No Nose Smiley :)

On Thursday 22nd December 2012 at lunch time, I wandered down to the Bank of China near Wynyard station (Sydney) and filled in my application form. The form was to apply for the bank account. The bank also took a copy of my passport and my HKID as well as a letter in the same name which had my home address. If you can read Chinese, here's a photo of a sign which was a the branch with some details: The bank branch was very quiet even at lunch time. There was one lady who was at the enquiry desk who helped me out. I took a seat and explained what I wanted to do and she just asked me if I had all my ID and documents with me. I had to write my Chinese name a couple of times which was a bit embarrassing as my handwriting looks like a 5 year old's! You know how some kids may write S or L or some other letter "backwards"... that's the type of handwriting I have! I had to silently giggle when the lady asked if I could "read Mandarin"! (Not Chinese but ...

I’ve recently learnt about Tabata and how this can help me optimise the time I spend on exercising. Reducing it down to less than 5 minutes a day! So of course I had to give it a go. I started this on 19th December 2011 so it’s still early days. Let’s see if this can replace the longer runs I would normally do with Sprocket. I decided to do this with my trusty exercise bike (seriously this has been probably the item which has been the best value in terms of exercise equipment – I bought it around 1995 for over $200 from Rebel Sport and I’m still using it regularly!). So I exercise in quick intervals of 20 seconds going as fast as I can and then 10 seconds of slower cycling. To make it easier I downloaded an Android App (Interval Timer AD) to help me identify the end of the 20 or 10-second ‘stints’. I wonder why the 20 seconds seems so long and the 10 seconds so short . I do this for 8 cycles and after I can feel it. I can feel the ‘Afterburn’ and my heart rate is accelera...

The HK government is doing HKD6000 handouts to all Permanent Hong Kong ID holders. After hearing about this for months now my mother tells me to hurry up and sort it out. Unfortunately I need to get a LOCAL (as in Hong Kong) bank account open in my name (ie not a joint account). Anyway I wandered down to the HSBC branch and they can’t help me unless I want to wait 6-8 weeks for an account to open. I then went to Citibank and they can open a foreign currency account but not a ‘local’ account… so I tried Bank of China . I just called them as I didn’t want to walk down there (after having just come back from that way). And they can do it all for me! I just need to bring my HK ID, Passport and evidence of current address. All of this needs to be done by 30th December 2011! So get your skates on down to your local Bank of China branch (there aren’t too many of them) and pay your AUD100 to get your HKD6000! More info about the scheme here: http://www.scheme6000.gov.hk/eng/in...