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The past week has been fairly uneventful. I’ve met some of the new exchangers, who seem nice enough but also seem a few collective decades younger than last semester’s. Most of this term break’s exchange travelers are back and in one piece.

After much schedule-juggling, I’ll be going in to this week with the following classes. I won’t try to reproduce my schedule as Lingnan’s timetables don’t make the slightest bit of sense.

HST 193 China Through Eyes of the West [what do I think? this class should tell me!]
HST 399A History of Contemporary China
HST 399E The World Turned Upside Down [the American Revolution? History of British colonial defeats? Who knows.]
POL 319 International Politics of Northeast Asia

I’d like to go in with five or six classes, but the schedule isn’t cooperating. I hope I’ll be able to stay in all four of those and avoid needing to scramble for an add/drop during this upcoming week.

I’ve been telling people—and I guess I should put it out on this blog for any googlers to see—that I cannot recommend Lingnan as a study abroad experience. To qualify that: being in Hong Kong is great, even if I’m a solid hour by train from the city center. The Office of International Programs here is great.

The “study” is… unimpressive. The administration and its policies are obtuse. There will be a “What’s Wrong with Lingnan” series coming up to elaborate and suggest changes, but since I’m not at the appropriate hierarchical level my complaints won’t do any good here. The hostel atmosphere is stifling: the university treats its students as 15-year-olds and gets the appropriate behavior in response.

The only real positive about Lingnan is that its small size may be easier to handle as an exchange student. Otherwise, you can have a good exchange experience—on balance, I think my experience has been good so far—at Lingnan, but it’ll be in spite of rather than because of Lingnan.

Harsh words, perhaps. I know that the legitimate criticisms of WVU by international students in basic areas such as “getting students from airport to dorm room without major adventures” might be worse than any difficulties Lingnan’s thrown at me, but I think someone considering exchanging at Lingnan would be well-served by knowing about these problems before arriving. I also think Lingnan would be well-served by listening to some of the exchange students’ criticisms instead of summarily dismissing them. We aren’t right about everything, but we can’t be wrong about everything either.

Our room in KL (not a budget dive) was scary dark and quiet. I had no idea what the time was, with the lights off.

Made it back without too much excitement, and I’m faced by the twin demons of piles of laundry and an Octopus gone negative. Ah, down and out in Hong Kong.

Becky is psychotically happy about starting her study abroad experience. Hope that works out well. I’ll go to the new exchange students’ lunch tomorrow (when have I ever turned down a free yum cha session?) and try not to be too realistic around the newbies.

I just received word that one of the classes I added last week is due to get the insufficient enrollment axe. I guess I’ll have to try again during add/drop, which starts Wednesday.

If the weather clears up I might hit Zhuhai for a day this week. Who knows.

My toe is not feeling good at all after its first day back in closed-toe shoes, but it isn’t turning purple or anything. I guess I’ll grudgingly make an appointment to get it checked out in the next couple days.

This trip was very good in a sort of OCD way—thanks to the power of suggestion (where I placed my arrival cards), I managed to get immigration officials to fill in the gaps of my passport instead of forging ahead into the new pages. It was good in a lot of other ways, too… Malaysia was great, and though I hate to admit it I even had fun in Singapore.

I’ll get pictures up some day. Sleep is, as always, the priority.

We had a bit of a break (though it didn’t last all day) from the rain today. Laundry (yes, all two of my shirts after leaving the one in KL) got done in the morning while we explored the historical/colonial center and Chinatown in more detail. We got to see the Portuguese ruins (don’t skip Macau for them) and revisit the sublime hippy juice shack we found in Chinatown yesterday, and expand our sampling of the local restaurants.

Becky has posted a few pictures from KL and Singapore on her facebook, if you’re hip to that scene. If you aren’t, be patient until I can find a real connection, would you?

As usual I’m finding it hard to figure out what’s flooded and what isn’t, but at the moment it seems to me that the eastern side of the peninsula and Borneo are the currently-affected areas. Unfortunately, rain is forecast everywhere we want to go: currently one of Penang, Pangkor (both islands, the latter much smaller and uncolonial and a little closer and currently top in the running) or the Cameron Highlands (hmmm… treks, yay, in the rain, eh…)

Tomorrow morning, we’ll probably try to go somewhere. We could have picked worse for our decompression city, though… we have a clean double room for RM 40, with a nice porch and rooftop garden which we are taking good advantage of, and food isn’t bad.

Our flight back has crept up on us and comes in only five days.

I did a little tweaking to my Lingnan schedule for the upcoming term today. Sadly, I have to make sure at most one of my teachers is local, because I can never know if they’re going to pull the Chinese-reading junk in an English-medium class. Anyway, I have 15 hours now, no longer including Mandarin, so I have room to drop the class taught by a local if he follows what seems to be standard procedure.

If he teaches the English-medium class in English, unlike his colleagues, it should be fun… Modern Political Ideologies. If not, hey, I just need 12 hours.

Remind me never to leave so early from Macau: a flight leaving at 10:45 had me leaving Lingnan at 5:30. That wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was close enough. We’d booked a Turbojet ferry online for 0700 and taking the first West Rail train at 0547 got us there in time to grab breakfast. After waiting almost an hour for the an AP1 bus to stop (two didn’t) we gave up and caught a cab to the airport in Macau, where (due to the smallness of everything) we had about an hour to kill. Introduced Becky to egg tarts, I think she approves.

AirAsia proper was a much improved experience compared to Thai AirAsia, which I’d flown to and from Bangkok last month. Leather seats, new A320, less aggressive anti-outside-food-and-beverage policy, and reasonable prices and better selection on the inflight service. We snagged exit row seats—not as impressive as the missing-seat legroom I had on the tired 737s of the Thai version, but still a good three times the normal legroom or so. After a flight that was shorter than I expected (because I’d forgotten that Malaysia and Singapore share the +8 timezone with Hong Kong, despite all the +7 countries between them), we were at the very unimpressive LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) in the outskirts of KL International Airport.

After waiting for immigration to get its act together, searching for phantom (yet to be installed?) ATMs, and so on, we caught a bus to KL Sentral (the transport hub) where we ate and got in touch with our couchsurfing host. We took a Komuter (Malay transport words aren’t too confusing, eh?) train to her home town of Shah Alam, the capital of Selangor province (surrounding KL) and something of a bedroom community. It does have a fantastic(ally big) Blue Mosque, which we didn’t see since Friday is a tough day to get in mosques.

I’ll write more about our couchsurfing experience later (after we’ve finished it), but suffice it to say that it’s been very welcoming at times and very… cross-cultural at others. And some cultures are more cross about some things than are others. Remind me if I don’t write about it, there’s a lot to write… it may have to wait until I’m back in Hong Kong.

Today we’ve been out and about in KL. The dearth of people at what I thought would be packed tourist hotspots… even perhaps for locals… even outside of prayer hours… has been very strange. Merdeka Square, where independence was declared, is pretty and big and centrally located… yet for a while we were the only people there. Friday can’t explain all of it, as Malaysia’s substantial Hindu and Buddhist populations don’t have anything special to do on Friday. The weather is a bit gray, so going up the towers isn’t that interesting. However, the Petronas Towers are neat-looking and the surrounding gardens are nice. Chinatown is… kind of Chinese. I don’t think any Chinatown will cut it after Mongkok.

Food is great, lots of it from lots of places. Western, Malay, Thai, Chinese, Indian… yum.

The exchange rate is not so great these days, from 3.77 in the days of the printing of my Lonely Planet to 3.4odd today. Prices aren’t great in general, but I guess that goes with development.

The highlight of KL was easily the Batu caves, a complex of limestone caves north of the city containing Hindu temples and big golden god-images. And the aircon bus ride provided some much needed cool relaxation. Overall verdict: KL isn’t packed with attractions (unless you’re better dressed and cultured and timed, for all the lovely-looking mosques), but it works. Unfortunately, impending floods (if you’ve been watching news about Malaysia, more of them) are expected to hit the area north of here over the weekend. This includes Georgetown and Penang Island, our tentatively planned next stop. But, according to Thorn Tree, some attractions in the south, specifically Melaka, are visitable despite earlier flooding there, and the routes to Singapore if we decide to dip down remain passable. We’ll go somewhere southerly tomorrow, most likely, and hope that Penang etc. clear up in time to see stuff up there on the way out.

I’m certainly not home, but it felt comforting to stride through Sheung Wan this evening.

My passport has been used through page “I”.

Nothing too eventful happened in Bangkok while I was there: however, an earthquake cut quite a few important cables off Taiwan leaving all of East Asia with serious trans-Pacific connectivity issues. Ships are, supposedly, on the way. How un-modern.

My flight wasn’t bad. A fight nearly broke out over AirAsia’s “no outside food and beverages so we can sell them to you marked up” policy, but landing wasn’t too delayed. The scenic AP1 bus between airport and ferry terminal in Macau wasn’t fun because the sky was miserable, but the weather is temperate here (not cold like Lao or burning up like Bangkok) and I don’t have a fever.

This is guaranteed to be an interesting New Year’s Day: the first time I get to pick someone up at an airport instead of begging my way to or from one. Maybe I’ll find something interesting on the Eve too… you’d think Hong Kong would have something interesting to offer for it.