Month: October 2006

Live from Vietnam

This post comes to you courtesy of a reasonable 100d/min. Internet establishment on Thai Van Lung St. in Saigon, the name still in use for this central district of what’s now Ho Chi Minh City. We’re on the last full day of our trip, and it hasn’t been a bad one.

Our couchsurfing host has provided us with palatial accomodations and been fantastically generous. It’s a little tricky to have to coordinate our schedules with him, resulting in having to nurse drinks or mess around on the Internet to kill time waiting for him once in a while, but it’s not bad.1960

Friday we arrived after a preposterous additional security search in HKG, where US airlines (even flying away from the US) are subject to the TSA’s baffling liquid regime. We had checked one of the backpacks to prepare for this eventuality, but it was still a pain. After everyone underwent the liquid screening, both of my travelmates got the magic SSSS on their boarding passes entitling them to additional screening on the jetty. Luckily for them, an on-time departure trumped security and they were waved past.

After wading through touts we found a recommended taxi company and made it in to town for the fair price of 60 Kdong. Not bad, though our glacially-paced set of buses in Hong Kong was around half the price.

Saturday was a day of hard-core sight-seeing. We saw the War Remnants Museum, the Presidential/Independence/Reunification palace, and the girls went motorbiking while I did a little more spelunking through old colonial buildings around the Notre Dame cathedral and post office. We also saw the Ben Thanh (sp?) market and crossed quite a few streets, which is something you might not think of as exciting if you haven’t been to Vietnam.

On Saturday we went for a package day-trip to the Cao Dai temple and Cu Chi tunnels. The Cao Dai temple is the Holy See of a local combination religion, and can only be explained by pictures (to come). The Cu Chi tunnels are a 200 km system of, well, tunnels, used first against the French and later against the Americans. We saw the traps, crawled through a section, and all the usual tourist stuff, in addition to taking bus rides on some more interesting roads. It was good to get out and see a bit of the countryside, though.

Today has been a day of chilling out so far. We had some iced coffee and sat/walked in the Botanical Garden for a while. But it’s about time to meet our host for lunch, so here I sign off.
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Macao o segundo

I’m back in Tuen Mun after a second crack at Macau this weekend. I traveled with a group of seven others, which is a bit large for my taste but ended up working out decently enough.

This time I wasn’t miserable from unexplained sudden blistering on my feet, so I was able to enjoy everything more. We took the ferry from Sheung Wan on Hong Kong Island this time, which is actually about as close (in transit time) as the much (physically) closer TST China ferry pier. We stayed at the Sun Sun Best Western, fairly close to Largo do Senado (the central square)—but everything in Macau is pretty close to everything else.

Since it was the first trip to Macau for many in the group, we didn’t make it to the islands. Maybe next time. Or the time after that.

We saw the usual sights. New ones for me included a long walk up and around the Guia hill/fortress/lighthouse complex, the Lou Lim Ioc (sp?) gardens, walking in the Leal Senado, and generally a lot of walking around the more central and eastern parts of the peninsula. We largely neglected the north and south, and stayed more or less in the west (which is pretty boring).

Claiming a bed in this Best Western was a bad idea as I was destroyed by what seemed to be a bed full of some creature. My panicked laundry session and careful isolation on returning seems to have worked, but I’ll keep my fingers crossed. Last night I had a set of merged welts from bites almost entirely covering my right bicep, but the magic of Mopiko has me looking a little less freakish today.

Once again the walking around (unencumbered by blisters) was my favorite part, or would have been if it weren’t for the food. For Saturday’s lunch we tried a Portuguese place called Boa Mesa near L. do Sen., which seemed to be well-received by the group. For dinner we found a semi-Shanghainese place near the casinos where I tried the famous xiao long bao, or soup dumplings. I had the crabmeat version. Look them up, they’re fun—a literal flavor explosion. After going to Portuguese Mass at the cathedral (one of the least impressive I’ve seen, but hey, it’s in China) and getting ice cream, Sunday’s lunch was at the Café Chocolà on the same alley (Travessa do São Domingo, maybe?), a café pretending to be Italian but with obvious Portuguese food. I had a set lunch of a mushroom torte with soup (cream and vegetable) and salad (boring, but with plenty of azeite [olive oil]), a papaya–sweet lime (tasted a bit like Key lime) shake, and pigged out with a guardanapo (literally, napkin… or a rocambole (sp?) to Brazilians) afterward. Most of the others had very reasonably priced and pretty good-looking baguettes.

I’ve now been to a casino (a couple) for the first time in my life. We went in both the Wynn and the Lisboa on Saturday night. It’s easy to see why the Stanley Ho/STDM monopoly (e.g. the Lisboa) is losing business. Popular games (for people with more money than I) are baccarat and sik-bo (big-little, a Chinese dice game that has gameplay and odds similar to a wheel-less roulette). I got tremendously lucky on a ten-cent slot machine (ten HK cents… heh) and wound up pulling myself out of the red and cashing out 30 HKD in the black. Very, very lucky. I’m not trying that again any time soon.

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I think that covers most of the weekend. Today, I have a trip in the works to Wan Chai to get my Vietnamese visa, but first I’m going to English Corner where there is such a thing as a free lunch.

Breakfast with the President

I have forgotten to mention Breakfast with the President, a much-hyped tradition at Lingnan where students sign up to be invited to eat breakfast with the President of the university. He picked up the idea from a school where a president would slum it and sit down weekly for breakfast in the cafeteria, expecting students to spontaneously stop over. He believes this system (where students have to be motivated enough to sign up to receive a [presumably motivation-boosting] Official Invitation) to be a vast improvement. I’m skeptical. This is his last year at Lingnan so I’ll try to be candid: something the breakfast is supposed to promote.

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Meal review: Eh. Congee and fried dough good, sandwiches bad. We were told that the sandwiches are intentionally replacing bacon and eggs to keep us healthy. It would have been better to keep that from us and pretend that the tuna and egg canape is a traditional Hong Kong breakfast delicacy, as the mention of bacon and eggs came off to my stomach as an insensitive gesture.

Conversation review: Meh. We were invited to tell the President about our problems with the exchange process, and after most every one he explained to us how they weren’t really problems.

An amusing example is the class selection process. Exchange students are given a class list but no class timetable. When we send in our requests, we’re told that not all of them can be honored due to time conflicts, which never would have happened if we’d had access to a timetable. [WARNING: minor dramatic license follows]

Explanation: The timetable is set after class requests. A computer then schedules classes to meet 95% of requests. This is to prevent students from having the slightest bit of control over their daily lives. I mean, it’s to prevent students from “distorting their interests” by choosing classes that would allow them to schedule around jobs and such.

Problems: We aren’t allowed to take jobs. Either our requests aren’t entered into the computer system or the exchange students comprise the other 5% of students who experience conflicts. Teachers wheedle students to drop or change scheduled tutorial times because they want to schedule their classes around their lives. Computerized scheduling (my high school had a fiendishly complicated version of this) might work when everyone is supposed to be on campus every day of the week from time A to time B, but I think it’s a miserable idea in the university environment.

Counterpoint: Well, our system is what’s best. We know it is. And we’re hoping to make it even harder (read: impossible) to add/drop to make our system even more foolproof!

Problem: How about the dozen or so courses taught in “stealth Cantonese?” (where an “English” course consists of 2.5 hour discussions in Cantonese, or requires critical readings in Cantonese)

Counterpoint: That’s a problem with imperfect information [ha, what an economist!]. But our system is still the best. And please eat more sandwiches even though it isn’t yet nine in the morning, these piles look awkward just sitting on the lazy-susan.

As it became clearer that this was the standard answer, the conversation grew even more forced and awkward than the situation (honoring lowly students with an audience) dictated. All things considered, in my delectably humble opinion, university presidents would be better off taking the dining hall approach.

Prediction

Ho Chi Minh City / Saigon is going to be hit by a typhoon Friday a week. And I’m going anyway.

I’ve come all the way to Hong Kong and the best airfare I find is on United Airlines. I’ll be going to SGN from late 27 to early 31 Oct for the princely sum of 1275 HKD tax-in r/t. Rock.

Might hit Macau again this weekend, too. Got to get out of this place more.

Communal eating

Chopsticks aren’t the only wooden slivers of Chinese culture slipping under my skin here, but they’re part of something I meant to mention in my previous post (I’m not as shallow and unappreciative as it might seem when I’m muttering about some tiny injustice).

Sharing dishes at dinner is the only normal way now. Hepatitis immunizations make the luxury restaurant option of serving chopsticks unnecessary, as we all poke in to piles of delicious food with our own two sticks. We can usually get away with ordering one or two dishes fewer than the number of diners. The two times I’ve sat down to an individual meal in the past month or so, I’ve felt weird. That’s just not done. Food is for everyone. I like that a lot.

Sunburn update + food

There is no update. I didn’t burn. Excellent.

One of my textbooks has changed from a three-hour reserve reading to a seven-day reserve reading. Checked out through Tuesday. This isn’t helping me prepare presentation materials for Monday.

Dinner last night, at the infamous Mei King (where we eat when we say “Fu Tai”), was very good—we ordered well. Dishes I hadn’t tried before included some type of Egg Foo Yung (Chinese omelet), Singapore vermicelli, and Indonesian boneless pork (with sizable bones and covered with some sort of salad dressing, disturbing, but somehow still good).

I can write my Chinese name. Everyone else can write most of the words we’ve studied so far. I’m not used to being this far behind in a language class. The method everyone recommends does work—I learned my name by mindlessly writing it over and over. Unfortunately I’m not at the level of detachment from my surroundings required to do this in class like everyone else does. I don’t know that I’m writing it correctly or recognizably, but I can tell what it is.

I can write 哈达能, though, so I’m going to be proud of myself for a while. I might add it to my name tag on my door, if it doesn’t mean something bizarre in Cantonese (Curtis?).

Lamma Lameness

Our excursion to Sai Kung ran into choppy water, so we went to Lamma Island instead. After attempting to put in at a beach where our small boat couldn’t safely dock, we settled for what is known as Power Station Beach. It was just as charming as it sounds. I had some fun, though, and came back slightly burned for my trouble (though we rarely saw the sun peaking through the clouds/haze/smog).

The boat trip was exciting in a disagreeable way, with heavy pitch and roll along with scattered seasickness and a seizure on our way out. The ride back was less traumatizing but just as erratic in quality.

I got dumped all-too-easily from the “banana boat” into some of the nastiest salt water I’ve yet had the pleasure of having forced down my throat. Attempts at beach volleyball and Sea-Monkey in the Middle were more fun and required less effort. Stepped on (but did not break) a light bulb during the volleyball. I’ll take that as an omen of luck.

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weekend preview

Well, not new, but new in part to me. I managed to snag one of the Lingnan copies of HK Magazine (free English-language nightlife weekly) and after getting a chance to read all the way through one I’m floored: for WVians, it’s what Graffiti would be with competent editing and a world class city full of exciting things to do. You can dream about that while the mercury flirts with freezing, and I’ll just stick around here for a while.

It won’t win any awards for subtlety: it carries the always… interesting “Savage Love” and this week’s cover story is titled “How Drunk are We?” But it also tells me what this weekend’s “Street Carnival” in Lan Kwai Fong is about (Hong Kong isn’t very good about putting Mardi Gras in the right half of the year or so) and that a new Almodóvar film is opening. Cool.

Almost all of tomorrow will be sucked up by an OMIP-organized excursion by boat to Sai Kung, in the North-eastern New Territories. We’ll be going the scenic way by boat from the TST public ferry pier, which I don’t quite understand. If the included lunch is as big as it sounds, I’ll get over it quickly. I’ll go back to being bitter if we are “grouped” and forced to satisfy the local fetish for “educational” “games” most of us thought we’d escaped some time after second grade or so. Afterward I should be thoroughly pooped but will probably let myself be dragged to LKF.

I’m starting to get tempted to ignore my promise to not travel [how many times can I type “to?”], as low-ish fares to Taipei and semi-workable flight times over the Cheung Yeung long weekend (Monday 30 Oct. is off) beckon. Hm.

Monday brings el desayuno con el Presidente, which is something WVU definitely doesn’t do. WVU also doesn’t allow “spirit teams” of sociopaths to stand outside dorms and scream “wake-up songs” in the early morning hours, so I’m not going to beat up on it too much. I’ll also go to Festival Walk in Kowloon Tong for a crack at a few of the “Western Grocery Stores” (which we speak of reverently almost to the point of including air quotes) as Team America shops for goodies for its Wednesday Lingnan International Day booth. I’ve heard rumors on the Internets about the existence of “Sun Chips” and “root beer” and other whispers from my past, and I’m eager to put them to rest—in my stomach.

I need food, bye.

Mid-Autumn Festival

The presentation was OK on Friday. That guy who likes to launch into mercilessly irrelevant blather about Chomsky in class was, on a day when I was discussing his idol, speechless. I was kind of looking forward to some debate from him…

Friday was Mid-Autumn Festival, celebrating the Harvest Moon. Coincidentally, the moon was near apogeeperigee [I’m not an astronomer for a reason, oops] and bigger[-looking] this year. At noon the sky was overcast, but it cleared nicely by the evening. Went down near Causeway Bay and saw the dragons and lanterns and all that, but ended up home early (on a night when trains ran late!) due to a miscommunication.

Saturday was a public holiday (in HK Saturday is normally a workday) to let everyone get some sleep. I did. The Mainland gets a whole “golden week” off for it.

Today, I also slept. Watched a Lingnan U. v. Orange Team football match on the campus pitch. We got killed.

I hope you, dear reader, didn’t have too many mooncakes forced down your throat this weekend. I did get to try some “non-traditional ones” which were interesting (and easier to get down).

Tomorrow: a week of school without any festivals. Ick.

Voting

My absentee ballot arrived in the mail today, a day after I asked the Consulate to send me a write-in form. Oops. It’ll go to good use for someone else, though.

The ballot is rather thin this election in my precinct: no school board shenanigans, just one senator, and the usual two-year offices. I undervoted a bit, since several of my incumbents lost my vote over the past few years without having sufficiently impressive or repugnant competition to get me going. I did get to show the Mountain Party some love instead of explicitly throwing my vote away for one office, and that’s always fun.

I could have mailed the (US postage affixed) envelope from the Consulate by APO/FPO for free, but since it’s about HK$40 r/t away I splurged and spent HK$6.10 on local stamps, after getting lots of practice signing my name on the envelope.

On my way, I dared to enter the local stationery store (which looks like a Hello Kitty boutique) and find a padded envelope for something I’ve been trying to send for a while. Sending that gave me the opportunity of licking a $20 stamp for the first time in my life—an important milestone, no doubt.

Enough postage. Worked on the first of my tutorial presentations today, which I will need to remember to wake up for at 9:30 tomorrow. It’ll be a blast. It’d be more of a blast if the class were about psycholinguistics (as titled) instead of first language acquisition, but I’ll survive.