Days 1, 2: Hong Kong

Let's roll the highlights.

1) Worst thing about Hong Kong: oily food.

My stomach has never done well with fried/oily food, so in combination with my jetlagged stomach, I haven't been able to eat much at all in Hong Kong. Thus, I lost 5 lbs -- I'm 102 lbs now.

It's kind of nice not to eat much, but it also scares me. After all, the last time I had this small an appetite was when I was recovering for a full week from food poisoning at the In and Out Burger.


2) It's amazing how some rundown, dilapidated buildings are adjacent to some very upscale, new skyscrapers.

3) Hong Kong is a pretty neat place, but I couldn't imagine living here for the same reason I don't particularly care for NYC.

My best explanation for HK (which my father laughed at, but secretly agrees with) is that to imagine HK, do the following.

(1) Take Manhattan and cross it with Chinatown, NYC.
(2) Take the result and cross it with Flushing, NY.
(3) Take that result and treat it with steroids -- lots of 'em.
(4) Voila! You have Hong Kong!
(5) Optional: Turn up the humidity, heat, and add mosquitoes.

4) There's still some tension -- even between the younger locals -- and the expatriates living in HK. Many of the locals feel that the expats feel superior to the locals, thinking that they "own the place." In return, the locals feel a lot of resentment toward expats. It probably conjures up feelings of western domination, imperialism, and prior British rule.


5) People in HK that I meet ask me if this is a cultural shock for me to be in HK, walking around. Actually, for reason #3 exactly, HK seems no different from NY. Yeah, I really feel no different.

Anyway, HK locals never believe me when I tell them that as a born-and-bred American (ABC!), I don't feel any different.


6) My mom is amused that when she compares me to people in HK, I'm not short at all, nor am I skinny. It's kind of cool to be somewhere where I'm just average.

Now, if only MIT were placed in HK...then I would be average of the average.


7) Best thing about Hong Kong: merchandise with printed English that makes absolutely NO sense.

For instance, I would've bought this bag just because it was so ridiculous. I didn't buy it because it was gigantically large and pink.

From Hong Kong - Days 1 and 2

8) One of the coolest things in Hong Kong: that everything can be done with bamboo.

From Hong Kong - Days 1 and 2

9) Oh, H1N1 scare. Lots of people still wear face masks -- after the SARS scare, you can understand why the people of HK are freaked out.

However, these commercial products are idiotic:

From Hong Kong - Days 1 and 2

10) Did I mention that the Cantonese eat everything?

Take a look at this picture. We thought it was squid.

From Hong Kong - Days 1 and 2

Here's what it really was:

"Evisceration is a method of autotomy involving the ejection of internal organs used by animals as a defensive strategy.

Sea cucumbers (Holothuroidea), eject parts of the gut in order to scare predators. The gut can then be regenerated in a few days by cells in the interior of the sea cucumber."


I'm may be going vegetarian when I start grad school. I am considering making a conscious effort of it -- more so than my ODPing.


>> I don't know if blogger will be prohibited in the PRC ("The Great Firewall of China"), so if this is my last post during my trip, my apologies.

Here is the link to my (excessive) HK pictures. I captioned a few of them.


See you later wor! ^_________________^;;