Last night was miserable. Last night I got my roommate. But correlation does not equal causation.
The misery can be attributed almost entirely to going to bed early because I was coughing so much. I had been out and about, of course, and deserved every moment. But this was complicated by my roommate’s moving in. I told him not to worry about using the light when he needed it. I think there might have been a conversation outside about how early I go to sleep, and I thought I heard “gwailo,” but I’m hoping that’s just my paranoia talking. Even the prospect had my ire up before a new round of coughing slammed it out of me.
I don’t know much about the roommate, but I’ll lay out what I do without too badly invading his privacy—Chris is a second-year student of History here, with no interest in exchanging or business courses (unusual for Lingnan). He probably goes to sleep pretty late.
OK, that’s all I know so far.
He was busy much of today with the Hostel B O’Camp. If you’ve heard of “o’camp” many times before in various contexts (or not) and, like me, have no idea of its meaning: O’ is for orientation. It seems to involve quite a lot of shouting. Quite a lot of shouting. My guides to the room on arrival as well as Curtis, my oracle of Hong Kong wisdom, had claimed it to be riotous fun, and from what I can hear riotous is the right word. Tim, the WVU student who transferred (!) here after three years (!) with no credits transferring (!!!), over lunch, countered that his orientation experience (required since he is a “normal student” here) was not so much fun for non-Cantonese-speakers. It doesn’t matter for me since I was probably bounding across the islands if anyone ever came to ask me if I wanted to join.
Tim is a vegetarian, which is pretty challenging when the local cuisine finds a way to stash pork in almost everything. I guess keeping halal or kosher would be pretty rough too.
I have restricted myself to the Tuen Mun area… no, better, to campus, Siu Hong, and Fu Tai, at least until the travelling exchangers return, in an attempt to get rid of the cough. If it isn’t much better tonight/tomorrow—and it’s not been too bad today—I will bite the bullet and make an appointment with the doctor in Fu Tai. If nothing else (I’m pretty sure it’s a head cold) I might get some cough syrup out of the deal, since medications are included in the cost (20 HKD) of consultation. To pass the time PANIC law school applications PANIC I’m still not coming up with a good topic for my law personal statement—what in the name of bellowing is going on in the hallway?—and reading. This evening’s 250 pages of colonial Hong Kong escapism were provided by the wonderful (if self-congratulatory) Myself a Mandarin: Memoirs of a Special Magistrate, and I have a little reserve decidedly un-Chinese Faulkner and Steinbeck to provide breaks from the continued law school panic. Rumor has it that LSAC will begin electronic transmission of applications early next week.
Also next week, classes. They won’t be hard to get to, though I should scope the buildings out: some of the internal navigation is non-obvious, requiring the use of exterior lifts to reach upper floors. My student ID card should be ready Monday when Registry opens, and my HKID appointment (at which I won’t receive my card, even if everything is in order) comes a couple days later.
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