After I was told that I shouldn’t end my post with death I added some more paragraphs. Although I’m soo dead tired after the hiking trip yesterday to Sai Kung. Luckily, my fingers weren’t affected from the hinking so that I don’t feel any pain while I’m typing the text on my iPod (because my Macbook gets a new touchpad) — unlike the other parts of my body.

Today was very relaxing. Everything I did was to sleep, to sleep, to watch three episodes of House MD, to do my laundry and to read manga. I feel pity for my roommate who has studied for the last few days, because she has three midterms next week.

Tomorrow, I’ll go picking up my Macbook from the repair centre and trying to get a visa for Taiwan. Wish me luck in this matter.

Anh Thu

Now I’ve been in Hong Kong for about a month and I’ve settled down so far. It’s October, which means that mid-terms are going to control everybody’s life. Students are running around with loads of books, drinking litres of coffee to stay awake or just camping in the library — too bad that the library closes at 11 pm. However, a UST alumni told me that the library is open 24h at the end of the semester. But I’ve to admit that the library here is really amazing. It’s so huge, with many desks and “cubicles” and you’ve got a magnificent sea view from the window seats…it’s like: “Wow, so beautiful ~sigh~…. I want to go to the beach….d’oh back to work!”

Well, although everybody is complaining about studying for exams and working on projects and all these at the same time, they still have some time left to engage for the students societies’ activities. There is every day some event, like a singing contest, magic show or this week it’s the “Glaciers week” (Glaciers is the name of the Undergraduate Hall 3 — a dormitory). They taped the whole university with their banners, but there are still some exchange students who claim they didn’t see anything when they went to classes…..maybe you need some glasses Wouter ><. How can’t someone notice THAT?

It seems that at UST they want you to develop not only your knowledge but also your social involvement. There is a huge number of students societies like sport societies or business societies where you can get in contact with companies. They organize events like BBQs for members only or big festivals everyone can enjoy. Even the university administration is trying to get the students to participate in workshops by bombing them with spammails (at least 7 per day — I get 5 per year at TUM if I’m lucky). But the university concerns about ther students like in the case of one PG student who died recently: The university is trying to collect donations for the parents of the student as they lost their only child and at the same time their financial backup… Here you can see the memorial wall.

Can you imagine to die after only six days from the day you’ve been told that you have a really serious disease? So try to live your life without any regrets.

The most funny course is definitely my language course: “Mandarin Chinese for Non-Chinese Language Background Students”. I’m lucky to have Ms. Han Xuan as teacher. She’s so funny, always trying to make fun of our pronounciation, so that everybody can laugh at everybody and no one has to be scared or be ashamed to speak “Chinese”. Our class has around 20 students — depends on wether they’re in Hong Kong or travelling around Asia — out of these 20 students there are six Germans (excluding me). And the couple Ben & Bastian are the causes of most of the laughs. Not only is their pronounciation horrible, but they always have no idea what the teacher is talking about, furthermore they always ask weird questions like: “Can I also say that in this or that way?”…I wish they could do so in the normal way, but they don’t…

A couple of weeks ago I discovered a very curious thing concerning homework assignments at UST. I have two courses where I’ve to hand in homework assignments. The amount is compared to the amount of homework I got at TUM very small, but that’s not the point. Usually, we have to drop them into boxes standing in the Department of Mathematics — very similar to TUM — but then I got an email telling me to pick up my homework at a specific room. It took me two days to find the room, although I used the roomlocator. The room wasn’t a room but only a corridor with a shelf full of paper (very colourful as everyone here uses society paper sheets), not really divided in different courses. So the result was that I found one of two assingments. I’ll keep looking for my second assignment though. If anyone can figure it out from this picture, please don’t hesitate to contact me =) It’s a single sheet of paper, non-coloured and chequered.

Anh Thu

The last weekend was kind of disappointing. While most of the exchange-in students flew to Taiwan, Cambodia, Vietnam or Japan I stayed at UST. That however wasn’t the disapointing part, but the fact that the expected typhoon turned out to be a low pressure area. Furthermore Sogo Department Store didn’t have the big “National Day Sales” like last year, so that I couldn’t find things, which I liked AND was able to afford….let’s hope for Christmas Sales ^^.. Nevertheless I didn’t get home without any good purchases. Can anybody tell me how much Chucks cost in Germany? For those who were interested in this topic there’ll be a detailed post next time =)

Besides shopping I spent my weekend with doing homework and studying for the upcoming exams and midterms. It’s really different from TUM. Back at TUM you only had one chance to determine your grade — final exams. Here at UST you can get percentages by submitting homework, writing quizzles and midterms. On one side it’s really nice, because you don’t have to be sooo stressed before the exam. But on the other side there’s a lack of stress which can be important to take the exam seriously… Nothing’s perfect! T_T

I know, the last days I was really lazy (like a hornet) — haven’t written an entry for weeks. But I’m really happy about your comments, they motivated me to write more in the future. Thanks for reading my blog ><

See you soon. <3

Anh Thu