And on a sidenote, I've now been here for a full month!
Monday, September 21, 2009
What Happens in Macau Stays in Macau, Part 1
(photographs posted most recent first)
And on a sidenote, I've now been here for a full month!
And on a sidenote, I've now been here for a full month!
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Four More Stamps: Fabulous Macau
For the first time since I arrived here in Hong Kong, I left the Special Administrative Region to visit Macau, another SAR of the People’s Republic of China. With different immigration schemes and regulation, leaving Hong Kong got me one stamp in my passport, entering and leaving Macau got me two more, and my reentry into Hong Kong got me another large student stamp.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
In addition to controlling immigration separate from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau each maintain their own currencies. Macau’s is the Pataca, which is pegged to the Hong Kong Dollar (which is in turn pegged to the U.S. Dollar). Being such as small currency zone though most everyone takes Hong Kong Dollars there, which means that only as much as 30% of currency in circulation in Macau is the Macanese Pataca.
For those who don’t know, Macau is often referred to as the Monte Carlo of China; and for those of you who don’t what Monte Carlo is, I refer to Macau as the little Las Vegas of China.
Situated on an island and a peninsula (which I believe is technically another island), it’s quite a bit smaller than Hong Kong SAR and has an industry heavily based on the gambling and entertainment industries. However, in comparison to the Strip of Las Vegas, many of the casinos appear smaller and less in number. Like Las Vegas, there were many not-so-ritzy areas that appear in stark contrast with the shining lights of tourist Macau.
Though more than anything, I went to Macau with some other exchange students to simply see and be there, I found the cultural items, most of with heavy Portuguese influence to be the most interesting part of the whole expedition.
Which brings me to another point—Macau is an SAR because it used to be a Portuguese colony in much the same manner that Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Having been controlled since 1557 by the Portuguese, Macau has a history as being the oldest European colony in China. Having been given back to China in 1999, Macau is also the last European colony to be returned. So in many ways, Macau is more Portuguese than Hong Kong is British.
The name of Macau itself has, since I first learned about the city, always been a point of personal contention. In Chinese, it is referred to as 澳门, which would be pronounced as Àomén in Mandarin and Ou3mun4 in Cantonese, neither of which sounds like its English name, adopted through Portuguese.
Though not a problem, since many names have not been transliterated properly (for China would be written Zhōngguó or at least Zhongguo), and life continues to move on, apparently when the Portuguese first landed in Macau, the locals told them that the territory was called AMaa5Gok3, named after Matsu, the goddess of seafarers, for whom a temple is dedicated. On the other hand, the name Hong Kong is transliterated by the British from Hoeng1Gong2, which was and remains the local name of the main island.
But back to the trip, we took a ferry from Central District direct to Macau’s ferry terminal. At about 37 miles, the journey took about an hour. With how bumpy the journey was, I was glad that I didn’t get seasick on the way there.
Trying to find the way to the hotel that we booked, we went up to the taxi stand and asked cabdrivers whether they could take us to the address we had written down. None of them had any idea where it was. Apparent to us now, the bilingual street names are translations of each other and not transliterations, meaning that a street named “Praca de ponte e horta” is not understood by those who operate in Cantonese (which has a completely different sounding name for the same street).
We ended up taking a bus to the Central Square (which has an absence of casinos). Nearly all the buildings along the way showed Portuguese styling. And I don’t know how it is in Portugal, but like in France and Italy (where I have been in Europe) the street names were written on the sides of buildings instead of on freestanding posts, as they are in most of Hong Kong and the United States.
The Central Square (officially Senate Square), in addition to sidewalks along the main road, was colorfully tiled in black and ivory, with wavy stripes and designs of animals apparent (which I read is traditional Portuguese pavement). The buildings were ornate and brightly colored with traditional columns and arches. Preparing for some festival in all likelihood, large decorations in the shapes of fruits and vegetables were hung over the main square. I watched them put them up from my window when I ate at McDonalds the next morning.
Our hotel, which, while close to the square, was not as close as described on its website. Ole London Hotel was, while not located in the best of neighborhoods, not in the worst of neighborhoods, and offered a comfortable bed, bath with a large showerhead, and free air conditioning.
Once we dropped off our stuff, the first stop was Macau Tower. Similar in shape to the Space Needle of Seattle, Washington, the one in Macau offers great views of Macau (as well as mainland China across the river) in addition to the highest bungee jump in the world. I did not have the privilege to do that, though it was more like I didn’t want to spend the money.
Getting up to the observation deck cost $90 HKD, but the bungee jump would have set me back $2088 HKD for the jump and $588 HKD for an additional jump, if I wanted it. Plus, one of my friends, who works as a nurse in Australia, said that a lot of peoples eyes pop up when the bungee bounces back due to the pressure change. I did see three of my friends do it too, and though I regretted not doing it with them at first, I decided that I was in Macau not to bungee jump but to see the city.
Later, we went to a casino—the Venetian. While on the other island and away from the other casinos, it is the largest Venetian hotel and casino of them all. I saw the one in Las Vegas and I thought it was pretty cool. The one in Macau was in all earnestness not any better than the one in Las Vegas. They both had the artificial sky and the pool-water Grand Canal, along with St. Mark’s Square (incomplete without Doge’s Palace and the campanile). We went to the food court, which served average food at terribly inflated prices, not to mention the food venues were way slow.
Down on casino level, the casino was just like any other casino. I originally intended to gamble like $5 HKD at slot machines (gambling and drinking age in Macau is 18) but ended up just looking and gambling nothing. What caught my attention was how the casino was entirely shielded off and one had to go in between gates along with people with the authority to verify your age to card you. This is in contrast to how in Las Vegas, they make you walk through the casino to get anywhere and everywhere, in hopes that the combination of clicking and shining lights will get you to sit down for a bit and spend a lot.
The next day, we went back to the central square and ate at McDonalds. It was great except that it didn’t sit well with me. After getting my coffee fix at Starbucks in the same square, we set off on a walking tour prescribed by the Lonely Planet guidebook for Hong Kong and Macau.
On top of markets (which I have yet to see as any better than Chinatowns in the United States), some of the highlights were St. Dominic’s Church on Central Square, which, being Catholic, reminded me of the many Catholic churches I saw early last summer in France and Italy. The main difference was that the interior of this church, just as grand as the others, is painted a light color, which in part makes it much more bright than the others. As part of the church, one of the bell towers was turned into a museum that houses relics and the like.
The other highlight was the Ruins of St. Paul’s, which used to be the façade of a seventeenth-century church in that location. Now, the façade is reinforced and equipped with a viewing platform, from which there is a great view of Macau. In front of the façade are steps leading down to street level. Though just as crowded as the Spanish Steps in Rome, there are more of them.
We headed back to Hong Kong that day, ready for classes to start again the day after.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Shopping for Classes, Part 2
The add/drop period for class registration ended September 14. For the Faculty of Social Sciences, September 15 was when we had to turn in a signed finalization of those classes. Though I met both deadlines, making sure that classes will be approved for meeting requirements for general education and my majors and minor has been a little more difficult.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
With shopping for classes done and over with, I ended up with five six-unit classes and one three-unit class, Cantonese for Foreign Learners 1. That class may actually contain the majority of the fun I have on campus. Organized to give us conversational knowledge of Cantonese, the class is simple and entertaining. For the fifty minutes, twice a week that it’s worth, I can tell that the teacher is really enthusiastic about what she does. What makes it more fun is that, since I cannot apply this class to any graduation requirement back home, I’m going to take the class pass/no pass, I can enjoy myself and the content of the class without feeling to bothered about what grade I get.
The three five-unit classes that I plan to apply to requirements back at UCSD are Introduction to Arts of Asia: Past and Present, Traditional Chinese Society, Hong Kong and the World, Humanity in Globalization, and Phonetics.
To be rephrased as Introduction to Asian Art on my University of California transcript, this is the other class that I think I’ll take pass/no pass. This is to fulfill the non-western fine arts class for Eleanor Roosevelt College’s general education requirements. Being in Asia, I figured that this would be a good opportunity to do so.
The class is very interesting to say the least. As of yet we’ve been discussion Buddhist art and just last lecture we were discussing how Buddhism’s arrival to Japan reflected the native Shinto way of life and its reflection in art and architecture, particularly the design of temples. It was further related to the present day, in which reflecting the older works we went over selected contemporary works by such notables as Yoko Ono.
Traditional Chinese Society is an ethnographic, anthropologic class that deals more with contemporary Chinese society in light of traditional Chinese society. Right now, I’m trying to get it preapproved for my minor in the Study of Religion, with my case being that the class focuses on way of life, which is true religion in its essential form. Concretely, similar classes have been approved for the Study of Religion at UCSD, namely Chinese Society (a sociology class) and Traditional Chinese Society (an anthropology class). Here at HKU there is not an anthropology department, so this class is listed under Sociology. In crossing classes with UCSD, the description of my class here at HKU is in between the two UCSD classes, leaning more towards the anthropological one.
If the Study of Religion program refuses to see my logic, I plan to make my case to apply this as an anthropology class to the secondary focus of my International Studies-Political Science major. Unfortunately, UC transfers this course over as a sociology class by default, so I would have to prove its anthropological content through the syllabus and explaining the ethnographic methods used in analysis.
As of right now, we’ve been dealing with what it means to be Chinese (a topic which I have addressed and will address again personally in a later post). Last lecture we talked about creation stories as an aspect of Chinese culture and contrasted the shear view of culture to that of Christianity. Next week we focus on the body and the traditional Chinese view of it.
This class’s tutorial is also the only one I’ve been to so far. With such a small class, there is no teacher’s assistant and the tutorials, called sections at UCSD, are run by the professor himself. It was set up as an informal environment in which we could discuss the readings and the current class materials. In that tutorial, I had to make my case for why I call myself American, but more on that later.
Hong Kong and the World is another favorite class of mine. It is listed under politics and public administration, and rightly so. The professor doesn’t have a PhD but work experience, having a consulting firm with such clients as the William Clinton Foundation. I plan to apply this class to my International Studies-Political Science major.
In light of Hong Kong’s political situation as a highly autonomous part of the People’s Republic of China, we look at why Hong Kong as been such an economic success and evaluate its future competitiveness in light of rising Chinese cities and Hong Kong’s eventual return of full sovereignty back to China.
This particular professor organizes his classes with many guests. Our first is the current director of the InvestHK, and described his job as attracting and retaining foreign investment in Hong Kong. This was followed by an intense question-and-answer section which he handled like a seasoned politician.
Humanity in Globalization is another political science class taught by the same professor as Hong Kong and the World. This actually ended up being a substitute class for me, as I meant to take International Relations of East Asia, but was troubled by the lack of oratory skills of the professor. I opted for the more interesting, more grounded class (for IR talks about countries practically as sentient beings whereas Humanity in Globalization talks about individual people in relation to the world.
So far, we’ve talked about modern-day slavery (which most people don’t know about) with one source claiming that there are more slaves today than there have ever been before. (Though I wonder if you cast that data as a percent of the population whether the numbers would seem less dire.)
My last class is Phonetics, which at first I was really excited about, but now I’m questioning the content. With my second major being a specialization in linguistics, Phonetics is a core class for me, and deciding to take it here I thought would be a good experience.
At UCSD, Phonetics is taught in light of English, introducing anatomical features of producing speech, and focusing hardly at all at the International Phonetic Alphabet Chart. Regarding linguistics, I actually prefer phonetics and phonology over semantics and morphology because there is a quantifiable reality to the study. Semantics for me seemed a little soft because it seemed less logical than other linguistics sub-disciplines.
At HKU, Phonetics is taught much the same, with the exception that we go over sounds of Mandarin and Cantonese in addition to American English (I don’t know why we don’t go over British Received Pronunciation). It sounded good and all, but for the second lecture, we went over sounds of American English, and being that many local students (most all local students) don’t speak American English, he taught it more like a let’s-learn-how-to-speak-properly class.
This was problematic in my head because at UCSD a resounding message in my linguistics classes is that linguists (and social scientists) for that matter, being researchers, work to the effect of description and not prescription. That means that Linguists don’t dictate how we should speak, they just analyze how we do speak.
Being a native American English speaker, I had no problem, but as we have to go over that again in Mandarin and Cantonese, I hope he doesn’t continue in the same manner.
To make matters worse, the TA for the class makes all the announcements in Cantonese. I always end up raising my hand to request her to repeat what she said in English.
Though I hoped to write this post after I settled into a routine, I figured that I should get out my sentiments about my classes and reveal the results of my shopping before going any further.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Two Tours and a Weekend
The weekend before last, we were offered two tours of the area: on Saturday was Kowloon and the New Territories; on Sunday was Hong Kong Island. Promoted through the Office of International Student Exchange (OISE) here on campus (the organization that gave us nifty university-branded tote bags as souvenirs), they were organized by a private company that, while good, failed to meet my expectations.
I’ve been on two main tours of this type prior to these: One was a day trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona from Las Vegas, Nevada, via bus, and the other was my two-week tour of China in which my family and I visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.
Day 1
Saturday, we were to be off at 9 a.m. One of the charter buses broke down before leaving, and as a result we didn’t get on the road until 10:30. Though the effects of this setback were not altogether noticeable, they compacted the day. They still took us to all the places on the schedule, giving us a little less time at each place to wander around and get a deeper feel.
The first stop was a bird garden near Mong Kok, a major shopping district in Kowloon. With the exception of a lively parrot, the birds were all small and in cages. Most of the birds were there for sale, along with cages and birdseed. What struck me the most about this bird garden, which I probably would never had visited had I not been directed there was its age—it was gracefully old, and not in the same way that any other building in Hong Kong would be old.
Their bathrooms had pooper stoopers. My mom’s friend, who happens to be a nurse, once told be that anatomically and physiologically speaking, pooper stoopers were more natural (and therefore better) for trying to osmoregulate, for they require the user to step over a hole in the ground and squat.
In my opinion, seeing the dampness of the ground (not sure if it was due to water), those pooper stoopers (a name of my own creation) were true germ spreaders. Beholding them reaffirmed my policy of not letting people put their shoes on my bed.
The Bird Garden was definitely worth going to, and after we walked around the surrounding streets, which had flower shops on them. They had roses along with many of the other standards, but what was in the most abundance were orchids, visible at every shop in every color.
After that was a viewing platform and visitors center for the Tsing Ma Bridge, which while not the most impressive of dual-level suspension bridges, was one of the first to link Lantau Island (home of the new airport and Hong Kong Disneyland) to the rest of Hong Kong. The top level is comprised of automobile traffic and the lower level, which is enclosed, is home to two lines of the MTR (Hong Kong’s subway system).
Also visible from the viewing platform was the Tin Kau Bridge, which, as a self-anchored suspension bridge (more accurately a cable-stayed bridge), I found much more visually appealing.
From there it was on to the Wetlands Park in Hong Kong. It housed one of those kid-oriented conservation-focused museums. This one was particularly focused on swampland, demonstrating its benefits as a buffer to tidal waves and other inclement weather. Out in the park was a good place to take hikes around, but the blasting heat and humidity of the day inhibited any such desires.
For those who don’t know, the territory of Hong Kong SAR is only 25-40% developed. (And my hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, attempts to brag about its 30% open space!) The parts that haven’t been serve as wilderness and often as permanent open space. It’s really quite nice to have such open areas to relax so close to a massively crowded city.
This particular park that we went to sat on the northern border of Hong Kong (with mainland China). As such, you could see the major development of Shenzhen, which is quite visibly built up to that border.
From there, we went to a Taoist temple on the east side of Kowloon. Excluding myself, not having found out about this until after departure, they were providing people with this traditional fortune-telling mechanism. (I’d say game, but it’s not really considered such.) I never found out the name, but to do this, you have a whole bunch of sticks in a cylindrical cup and you shake it in the temple in front of the Taoist gods to find out your luck and or fate. When one falls out, which can take such time, they help you interpret what it means.
In the last stop of the day, we went to the Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill, another district of Kowloon. It had a major garden complex that, minus the tourists, would provide quaintness and serenity until one realized the giant skyscrapers in the background. Otherwise it was a really nice place. I think it was definitely a highlight of the trip.
I went to bed tired. The majority of the group was exhausted. It had been a good day, but the worst part was that some of us had to do it again the day after.
Day 2
These two tours, one day after another, were run by the same Black Castle Tour Company. With three tour buses each day, there were three tour guides. For Saturday, we went on the bus with the guide on summer vacation from PhD studies in the States. His English was quite terrible. Sunday, we decided to try a different tour guide. This time, we got a local woman who had better English and made an attempt at telling jokes. The content was good, the execution average, and the reaction dead. Oh well.
This day was set back a little later. Our first stop was a museum that opened at 10 a.m. on Sundays, so we got onto the buses at 9:30. On one hand, the buses didn’t break down, so we were on time. On the other hand, Starbucks on campus doesn’t open on Sundays, so I was coffee-less unfortunately that day. But that’s beside the point.
The museum we went to was that of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is frequently credited as the founding father of modern China. While interesting, the museum housed few authentic artifacts and the museum’s tour guide simply read off the story boards on the walls.
The next stop was Aberdeen, a fishing village (formerly full of pirates) on the south side of Hong Kong Island, about 10 minutes from my dorm by bus. There we went on boat tours of the bay in what we were told were Sampan (literally “three pieces” of wood), though ours were noticeably more posh than the examples on Wikipedia.
Like many other places in Hong Kong and China, the most notable part of this boat ride was the contrast between new and old that was presented to us. Right next to the large commercial fishing boats were smaller houseboats, that according to the tour guide were dying out as more people preferred living in the local high-rises.
Next was Repulse Bay. Other than being a really nice beach (not littered with trash like the nearby Deep Water Bay Beach), it was notable for its collection of Taoist and Buddhist sculptures, including a Buddha whose tummy has been blackened in the name of good luck.
After was Stanley. I had been to Stanley once before, though I didn’t blog about it. It’s a nice little town (with skyscrapers) on the south side of the island. It’s home to many ex-pats and Stanley Market, which reminds me so far the most of American Chinatowns of anything here.
My favorite parts of Stanley, though, are the Murray House and inhabiting Hong Kong Maritime Museum (which I have not visited) and two temples, one claiming to be the oldest building in Hong Kong and the other with a giant Guan Yin (a Taoist goddess turned Buddhist bodhisattva) statue that looks over the area.
From Stanley, we were off to the Naval Museum on the northeast side of the island. The buildings themselves were built by the British as a lookout for the colony. It had decent exhibitions of the naval history of the Ming and Qing dynasties (the last two) as well as decent views of Victoria Harbor.
With that we were taken back to the university. Not quite as tired as the day before, we went to bed to get up for classes
I’ve been on two main tours of this type prior to these: One was a day trip to the Grand Canyon in Arizona from Las Vegas, Nevada, via bus, and the other was my two-week tour of China in which my family and I visited Beijing, Xian, Shanghai, Suzhou, and Hangzhou.
Day 1
Saturday, we were to be off at 9 a.m. One of the charter buses broke down before leaving, and as a result we didn’t get on the road until 10:30. Though the effects of this setback were not altogether noticeable, they compacted the day. They still took us to all the places on the schedule, giving us a little less time at each place to wander around and get a deeper feel.
The first stop was a bird garden near Mong Kok, a major shopping district in Kowloon. With the exception of a lively parrot, the birds were all small and in cages. Most of the birds were there for sale, along with cages and birdseed. What struck me the most about this bird garden, which I probably would never had visited had I not been directed there was its age—it was gracefully old, and not in the same way that any other building in Hong Kong would be old.
Their bathrooms had pooper stoopers. My mom’s friend, who happens to be a nurse, once told be that anatomically and physiologically speaking, pooper stoopers were more natural (and therefore better) for trying to osmoregulate, for they require the user to step over a hole in the ground and squat.
In my opinion, seeing the dampness of the ground (not sure if it was due to water), those pooper stoopers (a name of my own creation) were true germ spreaders. Beholding them reaffirmed my policy of not letting people put their shoes on my bed.
The Bird Garden was definitely worth going to, and after we walked around the surrounding streets, which had flower shops on them. They had roses along with many of the other standards, but what was in the most abundance were orchids, visible at every shop in every color.
After that was a viewing platform and visitors center for the Tsing Ma Bridge, which while not the most impressive of dual-level suspension bridges, was one of the first to link Lantau Island (home of the new airport and Hong Kong Disneyland) to the rest of Hong Kong. The top level is comprised of automobile traffic and the lower level, which is enclosed, is home to two lines of the MTR (Hong Kong’s subway system).
Also visible from the viewing platform was the Tin Kau Bridge, which, as a self-anchored suspension bridge (more accurately a cable-stayed bridge), I found much more visually appealing.
From there it was on to the Wetlands Park in Hong Kong. It housed one of those kid-oriented conservation-focused museums. This one was particularly focused on swampland, demonstrating its benefits as a buffer to tidal waves and other inclement weather. Out in the park was a good place to take hikes around, but the blasting heat and humidity of the day inhibited any such desires.
For those who don’t know, the territory of Hong Kong SAR is only 25-40% developed. (And my hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, attempts to brag about its 30% open space!) The parts that haven’t been serve as wilderness and often as permanent open space. It’s really quite nice to have such open areas to relax so close to a massively crowded city.
This particular park that we went to sat on the northern border of Hong Kong (with mainland China). As such, you could see the major development of Shenzhen, which is quite visibly built up to that border.
From there, we went to a Taoist temple on the east side of Kowloon. Excluding myself, not having found out about this until after departure, they were providing people with this traditional fortune-telling mechanism. (I’d say game, but it’s not really considered such.) I never found out the name, but to do this, you have a whole bunch of sticks in a cylindrical cup and you shake it in the temple in front of the Taoist gods to find out your luck and or fate. When one falls out, which can take such time, they help you interpret what it means.
In the last stop of the day, we went to the Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill, another district of Kowloon. It had a major garden complex that, minus the tourists, would provide quaintness and serenity until one realized the giant skyscrapers in the background. Otherwise it was a really nice place. I think it was definitely a highlight of the trip.
I went to bed tired. The majority of the group was exhausted. It had been a good day, but the worst part was that some of us had to do it again the day after.
Day 2
These two tours, one day after another, were run by the same Black Castle Tour Company. With three tour buses each day, there were three tour guides. For Saturday, we went on the bus with the guide on summer vacation from PhD studies in the States. His English was quite terrible. Sunday, we decided to try a different tour guide. This time, we got a local woman who had better English and made an attempt at telling jokes. The content was good, the execution average, and the reaction dead. Oh well.
This day was set back a little later. Our first stop was a museum that opened at 10 a.m. on Sundays, so we got onto the buses at 9:30. On one hand, the buses didn’t break down, so we were on time. On the other hand, Starbucks on campus doesn’t open on Sundays, so I was coffee-less unfortunately that day. But that’s beside the point.
The museum we went to was that of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who is frequently credited as the founding father of modern China. While interesting, the museum housed few authentic artifacts and the museum’s tour guide simply read off the story boards on the walls.
The next stop was Aberdeen, a fishing village (formerly full of pirates) on the south side of Hong Kong Island, about 10 minutes from my dorm by bus. There we went on boat tours of the bay in what we were told were Sampan (literally “three pieces” of wood), though ours were noticeably more posh than the examples on Wikipedia.
Like many other places in Hong Kong and China, the most notable part of this boat ride was the contrast between new and old that was presented to us. Right next to the large commercial fishing boats were smaller houseboats, that according to the tour guide were dying out as more people preferred living in the local high-rises.
Next was Repulse Bay. Other than being a really nice beach (not littered with trash like the nearby Deep Water Bay Beach), it was notable for its collection of Taoist and Buddhist sculptures, including a Buddha whose tummy has been blackened in the name of good luck.
After was Stanley. I had been to Stanley once before, though I didn’t blog about it. It’s a nice little town (with skyscrapers) on the south side of the island. It’s home to many ex-pats and Stanley Market, which reminds me so far the most of American Chinatowns of anything here.
My favorite parts of Stanley, though, are the Murray House and inhabiting Hong Kong Maritime Museum (which I have not visited) and two temples, one claiming to be the oldest building in Hong Kong and the other with a giant Guan Yin (a Taoist goddess turned Buddhist bodhisattva) statue that looks over the area.
From Stanley, we were off to the Naval Museum on the northeast side of the island. The buildings themselves were built by the British as a lookout for the colony. It had decent exhibitions of the naval history of the Ming and Qing dynasties (the last two) as well as decent views of Victoria Harbor.
With that we were taken back to the university. Not quite as tired as the day before, we went to bed to get up for classes
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
City LIfe
Being here for two weeks, I have fallen into something of a routine. Living inconveniently far from campus, I find myself taking public transportation to school frequently. The buses that run by my hall are so-called minibuses (小巴) that seat sixteen, standing prohibited.
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
These first few weeks of class, there have been large crowds of students trying to get to campus, crowding the bus stop whenever I want to catch a bus. Besides the raw numbers trying to get on these minibuses, there seems to be no respect for who got there first, so everyone sort of piles onto the bus as the bus driver indicated how many more seats remain.
It costs either HK$4.50 of $5 to get to main campus, so since paying this twice a day adds up, the university has a shuttle service. But with a bizarre schedule and few shuttles, this resource seems more of a formality than an actual service.
Because of this, I’ve found myself taking cabs to school more often than not. At about HK$21, if you get a group of four or five together and split it, it’s roughly the same price with faster service.
If I have time, I grab a bite on campus if I didn’t already at Bay View Restaurant, a very average canteen located beneath my hall. Frequently I find coffee because my hallmates do not allow me to get to sleep as early as I would like.
Going to class, I sit more frequently towards the front of the lecture hall here than at home because the locals don’t stop chatting with each other while the professor tries to talk. (We’re still in the middle of the add/drop period, when students are choosing classes, so once this is over, not only will there be less students in attendance, but also many students simply do not show up to lecture.)
For lunch I got to one of the four eateries on campus. My favorite, the one in Swire Hall above the Global Lounge is packed. Here, instead of having tables for two and four, the tables here seat eight to twelve, which means that whereas at home you usually didn’t sit down at a table already taken, you have to here if you hope to sit.
And a note on morality and ethics, I was telling a hallmate once at a crazy McDonalds that send the fastest eater to find a table and reserve it, allow the rest of us to order, then once we get our food, allow the last person to get their food. If you don’t do that, it’s hard to get a table. My hallmate said that that wasn’t fair for some reason that I don’t remember, since it didn’t seem logical to me, but I told him that that’s what they do.
At the canteen above Swire Hall, students seemed to come in big groups. They’d claim a table with one person and all their bags and backpacks, then proceed to order. So when I picked up my food, I walked around for ten minutes trying to find seats that didn’t have bags on them. Of those, half of those were reserved (as I was told off in Cantonese).
After my classes are over, me and some of my friends (also exchange students) do something locally. There’s actually a nice mall nearby named Westwood, where we go frequently. It has a few nice restaurants, a poor selection of retail stores (but that’s not why we go there) and a Wellcome store (yes, with two Ls), which I wish the locals had told me about.
Two weeks ago, I arrived in Hong Kong without blankets of a pillow. The lack of a blanket I could deal with, as it was filthy hot and humid well into the night. The day after next, I asked a local student where I could buy a pillow. He sent me to Causeway Bay, which happens to be halfway across the island, to IKEA.
Knowing IKEA back home as a large home store, I set out, without a map or any idea where in Causeway Bay I was going. The minibus dropped us off and I wandered around for a while. After asking a few people where IKEA was and getting piecemeal answers, I decided to just go to a bedding store I saw along the bus ride. I paid HK$174 for that pillow, thinking that’s like less than $25 USD. Unfortunately for me, at the Wellcome at Westwood, a short five-minute bus ride away, they were selling nice pillows for HK$30. Oh well! It’s too late now.
As there is an undoubtable and irresolvable delay in what currently happens and what I write about in posts, I’ll say that I type this right now as I wait for a University of California Education Abroad Program “How to get approval for classes back home” seminar to start.
Also, I haven’t written about it yet, but I’ve done quite a bit of local sightseeing over the past few weeks. Just this weekend I went on two tours advertised by the school giving a good overview of the area.
Posts to come!
Friday, September 4, 2009
Shopping for Classes, Part 1
At UCSD and, as far as I can figure, most American universities, enrollment works in a simple way: you sign up for classes months in advance, before the start of the term, and once the term starts, there is a certain period of time to alter your schedule.
Here at HKU, the university has scheduled out add/drop period for courses to coincide with the first two weeks of classes. This means that shopping for classes, in which we attend say ten classes to choose four or five of them, is a way of life. Though I was warned at the Hong Kong orientation at UCSD last May that this would be the case, actually experiencing it has been quite different.
I hope to sign up for five classes plus Cantonese, and planned to go to eleven classes to see which ones to choose. Out of those eleven, I have decided not to check out two of them. So far I have attended four, all of which I feel I want to take. Because I still have five classes to check out, this creates a problem I like the content of the courses and have become somewhat immune to professors’ individual teaching styles. Whoever it is, I still take extensive notes and attend most every lecture.
Here at HKU, the university has scheduled out add/drop period for courses to coincide with the first two weeks of classes. This means that shopping for classes, in which we attend say ten classes to choose four or five of them, is a way of life. Though I was warned at the Hong Kong orientation at UCSD last May that this would be the case, actually experiencing it has been quite different.
I hope to sign up for five classes plus Cantonese, and planned to go to eleven classes to see which ones to choose. Out of those eleven, I have decided not to check out two of them. So far I have attended four, all of which I feel I want to take. Because I still have five classes to check out, this creates a problem I like the content of the courses and have become somewhat immune to professors’ individual teaching styles. Whoever it is, I still take extensive notes and attend most every lecture.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Welcome to the University of Hong Kong
The University of Hong Kong held its orientation for non-local students this last Friday, August 28. Though I appreciate the effort, much of the event seemed to drag on and students found themselves socializing with each other more than listening to the presentations, making the presentations hard to hear. Apart from the main event, there were a few subsequent components to orientation that I found were much more informative and useful than the opening act.
The day was opened with all of the non-local (mainland Chinese and international) students gathered in the assembly hall of Main Building. My HKU buddy informed me that, as that building is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant edifices on campus, important events are held there to give a good first impression of the university.
Unfortunately, since the hall is so old, it’s also quite small, and many of the students could not fit. They were directed to nearby rooms where the presentation was broadcasted live to them. What happened at that first event were mostly formalities—introduction of the administration, various resources available to us, and a plug for the Chinese-language courses they would be offering to us in the coming semesters.
As a bad sign, I couldn’t understand a significant amount of what they were saying. Though while listening closely I could gather 75-90%, I’m still uncomfortable with the current degree of comprehension. But I’ll get to language in another post.
About those Chinese-language courses, I’ve decided to take Cantonese for Foreigners 1, as I have a pretty good Mandarin foundation, and figured that it could be good to get as local as possible. I think that the biggest thing I’ve found here is how profoundly bad my Cantonese is. And though a Canadian exchange student “called shenanigans” on me for not speaking Cantonese, she was highly uninformed of my upbringing, but I’ll talk about that more in that upcoming language post.
They provided us with a “light lunch” which was actually quite filling with three half-sandwiches, an apple, and a juice box. At that point most non-local students were done with their orientation; however, American students had an additional meeting with a representative from the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.
That meeting started with her asking where everyone was from. Starting with California, about a third of the American students raised their hands. The other two thirds were from various places scattered around the country. As many of the students from California (undoubtedly mostly University of California students) were Asian Americans, my roommate mentioned that night that Asian American students being a big chunk of students studying abroad in Asia should be no surprise, but I informed him that the UCs have a large Asian population, and still more students, at least at UCSD, went to Europe for study abroad.
Like I said earlier, I’m in good company.
At the meeting basically said the standard “don’t make yourself stand out” stuff and told us how to handle ourselves if we were to get arrested. The consulate would provide a list of attorneys to help, but if someone’s incarcerated, he or she will be visited every quarter by a member of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.
Someone asked how serious jaywalking in Hong Kong is, and the representative said that she didn’t know, but it would be safer to cross at the crosswalks and she herself prefers to wait a couple seconds after the light turns green to cross, allowing those running red lights to do so.
An hour after that, my faculty had a quick session (that lasted an hour and a half) on how to register for classes. It was really complicated, but more on that later. Off to class now!
The day was opened with all of the non-local (mainland Chinese and international) students gathered in the assembly hall of Main Building. My HKU buddy informed me that, as that building is one of the oldest and most architecturally significant edifices on campus, important events are held there to give a good first impression of the university.
Unfortunately, since the hall is so old, it’s also quite small, and many of the students could not fit. They were directed to nearby rooms where the presentation was broadcasted live to them. What happened at that first event were mostly formalities—introduction of the administration, various resources available to us, and a plug for the Chinese-language courses they would be offering to us in the coming semesters.
As a bad sign, I couldn’t understand a significant amount of what they were saying. Though while listening closely I could gather 75-90%, I’m still uncomfortable with the current degree of comprehension. But I’ll get to language in another post.
About those Chinese-language courses, I’ve decided to take Cantonese for Foreigners 1, as I have a pretty good Mandarin foundation, and figured that it could be good to get as local as possible. I think that the biggest thing I’ve found here is how profoundly bad my Cantonese is. And though a Canadian exchange student “called shenanigans” on me for not speaking Cantonese, she was highly uninformed of my upbringing, but I’ll talk about that more in that upcoming language post.
They provided us with a “light lunch” which was actually quite filling with three half-sandwiches, an apple, and a juice box. At that point most non-local students were done with their orientation; however, American students had an additional meeting with a representative from the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.
That meeting started with her asking where everyone was from. Starting with California, about a third of the American students raised their hands. The other two thirds were from various places scattered around the country. As many of the students from California (undoubtedly mostly University of California students) were Asian Americans, my roommate mentioned that night that Asian American students being a big chunk of students studying abroad in Asia should be no surprise, but I informed him that the UCs have a large Asian population, and still more students, at least at UCSD, went to Europe for study abroad.
Like I said earlier, I’m in good company.
At the meeting basically said the standard “don’t make yourself stand out” stuff and told us how to handle ourselves if we were to get arrested. The consulate would provide a list of attorneys to help, but if someone’s incarcerated, he or she will be visited every quarter by a member of the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong.
Someone asked how serious jaywalking in Hong Kong is, and the representative said that she didn’t know, but it would be safer to cross at the crosswalks and she herself prefers to wait a couple seconds after the light turns green to cross, allowing those running red lights to do so.
An hour after that, my faculty had a quick session (that lasted an hour and a half) on how to register for classes. It was really complicated, but more on that later. Off to class now!
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Ugly World
So I’ve been talking about the prototypical stereotypical “Ugly American” over several posts prior. Loud and obnoxious, drinking to no end, the “Ugly American” was what we were told not to be. We were told that the rest of the world frowns on such seemingly senseless actions, but after what happened last night, not only do I have doubts about how inclusive the “Ugly American” is of Americans and exclusive of everyone else, but also I feel I sense a common humanity among the people of the world.
Last night was something of an unofficial gathering of the HKU international exchange students. We were to meet at HKU’s west gate and then venture over to the party area of Central by bus. People from the Sasoon Road Campus, myself included, met earlier and then trucked over to west gate together. There we found a small crowd of international students.
And that was my intention in going to this get together. As previously explained, I’m not a huge fan of drinking. I still have never been drunk, never hungover, and the most I’ve drunk at one time was one-and-a-half limoncellos in Sorrento, Italy. In short, I made no effort to disguise the fact that I was there primarily to meet-and-greet other exchange students.
I met a lot of people from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Europe mostly. It was a diverse group. I thought the gathering would be very casual—you know, maybe a drink or two—nothing big and explosive.
I’m not against drinking personally, despite what my actions seem to suggest. I always thought that I was more of a glass-of-wine-with-dinner kind of guy over a let’s-go-drink-the-night-away one. I don’t drink also because in the United States the appropriate age is 21, whereas most everywhere else it hovers around 18, as most people know.
And the little get-together was going great. The crowd began growing and before we knew it, we probably numbered in the low hundreds. I met more people than I could ever possibly remember (a sentiment shared by many of those students), and before I knew it we were being herded onto a double-decker bus.
Now trying to get some hundred people onto a single bus at a single bus stop is kind of a nightmare. First, we were on a two-lane road with blind curves, so we stopped all traffic behind the bus as we filed our way onto it. To make matters worse, most of us, having just arrived from our home countries used coins to pay the fare. Locals prefer to use so-called Octopus cards, which work like rechargeable, good-as-cash gift cards all around Hong Kong, that are way more convenient for purchasing as well as public transportation. Unfortunately, taxis only take cash, but that’s beside the point.
When all of us managed to get on the bus, over twenty of us didn’t have seats. Standing in the aisle, most of us used this highly claustrophobic time to acquaint ourselves with more people with varying levels of success.
We got off in Lai Kwai Fong in Central, which pretty much serves as Hong Kong’s party district, and the drinking began. Some people easily spent hundreds of Hong Kong dollars on drinks (as the prices at the bars were absolutely ridiculous). Most of us went onto this small pedestrian side street where there was a 7-Eleven, which was much, much cheaper than the bars, of course. Whereas the bars had loud music, the pedestrian street had lower volumes of it, allowing us to keep introducing ourselves and such.
I only had one beer the whole night, but as the night went on and the drinking began showing its effects, it became less a night about meeting other people and more about having drunken fun, I guess. And while the Americans drank to the effect of the “Ugly American” stereotype, others of different nationalities drank to that same effect. The taxis for hire were patrolling the streets for business as the partying went on and on and on.
While they remained in a drunken stupor, I became bored, being completely sober and all. Ugly American? I couldn’t help thinking that that classification is more deserving of the title “Ugly World.” As the night went on, I split a taxi back to my hall with two other people. I pronounced Sasoon more properly, with rounded lips and a French “u” for the “oo” of Sasoon and we found our way back easily.
The night was over and I was ready to go to sleep. And for the record, I still don’t see the point.
Last night was something of an unofficial gathering of the HKU international exchange students. We were to meet at HKU’s west gate and then venture over to the party area of Central by bus. People from the Sasoon Road Campus, myself included, met earlier and then trucked over to west gate together. There we found a small crowd of international students.
And that was my intention in going to this get together. As previously explained, I’m not a huge fan of drinking. I still have never been drunk, never hungover, and the most I’ve drunk at one time was one-and-a-half limoncellos in Sorrento, Italy. In short, I made no effort to disguise the fact that I was there primarily to meet-and-greet other exchange students.
I met a lot of people from Australia, Canada, the United States, and Europe mostly. It was a diverse group. I thought the gathering would be very casual—you know, maybe a drink or two—nothing big and explosive.
I’m not against drinking personally, despite what my actions seem to suggest. I always thought that I was more of a glass-of-wine-with-dinner kind of guy over a let’s-go-drink-the-night-away one. I don’t drink also because in the United States the appropriate age is 21, whereas most everywhere else it hovers around 18, as most people know.
And the little get-together was going great. The crowd began growing and before we knew it, we probably numbered in the low hundreds. I met more people than I could ever possibly remember (a sentiment shared by many of those students), and before I knew it we were being herded onto a double-decker bus.
Now trying to get some hundred people onto a single bus at a single bus stop is kind of a nightmare. First, we were on a two-lane road with blind curves, so we stopped all traffic behind the bus as we filed our way onto it. To make matters worse, most of us, having just arrived from our home countries used coins to pay the fare. Locals prefer to use so-called Octopus cards, which work like rechargeable, good-as-cash gift cards all around Hong Kong, that are way more convenient for purchasing as well as public transportation. Unfortunately, taxis only take cash, but that’s beside the point.
When all of us managed to get on the bus, over twenty of us didn’t have seats. Standing in the aisle, most of us used this highly claustrophobic time to acquaint ourselves with more people with varying levels of success.
We got off in Lai Kwai Fong in Central, which pretty much serves as Hong Kong’s party district, and the drinking began. Some people easily spent hundreds of Hong Kong dollars on drinks (as the prices at the bars were absolutely ridiculous). Most of us went onto this small pedestrian side street where there was a 7-Eleven, which was much, much cheaper than the bars, of course. Whereas the bars had loud music, the pedestrian street had lower volumes of it, allowing us to keep introducing ourselves and such.
I only had one beer the whole night, but as the night went on and the drinking began showing its effects, it became less a night about meeting other people and more about having drunken fun, I guess. And while the Americans drank to the effect of the “Ugly American” stereotype, others of different nationalities drank to that same effect. The taxis for hire were patrolling the streets for business as the partying went on and on and on.
While they remained in a drunken stupor, I became bored, being completely sober and all. Ugly American? I couldn’t help thinking that that classification is more deserving of the title “Ugly World.” As the night went on, I split a taxi back to my hall with two other people. I pronounced Sasoon more properly, with rounded lips and a French “u” for the “oo” of Sasoon and we found our way back easily.
The night was over and I was ready to go to sleep. And for the record, I still don’t see the point.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
A Friend or Two
At the moment, I’m not advertising that I’m keeping this blog to my new HKU acquaintances and friends. I intend for it to be read by people back in the states who would be more open to taking what I say with an open mind and realizing that I intend my narratives to be a reflection of my raw thoughts and impressions and less a forum for bias and slant (though I realize the words are often the same for both purposes). Now I’ve tried searching my name in Google and this blog pops up pretty close to the top; I’ve posted the address in my Facebook profile, so maybe they will find it. At that point I shall not ask them not to read it, but hopefully my thoughts will be understood as thoughts to which I am entitled, whether positive or not.
So I arrived at my hall in the late evening and ended up going to bed at 9:30 (Hong Kong time). I didn’t have a pillow and I didn’t need blankets. I felt so alone in my hall those first few days for a few reasons. As I arrived at the beginning of the weekend, I was not able to register for Internet until Monday, which left me without an outside world and a way to reach back to California. Though all of the local students had already moved in, they were seldom visible as they were on the second day of their ten-day hall orientation. (Long, right?)
I met a few of them, as I mentioned before. More recently I met another who went by the notable name of 99, pronounced “nine, nine” and not “ninety-nine.” He was friendly, telling me how to use the copy machine and something else that has, at the present, slipped my mind. Another I met in a hallway but he continued onto his room without allowing me to introduce myself. Fair enough.
I slept okay. It was humid and hot, ceasing little in intensity at night, and as harsh in the late evening as during the early afternoon. I must have woken up four times during the night, each time forcing myself to go back to sleep. Finally at 6:30 a.m. I woke up hungry, knowing that little, if anything would be open. However, I knew there was a 7-Eleven on the ground floor that I had seen coming in, so I went to go find it again. Instead I was met by the night guard who spoke to be in precipitous Cantonese. I replied in English and she realized she was faced with one of those students.
Now I expected that since classes were in English, students would speak good English, and that staff members would speak decent English as well. But similar to the woman checking me into my room some ten hours prior, I found myself struggling with, the night guard was of poor English competence. I would not judge these staff members so harshly if I were going to a school whose primary language were not English, but I was not, so I expected some English.
She managed to get out a “Hungry?” while pointing to her stomach.
“Yes,” I answered properly and deliberately for maximum comprehension.
She led me outside and pointed at the 7-Eleven. “7, 10,” she said explaining the hours. Then she faced me towards the restaurant and said “7 and half, 9 and half.”
I thanked her for her explanation, though the hours were pretty conspicuously posted on the signs outside both establishments. There was also a vending machine there (that only took big coins) and a Hang Seng Bank ATM, where I tried my HSBC card at with successful results. I went back up to the fourteenth floor of my hall. It was still as humid as ever.
I came back down in an hour to eat at the restaurant (locals style it “canteen”) that was meant for HKU students and staff pointed out earlier. I went down the steps into the restaurant and ordered some Congee (like oatmeal but with rice instead of oats) which came with a side of noodles. It was a lot of food and of decent quality for $16 Hong Kong Dollars (about $2 USD).
As I was eating three students came in with some very American clothing. They had advertising contributors to specific events (such as Honda being the presenting sponsor of the Los Angeles Marathon). One of the students had a blocky “M” on the front of his T-shirt that looked more like an upside-down “W” than a right-side-up “M” and I thought Michigan (as in the university).
After the ordered their food and sat down, I introduced myself and subsequently moved to their table. It turned out that they are from Minnesota (hence “M”) and had gotten to Hong Kong a few days before I had.
It was good to meet some other international students. The sounds of Cantonese were all too easy for me to zone out (as I have trouble really understanding the language at the moment), so it was easy for me to ignore the local students all together.
They told me how they were out partying practically every night prior and were trying to figure out where to go that day. And for that I could admire their boldness. I feel utterly lost when I venture into Hong Kong outside of the university (still as I write this post) and think that they were either being very brave or very stupid for going around town partying. I feel that I would have trouble finding my way back to my dorm after dark, and I don’t even know how it would turn out if I were even partially incapacitated.
So I found out that two of them were from the Faculty of Social Science (like me) whereas the third was actually a student from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (which I would find out is pretty far away).
I left on basis that I was going to meet my HKU buddy for that tour she had offered me for that day. I went up to my room and called her, leaving her a message. When she didn’t call back, I just lay in bed watching movies that I had brought from home on my laptop.
She ended up calling at 1 p.m. asking me to meet her at main campus at 4. I was to take minibus 8 or 28 to get there, but I had no idea how the buses operate in Hong Kong, how long it takes to get to main campus, nor even what main campus looked like. So when the bus arrived I verified that it would be going by HKU in broken Mandarin, deposited my coins, and sat down.
Like other buses, you have to ring the bell (or pull the cord) to tell the driver to stop, but out of all the minibuses (which seat 16 and are painted a dirty mint green) I have taken, only one has had some non-verbal way to alert the driver. As I found out, you have to verbally ask the driver to stop. Those little buses are loud and I continue to be impressed that the driver can hear the requests over the angry sounds of the engine.
The journey went smoothly (though the minibus did not) and I arrived at HKU main campus and descended the bus at the proper stop (with the driver’s help) like half an hour before my buddy was set to arrive.
Waiting under this awning spanning the path of the West Entrance, the humidity was as present as ever and I could feel the presence of the sun beating down on me without the direct light of the sun. Bored, I studied the campus map in front of me. It looked pretty simple. There didn’t look to be too many buildings. The roads and pedestrian paths among the buildings didn’t appear straight, though, as the campus is on the side of a hill.
When my buddy arrived, I was relieved to start moving again. She tried to call me by my Chinese name (which very few people know) but I insisted on my English name. I asked her how to properly pronounce her name, but she misunderstood my question to be inquiring her English name. So she explained that she goes by her Chinese name. I rephrased my question and she taught me how to say it properly, afterwards commenting on my poor Cantonese ability, to which I just laughed.
She showed me around campus, which was bigger than I imagined. The map was totally useless to those not acquainted with the campus, and I found myself gawking at the presence of the almost senseless routes that we needed to take to get to where we wanted to go. There was no way that I was going to remember this all right away. I was shown where the Global Lounge is (from where I’m writing this now), as well as the location of my Faculty and Main Library, among other buildings and locations.
Still afraid of getting lost, augmented by the almost illogical campus layout, I ventured straight back to my hall, where I knew what floor I live on and from the elevator where my room is. And there I stayed (except for bathroom breaks and showers) until the next morning. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go down to the canteen and all (though I truly didn’t) but I wasn’t hungry for dinner, and something about the humidity in my room relaxed me as I went to bed at 7.
I still don’t know how to pronounce my HKU buddy’s name properly.
Just to note, I just changed the time zone of my blog, which incidentally affected previous posts. As a result, any posts that I didn't publish in Hong Kong are slightly off in time and date.
So I arrived at my hall in the late evening and ended up going to bed at 9:30 (Hong Kong time). I didn’t have a pillow and I didn’t need blankets. I felt so alone in my hall those first few days for a few reasons. As I arrived at the beginning of the weekend, I was not able to register for Internet until Monday, which left me without an outside world and a way to reach back to California. Though all of the local students had already moved in, they were seldom visible as they were on the second day of their ten-day hall orientation. (Long, right?)
I met a few of them, as I mentioned before. More recently I met another who went by the notable name of 99, pronounced “nine, nine” and not “ninety-nine.” He was friendly, telling me how to use the copy machine and something else that has, at the present, slipped my mind. Another I met in a hallway but he continued onto his room without allowing me to introduce myself. Fair enough.
I slept okay. It was humid and hot, ceasing little in intensity at night, and as harsh in the late evening as during the early afternoon. I must have woken up four times during the night, each time forcing myself to go back to sleep. Finally at 6:30 a.m. I woke up hungry, knowing that little, if anything would be open. However, I knew there was a 7-Eleven on the ground floor that I had seen coming in, so I went to go find it again. Instead I was met by the night guard who spoke to be in precipitous Cantonese. I replied in English and she realized she was faced with one of those students.
Now I expected that since classes were in English, students would speak good English, and that staff members would speak decent English as well. But similar to the woman checking me into my room some ten hours prior, I found myself struggling with, the night guard was of poor English competence. I would not judge these staff members so harshly if I were going to a school whose primary language were not English, but I was not, so I expected some English.
She managed to get out a “Hungry?” while pointing to her stomach.
“Yes,” I answered properly and deliberately for maximum comprehension.
She led me outside and pointed at the 7-Eleven. “7, 10,” she said explaining the hours. Then she faced me towards the restaurant and said “7 and half, 9 and half.”
I thanked her for her explanation, though the hours were pretty conspicuously posted on the signs outside both establishments. There was also a vending machine there (that only took big coins) and a Hang Seng Bank ATM, where I tried my HSBC card at with successful results. I went back up to the fourteenth floor of my hall. It was still as humid as ever.
I came back down in an hour to eat at the restaurant (locals style it “canteen”) that was meant for HKU students and staff pointed out earlier. I went down the steps into the restaurant and ordered some Congee (like oatmeal but with rice instead of oats) which came with a side of noodles. It was a lot of food and of decent quality for $16 Hong Kong Dollars (about $2 USD).
As I was eating three students came in with some very American clothing. They had advertising contributors to specific events (such as Honda being the presenting sponsor of the Los Angeles Marathon). One of the students had a blocky “M” on the front of his T-shirt that looked more like an upside-down “W” than a right-side-up “M” and I thought Michigan (as in the university).
After the ordered their food and sat down, I introduced myself and subsequently moved to their table. It turned out that they are from Minnesota (hence “M”) and had gotten to Hong Kong a few days before I had.
It was good to meet some other international students. The sounds of Cantonese were all too easy for me to zone out (as I have trouble really understanding the language at the moment), so it was easy for me to ignore the local students all together.
They told me how they were out partying practically every night prior and were trying to figure out where to go that day. And for that I could admire their boldness. I feel utterly lost when I venture into Hong Kong outside of the university (still as I write this post) and think that they were either being very brave or very stupid for going around town partying. I feel that I would have trouble finding my way back to my dorm after dark, and I don’t even know how it would turn out if I were even partially incapacitated.
So I found out that two of them were from the Faculty of Social Science (like me) whereas the third was actually a student from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (which I would find out is pretty far away).
I left on basis that I was going to meet my HKU buddy for that tour she had offered me for that day. I went up to my room and called her, leaving her a message. When she didn’t call back, I just lay in bed watching movies that I had brought from home on my laptop.
She ended up calling at 1 p.m. asking me to meet her at main campus at 4. I was to take minibus 8 or 28 to get there, but I had no idea how the buses operate in Hong Kong, how long it takes to get to main campus, nor even what main campus looked like. So when the bus arrived I verified that it would be going by HKU in broken Mandarin, deposited my coins, and sat down.
Like other buses, you have to ring the bell (or pull the cord) to tell the driver to stop, but out of all the minibuses (which seat 16 and are painted a dirty mint green) I have taken, only one has had some non-verbal way to alert the driver. As I found out, you have to verbally ask the driver to stop. Those little buses are loud and I continue to be impressed that the driver can hear the requests over the angry sounds of the engine.
The journey went smoothly (though the minibus did not) and I arrived at HKU main campus and descended the bus at the proper stop (with the driver’s help) like half an hour before my buddy was set to arrive.
Waiting under this awning spanning the path of the West Entrance, the humidity was as present as ever and I could feel the presence of the sun beating down on me without the direct light of the sun. Bored, I studied the campus map in front of me. It looked pretty simple. There didn’t look to be too many buildings. The roads and pedestrian paths among the buildings didn’t appear straight, though, as the campus is on the side of a hill.
When my buddy arrived, I was relieved to start moving again. She tried to call me by my Chinese name (which very few people know) but I insisted on my English name. I asked her how to properly pronounce her name, but she misunderstood my question to be inquiring her English name. So she explained that she goes by her Chinese name. I rephrased my question and she taught me how to say it properly, afterwards commenting on my poor Cantonese ability, to which I just laughed.
She showed me around campus, which was bigger than I imagined. The map was totally useless to those not acquainted with the campus, and I found myself gawking at the presence of the almost senseless routes that we needed to take to get to where we wanted to go. There was no way that I was going to remember this all right away. I was shown where the Global Lounge is (from where I’m writing this now), as well as the location of my Faculty and Main Library, among other buildings and locations.
Still afraid of getting lost, augmented by the almost illogical campus layout, I ventured straight back to my hall, where I knew what floor I live on and from the elevator where my room is. And there I stayed (except for bathroom breaks and showers) until the next morning. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go down to the canteen and all (though I truly didn’t) but I wasn’t hungry for dinner, and something about the humidity in my room relaxed me as I went to bed at 7.
I still don’t know how to pronounce my HKU buddy’s name properly.
Just to note, I just changed the time zone of my blog, which incidentally affected previous posts. As a result, any posts that I didn't publish in Hong Kong are slightly off in time and date.
6 Sasoon Road
This is my dorm room and hall building. I have a low bed on my half with a relatively hard mattress and slept without a pillow for several nights. 
There is an industrial ceiling fan as well, which helped mitigate the heat and humidity of the nights before the air conditioning. The outside of my hall, Lee Hysan, as well as the surrounding halls is covered with bamboo scaffolding and green mesh. So until that comes down in late October, my views (which are really great from the fourteenth floor) are through that green mesh.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Welcome to Hong Kong
I am so utterly confused.
When I landed on Friday, August 21, I just wanted to get to my dorm as quickly as possible. From the airplane Hong Kong looked beautiful, and from the ground it still does. I took the airplane express train to Central Hong Kong, where the taxi pick up area was located underground.
I waited there for half an hour as the taxis slowly came and went. In the meantime, I began sweating up a storm as I realized how humid it really was. Even inside the stations, which I believe were somewhat air-conditioned, I was a precipitating mess carrying around my bags. I just wanted to get to my hall.
Just about 20 hours before then, my parents dropped me off in the airport. We didn’t weigh my one suitcase, so my dad brought an extra duffle bag in case I needed to repack to avoid the $150 over-weight fee. I could bring up to two pieces of luggage weighing less than 50 pounds each, but not one weighing up to 100 pounds. It turned out that my suitcase weighed almost eighty pounds, so it was good my dad brought the extra bag.
Security was on high alert that day, so I had to wait through winding Disneyland-style lines with the other travelers trying to get into the terminal. Before then I said my goodbyes to my parents, and then I was alone and off on my way. The next time I would see home or my immediate family would be in December.
Finally my taxi came up to the gate. I entered after my bags were in the trunk and we were off. He asked where I was headed in Cantonese. I replied “6 Sasoon Road, the University of Hong Kong.” Unfortunately, I mispronounced “Sasoon,” which I said with an “oo” like “moon” as I was taught. However, as Anglicization is an aid more than a solution, the way the “oo” of “Sasoon” is pronounced is closer to the French “u” as in “tu.”
So he misunderstood me. I ended up showing him the cheat card that the university provided me with that explicitly said, “Please take me to the following hall at the University of Hong Kong at 6 Sasoon Road: Lee Hysan.”
Then he was like, “Oh Sas[French “u”]n Road!” As we emerged from the underground pick-up place, I couldn’t help but notice the roads sprawling upwards, the streets visibly twisting back and forth among themselves—and it wasn’t even a freeway. These flights of roads gave me the impression that most of Hong Kong Island was like that, and I quickly became hesitant to go exploring the city by myself. Now most people tell me I have a good sense of direction, but this sight just intimidated the hell out of me and at that point I just wanted to sleep.
We drove from the downtown district up and around the west side of the island, into Pok Fu Lam District where I couldn’t help but noticing the propensity of Hong Kongers to finish their buildings in tile. While not really noticeable in pictures, most residential buildings are covered in small ceramic tile squares of varying colors.
As we approached my hall I was shocked. I was still in a surreal mind state, but the hall was nothing like what I expected. The turn-around driveway was partially under construction and all the buildings surrounded it had bamboo-constructed scaffolding and green covering.
I walked in and found an unexpected language barrier with the woman who was helping me check in. I was under the impression that since classes were held in English, most of the staff would be competent as well. Well there’s an expectation thrown out the window.
I went up to my room on the fourteenth floor, which has great views (albeit covered by green mesh netting) of the west entrance to Victoria Harbor. I also found a couple hall mates to introduce myself to. One was really nice and one was really not so nice (like students elsewhere).
That night, I finished up by calling my mother (at 6 a.m. pacific daylight time) and my HKU exchange buddy, who offered me a tour of campus the day after I arrived. The first picked up, relieved that I had gotten there on time and safely (as there is only one SFO-HKG flight a day and my flight to SFO from LAX was delayed by almost two hours). The latter didn’t pick up, but as I will explain, I still got my tour later.
That night—no air conditioning, fully humid with just a fan and five open windows—I went to sleep, apprehensive about what was to come. My thoughts drifted on, as always.
Lesson learned—pronouncing Anglicized Hong Kong names and places with an American accent won’t get me very far.
Welcome to Hong Kong, James.
When I landed on Friday, August 21, I just wanted to get to my dorm as quickly as possible. From the airplane Hong Kong looked beautiful, and from the ground it still does. I took the airplane express train to Central Hong Kong, where the taxi pick up area was located underground.
I waited there for half an hour as the taxis slowly came and went. In the meantime, I began sweating up a storm as I realized how humid it really was. Even inside the stations, which I believe were somewhat air-conditioned, I was a precipitating mess carrying around my bags. I just wanted to get to my hall.
Just about 20 hours before then, my parents dropped me off in the airport. We didn’t weigh my one suitcase, so my dad brought an extra duffle bag in case I needed to repack to avoid the $150 over-weight fee. I could bring up to two pieces of luggage weighing less than 50 pounds each, but not one weighing up to 100 pounds. It turned out that my suitcase weighed almost eighty pounds, so it was good my dad brought the extra bag.
Security was on high alert that day, so I had to wait through winding Disneyland-style lines with the other travelers trying to get into the terminal. Before then I said my goodbyes to my parents, and then I was alone and off on my way. The next time I would see home or my immediate family would be in December.
Finally my taxi came up to the gate. I entered after my bags were in the trunk and we were off. He asked where I was headed in Cantonese. I replied “6 Sasoon Road, the University of Hong Kong.” Unfortunately, I mispronounced “Sasoon,” which I said with an “oo” like “moon” as I was taught. However, as Anglicization is an aid more than a solution, the way the “oo” of “Sasoon” is pronounced is closer to the French “u” as in “tu.”
So he misunderstood me. I ended up showing him the cheat card that the university provided me with that explicitly said, “Please take me to the following hall at the University of Hong Kong at 6 Sasoon Road: Lee Hysan.”
Then he was like, “Oh Sas[French “u”]n Road!” As we emerged from the underground pick-up place, I couldn’t help but notice the roads sprawling upwards, the streets visibly twisting back and forth among themselves—and it wasn’t even a freeway. These flights of roads gave me the impression that most of Hong Kong Island was like that, and I quickly became hesitant to go exploring the city by myself. Now most people tell me I have a good sense of direction, but this sight just intimidated the hell out of me and at that point I just wanted to sleep.
We drove from the downtown district up and around the west side of the island, into Pok Fu Lam District where I couldn’t help but noticing the propensity of Hong Kongers to finish their buildings in tile. While not really noticeable in pictures, most residential buildings are covered in small ceramic tile squares of varying colors.
As we approached my hall I was shocked. I was still in a surreal mind state, but the hall was nothing like what I expected. The turn-around driveway was partially under construction and all the buildings surrounded it had bamboo-constructed scaffolding and green covering.
I walked in and found an unexpected language barrier with the woman who was helping me check in. I was under the impression that since classes were held in English, most of the staff would be competent as well. Well there’s an expectation thrown out the window.
I went up to my room on the fourteenth floor, which has great views (albeit covered by green mesh netting) of the west entrance to Victoria Harbor. I also found a couple hall mates to introduce myself to. One was really nice and one was really not so nice (like students elsewhere).
That night, I finished up by calling my mother (at 6 a.m. pacific daylight time) and my HKU exchange buddy, who offered me a tour of campus the day after I arrived. The first picked up, relieved that I had gotten there on time and safely (as there is only one SFO-HKG flight a day and my flight to SFO from LAX was delayed by almost two hours). The latter didn’t pick up, but as I will explain, I still got my tour later.
That night—no air conditioning, fully humid with just a fan and five open windows—I went to sleep, apprehensive about what was to come. My thoughts drifted on, as always.
Lesson learned—pronouncing Anglicized Hong Kong names and places with an American accent won’t get me very far.
Welcome to Hong Kong, James.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Some Notes Before I Go
Tomorrow, I leave for Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong, where I will spend the next four months studying and sightseeing. I’ll leave for Los Angeles International Airport at 6 a.m. for my first leg to San Francisco. From there I have a thirteen-and-half hour flight direct to Hong Kong. I’m all packed but not necessarily ready to go.
I’m still nervous as ever as I anticipate my long journey and longer transition. But already I am confident that I will quickly make Hong Kong my home away from home. At UCSD I served as an American student to help orient international students and in the same manner, HKU has set me up with a Hong Kong student to help me, now the international student, find my way. While I’ll mosey my way to the university from the airport, she has graciously offered to show me the campus the day after.
I arrive on August 21 and have orientation the following Friday, August 28. Class begins on September 1. Maybe by then I’ll get used to British English orthography and the metric system. Surely by then I’ll have bought blankets and a pillow.
Next time, I’ll be writing from Hong Kong.
I’m still nervous as ever as I anticipate my long journey and longer transition. But already I am confident that I will quickly make Hong Kong my home away from home. At UCSD I served as an American student to help orient international students and in the same manner, HKU has set me up with a Hong Kong student to help me, now the international student, find my way. While I’ll mosey my way to the university from the airport, she has graciously offered to show me the campus the day after.
I arrive on August 21 and have orientation the following Friday, August 28. Class begins on September 1. Maybe by then I’ll get used to British English orthography and the metric system. Surely by then I’ll have bought blankets and a pillow.
Next time, I’ll be writing from Hong Kong.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Packing for the Trip of a Lifetime
With just over a week left before departure, it seemed time to pack up. I guess if I needed anything, I would have the time to buy it. But honestly, I’m a little confused.
I try not to take for granted that some things are the same here in California and there in Hong Kong. Some things I know are different—I bought some British electrical plugs; the standard paper size is a little longer and a little skinnier than here because of letters they have sent me. Some things I know are the same—most appliances will use Arabic numerals rather than traditional Chinese characters. Some things I’m just not sure about—I’m not bringing sheets because I have no idea what size their beds are.
Some things I want to stay the same—I’ve packed my own binders with a three-hole punch because I feel secure in the standard American binder size.
I’ve decided to pack relatively light. I’ll have one large roller (that I believe has to be kept under 50 pounds) and my computer backpack. Hopefully that won’t be too much to carry. When I land, I have to take on the airport express to Hong Kong Central Station and then a taxi to my dorm hall near campus.
I’m arriving in the evening, but hopefully not after nightfall. My uncle told me that HKU isn’t in the best neighborhood—but I’m not sure whether he meant aesthetically or crime-wise (thought I think he meant the first).
Since I’m not bringing bed sheets, hopefully somewhere to buy them won’t be too far.
I try not to take for granted that some things are the same here in California and there in Hong Kong. Some things I know are different—I bought some British electrical plugs; the standard paper size is a little longer and a little skinnier than here because of letters they have sent me. Some things I know are the same—most appliances will use Arabic numerals rather than traditional Chinese characters. Some things I’m just not sure about—I’m not bringing sheets because I have no idea what size their beds are.
Some things I want to stay the same—I’ve packed my own binders with a three-hole punch because I feel secure in the standard American binder size.
I’ve decided to pack relatively light. I’ll have one large roller (that I believe has to be kept under 50 pounds) and my computer backpack. Hopefully that won’t be too much to carry. When I land, I have to take on the airport express to Hong Kong Central Station and then a taxi to my dorm hall near campus.
I’m arriving in the evening, but hopefully not after nightfall. My uncle told me that HKU isn’t in the best neighborhood—but I’m not sure whether he meant aesthetically or crime-wise (thought I think he meant the first).
Since I’m not bringing bed sheets, hopefully somewhere to buy them won’t be too far.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
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.
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.
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