HK: Day 3

Ramada Kowloon Hotel, Hong Kong - Local time 01.30

I slept great and woke up fit this morning. We decided last night to just order from room service. A blog reader (Randy) e-mailed me asking me how we pay for stuff like food, tickets, hotels and transportation. Let me explain:

There is a department in Paris called Planning & Coordinating. There they have people working called Planning Masters. They plan which AFC team does what, when and where. Remember... AFC is not only based in Holland, but also in New York, London, Paris, Mumbai, Sydney, Mexico City, Toronto, Tokyo, Ilha do Sal... etc. We are worldwide. When a project comes in, the Planning Masters see how big the job is, how many consultants are needed and for how long. They also check what specialty is needed. We (team #3) are specialized in Asia.
They check which team is available in which country and see which team is down. When they find a team to send on a project, the Planning Master calls the local staff department in that country. In Holland this department is run by KLM. It's called KLM Staff Coordination & Crew Control (staffco & crewco). They call staffco, give them the instructions and then staffco takes over from there. Staffco works with a system called Plan & Go, which has all of our personal info in it like passport number, visas, vaccins, addresses etc.

Staffco gives me a call and give me the details of the project and tell me with whom I'm going. When I confirm that I'm available to go (not sick or something), they go ahead a start looking for the available flights, hotels etc. Within a few hours they email me or fax all the details like; airline, flight number, hotel name etc. At the same time my Managing Consultant (Grietje) also contacts the rest of the team to tell us exactly what our job will be and how long we have to do it. So at this point the team starts doing preparation work for the project. About 2 days before we leave staffco calls me one last time to make sure I have the correct details of the travel info.

On the day we leave, we get briefed by our Unit Manager at the office or airport and staffco also brief us on the travel plans for one last time. They hand us our (e)-tickets and hotel vouchers. We all log into Plan & Go to see how much allowance (dag geld) we get per day at the destination we are going to. You don't get it in cash, but you withdraw it from your company credit card in your name. Always in local money. For instance in Hong Kong we get HK$550,- per day (Hong Kong Dollar). That is about US$70,- or €56,-. With that you pay for food only. Hotel, airline tickets, taxi, metro, bus or car rental the company pays for. They also provide you with a laptop and a company GSM. Now you would say it's a lot, but if you want to eat proper meals, you pay good money for it. If you decide you want to eat fast food, you can save a lot and bank the rest.

Company credit card. We have a contract with AmEx.

Hope this explains it, Randy from Texas!

Meeting time in the lobby was 9.00, so I ordered myself a croissant, orange juice and coffee.

You order room-service via a computer that's in your room. Very easy and handy.

During breakfast I emailed some friends and responded to my comments on this weblog. 8.30 I showered and precisley at 09.00 I was in the lobby in complete AFC uniform. Grietje, Brenda and me took the taxi to HKG airport, while Freddy went to the AF office in Victoria to do other work. We would meet him there later. At the airport we met with Tang-Fei and started to do what we came here to do.





The morning was filled with meetings with Management of Swissport, Menzies and GlobeGround.

Around 13.00 we had a quick lunch and continued working.

Lunch: pasta with a Snapple

At 14.00 we stopped and took the metro back to the hotel. We quickly changed out of our uniform into casual clothes and took the hotel shuttle to Victoria where AF has a city office and Freddy was working the whole day. Outside we met up with Tang Fei once again.

Tang Fei outside of the AF main office

Yes... we still had more work to do! From 15.30 to 17.30 we had a meeting with AFC people based in Hong Kong about the project.

This is Annie. She is AFC staff based in Nairobi, Kenya and is here for a project as well. Her project is for Kenya Airways. We worked together in the past on a joint project for TAAG Angolan Airways in Paris a few months back. It was good to see her again.

After the meeting was over, Grietje, Brenda and me decided to go walking around the city a little. Freddy doesn't really like that kind of thing, so he went out to dinner with Annie. We took the bus from Victoria and went to Kowloon and walked around among local people and tourists. It is always fun to explore a city.

In the bus

Food stand in the street... and no... I didn't eat anything from there!

See if you can spot Brenda & Grietje in the crowd...

After it start to get dark, we took a bus back to the hotel and worked a little more for a few hours in Brenda's room. Now I'm going to order room service again, watch some TV and go to bed. I am beat!

Goodnight!