L.A.S.E.R.S, DiD, Mid-Terms, Halfway Point

Listening to Lupe Fiasco I am remembering how much I miss home.  I would bob my head up and down walking to and from Lot 1 everyday, that or Kanye's new album.  Also I've hardly been able to catch a song from Lupe's new album L.A.S.E.R.S. "Things I've Never Said" is a real good song and keeps with the traditional Lupe.  Anyway I've been surfing the Internet looking for a website to listen to it, hardly fruitful.  So I decided to blog.

We took a nice little field trip for my Entrepreneurship class last Thursday to Dialogues in the Dark.  At first I expected it to be a secret revealing, mushy, team building exercise, as if I needed to go through anymore of those.  To my surprise it ended up  being much better, and somewhat frustrating.  We were literally put into a pitch black building that simulated walks through a park, street, movie theater, and bar.  Our guide for the event was a blind man that lost his sight when he was about 27. You really couldn't see your hand in front of your face. 

The first was the park,  which was interesting because the longer it lasted the more sounds I could hear. We could feel the ground, trees, leaves, and water, strangely it all felt much different in the dark like you had to gather more information with just one of your senses and then had to process what it was.  I found a bench and guessed it could fit about four people, quickly people were swinging with their sticks trying to find the bench.  It turns out it was much too small for four people but I was determined not to look like a fool so I had about half a butt on there.  It ended up fitting four so I don't care. Then we walked down a hall into a busy street, with all sorts of sounds and stuff.  I accidentally crossed a busy road, but there weren't any cars so I wasn't concerned where I was wondering. I actually began to understand everything so don't take me for a complete failure.

By now I was getting frustrated, my eyes hurt, and I couldn't keep them closed because it felt like I lost some of my balance.  Thank goodness the next area was a movie theater, but they only played sound, music actually, but it was nice and I think I took a nap during that.  Lastly, we made it to the bar where we could buy some soft drinks and sit around and chat with our guide.  After getting to know him we had to re-adjust our eyes to the light, it was much harder than expected.  And it made me really tired.

Mid-Term projects are all the buzz nowadays in HKBU some are exams, some are group projects, and others are solo projects.  No matter the format, I'm not really interested in any of them.  It is extremely difficult to study here, I've at least printed out all the slides, I just have to read them over again ten or twelve more times.  It should go pretty well.

In about a week or so it will be exactly the halfway mark of the semester.  This has made me wonder what my reaction to my return to the States will be like.  I think it is going to take me a little bit to figure out I am back with my family and my girlfriend.  It'll be just like it was when I first got to Hong Kong, unbelievable.  I have met some incredibly cool people here.  I'm excited to get back home, if I could just get like 3 days to a week visit to Maumee I think I would be all set to make it to May 24 much easier. 

We've made it halfway though so at least we know we can make it the rest of the way, it makes me feel good I can say that.

But for now a healthy subscription of Lupe Fiasco and instant Udon noodles should do me just fine.

Everyday Life in Hong Kong and Pigeon-Napping!

Okay it has been a few weeks since the Philippines and due to the massive amounts of money I spent there, lately I have been living realy Hong Kongy.  Classes are going well, actually we had a presentation in Supply Chain Management that we did very well with.  Chinese presentations are extremely bizarre.  After the presentation we asked questions for them and they would huddle together to find an answer like 5 minutes later real strange.  I am actually starting to get assignments, projects, and presentations coming up, most of it is group work but I think I'm going to take my tax class on by myself.  Shouldn't be too bad.

We did however make a stop at the Space Musuem here, and let me tell you. Don't Go. Ever.  It is at the same level of 9th grade science projects.  The coolest thing they had was like a gyroscopic bike.  But then we saw this amazing movie about the ocean and stuff and the most incredible part is that Jim Carey narrated it! The Pet Detective himself was telling me about the ocean in Hong Kong.  Anyway that was the best part of the Space Museum by far.  We also got to take a look at the Avenue of Stars which is an exact copy of Hollywood.  We saw stars of people like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Chow Yun Fat and then there were a million others we didn't know.  They did have a giant statue of Bruce Lee which was cool.  Then we finished the night up with a little Outback Steakhouse and a Bloomin' Onion.

 Okay so all that was last weekend.  The week in between was pretty slow, grocery shopping, basketball, I signed up for some Art and Culture courses here: Climate, Innovation, and Creative thinking I'm sort of excited to start those.  On Thursday for Christophe's birthday we tried to go to Hyde but they wouldn't let me in because I was wearing shorts, I never felt so informal in my life, and I felt bad because a lot of us ended up leaving because of me.  However that night my French vocabulary tripled.  I haven't even bothered to try and learn Cantonese it is so much harder to remember.

Friday, last night, we decided to head out toYau Ma Tei to eat some food and hang before heading out.  We walked down a market for a while and I sat at a table mostly because I couldn't keep walking anymore.  It was a good place, there wasn't enough room for tables on the inside so we sat on, basically card tables and little foot stool.  Most restaurants are like this, kinda dirty, almost no english words and they usually laugh at us foreigners, but we like it and usually laugh with them.  We ate and some of our group went out and the other stayed behind to check the market out.  I chose to stay back.  The stuff at the market is real cheap and I almost bought a big bottle of Polo cologne for like 10 bucks but decided against it, stuff is really inexpensive here.  I was crazing a 50 cent milkshake from McDonalds so we went there and I got a Egg McMuffin and a chocolate milkshake.  On our way out we witnessed a man stuff a sleeping pigeon into a McDonald's to go bag. Take it back into McDonald's to show his friend.  The assumptions began, usually based off of stereotypes, was it going to be dinner? A pet? Does McDonald's use pigeon meat? The weird thing was he did it so smoothly and calmly I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time.  Which lead to the conclusion that he and his buddy regularly dine on pigeon. Yum.

Boracay, Philippines

Over Chinese New Year break me and a group of friends traveled to the Philippines.  I was hesistant at first to go there because I've heard of all the bad stories about the place.  However, let it be known that the Philippines is one of the safest places I've been and the people there were incredibly nice.  It took about two planes and bus to get there but it was worth it.  Really the only dangerous place is Manila but we stayed at the airport the whole time on the way there.  The trip there was pretty rough, our first flight was delayed almost 4 hours because there was a problem with the plane (made me feel great) but we also were given HK$ 75 to spend at the food court, which had a Burger King.  I definitely spent all 75 at BK, spicy whopper meal (supersized), angry onions, a croissantwhich and I was full and ready for bed.  Unfortunately the only bed available was an airport bench so I tried my best to take a little nap and I read alot of my book.  When we boarded everybody looked beaten and ready to just get it all over with, that airplane ride kinda sucked.

Okay, so we arrive in Katiclan and chill for a bit untill we boarded the next plane, which was tiny and when we boarded, thats when it first started, the club music.  The Philippine people LOVE listening to club music with it's techno beat.  Anyway, there was fun poppy club music playing on the airplane! Okay other than that, it was a pretty standard hour long flight.

Finally, we get to Manila where we meet this great bus driver named No-No, atleast pronounced like that.  He got us to our ferry in a matter of minutes.  This was our first up close look at the Philippines, there were alot of shacks, people, dogs, cats, trees, and these things called tricycles, oh and Jipnees!  Ticycles are essentially a mo-ped with a customized sidecar basically slapped on the side, they don't look safe at all, but it is the way people get around there.  And then there are the Jipnees, they are the coolest buses I've ever seen.  They have a really low profile roof and they are usually customized as well, most of them were really shiny with a bunch of stickers and of course loud club music playing, they're great.  Anyway, No-No got us to the ferry dock where we had to pay for tickets and an environmental fee. If you are planning to travel to the Philippines, make sure to bring extra cash because there are alot of surprising fees.  Okay, we got on our super crappy boat and headed to Boracay. 

We get out and it is raining :( but that didn't stop us, we hopped on a trike, yes, all six of us packed onto one.  The dude charged us an extra 20 pesos just because of that.  He was cool though, he managed his way to St. Vincent cottages.  Their webpage makes the place look so much better than what it actually was.  Our room was 4 double beds and a bathroom.  The bathroom. . . not what I'm used to, basically what we had was a toilet, sink, and a shower-head stuck in the wall.  There was no actual shower area, if you wanted to take a shower you had to make sure your clothes were out of the way because everything was getting soaked. 

But we made it!

It was beach everyday all day.  We usually laid out in front of this cool restaurant called Epic where we could walk up and get drinks or a little something to eat.  The first night we sat on the beach enjoying some live entertainment and San Miguel.  Astonishingly they were singing more club music, it was actually cool, live interpretations, the male singer tried his best to auto-tune himself, he was good at it too.  We were all really tired and sun soaked so we went back and fell immediately asleep.

Day Two
We were at the beach again, only this time I went to buy a frisbee so we could do something other than lay, alot of the locals were skim boarding, but they were too expensive for me, although I am quite familiar with it.  That night we went to one of the clubs there and it was pretty intense, there were people already on the dance floor when we got there around nine.  Austin and Clement ordered these towering, flaming, drinks to start things off, I was mostly at the table and ended up leaving early and finding my way back on my own.

Day Three
This day was by far the most sunniest and probably the day I got burnt the most.  I believe this night we went out to dinner to a nice little place and called it a night afterwards.

Day Four
This was our last day in Boracay we went on an ATV tour to the tallest point of the island and got excellant pictures of the sunset.  Then we found out about this place called the Jungle Bar and we just had to go.  It was on the other side of the island which is only about 2 kilometers so we got on a trike and headed out.  This place was terrifying it was in the middle of nowhere, but nearly every exchange student was there so it was pretty awesome.  They had bamboo and coconuts hanging everywhere, and if you tried you could hear the waves crashing.  People were swinging, dancing, talking and playing pool, everyone was having a good time.  By this time I had turned into clepto-mode and I spotted a low hanging coconut so I snatched it off the roof and proceeded to bowl using empty beer bottles and my coconut.  Also before we left I jump up pulled a coconut head off the roof and ran away to a trike waiting for us.  It was awesome.

Day Five
In order to make it to our flight we had to take a ferry at about 4:30 am.  Which meant we had to get up at 3:00am after a night at the Jungle Bar. Somehow, we managed to get everybody up and moving.  We hitched a trike and peaced out.  We called No-No before we left to make sure he was waiting for us on the other side.  Once we got there, sure 'nough there he was waiting to pick us up.  A couple of world traveling Americans got on with us as well and offered some great stories and made the bus ride go pretty fast. The ever impressive No-No got us there on time to ride our first plane to Manila.  Our flight was on schedule and everything to off to Manila we went.  We planned to spend a day in Manila, so had to find a hotel.  We arrived at this place that had shotgun toting police officers at every corner, we were scared but we knew this would be the safest place.  The hotel was really nice and that night we went to the Mall of Asia to watch a movie.  The choice. . . Season of the Witch, definitely not one of Nicholas Cage's best. but it was still pretty cool to be there.  After that we went back to our hotel and figured everything out for tomorrow and then fell asleep.  We woke up and headed to the airport to get on the final flight back to Hong Kong.

Cracker Nuts
I almost forgot to mention, at Boracay they have these things called cracker nuts, basically a peanut with some sort of hard shell flavored in BBQ, Cajun, or Abolone.  They were the greatest things I have ever had and I brought a huge pack back with me.  Well that is gone already and apprently they are only sold in the Phillipines since I haven't been able to find them.  Seriously considering ordering some off the internet.

The Philippines were incredible.

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.