toughest week ever

well, i've been having such a rough week that there's been barely time to think, much less write about it. i mean, between shopping on saturday, going to the pool on sunday, walking on the seawall on monday and halloween yesterday...really! student life is hard work.
turns out the pool on campus is really nice! walked up there on sunday for a lazy swim and some poolside lounging while the boys were sleeping off their macau trip. and then monday, mia and i discovered a 7-11 in the science park near our building. we also discovered a bike path along the water - with some lovely barbed wire protecting cyclists against the ocean... or protecting the ocean against cyclists.... who knows. all i know is that there is a hole in the fence and if you walk through it and the bushes, you can get to the water! yay!
and halloween.... phew. dressed up as angelina jolie, though in the end looked more like lindsay lohan. a bunch of us tried to go to lan kwai fong... but turns out all 7 million people in the city had the same idea so we headed back to kowloon to the turkish bar for a few beers after class. a nice. laid-back evening.
and today, homework. hopefully i'll have some halloween pics soon.

the motion of the ocean...

one of the exchange students at our school was only here for half of a semester and rented a boat for his last day in hk. we all hit the supermarket for food and bevvies, then headed to the pier in TST. it was a pretty eclectic group, mostly european with a couple of canadians and asians thrown in for good measure!

when the boat left the dock, we realized that we had 3 stowaways on board! three korean tourists mistook our party boat for the ferry (we think...) so we motored over to hk island and dropped them off. they looked pretty sheepish when we left them at the bus stop!
after that, headed west to the southern tip of the island to relax in repulse bay. there are so many boats in the harbour that standing up was a bit of challenge, but we all figured that by drinking more beer, we'd create some sort of balance between our own rocking and that of the boat. the french kids sat downstairs with baguettes and cheese, while our danish dj prepared his newly-purchased ipod speakers... his ipod is way more of a b-pod than mine! it's so broken that it's basically a shuffle...
tanya and i tried a pineapple beer... much like the wine in okinawa, i don't recommend it!
at repulse bay, a bunch of people swam - of course i did not. they were swimming on the OUTSIDE of the shark nets. no thank you! then, as the sun started to set, everyone came up top and took photos, drank "champagne" and basically got silly. we even had a dance party! i have to thank frederik for a fantastic slow dance involving lots of spinning, but no dipping (a good thing - we would have ended up overboard!). wesker was a menace, as usual and decided that his new english name should either be "weskerado" or "sexyhandsomeman"... crazy kid!
headed back to TST around 9 where unfortunately, bernard (the guy leaving) had his bag containing his passport ripped off. sucks. here's hoping he got home ok!!!

the big coincidence

just thought i'd post a photo of our meeting with patty, javier and katherine...
man, that was so crazy.

and a little shout out and some TLC to my grandpa who has had a big week! glad to hear everything is going well! sit back and let my mom and dad take care of everything.... (that's what i like to do!)

deep-fried robin!

so, anyways, shanghai, shanghai, shanghai... it was great, but i'm not writing about it anymore... richard marx...
finished up my papers this week! am free of work for a while and have a much lighter schedule! ahh...
took advantage fo that to go to cooking class with marc and anna and anna's mum tonight. it was great fun!
we made deep fried fish and eggplant in broad bean sauce... well, we watched it being made... also watched the teacher make fried rice. then we actually made cashew chicken. i have so much more respect for chinese cooks now... it's hard work! and there are so many dishes to be done afterwards! boo!
she also runs a day-long intensive dim-sum course... i think i'm up to the challenge!

half-way...time flies

wow. it's almost the end of october! crazy!
haven't been out, other than for food in a couple of weeks. can't wait for wednesday. after that, i'm free!!! at least for a little while. considering going on a little trip this weekend but am probably just gonna stick around here and explore parts of hong kong that i haven't seen. i can't believe how much of this area that i still have to explore. phew. i have a lot to do.
i've started applying for jobs. started thinking about the new year. kind of makes me want to crawl into bed and nap. i don't want to give up my sweet student lifestyle! but i do want to get a paycheque!
still got lots of group work to finish up. had dinner with some of the first years on thursday night... they are in the middle of their "core" and are discoverign the joys of group work. they had some great stories for me - strikingly similar to stories i heard at ubc! funny! i feel kind of bad for them, but i couldn't help laughing...
mostly just sitting at my desk writing... and emailing... and youtubing... my chair and i are good friends.

clearing up the confusion

the other day matt asked me if i was actually attending classes in hong kong, or just sightseeing. i realized that i don't write much about school. i figured that today i would write a little something about school, since it's midterm season and i'm in the middle of three hell weeks. and yes, they are hell weeks because i didn't do any work in advance. damn that dennis! so smart - doing all his work in the beginning of the term... i'll never learn! so far this week i had two group presentations and one final exam. i've got two papers due next week and one the week after that. boo! currently i'm sitting at my desk trying to break the 1500 word mark on a 3000 word paper about wal-mart's entry into china for my strategy class. where's tony boardman when i need him??? jeez.

WHO BRINGS A CHICKEN ON A TRAIN???

Woke up a bit early for my liking, ate a fairly strange breakfast at the hotel and headed for the train station. Got ourselves some tickets to hangzhou, a city 2 hours away from shanghai, rumoured to be one of China’s most scenic spots. The boys had big hopes of continuing on to suzhou, which is famous for producing(?) beautiful women. The train was pretty good, took about two hours. Dennis had a window seat and proceeded to take a nap as soon as he sat down. Rodrigo and I were chatting away, when I heard an odd sound. I was pretty sure it was a chicken. Now, this was an express train – a pretty nice train – albeit humid. WHO BRINGS A CHICKEN ON A TRAIN? The people in front me, that’s who! I was freaked out for the rest of the ride, cause the girl was coughing a lot and I really didn’t want to catch the avian flu! We tried really hard to see the chicken before getting off, to no avail. Seriously though, you can’t bring a chicken on a train.
Hangzhou is really beautiful and has a giant lake called XiHu (west Lake) in the middle. We walked around quite a bit of it, saw some turtle, ate some dumplings, got approached by little kids who wanted to speak English…nice place. Went to the tomb of general yue.
On the way back, our train wasn’t as nice as the morning one, and turned out 3 hours later that it was not the express. We were soooo hungry and grumpy when we arrived in Shanghai, that we went out for Turkish food, had a couple of beers and hit the sack. Best sleep ever!

how can it still be so hot in herre?

at four pm today it was 27 degrees with 86% humidity. help.

so, this morning we went over to the island for the rat race...dennis was a couple of minutes late. usually, i'd be mildly irritated, but today it was fortuitous! at tsim sha tsui station, i looked out the window and thought "that girl looks like katehrine" (who is in my class at UBC). she then got on the SAME train, SAME car, SAME door as us, with her partner and patricia and javier! (two more students from UBC). they didn't notice us at first, but once we all started causing a crazy hugging and yelling commotion, i'm pretty sure most of the city turned around to watch. how weird is that? 7 million people int he city, trains every 3 minutes, 12 cars on each train..... nuts.

mooncakes. foiled again.

Since arriving in Hong Kong, I’ve seen ads everywhere for mooncakes. I knew they were something associated with the mid-autumn festival, but couldn’t figure out what they were…. Well, now that the festival is over, mooncakes are cheap and plentiful…. And turns out they are the fruitcake of China! I’ve got a whole box of them sitting in my room and I can’t GIVE the things away! Jeez. So if anyone feels like snacking on a little cake full of lotus paste and preserved egg yolk, just let me know. Ugh.

Shanghai - Day of the Rocket

hhhh…. So nice to have my own shower! Could have stayed in it for an hour, except that the extremely chlorinated water made me kind of feel like I was showering at a public pool.
Met up with the boys and we headed to Carrefour for breakfast. I was really excited to go cause we study it so much and I’ve never seen one in person! Turns out to be a pretty good store. Got some food court snacks and headed downtown to the fabric market. I eventually picked a tailor, got measured and gave her some magazine photos of items I wanted. Then I left with my fingers crossed. The boys only lasted a couple of minutes inside, so I went and found them perusing the LP outside.
Headed over to the French Concession to see the site of the first Communist Party Congress. Man, Mao would be spinning in his grave… the house is surrounded by restaurants and shops, all geared towards tourists. Very, very capitalist! The area is beautiful though, and completely unexpected for me. I really thought mainland China would be ….Chinese….
From there, went over to Fuxing Park, where all the old timers play cards and checkers all day. It’s a beautiful place and I was standing by myself taking a photo when an old man approached me. My first thought was that he was going to yell at me in mandarin for taking photos… I don’t know why I thought that… but instead he said “Hello. How are you?” in English! Turns out he listens to the BBC and Radio Canada quite a bit. We chatted about the park and he told me about his commute there everyday. Suddenly he noticed Dennis taking our photo and couldn’t get over the fact that Dennis could LOOK Chinese but in fact BE Canadian. I wanted to talk to him more, but we had places to go and people to see!
Took the subway over to the Pearl Tower, and I have to admit, I wasn’t super stoked about going up. I’ve been to towers before and usually find that after 10 minutes the view loses its appeal. And so it did…. But we found a fantastic museum full of miniature historical scenarios in the base of the tower. And even better, we found a lovely patio with nice washrooms and a seemingly good stock of Tiger beer. We drank all their Tiger and Dennis learned some more Spanish. I then decided that if I were to have a music video, it would be performed on the neon steps of the rocket (tower). I may or may not have performed some dance moves. I looked gooooood.
Back into the subway to Indian buffet at Carrefour! Mmmmmmm…. Indian buffet! And for appies, lamb on a stick! I asked the kabob vendor at the subway station if I could take a photo with him, and suddenly he had his arm around me neck and was trying to kiss me on the cheek. Thankfully, my reaction time was good and I avoided it!!! After that, his buddies came over and were speaking Mandarin to us… not that I could understand, but Dennis told me that the other guy was telling me that he was way better looking that my kabob boyfriend. Hilarious!
Couldn’t stay out too late – Saturday we planned to take the train to Hangzhou!

Shanghai - Day 1

Ahhh… Shanghai. City of perfect temperatures and friendly taxi drivers. Mecca of dumplings and Starbucks. Headquarters of chicken extravaganza and blood-sucking mosquitoes.
The fun we had…
Last Thursday morning, as I lay on my 2-inch thick mattress, dreaming of something lovely, I was rudely awakened by Dennis text-messaging me. Ohhhh…. Had to get up at 530 to catch an 830 flight up to Shanghai. Rodrigo met us at the airport and took us back to our hotel, or rather MOtel in Pudong via magnetic bullet train.
Our hotel was great… my room was small but perfect and only cost about $35 Canadian per night! (And yes, mom, it had a private bathroom! Woohoo!) From there, we headed downtown to start sightseeing. It’s at this point that I should send a shout out to our host Rodrigo for taking time away from his studies to show us around town! He was a fantastic guide and made up for our other classmate who disappeared to somewhere near Pakistan…or something like that… for the weekend! The subway system is much like Hong Kong’s and is easy as pie to use.
When we popped up above ground, we were on Nanjing Road, which is Shanghai’s main street. It’s a big, wide boulevard with lots of stores and restaurants in modern and colonial buildings. I loved it, Rodrigo, not so much. We walked down to Old Shanghai, being careful of the cars…. Scary drivers! The old town is like the Disneyland version of China. Uber-China.Tons of souvenir shops and renovated buildings, and of course it had McDonalds, Dairy Queen AND Starbucks. I ate the most delicious street meat! No idea what variety of meat it was… yikes. Walked through the tea bazaar, the Yu Gardens, then over to Poor Street. Poor Street, as I named it, it exactly that – a bastion of poverty in the middle of a boomtown. Rodrigo guesses that by the end of the year, it won’t exist. The street is lined by ramshackle buildings with shops, markets and restaurants on the first floor and family housing above. Whole families live in just one room, and there are no bathrooms to speak of. The only running water comes from sinks on the street. In spite of that, everyone was clean and going about his or her business. We also checked out the insect market, but the air inside was a little thick from all the birds and such. No sense in spending too much time there, don’t need no avian flu.
We then walked up to People’s Square and down Nanjing to the Bund. The Bund is like the seawall in Vancouver and just as crowded. We went to Bar Rouge on the roof of one of the old British buildings. I felt like I was on Sex and the City! There were beds as seats, lots of red lighting, a rooftop patio and sand on the ground. It’s quite the ex-pat hangout, so we had a couple of beers and got out of there right quick. Went over to the French Concession to an Irish Pub and then….. the highlight of the night…. Back to Pudong for chicken extravaganza! Seems that Rodrigo walks a lot. A lot. And discovers interesting places. Interesting. He took us to a “locals” late-night restaurant where we ate sketchy hotpot with complete with chicken feet and drank big bottles of beer for basically no money at all. I like locals’ prices. I was a little worried that my stomach would hate me for the rest of the trip… TO BE CONTINUED.

shanghai honey yeah!

i'm back from shanghai! we had a fantastic time! i have so much to write! today is crazy busy though, so it's going to have to wait until tomorrow. until then, some pics.

poor street

nanjing road

tea bazaar

pudong

me at the city god's temple

settle it amicably... even if you really want to kick the guy

last night's class was full fantastic moments, largely due to our marketing prof! he got through everything to do with marketing in less than one lecture, so that he could get back to ranting about whatever strikes his fancy. love it! he did take a couple moments to talk about his cerruti suits, and how he can only wear fake goods during the day, certainly not when out with his rich friends. Ended the monologue with "I cannot drive a Honda to a party.".
Off to Shanghai tomorrow! woohoo! don't expect to hear from me until monday night.