[insert witty title here]

I’m sitting in my dorm in Hong Kong thinking of posting and staring out the window at the hazy sky that reminds me very much of Vancouver.  You know, the gray-about-to-rain looking kind of skies.  I can’t decide what to write about.  Challenges of healthy living at dorms?  School stuff? The exchange student partying habits?  Extracurricular activities?  Budgeting? Homesickness? I can’t decide.

I made a friend here who is from HEC in Quebec.  He says it must be a Vancouverite thing, the indecision. You know those times when you hang out with a bunch of people but no one wants to make a decision on what to do?  I have a friend from home who is taking a semester off in HK and when we all hung out, he said it’s not indecision, it’s being considerate.  I think it’s just personal indecision on my part.  Is indifference the same as indecision or just an excuse for it?

People who return from exchange often say they learned so much about themselves and the world.  For me, even though it’s only been a month, it’s the meeting people all the time factor that is affecting me most.  You can’t call up your best friends to go out when you’re lonely or rely on someone to be on MSN to fill your social gap (time differences boo.)  The business student teachings also kick in and tell me to go out there and “network.”  Get bored, meet people more often than I would at home, and then I’m plunged into the awesome cosmo of knowledge and insight that is the bigger world.

I met up with an “acquaintance-friend” (those people who you would say are your friends but you don’t know them all that well) who quit school to move back to Hong Kong and work in his family’s business. I learned he is very ambitious. When I hear about what he has been doing and what he wants to do it makes me wonder if I should be ambitious too and build great dreams risking failure or just be calm and content and stable?  At times I wonder if there is even a decision there.  I guess it’s more like I don’t have a picture for my future. Like its an empty frame hanging in white space.  Maybe I’m uninspired.  I love ambitious people, I always learn so much from them.

Go be ambitious, you’re young, just do it.
(September 12, 2011: Mid-Autumn Festival, Victoria Park)  

Whilst talking to my friend I noticed two feelings that young ambitious people tend to tell me about:

1. We want to do something great and we know that we can, we just don’t know what it is yet.

2. We either hold fears that someday we will be [age] and we won’t be where we want to be or we are already feeling like we are not the person who we thought we would be by now.

Do you think this is universal? It is striking how extremely similar my friend’s feelings were to other young ambitious people I know.

“If only I had a dream, then I’d chase it like mad” I would tell myself.  People my age with dreams tell me “if only I knew for sure this is what I want.”  I’d like to hear what someone who knows for sure has to say.

 

Windy days here are wonderful =)

I have arrived in Hong Kong!  Safely.  Soundly.  And the most foreign feeling of all: independently.  I came here 2 days before residence move-in so I was living in a relative’s empty apartment but now I am at the dorm.

It doesn’t look much different from Canada eh?

 

Anyway, here are some random things I’ve noticed over the past 4 days:

- Cooking for 1 is hard.  Not to mention I can’t cook.  Because I had to buy just enough groceries to last me 2 days but not leave anything behind, I ended up make 3 dishes of pretty much the same thing in different forms.  A failed Omurice that just became rice on an omelet, cantonese tomato fried egg (with green peppers) and everything put together to make fried rice.

(I didn’t only eat 3 meals in two days, my uncle bought me lunch)

Why did I cook at all?  Just to experience this aspect of independent living.

- Living alone is shocking lonely the first night.  After dinner I just sat there looking at my dishes and empty room thinking wow… so this is what it is like… it kinda sucks. Even if I’m not talking, it’s nice to know someone is there.  Note to self: get roommate if I move out.

 

- WiFi is extremely easy to find in HK.  Starbucks, McDonalds, the library, the park, the bus… yes.  The bus. =o

- I’ve been taking UBC’s course registration system and way finding website for granted.  I wish it was like that here.  You don’t know what you have until it’s gone right?

- Hong Kong is not the same city in the day time as it is in the night time.  That has got to be one of the most lovable things about this place.  That and the fact things are super cheap and there is no tax or tipping customs.

- Two things I was looking forward to about exchanging here: 1) escaping the gloomy rainy winter in Vancouver and 2) not having the walk that hill I walk every morning to get to the skytrain.  I wish I checked the topography of this place so I could know what I was getting myself into.  I didn’t know this area was so mountainous, it’s a good recipe with the 30+ degree weather and 85% humidity.  Good there there was a shuttle bus for luggage.  Here is a picture of the view from my room:

Those large apartments are not dorms, just rich neighbours. Check out their pool…

No joke.

- About living on campus: so far it feels like living in an apartment near school with a perpetual mini clubs day with 1 booth in the lobby.  My roommate hasn’t moved in yet.  So I guess more on this later.  Hong Kong is so hot and I am too cheap to spend too much on AC, I really only come here to sleep and use my computer.

- First tastes of how school here is likely to be very different:  There was a welcoming ceremony yesterday and they gave us graduation style robe/gowns to wear as we put our right hands up and took a pledge.  That was the 1st time I felt extremely foreign here.  The 2nd time was when I was ordering food at a local restaurant but I couldn’t because the menu was Chinese only and the only word I could read was cow.

 

I notice I haven’t mentioned much about the city life yet.  I don’t know why but I don’t really know what to say about it yet…

I also notice I don’t have a picture of the actual school yet either haha.  I’ll try to get one.

 

Ok I have to grab some breakfast and prepare before more orientation.  I’ll try to make a more organized, and less full of random everything under the sun post next time.  Let me know if there is anything you’d like me to talk about about going on exchange or Hong Kong.  Or if you have any recommendations of stuff I should check out!

was what my friend said when talking about the new UPass system and how we have to carry two “IDs” (the pass and our UBC card.)  Whilst making the following face:

Ok, not actually but everyone loves internet memes.

Quick update on my life, guess where I am!

 

 

If you guessed YVR then you are absolutely correct and amazing at remembering minute details.

I am about 2 hours away from boarding my flight to Beijing, then Hong Kong to endevour in my next “great adventure” of university life.  Exchange.  It may seem like nothing to those of you who came all the way to Vancouver and are fighting it out on their own right now but for me, someone with overprotective parents who don’t think I could survive for even two weeks on my own, this is a challenge I’ve been dreaming of since senior year in high school.

 

I don’t have anything too insightful to say right now but I wanted to make an in the moment post.  So for the sake of that I will tell you of my in the moment feeling: sleepy, and wondering why I am not as excited as I thought I would be right now.  But that’s the curious thing about trips, some how when I’m planning and signing up everything is delightful and as it draws close, it just feels unreal so I’m not as excited.  Anyone else get that?

Maybe it’s my friend’s mentality about trips passing over to me.  ”You’re not going for sure until you land.”

1. Unless you make special arrangements, you have to pay for a full course load.  In other words, 5 courses.  You can take less courses but you have to pay for 5.

2. Just because UBC has given you the go-ahead to your school of choice, you still need to apply to the actual school as an exchange student.  (I knew it was too easy!)

3. I forget the number, and it may only be a Sauder thing, but there is a limit on the number of courses you can take that are the equivalents to your core courses. Ie. You need A202, B204 and C203 to be promoted to 4th year, you are only allowed to take 2/3 abroad.

4. You might not know what you are taking on exchange until after your course registration dates at UBC. So if spots in your faculty are competitive, plan ahead and make some extra worklists.

5. Even is you are rejected by your 1st choice, have your 2nd and 3rd choice of schools fill up, there is still hope.  I am going to my 4th choice! =D City University of Hong Kong (which was actually my original 2nd choice until I changed all my plans 2 days before the forms were due)

6. Student residence in other countries may be cheaper than you think.  If money is something holding you back from exchange, remember that your tuition is the same, less in a sense because you won’t be paying for things like a UPass, so the only difference is your living expenses, unless you are already paying for them.  (Considering we are in Vancouver, chances are you will be saving money.)
*side excursions to nearby countries not included

7. All Go Global students get a scholarship of up to $1000 per term! (and a bunch of other possibilities)

Random money tip: when applying for a visa, those photobooths in the mall (not sticker photo) will work and you will save about 20 bucks.  But unless you are drop dead gorgeous, your picture will probably look ugly. Photobooth pictures do not qualify for passport renewal pictures, visas only.