Fuck. I need to start studying more.

...and we lost one.

University life here seems much more lax than CP. After exams, kids just don't show up to class anymore. There were about thirty people in stat on Thursday. The class is supposed to be about 120... Following their example, I skipped all of my classes on Friday. The day started early with YP and I making our way to HKU. We went via Choi Hung and ended up at Fa Yuen Gai. Inevitably we ended up combing the area and buying to our hearts content. Only about three hours later did we attempt to go to HKU again. Took the MTR to Wan Chai and then the 40 bus to HKU.

HKU is pretty much what I expected it to be. I feel like the place has alot of history to it. Its pretty cool to have a university in the middle of the city. The design is quite poor though since you have to take a bus to go to class -__-". Jonathan and I ended up watching one episode South Park in the library before we each KOed in front of the TV. Afterwards, we all took the bus to MK to meet up with Shing. It was his last night in HK before going back to Singapore and then Japan for his exchange.

We wandered the area before heading to the MTR Station to meet w/ Todd and Wong Chung. We had dinner at a cha chan tang and ordered a set meal for our side of the table. YP, Todd, Shing, and I got goose, cha siu, veg, swt sour pork, chicken, and tofu. Quite a delicious meal.

Dessert was a delicious milk pudding? One of the most heavenly things ever. I need to go back to have more! Must try the egg one as well.


After visiting Shing's grandparents'house, we played silly drinking games with water. The laughter was enough exercise for me for the whole week. Ridiculous. Before midnight, the HKU kiddies left us. The lack of MTR after 12:30/1am is a bit of a problem sometimes but they do have buses at night. The rest of us wandered around the empty streets of Mong Kok at night. The streets were not really empty though. Even at 1am, there are still people walking around, people sitting around and eating. They are a few odd shops that are still open. We went to a recommended dessert place to have shaved ice. YP and I shared mangooooo! So amazing!



We stumbled upon Tung Choi Gai which was empty and filled with rubbish from the day. Took lots of fun pictures which are still with Shing. It was really sad to see him go. We had alot of fun days in UST and hiking. It reminds me that we are already halfway through our exchange and that in a few months all of us will have to go our separate ways.

21.

I'm 21. 

I never really liked birthdays.  I always thot that they were a bit awkward. When I was younger, I was never really that excited to have bithday parties but it was my parents actually who insisted I have one every year.  I always felt like 03.24 was just another day.  

My 21st started off with an unknowing visit to the seafront cafe.  My roommate had been talking about the tong shui all night and I figured I would join her for some.  My studying for Elec210 was not very productive either.  As we walked towards the cafe, I first noticed the group of classmates from my 210 and 152 class.  I thought that they had gone home for the night as we had an exam the next day.  As we entered, I saw the group of exchange students from Singapore and the US that we had been hanging out with.  I had not seen many of them for quite some time since midterm season was upon us.  

It took me a few seconds to realize that they had all gathered here to surprise me for my birthday.  I know everybody had tons of papers, projects, and exam but thank you SO much for coming out last night.  You all have really made my 21st a memorable one.

A special thanks to my roomie for organizing all of it! :-D And for the massive tofu that she got me! :-D

 

The world's happiest electrical/electronic engineers. Seriously.

These kids stayed up until 2am with my roomie and me despite our looming stat exam that we had the next day.  I'm still working on my HK English accent =P.  Its getting there.  

We are learning Tonyspeak.

Singaporean = Singaporprean = Sang ga Poly yun

Yi Pei = E-Pay = eBay = eBanking = eBranking = eBlanking

The morning started off with some hardcore studying.  Could barely get up but I somehow managed to drag my butt over to the common room.  Just as I had sat down, I got a call for delivery of flowers! 18 pink roses. <3>

The 210 exam was NOT easy. Silly TA lied to us. We were all confused afterwards.  After a nourishing therapy meal of McDonalds Shake Shake chicken and Shake Shake fries, I attempted to study for Sosc166 which is tmrw.  Didn't get much done, but I doubt I'll actually be in danger of failing the class. 

Grueling Tuesday

Its always great to start off the day with a delicious breakfast here. Canadian breakfast from the cafe is only $18 and comes with toast, beans, bacon, two eggs over easy, and a milk tea. Seriously, how much better can it get?

Well there is that mushroom omelette that comes with hash browns and milk tea for $16... but that will have to be for tomorrow.

No mgto class today, thank god. Really, not the world's most thrilling lecture. Did some work on the group project over a lunch hour and then hit the library for another hour or so before stat. I actually understood what was happening in stat today... until the first hour passed and then he started going at hyperspeed, covering 10 slides in about 15 mintues. I gave up and started fiddling with my super asian four ink pen.

I was planning on hitting up the library again for a bit before heading out to Kowloon but a classmate reminded me of the ridiculous amt of people who would be traveling on the MTR at that time. I decided to head out and stop by Causeway Bay to look for my roommate before heading to do the volunteer project in Kowloon.

We had this amazing ridiculously delicious Japanese buffet. No pictures right now because it was a spur of the moment decision, but no worries, my roommate and I are planning on going back sometime soon. I bought a decent pair of headphones for $10hkd.

I headed over to Kowloon and was completely confused and lost for a while. The prof called me and didn't seem too happy but I eventually made my way to the center about 10 minutes late. We met some really incredible people who have been through a ridiculous amount of stuff. There was one girl who hit her head when she was young and had brain damage. It has taken her years and years to recover but she has made a great deal of progress. It is very difficult for her to remember simple things but for her introduction she managed to give us all of the dates of her history of her disability.

I got paired up with this old lady who is the oldest in the rehabilitation center. She is 72 years old and has had one of her kneecaps replaced. She has pains in her other one and so will be replacing it soon as well. She is super energetic and happy to talk to us. Even though she is 72 years old, she is going to classes right now to learn how to do massages. She has to memorize the 206 bones of the body and the names and functions of each one. She is also learning about the pressure points and how they can help relieve pain and stress. Classes are from 9-6pm but she rushed over to Kowloon to meet us. She can actually understand my Cantonese! hahaha. She studies by writing the names of the bones on tiny pieces of paper and sticking them to a bracelet with big beads. Then she can always look at them and review them. New study tip! =P

But anyways, she has exams and such throughout March which is pretty much the same as me. I told her I would call her on April first to set a day where we can go out and do some stuff. She has an event in April after she has learned everything she gets to demonstrate her massage techniques on friends and family.

Its pretty cool to see people doing these things. It reminds me to not be such a lazy ass.

Its 2:40am. I am going to sleep. SO much studying to do.

gnite.

Weekend Fun!

The weekend started off with the intention of studying all day Saturday and then going out shopping on Sunday. It is a little backwards now because I ended up shopping a little at Mong Kok on Friday night. Bought some socks and lo behold, more skirts. They were 2 for $30hkd. How ridiculously cheap is that? I seriously cannot believe some of the prices here. Really though, at that price I had to buy it.

Saturday morning started off quite late as I had the intention of getting up around 9 to do some homework. I ended up waking up at 11 and joining Yi Pei and some other friends to go hiking at Kum Shan. This is where they went monkey feeding last week. We at lunch at Prince Edward which was quite good. After that we took bus 81 to the trail.


The first few monkeys that we saw at the park entrance were following a man who had some peanuts in his bag.


The scenery in the park was amazing!!!


Aand some more monkeys :)


After walking around the park for a while, we came upon this trail and decided to take it.


There were some cool scenery spots with benches and such. YiPei and I are pretending to play Chinese chess with the loose change in our bags.

After that, we kept walking and walking and walking. We noticed that suddenly we kept climbing more stairs and it seemed as if we were getting farther and farther from the city. The stairs were killing me as this was seriously the most exercise that I've gotten in the past year. It started to get really dark and I was really scared that we were going to die in the mountains of New Territories hahahaha!

But after another hour of stair climbing, we finally reached the peak and started our decent. There was another 30 minutes of downhill walking before we caught glimpse of lights! We had finally reached the next town haha! There was a small house on the side of the road that sold small snacks and drinks. We quickly bought some as we had not eaten for about four hours. I bought this funky soda called Ginger Beer. It actually had some ginger flavour to it and was very good! The lady at the store told us that it was only another 20 minutes until we reached the MTR station and we hastily followed the road she pointed at.

We were rewarded with lots of cha chan tangs with delicious food! We stopped in one of the first ones we saw and I ordered this for my dinner.


It was $26hkd and delicious. It was noodles with beef, a plate with bread, egg, and ham, and a cold milk tea. SO GOOD.

We made it back alive and after a hot shower and some Big Bang Theory, I was out cold for the night.

This morning I again planned on waking up at 9am to go to the library. My alarm went off and I quickly disabled it and woke up at 11 again. Auntie Alice called not long after announcing that she was coming to school with food. Lots of food.

I'm stuffed from lunch, and I have a curry dish waiting for dinner. I'm going to die from eating too much.

The library is surprisingly filled on Sunday. There are more people than on weekdays...

Enough procrastination. Time for some 152 studying!

What an incredibly unproductive day so far. I'm restless. I don't want to watch tv, I don't want to play games, I don't want to study.

I was awakened by the jackhammering of construction outside my window. This poor pond has been empty since the second week of class. :( I guess that means less mosquitos tho.

I did laundry and then Yi Pei came back from Guai Lum. Yayy!! =) We had lunch at LG5 and I had this amazing Japanese egg rice dish. It was like two pounds of egg and tomato rice and I downed it all with a cup of cold milk tea.

Started to watch The Four on mysoju.com. Seems pretty good so far although I have not even finished episode 1.

I have 210 hw due tmrw. I have no idea what is going on. I should probably go read the notes... now... Ugh I'm so lazy today.

Belated update on food...

This was my delicious dinner of eggplant and an omelet of smoked duck and veggies.

Part of the atrium at UST showing some tables of people trying to sell stuff

People who succeeded in selling me alot of mochi.

Hot pot dinner at Cafe de Coral. I love hotpot. Or as my roommate calls it, steamboat!

The platter in the front is goose guts. It was SO GOOD.

More to come soon!

I need to learn to keep up on this thing.

So it has been about a month since my last post. I've really ignored this thing.

School is surprisingly not as difficult as I expected it to be. I feel like I should have taken another engineering class. That would have made a good load. I've been shopping at least twice a week which is keeping my spirits high. :) I've bought alot of clothes in the few weeks that I have been here. I think next time I go out, I need to buy some shorts.

This morning, I noticed there was a small bubble of skin on the bottom of my foot. I broke the skin and tried to clear some of it but ended up pulling off an extremely thick piece of skin. Gross. I know. Now it hurts when I walk because that one part of my foot has extremely thin skin.

Just before dinner, I decided that it would be a good idea to try out this experiment I read about. Apple cider vinegar is very popular for lots of different reasons. I bought some over the weekend to try out as a shampoo that is said to be good for your hair. Well, it turns out that it leaves a horrendous smell afterwards even after I rinsed it out for 20 minutes. Maybe I will dilute my solution some more tomorrow...

I decided it would be a good idea today to eat my noodle dinner by the seaside. I mean, how often is the weather so gorgeous and Maryland sure doesn't have a beach on campus. Well after settling on a rock and dipping my first bite of yau mien into chili, I felt a sting on my ankle. I figured it was some sand or something. Then I noticed a sting on my thigh. Great. Mosquitos. But seriously on the second of March? Its snowing back at home. There won't be mosquitos there for another good two months. Anyways, after about five minutes of trying to withstand it I was scampering back to my room with my semi-eaten noodles.

I've covered all of my eight mosquito bites with toothpaste. It feels so good. Hopefully the AVC smell will be gone tomorrow and then I will just smell like peppermint all day.

But seriously, aside from my several and many random mishaps today, HKUST is absolutely amazing. I don't think I have ever enjoyed school this much. The professors make sense and the homework doesn't last until 4am. I could seriously get used to this.

But then again I've been slackin on the hw. Slackin as usual, but there is not that much that has built up. Exams are the week of the 20th. Seems pretty straightforward stuff so far.

Enough procrastinating. Time for some glorious statistics.