February 29th: Thailand – Day 2

Day 44, 7AM: My alarm goes off and it’s been less than three hours since I went to bed. This is OK, except for the fact that my alarm is an hour early. I forgot that Thailand is an hour behind HK when I set it… So, this means that I get to reset it and go back to sleep for another hour. Lucky me.

I manage to drag myself out of bed exhausted and wake Brian and Alex up from their restful slumber. We then all went to breakfast and went downstairs to rent a taxi to take us to all the places we wanted to see. Because our hotel was so big and was four stars, there was a travel agency of sorts on the first floor which rented us a taxi and driver for the entire day who then drove us to all the things we did. I think it cost each of us a couple hundred Baht each for the entire day (100 baht = $3.33 USD).

Our adventure began when out taxi driver took us to the river so we could take a boat ride for 400 baht each. The boat ride consisted of this long boat and a boat driver, and we had the boat for about an hour. We started out riding up the river for a few minutes when we turned into a side canal and rode in there for around 15 minutes. But first, the Hat Story.

So, when we immediately get out of our car we’re ambushed by three people. One of them is trying to put Hawaiian looking lays around our necks and another guy put a hat on my head, with the third lady holding up postcards. We assumed that it was some sort of welcome thing for the boat ride and walked toward the dock. That’s when the guy who put the hat on my head started to compliment me on it. I thought that was a little odd but kept walking on my way. Then he held up his hand with the number 400 written on it. I soon learned that nothing is ever, ever free. So this guy wanted 400 baht for the hat he put on my head. So I took the hat off, handed it to him and politely said no as I kept walking. He puts the hat right back on my head and says “four-hundred.” I take it off and say “No” again, this time a little more firmly. This time he puts it back on my head and says “350 baht.” I take it off a third time and say no again. He grabs it out of my hands and I think the ordeal is finally over, but no, he puts it on my head for the fourth time and says “300 baht.” Once again, I take it off and say no, trying to hand it back to him, but he won’t take it back. Next he offers me 250 baht for it and tries to compliment me on how good it looks. At this point it’s getting ridiculous because I have absolutely zero interest in buying this hat from him, but he won’t take no for an answer. So, at this point we’re almost at the boat dock (we’ve only traveled about 20 feet from our car so far) and I’ve taken the hat off for the 6^th time and tried to hand it back, but he simply won’t take it and keeps his hands away from his torso so I can’t put it anywhere without dropping it. He goes down to 200 baht and I say “No!” for the 6^th time. Finally, he grabs the hat and I think I’m finally over with this, but instead the hat goes right back on my head. Now for try seven. I take it off and thrust it at him, so he obliges by grabbing it and putting it right back on my head for the 8^th time!!! This time he offers me 150 baht for it and it’s starting to try my patience, so I tell him “NO” in a firm voice for the last time and jump onto the boat before he can put it back on my head. So you might ask what I’ve learned from this. First, prices are horrifically inflated here and you can get things very cheap if you act uninterested. Second, these people really, really, really want to sell you stuff and are very forceful about it, so you have to be extremely forceful in telling them no right back.

Our group from left to right: Me, Tyler, Emily, William, Stephen, Alex (Brian is taking the picture)

There were all these houses built on the canals.

After we got very far down the canal our boat pulled over to the side and stopped. We were somewhat confused until a lady came over in her small boat to sell us things. She had everything from bottled water to fans to souvenir elephants that she wanted to sell to the seven of us. We bought a few items from her because everything was so cheap, although we later discovered that we were horribly ripped off because we didn’t know that the same stuff was much cheaper elsewhere. So, the lady was very nice and we all bought water and got free bananas included in the deal. After that the boat driver took us to Wat Arun, a very large temple that was very, very steep. Now for the second story of the day.

So, when the boat pulls up we all get off at the dock and they tell us in broken English that the boat will be back in exactly one hour to pick us back up. The first thing we see are those wooden cutouts where you go up and stick your head in the hole for the face and take pictures. So we all go up and start taking pictures with the cutouts, which was a lot of fun. Our fun soon turned bitter when a guy walks up to us and says “40 baht.” We have absolutely no clue why he is demanding money from us and we think he’s trying to sell us something. We say “no thank you” and start to walk away. In response, he grab one of our arms and points to a very, very, very, very small writing on the bottom of the cutouts that says “40 baht.” Now, conveniently the writing is also stylized to blend in with the decorations around it so you can’t tell it’s writing. So, this guy demands 40 baht from each of us and we feel incredibly taken advantage of. Lesson from this experience: never, ever do anything in Thailand before asking how much it costs.

Wat Arun from a distance, you can see how amazingly steep the sides are!

Those stupid cutouts...

Another view of just how steep it is.

You can see Alex and Brian carefully coming down the stairs

See more pictures here

So this temple was very interesting and the steps were so steep that they were about six inches deep and went up about 18 inches. I admit that I held onto the handrail because I felt like I was continuously going to fall and it was most uncomfortable. In the end the temple was a lot of fun to see and once we were up the stairs we could see a large portion of the city because it was so tall. After the temple (which costs foreigners 50 baht each to enter) we went back to our boat which took us to the spot we departed from. Now for story three.

As soon as we get off the boat and thank the people there Hat Guy and Postcard Lady are still there, waiting for us like predators about to make the kill. My strategy this time was brilliant to avoid them and not get pulled into some scheme – I left everyone else go first and buried myself in the middle of our group. This worked great for me, but unfortunately Alex was caught by Postcard lady, and she was viscious. She followed Alex, standing in front of him and blocking his way back to the taxi practically screaming at him to buy postcards. The rest of us managed to get to the car and get in relatively quickly, but she wasn’t letting Alex move towards the car! He kept trying to politely say no and shaking his head as me slowly but surely made his way to the car with the lady hot on his trail. From the boat to the car was only around 50 feet and he took close to two minutes to finally get into the car. As he got closer the lady began to scream at him and begged him to buy postcards. Even after he got into the car and closed the door she pounded on the window until the car actually got into traffic where she couldn’t follow. All I have to say is that Postcard Lady was intense. Oh, and I feel really sorry for Alex.

So, we’ve only been out in the city doing things for about two hours and I’ve already had so many experiences. My impressions so far were that I was extremely uncomfortable with people this aggressive and have no skills yet to deal with them. I also have learned that being polite simply isn’t an option most of the time. Those of you who know me well know that I try to always be as polite as possible and nice to the people I meet. Having to be rude to these people or lie to them and say I’ll come back later is incredibly hard for me to do, even though it’s required. But enough of that, our fun was only just beginning!

After the boat ride our driver dropped us off nearby at the Grand Palace, which is the residence of Thailand’s royal family. We got dropped off about a block from the entrance, so we began walking over to where we could see all the tourists walking in and out. As we got near a bunch of people started to tell us that you couldn’t wear shorts inside and had to wear pants, and they offered to make us pants in 15 minutes – for a price of course. Three others in our group and myself were wearing shorts because it was extremely hot and humid, so we started to get concerned. However, fresh off of our boat experience we decided to verify their story before we purchased pants from these street vendors. When our group members with pants returned, they informed us that we do indeed need pants to enter the palace, but we can rent them inside. So, although the vendors didn’t technically lie to us, they weren’t entirely honest either.

Inside I got to rent pants. Yup, pants. You gave them a deposit of 100 baht and then they had changing rooms for both guys and girls where they had one size of pants that fit everyone. We just put our pants on over our shorts to keep it simple and were walking out when we overheard an American speaking to a person who was handing out pants. He was complaining in English that he needed bigger pants and the lady wasn’t understanding what he was saying so he started to motion with his hands bigger and said “Grande! I need Grande!” for those of you who don’t know, grande is Spanish for big. Leave it to an American to try speaking Spanish to someone in Thailand. We thought it was hilarious.

So we walked around the Grand Palace and toured the temple area which was unbelievable! There were so many temples, each one more exquisite than the last and with such fine detail that you had to get right up to it to see all the miniature work. The pictures do a better job explaining than I could:

You can see my awesome green rental pants!

see all the Grand Palace pictures here

After the Grand Palace we returned our pants and got our driver to take us to another temple on the map we had. It turns out that the temple we wanted to go to was actually the Grand Palace itself and we got very confused when he drove us about two blocks and then pulled over to the side of the road and pointed to where we had just been. Once we figured that out we went to yet another temple, which we think could have been the Marble temple, although we’re not quite sure.

After the Marble Temple we walked around and saw Wat Katchanadda and the Giant Swing (although I’m honestly not sure exactly what the giant swing is). Walking around the streets of Thailand was interesting because it wasn’t the touristy area and we could see what the local areas were like.

See the rest of the pictures here

After an hour or so of walking around randomly and getting a little tired of seeing so many temples we went back to the hotel to try and find food for lunch (although it was already past 3PM). After a quick rest and some food we went back down to the travel place to ask about what to do in the evening. Someone at the Grand Palace had mentioned to us that we should see a local culture show and so we signed up for one of those, although it cost 1500 baht each.

Once there we were treated to a buffet dinner before the show and then had to rush to get to our seats in time. There was no picture taking allowed inside so I can’t show you anything about the show, although I can tell you it was interesting. It was about the history of Thailand and had great dances and an interesting plot, although it was mostly just dances. After that we took pictures with some of the people from the show and got to see the elephants that they used in the show up close. We got done around 10:30PM and had no idea what to do next, so we asked our driver what he recommended. Que next funny story.

Because our driver only spoke very broken English, and knew very few words, he had great difficulty trying to explain to us what there was to do. We managed to hear something about a night market, and one other thing. So, the seven of us are sitting there in the van while he’s trying to explain this to us. We gather that it’s some sort of show but can’t hear. Then we think he’s trying to ask us if we want to go to a nightclub for drinking or something. Then he starts to get excited and explains to us something about ladies dancing. Right now I sense that something isn’t quite right, but I’m not sure what exactly. I guessed he meant some sort of strip club or something and we were all just sitting there very awkwardly not sure what to say. It started to really go south when we figured out that he said something about you go up and pick one [one of the girls dancing] and started to get very, very uncomfortable. So we’re sitting there saying “uh…… um……” not sure what to do when Emily, the only girl in our group suddenly get very excited and exclaims “A SPITTING FROG SHOW!” She though she heard him say something about a species of spitting frog and poisonous snake and he wanted to take us to a show that featured those. We’re trying to explain to her that she was completely wrong and this was no spitting frog show but rather some sort of strip club to get prostitutes. What made matters even worse was the fact that her excitement over it got our driver very excited and he was ready to drive us there. We finally just told him to take us to the night market and now we joke about the spitting frogs. Oh, and if you know anything about Thailand, it turns out it wasn’t quite a strip club he wanted to take us to but one of those shows Thailand is known for if you get my drift.

So, now that that was done with, he took us to the night market where I had a blast. It’s basically a part of town where there are indoor vendors who each rent out a small space for their shop and then various vendors with their tents lined along the streets outside and everyone is trying to sell you everything they have. I bought many souvenirs there for friends and for myself, and I even got to practice bargaining (yes, for those of you who don’t believe me I actually do haggle over here). Oh, and my tale of Thailand wouldn’t be complete without the Blue Elephant story.

So, one of the shops we saw had paintings of elephants and villages in very bring and vivid colors on black cloth. It caught our eyes so we walked inside. Brian was trying to decide if he should buy a village picture he liked and I was trying to decide if I should buy an elephant picture. So, we sat there trying to decide and this lady was trying to convince us to buy. She started by asking for 1500 baht for one painting, telling us they are hand painted. However, we honestly couldn’t decide which ones we liked best or if we wanted to buy one so the lady kept lowering the price trying to entice us to purchase one. Every few minutes she’d come up with some excuse to lower the price to try to sell to us. Actually, that’s another story on its own. In Thailand, everything is cheaper for you. I’m quite serious. They start out with horrifically inflated prices (at least twice what they are actually willing to sell it to you for) and then say “for you, special price!” and then offer to give you a discount to get you to buy. You sort of feel like a celebrity because everything is always cheaper for you! But back to the story. After around 20 minutes of standing there and looking through the paintings she has she finally gets down to 700 baht and we decide that for a price that low it’s more than worth it. So Brian gets down to a brownish painting of a village or a painting of blue elephants. He decides on the village and asks Alex and me if either of us would like the elephant painting because it looked very good. Deep down I really wanted the painting, but I didn’t want to get ripped off again when I could get it cheaper somewhere else (I got ripped off earlier in the day and that was still very fresh in my memory). During my indecision Alex decided it was worth it to him and bought the painting. Right as he said “yes” I knew that I really, really, really wanted that painting. So I made it a personal quest to find another blue elephant painting for me before I left Thailand. Don’t worry, the story isn’t over yet.

So we continued to walk around the market for a while and I searched for my blue elephants to no avail. Once all the stalls began closing we tried to get a taxi to take us back to our hotel and had been told not to spend more than 100 baht on it, but none of the taxis were willing to go below 150. So, we decided to be adventurous. Thailand has these things called Yuk Yuks (which upond further research found out that their actual name is Yuk Tuk or something like that and we were just hearing them wrong, but Yuk Yuk just sounds better) which are basically motorcycles converted into three wheeled open air taxis. So Alex, Brian, and myself crowded into one of these and told him our hotel. Yup, story time!

Let me begin by saying that I thought I was going to die several times. You see, these Yuk Yuks have no seatbelts, and the drivers are even worse than the taxis, and you remember that description from my blog entry yesterday! So, these things can accelerate incredibly fast and can drive very fast to weave in and out of traffic such that we’re cutting off taxis left and right and not staying in one lane for more than about three seconds at a time! The most memorable part was when we pulled up next to another Yuk Yuk at a red light and the two started to rev their engines for fun. There was a young Caucasian guy in a suit in the other one and so he sort of cheered his guy on in a joking way. As soon as the light turned green the other Yuk Yuk peeled out and did a Wheele on its back two wheels so that it was traveling at a 45 degree angle to the ground across the intersection. All I can say is the look on that young guy’s face was priceless. That was really the moment I realized just how crazy we were. We also tried asking our driver at a red light how old he was and he said “twenty-teen.” We decided that if we tried to talk to him more we’d only get every more nervous than we already were. So in all this swerving we’re coming within about two inches of other cars and I kept thinking our Yuk Yuk was going to tip over going around the corners. Eventually, we managed to make it back in one piece... barely...

Our Yuk Yuk!

*Facebook readers, if you can't see the two videos above, try viewing them on the original blog entry.

So we then stayed up deciding where to go the next day and checked our email accounts. I had an email waiting for me from my parents saying no more Kenya Airways and that they would pay for me to fly on a better airline. To be honest though, I wasn’t surprised – I sent my parents the itinerary right before I left and was expecting a comment about the airline. Then we stayed in our room and Brian, Alex, and I chatted and relaxed after a long day. We finally got to bed at 3AM, and planned to split from the rest of our group the next day to go to Pattaya where we could ride elephants through the jungle. All in all, a very long day, but also incredibly rewarding and enlightening. I learned so much about the rest of the world in that 18 hour time span that it broadened my horizons more than any other trip I’ve been on and taught me new things about the world. I will never, ever forget this day and will remember it was one of the best days of my life.

February 28th: Thailand – The adventure begins…

Day 43, 9AM: There we are: it’s the middle of the night, tearing down the freeway at speeds far beyond perilous, swerving left and right through cars and narrowly missing obstacles in our way. There is a car in the far right lane (they drive on the left side). Our taxi floors it and goes to its right – headed the wrong way in the opposing traffic’s lane. If that weren’t bad enough, just then I notice that the road has a concrete center divide ahead and we’re headed straight for it. At the last second, not even 10 feet away from it our taxi swerves back into the lane with about one foot to spare between the front of the car and the barrier, and about one foot in back between us and the other car. My adventure in Thailand had just begun...

I wake up and immediately decide my watch is lying to me. There is no way that it’s already 9AM. After getting to sleep at 4AM due to internships yesterday I feel exhausted. Lucky for me classes are relatively easy, with the only notable thing being a video on Halo Effect in my ever favorite Judgment and Decision Making. What they basically did was to hire two actors – one that looks good and one that, well… doesn’t. They give them basically identical resumes and have them both apply and interview for the same job. They also did a test with a pretty woman stranded on the side of the road with car trouble and another, average woman. Now, it doesn’t take an astronautical engineer (aka rocket scientist) to guess what happened. While the average looking woman stood there for 45 minutes before someone offered to help her, and he only gave her a couple suggestions before continuing on his way. Next, the pretty woman stood there and cars were screeching to a halt, people from both sides of the street walked over, all trying to help her fix her car problems. Some of them even offered to walk all the way to the gas station to buy her a gallon of gas. You can probably guess what then happened with the job interview as well. The pretty girl got job offers from all five jobs she applied to, the average girl didn’t even get any calls back.

So, I get back after class and madly pack for Thailand. We then head off to the MTR get to the airport without any issues, Thailand here we come! A quick note about our flight is in order here. There are only six of us on this flight and one guy on a different flight. You might ask why, but once I explain that we’re flying Air Kenya you might understand. To put it mildly, my friend’s mother is paranoid about air travel and wouldn’t let him buy a ticket on this flight. In the end, the flight was a lot of fun and very nice. The fact that Kenya was recently almost in a civil war due to their presidential elections and allegations of vote rigging made me slightly nervous to be honest, but Kenya Air is the best airline in Africa and has an excellent safety record. Not to mention that it was about 200 USD cheaper than the other flight. The most interesting part was that they spoke Swahili and the flight attendants were dressed in traditional African attire. It was a most relaxing atmosphere and I highly recommend them.

We arrived in Thailand without problems… yet. You see, my friend Brian, the guy who was on a different flight than the rest of us, and we never really discussed where we’d meet after our flights landed. So we ended up searching the airport for around 40 minutes trying to find him. As for the airport itself, I was most impressed. It was not only modern, but one of the nicest airports I’ve ever seen. After getting through customs we manage to get outside and find two taxis to take us to our hotel. If you want to know how that went, read the first paragraph. Basically, the city was very nice with modern roads and freeways and such things, but the traffic laws are blatantly ignored. Our driver sped at who knows what speeds and swerved all over, sometimes driving on the other side of the road! I honestly thought I was going to die a few times, especially considering the fact that there weren’t seatbelts! Let’s just say that the ride was both enlightening as well as thrilling.

We arrived at our hotel at 2:30AM local time (Thailand is one hour behind HK) and it took about half an hour to check in. The hotel itself was very nice and was a 4-star hotel, yet still only $40 USD a night per room. We actually got upgraded rooms and the rooms themselves were not only beautiful, but quite comfy. The coolest thing was the fact that I got my very own king sized bed, although I felt like I somehow needed to use all that space. I think the pictures of the hotel will explain better than I can.


This was the pool. Pretty nice.


My giant king size bed.


The bedrooms are separate from the living area, I like nice hotels!


A view of the city at night from the 12th floor lobby.

We ended up looking around the hotel some more and deciding what we wanted to see the next day before finally getting to bed around 4AM. Like I said before, our adventure was about to begin. On a more practical note, I would like to apologize to anyone reading this. I went on this trip a month and a half ago and am just now getting around to writing my blog entry on the first day. I’m trying my best to get caught up and thank you for taking your time to read all the way through. The rest of Thailand proved to be most interesting and I recommend you continue on.

February 27th: I hate resumes

Day 42, 11PM: There I sit. It’s been hours now and it still is far from being done. After spending since 3PM working on my resume and cover letter, I finally get the first job applied for. Now for the next four…

So as you might have gathered, I procrastinated again. My goal was to apply to internships by the 14^th of February. Today is the 27^th. I fail. It’s not all bad though, my old resume wasn’t very good or well organized. After working on it for the past three weeks I’m finally proud to call it my own. So today I’ve been sitting here and finishing my resume (with the generous help of my father who has been providing feedback through the process) and now it’s time to apply for all those good summer internships. Unfortunately, tomorrow I leave for Thailand right after class, so I have no time to work on it then. In the end my furious work ended at 4AM… and I got to wake up at 9AM the next day… lucky me.

*Note to self: do not repeat this experience.

February 21th: Waterfall hike + USC sweatshirt

Day 36, 12PM: Today in my Judgment and Decision Making class we learned about gradual change, sounds interesting, right? So, Professor Nasson tells us that people are bad at noticing change that happens gradually, such as the case when you slowly increase the temperature of water with your hand in it but you don’t notice your hand is getting burned. To demonstrate the point, he showed us a video and told us to watch for what’s changing. So it starts and there’s a nice picture of a sign on a path with trees and farmhouse in the background and some bushed in the foreground. And we’re sitting here waiting for something to change when the video abruptly ends. Just like that.

So there I sit thinking to myself ‘but nothing in the video changed…’ Confused, he asks us if anyone saw the change. Nothing. No one raises their hand. So we all look at him like he’s crazy or something and he says ‘Fine, fine, I’ll show you the video again.” He shows us the same video. Still nothing happens. He asks again if anyone noticed and one person raises their hand and in a meager voice suggests something. He just laughs and says no. Nasson then rolls his eyes and shows us the video a third time. This time about three people raise their hands to say they noticed a change. I still don’t see anything. So he shows us a fourth and a fifth time before about half the class is raising their hands to say they saw something. One of the students says that a rock disappeared when Nasson asks what they saw. A bunch of people start to laugh, after all, it’s not like our entire class wouldn’t see a rock disappear!

Nasson just smiles and shows us the video again, this time telling us to focus on a rock in the foreground. Sure enough, the rock disappears. I was shocked to say the least, I saw that video five times and I couldn’t even see a rock disappear before my own eyes! Nasson then showed us several more videos where things either gradually appeared, disappeared, or changed color and with each passing video everyone, including me, got much better at spotting the change. The trick to the whole thing was the fact that it was a slow fade and not an abrupt change, so it didn’t catch your attention. He explained to us that our brains focus on movement and sudden changes, so when the change happens gradually we are really bad at noticing it. Nasson then explained that a lot of companies have problems with this because they don’t notice gradual shifts in their market or problems the company is encountering. All in all, I found it to be a very interesting lecture and was shocked that I didn’t notice it the first time. And if you’re sitting there thinking to yourself that you would have seen it, just remember that our entire class of 70 people took three tries before anyone noticed it, and these are some of the top business students in the world.

Oh, there was another memorable event in this class today. So, when it was cold I wore my USC sweatshirt to class everyday to stay warm, and Nasson made fun of me once for it. So, for the first month of class I wore something that said USC on it to this particular class either by choice or by sheer coincidence. As such, I became known as ‘the USC kid.’ Professor Nasson did his graduate work at USC and so it became a running joke that he was always nice to me and favored me because I was from USC. So today I was getting dressed and decided not to wear anything USC and see what happened in class. To make sure of this I grabbed my new jacket instead of my USC sweatshirt to wear. So I about half way through class Nasson calls on me and after I make my comment he remarks that I’m not wearing anything USC today. Right before class though, I noticed that I had my USC marathon team shirt on underneath by accident (believe me, I honestly did know and was trying not to wear anything). So, I just smile at him and slowly unzip my jacket. Underneath my jacket is my USC tee-shirt in Cardinal. He starts to laugh and the kids below me turn around and start to laugh. Then I slowly turn to my right and my left to show the rest of the class what was so funny. By now the entire class is cracking up and continues to laugh for the next two minutes. Score one for me.

Today was very exciting, because in addition to my adventure in class, I also had an adventure outside. I wrote a few days ago in my blog about my hiking adventure along the beach where we saw a waterfall off in the distance. As such, you can probably guess that I went hiking today with Brian to go and find that waterfall. We started out by climbing down a steep embankment to a river we could see from the path. When we got to the water it was white and bubbly, the sort of water you’d see coming out of a washing machine. We then hiked along this river until we reached the top of the waterfall where I grabbed a somewhat questionable tree and stood near the edge to try and get a better view. It was a difficult journey to get there and there was trash everywhere, but a pleasant hike nevertheless.

You can see the horrible looking water.

The view from the top of the waterfall. It's a 300 foot drop from there.

A nice shot I took of Brian.

This was the waterfall from a distance

One of my artistic shots of the day.

After that we walked back down that path to try and find the base of the waterfall to take pictures, but couldn’t find a good path. The river ran through an ‘Organic Farmers’ thing that had no trespassing signs all over, so after great deliberation we wondered through the forest amid tons of leaves and brush to try and get to the river, only to be stopped by a very steep cliff we couldn’t get down and were forced to abandon our endeavor.

For more pictures of this little excursion, check out the photo album below.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2227818&l=3be9a&id=3423216

On the bright side of things, we managed to actually book tickets for Thailand after 3 hours of debate and hassle.

February 19th: Dinner at Outback

Day 34, 7PM: tonight I went to dinner with Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and a girl named Sandy at Outback. I told them that they’ve been showing me all this Cantonese food and it’s only fair I take them to a restaurant that serves a good steak. While at dinner, Sandy said something very interesting to me. She said, “You’re not a stereotypical American.” At first I was happy because I know that Americans aren’t always perceived in a positive light in the rest of the world and one of my goals in coming to Asia was to not be a stupid American who is rude and ignorant of other cultures. Apparently I made an impression on her because she was shocked at practically everything about me. First, I didn’t want to order beer with dinner (she was even more shocked to find out that I don’t drink), then she was amazed at the fact that I don’t eat seafood or drink coffee, then I was skinny instead of fat, and then the fact that I was actually nice and knew a lot about other countries and cultures was the final blow. Upon later reflection of this it was slightly discomforting to think of how many negative stereotypes of Americans are out there, and I’m just glad to do my own little part to help correct the record.

Oh, and the food was really good. You know, this entry wasn't nearly as interesting as I thought it would be.


Me and Chang Sheng


Ri Huang and Sandy


I honestly don't remember what I was shocked at


the four of us at our table


Our group picture outside.

February 18th: Are you sure you are really Ansel, because we don’t believe you.

Day 33, 8PM: So my amusing story for the day is as follows: How hard is it to buy a plane ticket with your credit card? Then consider the fact that called my credit card company and told them I’d be in Hong Kong until the end of May, meaning that they are expecting me to be using my credit card in other countries. So you would think the answer would be: not hard. As usual, you’d be wrong.

So I decided my next trip to another country would be to go to Thailand and as such needed to order tickets. This shouldn’t be hard so I went online, and tried to book my tickets. So my friend Brian and I find really cheap airline tickets on Sri Lanka Air and I try to book them with my visa card. After going through all the booking stuff it tells me my card was declined. OK, I must have typed something in wrong. I enter all the stuff in again. Still declined. Next thing I know my parents message me on Skype and tell me my credit card company just called our home phone and asked if I was really trying to book tickets to Thailand. My mother told them yes, I was actually trying to buy tickets. So after this I enter the information yet a third time now that they know I’m trying to legitimately book tickets. Declined again. Just great.

I do what anyone would do next, I call my credit card to tell them to let me book these tickets. They start out and ask for my name, my credit card number, my address, and the last four digits of my social security number. So, after all that info you’d think they would be happy considering the fact that my mom also told them I was trying to do this when they called my house. Nope. So then they ask me for my phone number. I give them my cell number out of habit and the guy sort of says “uh…” and I correct myself and give him my home phone number because apparently that’s the number listed on the account. Next, he asks me “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” I didn’t even know that they knew that! Apparently my phone volume was on the loud side because Brian just starts to laugh at this point. So I tell them her name and he asks me “What elementary school did you go to?” At this point the entire conversation so far is just absurd and ridiculous. Next they ask me for my checking account number (I have no clue why) and several other piece of information about me while my friend Brian is cracking up.

Eventually, I manage to convince them that I am indeed Ansel Misfeldt and they let me buy the plane tickets. At least one thing is done now. Or not…

So, about an hour after we finally book these tickets Brian comes over to my room and says we have a problem. Oh great. So, his mother is in charge of Global Security for Deloitte and won’t let him fly on anything that Deloitte won’t put one of the employees on. Apparently, Sri Lanka Air is not on their ‘approved’ list. So after all that hassle we have to cancel our travel plans, which is hard to do when you had a typo on your email address where they sent you your ticket number… but that’s a whole different story.

February 16th: Climbing random rocks!!!

Day 31, 3PM: So, today I decided to be adventurous. My friend Brian who I met at the Uni Bar the other night at the student gathering and I both mentioned that we had wanted to go and explore the beach around HKUST, so we decided to go after class. We began by going down to what I call “Three Meter Beach” because it only looks like it’s three meters long (it’s really closer to 10) and then proceeded to climb on rocks and see how far we could get. After about half an hour of fun we reached an impassable chasm and had to run around. To be honest, it was slightly disappointing.

However, a little thing like an impassible chasm is not enough to stop us from having our fun so we decided to go the other direction along the beach. From campus you can see a decently long beach about half a mile from campus and we decided to make our new goal to reach that beach. Much to our dismay, we got stuck on the first rock we came to. Yup, the first rock. The rock is huge and juts out into the water, so the only way to get past it is to climb over it using a very sketchy rope that’s tied to something on top or to wait for low tide and climb around it. We decided that the rope was not to be trusted (nor did we know if there was another rope on the other side) and that we had to abandon our little trip.

Right as we were about to end our expedition, we decided to go and take a look at a trail Brian noticed near the Mini Bus stop so we went up there to see what was in store for us. What we found was a path that went either up or down, so we decided the down option was better. So we start walking down, and down, and down, and down some more. Then we walked down a bit further just for fun. At this point we’ve been going down steps for several minutes and have no clue where we are or where we’re going – I was excited! At one point we could see a giant waterfall off in the distance and decided our second adventure would be to try and find the top/base of it, but that’s another story. So it turns out, this path took us all the way down the mountain HKUST is built on the side of (probably around 40 stories down from the where we started) and emptied us right onto the beach we were trying to get to. So, we wondered around there and climbed on more random rocks until we decided it was getting late and we should head back.

To see the adventure, follow this link and it will take you to a photo album of our expedition, because the fun wasn’t over yet.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2227564&l=7b05c&id=3423216

After our little adventure, we met up with the group for lunch (Emily, Tyler, William, Stephen, Alex, Brian, and Me) and then went to a really cool Olympic thing in downtown. Basically it was an exhibit on the history of the Olympics and all about the ones in Beijing this summer. The funniest thing that happened was that at the end there was a stage and people singing and not only were they all wearing US ARMY sweatshirts, they were singing this song “We are ready” over and over again, because that was the only line in English.... and if you hear it it gets stuck in your head, not to mention it was just plain funny.

A model of The Bird's Nest

I think this one is called the Water Cube

Everyone's favorite Olympic mascots

The Olympic torch

Various historic artifacts, at this point my camera started to run low on batteries

These are the singers singing "We are ready" in the ARMY sweatshirts

A picture of downtown on our way back to the MTR

Your favorite blogger with the Olympic sign

So after the Olympic thing, we went to LKF to see a comedy club one of their friends was performing at. Apparently this was the only comedy club in all of Hong Kong because it isn’t a popular form of entertainment here. They have two shows, one in Cantonese and one in English, and so we went to the English one (after getting some halfway decent Mexican food, and I REALLY, REALLY miss my Chipotle…). The show itself was decent, and we all went for drinks afterwards where I got my usual coke. All in all, a good Saturday.

February 15th: Pizza Hut again!

Day 30, 12PM: So, yesterday I made plans with Brian (one of the guys I met at dinner last night) to go to lunch, interestingly, we had trouble meeting because his phone ran out of minutes. So, over lunch we decided to go to Pizza Hut for dinner and so that Brian could add money to his cell phone. Now this might not seem all that interesting, but when time for dinner rolled around I called Emily to see if everyone else was ready to go when I hear some lady answer in Cantonese. Great, I don’t have the right number or something, but no, that would be too simple. Lucky me, then a lady comes on in English and tells me that my balance is too low and I can’t make phone calls. Joy oh Joy.

Anyways, dinner went well and the pizza was really good like usual and it was fun to hang out with all those people I met last night at the Uni Bar. Oh, we also decided at dinner that Brian and I would go climbing randomly on the rocky shoreline just south of campus on the bay…

These are the people i went to dinner with (from left to right): Brian, Emily, William, Tyler (Alex is somewhere behind Tyler...)



A random picture of the city at night from our Mini Bus

February 14th: Me = Monkey

Day 29, 12:45PM: So, two interesting things happened today. First, there I was sitting in class, everyone staring at me. What to choose? Do I go for brown or green? What could Nasson possibly be trying to get me to do? Once again, in my favorite class Judgment and Decision making I found myself trying to outwit my professor. He asked for a volunteer, so of course I raised my hand. Professor Nasson then walks over and thrusts a bowl of M&Ms onto the table in front of me and says “Pick one.” So in my usual way, I examine the bowl and try to figure out what he wants me to do so I can do the opposite. I begin thinking, maybe this has to do with taking either one of the colors that has the most or the least, so I decide to take one of the green ones because there is the fewest green ones in the bowl. He looks down and asks me what color I chose and I respond ‘green.’ He says ‘hmm,’ and tells me to take another one. Great, I got him this time I think to myself, because he told me to take another, so clearly I didn’t do what he wanted the first time. I look back into the bowl and take another green M&M. He looks down and says ‘hmm’ again before walking away. At this point I feel confident that I did the opposite of what he wanted me to do and feel quite smug with myself. He then proceeds to say to the class “Ansel here just proved that he is as smart as…” and he clicks to the next slide in the power point presentation. Much to my surprise a giant picture of a Monkey pops up. Yes, a monkey.

Nasson then tells us how once we make a decision we tend not to change the decision and thus my choosing green M&Ms twice in a row proved the point, because monkeys do the exact same thing. So much for my complex analysis and outsmarting him. Moral of the story: I am as smart as a monkey. Yes, Me = Monkey. Talk about a blow to your ego.

Luckily the rest of the day had a more positive outlook. I met a girl named Emily a few days back at the US consulate thing and randomly ran into her on my way to class. She asked me if I was going to the gathering at the Uni Bar later tonight and I said no because I tend not to like bars and such things and would prefer not to get pressured into having that free drink they were advertising. So, I politely said I was not and went to class. Then, 4PM rolled around and I thought about it again, and decided that I might as well go because there isn’t any harm in wasting half an hour if I don’t stay there. I got there and went to say hello to Emily and say I changed my mind about going when she introduced me to a bunch of other people she was talking with. It turns out she is from Georgia Tech and is here this semester with a group of her and 5 of her friends also from Georgia Tech (aka, they’re all engineers or CS people). So I got introduced to Brian, Alex, Stephen, William, and Tyler. We then began talking about how it seemed like everyone else there were going on trips to Thailand and the Philippines the coming weekend and how we all also wanted to travel places. So, we talked about all taking a trip to Thailand together and decided to meet later to talk about it. We ended up going to dinner shortly thereafter and made plans for my next trip to Thailand in a week and a half (although this will later turn out to be a rather big problem).

February 12: War and gambling… in class

Day 27, 10:45AM: I see it coming towards me, I jump to the side narrowly avoiding a collision. Reacting as fast as I can, I jump to the floor and grab more ammo before leaping behind the barrier. My heart is racing as I peek out just long enough to assess the situation and figure out my plan of attack. I poke my head through the metal bars and throw a volley of projectiles at the enemy. Quickly, I gather strength and grab ammo as fast as I can while trying not to think about the injuries I sustained so far. Right about now I think to myself, “Wow, this has to be the best Corporate Strategy class ever.”

I thought that I’d try a new format (yet again) where I start with something interesting that happened to captivate your interests before moving on to the more mundane and boring parts. This way you’ll wonder what I’m talking about and keep reading. Tricky, huh?

I had set my alarm for 8AM thinking I could fight off my desire to sleep and actually catch up on some blogging. I failed. I managed to pull myself out of bed in time to check email and get a little reading done before class at 10:30. When I arrived in my class, half of it was gone. Not the room of course, but half of the desks and tables were missing, including the table I usually sit at. I sat down wondering what to expect and awaited instructions. On the projector was a list of group numbers and student names, which I gathered meant we were doing something in groups.

My professor begins by telling us that today in class we’re having a Paper War. Yes, a Paper War, the sort where you throw crumpled up pieces of paper at people for fun. I have no idea what to expect at this point, but I can tell it’s going to be fun.

My mind begins to race. He instructs groups 1 and 2 to line up in the empty part of the room (I’m in group two) and we all walk slowly over. He tells us to fight and have a paper war while handing up paper. Nothing happens. Then he starts yelling “FIGHT, FIGHT!” and the other team starts to crumple up paper into balls and throw them. Now, those of you who know me can attest to the fact that I’m not competitive in the slightest and I never think before I act. Obviously both of those are lies. When I said my mind was racing I meant it, because he just gave me a puzzle to figure out: What is the objective of this, what does he want to see, and how can I think outside the box? To begin we both start throwing paper at each other and nothing much is happening, but slowly people start to get into it and actually aim and dodge the paper balls. My first thought comes to me: he didn’t give us any rules to play by. So I turn to him and ask what the rules are and he says there aren’t any. Ok, well he told us not to hit the audience, but I considered that an oversight on his part. Well, he said no rules, so I ran over to his desk and grabbed a huge stack of papers on it. I then looked at him and he just smiled at me, so I ran back and threw the stack at the other team. It hit the ground and they started to grab it and crumple them up and throw them at us. My intent was not to destroy those papers, but rather to throw them in a stack and then return them to demonstrate my creative thinking. Oh well, he said no rules and if they were important he would have stopped me.

So the fight continues as I try to think of the next rabbit to pull out of the hat. By now both teams were into it and grabbing and throwing as fast as possible. Then it comes to me: why not steal their ammo? So I run behind their line of people and start to grab their ammo when it hits me: I’m I’m grabbing their ammo there, why not just throw it at them? So I start chucking the paper balls at their back before they notice I’m not on their team. Then they all turn and start throwing them at me, at which point my group now has easy shots at their backs. After grabbing lots I run back to our side when my next great idea hits: Why not use other objects in the classroom to help us? So I run over to where the tables were piled up and start grabbing one when the professor rings a bell and says the round is over. Disappointed, I put the table back in place as he gives me a very surprised look and asks what I was doing with the table. “Build a fort” I respond. What else would one do with a table? We ten gathered up all the paper balls and put them in a bag, as per the professor’s instructions. Exhausted, we all sit back down and I strike up a conversation with the only other guy on our team between gasping for air. It was quite the workout!

In these photos, I'm the guy wearing the green shirt:








In this video, I'm wearing my black USC sweatshirt for the first few, and i'm the guy using the table.

It wasn’t long before the professor walks over and tells us to go again. Yes, he wants us to fight again. We’re exhausted at this point and I’m trying to figure out why he wants us to go again, when I see that there are 7 teams, meaning one team must go twice. Lucky us. To be honest, just because we were sitting down doesn’t mean that I stopped thinking of creative things to do to give us an advantage. So we line up again, and this time the ideas are flowing nicely. First, I discuss my plans with that guy I was talking with and he agrees that they’re good ideas. So I slowly make my way to the other side of our line next to where he had set the giant bag of paper from the last round. They hand both sides new paper to crumple and say GO! At this point I smile at him, grab the bag and run to the center of our team where I proceed to dump the entire contents onto the floor for our use. Now we have tons of ammo and they don’t.

Next, I run over and grab the table I wanted to use in the last round and make myself a fort. This is the part I wrote about in the beginning where I was literally running, jumping, leaping, and dodging the ammo being thrown at us. Now, I realize that although my table shield is nice, it’s not as fun. So, I decide to use the table as a harvester and start to drag the table through the center of the room to use it as a giant scoop. This brings back very large returns of paper balls and I try to do it again. By now the other team is starting to adapt and grab the table from me. A tug of war ensues and they end up with the table because they had two guys pulling it. We keep throwing more paper balls and I eventually run over and manage to get the table back. Shortly thereafter the rounds stops and we clean everything up again. This time the professor takes the paper bag and puts it behind him. (I also considered using either the professor or a bystander as a shield, but decided against it.)

Even more exhausted we sit down again and that guy and I really start to talk now because we were the most into the game and both did very well. It’s now that I realize I might have pulled the inside muscle next to your quad on both my legs as well as my left thumb. A small price to pay for victory. So the other teams went, and the most interesting development was that one team tried to make paper airplanes to be more accurate, which failed miserably. After it was all over my professor walks over to me and my new friend Hon (I think) and tells us to have a 1v1 paper war. Oh great. So now my remaining ideas come into play. This time I use a table and the projector screen to create a fully defended fort that he can’t hit me, and we begin our war cautiously. At one point it turned into a game where he tried to bat my paper wads out of the air like baseball, but we basically just ran and dove behind things while throwing paper balls. He made a fort out of the trash can and chairs, and at one point tried to raid my base while I was running at him, but the real fun was when I counted down 3, 2, 1, NOW! At this point we both grabbed paper balls and started to throw them at our professor. In my foresight I had planned with him to do that while we were still sitting down. To no one’s surprise, the professor ended the round.


This is the video of our bonus round. If are reading this on Facebook, you'll need to go to my actual blog to watch it.

So now we rearranged the room and got back into groups for discussion. This is where it gets dicey because he goes to get his printouts of the discussion questions. Remember that stack of paper I grabbed in the beginning that the other team started to tear apart? Yeah…

At this point he asks us where they are and I tell him. The TA then says angrily that she wants to kill me. I’m not joking; the TA said she wants to kill me. So, I feel very bad at this point because they have to dig through the paper balls to find some sheets to pull out and give to the groups. Yeah, I feel terrible right about now.

My next fun experience of the day came in my next class. Because the other story is so long I’ll cut to the chase: I won money from my professor. Basically to teach us about expected utility theory he had us gamble with him in class where he would draw 3 cards from a normal card deck and pay us $4 for every heart he drew. We could offer him any amount of money to play the game and then play. I was the first one after doing some quick math and offered $2.50. He said no. Then I offered $2.90 and he said no again. The expected value from this is $3, so I could tell he would only take offers above $3. Someone finally offered $4 and lost. Then the next person did the same and lost. One person even offered $5. In other words, everyone lost money. Then I thought about it and said, “even if I lose money, it will be fun to say I gambled with my professor in class.” I then offered him $3.50 and actually drew a heart, so I ended up earning $0.50 from him. Yes, I gambled with my professor for real money in class and won. I was happy. To answer your next question, at the end he gave everyone their money back and I gave him back the fifty cents as well. I also spoke to the professor after class to ask if I could move the final so I could stay and travel in China after my marathon there, which he said I might. He is actually a USC grad and we talked for about 20 minutes about running and random things, so I think I’ll actually be able to do it. Yay!

Besides that I also finally convinced myself to go running and start marathon training, so I ran about 8km and had a very enjoyable run. Specifically, I enjoyed thinking while I ran and observing everything around me. But, this post is too long and I’ll talk about it more in other posts.


Yeah, i have palm trees and an ocean view while i run!


My artistic shot of the day




For those of you who are wondering, the reason we had a paper fight in class is that he was trying to show us how as time goes on groups begin to actually use strategy and how much of an advantage that gives one side over the other. And in my Judgment class we gambled because we were learning about expected utility theory. All in all, a very fun and memorable day.