Gallamine.com

Well, I’m heading back to America.

My flight arrives at RDU at 11:03. Flight AC1018.

Hong Kong has been awesome, but my place is at home now. It just doesn’t make any sense to stay here – there are much more important things.

It’s a good time to leave in general. I’m pretty homesick and I have yet to reach the “acceptance stage” of culture shock – therefore arriving back home will be easier than if I stayed longer.

I was hoping to leave a bit later in the weekend, but Air Canada was all booked and a spot opened for Friday so I took it.

There is much to do! Stressing out a bit …

http://hanzismatter.com/ – “Dedicated to the misuse of Chinese characters (Hanzi or Kanji) in Western culture.”

http://www.engrish.com/ – “Engrish can be simply defined as the humorous English mistakes that appear in Japanese advertising and product design.”

St. Patricks in a Hong Kong pub. I got a funny hat. Expensive soda & tasty Fajitas. No alcohol though. I wouldn’t want to risk getting hurt w/o insurance coverage.

St. Patricks to remember.

Tomorrow if the official Half Way Point of my time in Hong Kong. I can tell it. I’m tired of rice and get aggravated with things here.

‘Tis normal.

I made a presentation to a class today on the topic of home-education. It was rather interesting.

We discussed whether home education was a viable option for Hong Kong. There are actually quite a few cultural and economic obstacles. The students raised some valid points. I would simply say that perhaps the culture needs to change in order to accomodate home education and not the opposite.

I said, “why shouldn’t parents be allowed to do this?” It’s a valid question.

… one of these.

That’s all.

Yet another nice link:

MAKE Blog

I want a subscription to MAKE Magazine!

Sometimes I think creativity is curse though.

So the Indian man at the foodcourt said, “Are you in Hong Kong alone?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m studying here for the semester.”
“So, no girlfriend or anything?”
“Yes, actually,” I said with a big grin, showing him a picture of Jamie, “she’s at home though.”
He looked at the picture and smiled. “She is very beautiful.”
I replied,
“I know.”

In other news, I was watching a Kung Fu movie the other day and I could actually pick out some of the dialog (a very small amount). I guess that means I’ve actually learned something in my Putonghua (Mandarin) class. All that torture is paying off … a bit.

… because that means I could build something like this. DIY laser tag gaming system. Add it to the project list. More info.

No only does Google do conversions (72 kg to lb), definitions (define:word), but it also does weather!

weather raleigh, nc

Amazing.

Here’s a link to add to your bookmarks:

Lifehacker

Thanks to some harsh words said against the Japan-US alliance (in regards to Taiwan) during the People’s National Congress this weekend, the US visa price into China jumped from 790HK to about 1800HK.

This affects my Easter travel plans. How aggravating.

My goal is to find Shangri-la. Rumor has it that it is in Yunnan province.