Field Trips.

Mum’s in town, so we took the opportunity to go on walkabouts to various places.

Yesterday we went to Shenzhen, and as did my previous trips, the experience was interesting. This time round we went into Shenzhen from Lo Wu and came back out from Huanggang. The fun part, besides a 20-minute express bus from Huanggang to Tsuen Wan, has to be the Shenzhen Metro line 4. The interchange station at Convention Centre Station has only one side, and this one side serves the two different directions (as shown in the picture below).

Now if you are waiting at the station for the train to arrive it would still be easy to identify which direction the train is heading to, but what if you are rushing and run onto the train without trying to find out which direction it heads towards? That would be kinda sticky.

And this is how the Huanggang Border Control looks like. The buses in front are all heading towards Hong Kong, so apparently if you are on those buses, you get off in front of the border control, and then go into the building, and come back out and get onto the same bus again – similar to what happens at the Causeway. It’s quite an interesting experience – and apparently it’s much faster to clear immigration using my Hong Kong documents rather than the Singapore passport!

And then today we went to Ocean Park, or what I would choose to call Zi You Xing (自由行) Park. There were so many mainland visitors in the park that they absolutely freaked me out. Basically any bad practices or lack of courtesy acts that you would associate with them, I saw them all in the park today. My impression for Ocean Park has always been very good, but it’s just so irritating to see those lot of people (I would struggle to label them as people) messing the park that I love a lot. Cutting queues, talking loudly, squatting around, pushing around, smoking in the wrong places… I got really fed up with them.

This was the notice pasted on the doors of the cable car inside Ocean Park. As you probably know, those characters are in Simplified Chinese, and in Hong Kong we use Traditional Chinese. So I guess it goes without saying for whom this particular notice is meant for. And I realised that the tone of the announcements in the park are different for Cantonese, English and Mandarin. The Cantonese and English announcements are always in a nicer tone, while the Mandarin announcements are always sterner. I guess that is a signal that we are getting too many of these irritating mainlanders bringing their bad habits back home to Hong Kong. I mean, I’m happy that these people are coming to Hong Kong and boosting the Hong Kong economy, but why can’t they keep those bad habits back home?

That said, it shouldn’t be my last time visiting Ocean Park this year, especially this is the 30th anniversary of the park.

New Year.

First of all, a very happy Lunar New Year to everyone. It’s been a few days since I last updated again, reason being – oh well you know what reason I would give so I’m not saying.

Anyway I went to the Lunar New Year Fair in Causeway Bay last Friday and it was quite a sight. The whole Victoria Park was packed with people, so much so that I didn’t need to walk – I was pushed along by the people behind me. There were a lot of interesting things on sale, and since this Lunar New Year is the year of the pig (or the year of the boar as my school prefer to call it), almost all products have something to do with the pig. I bought myself a cushion because I kinda needed one here at home, and at just $38 I think it was a fair deal.

The Lunar New Year so far has been OK, as I take a well-earn one-week break after slogging it out at work for the past month. Spent most of my time playing games on my PSP, and I’m grateful for such a long break.

And just to show you how packed it was that evening at the Lunar New Year fair:

Whoever said there is no Lunar New Year atmosphere here in Hong Kong?

Valentine’s Day.

It’s not that I thought today is Valentine’s Day – it was more like I was exhausted yesterday so I didn’t update about what happened.

All in all it was another low-profile Valentine’s Day for me. As far as work is concerned, the highlight was probably a nice treat by one of my colleagues, successfully set up my MacBook to the office printer, as well as seeing the atmosphere put up around campus by the students to celebrate the special day. As for me, it was just another day. Conducted my class, prepared for future classes, almost identical process as did previous days. While it is true that every lesson is a new experience because of the different responses by the students, it is becoming more routine. Perhaps that’s the sign of me really getting used to my job already.

I’ve been noticing the few old folks who are distributing flyers for certain property agencies outside the Lam Tin MTR station, and one of them left a really strong impression on me. Every time I see him distributing those flyers he’ll keep saying “有優惠，隨便揀”, meaning that there’s special offers and discounts and you can pick what you want. Perhaps it does make sense that if I’m buying a house it would be great to have offers and discounts, and I should really be able to pick the unit I want. But in Cantonese the connotation is really different. And the way he says those things make it sound as if people are buying vegetable in a market. I know this old man probably wants to earn a bit of extra pocket money by distributing these flyers, but I’m not really sure if he knows what he is distributing. Thank God it was only flyers for property agencies. Imagine he’s distributing flyers for those illegal DVD vendors (e.g. X-rated videos) – that would be hilarious.

Recently Hong Kong has been covered in some kind of excitement because of the upcoming Chief Executive election. The election was labeled a small-circle election, as only 800 people can vote for the new CE, which is contested between the incumbent (and obviously more capable and rational) Donald Tsang and the challenger Alan Leong. Donald Tsang has been highlighting the issues of economy, widening income gap, etc etc, but all Alan Leong seems to be interested is fighting for a general election for the CE. Every time he talks, he talks about the general election and nothing else. It seems to him (and his “democratic alliance” lot) that a general election for the CE is the cure for all problems in Hong Kong. It feels almost like if I am jobless, I don’t have money and have a family of 8 to support, a general election can solve the problem. To be honest, I’m sick of this guy and his lot of politicians. These people have no understanding of the situation in Hong Kong. If I have no money, would a fully elected CE solve the problem for me? If I don’t have a job, would a fully elected CE give me a job? All I can say is that I hope Donald Tsang thrash this idiot by a couple of miles to wake up their freaking stupid ideas. If I have to use 3 words to describe Alan Leong and his gang, that three words would be irrational, ignorant, and irresponsible. I just can’t see Hong Kong heading anywhere positive if this joker is elected into the post. Don’t freaking waste my time and pollute my eyes, Mr. Leong. If I label you as rubbish I’m already being very kind.

I heard that his party is putting up booths at the Lunar New Year Fairs – I’m really contemplating to go there and give him a piece of my mind.

Justin x HKPO in Concert.

Today is a good day for me too. First of all, winning a football bet was a great way to start today. I placed a $60 bet and won $169 in return, which was definitely a wonderful thing for me. I was tempted to place a further bet, but decided against it because it’s always better to be satisfied about what I have won.

And then in the evening I with my sister to the Hong Kong Coliseum to watch Justin Lo & Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s concert. The concert was a great one, and I was pleasantly surprised about Justin’s performance today. I have heard some people talking about Justin’s live performances are really good, so I was quite happy about his singing today. He certainly sounded very good – I guess probably because when he doesn’t need to jump about on the stage and concentrate on singing, so that $100 spent on the ticket was certainly worth it. I even managed to take a good close up picture of Justin in action!

I know most of you probably can’t really see Justin in the picture, so I’ve pointed where Justin is standing on the stage with an arrow:

Well, he must be somewhere around there, anyway.

Concerts.

Sorry for not updating for the past couple of days. I guess it’s quite understandable that I am getting myself all tired after one whole week of lessons. Actually teaching can be a pretty fun job, it’s just that it can be quite frustrating at times too. I won’t really call it frustrating – it’s more like the kind of pleasant frustrations. It’s the kind of frustrations that you won’t really feel angry or upset and can really have a laugh about. Hope that would stay that way.

Anyway I’ve bought the tickets to two concerts – Janice Vidal’s one in March (which cost me $480) and the big one – Ayumi Hamasaki’s concert the following week (which also cost me $480). The crazy thing about Ayumi’s concert was that when the tickets were on sale yesterday, they were sold out within 3 hours! I think I was very lucky to be able to secure two tickets for the concert, and I’m sure for those who want to make a quick buck or two by selling the tickets at jacked up prices would be laughing their ways to the banks. But as for me, I’m just more than happy to be able to watch a couple of good concerts in a row. In fact, I’ll be watching Justin Lo’s concert this Sunday!

And of course my mood is always going to be great when I got my pay! The promptness of my employers dispatching my pay was impressive – certainly something that a particular university in Singapore can learn about. I mean, this university took 3 months and still fail to dispatch a miserable sum of allowance. The questions for this university would most probably be…

“How much longer would you take? And what reason would you be using for this delay? And why would you take 3 months to dispatch that few hundred dollars? Is it because we are only students that’s why we can be bullied into this kind of inefficiencies?”

Champions.

Just like 2 years ago, Singapore are the ASEAN champions. But in my opinion, this victory is definitely much more interesting than the last one because of the following reasons:

1. While it is amazing that Singapore went through the whole tournament undefeated, it is equally amazing that the team only won 2 matches outright out of the 7 it played. The Lions were certainly hard to beat, but they also don’t win easily – they drew the other 5.

2. The Lions beat Thailand. You can rub your eyes a million times and you’ll still read that right – The Lions beat Thailand. I can’t even remember when the last time was when that happened.

3. 11-0 against Laos. The last time I saw Singapore score so many was 1993, when they hammered 8 past the mighty Brunei in the Malaysian League. Noh Alam Shah, who whammed in 7 against the Laotians, probably was in the stand at the National Stadium watching Sundram score that bicycle kick.

4. The home-and-away knockout stage of the tournament is actually good for Singapore. Ever since they changed the format to that, Singapore have been champions. May that continue for long.

Whatever it is, Singapore are the champions of ASEAN again and it should be something to be happy about. The Thais can say all they want, but the most important fact is that the cup is going to stay in Singapore for another 2 years.

Source: ChannelNewsAsia

Eat your hearts out, Kiatisuk Senamuang. Hahaha.

Red Packets.

You know Chinese New Year is getting near when your employer gives you red packets:

These red packets were given by the VTC Staff Recreation Club (of which I still have no idea if I am a member or not) to every staff at VTC. They look cute, and I think I might use a couple of them this Chinese New Year. I know I’m not married yet and probably don’t have to give out red packets yet, but it’s good to have them around, just in case I have to give to anyone.

All the classes that I have to conduct this week are over, and looking back at the last couple of days, I can say that I had a pretty decent teaching experience so far. It’s not easy to be a teacher these days, considering you have to deliver your lessons in such a way that the students are not going to be turned off. But I guess so far I can say that I managed to do so. The feeling of seeing them cracking a smile at the things that I’m saying or seeing them ask me questions are definitely heartwarming sights. It does appear to me that the learning environment in Hong Kong and Singapore are quite different. Of course perhaps my base of comparison isn’t exactly right, but in Hong Kong the students don’t seem to be afraid of asking the teacher anything. If they want to know something, they will open their mouth and ask. As for Singapore, I’m not too sure, but from all these years of studying there, it seems to me that people are not interested in asking – at least not in class. The students that I’m handling, they ask so many things in class, to an extent that I have difficulties answering them because my brain is not fast enough to process so many questions at once!

I don’t have any class tomorrow, so I’ll spend my day preparing for next week’s classes – and look forward to seeing Huimin who’s coming to town!