Olympics

Even though I don't have TV in Waterloo, I've been watching as much as I can when I'm in Toronto (HD signal from the air is sweet). It's been an exciting games. I managed to catch some of Phelps destroying his competition in the pool and the electrifying run by Usain Bolt. I think the most exciting medal for Canada was Simon Whitfield's triathlon run, coming from behind to capture the silver. What an exciting race!

Also, I couldn't help to notice the cheerleaders. I didn't even know they had cheerleaders in the Olympics, and the most surprising thing is that there are Chinese cheerleaders! That's unheard of - especially in China - I think it's a new concept. And then the girls in the opening/closing ceremonies, the girls carrying the medals, leading the athletes in and out are all attractive. I never expected to see so many! Too bad the camera always shows them in passing and in the background :(

One last thing that's really cool for me personally. Remember during the opening ceremonies when the Chinese gymnast ran around the perimeter in the air before lighting the torch? The projected image was done with projectors made by my company on a projector I worked on. How awesome is that? My company provided all the projectors used in the Bird's Nest stadium - almost 150 projectors! Sweet.

AHHHHHHHH, I'm not Chinese

I went to the Blue Jay home opening weekend series with Andrea, Mike and some of her cousins. It was a great game, because Skydome was pretty lively, we had Halladay on the mound and the Red Soxes were in town.

The Red Sox were pretty sloppy, which I attributed to their recent trip to Japan. Their shortstop made 3 errors in the game! But the most exciting thing was something I've never witnessed in person before. Boston's starting pitcher, Beckett, loaded up the bases by walking two straight batters and Francona had seen enough. The relief pitcher came in to face Frank "Big Hurt" Thomas. You could feel the energy in the stadium. Everyone was anticipating and wishing for a home run. First pitch thrown and Thomas hits it out of the park for the Grand Slam and the stadium goes crazy! It was an awesome moment.

But as for the title of this post, the Blue Jays ended up getting 7 strikeouts, which means free pizza! Andrea passed me my ticket and I started to think about which location to visit the next day.

So anyway, I opened my wallet today and discovered my unredeemed ticket! AHHHHHH! OH NO!!!!! I didn't get my free food! How is this possible? What is wrong with me??? They should revoke my chinese ethinicity. Just dump a bucket of non-yellow paint on me. That's not enough, because I'll need to dye my hair, my eyebrows and pubes. After my appearance is done, I'll change my behaviour too. I will wear my shoes inside the house and not mind the mess. Then I'll wear those same shoes to the local mall, attract some white chicks, go to the food court and order chicken balls and chop suey...and like it.

Yeah, I'm mad at myself for missing out on free food.

Hong Kong Impressions

I visited Hong Kong six months ago and I haven't blogged about my trip, except for, obviously, the food pictures. I have a few thoughts about Hong Kong that I wrote down soon after returning, but never got around to posting and I'll share them now.

The most noticeable difference is the sheer number of people. I thought New York was densely populated, but Hong Kong is denser by several orders. Everywhere you go, there are crowds and crowds of people, which doesn't even compare to a busy weekend in Toronto. Imagine a popular festival or crowded event at Nathan Philips or Dundas Square and then imagine if it was like that all the time all over the place. That is what Hong Kong is like.

A lot of people means a lot of pollution. The air is noticeably worse in Hong Kong, and I can't imagine how much worse Beijing can be. It's unavoidable that packing so many people together in such a small space will result in pollution. But at the same time, having such a densely populated area enables them to have a good transit system. And it's not only goverment sponsored, but since so many people ride transit there are private companies providing competing services. Although I didn't have a bad experience on the private buses, I wonder how the public transit is regulated, because I had the worse public bus driver in my life. I was literally falling out of my seat onto the ground because the driving was so rough. Regardless, people in Hong Kong don't need to drive and rely on pulic transit. Plus, I heard that there's a 100% import tax on cars. No wonder HK immigrants buy expensive cars when they come to Canada....it's already discounted 50%!

What makes the pollution worse is the really hot and humid weather. As many of you know, I prefer hot weather and I'm deathly afraid of the cold. I visited near the end of August, when it is still in the hot season, but I didn't mind so much except for the humidity. The toughest part is dressing for the indoors; buildings all blast the A/C, meaning dressing in shorts is too cold for me indoors. The craziest thing about the HK natives is that many of them are wearing sweaters in the middle of summer. It could be 35 degrees out with 100 humidity and people would still be wearing sweaters!

Maybe when they sweat through them, they'll just buy a new one. That is not a joke. The clothing industry is completely different in HK. Maybe because it's so hot, all the clothing is very thin and seemingly of lower quality. It is also much cheaper in price than Canada. This means there is a culture where people can buy clothes just for the current season and toss it next season. It also means people are "more fashionable" because they can afford to keep up with the latest fashions. From a Canadian perspective, I wasn't interested in the cheap clothing because of the low quality, and clothing with acceptable quality had similar prices to Canada anyway. I did find one store I liked, G2000, and the advantage in Hong Kong is that they hem the pants for free or a small nominal fee.

Even though I personally didn't have a great time shopping, Hong Kong really is a shopper's paradise. Everywhere you go is basically a mall. The whole subway system is one large mall. And right beside all that shopping is the eating. Everywhere you go, there is food to buy. There are the 7-11's on every block selling everything you could want, the fancy restaurants on the upper levels of every building, the street eat stalls that are now mandated to be on a piece of property and not just on the street, the plentiful dessert places advertising their sweet delicacies to passerbys, the casual cheap diners constantly packed with people and loud chatter, the bubble tea hangouts, the bakeries which draw you in with their smell, the list goes on and on. Hong Kong people eat out for every meal. That is their culture. Their living quarters are too small to cook, and the food that you can buy is so cheap it is not worth cooking yourself. Plus all these places to eat are just an elevator ride downstairs away. You can find lunch for $2 CAD and dinner for $3 CAD if you wanted. Now I understand why Hong Kong people don't know how to cook (sorry, broad generalization which I know is not true, but it has some truth to it).

Cheap, plentiful and convenient food should mean a large waistlines. This is not the case. Most people in Hong Kong are quite slender, especially the females and especially when compared to North America. I loved the desserts over there, partly because they were new to me and partly because they were so refreshing in the heat. What I did notice is that the whole city is plastered with advertising (even more so than New York) and a lot of the ads are for slimming products. I can only assume that it's a good business there. But a better reason is probably that their portions are smaller and there is less emphasis on overeating - AYCE style.

Anyway, Hong Kong was fun to visit and it was by far the most urbanizied place I have ever been. It's a paradise for eating and shopping and the attraction of the city is the city itself. A few of you have gone recently, are there right now, or will be going soon. Any thoughts?

Learning Chinese

My Chinese skills suck. It's shameful in fact. Writing is hopeless for me. I can read basic words, but given a newspaper, I have no chance. I can speak some, but my Canadian accent is a constant source of amusement for native speakers. I can understand basic Mandarin, but a newscast I have difficulty with.

I suppose it's partly my fault. I speak mostly English at home, even when spoken to in Chinese. On the other hand, I took Saturday school all the way to high school. When I was younger I always resented the fact that Friday nights were always spent studying. Now I resent the fact that I didn't work harder. But I wasn't a complete slacker and I did end up learning quite a bit. I just wished I learned more.

Lately, some of my friends have been signing up for language classes. A lot of them signed up for this in the summer, which I thought was insane, since I didn't want to give up my summer weekends cooped up indoors. So I decided to start taking classes in the winter with the Confucius Institute at Renison College, which is on the Waterloo campus. Class is only two and half hours every Thursday.

So far it's been quite good. There are only four students in the class which really accelerates the learning process. The teacher is excellent and knows how to teach and interact with the students. The class is mostly focused on reading and conversing, which I suppose are the best skills to know first. The down side is that they are teaching "Mainland" Chinese. I'm not used to their accent and some of their words. Since they are Mainland, the writing is simplified, which is harder for me to learn, since I had previously only learned traditional. But all in all, I'm pretty happy with the course. Now, if only my language skills improved to a point where I'm good enough to use it!