Hello brave new world!

I moved to Hong Kong in mid-October ’08. It was quite a welcome move for a number of reasons not the least of them being the fact that October was the month that one had to start scrapping ice of the car in Canadian icy mornings. While Hong Kong welcomed me with the +31C degree weather and all of ice contained in the fridges where it truly belongs as far as I’m concerned, and not on your car.. brrr

Having visited Hong Kong for the first time in December ’07 as part of the MBA school trip, I was really looking forward to the chance to experience living in it. The impressions that I carried from the ’07 trip were the vibrant city which people defined by three simple words: work, eat and shop, and just shrugged their shoulders when I asked about another one that they’ve seemingly forgot to add to the list: sleep. As I know now, being here for three months, they weren’t that far off, after all.

My friends in Canada were shell shocked when they’ve heard that I’m moving to Hong Kong to start a job with Prudential UK. They were wondering if I was crazy and what made me accept the job half a way across the world. I’ve been warned multiple times that it’s not only going to be really different culturally wise, but everything else is going to be difficult as well. The question that kept on popping up was why I didn’t just get a job in Toronto instead. I think though, they were secretly jealous of my upcoming adventure.

One of my life passions is travel. But what I was dreaming of was actually a get a chance to experience a new culture on a deeper level than what you get on a two-three day tourist visit. So when Prudential offered me the opportunity in Hong Kong I jumped on it. Don’t get me wrong, it was an interesting opportunity to start with, but the location was a big bonus for me.

Now a little bit more about the actual opportunity. Through the interview process Prudential matched me to the Business Analyst role in the New Markets development group. We are part of the Prudential Corporation Asia regional office. My role focuses on providing analytical support for the Prudential’s expansion in Asia and beyond, helping to identify and execute expansion into new areas within our current markets as well as brand new markets. We are basically the team which is on the bleeding edge of Prudential UK.

It was October 9th Thursday when I touched down at my newly found HK home. It honestly didn’t feel real for the first little while. Part of it was probably due to the fact that the whole process happened so smoothly, for that I have to praise to our HR department, they helped to make it go off without a single glitch considering all the little details that needed to be taken care off before it could all happen. There were all the employment contracts that had to be UPSed back and forth between HK and Toronto, the HK employment visa that luckily took only two weeks to process, and then all the other nitty-gritty stuff that had to be taken care off before I could start.

I was to start the job on Friday, the day after my arrival. The 13 hour time difference and the 16 hour flight didn’t help, what did help was the fact I was full of excitement and quite busy right from the start. Well that and couple of double espressos that I might have accidentally grabbed from Starbucks ;)

Before starting at Pru, I have been familiarizing myself with insurance industry, the company and our product specifics. However the first couple of days were a deep dive for me, getting a full overview of our product set and our presence across the region. That was followed by the overview of framework for new country analysis and examples of the countries that we considered before.

I was a bit of an early starter at Momentum as our official start was supposed to happen in London on November 9th. We were to spend a week in UK building our understanding of the group, meeting with managers from various members of Prudential family and getting to know other participants in the Momentum program to help build us a support network in whatever we decide to tackle later on.

Till next time,
George