Dear McGill MBA

It's a tough life. Leaving all your friends and moving to a strange country.

This is a message to all my fellow McGill MBAers. Keep on keeping!!

Borneo-boy - Brunei

Let me tell you something about Brunei. It’s a small sultanate sandwiched by Malaysia on the island of Borneo. It’s got lots of oil and therefore lots of money . . . but the money doesn’t seem to be shared very evenly. The sultan is one of the richest people in the world and was the richest person until 97. He’s got a couple of wives (you are allowed to have four in Brunei). Oh yeah and it’s a Muslim country so there is no booze allowed. In the capital city of Bandar Seri Begawan, about 30,000 people live on the water. This small country is going to run out of oil soon and is trying to grow its tourism to make up the difference, but so far I’d say it isn’t working.

Let me tell you about my time in Brunei, specifically being there for ‘National Day.’ So National Day is the day where the Sultan comes out to view the people. The army, navy, air force, civil servants, students, business people, etc, parade in front of him and all the VIPs in the nation. It’s really grand and quite impressive. Being one of the only tourists there me and my team got a lot of attention. I was able to meet the Canadian High Commissioner; The team was interviewed by the national paper, the national television station, and the national radio station on a number of different occations; and everyone wanted to say hi to me. It was really cool. Brunei is one of those places in the world where the average citizen hasn’t been turned off by tourists and actually wants to come have a conversation with you. Its one of those places where the kids haven’t seen many tall white people before so they run after your taxi waving with huge smiles on their face. It was such a nice place to be after the chaos of Sabah.

Check out the pictures here.

Borneo-boy - Mt Kilabalu

This is my first attempt at video blogging. A friend over here does it all the time and it kind of makes sense. Easier to do, you get to see what I’m seeing, etc. So this is me on Mr. Kilabalu in Malaysian Borneo. The mountain is over 4000 metres high and it’s around zero on the peak. I didn’t bother bringing any warm clothes to Singapore which makes it really hard to stay warm. I wore three layers of t-shirts, a light sweater, a wind breaker, my camping pants, and a towel on my head. Making it to the peak was totally satisfying, but compared to Mt. Everest at nearly 9000 metres it doesn’t seem so impressive.

Here are the pics of the trip up the mountain.

Hongky Kong Man

The 3.5 hour flight from Singapore to Hong Kong is a pretty common trip for people here. They go for gambling and shopping weekends. Drop the gambling and throw in drinking and eating and you’ve got my week. It’s pretty easy to see why people move between Hong Kong and Vancouver so easily. The water and mountains with a city sandwiched in between must be a pretty familiar site for both. I flew into Hong Kong earlier in the morning on Friday and spent the day wandering around Central checking out the sites. I finally got to see one of if not my favourite buildings up close and personal. The first stop was a trip up the Bank of China building to the 43rd floor for a view of the city. I met up with some friends and we grabbed some Shanghai style dinner and went for drinks. The next day was all about shopping. We took a trip over to Kowloon which is kind of like China town in every city in the world except it never ends. Oh yeah, I forgot, we had the best dim sum for brunch at some place near Causeway Bay. That night we ended up at LKF for a crazy night of drinking and dancing. It reminded me a lot of places here. Drinking on the streets, lots of bars jammed into the same spot, a huge expat crowd. The big difference is there are 7-11s in the neighbourhood so people tend to get their beer there and drink on the streets before heading into a bar. Some might even argue that 7-11 is the best bar in town . . . but those people are dumb.

The next day I wanted to go to Shenzhen, which is the city on the China site. It was totally different than expected and a big culture shock. It’s kind of hard to describe, so I won’t. On my last day I was flying out of Macau so got up early and took a ferry to the tiny little city. It’s a tiny little city that looks like a Mediterranean city but full of Chinese gamblers. The food is great and the casinos are easily abused by budget travels.

Click on the picture to look at some of the city photos. Hopefully I’ll have pictures from night time partying soon.

Music worth listening to from LCD Soundsystem.

Music you’d be listening to right now if you were as cool as me

Avalanches – Brain (Teazer) . . . . its so fuckin party

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Goodbye to the mother and the cover

Klaxons – Golden Skans

Menomena – Wet & Rusting

Arcade Fire – Intervention

The Shins – Sleeping Lessons

Bloc Party – The Prayer

Looking for love in all the wrong places.

It’s the oldest profession in the world and I an irrational fear of it. Being from Canada, I’m of the view that prostitutes are disease carrying drug addicts trying to get their next fix, hence the fear. Around these parts though, prostitution is prevalent and open. I figured it was time to get over myself and accept the world with arms open. So when the team decided to go Orchard Towers after the bar I didn’t protest. Before I left for Singapore John says ‘you have to visit Four Floors of Whores.’ Well I finally made it to the infamous four floors in Orchard Towers. Picture the brothels from Hollywood movies with girls strung over the railings making cat calls and drunken guys swaying back and forth with a girl on each arm. Now remove all the red satin curtains and wooden bar and replace it with a discount mall and escalators. Kind of funny, kind of fun. That’s Orchard Towers. I’m still not planning on paying for sex anytime soon, but I’m not afraid anymore.

Some songs worth checking:

The Golden Dogs . . . check out construction worker

Arcade Fire cover my fav Clash song . . . kind of a bad recording though