Campus Life

This week I have kept a pretty low profile.

I had my second Arabic class... did I mention that I signed up for that? It was ridiculously cheap - $900hkd (about 100 CND) for 30 hours of instruction. The teacher is really nice, and I feel like I am learning a lot every class. They write in the opposite direction - the books open in the opposite direction - and everything still looks like squiggles to me. That said, I am slowly learning how to write said squiggles, and subsequently sound them out. Arabic is a language in which one should be able to correctly write out a dictation or sight read without any problems - there are no silent letters or pronounciation exceptions.

I know, Arabic in Hong Kong seems weird. Chinese didn't fit with my course schedule. In fact, nothing did other than Arabic and Ancient Greek. I concluded that Arabic will be slightly more useful for me as a business person, and hopefully by the end of this course I will know enough to greet and make small talk with any Arabic clients (then promptly switching to English before I agree to sell my company to the mailroom guy).

Campus life is interesting. As the pictures and (hopefully) video will confirm, last week was elections week. All the different clubs have a proposed exectuive board that they want the club members to vote for. It has the spirit of frosh with the structure of activities day. The kids from my house are really hard core - they have been campaigning for the past three weeks. Still not exactly sure what for... I think that already have the executive but maybe not... Anyway, the attached transformer video is pretty funny.

There was no tutoring this week, so I went shopping. Didn't buy anything, as we happened to end up in the 'wholesale' street, where you can only buy that shirt you like if you agree to buy 100 of them. It was torturous. Maybe 1 in every 15 shops would actually have individual items for sale, and frankly, most of this stuff would make any North American look silly. That said, I am still in search of the perfect hello kitty backpack. I had to make myself feel better after said torture by searching for coffee. Actually, it was my friend Maggie's idea - and when she said in that lovely German accent of hers 'All I want is a Starbucks right now' I could have kissed her.

On another note - I cannot understand how Asians are so slim. I can't. Everything here is greasy, deep-fried. They have cake stores and bakeries everywhere. The common room reeks of McDonalds. At first I thought that these tiny asian women must not finish their meals - but alas, no - they absolutely go to town on them and devour every last deep fried oily bite! I am forced to conclude that they have superior fat burning genes. Or that they only eat one meal a day.

Exeunt.

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