:mattLandia:

Today was a LONG but good day. Here's a short breakdown of my day, which is pretty typical for me when I working in a city I've never been to.

7 AM - Wake up. Waking up is fairly easy when you have wrap-around windows on the 25th floor of the Marriott in downtown Hong Kong. Stunning view. I shower, answer all my email I get over night, and pack for work.

8:30 - Hop a cab a mile or so over to the our HK office. Totally shocked (yet again) as the absolute prowess these cabbies have. I'm talking 1/100's of an inch between them and other buses, cabs, people, etc. And strangely, I have zero fear.

9 - 4 - WORK. In my case, this means standing in front of a class, laptop projector roaring, scribbling on a white board, taking questions (in this case in broken english), troubleshooting pc performance and lecturing to the class. No amount of practice makes it any less tiring. By 4, I'm bushed.

4ish - Head back to the hotel to drop off bag, change clothes, and grab my camera. Today, I'm hanging out after work with some of my trainees who are here for my class from Korea. Their names are Yong-Hyuk, Gun-il, Jong-sung, and Moon-Seob. These guys are really cool, and take me to this great eatery where I finally get some authentic HK Dim Sum. I opted for the pork dumplings and some hard core won ton soup. Very, very decent.

5 - 8 - Walk all the hell over Hong Kong. I mean up streets, down alleys, up and up and up hills, and down and down and down hills untils my calves are complete jelly. I almost always do this my first few days in a city. It's my own personal recon mission, and I scope out shopping, restaurant, attractions, etc. This is really helpful for shopping, so I can find the best deals and have a much better idea of what my options are.

8ish- Get back to the hotel, bathed in sweat, legs aching. Answer a few more emails. It's warm and balmy out, so I decide to take a swim. The pools is outside on the 7th floor terrace, surrounded by glowing towers of glass. There is no one else in the pool, so I slide into the perfectly tepid water, float on my back, and watch the lights blink all over the city. THIS is how you relax.

9ish - Grab some grub at the eatery downstairs, head back to my room, take a long hot shower, wrap up in a robe, and then plop down to email, blog, post pics, whatever. The whole time sitting at my desk over looking the city.

Now, if this was weekend day, or if I wasn't lecturing the next morning, I would probably head back out again to check out the night life, but as I've learned from painful past experiences, going out late and lecturing at the crack of dawn DO NOT MIX. Don't say I never warned you.

And I'm off to bed.