Asian Patents Attorney Association Council Meeting @ Hong Kong, 2009 – Overview

My trip to Hong Kong for the Asian Patents Attorney Association Council Meeting (“APAA”) was fruitful but very tiring. It was held in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre at Wan Chai.

The road I take to get to the Convention centre everyday. Just 5 minutes walk from my hotel.

A little bit a background of this conference. This yearly conference is basically a meeting for Asian patent attorneys and this year had the record number of participants. 1400 patent attorneys and other professionals of related field attended this 5 days event. There were also other participants outside Asia e.g Europe, US and Africa.

Throughout the entire conference, talks and sub committee meetings were organised by the conference organiser. Although there are many talks and conferences, not many participants attend the them. The ultimate aim for most participants is to network. Through networking, participants may cross refer their work to other participants. For example, a Japanese patent attorney wishes to file a patent in Malaysia would need to seek a Malaysian patent agent to file the patent. With a connection established, the Japanese patent attorney may refer the work to the Malaysian patent attorney.

A typical day for me would start at 9am and would last till 12am. There were times I slept at 2am to do work and wake up at 8 – 9am for meeting. On my last day, I slept at 4am and woke few hours later for a 11am meeting. I was zombified.

Loot for this year. The amount of name cards obtained.

Conference area

However, our schedule was not as hectic as one Japanese firm. They had 13 meetings in a day starting from 9am until 530pm! Thereafter, they went for night receptions until wee hours in the morning!

I stayed in a hotel called Harbourview. It was the most affordable hotel in the list of participating conference hotels.

Looks impressive huh? Check out the view.

Although named Harbourview, my room doesn’t have any view of the harbour. All I had was an office building and a strip of light.

zoomgg the strip of lighttt.. soo beautifullll

Further, on my first night, I woke up in the middle of the night to find the TV turned on by itself -_- Thank god nothing spooky happened after that.

The conference ended with a Gala dinner at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre. After the dinner, we adjourned to Lam Kwai Fong for drinks. I was there until 330am and woke up for a 11am meeting few hours later. uuhh..

We had some time for ourselves on our last day. However, I don’t have any friends in Hong Kong thus I didn’t have a place to go. I decided to follow my colleague to Wong Tai Sin Temple, a Taoist temple established in 1921 and also one of the most famous temples in Hong Kong. Those who know me well, I am not very eeer.. religious. In fact, I am agnostic.

There were some old ladies selling joss sticks and other praying materials at the train station. However, other than the joss sticks, other praying materials are not allowed to be brought into the temple.

We dropped by Wong Kok after the temple visit. However, we got lost and ended up at one street selling renovation materials and also offering renovation services. It was extremely boring. We passed by some markets as well. We didnt get to see the well known Lui Yan Kai and Poh Hai Kai.

In regards to food, I didn’t get to try most of the local stuff. I spent most of my time eating hotel food. I didn’t have the chance to explore many places for good Hong Kong food. Hotel food is really expensive. Grand Hyatt Hotel was serving Hainanese chicken rice for HKD200 (around RM100!). Nevertheless, I did get to try a few nice things which I will blog later.

Chocolates that I bought from Hong Kong! Gave 99% of them away.

More later!