A quick recap without philosophical depth

This must have been the longest gap of not posting anything whatsoever! Time flies! Why? Cause it all gets to be so everyday-life maybe?*

First of all and because I will otherwise forget: we have a pet! Or actually we’ve had three. The first was a bee, a real big yellow killer bee living in our bathroom, which fortunately deceased during the last cold season in HK. The second a cockroach, which was crawling out under our water cooker (that one we got rid off). The third is a lizard which dropped out of Erkki’s trousers- nobody knew where it came from. It lived in Erkki’s room for a couple of days decimating the population of flies and mosquitoes (which always manage to sting me in the eye – i.e. I wake up with only one functional one), then disappeared mysteriously. I hope we do not find it rotten under someone’s bed at some point (a possibility, considering the cleaning frequency of the apartment). But for now it is alive (until proven otherwise).

Erkki left for Malaysia last Friday; he did not have any midterms this week, so he just decided to take one week off. To celebrate we threw a farewell party on Thursday night –it started with few, ended up in everyone (50+ people), including me, being outrageously drunk. At some point someone decided it was my birthday that day: this because I had regretted the fact of having been born in November. Everyone started singing and going completely crazy. It was insane! I can’t give you any more details of the night- it was fun though, but our landlady was apparently not so thrilled since she contacted us via the rental agency the next morning. While she was upset, they took it all with humor… but anyways, no big parties on weekdays anymore!

The weekend and actually the whole week up until today went into sports (playing football, basketball and badminton) and into literally living at the library for the rest of the time: studying, studying, studying… I found my old work-mode-routine, which I am glad about! My mid-terms were yesterday: one (Derivatives) I had studied for all week, the other (Business Ethics) I hadn’t. Gut feeling: the one I did not study for went probably better than the other, which was a complete catastrophe! I was really frustrated. The format here is more: do not think, know everything by heart, and just write and calculate like crazy for 60 minutes. Ok, I knew what was coming, since I had done my Econometrics mid-term the week before (that one went actually pretty ok), but still, this was even worse! Results next week and I am not looking forward to them… should try to persuade HSE to give me a pass/fail grading. Don’t know if that will work though.

Yesterday was the worst soft drink I have ever had: American tea with ginger and honey. The label looked nice, but the content was not. How deceiving! (but other HK/Chinese “softdrinks”, e.g. tea with jelly marbles, i.e. bubble tea, are really good!) It was also the day of my first HK pizza with Chinese mushrooms. The evening continued with ladies’ night in LKF then the Kangaroo bar in Wanchai. The Kangaroo bar is the cheapest place to get drunk in the city. It is crappy, and if you are not at least half as wasted as the average, you will soon feel the urge to leave this place as fast as possible. The only reason to stay might be the cute bartender (who does not like me for ordering coke with ice). There are no drinks sold but only fishbowls, i.e. big bowls with a mixture of various alcohols that come in red, blue or black (listed here according to the perceived increased “lethality” in terms of temporary “death of alcohol”). And people (not including myself) were –again- so b***** wasted, half of them passed out in the bar, the other half puking all over the place. It gets really annoying… ok, a lot of people (maybe 8) had their 20th and 21st birthdays last week and this week; most of them American which means they “have to be gotten” as wasted as possible without alcohol poisoning. It’s like an orgy of some sort- and in the early hours every second person vomiting at some corner in LKF is a UST exchange student. I guess it is understandable but as a Swedish guy put it: “it’s like holidays in Greece when you are sixteen and you get drunk for the first time there cause in Sweden you can’t do that”. Very prolonged holidays though.

I feel so old in my mind! I do not know how to describe it, but old. I think very differently about what is fun or spontaneous and I am not sure whether I am enjoying myself in what this group defines as “a normal way to have fun”. I am not. Enjoying that that is. But maybe I just think too much? Some people certainly don’t. Apparently, after a long night in Wanchai, some people forgot (or were too drunk) to pay the full fare to a taxi driver- or maybe they had negotiated a lower far, because that is how it usually works (the fares never go by the meter, or if they do, you are surely ripped off), and the driver then decided to charge the full amount. In any case, we got two angry emails from the international office and the business school administration, that this was a “criminal act”, “unfair behavior”, etc. etc. I understand the principle (but hey, it’s 30 HKD), but the best part was the advice, communicated to us in an absolutely serious email.

Quote: “We'd like to give you the following advice:

• take good care of yourself and avoid getting drunk
• designate a friend to ensure the group returns safely
• have sufficient cash (at least HK$200 - 300) to pay for taxi fare
• pay full fare as shown on the taxi fare meter
• do not assume that the taxi driver should give you a discount”

Is this fun or so far from reality that the naïveté implicitly emanated can be already categorized as scary? Is this to be taken serious? I never imagined the cultural gap to be that substantial. What do they think people have actually been doing here? Running around playing with dolls and cards (like the locals do)?

Summa summarum: Less drinking, (and no ginger tea), more joy = no hangover!

* This entry was composed on Friday, March 24, 2006 but publishing had to unfortunately be postponed due to scheduling problems. The author apologizes for any possible confusion caused by the disruption of the chronological sequence of this story.