Like someone removed my brain, short-circuited it, then dropped it a few times for good measure

I don't remember anything except the library.

What happened before classes at 4:30? I don't know.

During classes? Dunno.

After classes? Library. And there I stayed.

Oh, I just remembered the morning. It was generally horrible. I wish it'd stayed forgotten.

Anyway, except for the whole fried-brain thing, the library wasn't so bad. I selected a nice desk in the study section, flipped on the light, and bought myself a bottle of water and peanut M&Ms (not a bottle of "water and peanut M&Ms," a "bottle of water" and "peanut M&Ms"). Then I dutifully began fusing scraps of knowledge to my brain cells.

I emerged 3 1/2 hours later to find I'd missed the haunted hostels :(
I'd forgotten they took place the day before Halloween, since everyone goes home on Fridays. Bummer. The haunted houses are taken pretty seriously and there's an unofficial competition between the hostels to see who can create the best one. And I'll never know. :(:( (that confusing conglomerate of punctuation represents double sadness).

But actually, I don't feel horribly sad. I just wanted to see what two frowny faces looked like side by side.

Coconut milk with mango and tapioca pearls

I just got back from the night market at Fu Tai, where I went with a friend who's become a coconut-milk-buying expert. I probably shouldn't be eating so sugary a snack right before bed--but it's so delicious! And the tapioca pearls are endlessly entertaining.

The market doesn't open until 10:50, if it can even be called that. I wouldn't have referred to several women standing in a row as such. We walked up to one lady who handed my friend a slip of paper. My friend pointed to some of the characters and told me the coconut milk could come with pieces of mango (yay!), watermelon, or something else that I've forgotten. After we placed our orders, the lady walked away, and maybe ten minutes later she returned with styrofoam containers of deliciousness.

And while thinking about food: I tried those sesame filled rice balls again, this time after reading the cooking instructions. They're supposed to be boiled! So I stuck them in hot water and microwaved them. The texture totally changed! The flavor became tasty! The only problem is, some of them were cracked and spilled their insides while boiling, transforming the water into a grimy black mess. And wasting otherwise edible sesame filling.

This afternoon my fencing friend knocked on my door, handed me a slice of apple, and left.

Possibly her odd behaviour could be explained by my earlier rambling about midterms--maybe I looked in a particularly do-not-disturbish mood? While studying I tend to run my fingers repeatedly through my hair, perhaps I resembled a frantic and unpredictable madwoman?

Anyway, I enjoyed both my classes today! Yay! In Economics of the Family the professor talked about potato chips. In relation to marginal utility. He said when he first came to the United States in 1989, he'd never eaten potato chips before. So his marginal utility for them was very high, and he would open the bag as soon as he'd left the store. But now his marginal utility for potato chips is much lower, and he hardly ever eats them. I liked imagining the professor twenty years younger and excited about chips.

And in Financial Economics we used calculus--yay! Finding derivatives? I can do that! Easy as pie. If not nearly as tasty. Seriously, I almost laughed with relief--no strange new vocabulary, no complicated terminology (are "vocabulary" and "terminology" so similar as to be repititious?), no equations whose purpose I don't understand. Just the same process I repeated (with assorted variations) all last year. It's like Financial Economics had been some snooty classmate who I just learned enjoys climbing trees and eating raisins and maybe we can be friends now...

After class I went to the library and borrowed Breakfast at Tiffany's. I did this because yesterday in the lift my friend mentioned that she'd re-read Of Mice and Men and re-experienced it's perfection and wanted to re-re-read it (that is, as soon as she finished she considered flipping to page one and beginning again). I don't particularly remember that novel, but I do remember not particularly liking it. But I tried to think of what else I'd read in 9th grade and I think Breakfast at Tiffany's came just before or after we read Steinbeck, unless it didn't. Also, I couldn't remember how the story goes or even whether I enjoyed it. All I could remember was the scene in the movie where the main character (whose name I'd also forgotten) squeezes past a group of people in a crowded room by placing his cold drink against the lady's back. If the teacher hadn't specifically brought it to our attention, I would have forgoten this scene along with the rest. Most simply: I wanted something to read.

Anyway, borrowing the book = horrible idea. Truman Capote distracted me all afternoon. If only he were a bad writer of terrible books. Sigh...but I needed distracting.

What? Classes on a Tuesday?

I'd almost forgotten those existed, what with all the holidays and non-holiday-but-still-no-classes days. And actually, I have quite a lot of classes on Tuesdays. Ick.

I learned about intra-industry trade, an innocent man imprisoned for 26 years, property rights in aboriginal societies, and how to say, "Pleased to meet you" in Mandarin. I ate dinner. I studied. I wished for a stronger (or existent) Internet connection.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a way of knowing exactly when your brain had absorbed all the necessary information so you'd know when to stop studying? Someone should invent that. It could be thermometer shaped and you'd hold it next to your skull and it would make pleasant beeping sounds. Or maybe a delightfully electronic voice would say, "You have sufficiently prepared. Please close your textbooks and go exploring."

Oh! Last night I semi-figured out my roommate's conversation with her parents! Soon no secret will be safe... No, she was just talking about studying abroad. And I don't think recognizing "America" and "France" would have provided any great clues if I didn't already know she's applying to study abroad. She wants to come to St. Mary's! She can't believe the bus only comes by every hour, but she liked hearing about the climbing wall (I didn't tell her I've only tried it once). It's much harder for Lingnan students to study abroad: they need to pass an English exam, answer an essay question, and compete for limited openings. After we talked about St. Mary's she asked me which universities people don't want to go to--so she will have a greater probability of being accepted.

Then she wanted to learn the English for various bodily functions. I suppose it's useful knowledge...

And I joined Secret Angels! A day before the deadline! Phew... From what I gather, Secret Angels is kind of like Secret Santa, but it lasts for a whole month. I filled out a form with my name, room number, and something I like (chocolate). In a few days I'll be given someone else's form--that person is my "master" and another person (I won't know who until end of November) will be my angel. Throughout the month I have to take care of my master, leaving her (or him, I suppose, the game is played throughout the whole hostel) gifts and stuff like that. Fun!

One down, four to go

Mandarin midterm this morning (yay alliteration) as well as the final yoga class and a meeting to discuss a paper on biofuels. I couldn't decide where to go for my afternoon of studying (bugs by the canteen, freakish silence inside the library, potential distractions in my room) and settled for the small common area on the fourth floor--where I went last night after discovering my roommate had tucked in early.

Perfect! It's my new favorite study spot! The occasional dinging of the lift and shuffling of people provided non-distracting background noise, I sat on a comfortable (if plastic-like) couch, and whenever I felt imprisoned by asset classes and financial instruments I simply looked out the huge window.

Later I went to the Park 'N' Shop and bought chicken franks, scallops noodle, and bananas. I returned and ate an interesting dinner. (actually, not that interesting, because I ate the bananas separate. on the note of interesting foods, I really should figure out how to cook sesame filled glutinous rice balls. It doesn't seem fair to give up on them after sampling them raw).

Only 8 people showed up for fencing, probably because of midterms. I'm still horrible at fleching, but now I learned I've been moving the wrong leg! No wonder I couldn't feel the forward momentum!

Oh yes, and:

More snacks from my friend!
These were crispy and puffy at the same time, I'd guess they were made of rice.
The flavor is difficult to describe, along the lines of salty.
And yes, I wish I knew what that child is wearing.

Stuff I learned yesterday, part 4(?)

• studying by the canteen will NEVER work because people are GUARANTEED to come and bugs will ALWAYS bite
  
• entering the library stops bug bites from itching
  
• lemon and blackcurrant juice tastes good, but not astounding
• studying isn't fun
• ever
• the library closes at5:30
• pre-recorded announcements are the best
  
• despite the red chili pepper on the menu, Singapore-style fried vermicelli is not spicy, but that's okay because:
  
• Home Fairy sometimes forgets/chooses not to provide glasses of water
• for coffee, almond coffee's not bad
  
• sometimes missing the first half of a movie isn't detrimental to understanding it
• especially when the mastermind villain explains all
  
• the 4th floor common area couches are surprisingly comfortable
• the beans growing on the windowsill are surprisingly dead
  

Tsing Shan Monastry

We left at 8 (or planned to).

I woke up at 7:55. See, I'd set my alarm, but I'd forgotten to activate it. In a half-conscious, whirling blur I threw on some clothes, grabbed a sesame seed paste filled bun and tofu, and nearly ran to the front gate.

I'd forgotten we were operating on Korean time.

I arrived 5 minutes late and saw no one. One friend arrived a minute later, unnecessarily apologizing for keeping me waiting. As she headed over to the canteen for breakfast, she explained that our other friend still needed to print out a map because her roommate had changed her mind about accompanying us.

At the canteen I learned to avoid the egg and tomato sandwiches, and you should too. My friend took hers apart and showed me why: on each half of the sandwich, the canteen places filling only along the edge where the bread has been sliced in half. Sneaky, sneaky.

We returned to waiting by the front entrance. Then our missing friend called down to us from the library: it's closed. So we'll have no map. But her roommate told her, "It's easy to find and there'll be signs."

On the way out we stopped by the vending machines for water. I swiped my Octopus before seeing that the machine'd run out of water. There's no way of un-swiping, so I ended up selecting a can of some "isotonic replenishment drink."

Not a monastery.

After a 45 minute bus ride we did not arrive at our destination. Turns out we went the wrong way; the person on the bus who told us were were going the right way...was mistaken. After calling some people (who told us the temple is actually quite difficult to find and we should've taken a taxi) we rode the bus back, hailed a taxi (that drove us up the path we'd planned on walking) and saw the below sign.

Yay!

The long set of stairs?
The Mountain Gatehouse, with an Earth God Shrine just inside and to the right.

After walking along a path and feeling like jungle explorers (we were surrounded by plants with extraordinarily large leaves) we found a more promising set of stairs. Up, up, up!

We came to a fork--on the right: a warning sign...for experienced and well-equipped hikers only...not responsible for any injuries...under fifteen must be accompanied by a guardian...

We chose left.

Amazing!

However, the path increasingly resembled a path that wouldn't lead to a monastery. Luckily we found some hikers who told us these paths led to the peak, walk all the way down and turn right.

The right way. If we'd followed our noses (instead of our eyes and advice about a long set of stairs) the smell of incense would have guided us.

Besides incense, the first temple also provided flyers, a map, a business card for the Managing Trustees of The Charitable Trust of Tsing Shan Monastery, and a scary booklet with the causes and consequences of various actions. "Consequence: To be bitten by a tiger or hurt by a snake. Cause: To create hatred with others. Consequence: The mouth will be irregular in shape by birth. Cause: Gossip frequently." Accompanied by creepy, cartoonish illustrations. The front cover (where I expected the back cover to be) deceptively depicts a smiling statue.

Guanyin, a female bodhisattva.
Bodhisattvas are similar to buddhas, but they choose not to achieve full enlightenment so they can help enlighten others, or so I recall from art history. In one legend (that I read about online, she tried so hard to reach out and stop all the suffering that her arms shattered. But then a buddha decided to help her and provide her with a thousand arms.

Here she is sitting on a lotus.
People like lotuses because they grow out of mud and are still beautiful.

I couldn't figure out what all the numbered strips of paper were for, but a friend knew:

1. Shake the container a few times
2. Randomly select a fortune stick
3. Read the number (written in Arabic numerals) of the stick
4. Find the matching compartment (labeled in Chinese characters)
5. Grab a paper from the compartment
6. Wish you knew more Chinese characters.
   

The source of the chanting voices reciting poetry.

Thousand Buddha Wall.

This monk was important, so people carved a statue of him.

We met this man who told us (by writing characters on his hand, which my Korean friends understood) that there were many mosquitoes and had we seen the buddha with all the arms?

One of the paths led us to this house, which I photographed through the iron bars closing it off.
The calander hadn't been changed since January 22 of an unknown year.

Another path led to several empty rooms (probably recently renovated) and turtles with dragon heads.

I liked both the dog and the hollow supporting columns.

The main entrance that we'd missed from the taxi.

And a teeny tiny shrine with adorable statues.

We rode the light rail back.
It didn't even take 10 minutes.

For lunch we went to the Chinese restaurant above the canteen (the canteen was crowded with students from Information Day, and the restaurant has a discount on Saturdays). We ordered dim sum (fried dumplings, some kind of shrimp roll, and vegetable and pork buns) and fried rice. The quality of the food still amazes me. The rice, for example, looks exactly like rice I've eaten at the canteen. Same basic ingredients, same cooking method (do different rice-frying techniques even exist?). Why is one edible and the other mouth-wateringly delicious? I don't know.

Charcoal fish

On Friday afternoon I talked for three minutes about St. Mary's amazingness (a beautiful river! interactive classes! tasty lunches!) to prospective exchange students. I love microphones. Instead of concentrating on projection, I could develop my next sentence! What a brilliant invention! And I felt all important-ish, even though there were hardly twenty students there.

After classes and dinner I headed towards the Hostel C common room where a friend said she'd be giving lessons in charcoal drawing. On the way I ran into some more friends (one of them headed to the same destination) and agreed to join them later for a movie.

She taught us how to draw a cute anime girl, but I decided I'd rather draw a fish:

At least 3 people stopped by and said, "You must be hungry."
If I had been, I wouldn't've craved a sad-looking fish in a plateful of butter.

Around 11 we cleaned up, rearranged furniture, and ate ice cream in preparation for the movie. Europa Europa. Maybe if we start off more cheerful, we'll feel less depressed by the end? Umm, no.

Closed book, closed note exam. Now.

I do not understand my Financial Economics professor's sense of humor. Well, okay, maybe if I were a professor I'd find a roomful of panicked faces mildly amusing. Plus, after revealing it's a joke everyone feels much more appreciative of the professor's kindness in not administering an unannounced exam, in providing a practice exam instead, and in dismissing class 50 minutes early.

Blarg.

I forgot to buy oatmeal today, so I guess I'm eating noodles for breakfast tomorrow. Walking over to the supermarket shortly after waking up = horrible idea. I nearly get run-over enough as it is. And that's with the painted arrows on the road pointing the direction to look in.

I researched for the morning until I needed to leave the room after lunch (so I switched to studying by the canteen). And the reason is this: my roommate had a French exam tonight and to study she played the same audio file over and over and over. Unfortunately, only the English translations of the sentences were drilled into my head. "My mother is called Julie. She is 30 years old." "I have no brothers or sisters. I am an only child." "My sister has two children, named Alexandre and Louise." "My parents are divorced." "My older sister is also divorced."My parents are separated." "My older brother is not married."

On my way out the hostel, a friend handed me these coconut crackers (the same one who also gave me those grape crackers). So I returned to my room and photographed them.


If you'd like to recreate my day (or most of it) you will need to acquire the following:

1. a warm day
2. one of those circular tables with an umbrella in the middle and chairs around it
3. an Investments textbook
4. several weeks of notes
5. a juice box of lemon tea
6. generally non-distracting friends
   
7. a calculator

Then kind of mix everything together. Actually, shake everything together, that way you stir up the natural sedimentation in the lemon tea.

I'm too tired to look over what I've written. I might have failed at making the day sound wonderful, even though it was. For no particular reason, except maybe because outer-space aliens didn't invade and I always love it when that doesn't happen.

The OMIP wants its stuff back

We got an e-mail about them wanting the plastic containers, peeler, and other cooking utensils that we bought with their money. Sigh...I'd hoped they wouldn't notice we'd only returned the useless stuff. At least we've already made our second batch of apple cobbler.

I mostly researched today. If I thought you'd be interested in Australia's potential benefits from a free trade agreement with India, I would write about that. But I doubt it. I'm not even particularly interested. I wish our papers could include more ideas and less facts; I feel like this paper won't demonstrate anything other than my ability to collect data and assemble it into paragraphs.

Classes were good. This time Economics of the Family related to Environmental Economics; we learned about public goods. Stuff like national defense, street lamps, and air. Let's say everyone needs to pay to use the streetlamps, but I decide not to pay. They're not going to turn the streetlamps off every time I walk by. Of course, everyone's thinking the same thing, which is why the government buys them. The national defense example explains the concept better, but I like streetlamps better than guns.

And in the evening I watched Philadelphia, and I just realized the title doesn't particularly relate to the plot, except that apparently that was the setting. It was a good movie, but sad. It left me wanting milk and cookies, or maybe a nice, soft blanket.

As an aside/conclusion, I ordered fried noodles for dinner and actually received fried noodles! Much tastier than the rice, initially. After awhile the grease annoyed me. Oh well.

Apple cobbler, revisited

Today graduates holding bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals and cameras invaded campus. They also filled the canteen, which mixed up several lunch orders in response. Fried noodles with pork became fried rice with chicken. BBQ pork with sausage became BBQ pork with duck. Coca-Cola became lemon tea. And some dish with tomatoes became some dish with tofu, peaches, pineapples, rice, and mysterious green vegetables. Only the friends who ordered club sandwiches weren't disappointed.

After lunch we bought the missing apple cobbler ingredients (not many, with all the leftovers from International Day): flour, apples, and ice cream. Dreyer's vanilla, which I would have been highly suspicious of if I hadn't already known that it's legitimate and not some bizarre Breyer's-Edy's copy-cat. The similarity to Breyer's is unfortunate, but its logo is allowed to look like Edy's because it is Edy's. Or rather, Edy's is Dreyer's wherever Breyer's is sold.

Anyway, the flour came in a nifty box.

No peeling or slicing or measuring or stirring for me!
This time I only needed to press buttons on the microwave.

I also needed to knock on half the doors in my hall because I'd forgotten the room number of my friend from fencing (I only knew she lived on the right side). After International Day I'd promised to show her how to make apple cobbler and last night she'd jumped up and down with joy when I told her we'd be making some today. She said before International Day she'd never eaten a dessert with real apples (in contrast to apple flavoring, not in contrast to fake apples). The first time around she wasn't in her room, but 1/2 hour later, yay! I found her.

Mmm...hot apple cobbler (fresh from the microwave) with ice cream on top...

Of course, the complete experience would have included some New England autumn foliage and maybe some sweaters. Or at least long pants. Actually, I only miss the idea of cold weather (even though I used to love cold weather above all else--I don't understand!). I don't miss jackets, sleeves, mittens, scarves. Okay, maybe I miss my scarf. A little. But only because it's bright red.

And for dinner some friends made salad: lettuce, corn (near disaster until we found a can opener), avocado, tuna, cheese, and Thousand Island dressing. And someone brought persimmons, which I'd never tried before. Yum! They don't taste like tomatoes (anymore than cream soda tastes like ginger ale; I really need to stop predicting flavors based on outward appearances). They're sweet and sloppy and would probably qualify as a top ten favorite fruit, but as I've never calculated such a list I can't say so with complete certainty. Pomegranates, pears, peaches, plums, (no this isn't a list of fruits beginning with "p." it's a coincidence I never noticed before), raspberries (they belong earlier in the list), fresh blueberries, kiwis...yes, I'd say persimmons fit in after kiwis.

For dessert: more cobbler.

Mario Kart

No classes tomorrow! So it doesn't matter that I've stayed up so late, except that I'll accidentally wake up earlier than I'd like and experience tomorrow from a more zombie-like perspective.

Today I turned in the receipts and leftover cash from International Day to the OMIP. Initially it appeared we were short a nice quantity of money, but it turns out I'd written down wrong numbers on our summary of expenditures (I left off a packet of cinnamon sticks) and I think the person at the office miscounted the remaining money. Anyway, everything added up right the second time.

Then in yoga (reverse the order of these paragraphs, yoga happened before OMIP) we blew up balloons and stomped on our neighbor's. But first we wrote stuff on them or drew pictures, whatever we wanted. Some people drew faces and luckily I didn't have to step on one of those.

After fencing I watched the last five minutes of Thank You for Smoking with friends who were in the common room. Then we played Mario Kart! The original one, which I'd never played before, but that's really no excuse because some of the people hadn't ever played any version but they still beat me. Every time.

I thought I'd be going to Ocean Park tomorrow, but it turns out it's closed. This is really strange, because there's no holiday or anything, we just don't have classes. Some friends who haven't been to Stanley before will go there, but others who really want apple cobbler will stay on campus and bake some with me. Am I allowed to use the verb "bake" in reference to a microwave? Probably, but I consider it highly offensive to ovens. Good thing ovens don't read blogs.

Okay...bedtime.

Prince Edward Station

We couldn't decide where to go yesterday, so we planned on abandoning the guide book and hopping off at a random station. Unfortunately, Prince Edward Station quickly led to Mong Kok, and I ended opened my brochures-- I couldn't risk missing the flower market and bird garden.

However, we didn't resort to the maps right away. Until lunchtime we walked along whichever streets looked most interesting.

A Japanese restaurant. I tried to figure out how vikings related to sushi...and failed.


The real goldfish market.
I don't know where I went last time, but there were 10 times as many stores selling fish along this street.

The stores also sold an assortment of other animals:

teeny turtles,


a dinosaur,


forbiddenly photographed puppies,

and hyperactive hamsters.


With minor exceptions (a bike shop, a hardware store) every store along this street sold pets of one kind or another. All the stores were small and some were very specialized, like one that sold only bunnies. From America.


Trees? Trees!

For lunch my friend really wanted a sandwich. Or thought she did. So we found a French deli, or a restaurant that advertised itself as such.

I wished I were 12 so I could have eaten Smile Potatoes.
Alas...
The mango chicken panini tasted fine, even if it look boring to the extreme...
My friend ate seafood something or other. It contained bread, so that maybe, sort of qualifies it as a sandwich. In an I'm-ridiculous-for-even-considering-the-possibility-of-it-having-been-a-sandwich kind of way.


The restroom's open until 00:00!
After I took this photo, two ladies stepped out. I shoved my camera back into its case and pretended I hadn't just photographed the washroom door.

Then we rode an unfriendly and clanking elevator down to the ground floor, walked through some of the ordinary markets, oriented ourselves, and walked in the opposite direction from the jade market (my doing) but the exact right direction for the bird and flower markets. Along the way:

I saw another one of these signs instructing me to take a picture!


So, ta-da!

I've learned the real purpose of the signs. It's boring. Before solving mysteries I should find out whether the answer will be more or less exciting than ignorance.

Do children even trick-or-treat in Hong Kong?

Many shops and stands were overflowing with Halloween costumes and decorations, but we also found a few selling Christmas ornaments. At one store the two holidays merged together in the form of a Halloween-Christmas stocking. How curious.

I couldn't recognize a single one of these, whatever they are. Then again, I didn't look through every jar and box, so maybe, tucked away on the right-hand side of the third shelf on the left wall I would have seen something familiar.

The flower market is located on Flower Market Road.
And it smells WONDERFUL.


Dragon fruit! I still need to try some!
(if I'd been allowed to buy the kid's meal I could have...grumble...)


Honest to goodness, I couldn't figure out what all these signs meant.
No curling up with a good book?
No weight-lifting?
No short sleeves?
No slipping on marbles?
No bicycle racing?
No dogs with studded collars?


Anyway, the place OVERFLOWED with birds.

An escapee!

Then, wishing we could fill our dorm rooms with parrots, kittens, puppies, goldfish, turtles, a dinosaur, egg tarts, croissants, smile potatoes, flowers, Halloween masks, paper lanterns and no-dog signs, we returned to campus.