Jo Sun! (Good Morning)

Time to inform you all with what I have been doing since my last post.

After my escape (thanks Vincent!) from Pinsent Masons on the Thursday morning I was able to meet with Iain Lindsay at the British Consulate, which is a lovely modern building - very secure though, I got my phone taken off me while I was on the premises and had to go through lots of security gates. Iain told me all the functions of the British Consulate in Hong Kong, which is a lot more than I realised - people always forget what goes on in the background. I knew quite a lot already about the history of Hong Kong and the UK's governing role before 1997 but they still have a very strong presence in Hong Kong. UK Trade and Investment is high on the list of priorities, with Invest NI and Scottish Development International even holding presentations in Hong Kong for local and international businesses. The UK Trade and Investment work to help businesses set up in Hong Kong, set up in the UK and they also give guidance to local businesses wanting to set up in other parts of the world. I was shown around the office and met some of the other employees, and was taken to the British Council which is beside the British Consulate. The British Council was extremely busy with Chinese people attending summer schools to learn English and take exams. After being in Hong Kong for so long it is hard not to notice the high work ethic; almost everyone is trying to learn something new and many go to University to do more than one degree, and they actually enjoy the work they are doing. After getting a coffee (I got a mocha) we headed back to the British Consulate to check out the snazzy new interactive TV they have in their reception area. I was able to look up the internet and search the UK Trade and Investment and the British Consulate websites and even left a little presence of Scotland when I left by displaying the Scottish Development International website! On a more personal level, Iain told me what the British Consulate could do for me - if I lost my passport they can help me get a new one, if I was arrested they would provide me with assistance in jail and lots of other help that I obviously wont need as those kinds of things would never happen to me (touch wood!).

After my return (my escape didn't last too long) I was given a few different jobs to do. I had to help Alvin with a conflict of laws case, researching what law would take precedence for a share purchase agreement and James gave me a task also dealing with conflict of laws but in the area of sale of goods. Most of Friday was spent continuing my database project and accumulating two files worth of information for people in the office, which really means running around the office like a headless chicken as its 4.30pm and this needs to be finished and signed off by 5.30pm and there hundreds more references to find!

Friday night was spent having a 'Macau burger' and a few drinks with Sun Chen who is a trainee who moved into the same apartments as me during the week. I am pretty pleased about this as it means there have been lots of opportunities to have dinner out. The night before we went to a Vietnamese restaurant this was delicious. I arranged to go for a little shopping trip with Patricia, another trainee, and she showed me around the local shops in Causeway bay so now I pretty much know the place like the back of my hand and we had awesome food in the 'Brunch Club' - eggs benedicts with chorizo and mushrooms - yum yum. Later on I went to the cinema, for some more caramel and chocolate popcorn, to see 'UP' in 3D, which was pretty funny, although a child started crying and shouting 'it's so scary'. Sunday was the usual, wash my clothes, do the shopping, finish some work and relax day - perfect!

I had planned Monday to be quite a quiet day just doing my database but I was very much mistaken. I was targeted by Bernard who asked if I could help on a Vietnam project, trying to find Vietnamese contracts in English, which is pretty hard when the law of Vietnam states that all contracts must be in Vietnamese! Rodney asked me to find information for an article on Managing Risk and then at the wrong time I chose to walk back to my seat where Norman spied me. And that was the rest of my day, and Tuesday, taken up of compiling information for the closing of a case into files which then had to be doubled checked against previous files. There were about four of us working on it at the same time because it was such a big case. On Wednesday Maggie (the Hong Kong Librarian) and I had to speak with Nick Thow from the UK office about the database that I was doing. This went very well and he was impressed with the progress we had made, which means I need to keep working to get it finished.

Tonight I am going to meet Fiona Donnelly from Scottish Development International with Alison and Vincent from work so I shall post another blog to let you know what went on!