If I haven’t mentioned it before, when attending UBC I live at home in Burnaby, an hour away from school by transit, with my family. My dad, my overprotective brother and my mom who is there once or twice a year. Hong Kong is a whole other story. I am living in student residence. Hall 2 of 9 Halls with other people around my age with a distribution of about 50% locals and 50% other (international, mainland China, exchange.) Or at least that was what I was told the distribution is.

The only similarity is the distance to the nearest mall is about the same and the route to it is divided by a similarally steep hill.

I love living on campus to the point where I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with me because I feel like I should be feeling home sick. Lets arbitrarily analyze this with a +/- scale and see if I am being blinded by my freedom from commuting (and freedom in general) or if this really as wonderful as it feels.

• 15 minute walk to school vs 1 hour transit? No brainer. +10
• Not having the worry about staying at school extra late doing projects (which is surprisingly common here) and then waiting for the bus in the rain. +5
• No longer having ask if I can go out (I have “Asian parents.”) +7  Though still getting checked up on over the phone. -2
• Haven’t had a decent home cooked meal in a month. -4
• Eating out at unique places all the time. Only +4 because then you realize it gets expensive and you start saving by going to some not so good for you places *cough*McDonalds*cough*
• Big Mac meals and McNugget meals here are only $2.50 here! +0… It’s McDonalds.
• The stove here is actually a hot plate. Only -1 because I don’t cook here.
• Another -1 because I don’t cook.
• Weekly dessert night for Hall 2!!! Only +1 …because I have gotten fatter =I
• Unhealthy changes in appetite due to lack of affordable quality portioned correctly food on campus. -6
• When your food gets stolen or destroyed in the tiny common fridge. -4 because then you’ll never put anything in it again.
• Another -2 for the sheer lack of space in that fridge.
• Having an awesome room mate who likes the stuff you like and has similar sleeping patterns. Neutral. Because it could have easily been the opposite. But +2 because she is just that awesome.
• Hard time getting alone time to be depressed and moody. -5
• Easy time to find someone to hang out with. +4
• Learning about other cultures because res is so diverse. +6
• The sharpest rise in number of Facebook friends (and real friends of course ;)) I will probably ever have. +1
• The hall committee banging on doors every night trying to solicit votes. -1
• Living independently for the first time can be really taxing on your self control. Neutral. It’s good preparation for life?
• There are no dorm parties here but there is the nightly drinking and hanging out on the lawn. +2
• I can’t sing as loudly as I want to my music of questionable taste. -3
• That moment when you realize you don’t have basic supplies such as an umbrella, toilet paper or a blanket for the changing weather. -2 because then you realize those things are super cheap in Hong Kong.

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 =)