From minutes to hours and from days to month.

Before I knew it, it was September 24th, exactly one month since the day I first stepped on HKUST campus and now I think I can truly call myself...a Hong Konger

What did I do to celebrate this occasion?
Let's start it off with something cultural this week...
The Mid Autumn Festival

Ritvik and I

So many people in Tin Hau

My friends and I went down to Tin Hau to see what they call the "Tai Hung Fire Dragon" performance. It was a crowded night and we had to struggle to get through all of them to see the dragon itself filled with hundreds of incents and it was truly one of a kind in my eyes. 

The hard working officers

Conrad

Catching a butterfly barehandedly...

Hiking 12 kilometers around Sai Kung National Park...

Hiking Buddies

 

Acting like a fool.

 

 

The Waterfall

This was the trail that we hiked which was about 12km in total.

A photo is worth a thousand words so I guess with the amount of photos I have put here I would not really need to write anymore but I will just do it anyways.

Waking up early on a Sunday to take a bus down to Sai Kung was not too difficult and then we took another bus that took us directly to the beginning of the trail in Sai Kung National Park. It did not take very long before I started panting like a dog and yet the trail seemed to last forever, but the deeper we got, the more beautiful the sceneries around us became and I have to say that I enjoyed it very much. Although at first we were headed up the mountain trail to a peak called, "Sharp Peak," but with some, "directional miscalculation," we ended up down the beach instead and had tons of fun anyways. I quickly got off my hiking shoes and just started walking toward the ocean. It was exhilarating to put your feet down the water and just let the waves wash away your fatigue even for a short while. We did a little climbing up from the beach to a small water fall which my friends, Julius and Daniel, did not hesitate to take a dip. I sat there next to the water without a care in the world and just looked up to the clear blue sky.

'What a perfect day for a hike,' the thought came to my mind and I just smiled.

The walk back was quite some time shorter but no less tiring in my opinion. We took a route that lead out to a taxi area and took a cab down to Sai Kung where we caught another mini bus back to UST.

Walking back to hall 3 was no challenge since I pretty could not feel my legs anyways and then I remembered one of riddles from the Hall 3 Mid Autumn Festival party which they held and taught me how to make my own mooncakes. The Riddle was....

"How do we know the ocean is friendly?"

"Because it waves."

A little more Chinese everyday

Time flies...another weekend comes and goes and it is over before you know it. Homework was brutal and I will turn it in tomorrow morning, but this weekend was not only just about homework because it really felt good to step back in the court again.

How classes are like...

Chillin with Conrad in Comp104 Lecture.

Let's look back at this past week and the many things I have done. Classes of course were the main thing and they were no jokes too. With the rapid increase of workloads coming my way, it sure makes me miss the good ol' days when I had absolutely nothing to do, but a little challenge never hurts anyone and I managed to get myself even busier with other stuff anyways.

Ritvik standing next to the tiniest "tractor" ever in Kwun Tong.

Last Thursday, on the 17th, I went down with a couple of my friends, Ritvik and Apinun, to the Hong Kong Persons office in Kwun Tong and finally picked up my Hong Kong ID card. Sure makes me feel weird getting my Thai ID card out of my wallet and replacing it with the HK one, but now I don't have to carry my Passport with me around anymore. Right afterwards, we headed to Hang Hao so Ritvik could pick up his iPhone 4.0 after waiting far too long for it since the shop would not give it to him without the real ID card and we only had our temporary ones beforehand. We sat there at the shop for quite some time, but it was worth it because I also got to make a postpaid phone contract with the "Three" company and it is much cheaper than the Prepaid one that I have been using.

In a friend's room

On Saturday, we went straight to Tsim Sha Tsui to hang out there and do some shoppings of course ;) I got some plane t-shirts to wear from there but a friend of mine actually bought the new iPod touch for 2300HKD and he has been making me want one for myself ever since. I gotta say that I'm really tempted and the price here really isn't bad at all compared to the price that it will be in Thailand. But my friend was the one who bought the last one in stock from the store. I guess my wallet was saved by the bell indeed.

Friends from hall 7 coming over for a visit at hall 3 because of the fire drill

and I sure enjoyed rubbing it in to them 

One of those days.

Have you ever had one of those days that you have to stay in a room full of people from around the world and try to figure out how to ask each other's names in Mandarin, run to a conference room just to sneak out right after the MC invited the first main speaker to give a speech, run down from 2nd floor to Lower Ground 5th floor  to 10th floor to Ground floor to 11th floor to Ground floor again to go get dinner in a Cantonese speaking party, go up on stage to try to sing out a Cantonese song for everyone to guess what song it is, run all the way back up to the 2nd floor again (G-10-G-11-LG7-2), and then attend another meeting just about 2 hours late?

...well now I have.

I started today off with my Putonghua/Mandarin class. It is everything but easy that much is sure. I had fun with it anyways though. Some of the basic sentences we practiced today are :

Nǐ hǎo. : Hello. (literally translates to "You good")
Nǐ jiào shénme míngzì? : What is your name? (literally translates to "You call what name?")
Nǐ xué shénme? : What do you study? ("You study what?")
Wǒ xué gōngchéng : I study engineering.
.............Etcetera 


After classes, I ran to International Students' Association(ISA) meeting for the inauguration of the new president. I had to sneak out early because I also had another appointment with my dormitory, hall 3, which also intercepts with another appointment I have with AIESEC, a famous international leadership organization.


At the hall 3 dinner, one of the organizer, Samantha who tells everyone to call her "The female Sam" even though nobody knows of "The male Sam", asked me to participate in a game for everyone to enjoy. What happened was, they let me hold an ipod playing a Cantonese song that I have never heard of before in my life and try to sing out the words for everyone in the whole room to guess the name of the song. 


It....was.....HILARIOUS.


One of the songs they gave me didn't even sound like human language so I could only imagine how my singing sounded to the people in the room, but one of hall members ran to the front of the stage and answered it correctly anyways. I almost jumped down the stage to give that guy a hug right then.


After hall 3 dinner, there was the AIESEC recruitment talk. It was enjoyable in a way since I only had to sit in and listen for an hour instead of three and the people are really nice there. I am very interested in joining AIESEC because I think it will be something I can really commit to and widen my horizons at the same time.


AIESEC website : http://www.aiesec.org/hong%20kong/

Out and about

Before the semester began I have had many opportunities to go out and see Hong Kong. It really is an awesome place to be and I like it very much here. The beaches are great and you can see the shark-net that they put there because there have been shark attacks before. UST organized a little something called City Tour for us and we got to see even more of Hong Kong and I got a chance to get to know my international friends even more.

Beach in Hong Kong.

Daniel and his camera.

Besides from the beach, we also went to a place called Stanley Plaza which was rather plane and boring and the only thing entertaining there was seeing Yousef, a friend from Pakistan, trying to solve a Rubik's cube.

Stanley Plaza

Attawat and Yousef

We ate at a Chinese restaurant called Jumbo which was a big cruise ship in the river, and I got to take this awesome photo there.

Walking back.

Afterwards we went up to Victoria's peak to see an awesome view of the city but were actually unable to see the daily light show at 8PM...still was awesome though :)

The Bus driver!!!

Free time's over because now we have kick started our semester and it's going to be study-time! YES!!!...sometimes.

Hong Kong... Here I am!!!

Today was a busy day like usual. First class started at 10.30 but I got there a bit late because I got lost in the hallways. As dumb as I sound, it was impossible not to get lost. Right then I thought to myself, "I still can't believe that THIS is happening"

HONG KONG RED TAXI

By THIS I do not just mean getting lost. I mean living here and studying at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology ( HKUST ) or better known as fodai or UST by the locals. (UST = University of Stress and Tension) Today is my 16th day in Hong Kong and my 13th day staying in Undergraduate Hall III of HKUST. They say that it's not the best hall on campus, but I think I've grown quite fond of this hall. Everyone here is so friendly all the time that I find it funny and also there are 8 other international (full-time) students living here in this hall that I know of who are in the same boat as I am. And who knows how many other exchange students (one-semester.)  The international students and I became friends quite easily probably because we know how it feels like being "The Foreigners"

BBQ at the beach

So much more to say but so little energy left in me before I fall asleep from exhaustion. Let me leave some random photos just for the heck of it.

Me and my international friends

Paisano's Delivery Guy

Paisano's Famous 24 inch pizza

Crazy Korean 'Jablelai'

Need some adaptors?

And so much more to come