Daniel vs. Hong Kong

On this, my third day here, I finally feel like I have this city understood. As in, if you told me where something was, I could get there, and do whatever it is I needed to do. Or, alternately, I wouldn't die if I was left on my own here. This is good, since I will be on my own in just over a week, in Guangzhou. I am also picking up the pronunciation of the language, if not the language itself.

Today I did many exciting things. To begin with, we went to Hong Kong Polytechnic University to present our research. Dr. Lo gave a talk to the Optometry department there, after which I demonstrated the program. It seemed very well received and they asked me lots of questions about how it works, since neither Dr. Chen nor Dr. Lo is very good at explaining it.

Afterwards, we all went out to lunch. We all are include several professors, the chair of Optometry and the Dean of Health Sciences. Some pretty important people, in other words. They talked about some interesting things, or at least I assume they were interesting. It's hard to say because half of what they were saying was in Cantonese. And it wasn't as if they would have a conversation in English and then switch to Cantonese, they were switching mid sentence, for no reason at all. It seems that there is a war among eye doctors here. The ophamologists (eye surgeons) and optometrists fight over patients and will not refer to each other, which is a pretty big deal. That's basically what I got out of the conversation. Oh and since they thought I was a grad student, the Dean offered me a sort of joint PhD between his department and the Comp Sci program. There was that.

At this lunch, I discovered something. I despise basically all chinese food. I vastly prefer westernized Chinese food to real Chinese food. Although real Chinese food is fresh and much better for you, fake Chinese food tastes like Canada. I spent the rest of the day feeling ill after ingesting that much Chinese food. It just kept being dumped on my plate over and over again, and to be polite I had to keep on eating things I could not and cannot identify.

After that lunch, we went to a place called the Golden Computer Arcade in Sham Shui Po district, which is a big shopping mall filled with, you guessed it, computer stuff. You name a computer stuff and you can buy it there, for about 80% of the price in PG. Plus, there is no tax. I may or may not have bought further Christmas gifts there. It was pretty exciting for me. Instead of having a couple of computer stores, here in Hong Kong they have 5 thousand tiny ones, all selling the same things at randomly different costs. An iPhone (a real one) varies between $4500 and $5400 HKD ($575 - $690 CAD). However, these iPhones are unlocked. Apparently, the golden days of cheap electronics in Hong Kong is over. I'm still holding out for mainland China.

Sham Shui Po is awesome. It is this huge area of markets that looks exactly like every Chinese Martial arts movie. You know when the hero is being chased by the bad guys past a bunch of booths and such? That's Sham Shui Po. (This reminds me. On the night I got here, Dr. Chen and Dr. Lo went out for dinner, and saw a Chinese man and an East Indian man having a martial arts fight on the street. And it was not friendly sparring. It was drunken, 2 am fighting. I intend not to ever challenge someone Chinese to a martial arts fight. Unless AJ is there.)

We then went to yet ANOTHER shopping district (the theme of Hong Kong seems to be "Why yes, that is for sale") because Dr. Chen wanted to go to the Nokia Outlet, to buy his brother a sweet cell phone. I dunno what it was, but it cost about $800 CAD. The most expensive phone in the store (the 8800 Sirocco Edition) cost over $1000 CAD, which is pretty hardcore for a phone with no touch screen or keyboard.

I bought myself a phone (the 2760), for about $100, and it is pretty cool. Major problem I had: the menus were in Chinese. Lucky for me, I happen to be with some people who also speak Chinese. Now it is all Englishified. I bought myself a SIM chip, so anyone can call me. In fact, because my sleeping schedule is so erratic, people can call me basically any time, and I will probably answer. The number is 011 852 90198942. You can read this for some information about why my phone number is so crazy. In China you can do this really cool thing where you buy a SIM chip, plug it into the back of your phone, and it has a certain number of minutes on it. Once you run out of minutes, you buy a new SIM chip. It is like pay as you go, except you have no specific carrier, and you can change whenever you like, AND your minutes don't expire. Plus, the cost is only 4 cents per minute for local calls (for all the Hong Kong numbers I need to call) and about 10 times that for long distance. Anyhow, I'm pretty stoked about my Hong Kong phone.

I was hoping after this that I could sneak off and go to McDonalds or something to scour the taste of lunch from my mouth, but no, "we" decided to get Japanese food as well. So, I had Sushi for the first time. Verdict: I would far rather eat Chinese food. I ate exactly one of something (some kind of fish wrapped in seaweed and rice) and then feigned fullness. Dr. Lo is catching on though.

When I got back to the hotel, I ordered a grilled ham and cheese sandwich from room service. I am here to tell you that was the best $15 I have ever spent in my entire life. It came with french fries! I have nothing against Chinese food, except that I do not like the taste. I rather wish I did, as it seems very interesting, and largely healthy. But I do not. That said, I'm going to have to get used to it. However, once I get home, I am eating pizza for a week. And it will be wonderful.

Also, Dr. Chen mentioned an internship with Microsoft in France. The only way that deal could possibly be sweeter is if you replaced Microsoft with Google. But I'm pretty alright with MS. We'll see how that goes.

There are more pictures from today, but they are on Dr. Lo's camera. I will get them from him tomomrrow, when we go to Guangzhou on the train. I'm pretty excited. So far I have loved the transit systems here.