(no subject)
Jul. 1st, 2006 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meanfreepathI suppose it is time for (at last) a meaningful update to this LJ that is constrained neither by lack of internet access nor by extreme exhaustion.
Having successfully consolidated the remainder of my student loans yesterday morning, and thus having locked in an interest rate, I did indeed make it to New York with my family. Lunch was dim sum with my maternal grandparents, with discussion of our travels. After some vicissitudes, I managed to meet up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
crystalpyramid on the uptown 6 platform at Grand Central. Note to self: subway platforms are huge, and arranging to meet up with someone on the platform without specifying a specific location, like the subway map on the platform, may not be so easy. Later we walked about 20 blocks downtown from 103 St and met up with js20 for dinner, followed traveling to Chinatown for exotic ice cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. All in all, it was a wonderful evening of seeing two great friends and good conversation.
My body still seems to think it's on Hong Kong time. Thus I tossed and turned fitfully for hours last night, only managing to fall asleep briefly sometime after 5 am. On the other hand, I sort of collapsed into bed after lunch and slept away the afternoon. This probably isn't a good thing as I really need to get the internal clock reset to Eastern Standard Time sooner rather than later.
I think I'll use this space to briefly summarize the places I went to and the things that struck me most. Hong Kong was a sort of home base from which we went on three organized tours with Hong Thai Travel, which I can highly recommend should you ever be interested in Cantonese-speaking travel services. They are headquartered in Hong Kong and I think the Thai in their English name is more an Anglicization of the Chinese, although I'm pretty sure they do offer tours to Thailand. In Hong Kong itself, we stayed with an aunt in Tung Chung on Lantau Island, close to the new airport. We were very close to the Tung Chung subway station, which was convenient for getting into the city. My aunt's apartment complex, as well as the shopping mall over the Tung Chung metro stop, are both owned by MTR, the company that runs the subways in Hong Kong. I do believe MTR owns a fair amount of real estate in Hong Kong, both commercial and residential, near their stations. According to last year's financial report, their revenue from property development was almost equal to their fare revenue in 2005. Perhaps that is part of the reason their system is modern, clean, fast, and generally wonderful.
But I digress... Hong Kong is absolutely wonderful and I would love to go back there, perhaps in the fall or winter when it's not so hot and humid. The food is absolutely wonderful -- I had spectacular meals both in fairly fancy restaurants as well as in hole-in-the-wall places on the street. Hong Kong is clean and orderly in the best British tradition and would not be hard to get around even if you knew no Chinese. It's also amazing that minutes from the crowded, bustling downtown areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, you have the serene natural beauty of the mountains on Lantau.
We went on three Hong Thai tours to different places in China: Qiandaohu/Huangshan/Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guilin. Going to Huangshan (Mt. Huang) convinces you that what you see in traditional mountain-and-water paintings (shanshuihua) isn't just imagined. There's something almost mystical about the place, where you're at the same altitude as thick clouds blowing by. I would love to go back there and see more of those mountains. The hiking paths (should I even call it hiking?) are very clearly delineated, safe stone steps. Going back with people other than amazingly and sorrily out of shape Hong Kongers would be worth it (many buildings rely on escalators and/or elevators, which is surely helpful for many people, but does have the effect that many Hong Kongers sufficiently well off to travel don't really have to climb stairs much). Hangzhou, with its West Lake, is pretty in a different sort of way.
Beijing was also worth visiting. The Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, and Forbidden City are all steeped in Chinese history from the Yuan Dynasty, when Beijing became important as a national capital, through the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, to the present day. One interesting detail is that the Forbidden City contains large pots that were used to store water for firefighting; these pots were covered and heated in the winter to prevent them from freezing. Some of them were covered in gold leaf. Pillaging foreign troops (mostly French, I think I was told) tried to carry some of these away, but failed because of their weight. Instead, one can still see the scratch marks left by bayonets as the soldiers instead resorted to scraping off the gold leaf.
I did line up to file through the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, out of curiosity. Was I the only American in the line? Perhaps. Let me emphatically state here, in the strongest language possible, that I do not hold, and never have held, Communist sympathies; that I do not support the government of the People's Republic of China; moreover, that I hold no loyalty whatsoever to Mao Zedong or to the ideas which he expounded. But other people left flowers and bowed to the large statue of him in the chamber directly in front of that containing his body, watched over by a PLA honor guard.
Guilin, which literally means osmanthus forest, was the destination of our last tour. There are indeed a lot of osmanthus trees there, and many local products feature osmanthus, including osmanthus scented tea and osmanthus Chinese cakes. Guilin rice noodles are different from what one usually encounters -- the first time I had some, I thought they resembled spaghetti more than anything else. But what Guilin is most famous for is the scenery of the Li River outside the city. Meh. The mountains around it are indeed pretty, but personally I much prefer the ruggedness of Huangshan.
China is certainly different. The old joke that the toilets are easier to find with the nose than with the eyes often still holds, and one should not expect to find toilet paper or soap in most public bathrooms. Traffic is absolutely insane and tends to primarily follow the rule that the bigger, faster vehicle has the right of way, and crossing the street can be an adventure. People tend to hack up phelgm and spit it onto the street in public (Initially, I had the ending of the alto aria "He was despised" from Handel's Messiah running through my head every time I saw this, particularly the very last line, "From shame and spitting!" followed by the perfect authentic cadence played by the continuo. But I saw so much public spitting as to become completely sick of this.)
There's reams more to say, but perhaps some of that will make its way into my next SWAPA zine, or onto LJ at a later date.
Thanks to my procrastination, I now find myself on the Harvard GSAS wait list for housing. I have not been able to find out how bad #108 is (is it 108 out of 500 or 120?). Supposedly, by mid-July, I will hear where I am on the list at that time. Still, it seems not unlikely that I will be getting an apartment, which may be further away than the GSAS dorms but might at least give me better bathroom and kitchen facilities. My mailing the contract later than I should have may well turn into the most expensive mistake of my life, potentially costing me over $200 a month.
There are apartment resources: Craig's List, the Harvard Housing Office, and possibly also some resources for Swarthmore alumni, although I need to check on the latter. A trip up to Boston at some point would almost certainly be necessary. There are also Swatties starting at Harvard (sammka, are you who I think you are?) with whom I should get in touch, in case anyone is looking for a roommate. I suppose I'm a little antsy about roomming with a total stranger, but Swatties would not be a problem.
I am told also that apartment-hunting is greatly helped by having a cell phone. This is likely to be a heavy expense, on the order of $30 or $40 a month, and I probably need to get one sooner rather than later. Anyone have cell phone companies to recommend, either positively or negatively, particularly for the Boston area?
The costs of things like cell phones and non-GSAS dorm housing will surely require money. Thus, I need a summer job.obcordate has kindly referred me to two temp agencies in central New Jersey; I should work on my resume and probably decrease its current emphasis on academic physics coursework, research, and publications. Any other ideas? As a last resort, I suppose I could always try to find a job flipping burgers or bagging groceries, which could be endured for a few weeks, and the utter boredom of which would certainly get me pumped up to begin graduate studies!
Having successfully consolidated the remainder of my student loans yesterday morning, and thus having locked in an interest rate, I did indeed make it to New York with my family. Lunch was dim sum with my maternal grandparents, with discussion of our travels. After some vicissitudes, I managed to meet up with
crystalpyramid on the uptown 6 platform at Grand Central. Note to self: subway platforms are huge, and arranging to meet up with someone on the platform without specifying a specific location, like the subway map on the platform, may not be so easy. Later we walked about 20 blocks downtown from 103 St and met up with js20 for dinner, followed traveling to Chinatown for exotic ice cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. All in all, it was a wonderful evening of seeing two great friends and good conversation.My body still seems to think it's on Hong Kong time. Thus I tossed and turned fitfully for hours last night, only managing to fall asleep briefly sometime after 5 am. On the other hand, I sort of collapsed into bed after lunch and slept away the afternoon. This probably isn't a good thing as I really need to get the internal clock reset to Eastern Standard Time sooner rather than later.
I think I'll use this space to briefly summarize the places I went to and the things that struck me most. Hong Kong was a sort of home base from which we went on three organized tours with Hong Thai Travel, which I can highly recommend should you ever be interested in Cantonese-speaking travel services. They are headquartered in Hong Kong and I think the Thai in their English name is more an Anglicization of the Chinese, although I'm pretty sure they do offer tours to Thailand. In Hong Kong itself, we stayed with an aunt in Tung Chung on Lantau Island, close to the new airport. We were very close to the Tung Chung subway station, which was convenient for getting into the city. My aunt's apartment complex, as well as the shopping mall over the Tung Chung metro stop, are both owned by MTR, the company that runs the subways in Hong Kong. I do believe MTR owns a fair amount of real estate in Hong Kong, both commercial and residential, near their stations. According to last year's financial report, their revenue from property development was almost equal to their fare revenue in 2005. Perhaps that is part of the reason their system is modern, clean, fast, and generally wonderful.
But I digress... Hong Kong is absolutely wonderful and I would love to go back there, perhaps in the fall or winter when it's not so hot and humid. The food is absolutely wonderful -- I had spectacular meals both in fairly fancy restaurants as well as in hole-in-the-wall places on the street. Hong Kong is clean and orderly in the best British tradition and would not be hard to get around even if you knew no Chinese. It's also amazing that minutes from the crowded, bustling downtown areas of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, you have the serene natural beauty of the mountains on Lantau.
We went on three Hong Thai tours to different places in China: Qiandaohu/Huangshan/Hangzhou, Beijing, and Guilin. Going to Huangshan (Mt. Huang) convinces you that what you see in traditional mountain-and-water paintings (shanshuihua) isn't just imagined. There's something almost mystical about the place, where you're at the same altitude as thick clouds blowing by. I would love to go back there and see more of those mountains. The hiking paths (should I even call it hiking?) are very clearly delineated, safe stone steps. Going back with people other than amazingly and sorrily out of shape Hong Kongers would be worth it (many buildings rely on escalators and/or elevators, which is surely helpful for many people, but does have the effect that many Hong Kongers sufficiently well off to travel don't really have to climb stairs much). Hangzhou, with its West Lake, is pretty in a different sort of way.
Beijing was also worth visiting. The Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, and Forbidden City are all steeped in Chinese history from the Yuan Dynasty, when Beijing became important as a national capital, through the Ming and the Qing Dynasties, to the present day. One interesting detail is that the Forbidden City contains large pots that were used to store water for firefighting; these pots were covered and heated in the winter to prevent them from freezing. Some of them were covered in gold leaf. Pillaging foreign troops (mostly French, I think I was told) tried to carry some of these away, but failed because of their weight. Instead, one can still see the scratch marks left by bayonets as the soldiers instead resorted to scraping off the gold leaf.
I did line up to file through the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, out of curiosity. Was I the only American in the line? Perhaps. Let me emphatically state here, in the strongest language possible, that I do not hold, and never have held, Communist sympathies; that I do not support the government of the People's Republic of China; moreover, that I hold no loyalty whatsoever to Mao Zedong or to the ideas which he expounded. But other people left flowers and bowed to the large statue of him in the chamber directly in front of that containing his body, watched over by a PLA honor guard.
Guilin, which literally means osmanthus forest, was the destination of our last tour. There are indeed a lot of osmanthus trees there, and many local products feature osmanthus, including osmanthus scented tea and osmanthus Chinese cakes. Guilin rice noodles are different from what one usually encounters -- the first time I had some, I thought they resembled spaghetti more than anything else. But what Guilin is most famous for is the scenery of the Li River outside the city. Meh. The mountains around it are indeed pretty, but personally I much prefer the ruggedness of Huangshan.
China is certainly different. The old joke that the toilets are easier to find with the nose than with the eyes often still holds, and one should not expect to find toilet paper or soap in most public bathrooms. Traffic is absolutely insane and tends to primarily follow the rule that the bigger, faster vehicle has the right of way, and crossing the street can be an adventure. People tend to hack up phelgm and spit it onto the street in public (Initially, I had the ending of the alto aria "He was despised" from Handel's Messiah running through my head every time I saw this, particularly the very last line, "From shame and spitting!" followed by the perfect authentic cadence played by the continuo. But I saw so much public spitting as to become completely sick of this.)
There's reams more to say, but perhaps some of that will make its way into my next SWAPA zine, or onto LJ at a later date.
Thanks to my procrastination, I now find myself on the Harvard GSAS wait list for housing. I have not been able to find out how bad #108 is (is it 108 out of 500 or 120?). Supposedly, by mid-July, I will hear where I am on the list at that time. Still, it seems not unlikely that I will be getting an apartment, which may be further away than the GSAS dorms but might at least give me better bathroom and kitchen facilities. My mailing the contract later than I should have may well turn into the most expensive mistake of my life, potentially costing me over $200 a month.
There are apartment resources: Craig's List, the Harvard Housing Office, and possibly also some resources for Swarthmore alumni, although I need to check on the latter. A trip up to Boston at some point would almost certainly be necessary. There are also Swatties starting at Harvard (
sammka, are you who I think you are?) with whom I should get in touch, in case anyone is looking for a roommate. I suppose I'm a little antsy about roomming with a total stranger, but Swatties would not be a problem.I am told also that apartment-hunting is greatly helped by having a cell phone. This is likely to be a heavy expense, on the order of $30 or $40 a month, and I probably need to get one sooner rather than later. Anyone have cell phone companies to recommend, either positively or negatively, particularly for the Boston area?
The costs of things like cell phones and non-GSAS dorm housing will surely require money. Thus, I need a summer job.
obcordate has kindly referred me to two temp agencies in central New Jersey; I should work on my resume and probably decrease its current emphasis on academic physics coursework, research, and publications. Any other ideas? As a last resort, I suppose I could always try to find a job flipping burgers or bagging groceries, which could be endured for a few weeks, and the utter boredom of which would certainly get me pumped up to begin graduate studies!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 03:43 am (UTC)yay
Date: 2006-07-02 09:05 am (UTC)Glad you are resting up. I will admit that my sleeping habits for the past few days have proven quite similar to yours, though it is surely not due to jet lag.
I think your research and experience with publications may land you a job. Perhaps there is some eccentric scholar who might need your diligence in organzing his documents or research. Let us see how the meeting with the agencies turns out. I will talk to you this (Sunday) evening, since I slept most of the day Saturday.
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 02:17 pm (UTC)talk to sammka.
check craigslist.
get a cell phone. (hate to say it, but go with verizon, they really are the most reliable around here... didn't used to be true. is now.)
and above all, don't forget to breathe. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-07-02 02:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-05 11:09 pm (UTC)