Dispatches from Hong Kong: Part 2

Day 2

(Photo: Hong Kong Nights, from my balcony)

My goal for my second day in Hong Kong was simple: don’t go to sleep. It seems easy enough at first blush, but trust me, it isn’t. My body is fighting me as I try to adapt to this inverted time zone. Yesterday, after I got back from my walk, I planed to head into the city and start to feel my way around. It was about 12:30pm and I decided to lay down for a sec, big mistake. 10 hours later…. I awoke to find that not only had I wasted the day, but I’ve also thrown off my ability to get on schedule for another day. So, I Skyped with the family for a while, cooked some food, did some dishes, worked on a blog post and watched my one TV station to pass the time. Quick aside: CNN International is so much better than the US version, it’s shameful. But this only got me to about 3am, so I took some sleeping pills and slept until 5am. My promise to myself was that I would not go to sleep again until this evening. So, now you understand the reasoning for my simple but vital goal.

In order to succeed in my plan, I had to get out of the house. For the time being, my apartment only gets one TV station and I don’t have Internet service. My sponsor has been kind enough to allow me to come over to his unit anytime I want to get on the web until I can figure out how to obtain service for myself, but I don’t want to wear out my welcome. So, that means that there isn’t much to pass the time at home. I have plenty of books, but if I’m tired I cannot read, it just hastens my slumber. So, I gotta get out of here.

Since I don’t have web service once I leave the compound, I have to study my Google maps well for the journey ahead. I’d like to take another quick detour to thank God for those fine folks at Google, by the way. I don’t know how anybody found anything in unfamiliar cities before GPS. Consider that for hundreds of years, people would just sail blindly into the night, over entire oceans, not knowing what they would find on the other side, if anything. The courage that takes… staggering.

So, armed with the bus schedule I wander down the hill and make the first of what would be many routing errors of the day. While I found the right bus stop and the right bus, I got on going the wrong direction. No problem, I thought, I have no schedule today, I’ll just ride the circuit and get to my stop eventually. These busses, its important to note, are the huge double decker variety. So, I was seated on the top deck, in the front row with my knees pressed against the glass to get the best view possible. I also had my headphones blaring while I enjoyed the scenery.

(Photo: view of Hong Kong from my 2nd-floor bus seat)

This, however, reduced my ability to be aware of my surroundings. I couldn’t see what was happening behind be or below me, nor could I hear any announcement being made. After a while, once the bus turned around to head back the way it came, I noticed that it hadn’t stopped in a while. I turned around to find that I was the only person on the bus, which was standing-room-only when I had first gotten on. Uh-oh, I thought. I began to think the bus is out of service and the driver has no idea I’m up here. But since I had been staring at the maps a lot the past few days, I noticed he was heading towards downtown which is where I wanted to be anyway, so I decided not to alert him to my presence until we got downtown. Once we got to the bus depot, I came downstairs, to his great shock, and asked if I could kindly get off here, please. He was happy to be rid of me. He didn’t even allow me to pay, “Just get out of here!” I imagined him thinking. To my great fortune, the bus depot was across the street from the stop I was hoping to get off on all along. So, it took me an hour longer than it should, but I made it.

The place I was heading was a restaurant called Tim Ho Wan. I classmate at AU spent a great deal of time in Hong Kong and couldn’t speak more highly of this place. “It changed my life,” he’d tell me. “I still have dreams about it.” A bit hyperbolic, to be sure, but it seemed as good a place as any to have my first locally bought meal. It isn’t the type of place you would stumble on just walking by; it is tucked away in a train-station/shopping mall. But once you find it, you know you’re in the right place. The place was spilling with people; it looked like the Apple store on a new product launch day.

(Tim Ho Wan, poppin' off)

Every other restaurant around it had 3-4 people eating there, but Tim Ho Wan had an hour-long wait. I think these other restaurants are only here to catch the residual business for people who come there to eat at Tim but don’t have time to wait. I then started asking people in line what the process for getting a table was because the scene was hectic and the process was hard to discern. I met a nice couple from Sydney, Benny and Nichola, who showed me the ropes. Their number was about 20 spots higher than mine and they said they’d been waiting 45 minutes already. So I settled in for the long wait. But to my surprise, when they were called for their table a few minutes later, they were given a table for three for the two of them and they invited me to come sit with them. Lets take a moment to tip our hats to the kindness of strangers. The world is a better place with folks like this in it.

(My new friends, Benny and Nichola)

(the famed Pork Buns and Steamed Rice Rolls)

The meal was great. I would stop short of calling it life changing, but it was worth the wait and lived up to the hype. It was the perfect opening salvo in what I hope to be a parade of culinary delights in Hong Kong.

It was now about 1pm and I still had more time to kill before I could go home. I decided to see if I could catch a flick before heading home. The free Wi-Fi in the train station was a godsend. I’ve found that there aren’t as many public Wi-Fi spots as I was expecting. Maybe its because there are 7 million people in this city and they want to discourage loitering, or maybe the culture is different, but not even the Starbucks I found had it. The train station and the mall have been the only two places I’ve seen with free Wi-Fi and they limit you to 5 sessions a day at 15-30 minutes each time. They clearly don’t want you hanging out on their bandwidth. But the 15 minutes was long enough for me to find the nearest theater and route my way. The surprising thing I found during my walk to the mall was that there were hundreds of women sitting on cardboard boxes underneath the overpasses. It was a confusing scene because they weren’t panhandling, and they were all dressed well enough with enough new-looking consumer products that it was obvious that they were not homeless, but there they were by the hundreds. What were they doing here, I wondered.

(These women had nowhere else to go)

It was explained to me later that these are the Filipina domestic servants of the Hong Kong elite. Sundays are their days off and they have nowhere to hang out—Hong Kong has a surprising lack of places to sit and relax—so they build these makeshift cubbies and spend the day here. That was surprising to me. A city as rich as this one should surely be doing a better job of providing public spaces for its residents to meet. 

I ended up walking the wrong direction for a while, so I ended up taking the famed Hong Kong subway back where I needed to be to make up time. The system lives up to the hype and puts every US transit system to shame. The only US parallel you can draw is the trains at Disney world. Sleek, pristine, smooth, and quiet. Its hard to believe that this system transports millions of people daily. The Stations look like someone just mopped it 10 minutes ago. Wide-screen TVs are stationed every few feet to entertain you while you wait for the trains.

(I was surprised that Mickey Mouse never showed up to sell me something while I waited for the train)

On the trains themselves, instead of only providing a map of the system and leaving it up to you to figure out where you are and what direction you’re headed, these trains have maps that show you where you are and where you’re going. They even have a light that tells you if you’re facing the side of the train that the doors will open on next or not. Very impressive, Hong Kong.

I made it to my movie just in time and enjoyed 2-hours of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson saving the world in San Andreas. If you’re from California, however, don’t watch it. It will terrify you. You guys built a civilization on a bomb, by the looks of things.

The trip home provided the most important lesson of the day, however. I found the bus station I needed and was there as my bus approached only to watch it sail right by me. Curious, I thought, I’m pretty sure that is not how this works. It turns out that in Hong Kong there are several bus lines that share the bus stations, so from the bus driver’s point of view, just because there is someone standing at your stop doesn’t mean that they’re waiting for you. So, you have to flag the busses down. A few minutes observing the other passengers made this clear. So, that mistake cost me 30 minutes, but I made it home nonetheless. I was excited to prepare for my first day of work the next day and then getting to bed early. I had succeeded in not going to bed all day and I was surely going to be on schedule now. I had been up since 5am and went to bed at 9pm with a 6:30am alarm set for the morning.

At 2:30am, however, my body had apparently had enough sleeping. This was going to be an interesting first day….

Dispatches from Hong Kong: Part 1

Man, that is a long flight. I was struck by the fact that, even though we as a society have acquired the ability to soar above the clouds at almost 600 miles an hour, it still takes 16 hours to fly to Hong Kong. That is how far away this place is. I also found myself thinking about how fortunate I am to live in the age I do. Just 100 years ago, it was extremely rare for someone to venture more than 50 miles from the spot they were born. Most people lived and died in one place, never knowing anything of the outside world. We, however, have the tremendous opportunity to travel as far and as wide as we see fit. I don’t take it for granted.

Arriving in Hong Kong was a surprisingly easy ordeal. I had steeled myself for potential issues with customs or immigration, but the visa line was fast and efficient. The immigration agent took my passport, scanned it, said nothing to me, and handed me my visa. I immediately walked down to baggage claim when my bags were doing laps around the belt waiting for me. They then had two lines for customs, if you had things to declare, you took the red line, if you had nothing to declare you take the green line. So I took the green line and was surprised to find that it led you directly out of the airport. I was outside of the terminals and free to go less than 20 minutes after getting off my international flight. Impressive, Hong Kong. Impressive.

My next task was getting downtown and meeting my contact from the consulate. The plan was to take the train from the airport to a specific train station where he’d be waiting. I was nervous about this plan because I had no number for him nor did he have one for me. But he assured me that we would be the only two black people in the station, and thus, we’d find each other easily. My joke was that we had better hope the NAACP didn’t decide to have a conference in Hong Kong this weekend, we’d never find each other. But in the end, he was right. Not 15 seconds had passed after I got off the plane and I was able to spot him. As I write this I have been in country 30 hours or so and despite walking 3-4 miles into the city today and passing hundreds of people on the streets, I have yet to see another black person anywhere. It is amazing how much we take our ethnic diversity for granted in the US. It is truly a strength that we don’t exploit enough.

The apartment they’ve given me is fantastic. I was prepared for a really cramped summer since Hong Kong is famously space deprived. But this place is probably 1400-1600 sq/ft with an enormous patio that may be 500 sq/ft itself, with an amazing view of the Deep Water Bay and the city below. It is a top floor unit, which is great. There is no elevator, however, so I will get my fair share of steps in this summer for sure.

Sleeping has been an issue. I’m trying to get myself on the right time-schedule out here, we are 12 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time here, but I have been unable to do so as yet. I’m hoping I can get it together before work starts on Monday.

As I mentioned earlier, I took a long walk today. I woke up at 4am and had nothing to do, so I figured I’d see how far my feet could take me. I hadn’t yet gotten any Hong Kong Dollars, so, I couldn’t take the public transport anywhere. I strolled down the windy roads of the hill we live on and ended up heading west towards the high-rises in the distance. After being in the mid-Atlantic region for almost 2 years now, a long walk in a hot, humid, tropical environment was a bit of a shock to the system, but after 30 minutes or so, my body remembered its Floridian roots and seemed to adjust. It took me almost an hour before I realized why the Hongkongers had such strange sidewalk social norms; it’s a left-hand drive country. So, I was that jerk on the wrong side of the sidewalk demanding that people move out of my way; sorry about that guys…

My main goal for this walk was to obtain means to travel freely around the city. So, I stepped into a couple of convenience stores to inquire if they could sell an octopus card (which lets you ride the trains, buses and ferries. You can also use it to pay in stores) to me, but I found no joy. One woman made an air brush motion at me after I asked her about it they way you do when someone asks you an absurd question. She wouldn’t meet my gaze after that. I’m not sure if she even understood my question, it’s not clear that she did. If she did understand me, it was a really rude way to treat someone. In any event, she couldn’t help me. I eventually did, however, find a bank and an ATM so I could get some cash that enabled me to pay for a cab ride home. Our compound is not centrally located here, so it is going to be a bit of a chore getting to the action areas, but my sponsor was able to give me an Octopus card once I got back to the apartment, so I should be good to go from here on out.

One of my goals here is to learn something everyday, I figure that if you can’t learn one thing while living in China for a summer, then something is wrong with you. The thing I learned today: While any building that looks like this in the U.S. is surely serving up some delicious food, that is not the case in China. 

While on my walk today, I stopped in here hoping to score my first locally cooked meal; imagine my surprise (read: disappointment) when I walked in and found nothing but burning incense and a man waving an incense candle around in a ritualistic manner. No one looked at me funny for being there, but I felt as if they could read my thoughts and were thinking, “This idiot walked in here looking for Sesame Chicken, I bet!” I couldn’t get out of there fast enough; my imaginary tail tucked firmly between my legs…

Jack Bisase: Pickering Fellow

Nancy Soderberg.

 That name deserves to be the first thing in my first post because none of this happens if not for her.

 As I think back on my journey it is hard to sum up the major points that lead to this point, because they were all pivotal. Even the seemingly meaningless micro-choices ended up being huge. Jobs I took or didn't, conversations I had on a whim, advice I listened to, failures –the failures ended up being SO important– all on them stack on each other like the most fragile of Jenga tower lifting me towards the sky. But one thing I know: Nancy was the final piece on that tower.

 Before I get into this story, you should know who she is. Her accomplishments could fill the page and then some, but here are some highlights: President, the Connect U.S. Fund; President and CEO, Soderberg Solutions; Vice President for Multilateral Affairs, International Crisis Group; Adjunct Professor at Columbia University; Alternate Representative to the United Nations, Presidential Appointee with rank of Ambassador;Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. It goes on and on, but you get the idea. (The full resume is here.) When this lady talks, you listen.

The first time I heard her name it was in the mouth of Professor Paul Harwood in the summer of 2010. I was taking his Terrorism Today class that summer. I had the time off it take that class because my daughter, Lyra, was born at the same time that the summer session started. Fortunately, I was working for a very progressive company, American Express, that allowed the fathers time off just like the mothers. So I had six weeks (yes six!) of paid leave to be with my family. Take a moment to consider that fortunate convergence of events and how perfect the timing was...

 That terrorism class was my first taste of studying something that really piqued my interests since returning to school the previous fall after a 6 year hiatus. I truly looked forward to each class and each assignment, and it showed in my final grade. So, after the end of the semester I went to Dr. Harwood for advice as to how to continue working in these issues post-graduation. He said "Find Nancy Soderberg. She can help you". I signed up for her class for the upcoming fall at the first opportunity.

 Day one of that class I was in the front row in the center seat. She was going to know who I was. I wasn't leaving anything to chance. Now anyone who has ever taken one of Nancy's classes can tell you that her favorite point to harp on students about is obtaining internships. She preaches it like her life depends on it. The first time I sat through her famed "you must get an internship!" lecture I already had a shield of well-sounding, and legitimate, excuses. "I work", "I have to provide for a family", "I'm too old", "I just want to get a degree, I don't need internships". But in private conversation she would bat each of these excuses away as if they weren't even worth considering. So, reluctantly, I made a half-hearted attempt at obtaining one. I found a few that looked interesting, but since I had dragged my feet, I had missed the filing deadline for most of them.  And the ones I was on-time for, I was hearing nothing back. I told Nancy that I had applied to intern in U.S. Senator Bill Nelson's Jacksonville office. She said "Here is the email for Michelle, the Regional Director. Tell her I sent you". I did as I was told and the day after the email was sent I had an interview. The day after that, I had the job. So, in two days I went from nothing to Senate intern, all because of one email.

 Maybe this Soderberg knows what she's talking about, I tell myself.

 So, after that summer I have a really impressive bullet point on my resume and not one, but two really impressive individuals to recommend me for future positions: Ambassador to the UN and Regional Director in the Senate. Prospects are looking up...

Nancy wasn't done prodding me once I got to the Senate. That summer she says to me "You should go to grad school in DC. Either American or Georgetown". I laughed at her. How was I going to pay for that, I asked her. I had a family. I can't pull that off, that ship has sailed. All I wanted to do was get a nice little job after graduation that I could feed my family with. That was all I wanted to accomplish. Honestly, at this point I still had no vision as to what was possible for me beyond that. But the one thing I had committed myself to was to listening to everything she told me regardless of how crazy it sounded. So I prepared grad school application knowing that I'd never get in, but I put everything I had into them.

My GRE scores ended up being really good, my recommendations were solid and my last two years in school were phenomenal, I was one of the top students in the university for that time. But from where I was sitting, none of that seemed good enough to me. I have an inferiority complex of sorts when it comes to my resume. I can always imagine the hordes of 22 year-olds with better looking scores and accomplishments. But to my shock, I was accepted into some of the top schools and decided to attend American.

After talking it over with my wife, we decided deferring admission for a year would be the best way to proceed. We wanted to have another baby and this would give us time to do that while getting our act together for the big move. My main goal for that year off was to find funding for school. I knew getting through grad school would be really hard to do, and finding  free money was going to be key to my success. So I began the process of turning over every rock I could looking for money. During the process of my applying to grad schools I noticed a question on the Georgetown form that stuck with me: "Are you a Pickering Fellow?" I had to check "no" on the form, but I remember feeling like a "yes" in that box would have improved my chances immensely. So, I made a point of looking up what it was, and the opportunity was jaw dropping: They'd pay for both years of grad school, give you professional development through internships for 2 summers, and if that wasn't enough, they'd give you a job in the U.S. Foreign Service upon graduation! Could this be possible for me? Not a chance, I thought. There is no way I'll be competitive for that. Every smart international relations student in the country is going to apply for that, I thought, and I bet most of them didn't drop out of undergrad and wander the earth for 6 years. But despite my doubts, I applied. My philosophy is: you have to be the one to turn me down. I'm not going to reject myself by not asking the question." As Wayne Gretzky famously once said, "you miss every shot you don't take." I also applied for Pickering's sister program, the Charles Rangel Fellowship, which provides almost the identical opportunity. Applications were due in January, results wouldn't come until the spring, so I waited....

As winter turned to Spring, the results started coming in. And it turned out that every opportunity that I applied to I was rejected from.... everything except one. The Pickering Fellowship said I had made the finals. That meant that 40 people were invited to DC for interviews and 20 of them would get the fellowship. I can't describe this moment to you adequately enough. I was so excited, because I knew that I had already won. There was no way they had 20 kids they were going to like better than me. They had looked at my credentials and decided I was interesting enough to meet without ever being in a room with me. I am at my weakest on paper, once I get into a room with you, I shine. So, I knew that if my paper was good enough, the deal was done. I still had much work to do, however. I contacted AU and asked if they knew anyone who could help me prepare. They put me in touch with the angelic Mary Jo Pham who became my life coach for a few weeks. With her help, I was unstoppable. About 10 minutes into my Pickering interview, I knew I had won. It was a moment I had prepared my whole life for. I crushed it. Three days later I got the official notification that I was selected, and my life has not been the same since.

Since that email came notifying me that I won, we had a baby, we moved 800 miles 6 weeks after that, and then started grad school 2 weeks after that. We had many storms throughout the next two years, a couple rocked us to our core, but we survived them all. As I write this, I am sitting in Hong Kong with a Masters Degree from American University. I will be here for the next 10 weeks working in our consulate here in the Public Affairs section. I will then start my Foreign Service career in September. I constantly wonder how all this has happened for me. I am not worthy of the things I've been given. I know people who work harder and have had much less success. My great fear is that I am going to wake up one day and find that it is 2012 and I've dreamt this whole adventure. I don't know what it was in my application that got the Pickering team excited about me, but I know that whatever it was, Nancy Soderberg had a lot to do with it.

I owe so many people so much for where I've ended up. My Mom, my grand parents, my friends, my mentors, my wife and even my kids... but the cherry on top was Nancy. She was the key that unlocked the door to this new world, so I dedicate this post and the ones that follow to her. Cheers to you, Nancy. We owe you everything...