HK: Attendants

It seemed to me that HK is very well stocked with service people and attendants.  It seemed to me that even the smallest closet of a store can have several attendents.  They were everywhere. Maybe it was the size of the population versus area issue and this was the natural way to put them all to work.  Or something. It just seemed like everything that could use an attendant had one.  Without forethought I would have imagined it being overdone, inconvenient, and possibly annoying.  But I actually found it to be a surprising benefit and I began to get spoiled.  There always seemed to be cashiers, tellers, doormen, and other forms of help around in abundance.  But nowhere did that really drive home than at the pass control at the airports.

Case in point:

When I arrived in HK it was at a kind of off hours, i.e. not crowded. And yet when going through customs I noticed that nearly all of the stalls had agents AND there were ample officers that were guiding people and steering the lines and making things run efficiently.  E.g. There were attendents pre-checking documents in the line and at the head of the queue was someone keeping an eye and instructing you on which stall to go to. I passed through in what seemed like record time.  When I went to Macau by boat, it was also equally streamlined and efficient.

Contrast that with when I got back to SFO, where I got through completely put off and downright pissed.  I shall elaborate.

• There were only 2 agents handling citizens and permanent residents, maybe 3 or 4 handling visitors.  With the ratio of visitors to non-visitors that actually seems reasonable to have more there, but still too few for all.
• There was one officer there floating around occasionally steering people here and there but absolutely failing to make things better.  She let the long lines form like a grocery store, with a line of people behind each agent rather than a single line served by a next available agents like in HK and LIKE IT SHOULD BE.  That should just not have been allowed to happen.  Even the ticketing/checkin lines are single queue and the security checkpoints are mostly single-queue as well.  It's just more efficient and fair and less frustrating.  It can be proven mathematically that it is the best, quickest, and fairest system to those in the queue.
• So there I am lining up in one agent's queue and wouldn't you know it'd be the wrong one.  The agent was just biding his time, chatting with passengers, making extra checks while his neighbor agent was passing people through efficiently at at least 3 times the rate.  I was burning.  By the time I reached the agent, the other queue was empty as was the bigger visitors queue.
• Not only that, another plane's worth of people that came in behind ALSO passed through in advance of me.  In fact, the lazy attendant steered a good chunk of them to a temporarily open line (since the visitors were done processing) so even though they arrived later, they got through before me.  That just really pissed us off.
• At no point could I (or my fellow line prisoners) reasonably jump out of our line because we'd have to go to the tail of the other line, which was long most of the time.  In hindsight I still would have gotten through quicker had I done that.

It was just a clusterfuck. They should be ashamed of themselves for having it in that state.  Even if the presence of fewer service people could be understood or justified by "hard times" pleas, that organization was inexcusable.

Anyhow, going back to HK.  With all the attendants around I was reminded at some point of Japan, which is dense country and the areas I spent some time in were also replete with attendants and very well serviced.  The contrast is that Japan is a culturally polite society and the service there is absolutely astounding.  Customers are always greeted and smiled at and well taken care of if needed.  You can get that level in the US but only on occasion and certainly not on a national scale.  HK was a bit more straight forward and reminded me more of the stereotype of service in, say, Germany.  You're basically attended to, not impolitely, and generally without any fake warmth.  It's just a way of being which is fine but I personally like the fake warmth because it just makes the environment better, to where I would argue the warmth really isn't all that fake as it's made out to be.  I mean, a smile and a kind word is more likely to put people in a good mood and respond in kind and more open to being sociable.  And I think that's a good thing.

HK: Table bag holding hook

I don't know where it was invented but at HK stores and in particular the street markets these little devices were everywhere.  They are table hooks for holding your bag and whatnot under the edge of the table.  It's just a disk with a hook that you unwrap from the disk and let hang over the edge of the table and you hang your bag on the hook at the bottom.  I find it an ingenious design actually.

I bought a bunch of them, I should have bought more since they were cheap at the market.  The kind I got had a magnet in the disk for latching firmly to metal tables but with a felt-like cover so as not to scratch the surface.  I haven't tested hanging a fully loaded computer backpack on it but holds a respectable weight like the baby bag pictured.  They were designed with purses in mind, a lot of the ones I saw had more feminine designs on them and were next to compact mirrors and whatnot, though they were common in the sousvenir area too (where I got mine).

I can see these being popular out there; people I notice have an aversion to putting their personal effects on the floor. Yet I think I only saw it used only couple times, but that's not surprising since I haven't had all that much need to use mine either.  I'll probably keep one in my backpack.  I really like clever and useful devices.  I wonder if we'll start seeing them sold in the states.  The ones I got came out to be between a $1 and $2 a piece, but I can believe seeing them being hocked at like a Brookstone for $12-$25 and getting away with it.

HK: Drink baggy

In my experience the most common drink carrier I see looks like so:

At a McD's (or was it Starbucks?) in HK, I was given a drink in a bag, like so:

Imagine that!  After some thought (and usage) I see quite a bit of advantage in using a drink bag over the cardboard carrier.

• Reduced spillage -- The drink is essentially being carried from the top in the bag, whereas with the cardboard carrier it is essentially being carried from the bottom which is inherently less stable in terms of preventing spilling.  Consequently we have to walk on eggshells when carrying a tray with drinks and it's the main reason we tend to hold individual glasses from the top, where gravity and the centripetal action from swinging from the top reduces spillage.
• Contained spillage -- The enclosing bag keeps what spillage does happen contained and not spread to one's clothing or other items.  It also makes it possible to embed the drink in a larger bag with other items with less fear.
• Carrying convenience -- When the number of drinks is one or two, I find the bag carrier easier to carry.  With 3 or more, I'm not quite sure.  A tray has better capacity, but embedding a number of drinks in bags within a larger bag might be just as well, though it is certainly safer.  Still, the more common case is only a drink or two.
• Trash volume -- Those cardboard trays are thick and can take up a lot of space, esp in the trashcan.  The baggies in contrast are thin and collapsible and can be used to collect trash or some other purpose if clean enough.

This analysis really only applies to drink cups that have lids.  Without lids, the tray model seems more appropriate but then you're probably not taking the drinks very far, only to the nearby booth and not your car or around the city.

But hrmm... plastic bag vs cardboard?  Seems to violate something, right?  I think the bags can be made just as environmentally friendly.  In fact I not long ago bought biodegradable "plastic" bags for composting.  I don't see a problem.  We should be using them.

HK: Inspired door bumper

Sometimes a really small simple dumb device can really get my attention when it does something right.  In this case, it's a door-bumper.  I saw a kind in HK that not only softens the blow of a door opening but can also hold it in place.  The modification is that the wall bumper also has a rubber hole that you can push the door bumper into to hold it in place.

The closest I've seen at Home Depot are the magnetic door holder, but then it's not really a bumper anymore.

When I see things like this, I think that not only should this other variety be more available but that all (or most) of the ones that I do see should just stop being made and sold to begin with.  Would probably reduce the need for those door stop triangles which in my experience never really hold the door open, only sometimes prevent the door from closing.

HK: Hot water

I moved into my house 5 months ago after 3 years in an apartment building and one thing that I absolutely miss is the quickness with which hot water appears at the faucet.  I remember this happening when I was a kid, having to leave the water running for 28 years before the water is hot and then rushing to use it before it runs out.  Even more, the water is freezing cold until it gets hot.

This is a common situation in houses I think, in particular old ones like mine.  I've seen some people in my area buy and install these on-demand hot water devices to alleviate this problem.  Some merely get one exclusively for the sink.  Our only device of that nature is the always-on hot water kettle that we use for baby-related needs primarily.  That doesn't count though, we have to fill it manually with filtered water.

Anyhow, I never had this problem in an apartment building so I was a bit surprised to see that even in a very modern building in HK there was an on-demand hot water device in the shower, like so.

Having used it, I totally want one, especially for my house.  It can make the water really really hot if desired and instantly.  Only trouble is I need one that connects to multiple faucets not just one, and this probably reduces the effectiveness a little do to the need for intervening pipe length.  Also, I'd need at least 3 of these (2 bathrooms and 1 kitchen) but even 1 would be a blessing.  Shame getting one installed is pricey.

HK: The only way is up

Even discounting the sky scrapers, most buildings in HK are still tall as are the residences.  This is a well known necessity of course given the land restriction and population density.  The newer buildings have elevators and the newest buildings have really nice fast and efficient ones.  Here's a snap of one.

A few observations:

• In the west there is usually no floor 13 out of some superstition.  In Asia, they do something similar but rather than one floor missing, they skip one per ten by eliminating all floors ending in 4.  It is an unlucky number because the pronunciation of it is similar to the word for "death".  This building in fact did both by skipping 14  AND 13.  They did keep the 40s though.
• The panel is covered by a plastic sheet.  The white sign at top says that it's sterilized every 4 hours by building management.  They take disease spreading control very seriously.  It's custom to wear a surgical mask in public when one is sick and out in public.  There are hand-sanitizing stations in the malls.  Even at the airport coming in they used a temperature gun on the BB to check for fever.
• And here's a startling fact that motivated this post:  The door CLOSE door button ACTUALLY WORKS.  (It's a well established fact that the ones in the US do not.)

HK: Scaffolding wonder

Got back from my 2nd trip (as an adult) to Hong Kong and this time I decided to start jotting down notes of things I found interesting, and especially when I see thing done in a different way.

One of the things that blew my mind from my from my previous trip was the scaffolding they use in building resurfacing, repair, and construction; which is composed of thousands and thousands of random length bamboo poles held together with zip-ties (or something similar).  It's quite an awesome sight actually to see high-rises covered in them.

And with the hustle and bustle of the city, it's everywhere.  It definitely makes you feel like you're in Asia (not that it's needed).  Obviously, it works and probably works well, but my sentiments are mirrored by this guys post I found.

They should reboot the original Donkey Kong replacing the girders with these things.