Week 1 (part 2): Uni, lots of new people and a roommate?
Little Disclaimer: I will be switching to weekly posts now (and yes that still puts me behind by at least 2). The length of posts may increase due to more photos. No idea how much writing there will be in between the photos.
Photo Selection with interspersed commentary
Tuesday
On Tuesday I made my way over to Uni, spent nearly the whole day there trying to get my student ID card. On arrival at campus there’s the turnstile gates where you’re meant to scan your ID card. I didn’t have my ID card yet, that was why I was there. I saw that there was a security guy on the side letting people through if they showed him a piece of paper, so I just showed him all the printouts I had and I was through. Later found out I had an email with a QR code that would be valid for that day. I did use it to get out afterwards. If anyone checked the system it would look like I teleported in and walked out. The main points of the day were getting the card and getting to know people. Reminds me of a thought I’ve had previously; the last person in a room only knows they were the last person. They don’t know who arrived just before them. When new to a room all you see are small groups of people talking to each other. There’s no visible way to tell if the 2 guys talking in the corner just met each other for the first time 5 minutes ago or 5 years ago.
Actually, here’s a little rant. I got a reminder that when technology doesn’t work it can be a real pain. Part of the process of getting the ID card was submitting a photo through their portal/website. They have a system that checks the submitted photo. This system is barely functional. People were getting a lot of errors that were nonsensical. For example, a girl who doesn’t wear glasses got an error message saying her glasses are too reflective. Many people reported using GenAI to adjust the picture so the system accepted it. A friend I made that day said he had spent ages doctoring his picture using paint. One of the error codes he got was the face was not symmetric enough. He tried mirroring his own face and ultimately stretched it so that it was accepted. His picture on the card does not look comfortable for his facial bone structure. Utter shambles. Hence, I gave up trying to submit a photo (I had tried the photo I submitted successfully for the HK Visa) and just turned up expecting them to solve it. Turns out that was the right move. Not only did I not waste tons of time getting stressed trying to get it working in the first place, but I also skipped the huge queue on the day and got my ID card in half the time it took others.
Wednesday
A new day to go to uni and attend a ‘Welcoming Session for Inbound Exchange Students’. Was it kinda boring? Did I stop paying full attention near the beginning and work on course selection on my laptop? Did it go on for 2 hours but feel like more? Did I wish I could listen to it at 2x speed? Was it still kinda worth it to go? Yes. It’s one of those things you just got to get through.
On the upside, everyone I’ve met so far was at the session and afterwards people congregated outside the room. I started talking to new friends of a new friend while waiting to see if anything was happening. Turns out, two or so people had the idea to go to a dim sum place and then they knew a couple people who knew a couple people and everyone thought that sounded like a fabulous idea. However, everybody was waiting on somebody to lead the way. The 2 friends I had made (a Taiwanese lad and a Taiwanese-american lad) didn’t fancy going to the restaurant with what looked like at least 15 people. We and the 2 original great thinkers decided to head off. Naturally everyone else also followed. The other group did go separately (and arrive there first somehow). So we end up in the same restaurant but we sat separately at a table of 5. Partly because I didn’t want to sit at the huge table. Much prefer to get to know the smaller group better. (Update from week 3. I’m still in touch with those 4, some of them are in the same classes as me as well.)
If you don’t know what a Dim Sum restaurant is like imagine the Spanish tapas idea but with better food.
After the delicious food we wandered around the area for two hours till it got dark (at one point walked through a street market).
I ended up going to MOS (Ma On Shan uni accommodation) for the night, as that’s where the two Taiwanese lads stay as well. This turned out to be good as that meant the next day we went to HK Island together.
Thursday
We started by going to a place that one of the lads got recommended by a local guy in Uni (lovely and helpful guy). The place was a little mall. Actually not sure if that’s the right name for it. Imagine instead the ground floor of a building has 2 big corridors that go through all the way from one side to the other. There’s no door, you can just walk in and through. You can’t see through all the way though as there’s stuff everywhere. There’s tiny restaurants with ‘indoor’ seating, others with a couple tables ‘outdoors’ in the walkway. There were what looked like some local construction workers having some bowls of noodles at one. There’s a cart where an old lady is selling the egg waffles (I should have taken a photo but I forgot). She was talking to the two lads and apparently telling them she made the best egg waffles around. There were pictures of a famous Taiwanese man (I can’t remember who it was, I think they were an actor), and the lads seemed to light up when they saw the pictures of the man clearly ordering something from this stall. There are a couple estate agent companies working from tiny offices where the wall is made out of glass and I can see the cramped office and messy desk. On the glass wall there’s the usual pieces of paper advertising a flat. But not like back home where there’s a clean grid of printouts. Theirs sometimes looked like handwritten pieces stuck up somewhat haphazardly. There’s even one room that has the claw gambling machines. You know the ones with a claw and you can move the claw to try and pick up a little toy but the claw opens before you’re ready . The claw shops always looked unmanned and are lit with bright white, uncaring lights. There’s lockers along parts of the walls. I don’t know if I saw any signs in english anywhere in mall. The place was clearly a place locals go and not a regular tourist stop, which was good as the price reflected that.
Across the street next to the MTR station was a wet market. This was the first time I saw so many live fish being sold like this.
After that we decided to go to the north-west side of HK Island (we were in the north-east). We thought it’d be fun to take the trams. Turns out the norm is to get on the back and then tap your card to pay when you leave at the front. A simple set price to use the tram. On the tram I mentioned that I’d been to Hong Kong Park and that there was a zoo thing near that. They were happy to go with that. One thing I didn’t know before is that the trams are very slow when compared to the trains. So we spent at least 50 mins on that tram. We were on the bottom at the back looking about. At one point, the tram behind us came closer and I started looking at it. My tram stopped at a red light. This was great as it let me look into the front of the other tram as it came closer. As I became able to look in I realised that of course the driver had been able to see me perfectly fine and would have seen me staring at them for the last couple minutes. That then made me smile and wonder if she was looking at me.
The problem when trying to see if someone else is looking at you is that you need to be looking at their eyes to see where they’re pointing, and that means if she is looking at me then there’s immediate eye contact. Her lips twitch towards a smile and then she rummages around in the bag behind her. When she turns around again she’s wearing sunglasses and my tram is pulling away again. I’m sure the fact that the tram never came close to us again has nothing to do with the odd tourist in the back of this tram.
We decided to get the ferry from HK Island to cross Victoria Harbour to Kowloon. After walking around a bit we decided to go for another dim sum restaurant for dinner. Did I mention that going with them was great as they were actually able to decipher the menu and recommend things that tasted amazing? Very useful and tasty.
Friday
A relaxed day with some planning and exploring, finished off by playing one of the best sports ever.
Looked around the accommodation a little more and discovered the washing/dryer machines and a drying room. Wasn’t expecting that but very happy to see it. There are also a couple common rooms. A printer room. A band room. And big sports hall where basketball, volleyball and football can be played. The downside is everything must be booked and it’s not the simplest system.
Played a little table tennis with the same two friends
Saturday
On Friday or Saturday my roommate arrived. I had been hoping that I wouldn’t get a roommate but as I was working on my laptop the door opened and there he stood with all his luggage. On Saturday we went for a decently long walk around the local area. First we got something to eat for lunch in the nearby shopping mall (it has a lot of restaurants). We started talking and eating, but mainly talking. We then got up and thought we could walk to the local beach. The idea was simple, the execution, less so. I think we started around 16:30 and were out till around 19:00. We talked about a lot. In hindsight, it was such a good thing as we got to know each other and built the base for our friendship. I think it made it easier for us now (viewpoint from week 3 after going on a hike together). Getting to know and understand a little what the other person is like means it’s easier to like them and harder to hate them.
I feel like when you don’t know them that well you can be quick to make assumptions about them and you’re more likely to generalise. For example, you enter the kitchen and see they’ve left the shared dirty pan right next to the sink and there’s some rice and other unidentifiable food scraps in the sink. It’s been that way for 3 days now. If you don’t know them well, you might be annoyed and blame them for being messy. Your annoyance begins to build. You think that’s so typical of them, they never tidy up after themselves. You’re building a negative image of them and the situation in your head. If you knew them better then you’d know they prefer to wash all their dishes straight away. Or you know that they’ve been really pressed with uni lately. Or you know they’re not the type to do something like that maliciously, and think they probably have a good reason, they would clean it for you if you had forgotten.
Hmm, maybe not the clearest example. If you can get a good image of them first, by getting to know them, then the practical side of living together in a room is easier. I believe that even if you don’t feel like you’ve got a lot in common then if effort is made from both sides the initial lack of common ground can be bridged.
Sunday
Gabby said she was up for going to church (The Gathering) as well. We agreed to meet at the MTR station underneath. We both ended up running a bit late but still made it to church at an acceptable time. After the service people get lunch from the food court in the lower floors and eat it together in a different church space on the 14th floor. We sat at a table with a friendly guy who had talked to me last week. We had intended to meet up during the week but were both busy. So we agreed to try again the coming week. There were some other people at the table and there were interesting conversations, but I feel like I’ve not really connected with any people my age or situation (20s or student). And that’s not because they don’t exist. The room feels half filled with them. I realise that I’m only here the 2nd time, but I feel like I already knew some people in the first 2 weeks. I think I’ll need to be more proactive and outgoing if I want to be part of the community (especially as I don’t have the time to wait for things to happen to me). I realise that I had thought I could just turn up and it’d be sorted.
A singular Thought
This blog has transitioned to more of a chore than a delight. I think that’s largely because I’m more busy with other stuff, whereas at the beginning I had more time and it was new. I knew this was going to happen and therefore planned to switch to weekly posts at some point but I didn’t think it would be happening already. Part of the problem is that when I sit down to work on it I want to do a good job. I don’t want to publish and post something that is just an itinerary report. I want to write about what I did but also what I thought, how I felt when I saw stuff. What I thought later about what happened. This is meant to be a weird mishmash of journal, diary, thoughts, picture album, project on self hosting a simple website. Any of them by themselves is work but everything together is not a simple endeavour. Working on it is always fun, it’s just that I want to do it properly.
This is probably a good place to mention that I use GenAI to check my writing and give me pointers on my writing style and pacing. But I am determined to make sure that every word, line and paragraph is thought of by me. This obviously takes effort but writing is a skill I want to improve and I think I’m already cutting all the corners I can. Writing is definitely a skill that takes time and effort to improve (actually the reason why I’ve not tried to improve it before).
Technical Ramblings
I have updated the fullscreen photo feature so it now locks the page in the background. No more attempting to zoom in and accidentally scrolling and then losing the position in the page. Did you actually know the photos first load in a reduced quality, but if tapped/clicked on the full quality picture shows fullscreen, to exit fullscreen just tap on the picture again? Maybe I should add something explaining some of the quirks of my little website? Maybe an Intro Section at the bottom of the homepage?
Also, I had a few people mention that it looked like I hadn’t posted anything in a while. While that was true they meant they couldn’t see my last 2 posts. I’ve had a go at reworking the backend of the page (server stuff). So the issue should be solved. But if another week or two go by and nothing changes on this site then something has probably gone wrong on the website side. I’m doing well and enjoying life in Hong Kong :)