Impressions

Nimen Hao! (Hello)

The life here is so vibrant with action and flooded with excitement wherever you go. Most likely this is the main cause of time passing by so quickly that it is a great problem to find some time to share my experiences with you… Anyways, here it is – a new fresh post in my blog!

I know that you want to hear all the small intriguing details at first, so I will start with them and continue with more general impressions later on.

Peculiarities

1. Even though there are two us living together in one room (Aurimas and me. It’s not that bad, we have some mess in common :)), we have to share the bathroom/toilet with two other guys, one of which is English another Chinese.

2. Some days ago we had a meeting of our floor inhabitants. Out of 39 some 14 came, including Aurimas and me, and we had warm introductions of each other. Each Asian has an English name and they are free to choose it. I understood only a few of our floor-mates introductions because of really weird pronunciation they have, luckily they all understood me. Aurimas is having difficult times to introduce himself as there is no English equivalent for his name and therefore nobody can pronounce it. Most likely we should give him a Chinese name – Dzu or something similar :) (Your suggestion are welcome). Getting back to floor-mates, they seem to be pretty fun, most of them play table-tennis well.

3. Some days ago Aurimas and I desperately tried to cook some food. We have electric cookers, but although they look pretty easy to use from the first time – they are complicated. We spent more than an hour trying to turn it on and the problem was not the fact that the control panel was in Chinese. It was an electro inductive cooker and although I had one idea why it does not work I though it’s not the case. It appears that this cooker needs a big metal contour to heat it with microwaves (or something like that). So, only when we’ve put a massive pan on it, the action has started! Similar experience was obtained while using a microwave as well.

4. Lietuva / Lithuania in Cantonese is pronounced as “Lai-tiu-vai-a”. Pretty strange but still similar. Out of a huge variety of people not many know what it is. So usually I start explaining: “Do you know Eastern Europe or at least the Baltic sea, so we are almost in front of Sweden”. Some of the Chinese really know, some of the Europeans as well. But there still is a vast majority of wrong answers (at least they manage identify that we are not next to Madagascar). Bringing an example of Lithuania as a basketball country that defeated China in Olympic Games this year, creates no reaction, just silence.

5. As most of you know I have never studied seriously at SSE Riga and at the same time I was deeply disappointed because of that. There is a necessity in my blood to compete! Even in academic level. Aurimas and I could have designed whatever schedules we wanted in this exchange semester and nobody would care. So in the end of the day I have two days of lectures (Wednesday and Thursday) + 1 Mandarin class on Monday. Although it seems little, those two days are pretty hectic – from early morning to late evening. I’ve got all the toughest courses that claim to change my life – Marketing of Financial Services, Management of Financial Institutions, Strategy and Policy and Advanced Security Analysis and Portfolio Management!!! From the first glance it’s quite not bad repetition of the core courses I had at SSE, moreover some lecturers have pretty impressive background, but still don’t speak English well. Having been to the first lecture of Advanced Security Analysis… I asked myself: “Did I find my second finance course? :)”. After a while it became clear – there is no such thing as the second finance course, everything is already seen to me.

6. While writing to you I sit dressed up in a thick blouson with a hood. You most likely think: “what a heck, it’s 30C day and night there”- and you are right :). This abnormality emanates from the fact that people here are obsessed about air conditioning. It’s probably the most air conditioned country in the world. I believe most of the locals here would like to live somewhere in Kamchatka and enjoy the snow. Outside of a building you have 30C, inside 15C – this change just kills me. I am already ill, so this is the reason I am in warm clothes now. Even if I am ill, the air conditioning is on in my room as otherwise it is impossible to sleep (you know the feeling of being boiled in soup).

7. Without any lies – I like Asian girls. Most of them are skinny, but some have just perfect combination of meat and bones :). From what I have seen by now – 1st place goes to Korea, 2nd China, 3rd Philippines, 4th Singapore/Japan. The ranking will be reviewed after some time :). Parents of Chinese girls forbid them to date non-Chinese guys, although it seems that they like Europeans at least not less :). Chinese guys want to become as pale as possible and therefore do not go to the beaches in order to avoid suntan. In Japan it is trendy to have a European boyfriend (I should visit this country :)). It is crucial to know what people gather in what clubs as there are locals partying zones and foreigners. The only difference is that in foreigners partying zone all the girls are hookers! Most of them are Philippinos, as it is a very poor country. You can see a 60 year old German business man hanging out with some 18y.o. hooker. One Polish guy here told that he was approach by one of them with an offer price of 2000HKD (200EUR), which is quite expensive although he was in a VIP club. Seems that they can live for some months for such a sum here :). Another story comes from one of Canadian exchange students, who being totally drunk was dragged by a hooker to a bus heading to the prostitutes nest, but luckily he managed to escape (he seemed to be proud of that) :). So, when going to party in HK be careful, don’t get wasted and choose girls carefully :).

8. As mentioned before, I study Mandarin Chinese. They have over 1300 characters, which could form new meanings if added together. But that’s not everything yet, they can pronounce syllables in 4different ways and it becomes like singing. I was never admitted to a music school (luckily) because I have no musical hearing. So now I have to obtain one as these guys are like singing here and can define how high your voice in a scale of 1 to 5 is. They can say “ma” in 4 different ways and it will have a different meanings. Below you can see a small saying, which means “Mom rides a horse, horse is slow, mama scores the horse”.

9. I go to swimming pool, which is quite big (50m). The water there is 30C, so if you would add some potatoes and carrots you could get a soup of me. Nevertheless, Chinese are good swimmers, hopefully someday I will become one too. Another issue related to sport is that I am not allowed to go to the gym. I have to watch a 20 minutes movie where monkeys show that it is bad over-exercise and it is shown 3 times a week for audience of some 30 people. I will watch mine in two weeks (closest free session) and then finally go to the gym.

10. Beard grows faster here, that’s a fact. Most likely it is because of high humidity and warmth. As a proof to this hypothesis could be the fact that you will never see a bald monkey in the jungle, whereas I saw one in Lithuanian zoo :).

11. My dormitories appear to be in a prestige place actually. Next to it there is a luxurious building, where a flat would cost over a few millions of Euros, even a small one. I find my dormitory room quite ok for living compared to what I have read of hostels in Hong Kong (a room size of a bed). And in general Hong Kong is place without space. It’s territory is over 100 times smaller than that of Baltic States, but it has the same amount of people.

General impressions

Being some kind of economist I cry while seeing all the inefficiencies here. I understand that the labour force from China is very cheap, but it would be better to use it wisely. In the shops there are crowds of staff just wandering from one aisle to another and doing nothing. At the counter there are two more people putting my food into the bags, besides cashier. My universities police force is enough to stop a rebel attack. In total there 3000 staff people to serve 27000 students. The streets are very clean here as no city has so many cleaners as Hong Kong. And in general infrastructure is very well organized because of enormous Chinese human resources most likely. Metro is much better (cleaner, faster, nicer) than in London, although looks similar.

People are very helpful here, although not everyone speaks English well. Actually, most of the ordinary people don’t really speak English at all, but might understand some words. If you stand on the street with a pretty confused mimic, some people will definitely approach you to wonder whether you need some help. Once some 3 people asked me if I am looking for something, in 1 minute!

Shopping is a hot trend here and there are some districts meant for that. Hong Kong is a tax-free area so everything is generally cheaper. And you have always to bargain the price! I visited all the camera shops in search for mine and asking exactly the same model. Finally I got 2600HKD offer for my Lumix TZ-15, instead of 3000. And it was a decent place like Electromarkt. To give their competitors’ quotes was a key thing and the price on e-bay has helped a lot. Always look for the prices on the internet before going to shop in order not to get fooled. And don’t forget to ask for warranty. It seems that a few big corporations control everything here and there is almost no crime, so, do modern yakudzas operate like that?

Food is quite good for me, although totally different from what you are used to get when going to Chinese restaurant in Baltics. There are many strange sea dishes, which I don’t really like. There are some dishes from frog legs and testicles and as menu is mostly in Chinese, you can never know what you eat :). The prices vary quite a lot. In restaurant cheapest dish is 50HKD (5EUR), in the schools canteen normal food is 25HKD, cheap food – 10HKD. It is very popular here to offer “all you can eat” option, where you pay around 100HKD and go to an open buffet. Fruits are awesome here. For the first time in my life I tasted the real bananas :).

So far, so good. Stay tuned!
Danielius