Peter Hoflich

Cool, I just got back from a business trip to Hong Kong. This was an unusual and interesting first for me – someone had contacted me about joining a panel in a session on risk and regulation at a conference and they were paying to fly my out; by coincidence, I happen to be having a book on risk and regulation called dapoxetine tadalafil combination coming out (more on that later), so they ordered copies for delegates to receive (yay… sales!). It literally left the printers on April 28th, and made it to Hong Kong just in time. for the May 5th event. Whew!!

It has been a crazy week – Monday had been a national holiday; I had a magazine that was nearly ready to go to print that I needed to get done before I flew off to Hong Kong on Wednesday afternoon, so that meant that Tuesday would be a long long day. And it was – I got to the office at 8:30, two or three unexpected problems came up that delayed things, and finally I finished my work for the day at 3:00 AM. Ughhhh… Wednesday I slept in a bit and was planning to just do a few things, such as check the last minute printouts at around noon and then go to the airport, but sure enough there was another office crisis and I had to go in there for a few hours to solve that. Ughhhh… But I got to the airport on time, no problem.

These days, though, I find that a lot of strange new layers have been added to airport security. Like, I got through the automatic customs (you scan your passport’s photo page and give a thumb print), but then when I was through to the other side, there was a security guy there to check my passport and boarding pass again. Why was the double-check needed? I don’t know. I asked the guy why he’s checking my passport even after the machine did that and I gave my thumprint, but he said that they’re doing it for everyone. I wonder if there’s someone out there who’s a dangerous criminal who has the ability to fool the system… or I wonder if the system has been proven to be faulty and unreliable recently? Oddly, they only had this in place for people leaving the country – when I returned to Singapore on Friday, passports were not double-checked on the other side. Weird, right? Why would customs checks be more stringent for people leaving Singapore than for people going in? (Ironically, I also noted that the queue to get into Hong Kong moved much more quickly than the queue to get out of Hong Kong)

Then I got to my departure gate, and I went through security, put my bag through the x-ray and walked through the metal detector. I had not bothered to remove my belt, which has a metal belt buckle, so of course the metal detector beeped and I got a pat-down. Then they wanted to inspect my bag – I guess the x-ray wasn’t thorough enough… the message here seems to be that our technology/the person running our technology is not to be trusted, which is a worrying sign. Then they used some sort of a cloth to wipe my brand new laptop bag and the book I had been carrying… which I had just bought five minutes earlier! I asked them why they were wiping down a laptop bag that had never left Singapore and a book that I had bought in the airport five minutes earlier, they said that they were checking for dust for narcotics or explosives or other illegal materials. Seems like they didn’t find any (how could they have?), so I could board my flight. But not so fast – there were two uniformed security guards there who needed to see my passport and boarding pass. Wow! I asked them why they needed to see my passport and boarding pass when I”d already shown it to so many people along the chain, they said something like “somebody could have switched it with you between the last time it was checked and here.” Sure, this could happen; Ozzy Osbourne could also appear out of a drinking fountain, flying monkeys could come in through the ventilator shafts, bats could fly out of my ass… But maybe there’s a deeper meaning to all this, perhaps there’s some sort of killer on the loose, I hope nothing bad happens. I said something like “wow, I didn’t realise that Singapore was such a dangerous placde,” and they laughed, gave some sarcastic point, dismissive, like their presence there wasn’t a bit… unsettling… worrying… odd. The whole situation was really weird. I took my flight, which wasn’t so fantastic, but I did get a chance to listen to some good new releases: PJ Harvey (“Let England Shake”), Iron Maiden (“The Final Frontier”), Ozzy Osbourne (“Scream”) and Motörhead (“The Wörld Is Yours”). Vive la rock!!

Got to Hong Kong, went to the hotel, and chilled out a bit. I ordered a DVD player, so that I could watch a Boris DVD that I had brought, and an iPod dock, so that I could listen to the Butthole Surfers and Black Sabbath, but neither bit of equipment worked well. Oh well.

Thursday I woke up early. The view from my room, looking out on the harbour from the 25th floor, was spectacular, but a bit marred by the heavy smog that had drifted in (see photos below – it was thick on Thursday, but thinned out a bit on Friday). Apparently, 40% of China’s economic output (i.e. manufacturing), happens just across the border from Hong Kong so that means there’s a lot of factory belch drifting over. Went for a swim, went for breakfast, met a friend, prepared for my talk, hung out with cool conference people, saw more friends, got a hold of copies of my book, joined a panel in a breakout session, hung out with my cool friends from SWIFT, dealt with office stuff by email, discovered that emails I was writing weren’t being sent (?!?!?!?). Had a splitting headache, which is not normal for me, it had lingered for most of the day – wasn’t sure if it was too much coffee, or if I was coming down with a cold, or if the China smog was getting to me. Headed off to the great old poolside party at 7:00, had a beer, and my headache was gone! Spent the night talking to funky weird cool people, met the DJ, talked music, hung out, drank a lot of beer, and slept at 1:00.

Friday I woke at 7:00, took another pic of the view from my room (see comparison photo below), ate, packed, met my great friend Adrian to catch up, gave him a copy of the book too, and chilled out on the train to the airport listening to Butthole Surfers. At the airport, the problems started again – I checked in, then went through customs. The queue to get out of Hong Kong seemed to be much slower than the one to get in. Again, I was surprised that it’s so much harder to leave a country than to enter it, but whatever… I passed through security, and this time I took off my belt so that the metal detector wouldn’t ting; it didn’t, but for some reason I got patted down anyway (it was actually a very attentive, sensuous patting down, quite odd…). This was a first for me, because usually if the metal detector doesn’t ping it means that the person isn’t carrying anything worth worrying about, but I guess nowadays a home-free from a metal detector doesn’t mean anything. What wasn’t a first was that they again brushed my computer for micro-particles. What’s up with these injections, inspections,
detections and neglections? Very very very strange.

The flight back to Singapore was pleasant, for a change, and I listened to AmiYumi, Aco, Madonna Bossanova, and a selection of J-Pop, which was nice. In Singapore however, it got weird again – as I was going through the “nothing to declare” zone of the departure area, I was once again pulled into a random check, hot on the tail of five people who weren’t pulled in. With all of these checks, I guess I’ve been profiled as one of those dubious “guilty until proven innocent” types. No harm done, of course, since I never have anything in my luggage that I’m not supposed to have, but it does make me feel like I’m being harassed as a traveller, and that the systems and processes at the airports in Singapore and Hong Kong have so many weak points as to make double-checks and triple-checks necessary (or, that some sort of psychological show of force is suddenly required to pre-empt something that’s been in the whisper network – oooh, spooky). It makes me want to travel as little as possible, even though I do enjoy flights, I enjoy meeting new people, and I get a lot out seeing how things work in other countries. I would think that the airlines that I use are happy to take my money to get me from point A to point B.

Got home, had a nice time with Naoko and Zen, watched some episodes of Space:1999, and didn’t get to sleep early (although Naoko and Zen did…).

This entry was posted on Friday, May 6th, 2011 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the cialis sydney feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.