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That time when my friends (almost) surprised me (they're loud) last night with cake, egg tarts, and a candy filled picture jar!

An Early Retrospective

"The people we've met in the last five years, will we remember them in ten more?"
-Death Cab for Cutie

If you go to my Facebook, click on "All Friends," I could show you dozens of people I don't talk to, hardly know, or don't know anymore.

I can show you pictures of people I haven't talked to for years, and people that I'll never talk to again. These people were friends, teammates, and acquaintances, and as much as I've forgotten about them, what can I say about how much they remember about me?

But there will always be that time Scott, Mat, and I got chased by a dog through Mat's backyard. That time in when Cyrus got his foot stuck in a mud hole; when there was that drug bust in middle school; when freshman year soccer was a nightmare. The first time I got on stage with Andrew and Chris to play a show, when Chris missed the game-winning penalty kick, the first time I sat behind the wheel of my car, when I fouled all my attempts in the long jump sophomore year, when Jeremy got drunk after the State meet, when I scored my first goal in a decade in a loss to Newark. When it was Frisbee Friday, when I hated working at Costco, and when we watched stars.

There was when Kazu won thousands on online poker, when I walked in on my first roommate, when we threw Marci into the fountain, when Turbo became Turbo, and when there were the KP sessions. The first time I played fantasy basketball, the first time I did Neurology, and when I didn't know 我 from 在. When the freshmen showed up on the team, when I met you, when Audrey chose the movie Leeches, when my other roomie sent himself to the hospital, when I played NBA 2k8 instead of doing homework, and when we imitated sea lions.

Now there is when Allison caked Jennifer, when Kat choked on a fish bone, and proving my theory about kids our age and old TV shows during late night talks about nothing.

We're not leaving yet, but we're certainly getting there. Maybe I'm just getting old, but I think the last few months will stick with me for a while.

Too emo, but hey, nothing better to do

Odds and Ends (have I used that before?)

1 - Friends from Oxy sent me a birthday box - it had candy, cards, and a big ol' picture of Gabe. What more could a guy ask for? You guys rule.

2 - I don't know quite how to feel about Kanye West's new CD. On one hand I'm intrigued, on the other hand I feel like someone needs to slap him and shout "GET BACK TO RAPPING AND MAKING BEATS"

3 - Totally saw my HK twin at the track yesterday. Tall, skinny, Chinese guy jumper. I think we bonded.

4 - CUHK gave us CUHK chopsticks as a souvenir. Yet another thing in my life that I don't quite know how to feel about...

5 - Post-school travel plans: Xian, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou for 9.5 or so days

I just might be getting used to life here...shame it takes three months eh?

Interweb

I love the internet. I can:

1 - Watch the NBA online
2 - Borrow intellectual property
3 - Learn
4 - Blog
5 - Plan a 10 day trip through China without leaving my somewhat comfortable lawn chair. Yes, in our rooms we have lawn chairs. But if I was so inclined, I could totally use the internet to order myself another chair.

Yes.

Teaching in China - Pictures and Video

http://www.youtube.com/user/shuie888

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shuie/

Teaching in China pt. 2

More serious stuff I suppose...

1 - How are those kids supposed to get out of the countryside? The economic opportunities of Zengcheng seem fairly bleak - the most common jobs seem to be farmer or shopkeeper. It seems like a self propagating thing though - the child of a farmer goes to Pai Tan Middle School, that child grows up but is unable to leave Zengcheng (too poor/no chance for advancement), that child becomes a farmer who sends their child to Pai Tan Middle School. It makes me wonder that if I was one of those middle schoolers, how would I get out? I think the real question though, is would I want to get out? Or even know what out is? The more I see of China the luckier I feel...

Teaching in China

Long post?

This last weekend was teaching in Zengcheng, China - they are famous for a certain kind of vegetable that grows only there, one of the highest waterfalls ever, the largest square/park in China, and unusually persistent mosquitoes. Zengcheng is about 3 hours (from where we left) away from CUHK, so it was a nice chance to listen to some music and zone out.

Transit - Getting there and back was honestly kind of dumb. We took the bus from the Sham Shui Po MTR stop, rode for an hour to the HK/China border, then two more hours into Zengcheng. What would have made more sense would have been to take the MTR to the HK/China border (cheaper and faster ((25 minutes vs an hour))) and just gone from there, but hey, we got in and out alright.

The school - Zengcheng is a rural sort of town. Or village. Whatever. Regardless, no big buildings, lots of motorbikes, and a couple of chickens running around the streets. As I'm coming to realize, rural villages in China tend to look alike. The school (Paitan Middle School represent) was gated off, but seems decent enough. It's a large school as it caters middle schoolers up to the equivalent of high school seniors, so ~1500 people, some of the students even living on campus as their houses are far away in the countryside. The buildings were multi-story (to maximize space I'd assume) with three basketball hoops, a jogging track, many ping pong tables, and a badminton net.

Me and the kids - We worked with 13-16 year olds, guys and girls, and I'll admit it - the kids loved me. Right off the bat is the oddity of my height - the comment I heard the most over the weekend was "so tall" or "ho gao." Some kids even took the liberty of telling me "you're taller than Yao Ming."

The guys took a liking to me because on the first day in the afternoon, one of the other guys in our tutor group and I played basketball with some of the guys. It was 4v4, so we picked up a young'un as well as another tutor and we played. Life was easier because well, we were playing against 14 year olds, so we all put up decent numbers. On an evil sidenote - I completely blocked this kid's jumper and after the other guys had finished going "ohhhhh" (they do that at everything though) one kid yelled "you got packed!" Good times.

The girls liked me, because apparently I am considered "very handsome" in some parts of rural China. It was like being a celebrity - when I would smile and wave, girls would cover their mouths, giggle, and turn to their friends. I had girls following me around, other girls saying that I was handsome, and other girls saying "so tall." It even got to the point where two girls gave me their picture (the kind of pictures you take in the photobooth in the mall arcade) with their names on the back.

But beyond gender differences, all of us exchange tutors were very warmly received by the students. I asked the guys in my small group what they thought of the girls that were in the group, and the unanimous response was "very pretty" and "so beautiful." Kids were grabbing at tutors to take pictures - the shy ones used their friends and the always effective "will you take a picture with my friend?" It was interesting though; once other students saw you taking a picture with other students, they would all rush over to get into the picture - you'd begin by taking a picture with three guys, and wind up ten seconds later taking a picture with 25 students. The students asked me if I had a Chinese name, so I sat down to write it for them. Seconds later I was completely surrounded by students (15 at least) who read off each character as I wrote it.

My favorite moment dealing with the students though probably occured during the tutor's introductions during the evening session of the first day. Us tutors were all going down a line and just introducing ourselves, where we were from, and what we're studying. When it got to my turn and I stood up to begin speaking nearly every student in the room (40+) went "ohhhhhhhhh" with some "so tall" thrown in for good measure. I suppose it's an easy in with the kids

The Teaching - Honestly it wasn't really teaching, it was more just trying to get them to practice speaking English. It was fairly rough going at first, most of the students being shy and lacking confidence in their English skills. Some of the students were excited to talk despite their level of fluency which made things easier. For that same evening session, I had an 18 year old senior student in my small discussion group (when we broke into small groups for each tutor, all the guys came and sat with me) who translated pretty much everything. As it turns out, all the guys wanted to talk about was basketball - the most common phrases are "Kobe Bryant MVP," "Yao Ming," and "Rockets."

The Sunday morning session started off interestingly - in splitting up all the guys again came with me, but as I was conducting a slightly awkward Q&A session, one kid had a camcorder and was just recording the whole thing. Despite our initial instructions of not speaking any Chinese, I had to throw some phrases in just to maintain my own sanity (such as translating "breakfast" for them). It bogged down, so it just got to the point where it was time to play basketball (it was clearly what they were all waiting for).

So we played for about a half hour when one of the teachers, "Churchill," told me, in essence, to knock it off with the basketball and that we should be practicing English (one of my reservations about just getting right into basketball). But then as I sat back down with the group of guys who I was with (just to watch the last game finish), the damndest thing happened - they all suddenly became willing to talk. It was still basketball talk, but guys who had never talked were suddenly full of questions - they asked me how long I had been playing, if I could teach them, and that sort of thing. Not only was that in the teacher's face - but it reinforced for me the potential of sports: before we played basketball I was just a tall guy from America speaking a lot of English. After playing basketball it was like I was just another guy who likes playing baksetball - that common experience was enough to spur the students to overcome their shyness/self-doubt in speaking English. I feel like them seeing that I shared something that they are so passionate about (they apparently play after school everyday) reduced the feeling of foreigner/local and teacher/student to the point where they were comfortable speaking. Plus:

1 - Putting a ball into a net doesn't need language
2 - Being teammates creates an instant bond and familiarity, especially for team sports
3 - I clearly put a lot of value on sports/athletics

Misc - Gave out my email address plenty of times, had millions of pictures taken of me/us, made the peace sign many, many, many times. It was an immensely rewarding trip, if not a sleepless one.

More details if I remember more, pictures and video to come!

Music

Ok one of the worst things about being here in Hong Kong is that I don't have any speakers. Well actually I have these little dinky things (the diameter of a muffin - which is now officially a unit of measure) but they're basically louder computer speakers. What I want is a set of actually speakers with a nice subwoofer (I play bass, I like bass) and to listen to the following:

Ratatat - Seventeen Years
Gorillaz - Spitting Out the Demons
Green Day - Waiting
Kings of Leon - Manhattan
MGMT - Kids
Say Anything - Have At Thee!

And so many more...

Because it's not loud unless you can feel it in your chest. Headphones can't do that.

Well It Happened, Finally

Hong Kong has started to cool down - it's officially pants/long sleeve/sweatshirt weather.

'bout time

On and On and On

50th post! Either I'm prolific, or I need something better to do with my time...

1 - I'm fairly sure that the Asian culture is the only one that would allow for the wearing of purple and gold track jackets that read "Quantitative Finance" on the back un-ironically

2 - Asian people (Asians of all types) love pencil cases. While I go fishing through my backpack to dig out some pens (it's a dedicated pen area nonetheless), Asian students just throw down with some pencil case. It's usually some bizarre color with an adorable cartoon character on it. I'm never sure whether or not I should be feeling jealous...

Unrelated: here's how I take notes when I'm bored
Nowhere in any microeconomics textbook will you find the word "owned" used in this sense. Turns out Doctor A should receive a market salary of $10,000 more than Doctor B. Owned.

Liveblogging Class Registration

Because honestly? It's 2:08 am, and I'm going to need something to do until 3 am when my registration time actually is.

2:09 - In the Kuo Mou Hall computer lab because my roomie, Wilson, is asleep and you know, have to be considerate and all. But to set the scene there are two other people here, both more studious than I am - they're actually working on some various paper/highlighting, while I sit, listen to my ipod, and regale my legion of readers with how exciting my waiting-for-class-registration is. I've got my course planning sheet out infront of me, my user name and PIN already filled in on the registration page, and I'm still not going to get into econ...

2:26 - espn.com + youtube > boredom

2:42 - ok enough of that...bored bored bored

2:47 - doing what any good American does: looking at consumer items online

2:58 - album of the month: Only by Night by the Kings of Leon. Oh, two minutes left!

2:59 - man, suspenseful stuff we got going on...

3:05 - well shit.

3:16 - like so many things in life, that was brief, unpleasant, and unsuccessful. I've managed to register for 1/4 of the classes that I wanted, and am enrolled in two BS classes just so I can call myself a full time student.

3:18 - email complaining and asking for help (yay private schools - academic advising actually helps) has been sent. I'm tired and more than slightly digusted with this whole system - I'm going to bed.

Not Related to HK at all...

But if there was one person who I wished I could write like? Kurt Vonnegut.

From Wikipedia:

"In his book Bagombo Snuff Box: Uncollected Short Fiction, Vonnegut listed eight rules for writing a short story:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Vonnegut qualifies the list by adding that Flannery O'Connor broke all these rules except the first, and that great writers tend to do that."

If I could choose two? It's be Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury.

*EDIT*

Three? Vonnegut, Bradbury, and Harlan Ellison