Latest from HK

14 January, 2010

Last couple of days have been excellent. Got word the other day that I’d been nominated for the Outstanding Junior in International Business, as well as the International Business Service Award back at ISU, which was nice. Apparently its not easy to be nominated you need a faculty member to personally recommend you, so perhaps my endless efforts to network with all the profs is finally paying off. I also got an email from a Katie School professor that I’ve been in contact regarding an internship opportunity in South Africa that we’d previously thought was all but dead. However, there appears to be new hope for it, so I may be heading down to South Africa in mid-July to work with the world-renowned Dr. Gert Cruywagen, risk management specialist. It’d be pretty awesome to say the least, and I’ve been assured one of 2 spots in the internship should it in fact occur. Also got word that I’d made the Dean’s List for Fall of 2009, which was nice. Yesterday I didn’t have any class. Elliott and I went into Central to get some groceries and laundry detergent. After buying a bunch of bananas, oranges, fabric softener, and detergent, Elliott realized he needed to go to University for something. Therefore, we walked around University for a good 25 minutes with a bushel of bananas, some oranges, and laundry stuff. We ran into a few friends over there, and they got a kick out of it all. After that we headed back to Lee Hysan to do some laundry, during which time we discovered the roof of the building has a view of the bay, Victoria Peak, downtown Hong Kong, and a huge cemetery. Pretty amazing from 200 feet up. After laundry we called up Ben and went over to University Hall. It was an absolutely amazing building, it resembled a huge castle, with wide corridors, gothic architecture, and huge rooms. We went to McDonald’s for some dinner, then headed to 7/11 for a few Tsingtaos. We headed back and played some gin in the basement of University Hall (which is incredible, 2 ping pong tables, a snooker table, a big screen TV, etc.), and after awhile we ended up just heading up to the balcony to have a few drinks and listen to some decent English music. We ended up meeting a lot of people over at University Hall, including a couple of Canadians, a Czech, etc. Got back pretty late and went to bed. Today I had a lot of classes, none of which were too exciting. My multinational corporations class should be ok, its 3 hours straight from 4:00-7:00pm (or as the Hong Kongers say, 16:00-19:00), but there aren’t any tests, we’re only graded on participation, case studies, and presentations, so it should be a fairly easy A. After class we got some Carlsburg from Circle K and headed up to the roof of our building with this really sweet Australian girl Lex to watch the sun go down over the bay. It was pretty awesome, having a nice view of the bay, the skyline, and Victoria peak. After a couple of hours we decided to head downstairs for some dinner. We ate at the hospital across the street, which ended up being pretty good. After that we went to a “circus party”, which was essentially a party where you all dressed up as people in a circus. We didn’t dress up, and we got there a bit late (around 10:00pm) and they were all preparing to go out to Lan Kwai Fong (the bar district downtown). We decided to skip on that and head back to Lee Hysan for our floor meeting at midnight. We got back and started playing a bit of FIFA before the meeting, and Lex left to head home. Our floor meeting began promptly at midnight, and they went over some basic floor rules (no smoking, no leaving messes places, etc.). Also, the entire meeting was conducted in Cantonese, so I was assigned a personal translator, which was pretty cool. We then discussed where we should have our first hall dinner, which will take place next week. There’s no consensus just yet, but it sounds like it’ll be great. Also, when asked if we’d want to sit with locals or non-locals at a big formal dinner in a couple weeks, Elliott and I both promptly responded “locals”. Gotta soak up the culture while you can. We were also more or less initiated into the floor “group”, and we were instructed to now call everyone “brother” as opposed to “floormate”, “flatmate”, “roommate”, etc. It was all pretty cool, they definitely made me feel welcome. Tomorrow is lunch with Uncle Chanwa’s son, Bobby, then class at 2.