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These days it seems that I can apparently only type in 140 characters or less when online. School has been pretty hectic the past couple of weeks with deadlines that I seem to have to struggle to meet. Finally have a little bit of a breather in between the research papers and presentations after meeting yesterday's deadline. So I decided to blow off the HK film class screening, which I can watch in my own time anyway, to wander around Central. Had lunch in a place where I was the only customer, sat in my favourite Starbucks here reading until it got too crowded and then I took the Mid-levels escalator all the way to the top. I had never done that before and it was all very interesting to see the little streets and shops that I'd never noticed before (there was a bar near the top that had a sign saying it was the last bar along the escalator) until I reached the very top and realised I had no idea where I was. Naturally the whimsy wore off quickly and I had to endure traffic jams as I cabbed back to school in time for the Lovells recruitment talk and then my class at night.

( Of Coffee and Cameras )

Today marks a week since I arrived in HK and tonight, I started to move into my new single room. HUR-THANKYOUBABYJESUS-WOOT-WOOHOO-RAY! I think my excitement and absolute delight is pretty evident. But really, thanks to all who have dropped me a word of encouragement when I was feeling absolutely miserable (read: the first couple of days). It really made me feel a little better <3

I don't think I've fought this hard for something in a long time, if ever. Pretty sure I annoyed quite a few people with my constant emails and sms-es. How do I know I pissed them off? They never replied. What-eves man. (What has the euphoria done to my vocabulary??) I made damn sure that I thanked those who did help, especially this one girl who, really, God placed in the bathroom a couple of nights ago because she turned out to be the outgoing floor representative and had many connections. A random conversation and she helped get things settled the next day. Thank You card and chocolate from Royce to express my profound gratitude.

So the room is really small and the previous tenant is an absolute slob, I mean clothes all over the floor type of messy, but you know what? I'll take it. We only started to move at around midnight so we're still going to sleep in our respective rooms tonight, but we officially switch at noon tomorrow. Fortuitously, the class I was supposed to have doesn't begin till next week, so I'll have the whole day to clean and start to unpack at long last.

( A little more to say )

Delayed posting anything since I finally got my internet up and running because any earlier and I'm pretty sure it will all be emo whining, though that's not to say that there won't be whining, or emo-ness for that matter. It's not been the best couple of days for me I must say. First of all my accommodation is pretty crappy and while they didn't say that you can request for a single room, everywhere I look along my corridor I spy single rooms with their door wide open but their residents mysteriously absent. Rub it in my face that you have the room all to yourself why don't you. Pisses me off like you wouldn't believe. Sent off a pleading email just a while ago to see if anything can be done about my situation. The fact that I'm exhausting all possible methods makes me a little less frustrated.

So, the roommate is *drum roll please* as I thought, a PRC. Fortunately though, she is pretty nice and so my desire to switch rooms has nothing to do with her really. I just really would rather have a room to myself, however tiny it may be. It's just the way that I am. I'm fussy like that. Skyping with the family tonight proved to be extremely difficult with her having to leave and come back to check if I'm done every 15 mins. While I thought that I didn't have a choice before I arrived, that clearly isn't the case as I face a many single rooms across the hall whenever I open my stupid door. Ah there's that frustration again. Also, I'm still living out of my suitcase. I refuse to unpack because a part of me is still hoping that I might be moving soon. Unpacking would mean that this is permanent, which I'm not sure I'm ready to accept, yet.

The weather is so ridonkulously humid that I can't be outside for more than 10 mins without breaking a sweat. When will autumn arrive?? Clearly not soon enough.
Also, stairs. Everywhere. It's a real uphill climb to get to the university from the bus stop and nearly everywhere you go around this area, especially in the university, you have to be prepared to climb up a, usually steep and long, flight of stairs D: I die.

So far, holiday Hong Kong, and living in Hong Kong seem to be two very different experiences altogether. I just hope my independent nature will help me survive what will surely be a difficult first few weeks, especially since I'm more or less here alone. I miss my friends and family :(

Well, the hardest part of the exam period with the back-to-back content-heavy papers are over and done with. That's two down, one to go.

Sort of sleepwalked through this weekend as I tried to recover from subsisting on minimal sleep and ginseng power the past week. Hardly any real work done but at least I caught up on my chores and packed my boxes some more. About 80% done so they should be ready to begin their long journey on the high seas back to Singapore by this week. As I was beginning to take down the posters and such it really dawned on me that I won't be back here for a whole year, and that made me a little sad. Was talking to a friend who remarked that I didn't seem very excited about the whole HK thing. I kinda brushed it off as the admin work that needs to be done that's bumming me out but I think a part of me is pretty reluctant to leave behind what has become familiar to set off to yet another new place and start making new friends and adapting to a new environment. And when I return, almost everything that makes this place feel familiar will be gone and I'll have to start over AGAIN. No more familiar Saturday grocery shopping and dinners, Monday night takeouts, friends who act as my sounding boards when I'm testing out new concepts that I read somewhere, exchanging of ideas about topics I have no clue about, and people who make think harder and help shape my opinions because they share their knowledge and things that they've read. It's made for the intellectual part of university life, the part that sometimes I feel is missing from a purely law course. Oh, and no more Xni in London to visit, go to concerts with or have make shift picnics in parks while we laugh at the couples and their dogs :(

Don't mind me, I'm just feel like whining for a bit. I know I'll be alright and adapt as I have before; it's just that I'll always know what I left behind. Woah, this post sure took a sharp turn into emo-ville when I wasn't looking. That is all.

Decided on a whim that I wanted to watch Army Daze again. Remember that movie? Oh man my sis and I used to watch it over and over. So I found it on youtube and watched the whole thing. About a minute into the movie, it dawned on me that the character in the movie, Teo Ah Beng, looks exactly like my friend John (yes, John Teng)! HAHAHA. I died.

Completely unrelated, I was at Costa yesterday and there a really rude barista on duty. I asked for a half-caf skinny cappuccino and guy in charge of making the coffee seemed really ticked off about it. I heard him mumble something but the guy who took my order assured me that they do do half-cafs. When I was up all of last night tossing and turning though, I started thinking that maybe he didn't bother making it a half-caf after all.

Made it a point to take my coffee today decaf, or so that's how I ordered it. It tasted suspiciously good, a little too good to be decaf. Guess I'll find out when it's about bedtime. All this reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld, the Non-Fat Yogurt episode. They thought they were having non-fat yogurt, but they really weren't. Wonder what it means when you start drawing parallels between rl and tv show plot lines. Probably that I should spend less time in front of the tv.

Having been in law school for almost 2 years now, I've found that a by-product of that seems to have been a greater interest in legal/ constitutional issues. They make a lot more sense to me now, just as I think reading the Business/ Financial section of the papers would make a lot more sense if you have some knowledge of economic and financial theories. And I think that slowly, with the help of a lot of reading, tv/documentary-watching and conversations with people who are a lot smarter than me, I'm beginning to have an idea of what my position is on such issues.

So THIS upset me more than I would have imagined, and is extremely disappointing coming from the Obama Administration.



Honestly, I share Rachel's 'WTF face'. Glenn Greenwald wrote a really good article that explains what this decision means. It's also really good reading for those who are not familiar with the issue. I have some thoughts, or what could turn out to be a really long rant, to follow soon.

Completed something like a week-long, or maybe it was like 10-days, of marathon style non-stop essay writing in an attempt to finish the 3 essays that I had as coursework this winter. It was not exactly the way I would have liked to spend my Christmas and New Year, but it sure as hell beats having exams. The topics of my papers this sem were quite interesting as well, most of it anyway, so I actually had a pretty decent time reading up for them. Now all I have left is one written exam, Criminal Law, which I really should be preparing for, and then let the good times roll. That is until 2 weeks later, when they release the results.

And all that coursework madness wouldn't be complete without a little panic attack to top off the whole experience. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep or the pressure now that all my grades add to my final degree, but when I went to hand in my non-law module paper, I was surprised to find that the reception was closed. I thought it was very curious that they would be closed on the day of the standard coursework deadline, but they had a little sign that said they were open on two other days - one before the day I was there, and the other after. So long story short, after some frantic and unsuccessful trying to get online with my ipod touch to check the deadline again, I went back and managed to convince myself during the short walk that I had completely missed the deadline and was going to lose 5 marks because of it. There was a lot of talking out loud to myself on that walk and I recall an extensive use of variations of the word poop. But as it turned out, thank you baby Jesus, I hadn't missed the deadline. I was a day early.
Phew. Never again I say to myself. Fingers crossed.

Surprise find on ESPN today. To my total amusement, they were showing, live if I'm not wrong, the National Spelling Bee. Obviously it had to be live cos these things are so important that you need up to the minute scores on who's winning. I mean, seriously, ESPN?

It was all looking very familiar, like I had seen it before somewhere with the live commentators ("Oh, she figured out that if the word has a Greek origin then it has to end with the e. That is just brilliant.") and cheering parents. Then I remembered that I saw it on an episode on Psych where Dule Hill revealed himself to be a Spelling Bee alumn and geek. Haha. Out of the 19 finalists that I saw, like 90% of them were either Indian or Asian. There was this really adorable sk8ter-boi-like Asian boy who I'm guessing is secretly a total nerd. He had his baggy shorts and polo shirt buttoned to the top. The coolest of the lot, definitely.

Those kids also reminded me of the contestants in the documentary Wordplay. It's a great little piece about this annual crossword competition that Will Shortz (the NY Times crossword editor) holds every year and it follows the main contenders in the lead up to the competition and during the actual contest. Also features plenty of celebrity crossword aficionados. Fast forward 20, 30 years, and perhaps you'll find the same bunch of kids at battling it out in the crossword arena.

So I've managed to have a bit of a breather between my previous paper and my next (which also happens to be my last, yay to that) and I've been thinking a bit more about my summer trips. Well, to be honest, I've only been thinking about the NY trip rather than the trip to Italy. At this point the Italy trip just seems like something that I have to get past before the real holiday begins. What can I say, I mean I'm going to be seeing the lovely Stephen Colbert in action and a singing and dancing David Hyde Pierce. What more could I possibly ask for? (Well, actually I could throw in Jon Stewart and maybe Bradley Whitford but he's in Boeing Boeing which I think is a bit meh..) Haha but don't tell my Italy travel-mates.

Anyway, I've been searching for travel shows about NY. Not much success there, so I've turned to the tv shows. There are tons and tons of shows about NY. Off the top of my head, Friends (obviously), Sex and the City, Will and Grace, HIMYM, Seinfeld and about a dozen other movies (think every single Woody Allen movie and of course, When Harry Met Sally). But I think SATC is the one that is most about the city, so I've been watching a couple of episodes in between my frantic rush to cram every bit of Contract Law into my head before Tuesday (or at least that's what I'm supposed to be doing), and I was very pleasantly surprised to see Amy Sedaris as Carrie's publisher in season 5. She is hilarious. I've seen quite a number of her interviews on Letterman on youtube, she is on the show like all the time, and she is always so delightful and so funny. They talk about the most trivial things but it is usually hilarious. Unfortunately though, because she didn't come from a show like SNL (which is really terrible now, so not funny anymore), she isn't quite as well-known as say Amy Poehler. Which is a shame because she is so talented and possibly much more funny than the other comedy 'it' girls (such as those on the cover of a recent issue of Vanity Fair).

The point of my post though is to ask all you people who have been to NY (recently, or not so recently) for some recommendations. Where are the places that are a must-see, lovely places to shop, food etc. Please email me, or comment here, and if it is possible, please provide as much details as you can? Every bit of information will be of great help :) Thank you in advance!

( Amy )