It Starts in Hong Kong

Its been a long time coming (guess that song)

2005-08-04T16:11:00.000+08:00

So I left you all hanging by a thread in the aftermath of Shirlys birthday. I think nearly 2 weeks have passed but unfortunately the flu turned into fever which has back tracked my wonderful blogging skills to a standstill.

Lets start from the beginning. After Shirly's bday the next thing I can remember that had much impact on me was a night out a some place called cinta J. The place was well decked out and nicely furnished - but the real interest in the place was the fact that there was a live Philipines duo playing there who would also accept requsets for songs. It started out really nice we all got some drinks and were having a chat listening to requests (not made by me might i add) of such thins as Abba's - Dancing Queen and Madonna's - Like a Virgin. These were all done exquisitely and we were all havin fun in a decadant way :).

Then came the enevitable asking us ot buy more drinks - although this is now expected for me this came with an extra sting in the tail. Basically in the small print (i wonder how any of the bar staff failed to tell us this before we sat down) on the menus was that if you sit down in the bar you have to order a minimum of 50HKD per person. As there were 10 of us this came to 500HKD and our drinks only totaled to just over 200. It was astonishing to hear the alternative was leaving and still paying 500HKD even though we hadnt had this much to drink. Forutnately after kicking up a bit of a fuss the manager let us pay our actual bill and leave. This unfortunately put a bit of a downer on what was a really nice meal we had at a congee (chinese porridge) shop before hand. I got to have once again the amazin the twisted doughnut (ucharkuay - im never gonna be able to spell that) that ive not had for ages. It reminded me of being a kid which was nice.

More sadness ensued as just last saturday the first of the Iaeste crew was leavin. This was the beginning of the end of what im calling the "golden era." Chris the fulcrum of the Greek iaeste crew was leavin. We were all pretty cut up about it so here is a few pics to say a good farewell.

This pic is from the "last lunch" we had at the thai restaurant near our now so called local noodle shop. In the background is Steven lookin very conspiratoral but the food there was good and cheap which always helps :).

This reminds me just before this we had the great midsummer nights ball. This was a ball for all the exchange students and a chance for us all to dress a little crazy. My roomie Johan took the buscuit (I hope all u UK peeps are appreciating the effort im puttin in to get all there idoms in) by dressing up as a woman - i wonder where he got this idea from :). Anyways im not posting any pics of him like this cos i actullay dont have any cos this was the start of my downfall.

Here is a pic of my brief attendance to the mid summer party.

Here we have : Finn, me, Caroline, Shirly

This friday night I wanted to go out as it was Chris's last night but i was feelin reall bad after our previous night of Karaoke. (If you want more info on Karaoke please click on the link "Grace" on the left hand side of this here website - i think she did a primo job of coverin what went on and id just be makin this blog even longer and more detailed about how good the food was and how fun "trying" to sing was. One note of mention of the karaoke is that they had kryptonie - 3 doors down which Richard and I basically annhilated and i dont think i can see that song in the same way ever again - I also think now everyone else who didnt know it before will definitely hate it).

I shuoldnt have gone out on friday (we went ot guess what LKF - but to a different house music type bar called Yamla - it literally means drink (supposedly)) . It was a pretty decent night out although i didnt have that much fun probs because i was gettin ill. I really paid for it on saturday and sunday by basically not moving from my bed. I only got up on sunday morning to go on a hike to tai mo shan which is the highest peak in HK (957m) but unfortuantely no one turned up except two greatest Annie and Lisa.

We cleverly decided to try to go to Sham Shui Po where they supposedly have really good cheap electronics goods. We got there at around 10am ish and found everything closed!! Shops we found didnt open till 11am on sundays.

Here we are in the closed computer centre:

Lisa on the left and Annie on the right.

When the shops finally got their act togther we went a little crazy and bought some web cams. I am now the proud owner of a 1.3 megapixel web cam. Cool eh and it was less than a tenner bargain!

So getting back I felt dreadful. For me the past few days have been a sleepy existance - I went to see the doc on mon. He gave me some pills - told me my temp was high and i have a fever. I stayed in bed and slepy pretty much for at least 16 hrs a day. The only daylight i saw was to go and get some food. It is now thursday I have just about recovered. I just have a really bad sorethroat and it seems to be continually swollen. All I need to do now is regain my energy :).
I hear rumors that the other iaeste and associates were partyin hard so there is probably much more interesing things happin there. But your readin this blog so your just gonna have to put up with what im up to which is maily being sick. One up side to staying indoors is that the pollution in the air outside hasnt affected my face much so its tending to look a lot smoother. Like they say, always look on the bright side of life woohoo woohoo woohoo woohoo (ok u really have to whistle it or it just doesnt look right).
Thats me for the mo. The next to bugger off is Richard - this will also be a pretty sad day on friday evening but hey hes from Ireland - so i can see him easy :).
Keep well all
bai bai

A week on WHAT!!

2005-07-25T15:53:00.000+08:00

Ah you can see by the title of this post its been just over a week since i last updated. Bad bad me. There are actually 2 reasons for this. These are very good also. The first is that during the first few days monday to wednesday we didnt do much - or that i can recall. Most of the time is spent in the australians room chatting into the early hours of the morining. Not that this is not a throughly enlightning experience but i know you all reading this want some real action - scandal, hospital trips something to salivate the hollywood directors. Well for me the fun really started on thursday with a tickly throat.
Actually what I am calling fun is actually refering to the flu. So yes not really fun but hey its at least something. I think my peak of fitness was on thursday lunchtime after this it was all downhill. On thursday night i was coughing and spluttering and just generally walking around very slowly due to sheer fatigue.
A very restless night made my mind up not to go to work and try to vist the Poly U doctor on campus. Now I had heard may things about the doctors in Hong Kong good and bad but this was one interesting experience. When I eventually arrived the place looked like it had just been built yesterday. It was really bright and clean withn lots of techno jiggery everywhere. The service was very quick I only had to wait a few minutes to seee a doctor and the electronic label above the door tells you when to enter. The doctor was very direct with questions and I would say the UK doctor mentality is more catered to making the patient feel nice. Whereas in HK it seems to be efficiency is what is wanted.
Anyways I got loads of medcine completely free, some of it i have no idea what but to be honest i dont think much helps the flu apart from a good rest. Thats why what i did next was not a good idea at all.
Friday night Will came to see us, (for a few of you back home you may know Will Wan - he has his grandparents living in HK) so after much discussion i fianlly agreed to go out with everyone else - mainly for Will's sake as by now my coughing had reached the proportions whereby after everytime I finished my lungs were burning. Anyway guess where we went yep siree, LKF. However this was a bit different. We made our way to a place called pebbles (really cute sounding isnt it) whre they play a lot of 80's music. I have to say that night even with my illness is one of the best ive had in HK. Nearly everyone was out, the music was good and classic and a good laugh was had by all.
Funnily enough as the night went on, i started to feel a bit better, but looking back on it now i think it was the alcohol talking.
reviving my body at around 2pm on saturday I tried to ready myself as today was Shirly's birthday. I went to TST to meet Grace, Josin and 2 of Grace's friends for lunch. Unfortuantely we arrived late and by the time we managed to meet up after eating I didnt get any time to speak to Grace's friends. Anyway Yorgos, Petros, Chris, Josin and I made a quick trip to stanely market. Actually I lie when i say quick as Stanley market is actiually further on than Repulse Bay where we had our first beach trip.
Also the fact that we left at 6 pm meant that by the time we got there, nearly every shop was closed. However the few we did have were pretty cool and i got some postcards and a bit of clothing. I was actually lookin for a present for Shirly but seeing as all the shops were closed it was a little hard. After a bit of a shop we had a drink in a english bar (Europeans always attracted to their own kind). The place was pretty nice and I had a Tsing Tao beer outside with a hotdog bought from Kmart.
coming back to HK island Josin and I went to meet the others at a russian/ukraninan (i think) restaurant for Shirly's birthday bash. The food was really good and the restaurant was also well decorated. Here is a pic of the cake and birthday festivites:

I still wasnt 100% after the night before but as usual we went out again. Unfortuantely everyone was completely knackerd and a few people were ill, once one gets it all the rest will. After a little while after hitting a few places we made our way home.
Getting up late again on the sunday morining I was meant to call Will and find out what he was doing as he had joined the iaeste trip for city orienteering. Unfortunately I couldnt get hold of him and only managed to catch him for a few mins after he returned to halls with Adam. The rest of sunday was used for recovery. I tried showing a vcd of sin city that i managed to download. The major problem was that the film had its audio about 2 minutes behind the video and also that there were a bunch of people above us watching another film on a reallly loud volume which spoilt the whole experience.
thats me for the mo hope it wasnt too boring, i think the flu has taken its toll already and hopefully in the next post ill be runnning away from the chinese police in chase over HK. Or hopefully not as the case maybe.

The ball within the hall and more beach partys

2005-07-18T15:45:00.000+08:00

So I left you all gagging for more about the wonderful polyU hall ball. As always I want to look smart for these occasions so having brought my Einsten tie I thought now would be as good a time as any to bust it out. Unfortuantely I didnt bring a suit jacket with me but the lovely Sebastian was kind enough lend me his nice tweedy lookin jacket. A few elbow patches and I think I could have been labled and english lecturer. Of course both Annie and Caroline looked stunning, all in all it was quite an interesting experience. This was due to the fact we only stayed for about 10 minutes watch loads of formally dressed chinese learning ballroom dancing off a video playing in cantonese. Thus it was not entirely helpful for any of us "international" students. The pic below is of us in the ball.

From the very far left. Niko, Stefan, Annie, Kian, Caroline. As you can see we were havin a great time. Thanks to Muriel for takin the photo on my camera. She is always very good at takin photos.

Anyways after Caroline attempted to ballroom badly (im gonna have to learn next year in dance soc) we went for a lovey chinese meal (amazing you can get chinese in HK - btw this was meant to be sarcastic i know how its so hard to see it in writing).

Fortuanately the meal was pretty decent andit readied me for the night out. Believe it or not our intention this night was actually to go to some place in Tsim Sha Sui (TST) not good old Lan Kwai fong (LKF). But as you will see the best laid plans are never the best laid actions.

As TST is so close to our halls we decided to walk it. Its about 15 minutes by foot. What you forget is that this is HK where the out side temp is probably around 32 degrees and the humidity is off the scale. This meant taht walking around in TST for about nearly an hour deciding on where to go did not have the best effect on a group of nearly 30 people. A combination of both fatigue and bordem I think fragmented the group and people quickly got into taxis and moved their way to LKF (standard!!). To be honest i really enjoyed walking around. The heat was pretty irritating but I could deal with it and I had not really had chance to walk round the TST area before. Also I suppose I was in a pretty relaxed mood as i didnt really want to go clubbin and was actually happy to plod around a bit. Unfortuantely when everyone went of to LKF i followed like a sheep when now in some consideration and what Markos and a few otheres got up to that night maybe I should have stayed in TST. Anyways we got to LKF and after much discussion with the bouncer (I always seems to have to talk to bouncers for ages to get in anywhere - maybe its my new triad look hair cut that doesnt put them on side with me).

The situation was quite a funny one. When I arrived at LKF the bouncer wanted to charge the guys 100HKD to get in even though the others we were with were already inside and had not paid a penny. After Chris came out of the club and a few others in front of me talked to the bouncer he let us in. However I didnt go in at this point because Martin was talking to some people on the other side of the road and it was just me, annie and martin. I pointed to our group in front of us and then to myself to indicate that we were all together and told him we were waiting for martin to finish his conversation and come in with us. 2 minutes later as we tried to enter he once again said we had to pay to get in. I was outraged and very nearly lost my top. I was only just stopping myself from shouting at him. I was talking quite forcfully though and trying to explain it was outrageous to charge us since all our friends just went in right under his nose for free like 2 minutes before. Looking back on it I shouldnt have got so angry and worked up over such a small thing. I think mainly I was in a pretty bad mood when I arrived as i wasnt really up for goin to LKF again.
I recognised my sillyness and sat down to call someone in the club to come out and verify we were their friends. As I did so I apologised to the bouncer about my attitude and how I also understood his position. I think this act of kindness broke him and may have surprised him due to my initial onslaught. Accepting my position he let us in for free. So there you are nice guys may come last but at least they can butter up bouncers to get into clubs for free :).

Thwe night was pretty good, I think im getting better at recognising many of the R n B tunes they consistantly play. Thoughout this I now have unfortunately fallin in love with the Gwen Stefani song - HollaBack girl. Right at the end they also played evanescence which I throughly enjoyed.
Saturday was when I went to meet a friend of the family living in Hk. We met outside the central library of HK. I fortunately had a little time to check it out. It is an amzin library. It has i think 10 floors but what I found most special was the culture of the library.
The first floor is completely devoted to kids. What the amazin thing about it is that at aound 12 midday on a saturdaythe whole place is just packed out with cute little chinese critters. Its such a nice idea bring your kid to learn and they also can make friends with loads of others there. I dont think this would ever happen in England.

Here are all the kids havin fun on the first floor.

The steps up to the central library. Everyone has a little english idiom. Unfortuantely they seem to have go it wrong here. But I suppose we can forgive them as english is not their mother tounge (is that how u spell it?)

Afte the meeting and some good Japanese food I got roped into shoppin with the girls in Mongkok. I was actually looking ot get a nice shirt shirt and a wallet which ive been desperate for since I came here. But you know when you go shoppin with the girls you dont get zilch. However I didnt find it entirely boring as I really enjoyed all the cantopop and easy listening chinese music they played in the stores. If I actually understood what they were saying I probably would hate it cos im sure its prettty cheesey. But as they say "ignorance is bliss." Just to clarify my sudden obsession with idioms - Caroline and I were both for about 3 days trying to figure out the "close but no cigar" one. I think i came up with some corkers such as "no more cigars for you mate" as an attemped one. Carolines "your smoking the wrong end of the cigar" has I think been plagerised from somewhere else :).

Saturday night I was a bit of a lameo again as this time I didnt go out and watched a few movies - im just sick on LKF and the R n B hipo hop consistancy (although to be honest there are actually a few songs I do like - I think its the problem with the fact that i dont know may of the songs there and thus i find it quite hard to get into - have I said this already?). From my understanding of everyone else who went out it was an amazin night where they took over a really small club/bar and got them to play 80's music. How i missed out. On the other hand I got to see some pretty interestin movies - none that I would have ever had the chance to back home. The first was Yamakasi - its about the french free runners i think they call them. Its a pretty decent movie not all that moving but fun to watch just for the acrobatics. The other one was a Audrey Tatu (i think thats right - woman who did amilie) movie. I think its called to love or not to love or sommat similar. It mainly about her being a stalker. Its pretty grusome in certain areas but I also feel like this style of movie has been done before but maybe not from the womans perspective - its normally the guys who are stalkers eh!

Sunday was beach day once again. This time it was a proper Iaeste trip to Big Wave bay. To be honest it does sort of live up to its reputation in that the waves are consistant and pretty big. Although the main bad thing was there were loads of small black shards of wood floating in the water. It was horrible, you would go into the water and all these small black pieces would be stuck to your body. This coupled with the fact that the water tasted like comeone had peed in it and you couldnt see more than a cm into the water meant my swimming experience wasnt that amazin.
We also had a barbecue. However in HK tehy dont barbie like we do at home. You put the coals on top of the grill bit and then take some sort of skewer thing (with some added meat of course) and hold it over the burning coals. This has 2 effects, 1) your arms get really tired cos it take ages to cook a piece of meat 2) subsequently to your arms gettin tired you relax and your meat drops a little a gets ash all over it. Honestly I cant really see why the HK find it so fun this way of cookin (imagine cooking marshmellows but with the coals much closer), its tiring, irritating and most of all hot. Next to a burnin barbie under the HK midday sun I think can only be good if your lookin for outside saunas for free.

One final point about the badness of the beach water was as you couldnt see aynthing as it was so dark with loads of black bits I was staning on some huge rocks on the sea bed. Here Yorgos is modelling this one that nearly "cut me up" (good phrase eh)

Sunday night after we got back consisted of me losing to Stefan (see above pic) in table tennis. This was doubly bad cos I just couldnt hit the table and get anything in. It happens - maybe my play is a little aggresive but in a few years time with constant practise im sure ill be the roger federer of ping pong.
Thats me for the mo. Hope you enjoyed this what I would consider to be a medium ish lenght post. Im taking annies advice as she supposedly loves it long :). ttfn.

The Awkward days

2005-07-15T12:11:00.000+08:00

As the title suggests the last two days have been a little awkward for me, however I promised Michelle that she would be in my first sentence in my blog so here we are (who says i never keep my promises :)).
The pic to the right is me and lovely michelle who funnily enoughtook this with her other hand. She is very good at this (blind phototaking, a skill i must learn or at least practise in the near future).

Anyways, why were the last two days awkward, lets start from the beginning :). (I can already hear the moans of pain and suffering and the thoughts flooding in can i be bothered to carry on reading this tat?) Ill try to be consise even though it goes against my will (actually it goes against my aching wrists and tired eyes).

So Wednesday was a fun packed day of resistance temp mesurements on the titanium film coated pieces of silicon. I think that the results turned out pretty good in the cooling process with liquid nitogen although im getting this sneaky suspicion that ive had a rant about this already. If not you will all soon be updated on the wonderful fun that is RT measurements :). Moving along swiftly to the awkward part. This night I had been invited by Josin (at Annie's party - for more info please read previous blog (see what good physics does you, you can even refence things!))
So to the Awkward squad (I doubt many others unless from the UK will understand the pun I have just used - as always - homework look up the awkward squad), this was because I was invited to a birthday party meal although I had never met the person whose birthday it was. So normally I wouldnt go but as Grace and Josin were going and Grace was in almost the same situation as me and the restaurant we were going to I had eaten before at (the food is really good) I decided to make myself a nusance and tag along. Fortunately the guy whose birthday it was was really nice and I found him easy to talk to and all in allthe food and company was good and I think a good time was had by all. So some of the awkwardness went although there were still many people there on the table we sat at i didnt get a chance to speak to. You never know with the randomness of the group and the people we meet I may have another chance. Also seeing as they all know Josin there is a high probabilty another meeting will occur.

To the right is a pic of a few peeps in the restaurant with what i suppose can be considered a hong kong birthday cake in the middle. The only person I know in this pic is Josin on the far right. Im happy to accept further names of those who know. I was surprised to see Michelle once again (she seems to know everyone) and also glad as hadnt spoken to her for ages. She always makes me happy by commenting on how nice my british accent is :).

This was defintely quite an experience for me as back home I dont think i would have ever agreed to something like this. The main reason i wasnt so afraid was the fact that I thouhgt im in HK half the peeps ill see there ill proabbly never meet again - so if i make a complete fool of myself who cares? Bad attitude? i think its more of a safety mechanism. (this part here was introduced because at the dinner certain things were said about my blog about its content, believe it or not, comments were made on its detail and also on its newpaperlike recording of events and not of my thouhgts feelings and perspective of the events so here u all are, i can so do it!)

The next day was even stranger. It happened that Josin knew a friend who was throwin a party for a friend and so all the iaeste crew was invited by Josin. The crazyness started at about lunch time. Josin called me saying he was ill and that he couldnt come. So I ended up getting this number of James the friend who was setting up the party and figuring out wether we could come or not. Everything seemed to be ok so we went down that evening.
The C club is where we went - from this blog im sure you all back home think this is the only place we ever go. I promise 2 things, 1 we dont and 2 im not a big fan of it and really dont wanna go there too much more (only exception is if everyonw i know in HK wants to go at same time). As it was a thursday night it was pretty emtpy. We supposedly had a private room althought it was actually just the room we had seen before on previous visits that was set back into the wall. The dodgyness started towards the end of the night where some of the iaeste massive were thinknin of leavin. This was bad becasue there were drinks ordered to teh room that no one had paid for. We were about to leave James with a massive bill. Not only this but I was actually asked to put up a credit card to pay for it as well. Crazy or what seeing as id never met the other 10 or 15 people there. Fortunately it was all sorted and we went home discussing the antics of our group that night.

Anyways ill save u all from eyesore as ive gotta get ready for our hall ball. This shoud be fun as i dont really have anything formal with me to wear and also my fingers are gettin tired.

Till next time peeps

The second football match

2005-07-13T16:22:00.000+08:00

So Tuesday was a fun packed day of physics. The laser wasnt being used so we started our PLD experiment properly. Using very low pressures of 3x10^-5 torr and temps of around 600 degrees C to deposit thin films was quite fun. Today were doin a bit of testin. Well have to see how good our whole days efforts were good or not. The graphs seems to have a pretty good metal transition at around 180K whether this is a good thing or not i have absolutely no idea. Also supposeldy if we can get the transition to occur at around room temp (havent we heard this all before "if only" - the greatest want of any physicist) then it can be applied to sommat called a bolometer (whatever the hell that is) and maybe we get some new physics as no one knows how to explain transition at room temp.

Now to try n interest u all - well Tuesdays soccer day where we all normally play for around 90 mins get unbelieveably sweaty due to the heat and runninng round like lunatics cos were all poor and can only just about kick it in the general direction of the goal. Last evening however was a bit strange. We the Iaeste crew thought we had the pitch booked every tuesday from 6.30 till 8.30pm. We were later told it was actually booked for international students in general. How did we find out this vital piece of info. Well because when we got there at 6.30 there were already a bunch of Americans and French people playin. The problem was that they wouldnt let us play with them. After much argument and gettin the managers of the football field and an amazin display of relentless pushing by evalina we got to play form 7.30pm and onwards.

As always the heat bore down and after 5 mins of running round most of the time was spent defendin and passing the ball around. I think a good time was had by all. the next pic is a blurry one of the pitch. I have no idea who took it but i didint cos i was playing unlike some lameos (who might be named Johan :)).
nice pitch eh the lovely astro turf. We play for free also so you cant turn your nose up at that.

That evening we all went back to our local noodle shop where once again i had the beef rice with a plate of fried dumplings. Its always so good there. Then Johan and I ended up talking to Grace for about 2 hours i dont think ive yet been to bed before 3 o'clock. And ive nver been into work before quarter to 10. Believe me i woke up at 10 this morining (cos my alarm didnt go off honest1) and i couldnt lift my right leg beyond the parallel level due to the football. I was also really tired to the point wherer i couldnt pick up my tooth brush properly.

Anyway hope u enjoyed a pretty mudane update but the football is good and I scored an amazinly fluky goal from around 40 yards out with a beautiful chip over Markos's head.

Just a final comment to account for the poor english spelling mistakes and very poor grammer spattered across all my posts. Basically i write like im on msn. Basically with very abbrivated words spelling mistakes. Almost no grammer at all and best of all its just a continuous steam of conciousness. So your all gettin a really in depth look into my mind. However how much u think thats good for u, oh well :)

Annie's Birthday day

2005-07-12T15:24:00.000+08:00

Monday was great not only did I get into work late but the Laser for our experiment was booked up so we did nothign all day - well surfing the internet. Thats y youve all just had 2 successive updates within such a short period. Today we did the PLD pretty much on our own were actually in the process atm. Me and Yorgos are waiting for the temperature to rise. Also finally my Poly U visitors card was made - it only took em 3 weeks!! It also has probably one of the worst pictures of me on it. Im not sure how they got hold of it. Maybe I sent it off before hand forgetting about it. Just to hurt myself even more ill post it here :).

Hope you all had a good laugh. Anyways this means I can now use the facilities here in PolyU like the badminton court and such. Im actually now considered staff it seems - scary eh. Anyway the day was actually (and rightly so) defined by annie's Birthday. Annie is not an Iaeste trainee but we somehow randomly met her (probably cos she is toilet mates with Yasmin and Kim). She actually studies in Nottingham Uni and is currently here in HK doing part of her course for masters I believe. How good is nottingham compared to imperial. Im sure our erasmus scheme never included the option to go to HK!

So its the day of Annie's Bday and Caroline (who is also from the UK and Annie's course mate - im sure someone is gonna correct all the apostrophies in this) was running round like a mad hatter trying to get everything sorted. Fortunately I think she did a great job and the whole night went pretty smoothly with cake, happy birthday songs in 3 different languages and some drink. After the festivities we went to a thai restaurant where the 20 odd or so of us took over the place. The owner there is really nice and alway produces separate bills for all of us so it easy for us to pay and obvioulsy the food is good.

Here is the wonderful annie blowing out her candles:

Josin also came to our halls (Josin is in HKU and also not iaeste - aiesec member he is). I think we have managed to convice him to come stay in PolyU!!
We will see what happens. You can see Josin in the grey shirt.
From left to right: Deng, Annie, Sebastian, Martin, George, Josin, Yorgos.

Look at all the beer cans - how is it that no one was completely wasted?
Anyway the Austrailian girls have gone to China (which im really envious of) so I hope they have a really good time and we probably wont have any fun without them (im sure thats what u wanted to hear Yasmin :)).

good post eh - short and sweet and only took me a good 2 hours to produce (damn msn messenger).

The past weekend walk

2005-07-11T15:17:00.000+08:00

So waking up late ish on the saturday afternoon about 1.30ish I called Grace to see what was happening as we had decided to go to a very famous traditional chinese restaurant and try out their dim sum. Ringing her at 2 oclock (making her get up incidentally) I found that we were gonna end up goin a bit later so i spent my time wisely writin the beast of a blog spannin the long wan chai night.

when we eventually managed to leave it was around 3 to half 3 in the afternoon. With about 10 people and very little knowlege of where the place was exactly it took us all a little time to find. By the time we got there we had unfortunately missed out on dim sum even though in Lonely planet they say they serve it up until 6 oclock. So much for the book of everything. Anyways the meal was really good and i think I had some of the best sweet and sour pork ive tasted in a long time. The traditional chinese waiters are probably the rudest ive ever seen though. For example the waiter wouldnt take our money even though there was more than the price of the meal because he wanted to know how much tip he was getting. Maybe this is the normal way of doing things but it is very off putting and in the end he didnt get anything. This coupled with the fact that he was very slow in getttin rice (i.e we had finished most of the food and then the rice came).

Outside the restaurant was probably the best mahjong shop I have ever seen. It had all different shapes and sizes of sets in all different colours. Ive never seen so many types of dice representing winds and numbers. If only I had some money eh!

Im going off on the beaten track. The day carried on with us all going to victoria park where we went to the natural foot massage section. This actually consists of just a path with lots of pebbles stuck into the ground. What u do is walk ove rthem barefoot. This as you can imagine hurts as most of the stones are pretty spikey. But I managed to make it all the way round and felt like a hero after.

To finish the night off we went bowling. The fun really started here as the only bowling alley in HK is a members only club. At first we thought it wasnt going to happen but with two pretty girls in your group one who can speak cantonese (Grace) we managed to win over the stone faced bowling manager. Both Chris and Cerille are now proud members of the HK bowling club. Congrats to both of you.

Christos in the metropolis Grace and Josin i dont have yet a pic of Cerille Josin was included cos this was taken with his camera

credit where credit is due.

Hope that was a bit of fun. Man it takes ages to publish pics like this.

So after the bowlin i think it was a pretty quite night from what I remember just had to plan and get ready for the big hike the next day.

On sunday we met at 11ish to go on the maclehose trail.

http://parks.afcd.gov.hk/newparks/eng/hiking/mtrail/mtrail.htm

its meant to be pretty famous in HK. we did the shortest section stage 6 only 4.6km but even then it was really tiring. Mainly due to the incessant heat that wears you down and makes you sweat as ben puts it "like a pedeophile in a childrens nursery."

In the end we managed to scale to the top of Lions rock and had some amazing views of the whole of Kowloon, Hong Kong island and the new territories.

A view from the peak. There will be more on my webshots soon.

At the end of the day there was a bit of controversy due to the fact that we were meant to meet up with stefan and a few others and Yasmin and Caroline but unfortuantely what happened was that the group at lions peak were all really tired and just went home. So the others we were meat to meet in Sha tin were left behind. This I have to say I got a little ear ache for but as is always true many things could have been done better but were left to the last minute and I was also really tired after the walk so I wasnt really thinking that straight.

At the end of the day I called home to see how things were with my dad and check that no major problems happened with any family in London. Spent ages again on the computers geting stuff done because the comp i lent off my dad is too slow. Also Skype doesnt seem to work properly on it. For all those in UK who dont know what skype is check it out. Its performs the same as msn but u can also voice chat but best of all you can call landlines with it as well and it is dirtly cheap. Cheap like I call uk from here at 1.1 pence per min. Better than any phone card.

Monday through to Friday

2005-07-11T00:56:00.000+08:00

On monday the physics was good - that means non existant although we did manage a few tests on the Ti film deposited for only 1 minute. (this is a good thing belive me)
Anyway the most I remember for the day is going to the Gym (yes the halls have one isnt it great and best of all its free!!) and caning myself in. Both Johan and Kim seemed to do pretty well but for me it was a different story. Ive not been to the gym for at least 3 or 4 years, definintely not since ive been at uni. I got a bit gung ho and after a spritely .5 km walk thingy I did about 5-10 mins on a bike and then 1000 meters on the rowing machine. This put me in the state where notonly was it hard for me to breath but actually to move. I felt not only like I was going to throw up but that the entire world was collapsing around me on my lungs. After I finally managed to recover the nights sleep was fit full and restless due to the throbbing in my arms.

Tuseday eveing consisted of a football match set up by Ricky. It was really good to actually get some exercise and play some footie. However with the heat and not being fit at all, including my caneage at the gym, I dont think ive ever been so tired after or sweated so much. I literally had my entire shirt soaked and i could actually wring it out! Fortuanatley I was on the winning side (of course) although I think this had very little to do with my prescence. Ill try to represent the UK much better next time.

Wednesday included a trip to the HK space museum. In my opinion if your ever here dont go cos there aint much of an exhibition and just an auditorium that shows movies. Supposedly its pretty good if the flim is shown right around but Im thinkin this is not my sort of thing. In the end we just walked around a bit ended up in Kowloon park. We got to see some flamingo's although it was really dark and my pics came out poor. Then we went down a lovely and romantic pier - which i have to say at night is a perfect place to take a special someone cos you get the river and all the skyscrapers with their lights.

On Thursday we decided to take it easy and all got together in the common room to watch the movie "Annie Hall" I remember seeing it before and its still as good as the last time. The price of VCD's here is sick. It was around 20HKD for the movie - just over a pound and this is a proper legal copy bought from HMV of all places (hehe HMV HK).

Friday, the must have trip to Lan Kwai Fong (LKF) you know your goin too often if it has to be abbreviated. We club hopped for a bit and ended up in a bar called LUX. It was pretty nice and the company was good obviously (due to all the iaeste and other randoms -not to degrade you all but u know iaeste is the best). As always they played even more r n b but i think im gettin to know some of the songs now so i can dance to a few of them. It was a really fun night and apart from a few incidents within the group all was good and most importantly we got to see probably the best dancer I have ever seen. I wanna figure out how to post movies. Ill probably take bobs advice and buy a bit of web space. Then you can all see his crazy moves!

As you can see this was pretty short and sweet cos im running out of patience and time but the pics are in web shots and ill put a select few here to really keep things goin. Hope you all enjoyed the update and that to those on the G8 demo enjoyed it throughly also.

Reprise of the week before

2005-07-10T23:56:00.000+08:00

To start ive decided to try post my photos on webshots the link is below. It has to be said I do think it pretty irritating to use and also it a pain for me to post them but at least u can all have an idea of whats generallly goin on. The link is below:

http://community.webshots.com/user/zeydorf

Ill try to make more captions on the pics as they are uploaded cos as they say pics speak a thousand words :).

Wow its been ages since ive updated my blog. Firstly I will take on a few comments that have been made about it and what my thoughts on this are.
I have been told recently by a number of different people that my blog is very long (true) and very detailed (also I think it is pretty true – but believe it or not I think I could have said a bit more but held back incase it turned into a novel). There have been some mixed feelings on the quality of the blog due to these aforementioned problems. I can fully understand that if you just wanna see what the hell im doing and maybe get a quick feeling for the HK culture then im not being too helpful. People are gonna look at it and think im gonna need all night + several cups of coffee to get thorough this!
However, I came to the decision that im fundamentally (see got some sort of physics related word in there) doing this for a record for myself so I don’t forget everything once I leave. So basically (probably my second most favourite word after amazing) “malaka” to you all, im doing it as detailed as I like. (For all those not in HK or not greek your challenge for the week is to translate “malaka”) However this is a friendly malaka as I still want you all to keep reading this when you have time. Ill try to split massive posts like this into helpful paragraphs so you can all just chop away at it J.

Anyways that’s enough of my rant about the status of my thinking on my blog. Please feel free to comment further im always open for new ideas to see how this masterpiece can be applicable to all. I will now spilt the post into several titles and further subtitles for referencing purposes (so you can all talk about it later and not get mixed up J). Hard to follow you aint seen nothing yet!

Thursday 30th June

The Physics section

So lets kick off the mamoth task. I think I havent updated since Thursday so my memory is a bit hazy but well have a go and to quote Josin try to “remember every detail.” Thursday was our last day of work for the week and we were all a little excited and a little lazy at work (or at least I was anyway). I think Yorgos and I were doing our resistance vs temperature measurement of our titanium nitrate film that day. I found it a little exciting as ive not used liquid nitrogen for a while and the way they dispense the stuff is quite fun. For the non physicists, (well not in ic anyway) we basically have a huge tin can on hinges filled with the liquid nitrogen and we just tip it into our canister. Whereas in PolyU they take a huge long metal insulated pipe. Stick it into the same tin can and then use some elaborate system of air pumps to suck the stuff thorough the pipes and into a thermos flask. Now not only is the way we do it back home much easier it also leaves us money to store the liquid nitrogen in beautiful shiny evacuated holders (which supposedly cost around £80). Yes you heard it right they store liquid nitrogen in a thermos, but “actually” (I think only 3 people in the world will find that funny now, that is including me) I think its pretty cool (hehe get it – ok its bad) and there doesn’t seem to be any marked difference in the amount of time the stuff evaporates away. The amount of invention you can have when your dept doesn’t have much money.

The afternoon

So why is this section the afternoon surely you just wanna know about the the day we had. Well The reason that Thursday was the last day of the working week is because it was a national holiday to celebrate the hand over to China from the UK on the next day (1st July). Now I think I heard on the grape vine through other people, I have no idea who or maybe I was just deluding myself as usual that the ceremony to celebrate this wondrous occasion occurred at 6am in the convention centre. As we had no work the next day we were looking at a big night out or as the Greeks say a night for “putana” (another challenge for you all back at home).
Interestingly enough I heard I heard from my supervisior that the handover celebration was quite contraversial. There were going to be 2 demonstrations, one supporting it and the other opposing the chinese government. As much as I like demos unfortuantely I didn’t attend.
Actually J Thursday had seemed to turn into our film night. Last Thursday we went to see batman begins (its not too bad in my opinon – could have been worse, if you can see for £3 its worth it maybe not for a london £5 student price) this one we went after some disscussion to time square (its not america’s) intitially to go to a bar and meet some friend of Josin’s who he carted around (basically phoned him to tell him first we were in Lan Kwai and then we decided to go to time square). Fortunately Michelle managed to meet us in Time square after thinking we were going to Lan Kwai. So arriving in Lan Kwai at close to 12 oclock midnight (I told you there was SOME discussion) we ended up rushing into the cinema for the late showing of War of the Worlds. I felt really bad as we went up the escalator towards the film as we left Josin behind as he was still waiting for his mate. However as things transpired maybe Josin had a better time (he later told me he found a wicked bar). What can I say about War of the Worlds (WW) considering the original was made in the 1950’s I think and also created by the Wells who basically started Sci-fi genre, respect is due. However it was just a lot of cool special effects and quite a basic story line. Admittedly ive never read or seen the original but apart from a few good scenes which had a bit of suspense, I didn’t think there was much to it. A downloader movie

Friday the flag rasing

Coming out the war of the worlds there was the mandatory after film discussion that everyone had. Bad, good what we did and didn’t like. Just to serve the purpose of sharing a great experience or for making sure that the others feel as bad for seeing such a bad movie and wasting their money on it.
It was around 3 in the morning and I had the idea that it would be cool to stay up all night and try to see the sunrise and watch the Hong Kong flag being risen along with the Chinese Flag. I heard from Ricky I think (Ricky is one of the organisers for the Iaeste students here) that the flag raising was at 5.45am. This I found out later was completely wrong. This time was actually the time we were to wake up in halls to go see the flag raising. The only saving grace of this night is the fact that we never could have made it back to halls and got up for the flag rasing.

Our first mission was to find Kim, Yasmin, Annie and Caroline who were all waiting in Wan Chai for us after we came out of the Cinema. After walking around for about 10 minutes we were told we were in the area of Wan Chai. The best directions in the world were given to us, they were near a 7-11 on Lockhart road. Those of you not in HK need to know that there are 7-11’s everywhere and Lockhart road is VERY long. After asking a local shopkeeper we found out 20-30 minutes later we had walked in completely the opposite direction to where the girls were waiting for us. We had arrived in Causeway bay. Taking a reprise we stopped in a NEARBY 7-11 and had some food (well Markos and I did). It consisted of a microwaved pork and rice dish. Looking back at it now it would have been pretty tasty if I’d had a bit more to drink but it was really only just bout edible –nothing special at all. However I think this is the equivalent in HK of getting a Kebab after a big night out. However in this case the night had only just begun.

Another 30mins later and having lost Johan, Niko and Markos we managed to meet up with the girls. Being in the middle of Wan Chai (the place for naughty boys and girls) we decided to go to a bar have a few drinks and wait out the flag raising. We floundered upon a pretty nice Australian bar that we had visited previously before. Here it is around 140HKD for 6 bottles of Corona, which isnt too bad for HK prices.

This was the time that I tried to introduce everyone to the wonder of darts playing. However not only was the throwing line short every dart was completely different making a very interesting game for all. However we still managed to meet a few random people and have a game with them.

After the bar shut we wandered towards the convention centre to ready ourselves for flag rasing and obviously to get a new seat. It was approaching the magic hour (thanks to bob for teaching me this wonderful term) at around 5 or 6 ish and we caught all the security guards lining up and getting instructions for the day ahead. Then the fateful moment came as we approached the desk outside where the flag was to be raised and were told it didn’t happen till 8.30am. At the sound of there seemed to be a massive drain in energy of the whole group and everyone was knackered and wanted to head back. A taxi ride later (and no flags within vision) I was back home unmoving on my bed.

Getting up at 10.30am after going to bed at 7am probably wasn’t the best move but I couldn’t sleep – the beds here are like slabs of stone (supposedly made of sponge). Im told its meant to be healthy for your back. All I can say is it is very healthy for my getting up time.

Friday day was spent mostly recovering and doing laundry (I bet u all wanted to know thatJ ). Then Friday night was also massive, we hit Lan Kwai Fong again with the help of Shirly’s friend who showed us all around club hopping from here to there.

Now the final place we went into was really something to tell about. The place is call bar George – it sort of plays cheesy music (although I still didn’t think it was quite cheesey enough to be pure cheese). We all have to remember there are about 25 of us and bar George is pretty small. So when we all entered we pretty took over the whole joint. I was dancing away to some nice music when a waitress came up to me and asked if I would like a drink. I told her very kindly that I was fine and thanked her for asking. Just a few minutes later a heavy handed tap was on my shoulder. As I turned round the bouncer was behind me and asked if I would like a drink, I thought it strange and kindly replied that I was fine. The bouncer subsequently took me from the dance floor whispered in my ear “just one mate” and then prodded me in the direction of the bar. I succumed and bought a pretty nice pint of Kilkenny. The situation didn’t piss me off as much I thought it would have – what really narcked me off was the fact that he subsequently went round to everyone asking them to take a drink. Obvioulsy we all left (I felt most sorry for the DJ who was playing to 2 people then around 30 and then none) and made our way back to halls at around 4 or 5 oclock in the mornin. The night ended with us going back to Kim + Yasmin’s / Annie’s room (they are toilet mates – share a toilet) and drinking into the early hours of the morinin.

Saturday

So once again arising early (crazy eh) we all went for a trip to the beach. Im gettin really tired of writing now so ill just say it was a amazing and will post some pics. We played football swam for ages and genreally took it easy after a massive few days of outings. The only down was that Niko badly scraped the skin off his foot after playing fottie and the rag that he got to cover it proabably was better used for toilet paper.

Once again Sunday day was used for rest and recovery. I cant remember anything too interesting happinin on Sunday so I think now is time for those of you who are getting bored to take a quick rest and have a coffee and ready yourself for the next installment. I only remember Johan and I cleanin our room moppin and drying with newspaper sheets from the dustbin. Wasn’t that interesting!!!

The late update

2005-07-02T12:20:00.000+08:00

Hi everyone, sorry ive been a little lazy recently as now its already saturday and ive not updated since thurs it seems. Any ways as you can imagine a lot has been happening. Ill probably do a series of posts as there are a few days missing and also it means there aint a huge massive beast of a post where you can get lost and not restart again halfway through. Today im off to repulse bay (which is a beach) here is the link so you can all be envious of me:).

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/hongkong/island/bay.htm

I'll update you all on thursday night and into friday - as it was massive, as soon as possible. Lets just say this the friday was the 1st July which was a public holiday commemorating the hand over of HK to China. I think I somehow got it into my head that it would be good to try and all nighter to see the 1st of July in. I apologise now to those who are reading this and came with me on that day the rest of you will find out why later.
Im off to the beach now and will update hopefully tonight.

The aftermath

2005-06-30T14:39:00.000+08:00

The evening started well with the thermocouple being fixed allowing us to produce a titanium film on a silcon wafer (very interesting eh!). Today we will be testing the beast to see its resistance and temperature properties and see if it give off any GMR (look for yourself if your interested enough what this stands for - however if you take the time im sure ull throughly appreciate it just like I did :)).

After this we went to Mong kok to help some others buy some digital cameras. In my case is was a lot of walking around and finding out that I could not afford to get a 1GB memory card or and extra battery for my camera. After walking around until I was very tired I went back to halls with a few others as I coudn't be bothered to walk around Mong Kok with nothing to buy. When we got back I was completely knackered and hunrgy so I agreed to go to eat dinner in Hung Hom (which is where are halls are situated) with 5 other women (reluctantly :) ). We went to a nice local place where there we no menus in English but some of the women with us were from HK studying in HK. One was Rainbow (seriously that is her name) and she help me to pick some sort of noodle dish with pork which wasnt too bad but not amazin. (dont worry some pics will come later - im having problems at work with ip conflicts but ive almmost managed to get my laptop running win 98 to share files with the desktop in my office running xp - arn't I great!!)

Anyways after eating, the others I was eating with went ot Lan Kwai fong (the party district of HK) and I went back to halls to go to Lan Kwai with all the others (who are actually iaeste students - whereas the peeps I was eating with weren't and we only met through sheer randomness one day).

Then as the majority of the Iaeste group had not eaten yet and had just come back from Mong Kok we went to eat again. (This seems to be quite a thing in HK where people just keep on eating). The restaurant had pretty good food and the beer was really cheap. A special chinese brand was served to us called kingway in a massive 0.65 of a litre bottle (which I believe is more than a pint) and cost only 10HKD. This is less than a pound - and I think it tasted much better than cheapo carlsberg "best beer in the world."

After a quick taxi ride to Lan Kwai (the taxis are pretty cheap as you can get 5 people in one taxi) we eventually found the "C club" where the women we were meeting (the ones I had dinner with) were. The weather btw (you know the british can never stop talking about the weather) was atrocious. We think we got it bad when it rains in the UK. In Hong Kong not only does it rain but u get typhoons! I think last night it was just one that could fill a swimming pool in a few minutes - where your unbrella only give you partial coverage from the onslaught.

Back to the point, we tried to get into C club but unfortunately the new iaeste trainee who arrive last night was wearing shorts was not allowed in. As we waited outside for a few minutes figuring out what to do we saw a guy walk in with shorts. After a small heated discussion with the bouncer we found out that he was a vip and had booked a table. So we got the number of the club off the bouncer and I rang it from the front door. After expaining the situation to some woman on the phone I got to speak to the manager. He conceeded to come out of the club and meet us.

By this time everyone was standing on the doorway to his club so when he came out we had a quick plead and seeing aobubt 15-20 potential people ready to leave if he didnt let one guy in he waved us all past the bouncer.
That I think was the most eventful part of the night out. The C club is pretty nice with very nice plush chairs and a few podiums to dance in if you feel really outgoing or just plain wasted. They mainly play R&B believe it or not (oh my gosh) but also a little bit of hip hop i think. Unfortunately im not really the greatest fan of it all but I can just about dance to it. This is also the 2nd time ive been to C club so I would really like to check some other places out. All in all it was a pretty enjoyable night although the getting up for work this morning was not so good.

I arose at 9.38am and got in uni for around 20 past 10. Didnt do any work until 12.30 and then went ot lunch. At about 3 after lunch we tested the titanium coated films we made yesterday getting a resistance versus temperature curve - but unfortunately our curve was wrong as it had loads of steps when it was meant to be a straight line.

Thats the update for the mo will keep it alive and give feedback on war of the worlds tomos (which were gonna see tonight incidentally)

Last night 29th June - The Parade

2005-06-29T12:15:00.000+08:00

Well what did happen last night. I got everyone motivated to go see a parade in Wan Chai that supposedly only happens twice a year in HK (as Josin told me). However, as we got to the parade it was called a Lion parade. This is supposedly a massive charity organisation that has members all over the world. Ill post a few photos of the parade later - basically it was just a massive march of people from their respective countries. Had a bit of a demo feel with all the placards waving about.

Then after looking at the parade for a few minutes we went to have some dinner. We found a small ish local restaurant. The food was pretty good and Martin one of the new Iaeste students from Germany also came along. There were about 10 of us, unfortunately both Shirly and Richard didnt eat with us due to food difficulties and both Kim and Yasmin both had eaten already (although a coffee and ice cream I dont consider to be a great dinner :)).

Obviously some of these name will make no sense to those back in the UK reading this (or actually anyone who is not in HK with me) but ill post some pics so you all can have a bit of reference.

After our antics in Wan Chai we went back home played and bit of table tennis. The halls have snooker, pool, 4 table tennis courts and a swimming pool all for free use which i think is pretty amazin.

Tonight is Ladies night where the women get in free to the clubs and get free drinks (crazy eh!). Were all intending to go out as a big group i'll keep you all updated as to what happens and will try to take loads of pics.

Anyways on the physics front - for anyone thats interested - we had a slight problem with our experiment, in the fact that the thermocouple stopped working so out holder was at around 260 degrees when we thought it was at around 36 degrees. This meant that our substrate was completely oxidised (which is not a good thing). The thermocouple will be fixed this afternoon and well have to start the whole experiment again damn!!

Trying out the pics

2005-06-28T15:36:00.000+08:00

Hehe I figure out the posting pics all by myself. This is a pic from the peak (highest point in HK) where we ended up in a Hard rock cafe. I bought this shirt for only 180HK dollars (which will now forth be named as just HKD) which i think is approximately 16 pounds (damn these chinese keyboards no pound sign).

This pic was not taken by me unfortunately nor by my camera as a little bit of thought may help you to conclude (as im in it). I henceforth will try my best to only post pics taken by me or my camera thus not taking credit for others pics :) (like some people I wont mention (Josin)). Anyways looks like all this physics is still keeping my mind alert to the point where I can figure out how to post pics on my own. Next its how to post movies (if its even possible).

My first Post

2005-06-28T15:06:00.000+08:00

Amazingly enough I'm at work atm. Trying to look for certain conditions for producing a Titanium film on a Silicon wafer (for the physicists out there - come on you know you wanted to know). Anyways im having a really good time in HK. Theres loads of iaeste and aiesec students here and we all get along famously (that sounds really cliche eh?).

Hopefully ill be able to add some pics for you all to see soon. Supposedly Grace knows how to do it so she'll teach me soon and ull all be able to see my antics and the wonderful new pics taken from my new Cannon Ixus 50 I bought here in HK. Anyways im not sure what im going to do tonight but ill try to update this once every 2 days (at least) so itll be also a nice reminder for myself of my trip. I hope all of you who read this are in full appreciation of all the hard work im putting in here :).