School, Meeting Locals and pre-Philippines

I apologize in advance for the lack of photos in this blog.  Check out my last couple posts to get your fix

Last week was pretty dull and mostly a recovery from the amazing-ness that was Thailand.  Classes were on the boring side as we move on to the more legitimate part of the semester as last week was the first week after the add-drop period had ended, so classes were finally set and professors got down to business.

Accounting still sucks, enough said.  My Chinese Film class is pretty interesting.  I’ve never taken a look at a history from the perspective of film, so this has been new to me.  I have to say though, that there is more knowledge of film (that I don’t have) and Chinese history (which I happen to have) than I expected for a class without prerequisites.  My professor is pretty sarcastic and kind of has the attitude and pretentiousness that you’d expect from some high literary or art critic – an heir of condescendence.  The class is 3 hours long (we watch a full movie every week) but we spend the first half hour talking about movies that we’ve seen in the past week. I think she just sees this as a stand-up comedy routine, where people say movies and she just rips them to shreds because, well yeah, in the deepest sense, Avatar sounds pretty stupid, but then again, so does everything.  Golf is just a game where you smash a one-cubic-inch ball with a metal-clubbed shaft hundreds of yards so you can find it and hit it again, until you find the 2-inch hole, and then you repeat another 17 times.  But the films have been pretty interesting, The Goddess (~1940), Spring in a Small Town (1948), Two Stage Sisters (~1965) and Sacrificed Youth (~1985).

My SE Asia Culture class has been interesting, but the discussion has been pretty weak.  I think this is purely the product of a professor who studied at Harvard, trying to bring the Western classroom to the East.  She is constantly trying to spur discussion.  A couple problems arise. The local students don’t speak by default.  The other international students have some trouble keeping up with her not-perfect English and then formulating ideas to contribute to the conversation – totally understandable, I don’t blame them, I’m impressed by them.  Then, the other two Americans are also shy Asians, so I end up being the major talker, which I’m not a fan of.  Either way, we have a big group project (will elaborate much later on) and we formed groups today in our Tutorial (read: sub-section, that’s just as long as the lecture) and I’m paired with one of my exchange friends Iulia and a local student Candy (great name, I know).  I got to talking with Candy and she seems really cool and interesting – studied at UNC last semester and loves talking about food – I think we’ll be fast friends, and I’m always looking to make more local friends.

Also, backtracking a bit, Friday I went out to dinner with the same crew that I went to hot pot with, a few locals and one other international student because the others were on vacation in the Philippines.  We went to Po Tai which is one stop in the other direction on the MTR.  It used to be a big market, but now is dominated by an indoor food/fish market, and on the top floor there is essentially indoor street food.  There were maybe 20 of these small restaurants with there little areas to seat customers all in one big “hallway” that was more like a street.  We ate some traditional Chinese food – brought on big plates that everyone takes off of – consisting of the usual squid, shrimp, chicken, fish balls etc.  Sadly, I forgot to bring out my camera for this, andi apologize.  We then went out for dessert and had some delicious treats which I wish I had the pictures for, because they are impossible to describe.  Bottom line, they eat mostly fruit and gelatin-based desserts as opposed to the Western cakes and chocolates.  I’m a little out of place, but still find things to enjoy, I’m a dessert fiend as it is.

The most interesting part though was the conversation we had.  Definitely touched on a lot of subjects from campus programming to religion – which I will elaborate on.  The campus programming one was most interesting to me because of my intense involvement at WashU with it.  Some of the high points are that their “clubs” are called “committees” and are pretty large.  I think people tend to be general members in a lot of groups, and then there are executive councils of roughly 20 people in each group – so I figure the general body is pretty large.  But then again, the campus is also 2-3x of WU.  One really cool thing they do, is for recruitment, a lot of the major clubs do this synchronized dance /song routines everywhere on campus.  They all have matching jumpsuits and track jackets and have been walking around in them all semester – I think it’s a bit of overkill, but then again, CS40 and other programming groups are no less.  Anyway, at the canteens during lunch, and even in some of my classes, they march in doing these dances, almost like a step routine, advertising for their recruiting efforts.  I’m going to try to get a video of it before I leave because it’s just hilarious.

Another topic that really stuck with me was religion.  It came up as we were relating CNY to Christmas and how they celebrate Christmas, with a tree and some gifts, but don’t believe in Jesus or any of the religious aspects.  Once a year or so, they said, their parents might go to a temple to pray for a healthy new year for their family etc, but nothing like the established religion we have in the West. Also, I haven’t really mentioned this, but I’m probably one of a handful (literally to be counted on a hand) of Jews on this program and thus the University.  I constantly find myself talking to people and being the first Jew they’ve met.  This has been less of a shock and more of an opportunity for me.  I kind of enjoy being their first impression of a Jewish person, because I’m pretty normal – by Jewish standards at least.  I don’t have peous or wear a kippah, and so it comes as a surprise to them that I’m Jewish.  The most interesting comment was when I said that I don’t celebrate Christmas because I’m Jewish, and my friend said “Oh really, what does that mean? I can’t figure out the difference between the white religions”.  Now, I point out that “white religions” was not meant in any negative connotation, just a matter of translation error.  But it was really cool to explain the idea and similarities between the three main religions of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, the basic tenets, and how they differ.  I also saw it from an interesting angle that, while I’m sure there are others, they do not prejudice on religion at all, because it just doesn’t really exist here.  Maybe this is a result of the decades of Communist influence, or maybe they are just more tolerant in their ignorance, while I find that we tend to be more prejudiced in our ignorance.  That as a really long paragraph, I apologize.

In other news, I still have no third roommate and it doesn’t look like one is coming any time soon. Unfortunate, but I can get used to the extra space and permanent second “mattress”.  Comically, my roommate Michael from UNC left for Shanghai while I was in Thailand, and then extended his trip to Seoul, and comes back after I leave for the Philippines, so I won’t be seeing him for nearly 4 weeks – kinda crazy.

Oh yeah, and I’m going to the Philippines.  For 9 days.  I leave on Thursday the 11^th at night, and return on Sunday the 21^st in the morning.  Other than my in/out flights to Manila, I have no other plans yet.  This has led to a bit of a change in my traveling philosophy – I need to be more proactive in planning.  I seem to be continually getting screwed out of groups because I think that others will work out – I need to let my mini-administrator out of the closet for a few seconds, plan some outline of a trip and then recruit people.

I had been planning to go with a group of Americans before I went to Thailand, and we were going to book the tickets before I left.  Then we didn’t.  Then I gave my credit card info to my flatmate to book them for me.  When I returned from Thailand, I found out that they decided not to go – lame sauce.  So, I thought I might tag along with my friends from Thailand, but then found out that they had already done the bookings, and their group had gotten too big.

I then relinquished myself to the possibility of staying in HK for Chinese New Year.  I got pretty excited about being able to do a lot of the touristy and fun things in HK I haven’t been able to do, maybe go to Macau, enjoy the parades and fairs etc.  Then Sunday, someone I had asked to go to the Philippines with a week earlier told me that he had decided to go.  Meet Josh, one of the most slowest-to-organize people I’ve met.  Anyways, I booked my flights with him and his friend who I’ve met Jesse, from UCL – good guys.  So, again, we have no plans except to get down to Cebu (a major beach town) eventually, and either fly there, or go the slow route and see some sites.  While that sounds good, I’m not sure we’ll be able to muster the planning to do this.  We shall see, I’m optimistic.

In other fun news, I saw the Super Bowl on Monday morning.  And by morning, I mean MORNING.  Like waking up at 5:30am morning.  Morning as in, it’s too early for the campus buses to be running so I should walk a half hour to the MTR.  Mike (Notre Dame) and I made it to SoHo, an area in Central with lots of different cuisines and bars/restaurants, at around 7:30am, just in time for kickoff.  We went with 4 other Americans from CUHK, and met up with the guy Will that I sat next to on the flight over to HK.  We had an excellent American-style breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, English muffins and Budweiser’s for a pretty reasonable price.  I haven’t felt this patriotic in a very long time.  The game was broadcast really well except for two things – the announcers were terrible and there were no commercials.  And by this, I mean that instead of commercials, we had these incredibly annoying promos (without words) for the other sports that this channel shows throughout the year.  And this same 30-second spot was repeated every single time for 4 hours.  I’ve never wanted to see a real commercial so much in my life.

In my academic life, I’m sad to say that I wrote my first essay (only 700 words) for Friday, and I have a midterm (yikes!) on Thursday.  At this point, I’m comfortable saying that I have no idea how I’m going to study.  When I think of it, I can’t even visualize me studying.  And, sadly, my first test is in the econ class which I need a sky-high B- in to get credit at WashU.  I wish they weren’t so vague with the test and material parameters.  Oh well, I’m sure if I can handle WU, I can handle this stuff. 

That’s all for now, thanks for reading through all that text, you’re a champ for doing so, and I promise to come back next time with some fabulous pictures from my ample travels.