Bryan in Hong Kong

This has been a very busy week. Finals ended yesterday. Thus begins my 37-day winter break!

Yesterday I also moved into my new apartment on campus, which has a very nice sea-view both from the living room and my bedroom. I’ll post pics soon. I’ve only briefly met one of my three flat-mates, they may have gone home for break.

Tomorrow (Christmas eve!) Kelly is flying in from Malaysia to visit for a week. We’ll be traveling around HK until Thursday when we’ll go to Macau for a few days. Definitely going to be fun.

I also bought my ticket to Bangkok, and ticket to Shanghai. I’ll post more info about these trips next week.

Already starting to enjoy the break. For dinner tonight we went to a nearby town called Sai Kung that is famous for seafood (pics). I suspect we’ll be going there a lot next semester, the food is amazing. Anyways, better get some rest tonight for sightseeing tomorrow!

Oh, and my new address is:

Bryan Stroube
The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
University Apartments, Tower B, Apt. 609D
Clear Water Bay, Kowloon
Hong Kong

Half-way through exams. Two more to go: math Wednesday and econometrics Friday.

I had dinner at a Thai restaurant tonight. Even the restaurants in the standard shopping malls are very nicely designed, and you can tell a lot of effort went into creating the atmosphere, except… this was the second time I’ve noticed what could become a disturbing trend… the restaurant looped the same song the entire time I was there. There were no words, but it was clearly a Kenny G style saxophone version of James Blunt’s “You’re Beautiful”. Just imagine hearing that 10-20 times in a row!

This follows an experience at a Korean restaurant last month that looped a single Black Eyed Peas song the entire night. After about 5 times, your mind starts playing tricks on you. I don’t know how many times I thought I heard the beginning of a new song, but then it turned out to be the same one again! Anyways, just thought it was worth sharing :)

OK, this is an entirely random post, but I just noticed that Evansville got a serious quality upgrade on Google. Apparently nobody was outside in the yard when the satellite snapped this image, but you can clearly see the cracks in the streets. And check out the people at Purdue. The quality of campus in HK is still quite good, but doesn’t appear to have been upgraded:

Amazing to think that we’re already beginning the last week of classes, followed by two weeks for exams and then winter break. Seems like the first semester has gone so quickly. Taking a short break from studying to make a post.

In other news, we finally played the electrical engineerings in basketball yesterday (reschedule from rain last week). I’m pretty sure they won by at least twice our score. I’ve now proven my hypothesis that a slight height advantage is no replacement for skill. Also, met some people from the Purdue Club Hong Kong Friday, which was fun. Still amazed by the sheer number of people on the streets in downtown Hong Kong (Wan Chai, Causeway Bay), especially on a friday night.

I’ve been using a cell phone in Hong Kong for awhile now, and I’m so impressed that I thought the topic deserves a post.

I can call the US, China, Hong Kong, and most of Europe directly from my cell phone (no cards) for about US $0.03 /min! Back in Indiana, I literally couldn’t call Kentucky for that price (on a basic Cingular monthly plan, that would cost about US $0.09 /min …and who knows how much it costs to call Hong Kong).

Here’s how it works:

• Bring tri-band phone from US
• Buy SIM card in Hong Kong (about $6 USD)
• Add money to card as needed

Such a simple and versatile system.

I guess the big question is why hasn’t a similar system evolved in the US (I’ve used similar systems in Europe). Consumers have much greater choice, because the actual phone and airtime charges are separated. Consequently, cell phones stores are everywhere here. I’m sure someone has already done a PhD dissertation on this…