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May/25/08 11:18 PM
Our first weekend has come to an end and I'm trying to get back into school-mode for class early tomorrow morning. Since my last post we've had a number of new speakers and explored the city a bit more.
On Friday morning we got up and went to class like it was a normal school day to see a young MBA student teach us about Feng Shui, which is the Chinese way of organizing your home and office that hoity toity Americans do these days. It was interesting, though I don't buy any of it. Apparently you're doomed if you position yourself across from a 90 degree angle at any time. I'll pass on losing sleep over my 90 degree angles. Then directly after that we had a presentation on living and working in Hong Kong, where the speaker pretty much told us that Hong Kong workers work the longest hours, have their dollars stretched the thinnest, produce the fewest children, inhale the most pollution, and are constantly threatened by an incompetent government and China. I'll pass on that as well :). After heading back to the hotel to do some research for our term projects we went to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which would have been a lot more interesting had the presenter known how to do a proper Powerpoint presentation. Instead she dragged on for almost two hours in a stifling hot room and lost most of our focus. The subject is interesting, though. In the 1970s and 1980s Hong Kong used to be a city totally ruled by corruption. It was a place where to receive any sort of medical or police help you had to pay someone off and a place where all business deals were greased. Through strict enforcement and education by the ICAC, though, Hong Kong has now become remarkably un-corrupt. It was ranked the 2nd least corrupt city in Asia last year, behind Singapore. After that, we moved out of downtown on our way to one of the best experiences of the trip so far...
Before dusk we took the famous Victoria's Peak tram up a steep mountain to a position that gave us an unbelievable bird's eye view of the city. Atop the peak there is a huge shopping mall full of restaurants (even restaurants that have American license plates!) where we ate and shopped for souvenirs a bit. After dusk fell we went to a clear viewing site and just relaxed in the beautiful weather, took pictures, and admired the view of the dark city lit by millions of colored florescent lights. Check out the pictures under the "my pictures" tab to see what I'm talking about. On the train ride home we also ran into a creepy, drunk, self-important British professor from a university here in Hong Kong who thought we were crazy for not wanting his business card. All he could talk about was how he came here to "chase some skirt" and hasn't left for 20 years. I'm now convinced that all the older, white men in this part of the world are perverts. Anyways, we went home after that and just crashed.
On Saturday morning we woke up early to get a Tai Chi lesson from the same guy who taught us about Feng Shui. Every morning you can see hundreds of Honkies, ranging from young to elderly, doing Tai Chi along the waterfront behind our hotel. I was amazed the other day to find out that the average lifespan for a Hong Kong woman is 85.4 years! The book I was reading attributed this partly to exercises like Tai Chi that a huge portion of the population takes part in every day. After Tai Chi I went back to my room and took a glorious four hour nap.
Waking up motivated, I decided to do a little exploring on my own. I walked out of the hotel door and stumbled into the shuttle that takes guests to Tsim Tsa Tsui, which is a busy downtown area. With no particular destination in mind, I hopped aboard. I then wandered down towards the water front (no surprise there) and found that a harbor-tour ferry was leaving in eight minutes! I quickly bought a ticket and hopped aboard the Star Ferry. After the boat made a quick trip across the harbor and then back to port, I realized that I had of course hopped on the wrong boat. Doh! Well, the tour cost HK$50, so there was no way I was putting that ticket to waste. So, I hung around for another 45 minutes until the next ferry took off. The later ride was just before dusk. It was a nice ride through a crowded Victoria Harbor, though I wish the boat had gone a little deeper into the harbor. I then hopped off at around 7 PM and faced my next debacle: how to get home.
I then saw a bunch of people running towards a bus at the bus station across the street. I saw the bus that everyone was madly running to said something in Chinese (which might as well have been Jibberish to me) and ended in the word "Estate". Remembering that there was a bus stop ending in the word "Estate" near my hotel, I got caught up in the craze and bolted for the bus. I sat down and immediately said to myself, "Well, that was dumb". Sure enough, it was. The bus took me about an hour into suburban Hong Kong, far from anywhere I had ever been before. I ended up just completing the loop after realizing I was totally lost and ended up right back where I started two hours later. I then took the MTR (HK's version of the T or Metro) back to the hotel, which is what I should have done in the first place. Oh well, it was an adventure. That night we went out to a festival in Long Kwai Fong, which was pretty fun.
This morning myself and a few others ventured out to go to mass in Hong Kong. We ended up at St. Benedict's in Sha Tin. The mass was pretty similar to mass back home, since we picked the one that was in English (though the priest didn't speak very good English. I think he was from Italy). Here they don't shake hands for peace (they bow slightly) and they dip the Bread in the Wine during communion. I'm guessing these are a result of the SARS scare a few years ago. I'm also pretty sure that I accidentally donated my room key to the collection basket with the change in my pocket. Not looking forward to that HK$200 fine! After mass we went to Pizza Hut in the mall across the street. It's funny that in Hong Kong Pizza Hut is positioned as a luxurious place to eat. We had to wait almost half an hour for a table (a table with a table cloth and fancy chairs). The decor is all new and the menu is much, much larger than that in the U.S. But, there was a bit of a language barrier when ordered, so my order of a sausage deep-dish pizza with marinara sauce somehow arrived as as deep-dish pizza with Thousand Island sauce (yes, Thousand Island dressing) with sausage, chicken, pineapple, and mushroom toppings. Surprisingly it didn't taste that bad. It was also funny that they had a pizza called the Adventurous American, which included sausage, pepperoni, and corn. Apparently they think Americans like corn on their pizza.
When we got back from lunch we went to my first horse race! We caught the last three races of the day. It was pretty cool. There were probably about 10,000 people in the stadium on one side of the huge racing track. I won HK$125 on the first race when my pick, horse #1, came in first. Great start! Of course, I lost the next two races. But, I ended the day up $25. Not too shabby for my first horse race!
Now we're all just laying around. I'm going to go for a run, do some reading, and head to bed early so I'm not too tired this week. Anyone have any book suggestions for me? I just finished John McCain's Faith of My Fathers. I highly recommend it to anyone. After reading it, I don't know how anyone could not vote for him, regardless of some political disagreements (of which I have quite a few).
Happy Memorial Day to all back home! Enjoy the long weekend.
Pictures from the first week of Hong Kong will be up later tonight, so check those out too.
On Friday morning we got up and went to class like it was a normal school day to see a young MBA student teach us about Feng Shui, which is the Chinese way of organizing your home and office that hoity toity Americans do these days. It was interesting, though I don't buy any of it. Apparently you're doomed if you position yourself across from a 90 degree angle at any time. I'll pass on losing sleep over my 90 degree angles. Then directly after that we had a presentation on living and working in Hong Kong, where the speaker pretty much told us that Hong Kong workers work the longest hours, have their dollars stretched the thinnest, produce the fewest children, inhale the most pollution, and are constantly threatened by an incompetent government and China. I'll pass on that as well :). After heading back to the hotel to do some research for our term projects we went to the Independent Commission Against Corruption, which would have been a lot more interesting had the presenter known how to do a proper Powerpoint presentation. Instead she dragged on for almost two hours in a stifling hot room and lost most of our focus. The subject is interesting, though. In the 1970s and 1980s Hong Kong used to be a city totally ruled by corruption. It was a place where to receive any sort of medical or police help you had to pay someone off and a place where all business deals were greased. Through strict enforcement and education by the ICAC, though, Hong Kong has now become remarkably un-corrupt. It was ranked the 2nd least corrupt city in Asia last year, behind Singapore. After that, we moved out of downtown on our way to one of the best experiences of the trip so far...
Before dusk we took the famous Victoria's Peak tram up a steep mountain to a position that gave us an unbelievable bird's eye view of the city. Atop the peak there is a huge shopping mall full of restaurants (even restaurants that have American license plates!) where we ate and shopped for souvenirs a bit. After dusk fell we went to a clear viewing site and just relaxed in the beautiful weather, took pictures, and admired the view of the dark city lit by millions of colored florescent lights. Check out the pictures under the "my pictures" tab to see what I'm talking about. On the train ride home we also ran into a creepy, drunk, self-important British professor from a university here in Hong Kong who thought we were crazy for not wanting his business card. All he could talk about was how he came here to "chase some skirt" and hasn't left for 20 years. I'm now convinced that all the older, white men in this part of the world are perverts. Anyways, we went home after that and just crashed.
On Saturday morning we woke up early to get a Tai Chi lesson from the same guy who taught us about Feng Shui. Every morning you can see hundreds of Honkies, ranging from young to elderly, doing Tai Chi along the waterfront behind our hotel. I was amazed the other day to find out that the average lifespan for a Hong Kong woman is 85.4 years! The book I was reading attributed this partly to exercises like Tai Chi that a huge portion of the population takes part in every day. After Tai Chi I went back to my room and took a glorious four hour nap.
Waking up motivated, I decided to do a little exploring on my own. I walked out of the hotel door and stumbled into the shuttle that takes guests to Tsim Tsa Tsui, which is a busy downtown area. With no particular destination in mind, I hopped aboard. I then wandered down towards the water front (no surprise there) and found that a harbor-tour ferry was leaving in eight minutes! I quickly bought a ticket and hopped aboard the Star Ferry. After the boat made a quick trip across the harbor and then back to port, I realized that I had of course hopped on the wrong boat. Doh! Well, the tour cost HK$50, so there was no way I was putting that ticket to waste. So, I hung around for another 45 minutes until the next ferry took off. The later ride was just before dusk. It was a nice ride through a crowded Victoria Harbor, though I wish the boat had gone a little deeper into the harbor. I then hopped off at around 7 PM and faced my next debacle: how to get home.
I then saw a bunch of people running towards a bus at the bus station across the street. I saw the bus that everyone was madly running to said something in Chinese (which might as well have been Jibberish to me) and ended in the word "Estate". Remembering that there was a bus stop ending in the word "Estate" near my hotel, I got caught up in the craze and bolted for the bus. I sat down and immediately said to myself, "Well, that was dumb". Sure enough, it was. The bus took me about an hour into suburban Hong Kong, far from anywhere I had ever been before. I ended up just completing the loop after realizing I was totally lost and ended up right back where I started two hours later. I then took the MTR (HK's version of the T or Metro) back to the hotel, which is what I should have done in the first place. Oh well, it was an adventure. That night we went out to a festival in Long Kwai Fong, which was pretty fun.
This morning myself and a few others ventured out to go to mass in Hong Kong. We ended up at St. Benedict's in Sha Tin. The mass was pretty similar to mass back home, since we picked the one that was in English (though the priest didn't speak very good English. I think he was from Italy). Here they don't shake hands for peace (they bow slightly) and they dip the Bread in the Wine during communion. I'm guessing these are a result of the SARS scare a few years ago. I'm also pretty sure that I accidentally donated my room key to the collection basket with the change in my pocket. Not looking forward to that HK$200 fine! After mass we went to Pizza Hut in the mall across the street. It's funny that in Hong Kong Pizza Hut is positioned as a luxurious place to eat. We had to wait almost half an hour for a table (a table with a table cloth and fancy chairs). The decor is all new and the menu is much, much larger than that in the U.S. But, there was a bit of a language barrier when ordered, so my order of a sausage deep-dish pizza with marinara sauce somehow arrived as as deep-dish pizza with Thousand Island sauce (yes, Thousand Island dressing) with sausage, chicken, pineapple, and mushroom toppings. Surprisingly it didn't taste that bad. It was also funny that they had a pizza called the Adventurous American, which included sausage, pepperoni, and corn. Apparently they think Americans like corn on their pizza.
When we got back from lunch we went to my first horse race! We caught the last three races of the day. It was pretty cool. There were probably about 10,000 people in the stadium on one side of the huge racing track. I won HK$125 on the first race when my pick, horse #1, came in first. Great start! Of course, I lost the next two races. But, I ended the day up $25. Not too shabby for my first horse race!
Now we're all just laying around. I'm going to go for a run, do some reading, and head to bed early so I'm not too tired this week. Anyone have any book suggestions for me? I just finished John McCain's Faith of My Fathers. I highly recommend it to anyone. After reading it, I don't know how anyone could not vote for him, regardless of some political disagreements (of which I have quite a few).
Happy Memorial Day to all back home! Enjoy the long weekend.
Pictures from the first week of Hong Kong will be up later tonight, so check those out too.
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