Hong Kong

Posted by Jeff Ignacio on June 20, 2009 under Travel | Be the First to Comment

Hong Kong is a City of Convergence where modern meets ancient, and East meets West. It’s a city of dim sum, sweets, tea of all varieties, bright lights, drunk ex pats, 7-11s everywhere, and high humidity. I’m loving it. My Cantonese is nonexistent so I rely on Linh to get us through. Here’s a breakdown of what’s happened so far on our trip.

Day 1 – June 17th/18th

Lots of traveling. First Linh and I flew from Los Angeles to Narita, Japan. 10+ hour flight to Narita (Tokyo), a 2 hour layover, and a 4 hour flight to HKG (Hong Kong). The best thing about flying is lots of orange juice and a few bags of peanuts.

When we arrived we straight to 7-11 to get microwaveable dumplings. Thirty seconds and you have mini shumai dumplings. fast food Asian style. Delicious.

Day 2 – Hong Kong

First, we went to Wan Chai to enjoy a lunch. We were turned away from the Che’s at the Broadway Hotel because we didn’t make a reservation. The funny thing was that when I looked inside there was nobody in there! What the hell. Instead of eating, we went to an internet cafe to hang out for 30 minutes. To satiate ourselves we finally sat down to have lunch at the Hoi Tin restaurant.

Before heading to TST, chilling at the Grand Hyatt to enjoy the air conditioning was too good to pass up. The hotel lobby was impressive. Large open atrium with the 2nd floor restaurant overhanging the registration table. Live piano graces an elegant presence to top your cooling off.

The ferry from Wan Chai to Tsim Sha Tsui (TST) took about 30 minutes. I will post pictures later. To get an idea of TST, imagine Beverly Hills… but in Hong Kong instead. Chanel, Gucci, Cartier, all the places I couldn’t afford. Oddly enough they had an H&M for the every day person. At the mall, we found a life sized Yao Ming statue, as evidenced below.

Yao and I become friends.

Upon my return to the Central Harbor, I attempted to navigate my way back to Lan Kwai Fong (where the hotel is) through the large ITC Mall and its air conditioned walkways. Result: failure. I got us lost naturally, but somehow we managed to make our way back.

Night activities. Enter my friend Stuys. We meet up with Stuys and a bunch of her HK friends. The funny thing is that everyone here seems to have some sort of Southern California connection, sans one friend who just came back from London. Stuys’ God Brother Jay took us to Beijing Club at the M88 building on Wellington. Fun times. I’ll post more photos towards the end of the trip. HK people don’t dance as crazy as LA people do… but still the partying had a touch of what you see in HK films.

Jeff and Stuys

Stuys and Linh

The Girls

Santa Barbara

Posted by Jeff Ignacio on February 1, 2007 under Business, Random Entries, Travel | Be the First to Comment

I work in Malibu now. The commute to work is one of the best views I have had in awhile. No large buildings. No red lights (or barely). No inefficient onramps to extended parkings lots (a la 405). At first I was not very happy having to drive 30 minutes to work, when I already had an office 2 minutes away from where I live. But that’s the price you pay for taking on a new position. The job is pretty sweet. I get to negotiate with property owners to see if they want to sell their property to me… actually my company. But I get to do all the investigating, all the negotiations, and of course seeing the deal to completion.

In two years of existence, our company reeled in a whopping $300M in property networth. That’s mostly because the financial backer of our company is a mega billionaire. Gotta love that.

Today I drove out to my first area to scope potential acquisition targets. I drove up to Santa Barbara and again… enjoyed the ocean view. I hit up State Street between Victoria and Guiterrez St. I must say that the whole area is prime for acquisition. Our company would be interested in all of that property, with the exception of the Paseo Nuevo shopping mall on the west side of State Street. But other than that… it’s a free for all.

I went west one street over to Chapala. The whole street is DEAD. No foot traffic, it’s all drive to destination type properties. We’re after street front, main street, walk up to type retail properties. I’ll be out there again next week also. Going to work the phones hitting up these owners tomorrow.

My next area will be Corona Del Mar. I’ll be out there next week for a day or two.

The Train Station For Montserrat

Posted by Jeff Ignacio on July 14, 2003 under Travel | Be the First to Comment

Sunday morning I woke up and headed to the train station. Me, Helen, Sonoko, Brianna, and Thamar took a train to Montserrat. It’s a mountain 45 minutes north of Barcelona. The monastery that rests atop the mountain is awesome. The view from up there was cool, and hot at the same time. I got to see the shrine of the virgin, the basilica, the souvenier shops, and some tourists. Again.

Afterwards I got to see a bullfight! The stadium had a lot of people, but it was not packed. Maybe because the three best bullfighters of Espana are in Pamplona. But anyhoo it was awesome. I took tons of pictures. So you’ll all be able to see it.

OH the craziest thing happened yesterday while I was the train station. As i was walking to McDonalds I ran into Julie D. and Aeby L. I was really excited to see them.

Today the weather is frikkin humid! So I’m hopping in and out of shadows and air conditioned stores. Wish me luck! I’m going to try to meet up with Julie today if I can.