In 1998 I was working in the Midas Team in St Magnus House,
Lower Thames Street in London. Midas had been developed as a PC based query
system for Multicurrency Payments Department (MPD), the area that processes all
of the UK Bank's payments, home and abroad[1].
My role was to liaise with the business, gathering requirements, handling their
questions and testing the application. It was hard work, but enjoyable, and I
must have been pretty good at it, because when the Bank decided to install a
version of the application in HSBC's Correspondent Banking Department in Hong
Kong, I was chosen to not only test it, but also to travel to Hong Kong and
help with the implementation in January 1999.
But as Christmas 1998 approached, my wife Val and I were
plunged into a nightmare. Our daughter, Sarah - who was fifteen months old -
fell ill. She was fractious and restless, cried all the time and was sleeping
poorly. The doctor could not tell what was wrong, and when her condition failed
to improve, we took her to the hospital. Again, the doctors were unsure what
was the matter, but one of them said - and I will always thank him for this -
that we were not taking her home until he had discovered what was wrong. Eventually
he asked permission to perform a lumbar puncture - just to rule some things
out, he said. When he came back he gave us the devastating news that Sarah had
meningitis. I have never been so scared in my life, but fortunately the
diagnosis was made in time to get her the treatment she needed and she
ultimately made a full recovery, but while she was in hospital - and both Val
and I spent nights there, sleeping in uneasy chairs - any thoughts of a trip to
Hong Kong were far from my mind.
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| HSBC Headquarters, Queens Road Central, Hong Kong |
Sarah's recovery meant that I was able to fly out to Hong
Kong, but not without a sense of apprehension at leaving Val alone with her -
and some trepidation at the prospect of two weeks in a strange place, together
with the prospect of dealing with the Midas implementation alone, albeit with
support from the UK - six thousand miles away and six hours behind.
As I was still a Grade 5 clerk at the time (I think that is
GCB7 in the new structure), the Bank didn't exactly push the boat out when they
booked my flight and I was shoehorned into Economy for the twelve hour flight,
which left at 9pm instead of the scheduled 6pm and meant that I landed in Hong
Kong at three o'clock on a Sunday afternoon. And rather than stump up for a
hotel, the Bank billeted me with Chris Doyle, a manager in the Correspondent
Banking team at his flat in Happy Valley. I don't think that I properly thanked
him for his hospitality; as a stranger in a strange land, not having to spend a
fortnight in a lonely hotel room, but having some company and being included in
the social life of Chris and his fellow ex-pats was something I was grateful
for. Chris thoughtfully gave me a piece of paper with his address written in
Cantonese and a phonetic English translation (something like "pow ma day
surn gayling fong") that was of immense assistance the night I got a cab
home alone with a driver who spoke little or no English.
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| View from The Peak |
Hong Kong was a mixture of the familiar and the alien. Out
for a walk one lunchtime, I passed well known stores and restaurants; Marks
& Spencer, Louis Vuitton, McDonalds, and then, turning a corner into a less
well trodden side street, I saw a man with a stick, driving a dozen chickens
before him! And this contrast was apparent in the office too. One evening I was
involved in a call with my manager in the UK, Raj Soni and the manager of
Correspondent Banking in Hong Kong, Geoff Armstrong, who had been my boss at
Threadneedle Street International Banking Centre. Having been in a meeting with
people I had worked with at home, it seemed odd to walk out of the office that
night into Queens Road Central rather than Lower Thames Street. That mixture of
the recognisable and the unrecognisable is one thing that makes Hong Kong so
alluring, and although I suffered some pangs of home-sickness, the familiar
sights and the work made it less painful, even if I suffered chronic jet-lag.
Many an evening I would doze off in an armchair, my book falling to the floor
with a thud that woke me up, only to find myself unable to sleep once I got to
bed, dozing fitfully until the alarm went off, by which point I felt exhausted.
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| Pictured on her visit to London some months later, Maria Ng from HSBC Hong Kong's Correspondent Banking Department and yours truly. |
Although I was only there for two weeks, I saw enough to
recognise a subtly different working culture. While in the UK I was used to
people arriving at nine, working in a blur until five or five-thirty and then
leaving, in Hong Kong I would get to the office just after eight in the morning
to find most desks occupied, and leave at six in the evening with people still
working. One evening I was still there at 8pm and hardly anyone had gone home. But
between times, whereas my colleagues in MPD or the Midas Team would be flat out
almost all day, in Hong Kong the daily grind was more laid back. I'm not saying
they did less work, just that they seemed prepared to allow the work to
progress at a more leisurely pace. Since I was there for two weeks, I had
opportunities for sightseeing. I went to The Peak. The famous Peak Tram runs
from Central to Peak where there are brilliant views of the city and harbour. I
took the equally renowned Star Ferry to Kowloon and the bustling Wan Chai.
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| Looking across the harboir from Kowloon |
Apart from Hong Kong, the furthest I ever had the chance to
travel on bank business were Sheffield and Livingston in Scotland, and the trip
to the former British colony (it was handed over to the People's Republic of
China in July, 1997) was one I'll never forget. The implementation went as well
as could be expected - a few minor glitches, but generally it was rated a
success - and I had the chance to see a part of the world I might otherwise
have not. I would recommend anyone who gets the opportunity to visit Hong Kong
to go, it really is a different world.
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