[Alby]

Originally Posted by stocklobster

LOL! I nearly lived on the slopes of Okemo for two years..lol. The best skiing in the region, imo.. and Ludlow was a great town to party in.

re coffee, my bloodtype is Java, double caf...heh heh.

Small world indeed

My Dad's family is from Cavendish, VT ... adopted homeland of Solzhenitsyn.

[stocklobster]

I just found this, and it would seem to confirm what I've been seeing in the jobs listings. Guess that until the toxic waste cleanup crews are done carting off the mess from the subprime blowup back in NY and London, looks as if Hong Kong, Singapore, Bombay, Dubai will be the places to be.

There's always a game going on somewhere:

Market downturn forces executives to quit London and New York - Times Online

Market downturn forces executives to quit London and New York

Rhys Blakely in Bombay
From The Times
April 21, 2008

Excerpt:

The tale has been circulating since the new year of a beleaguered Wall Street bank that told its senior rainmakers to prepare to relocate to an emerging market or to leave the firm.

As one executive is reputed to have said, with deals drying up in London and New York, it was a case of “Mumbai, Dubai, Shanghai - or goodbye”.

Now that story is looking less and less apocryphal. As jobs are cut in the City and in Manhattan, the pace of the bankers' exodus to the East is accelerating.....

...In the past two years, Goldman Sachs, Merrill and Morgan Stanley have left local joint ventures in Bombay to set up independent operations.

Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers have opened new offices. Moreover, most of them are hiring and few are finding it difficult to attract Western personal.

Sudarshan Narayan, managing director of Clark & Kent, the Asian-focused headhunters, estimates that there has been a 20 to 25 per cent increase each year in the number of Western bankers heading to centres such as Singapore for the past two years.

He expects the trend to increase sharply this year: “Dealmakers don't want to sit on their hands back home.” .....

[Libby1328]

Hold on a tic, there's really no Dunks in HK?! Well, now I know what to do with my extra baggage allowance: pack a suitcase full of fresh ground original blend DD coffee!

Stocklobster: I'm with you on the Maine thing. Did you know there's actually a civil war memorial in Kittery, Maine in which a single statue of a soldier is sporting a confederate uniform? I kid you not! Apparently it was a mistake but the town decided to go ahead and erect the statue anyway.

Mike: We are relocating for jobs. Or rather Dan, who was offered a job rather unexpectedly, is relocating for a job. I'm what they call a "trailing spouse" though I prefer the term "accompanying spouse". I'll be joining him on a Dependent visa which means, as I understand it, that I'll be permitted to work unless the visa expressly states otherwise (fingers crossed that it doesn't.) While I've only generated a few job leads (too busy finishing my last semester of law school) I will tell you that I feel (slightly) more confident about the job market in HK as compared with Boston. But I understand that my feelings could change dramatically if I'm still pounding the pavement looking for employment well after our arrival in August. I've got one sibling in HK already- he's in finance and he's been there since '06 so yes, I'm seeing a relo trend.

Anyway, there's a Sox/Yankees series at the end of August so Party at Libby & Dan's place! That is, if Libby and Dan have managed to rent a proper place by then...

[Sleuth]

Originally Posted by bostonmike

Sleuth, Where are you from in CT? North or South of Hartford?

Southwest, actually. And an Orioles fan. (If you remember way back at the dawn of time, before the current owner, the Orioles used to be good.) But my brother is a Yankees fan, in case that counts.
Sorry everyone else, no Bosox fans.

[PDLM]

Originally Posted by Libby1328

I'm what they call a "trailing spouse" though I prefer the term "accompanying spouse". I'll be joining him on a Dependent visa which means, as I understand it, that I'll be permitted to work unless the visa expressly states otherwise (fingers crossed that it doesn't.)

If you are legally married then you will get a Dependant Visa that allows you to work freely. If you're not legally married you're going to be struggling to get a residence visa of any sort.

[campas12]

i have to chime in here only becuase i'm not sure where i'd fall under the scheme of things.

parents were from hong kong, i was born/raised in uk, then moved to nyc. basically 14 years each...now i'm packing my bags to move to hong kong...don't currently have a job lined up though with the serverance pkg i'm getting from work (unplanned obviously, but timing wise couldn't have worked better!) i'm not too worried.

am i going to have issues mixing in with the expat crowd ??

suppose i can wear my liverpool jersey underneath my ny giants jersey and pull a quick switcheroo depending on the bar i'm going to?

here's a related question- is hk safe?
examples:

when in uk, i fear that i'm going to get slashed/taunted by a few punks with nothing better to do.

over in nyc, i only worry about cabbies hitting me while i'm in a drunken stupor (being caught in a club where a fight breaks out!)

i've heard in hk, i should be worried about locals thinking i'm better than them cause i don't speak canto fluently?

[Libby1328]

Originally Posted by PDLM

If you are legally married then you will get a Dependant Visa that allows you to work freely. If you're not legally married you're going to be struggling to get a residence visa of any sort.

Legally married, PDLM. And many thanks to you as much of what I know about Visas (of any sort) I have learned from reading your posts!

[goleoboy]

Originally Posted by campas12

i have to chime in here only becuase i'm not sure where i'd fall under the scheme of things.

parents were from hong kong, i was born/raised in uk, then moved to nyc. basically 14 years each...now i'm packing my bags to move to hong kong...don't currently have a job lined up though with the serverance pkg i'm getting from work (unplanned obviously, but timing wise couldn't have worked better!) i'm not too worried.

am i going to have issues mixing in with the expat crowd ??

suppose i can wear my liverpool jersey underneath my ny giants jersey and pull a quick switcheroo depending on the bar i'm going to?

here's a related question- is hk safe?
examples:

when in uk, i fear that i'm going to get slashed/taunted by a few punks with nothing better to do.

over in nyc, i only worry about cabbies hitting me while i'm in a drunken stupor (being caught in a club where a fight breaks out!)

i've heard in hk, i should be worried about locals thinking i'm better than them cause i don't speak canto fluently?

I'm in a similar situation - honestly there are so many 'reverse migrants' now in HK and many 1.5 generations (born in HK and grew up overseas), speaking cantonese with a strong foreign accent is common. Even if you can speak english only, that's fine to get around. You'll mix in with the expat crowds (many of us do) hwever, you'll find the local crowd fascinating too and will want to try to experience the local life a bit... so you'll have the best of both worlds.

HK is definitely safe. I know what you're saying. In the U.S. lots of hooligans on the streets / subways have nothing better to do than to harrass you... they don't do that here. People really mind their own business. It's good and bad. You'll miss the 'color of characters' on the streets and may think everyone is acting like robots initially. Then you'll just realize that people don't really care and they've got better things to focus on (like their Nintendo DS / PSP...) than to bother you. They do stare sometimes, but i'll take a stare over a whollop on the head any day. We've gotten into so many verbal fights on the NY subway when we lived there with hispanic / black guys twice our size... i'm surprise i'm still alive to talk about it... oh, the cab drivers are SOOO much better here -- they drive sooo fast but they don't yell at you and actually STOP for you (unlike nyc)