That was the Plane this is Day/Night 1 (8/25/08)

Met up with some UT exchange students, went on adventure to get to CUHK. King of hot, too humid. Plus 98 pounds of luggage + a backpack = nothx

CUHK is like some kind of college in the midst of what is either old or just rustic. It's also on a giant freaking hill, turning the campus into a set of giant freaking hills. It's like Oxy on steroids.

So far people have been nice, if not particularly helpful. As a group we got two "Oh I'll help but I'm actually leaving...," so yeah.

They have us holed up in temporary residency hostels for the first few days. The free (so far) air conditioning offsets the lack of internet.

Had my first "Are you real Chinese" exchange today with a student helper as he showed me my temporary room:

Guy: "So are you ABC?"
Sam: "Huh? What?" [I was tired!]
G: "Are you ABC?"
S: "Oh, yeah"
G: "Which city?"
S: "San Francisco"
G: "Oh oh oh oh"
(slight pause)
G: "Ni shuo putonghua? Ni ting bu dong?" (Do you speak Mandarin? Do you understand?"
S: "Yi dian, yi dian" (A little)
G: "Ni shuo gongdonghua?" (Do you speak Cantonese?)
S: "No, no"
G: "Ah so a little bit of Mandarin"

Pass? Fail? Doesn't really matter?

Adapter for electronics doesn't fit the plug, killed a whopper of a mosquito, and found ants infesting one sink. Nice.

From what little I've seen on HK, it feels like a bizarro version of cities I'm used to (SF, to a lesser degree NY) - it hasthe sprawl, the people, but it seems almost too organized? Maybe Sha Tin station during sunday nights isn't Market St at lunch time, but so far its not been that hectic moving around. Having luggage sucks though, small elevators and bars around each escalator.

HK has some nice architecture and makes interesting use of lights as accents for buildings. Like most cities, it is beautiful from far away. We'll see how it is closer up.

For me, it's hang out, read/play gameboy, shower, eat, and bed. Something like that.