Ying Yang

Last week I had to go back to Hong Kong to renew my China visa and attend a conference, which gave me an opportunity to sort of compare side by side a typical week in the Martial Arts school Vs a typical week in the metropolis.

The Weekend:

Saturdays and Sundays are rest days at the school, breakfast is served at 9:00am and after that everyone is free to do their own thing; some people sunbathe others sleep in the Friday night hangover – yeah, there is a group of teenagers that take this as summer camp and find ways to sneak out and get hammered on Baijiu! You can call me old, but I clean, do the laundry, go to the supermarket for my week supplies, read and try to have conversations with the sunbathers. Starting next weekend, I’ve signed up for extra Chinese classes in Dali, so I’ll be spending the weekends there which should be nice.

A quick note: when I mention the laundry, is not one of those mechanical things we’re used to in the west; there is only one old and abused washing machine for everyone to share, so it means you have to be vigilant and quick when the machine is free to run with your pile of clothes and claim possession of it. Perhaps due to the constant use, the frequent power cuts and the unstable surface where it is, the poor thing is absolutely screwed. After multiple trials and errors, we’ve found that the most efficient way to set the machine is to put it on the ‘quick cycle’ which is supposed to go for 27 minutes…. only that it always gets stuck sometime between the 14 and 7 min, so you have to literally guard the machine, wait for the time when it gets stuck, turn it off and re-set it in the ‘spin only cycle’ which lasts for 10 min; otherwise the original 27 min can go on for about 90 min. Also the water supply comes from a hose up the mountain, that most often than not breaks apart and we have to rush to put it back together; the beauty of the countryside… So doing the laundry is a lot more time consuming than you’d expect.

In Hong Kong, having no kids means weekends are for pampering and glamour! Typically a HK weekend would include a combination of mani-pedi, facial, massage, hair dressing, afternoon drinks in the hip bar de jour and fancy Sunday brunch. I, of course, did all of the above!

On Saturday night, my dearest friend Craig organised a dinner at a private kitchen for his 40th birthday, which I was very happy to be able to attend. For those of you outside Hong Kong, private kitchens are one of the coolest and most exclusive ways to dine out; basically, these are restaurants without a public licence that operate in small renovated apartments, and that allow you to bring your own drinks as they don’t have permits to sell alcohol. What it means is that you get to have a great quality meal with the best of your wine selection (this time from Craig’s South African reserve), at a very reasonable price and intimate setting.

Washing machine Vs Private kitchen = Point for the private kitchen

Monday to Friday:

As previously mentioned, the training schedule at the school is very structured and rigorous. I wake up every day at 5:00am, have 3 sessions of training each for about 2.5 hours; the altitude and extra energy of the twenty-something old students add to the difficulty, meaning every night (at 8:00pm) I collapse in bed absolutely exhausted! My outfits consist on multiple layers of workout clothes, running shoes and a hat for the afternoon sessions. I only get to wear ‘normal’ clothes for a couple of hours in the afternoon, around dinner time.

Meals are predictable and average in quality. The cooks have about 20 dishes in their repertoire; they choose randomly what to serve each day (we get 7 dishes: 2 meat, 4 vegetarian and rice), which makes each meal a bit of a lucky draw, sometimes we get the jackpot that everyone fights for and sometimes the food is left untouched. The nice thing about meals is that we all sit together on a long table and share stories and jokes the old fashioned way.

A working week in Hong Kong is like packing a suitcase with one of those vacuum bags, to extract the bits of free time you have and squeeze a bit more work in! I was attending a conference, which in my line of work -marketing and business development- involves a lot of events and socialising.

Typically I would get up at 6:30am, try to have a morning workout (not always successfully), have a shower and put on my corporate look: pencil skirt, shirt, heels, make up; leave the house at 8:00am to a working breakfast; 9:30am be at the conference venue and attend pre-arranged meetings, listen to the talks and participate in the networking sessions; in between grab a quick lunch or sit in a roundtable lunch session; 5:00pm networking drinks followed by 7:00pm event dinner. I was TIRED! Having to be constantly on your best behaviour, ready to come back with a smart comment that will sell your company, listening to loads of new information, smiling, exchanging business cards, it’s all pretty draining.

Physical Vs Mental exhaustion = Debatable tie

Both places and lifestyles have pros and cons. I have developed a pretty good skill at enjoying the present moment; call it enlightenment, maturity, positivity or gratefulness, but I honestly enjoy and appreciate every single day where ever I am with the circumstances I have. I like both the glamour of the corporate world and the strength of the martial arts training, and I do feel grateful for having the opportunity to experience both!