A Day in Hong Kong
My day here tends to start out early in the afternoon, say around 2PM. After the first couple weeks of class I stopped bothering with the pretense of waking up early to go to my lectures and simply started sleeping in, as anyone who knows me here can tell you. My ability to sleep to all hours of the day, through fire alarms and the loud, occasionally shrill voices of my hallmates is a constant source of curiosity & amusement to my friends.
Anyway, so my day starts with the usual getting ready for the day stuff (shower, etc), and then I leave my hall and walk to one of two bus-stops. The one closer to my hall is where the mini-buses stop and and farther away on the larger street is where the double decker buses roll through. The mini-buses are generally cheaper, will drop you off about anywhere along the route where you ask them to stop (in simple, and no doubt bad, Cantonese that I learned in my first couple of weeks here), the bus drivers generally speak no English whatsoever, and you have to know where you want to go and which number mini-bus will get you there, because there are no bus schedules where the mini-buses pick you up.
As for the double-deckers, they're a little easier. When you go to their bus-stop, each bus that stops there will have a schedule listed that tells you (in both English & Chinese) what number goes where, how much it is at the location where you are, what time the buses start & stop running, etc. The bus driver is more likely to speak English, though it won't be necessary for you to speak with him because you just hit the stop button when you want to get off at the next stop. The downsides on the big buses are that they tend to be more expensive than the mini-buses, only stop at specific locations & are slower than the mini-buses.
On both of the buses you can use either exact change or an Octopus card to pay for the ride. An octopus card is basically a stored value card that automatically deducts from your account when you press it against the card-reader in the buses (as well as the card-readers of various vending machines, stores, etc). You can refill the card in the MTR(subway) stations or at any 7-11 store (which abound here in HK). A lot easier than fumbling for change whenever you're getting on a bus with a line of people behind you, and as an HKU student I get a student Octopus card, which gives me a 50% discount off the MTR fares.
So, after a 15 minute or so ride, I get off at the main entrance to Hong Kong University. From there, I take a lot of stairs and at least one elevator to get to class, a common theme at HKU. I can remember trying to find my way around campus before classes started when I first got here in September. Being used to Drexel's campus, which basically consists of simple, flat, city blocks, when I looked at the map of HKU I pictured all the buildings basically next to each other on one level, where you'd just walk across courtyards & such to the other buildings. It didn't exactly work that way.
If I had to explain it, I would divide the campus into three sections, with each section on a different level. The engineering section of campus is on the right, and one level up from the central part; to get from one to another you have to take a flight of stairs in one of a few places where there are stairs. Then to get to the left side of campus from the central part, you have to go through the Cheung Yuet Ming Amenities' Center from the ground floor to the 5th floor or so, which turns out to be the ground floor of a building in the left section, like the Meng Wah complex, where I have my accounting class. Once you get used to it, it's not such a big deal, but at the beginning it confused me a bit, and by the end of that first week my legs were hurting from all the stairs.
From there, class commences, which is simliar to classes at Drexel, yet not quite the same. First, the subjects here are taught in English, yet the native language is Cantonese, and that is the language you will hear spoken everywhere except inside the classroom, and sometimes within the classroom as well. One thing I quickly got used to was spurts of Cantonese jokes and otherwise from the teachers here, where everyone laughs and I'm just sort of looking around confused. The English they do speak is at varied levels of profiency, and they generally have an English accent when they speak, which seems very odd combined with the Chinese accent. (Or maybe it just sounds odd to me, being American.)
Things also seem to move a little bit slower here as far as teaching & assignments are concerned, though I'm not sure whether that's because of the particular classes that I attend, because of the fact that English is a second language, or whether I'm just used to things moving fast at Drexel where my terms are 10 weeks instead of 13.
After my classes are done for the day, I generally have met up with friends in classes, or I then meet up with them in the main courtyard on campus by the library. If I'm in the mood to pay for dinner (which I was in the first month & a half or so I was here), we'd generally go to one of the campus restaurants and eat Chinese at Chueng Yuet Ming or the Student Union, or we'd eat "Western" at Super Sandwich, a place carrying sandwiches, soups, fruit & vegatable salad, muffins, rolls, pasta, baked potatoes, etc. Otherwise, we'd eat at the campus restaurant by the dorms (bad Catonese food that I avoid whenever ramen noodles is available, which means I never eat there) or we'd go somewhere off campus to one of the many & varied food restaurants that exist in Hong Kong, with a choice of both Chinese & Western foods. For China, Hong Kong isn't exactly the middle of nowhere.
Then I'd go back to my room in my hall, called Wei Lun Hall. Living here as been one of the more unique aspects of my life in Hong Kong. Here, living in the dorms isn't just a place to stay when you're away from home, it's considered a society, and each hall, and floor in that hall, has it's own culture. My hall is supposed to have the qualities of: loyalty, creativity, intelligence, etc etc. And my floor, gou lao, is the "Sincere" floor. The hall has activities, such as a weekly hall dinner, as well as various clubs & organizations that exist only within that hall. Each floor also has activities, such as: competing in inter-hall athletics and other forms of competition, weekly meetings, and weekly floor dinners.
There is an expectation that if someone lives in the dorms, they will participate in the hall & floor activities, as well as attend the initial orientation activites, which involve various activities a week before classes start, which is supposed to be difficult both physically & mentally. Since getting in is a selective process, if someone doesn't participate in both the orientation and activities throughout the year, they aren't likely to be allowed back to the dorm the next year, and they will most likely be ostracized in the meantime by the other residents of the floor & hall. Luckily for me, exchange students are considered exempt from this. I've never been good at "follow the leader" and the activities are generally in Cantonese anyway.
As for what this means in everyday life, there seems to be more of a "share & participate" mentality. Everyone uses the dishes, pots & pans and silverware in the kitchen, often the floor eats together, doors are supposed to be open to the hall when you're home. Other things that go on in everday life, though I don't know why, are things like people staying up late every night, they don't start going to be until around 3 or 4. The oddest thing for me is to go out on a Thursday or Friday night and come back at 5 in the morning to find my hallmates still up and about. It's certainly one aspect of hall life that I've found myself adapting to, though I don't exactly know why I stay up that late. Probably just stuck in a sleeping cycle.
Anyway, that's my life as of now. Hope it held something of interest. :)
Posted by blablues at November 05, 2002 06:56 PM
