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).