Identity

How much do we know about ourselves? We know our blood type, our horoscope, and what personalities belong to the horoscope, we know what we desire for, how we react to certain situations, how others are different from us......

There are people who I've known for years but don't understand me as a person, and there're people who straightly interpret me based on a very short conversation. The latter is the scariest part, they seem to be able to pierce through your heart and ruthlessly pinpoint the side of you which you wanna hide. You would question yourself, is your problem that obvious to others?

Although you know exactly what your problem is, you have little intention to change yourself until someone tells you into your face, and then there comes a sudden revelation pops inside your brain. Why am I so easily deciphered? Why this is not a problem for others? How should I correct this problem from now on?

While there're others just plain fake, praising you for who you are, dodging the bad traits in you, applaud you for whatever you do. Guys love this type of girls, they always like a boost in their mansculinarity, while I think it is just a pure show.

Admitting your own flaws is the bravest thing to do; not admitting means immaturity. Knowing yourself is a process of growing up, while not knowing yourself means you don't recognize your own identity.

Cash rich

Japanese corporates appear to be super cash rich.

Given the domestic growth continues to be weak, they are scouting for growth elsewhere and taking on shopping spree during market turmoil.

Couple of months ago, Daiichi acquired Ranbaxy at a ridiculous 54% premium price for a global generic business. The Indian founders sold out all of their stakes to a Japanese companies. Why? Bc it is too sweet of a deal to let pass.

Mitsubishi UFJ taking up 20% of MS for more than $8bn, branching their keiretsu out to a major US i-bank.. or should I say commercial bank now? Has Japanese been fared well in US minority shareholdership?

Nomura is acquiring Lehman's Asia business, including JP and AU, which indeed an exceptionally good news to Lehman's employees....no layoff, no restructuring (as yet), the best part is - they will receive a bonus same as last year! no biggie, just 300mn for 3000 staff, 100K per person on average, SWEET! They have a lot of cash on hand anyway might as well spend on the existing staff rather than paying market rate for new hires. While Bear staff all left to look for jobs, ML may see sizable layoff, Lehman people went out to celebrate the takeover.

On a side note, although I don't concord with others that HK cabs are super cheap (if that's the case why there are so many empty cabs running on the street), ANOTHER 2 bucks raise in the base fare?! What the heck, I am feeling the pinch again..probably should consider moving out of HV or be more discipline with time management... or should I start carpooling?

Bad fusion

Sunset in central

You can totally tell the difference, from southbay where air and sky is clean, to central where it is shrouded by a smoky haze. Dinner at BO innovation, I have always wanted to try this restaurant... but I think this would be the only time I will dine there...

To sum up, poor and slow service, tattooed chefs, smelly bathroom, uninspiring fusion food, I don't think this restaurant should deserve a premium. Considering the price tag is not cheap at all, probably it would cost 1000hkd per head for dinner, the food more resembles a slight twist in traditional chinese food. Fusion food is not just a combination of western and eastern ingredients but how to combine the two to create something better... and obviously they failed to achieve that.

Appetizers: foie gras pot sticker (poor preparation of foie gras make it tasteless); xiao lung bao (pretty interesting the bao only contains the soup base without any meat...hum.. isn't it called cutting corner?); quail egg with cavier; ha gou with truffle xo (can't taste the truffle at all), lam choy puree (very watery paste would be better if they make it into jelly)

Cod dish - the best one among all, much simpler and fish is cooked perfectly.

Crab souffle with vinegar and brown sugar. basically like hairy crab fat with the same hairy crab sauce. Interesting texture but somehow I feel there's some missing parts to it.. like the real crab meat to balance out the intense flavor of crab fat.

Pork in vinegar and ginger sauce topped with egg yolk. the chef recommends us to eat the yolk as a whole first because it will break... my god what's the point of having the egg yolk if you need to eat two pieces separately?! I thought the yolk will make a good match with the pork meat and make the meat silkier? pork meat is indeed very tender, but it tastes like regular vinegar and ginger pork for mommies who just give birth to babies.
Minced chicken wrapped by chicken breast with konyaku and scallion.
Fried rice with tobiko. er...it's pretty tasteless.
Probably it is extremely difficult to fuse chinese food with western cuisine.. I really don't know. I prefer japanese and french fusion because the ingredients and preparation compliment each other. I just don't get why needed to try so hard to make something impossible to possible but not in a good way.

If I am paying that kind of money I will spend on real french food rather than BO innovation. I think it is totally overated.

Crisis

I have to mark today down to commemorate the financial crisis.

HSI was down by >5% today marking the 52wks low. Taiwan limited down again and selling pressure on India is mounting. Everybody kept shaking their heads and nobody has the energy to untangle their emotion while seeing all the stocks going red. My colleague said he actually felt like worse than '03 because he found nothing to buy and started to concern about his job security.

I was working late in a down market today. In the middle of the way back home, the cab driver started giggling, trying to initiate a chat with me in unbearable silence. He joked about it was so obvious to tell the bad market put a big dark cloud over the sky and people came out from citibank had long sad face that couldn't hide their sullen emotion.

It would be interesting to see how the market will restructure going forward...fundraising is likely to slow down given the credit crunch, investment sentiment continues to remain weak, now more so called talents left jobless and resumes floating around the street...the brokers previously were a lot more attentive to hedge funds since they generated much higher brokerage fees but now they are eager to serve long only clients with many hedge funds going under.

What I want to see is the property price in HK to come down. The hype last year was exacerbated by heated stock market and incredible bonus payout, people are lucky to retain their jobs let alone getting any bonuses, we ain't going to see any wealth effect this year while salary to go stagnant. Why are people still paying more than 10K per sqft for a tiny apartment?

Whoever holds large position in cash is the winner after all...

Woman at work

I have to admit that I have been slacking at updating my blog....is not like i have nothing to talk about, but my emotion has been affected by the recent market turmoil and under stress to perform as we are approaching the evaluation season. I actually miss the days when I was in SF, where you are praised for whatever you do and nobody will criticize how much more you can contribute and they can only see the excellence rather than the flaws out of you. Life is so much easier in the states, I feel like I have aged 10 years for the 3 yrs duration in HK..... I feel so old..

Recently there are a lot of TV dramas ie cashmere mafia, lipstick jungle, featuring the high-power career-driven women , showcasing how women can rise from the bottom of the corporate ladder, facing off the male colleagues to become the management of the companies. They are oftentimes fancy looking, wearing branded outfits and handbags, self-centered and have strong faith in themselves and believe they can conquer the world. It's the reality that when women want to excel to the top they need to work 2x as hard or as cruel because no matter how good they are, they are still being stereotyped as mommies who will sacrifice work for kids/family and can't be 100% devoted at work... so it is to their disadvantage that they need to be even more like a man than the real men.

I ask myself whether I have what it takes to become one of the high-power working women. There are two ways to achieve that: 1) adorable looking and work your femininity into a competitive advantage 2) cut-throat bitch who likes politics and step on others to reach the top. The truth is that I can never be a bitch either way...I don't know how to play politics and I cannot backstab others to protect my own territory. From the first day in school we were taught to be helpful and considerate and be truthful to others, these principles and morality turn out to be the impediments when apply to real life. Is it being selfish and political the only way to success? All along I thought It's the woman's nature to take care of others and have a soft spot that is easily conquerable. I don't really see the top management women being recognized as genuinely nice and have adorable personalities. That comes to the next question, whether being selfish and political the only way to survive before becoming successful. I probably wouldn't be one of those successful women as I don't want to be the cut-throat bitch who are defined by their professional lives rather than good moral quality that one possesses.

Moon cakes

It's the mid autumn festival and moon cake eating season again! I still remembered the part that I enjoyed the most is candle burning...what we did was to gather around in the playground at night, melting red candles in the moon cake tin or on the concrete ground and peeling off the red wax when the candles were all melted...there's nothing much you can do with the remaining wax, it is no doubt a useless and stupid game which was enjoyed most when time was in abundance. Candle burning is forbidden in HK now.. government suddenly realized how dangerous that can be and needed to hire intensive labor to remove the wax from the playground the next day morning...

Traditionally in the mid autumn festival we eat moon cake with lotus seed paste and egg yolks. The cake itself is very filling because we need to use lots of lard to make it tasteful. I particularly like the skin (well.. i like the skin of everything) of the cakes because of the soft texture and sweet flavor.. I used to eat a lot of moon cakes but later on switched to the snowy moon cakes by Tai Pan because of its lighter taste and mochi type of texture..yet I have my principle of not trying out the weird flavor like tiramisu and durian I think it is just awkward to combine random flavors and force into a moon cake mold to make it festive looking.

And this year I made my own! The snowy moon cakes with red bean / green bean paste. The whole moon cake making process is actually quite fun and easy to do. I again resent the cake shops to sell something low cost for high margin.. this set can easily sells for >100HKD!
Another kind of new style moon cake - egg custard filing with crispy skin. This one is quite hard to make it shape nicely because of the uneven distribution of the skin.....
Only 4 ingredients are needed for the skin.