A Really Really overdue Chinese New Year and V Day entry

This entry is to declare that I'm still alive, and also for the sake of posting because I haven't in a long long long time.

I saw some 55 kCal instant noodles at a cosmetics store. I bought it due to curiosity (and okay fine, I don't deny the marketing appeal). I have a picture, but I'm too lazy to fiddle with my phone right now so it's not uploaded.

During christmas 2009 I was wondering why everyone wasn't as hyped up as people usually are around holiday season. (In Canada, everyone is looking forward to christmas half the time.) Anyway, I now know why the discrepancy. It's because something better is around the corner in Feb. So this year, I got a groundbreaking, astonishing 40 red pockets (lai see). Meeting relatives you never knew you had is a strange but nice. Meeting potential relatives (boyfriend's side) is also strange but nice. OMG I'm so excited about Easter. Three days off!!

It's a...tiger? (next to my nearly complete MG Justice Gundam )

Answer: a bear in tiger camouflage.

That's supposed to look like me... and it actually does. I can now be found in HK streets, permed hair and in red glasses, holding a nokia n5800 and looking dazed.

Then my phone broke down for a week.

Anyway, as my lack of posting would indicate, I've been really really really preoccupied. I think it may be another lag before my next post.

Cannibalism in Action

This is Turtle Jelly in a container with a turtle eating turtle jelly. With a smile on its face I must point out.

My dad is now complaining about how he missed seeing how the elephant got caught by the lion on TV because my mom went somewhere in the house in the middle of cooking dinner... The conversation goes something like this:

Mom: *walks away in the middle of cooking to look at new clothes she bought today*
Dad: The celery is getting overcooked
Mom *ignores*
Dad *takes out the spatula*
TV *ROAR*
Dad *dashes out to see the elephant being consumed by the lions* aaaaaaah I missed it!!!
Mom: Whatever, they always show the lions eating something on TV
Dad: No, not an elephant!! It's always a bambi or something! Why did you abandon the cooking? You can always look at clothes later.
Me *standing over the frying fish* -__-''


After many excessive dinners later (some of which are because of work...we get a lot of guests, and of course we have to take them out for fancy lunches and dinners), I am back, bloated and feeling kind of heavy around the middle (I'd rather the heaviness go to my butt, because apparently that's healthy.), to report:

1. I took a professor from harvard (also pres of the american microbiology society, so very important person, I again don't know why my manager trusted me with this) to the peak so he could 'sight see HK', but we got lost on the twisty way to the top. But it's not my fault. The prof who offered to drive us there didn't know the way but insisted that he's gone before. On the way, we visited SWIMS (swire institue of marine sciences) HKU's coastal laboratory.

I also recently discovered that my manager's coastal laboratory at HKUST (Uni where I'm working at) has a really pretty view too, and a seafood restaurant-esque laboratory to boot. There were starfish, sea urchins, and mussels in these really large bins. (Yummy. Oops, there goes someone's experiment!)


Research Staff Quarters. Looks pretty, but gets very wet and humid in the summer.

The foggy road of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.


Seafood restaurant Lab ("coastal marine laboratory") at the edge of the ocean, about a 15 min walk from my office.



2. I'm really tired most of the time.

3. I regret checking my work email at home just now (I don't even know *why* I opened outlook). My manager, who is now out of the country, happily unleashed a torrent of work on me. Now I don't feel so good...

4. I'm really tired most of the time. Oh did I say that already? I want to crochet, cook, play some piano (wow how long has it been???), and read, but no time to do peaceful things like that...

5. I'm waiting for my hula hoop. My colleague bought one for me from China and promised to bring it to me during work.

Lunar new year falls on Feb 14 this year. An explosion of candies, chocolates and other confectionery are found in supermarkets. I love pretty packaging.

Rip off! It says "Mixed Nuts" but if you look carefully, they're rice cracker bits, green peas, seaweed and the occasional peanut.

HK's Education Culture

My dad is a non-conformist, and thankfully so. I dislike doing what everyone else is doing (they're probably just giving into marketing or believing something the government said) or thinking what everyone else is thinking (ie "education has salvific power" as Mr Tall, expatriate blogger from Batgung so eloquently put it. In fact most of this article's sources come from that blog.).

Quoting dad in reference to the stock market and the methods people use to raise their children: "Most people are wrong. If you follow the sheep herd, you can't succeed."

I found a genius article that further support his argument of "if you're not born with intellectual capacity, there's not much you can do to expand it". Ok fine, I reworded it from "if you're stupid, you're stupid". He criticizes the mentality of "more difficult is better" when chinese moms are impressed by schools that teach at a more advanced level. If it's so simple why not just enroll everyone in a higher grade?

*Gasp* Not everyone's IQs are cut out for college: "Intelligence in the Classroom
Half of all children are below average, and teachers can do only so much for them."

I like this quote:
We live in an age when it is unfashionable to talk about the special responsibility of being gifted, because to do so acknowledges inequality of ability, which is elitist, and inequality of responsibilities, which is also elitist. And so children who know they are smarter than the other kids tend, in a most human reaction, to think of themselves as superior to them. Because giftedness is not to be talked about, no one tells high-IQ children explicitly, forcefully and repeatedly that their intellectual talent is a gift. That they are not superior human beings, but lucky ones. That the gift brings with it obligations to be worthy of it. That among those obligations, the most important and most difficult is to aim not just at academic accomplishment, but at wisdom.

And it doesn't matter if your IQ isn't sky-high! "What's Wrong With Vocational School?
Too many Americans are going to college."

Because of society's (in particular HK) overrated view on education, there is academic inflation in which babysitters might need a degree in Education.

And finally, this article, the author of which is from the Ivy Leagues, humbly reflects on the disadvantages of an elite education.

I must quote him:
One of the great errors of an elite education, then, is that it teaches you to think that measures of intelligence and academic achievement are measures of value in some moral or metaphysical sense. But they’re not. Graduates of elite schools are not more valuable than stupid people, or talentless people, or even lazy people. Their pain does not hurt more. Their souls do not weigh more. If I were religious, I would say, God does not love them more.

I am disgusted by 'my kid is better than your kid', 'so-and-so's daughter is going to (insert name school)' talks over dim sum at yum cha by a bunch of 'see lais' (middle aged chinese women notorious for being loud, opinionated and nosy).

And Mr Tall, HK expatriate blogger, provides an excellent summary of the HK education mentality and situation, which explains why salaries for fresh grads have plummeted and have not recovered yet. As I'm in my early 20s, I feel and see this situation, and the bleakness of those still struggling to worm their way into the career world and into a decent living so that they can forge a family (which means buying a house, and since housing is so expensive, that's very stressful....but that's another post altogether).

My dad encourages me to go to school to learn. That's why I'm doing a Masters... I don't put my faith in it elevating my salary or necessarily and automatically entitling me to my dream career. It might do all those things, but that's not the whole point.

The older you get, the smaller you feel in light of all the issues you see in the world.

Christmas

It's been soo long since I've last blogged and I can simply chalk it up to being occupied from day to night.

It's not perfect but I must say I am enjoying life.

I've taken a strong liking to potatoes until I heard on a radio show while in a taxi, that each spoonful had like 45 calories. Or something scary like that. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think I had about 4 meals with potatoes in it that week.

Hence: Salad-soup diet after all the gravy and potatoes.






I also had a record breaking amount of chocolate.

I wanted to talk about global warming in this post but nah... too lazy, and plus, it's time to go out again.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

A theoretically really really horrible morning

I don't even want to begin to explain why, but I have two pairs of glasses with vastly different prescriptions. I can say vastly because my eyes are THAT bad.

Neither pair is correct. One is significantly better than the other and enables me to get through life okay, but it unfailingly slips down my nose and is therefore very annoying.

So I got new ones, but they haven't arrived yet.

This morning, I was really really really sleepy (background information: yesterday was my birthday so I took the day off despite having started only a week before, blissfully enjoying life. I walked through the whole day though, and plus 'that time of the month' began, which generally makes one more achy and tired). I was wearing the bad glasses, the pair with prescription way off, probably by 400 degrees. My world was blurry.

More importantly though is that my mind was fuzzy. I could have fallen asleep standing up. As I dragged my feet (which was in a bit of pain due to too much walking the previous day) to the elevator this morning, I heard the wind howl outside, reverberated and amplified in the elevator corridor. At that point I wondered, could music possibly replicate this kind of mood? I mean, there is music about breakups, loneliness, sadness, anger, tiredness, death, regret... anything for this dead-as-a-zombie, I-don't-want-to-go-to-work, it's-cold-and-windy kind of mood?

Out I went, and the wind continued to howl. People of Hong Kong clutched their scarves, mittens and hats as they waited for the bus. (It was actually like 16 degrees.)

I don't know how, but I made it to work without missing some stop in the middle of my 1.5 hr commute.

I sat down in front of my computer, bewildered.

"Meeting." I heard somewhere.

Just one word and that sent me hurtling like a torpedo through the hall and down the stairs. It was 8:55 am and I realized that I was supposed to set up the room and projector for a ginormous 2.5 hour meeting at 9 am.

It was a maze downstairs but I found the projector. I hurtled back upstairs with the projector and luckily had got it set up in time. I had to pee, but no time...

2 hours later I still had to go pee...

My manager sat next to me.... so I had to look like I wasn't hungry, sleepy (was in REAL danger of dropping off any time by then), and needed to pee.

He also introduced me to everyone, but my world was blurry so I couldn't be sure who was who...

Good thing my weekend was good, and diluted out this whole experience.

I will upload pictures of the cutest things I saw on my birthday later (namely decorations in malls, to summarize, but no really! They're REALLY cute!)

First Day of Work

WOOHOO, I got hair extensions!! (will replace pic once I have a picture of myself with it)

Here's where I live and that's where I work... across HK.

I think it's time I uploaded a picture of myself to let you all know that I don't look any fobbier... except maybe, indirectly, the scarf, since it's not cold at all and I'm wearing one like the rest of the HK population, who cower in frozen fear at the slightest drop in temperature...that is not to say I don't mind the cold; I am very much afraid of the cold but I've gotten used to this kind of discomfort back in the harsh heater-less, bus-awaiting days at Waterloo...

My piano and English student (9 years old, but way more intelligent than your average 9 year old) thinks I'm his best friend or something and actually looked betrayed when I got a real job and couldn't come play with him as much anymore. It would have been cute if he wasn't so annoying and kept whining in person and in bold caps through my email "COME TO MY HOUSE EVERYDAY AND QUIT YOUR JOB." So I used this opportunity to teach him new words: "demanding" and "unfortunately". I told him that I was doing something meaningful, like helping people research bacteria from the Red Sea. He was like, "Red Sea? Like Moses in the Bible? I'll remove all the bacteria from the Red Sea so there's nothing to research." Viscous...

I think he's an attention whore, like most kids, especially HK kids. Back in high school, I liked using the word 'beady' to describe little kids' eyes, but I don't think I understood what that word meant until getting here... I don't know why, but kids' eyes in HK are really beady. Maybe it's the intelligence that is brimming in them, due to the steady diet of EPA and DHA, Mozart and other gross music, 'flash card training' and 'swimming and piano and violin and mandarin and math lessons' their parents fed them. But then, they grow up and it's not like they're any smarter because 'double loss' youth seems to be a real problem in HK. Double loss youth is a term that refers to youth who refuse to work because the real world is too harsh (low income, lack of job search skills, no goals, long hours and under-appreciation) and can't study anymore.

It's like, life is full of ironies. I ate a few soggy fries today for example. I didn't eat them while they were hot and crunchy, because they were oily and bad for the skin, but ended up hungry eventually to the point of accepting soggy fries.

So in conclusion, be happy with what you have right now because things could be worse.

Oh, I just realized that the title of this post is "first day at work" but I haven't talked about it... and I'm too tired to. So maybe later if I'm ever in the mood (Probably never).

AH BUT I did go to the cat cafe again! SO CUTE!

FFXIII versus : ) and offer!

woohoo! I got the offer! I sound more enthusiastic than I really am though theoretically, I should be; it's an awesome job. Although I'm happy about it, I wasn't getting the 'woohoo' feeling. I just calmly accepted the fact, and answered her email.

Seems like my stagnation period is over...well not really stagnation per se I guess, I was studying chinese most of the time, teaching and maintaining a social life... It was also nice to see some friends from Canada in HK. The weather has been improving too...nice to be able to walk around out there without breaking into sweat.

I'm so out of it sometimes... living life like it's a movie, not fully experiencing everything, not really paying attention to dates, details, big events...planning only when necessary. I'm emotionally calm, because I want to avoid excess ups and downs.

Hm, now I sound more depressed than I really am. Well actually, I'm not depressed at all... I'm very much happy and content.

Other than watching 'superlover' repeatedly, I'm also watching FFXIII versus, the extended trailer. It looks soo awesome (yeah yeah, I know...just impressed by white haired and angsty in a suit swinging around and looking bored while slaying heaps of soldiers)!! Yoko Shimomura, composer of the soundtrack, is also very awesome! I've been listening to her before I knew of FFXIII. I am so getting this game when it comes out. Maybe I need a passion that's simple, like a game or a movie.

Beware of your belongings... they're out to eat you in your sleep.