My First Day in Asia

After having a brief panic about losing both my passports, I was able to find everything I need to travel, and I left the US at 1:30 am on June 10^th, sat in a middle seat for 15 hours, and have since arrived in Hong Kong at 4:30 am, June 11^th. To me, this still seems a little like time travel.

            I arrived in Hong Kong, and was quickly able to navigate the airport to find a my way to a red taxi, which would take me to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where I will be staying this Summer until August 13th. On the way over I tried to take a number of pictures, but was unable to due to the car shaking, and the rain pouring on the window. But the views and general structure of Hong Kong were pretty amazing. One thing I noticed is that there are a lot of tall buildings that stand together that all have the same design – I was later told that this just the way it is in Hong Kong, and that a single estate owner will generally build a bunch (it looks like ~4 to ~10) of identical skyscrapers right next to one another. On that note, despite living in NYC, I’ve never liked the word ‘skyscraper’ very much, I’ve always felt like the tall high-rises I’ve seen are not accurately portrayed by the word – but here in Hong Kong the word seems to be so much more appropriate. Driving through urban regions of Hong Kong during a storm, sparsely located groups of identical buildings appear to huddle together to weather out the storm. The few buildings that stand alone, stand tall against the low forming clouds and fog, and to me seem to aggressively defy the storm, scraping the cloudy ceiling.

The whole area seems straight out of movie to me, something that belongs in a scene of Avatar, more than it does under my feet. The way there are all these small island structures everywhere you look, it seems like the whole area is just on the backs of a series of very large turtles and very large lizards – although I have never traveled to Japan, and I am sure Japan is different, I feel like I understand where the idea for Godzilla came from.

As the day has progressed, my confusion with the time of day has only grown, as, the time difference between NYC and HK is exactly 12 hours, and it has been raining since I arrived so it’s has been hard to tell the time of day, as I keep forgetting if it is morning or evening.

            I wandered around the campus for a little while, before Ryan, a local Hong Kong-er and fellow HK RIPS participant met me, and we dropped my stuff off at his room. Since then we have managed to do a good number of things, including (but not limited to):

            Get breakfast

            Get trapped in an elevator

            Teach Ryan to play a little Frisbee

            Get cash and an Octopus Card (a public transportation card)

The currency here is the Hong Kong Dollar, which is roughly valued at 7.8 HKD to 1 USD.

      

            Find a big, dead bug.

I was able to explore the campus a little bit. It seems like there are a few things that Ryan (who I appointed myself to be my guide) does not even seem to notice that seem relatively odd to me. For one, the university reaches all the way to the water; and the university is on a relatively steep grade, that probably rises ~360 feet in under half a mile (according to Google maps). Additionally, there appear to be no points on campus where you can’t walk 40 feet and see water, boats, and tree-covered islands. The last thing that surprised me is that it that we have to pay for our AC, by tapping a card that you put money on.

As of right now, I am sitting in a HKUST common room, overlooking (to my count) 4 islands, waiting to be let into my dorm room.

This has been Roy, reporting live to you on ‘What’s the Matter with Roy’. Tune in next time to find the important questions of “What does the rest of Hong Kong look like?”, “What will Roy be able to accomplish this summer (if anything)”, and “Will it ever stop raining?”