Sunday 11th
I went on a ferry to go to Discovery Bay, Lantau Island, to meet up with family friends who live there and have lunch at their place. The ferry ride was pretty interesting, since I could be in between many many boats and ships of all kinds. (Hong Kong is one of the harbours with the most ships crossing in one year in the world) I figured before, the ships would let out a lot of smoke and contribute to the pollution, well they really do not know the filter technique here...that's for sure.
Martin picked me up at the harbor with his golf cart and we went back to the apartment. They have three girls and one absolutely cute dog named "Chocolate". They also had friends over, a family, Chinese mom from the Chan family and Australian dad and a daugther. All the kids were wayyy younger. But we had german Bratwürste and it was very nice. I got told that my Mandarin/Putonghua ain't that great...but that woman critizied anything and everything anyways and by now other people told me it's not that bad.
Discovery Bay is a small Utopia, I have to say, it can only be reached by boat or through a tunnel, but there were no cars allowed and it was cleaner and more structured than anything I have ever seen before. The view from the apartment was amazing. I saw all the houseboat yachts. Pretty amazing to live there.Monday 12th
First day of University. I had to sign in and get my classes sorted out. It took me about an hour to find my department. The Meng Wah Complex.
I took a minibus from my residence down to east gate, which took about 5 minutes, with two others from here. They were not in my department though. Soon after I buddied up with two other girls to find our way up. Yes, UP. It's a pretty intense hike, but at least I work out before even getting to class everyday. It takes about 5 staircases with 20 steps each, to get to the first elevator to go up from ground level to L1. Then you turn right and get to the big place which oversees all of Hong Kong harbor with some skyscapers blocking the view in between, of course.
The library, starbucks and benches are situated there. It's huge. Then you walk up a staircase with around 100 steps to get to a park with a pond and its beautiful. You turn left and get to a building with 5 moving staircases. Then you turn right. The Meng Wah is right there with another rolling staircase going up. And the elevator up to the 7th floor. WOW, compared to the Munich Business School building, that is what I call a great campus and a great university!!!!
I ended up getting all of my classes and still had two weeks for add 'n drop period to change them. I wasn't sure about my Putonghua class, but that should soon be getting sorted out. I had already missed my first class that day...therefore I simply looked around, got other things sorted out and went to lunch with some new aquaintances. There are two cafeterias, one sandwich place, a bank, a supermarket and small other stores like a bookstore and an apple store on campus. Pretty cool. I would end up having no class on Friday's and only one hour on Wednsday. My schedule turned out to be great!!!! Thuesday and Thursday were my business days, morning classes :-( which should be fine... Monday and Wednesday my film and chinese days!
Wednesday 14th
In Mong Kok, Kowloon Side. We went to eat Thai Food on the 14th floor of a building (view down to the street, there are wayy more people at night)
and shopping afterwards at one of the biggest malls.
You get around on buses and with the MTR here or the tram or taxi and people just love queuing up, they wait and are patient, they don't mind at all. At times there are around 30 people standing nicely lined up to get on a bus that only fits 15 and comes every 20 minutes. There are big double deckers, which are a heritage of the British here and minibusses with brakes that sound like they wouldn't work anymore, however, you know that you get whereever you want to, whenever, pretty fast, even if the bus driver goes down a huge sloped hill with 80 km/h or makes a sharp turn with 60 km/h...and oh yeah, the road system is like in England, left side driving. I just noticed that a couple of days later, when I tried crossing a street and nearly got run over :-)
That same day, my wallet, with EVERYTHING, stupid me of course took all my credit cards and everything with me, the emergency credit cards aswell....yup...my wallet got "lost"/"stolen" however you want to put it. We went back to the mall and talked to the security guy while walking backwards the way we took. The security, obviously did not have much to do and he patiently took me everywhere. A lost and found in that mall, of course, did not exist, that says all. I would not see it ever again. Fortunately I kept 500 HK $ at home, which is around 50€ and would have to last for a little while.
(people queuing up)
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