Last weekend I finally moved out of the airport hotel and into a serviced apartment on Hong Kong Island where I’ll be for the next month until I find something more permanent. Having surveyed the options available there were clearly some tradeoffs to be made on the location vs price front but in the end I found somewhere pretty good.
Apologies for being offline the past few days – I moved into my new apartment but had an unexpected delay in setting up the connection (China Telecom failed to deliver on their 24 hour installation promise but at least the installation good) as well as taking a short trip outside of Shenzhen (more on this in the next post). Aside from this hiccup the new place is pretty nice. It’s the first time I’ve truly had my own apartment, not sharing with anyone else, and it feels good! Located on the 9th floor of an apartment complex in the up-and-coming “Coastal City” area of Nanshan it has 2 bedrooms, large living room, balcony, kitchen and bathroom. Plenty of space for me to get lost…
So after 5 days in my new home, Shenzhen, the most resounding impression so far is that this place is hot – really hot. During the day it’s been around 32°C and at night 27°C, all intensified by 66% humidity in the concrete jungle of high rise apartments and offices. Air-conditioning is a must-have and makes working indoors much more pleasant but wandering around in the midday heat is physically draining and you’ll probably want to carry around a bottle of water at all times. Most likely having something to do with the heat at around 1 to 1.30pm each day most people take a nap, in fact, in my new office a security guard comes round and turns the lights off then on…