Personal Dork Assistant

The Jungle

"Welcome to the jungle
We got fun 'n' games"
— Guns 'N Roses

"The line of the buildings stood clear-cut and black against the sky; here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys, with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world." — Upton Sinclair

Hopped on a flight for a lightning-trip to Hong Kong. Uncle wanted to show off the factories for a while so he wasn't going to miss the chance while everyone was here. A longer trip would've been nice, especially since we're losing one day to Shenzhen, but Sam and Dad are flying back to the U.S. the day after we get back. A van was waiting at the airport to take us directly into China. That made for an awful lot of border control forms to fill out. The recent SARS scare doubled the paperwork, too.

"Do you show any SARS symptoms?"

"Of course not. Who the hell would be stupid enough to say yes?"

All the flying and driving took their toll and I was feeling a bit queasy by the time we reached the border, so I was actually glad to get out of the car to go through Chinese customs. We were mixed in amongst the hordes of people heading both in and out, moving in convoys of tour busses. My jaw just about dropped to the floor when we got through customs and onto the main road into Shenzhen. Hong Kong's array of buildings are impressive feats of engineering, but they are strewn around the islands, squeezed into the limitations of the geography. Central Shenzhen is a concentrated effort to maximize the amount of housing given a (relatively) unlimited amount of land. A wall of huge apartment buildings sprung almost full-ground right out of the ground. The buildings stilled appeared relatively pristine, despite the horribly dirty air and the huge amount of dust in the air, making it all seem rather miraculous. The roads were wide to accommodate the traffic, but I'm sure even then the infrastructure is stretched to the breaking point. The scary thing is that these are relatively middle-class dwellings (the workers would just live in dorms at the factories), and in the end it's still just a drop in the bucket. Mom started coughing and sneezing at the border and didn't get better until we got into the clean rooms at the factory.

Turned out that the factory wasn't in Shenzhen proper, but in DongGuan (東關), another 45 minutes inland on the new turnpike, which was a bit further than we expected. The ride was smooth enough, just that breathing was a misery. We weren't the first factory in Dongguan 13 years ago, but now we're probably the largest and oldest one left, as low-tech manufacturers moved further inland in search of even cheaper labor and land. Meanwhile, a bustling town has sprung up, first with small shops, and now with gleaming mini-malls and high-rise apartments getting set to open. We've been happy to stay and expand, too, as building #5 is going up, and #1-4 are already going 24/7/361 (give or take Chinese New Year, Labor Day, and Independence Day).

The buildings weren't impressive-looking, mostly pastel green tiles. What's the deal with the tiles and Chinese buildings anyway, Sam and I wondered. We figured that it was just the cheapest and easiest way to pretty up these generic industrial prefabbed concrete buildings. The main building is nice on the inside, though, with plenty of marble, wood, and leather to show off for visiting folks. There's a low cubicle farm for the office girls, a taller cubicle farm for the (mostly Taiwanese) executives, and a big office for The Man, with a bedroom (complete with Taiwanese satellite TV) hidden in the back for long stays.

One of the managers (the grandson of grandmother's uncle on her father's side, Pitt educated, and talk about Pitt, Larry Fitzgerald got robbed on the Heisman) took us around and explained the manufacturing process.

1. Individual LED dice is separated from the wafer and placed onto a PC-board or lamp-holder.
2. A wire is micro-welded between the dice and the board, with an extra dab of silver solder for stability. You can now apply power to the chip and have it light up.
3. The board or lamp is encapsulated in epoxy, which protects the dice and acts as a lens.
4. The row of lamps or a boardful of SMD components are separated and each individually tested for brightness and wavelength purity, then binned appropriately.
5. The LEDs are mounted in their final housing and packaged for shipping.

Sounds simple enough, but there's plenty of precision machinery required to make it all happen 1e7 times a day without error. A surprising amount of the equipment (especially in QA) was custom-made, and he showed us the machine shop where high-tech CAM machinery were accompanied by grease monkeys hammering away on chunks of steel. There were lots of injection-molding equipment, too, for everything from the housing of alphanumeric LED displays, to the shipping containers for the displays themselves. The vertical integration and in-house tech helps improve the quality and really helps with turnaround time for new products. Really important in a field like LED where an exponential combination of color, brightness, and form factors are available. It was fun to see the improvement in the speed of production as we went from older to newer machines. Hey, we'll run 'em as long as they work. Also interesting to note that all the outside machinery manufacturers sent large wreaths and many people to grandfather's funeral.

Drove back to Hong Kong and got to our hotel at about 7pm. Was stuck at the border crossing for 45 minutes, and had nothing better to do than to marvel at all the late-model HK-registered Mercedes. With four numbers on the plate, there's a 65.6% chance that it will not contain an 8. Based on our observations, there's a significant correlation between Mercedes and 8's on the license plate. Tried to pick out a good place to eat in Tsim Sha Tsui amongst the bewildering array of places, and ended up at a Szechwan place. The water-cooked beef was actually swimming in oil flavored by chilies and peppercorns, but I knew that going in. It was tongue-numbing, due to the Szechwan peppercorns, and hot, of course, but not tongue-searing hot. Quite tasty, actually, and great with rice. Dad and I like it, anyway. As for mom and Sam, at least the crispy-skin fish was good, too.

Had a good night's sleep and went out in search of breakfast. There were more foofy boutiques than you can shake a stick at, but not a decent coffeeshop in sight at 9:30am. Finally found a bread shop in the bowels of one of the many underground shopping arcades and picked up some pastries to eat in Salisbury Garden. The red bean bun was tasty enough, but the coffee was pure crap. Sure it was only coffee from some random cheap pastry shop, but it could've been good. The machine ground whole beans and made the coffee automatically without any intervention from the (cute but mostly useless) sales girls. Stupid machines.

Did the tiniest bit of touring, as we walked down to the Star Ferry Terminal for a quick hop across Victoria Harbor. HK$2.2 each for Sam and I, mom and dad rode for free as seniors. No wonder the SE-Asian maids prefer this ride. And even with the hazy air you can't beat the view for the price, hence the many tourists on the boat. Admired the spiff skyscrapers in Central (amazing what nice designs big banking bucks can buy), then took the subway back across (HK$9 per for adults, half price for seniors).

Hit a Shanghai place for lunch. The big plate of perfectly cooked beef tendon sure hit the spot. Cheap, too. Got back to the hotel and waited for aunt to get in. She was coming to meet uncle and do some banking business (i.e. sign her name to lots of random paper). Oh, and to shop, of course. Mom and aunt picked up some ridiculously cheap fleece pullovers (now that the funeral is over they can get the red ones) on closeout, which was a nice deal. That was only a warmup, though, as Mom's favorite jewelry store is directly across the street from the hotel, and they couldn't resist dropping in.

The sales dude recognized mom even though she hadn't visited for a few years. I'm sure he remembered her expenditures, too, and he started to lay down the schmooze right away, while the attending ladies scurried about bringing tea (Brit tea on nice china) and water for everyone. Despite mom's protests that she wasn't looking to buy anything, the salesman still managed to reel her in with a diamond brooch of a flower bouquet, with a couple of 11mm light-pink pearls acting as the flower bulbs. Actually, I had my eyes on the piece when we first sat down. Yay me. It's nominally for grandma, but mom'll "share" it when grandmother isn't wearing it. It's not as if either of them wear fancy jewelry all that often anyway. It's kinda like my buying anime DVD sets that I never get around to watching, except with two orders of price difference. Personally, I would've bought the new PowerBook. It would match a nice black jacket just as well.

Moved on down to the Peninsula Hotel's shopping arcade. The Pen is old school, old money, and the shops show it. That's when Prada, Dior, and Ferragamo are the bourgeois brands along the streetfront, with more upscale stuff tucked away discreetly on the inside. Looked around, but we really didn't need formal clothes, and felt silly buying casual clothes at formal prices when we usually balk at paying full-fare at The Gap. Well, mom did get a handbag, but that's like a methadone shot. Besides, she didn't have a small, black, leather bag before. Tried to get a reservation at The Spring Moon upstairs, but they were booked solid long ago.

Sam and I hit HMV while mom and aunt went back to the hotel. Sam got bored quickly and went back, too, but I went through the store and tried every listening station that wasn't Britney+Kylie+Madonna. Picked up J-Pop, Mandarin-Pop, 80's Brit-Pop, and some kitschy Chinese instrumental thing that's "taking the Japanese music scene by storm." Take Five doesn't really sound good on native Chinese instruments, but the album was cheap, especially considering it's two discs, and the musicians are apparently all pretty girls in slinky dresses. Maybe I should've got the concert DVD instead. And then there was the album of French songs done in Bossa Nova style by a Japanese artist. Spent enough money to get a little dog toy. Could've registered to win an N-Gage, too, but I demurred.

Waited for uncle to get out from Shenzhen, and everyone was more than ready to eat by the time he arrived. He led us down the street and then ducked into a side alley and up a few flights of stairs to a surprisingly large restaurant that was absolutely jam-packed with locals. This would normally be a good sign, except we had just about the worst service that I've ever experienced at a restaurant. I don't mind taking some time to finish my meal, and the food itself was plenty good enough, but the pacing was just absolutely awful and the waitstaff was totally unresponsive. The roast pig and duck came right away since cold-cuts are easy, and then it was an agonizing wait for the hot dishes. Even then there were noticeable failings, like half the veggie platter was cold because one station was too far ahead of the other. The noodles came last, after everyone was already full, and let's not even get started on the saga of the soup, except that I guess I should be glad as an environmental supporter that they didn't put nearly as much shark fin into the soup as we expected. Sure was glad Sam was there so I had somebody to talk to. Glad to have him and uncle's single-malt, anyway.

Next morning was a little better, as I finally had a measure of success in my search for a decent cup of (non-Starbucks) coffee in Asia. There was a little hole-in-the-wall coffee place around the block that actually had an honest-to-goodness espresso machine instead of those awful one-button automatic things. It wasn't great or anything, but it was perfectly drinkable in the morning and not that expensive. Just had enough time to wash down the taro bun before catching the taxi out to the bank, where we all crammed into the claustrophobic conference room with the bank folks and Jessica the CPA. Signed what they put in front of me, as our account manager pushed investment funds complicated enough to even make my eyes glaze over.

How about a fund that invests soley in HSBC?

• On the starting date:
  

  Buy HSBC stock and notes with principal
  Initial Price = Price of HSBC stock at starting date
  

• One year after the starting date:
  

  If (HSBC stock price > the initial price) {
    Return(principal + 7% profit);
    Close Fund;
  }
  Else {Wait for a year}
  

• If the fund is still open, then at the end of two years:
  

  If (HSBC's stock price > initial price) {
    Return(principal + 14% return)
    Close Fund;
  }
  Else {Wait for a year}
  

• If the fund is still open, then at the end of three years:
  

  If (HSBC > Initial Price) {
    Return( principal + 21% profit );
  }
  Else If (HSBC < Inital Price and HSBC > 95% of Initial Price) {
    Return ( principal + 3% of principal );
    Apologize to customer for being a lousy investment;
  }
  Else If (HSBC < 95% of Initial Price) {
    Return ( the shares of HSBC that the principal bought initially + 3% of principal );
    Commit seppuku for sucking ass;
  }
  Close the Fund;
  

• That's it, thanks for playing!

Some crazy Excel jockey spent a lot of time cooking that one up. Heck, it's not too different from laying a proposition bet at Vegas. Looking at HSBC's stock chart, it looks like the fund is selling a mostly risk-free (only horrible result is if HSBC is below 95% of initial price after three years) return, but if HSBC rises more than 7% per annum, the bank gets the profit above 7% instead of us. Seems like a fair enough bet, at least it seemed that way when we looked at the tiny stock graph in the brochure and the 500-day moving average. Heck, anything is better than money market returns right now.

So that was that. Mom went off in search of dried seafoods that only Chinese people would eat, and we went back to the hotel to catch up on sleep and watch some Premier League football commentated in Cantonese. The flight back was uneventful, except we had some time to marvel at the hugeness that is HKG. A planeful of people just seem lost inside the huge halls.

Posted by mikewang on 05:14 PM