Definitive Post, Conclusion

If you were like the many who thought that I was done, you’re wrong. I need to conclude the gargantuan endeavor that is this blog with one final post. I’ve been back in the United States for about a week and a half now, and I’ve begun packing and preparing for my return to the University of California, San Diego. Workload permitting, I’ll edit over this whole blog so it flows like a novel, consolidating posts where necessary and refitting everything so it works, more than partially so that I can relive the experience that I am so missing, and know that I will continue to be nostalgic of for the foreseeable future.

And if because of the reverse-chronological format of blogs you arrive at this post first, I encourage you to start at the beginning four months back. Though I’m biased, I think it’s worth it.


Des Amis, Des Ennemis

I have this nasty habit of getting sick in some way or another before entering a new environment. So before heading off to Hong Kong, I happened to be going through the usual. It kept me going to the bathroom in short and my head was persistently and consistently hot. Thinking there was the possibility of getting quarantined, I can’t say I filled out the health declaration form truthfully, and I self-medicated to get me through the lines should they take my temperature.

Showing how much I knew, since Hong Kong just gave sick people respiratory masks and advisory literature but nothing more, I entered the cab on the way over marveling at the sheer number of bridges on surface roads that there were and the lights of Central, only to be nearly shocked at the superficial condition of buildings outside of the tourist drag.

I was sick and I get sick in such situations because of my nervousness and I know it. I didn’t know who my roommate would be, how cliquish the locals would be, how accepting my fellow exchange students would be of the contrast between my national origins and my ethnic roots. All I could tell myself was that it would all work out and that whatever happens happens.

And as I’m blessed time and time again, through privilege and circumstance, everything worked out better than I could have ever assumed. Out of my perceived adversity, though profoundly false, I guess I could say that I became a stronger person in my first learning experience of my four-month exploration.

I guess I’m a naturally shy and soft-spoken individual. Though I do enjoy the company of others on a regular basis, I also enjoy my own company alone, reading a book, writing (this blog), and much less often watching television.  For some reason I had a hunch that I would be the second case more often than not. That’s not to say that I can’t have fun, because in new situations I turn up social butterfly mode and go with it until I have at least a few good friends.

And more than a few good friends I got. They weren’t exactly the friends I was hoping for, being that I wanted to immerse myself in Hong Kong and its locals, but in some ways making friends with other international students gave me a better world view, especially an Anglophone world view, rather than just a Hong Kong- or Chinese-centered one.

Of my friends, of course some were better than others; for a few we parted ways over personality, never ideology. So I guess I’ll go bad news first.

My luck with roommates varies a lot over time. I know he doesn’t read this blog, so in this conclusion, I have few qualms about describing our dealings, especially keeping him in anonymity (at least from those who don’t know him).

He happened to have come from Illinois, the same state where I can say my parents are from (having been educated there, met there, married there, and lived there for a long time). That’s not to say that he’s like my parents though, because he turned out not to be in so many ways.

In being cordial we were good friends for the first month and a half. Though it sounds corny, this was what I like to call the honeymoon period—that being before people fully get to know each other and personalities fully materialize. Things that were so minor to me during the honeymoon period, such as his perceived need to get a girlfriend right then and there in the first two weeks, and his staying up way late to play video games only to complain of exhaustion and boredom during the day began to really annoy me.

In addition, his preconceptions of me came out one by one, one by one revealing themselves to be more specifically misconceptions. For one, he kept insisting that both my parents are from China, to which I had to remind him that my father’s from Detroit and my mother is originally from Hong Kong and immigrated mid-childhood. It followed that during a discussion about learning languages he believed that I speak Mandarin natively, as taught to me by my parents. I had to remind him that my father is a natural-born American and that my mother is from Hong Kong (where they overwhelmingly speak Cantonese over both Mandarin and English), to which I told him he should be able to speak standard German, since he claimed Austrian roots.

And I’m no saint, but on the other hand many of my hunches about him turned out to be true. For one, he whined a lot about not having enough money, though he blew it like no other, spending plenty on drinking and partying. And when he found out that I don’t get financial aid from the government, he assumed that I’m from a rich family, thereafter pointing to expensive sportscars and telling me to buy them for him. The cherry on top was the rigid attitude that he had to all things world. He described his disdain for Islam Week at HKU and described the locals in terms he should have thought twice about before saying to me and my Asian self. In his intelligence, he managed to tell his mom about me in not-so-excellent terms with me in the room. He assumed since I had my earphones in that I wasn’t listening when in reality he should have saved it for later, when I wasn’t present.

It all culminated towards the end of reading week, when after landing at the airport from our group trip to Beijing, he said that had to get off the plane to go meet his friends, with the implication that we were not his friends as denoted by his overly forward tone.

That friend turned out to be a “girlfriend” located an hour’s ferry away in Macau who he probably met on the Internet. In earlier weeks, he would browse the personals section of Craigslist in his boredom, telling me about them while I was trying to study. I ended up disappearing to the library more often than not to study or at least get away from him and he ended up disconnecting from the group and disappearing to Macau nearly every weekend to go see her. That’s not to say I assumed their relationship was one of convenience, because I know how he described her to some of my other friends.

And on the upswing, throughout the whole semester, his opposition to picking up a few words of Cantonese became quite irksome. Yeah, others were like that too, since it’s plenty evident that it’s not hard to get by in Hong Kong on English alone, but with him, it fit his personality in such a way that could only be described in American English-only campaigns by many of the uneducated too lazy to press number “1” or “2” on their phones when prompted.

This isn’t to say that we weren’t friendly though, being that we had to be as we were roommates and all. We parted ways on the appropriate note. He packed away all the People’s Liberation Army “Commie” hats at Mao Zedong quote books for his friends and had be chuckle at the appropriate time. I told him he gets cheap thrills from that stuff. He said it was for his friends. I modified my statement to say that he and his friends get cheap thrills from that stuff. He also was trying to figure out how to pack away a rolled poster for his right-wing father that featured Obama morphed into Mao. He thought I was laughing with him at the witty piece of art. I was laughing at him since he couldn’t get it into his backs without crushing it, putting about thirty folds in it. And as much as I can disagree or even hate someone, defiling someone’s image simply isn’t constructive and if you have to lead with your emotions than you aren’t going to get anywhere (or haven’t gotten anywhere).

And in another falling out, this friend happens to read my blog instead of updating his own (October, November, and December all went down without a single word). This is the friend who I described as not understanding face (in the universal sense) and social relationships that I used as an example in my Traditional Chinese society class.

All of a few hours after my post went on screen he called me during class. I hung up on him since I was in class, so he texted me describing how sorry he was and how he wanted to start anew. I forgot about it by the end of the day, so he ended up sending me a message on Facebook telling me that I defamed him to the point where I should remove and retract my statements. I told him that he was in the wrong, and since it would be sufficiently difficult to figure out that it was him (though the lack of a name and a face), and because I presented my writing as my opinion and not as undisputable fact that in no way could my statements be construed as libel (which he incorrectly termed slander). In addition, he had no career of which to speak to ruin, no would anyone care about what I say about him. I told him that those people who figure out that I was talking about him already have opinions formed of him, and that my little post wouldn’t shift things one way or the other.

With nothing good to say to him and knowing that he had nothing good to say to me, we avoided each other until the last few days. We were cordial and did not mention the disagreement we had.

Later, I was told that he doesn’t like me. I replied to her that I don’t really care. What happened happened and it had gotten to the point where I practically brushed it off my shoulder.

And for the good news, most of the people that I met were genuine and open-minded. I found myself discussing contemporary issues with them and debating the past (often over coffee). I found good travel buddies after thinking for the first few weeks that I should probably find some tours to take me travelling.

Though it seems that I sold them short in this conclusion, I described much of what we all went through in nearly all of my previous posts, from travels to classes and simple cultural differences.

Seeing all of them go was in itself the end of this Study Abroad chapter in my life, since they were more than there for all of it—they were an integral part of it. I plan to stay in contact of course, and who knows?—maybe we’ll have a Hong Kong reunion in a decade’s time.


Lectures and Tutorials

It may just be because I belong to this system, but I can’t describe fully how much I appreciate the liberal arts education. Something also must be said about learning in the common language rather than the elite language.

But first things first: liberal arts as a type and theory in methods of education has a different meaning to the general public and American university students than in the international higher education community, especially along the Anglophone front. Here, we like to think as liberal arts as primarily and often exclusively referring to those institutions of higher learning termed liberal arts colleges. Names aside, this distinction is made primarily to distinguish them from research universities—the difference having less to do with what is liberal arts and more with how big the student population is, how many students there are per class, and what the professors do during their free time.

Liberal arts colleges aim to boast more intimate student experiences, with students being able to learn better through a more Socratic classroom environment with the format more along the lines of a pseudo-discussion rather than a rote lecture in which only the (doctored) professor talks.

On the other hand there are the research universities, where professors teach large lectures with much of the grading being left to teaching assistants, often graduate students, allowing them to research with the time leftover (though often research comes before teaching). In this sense, students have to work at getting to know their professors, most notably by taking advantage of office hours. Misconceptions about research universities stem from that basis—that because lecture halls regularly encompass three hundred students, they cannot be nearly as effective as liberal arts colleges.

In my opinion, people should choose what works better for them rather than just thinking that liberal arts colleges are just better or worse. I know two things: that both formats work well for me, with me myself preferring the anonymity that a large lecture hall can afford me, and also that out of the fourteen or so classes that I have taken thus far at UCSD, most have had less than seventy students, with my smallest class having around ten. I believe that the value of what you get out of anything is what you put in, meaning that it’s irrelevant which format, whether it be large lectures or small discussions, you choose, insofar as you take full advantage of the resources at hand.

But American public definitions aside, what is really meant by attaining a liberal arts education is not the methods in which you met you ends, but rather what you get out of it. As I understand it, without consulting any literature on the matter, the liberal arts education is one of breadth, notwithstanding continuing depth, meaning that you should come out of college understanding not only your subject, but also other subjects—not necessarily all of them, but of those that you do, at least their basis or even some finer points, or in other words, well-roundedness. The theory behind this is that by getting a good depth of feel for more of what our universe of knowledge is about, you can produce more profound critical thought on your own discipline, seeing material in a more comprehensive manner if you will.

In this sense, American universities and colleges are all based in liberal arts, since all have general education requirements of sorts to gain breadth {as well as to keep accreditation). You can contrast this with vocational schools, which, being more skill-based, teach you what you need to know for your future job with much less emphasis on critical thought.

In other countries, higher education is often somewhere in between liberal arts institutions and vocational schools. In Hong Kong for example, general education is advertised by the university as something for personal enjoyment rather than as a requirement. So in this sense, breadth is more an optional asset rather than a requirement for graduation.

Of course, there are pros and cons. Using the simple comparison between the American education system and that of Hong Kong, graduates from American universities and colleges come out as highly skilled in terms of critical thought, or more pragmatically put—problem solving. Graduates from Hong Kong universities will come out with more specific knowledge on the specific fields that they’ve trained for.

So automatically, one would compare the two and ask which one is better. On top of the fact that I just got back from Hong Kong, I compare the two because of their similar economies. Hong Kong’s is based on the service sector, largely in finance, with much industrial manufacturing having gone to nearby Guangdong Province in Mainland China. That of the United States is going in that direction, with (industrial) jobs going overseas because of cheaper labor in places like China. As such, Americans are finding it more and more necessary to upgrade their educations with children now being expected to go to college or likely end up in a dead-end job.

So which system of higher education is better? Though I’ve tried to fully express my viewpoint in earlier posts and very simply stated my ardent appreciation of the system I happen to be in, I’m not going to delve into that again here, because then I’ll end up going into dollars and cents, and past subsistence (including security), I’ve never felt like happiness or the meaning of life were embedded in numbers of any sort.

The second point of contention that I intend to mention is the language of instruction. Hong Kong, having been a British Crown Colony for the vast majority of its successful history, tends to over-idealize and overestimate its colonial heritage. As such, much emphasis is placed on English-language education, with the appropriate policies being in place and in action in the territory’s major universities, of course including the one that I attended on exchange.

Before coming to Hong Kong, I read in the pamphlet that the school sent me to help me find my way upon arrival that though classes are all in English, the local students speak to each other in Cantonese. I took a double take at the sentence, knowing that there is generally the tendency to prefer speaking in the language with which one is most comfortable in. It was in a sense of what was to come, because the pamphlet was correct as expected.

While I fully believe in language rights, certain things about Hong Kong local students weren’t quite clicking as I was hoping. The pamphlet itself used funny English. It had funny constructions, odd prepositions, and “the” before nearly every noun, whether it needed it or not. I assumed that the way the pamphlet was written simply reflected the variety of English used in Hong Kong. I don’t think this was an unreasonable assumption at all. It is well known that especially since English has such large geographic spread, there are bound to be vast differences in various technical usages of certain words and even different grammatical features. For example, a British English speaker would say, “at weekends,” whereas an American English speaker would say, “on weekends.”

As I would find out, it’s hard to classify Hong Kong English as a true variety of English. This is because the differences in word usage between Hong Kong English and American English were anything but consistent (and hence not predictable and not easy to internalize). When Hong Kong English speakers would say something, it seemed often that any preposition could go in conjunction with any verb, and because of that, it took a great deal of effort during my entire stay there (meaning it didn’t get any easier) to understand what people were saying.

Their lack of English skills was in large created by the fact that they don't speak English with each other, and based on what I have heard and witnessed, that they seem to subconsciously view English as a hindrance to their educations despite its advantage in their futures. The reason I say that is because during a floor meeting at Lee Hysan Hall, the students conducted all their business in Cantonese despite the presence of non-Cantonese speakers. This meant that instead of everyone switching to English (which they are all expected to be able to speak), they had one member translate for those who could not understand. It seems as though if they had more practice, they would either get their prepositions correct or at least consistent.

I say this to mean that everyone should speak English properly, like many Americans would have it be, just that in a school that boasts English as its language of instruction, it might be good as a student to get to speaking well a consistent variety of the language if not an already existing standard.

This isn’t to say that everyone was a bad English speaker, for I’m sure there are. What I mean is that overall, the local student population needed dearly to refine their English-language abilities.

What this meant for my classes was that in my opinion they were largely diluted. Ask me what I learned in class and I’ll tell you I’d rather talk about my travels. Professors had to speak slowly so that students understand. This meant that in the fourteen-week semester (my quarters at UCSD are ten weeks), I feel I learned less than back in California during a significantly shorter term.


La Gran Obra de Arte

I know I’m not the first in using my passport as a something of a symbol of my travels, but I’m going to do it anyways. Doing so is popular because such a representation is apt. After all, that little booklet accompanied me all along the way.

The original sections of that little booklet were completely full by the end. If you recall, by mid-November, it readily became clear that my passport book was filling up with stamps. Since Hong Kong and Mainland China have separate immigration schemes, the fact that I did a lot of frequent traveling to the mainland meant that most of those stamps were red rectangles and ovals. Under advice online from the Department of State, I ventured over to the consulate-general to have more pages added to lessen the likelihood of being turned away when going through immigration. Unfortunately, none of those pages were actually used since no one wanted to be the first to stamp on those pages, being that they are a different color from the rest of the booklet. Instead, they took the liberty of being economical and went backwards the booklet, stamping wherever they could find a corner here and there.

Most know of the pride I take in my passport, and the fact that I will have to get a new one soon means that this one, once invalidated, will likely find its way into a bank vault somewhere (though probably not). I may be one of the few who do this, but I like to exhibit my passport when people ask about my travels. The fact of the matter is half of them are asking to be polite more than out of interest, so handing over my passport to them for the first time gives them something physical to match with the various stories wandering around my brain. I know that I’m not the best storyteller in speech, and I don’t deny that there is always room for improvement in my writing.

Before going to Hong Kong, I had been to China for the first time in my life on a two-week tour of some of the major sights. Prior to that trip, my international travels consisted of one road trip to Canada from Ohio with my aunt and uncle in Dayton. Back then you didn’t need passports to re-enter the United States through that border—just American birth certificates or American naturalization certificates plus identification. Even now with passport control, the United States doesn’t stamp Canadians (I’m pretty sure) and Canada doesn’t stamp Americans (I’m certain).

I went through Canada again at the end of an Alaskan cruise, having been routed through Vancouver. But the bottom line is that I got my passport first for my trip to China. I used it again for going to the Schengen Area when my family and I toured Paris and much of Italy. This means that in the first three years of having my passport, the first two pages were used: one with my Chinese visa and one with immigration stamps.

Applying for my Hong Kong student visa through the university and receiving my new full-page sticker made me pretty happy despite the fact that it was one of the ugliest pieces of paper ever designed. It made me realize both the definite fact that I was going to be going on a long trip and that that trip was happening soon.

And as visas go, I had to get one more to enter Mainland China, for which I applied and received in Hong Kong. The process reaffirmed my nationality in the fact that my visa cost over $1000 HKD when most other people in line paid less than $300 for exactly the same piece of paper.

And on my multiple-entry visa, I got most of my passport stamps. On exchange, I went to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guilin, crossing the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China twelve more times. Other trips that I made were to Macau and Taipei. Outside of Greater China though, I only made one trip—to Phuket, Thailand. I genuinely intended to get to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Tokyo, had it not been for the increased costs in traveling alone, and I’m confident that had I stayed for the entire year, I would have gone to Vietnam and Cambodia as well.

I guess it’s difficult for me, especially as an American, to say that I'm not well traveled. Because although the farthest trip I made when I was under 10 was from northern Los Angeles to San Diego and my first plane trip happened the summer right before September 11, 2001, it’s hard for me to claim such a statement in the present. The fact of the matter is that not only have I gone to New York state and back through thirty states, but also my passport has become the great work of art that it now is.

With my internalization of the fiction that is nationality, I understand that talking about my passport in such a manner can be construed as a double-edged sword, but because it’s recorded the majority of my travels in such a succinct yet unique way, it serves me more as a momento and a souvenir rather than a document proving my citizenship.


Dollars, Yuan, Baht, and Those Unsung Heroes

In planning this conclusion, I initially intended to list out the costs of my study to Hong Kong. I’ve decided as of now though to stop short of this. I will say that after making my final summations the number is not small, or at least not nearly as small as I would have expected.

I consider my lifestyle comfortable, perhaps upper-middle class, but not lavish or particularly elitist. My travels were much of the expense. Encouraged my mother in words and parental financial assistance, I found myself going somewhere nearly every other weekend. In short, traveling outside of Hong Kong added up to about 40% of my total expenses.

However, my biggest single purchase came in the form of a digital single-lens reflex camera, which, being on sale, I splurged about 9% of my total expenses on. I got a Nikon D90, which sits at the top of the mid-range section, right under professional.

It cost me so much that in a very stable, rational matter I assure you I just about didn’t hand over my debit card to my salesperson. After the fact, I lamented for weeks about how much I paid for it, comparing it to how much money I would have spent on more trips and such, how much it costs to free a modern slave, how many times over I could have paid off my friend’s library late fees.

Since I did study abroad rather than just travel abroad, I should probably mention how much I paid for my education abroad. At just over 30% of my total expenses, tuition was about $4000 USD, paid to the Regents of the University of California. I actually don’t know how much it costs to go to the University of Hong Kong because since the University of California sends as many students to the University of Hong Kong as the University of Hong Kong sends the University of California (under the exchange program), students pay their home institutions. This means that the amount that I paid was about equivalent to how much as semester would have cost at Berkeley or UC Merced.

And herein I start my thanks. At the urging of my father, I applied for a $500 USD-scholarship at UCSD (with multiple recipients). This is one of the very few merit-based scholarships that don’t look at financial need.  I happened to get this scholarship (for whom I have no idea who to thank) and it was automatically transferred to my EAP program in a miracle of the bureaucracy that feeds into UCSD Finance office.

For the longest time I had no clue where the $500 came from in my EAP financial accounting. I assumed it was a glitch in the system. When I had to pay a bill to UCSD though for a Programs Abroad Office administrative fee, I saw the two register lines devoted to this scholarship (receipt and subsequent transfer). So to whatever committee or person thereof that I got this scholarship from I owe my first thanks.

My second thanks goes off to the Programs Abroad Office here at UCSD, the staff of which (save one particular advisor for the Global Seminars Program) were all extremely nice and helpful. They, along with the system-wide Education Abroad Program office helped me and all the exchange students sift through all the paperwork involved. Especially regarding immigration-department paperwork for Hong Kong students, these two offices, along with the Center for Student Development and Resources (CEDAR) pushed all my paperwork through the bureaucracy of Hong Kong immigration.

If memory serves me right, I had to submit about ten forms through the offices. The two big forms were the application to the University of Hong Kong after my acceptance to the program which took me the better part of an hour to fill out in English and my student visa application that in all its thirty pages was divided into parts “A” through “K” with every letter in between.

Of course, my greatest thanks go to the financiers of this expedition and my support crew, both of whom happen to be my family. As cliché as it sounds, my family has always been there for me, if not emotionality at least in person, and without them it is clear that at my age, and especially because of my financial viability, that this trip would not have gone as far as it did. Without their assistance and their blessing, I would not have had the ability to jet around East Asia. I also acknowledge that while my parents pay for much of what I do so that they have a controlling interest in what I do, it is always for my own good if not for the good of the family.

And in this sense of family, there is one thing left of my heritage that I think is not only important but also incredibly moral. I vow never in my life to ever just send them off to a nursing home. The fact of the matter is that while I’m told I was an easy infant to take care of, the amount of good that my brother and I brought to their lives in constituting a family is offset by the negatives, such as opportunity cost in careers lost, significantly long periods of sleep deprivation, and financial well being. At one point in my mid-teens, my parents noticed I was drinking expensive lactose-free milk at such an alarming rate that I equated the situation with water being flushed down a toilet. But ultimately from a moral perspective, it would just be wrong to cast off one’s parents in their time of need.

Honestly though, I can’t say that it’s only because of my heritage that I aim to espouse such a principle in my conscience. My parents have always struck the right balance between being imposing and controlling to the point where I’m led in the right direction and laissez-faire to the point were I could find the right direction by myself. Because of that, not only have I never had an intense period of rebellion, whether it be in middle school, high school, or right after leaving the nest, but also my parents are the two people who I’m most open with, whether or not they would like to believe it.

And though friends don’t usually get mentioned in such a context, I feel I owe thanks to my friends both at UCSD and at HKU who gave me first-hand support. From my friends at UCSD, their interest in the normalized craziness of what I was doing have a certain kind of value to this endeavor that, while kind of superficial, made me enjoy the whole thing that much more. And my friends at HKU, who came to the territory as disoriented as me helped pull me through all the changes set in front of us, though many of us came from different backgrounds, different homes per se. I guess it was through diversity that we aided each other in perceived adversity and because of the lot of them that I went from missing California then to missing Hong Kong now.

If you haven’t slipped into beta mode yet, you probably realize that I gave you enough information to figure out how much I spent in acceptable detail. I just didn’t want to throw numbers around for people to preoccupy themselves with.


In the Quest

This blog itself had an interesting role in my experience abroad. Though I had no intentions of telling anyone about my blog because I wanted to have the freedom of conscience in a sense to write whatever I wanted to write on it, word leaked. I could blame Facebook for not allowing me (at least at the time) to promote my blog to friends back home at the exclusion of new friends in Hong Kong—but that would be somewhat irrelevant.

In this age of social media, I knew what I was getting myself into by starting a blog for the whole thing rather than just writing my thoughts down into a physical journal. And therein lies a paradox in my said motivations in writing a blog rather than a traditional journal.

I have said a few times that in all my writing I write for myself. And it’s true. So the paradox that seems to be lies in the fact that I write for myself yet I publish it on the World Wide Web for the whole world to see. Now I wouldn’t be publishing it online for others to read in my own self-interest.

Actually I would. Let me explain. I write for myself in the sense that most directly I write for my own purposes—say so I may be able to read this when I’m old and crumbling. I also write for myself in the sense that ultimate benefit will come to me. This isn’t to say that you lot who have read my blog won’t get anything out of it—just that by you reading it I get some ultimate benefit, often in addition to yourselves.

This works on two levels. I talked about how on a superficial level seeing that other people take interest in what I’m doing gives me satisfaction in the sense that what I’m doing is worth something rather than in the sense that now I can become popular. On the higher level, me publishing what I have to offer (in a sense) puts something out there for everyone, including people to whom I have no connection, to comment on. This means ultimately that as I get older and mature into a career, I will have mileage posts to speak of about my life. From there not only will I able to reflect upon my past, but also what other people have to say about my past. For all my uncertainty in life, this blog is staying on the Internet.

To me, this means that this blog can prove more interactive and in a sense provide advantages over traditional publishing. Taking a step back, I write papers for class ultimately because I need to get a good grade on it to a good grade point average to go to a good graduate school and establish a solid career in which I will hopefully be able to do meaningful work. These papers are unlike a blog though in that there are only a few people who will ever read them.

Because of my inhibitions about my work, I am and have always been hesitant about putting it out in the open for everyone to view. But because of the fact that blogs and the Internet come off in my subconscious as quite anonymous, I have few qualms about putting nearly everything about my experience out there on the web.

And honestly, it’s nice not having any editors past yourself. I’m ultimately going to have to go over this monstrosity of over well one hundred ten thousand words (a mid-size novel) to make it flow. My photos that I have put in separate posts out of convenience could be integrated into my text, ultimately reducing the number of posts (currently one hundred forty-six), which I’ll make look more like chapters, yet increase the number of words in smoothing everything over.

As for the style of my narration, I wrote everything descriptive in the past because everything of substance happened in the past. In terms of flow, I understand this blog to be more formal-sounding than most. I have also been told that I write like I speak, which meant close to nothing to me since I think the best writing is genuine thought, regardless of research. My conventions I wrote in my native dialect without regard to Standard American English (except in orthography). This means that the overwhelming majority of grammatical mistakes you seem to find are actually perfectly fine in my eyes. If you see few and far between in the way of weird words and odd grammatical constructions, it means that you and I have more in common than you may outwardly imagine. Bottom line is that my balance between sheer informality and stringent formality strikes a tone of authenticity in myself from which you can gauge yourselves.


After the Quest

I go to UCSD, but when I was applying to Harvard I wrote for one of my essays something I entitled “The Last Prologue.” Obviously it either wasn’t enough to get me accepted or it was enough to get me rejected, but either way I mean the title as a way to see how I positioned myself in my surroundings.

You could say that immaturely, I felt like my childhood was kind of a prologue to me real life, which would begin when I became an adult. The first time I doubted this conviction came the day I turned 18 and felt nothing different. In my newfound adulthood I was no different than the day before, and at that moment I thought in a different way how there are so many young people who have wisdom beyond their age and so many old people who lack the years that they possess.

I don’t mean maturity in playful banter. In this regard arrogant people would be classified as immature. Ultimately though, if my childhood of eighteen years was my prequel, then my old age lasting a few decades, say from retirement, would be my afterword, my conclusion, and my epilogue beginning with my death. In my reformed mindset, I feel that since to call old age an afterword would be unfair, to call childhood a prologue would be nonsensical.

I now firmly believe that one’s life is the entirety of one’s life. So though there’s no getting rid of your past, for the rest of your life there is always opportunity for maturity.

In the same regard, I will be graduating college within a year and a half. It could even be as soon as fifteen months, each month of which I am confident will fly by whether I want it to or not. Before studying abroad, I’ve gone through my childhood and the various levels of education in the public school system. I’ve worked in a few very small jobs as a tutor and as a translation assistant and I’ve also sat on a large non-profit’s Board of Directors. After studying abroad, I’ve lived and studied outside the country. I’ve felt lost in translation but not as lost as some people. I’ve discovered that I’m a dual national. Most notably yet most simply though, I’ve advanced one term in my university career and became a more mature, open-minded individual in the process.

People like to say that the journey is the destination in that what you learn is in the journey. I would like to modify this to say that the journey is but after. I have learned so much my studying abroad, but I know that as much as I have learned and will have learned by the time I, say, turn 50, there will always be more to learn. Hence, the journey is after, and in that sense, you’re always in a journey, since the day after tomorrow is but tomorrow come today’s tomorrow.

And so in the title I refrain from calling this the last post, because though this is indeed my last post to this blog, in no way is it my last bit of writing. And though it’s usually uttered in a different context, it’s always the case that when one door closes, another one opens, even if it’s not the one you planned for.

So out of college in less than a year and a half, what’s my next door to open?

After the Quest

Germans All Have Blond Hair and Blue Eyes

I guess I just can’t shake it off. Most incidents are minor and not worth mentioning, except perhaps in larger contexts, because a constituency is made of its smallest parts, right? At this point, I don’t plan to exempt myself from this observation, because I know I do it too—I just wish it would all stop.

I guess the basis of this whole thing starts from a simple rule of thumb in English class in high school—never make absolute statements in essay writing. I’ve learned a long time ago now that applies to speaking now, because almost all absolutes are wrong, if even by the smallest degree. I’ve just learned that if all people believe the same absolute, it’s fake truth wills out against the real truth—which I guess is to be expected, since as records are reflections of events and not the events themselves, what’s “true” is largely up to interpretation, whatever the truth may be.

I’m guessing that this post is just going to amount to episodes of logical fallacies and the sense I’ve made of them.

The Germans

I once said to my group of friends here, something something something “is like saying that everyone in Germany has blond hair and blue eyes—it’s just not true.” Now, I’ve seen the statistics and I’ve seen it for myself (meaning I’ve been to Germany), but the fact that even though a vast majority of Germans have blond hair and blue eyes, the fact of the matter is that not all of them do, even if you only include ethnic Germans in Germany. I’ve met plenty of people from Germany who don’t have blue eyes and plenty more who don’t have blond hair.

My logic was lost on them though, as it often seems that 95% equals 100%, but any one who’s studied any form of science (natural or social) would tell you that it’s not the same, however damn close it is.

My statement got the reply, “Well have you ever been to Germany? Because I’m always surprised by the sheer number of blond-haired, blue-eyed people there”—to which I said yes, and that it’s still not all, to which I was rebutted, “Yeah but it’s a lot”—and I to that I said that yes, there are a lot, but it is still not all, and that’s the bottom line. And though I was ultimately right in logic, my statement got rejected because the falsity of notion and not the logic was what was agreed to.

In the Middle of China

Fine. On the train to Guilin, this guy started a conversation in Mandarin with me and the three other people in my group. I was the one with the highest proficiency (with two being nil), so I did most of the talking. They all said where they were from (Scotland, Australia, and Norway), and I said I was from the United States, using it as an excuse for my lack of proficiency. I am well aware that I’m noticeably of Chinese decent (though many perceive my attitude of that fact as meaning that I’m ashamed of my past or that I’ve got false notions about my appearance—both of which are false), so the guy pressed further at me. I asked the others what I should tell him.

One friend said that I should say that my family’s from China. I told her that’s not true (because to me that would imply that my parents met in China and moved to the United States, which isn’t true, with one parent never having been outside of North America and the other speaking better English than Chinese). By that logic though, I should have asked my Australian friend whether she would say that her family is from Britain, since her father’s from there and that overall she could trace her entire ancestry back to the Isles, because I’m pretty sure she would have said no.

American Dad

It seems funny to me that no matter how much things are illogical, the most superficial aspects of something just make up for the rest, even if it makes something more illogical.

Just a couple days ago, I got asked where my father is from since I always say that I’m trying to learn Cantonese, partly so that I can use it back home with my mother, who’s originally from Hong Kong, having left the Crown Colony at the age of eleven. I said Michigan, which is the complete truth.

Though I ultimately understand, I’ve always wondered why I get such a variety of reactions when I say my dad’s from Detroit. The fact of the matter is that that’s the truth. It’s where he was born and where he spent the first half of his childhood (the other half being in Chicago). He’s got those annoying double negatives to prove his difference in dialect.

So my friend asked me just a few days ago where my dad was from. I said Michigan, which elicited surprise. I was kind of taken aback. I wasn’t offended, but I was surprised, because I spend a lot of time with this friend and I’m sure I’d told her before. She had it in her head for some reason that my dad’s from Hong Kong like my mom is. I said that if that were the case, my Chinese would likely be much better—native even, if not at least near.

The Locals

The time I went to dinner with my floor here, I got local students asking how I could possibly American. After all, I look Chinese. To that I tried to say that why can’t you be both, or why can’t you be one in certain aspects and the other in other aspects? Unfortunately, I couldn’t convey that, nor could I convey my surprise that those students have never heard of populations that are not homogenous. (Hong Kong is 95% Han Chinese whereas the United States is less than 70% non-Hispanic white with California coming in at less than 50% non-Hispanic white.)

The Disconnect of the Upper Echelons

What’s the funniest is who knows what. Earlier this week, I walked into the Finance office to apply for my caution money back (a $350 HKD deposit) now that the semester is coming to an end. I asked for the proper forms not knowing what I needed, and though I’m 華人, I got the form for exchange students. The secretary for the office had heard my foreignness in my accent and judged my origin based on that rather than my skin color, so to speak. This feat would not have seemed so impressive had the pro-vice-chancellor on Monday not said what she said.

As I said earlier, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Amy Tsui came in to speak at the last lecture of Hong Kong and the World. I’ve got my opinions of school administrators, most of which along the theme of being disconnected and haughty (though not overtly arrogant). She of all people is someone you would expect to get this straight, having done her Ph.D. (in linguistics) in the United Kingdom.

Seeing our class of forty in attendance, she noticed the two white people in the lecture hall and referred to them as the “two foreigners in the class,” (though there were about ten of us), without thinking that maybe some of us happen to be of Chinese decent. Of all people, I would have expected her to understand well that culture, like language, is passed down through socialization and isn’t dictated in our genes. (Unlike the many people back home, including some of the people closest to me, who overtly believe that I am more comfortable around people who look like me rather than the people in my hometown—composition: 85% white).

I guess it just goes to show that those at the uppermost echelons of society are often the most ignorant whereas those of us who have our feet firmly planted on the ground—the ones who interact with everyday people—really know what’s going on.

Add It All Up

The bottom line is that I hold none of the above statements against the people who uttered them. This is because I’m well aware that as much as I try to monitor myself and bring myself back down to logic, I still fall victim to the same forces.

So the base line is that I really dislike when people hate that they are expected, especially in public situations, to be politically correct all the time. All that means is that you ultimately don’t care about anyone else (in feelings, emotions, situations, etc.), even if you think you are just joking. It gets worse when such is followed by a request not to judge, and I’m sorry, but the fact of the matter is that I already will have.

Just try and try hard, that’s all I can and do hope for.

Currency, Coins, and Octopus

I opened my draw a while ago to find some (not much) American money. It was just lying there, having not been touched in quite a while. I picked and thought that they were just funny—funny shaped, funny colored, funny everything. They seemed awfully long in comparison to their width and way too green for their own good. It made me realize that though I’ve been here only for three months, it’s been enough to make me reevaluate my norms and see that I’ve not really talked about money here in Hong Kong.

By money, I don’t mean business. There’s enough of that here. I mean the nuts and bolts. I mean the greenbacks and the buckaroonies. I remember my first week here, I found myself with a wallet full of coins. I thought it was ridiculous how many coins I was carrying and when I emptied it out on my desk, I found about $60 HKD worth.

The funny thing is that they only divide the dollar into tenths here, so in theory I should be getting less change here than back in the States, being that back there we divide the dollar into cents. Yeah, here they divide it into cents as well, but the smallest coin is worth ten cents. Prices quoted in cents get rounded to tenths and in Cantonese, they would actually count ten cents as one unit (一毫), or one ten-cent unit.

I actually went running around my early days here calling ten-cent pieces dimes, because that’s what you’d call it back in the States. Pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters are what’s in common circulation, right? Here, in coins there are ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, dollar, two-dollar, five-dollar, and ten-dollar pieces. On a quick side note, I learned that talking about coins in American terms is not understood properly by other English speakers. They would say ten-piece instead of a dime, for example, and though words such as nickel can be figured out if you sit down for long enough, I’ve more than once gotten blank stares at my coin calling. But back onto everything else.

So there’s a funny collaboration of reasons for why I end up with more change here than back home. For instance, one USD is equal to almost eight HKD (fixed) here, so in some funny way, maybe the fact that I have to pay more in raw numbers combined with the fact that coins have higher raw face value here gives me that increase. I think though that the main reason is that back home, I hardly deal with notes and coins.

I deal with credit cards. Swiping for things is the easiest way back home. Most places have it integrated into the system, and for many purchases under like ten dollars or something, they’ve stopped asking you to sign the receipt. Here, I’ve seen people use credit cards. It takes forever. There are very few if any registers here that have integrated credit card capabilities. Clerks have to do it through the separate machine and enter the dollar amount separately, and the receipts print out funny. They look like sheets off the pads waiters write on at restaurants. In short, it’s not worth it here to use a credit card.

However, the Octopus card is in vogue instead—and it’s here to stay. It’s really quite a good system. It’s in essence a debit card without a signed contract. You can store up to $1000 HKD on the card and deposit money at a plethora of locales. You’re also allowed to go negative up to $35 HKD in one transaction, so if you’ve forgotten, chances are it’s not a big deal. It’s taken everywhere as well. Except for the taxicabs, I’ve hardly seen a place that takes money but not Octopus Cards.

The name is a different issue though. In Cantonese, the name is 八達通, which means something along the lines of “eight arrivals card.” The name was chosen during a competition, and has good vibes with eight being an auspicious number and all in Chinese. However, the only connection between the Cantonese name and the English name is that the first word in the Cantonese name is eight, and octopi have eight legs (or tentacles or whatever).

I guess I’ve got money on my mind though because I’m on a mission to collect coins for my brother’s currency collection. So a lot of non-Europeans don’t know this, but the Euro, while legal tender in the Eurozone, is minted by the individual countries. I’m not sure about the bills, but the coins at least (one-cent, two-cent, five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, euro, two-euro) are all produced by the individual countries and as such have state symbols that allow the currency to maintain national identity in the face of universality. These coins float all around the Eurozone, so while we were in France and Italy this past summer, he tried to collect as many as he could (a daunting task).

So I’m collecting for him. So far, I’ve got a full set of Thai Baht and some Chinese Yuan (though I think he might already have a set of that). I’m also trying to get a set of the modern Hong Kong Dollar coins (with the bauhinia flower) as well as a set of the pre-handover coins (with Queen Elisabeth II). My roommate who goes to Macau a lot has retrieved me most of the Macau Pataca. In addition, I’m trying to squeeze other currencies out of my fellow exchange students. In short, my little brother should be happy.

Back on to term paper writing!

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.    

The Fame

The last time I traveled to Shenzhen, it was poorly orchestrated and we didn't end up seeing that much. I wanted to go back. So the Monday before last, I hoped on the MTR East Rail Line and did just that. With the tickets costing less than $10 USD each way, I figured it would definitely be worth it to go back and check out the place better since last time we ran out of daylight to fully see the place.

Just as a refresher, Shenzhen is the Special Economic Zone (city) in Mainland China that borders Hong Kong to the north. As I remembered through this trip there, Shenzhen is a very new city, set up to take advantage of Hong Kong's special status. My aunt and uncle recounted to me months ago how it used to be a nice, relatively quiet place until its designation as a SEZ in 1980. At that time the city boomed as the mountains were gutted to reclaim the sea. Today, Shenzhen serves as a reminder to how fast development can occur in China. Though it lacks the same level of recognition of Hong Kong, it has at least one million more residents (officially) than Hong Kong.

Admittedly, this trip to Shenzhen was not entirely about sightseeing. I needed a haircut. My uncle told me that it cost him more to cut his hair at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Clearwater Bay, Kowloon than at the local barber in Fremont, California. From this, and in addition to asking my friends here how much they cut their hair for in Hong Kong, I figured it might be worth it to venture out into Mainland China, hereonout in the post referred to as China.

China is known for being cheaper than Hong Kong, as most people would presume. As I would find out later on, some parts are (way) cheaper than others--but that's for later. Shenzhen is famous for its massages--so I figured why not put the two together and and make an experience out of it. As I would later calculate, the haircut and massage (which were inseparable services) plus the round-trip journey on the MTR cost just a little more than a simple haircut in Hong Kong--so I justified this extra expense (less than $5 USD) in the experience to be beheld, or in my case relaxed. A friend of mine felt the same way, so I didn't go alone.

After a couple hours in Hong Kong (bus and subway), we got up to Shenzhen before 11:00 a.m. and proceeded into China. Border control was standard and expected, though this last passing gave me just four pages left in my passport for visas and entry/exit stamps (out of the original fourteen).

Right on the other side sits Shenzhen's main train station, so to prepare for Guilin the coming weekend, we bought tickets to lessen what had to be done later, as well as to save our seats (or in our case beds) in both directions. A friend of mine asked for them in Mandarin, which I later found out I had a lot of trouble doing, but more on that later.

After that we got food and headed off to get our hair cut. The particular place that we went to had to services available: haircut plus Thai massage, and haircut plus Chinese massage. The Thai-style one was longer in duration and more expensive at ¥50 CNY while the Chinese-style one was ¥40 CNY. Not being a huge fan of massages, viewing them more as painful than relaxing, I went for the Chinese-style one and my friend went for the Thai-style one.

I swear they washed my hair at least three times (because I lost count). When that was said and done they wrapped a towel around my head and proceeded to give me the massage. Parts were painful and others were soothing, though in the end I can't say I felt calmer or anything like that. While my masseuse was massaging my left arm, she received a phone call and ended up distracted, massaging that one arm for like ten minutes. Because of the lack of barbers (or for my elitist friends "hair-stylists"), I was told I was going to have to wait for a while before getting my hair cut, so they recommended I just upgrade to the Thai one, so I did--hey, it's all part of the experience, right?

When it was time, I sat in the chair and watched as my hair fell to the floor. As this was the first time cutting my hair since I left California, there was plenty being removed to go around. For the first time in months I could feel the air hovering around my now naked ears. The thing is though that the barber was cutting my hair kind of funny. I felt like it was becoming a mushroom.

In my primary- and secondary-school days, I would hate having my hair cut, and as a result it would grow out. While most wouldn't really care, because it would just get long, my hair happens to be really quite thick, and as such, it would grow more out than down. No matter what style haircut I would get, it would always become mushroom-shaped.

And now my hair was being cut mushroom-shaped.Though I write as if I was doing all the communication, I wasn't. My friend was helping me communicate all the way through alternation between Mandarin and Cantonese that was making my head turn round as I was being asked where I was from and proceeded by something to the effect of "you're Chinese descent." So in this process, My friend helped me ask the barber to make it smaller, and slowly it became so. When he thought it was done, I was sent back to the bed-sink complex for a rinse-off. He then cut it shorter, which required another rinse-off.

After that, to my surprise, he began spiking my hair. Sometimes I push up the front, but that was the only day that I've ever walked around in public with a head full of spiked hair, but whatever. I experienced first-hand what Shenzhen is famous for.

We finished off that day by doing some more sightseeing (which was highly uneventful) followed by street food (which was highly delicious and incredibly cheap). On the journey back to Hong Kong Island, I looked through my passport and realized just how extensively I've traveled. Before coming, I thought I might not even be allowed to exit the SAR without being able to come back to resume my studies as a student based on the wording of my immigration visa. Now all the entrances and exits (plus my Chinese visa) have filled up my pages, and now I have no choice but to say "yes" when people ask, "Are you well traveled?".

Back to my passport, it was advised that some states don't let you into the country without at least four empty passport pages. So this morning, I went to the United States Consulate-General here in Hong Kong and got additional pages added to my passport. They fit kind of funny, but they get the job done.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.  

Taipei: The Republic of China

A week and a half after I got back from Beijing, some of us jetted off to Taipei for a three-night weekend trip. It was honestly a spur-of-the-moment trip, as we planned and booked the trip all of about four days before we left. Leaving on Thursday night, we picked up our itinerary on Wednesday morning and checked in for the flight on Wednesday night via the very convenient Airport Express Station in Central.

The reason why we had to check in so early was that I needed to make it to my last class on Thursday (Cantonese) to make a presentation. It ended at 5:00 p.m., and with the flight leaving at 8:55 p.m., I felt pressed for time. Back home, the main international flights leave Los Angeles International Airport. You leave super early because there is no subway/light rail system to get you there efficiently from my suburb, so you have to drive—and since everyone drives, you get stuck in traffic. Depending on your route there, you either go along the Pacific Coast Highway and hit traffic lights or you go on the 101 and 405 (which happens to be “at capacity” a.k.a. congested for fifteen hours of the day). On top of that, with such high security at airports, it’s not uncommon to wait for an hour to get into the terminal.

It’s different at Hong Kong. First off, there are airport buses going everywhere in the territory. The one from my dorm takes about an hour and costs half of what the Airport Express does ($48 HKD vs. $100), and after you take a bus to get to Central, which is where you’d pick up the Airport Express from, you’ve already lost half an hour, which is followed by the much-advertised 24-minuted train ride to the airport that would take 24 minutes if you didn’t have to wait so long for it to depart. So thinking time was in a crunch, since I had four hours to get to the airport, go through immigration, customs, and security, I opted for the Airport Express. It took me about an hour total to get there, and forgetting how efficient Hong Kong International Airport is in comparison to Los Angeles International Airport, I got through security in five minutes and immigration in four, not to mention that I forgot that Hong Kong doesn’t have exit customs (because I remembered China does). Basically, I ended up rushing to the airport, and after everything was all said and done, I waited two and a half hours for the airplane to leave. But enough about that…

Honestly, when I came to Hong Kong I never thought I would visit Taiwan. I remember looking out the airplane window when we flew over a corner of the island, never thinking for a second that I’d get my way over there before the semester was out. Lo and behold I did.

Taiwan holds a funny place in my mind. Partially because of my upbringing, I’m of the One China mentality—that is that there is one China (which includes Taiwan), which is the standpoint for any state that hopes to have relations with the big China. Before I get in trouble with some of my separatist friends back home, just read this post out. So in off-the-record contexts, I would likely suggest that Taiwan is a part of China, though I realize that in practice it is not.

After landing in Taipei Taoyuan International Airport after a one-and-a-half hour flight, we stepped of the plane. Officially the Republic of China (with China being the People’s Republic of China), immigration put a nice ROC stamp on our passports. The entry card was carbon-copied to a departure card, the latter of which was stapled into our passports. One of my friends drew political swords when his passport was stapled right through his Chinese visa.

Walking through their capital’s international airport, it seemed dark and dingy, which, while not speaking to the vibrancy of their city, did not bode well for first impressions. It seemed like this airport, which was built in the 1960s, was thought of as a temporary venue until the Nationalist government could return to Beijing. This sense of temporary placement seemed to follow me through Taipei. Having been mostly developed in the 1960s, it seems like everything was a little too new and that things weren’t built to last. Chiang Kai-shek, leader of the Nationalist when they were exiled, is not even interred; his body is in an above-ground casket, ready to be transported back to his proper burial space in Mainland China “when” the Nationalists capture back all of China.

Another thing that I reminded myself of was that more than a handful of my friends back home are on the Taiwan side of the cross-strait relations, which, while having warmed up lately, are still unstable at the core and in principle, which either party claiming the entirety of the other’s controlled territory. Many of my friends spend their summers there in Taipei and say that they are not (ethnically) Chinese but Taiwanese because they aren’t communist. Fine, but when I told them about Taiwanese aboriginals, they said that they weren’t that either. It seems they’ve lost the fact that Taipei looks very similar to Mainland China and that they speak the same “national” language, not to mention Taiwanese is mutually intelligible with the Fujian dialect of Chinese on the mainland.

That’s fine and all. We weren’t there anyways to talk politics.

Like my serial about Beijing, I have two more text posts about Taipei and two photograph posts. As for now, I need to call the United States consulate and see about getting refill pages in my passport.

More to come.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

The Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR

Though I’ve now been to Mainland China twice during my episode here at HKU, I must first preface these experiences with what it took to get there.

Hong Kong to the average individual is full of bureaucrats. Businesses, who find it easy to incorporate here, would beg to differ. Though a friend of mine spent a total of five hours on applying for her Hong Kong identification card (HKID) and had to pick it up a month later. In contrast, when I was 16 I completed my behind-the-wheel portion of my driver’s test at the California DMV office within the hour I arrived.

So before leaving on my plane to Hong Kong, my mother asked why I didn’t get my Chinese visa in the United States before I left, knowing the likelihood of my travels there. I had no good answer, except that CEDARS (the student assistance office for HKU which has been lacking helpfulness) said it would be easy to pick it up here in Hong Kong.

At two pages long, the application was shorter than the ten plus pages of the Hong Kong visa form and the six pages of the U.S. passport application (if memory serves me right). With a processing time of four days flat (two if you pay $150 HKD more), it was back to me faster than the Hong Kong visa (a month) and the U.S. Passport (six weeks).

My timing wasn’t great. Admittedly, I could have gone for it in the first few weeks of school when nothing was happening and I should have gone during the summer to the local consulate office in Los Angeles.

Oh well.

After gathering my passport photo and filling out my application, I appeared at the office for the Commissioner’s Office of China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR in the Wan Chai district. It took me five seconds to get through building security, ten minutes in a waiting room, call number in hand, and thirty seconds at the window. (Less than fifteen minutes in comparison to the hours at Hong Kong immigration.)

Seven days later (though I could have gone in four), it took a little longer. It took about half-an-hour to get in the building, and fifteen minutes in the collection line. For pickup, there were two windows. The first, we gave the people behind the window our receipts (with something of an application number). Then proceeding to the second, they had our passports ready to go. Depending on how fast people could pay and how fast the clerks could make change the line moved faster or slower.

I thought this system was rather efficient.

Going up to pay, I was reminded that I am American. The guy in front of me was from an African country and the guy behind me was from Europe. (I didn’t judge based on skin color.) They paid $150 HKD and $225 HKD, respectively. I paid $1020 HKD to get my passport back.

The little fee thing is based on country because of reciprocal charges, so because the United States charges the Chinese $130 USD for visas, China does the same to Americans.

But at that point, it didn’t matter. I had my passport back. Without the biometric electronic chip, my passport is retro. It bends easily and has a bland color palate of baby blue and pink. It has the thickness of an Emory board. The new ones have a palate of red and blue and have a thickness comparable to British passports (about two stacked Emory boards).

Inside my passport was evidence of all my adventures thus far. There was my first Chinese visa when I went in 2007. My Schengen stamps followed (Zurich in, Munich out). Next page was my Hong Kong student visa (important though bland). After that my student entry stamp to Hong Kong, which takes up a full page or a half page depending on its orientation. Flipping the page were my Macau in and out stamps, and on the opposing page was my new Chinese visa.

It looked the same as my first Chinese visa. (Duh, James.) I was allowed multiple entries into China before March 2010. I was then ready to go to China.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.

Roman Holiday

Continuing on with my trip to Europe this summer, my brother, mother, and I traveled from Paris to Rome on June 24, 2009. From there we took trains to the Campania region, Venice, Florence, and back to Rome.

I am grateful for having gone on this trip, but when people ask me about how it was, I make no qualms about speaking my mind. Most have been accepting or at least respectful of my opinion, but a few feel I haven’t given Italy proper credit.

While I enjoyed the experience and would not hesitate to go back, it was by no means what I thought it would be and by no measure as romanticized as I have found it to have been. It was actually as a result of this idealistic state that I feel many negative aspects of my opinion exist. So while I grew to like France, I have found less of an occurrence in Italy.

Don’t get me wrong—I thought Italy was beautiful. I felt that there was grandeur and culture present, but had to learn that it was not to be presented how I was used to it.

If the graffiti in my travel to Paris made me realize not all would be how it was expected, then let’s just say that there was a lot more graffiti in Italy—a lot more.

Charles-de-Gaulle airport is okay. The terminal that I flew through was not the new, classy one that many people fly through. Other than the fact that Lufthansa, my airline, was quite late (though officially on time), causing us to miss our connecting flight to Rome, I had no problems with the Paris airport. It was relatively clean and definitely secure, though when we first landed, I asked some security personnel who we were talking to whether we had to go through customs or not.

A lot of people don’t seem to believe me, but when you enter the United States, you go through customs. You fill out a form and get “randomly” selected for an actual customs check, which most people don’t end up going through. In France, it was not up to random selection as to whether or not you go through customs. Upon exiting the airplane, the exit was straight ahead, and if you had anything to declare to customs, you could go to the right to do so.

I didn’t know there was this honor system in place, so I asked the guards. I asked in English. I was answered frankly, but the other security guards murmured something to each other about those stupid American tourists in French. The statement was off-putting, but I didn’t really care. I heard how annoying tourists can be, especially American tourists. I guess the French airport security guards had enough exposure to English to distinguish accents.

On the other hand, I can’t say the same thing about the Italian civil servants we encountered, but more about that later.

En route to Rome (and also coming back home), we went through Munich, where it was raining both times. While the Paris airport was acceptable, Munich’s was immaculate. Their bathrooms were so clean that I hesitated to use them; their floors everywhere were perfectly polished without so much as a scuff in sight. As our flight was delayed, the Lufthansa employee was courteous throughout helping us get on the next flight and gave us meal vouchers—not to mention his English was perfect (albeit foreign-accented).

When we got to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, the situation was quite a bit different. The terminal we landed at was dingy, at least giving it the appearance of being dirty. Before leaving the airport, we needed to find the tourist information area so we could buy our Roma Cards (which gave us some free museum entrances as well as transportation in its entirety).

Now the airport’s exit was lined with quirky little shop booths and information stands. So we went up to one of them. My mom asked, “Do you speak English?” Unlike my French, which I could get by on, our Italian was not so good, and we had to resort to using their English instead, which, as I understand, they Italians (as well as the French) really don’t like.

The question was met with an offended tone by the woman who my mom had asked. “Yes. Of course I do.” Okay, great.

“Do you know where Tourist Information is?” my mom asked.

“Do you mean Touristic Information? It’s down on the left.” My mom was confused.

“So Tourist Information is on the left?” she asked just to make sure.

“Yes! Tou-ris-tic Information is down on the left!” It appeared the civil servant was upset. She insisted that our English was wrong and made sure she corrected us, or at least tried. Unfortunately it was she who was wrong. She had simply mixed up her languages and stayed stubborn about it. In her mind, she was thinking how in French, the term is “(les) informations touristiques.”

Whereas in Paris, the metro and RER light rail lines were clean and efficient, the airport express train from the airport to Roma Termini station was extremely late and ran bumpily down the tracks. There was more graffiti down this corridor than that from Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle to Paris’s central station Châtelet-Les Halles. This did not bode well for what was to come.

My main conclusion about Italy was that it was interesting; however, I did not find it more exciting than other places I’ve been—say China. As aforementioned, I’ve gone on a two-week tour to China. Like Italy, it was full of cultural significance. Like Italy, English competence is something to be improved upon. Unlike in Italy, China’s people understand that their English isn’t the best. And also unlike in Italy, China’s people seemed to appreciate the money coming through tourism, as evidenced by their attitude towards tourists.

Italy was something else, in my opinion. For the money that tourists, especially American tourists, spend in Italy, many people that we’ve met seemed ungrateful and sometimes spiteful towards our presence. I realize that this is not and should not be a reflection on an entire country, as there were many nice people, but this is the basic impression that I received from the areas I visited.

An example of this is the Capuccin Crypt in Rome, which is famous for its collection of monks’ bones artistically arranged as morbid figures. The site is owned by the Catholic Church and run by what I think was a priest. Upon entering, we were met with a donation basket with a sign that said “1 euro minimum!” Whatever. Other than the fact that a “donation” is optional on an exhibit or museum, and what they were asking for would properly be termed “admission price” as it was not optional, the priest gave us a death stare walking in. We deposited our money into the basket, which we were going to do whether he gave us the dirty look or not.

He then proceeded to get upset with us, telling us in English that we didn’t put enough money in. I pointed to my coins, insisting that I had put enough in. Hearing us going back and forth, a tourist came by unsolicited with good intentions but bad sense. In her American (probably Midwest) accent, she insisted on translating the priest’s English to English that we could understand, if that makes any sense.

The fact that this tourist thought she would help us understand her English was off-putting to me, so I stopped her midsentence. “Thank you. We speak English,” I told her. Yeah, I was curt, but I wish she would have spent some time figuring out how our interaction was going before interjecting.

And another point—call me spoiled, but I’m used to American museums. They’re large, air-conditioned, and if your flash goes off, a security guard would be sure to inform you promptly that you just did something that hurts the artwork. Those old paintings are delicate, so the curators have to keep them in low-humidity, low-light environments, right?

Apparently in Italy they didn’t think so. If any one of those paintings (maybe one of the three hundred “Madonna and Child” paintings from the Uffizi Gallery in Florence) found its way to the Getty (which is probably my favorite museum), it would be pampered and kept in a special room in a climate-controlled environment with two security guards to promptly ensure no flash photography. In Italy, they say no flash photography, but even if security wanted to stop all the flashes from going off (which I think they didn’t), they couldn’t if they tried due to the hordes of tourists flashing away indiscriminately. And if paintings are vulnerable to flash photography, they must surely be vulnerable to the hot and humid environment that the interior of the museums provided. Though on a hot day, I love air conditioning, I could do without, but seeing as they put minimal effort forth to preserve and protect their pieces, I couldn’t help thinking where all the money from tourism went.

The only museum that I can say was what I expected was the Vatican Museum, but then again Vatican City is not technically part of Italy, as it is its own sovereign.

From Rome it was on to Campania. Naples is known for not being the most appealing of cities, so we pretty much skipped it. Instead, we stayed in Sorrento, which many people told me was really nice. And it was really nice, but it seemed basically like a less humid Santa Barbara. It seemed really done up for the tourists, and it was one of the few places that didn’t have conspicuous and copious graffiti. (In Rome, I could only tell that I was in a ritzy area because of the few brands that I know. The storefront of Versace had quite a bit of graffiti on the front, for example).

We also took a ferry along the Amalfi Coast and a bumpy bus ride back. (Amalfi is where we found out we were from Giappone a few posts ago.) It was also beautiful, but like Sorrento it looked like Central California. In fact, when I went up the coast a few weeks ago, Big Sur looked just as striking, but the road was wider and much better engineered.

We saw the regular tourist stuff. Pompeii was great and met expectations, but my mom had us take a decently long journey off to Paestum. Though it was farther than expected, it was well worth it. Formerly a Greek colony (I believe Athenian), it had some pristine Greek temples and some of the only surviving Greek artwork placed in the nearby museum. The reason it was so well preserved was because it was spared from conflict and human inhabitants for some 800 years due to a mosquito infestation.

Next was Venice, which I thought probably failed to meet my expectations the most. It had the famous canals and some old, noticeably sinking buildings along the Grand Canal. It was quite hot and even more humid, but the small city on the water lost its charm with the hordes of tourists ever present on the islands. Compounded with the narrow pedestrian streets and constant, familiar noise of English, the experience was less than charming. On top of that, many facades around St. Mark’s Square were under renovation, so our picture of the Bridge of Sighs is surrounded by scaffolding covered by advertisements. Whereas the Bridge of Sighs is often immediately recognizable, many people asked if that was truly it.

Near Venice was the island (or two?) of Murano. It’s famous for its glass shops. We got some interesting tours of the glass blowing and shaping factories, but one shop stood out from the rest. I doubt they sell many pieces. We went into this one shop and there was a nice old man assisting a couple from China look at some of the pieces. They spoke only Mandarin and understood a little bit of English, probably less Italian.

Looking at the different glass horses to see which ones they wanted to buy, the younger employee came back from his lunch break and rudely closed the door of the case after repeating, “I’m stressing, I’m stressing!” which sounded more like “I’m stretching!” He pulled the glass horse that they were holding and brought it to the check out counter to wrap it up. Because of his rudeness they decided that they didn’t want it any more.

My mom helped them tell the employee but he didn’t quite understand. His English was quite broken and the only conclusion he could come to was that that couple and the three of us were the same party. When he insisted that he wrap it up for us, even though no one wanted it any more, we all just left.

From there it was off to Florence, which had a lot less to do than expected. We went to Uffizi but skipped Accademia (where Michelangelo’s David stands). We took a sidetrip to Pisa, followed by Lucca (in a feeble attempt to escape the tourists). In Pisa there was basically the Leaning Tower, and instead of taking a picture pretending to lean against it, I took pictures of the many people doing so.

From there it was back to Rome, where we went on our flight to Munich (which landed an hour late) and then to Los Angeles (which, luckily, was also late). The trip was well worth it, and this Thursday, I fly off to Hong Kong. I plan to post once more before I go.

A Parisian Prelude

Sorry it’s been over a week since my last post. I’ve been caught up in other projects, but now I’ve come to the realization that I’m leaving not too soon from now—in less than two weeks, and I’d need to finish of my pre-departure blog posts. So here it goes.

A Parisian Prelude

Here, I feel like we idealize Europe as a cultural center. It’s filled with excitement and emotion, romance and adventure. This was my first time going to Europe, and I was expecting all of the vibrancy that people talk about in Europe, only to find out that the only thing that I found to be how I imagined was that in France they spoke French and in Italy, they spoke Italian.

As something of a prelude to the much longer trip that I’ll be departing on in two weeks, I want to show how I handled this experience abroad and reflect upon how I see my home state now.

I departed on June 18 and left France for Italy on June 24. In that short week, I found that Paris (the only place we went in France) was not what I expected; however, I grew to like it.

We arrived at the Charles de Gaulle Airport and had to take the Metro to my cousin’s house in Neuilly-sur-Seine. It was one of the RER trains which are supposed to be faster than the regular Metro trains, but was just more creaky and old feeling in my opinion. What struck me first was that everywhere I looked there was graffiti. On the trains; some inside the trains; at the stations; on the buildings lining the corridors—Europe was not how I pictured it at all.

Not that there’s no graffiti in the United States or Los Angeles; however, in my humble suburb and the surrounding bedroom communities we have very little graffiti. Most of it is out of sight and the city maintains the graffiti patrol, which makes sure graffiti is quickly eliminated by water pressure or paint. And it works. Thousand Oaks is a very clean looking city.

The subway was very crowded. We must have been waiting at least 45 minutes at the airport subway station before the train came. By that time, the platform was packed and the coming train followed suit. The subway made its way down to the central station named Châtelet—Les Halles. It was kind of dingy at best and filthy at worst. We then took another line to get to my cousin’s place. The entire journey took almost two hours including waiting time. We were tired and jetlagged and from the Pont Neuilly station we had a 10-minute walk to her house.

She said she lived on the first floor, but forgetting how Europe labels the ground floor “0,” making our second floor their first floor, we found our way onto their rez-de-chausée and knocked on to their downstairs neighbor’s door (who we were told later was a crank). Only after we found the intercom and messaged them did we find that they lived on the floor above the ground floor. My cousin came down with a “didn’t you know?!” face and brought us up to her floor on an elevator fit for two-and-a-half moderately sized people.

Such was my first day.

Over the next five days, we moseyed our way around Paris and I grew to like it. The tourist areas had less graffiti and I got used to the big-city feel (crowdedness) of the subway. As soon as I got used to Paris, though, we were off to Italy—and a whole different experience.

Quality v. Quality

Somehow I wanted to insert this aspect of my college experience into this blog by making it relevant somehow. Here’s my shot. I have full confidence that I may express certain feelings without upsetting certain people, mostly because I am sure that most of those people are not reading my blog. Some will be glad to read this post and some might think I’m just being bitter. Please believe me when I say that I have no intention of either.

It goes back to when I was real, real little. I think it was my father who gave me an “I’m going to Harvard” rattle. Whether or not he was the giver is irrelevant. My father is one of those who “only wants the best” for me, he would say; and I do so believe in his intentions.

Entering middle school I was poised to get straight As, no doubt. In the big jump from sixth to seventh grade I guess I found myself at a crossroads. At the time it would have sounded silly to say this, and it sounds only a little less now that I’m 19, but I like (as in prefer) to think that that was the end of my formative years in a sense. From then, my opinions have changed; I grew a few feet (I think); I learned how to drive—but nothing unlike that in the course of one’s adult life. I was poised to get into Stanford and remained so until I was rejected in 2007, in December.

Was it stubborn optimism that turned (what I like to think was) misfortune into hope?

Needless to say, I didn’t get straight As in middle school, nor high school for that matter. On the bright side, I didn’t get any Cs (or lower), nor did my GPA ever dip below 3.6.

And here we get to the topic of today’s post. Yes, the two sides are both qualities. And I know I’m not alone in thinking that I have had to make some difficult decisions over the years between two (or more) perfectly and equally equitable situations. In my case, I was caught up by quantity due to my inability to make chose but a few of the many existing scenarios before me.

Was it a good decision on my part? My mother asserted to me, after it was all set and done, “You probably should have done less. I think you stretched yourself out too thin. You couldn’t concentrate on grades and now you aren’t going to be going to your top choice school.”

I replied, “I honestly wouldn’t have done anything different.” And true to my words, my mind didn’t and still doesn’t think anything different.

My seldom-existent inner romantic would say that the heart wants what the heart wants and the brain could not, at that time, overcome the wishes of the heart, for rationality was gone. The heart had become one with the brain and there was nothing to be done.

So in this post I plan to pose three major decisions of quality versus quality (with many minor ones) that I went through. You may disagree; you may agree. All I hope is that my logic shows in my actions, hopefully culminating in relevance to my upcoming study abroad experience.

My first was in middle school.

When I was approaching fifth grade, there was a decision of whether or not to go to middle school. State legislation had just promoted the sixth grade to middle school (junior high school) status. However, there was a large enough group of parents who wanted to keep their kids in elementary school for sixth grade that Westlake Hills Elementary School kept sixth grade.

Why not stay in elementary school for sixth grade? My parents, with my consent kept me at Westlake Hills for sixth grade.

A third of the way across the school district (and Thousand Oaks), a good friend of mine went to Meadows Elementary School. Their parents had voted to get rid of sixth grade entirely there. As such, my friend went to middle school one year before I did.

I got to middle school as a seventh grader in the fall of 2002. My good friend and I were still pretty chummy and I ate lunch with his group of friends for the first week or so. With good intentions (in middle-school sense) he told me that I was not to get all problems correct on a math test or homework, because that’s not cool. I was told to deliberately work every tenth problem or so wrong to this effect.

I decided not to follow this piece of advice. If I wanted a good circle of friends, they first would not fall for gimmicks that make me supposedly look cool. If they did, then they could be considered shallow, at least in part. Because of this decision, I worked hard throughout middle school. So much that I kept a full load of honors courses with a workload to match. In eighth grade, I found myself in honors science, a relatively hard class with a good teacher.

Back in the day we would get assigned seats, of course, and for one rotation I sat next to this kid who needed a bit of help. The bit turned into a lot of help, for which I was perfectly glad to assist, for we had become pretty good friends.

The next seating rotation, we did not sit next to each other any more. That was it for our friendship. I saw him outside of class one day and said hi to him, for which he ignored me in the presence of his cool friends and pretended not to know me.

Because I have chosen not to name this individual, I’ll finish out why I mentioned him. So seeing how he had befriended me for the help, I judged him as being dim-witted and in need of plenty of help. Two incidents thereafter solidified this opinion.

The first was at a dry Christmas party senior year of high school. All the party people, including myself, were seated outside in comical conversation circles. Within our own circles we were conversing with each other.

Now many of my good friends are female, so my conversation circle was pretty much girls plus me and this other guy. In an adjacent circle was a group of football and baseball jocks. With most all sports being segregated by sex, their conversation circle was comprised only of guys, if memory serves me right. In that group was the aforementioned science class “friend,” if you will. Now a star football player, he received a scholarship to (the) Cornell University in New York.

The group began poking fun at me behind my back. I don’t remember the exact dialogue, but it was nasty and I do not care to elaborate for sake of word choice, if you catch my drift. They persisted and then moved on to the other guy in my conversation circle, another friend of mine. He wasn’t so good at hiding that he was hearing the entire insult and controlled himself to stay seated in his chair.

What transpired between the aggressors and the aggressees is irrelevant, so I’ll let you speculate as to the outcome.

The second incident regarding this individual did not happen but half a year ago. By this time, he was in attendance at Cornell and knowing fully well that he was, as my dad likes to call people, an idiot, I was curious as to how he was faring.

It just so happens that I’m friends with his ex-girlfriend, who also attends UCSD. Knowing that they’d broken up because of his infidelity, I asked how he’s doing at Cornell. She said that he feels really stupid there, to which I was not surprised and suddenly finding trouble containing my running laughter.

My second was in high school.

Many of my old friends may sense what’s to come in this second major decision. They would always remark to me stuff like: “You’re so busy!” “I never see you outside of class,” or “Do you have any free time?”

At the end of eighth grade we were led through registration of classes for freshman year of high school—the upcoming year. I talked to a counselor there. She said that if I wanted to get into Stanford, I would have to work extra hard and find a passion that you revolve around. I did both, definitely, but what pushed my chances of getting over the edge to the other side of the curve was a little thing I like to call community service.

My parents used to tell me that I’m really spoiled. When they would utter it, I would hate it. Now, I would say that was somewhat true. While I did not receive everything I wanted, I received everything I needed plus more. I never received stuff like big screen TVs or video game consoles for free, as did many of my classmates, but I never had to fight for food or had to find shelter like so many 40 miles southeast of Thousand Oaks. I was not given a car when I turned 16 (or ever for that matter) but I was given near unlimited access of my parents’. Being a teenage male, my driver’s insurance rates were sky high, but my parents never asked me to get a job to help pay for it.

So I took a look at the world, so to speak. Knowing full well what many of the underprivileged do with their lives—starting on a low note and ending on a high—I should be expected to end on an even higher note, having started from a relatively high note to begin with.

From this basis, I changed in two ways. One is ongoing and the other has already pretty much happened.

The first is that I became addicted to community service. I figured that I should use my ability and good health to assist others and those less fortunate. This is still going on as I try hard to find time perform my passion for service. I donate blood whenever I can (and so should you!) though I won’t be able to donate again until January 2011 due to my recent trip to Europe and my upcoming trip to Hong Kong.

The other is liberal (in the American sense) views (much to the covert dismay of my Republican father). No one person is inherently better than another in the same way that no one country is inherently better than another. In no way should making money be the primary goal for anyone’s life. Why should one person live with $10,000 drapes on every window in every room when someone not halfway across the globe works tirelessly every day for basic necessities? How can the United States call itself a Christian nation and claim to be accepting people of all faiths at the same time? Or for that matter how can the United States claim to be accepting and fail to insure every individual the same civil rights as the next?

While I claim a dislike for the Republican Party, I do not claim a dislike for its individual members, nor conservatism as an ideology.

I included this because as I am a political science major, I intend to write heavily about politics, political economy, and globalization from Hong Kong.

So by the time I was finishing high school I had been involved with at least six organizations. I did community service throughout Boy Scouts of America, including a 440-man-hour, $2,500-budget project for Eagle Scout rank; American Red Cross (of Ventura County), where I was involved as Youth Services Chair on the Board of Directors and Westlake High School Club President; National Honor Society, which does service with a variety of local organizations; Ambassadors Club, for service to the school; Los Robles Hospital, where I assisted the friendly pharmacist with inventory and paperwork; and Thousand Oaks Youth Commission, which gave me an award.

Even though all this organizations dominated nearly every day after school, this alone did not cause me to not get the best of grades.

I had another addition—school. I know it sounds silly, but I had a thing for taking extra classes. Each and every year I took seven classes. Junior and senior years I took an additional class at Moorpark Community College. My final semester of senior I took two classes at Moorpark Community College for a grand total of 9 classes at during my final semester at Westlake High School.

At graduation I was not going to Stanford, I had a ton of community service hours (probably literally), I had a respectable GPA (though not respectable enough for the Ivys), and I was set to go to UCSD with a combined AP-community college transfer of 86 credits (4 shy of junior standing).

My third was in college.

I guess this last major decision was not so much of a decision as a justification. I had not gotten into Stanford or the Ivys. I came to Eleanor Roosevelt College at the University of California, San Diego, to make a name for myself with expectations and disappointments.

Now that I’ve spent my first year at UCSD people ask me how I like it. My response it always the same: my biggest problem with it is that too many people don’t think they belong there. Out of all the first-years I’ve talked to, I can only name a handful that say they want to and plan to graduate from UCSD. In fact, this past year I’ve had two roommates because my first transferred out after the first quarter.

The part that bothered me was that the reason they didn’t feel they belonged was because they felt they should have gotten into college elsewhere. I got plenty of Berekeleys and UCLAs as responses.

At first, I was poised to become one of the many who didn’t “belong.” But what good would that do? UCSD is a perfectly good school and actually turned out to offer a really good education in my interests.

As I’ve explained in previous posts my majors, I have been unable to find comparable programs at other universities; and at none have I been able to find a program as enriching as Making of the Modern World.

Which brings me to my next point. Students are lazy. Well, that’s not my point, but not only are students at UCSD feeling as if they don’t belong, my classmates feel like they’ve had an injustice done to them by being placed in Eleanor Roosevelt College.

Most of the hate for ERC (from those who hate) is directed at MMW. As I explained earlier, I really appreciate MMW. Most complain about its length. One spiteful Wikipedia author claimed that at six quarters, MMW is by far the longest core writing class of all of UCSD’s six colleges.

I dispute that claim. It is indeed the longest, but not by far. Revelle College has five quarters of Humanities (HUM), which appears to be a western cultures and literature course, and an additional quarter of American cultures, making their grand total six. Sixth College has three Culture, Art, and Technology (CAT) lower division classes plus a colloquium for a total of four. Marshall College has three quarters of Dimensions of Culture (DOC), which many Marshall students say is useless, and the administrators are considering adding a fourth. Warren College has two writing courses plus Ethics for a total of three. And Muir College has two writing courses plus American cultures for a total of three as well.

So where is this all going? Rarely in my actions and choices have I been overall lazy. The decision to study abroad was no exception. The mountain of paperwork, multiple applications, and the money, just to name a few things. So why do it? I guess ironically going away to another university for a while would enhance the quality of my education at UCSD.