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!!!