It's supposed to be very, very significant for me, 'cause one of the advantages of being here is to meet guy from all over the world. However, I nearly messed it up by going to bed at 2:30 a.m. Though the alarm-clock function of my cellphone did its job and I went there on time, I paid the price: the stick attached to the cellphone to touch the screen was lost. It fell into the narrow gap between the wall and the bed.
I'm sort into two categories: "exchange student from Mainland" and "exchange student to School of Science", so I had to attend the meeting of both group. The former came first. The meeting is mostly about the things one have to know about Hongkong & UST, and most of the information provided are found useful. As all are from Mainland, part of the lectures are made in Mandarin, though most of them are in English. It made little difference to me, since I can understand English as perfectly as Chinese when I'm concentrating my mind. The thing that actually irritated me was this silly girl from MSSS(Mainland Student&Scholars Society). She is apparently from Mainland, and began her lecture with Mandarin without accent. However, she soon dropped it and began speaking English. I acknowledge the fact that her oral English is better than me, which is nothing astonishing, but I don't think it proper to speak it in front of all these elites from mainland. What's more intolerable is that she soon switched back to Mandarin, added, "See, I can speak Mandarin as fluently as English." What the fxxk is that? It's your mother-tongue! Damn it!
Then it comes to the meeting of all the exchange students, either mainland or overseas, in School of Science. I met many nice guys and girls majoring in maths, physics, chemistry and biology, including a few hot girls from Europe and America. Astonishing, the direction of research of most physicist here are condensed matter, but it's just a good news to me as that's also what I'm studying.
I immediately met this cute boy, Tawa Masahiro, from Kyoto University. That's supposed to be the base of Yukawa and Tomonaga! His major is agriculture, but come here to study maths. He spoke great English with little accent, quite opposite to my impression of oral English of Japanese. Furthermore, he can speak a little Chinese! We became friends the moment we saw each other.
Feng is a student from Tsinghua University, majoring in physics. And he's proved to be a capable physicist and an elite. The criterion of an elite cannot be completely explained by language, and it's said that only an elite can judge whether someone else is one. I saw those spirit in his eyes when mine came across his, and I can tell that he's qualified to be my ally, companion and fellow.
Happy Everyday--well, not Miss Liu, her surname is Zhang--is DM's schoolmate. She's from 11th Department of HIT, but she's planning to switch to 21st Department to study something pratical rather than theoretical. She's small but cute, a very lovely girl.
However, the time for me to know them is way too limited. There're 15 minutes arranged for us to walk around, talk to each other and exchange contact infomation, but it's apparently not enough! I wish I can meet more of them!
2007年8月31日星期五
2007年8月30日星期四
A Visit to HKU
A couple of minutes after I finished my last blog and turned off my browser, I received a call from H. B. Zheng, another exchange-in student from SYSU (majoring in physics) and friend of Racoon. I've contacted him quite a lot in July and August to share information, but I thought we lost contact after I arrived at Hongkong and changed my cellphone number. What's more, he had found yet another exchange student from our school, whose major is biology, and is a female (who have a sweet voice)! It really feels nice to find two allies at the same time when I've prepared to cope with all these involving things alone! They asked if they can come to my room, and I immediately agreed.
Zheng was much bigger than I thought, and his mustache kept reminds me of NJ, one of my best friend in high school. While the girl, named J. R. Li, is also a lot bigger, nealy as tall as me and quite as fat. They're very nice person and we had a good talk (mostly gossip) that lasted for 3 hours. Finally Li suggested we go visiting HKU today(as it has been over midnight), to which the two boys agreed.
Hence, everything went as planned. We arrived at HKU next morning and stroll about in it. HKU is not much larger than UST, but the distribution of buildings is a lot more complicated. We visited most of the buildings (not including library, for it's not opened for UST students). Meanwhile, Li was continuously trying to call her friends in HKU, in hope of finding a guide. By the time of lunch, she said she'd finally found one, and the friend will come to join our lunch in no time.
On a first glimpse, the HKU girl is not at all special and can be easily underestimated. She is a little smaller than Li but not a all slender, with a cannot-be-more-ordinary face which wore a mysterious smile. However, when we began to talk, I immediately found, from her breadth of knowledge, viewpoint on some topics, and her way of talking, that she is an elite of my kind, and her ability is not at all worse than me.
Her major is chemistry and biochemistry, but she knew things like wave function and Dirac equations. Her attitude to things like GPA and scholarship had much resemblance with me, and our goals were also quite similar. I, on the other hand, also showed my skill, and won her respect. Hence, the talk is made very serious and exhausting. At last, all the four of us exhausted and lost all the appetite to food. However, it's indeed exhilarating! I'd always been trying to find an elite majoring in chemistry, and now I found one! The relation between two elites with similar skill has only two options: love and respect; or hate and contempt. It seems that the former will be established in this case.
Zheng was much bigger than I thought, and his mustache kept reminds me of NJ, one of my best friend in high school. While the girl, named J. R. Li, is also a lot bigger, nealy as tall as me and quite as fat. They're very nice person and we had a good talk (mostly gossip) that lasted for 3 hours. Finally Li suggested we go visiting HKU today(as it has been over midnight), to which the two boys agreed.
Hence, everything went as planned. We arrived at HKU next morning and stroll about in it. HKU is not much larger than UST, but the distribution of buildings is a lot more complicated. We visited most of the buildings (not including library, for it's not opened for UST students). Meanwhile, Li was continuously trying to call her friends in HKU, in hope of finding a guide. By the time of lunch, she said she'd finally found one, and the friend will come to join our lunch in no time.
On a first glimpse, the HKU girl is not at all special and can be easily underestimated. She is a little smaller than Li but not a all slender, with a cannot-be-more-ordinary face which wore a mysterious smile. However, when we began to talk, I immediately found, from her breadth of knowledge, viewpoint on some topics, and her way of talking, that she is an elite of my kind, and her ability is not at all worse than me.
Her major is chemistry and biochemistry, but she knew things like wave function and Dirac equations. Her attitude to things like GPA and scholarship had much resemblance with me, and our goals were also quite similar. I, on the other hand, also showed my skill, and won her respect. Hence, the talk is made very serious and exhausting. At last, all the four of us exhausted and lost all the appetite to food. However, it's indeed exhilarating! I'd always been trying to find an elite majoring in chemistry, and now I found one! The relation between two elites with similar skill has only two options: love and respect; or hate and contempt. It seems that the former will be established in this case.
2007年8月29日星期三
Finally Settled in UST
Around 12:30, I said goodbye with my parents on the train, and left the train. They're gonna go to the Luohu Port, Shenzhen, Mainland and go home, while I'm gonna go to HKUST, alone.
I still clearly remeber my first night as a freshman, and the panic I felt when I was facing the total darkness in front of me. I still remember how, for the first time, I yearned the warmth of home, the helping hand of my parent, and even their chattering. I've once thought that all these are simply because of the fact that it was my first time to live faraway from my parents, my first time to handle all those trival details of live that used to be made perfect by my parents, my first time to take full responsibility of my own life. I've once thought that I've grown up and learned all these, and that I've got rid of such naive fear, for good.
However, the moment I left the train and headed for the subway station, I felt the panic once more. Though I thought I'm always familiar with the subway system, though I've taken MTC, the Hongkong subway system, for many times these days, but I can still sense that I'm kind of nervous. I finally realized that it is the shock brought by the brand-new environment, and it is not easy to thoroughly get rid of.
Eventually I arrived at HKUST. The first thing I did was to find a branch of Bank of China so as to create an account and to deposit my money. However, as I was a bit too nervous and impatient, I failed to find it, so I made up my mind to do against my parents' suggestion and go to the dorm immediately.
After arriving at the dorm, it suddenly come to me that I have to take a bath. I found that I've lost the ability of thinking reasonably when I'm sweaty. Furthermore, I need to try the public bathroom in our Hall. The result turned out to be fairly satisfactory, and it made me more relieved and relaxed.
After some preparation, I set out doing other stuffs. I planned to charge my IC card, buy my slipper and cable, and go and have a look at the library before supper. I'm still very confused about the exact procedure of get access of the Internet in my dorm. However, I came across this guy from northeastern mainland who offered to help me with my problem. He did most of the works for me. Though, due to some accidental mistake, I didn't get access to the Internet immediately after he set it, I'm still very grateful. We exchanged cellphone number before saying goodbye. He is marked as the first new friend I made in UST.
After that, I solved both the problem of air-conditioner and of accessing to Internet in succession, and sat comfortably in my dorm until now.
I still clearly remeber my first night as a freshman, and the panic I felt when I was facing the total darkness in front of me. I still remember how, for the first time, I yearned the warmth of home, the helping hand of my parent, and even their chattering. I've once thought that all these are simply because of the fact that it was my first time to live faraway from my parents, my first time to handle all those trival details of live that used to be made perfect by my parents, my first time to take full responsibility of my own life. I've once thought that I've grown up and learned all these, and that I've got rid of such naive fear, for good.
However, the moment I left the train and headed for the subway station, I felt the panic once more. Though I thought I'm always familiar with the subway system, though I've taken MTC, the Hongkong subway system, for many times these days, but I can still sense that I'm kind of nervous. I finally realized that it is the shock brought by the brand-new environment, and it is not easy to thoroughly get rid of.
Eventually I arrived at HKUST. The first thing I did was to find a branch of Bank of China so as to create an account and to deposit my money. However, as I was a bit too nervous and impatient, I failed to find it, so I made up my mind to do against my parents' suggestion and go to the dorm immediately.
After arriving at the dorm, it suddenly come to me that I have to take a bath. I found that I've lost the ability of thinking reasonably when I'm sweaty. Furthermore, I need to try the public bathroom in our Hall. The result turned out to be fairly satisfactory, and it made me more relieved and relaxed.
After some preparation, I set out doing other stuffs. I planned to charge my IC card, buy my slipper and cable, and go and have a look at the library before supper. I'm still very confused about the exact procedure of get access of the Internet in my dorm. However, I came across this guy from northeastern mainland who offered to help me with my problem. He did most of the works for me. Though, due to some accidental mistake, I didn't get access to the Internet immediately after he set it, I'm still very grateful. We exchanged cellphone number before saying goodbye. He is marked as the first new friend I made in UST.
After that, I solved both the problem of air-conditioner and of accessing to Internet in succession, and sat comfortably in my dorm until now.
2007年8月28日星期二
Impression of HK
I heart of Hongkong, "the Pearl of Far East", when I was very young. I attended a competition on knowledge of Hongkong at the age of 10 when Hongkong became part of PRC. I read more and more about it as I grew up, but I've never actually visited it until last winter vacation, when I when to HK with my cousin and my mom to buy makeups.
In my imagination, Hongkong was a very tiny place, 'cause I'd only seen it on the full map of PRC. However, I found that it is far larger, even Kowloon plus Hongkong Island is no smaller than Shenzhen. In my imagination, Hongkong was quite a "foreign" place, a city that had more resemblance with British ones rather than Chinese ones, and nobody there spoke Mandarin. To my astonishment, I found most of the Hongkong can understand Mandarin, some of them can speak it very well. In my imagination, as it's part of China, the price in Hongkong shouldn't be too different from that in Mainland. I was quite shocked when I found that I had to spend $5 on an ordinary bottle of drinking water. However, I haven't thought that I would spend four full months in this city.
Then I applied for this exchange plan, and was lucky enough to succeed.
Hence I'm here, with my parents, in this familiar and strange city. The moment I stepped out of the Custom, I had this strange feeling in side of me. The uncomfortableness, the cultural shock, are the same as going to a foreign country. That is why I chose to be here, to spend $20, 000 in four months, and to cope with such upset and all. I must learn to adapt myself quickly to a new environment.
In my imagination, Hongkong was a very tiny place, 'cause I'd only seen it on the full map of PRC. However, I found that it is far larger, even Kowloon plus Hongkong Island is no smaller than Shenzhen. In my imagination, Hongkong was quite a "foreign" place, a city that had more resemblance with British ones rather than Chinese ones, and nobody there spoke Mandarin. To my astonishment, I found most of the Hongkong can understand Mandarin, some of them can speak it very well. In my imagination, as it's part of China, the price in Hongkong shouldn't be too different from that in Mainland. I was quite shocked when I found that I had to spend $5 on an ordinary bottle of drinking water. However, I haven't thought that I would spend four full months in this city.
Then I applied for this exchange plan, and was lucky enough to succeed.
Hence I'm here, with my parents, in this familiar and strange city. The moment I stepped out of the Custom, I had this strange feeling in side of me. The uncomfortableness, the cultural shock, are the same as going to a foreign country. That is why I chose to be here, to spend $20, 000 in four months, and to cope with such upset and all. I must learn to adapt myself quickly to a new environment.
2007年8月25日星期六
The Last Day in Guangzhou
That is to say, I'm planning to set out for Hongkong tomorrow, August 26th.
We originally planned to depart on 26th. However, my father, for some unknown filthy reason, suddenly declared that the schedule would be advanced for one day yesterday i.e. we should have left for Hongkong this morning. I silently accepted this sudden change of schedule, and even announced it to some others so that they can be awared of it and prepare for my arrival. However, for some other silly reasons again, the schedule was delayed, and we'll depart as the original plan.
Hence, it seems that I won't get access to Internet until, probably, September. I'll miss you all.
Once I get access to Internet, I'll definitely tell you the story of the travelling and all in Hongkong.
We originally planned to depart on 26th. However, my father, for some unknown filthy reason, suddenly declared that the schedule would be advanced for one day yesterday i.e. we should have left for Hongkong this morning. I silently accepted this sudden change of schedule, and even announced it to some others so that they can be awared of it and prepare for my arrival. However, for some other silly reasons again, the schedule was delayed, and we'll depart as the original plan.
Hence, it seems that I won't get access to Internet until, probably, September. I'll miss you all.
Once I get access to Internet, I'll definitely tell you the story of the travelling and all in Hongkong.
2007年8月22日星期三
Kind of Dismay
Today I returned all my books, and that's when I found that the vacation is really coming to its end, and that, during the whole vacation, I've actually read little, too little.
It make me quite upset to acknowledge it, but it's the truth. I can have a long list of excuse, I can say "should I go through the vacation one more time, I'll definitely..." blah blah blah. However, the fact is here. After the whole vacation, I've not prepared myself much better for the goal, and I am, up to now, not in a very good mood to embrace the new challenges.
The only thing I've not drop is English. Yes, I haven't lost my skill in English, even made some teeny tiny progress in listening and speaking. However, that's crap. My English has long been in the situation that no great progress can be made unless thoroughly exposed in an English surronding for long enough. I've come to this level since, probably, one year ago. Since then, nothing can have made great difference. BTW, HKUST is not what I call "English surronding", for much Cantonese might be used. Though I expect to train myself in discussing on physics in English, and I do expect to prepare myself better for later life in USA with this exchanging thing, I've never expected to receive the feeling of "western country".
As to mathematics and physics, I'm sorry to say: NO significant, nay, noticable progress was made, if I haven't forgotten some of those I learned before. The only thing I've actually studied carefully is Modern History of Physics. In fact, that's just Inward Bound. I have to say it's not as "comfortable" as I expected. On the contrary, I was kind of frightened when I come across those struggles of human minds. Theory after theory was put forward and abandoned by those great physicists to explain a phenomenon. Some of these phenomenons are familiar to me, and most questions that once confused the all the physicists are, judging now, so simple and naive that even I can give the answers. It's quite a bit astonishing when one first come to know how much effort was spent by the human kind to unveil the secret of nature. That's why I always emphasize the learning of history of physics. If the new physicists don't realize the difficulty the old ones went through in establishing theories, they can never establish their own. See? I've gone too far, so let's come back. Besides, I've neither practised "the Four Mechanics" as I planned, nor made any progress in group theory, tensor analysis and functional, as I planned. I did read quite a bit about solid-state, but I'm still not so qualified to teach the ones in 181-324.
As to my plan of writing, it should only be fulfilled next semester.
Only 3 out of 5 of my requested course are approved, make it 12 credits in total. That shall give me more time to fulfill my further plan.
It make me quite upset to acknowledge it, but it's the truth. I can have a long list of excuse, I can say "should I go through the vacation one more time, I'll definitely..." blah blah blah. However, the fact is here. After the whole vacation, I've not prepared myself much better for the goal, and I am, up to now, not in a very good mood to embrace the new challenges.
The only thing I've not drop is English. Yes, I haven't lost my skill in English, even made some teeny tiny progress in listening and speaking. However, that's crap. My English has long been in the situation that no great progress can be made unless thoroughly exposed in an English surronding for long enough. I've come to this level since, probably, one year ago. Since then, nothing can have made great difference. BTW, HKUST is not what I call "English surronding", for much Cantonese might be used. Though I expect to train myself in discussing on physics in English, and I do expect to prepare myself better for later life in USA with this exchanging thing, I've never expected to receive the feeling of "western country".
As to mathematics and physics, I'm sorry to say: NO significant, nay, noticable progress was made, if I haven't forgotten some of those I learned before. The only thing I've actually studied carefully is Modern History of Physics. In fact, that's just Inward Bound. I have to say it's not as "comfortable" as I expected. On the contrary, I was kind of frightened when I come across those struggles of human minds. Theory after theory was put forward and abandoned by those great physicists to explain a phenomenon. Some of these phenomenons are familiar to me, and most questions that once confused the all the physicists are, judging now, so simple and naive that even I can give the answers. It's quite a bit astonishing when one first come to know how much effort was spent by the human kind to unveil the secret of nature. That's why I always emphasize the learning of history of physics. If the new physicists don't realize the difficulty the old ones went through in establishing theories, they can never establish their own. See? I've gone too far, so let's come back. Besides, I've neither practised "the Four Mechanics" as I planned, nor made any progress in group theory, tensor analysis and functional, as I planned. I did read quite a bit about solid-state, but I'm still not so qualified to teach the ones in 181-324.
As to my plan of writing, it should only be fulfilled next semester.
Only 3 out of 5 of my requested course are approved, make it 12 credits in total. That shall give me more time to fulfill my further plan.
2007年8月21日星期二
Lost the Concept of Time
I know I have no much time left, but I still cannot focus on the "meaningful" things.
I've been playing this game called Mount and Blade, a TPC(Third Personal Chopping) game. As the name indicates, you can knock the enemy into a bleeding corpse flying high in the air on your horse, or you can slide the enemy into half with your long sharp axe, or do them both. The game is rather small, but it's indeed realistic, 'cause it simulated most aspects of the real fights of that age. In the game, when someone is chopped, he'll be stunned for a while for the intense pain, and thus cannot chop back immediately. If there's a bunch of guys chopping a single poor guy, he'll become mincemeat without even a change to fight back! Hence I love it!
I've been playing this game called Mount and Blade, a TPC(Third Personal Chopping) game. As the name indicates, you can knock the enemy into a bleeding corpse flying high in the air on your horse, or you can slide the enemy into half with your long sharp axe, or do them both. The game is rather small, but it's indeed realistic, 'cause it simulated most aspects of the real fights of that age. In the game, when someone is chopped, he'll be stunned for a while for the intense pain, and thus cannot chop back immediately. If there's a bunch of guys chopping a single poor guy, he'll become mincemeat without even a change to fight back! Hence I love it!
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