Wesker's the man.

met with one of my project groups yesterday to go ask our prof about his expectations for our major project and incredibly, he outlined the entire thing for us, with examples and everything! what a great start to a great day!
the karaoke singer here is wesker, one of the guys in the full time mba class. he's from hong kong and professes to be a beer drinking champion. he's been trying to get us out on the town with him for a while and we finally managed to get ourselves together last night. everything was his choice - we all wanted to experience a "local" night out in kowloon instead of hitting up lan kwai fong, where everyone's an ex-pat. i hadn't been out to a bar in a couple of weeks and going out wesker style seemed like the perfect start to a long weekend. he even went out and bought weird chinese over-proof booze for the foreign boys, just cause the prof talked about it in class. he's really hilarious - very enthusiastic about everything and a little crazy. i was kind of scared of him at first....
first he took us to a local noodle shop for some lo mein - delish! we basically took over the whole restaurant and turned into total tourists... taking photos of each other, photos of the food, photos of the restaurant... man - after eating on camps everyday, it was a complete revelation that chinese food can be delicious and not super oily! unbelievable.
then on to a local pub for happy hour.carlsberg (of course!) was 2 for 1 which meant it was $2 canadian per beer. wesker and tanya (taiwanese exchange student) ordered them by the dozen and the can appeared in a giant bucket full of ice. it was great! we ordered a whole bunch more right before happy hour finished and didn't have to pay for the rest of the night! there was a huge crew of exchange students from all over the place...and wesker! he was loving it! we learned some hilariously difficult drinking games...one involving dice, the other was kind of a rock, paper, scissors style game, in which you had to predict how many fingers your opponent would put up... check out the photo of dennis and frederik playing! i was terrible.... it was a lot of fun to go out all together, and even better to leave early and actually catch the last train home with 1 minute to spare! it was not fun, however, to wake up this morning and finish my paper due this afternoon. ah well, got it done, got it printed. time for a nap.
happy early national day!

blinkers and geldings

went to the races last night at happy valley, a race track in causeway bay. we were quite the international group - from canada, germany, france, taiwan, korea, japan and australia. one of the guys with us is a professional gambler and taught us all sorts of horseracing slang. he also managed to get us some tips on the actual races. i diversified a bit - how could i not bet on a horse named "smacko"??? and ended up losing about $20 hong kong ($3 canadian).ooh. it was really fun though, and i can't wait to go again! it was crazy ex-pat central though - so much dyed blonde hair. it's weird the number of ex-pat women with bleached hair. do they really feel the need to differentiate themselves? do that many women dye their hair blonde at home? maybe i could write a paper on it for my ross-cultural psych class...
oh yeah, i shared the beer. i didn't drink it all. but i did bring the jug home for dennis, cause he LOVES the carlsberg. crazy kid.the racetrack was right in the middle of the city, so as you can in the photos, there are tons of apartment buildings with a strange view. the lights are so bright, i'd hate to live there. i've been invited to a private cooking lesson in october. am quite excited about that. and have found a buch of exchange students who are interested in doing stuff that's fun, cheap and doesn't involve clubbing. i'm stoked about it! finally, people who want to have adventures and go home early. seriously, i'm like a senior citizen here. all the exchange students are so young and spry.

young couples need beer to enjoy life.

so, in case anyone was wondering... my titles are generally fantastic quotes from my professors or people i meet along my travels. this particular gem came from my CRM prof this morning.
ooh! exciting stuff! the yoshida kyoudai are coming to the auditorium in the mall in my neighbourhood! and now that i've written it down, i feel that i may have mentioned it before. whatever. i'm going. and the other exchange students are coming with me. and we will probably be more of a spectacle than the guys on stage.
http://www.domo.com/yoshidabrothers/index.html

love words are itchy to my ears.

spent all of yesterday cooped up in my room trying to write papers and just hating it. too sunny to be indoors. by dinnertime, i was super grumpy so i decided to see another film-fest movie. went to see pai gu, a documentary about a bootleg dvd seller in shenzhen. on the way there, we were all talking so much that we almost got off the train at the wrong spot, and ended up being just late enough to make a scene. yay gwailo!
the movie was pretty good - pai gu, the dvd entrepreneur was really funny. after the movie, the director and main character came up to the front for a discussion. the rest of the audience really seemed to enjoy it, but i didn't understand a thing. ah, well. you win some, you lose some.
it really made me think about my life and shopping habits. i was feeling really self-conscious, sitting there with my fake designer goods, my good fortune to have been born in canada and my carefree lifestyle in hk. watching the guy in the movie move to the big city to try to eke out an existence, earning in a month what i spend in a day made was a sobering experience, especially all the scenes in his shop, with people trying to bargain to get the best price. i guess it all comes back to what our profs say about intellectual property laws not being applicable in poor countries. most of his customers were mainland chinese who would never be able to afford the buy or go the the theatre to see the movies that he sells. but again, i realize the globalization has created a problem market....me and my compatriots. we have the money to go to the movies. we have the money to travel to other continents. yet, when we hit shenzhen, all of our danimal-inspired negotiation tactics come out and we bargain as hard as possible to get the price down another $5HK (.75CAD). i'm not sure how satisfying that's gonna be for me from now on. dammit. i think i'm just gonna have to try to feel satisfied that i'm contributing to their lives when market vendors rip me off. and i did think about giving up shopping in china, but then i wouldn't be contributing... shopping. it's public service.

what's with all this homework business?

homework day. went for lunch with my little chinese friend olivia. she's from guanzhou and is doing her master's in geology. she's using me for my english skills... i'm using her for - nothing yet, but i'll think of something! the cafeteria ladies are getting really friendly. the cashier likes to follow me around and try to speak english and the beverage lady tries to teach me how to say orange juice every day. i stand there, repeat after her and promptly forget it. every day. good to have a routine.
watched the grey's anatomy premiere on youtube. man, the internet is just fantastic. huge time waster. huge.
went to a mongolian movie last night - cave of the yellow dog. and i must say that although it's about a dog, i highly recommend it. i only actually saw the second half cause lotte (german industrial psych student) and i got talking over dinner and accidentally missed the first half. oops. went with another german girl and a girl from taiwan. we all take classes together but i hadn't really seen them socially. kind of nice to expand the old address book a little more!
turns out that dennis and i totally got ditched yesterday. the people who invited us into a group on the first day of class have since formed another group with no foreigners in it... how sad is that? i'm actually in a group with the same people in my leadership class (which is a whole gongshow of a class..... alasdair, i wish you were here to witness it! your head would explode.) and when we were planning the group project, they suggested googling the topic and just re-wording whatever we find..... ah! migraine! intellectual property be damned! i really don't think i can do it.... my group is not gonna be very happy with me when they find out that i actually want us to LEARN about the topic.
dennis and i are off to shanghai on the 5th. can't wait! it's the centre of the world over here, so it should be really interesting! and of course, i hear the shopping isn't bad... mia just showed me some of her spoils from the big market up there. i'm actually quite proud of the restraint that i've shown so far. always good to have a friend who out-shops you. good for the conscience.
back to the books. gotta write a creative paper on cross-cultural communication and google my group project. sigh.

saturday classes really cramp my style

so, no fun for me this weekend. i'm all about class. cross-cultural management on a sunny saturday afternoon... almost as good as the beach.
went to shenzhen yesterday and spent only a modest amount of money. i'm really proud, cause the only things i bought were things that i had planned to buy before even arriving! yay me! the air up there is so bad that after six hours of shopping in the smoky, chemical atmosphere of the mall i got a wicked headache and just wanted to go home. the border people were great yesterday. we are all running out of room in our passports and decided to ask the immigration people to stamp our passports in specific spots, just to use pages efficiently. i figured they'd tell us off, but they were so friendly and had no problem with it!
had to pay rent this week, which was an interesting experience. i walked up to the bank teller, hoping that i could give them my bank card or credit card to pay, but nonono. that was not going to work. i had to go the atm, withdraw the money myself, THEN return to the teller to pay the bill. but the atm wouldn't allow me to withdraw enough money...so much drama. thankfully, the bank teller WOULD take foreign currency. it was so idiotic.
it's kids of strange being an exchange student here because it's so hard to meet locals. i find that a lot of the foreign students have a tough time going with the flow and really get upset about little things. i'm have a little internal dilemma because i want to enjoy my time here and find it fairly easy to adjust to the way things work here, but i also want to make sure everyone is ok. i'm such a mom. but i get so irritated when people can't figure out simple things, or complain about little things. (and i do see the irony in writing this right after my banking story!)
argh. enough venting. time to go to class. dennis and i have to figure out if we have a group for this class. we got invited into a group in the first lecture, but last week we got the feeling that our group might have ditched us.... who knows...

i've joined the rat race

our class has two teams participating in this race:
http://www.centralratrace.com
wish me luck! ahhh!

stolen moments under my umbrella.

i completely forgot to mention that on my way home from shenzhen last friday, the sky opened and the ocean fell out of it... as i was walking home from the station, a lady grabbed my elbow and asked me if she could share my umbrella as far as the parking lot. turns out, her husband works at the university and she was picking up the car. as one good turn deserves another, i guess, she drove me home! so nice not to have to struggle up the hill in the pouring rain.
ugh, the heat is back. spen the weekend doing some mad sightseeing around town with yo-chan. he got here saturday afternoon, so i went to meet him after class. i was hoping he'd be up for the night markets and maybe even some street food, but he seemed pretty tired and a bit shell-shocked so we hit the turkish restaurant up on knutsford terrace, then walked around the avenue of stars on the sea wall. he even brought me the ceramic beer cups that i made when i was in japan in june! they are.... very much like my other work.... interesting....unique.
sunday, we went for dimsum, which was somewhat more successful than usual, seeing as how he could pretty much make out what all of the foodstuffs were on the menu. nice to go places with someone literate. checked out the art museum - HK$5 for students!!! then took the travelator up almost the entire way (i've never gone the whole distance!) and walked down through soho and the peel street market. took the tram up to the peak - had to stand the whole way and thought i was gonna go flying backwards a few times. only stayed at the top for a few minutes, cause as usual, every tourist in town was up there. then just went down to lan kwai fong for thai/malaysian food at the exact restaurant that erin and i ate at the first time i was ever in hong kong!
yesterday, we took the jetfoil over to macau..... hot..... so hot.... what a weird place. not like i expected at all. the portuguese influence was really apparent in the signage and architecture, but i only heard three people speak it all day. we walked past all the giant casinos on the way to the central area, full of old cobbled streets.
saw the facade of st. john's cathedral, an old fortress and got good and dehydrated before hitting the sands casino in the mandarin oriental. ooh. good times! i decided that my limit was HK$100 - and actually stuck to it! yoshihito didn't grow up poker or casino games, although i suspect he might be able to teach me a thing or two about pachinko. i figured that roulette was easy to understand, as were the slots. in the end, i came out HK$800 ahead, cause my number came up at roulette, and he lost HK$500. i bought him mcdonalds. he's a big boy, he'll survive. back in kowloon, we went over to the temple street night markets to marvel at the extensive array of crap for sale.
as my mom would say, haivng guests is fun, but sending them home is just as good! yesterday, went to my classes, napped and didn't do anything new or cultural. it was so goooood! today was much the same.

the real china

marc, anna and i decided to hop over to mainland china today for a little shopping. legend had it that just beyond the lo wu border crossing lay a mall brimming with (donovan, stop reading now!) fake designer goods, cheap as cheap can be. took us about 20 minutes to get to the border with only one small train mishap.... for which i take full responsibility. we decided to meet ON the train but i was so excited about going to shenzhen that i got on about 2 minutes early and had to get off at the next stop to wait for marc and anna. oops. anyways, got to shenzhen, which is quite seriously just the other side of the border - in fact, we hear that there are plans in the making to combine it with hong kong to create one giant metropolitan area.
no surprise, the air quality in shenzhen is appalling. just past the giant mall, there are some grassy hills that were far too hazy for their own good. kind of scary to actually be in that kind of environment... we all developed a gross-air cough after a while.
the mall is insane - 5 floors of tiny stores selling mostly knock-off goods. the staff sit outside the store and try to entice you in by shouting at you "hey, missy missy.... copy handbags. you like belts? you wanna watch? what dvds do you need?". even marc was a missy in shenzhen.
so, one guy started following us around, trying to get us into his sister's store. after telling him to go away multiple times, we finally just started ignoring him. he fell back and followed us abotu ten steps back for a while then finaly disappeared. once we got into it, the bargaining was really fun! i am the proud(?) new owner of an elegant prada wallet, which ironically came with a certificate of authenticity. pretty sure it's not real, since i bought it in a sketchy backroom area complete with hidden door. nice.
anna got some sweet victoria beckham jeans and marc was overwhelmed by the selection of ties.
we decided that we need to have a chav night out in hong kong, and all buy juicy couture sweatsuits, gucci kitten heels and get acrylic nails decorated with diamonds, etc... we also found a store selling dresses more appropriate for ice skating than anything else. thankfully, the other big mall in shenzhen has an ice rink.
ooh. i also got a sweet gucci belt - helen, you'd be proud! and to round out the day, i bought a non-knock-off sundress. just to feel better about myself.
we also took the metro to another mall, which was a whole other adventure. turns out that hong kong dollars only work in the mall, so we were back and forth to machines, customer service and the bank in the subway station, just trying to buy a ticket.
the other mall was lovely and had the biggest starbucks i've ever seen. also had a fake taco bell with some unhappy-looking servers milling about in sombreros - a sad sad sight. apparently, all of the major supermarkets in china are vying for the upper-middle-class market and are tryign to be quite upscale. the one we went into was sooo nice but had skinned frogs. ew.
on the way back, a kid was pointing at us on the metro and totally got chewed out by his mom. it was hilarious!
got through the border with no problems and headed home... ahhhh... so easy.
anyways, gotta hit the gym, go to class and go find yoshihito downtown.

i'm feeling tropically depressed

ugh. last night was typhoon warning level 1. woke up this morning to heavy rain and a rainfall amber alert that specified that anyone living in a wooden hut should get the heck out. we just don't have announcements like that in canada. took a picture out my bedroom window but it doesn't do the weather justice. and this is no typhoon, just a tropical depression. can't wait to walk to class. i see a soaker in my future. ugh.

finally, the recognition i deserve!

here's a photo of the campus from the train station. back to class today, after spending all day yesterday running around picking up my china visa. school was good.... crm class this morning was all about data warehousing and data mining. learned that accurate information is impossible to gather in china. then learned the same thing tonight in a different context in marketing in china class. the prof tonight got back on teh topic of mitigating business failures in china with the purchase of a condo in shanghai, only this time he advised us to purchase nice paintings there too. apparently art is cheap here. best quote from the class - "intellectual property should be protected. but not in POOR countries!". too good.
went down to causeway bay this afternoon to check out the island beverly centre. it's this crazy little shopping centre full of kiosk sized shops selling japanese fashions and cheap shoes. quite good. i'll stop by again. realized that causeway bay is little shibuya.

the best part of the whole day for all of us though, was the fact that we now grace the MBA brochure for CUHK... yeah, that's right.... finally, someone has realized that i am one of the beautiful people! i'm posting the photos so that my glory can be shared by all.... the foreigners figure prominently in MANY photos - quelle surprise!

air-conditioning is for suckers!

ahhhh... today the temperature is such that i can open my windows and sit around wearing a t-shirt and short pants almost comfortably. usually, i'm all about rushing home to turn on the air-con and change into shorts and a tank top. it's sooo nice. we're having a week of overcast weather that should include a fair amount of rain. monsoon style rain.
yesterday, dennis and i had our saturday afternoon class - cross-cultural comparative managemnt... we met in the lobby at the specified hour and the rain was pouring down torrentially. dennis suggested that attendance might not be mandatory during a heavy rain alert but i insisted that we should go. way to go, me. my umbrella managed to keep me dry from the shoulders up, but by the time we got to class, the rest of me was drenched. it was really fun while we were walking - the streets were rivers, the rain was warm and the thunder was crazy! dennis, of course, thought i was an idiot and kept warning me that i wouldn't be having fun once we got to class. unfortunately, three hours into class in an air-conditioned room i had to concede that perhaps he had a point. i was freezing, denim was sticking to me and my feet felt super gross. the only remedy - the mall! got changed and headed out to buy some school supplies at muji. i loooooove muji. got dinner - pork chop with mustard sauce, rice, watermelon juice and a whole tower of broccoli! man, i was so excited to see such a quantity of dark green goodness all for me!!!
today has been pretty chill. slept until 10 - unbelievable! i think it's the change in temperature... i wasn't sweating profusely when i woke up.... gross, i know. went for brunch and started my readings. somehow, i all of a sudden have a ton of reading to do! one of my profs assigns us 3-4 chapters of the text each lecture! yikes! thankfully, the first chapters of all my textbooks explain chinese culture. easing myself into the semester. ooh - in one of my classes, we're doing a case on haier!!! and right now, we're doing intel. i'd better not find walmart on any of the syllabi.

disturbing day...

we have no classes on fridays, so dennis, mia and i decided to hit soho for some exploring. stopped off at the travel agency to get our visas for china on the way. the travel agency we took our stuff to was in a shady area.... lot of clubs with names like "tycoon" and "paradise"... ew.
soho was fantastic once again... found many new shops and chatted to some of the designers. check out the links!
rather than join 100 ex-pats for the international club's hot pot dinner (large groups of foreigners are awful) we decided to get some sushi in tsim sha tsui and head to wan chai to meet up with the first year class. i can honestly say that i will never go to wan chai again.... not even if they build an h&m there.... not even if the h&m give clothes away for free. i will not go there. it was like being in the patpong of hong kong. disgusting.
the clubs and bars are stuffed full of ex-pats, mostly guys.... and ladies of ill-repute. there are a lot of girls in shorts and boots sitting on chairs outside the bars, inviting foreigners in. the waitresses didn't like us (the girls) being in their bars, and kept threatening to kick us out if we didn't buy drinks. the guys we were with pretended to be our boyfriends and made us stand in between them so that we didn't get accosted. by the time we left, there was a veritable parade of cabs outside being hailed by middle-aged ex-pat men and their much younger asian "dates". my whole crew was traumatized. i had no idea that this kind of area existed here, which may have been a little naive. i expected there to be clubs and bars like that, but not a whole district. it made me ashamed to be a westerner and really sad for the women we saw.
turns out that the area became famous because of a novel/movie called "the world of suzy wong" about a chinese prostitute, and is still often called the suzy wong district. had i only known that before going out, i would have joined the other international students for hot pot.
i'm never going down there again - and i'm never going to trust any guys that spend any amount of time in that area.

the mind of a ceo

so... the course is actually cool. a series of case studies dealing with issues that leaders face. a very practical application of leadership theories and strategies. our whole crew is in the class, so it'll for sure be an interesting ride.
after class, the boys went out for drinks and food. mia and i hit the sev for carlsberg and chocolate and retired to the dorm for gossip and relaxation. i just went out into the hallway on my way tot hte washroom and A GIRL ON MY FLOOR TALKED TO ME! not just said hi, but stopped, welcomed me, asked me to hang out and bid me good night. another girls walked by as this was going on, and i'm pretty sure olivia (my new friend) is gonna be the floor pariah! woowoo! i have a new friend!!!

strategy class = gong show

dennis and i met mei's friend allen yesterday. she's a lawyer from guanzhou who is doing her llm at cuhk. she seems really nice and has invited us up to china to visit her and mei's families. she also mentioned cheap shopping, but that barely interests me... pfft. shopping. who needs it. ME!!! that's who!!!!
strategy class was a bit crazy. couple of guys with strong opinions, no one made a lot of sense and i kinda fell asleep. fortunately i was able to recover and answer with only a slight pause when the prof cold-called me for a definition of socialism. i got roped into a group with people i don't know. they wanted to make the most international group possible, so they invited my danish friend, who then dragged me in. i, in a moment of glory, managed to drag dennis down with us!
we totally broke the rules last night and stayed in frederik's room until 1am!!! oooh... and we drank beer in there... i'm just waititng for my eviction notice. it really felt like living in totem... weird.... i'm too old for this.
for dinner i ordered pork and rice and that's exactly what i got. no veggies. none. i had to go to 7-11 and buy some orange juice afterwards, just to feel better. and orange juice is not exactly a substance known for making me feel better. it all stems from a slightly traumatic childhood event involving orange juice, northern ontario and a new car... let's just say that my uncle doesn't drive me around anymore.
more later. gotta head out into the thunderstorm in search of brunch.

SARS! who could know about SARS?!

ah... got the first day of school under my belt. tuesday is my big day - 2 lectures, 3 hours each. crm(customer relationship management) in the morning, which frederik has decided is a class in which we will learn how to kiss ass. the prof was talking about data engineering and data mining and suddenly had a very cognos-looking star schema up on the screen! i almost ran away! IT class is haunting me, even here.
before class though, i had part of a club sandwich for breakfast. now, the club sandwich is a grat cultural experience wherever you go, because it requires turkey - a north american thing, and bacon - different in many places. this particular club was made with thin white bread and contained some sort of friend luncheon meat that was not quite back bacon, another ham-like mystery meat, a square of scrambled egg, tomatoes and cucumbers... interesting and not too bad. couldn't finish the whole thing because i was trying to scarf it down in the classroom with the no eating or drinking signs before the prof arrived.
did a little laundry in the afternoon. pretty exciting stuff. and then headed in to kowloon for a little shopping and a baked potato. simple pleasures.
met up with frederik at tsim sha tsui station and took the metro over to central to find our classroom in the bank of america tower. turns out the german first-year guys are in that class, as well as a bunch of exchange students. out of 12 of us, only 2 are local students. the prof is hilarious - the class is supposed to be about marketing in china, but he used most of last night to convince us that there is no way we could make any money there, unless we buy an apartment in shanghai. he kept starting topics which disintegrated into personal rants about: people who falsify qualifications, SARS, saving face when officials demand expensive entertainment, his secretary leaving at 5pm, Japan's superiority complex, joint ventures gone sour. he had no concept of time and went 20 minutes long... i can't wait for next week!!!
both profs told us straight out that we'd all do well as long as we attend the class and do our work. cool.

met up with marc and anna last night in lan kwai fong. the weather had cooled down enough that sitting on an outdoor patio was not awful! yay! they're doing well and enjoying the city. we're having opposite experiences - i live on campus, they live in an apartment downtown. decided that there's pros and cons to each.
but really - if someone offered me an affordable apartment downtown - i'd be on it in a second, just for the private washroom!!!

one last word before bedtime

nothing like a moonlit walk through campus to make you feel at home. tonight we found a bar on campus... sadly, every single patron was an exchange student. mostly undergrads - who are lovely people, but look like i could be their mother. i had one beer and decided to head home, seeing as i have a 930 class. the walk down (the bar is at the top of the cliff, my room is at the bottom) was gorgeous - breezy, well-lit and fairly quiet. ahhhh....
i have to give credit for at least part of my lovely walk to my new shoes. i'm very excited about this pair, because i have a history with them. two years ago on The Trip to tokyo, helen, jenny and i bought dirt cheap flip flops at muji. i loved mine and wore them all summer, to vietnam and malaysia, then all through the next summer. by the time i got home from japan, they were just gross... but i still loved them. unfortunately, i also had the sense enough to realize that shoes that turn your feet black while wearing them are not ok, and i threw them out. sniff. today i found the muji in shatin and they had the flip flops in 5 COLOURS!!!! i went with the exact same ones i had last time, and they did not disappoint. i love them. i really really do. i may need them in all the other colours, but that remains to be seen.

sad news from down under...

the crocodile hunter is dead. i don't know what to say.

internship report

i'm not finished my internship report. i wish i was finished my internship report. being in another country and with a new semester starting tomorrow, i have no motivation to do it. i know i'll be happy once it's done and handed in. it has occured to me that my feelings about this are much like my feelings about showering in the dorm....every morning i spend a ridiculous amount of time dilly-dallying around, avoiding the shared bathrooms, but then, once it's all over, i'm so happy. boo.
the two italian exchange students stopped by my room at midnight last night - i was sleeping. i answered the door with an awesome afro. not a great way to make new friends... we're hopefully going to meet again for lunch today, at which point i will be more alert and sporting a tamer do.
went running on the track yesterday morning... to be more accurate i should say that we staggered around the track a couple of times before collapsing in the bleachers to pound water and complain about the heat. i have never been so sweaty in my life. i felt like i had been swimming. it DID make my shower more exciting!

dennis, mia and i hit our favorite coffee shop at shatin for breakfast yesterday and i discovered that they seel $8 lamingtons! what a fantastic second breakfast!!! after than, dennis and i decided that our last real free day before school was a good day to hit another island... we chose lamma. by the time we got to the ferry at central it was already 2pm, so the walk around the island was not too appealing. we chose to go over strictly for the seafood. sok kwu wan is a little fishing town with a row of sketchy looking restaurants right on the water. you can choose your seafood from the giant tanks, or pick dishes from the menu. it seemed like the perfect venue to pick up a stomach bug, so we went with the biggest restaurant with the most foreigners already eating. i'm only so adventurous with seafood.... but, over 12 hours later, i feel great! we ate squid, clams, scallops and some really ugly prawn type things. sooo good! i didn't get on the beer train, cause i was afraid of the combination of seafood, beer and ferry ride.
i can't wait to go back, hit the beaches, walk across the island and finish the day off with a lobster as big as my head!!!
i spent last night in my room getting ready for class tomorrow andgenerally lazing around. all of us exchange/foreign students are have the same experience in the dorms - we are invisible... i smile and say hello to my neighbours when i'm inthe hallways and get zero response. it's strange. i'm like the floor leper.
ooh! just got a call from mei's best friend. she's from guanzhou and is doing her master of law at cuhk. we're going to meet up tomorrow afternoon. yay!

hello missy missy! wanna buy a copy rolex?

michele, mia and i hit the town today for street markets, dim sum and more shopping. had to order a couple of dim sum items blind because the restaurant had no english or photos on the menu. ended up with galic pork - a bit much, and a mixture of pork, shrimp and egg yolk served on a scooped out piece of zucchini. interesting. i'm completely elated - having found the hk version of main street! yes, from this afternoon, i am a soho kid. we found the cutest boutiques, cafes and lounges and it can all be accessed via the mid-levels travelator. nothing better than taking an outdoor escalator up to dinner! we actually hit harbour centre - yet another mall - for dinner where i discovered baked potatos topped with tuna and corn! fantastic! i recommend it to family and friends.
i'm in love with hong hong, and especially with maymayking. check out the link - my new favorite store.

standing in the centre of the universe

dennis and i hit one of the on-campus canteens for breakfast yesterday... i got pork buns and dim sum, he ended up with a giant breakfast of eggs, ham, toast, pork buns and a mysterious noodle dish. it's hard to eat a lot in the heat, but we seem to manage two meals a day in the air-conditioning. the food on campus isn't bad, and it's pretty convenient. i think we're going to be eating a lot more of it once school starts and we're not just taking off to the mall 3 times a day.
hong kong really is a city of malls. i thought some canadian cities were crazy with all the tunnels/+15s and indoor spaces, but they've got nothing on this city! everywhere you go, you find a brand-new sparkly shopping centre. dennis made a good attempt to go outdoors in shatin, but there's nothing out there - it's all in the mall! downtown, some areas like mongkok or central have a lot of outdoors shops and sights, but generally, it's a mall culture. dreamy! is it the need for air-conditioning? the love for shopping? desire for clean spaces?
we decided to have a bit of an adventure yesterday and took off for lantau island. we heard there was a path to enlightenment there, and a buddhist vegetarian restaurant. after our meat fest on thursday night, veggies were the order of the day!!! took the train out past the airport and disneyland and thought we could hop on a cool gondola up the mountain to the monastery but lo and behold, it's still in the testing phase. had to take a rickety citybus around the island which was probably a good thing, cause we got to see the southern beaches and little resort towns... they look sooo much like south-east asian towns. i felt like i was in thailand.

the buddha was cool - reminded me of kamakura.the restaurant was great - so nice to see some veggies! we were so excited that we got the deluxe meal. it was kind of strange to be seated in the VIP room at a buddhist monastery - but i certainly wasn't complaining.
went and stood in the centre of the universe, but to honest, i didn't feel any more balanced or enlightened than anywhere else i stood. was sooo tired when i got home that i just sat in my room, watched a little prison break and then went out for dinner. i even ditched early on karaoke... unlike me! the first year class seems really tight, and they seem like nice people. being around them last night made me really miss my class at home though...i can't wait for school to start so that i can meet more people and get into a routine. my time here is going to go really fast once we get into it.