Hong Kong – Made for tourists

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I couldnt really get enough time to sit and write a lengthy post on HK till now. The visit has been completely hectic whether its the meetings with the client or roaming the bustling Hong Kong streets. Finally I am coming back to India today. Fortunately I came a little early to the airport (well a lot earlier) so taking the time out to write this post.

The most beautiful part about HK is that it is made for the tourists, whether you are here to do business or just visit. To start with you dont have to apply for a visa before coming here. You get 14 days business visa if you have an invitation letter. I guess its the same for visitors as well.

The transportation modes are just as good. Be it a ferry from Central to Kowloon or the MTR from Casueway bay to Admiralty or minibus from Whampoa to Tsim Sha Tsui or Airport express from Tsing Yi to Airport, they are all made for YOU. Upon landing right at the airport you can purchase an octopus card, which is a multi purpose smart card. Then whenever you board a public transportation system you just need to tap the card to make the payment. The card works in most of the stores and restaurants as well. If you are out of balance, just walk to an add value machine and feed the HK dollors to it and you are done. Its really that simple.

The place is expensive though, especially if you are planning to stay in a hotel get ready to pay at least 60$ a day for a double-bathroom sized room. Food ain’t great either, of course I have limited myself to chicken and vegetarian stuff alone. I have tried Chinese food on my first day, roasted chicken wings with rice noodles, the noodles tasted like egg white mixed with salt water. Dont even bother to ask about the chicken, well lets just say that may be that is how chicken will taste when you eat with chop sticks.

Apart from causeway bay and tsim sha tsui areas, I didnt really get to see much of HK. But these are the 2 main areas where tourists flock. Around these places there are just too many currency exchange shops, probably 1 for every 10 normal shops. That alone shows how keep HK is about tourism. Always negotiate the exchange rate, never take the value mentioned in the board, a little trick I have learned during my stay here. Talking about exchange, HK has pegged its dollar at 7.8(approx) wrt to USD. But in the market the exchange rate can vary from 7.05 to 7.75 depending on where you change.

I have realized that clothes are cheaper here, mainly due to extremely fashion conscious people living here. You just have to take MTR for a couple of times to see all possible kinds of dresses / hair styles / nail colors / bags / watches / jewelry. But other fashion accessories like watches, footwear, leather goods aren’t so cheap. I could buy a 19″ wide LCD monitor for the price of a branded watch.

The best thing for me is that, there is are tons of free wi-fi hot spots all over HK. Everyday I would come home and connect the laptop to one of the free networks and call my folks back home. It was so simple and fun.

Overll my trip to HK proved to fun and fulfilling. I have finished the task for which I am here and did get a chance to roam around a little bit. But I would love to be back here for a longer and relaxed visit, the reason why I am not returning my octopus card at the airport.

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23 Responses to “Shift Calendar Template – FREE Download”

  1. Alvin says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    your recent postings include only Excel 2007 templates. Unfortunately the company I work at still runs Excel 2003. Is it possible to get your awesome files in other excel version as well?

    Thanks so much for your great excel stuff!

  2. Stelios Tserkezis says:

    Is it possible to do this for shifts with hours instead of days? To organise a three shift day?

    Thanks in advance,

    Stelios

  3. MASTHAN says:

    In my organization there are 45 employees i need split then into three shifts ex:A shift:14,B shift:14,C shift:14 and week off:3 kindly help me on this.

  4. Hui... says:

    @Masthan

    You need to understand what rules your company has for the various shifts / roster combinations

  5. Georges Lacombe says:

    Chandoo, I once did a shift control spreadsheet for my team. I put one person in each line, the columns were the days. I put a shift code in each cell indicating in which shift that person should work, or if the person were out that day. I have two codes for being out. One is for vacations and one is to compensate days worked in weekends. This way I was able to count how many persons I have in each shift, how many were on vacations and how many were out compensating (that's the term we use here) weekend worked hours.
    Later I included the possibility of a person be in two lines one for normal hours other for overtime. This is mainly used for planning purposes. If you would like I can send you an example. The only problem of this spreadsheet is that we don't have a person view, only this consolidated view.

    • Chuck Vaughan says:

      Hi George, I would like to have a copy of your spreadsheet if you can share it.
       
      Thanks in advance, Chuck   

  6. Idan says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    Where is the code located ? is it VBA ? If so , how do you hide it ? Or it is .NET ?

    Thx

  7. Hui... says:

    @Idan
    .
    No VBA or code, it is all done with Mirrors.
    Only Joking,
    .
    But there is no VBA or code,
    It is all done with Named Formulas and Lookups.
    Have alook at the cells in the calander area and Named Formulas in the Formulas, Name Manager Tab.

  8. Anand Sant says:

    How can i calculate between two or more different workbooks? Please, reply me as early as possible.

    • Hui... says:

      @Anand
      Open the workbooks you want to link to
      Start a formula = and click and change between workbooks as required.
      You can use the View, Switch window menu to change workbooks mid formula

      The format for using workbooks is
      =[Workbook.xlsm]Sheet1!$A$1
      or
      =SUM('[Book2.xls]Sheet1'!$A$1:$D$10)
      etc

  9. Shemi says:

    Hi Chandoo,
    I am working with a call centre wherein i ned to update at the month end 20 to 30 employees login hours which are defict to track it at the month end is very difficult is there any template which can be made to track that why on a particular day a guy who needs to be on calls was why not on calls.

  10. Denice Lognshaw says:

    Thank you so much Chandoo. This is really helping me. As usual, you rock.

  11. Mukesh Verma says:

    What's FortyTwoDays and Calendar in Name manager?

    Both are unused and FortyTwoDays doesn't make any sense.

  12. Dave says:

    I have a SQL db that contains records of events scheduled/completed on a particular date. Can this method ous building a calendar be used to display those events on the respective day?

  13. Jan Halliday says:

    Positively awesome!
    I'm attempting to help a friend create a schedule for adult classes - and of course its not"paid help".  Here is the scenario:
    20 classes, instructor, room#, student class size, start date, number of class days (need to subtract weekends)

    class
    instructor
    room
    students
    start
    #days

    PATH
    karen
    201
    21
    01/01/13
    11

    BILLING
    jane
    401
    15
    01/12/13
    13

    MEDISOFT
    mike
    301
    11
    01/25/13
    9

    he'd like to see these classes show up in different colors within the same month's calendar chart.  He can draw it, but I'd like to see it done automatically through data, and I just can't visualize it, but I KNOW this will work - can you help?
    Jan 🙂
     

  14. Chan Tean says:

    Dear chandoo,

    Try many way to download still can't access. Any way we want to try out 3 shifts with 3 guys in a group .eg Group A Morn, Group B Night and Group C Rest. And every each group must work on sunday to take turns. In fact we are security teams so that's why sunday is required to work. Pls guide and show how to put in the working calendar. Thank you in advance.

  15. Veronica Burggren says:

    I've been trying to copy and/or recreate this to use in a workbook I'm doing for the transportation department I'm working for. I need to have the calendar on the first sheet in my document (it has graph's from data on another sheet). I'm trying to use it to track (with the conditional formatting) accidents and injuries. I've redone the conditional formatting to do 4 different accident types (no injury, near miss, OSHA recordable injury and work loss injury), but when I enter the formula's you have in the calendar portion where it says "DateOfFirst-FirstWeekDay" I can't figure out how you did that. Are you able to help?

  16. Pipin Fantom says:

    I would like to use Excel to solve the following problem for a community work. I want to create a Driver schedule for a given month from a pool of volunteers for a community service. Each of these volunteers can drive only on specific days in a week. I would like to populate the driving schedule for each weekday with primary, secondary and tertiary drivers in a random fashion so that I do not overburden one person. I would greatly any help you can provide.

  17. Ravichandra says:

    Hi chandoo,
    Thanks for your valuable effort for create this template and let me know how to add multiple employees in the the Roaster.

  18. Savitha says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    This article on shift roaster is very helpful. Could you please let me know how i can use the same for n number of resources who work 24/7, considering their leaves and holidays?

    Thanks,
    Savitha

  19. Balu says:

    Hi Chandoo,

    This article on shift roaster is very helpful to all. Could you please let me know how i can use the same if I want to add for some more shifts, since the color is not getting change if I add more shifts like 4,5 etc.,

    Thanks,
    Murali

  20. Sarah says:

    How can I change the date to 2017 under Shift Data worksheet.

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