handedness, especially of roads

Or as Wikipedia calls it, "right of way"; the side of the road people drive on. Hong Kong, as a former British colony, requires cars to drive on the left (and drivers to sit on the right side). Other than a harrowing terminal transfer shuttle at Heathrow, I'd never been in a right-hand drive vehicle, and so in this last month or so, I've had quite a few questions answered.

1. Will I, as someone who grew up in a drive-right country, continue to panic every time I see an oncoming car, make a turn, or really just look at the road?

Still undecided. I'm mostly over it, but every so often, I'll see a bus out of the corner of my eye, and those six years (and 40,000 miles) of driving reflexes kick in, and I panic a little. But these moments have been happening less and less as the year goes on.

2. What's the gear map on standard transmissions look like?

It's actually the same as on left-hand drive cars, with first gear in the upper left, etc etc, and reverse someplace strange. However, the placement of the shifter seems to be different, and the angles gears are at are different. So it sits a little higher on the dash in at least some vehicles, and its motion describes more of a downward arc, with first and second being nearly vertical, though leaning towards the driver, and overdrive being more like at 45 degrees or so.

3. Will I get hit by a car, because I'm not looking the right way when crossing?

Almost certainly. In HK and Kowloon city, building density has produced a lot of one-way streets, on which the government has helpfully painted LOOK LEFT --> or LOOK RIGHT <-- depending on which way you're crossing, for the benefit of pedestrians. However, Tai Po does not have these helpful warnings, and I often cross not at designated crosswalks, and there have already been enough times where I was about to step into the street staring COMPLETELY in the wrong direction that it's almost just a matter of time. Drivers here are relatively courteous when it comes to stopping for pedestrians, which is reassuring. However, these factors are dominated by the potential for trips to mainland China (three train stops away), where they drive on the right. Don't ask me how the border crossing works (flyover ramps? we haven't been close enough to see yet), but traffic switches, so just when I get used to looking right before I cross, I'll have to remember to start looking left some of the time.

4. Do people walk left / stand right on escalators and moving walkways?

Yes. HK does not have a fixed escalator identity, which is to say that some people feel entitled to walk left all the time and will get pushy when you stand in their way, while sometimes the escalators will just fill with standing people on both sides. But I haven't ever seen a stand left / walk right escalator.

5. Do people walk up the left side of stairs?

About half the time. This is where things get confusing. Metro stations often have directed pedestrian traffic with a median running in between. These divided corridors almost always have arrows on the walls indicating which side you're supposed to walk on. But. Sometimes you're supposed to walk left, other times walk right. And unless it's rush hour, people often just walk on whichever side suits their fancy, arrows or no. The key seems to be to walk on the side that has the most disruptive group just ahead of you (i.e. lots of people or young children or carrying large bags or old people), because they will create a lee spot behind them so you don't have to push through people.

6. When you're walking and all of a sudden you're about to collide with someone, which side should you dodge to?

I hadn't actually ever thought about this before it started becoming a problem here. That weird dance-like thing people do when they're about to walk into one another acquires an extra layer of awkward once you start feeling self-conscious about why you initially tried to step out of their way to the right. Like maybe it's an instinct reinforced by our stairs'/streets' handedness, and I should be trying to step left every time. So then I try to remember to step left every time, but it seems like I'm still always going the wrong way. I don't think this has anything to do with any of the other questions, to be honest. I think people just try to get out of each others' way here more often because space is tighter, or something, so it's more noticeable.

7. When people do those cheek-kiss greetings, which side do they go to first?

As anyone who studied with me in Budapest can verify, I always always always got this wrong, and in a right-hand drive country, no less. Fortunately, it hasn't come up here at all so far. But that doesn't mean I'm not worried about it.

8. Do people look at me funny because I use my left hand to hold chopsticks?

Probably. It's hard to tell, though, because people are usually already looking at me funny for so many other reasons that they might not even notice which hand I'm eating with.

I had a dream this morning about eating Mexican food.

In the dream, I was in Vail for some reason, doing orientation for a job overseas. I remember saying,
"So this was my train of thought: oh, we should have Mexican food every night, because we're leaving the country. But then I remembered, we're going to be *in* Mexico, so it'll be even better than being here. This is gonna be so great; whenever I feel down, I just have to go out and get some food and everything will be okay again."

And then, in the dream, my internal monologue kicked in: But wait, what city are we going to again? Is it in Oaxaca? Guadalajara? How come I don't know.... and then I woke up violently in bed, here, in Hong Kong, and felt kind of sad.

----

I think the dream came about because I'm getting into that first phase of homesickness. I miss a lot of people from back home/college, I'm feeling unenthused about the program, but I don't feel that comfortable wandering around HK alone, so it's hard to get away from stuff. Also, there is little, if any, Mexican food here, and I'm afraid to try it because it'll probably be just good enough to remind me of what I'm missing without actually being genuinely good.

However, I think it's just one of those things you have to wait out. We're in this really weird place right now where the orientation classes are done, but our schedules and workload haven't been set, so there's kind of too much free time, so everybody's getting anxious.

Optimistically: they're assigning me to a couple maths (sic: British usage) courses as sort of a language assistant/TA. Math teachers are supposed to receive 25% of their university instruction in English, and textbooks are in English, but obviously it's easier to teach people math in their first language. (by the way, thank you Szabo Csaba, for giving me a little bit of experience with learning math in a second language) So I'm still not quite sure what I'll be doing for them, but it won't be grading, and it will give me a chance to see how math is taught here. Kind of exciting, especially for that little bit of me that has always/will probably always like math, even though it's not where I see myself going.

my Work Email

Is "samuel@ied.edu.hk", because apparently nobody here has ever been named Samuel before. Other ETAs have FirstInitialLastName or just LastName as their campus user name (as in, it isn't standardized), but for some reason I got this one. This may be related to the program being disorganized, but I'm not one to point fingers.

to-do list (sort of)

Plans for the rest of the week/weekend:

--get Hong Kong Resident Identity Card saturday morning: I have to take the train really really early in the morning to make sure I arrive at my appointment on time. There are only five bureaus where you can get a card, and they're very helpful to have, so appointments are hard to come by. I lucked out getting one during a time slot when I won't even miss classes or anything.


--get multi-entry visa to China: Supposedly, the PRC makes this very difficult for Americans, that if it's your first time applying, they'll only give you single- or double-entry visas. However, our program coordinator heard that if we have HK resident cards, we can get 6-month multi-entry visas (no matter how many entries, all visas to China cost the same, she told me), or 12-month if we're going "on business". So basically we have to wait for our HK ID card appointments to be made and cards to be processed before we can realistically apply, even though the border crossing is just three train stops north of us, much closer than HK Island or even Kowloon.

--practice Cantonese: I keep putting it off at night because I'm tired and not well-motivated. Even though I know (from experience) that dialects of Chinese are difficult, and require study every day, it's hard to keep discipline. Especially when our morning classes on teaching English are so unstructured and sleep-inducing (admittedly, I have always been an in-class sleeper); this cuts into our morale, I think, and makes studying the language just that much more difficult.

--send emails: I promise. This is getting a little ridiculous. I have some food in the dorms I can reheat tomorrow night, and then just sit down and write to everyone.

--sign up for fitness center training course: Although they gave us a staff allotment of free visits to the gym/athletic center, you aren't actually allowed to use any of the machines unless you take a two-hour training course. I guess I should just hope that either the machines are really different, making the training necessary, or that the course is in Cantonese, in which case I can just kind of tune out the content in favor of using the time as listening skills practice.

--clean off half my furniture: Because (like some other college we may be familiar with) HKIEd overbooked its dorms, and so now they need the second set of furniture from our rooms to refit study lounges and common areas into sleeping spaces.

--beg some music off other ETAs: I've been without hardly any since my laptop got stolen last spring, and the little I did manage to copy onto this computer is starting to wear out its welcome.

--if it's sunny, go to the beach: And try not to get seriously sunburned.

I guess that's kind of the shape things are taking now. I have a mobile phone number if anyone wants to call (it will do wonders for our friendship), so let me know if you're interested. Running out of "essentials" to shop for, so it's turned into mostly just browsing for now.

Oh, and the typhoon shut down public transportation friday night, but we're pretty protected from the direction the storm came in from, so it did next to nothing here. We were dorm-bound by lack of means to leave campus rather than by weather (which would have been so much cooler).

I spoke too soon?

Note the little loop and then how it just kind of settles in over the city... (Tai Po, where the school is, is about in the same place as the 11pm forecast X)

On the plus side, class got out an hour early when the staff had to "evacuate" because public transportation shut down. On the minus side, our collective ETA movie and social resources are spread among three non-connected dorms, and we're not sure how bad the wind/rain will get, especially later tonight. Updates soon!

typhoon was a bust--lots of rain, warm air, few winds... apparently its thunder got stolen by another typhoon moving northward that glanced off of it.

We went shopping again tonight, and I managed to stay strong and not actually buy anything. Orientation continues to consist of a lot of vague discussion of potential future job responsibilities (that seem like they'll take a lot more time than we're contractually obligated to work), and no Cantonese class yet. We've gotten along fine; it's just a matter of feeling a little sad about the vast volume of english we speak to everyone, everywhere, because my Cathy-derived dim sum ordering knowledge is one of best linguistic credentials our group has. Settling in to room, social subgroup.

I got assigned to do dorm programming for the dorm none of the ETAs lives in (along with three others)... they all have apt-style housing with kitchens, nice furniture, built-in TVs, big balconies, and their own laundry machines. We want to move there, but may just have to settle for some free meals once in a while.

typhoon!

Tomorrow is now the target date for getting all my writing done, for two reasons:
1. tonight, despite initially planning to stay in, I think I'm going to Festival Walk in Kowloon for more shopping. Oh yes, the shopping here is amazing and I'm loving it and we've been to like three different malls already. Although the impetus for clothes-buying is mostly about lighter fabrics for the insane heat, it's also about getting more Asian fashion-looking clothes to wear around. We've tried to use the rule of thumb "if you don't think you'd feel 100% comfortable wearing it back home, don't buy it", but it's really hard to keep a sense of normalcy surrounded by the people of HK. At least we'll make the effort for the year to look like HK residents.

2. tomorrow is when a "severe tropical storm" is scheduled to hit--my first typhoon! They say it won't be too bad, especially up where we are, but it's headed right for us (according to weather maps), and if it comes within a certain range of HK, it's declared a weather holiday and nobody goes to work. This means we'll be left without food or services, but on the other hand we won't have to go to orientation sessions. The plan as it stands now is apparently to stockpile some movies and just hang out for the day. So I'll have a day off with literally nowhere to go, and plenty of people to write to, things to chronicle, here, in humorous fashion. It's all been a lot of fun so far, with few down moments since that first ill-advised excursion last saturday night. And I'll put up photos (although they're all on facebook already)

first post from HK!

I really wanted to write a lot today, but I'm waaaaaaay tired and there's just no way things would stay coherent. Think of this as a teaser: photos, etc will come later. However:

food has already been really good. xiao long bao, green tea bun with red bean inside, tofu-and-duck dish ordered by pointing at random to menu, shanghai rice cake... some photos to follow in next entry.

sights are really pretty. photos to follow.

classroom responsibilities seem doable.

had a great day out shopping, sightseeing, etc with a few people from the program.

I get along well with the other ETA on my floor (Vicki: it's Scott, which is kind of random).

I got some fob clothes today, and shopping for them was really fun. Photos probably to follow.



There were also some bad things, many of which I was dwelling on last night/this morning, but I don't want to elaborate now, because the rest of the day went so well and I want to go to bed in a good mood.

Oh, and Sophia, I started reading "Tropic of Orange" on the plane, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm not done, but I have to say I was way surprised at the part where Emi and Gabriel are talking about computers/internet, because but for that one little part, the book seems really contemporary and relevant, even though it was written ten years ago.


Also, it's pretty painfully hot here a lot of the time. Part of our motivation for clothes shopping was finding stuff that was thinner, more appropriate for the climate.

Lots of highs and lows, but through it all beating jet lag by staying up late at night,
Sam