As for life in the Eastern Hemisphere, it's midterms, midterms, midterms here at CUHK. I mentioned before that I've already taken one midterm. That was for statistics, though, which is notorious around here for early tests. Now all the other classes are piling on the work. As of today, I'm about halfway through all my mid-semester tests and projects. Halfway, however, means there's still more to come.
I'll pick up right where I left off on Sunday when I discovered my missing food. Since then, I've cooked 2 different meals and subsisted on the leftovers and, to protect them, I've employed my new triple-bag-guilt-trip-hidden-in-the-back-of-the-fridge strategy with fantastic results. Not only has all of my food been there when I wanted it, but there aren't even any signs of attempted theft. It is a little inconvenient for me to spend nearly 5 minutes just getting to the container with my lunch, but it seems to be well worth it. If no one messes with my stuff this next week, I might try my luck with some more yogurt...blueberry yogurt. If this most highly coveted item doesn't go missing, I'll know I'm in the clear.
In other news, things have been rather lively around United College despite midterms. This week (today in particular) marks the anniversary of the founding of United College. To celebrate, Monday evening we had our cultural festival. This is a pretty interesting part of Asian university life that we just don't see in the States. Most colleges and universities in East Asia will have a small student-run festival where different clubs and organizations each have a booth. They use the opportunity to raise money for their clubs, and it's fun to go because they always highlight some of the fun things about the city you're in. For us, that means having a "mini Hong Kong" just outside the Student Centre (and, yes, CUHK has 4 festivals because it has 4 "colleges").
The theme this year was "Circus Mystery" so there were a few circus tents set up and people dressed like clowns. Su and I went together right when the festivities started at 6:00pm. This is how it looked outside:
And, naturally, we had dinner there instead of at UC-Can (the most convenient canteen from where I live, but also the worst one on campus). Our options were all street food so we went to about 4 different stalls and sampled some of the deep-fried festival fare. We had fried dumplings, fried sweet potatoes, fried fishcake, fried mushrooms, fried shao mai, and fried fishballs (shown below).
Thankfully we didn't opt for any fried dessert, and instead bought red-bean glutinous rice-balls with coconut jelly. Don't knock it before you try it, by the way.
There was supposed to be some live entertainment, but it seems there was a technical problem that took almost 2 hours and 15 people to fix.
We hung around for quite a while, and had fun looking at the miniature versions of Hong Kong's famous street markets. Of course, the items for sale were overpriced compared to what you could find in a real street market so we didn't buy anything. The festival was fun but small so we quickly ran out of things to do and it got a little boring. I think we called it a night at 9:00pm or so.
Tuesday was, unfortunately, spent the same way as last week...studying. Last time it was that killer finance assignment and this time it was the finance midterm. The midterm itself was actually scheduled for Wednesday at 7:00pm which made Tuesday afternoon a perfect time for hard-core studying (reviewing, mind you, not cramming).
Wednesday morning, my group for management class had an appointment with Dr. Chiu to talk about our end-of-term group paper. We've decided to focus on a US firm that does work in Asia (particularly China) and examine what kind of training it gives it's expatriate employees. We still haven't decided on a firm, but Amway looks attractive because we have some prior knowledge from the Shanghai trip.
Alice and I went to lunch after Putonghua (like we usually do on Wednesdays), and that's where my day started to go horribly wrong. I consider myself a lucky person. Usually, my life goes pretty well. Things tend to run smoothly for weeks or even months at a time. Therefore, it's rare that I have a truly bad day. It's almost never anything huge that goes wrong, either. It's an accumulation of small things that just gradually make my day worse and worse to the point that I want to go to bed at 7:00pm just to make the bad day end sooner.
Well, as you can most likely surmise, Wednesday was one of those days. There had been enough aggravating things that morning that I was already in a so-so sort of mood instead of my usual sunshine-and-butterflies approach to life. I had had to wake up earlier to make it to my appointment with Dr. Chiu on time so I was already running a little low on sleep. Since I was up earlier, I also ate breakfast earlier, which meant that I was hungry for lunch sooner. Unfortunately, my class schedule does not bend to the whims of my stomach so I was craving food something fierce by the time my one-hour lunch break came around. Alice and I went to UC-Can and ordered our food. We went to the different lines to pick up our different orders and, since she got hers first, she went ahead and sat down to wait for me.
At my line, I saw a plate of what looked like my order so I handed my ticket to the lunch-lady. She shook her head and indicated that the number on the ticket didn't match. Someone had just ordered the same thing I had, which is both fine and normal. I waited a little longer. As my stomach began to protest louder and louder, I watched as people who had been rather far behind me in line picked up their food, sat down, and finished it. When my hour was almost halfway gone, I was still waiting for Godot. I told Alice not to wait on me since it looked like it would be a while, but she said she didn't have anymore class so it wasn't a problem.
I started handing my ticket to the lunch-lady every time the cook finished an order--even when it obviously wasn't what I had ordered--because I wanted her remind her I was still waiting. True, she seemed a little aggravated with me, but sorry I don't speak Cantonese. Finally, she got her boss who spoke English. He looked at my ticket and then looked through all of the numbers on the cook's list. He very sincerely apologized and said that they had accidentally lost my order. Telling me to wait just a minute, he walked into the kitchen and said something rather loud and unhappy sounding to the cook. When he came back out, he said my order would come in just a moment. 15 minutes before class, I got my food (which was definitely not worth the wait) and scarfed it down in time to run to class.
Thankfully, no problems came up in class, except that it was statistics and we still haven't gotten our grades from the midterm. After class, though, as I was heading back to the dorm, the strap on my backup purse broke (my original purse was ruined on the flight over here when the man sitting next to me spilled red wine all over it without even apologizing). So, when I got back to my room, I examined the purse to see if it was fixable. It wasn't. The strap had broken in such a way that it was impossible to permanently reattach. I needed to fix it somehow and, unfortunately, my most viable option was masking tape. Here's the photo of my mad repair skills:
Maybe it was just my frustration or perhaps it was already in the works, but by 5:00pm I had developed the most intense headache. It was one of those that feels like your brain is a giant water-balloon and moving around too much makes the water slosh too much. Ugh.
By 6:30pm I was still over-full from my hasty lunch but, with the exam lasting from 7:00-8:30pm, I knew I couldn't risk a drop in blood sugar. I ate a really small dinner from some leftover stir-fry I had and felt miserable. I really hate having exams during dinner-time. You either have to eat beforehand when you're not hungry or afterward when you're starving. Either way isn't good for me.
So, feeling a little nauseous and with my head still waterlogged, I began walking to the building where the exam would take place. Unfortunately, there isn't a bus stop nearby so it really is faster just to walk about 15 minutes. I got there feeling miserable and took my seat. The exam itself was 30 multiple-choice questions, but it was far from easy. Thankfully, I had my financial calculator, which I had worked with meticulously in advance to ensure that I knew how to use it. With a fair degree of difficulty, I worked my way through 2/3 of the test. Then I came to a simple problem about future value of a lump sum of cash. That's easy: the formula is FV=PV(1+r)^t. In other words, a lump sum of cash today will be worth more in the future because it gains interest when you invest it or put it in the bank. The financial calculator, though, insisted that the present value (let's call it $1000) was worth more than the future value (approximately $885). Confused, I punched in the equation again, more carefully this time, and watched as it gave me the same answer. I solved it manually and got a much more reasonable answer, although it took me about 3 times as long. I finished the remaining 1/3 of the test without trusting the calculator, and went back to recalculate all the problems I might have done wrong considering my screwy technology. I didn't get through more than 4 problems, though, before time ran out and we had to hand in the tests.
On the way out, I had to fight hard to suppress the urge to throw my financial calculator against a wall and smash it into approximately 885 future pieces. Sadly, my only consolation was that some people were literally crying as they left. Remember, the grade itself doesn't matter--just how you do compared with the rest of the class. I had now reached that point beyond miserable.
Now I'm a reasonable person and an optimist by nature. I knew good and well that, no matter how badly I did, it wasn't the end of the world, tomorrow would still come, and that there would still be a final test in December. However, I know myself too well. Even though I know all of those things, and even though I know I'll be fine the next day, I also know I have to give myself time to be mad about it. Thankfully, I'm no longer a person who treats anger with chocolate. Instead I spent an hour on the treadmill at UC gym blasting heavy metal music into my eardrums. I know for a fact it must have been frightening to watch me on that thing. The treadmill faces a mirror, and even I had to look away because it seemed like some scary angry crazy lady was running straight at me looking for something to throttle.
When I got back to the dorm, I took a quick shower, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I didn't look at the time, but my roommates later said it was pretty early...even for me. I wasn't tired, but I just wanted the day to be over already.
The next day was Thursday so it was actually kind of lucky that I went to bed early. For once, I felt extremely well-rested for my 8:30am class. It's amazing what a good long sleep will do for you. By 2:30pm, though, it was time to start my 3-hour finance class...the same one for which I had just taken the midterm. That was an immediate mood-killer. Still, I wasn't angry anymore and I had had time to think, to re-strategize for the rest of the semester. Thankfully, the lecture was about stocks, which is actually really interesting so the 3 hours didn't seem quite that long. During the break I fished out the manual for my calculator and went through the baffling process of reformatting the thing, which set it to the default setting. Afterward, it calculated future value quite well, as well as annuities, par values, and amortizations. Imagine that. What's more, we found out our grades for the midterm (so fast!), and I didn't do nearly as badly as I imagined. Now, that's not to say I did wonderfully, because I most certainly did not, but I'm still a few rungs up from the bottom of the ladder. I passed, though not with flying colors.
Well, the excitement for the week was still not over. All day Thursday I had heard more rumors about Typhoon Megi. If you've been watching the weather in the news, you probably know about the super-typhoon that killed 7 people in the Philippines this week. On Thursday, it looked like it was headed straight for Hong Kong! Immediately after class, I rushed down to Park 'n' Shop to buy "typhoon food" so I wouldn't be stranded in the dorm with nothing but oatmeal and peanut butter to eat. Of course, everyone had the same idea as me. I've never seen the Park 'n' Shop look so empty. The only vegetables left were green beans, bitter melon, and some questionable-looking eggplant. Only the green beans made it into my buggie. I had hoped to find some fish or maybe some shrimp, but I was just lucky to find anything but pork bone. The very last package of chicken also made it into my buggie. The line for the cash registers was just slightly shorter than the entire perimeter of the store, and the wait was at least 30 minutes. During that time, my masking tape came undone on my purse so I just fixed it while waiting. Thankfully, I had had the foresight to carry my tape with me in the likely event that this very thing would happen.
I got my typhoon food back to the dorm, finished my previous leftovers for dinner, and then went ahead and cooked my chicken and green beans before the kitchen got busy. According to the HKO, the typhoon was supposed to hit this morning, but it didn't. I ate half the chicken and green beans for lunch, and only Typhoon Warning Level 3 was in effect. The next stage is Typhoon Warning Level 8, at which point class gets canceled and the MTR shuts down. Level 8 is the highest. But, since it was just at Level 3, I went to Putonghua class and watched videos of Jackie Chan's award-acceptance speech at China's version of the Oscars. Good job, Da Ge.
Now, when I last checked, it seems the typhoon has changed direction and will be making a direct hit in northern Guangdong/southern Fujian Provinces sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. Both of those areas are rather close, though, so Hong Kong will still get a lot of the wind and rain. We already have. Because of that, my plans for the weekend have changed. Originally, some people and I were going to Cat Street and Man Mo Temple tonight and then to Repulse Bay tomorrow morning. Well, we scratched Cat Street off the list for now (bad pun, I know, I know), and Repulse Bay has been postponed. Instead, we're going to Mong Kok tomorrow at 10:30am for some indoors fun and then to the Ladies' Market if the weather clears up.
In other news, it seems I'll be traveling in the near future. I've already been to Japan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China. On my list of countries I most want to visit, the next one is India, but that is still quite a long way from Hong Kong and a little inconvenient right now. After India, though, is Thailand. Some friends are arranging a trip to Thailand through a travel agency and I've been invited to come along. I would have to miss 2 days of class, but thankfully they are both days on which I have only one class. Therefore, I would miss only 2 classes. Also, the price for the trip is very attractive and affordable as it comes out to less than US$500. Since everyone going speaks some Putonghua and not everyone speaks English particularly well, we've decided to make it a Putonghua-speaking trip. I think that more than makes up for the fact that I would have to miss one Putonghua class. Just something to think about and let everyone in on! Our prospective dates are November 5-8.
Just for added fun, check out the video in this link: http://www.joblo.com/index.php?id=34392. It's the preview for a Thai version of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, made by GM Toons. Judge for yourself the power (or lack thereof) of international copyright laws, and can you say "Hallo, hallo, copy-beast?"
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