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7am is an ungodly hour to wake up on a Saturday, especially when you’ve only had a few hours of sleep, however I was slotted to attend the Blair Singer seminar on Sales and Leadership and I felt sure that If I skipped it, that I would be missing out on some very valuable information about how to take my business to the next level.

For any of you have been to other American-style NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) self-improvement seminars such as Tony Robbins, you will recognize immediately that the formula used is the same one. Just like at the Tony Robbins seminar, loud Top 40 music was blasting in the auditorium as we walked in. The music is meant to wake you up and create energy in the room and I tell you- at that time hungover on a Saturday morning-you need it!

The Sunseeker in Sai Kung

The other day, a friend of mine who is a filmmaker and producer asked me if I wanted to be filmed for an American TV show. While my days in front of the camera are long gone, I could hardly say no to this project as it's a reality show about travel, food and entrepreneurship (some of my favorite topics) And besides, millions of people in the United States are potentially going to see it and hear about hiphongkong.com! Kewl.

The show, which will air on the ABC network in March, is called the Erik Kaiser show. The star of the show, Erik Kaiser, is a dashing American entrepreneur who reminds me of a younger, fitter Donald Trump, both in his upright capitalist demeanor and in his somewhat feathered hairdo. Erik is the kind of guy who is inspired, driven, whose brain never stops whirring and is constantly calculating how much profit can be made off an idea. He's the type of person who has to keep a notepad by his bed for when he wakes up in the middle of the night with one of those awesome ideas.

Hong Kong is really doing a decent job of setting up arts, design and music events recently. Within the past half-year, there was the Detour Art Exhibit at the former Married Police Headquarters and Sculpture Sunday in Repulse Bay. There was also Rock Raiser and Clockenflap at Cyberport and now there’s a fantastic exhibit in West Kowloon for the Hong Kong Shenzen Biennale of Design and Urbanism.

It’s a bit of a trek to get out to West Kowloon but last Saturday post-punk band The Yours and this German experimental band called A Roller Control were playing live at dusk so I figured it was a great excuse to trek out there and check out what was going on. In addition, it was a stunning afternoon and gave me a good reason to dust off my SLR and get some pics.

When I was in Thailand over the Christmas and New Year holiday, I had a reading by a numerologist who lived in a stunning wood house up on a hilly patch of jungle amidst a forest of coconut trees. The place had view of the sea, a bed hung with mosquito netting, some retro Thai furniture, and a completely open kitchen which was exposed to all the elements. There was a hammock strung up on some trees which allowed you to gaze at the endless Zen view while blissing out.

First came Crackbook- now there’s a new form of addictive social media, Twitter, and I’m becoming a bonafide twaddict. I couldn’t really figure out what the hoopla was all about surrounding till I saw this hilarious video.

This is a shout out to all the gay brothers in the house- Hiphongkong loves YOU! We know that the mark of a truly fabulous city is when there are a lot of gays living there making the places pretty, arty and fashionable! So two snaps and a twist! Un huh.

Some people say that advertising is dead and that the only way to popularize your product, service, event or cause is through word of mouth or personal endorsment. This is why PR has taken precedence over traditional forms of advertising such as TV commercials or billboard ads.

The role of a PR person/company is to try to get magazines, websites and publications to pick up their stories and press releases and give them press coverage. This publicizes the product, service, event or cause and gives word of mouth credibility.

At the ungodly hour of 630 AM Saturday morning, I got an SMS from my girlfriend that said, “I’m going to H&M to queue for the opening day of the Jimmy Choo Collection- Wanna come?” Ummm.. Let me think about it for one second..NOT! I rolled back over and in comfort of my bed, I dreamt about people waiting on line in the morning chill.

The renovations in the Soho flat that I own are progressing expeditiously. However, as my construction crew drills and bangs the living daylights out of the sorry residents of that building, the very same thing is happening to me in the flat I’m renting. I call it ‘Re-Construction Karma’.

About a month ago, I started hearing random scraping noises at weird hours in the flat directly above me. Then, a few days later, the demolition/reconstruction started in earnest. I felt like someone had taken a massive drill and started drilling into my skull and brains straight through to my eardrums. There was banging, scraping and the sound of walls breaking. Glasses fell off my kitchen counter from the vibration of the drills and I could not hear anyone when they called me on the telephone. I couldn’t even hear myself think which is a huge detriment when you have a home office.

Fall in Hong Kong is an amazing time to get outside of the city and do some hiking. At first glance, one might think that Hong Kong is nothing but a bunch of skyscrapers and tenement buildings. However there are tons of easily accessible hiking trails all over Hong Kong!