Welp—looks like my blog development cycle of three weeks is a little too long. (Guess I procrastinate even when things are enjoyable 😭). Literally so much has happened, it’s a little difficult to format this post, so to make it easier upon myself and to give you a more accurate day-by-day picture, I’ll just make this chronological. I promise the next one won’t take three weeks!
Can you tell when I was in quarantine?
Sunday, Sep. 5th
Remember how I said I’m recruiting? Well, that includes bombing a Palantir Hackerrank (coding assessment that I got 1/3 questions correct on). Nice. Definitely not getting an interview there. Pizza Hut for dinner, but note that a Hong Kong “large” is a US “medium”. Interesting flavor: Cheesy Crust w/ Salmon + Tomato Pizza? (It was good) The other two were a standard Hawaiian with added mushrooms and a flatbread cheese pizza. Explained how SWE recruiting works to my aunt after dinner as well—she didn’t know how the typical move is to apply to 50+ locations and only hear back from (if you’re lucky) 5. Classes start tomorrow, but I don’t get to move in to my dorm until Tuesday. Welp.
Random note: the “close door” button in an elevator actually works when you press it, instead of being on a mandatory ADA timer. There’s been a few times where I’ve awkwardly stood there with no one else, thinking the door would close soon, but nope, you gotta press it.
Monday, Sep. 6th
First day of class. Took the subway to campus and started scurrying around like a little rat to all the different classes I was considering. Because I have no clue which classes will transfer back to Dartmouth for credit yet, I have to hit up pretty much every class I am considering, which led me to four different classrooms scattered around this 1.373 km2 campus built on a hillside. For reference, Dartmouth’s campus is only .95 km2 in the shape of a square, the CUHK mountain puts Dartmouth’s “college on a hill” to shame, and the weather is a nice and consistent 31°C at ~80% humidity. You can probably imagine how sweaty I was. Thank goodness there’s a free and robust campus bus system, which I got the chance to learn how to ride today. The course to highlight for today was my “Global Politics” class, taught by a Japanese Professor who worked in the Japanese Embassy to Hong Kong. Super cool class that was going to be discussing international relations and a multitude of other subjects as it pertains to today’s political climate and how the emergence of China has influenced global politics. What a cool course to take while studying abroad, right?
(I was honestly really hoping I would be able to take this course, but once I sent the syllabus to Dartmouth’s Gov department, they denied it, citing the lack of academic rigor—the number of exams and essays—for this course. Thanks, gov department!)
Another thing to note today was just how weird it was to be an ethnic majority here. Like, I knew that before coming, but knowing it and seeing it in person is a completely different experience. (It’s a little creepy that I can sometimes spot lookalikes to some of my Dartmouth friends from home 😂). For an Asian-American, I would even argue it’s almost as much of a cultural shock as it is for a White person from the US suddenly finding themselves a minority. For us ABC’s, though, it’s a different kind of shock—for example, canteen workers may start off talking to me in Cantonese, only for me to shake my head and say “Sorry, English?” before I start giving them my order. More on my language struggles later.
It’s a little unfortunate that I’m the only Darty on exchange here—in a normal year, we have five Dartmouth students on exchange at the same time that you can stick around with for the first few weeks as we all make new friends. Because of this and because it was my first day without knowing any other students yet, it was kind of lonely as I travelled from class to class. Honestly, it’s a little bit of a relief to see someone with blonde hair in my class, as I can assume with high probability that they’re also an exchange student, and many a contact and WhatsApp group have been exchanged this way (over the course of the following days).
Also totally random, but wow, a lot of people wear glasses. The 62% of 12-year olds with myopia statistic is really evident. Also also totally random, but being 6′ 1″ (186 cm) makes me appear even taller than back in the states, where I was already pretty tall. I can pretty much see above everyone else’s heads in the subway cars haha
Tuesday, Sep. 7th
Dorm (“hostel”) move-in day. My uncle and I hailed a taxi to take us to campus with my luggage, and I arrived around noon.
During check-in, I finally met another exchange student for the first time (Fabian, from Germany!). Following check-in, I went up to my room to find my roommate still sleeping, so I just left my luggage, took a few pictures, and headed off to class. After coming back, I finally found him awake, so we introduced ourselves and I got to learn a lot about him! His name is Stephen, and super luckily for me, he’s a Hong Kong native who’s able to speak Cantonese, Mandarin, and English, so I found no difficulty in communicating, and he explained all of the dorm’s logistics to me. (The one really weird thing is the bathrooms don’t have toilet paper rolls so you need to get your own).
During that time, I noticed a large monitor outside of our room along with some large bags of what looked to be random things (an umbrella, some paper, beach balls, etc.), and asked Stephen about it. He said that it was stuff left over from new student orientation and was planned to be thrown out later, to which I subsequently freaked out and asked him if that included the monitor (it did). Seriously, who just plans to throw out an entirely good monitor away 😨… So, naturally, I took the monitor inside and asked my uncle for an HDMI cable, and that’s the story of how I got a free 27-inch monitor to use for the semester when I wasn’t planning on it 😂
Afterwards, Stephen took me down to the student canteen which is on the lower levels of our dorm lobby, which makes it quite convenient to get meals (except for the long lines). Afterwards, I just went back up to my room and Stephen went to do stuff for the night. (click to expand photos)
Wednesday, Sep. 8th – Friday, Sep. 10th
So, turns out that he didn’t get back to the room until 8am Wednesday morning :))))) Anyways, I managed to run around and try a bunch of the canteens around campus (there’s over 30!). Classes attended these past few days: CSCI 3160 (Design and Analysis of Algorithms, Dartmouth’s CS 31 equivalent) ESSC 2800 (Environmental Engineering, ENGS 37 equivalent), MAEG 3050 (Control Systems, ENGS 26 equivalent), CENG 4800 (Embedded Systems, close to ENGS 28), GRMD 1302 (People, Space, and Place, GEOG 2.01 equivalent), MAEG 3010 (Mechanics of Materials, close to ENGS 33), MATH 3230 (Numerical Methods, close to CS 71/ENGS 91), and MAEG 4040 (Mechatronic Systems, close to ENGS 28 too). I’ve also spent a lot of time working on course selection logistics and emails. Wednesday night, I stopped by the local supermarket on campus to pick up snacks, shampoo, and laundry detergent, which was super convenient to have nearby (it’s stocked with much more than the CVS in Hanover). One annoyance I have with the campus is that almost all canteens are closed by 8 or 8:30pm, with few options elsewhere after that point on, hence a reason I wanted to visit the shop and pick up snacks. Because I’m still learning the bus routes on campus, I got lost coming back to my dorm when I hopped on the wrong bus, but at least it got me to walk around the campus at night a little more.
Now, on Friday, I got the funniest email: Juliet Wilson, a recruiter at Appian (a tech company), reached out for an interview back in early August, and subsequently ghosted me after it (even with a follow-up email). Now, she reaches out on Handshake, leaving me confused as to what to do, so I play dumb and send a response (see picture #2), to which I get a response saying that she did follow up! (A quick search in my inbox and junk mail turns up nothing). Ah, the joys of recruiting season.
Saturday, Sep. 11th – Sunday, Sep. 12th
A day of remembrance for the United States, but a day of fun and adventure for me in Hong Kong. I woke up pretty late, and immediately took the subway back to my aunt’s house. We got dressed, and she took me to dinner at a Thai restaurant with one of her old friends who now works at Citibank. Afterwards, we walked along Victoria Harbor before heading into the 香港文化中心 (Hong Kong Cultural Center) for a concert by the Hong Kong Philharmonic. Program of the night: Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (a piece I’m currently trying to learn) and Dvorak’s 7th Symphony. I want to say it was because it was the first in-person concert I’d been to since COVID, but honestly, the performance was just so good that I straight up sobbed during the 18th variation (16:25). Avan Yu, the pianist for the piece, is straight up #goals (plz plz plz I wanna be that good 😩😩😩😩) and he played Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 2 as an encore. Unrelated: Coincidentally, a friend in Seoul witnessed Valentina Lisitsa’s 7-encore piano recital at about the exact same time. Enjoy the photodump:
Sunday was much more relaxed. Went out to a noodle shop in Mong Kok with my aunt and cousins, and went back and watched a movie before heading back to my dorm.
Me about to smack my cousin for being annoying (jk)
Week 2: Monday, Sep. 13th – Friday, Sep. 17th
Monday was my first time doing laundry here. The wash cycle is pretty standard (you pay with your Octopus card) but the drying cycle is only 15 minutes per cycle. Stephen (my roommate) says that there’s normally a water extracting machine that further spins out moisture from your clothes after the wash cycle, but it was currently awaiting maintenance so I had to use two high-temp cycles to fully dry everything. Tonight was also the night that add-drop opens, and after dinner, I earnestly awaited the opening of the add-drop window at 8:30pm. Unfortunately, as soon as it opened, the system ground to a halt (as expected), and the drop requests I made for my original class selections took too long to process, denying me the chance to enroll in my preferred courses immediately. Beyond that, some of the courses also had prerequisites which weren’t loaded for me in the online system (since they would be coming from Dartmouth), which meant I now had to individually visit each academic department on campus to obtain approval for waiving those prerequisites.
Tuesday involved much more walking. Besides the one class I had that day (Control Systems), I had to walk around to the different buildings of each department to obtain approval for adding my preferred courses. Even better was the fact that not all of my courses were approved by Dartmouth faculty yet, so it wasn’t even a guarantee that all the courses I was adding would be the ones I stuck with. On an unrelated note, I finally heard back from one of my preferred companies for a final round interview, giving me a much needed boost of energy to keep preparing for them.
Wednesday was more uneventful, but I did get to meet some more international students from Germany/The Netherlands during dinner in our college canteen. That night, I also went to our college team’s table tennis tryouts to see if I could join for fun, but there were literally so many people (and many of them very good) that I doubt I would make it 😅.
Thursday was more of the same. I managed to visit the bubble tea shop on campus which is nestled next to one of canteens, and it was quite good! During the evening, I went to the second night of tryouts for the University Tennis Team (I missed the first night), trying to gauge how good the team is. Turns out, holy crap, they’re good. Like, “they could go pro if they wanted good”. There was only one other person who wasn’t at the first day but was there tonight, and the coach ended up making me hit with him the whole time. Everyone else was ripping consistent 70 mph forehands while he and I were pushing the ball at maybe 50 mph, missing every fourth shot. I even broke a string during the session and had to go back to the gym to borrow another racquet. The “tryout” seemed more like a practice session for the team rather than a real “tryout,” so I basically don’t have any hope of joining this team.
Fridays are free days for me as the courses I chose are only Monday-Thursday, so today was super fun. Throughout the week, a bunch of the Asian-American exchange students made a WhatsApp group, and we planned to watch Shang-Chi today at our nearby mall. Even if we didn’t have the student discount, the movie would’ve totally been worth its 100 HKD ticket price. A lot of the jokes about ABC identity and language hit home with the Hong Kong audience, and not to mention the amazing movie soundtrack also totally slapped. Seriously, go see it if you haven’t! Afterwards, we met up with 3 other exchange students and ate dinner at a nearby Yunnan Rice Noodle shop. I got to practice my Mandarin a little by helping the group read the menu and make their orders (throwback to Han Fusion, anyone?), and luckily for the group, I also got to help cover the bill with cash (I had just enough) since the restaurant didn’t take credit card. Some of the more exotic dishes that the other exchange students hadn’t tried before were Century Egg and Ox Tongue Beef Tripe. Sorry, I only got one picture there because I blew out my brains with the spiciness of the noodles:
I think now’s a good time to continue the conversation from above about Asian-American (specifically Chinese- or Taiwanese-American) identity in HK: Personally, I feel a kind of “social double standard” when it comes to my language abilities; as one of the friends in the movie group said, “people sometimes give you a strange look of ‘why are you speaking English?’ that the non-Asian exchange students don’t get, or that you don’t get, for example, if you were a White American exchange student in a European country who wasn’t able to speak that country’s language.” Notwithstanding my 10-week excursion into my first language with Dartmouth’s Chinese 4 course, my cousins will still sometimes make fun of me for not knowing how to read most of the items on a menu, or when I have to pull out my phone to look up a phrase that they said to me. And I get that they’re joking, but it’s still a small stab in the heart when their offhand comments remind me of what I gave up in order to take the path that I did in life, one that didn’t include maintaining my first native language. I am still aware of how lucky I am that I can fluently pronounce words in Mandarin with accurate tones because of my parents’ choice to speak it with me at home, but Chinese as a non-phonetic language is inherently more difficult to learn for English speakers than most other languages due to the lack of connection between speaking and reading/writing. As a result, only being able to speak (with limited vocabulary in the first place) leaves a lot to be desired with regards to reading enough to survive (which I am unable to). I’m certain that if I wanted to continue studying the language, I could reach a level of fluency, but with all the other commitments I have, ones that I also value deeply, it’s difficult to find time to study the language as I should if I seriously wanted to improve, thus adding to my frustration on this issue. I don’t know where I’m going with this, and there’s no real lesson or solution to take away, but I guess it’s good that more people are aware of this side of the story. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Saturday, Sept. 18th – Sunday, Sept. 19th
On Saturday, I took the MTR down to Hong Kong Island to check out a barbershop that a friend recommended. Walking in gave me serious NYC vibes, but they did do a seriously good job with the fade, so I’m happy 👌
Sunday turned from being a small lunch w/ a new friend to being a whole-day walking tour of Kowloon (after I was told that most of the canteens are closed on Sundays). During the subway ride, I got to know a Stanford exchange student (one of seven!) by the name of Jessica Chen studying computer science! It turns out many of the Stanford students are also computer science students, but most aren’t taking computer science courses here for some unknown reason. Upon arrival, we met up with the rest of the group (including a student from UPenn who played the cello!) and walked to a German restaurant nearby. Afterwards, we visited the K11 Musea (a really fancy) mall and found a bubble tea shop, “The Alley”, to have drinks at. A few of the others had just gotten out of quarantine, so they also wanted to stop by a store to pick up items. On the way back, I told Stefan (the cellist from UPenn) about another upcoming Hong Kong Philharmonic concert, and it turns out, he actually played a piece that they would be performing next weekend, so he bought us both tickets for the concert. Besides the fun times, I also did two mock interviews with friends from home in preparation for a final round interview coming up Monday. Once again, enjoy the photodump:
Monday, Sept. 20th – Thursday, Sept. 23rd
On Monday, I got around to visiting our University Library. It’s actually insanely cool—it has a makerspace on the lower level complete with 3D printers, a laser cutter, a VR setup, and even ultra-wide (50 in?) monitor setups for content creation software, and gigantic study spaces for all the students.
That night was also the night of a final round interview with Amazon. They slotted me for 9am Pacific Time, which was 12am for me on the next day (Tuesday)! The interviewer gave me a ridiculously hard problem which I hadn’t encountered before known as the assignment problem. (TLDR: see this description). I struggled to come up with a more optimized solution, so my interviewer just told me to implement the brute-force recursive solution which ran in factorial time, which I did. I came out of that interview feeling like I had absolutely bombed because of how hard the problem was; in fact, I was so mad that I called up friends from back home to rant about it lol; from then on, only time would tell the actual outcome of the interview.
Tuesday was 中秋節 (Mid-Autumn Festival), so after class, I went back to my aunt’s house for a family pizza dinner and ice cream mooncakes. This time, the interesting flavor was 北京烤鴨 (Peking Duck), which I liked more than the salmon from last time. I also ended up staying the night since I found out there were no classes on Wednesday. Wednesday morning, I got to try 留心月餅 (custard-filled mooncake) for breakfast, and my older cousin brought me to a 小吃店(literally “small eats” shop) after dinner for some bubble tea. Cultural Aside: there’s really no good translation for 小吃, which is larger than what we would call a “snack”, and smaller than a full-on meal. There’s tons of these places around, though, and they make for super delicious fillers between meals or as a late-night snack. While I was there, I also managed to fix a problem with the sustain pedal on their upright piano, thus giving me some much-needed practice time while I prepare music that I’ll be playing in winter term!
Showcased below is what I call the “Duality of the MTR”: one packed full for everyone rushing home for the holiday, and another basically empty the night of the holiday.
Thursday morning had me on an interview call with an IBM team, which went well, and afterwards, I went to class and did laundry again. For fun, some exchange students in the dorm went down to our common area to play some foosball and table tennis after dinner, and I gladly joined to get to know them.
Friday, Sept. 24th
Morning started with the good news that I received an offer from Amazon! I plan to keep interviewing for other companies until my offer expires, but this certainly gives me a lot of relief to know I’ve found an internship for the summer. For lunch, I head down with some friends to the Cafe attached to our hostel. Our orders (my order of a waffle breakfast, a croissant, and a latte, and my friends’ order of a loaded hot dog) certainly did not disappoint:
I followed this up by running errands to reapply for my student octopus card, whose online application was denied for some reason, and for the payment of my dorm fees. I had to call up Chase bank at 2am EDT to get them to increase my withdrawal limit for the day up to $1,000 USD in order to get enough to pay haha. The semester only costs 7,197 HKD in rent, which is about $925 USD (crazy cheap)!
I stop by my dorm to change once more before heading down to the MTR station to meet up with Stefan (the cellist) before heading to Kowloon to have dinner with my cousins. We chose a high-end Japanese hotpot place called Tadsuka Nojo which is located in Harbour City, the largest mall in Hong Kong stretching the length of five piers on the edge of the harbor! (Google it!) Following a pricey $1200 HKD dinner split for four, we rushed to the Cultural Center just in time to get into the concert hall before the first piece began. The program that night featured a modern piece to start followed by the Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto (a famous concerto written by two Chinese composers back in the 1950s while they were students at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music) performed by American violinist Nancy Zhou, and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition (epic Russian composer and piece, you get the vibe?).
Now, there was a catch for this concert: just as we got to our seats and sat down, the lights dimmed and an announcement came over the PA: “Please stand for the National Anthem of the People’s Republic of China.” This came as a complete surprise to me because I had forgotten that the theme of the concert was for China’s National Day (which is actually October 1st, but there were no concerts planned next weekend). The anthem was actually really cool to hear played by an orchestra, but afterwards, there was only a smattering of applause as opposed to the normal lengthy applause of a classical music concert (to be expected in Hong Kong LOL).
After the Butterfly Lovers’ Concerto (which was so amazing, I had chills the whole way through), the audience had to clap long enough to get Nancy Zhou to come out on stage three more times before she finally acquiesced and gave us an encore of a famous Chinese Folk Song (to which I forgot the name) with the conductor sitting at the piano as accompaniment (did you know most conductors were also pianists before they became conductors?). Mussorgsky was, of course, amazing as usual, with the huge ending at the Gates of Kiev being inspiring as always.
And thus, this brings me to today, the day I’m writing this. Lastly, random pics that didn’t fit elsewhere:
As such, this brings an end to this absolutely packed update. Reminder to comment and subscribe with your email if you haven’t and you’ll get notified of my next post automatically! And @Dartmouth folks, keep me updated with what’s happening back on campus :)))))
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