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.