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:

Happy thanksgiving everyone! Well no turkey here, just another standard day.

Thanksgiving dinner, HK style:

Still have a bit of free time left before I have to really get ready for finals. Had another basketball game last Saturday against the mechanical engineering grad students which was fun. Went salsa dancing Saturday night, and museums downtown on Sunday. Got dad’s ticket to Shanghai booked for January and am trying to finish the rest of my winter break plans. First week will be here in HK while some friends visit. The next week will be somewhere outside HK (beach in Thailand or city in Tokyo, what do you think?) and the final two weeks will be on the road (err… train) with dad on the mainland (thinking Shanghai, Xi’an, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Hong Kong).

A few days ago I went downtown to find a new pair of shoes, which turned out to be more difficult than expected. Walking down the street in Hong Kong, you would think that selling shoes is second in popularity only to selling cell phones. Apparently my feet are too big though, as no one seemed to carry size 12 or 13. There was even a really nice Rockport store in the mall, which I was sure would have something in my size, but didn’t carry anything over 11! I finally found a 12 at a sports store, so I now have some new kicks for Sunday’s b-ball gave against the electrical engineerings.

The MSc econ students had a basketball game today against the MSc IT students. Referees and everything. A lot of fun, and we even won by three points. Apparently some of the other master’s programs have teams too, so this could become a semi-regular event :)

Just finished my last midterm exam yesterday, which means exams are over until finals start next month (though still have a big project due soon).

Also, some new photos up.

The November 7th general election is quickly approaching. I just faxed in my request for a ballot this afternoon. If you’re voting absentee in Indiana, check here for the forms.

It’s my one-and-only brother’s birthday today. So instead of sending him a real card, I’m dedicating this blog post to him:

Dear Sam,

Happy birthday!

Your brother,
Bryan

And… in his honor, this post is filed under “random” and “holidays”. Happy b-day dude.

Sam (my younger brother in New York) has just put up some of his amazing September 11th, 2006 NYC photos. Very nice. Please check them out and leave him a comment if you have a flickr account. Click below.