel a bit nervous but I'm actively trying to make an effort to read through documentation on programming languages as well as trying to find projects to implement so that I have a chance to practice.

When you do a lot of research, you'll inevitably have great questions to ask the recruiter - this will help to show that you did research and also show that you are very much interested in what the company does.

The other thing that I find is if you do get into long discussions, the discussion will a lot of the time focus on what you said earlier in the conversation (for example, if you mention that you have had great ideas at your previous workplace, your recruiter may ask you for an example). Make sure you have something in mind when you mention something very general or abstract - it helps to transition from one point to another without missing a beat because your thoughts and communication skills will seem very strong.

Well, that's all I can think of for now - hope you get to the next step in the interview process !

Job Search: General Search Sites and Using Online Resumes

I have still been searching for jobs and have not had many or really any responses for interviews yet. I'm really not sure if there's something wrong with my resume / qualifications or that the job market is not good / competition is high with all the layoffs.

When I first started, I used a nifty trick to find more job search sites that I liked. At first, I tried searching for any "new graduate job search" sites using Google - that worked out well but a lot of the sites that came up were based in the U.S. That wasn't a problem, neither was registering, but a lot of the sites ask you where you got your degree from and UBC isn't exactly known by all sites for some reason.

As I said in my last post, I had heard about t-net from many people giving me advice on the tech job search and in order to find eluta I used the "Similar Pages" function on Google to help me find related sites. It's a really cool tool to use because any time you hear about a new job search site that you really enjoy, the internet's bound to have similar sites and resources that you may also like.

General Tech Search Sites:

I also have another cool strategy to use to search for job search sites. Often times when you apply for jobs, there is an online application form. The form often asks you about where you heard about this job (and those are the times you should always have some sort of connection, either through friends, family, facebook or linkedin, etc.) and a lot of forms have a drop down menu showing a bunch of sites where they might have posted their job. This drop down menu in job application forms is a great way to learn about new job search sites that you may not have found in Google Searches or using the "Similar Pages" function on Google. I am pretty sure that's how I found out about Indeed.ca and SimplyHired.com. What I like about indeed is that they are like a meta search engine - it searches through different job search sites and aggregates all the data on their page, which means that you could search through multiple job search sites at once using their search engine.

As an aside, I think a very important thing to figure out early in your job search is what you would like to do for work. For me, I figured I wanted to do something in the software or web development side (and I would not mind doing testing either because I think that's how a lot of companies hire entry level employees; they then move testers up into the roles of development after they've gained experience). I always knew that I wanted to do my MBA at some point because I do have a passion for the business side of things and did not want to stay on the technical side forever - which is when I saw the Associate Product Manager position at Google. I think that really is the dream job for me (yes, a job at Google but eventually a Product Manager that manages products for a technical company would be awesome too) - using my technical skills and working on managing the direction of products, eliciting requirements, the opportunity sometimes makes me giddy with enthusiasm. With that in mind, I can now do a focused search in the job search engines using keywords like "product manager" and "associate".

SimplyHired is the job search engine that LinkedIn uses and I think I can cover a bit here and a bit later when I talk about social networking to your job. It works a lot like other job search engines but the features I like about SimplyHired is that you can specify what industry you'd like to work in as well as the years of experience that you have (very useful when you're trying to sift and sort through thousands of job postings). I can't tell you how tedious it is to search through job postings, find awesome jobs with incredible responsibilities and then find out that it requires way more experience than I actually have.

Online Resumes

I have not used a lot of online resumes, mostly because updating one requires update of the others in order to maintain consistent information across the board but I do have one in particular on linkedin that I keep fairly up to date and consistent with my resumes. If you do not have an account on linkedin, I would suggest registering an account on there because it's a great way to use social networking to your advantage to find a job. Firstly, you have to find friends, family and colleagues that you may have worked with. During the time you wait for them to accept their invitations, you should start building your profile like your resume: put in your work history, education and specialties (linkedin has a useful 'scoring' function that takes you through all the steps of building your profile).

Once some of your invitations get accepted, start to ask for recommendations on your work. The recommendations are a lot like referrals and are a great way for you to stand out from already great accomplishments in your work history. Be nice and recommend others on their work if you find that you're not getting very many recommendations.

Another thing I would highly suggest is joining groups (for example, if you've just graduated, you could join your University's Alumni Group or suppose you worked at specific companies for a while, you can join the company's alumni group as well ie. Telus Alumni Group). The groups are a great way of increasing your visibility to others that may be working at companies you'd like to work for. I joined my university's faculty alumni group for computer science and started a discussion telling everyone about how I was looking for entry-level work. A few weeks passed and honestly no-one responded in any way but I finally got a private message from an alumni working at Google who said that he could refer me to their company! I was disappointed that I didn't get any more responses but a referral to Google from my university's alumni? That was incredible. I guess this is just a testimony that social networking can help you out even if it's only to give you a boost to your job search confidence.

You may think that posting up a resume on linkedin will do all your work for you and I actually thought like that too but I realized that you get what you put in. This means that the more work you do to actively build connections, update your profile and follow discussions (and post to them!), the more visibility you'll have in the group and the more job opportunities will start to appear to you. Sure, you could post up a linkedin profile and passively look for jobs, but you'll learn a lot more about yourself (and get more out of it) if you actively seek out people that can help you. As an example, I got great job search advice from a Toastmaster that randomly added me. I did not know her and she did not know me, but because she and I were both toastmasters, we connected. She sent me a message and a big discussion followed about how she did her job search and strategies she used and I really learned a lot (in fact, I am incorporating some of her advice now). I could have been really shy and just thanked her for the add but I decided to actively seek her opinion on job search and ask her if she knew anyone that was hiring. It just goes to show that positive results come to those that actively pursue it.

Job Search: Online Sites and Resources I use (University, Tech Job Search Sites)

Lately, I was inspired by Cindy Burn's blog, located here. To be honest, I noticed some comments on her twitter feed and many commented on how good of an idea it was to have a blog chronicling her search because it can not only increase her visibility online (and thus increase the number of potential recruiters seeing her) but also give some helpful advice to those also on the job search (and let them know that they're not alone). I certainly felt that way when I was reading her blog - that I was not alone in this bad economic situation right now.

I had planned to post on my blog after my job search was over but as of yet, it isn't (yes, a subtle hint I am still unemployed). Before I go into my post, let me give you some background and some context - it may help you figure out the resources that are helpful for you.

I graduated this past May 2008 with Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of British Columbia. I figured that with all my work experience both in coop and at UBC (if you're curious as to what kind of experience, you can look at my linkedin profile here ), I was at least going to get several interviews, if not job offers from several companies. Obviously that was not the case and after finishing summer work in October, I looked for work but to no success. That would be my background.

To give you some context of what kind of work I am looking for, I graduated with Computer Science and Math and was looking for technical work, software or web development more specifically. And because I recently graduated, I was looking for some entry-level work. This means that the resources I will be listing will mostly be of the entry-level technical kind (but there are some general sites I use, and a lot of the technical sites have jobs for other specializations, like Commerce, Accounting, Business Administration, etc.).


Now, onto many of the resources I am using / have used:

University:

The first thing that I used was the career services site of the university I graduated from. The site is here and I started looking through all the full time job postings for any entry-level work related to my specializations. While I did not find many, I did find a few and I kept a task list of all the jobs I did apply for as well as some companies that I found interesting so that I may apply to them if future opportunities popped up.

Side note: I started using the zenpages on Zenbe when I first started to help me with my task, filtering all my e-mails through a work-centric gmail (using my name and adding .jobs) but as I applied to job after job, it started to fill up. I decided to switch over to www.rememberthemilk.com to keep track of the jobs I applied to, the job search sites I used as well as the interesting companies that did not have any current job opportunities but that I wanted to keep an eye on. I think the advantage of using rememberthemilk is that I can add tasks from twitter, e-mail or Jott (from my phone) if I needed to.

The idea that I could look through job postings from my university's site inspired me to look at other universities and their job posting sites. You do have to be an alumni to use those sorts of services, but if you're lucky enough to know people that went to those schools and if they are nice enough people, they'll either offer or you can ask to borrow their id and password to use those resources.

Other than being able to access the job postings board of the universities, I almost forgot about checking the human resources site at the universities to look for work in the universities! Doing this is easy enough, just google "human resources" with the name of the university you are interested in and you'll find the site right away. Of course, there's an added bonus of you having worked at a university before because they'll often hire internally but for any other universities, you will only be able to apply to their external positions.

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Tech Job Search Sites:

From very early on when I was looking for work, I was intrigued by the opportunities of new graduate leadership development programs. These programs almost exclusively accepted new graduates (in my case, technical graduates) and was a great way to gain experience working in the different departments of a large company and contributing a lot of value to the company at the same time. You could build up a network of contacts and get a good sense of direction with your career from mentors. I may not have the right resources but it seems that there aren't a lot of sites that list those new graduate leadership program opportunities, rather, you have to be connected with the company somehow to know that they offer those kinds of programs.

What I did find though was a site that searched through all companies in Canada based on your degree and specialization. www.eluta.ca is a site I still like using because it has a great list of companies that have job opportunities in your specialization and it also usually has information about the company's culture, average salary and how many people they've hired in the past. Although I did use their job search feature, I also just went through the list of companies and looked through the career opportunities on each of their sites just so that I wouldn't be missing anything that the eluta search wasn't picking up.


Another job search site that everyone I know keeps telling me about is t-net. The really good thing about this site, other than listing all the local technology companies here in British Columbia, is the fact that it is really up to date with job postings. This is a site I search probably once every couple of weeks just to see if anything comes up (and again, I like to look through their list of companies and look for job opportunities / interesting companies so that I can keep an eye on those things.

More on general job search sites, social networking and other resources that are helpful for job search in later posts :)

Authenticity, Job Search and Hong Kong

On Authenticity:

Lately and even not so lately, I've been thinking about authenticity. What does it mean to be an authentic and genuine person? I think through my work as a residence advisor and conversations with other residence advisors, I have heard about these stories of 'fake' advisors. These are advisors who act one way around their residents or around residents in general and then act another way to their friends or even after they are no longer a residence advisor.

That really got me thinking about whether I put out a genuine attitude to my residents - did I act one way around my residents and then act another way after I was no longer required by my job to be nice to my residents? I certainly didn't think it was that way but it's always hard to tell when you're involved in something to make a very clear and unbiased objective conclusion from all the facts that you think of and present to yourself. I also got to thinking about my friends and the new people I meet; do I act the same around everyone that I meet?

That's when I realized that I certainly do try my best to act the same way around all my friends. Given that most of my friends know me as a fairly nice, funny and somewhat witty person, I feel that I do act like my true self around most of the people I meet.

Why this authenticity stuff really got to me lately was because over the summer, I had befriended many people (at least I thought I did). For some reason, and this is only my intuition talking, which by the way is quite accurate most of the time, I feel that sometimes we are 'forced' into friendships because of work or mutual friends and such. It is a weird feeling to think that you are friends and then once that mutual thing that brought you two together is gone, your friendship somehow disappears. It is especially weird to be the only person to think that you are still friends. As I was saying, over the summer, I was talking to a friend about how I had befriended some of these people and my friend said that even though they knew one of my friends, they did not feel like my new friend was a genuine person. This was not based on brief encounters but rather, extended observations through my new friend's work and behavior towards others. I usually don't take these with too much weight and I honestly gave my new friend a chance to prove themselves. Anyway, this is fairly vague but I think I have my answer.


On job searching:

These past few weeks, I have been looking for job opportunities in the technical industry, mainly of the entry-level / new graduate type. Suffice to say, it is difficult. I'm not really sure whether its because of the recession, my resume / cover letter / qualifications, or even if I'm off the hiring cycle but maybe it's even a combination of all 3. I really wish there were some dedicated sites that told new graduates which companies hire new graduates, which companies have leadership development programs (for those on the prowl: Bell, Telus, General Electric, Deloitte are to name a few) and although I have found a few (again, eluta, collegegrad.com, collegerecruiter.com, aftercollege.com), a lot of the jobs I'm applying to I haven't heard back from. It's also a bit disheartening to hear back from the companies you did coop with and get rejected. It really gets me thinking about whether its because of my job application or because of my job performance that I was rejected at those companies (and I guess there's an outside chance it could be the recession). Anyway, just a few of my thoughts about job search right now - I'll continue looking and hopefully I'll be able to find one soon to start in January. I'm really itching to start full-time work somewhere so that I can bring in some new ideas and bring about some sort of positive change in the world.


About Hong Kong:

Very recently, my mom told me that she heard that my grandma was not feeling very well and with that being the case, my mom booked for herself and me, two tickets to Hong Kong for 2 weeks to visit my grandma. While I do enjoy traveling, I thought about the awful 15 hour flight and what I have to do to prepare myself. As I hear after the ticket booking, we will be arriving in Hong Kong at around 7 pm - this means that in order to adjust to the jet lag, I would have to stay up at least 10 hours in the latter part of the flight. It might be possible to sleep the first half of the flight and just stay up for the later half but I'm not too sure.

The great thing about Hong Kong is that its such a shopping haven - the first time I went, I don't think I really did that much shopping apart from clothing and I plan to do some more clothing shopping when I head back (Giordano, G2000 and Esprit come to mind). We may also book a tour to head to another Asian country but since we will be booking that in Hong Kong, I will be learning more about that later.