February 2012
1 post
"I am so disappointed in you"
A fun little fact about me is that I have never been “grounded.” Now, this is not to say that in my twenty three years I haven’t engaged in behavior that warranted a serious “time-out”, because I definitely have. My parents just never needed to ground me because whenever they discovered I had made a poor decision all they would have to do is look at me and say, “I am so disappointed in you.” That...
January 2012
2 posts
Re-cap
January 18th was another day in the life of a recent college graduate. I had the day off work and with the first real rainstorm of the winter pouring down on San Francisco I decided to stay indoors. Sitting alone with my coffee and my space-heater I continued on my search for a full-time job. After hours of prowling the internet looking in vain for employment, the self-loathing was really starting...
My "Strongly Worded Letter" to Bank of America
January 18, 2012
Dear Bank of America,
Walking through the front door of our house with tears in our eyes after a coach unfairly cut us from a sports team or a teacher treated us badly, my mom would always threaten that she was going to write him or her, a strongly worded letter. My mom and dad, like most parents, hated seeing their children get hurt. They saw the hurt in our eyes and wanted...
December 2010
3 posts
Goodnight Hong Kong
Saying goodnight, before I go to bed on my last night in Hong Kong (for now). It’s like the childhood favorite “Goodnight moon”, just without the rhyming and not as clever.
Good night Kowloon Tong
Goodnight City University
Goodnight to all the crazy,awesome exchange students and local students I met this semester
Goodnight people campaigning for God knows what on the 4th floor of...
Adventures in Thailand
For whatever reason all the classes I took this semester held their final exams early, leaving me done for the semester by December 10th. I thought I should probably take advantage of this free time I had before I headed back to California. While my friends in Hong Kong were taking their finals, I decided I would go for a little trip. Initially I was going to go to both Thailand and Cambodia over...
Liz and Rosemary: Confused in Beijing
I think it is safe to say that over the last four months I have been confused by about 90 percent of the things that go on around me. Which I guess is only a slightly higher percentage than was the case previous to my stint in Hong Kong. However, my weekend in Beijing took that confusion to a whole new level. As a foreigner in Hong Kong you have the luxury of being able to go up to the average...
November 2010
1 post
"Keep on Keepin' on"
Over the last seven days I have had to face three pretty harsh realities. The first one being that there are only three weeks left in my semester and I have to start preparing for finals. The second is that I am not immune to infection and that despite my best efforts to avoid it, I had to pay a visit to the campus clinic. The third is that my Dad, a man I have for most of my life thought to be...
October 2010
2 posts
An Open Letter to Cockroaches
Dear Cockroaches,
I really don’t like you. My feelings towards you border on hatred. You’re creepy. How you have managed to outlive almost every other species in the world is totally beyond me. My dislike for you is rooted in an experience I had with some of your friends a couple of years ago while living in New Orleans. I’ll spare you the details but it involved a crowbar, some rotting drywall...
September 2010
4 posts
Having My Mooncake And Eating It Too
While my friends back in the United States got up this morning and went to class or to work, I slept in. No…I wasn’t ditching class. Today is a national holiday in Hong Kong as well as in some other Asian countries. Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, a harvest festival held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese Calender (or at least that is what wikipedia says). Supposedly it is when...
Apologizing for America: 200+ Years of Making the...
Standing in the MTR station, filling up my Octopus card, minding my own business, a middle aged man approaches me.
Him: “Are you American?”
Me: (Confused) “Uh, yeah. Why?”
Him: (Angry) “You make the world crazy! America makes the world crazy! America makes the world crazy!!”
Me: (still confused): “I’m sorry?”
Him: “Good.” And...
The Weird Kid in Class
Growing up one of my biggest fears, aside from spiders and dying and walking down stairs, was being picked last for the team in PE class. Luckily I was able to make it through my childhood and adolescence without ever being picked last for anything. Yesterday my biggest childhood fear came true…I was picked last. However, it was not for a sports team but rather for a group project.
After...
August 2010
5 posts
What Would Buddha Do?
I am not a very religious person but I can appreciate that there is something sacred about being at a place of worship. I am also no expert on the teachings and practices of Buddhism. I did however have some kind of expectations of what I would and would not see when I went to go visit the Big Buddha statue and the Buddhist temples on Lantau Island the other day. For instance, I expected to see...
Kids and Candy Shops
There are a lot of people in Hong Kong…7,095,747 to be exact, but who’s counting, right? This is something I knew before I came to Hong Kong but after living in San Francisco which only has about 700,000 people, it was hard to even imagine what 7 million people in one place looked like until I got here. Hong Kong is a very international city and attracts people from all over the world...
First Impressions
Living in San Francisco I would look at the tourists who were visiting the city for the first time and wonder what their first impressions were. As they looked confusingly at the maps, tried to figure out Muni, took ridiculous pictures and searched for the best restaurant, I couldn’t help but be a little envious of the adventure they were on.
As someone who has traveled a little bit I...