back in the USA

It's been a quiet few days for me back in the States. I'm just now starting to adjust back to an American lifestyle. Except for a brief Christmas visit, I have been away from America for one whole year. I thought that reading news websites kept me up-to-date on American life. But there still were a few surprises waiting for me.

One shock, of course, happened when I stopped at a gas station. Last August, the price of gas in Boston was below $1.60. Yesterday, the local gas station was selling gas for $2.64! What a difference a year makes...

TV shows have also changed over the past year. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV and saw -- of all things -- a ballroom dance contest! Geez, did FOX run out of fake millionaires or something?

One positive note: no commercials for the Atkins or South Beach diets. It appears the low-carb craze is no more. Time to break out the potato chips.

the longest day

Today's the day I'm returning to America! Woo hoo!

Today is going to be a loooong day. A friend of my uncle drives a taxi on the overnight shift. So right before he turns in his taxi for the night, he's agreed to drive me to the airport. My flight departs Hong Kong at 11:30 am HK time -- and lands at Newark at 3:00 pm. (I will change to a smaller plane and land in Rochester at 6:30 pm.) Due to time differences, that means my 16-hour flight occurs during one calendar day. So my day today should last 36 hours instead of the typical 24 hours.

shut yer mouths!

It's past two in the morning, and the people outside my windows are shouting slogans. No, I'm not stuck in some Cultural Revolution time-warp -- it's O-Camp time for the incoming freshmen.

Since moving to the dorms in June, I started to notice a weird phenomenon. Every once in a while, groups of friends would stand in a circle, chant a pair of four-word idioms, and applaud each other wildly. I also noticed that many Announcements in the Public Interest (the equivalent to Public Service Announcements in the US) would end with a group of people chanting a two-line catchphrase. The two-line proverb is very popular among the Chinese, it seems.

But with the start of Orientation Camp (O-Camp) this weekend, this chanting of slogans has become an obsession among the new students outside my windows. Even though my room is on the twelfth floor, the noise of their squawking carries up to my room all too well. Most of the slogans are in Chinese, so I'm not sure what they are shouting about. But at least once they had to shout in English. After hearing twenty people chant "My Bonnie lies over the ocean! My Bonnie lies over the sea! My Bonnie lies over the ocean! Oh bring back my Bonnie to me!", perhaps I don't want to know what they are cheering about.

the long and short of it

Last night, while boarding a green minibus, I had a slightly disconcerting experience. I sat down at the first empty seat... and my feet couldn't touch the ground! It was the first time during my stay in Hong Kong that the issue of height has had any impact on me personally.

For those of you who haven't met me in person: I am, by US standards, "vertically challenged". My height is several inches shorter than that of the average adult American. I am not a dwarf or a midget, but I can usually count on being 'the shortest guy (if not shortest person) in the room' in any situation in the States. No surprise then that items designed to fit 'typical Americans' are typically slightly too big for my frame. At my last job in Boston, for instance, my ergonomic office chair was a smaller version of the chairs everyone else used. The bus seats in Boston also left my legs dangling. In fact, I was so used to too-high chairs that I rarely gave the matter any thought while I lived in the US.

I rarely give the matter of too-high chairs any thought in HK. Actually, the matter of my height almost never comes up here! Certainly, I am shorter than the typical Hong Kong guy of my generation. But am I the shortest person in a typical room here? Goodness no. For instance, when I go out to dinner with my grandparents and their domestic helper, I am actually the tallest person at the table. My Western classmates are taller than me, it is true, but some of my Vietnamese classmates are not. There are plenty of other 'short' people in Hong Kong, so my height draws little notice.

The height difference between America and Hong Kong is hard to quantify or to rationalize. The statistics on average height are provided by each individual country, so Hong Kong's statistics are lumped with China's. Since the average northern Chinese is several inches taller than the average southern Chinese (HK is in the south of China), the Chinese (male) national average of 5'6.5" should be a few inches taller than Hong Kong's average male height. And while Vietnamese and Hong Kong peoples have similar body types, economic differences between the two countries should result in Vietnamese people having less-abundant diets and thus shorter heights. So Hong Kong's average male height should be taller than Vietnam's 5'4".

So what does all of this have to do with minibus seats? The height differences of succeeding generations of Hong Kongers, and the height differences between Chinese people and Westerners, are evident in public transit throughout Hong Kong. The oldest form of transit here is the tram (see pic). The height of the tramcar was set early in the last century - and was designed using the average heights of people from early last century. Even I have to watch my head when I ride the tramcars! As each new mode of transport makes its debut, the size of the seats have to fit taller and taller people. To accomodate Westerners, the newest minibuses have a couple seats taller than the rest. So when I boarded the crowded minibus last night and rushed to the only open seats, I ended up sitting in the first too-tall seats I've seen in Hong Kong.

doesn't every celebration need some music?

Well, final exams are done with. I decided to celebrate in true Hong Kong fashion: I went shopping.

Before you worry that someone has replaced the real 狄樂禮 with someone who actually enjoys shopping, let me assure you there was a good reason why I had to head to the mall. At the end of June, I was given HK$800 [about US$100] in gift certificates to a local electronics chain. Since these certificates expired in July, that left me a short time-frame to use them.

I showed up at the store with a long wish list. I knew that in the States one can buy affordable digital cameras for US$100, so could I buy a similarly-cheap camera here? Ha! The cheapest digicams I saw cost over HK$2000. Then I thought: perhaps I can get some computer software or music CDs? Nope, software and hardware are sold seperately in Hong Kong. How about a replacement for my worn-out portable radio, like a Walkman or CD player? Not stocked, since those items have, in HK at least, gone the way of the eight-track player. The "portable audio" department of the store consisted entirely of mp3 players, or mp3/combo devices. Okaaay. It looked like the only way I could get music on the go was to (wait for it) get a mp3 player.

Because I view shopping as a chore, I usually do a lot of research before making major purchases. (For my last car purchase I kept a binder with product reviews and pricing details.) Not so this time. I asked the salesclerk which 1 GB mp3 player was the cheapest and I bought it. It just so happens that the iPod Shuffle is over HK$300 cheaper than its Chinese and international rivals. (The fact that it goes well with trips to Starbucks and other yuppie endeavors -- well we can ignore that part, can't we?)

Nor am I far from alone in buying an iPod. How do I know? One of the features of iTunes, the software that goes with an iPod, is the ability to share one's iPod music collection with other people using your internet connection. While this was designed for households with multiple computers, this is especially cool when a dormitory is on the same network. Every time I boot up my software, a different person's music collection shows up on my PC. Someone in my building is a Christian worship leader - or just digs such tunes as "Lord, I Lift Your Name on High". Someone else like Chinese rap, which I didn't even know existed before I saw the playlist. A third person has a British club music collection. (Gorillaz, anyone?) For a portable music device, I seem to be using this thing quite a lot at home...