Back at Home

I feel like I have to say some final words about my trip abroad. Honestly, I don't feel like I've learned much about other cultures and all I really did was have fun which was a nice experience in that aspect. I've developed a love for traveling and I realize I should really go out and have some more fun. Stop sitting around at home and call up my friends! Finally in response to this blog's title, I can't say I'm any more of a fob now than in August. The only differences are some bangs and fob glasses :P

At the airport with my aunt and uncle

I know that I may not have had good grades this semester but as of right now, I have no regrets since I met such great friends abroad and had such great fun with them. Hopefully I'll see each and everyone of them again sometime in my lifetime. Rightly now I'm aiming for Germany this summer and London in 2012 at Alex's house for the Olympics. See you all there! :)

Tatsuya's Birthday Dinner during Examination Period

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Short notes on the past month

For the first twenty days of December, it was basically crazy studying to catch up on an entire semester's worth of material. Yes. I slacked off like crazy so I didn't study throughout the semester and fell asleep in class. I really wish they had midterms or something so that I would have at least half the material in the brain when i'm studying for finals. I basically lived at the library for a week from the 11th to the 20th (4pm to 6pm or so, sometimes I'd get there a little earlier) and ordered delivery in groups with my other exchange friends (they weren't caught up in their studies for the same exact reasons as me).

I would like to rant about my final exam experience for my Cell Biology class. Usually in the States, you would have exams where they ask you multiple questions testing your knowledge on around 70% of the material presented in class through short answers. At HKU, we were given 6 essay questions. Choosing 4, you would spend 2 hours regurgitating as much information as you can. The questions I choose to answer were something like "Na-K ATPase is very important in cellular processes. Explain" or "Write short notes on two of the following--Adherent Junctions, Collagen, ????something i dont' remember" or something about how things are imported and exported out of the nucleus and so on. The questions were just so freakin general and tested a minuscule amount of information I memorized for the course. It just didn't seem right. I was tested on basically a total of 12 slides out of like...150. Totally uncool.

During my last days abroad after completing my exams, I just splurged like crazy. Bought lots of stuff and ate lots of food no matter the price. I mean, my mentality at that point was eat as much in HK while I can since I won't be here for a while. So, I'm now 10 lbs heavier and realized I am still lacking in souvenirs. oopsies :P

Only in Hong Kong is there 24 Hr Delivery

Only in Hong Kong could I have gotten food delivered to me at 1:30AM. The group of us got 4 servings of potstickers, one watermelon sago, two curry chicken rice with egg and one 蘿蔔糕. Yum :) I also ordered McDonalds two nights ago at 3am. I wonder what I'm eating tomorrow.....

Keys and Popcorn

Duuuuuude! Look at my roomie's keys!!! I thought these kinds of keys only existed in fairy tales but no! These keys actually go into real locks on real doors in Manchester! :O haha...I was really shocked when I first found out. I wonder how many variations they can make out of these types of keys. I mean, our keys have squiggles but these keys have like....real ridges (I actually don't really know how i should call them :X)! Yea...I just wanted to get that out there before I forget.

vs

I also want to mention that I thought Europe and Australia did not have popcorn in microwavable bags for the past 12 hrs or so because I was at a party last night (or the end of it) and someone whipped out some microwave popcorn. My Australian friend and someone from France said they've never seen it before. Then I asked my friend from London and he said the same thing! and I was like WHOOOAH!!! How the heck do they eat popcorn at home then? Apparently they do it the old school way. They take it out of a plastic bag and put it in a pan with some oil or they just buy it pre-made. I was so shocked!!! But then I asked my roomie from Manchester and she said she's seen them before in England and my Singaporean friend that goes to school in Australia has seen it before too. Apparently the three that haven't seen it before probably hasn't been out often enough :P One novelty though is the "popcorn" button on the microwave, don't have those yet on the other side of the world.

Procrastinating

On Saturday I decided to neglect my work and have fun instead :P I bummed around for the first half of my day and then I went ice skating! It was really fun playing tag on the ice but confusing at the same time because i never know who is it until I was tagged! There was a surprising number of people practicing ice skating at the rink which was extremely crowded. People liked to link hands while they were skating really slowly and it was like a massive barrier so I couldn't really skate that fast. There were a lot of couples and people practicing skating backwards weaving through all the people on the ice. So skilled...

After ice skating, I experienced for the first time taking very asian photos in one of those picture sticker photo booths. The machine makes you take photos like every 5 seconds and we're all scrambling trying to make a pose. It was very amusing. It's my first time witnessing how one of these machines were used and apparently you pick backgrounds and then take photos. After you have your photo taken, you go outside the booth and decide how you want to decorate the photo by writing words and drawing on it. I didn't draw on the pictures myself but it was very interesting watching my friends do it because they seemed very pro!

look at our Asian poses!

For dinner we just had hotpot at Little Sheep buffet style :) It was 192 HKD (including service charge and other miscellaneous fees) which is just 25 USD! Super cheap and delicious. We just kept ordering and ordering more meat. I wish they had cheap buffet style good hotpot in the states :( Do they even do it buffet style at Little Sheep in the states?

Oh yea, work is piling up :(

Must. Stop. Procrastinating. :P

Goals

I feel like I haven't achieved my initial goals for coming to Hong Kong. At first I wanted to meet a lot of the locals and know the culture in Hong Kong better. I wanted to know Hong Kong as if I was a local. The problem is, I haven't really done anything to meet that goal. I figure I need to put myself out there more often, but it's really scary. I'm not comfortable enough to get out of my bubble. Yes, I've formed a bubble while I'm abroad. I don't really go out of it because I feel like it would be too awkward. I feel like I haven't changed at all since I've come here. I'm still procrastinating and using studying as an excuse for not going out as much. Should I be letting go of this attachment to do really well in school and just have fun? But my ultimate goal in life right now is to become a doctor, and in order to do that, I have to get good grades. But....do I really want to be a doctor?

We're talking about how identity is formed right now in my Hong Kong Pop Culture class and it's really making me wonder, who am I? I don't really have any attachments to anything and I feel like I'm just a person that my parents tried to mold myself to be. Do I want to be a doctor? Am I doing what I want to do? I'm confused as to what do I want to do with my life. I always felt that things will fall into place, I'll go to university, get into medical school, someday get married and have kids and then that would pretty much be the end of it. But I realized, these things don't just happen, I have to fight for them. Since these things require effort to achieve, I've been seriously considering whether these are the things I really want. I can't be my parent's puppet my entire life, I have to do things that make me happy. But at the same time, I feel like I have to do these things so that my parents are happy. I mean, they are the people that raised me, isn't this how you repay them? I'm really confused as to what I should do....

wow, all that up there is like cliche questions people ask about their lives. lol. ignore all that. That was just my rant.

Sick

I'm sick for the second time since my exchange!!! Gah! It's probably because I'm eating a lot of unhealthy food like deep fried stuff and lots of Andes chocolate. They're so good though :X Back to talk about being sick. I feel so awkward being sick here since people look at me funny when I cough or have a sniffle or something. After SARS, I guess it's understandable that they are weary of sick people but I refuse to wear a mask! It's so uncomfortable to wear one and I'm pretty sure i'm not spreading some sort of superbug. Maybe I'm being a bit inconsiderate :\

Still Procrastinating

Gah..half way across the world and I'm still procrastinating with manga and dramas. I should be going out and exploring Hong Kong but it's just too hard to get rid of old habits. Why does HKU love making us do presentations. Each class has at least one and I hate doing it! Ugh! TAing for genetics one quarter hasn't made me any better at public speaking. So much work to do....if only this really was a vacation. *rant rant*

At the beginning of the school year, I felt that courses were a bit slow with only two hours of lecture for each course each week so I didn't really try to keep up, but now all the assessments are all bunched up in the next couple of weeks. I haven't done any work really and it's really going to be a bitch to catch up. My cell biology class has a final exam worth 80% and I have a lab report due in 8 days. I have two presentations this Thursday (50 min lead tutorial with a 20-30 min presentation at the beginning and 3 min for my contagions and disease class), another the week after that, and another on the Tuesday after that. The more I feel pressured to do work, the more I feel like procrastinating. I'm starting to feel a bit stressed here.

Now I'm beginning to think about the things I have to do back in the real world. I have to apply to get into a lab when I get back to the States. I have to try to get a TA position (I don't even know what to TA for besides genetics). I have to pick classes for winter quarter. Finally, I have to maintain a decent GPA so I can still apply to medical and get into somewhere decent. Just thinking about what I have to do once I get back is making me feel even more stressed. *sigh*

I'm also starting to wonder what exactly I'm doing in Hong Kong. Am I supposed to learn something from this experience? I haven't really talked to the locals so I don't exactly know the culture here. I haven't been to that many places in Hong Kong so I don't feel like I've actually lived here for two months already. What exactly am I doing? What am I trying to achieve? If I am asked what I learned from my abroad experience, what do I say? I really wish this was just a vacation with no responsibility.

Thailand and Singapore Airport

I wrote an entry for Thailand, but then I kinda deleted it sooooo just look at my facebook photos, it says it all :P I'll just tell you about my airport experience. The reason why I had to sleep at the airport last week was because I was forced to change my flight to 6:50am the next morning rather than 4:30 the previous afternoon. So, being the cheap college students we all are, we decided to just camp out on the floor of Singapore airport.

Initially, I thought we could just sleep on the benches but it's like the designer made it so that no matter what position you're in, it'll just dig into your side or your back. Since that planned failed, we had to go with Plan B which was the floor. The problem is there's no carpet floors at all, so it's just cold hard solid floor.

Friends on the hard floor (one on his beach towel) and the super uncomfortable chairs

Apparently, some guy behind the counter was staring at us for like thirty minutes until he called me over. He just told us where there were carpeted floors, so he was harmless. Then he asked me if I was Filipino (thats for you Wen), but yay for carpeted floors! So I go to wash my face and brush my teeth in the washroom but it was very awkward since apparently in Singapore, they have workers in the washroom overnight to make sure you don't do something fishy I guess. Just slightly awkward :P

Afterwards, we try to look for the area the guy behind the counter told us about and we walk to this slightly secluded museum part of the airport. The signs deliberately said to not sleep in it but there were at least ten people already camped out in all corners and even some of the structures in the museum. It was basically all guys in the museum (ranges from age 20-50) so I felt preeetty insecure. I seriously thought about pulling an all nighter so that nothing would happen -___- Most of the guys just slept like it was the safest place in the world...guys, they don't understand. In the end I fell asleep and everything was ok :) Got on a plane at 6:10 and I was on my way back to Hong Kong (lots of turbulence though, kinda thought I was going to die. apparently a typhoon was expected to hit Hong Kong at the time. Good thing I made it back alive).

where we camped out :P

Singapore, Day 2

Not much happened today...I was tired this morning from a bit of studying last night until 4:30am :P I had some Char Kway Teow because my Singaporean friend recommended it to me. It was a combination of some chow fun and chow mein with some sort of shell fish I think. It was quite tasty but oily like beef chow fun.

We were wandering down the downtown area (similar to Market St) and it was alright I guess. Lots of expensive stores that I would never buy stuff from, but inside one of the malls, there was going to be a fashion show or something because there was a catwalk and lots of flashing lights. We didn't have enough time to wait for the show to start, so we had to leave early :(.

Later in the day, I had some Indian food which was pretty good. I asked for some nan instead of rice, but the guy didn't seem to understand me. Is the Indian bread not called Nan? Afterwards, we wandered around for a little bit and then a couple of my friends decided to go to the night safari. When we got to the subway station where we would take the bus to the park, we were approached by some women saying that they would bring us to the safari for free. At first we thought it was pretty sketchy, but since we had two white guys and one asian guy with two girls, it should have been ok :P We had to triple check the tickets we got from the just to make sure it was legit :P

The night safari itself was really fun since it was Halloween themed. We went on a tram ride which must be very similar to the wild animal park in San Diego. We were on a tram with an announcer telling us which animals we were passing by. The announcer seemed pretty into Halloween and tried to make everything sound scary even if it was the boringest thing in the world. There were also random people on the road trying to scare us on the ride so I was on high alert throughout the entire ride because I get scared so easily >.< The scary trail we went on afterwards was pretty funny. I started off saying "This is a really good spot to scare someone" and then someone just jumps out and screams at me, me being me, I screamed :P And then afterwards, one dude in grass camouflage gear scared my friend on one side of the road and I was looking at him going back into formation and I was like "dude, that is soooo good!" and another guy in the exact same gear just jumps out and scares me! Lol...they are so smart, a continuous attack on the pedestrians. I was preeeetty paranoid after that :)

After the night safari, we came back to the hostel and joined the random bbq they were having. It was pretty nice, I ate a hot dog in a slice of white bread lol. Singaporeans must really like sliced bread because they're ice cream sandwiches are wrapped in bread too lol. I was quite surprised (it was tasty though, had a durian ice cream sandwich).

Random Taiwanese phrase: chow fan (fried rice) -->having sex (I always thought it was just making out..oh well)

Singapore, Day 1

I got into Singapore two nights ago and I'm super glad this hostel has computers. Yay...Singapore's buildings are kinda old yet new at the same time, in that the buildings not in the center of the city have this...I want to say wild wild west kind of style and the city center has typical tall buildings like any other big city, and they're also into columns, you can see it everywhere. The city seemed fairly western after being in Asia for so long. People actually drove properly, pedestrians have the right of way, and the streets were very wide. One more thing I noticed about Singapore from the airport, is that there are a lot of trees planted on the streets, like one every 5 meters on the freeway. It was quite nice to see grass, I don't even remember the last time I saw it :P

There was absolutely no trash on the streets, but the strangest thing was that there also wasn't a trash bin in site until I walked for like half an hour. It wasn't even in the subway station. How do these people keep it so clean?!

The weather is just like Hong Kong: hot. The only difference is that you can actually see clear blue skies! I guess there is less pollution here. The heat was a bit strong for me though, so I felt very very sleepy once I stepped outside. I felt guilty that I felt this way, but the sun was sucking all the energy out of me...so sleepy, I could just lay down on the floor and fall asleep.

I haven't really had any Singaporean food, but I had some Laksa, which was a noodle soup that was slightly spicy with some seafood. It was quite good. The majority of the time here, I've had food at food courts, but these aren't normal mall food courts, these are like food areas on the street that just has like 50 restaurants in it. You can find it in multiple places here, it was quite weird how these food courts aren't in a mall and they actually have a term for these places, but I don't remember.

One more thing I want to mention is that they have so many languages here! People are speaking Mandarin (I think that should be your default), English (second default), and there were some that spoke Malay. I saw tourists from Japan and India yesterday as well, they were a huge bunch of people and they took pictures with my Caucasian friends. So awkward.

Lastly (for reals now), I don't think I can buy souveniers from here since the dollar is 1:1.1 and the numbers prices are around the same. Too expensive! A can of soda is already 1.20! Sorry guys.

I miss you guys (this city is too western compared to Hong Kong so I can't help making the comparisons and thinking of home in the States).

(I still have to update on what I did in Taipei, Taiwan...lol)

Damn it!

I can never look at this logo the same way again after my Austrian male friend pointed out how it looked like upside down :(

Shen Zhen

Last update for the night because it's already 5am and I really need to reset my sleep schedule. I've been sleeping at this hour for the past week or so >.<

I went to Shen Zhen last weekend with some guys and Melody. The first thing we did there was eat some expensive but yummy dim sum （蝦餃 was 32 yuan!!!) Later we went to Xili Lake Resort because we didn't have enough time to see Windows of the World. We were walking towards the mountain it was situated by when this lady walks buy and told us she would get us in for a cheap price of 10 yuan instead of 15 yuan. Wei Png was shady enough to actually accept (I guess he could be shady if he was in the Elite Section for the National Service in Singapore for two years). The lady then gave us 6 booklets and I'm wondering...wtf is this? Some sort of passport? It was so scary going through the front gate :\ The booklet was actually for monks to get into temples for free (there were temples in this mountain). Apparently we could pass for monks O.o



The temple looked nice all and the lake was nice too I guess...I don't really know what to say about it....it was all very scenic I guess. Here are some pictures

This a picture of the lake. If I brought pondzie, he would be in this picture.



bottle of coke for just 1 yuan!!! So cheap once you cross the border!



Rock that looks like a person :P



By the end of the night, the friends I was traveling with wanted to a have a massage. Of course I'm wondering, do you they want a massage or do they want a "massage". Luckily, they wanted the first one, but when they asked a man for directions, the man thought he wanted the other "massage" and they kept telling him that he can't find this place and they were all laughing "with him". It was kinda weird..my friend couldn't run away fast enough :P In the end, they found a decent massage place :)

It's already 6:40 am. It's about time I went to bed and stop watching 下一站幸福 :P

Gambling

I went to the Jockey Club in Happy Valley last last Wednesday. The first thing I did when I got there was order some McDonalds for dinner. It was becoming a routine, especially late night McDonalds when it's 24 Hour FREE DELIVERY (after 60hkd)!!! Anyways, back to the jockey club. I just watched a couple horse raises from some bleachers for the first 20 minutes while eating my McDonalds and then went up against the fence so I can actually see horses when they ran by :P After my friends lost some money betting on horses, I thought I'd put some money on the line for "Sleep Well", number 11.



He seemed like he had good stats, won some races before and does well in long distance races so I told my friend to put 10HKD for him to place and he put it for him to win! Gah! I was so frustrated, I thought that my 10 HKD was lost forever but it had a great finishing sprint and won!!! yay!!!



my winning ticket!


and me!



I won a 12HKD profit the first time I tried to gamble..yay! Don't worry, it won't turn into a habit :P

Little Sheep Hotpot And Centurion

I honestly don't remember much about this hotpot experience. There's a Little Sheep in San Mateo and San Diego and if I remember correctly, it's really expensive but yummy. We ordered tons of food till we were full for around 8 people and it totaled to around 140 HKD per personvincluding service charge--which means less than 20USD for awesome hotpot! :) (buffet style = 138 HKD/person before service charge). It was a little troublesome ordering the meat because the beef were basically labeled different types of awesomeness (A 級，高級，超級，等等), so yea, we just chose the medium priced one which tasted very good already. So I was satisfied :)

The toilets on the other hand was very bad. First, it wasn't sanitary (liquid all over the floor). Second, there was no handle to flush the toilet with. Instead, you go out towards the sink and get a small bucket full of water from the big bucket(trashcan size) and pour it down the toilet bowl to get it to flush >.<>

Here are some random photos from that night:

Yin Yang Style Hotpot (Spicy and Non-Spicy House Special Soup)

Mushroom Mixture

Squid Balls (Very mushy pre-cooked :P)

Middle Grade (according to price) Lamb?

Middle grade beef

We should do hotpot together again when I get back to UCSD :)

That night we also played centurion which is just one shot of beer every minute for 100 minutes but we didn't have enough beer so we just did up to 50 :P I had enough sense to stop at around 25 or 30 because I could feel that I was getting a bit tipsy but everyone else kept going until around 31 because they ran out of beer. So Andrew and I ran to Queen Mary's Hospital's 7-Eleven to see if there was any beer but I guess they didn't keep any in stock cuz it was on hospital grounds :P. So we just taxi over to the nearest gas station and bought out all their refrigerated beer and taxied back :P Everyone else at that point finished their 50 shots of beer (yay...).

Ooo and the birthday boy (Cel) was given a shot of vodka midway at 12:00am which made him throw up a little (w/in a minute of downing that vodka) but he was ok in the end :) This kind of went against him because we played "I have never..." after Centurion and someone said "I have never thrown up one minute into my birthday" haha.... Some people said some very revealing and semi-uncomfortable ones such as "I have never had sex", "I have never had a three-some", "I have never kissed ______" etc. It was mostly guys who drank to those, tsk tsk. And some where mean like the British guy saying "I have never been to the United States, Australia, Singapore, North America, (and any other country represented by some present except the UK)". Pretty much everyone drank :P People were pretty messed up by the end but I was ok thankfully :)

Centurion (click to enlarge photo)!

Honeymoon Dessert

Man, hopefully I remember everything from these past 2 weeks. I'll just post everything in small bits and use the pictures I took to jog my memory :P

I went to honeymoon (http://www.honeymoon-dessert.com/en_us/ ) around two weeks ago and it is a chain store similar to Creations on Geary in San Francisco. The one I went to was in a mall within Mongkok and we went slightly before it was busy so we got seats easily for a party of 10 :) My friend ordered a banana pancake dessert which is basically some cream and banana inside a pancake I think. I didn't eat it, but he said it was delicious :P

here's what the inside looks like after one bite :O

Being the durian lover I am, I was delightfully surprised when they had such a large selection of durian dessert. I decided on a Durian in Vanilla Sauce w/ Green Tea Ice Cream. The yellow ball on the right is fresh durian and on the left is of course the green tea ice cream which was really good :) I couldn't even taste the vanilla because the durian flavor was so strong. I thought the white liquidy stuff on the bottom was durian too until I saw the menu again :P Yummy if you love Durian! Would definitely bring my dad here some time :)

Me (look at my fake buffness :P )

Never Again

I am never going to watch the sunrise near some trees again! These bugs just had a humongous feast on me. I didn't really feel it this morning, but when I woke up at 3pm this afternoon I found my legs just filled w/ these red welts! I counted it just now and I have 24 on my left leg, 10 on my right leg, and 3 on my left arm! That brings us to a total of 37 bites in one go! I put ointment on it just now, but it's going to itch like hell for the next few days. I can't even rub around them cuz they are so dense on my leg! Every time one of my bites accidentally graze something, it starts itching like hell, and since it's everywhere, it starts itching like hell very easily! I can't wear shoes either since I have a bite right on my ankle on the front. Argh!

P.S. I will post about my adventures from these past two weeks within a week hopefully :P

Lecture Halls!

I attended some sociology classes and they're actually held in real lecture halls w/ squishy seats! The set up was similar to Center Hall Lecture rooms and the professors for those courses actually spoke English! One was British and the other had an American accent. It was nice hearing a professor speak English well :) Because my reproduction course was so bad, I decided to drop it. I'll record the lecture tomorrow though so I can justify myself when I go back to the states :P

I was around the Library today and the karate club was doing a demonstration outside. They've been sending out emails and all that other junk just to recruit people. Why are they so desperate...

Also, one last random tidbit for this post on shoes. I saw some cool shoes that zip up from the sides in H&M (they're products are more expensive here than if it were in the States)

And finally, some hideous shoe fashion I saw on the subway:

yes, they are wearing tights/pants w/ colorful socks in sandals. :P

Macau

I went to Macau the other day and I chose to wear the worst shoes: a size or two too small because I wasn't sure about my size at the time. So now I have like 5 blisters on my ankles and foot :(

Going there w/ Wen-wai and Wendy was really good since we hit all the touristy spots really fast and I got to eat some 葡撻 which was delicious! The crust was very flaky and the tart part was very soft. It was just like the ones I had in Shanghai; these things are definitely better than normal egg tarts. I'm going to have to convert now :P

We went to the Ruins of St. Paul's in Macau and explored around there and we found these exercise machines!

You sat on this one and you basically pushed yourself up and down w/ your feet.

You twisted yourself around in this one so I guess it is for your obliques.

This one is like a fake elliptical except it wasn't very smooth so it was sort of awkward.

I'm not even sure what this thing is for...massage?

According to Wen-wai, you turn this thing around and it works your forearms. I didn't really try it.

I'm not really sure what this is for....I just did the running motion on it. When I got off, it swung back and hit my shin T_T Now I have a bruise.

Lecture

I had my first round of classes today and it was quite different. Usually in UCSD, lecture halls can fit at least 200-300 students so this was what I was expecting when I was going to walk into a lecture hall in HKU; however, the lecture hall (as it was labeled on the door) was only a little larger than a discussion room. It had discussion room desks and the floor was flat. My cell biology class at 8:30 had around 40 students in a 50-100 person room and my reproduction and reproductive biotechnology class only had 15. I don't understand where all the students are, it makes me feel very awkward to be in such a small class since I'm used to blending into the crowd. It makes it easier for me to fall asleep if necessary :P

Besides the size of the classes, the accent of some of my professors were very strong too. I had to concentrate very hard to actually pick up what they were saying and I felt that the class would go at a much slower pace because English was not their first language. I mean, it wasn't terrible, but it made me feel like I could definitely get more out of the class if I took it at my home university instead. Reproduction seems like an interesting topic and I don't want to waste it on HKU :\ I guess this is the wrong way to think about it, but I really feel awkward in a 15 student class. I'll give it 1 more lecture and see how that goes.

One good thing about lectures here is that they print out the all the slides for you before class to hand out. They aren't as cheap as UCSD where you have to print everything out yourself :P But then again, it is only a 15 person class.

EDIT: There's WebCT at HKU and apparently where Denise is from too O.o

Modern Toilet

Modern Toilet is a restaurant on the top floor of a mall in Mong Kok. As the name indicates, it has a toilet theme so the seats were toilet bowls and the tables had sinks underneath. The food were also served with a restroom theme but I'm there more for the pictures rather than the food because it was only meh meh. I ordered three items, a entrée, a drink, and finally a dessert. As you can see below, the red bean milk tea I ordered was served in a urinal which was pretty good but not worth 35 HKD.

The curry hot pot dish was served in a western style toilet bowl (79 HKD). It was pretty tasty, but the fish balls and sausages had some cheese in it so it tasted really weird. I thought Chinese people didn't like cheese :\ Guess not.

I was pretty full after eating all that stuff and my drink but I heard about some items on the menu that looked like feces so I got poo looking dessert served in a squatting toilet plate. The chocolate ice cream was a little icy which helped the ice cream keep it's shape and did not melt easily. The dessert was nice to look at, but wasn't tasty enough to cost me 18 HKD.

A picture for my brother.


Here's a picture of a bunny marshmallow I had at some international dinner the other day. It's very cute and the hearts in the background is jello. Met a Japanese guy at the dinner and we're going to go Karoke sometime this week. Apparently he goes Karoke once a week in Japan, so he must be hella expert at it :P. He also thought I looked Japanese which was a first. Usually people think I'm filipino or something. Then some other girl said I looked Indonesian. What exactly am I?!

Beach

蘭桂坊-->bar/club-->7-eleven (to grab 2 beers each)-->beach-->home by 7am

participants:

Rory-Englishman (funny man who mastered British humor) <--Southern Britain

Ronan-Frenchman (great drunk)

Denise- my great British roommate <-- Northern Britian

Me- American

Samson - the visiting American

Marcel-Australian (Honorary Asian)

The men stripped down to their underwear and swam in the water while the girls just sat by the water and got their bottoms wet while drinking beer :P Almost skinny dipping for the guys but not

Beers I had: 8.4% cider, heineken (traded my martini chocolate mint martini for this cuz the martini was too bitter), tsing tao

Pondzie

Clayton named it! I didn't make such a weird name! I'm taking frog pictures for my brother so I'm lugging this frog around pretty much everywhere I go.

Looking at the China Pavillion at the World Expo

Birds Nest

Oriental Pearl Tower

Rice Burgers

What is that? Fried rice in a bun? That's what I originally thought even when I saw the picture on the menu. But nope, it was actually a bun made of rice w/ meat in the middle. It was quite good until I ate all the meat and all I had left was rice. This is probably one burger you can only find in Asian countries. Gotta include rice in everything :P

Creations in Hong Kong :)

College Experience

I am finally experiencing being thrown into a place where you know nobody. It was totally different back in UCSD, I had too many people from Lowell go with me, so I didn't really make too many friends. Since everyone didn't really know anybody, we just kept introducing ourselves to each other. I remember some names with faces and exchanged phone numbers with a few people. Everybody is desperate to make friends and form groups and I'm trying to decide what kind of group I want to join: heavy party goers, moderate ones, or party poopers? I think I'll try for mainly the first two :P.

Last night I left the window open thinking it would be okay since I'm on the 13th floor but a mosquito had a feast on my arms: 4 on my left forearm and 3 on my right forearm. I guess I'm lucky i didn't get bitten on my face but the antihistamines (Benedryl) made me so drowsy during all the orientation today. The only advice I took from it was basically to have fun and don't study too much. I'll keep that in mind :)

Phrases I learned from my British roommate Denise:

1) pop-to-the-loo = going to the toilet

2) fizzy drink = soda

PS. mini rant about China:

-Crocs are in (flats style and more)

-buckets on buses (Shanghai) just for little kids to do their business on the bus cuz they can't hold it in

I just had the most ridiculous experience ever. I go to the correct gate to board my plane to Shanghai and I’m like, huh…where’s the plane. Next thing I know, I’m following a bunch of people down two flights of stairs and get to ground level. What the heck is going on here, where is the plane? I am certainly at the correct gate. I get on a shuttle bus that is supposed to bring me to where my plane REALLY is. After a 10 minute shuttle ride, we get to a plane pretty much in the middle of no where and I go up a flight of stairs while it’s raining. These stairs are like the ones Obama would stand on while waving to the crowd. I’m like…wtf! Why couldn’t they park the stupid plane where the gate actually is?! Ugh… It just made no sense whatsoever.

Now I have to tell you my uber fail story. So, I came to Beijing looking forward to seeing the Great Wall of China. I kinda wanted to go to the touristy areas with the slides or roller coasters, but Susanna’s teacher said that 金山嶺 is the best part to see the wall so we decided to go there. I’m all excited to go to the wall and do some research on how to get there. I hopped on the bus and got off at what seemed to be the right stop and we get bombarded by these unauthorized taxi drivers to bring us to 金山嶺. We told this one guy we were not interested in going into his car, but he just wouldn’t go away. We walked across the street and then he drove his car over to that side and continued to bother us! The second time I tried going was around the same -____- I thought we failed the first time because we didn't go far enough on the bus. But nope, still got harassed by some Asian men. They really don't know how to take no as a answer.

On a brighter note, I got to see the Watercube and the Bird's Nest :) The water park inside the watercube was amazing! They had a really tall slide from what probably used to be the diving platform that had an initial drop that was like 85 degrees for like seven stories!!! I felt a little bit of a burn on my bottom, but it was totally worth it :)

Today I went to 王府井 and 西單 in Beijing. They were basically gigantic shopping centers that were eleven stories tall and there were like 4 of these enormous buildings next to each other. I tried some 85°C bakery goods and it was pretty good. The pineapple Danish thing looked like it was supposed to be a 菠蘿包or something, but the tasty crumbly part seemed more solid and more crumbly. It was alright.

I bought very little things even though I was in the shopping district because things just seemed pretty expensive, some shoes were like 490塊！There was also this one mall in 西單 that looked like a mall but it seems like there were separate stalls for different brands. There was always some worker standing that waiting for you to come in and assist you, but they seemed more like an intimidating guard for the stores. I think I prefer more passive workers than aggressive workers just waiting to pounce on you. It’s like in an American store, like Macy’s, there would be like 2 workers for like 400 square meters but then here, it’s like four times that much and they’re all staring at you like a hawk. So I just felt too awkward to buy stuff I guess, and when I did try it didn’t really seem right. I’m not sure if I’d really want to go into another Asian shopping center again.

You know how in the states, you know which stores you would normally go to for your price range such as Forever 21, H&M, and those other stores that you just know are way too expensive? Well here, I’m walking through the mall and everything looks all fobby and I’m not even sure which store to go into. I just assumed the ones w/ very little people were the expensive ones. If I walked into one w/ nobody in it, it would be hella awkward. I wish Vivien was here so she can dress me up, because I’m really bad at shopping. She’d be daring enough to go into those stores.

Oh yea! Subways are different here! In the Bay Area, transferring from one line to the other on the BART only requires you to cross one platform, but here, you have to do like a quarter mile trek in order to get to the next line! Everyone is also very pushy, and it’s really crowded on the buses. If someone really wanted to pick pocket you, I can see how that can be very busy. The doors are also automatically timed, so if you don’t get off the subway in time, you’re stuck in there for another stop. I guess this could be the reason why everyone is pushing and shoving to get in and out of the train. So much walking for so many hours (can’t expect to sit down on the bus when there are hoards of people) made me really tired >.<.

There were also TVs in the subway train and you can see commercials on the walls of the subway tunnel when the train is moving. I guess they timed each frame perfectly so you can actually read it and it’s not a blur. I thought it was pretty neat.

I went to a club for the first time because it was free entry for girls and free drinks too on Wednesdays for a particular cup. We had a mini “pre-game” and drank a shot of 白酒 which was like 56% alcohol (didn’t know until after I drank it)! No wonder it felt so terrible going down even when we washed it down w/ orange juice. Finally got down to the club at around 12am and got a free shot right at the door, wasn’t really sure what it was, but I didn’t really taste it. Then I had a “screw driver” at the bar because it was familiar (Alicia from lab was going to bring it TO LAB on sungod and drink it from a flask but it never happened :P). So I had two shots when I got to the club but I didn’t really feel buzzed which was ok J. I guess my tolerance isn’t toooo bad after all. I attempted to dance w/ Susanna and her friend for a while and I felt slightly awkward, but I guess the shots gave me a little courage :P. I lost part of my hearing tonight.

On a side note, this is for you Wen. I got asked if I was Filipino once yesterday :P

Hong Kong Airport

I got to SFO at around 11pm and as I was going through security, I started to get a little scared. There were all these families traveling together and then there was just me. I guess taking the plane alone often to SD didn't really prepare me for this new experience. Oh wells.

I remember reading a yahoo article about the full body scan at airports and I saw one today! Sadly, I didn't look suspicious enough to walk through it, but I saw two other guys do it.

Initially, I was planning to stay awake for the first 6 hrs on my 14 hr flight and that didn't really work out. I guess I was too tired at 1AM to actually pull it off. During the entire flight I was going in and out of sleep, limbs/joints got swollen because I wasn't moving around much and I finally got to watch Date Night. The movie was alright, Steve Carrell was ridiculous, Tina Fey was alright, so I'll give the movie a 7/10.

When I got to the Hong Kong airport, I realize I should really get glasses, things look slightly blurry and it really freaks me out since I'm in a foreign country. Nothing really looks familiar. All those big signs that are supposed to be easy to read, are just slightly fuzzy on the edges, but still legible, barely.

I landed at 5:15 in Hong Kong and I had to go through security again to get to the gate for my connecting flight. Security seems a little more relaxed here. I didn't have to take off my shoes and they put my laptop in a separate tub but they put some of my other belongings on top of the laptop :\. When I finally get to head out to my gate, I go downstairs and try to get on the shuttle to get to the other side of the airport but it doesn't start until 6am. So I'm like, no biggie and start walking over to gate 70 from gate 20. I didn't realize how long this would take until like 5 minutes later and I'm only at gate 28. This is because there is 75 meters from one gate to the next >.<. So this takes me like 20 minutes to walk alll the way over to the other side of the airport -____-. What a workout that was.

I finally settle down and decide to update my blog and I click my link for my blog and all the links were in CHINESE! and I'm like WTF! Good thing I knew exactly where the sign in button was and once I signed in, it went back to English :)

Packing?

35 hours until I leave the country for a semester. I should probably be pretty much packed right now, but I really haven't started yet. Still need to do laundry, buy medication, and book a hotel for my last day in Beijing. Should probably get on that.

Housing

Since I haven't been notified for the longest time whether or not I would get housing, I was sooooooo worried. But thankfully, I just received the email telling me that I'm going to live at Simon K. Y. Lee Hall ( http://leehall.hk/about/ ). It's right on campus and Danny used to live there, so I expect great things! Hopefully, I can join the athletics team for the semester and meet new friends. I wonder if I should bring my spikes.....

[edit]

Hm....apparently I read wrong and I"m going to live in R.C. Lee Hall. I don't know what to think since the site is A LOT more bare than the other one :\ http://www.hku.hk/rclhall/ . It seems a little far from campus and would require a bus ride. I'm starting to feel a little down about this hall thing. I hope this turns out ok....

Cost to Go to Asia

Time to see how much money I spend on this trip!

$140..............China Visa

$102..............HK Student Visa

$1308............Airplane Ticket (SFO-->北京-->上海-->香港-->SFO)

$5801............UCEAP Fees

$253..............Campus Fees

$58................Health Clearance

$10................Skype Credit

$800..............Rent (SD)

$189..............Hotel (5 nights)

$26................World Expo

$37................Emergency Medication

$11................TSA Approved Locks

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$8735 (Total so far)

On a side note, I got my Hong Kong Visa mailed to me today :)

(edited 2010/08/15)

Confused

I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be writing in this blog. The purpose of this post is to just test t make sure this works :P Oh yea, welcome to my blog. I hope I don't bore you too much with my boring adventures *coughwencough*.