August 22, 2009

So we have been in Hong Kong for 5 days now. What a place! We are staying in the Regal Kowloon Hotel. Kowloon is a part of Hong Kong that is on the mainland. It looks at Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbor, which has to be one of the most beautiful urban views in the world. They do architecture well here, so lots of elegant skyscrapers that are all lit up like Christmas trees at night. Kowloon is equally, if not more crowded than the island. A few less Westerners, so more Chinese. Our hotel is only 5 minutes walk from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), where I will be working. Of course, I am not going to be living in the hotel for 10 months, so we have spent a lot of time looking for an apartment. Fortunately, people have helped us with this from PolyU, since the combination of jet lag, culture shock and complete lack of Chinese language skills would have made it impossible otherwise. But after 3 days of looking we were successful, and will move into our modest 12^th floor apartment later next week.

Hong Kong is very hot and humid, very crowded, very foreign and very familiar at the same time. Multinational corporations are all over the place. There are three Starbucks within two minutes of the hotel. I haven’t been in them yet, but they seem to have that Starbuck’s feel, though the menus are different. I’ll have to see what the coffee tastes like. Also lots of Seven Elevens. But they have whole cooked chickens and all sorts of other prepared foods for sale in them.