Relocation or vacation

Monday morning blues turned into another day in Hong Kong. After a moody Monday morning, I slowly came out of my Monday misery and ended the day on a high.

There was no particular reason I was feeling blue this morning, I just was. I went running and thought to myself 'I have relocated to the other side of the world, found myself a job, and an apartment and have fallen into the same routine that I was in back in the UK'. Was I still on a journey?

Work distracted me from continuing these thoughts as I worked my way through phone calls I had scheduled the week before. I went for lunch with the girls to a lovely little restaurant called Charlie's. I have been to a few eateries recently and felt quite let down by the promise of good food and it turning out very average. A theme of expectations not being met is developing. After a pretty miserable weekend I was glad for this little treat of a surprise in the lunch break.  The girls had been planning all morning and by lunch had booked a 1/2 marathon in February and a bike ride on Lantau Island next week for the bank holiday Tuesday. Hong Kong loves it's bank holidays, and I love Hong Kong for it. It has 17 each year.

The afternoon went swiftly and I left the office at 6 to collect my newly heeled shoes and head home for a Skype with my cousin who has just returned from the trip of a lifetime sailing around Indonesia. It was lovely to hear all about his adventures, although it made me jealous, just a little. I hope my dear cousin and I will be reunited soon in Hong Kong. He really is one of my favourite people and I miss him.

We talked about committing to our careers and it made me think that now really is the time to grow up and join the real world. That even though every job right now feels like days on end of email writing, that this is the start of building business relationships, which eventually lead to working relationships and finally your clients becoming your friends. I am so very early on in my career that right now is the time to start focusing on the long-term rewards of working hard and committing to developing business skills and relationships.

That staying a year or two isn't going to get you much further than the email stage and that relationships take time and there is a lot of people in my company to look up to.

Learning to commit and the benefits