The great news of graduation from the UW also brought the inevitable sadness of losing my long-beloved web home. I have been forced to immigrate to wordpress.com for the time being. My old blog is backed up (as well as all the other data), but I do not know if I will get around to transferring it to this new blogspace. I’ll see how comfortable this new home is.
Anyways, I haven’t said much for a while and now I am faced the problem of too much to say but not enough time. I have (nearly) made it through my first semester here at CUHK and I guess, all in all, I am not too scratched up. However, some of my attitudes have nearly done a U-turn. Here’s the cliff notes of the last three months:
For the first time I ever, I will be honest in saying that I wasn’t that busy this semester. Although I was worried about having double the teaching load of other students, I took only one graduate seminar and that kept me sane. In my last post I talked about a new-found excitement in teaching. Actually, that has more-or-less stayed with me. My teaching experience this semester was very good. After a semester, I can see a lot of areas for improvement, but I feel confident that teaching will probably end up being something that I enjoy in the long-term. Even dealing with the inevitable “grading nightmares” and upset students wasn’t so bad. Luckily, my students were pretty tame.
My own graduate seminar was an interesting challenge. The first half was smooth since that was on the topic of my research interests. The second half was definitely harder since the topic switched to things that I am not so interested in and things that I don’t feel so confident in. But the good news was that I managed to do some of my own reading and, in the end, I felt I learned *something*. The paper came out better than I expected too. Now the only thing that keeps me from calling the semester “finished” is my term paper for the first half. This is supposed to be the easy paper! But, um, I am actually writing this blog entry to try and get myself motivated to write this last paper. Here’s hoping that it works.
On the domestic front, things are quite good. Since I wasn’t as busy as I expected, I actually had some balance of normal life and work. Goldie and I went to the beach during one of the hot weekends and had a wonderful time swimming and laying out on the sand. I also found my inner child, as well, and made sand delicacies like sand pizza and sand ‘ngaau yun ho” (beef ball rice noodles). And when I got back home, I remembered the fun days of my youth trying to get all the sand out of my bathing suit after coming back from the beach!
In November, when the temperature was a constant and comfortable 22C, we went hiking every weekend. Goldie, despite living in HK all her life, found out how much she has been missing out by not trying out HK trails earlier. And I have been really impressed of the hiking that HK can offer. You wouldn’t really think that a very dense city of 7 million could have so much natural space, but it does. Actually, it’s the very fact that the city is so dense (and that the mountains resist development) that people can enjoy the hiking. Usually, we just have to hop on a short bus or subway ride and head towards the hills. Pretty soon the urban jungle fades away, and you find yourself in a dense sub-tropical forest. And almost every trail has a guaranteed spectacular view since they all go uphill. On the top of the peaks, you can stand higher than all of the high rise apartments and skyscrapers. And you can see 360 panoramas of the teal waters of the South China Sea teaming with fishing boats, freighters, and ferries, interspersed with emerald mountain peaks and the dazzling skyscrapers. Yeah, I’ll try to get pictures up for those of you who don’t believe me.
Plus, there is some interesting wild-life both in the forests and the urban jungle. On one hike, I saw a beautiful bright green snake with a startling dark red neck. Some people warned me that it was poisonous and later I did some library research on it. It doesn’t appear that the snake I saw was poisonous but I found out HK has plenty of other snakes that are (including the king cobra). I also, unwillingly, saw a rather large spider on another hike. But, even worse, in the afore-mentioned library review, I found out the spiders here can get much larger than what I saw: the large house spider is upwards to 10cm and the large woodland spider is 15cm (with a 5cm body!). Speaking of which, I saw what half of one of those large (house) spiders look like last night. Yes, only half. One of the young cats from the alley near my house made a pre-dinner appetizer AND a toy out of a largish spider. By the time I found it, four legs were missing, but the other four were still wiggling as she tossed him up in the air. *shudder* But around that time, one of the neighbors had arrived to feed the pack of alley cats, and she decided to go for her main course of kitty nibbles instead. I guess we have a lot of cat lovers in our neighborhood because we saw not just one, but two, people setting up a virtual kitty restaurant in the alley last night. Plus, we know that those alley cats already get a lot of goodies from the late-night open air hot pot restaurant that is right in their home territory.
At around 5pm, the hot pot restaurant (which is also strategically located right next to the fresh market) starts setting up tables in the alley and they are packed with customers until at least midnight and sometimes even 2am in the morning. Hot pot, by nature, is a very social event. People usually come in large groups and stay for hours drinking and talking. I have been itching to try the place out and a couple weeks ago Goldie decided to invite her whole family to come out with us for dinner. At 8pm, we could hardly get a table. Goldie, her mother, sister, and I decided to hang out at our house while letting her father wait for a table. It was nearly an hour wait! But the big meal was worth the wait. Goldie told me the restaurant has been here for years (although sometimes in different alleys) and she fondly remembers having hot pot there as a child. Surrounded by people laughing, toasting, and eating on a cool winter night , while the restaurant dog strolled around and (of course) the alley cats hung at the perimeters waiting for scraps, it seemed more like a big family than a business. It’s quite a friendly alley!
So it goes without saying that Goldie and I have been happy with the new apartment. I don’t think the location could be any better. Tin Hau one of the special places in HK where it’s actually not too crowded but still very convenient and retains all the flavor of HK life.
Wait, there is one drawback. You can surely imagine that a city as dense as HK means that houses are not just stacked on top of each other, but right *next* to each other. At any given time, you could probably see what 100 different people are doing if you look out your window (esp. when your neighbors forget to close their blinds). While we try to maintain some privacy, it has come to our attention that we have a peeping tom…right in our bathroom! And he has no shame! It seems to me that he has actually memorized our usual schedules and deliberately waits next to the window right about the time we are going to take a shower. He’s tried to hide in the dark sometimes, but you just can’t miss his two glowing cat eyes (even though his dark fur acts as good camouflage). Yeah, that’s right…it’s a peeping tomcat. And we have since found out there are two of them! A little while ago, when the owner ran into us in the hall, Goldie asked about the cats and mentioned their spying past-time. The owner seemed quite embarrassed, but actually Goldie and I have enjoyed the two kitties a lot. Goldie finds it therapeutic to talk the kitties in the morning time about her work stresses, and I like to tease them with funny faces. A few times, the kitties have escaped from our neighbor’s house and run wild on the 20th floor. One of them is quite friendly with strangers and has had no problem inviting herself inside our house and checking out our place to see how we are living. But, ironically, the one who spends the most time staring at us in the bathroom is scared to death of us in real life.
Other than that, Tin Hau is great place for eating and wandering around on the streets. We have numerous Chinese dessert places around where you can choose from tens of yummy fresh fruit snacks. There is also a number of HK-style cafes which are nice for cheap weekend lunches. Plus, there are several small Cantonese and Chiu Chau restaurants (Goldie’s favorite food is Chiu Chau, but I still like Cantonese the most). Strange enough, there was a short-lived hot pot DELIVERY service. It was a radical new idea: an upscale, high-quality restaurant that actually brings all the raw ingredients at “value-added prices” directly to your house where you provide the stove, dishes, and cooking yourself. Hmm….do you see the problem? Given the fresh market was only a few streets away, it was hard to justify the need for a delivery service of RAW food especially at those high prices. I think they completely missed the point of delivery too. Remember, people who call for delivery in HK are so lazy that they can’t even walk DOWNSTAIRS for a pre-cooked meal. How does delivering a whole bunch of raw ingredients that they have to cook for themselves and clean up afterwards work out to be less work then walking downstairs? Well, like I said, it was a short-lived business endeavor.
Oh, yesterday, we got another reminder of the friendliness of Tin Hau. We got a suspicious card in our mailbox addressed “To: 20C Girls.” I nearly thought it was one of my father’s antics but realized that whoever “sent” us this card clearly didn’t use HK Post. We opened up the card and out fell a picture of our two neighbors: “Bo-bo” and “Duck-duck”. Yes, those two kitties that spy on us everyday. Their mother/owner sent us a Christmas card with a very cute portrait of the rascals. Now, Goldie and I are trying to figure out what we should give in return. I suggested that we send a picture of the same two kitties looking into our bathroom. 
Hong Kong is really into Christmas spirit. I’ve notice that people having been dressing up a lot more recently. All the stores are decked out in Christmas decorations. Many of the more expensive places actually special order live Christmas trees! I was surprised last year that mainland celebrated Christmas as much as they did, but clearly for Hong Kong, it’s really part of the culture. Two young girls were “caroling” in the tram last night when Goldie and I were going back home.
Just last night we had a winter solstice dinner with the family. In Chinese tradition, the family is supposed to be together on the shortest day of the year. But Goldie’s father shocked the entire family with “Christmas gifts” (envelopes… you guess what’s inside). Goldie’s sister and mom were quite happy with the gifts and didn’t bother asking any questions. But Goldie was perplexed. Her family never celebrated Christmas with gifts before. She figured it had something to do with me. Hmmm… I felt kinda guilty. Actually, for Christmas day, Goldie and I will be going out for dinner with her father again. (Her mother is going to mainland with some friends.) Her family has been treating me very well, for sure. But I worry that I have nothing to give in return! I’ll just have to keep working on my Cantonese so that I can keep up at the dinner table. I’ve tried, but my attempts are pretty miserable. Goldie’s father has suggested I stick to using Mandarin (because my Cantonese is incomprehensible…hehe…) and has tried to assure me that learning Cantonese is useless. Well, I’ll just try to keep up my snail-like progress on it.
Oh, I forgot to mention the “U-turn” of emotions. Basically, when I first started this semester I was thrilled about being in grad school. But the funny thing about grad school is… do I really need to say it? I want a REAL LIFE! I want to make money! I know that you all thought you’d never see the day that I would say these words, but that goes to show you how bad grad school really is. 
I’m thinking that when I get this M.Phil. done, I will really take a break and get a job. If, for any reason, I seem to “forget” what I have said here (perhaps right around my graduation time) and I start talking about Ph.D. programs… please, please stop me. (Note: I am not saying I won’t pursue a Ph.D., but I definitely want to work in the “real world” before I go back for the long haul.)
Anyways, this desire to make money was getting so strong lately, I decided to get started a little early. I have taken up some private English tutoring jobs (that’s THE job for native English speaking foreigners in HK). What started as one student has suddenly multiplied into three: a 22yo piano teacher, a 9yo boy, and 20yo primary school teacher. The young boy is actually atypical case for me, since I really don’t have any experience with children. Also, he is blind. We had our first session last weekend and it went alright. I can see I need to build up my skills with kids, especially knowing when to say “No.” If it wasn’t for his mom knowing when to set appropriate boundaries, I might have agreed to his request to bring over my CD player, MP3 player, and flute for him to look at. hehe… He is fascinated with anything related to sound. His first question to me was whether I have a mobile phone! I’m looking forward to future lessons with him, but still a little nervous if I will be skilled enough for it. It’s definitely more of a challenge with kids! Moreover, I am so oriented to writing and reading activities (I love to make handouts for my other students), I really have to change my approach with him.
Ok, it’s clear that writing this blog entry has not helped me write my term paper. So I think I better stop here.
