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I found out last week that there are two Swat alums teaching at CUHK, which was a pleasant surprise. I got an e-mail from one of them, inviting me to chat with him and his colleague, which I did last Thursday. Turns out they were both international students at the time ('73 and '75), one from Hong Kong and the other from Shanghai. I spoke to them in Cantonese too, which was kind of funny.

In other news, I managed to get kicked out of the original dorm I was living in. They are extremely uptight with the dorm regulations here, at least within the college I'm affiliated with. They got me for having a friend over past visiting hours. The whole process was so dumb, but ultimately, after two weeks of trying to appeal the decision to remove me from housing entirely, they agreed to let me do twenty hours of "community service" and to give me another place to stay. I suppose I'm pretty grateful that I still have a dorm to live in, but I'm pretty angry for how they dealt with the situation. Most of the people I had to talk to were really condescending, and treated me like some kind of criminal. It was only after apologizing a lot and showing incredible remorse, when I managed to wiggle my way out of what would have been an unimaginably rough situation of having no housing on campus.

Well, I'm glad that's out of my mind. It was lingering in the back of my head for the past three weeks and kind of stressing me out. Now, I'm free to worry about more trivial things, like finishing my problem sets and finding the new episode of Heroes online. Does anyone have access to that, by the way? I can't stream it off NBC since I'm not in the U.S., and I think I'm going to cry if I can't watch that anytime soon.

I tagged along with Shella and Dennis to CU Danso (the school's dance group) this afternoon, and it was a bit chaotic. I realize (and suppose, I already knew) -- I can't dance. Or at least, I'm pretty awkward when I try. You know, I keep thinking I'm still young and quick to learn things, so I should still experiment with new and unfamiliar things while I have the chance. At the very least, I'll gain a bit more perspective, right? But a part of me feels like I've pretty much established what I'm like, and it's hard to break out of what is familiar. I don't know. Maybe I should just loosen up and quit being so uptight?

I spent some time with my relatives in Hong Kong last week, after not seeing them for eight years. It was great! For the first time since coming here, I felt like I was taking a step towards finding out something about myself. My aunts told me about what my mother was like when she was younger, and how I'm a lot like her. My grandma's sister-in-law told me and my brother about how her husband passed away, in such elaborate detail. They were together for more than forty years, and shared something very special. It was beautiful how much she remembered -- down to exactly what they ordered to eat that morning, during dim-sum. And the way she told it made me think about how unexpectedly one can go. No one whose day brushed up against his knew that he was going to suffer a heart attack that very day, at 6pm. And that it was going to take his life, four hours later.

We also went to pay respects to my grandma, grand-uncle, and great grandmother last Sunday. It makes me a little sad that I'm one of the youngest ones in the family, so I've spent very little time with my older relatives. I wish I could just sit down with my grandparents now that I'm a little older, and talk to them. Two of my grandparents were already gone when I was born. My father's father passed away when I was ten, and my mother's mother passed away during my freshman year of college. It was a really sad fall break that year -- I went to visit her while she was paralyzed in the hospital. I had a whole conversation with her, because I was told she can actually hear what I say. I don't know if that was true, but thinking that and seeing her lay there paralyzed, made me feel something I'll certainly have a hard time forgetting.

Anyway, I don't mean to bring this post to such a serious note. I'm going to share with you a few photos:


Dinner with the famz.


Visiting my little cousin at the sushi place she works at.


We went to see the Big Buddha, but arrived too late. So we just took pictures outside.


The cable car ride to see the Buddha.


Lanterns on display during Mid-Autumn Festival.


Clams at some cheap side-street restaurant on Temple Street.


Dim sum at 3am, after a night in LKF.

Sigur Ros is performing in Tokyo on my birthday, and I really want to see them live but know that flying there and staying for a few days is unrealistic. But how sick would that be?!?! Probably the most memorable birthday, ever. Sad face. :-(