Finally not being treated like an idiot

Well, it's been a week since my last blog. Nothing terribly exciting has happened, just the generic amusement of being in Hong Kong.

Tomorrow is going to be a good day for two reasons. First of all, Pei-chin is returning from China. It's been lonely in the room without her. Secondly, I'm going to Macau again.

The field trips in my Chinese History class have finally begun. However, the organization of the trips makes me wonder just how organized they are, or if this is "typical" of HK.

In Canada, a class field trip would include all necessary transportation and major rules to keep students from getting seperated and the like. For THIS field trip, we have to book our own tickets, use city buses to get around, grab taxis from some locations to others, and get back to the ferry on our own. To me, this screams "bad organization!" But on the other hand, could it be that our prof just assumes we're competent enough to get around on our own? I'll let you know after tomorrow.

Also, when I first met my group in the class, they mentioned they wanted to do our report on the Macau trip. Cool. However, yesterday when we were supposed to pay for our ferry tickets and sign up for which prof/ta we'd be joining, my group mates (who sit at the back of the class) left before doing anything. Umm... Guys? What group are you going with? Are you even going on the trip? Hello? Gah.

Back to the topic of being considered competent. CUHK seems to be an anthill of construction work. You can't walk 10 minutes around campus without bumping into men pouring cement or jack hammering away at your senses. The difference between construction in North America and Hong Kong is that in HK, the work is done right out in the open and you have to pick your way through it.

For example, you'll be walking down a street and suddenly the sidewalk disappears and there's a bunch of men working on it. Normally in NA, you'd have to cross to the other side or the workers would have created a roped off area for you to walk in. Here, you just pick your way through the construction and continue on.

Also at night, things are left just as they are - the workers assume you're smart enough not to do anything dumb and hurt yourself at the construction site. I remember being shocked when I was walking along a small tunnel and seeing that the workers had cut a hole in the wall and giant twisted metal spikes/cables were hanging out. If I had tripped or something, I could have easily impaled myself on them. The only "protection" the workers had placed on these things was an empty plastic bottle, just to help you notice their existence.

I guess the fear of lawsuits in North America makes our construction sites a lot more safety conscious than the ones here.

P.S.
If you value your sanity at all, avoid Sudoku. It's this evil little number game that I completely suck at but can't seem to tear myself away from. And I'm not just being modest when I say I suck at it. I consistently get lower scores than average (e.g. average time for an easy puzzle is around 8 minutes - I usually take about 15min). Despite this, I still play it for hours on end.