Know When To Fold'em

Yesterday, Saturday, January 22, 2011, a big group of us foreigners decided to head out to Macau. This place is the number one casino area in the world, it rakes in more than all the casino areas in North America, COMBINED.  Not only that, the minimum buy-in for a card game was like 300HK these are some high rollers.  Let's start from the a.m., 9:30am.

I woke up at 7:30 am and just layed in my bed really contemplating going, then I fell asleep for about an hour longer, till 8:30.  I decided it was time to get going, so I got on my computer and IM'd people for a while untill it was 9:30, undressed, showerless I decided that I would go, so I threw some clothes on, grabbed my sack pack and passport, filled up my water bottle and headed out to meet everyone.  Even though somebody we knew had a detailed map of where to go, we decided to fallow these other two French people that I've never met.  First we get off two stops before we're suppose to, just because we didn't want to get split up, but half of us only got off the train so it was my group and the two french leaders.  As soon as we get out of the metro onto the streets they turned around three or four times, then we started to walk towards the pier.  Walking there, we past the two stations where we could have gotten off at and that just made me more angry.  We finally get on the ferry and I started to get excited, everybody was taking pictures and wondering how much money we were going to blow.

We got there about noonish so it wasn't time to gamble yet.  Instead, we head north to one of the fortresses.  This trip was also plagued with bad directions, but thanks to McDonalds we were able to get back on the right course.  McDonalds was great by the way, we were so far off the beaten track that I'm pretty sure the workers there have never seen a white person so the whole kitchen staff was staring.  Then we got to the foot of the very high hill and started walking up, and then walked up some stairs, and more stairs.  Once we got to the top the view was impressive.  You could see the whole island, but for the most part, you could only see shacks and a very depressing contrast to what I thought was a nice, fancy place.  We took a few pictures, sat down for a bit and then we were ready to find our way to the Vinetian.

We just rode a couple buses to get there, one that was free.  The Venetian was huge, we walked around a little part of Venice, complete with a river, gondala, and a singing captain.  There were alot of stores but we were just looking.  We got to the casino floor and I've never seen so many slot machines and card tables in my life.  People were just throwing $3,000 on the tables and not caring.  People were carrying stacks of money around.  I tried my hand at some roulette, I bet $20 and lost almost immediately, and then we got these super cool membership cards with our pictures on them.  I took mine holding a fat stack of $10s and $20s with a $500 bill on the outside.  After that we were getting hungry again so we headed to another casino, The Sands.

I ordered some shrimp and pork with spicy vermicilli, delicious as always, and even though it was at a casino restaurant it was fairly cheap.  Christophe and Clement could have done better with their orders, since they accidently got pork stomach, some goopy noodles, and chinese stem sauce.  Ordering awful food is always a possibility here.  Chris paid for my bill since all I had was $100s and $500s, high roller I am.   So it was back to gambling so I can pay Chris back for my meal and essentially get it for free.  I went to a roulette table and stuck in a $50 and lost it real fast, but I couldn't stop and put in a $100 and for a while I stayed around the $130 mark till I went on a run and got $225, exactly enough to break even and pay Chris the $75 for my dinner. I printed my ticket and we got out of there. 

There was still so much to see. We walked through the Lisboa, which has the most LED lights on a building in the world! That one was really nice.  Then we looked at the Wynn and it was the most fanciest thing I have ever seen, and it came with an unusually overpowering smell of Dove handsoap.  That was the last one and we had to run back to the bus to make it to the ferry terminal. We literally ran, and once we got on there we waited another ten minutes.  When we arrived at the terminal, it hit me, it is one o clock in the morning and I still have an hour long ferry ride, and another thirty minute trip back to the dorms.  With that in my mind I thought we would be able to get on a ferry right away.  Couldn't be more wrong.  We had to wait another hour and half.  Desperate, dillusional, and wishing we were still in the casinos, we bought a few beers to lessen the pain of waiting.  Buzzed and oblivioius, we stumbled onto the ferry and immediately passed out.  I woke up groggy and irritated, good thing there was a taxi waiting for us, one of the girls handed him a directions for the university that were in chinese and we speed away.  I got front seat, which is prolly the most scary thing you can do in Hong Kong.  These drivers and professionals, we should have hit so many cars, but he got us there safely.

My How Time Flies

It has been exactly one week since I got here, well in 5 more hours it will be.  So far my brain has all but exploded from all the new stuff I've had to learn.  Like looking the other way while crossing a street, walking on the other side of the side walk, holding my bowl up to my mouth and basically shoveling food in, language barriers, 3 hour long classes, I can keep going but wont.  I think I finally have all my classes together and ready for the semester.  My latest class, Hong Kong Taxation sounds like a blast, but nonetheless it is my only accounting course and I can't wait for it. 

Today me, Austin, Christopher, and Clement all went out to lunch at the Renfrew Seafood Restaurant in the William Lung Bank Building for Business Students (WLB).  When we got there we unfortunately learned that all the menus were in Cantonese, so we basically looked at the pictures and we had a student next to us help with the ordering, it was pretty rough, but everything we ordered turned out to be great.  We also got all of our paper work figured out, applied for a student octopus card, with my hobo picture on it, applied for a gym membership, which we'll have to take classes, and changed yet another class around. Oh well, it is done.

Okay things with my roomate have been pretty quite, he is a good guy definetely but is fairly poor at english so we haven't talked much.  But tonight he and his friends cooked me dinner which was very good and we talked about alot of things and they attempted to teach me a little of their language and I the same.  However, each time I tried to say something they laughed, and so did I.  You have to learn to laugh at yourself here. They were all math, physics, and biology majors and very very studious.  I'm glad I went though my floor isn't as active as some of the floors here but now I know a few more people it'll be a bit easier the next few months.

I'm pretty excited for tonight, a good group of us are heading to a pub nearby, Billy Boozers!  Each time we mention it to a local they always look back with a screwy face, I guess it isn't the best place and is a little dirty but it is a great place just to hang out and play some dice.  Yeah I haven't really started an school work, but that will come in due time.  Last time we went to Boozy Boozy I missed out because of some poorly cooked seafood, apparently it was a great time, but this go around I wont miss out.

Byeeeee

My Address In Hong Kong

For those of you that want to send me packages of Snickers, Fig Newtons, Food, or just a card, here is my student address

Room 307 R North Tower

The Hongkong Bank Foundation Building

Student Residence Halls

5 Baptist University Road,

Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong



First Day of Class

My first and also my last class today was the History and Aesthetics of Chinese Cinema.  It first started out by introducing ourselves, all of the international students anyway, and me being a business guy felt a little out of place with all the VCT, journalism, and humanities folk but I still tried to enjoy it somewhat.  Then we tried to find the key word in "History and Aesthetics of Chinese Cinema," Can you guess it? It wasn't Chinese like I had thought, but instead it was the word "and" because we were discussing the relationship between the history and aesthetics of chinese cinema.  We watched a movie about a middle aged working women that cooked and cleaned and did everything for her whole family, even the father-in-law.  But one day after returning from the store, she found her caring, helpful, mother-in-law fainted in the upstairs room.  We then saw a very abled woman go into panic mode and that was the major discussion of the film.  How the camera angles were and how it somehow made us feel more connected like we were simply the bystanders in the movie.  But now the woman has to figure out how to deal with a very rude father-in-law who apparently doesn't remember anybody except for the middle-aged woman and is also very dependant upon her cooking.  He has also lost all common sense and emotions. Good Luck. 

Anyway, during one of the breaks I walked out because I got a text saying they approved all my courses so now I don't have to worry about this one anymore, prolly gonna drop it.  I might pick up an investing class with Greg and Clement (he is french) they said it was easy and it falls in about at the same time, so hopefully there is still some space.

I don't have class tomorrow (tuesday) so I'll prolly hang with Austin and figure some stuff out.  I might sit in on my economics course on Wednesday since that is one I want to take, just so I don't miss anything too important.  So look for a new post to be up then. Peace and much love.

Flashy Lights

Last night a group of us traveled to central, which is on Hong Kong Island to watch the light show from across the river.  All the buildings are outrageous here and have tons and tons of lights on them.  About four or five of them had really powerful green laser coming out of the top of them and everything was orchestrated to this chinese pop stuff, which was okay.  It only lasted like twenty minutes, but it was okay cuz it got pretty repetitive, but it was something we had to do while we are here.  Afterwards we had to find somewhere to eat. . . there is always the option of eating on the street from one of the crazy street shops but if you're not used to that kind of food yet, it could get ya sick.  We found a spaghetti house and that was exactly something that we were looking for, there were nine of us so we got split up.  I order a soup for starters and a SUPER SEAFOOD DELUXE PASTA. not just a normal seafood pasta.  Everyone order coke except for the french guy, red wine. I know right?  But everybody is really nice and I can't wait to see what this place is going to be like once school starts. Regular students have already started to show up and for the first time last night I saw my roomate. Kinda awkward.