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.

February 9th: China Day 5 and return to HK

Day 24, 8:30AM: As I usually begin my mornings, I started by waking up. After this I proceeded to stay in our hotel room and chat on Skype with my parents instead of going to Dim Sum for breakfast (not exactly my idea of breakfast food). Finally, we got off to a very, very late start and decided to grab some food quickly before we had to catch our train. By the time we packed and checked out of the hotel, we had about 10 minutes to get our lunch, and it was probably the fastest meal I’ve ever had because naturally, my meal arrived about 5 minutes after everyone else’s. Funny how that works, isn’t it? So next we literally ran to the MTR to get to the train station and ended up getting there in plenty of time.

When we got back to Shenzhen, we walked back to the border and I bought my Star trek DVDs, and also some James Bond movies as well as the Stargate Atlantis episodes. This turned out to be a double edge sword, because I then spent the next two and a half weeks watching 5-6 episodes each day, but that’s a whole other story. So, we then came back across the border to HK, took the train back to UST and I was home. Oh, before we left Shenzhen I was walking down a hallway to use a restroom, and as I was about to enter the door, I suddenly had to duck. The ceiling was about 5’ 9” tall at this point. I guess China just wasn’t designed with me in mind.

This was our view from the window of our hotel

The area right next to our hotel wasn't exactly the nicest.

I enjoyed watching the view fro our window.

This is the first McDonald's in China!

February 8th: China Day 4

Day 23, Sometime after 11AM: I confess, I slept in very late again today. In fact, probably until almost 11:30AM. As you’ll see later, I fixed this problem of sleeping in on my Thailand trip, but that’s another story.

We started out by going to a mall and ate at a Western restaurant which had really bad service, cost too much, and didn’t taste that good. Then we went to another mall and ended up getting lost inside it because it was so big. We also explored the street vendors and eventually went to a bookstore to meet CS and Wai Zin. We ended up spending 2.5 hours in the bookstore while waiting until it was time to leave for our dinner reservations, which was incredibly long. I ended up reading parts of several books and found one book on the feasibility of the gadgets in James Bond movies! So, I ended up buying that book and then read several interesting conspiracy theories in another book about things ranging from JFK, to the Titanic (I hadn’t heard that one before), to the moon landings.

After that we walked a long ways to the Dim Sum place for dinner, where again I didn’t find much food I liked and primarily ate rice. Once we got back to the hotel I went over to the other guy’s room and I had my first experience watching American Idol. Yes, I have never seen the show before and my first time seeing it was in China. It was actually decently interesting to watch and there was a guy who wrote a song that was very catchy, but he couldn’t sing that well and was too over the top. In fact, that song will probably become a huge hit (if any of you watch the show it was the song about brothers forever or something like that).

Next, we went down to rent a Mahjong table in the hotel and it was amazing - the table was automatic!! When the game was over you pushed a button and the center of the table would rise up, you shove all the tiles into it, then it closes and a new set of tiles automatically rises up in front of each person perfectly stacked. I wasn’t actually playing and still don’t know the rules, but that was such a cool table! Oh, and today, everyone stared at me again.

This is me at the Dim Sum restaraunt

February 7th: China Day 3 - At the Zoo

Day 22, 10:45AM: I open my eye to a very dark room. CS is gone and my alarm is ringing for the 7^th time. I manage to pull myself out of bed and turn it off as I realize that it’s already almost 11. The plan was that Ri Huang, Chang Sheng, and Lucas would come and knock on my door at 10:30 and we would go to the zoo. Shoot, they probably knocked and then left without me. So I get up, get ready, and knock on their door, expecting them to be gone and being stuck alone for the day. Knock, Knock. No answer. I listen and don’t hear any noises coming from the room. Great. I slept in too late. Suddenly, much to my surprise Chang Sheng opens the door with a very sleepy look on his face. They were still asleep when I knocked. So, while I waited until 12:30 for them to wake up and get ready I began my blog entry on the first day in China (that really, really, absurdly long entry).

Finally we were ready to go to the zoo, but as usual, the top priority was food (those Singaporeans sure do love to eat!). We went to a restaurant across the street where I almost died. Well, perhaps died is a bit strong, but at least I started to get sick after seeing the menu. In fact, if we hadn’t gone to dinner the previous night where the chicken was served with the head still attached, I would have thrown up while reading this menu. I assure you I’m not joking. This menu was kind enough to have the description with the dish and very nice pictures to the side so you can see exactly what you’re ordering. Yup, that meant I got to see pictures of the pigeon dishes, cut chicken (feet and head included), pig intestine, suckling pig (where they cook a baby pig and it comes to you still looking like a baby pig on your food dish), even foi gras and shark fin soup! So I let them do the food ordering and just focus on not throwing up. They were kind enough to not order anything of those truly bizarre dishes and I ended up eating some pretty good sweet and sour pork and white rice.

We depart the restaurant and our adventure begins! Before going to dinner we talked to the people at the desk of the hotel to ask them how to get to the zoo and they told us to get on the 226 bus. OK, not that hard. So we cross the street to the bus stops when we discover that none of them are stops for the 226 bus. So we did what any intelligent traveler would do – we began to walk around trying to find the bus stop instead of asking for directions. We managed to walk several city blocks searching every bus stop we could see, and we even saw several 226 busses driving and tired to follow them, but we could never figure out where they stopped. We eventually asked locals for directions to the bus stop, but all three people we asked were somewhat rude and wouldn’t help us. So we keep following the bus and wind up right back at the hotel – this was clearly not working. So 45 minutes have passed and we’re no close to finding the stop. We keep following the 226 busses we see driving past us but still can’t find the stop, so we eventually ask a policeman standing on the street and he tells us the stop is about 20 meter away. So what have we learned from this you might ask? Get a map before you go trying to find bus stops.

So here we are at the bus stop after over an hour of searching and we wait for the bus. And we wait. Then we wait some more. This is followed by some more waiting. By now we’re been waiting for 20 minutes now and still no 226 bus, but we’ve seen all the other busses that stop at this place multiple times. In fact, I am going to digress for a moment. The entire time we’ve been in Guangzhou I’ve seen exactly three other white people. Three. So, I thought it was bad in Hong Kong when I’d occasionally get a few stares on the MTR, but this was SO much worse. I’d been able to ignore it and not think about it up until this point, but I noticed something curious while waiting for the bus. Whenever a bus would drive up and stop in front of us I saw most of the people in the bus glance over at me, but only a few would stare. But, the second the bus began pulling away the entire side of the bus would turn their heads in unison and just stare at me as it pulled away. I’m not joking and I’m not exaggerating either – it was pretty creepy. People walking on the other side of the street also watched me as they walked along and any babies walking by would stare even more. The entire time I felt like I was a bacteria in a laboratory under a microscope with someone watching my every move. Pretty awkward to say the least.

So, over 30 minutes have gone by now and still no 226 bus. Just our luck. We decide to wait another 10 minutes and then leave if the bus still hasn’t arrived. So, about 9 minutes go by and we’re about to leave when miraculously the bus arrives. We’re finally off to the zoo!

The bus then took about half an hour of driving through the city before we arrive at a bus depot. A bus depot??? What happened to the zoo? Apparently, our conversation at the hotel had gone something like this (although it was spoken in mandarin):

us: May i know how we can get to the “dong wu yuan” (that means zoo) ?

hotel: Oh, just take bus 221 from the bus stop outside the hotel and you will reach there is about one hour plus.

us: Is there any METRO stations near it?

hotel: no, you can only take a cab or bus.

us: Thanks, just to confirm, this is the one? (while pointing at the places of interest map)

hotel: yes yes.

us: wow… its more simple than we thought!

Turns out that the name of this bus interchange and the zoo are almost identical and so they gave us the wrong directions (you’d think they would have figured out we wanted the zoo based on the fact that we were pointing to the ZOO the whole time on the map). In our first bit of good luck since the day began, there was another bus at the interchange that was leaving right then for the zoo so we hopped on. Unfortunately, this bus took almost an hour to get us to the zoo, but we arrived nevertheless! So, after over two and a half hours of traveling we got to the zoo!

You can see the "Dongwuyuan" in the name

The zoo was huge, just like any American zoo I’ve been to. We bought out tickets and went in, deciding to come back to the safari and try and see the tiger show first. When I said that the zoo was huge, I meant it. It took us almost 15 minutes of close to running speeds to arrive at the show just after it started, including running through the crowds for the last couple hundred meters.

*If the video does not show on facebook, please go to the actual blog page to see it.

The tiger show was really cool and there are some videos for you. After the tiger show we saw an elephant show, pandas, animals from Australia, and then headed back to the safari.

Pandas!!!!

Drunken Panda!

Koalas!

Baby Hippo!

Baby White Tigers!!! I really liked these guys.

To our immense disappointment, when we arrived the safari was closed when we got back there. So, it was dusk at this point and we began wondering around the zoo to see as many animals as we could before they kicked us out. We ended up wondering further into the zoo until it was very dark as we tried to find an exit. After walking along a path to the exit for about 20 minutes a golf kart thing came by to drive us, which we were happy about and had been waiting for one to pick us up for the past half hour. So, it starts to drive and gets about 200 meters before it turns sharply and stops. We’re at the exit. Ok, so our ride wasn’t quite as much fun as we hoped. We then exited and crammed onto a bus to take us to the metro station and went back to the hotel. Oh, and the entire ride back took about 20 minutes by subway.

For dinner we found a KFC (much to my happiness) and had dinner. Although the popcorn chicken there didn’t taste as good as in the US, I did learn that if you just point to picture menus you can always order the food you want. We then returned to our hotel rooms and watched a Hong Kong movie on TV which was really good. After the movie they asked me if I wanted to go to a club or bar with them. Now, as you know I don’t drink and I’m amazingly awkward if you try to get me to dance, coupled with the fact that I feel like the only white guy in the entire city. In the end, I decided that I would regret it if I didn’t go with them and we left. We just sort of wondered down the street and looked in a couple of clubs, which were amazingly loud and smoky. One in particular I couldn’t hear the guy next to me screaming in my ear and I was coughing because there was so much smoke. All in all a very interesting experience and I’m quite glad I went and got to see what the nightlife was like. After that little adventure we went to McDonald’s for a snack where we had a good discussion about American politics and conspiracy theories. Our conversation continued back in their room where we ventured onto diseases, Chinese medicine, more conspiracy theories, UFOs, technology, ext.

So, my third day in china came to an end, and, most importantly, I learned to be extra careful when asking for directions in other languages.