Reality Check

It was a free day for me yesterday, and for the whole of the 15 non-sleeping hours of the day, all I did was to borrow some books from the library for my essay, meet the group for discussions about our film, and squeeze in a short workout. Thinking back, I really don't know how the rest of the hours faded away just like that. Bottom line is, I'm getting really lazy and lethargic.

The free hours yesterday also got me thinking again, and in some way brought me back to reality. I embarked on my SEP journey for a few reasons; to get a great experience, to escape from one semester of NUS hectic-ness, and also to provide myself with some time to think about what's ahead for the next few semesters. And now that November looms, I realised that I don't really have much time left to simply just ponder about what's ahead, but I would instead have to make a decision quick.

I'm going into honors year next semester already, but with the pre-requisite for honors thesis 4101 only available two semesters from now, I would practically have to void the semester ahead, and think of what I want to do with it. I have considered a few options really; serving back my dues in the army, just going ahead with the semester to maybe improve my CAP (or danger of deproving it), to do an internship, or to just simply find a part time job and wither my life away.

Internship's my choice, but being in Hong Kong adds a barrier to this as I am unavailable for interviews. Now I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping that the companies get back to me, and that something can be worked out. I saw the job scopes, and its really interesting and I'm really keen on it. A learning experience I wouldn't want to miss, so I'm just being really hopeful now.

The tentative exam timetable was released yesterday, and we all realised how early our papers would end. So in other words, I just realised that my last paper and my original return ticket date is actually 3 weeks apart! I guess I will either go traveling, or maybe shift my return date to a much earlier one. Then again, traveling plans would really have to depend on the internship arrangements, and I wouldn't mind giving up the traveling if I could rush back to squeeze in an interview.

So the issue about internship lingers, the exam timetable is still tentative, and what really is ahead is just a couple of months time, I really don't know. Everything suddenly just seems all so blurry and uncertain.

One Less to Savor

When we came over to HK, one of the first questions we asked Elaine's local buddy was where we could find Krispy Kremes. I even remember that we specially went all the way to Causeway Bay (and walked a fair bit) just to find the Krispy Kremes outlet mentioned in the guide book, and even ordered a dozen to share among the four of us. The after-thoughts were that it was not as fantastic it was 'supposed' to be, but well I was personally satisfied with my doughnuts.

Since then, we have found many other Krispy Kremes outlet, and started to realise how foolish we were to go all the way to Causeway Bay the first time when there was actually one outlet at Mongkok. So Krispy Kremes became a once in a while affair, and it was better this way too as eating it once every few weeks made it seem tastier each time.

Since our first Krispy Kremes venture, I did raise a point to the others. With Krispy Kreme getting such a big 'hoo haa' back at home, and with it being such a hit in many other countries, I was surprised at how empty the Krispy Kremes outlets here were. Almost every time I visit, there will only be a couple of tables filled. In fact, the only time an outlet was full was when it was pouring at Mongkok, and I guess people were there to just take shelter.

So having heard that Krispy Kremes could not make it to Singapore due to high franchise cost, I was serioulsy wondering how could it actually survive here in HK. Well, I got my answer today. It can't. News just came in that Krispy Kremes in HK just went into liquidation, and have already closed down a majority of their outlets. Oh well, no more doughtnuts. The only saving grace is that the roadside stalls at Mongkok will never close down, and it's something I've really grown to enjoy.

Two and Ten

Yesterday marked two full months in HK, and tomorrow will be the start of the tenth week. It's been really fast, and while walking along the Tsim Sha Tsui MTR travelators, it occured to me that in some way, I have unknowingly been assimilated into the HK environment.

Just a few weeks back, I was standing on the wrong side of the very same stretch of travelators, observing the speed at which the people here walk, attentively listening out to conversations in cantonese, looking at the different types of advertisements in the station, and basically just quietly observing and experiencing a place unlike home. Now, I just simply walk from point A to B without all the in-betweens I mentioned.

The past week have been much better than mid term week, although deadlines and meetings are still creeping in here and there. I've stepped out of school much more, and have actually had more time for soccer and working out. Marx and Weber presentation was a mini disaster, but well no pressure there (privilege of exchange student again). Filming is starting to show signs of intensity, but it's seriously an eye-opening experience, and I hope all works out fine and well.

Been reading the blogs of those at home, and together with all the MSN nicks and facebook statuses, its obvious that it's that time of the semester again. Well hang in there, and all the best! Oh and if you find yourself playing more games and stoning more during this period, don't worry, it's normal :) It will eventually all work out fine. Cheers peeps!

I Miss ...

I've kinda lost count, but I think I am somewhere around the mid point of this exchange experience. So being here for almost two months, I've grown to miss alot of things back at home.

Of course, my gf and family tops the list, that goes without saying. And second to them would definitely be my friends, especially the arts club peeps who keep me going in school. But apart from the people, there are just so many other things which I so dearly miss, and its only upon this time of absence from home that I've come to realise how much I miss these ...

Food is up there on the list, as I just cannot explain how much I miss local hawker food. No doubt it's quite a food paradise here in HK too, but hawker food like char kuay teow, chicken rice, bak kut teh, carrot cake and hokkien mee is just uniquely Singapore.

My house, my room, my cable tv and my bathroom. All these with the luxury of privacy! Lying on the sofa watching soccer, surfing the net and listening to music in my room, singing in the bathroom without the slightest worry of awkwardness.

The malls and streets of Singapore. Yes no doubt I used to complain how small Singapore was, and how I was practically walking the same places again and again, but I'm so used to that lifestyle so much so that I'm missing it now.

Believe it or not, NUS. It's only after coming here that I come to realise how much I miss NUS, especially the CNM department. I miss the modules that made so much more sense to me, I miss the lecturers who are in my opinion much better. And yes as ironic as it may sound, I miss the NUS 'system'. For those who frequent my blog, you should know what I mean by NUS 'system'. I guess it's one of those hard to explain love hate relationships. I hated it when things went wrong, when there was a lack of transparency, and when things didn't make sense. But now here at CUHK, it's an all different system in all, and I don't really know (plus don't exactly really care about) what it is. Back in NUS eventhough I wasn't exactly always a fan of the system, but at least I could take time and effort to understand it. Now here, it's just so foreign, and sometimes it just gives me a rather 'lost' feeling.

With all these said, having missed so much back home of course doesn't at all mean that I'm getting tired of HK. I'm still having a time of my life here, and there's still so much I want to see and do. Plans have been temporarily put on hold for these past two weeks (mid terms), but I'm sure they'll gradually resume. Still eyeing Ocean Park, and probably a trip to somewhere nearby.

As for now, back to Marx and Weber and their sociology readings which I have done for almost 5 days, but still get nothing, and presentation is tomorrow! Another reason why I miss my department so much!

Mid Term Week

The past week was mid term week here at CUHK, and as tienkwan puts it in her blog, the focus of mid terms on exchange doesn't just simply mean tests and assignments, but more of the fact that we are already halfway through our term. Considering that most of the deadlines are packed into the second half of our term, I'm very sure it would whizz past much faster than the first half did. Before we know it, we'll be on our way back home.

Mid terms week was the worse week for me so far here in CUHK, with one test, assignments and project meetings, but the level of stress and fatigue is comparably still far from what I had back home. The only woe I really have now is sociology. In some way I'm really glad that I have learnt alot more about sociology, because in true fact it's quite interesting. But I'm starting to wonder though why sociologists have to write in such a 'hard to understand' way, when the objective of writing was to allow others to read and understand.

Ok that aside, I am really grateful for knowing the Korean guys. Together with them, we Singaporeans have somewhat formed a soccer team, and we're playing regularly every week. We're even taking part in some school league, and have even printed our own jerseys. Well the whole team is actually wearing Arsenal's jersey, wasn't my choice, but I'll go with whatever makes the majority happy. But in my own personal opinion, the league and competition, that's secondary. Being able to play reguarly, be it competitively or leisurely, that's primary.

I had always wanted to play soccer here, so when my college had this soccer trials, I went for it but it didn't work out. Was probably too unfit and not good enough, although I had problems fitting in too as every single thing they said was in cantonese. Even the coach kinda treated us exchange students like we were not there, giving a debrief after the game and just walking off without translating. So after the trials I was thinking, that was it, there goes my plans of soccer here in HK. But now it's all worked out well and fine. Phew!

Work and Weight

I can conclude that the two variables of work and weight come hand in hand, and they have a very strong correlation. And when applied to me, it is a very strong positive correlation, which means that the more work I have, the more weight I put on.

In a previous entry not too long ago, I attributed the cold weather to myself eating more and exercising less. Well, this time it's the same principle, just that instead of cold weather, it's work. I've been so tied up with work the past few days that I either didn't have time to exercise, or was simply too tired and lazy to exercise. Similarly, because I woke up earlier and slept later, means I deviated from my usual 'no breakfast no supper' practice, and have since eaten much more over the last few days. This is bad.

Absence from school work for the past 5 months has really turned my engine cold, and it's really hard to start it back up. I almost forgot how to do a research paper until only just now when the tutor started explaining how. I think my reading speed decreased, my attention span decreased, and even attentive-ness to school work vanished. Haha so guess what, I actually didn't realise that I had a mini presentation to do in class today. So I unleashed my jtcx-1984 tutorial smoke bomb again (the same bomb I use almost every other semester). Hope it worked.

A simple sentence from a casual talk with my local project group mate today left me feeling a little guilty. He said that the research project we were working on meant alot to him, as it was a high level sociology module. And as it is a module in his major, he really wanted to do well. That woke me up a little. As I have been taking a rather laid back approach so far, it dawned upon me that I should perhaps give in a little more, least I give him the dread-exchange-students-in-your-project-group sentiments I get back at home.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

It has been 5 days since my last entry, and believe it or not, the reason is because I have been busy with school work. Haha, and it doesn't stop. I still have two sociology assignments to rush tonight.

I guess it's not really because school here is very hectic or whatsoever, but perhaps more like because I've been slacking so much at the start, that it has all started to pile up now. Well, I wasn't really expected to keep up with my readings every other week while on exchange right? I don't even do that back at home.

So life recently has been practically filming, editing, studying, and assignments. Managed to squeeze a mini soccer session somewhere in between, but that session was probably the only 'break' I had away from academics over the weekend. It didn't help that some minor but persistent flu bug hit me since last thursday.

I just completed a mid term, and despite the test covering just 5 chapters, there was a crazy amount of readings to do. I actually spent a few days on the hundreds of pages needed to be covered, but in the end, I just couldn't cover everything. So I went into the test with an 'exchange student' mindset, by just trying my best with whatever I had absorbed.

The conflict here would of course be why am I actually spending so many hours on my readings, somewhat unlike what an exchange student should or would do. Well, I didn't come here to do well, but neither did I come here to do badly. After all, SEP at CUHK was part of my escapism from CAP. So I am actually finding it hard to draw the line on where exactly is 'enough'. I guess it's also probably just me to want to just give it my best ... so I guess it isn't all that slack as I had wanted it to be.

As the entry title says, my own worst enemy? Myself.

Here We Go Again

School work is picking up real fast now, and things are starting to feel a little familiar again. Filming, editing, project meetings, studying for mid terms, assignments, loads of readings ... all these within the next 6 days, and it's just the start of things to come.

Here we go again ... but despite all the workload, there's one big difference here. I'm not feeling as pressured and stressed. Finally taking on my role as an exchange 'student'.

Seasonal Change

I think autumn is finally here! Almost 3 weeks late, but better late than never. Temperatures averaged around 24 to 25 degrees today, and I know some may say it's not THAT cold, but you can't really blame me for exclaiming the arrival of autumn as temperatures have been ranging somewhere between 32 to even 36 degrees since arrival.

For the first time here, the outside of a building was cooler than the inside. The sky turned darker earlier too, and it kinda reminded me of the typhoon a few weeks back. No typhoon this time, not even rain. Having settled down already, it suddenly felt like I was in a different place all over again.

I kinda like cold weathers, something different from home, but there's one huge problem. As Elaine, Bryan and I realised yesterday, we tend to eat much more when we're feeling cold. Much, much more.

We were stuck in a horrible downpour at Mongkok, but that didn't stop us from going on a feast escapade. We always saw Mongkok as the place to shop, especially for our sports stuff. In fact, the bulk of my purchases were made in Mongkok. But somehow or rather, there was not much shopping yesterday. Instead, we braved through the strong winds and rain to actually try new kinds of food. We had like super delicious deep fried and bbq sotong from the roadside stall, we had nice and cooling 'guai ling gao', we tried some cold noodles in a small bag which was soooo good, and we rounded it up by eating warm and yummy 'dou jiang you tiao'. Sinful.

To add to the troubles, I ran for almost an hour and a half today, and I realised I was literally not sweating at all, probably due to the cold weather. Oh dear, this is not good.

Back to the Books

Tomorrow will mark my 6th week of school here in CUHK, and I guess work is starting to pick up. Looking at the bigger picture, it took me 6 long weeks to actually blog about something related to school work, a stark contrast from the previous semesters back in NUS, and a testament to how relax I've been taking things here :)

I kind of started the engine rolling in the past week already, doing my first set of readings and having a few project meetings already, and even having some sort of a mini studying session with Elaine and Bryan at McCafe. Pace is still rather slow, but at least something's started eh.

Work has been going at a pretty slow pace probably because of the modules I chose, and the way I chose to have my timetable laid out. I am taking two films classes and one communications module for my major, and being a communications major, the irony is that I am definitely enjoying the two film classes much more. One basically involves watching films, and the other producing a couple of short films. I am therefore learning much about film production, the production process, the cameras, the sound, the lighting etc. Definitely something I wouldn't do back at home (due to concerns regarding grades and resources), so I'm relishing every single moment of it.

The remaining two modules are sociology modules, and perhaps my two most dis-interested modules. Nothing against sociology, but the exposure module I took back in year 1 sem 1 kinda scared me off a little. Eventually I still chose to take these two over some psychology and marketing modules simply because I wanted a free day, ease of mapping reasons, and a lighter workload (or so I think it would be). To date, the sociology readings are a chore. Maybe I was wrong, but oh heck, I believe I should be able to survive.

Wonders of The Dragon, Wonders in The Sky

It was Hari Raya Puasa back in Singapore yesterday, but we had our fair share of an 'off' day here in HK, as it was the Chinese National Day. Under usual circumstances, a public holiday amidst the mid term period would mean an extra day to rush assignments or study for tests, but under exchange circumstances, it simply means another whole day out away from school :)

We ventured off to the eastern tip of Hong Kong island to trek at Shek O Park and Dragon's Back. Similar to what I experienced at Po Toi, there was much climbing, walking and of course, lovely scenery. Again, pictures would tell a better story here, so I shall let my web album do the job. Perhaps the only thing I couldn't really capture with my camera would have to be the cool breeze we experienced up there. It just made us feel like staying up there all day long, enjoying the winds while admiring the scenery.

I really enjoyed the 3 hour hike, as it provided both a good workout, and a breakaway from the city life. I've never really done much trekking or hiking before coming to HK (apart from army navigational exercises), and I'm really starting to wonder why I didn't try this much earlier.

Dim sum lunch soon followed the hike, and there seems to be a similarity in all dim sum restaurants throughout the whole of HK. One word, cheap! The seven of us kinda ordered alot so as to make up for the efforts of our long hike, so much so that towards the end, we were hoping that they would actually forget some of our orders (they really did). So when we were going to settle the bill, we started to guess how much the feast would actually cost, and well, turned out to be just 10 Singapore dollars per person. Amazing! I still don't get why food in general is so expensive here, but dim sum is so cheap. A total opposite from what we're getting back home.

We ended the day at Victoria Harbour, as we squeezed amongst the crowd and waited for nearly 2 hours to catch the National Day Fireworks. It was a truly spectacular sight, and this time, the pictures cannot really tell the story. You really have to be there to experience it yourself. The fireworks felt really close to us, as they were shot out by 3 different ships on the sea just in front of the harbour we were at. The variety of the fireworks, together with the near perfect co-ordination of pyrotechnics and music, was simply unbelievable! We were initially feeling a little tired having to wait for so long, especially after a long day already, but I guess in the end it was all worth the wait. I personally feel that it's the best fireworks show I've seen to date!

While I was standing there in awe, witnessing shots after shots of fireworks bursting up in the HK skyline, many sentiments came through my mind. I was again thinking of how lucky I am to be able to come for this exchange, to experience such wonders, and to feel all so carefree and relaxed. I was feeling really grateful to my parents, and yes to NUS, for giving me such a fine opportunity. Which is why I feel its quite sad that a friend of mine has started to feel a little negative-ly about his exchange, citing his dislike of the size and the lifestyle of the place. It's a real pity considering that he will be carrying this not so positive attitude into the remaining three quarters of his exchange experience.

Quoting from Josh's blog (from Julie's comments), exchange will be over before you know it. So how do you really want to remember this exchange opportunity of a lifetime?