Busy day

The Thursday of my Hong Kong trip was packed with things to do. In the morning I got up early and spent a couple of hours editing a document for a company back in UK who needed my input. After that I had breakfast, then went to the office I'd been given in Hong Kong Polytechnic University to prepare the slides for my lunch-time seminar. My topic was "Managing a peer-reviewed journal: processes and policies" and I prepared some graphs of our performance with Construction Management and Economics, to explain how we did things, and how well we did things as editors. I also explained what kind of things were likely to succeed for authors who wanted their papers to be published. The seminar was packed out, I'm glad to say, and the questions were probing and challenging. It was an enjoyable seminar, but in total must have occupied two hours.

From the seminar at HKPU, Llewellyn and I made our way to City University, HK, to meet our colleagues there and talk about the potential for future collaboration as well as have a tour of their facilities. They showed us their environmental chamber, still under construction and an improvement on the one we have in Reading, because it can split into two rooms for various kinds of experiment. They also showed us their new wind tunnel, which was really impressive with its 300 bhp motor, and an experimental area the size of a study. There is a lot that we could do together, so we had a lot to talk about, but the time soon came when we had to meet the car that was to take us to Hong Kong Island.

We went to Admiralty at the end of the afternoon in the HKPU Jaguar so that I could give an industry seminar to the HK branch of Chartered Institute of Building. We got there early enough to go for a coffee, and I set up the computer with my slides for a talk about the research I had done on the costs of tendering. Again, the room was packed out, and the the seminar went well, with plenty of questions at the end. Fortunately, I had hit the spot with my talk and highlighted things that really concerned these contractors and consultants. After this, the CPD committee of HK CIOB took us for a banquet, which was rather splendid.

After the banquet, everyone went their separate ways, but Llewellyn and I fancied a bit more beer, so we returned to Lan Kwai Fong and found a relatively quiet bar where we could sit and watch the world go by while we paid attention to some beer. Draft beer called, funnily enough, Lan Kwai Fong. The people walking by were mainly young, some surely as young as 12 or 13, and mostly having a great time dressed up and making a noise. I guess we were there until about 2 am. What a great day.