I Think I Can Get Used To This

***I confess that these are not my pics - I stole them off Facebook***

I’m pretty sure that this, along with “Try everything once”, are my two mottos for this semester.  Every time I take a step back and realize what I’m doing here, and how awesome it is that I’m getting this experience, I find that I definitely want to maintain this lifestyle.  Let me indulge a bit into the past week.  It’s tough for me to blog consistently because most of the things I do come at the end of the week, which tends to fly by.  So I sit in bed on Saturday night (aka Sunday) at 1am on my night off from partying writing.

Chronology helps me, so we’ll start the week off.

Monday is pretty boring – I only have Accounting class at 2:30pm, and I’d rather not have to remember that I go to that class because it is utterly boring.  Accounting is a boring subject by nature, but this guy has real trouble teaching anything that hasn’t been written down in a textbook.  In general, I’ve found that the professors rely A LOT on slides, notes and what seems like copying from a text – either journal or book.  This is definitely a stark difference from WashU, where I feel like a majority of professors I have are the absolute experts in their fields, and bring some really interesting, novel material and insight into the class beyond readings. 

Canteen for dinner, and watched some 30 Rock (which I’ve come to love) and Burn After Reading (I like John Malkovich a lot now) and went to sleep early at around 1.

Tuesday I got up at 8:30 (truly an ungodly hour) to meet up with two friends from UMiami to go to the Chinese Consulate in Wan Chai (HK Island) early to get our Chinese visas.  Note that the visa process for HK is completely separate and much easier and cheaper than for the mainland.  It costs ~$130 US for all the visas, which is insanely pricey compared to like $30 US for a lot of European countries.  This was a DMV-like process, except a lot quicker and easier.  In and out in about a half hour and I go back to pick up my visa on Friday.

At night, another lackluster night except that I booked my flight to Thailand for next week (January 27).  I learned my lesson the nervewracking way – plan ahead.  Originally I was trying to jump on with a group of French guys and girls that I know, but then, one of the people in the group invited like three other girls, making the group too big, and they didn’t want to split (which is probably a bad decision on their part anyway).  So, I was in free fall for about a full day, having already booked a flight, but with no one to travel with.  My uber-planning self was not happy.  We’ll check back in on that story in a bit.

(This is what Google says it will look like.  I hope to confirm)

Wednesday is just more Accounting class in the afternoon.  Came back and relaxed for a bit before the programming body for I-House, called I-Touch (lame, I know).  So, this welcoming party was what CS40 should be able to do at home – serve alcohol.  For free. Beautiful.  That, plus a nice buffet, a tai chi performance by a master/professor guy, and some American drinking games to entertain the internationals made for a hearty Wednesday night.  While a lot of people went out for the horse races in Happy Valley followed by Ladies Night in Wan Chai, I decided to hold back a bit and actually do part of the assigned reading for my 10:30 sociology class.

(Yummy buffet)

(Lots of people out for the party)

(American drinking games were completely novel to most internationals.  We dominate of course).

Woke up Thursday morning a little more tired than usual, which I would attribute to the warmer, muggier temperatures and clouds.  Weather makes all the difference in my book.  Class is pretty interesting, and I think I’m going to like it.  It’s called Southeast Asia in a Contemporary World, and its taught by this Chinese-born, Harvard-educated woman who is really excited and passionate about sociology and SE Asia.  Although she is really exciting and has some interesting things to say, I felt that reading the article the night before actually made the class more boring because her slides had a very similar feel to the article.  That won’t be a hard habit to change for me. 

We spent the class being lectured on, and a small bit of discussion (more to come in our tutorial sections that start in a couple weeks) about the concept of SEA as a region.  Honestly, this was something that had never crossed my mind, as I just started using the phrase probably about 2 months ago.  It’s interesting because other regions like Eastern/Western Europe, Central America, North America etc all have some common characteristics or histories between the countries that tie it together.  Similar cultures, religious beliefs, language etc.  However, SEA is seen as a cohesive region by many outsiders, but really lacks any of these things.  The 11 countries that it “consists” of speak many different languages, have been colonized by different countries, practice different religions, and are geographically extremely widespread.  Fun fact: Indonesia alone has over 10,000 islands that spread from east to west about the distance of NY to California, with a population of over 200 million.  This seems like it will be an interesting class.  Unfortuantley, next week when we talk about Thailand’s piece to this puzzle, I will in fact be in Thailand – worse things have happened in the world.

Thursday night is Ladies Night on Lan Kwai Fong (read: LKF).  Really quickly, LKF is a region within Central, which is a section of HK Island.  Tons and tons of people show up for the many bars and clubs every Thursday night and most Fridays.  I went out with a group of American/Canadian friends, along with a contingent of about thirty other CUHK exchange students.  We were planning on hitting up a club with free cover for guys and gals (unusual) and were walking in when one of our friends was stopped at the entrance.  While there are normally dress code rules like “No Sandals, no shorts”, this one apparently had a thing against Dwayne Wade because you couldn’t wear Converse sneakers.  Go figure.

Instead, we ended up with the hundreds of other people on LKF partying in the streets.  I should note that I see the two guys I met on the plane who go to another school in HK on the weekends and are developing a funny friendship there.  Let me reintroduce Club 7 – aka 7-Eleven.  They are on almost every street corner and house the cheapest beer you can find – I buy 2-500ml cans of Carlsberg of Heineken for about $2-2.50 US – not a bad deal.  These places are packed and sometimes even run out of beer because this is where literally everybody goes before, between or after clubs/bars.  The weather was nice so there were hundreds of people out in the streets by Club 7, milling in and out of bars with free drinks from the girls and enjoying themselves.  Overall a great night that, as usual, ended with a late-night stop at McDonald’s.  I have to say – I’ve had more fast food here in the past 3 weeks than I’ve had in probably the last six months at home – really weird, but it’s the only place that is open 24/7.  We split our cab home and made it to bed a little after 5.  To save money and extend the night, a lot of people actually wait until 6 when the MTR reopens and take the train back for $7 HK instead of the ~30-40 that a split taxi goes for. I’m sure one day you’ll hear about that experience here.

(I plan on going out here sober with my camera one night, we'll see)

I’m going to split the weekend off here and write another post about the rest of my weekend which was much busier and productive (?).

Some Extra Things

I’ve definitely continued to feel like I’m really on a permanent vacation here. I have what seems like so much more time on my hands when out of class, plus a lot less pressure in class, that I’m just in bliss every day.  I’m really happy that I’ve been keeping up with people pretty well via Skype, like my parents, my sister, Michael Chen (in Oxford) who I’m hoping will be visiting me here later this semester, and Sarah Cohen who finally made it to Madrid!  But, I’d love to talk to more of you!  Please find me on skype at jakenovick. 

I’m starting to see the real importance of my time here, which is not the classes.  While I think I will be able to enjoy more the actual learning part of an education without the pressure of grades hanging over me with my extracurriculars, I know that I’m here to experience something very separate.  To be able to absorb and immerse into this culture in Hong Kong, get out more, meet and take interest in new people, see everything that HK (and SE Asia) has to offer, and challenge myself to do more with my time.  I definitely think I made a big step this weekend to getting on a roll with this idea (read the next post to find out how).

A couple last things.  I forgot to mention about HK (and maybe China) that never in a cafeteria or restaurant do you clean up for yourself.  Even in McDonald’s it is inappropriate for you to take your tray to the garbage.  Here, there are people’s jobs to do this for you.  At first this was very weird, and I got a few angry stares from workers, who tried to actually remove my garbage from my hands, but now I think I can get used to this.  Mom, please note, when I come back, that may just be a cultural vestige that I try to keep :).  Also, the waitstaff will normally give you the check, and then stand right next to you as you pay.  They don't get tips, so it's not awkward for them, but it's very strange having them stand there as you figure out how much each of ten people has to pay.  

Lastly, my roommate situation is still in flux.  Sam moved out last weekend and we haven’t received a new roommate yet.  In the meantime, I took the liberty of taking the extra bed pad (I refuse to call it a mattress) and am now sleeping quite comfortably until someone new shows up.  We have plans in the works to move the third bed against the wall to create some walking space.