Hong Kong has a population of about 7 million. Most are ‘night’ people. It’s something that I have suspected for a while and had confirmed yesterday.

My study began with my week day observations. I arrive at the office building at about 8.40am or so each day. All the shops are closed. Most will open somewhere between 10 and 10.30am. Lucky I enjoy window shopping but if there’s a last minute purchase required (eg stockings because I’ve laddered my only clean pair trying to put them on earlier that day) then it’s just too bad.

People walk into the building on automatic pilot, reminiscent of workers in 1984 (though some brighter clothing is generally worn). This is because the average HK person doesn’t really wake up until after they’ve eaten lunch. I’ve had this confirmed too.

Not many people at work arrange meetings before lunch-time; they all tend to be later in the day. This is opposite to my preferred way of working where I like to have all the important things done early, when I’m more focused. I’ve discussed the different ways of working with a few HK locals. I get up at 6am and they arise at 8am. I’m at work around 8.40am and they are there sometime before 9.30am. I like to leave at about 6.15pm and they leave sometime between 7-9pm-ish. I go to bed around 10pm and they tend to go around 12-1am. This explains quite a bit.

My confirmation of the large number of ‘night people’ continued yesterday.

Mr Shallot and I went to Tung Chung for a bit of shopping. It’s an area where there are a number of discount outlets under one roof. There’s quite a good supermarket, Nike, Quiksilver and even the Body Shop plus who knows how many other stores are there. We bought a new DVD player but that is another story.

We arrived at about 2.30pm and there were about 15 other people there. The stores were quiet and service was quick. By the time we left at around 5pm, the sun was disappearing and 3 million people were there. These are probably a different 3 million that seem to appear at week-day lunch-times but I can’t be sure as these ones on yesterday seemed a little more awake.

The place was packed, kids were screaming and parents were calm. I’m not a parent so all this noise tends to stress me out. That was my cue to leave.

My tips from these observations are:

• If crowds are not your thing, shop earlier in the day
• If you would like to ensure you don’t spend any money, shop really early in the day
• If you would like to buy breakfast somewhere you will find somewhere open in time for lunch
• Always have a back-up pair of stockings for emergency use only

* Thank you to Björk for the title to this post.