To Stay or To Go

This is my outlet for the agony of indecision over extending my time in Hong Kong. The extension is so brief, it is almost ridiculous that I am still in debate. I am scheduled to leave on March 20th, but I realized that I could take a couple more classes here and stay until April 10 completing my graduation requirements.

Why am I so torn about it? Hong Kong is fun but it is not a rigorous learning experience. If I return to Duke, it is less fun but I will take a few good classes and learn quite a bit next term. I will be busy with my classes - Healthcare Policy (taught by a leader in the field), Valuation (opportunity to round out my insecurity towards finance), and Pricing (a window to my future career). I will also finish my internship on green building. The valuation class will help me figure out how to do the internship project. I will try to immerse in my work, but I will be distracted by social pressure and getting ready for the move to SF. Here's a memory from Durham: the sorority house.

If I stay in Hong Kong, I will try to budget a trip every weekend, finish my studies here, where I am not building finance skills, but I'm learning about doing business in Asia and meeting businesses in Asia, which feels almost as relevant as building my finance skills. Potential trips include Yunnan province, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Vietnam or Laos. Additionally, I will continue to meet people in Hong Kong, network with Fuqua alum and friends of friends. I've made a good group of friends who I enjoy. Also, I will return to fuqua with enough time to bond with folks before we all depart. The cons are that I am slightly afraid of just 'hanging out' in Hong Kong and not taking advantage of the quality education for which I have paid. I feel guilty for not taking the more challenging classes that will supposedly build my skill set. Although it's true that I often forget what I have learned in class. Trips through Asia will be more memorable than valuation. Here's Hong Kong - not quite Durham.


In short, I will be happier in Asia but not sure that is why I am in business school. People say that I'll be so busy when I start work, it's worth enjoying myself now. That could be true. These periods usually energize me to work harder when they end.

Tuesday Night

Being on business school exchange in Hong Kong is exactly that - it is not "study abroad" - it is simply exchange from one side of the pond to the other. There is very little study and very little pressure to study. Instead, on a Tuesday evening when most of the world has an early bed time to be refreshed for a Wednesday working day, 5 business school exchange students in Hong Kong proceed on a night of drunken debauchery in LKF. Through researching the previous night's texts later the next day, we discover that our bed time was approximately between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning. So much for studying...Here are a few highlights from the evening.

For those not in-the-know, LKF is Lan Kwai Fong (sp?), a neighborhood composed of a few streets in the larger area of Central on Hong Kong Island. It is a landscape of bars and clubs where drunken escapades can be had every night of the week. It is also centrally located for most of my crew on exchange and quite close to our evening classes (we might not study, but we put up pretense by making a show at class). LKF has an atmosphere that blends Stone Street in Lower Manhattan and the French Quarter. The night starts as if on Stone Street and ends as if on the French Quarter. On weeknights Western bankers (the majority of the crowd) are in their suits sans jacket and tie. Lady bankers are in business dress, of the type that demonstrates sex appeal after hours. (I'll post pics later)

Regarding race in Hong Kong, it surprised me how many Westerners live here. Many more than I expected. Wikipedia doesn't give me the exact number, but I see them everywhere. So, it's China but it's also still a British isle in a sense. This is mostly true for one part of Hong Kong. There are other parts of Hong Kong where there are very few, if any, Westerners (more on that later).

Who are those crazy, drunken fools in the photo? Those are my exchange friends. Since I have yet to receive their permission for exposing them on my widely read blog, I will withhold names. Needless to say, it was an amusing evening.

(As an aside, we also appreciate the real culture of Hong Kong, but this particular evening was worth memorializing. Highlights of our hikes, dim sum adventures and travels to come...)