DSME2010A
Business Statistics
MGNT1020A
Principles of Management
CPTH3323
Putonghua Oral and Listening Skills III
GPA2135
Political Economy of East and Southeast Asia
FINA2010A
Financial Management
I realize my schedule may sound unbelievably boring to those (many) of you without the slightest bent towards business. However, rest assured that at least most of my classes are both interesting and practical...some more than others, but that's just life.
Anyway, it's not just classes that are starting up this time of the year. Clubs are going out full-force recruiting members. I was unable to make it to the official "Club Recruitment Fair" because the entire thing conflicted with my classes. However, with facebook around to fill in the gaps, I think that "fair" idea might become obsolete pretty fast. I'm now in the process of becoming a member of the ISA (International Student Association), which is obviously where all the cool kids are, right?
We all got invited to this "welcome and initiation dinner." There's an official one from the university next week, but this was just all the international students getting together at the Lok Yuen Dai Pai Dong. Lok Yuen is the name of the area (it's just a smaller area inside of Wo Che Estate), and Dai Pai Dong is the type of restaurant. This is actually a pretty neat cultural experience because Dai Pai Dong is zhende dididaodao Hong Kong Cantonese style food. As you can see in the picture below, the typical Dai Pai Dong is a huge open-air food market where you can buy dishes from several different vendors, who just wander the aisles. There's no A/C, lots of crickets and mosquitoes everywhere, tiny plastic stools, and an overpowering smell of stale cheap beer. It was really fun.
I was surprised at how many of the IBCE folks didn't come. There were only about 5 of us there! Still, I got to meet some great people like Helena, Pierce, and Justin while we were riding the MTR and then a whole table full of hilarious Korean students at the Dai Pai Dong! I was in the middle of talking to Justin. It turns out he's in my "Political Economy" class, and his English is so excellent I thought he was an American. He's from Hong Kong, but fits into the category I like to call "Cantonadian." Ever heard of Canindians? Same sort of deal. I think it's really a sign of the times in which we live when words like those become fairly common vocabulary. Is it too redundant to say that globalization is a worldwide phenomenon? I think it is. Anyway, so back to this table-full of Koreans...
Justin and I sat down since we were in mid-conversation. This mass of students (only a few of whom I already knew) swarmed the table and sat down. They were all speaking a language I didn't recognize, which is surprising for CUHK. I may not speak them, but I can recognize Cantonese, Japanese and (usually) Vietnamese or Malay when I hear them. Of course the language was Korean. They tried to teach me some words, but it just didn't stick. Maybe the restaurant was just too loud. People eventually lapsed into English, Mandarin, a little Cantonese, and Singlish, which kept things lively. Singlish, by the way, is another pidgin language (like it's more familiar cousin, Chinglish), except that it comes from Singapore. Singapore actually has 3 official languages: English, Mandarin, and Malay. Talk about a melting pot! I can only remember one Singlish word: Wah lah (Wow). Oh, Asia.
So we had fun. I met Sue, who is from Korea, Singapore, and the US...there goes that globalization again. Her English is fantastic and she loves to talk so I quickly made a new friend. I also got to try some Korean snacks that people brought along. I liked the water chestnuts and the spicy seaweed. We got back pretty late, but it was OK because it was Thursday night. I have only one Friday class, and it doesn't start until 1:30pm.
Friday, I slept in pretty late and, after class, I went over to the campus Park 'n' Shop. I can honestly say I've never seen such slim pickings in that store. I tried to find enough ingredients to pull together a recipe, but each time I had to go back to the proverbial drawing board because something was unavailable. I eventually just made something up. After all, even if I made something that tasted bad, I'd still be the only one eating it. I got some fusilli, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, chicken, and parmesan. I keep spices and olive oil on hand so I figured I could make a decent meal.
That evening I went out to dinner with a friend from my Mandarin class. She's an American named Alice, from California, and her family is Cantonese so she speaks the language a little bit. She's only here for a semester of exchange, but she's trying to apply for the whole year. Anyway, we've kind of become Mandarin-speaking buddies over the last couple of weeks, and seem to have a lot in common. So we met up at the MTR station and headed over to Shatin for some good eats.
We were also meeting up with some other girls we'd just met. Let's face it, everyone's new this time of year. We found Nayoon and Su near the escalators and began our quest for food. Ironically, even though I'm the token guailo (I can't really say laowai here because that can refer to any foreigner. I guess I'll have to stick with the politically incorrect guailo, which you may recall means "white devil barbarian foreigner."), I was more "local Hong Kong" than anyone else in the group.
No one could decide what to eat so I just recommended this Yunnan Province restaurant because, hey, I know it's good. I've been there a few times and the food is both delicious and well-priced. That's Nayoon on the left (she's Korean, and a Mandarin beginner this semester), and Su is on the right (she's from Fujian Province in Mainland China, but studies in the US).
Here's the photo of the whole group, courtesy of the waiter. Alice is, of course, the one wearing the bluish-green shirt.
We ordered lots of delicious food. I'm happy that people in Asia really seem to love their veggies. I know I do! The things on the far-left that look like some strange type of sushi are actually eggplant. Then there's Chinese flowering cabbage with garlic, and sliced beef with pumpkin.
And the whole spread wouldn't be complete without rice and delicious Mandarin-style fish.
I think we all ate better than we really needed to, but it was fun getting to know everyone. We exchanged phone numbers, took pictures, talked about plans for the semester and so on and so forth. After dinner, we walked around the mall for a bit, stopping into a bookstore called "Popular" on the 4th floor. Immediately we all wanted to check out the music section.
This takes a little explaining. There's a famous Taiwanese R&B singer named Jay Chou. He also does a little acting. Well, I ran into this guy's music when I started checking out the Mando-pop scene last year (thank you, Internet), and I really really liked it! I am definitely NOT the only one. He's huge here in Hong Kong. My roommates love him, my friends here all love him--even Alice, Su, and Nayoon all love him! In Asia, it might as well be Beiber-Who? because Jay Chou and Lady Gaga are where it's at. It's pretty much Jay Chou fever over here right now, though, because the man's having a concert in Hong Kong tonight. If I had found out earlier, I seriously might have bought a ticket. However, I found out far too late so it's simply a non-issue.
What this little tangent is getting to, though, is that not every Mando-pop artist can be Jay Chou. That's probably because not every Mando-pop artist has talent. Unfortunately, America's not the only place in the world that turns out a new boy-band every 5 years or so. It's a way-too-lucrative business in Taiwan and Hong Kong. I don't know who this boy-band is, but the general consensus among the 4 of us was that they were half Backstreet-Boy half Chippendale Dancer.
Once we'd spent enough time poking fun at the Mando-poptarts, we decided to search for some dessert. What we found was this little ice-cream stand in-between the back-entrance to Park 'n' Shop and a dubious-looking "Hello Kitty" store. I love it when ice-cream stands have flavors like "Hokkaido Milk Cracker," "Green Tea," and "Sweet Potato." I've had the green tea flavor and the sweet potato flavor, and I've eaten Hokkaido milk crackers before (though not in ice-cream) so I went with the single scoop of delicious Lychee Flavor:
Good choice, if I may say so myself. And I may...so I do. I love lychee, and I can't wait for it to come back into season. I'm also glad I got to make friends with some new people. We're all facebookified now so it's official. That always cracks me up. We got back around 10:00pm and said our goodbyes.
Today hasn't been quite as fun...just a little boring. I woke up to the sound of my roommate's phone going off, misread my clock by a couple hours, and didn't realize it was 8:30am until I was halfway through my breakfast. Oh well. Menglu and Yiyun were up not long after me. Yiyun went to the library to study while Menglu and I hung around the dorm because we both had homework on the computer. When we took our first study break around 10:00am, she started asking me what I was doing for lunch. I responded that I was probably just going to cook the stuff I bought yesterday, and her response was a big "Really?! Oh yay!"
Apparently, she'd been hoping to catch me the next time I decided to cook because she really wants to learn how. I told her we could cook lunch together if she wanted, but I was going to experiment a little bit so I wasn't sure if the dish would be any good. Around noon we set up camp in the kitchen and started cutting up the vegetables and chicken. I showed her how to cook the pasta first and then how to saute the other ingredients in some olive oil--just really basic stuff. I'm always a little nervous showing someone how to cook, but it's still fun to do. Menglu took to it really well. She said her family just hasn't let her in the kitchen that much so she hasn't had many chances to learn. When we were done, the kitchen smelled good, which is always a positive sign. We dished it up, sprinkled some cheese on top, and did the first taste test. Considering that we both went back for a small helping of seconds, I think we did all right. I have enough leftovers for one more meal, and Menglu learned how to cook some "Western" food. Everybody's happy. It's been a good weekend so far.
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