February 4th: Grady’s Secret

Day 19, 2PM: It’s agonizing as I sit at my computer, waiting and thinking. “What could it be?” I ask myself. “Did my experiment backfire on me?” What could he possibly be scheming?

The morning went by uneventfully with the usual chatting with friends and games of Starcraft, except for the discussion about the dreaded whiteboard. This deserves some explanation. I suppose it began when I was watching House last semester and he decided to implement a point system on his whiteboard to decide who to hire. The points were completely arbitrary and there was no particular system in which they were assigned, but it was fun! In general, games of any sort are fun, even if they are not fair. So, while talking to Grady today I decided that it would be fun to buy my own white board and do the same thing in our apartment next year. Yup, this is going to be fun.

Sadly, Grady did not think this was a good idea, nor did the other people in the apartment. For some odd reason they don’t like the idea of me being able to arbitrarily assign points to them whenever I feel like it for whatever reason I deem worthy. In all fairness, I can understand their reaction, but it’s just a game. True, it’s a game that they have no way of controlling, but please refer to my statement earlier that games are fun. So, in retaliation for my decision, Grady told me that he was going to do something too. This of course sparked my interest. Alas, he was less than forthcoming with details except to say that it was in retaliation for my whiteboard idea. Of course, this only served to generate more interest on my part.

So I began trying every method of persuasion I could think of on him to reveal the details I so longed to know. I tried first to appeal to our friendship and asked nicely. When it was clear that was not going get me anywhere I began to get creative. Eventually, I began to do what anyone would do, I started to take away points. Yes, everyone on the whiteboard starts at 100 points so I began to subtract points from Grady. Much to my dismay, once he reached -260 I realized that this strategy was clearly not working either. Eventually, I pleaded with him and was able to get him to tell me what it was: nothing. Yes, that’s exactly it, it was nothing; he didn’t have an idea in the first place and that’s why he wouldn’t tell me what it is. I should mention that at this point I was feeling a bit stupid. I just wasted 3/4th of my techniques to get people to tell me information trying to get information that didn’t even exist. In the end, I must say: that was some nice retaliation on his part.

So after that whole ordeal was over (and it took several hours) I went to the main academic building to try and add a class. Of my four classes I was not very impressed with my teamwork class and wanted to take Entrepreneurship instead. So I got on the website to sign up online (there had been open seats on Friday when I checked) and went to sign up. That’s when I found out that between Friday and today an additional 17 people tried to add the class and got on the waitlist. Oh great. So I signed up for the waitlist and went to the class. Often, professors will give first priority of students on the wait list to people that come to the first day of class, so I figured I should give it a shot. I walked in and decided to first ask the professor what my chances were of getting in. I began by asking him if they were planning on adding any seats to the class and increasing the quota (which two of my other classes did). He responded by saying “No, I think I’m going to keep it at 55.” Shot down. There went all hopes of getting in the class. 17 people ahead of me on the waitlist, this is clearly not happening. So I left, somewhat disappointed, but oh well, at least my perfect TTh schedule was still intact.

After that I went to buy my books, which cost about the same as they do in the US. A book in the US is about $100-$200 and it’s the same price here. What’s different is that they cost the same, but in different currencies. So, my books were about $150 HKD. This means that they cost less than 1/7th the price of my book in the US. I was amazed at how cheap they were. After that I got a call and had dinner with CS and Wai Zin.

Once dinner was over CS invited us to go up and see his lab. The lab itself was mostly computers and work area (he’s a dry chemist, not a wet one) and it was fun, but the part that sticks out most in my mind was the turtle. There on his desk was a tank of water and a turtle. When I was little, I really liked turtles and almost convinced my parents to let me get one. As we sat there in his lab and talked, I couldn’t help but stare and watch the turtle the whole time. And I mean the whole time. Picture me sitting in a chair staring at this water tank and mesmerized by a turtle that is sitting there in the water not doing anything. I enjoyed watching how it moved, the details on the shell, and I was hooked. We were in the lab for about 1.5 hours, and I easily spent a full hour just watching the turtle. It was so interesting to me, but I think CS and Wai Zin thought I was crazy. And now you probably think I’m crazy for staring at a turtle for an hour.