A Christian philosopher story

"I'm sorry, I can't get dinner with you tonight. I'm going to hear a Christian philosopher speak in Hong Kong central."

Not an excuse I thought I'd hear myself utter. Ever.

After class on Wednesday, one of my friends from class told me about this philosopher who was coming to speak in Hong Kong. My friend was helping to organize the event so he had some extra tickets to the talk. Would you like to come? he asked.

And that's how I found myself, on a Thursday night, on the subway heading to central Hong Kong and not totally sure what I was heading towards. I got off at the predetermined station, found the exit, and met up with my friend. "That's where we're headed," he said pointing. ICA, International Christian Assembly. Oh, it's a church.

Oh. It's a big church.

It was an auditorium style church with three large screens at the front displaying scenes from the stage they were hanging over. On the stage there was a band, complete with electric guitar and backup singers, playing songs that were a cross between Christian rock and hymns. I found a seat in the far back corner of the first floor and spent the following half an hour listening to songs and hearing a few prayers from various people.

When the the philosopher, Ravi, did get up to speak it was less of the lecture I had been expecting and more of a sermon. Makes sense considering the setting. I'm not totally sure where the philosophy came in, but the Christianity was certainly prevalent throughout the talk. He was a very engaging orator and shared many entertaining stories. Overall though, I had difficulty following his arguments. One in particular that stuck with me was evidence for a God. He cited that there was a 1 in 10 to the 40,000th chance that all of the enzymes necessary for life came together to form life by random chance. That's wicked small. So because that probability that life could arise by random chance is so small, QED, there must be a God. Honestly, I'm more fascinated by how one would calculate those odds.

I took the entire train ride home to internalize the experience. I'm still not sure what to call it besides an experience.

Besides that experience, we had our first typhoon warning! Mainly it entailed a bit of rain and wind and canceled morning classes; the actual typhoon missed us.

Excellent way to save energy.

Fresh, packaged corn anyone? It's even still slightly squishy!

Yesterday I took a hike up Victoria Peak in the evening and we were rewarded with this view from the top. One of my favorite buildings isn't pictured here. It's just to the left of this photo and it creates moving images up its sides with white lights. That sounds like I'm describing a television screen to somebody who's never seen a TV. But it isn't exactly a television. There's no screen, just the white lights and it's more subtle then a screen. Still, wicked cool and definitely worth the hike.

Hong Kong from the top of Victoria Peak. It's best at night.

Mid-Autumn Festival!

Happy Mid-Autumn festival! Last night Kat and I ventured out into the city to watch a fire dragon walk and see a lantern display. We spent some quality time milling in a crowd filled with the excited buzz that comes with holiday celebrations. We rubbed shoulders with couples taking selflies, walked by clumps of Europeans clutching beers, became jealous of the toddlers perched on their father's shoulders (who clearly had the best view in the crowd, but were too entertained by the glowsticks in their hands to pay any attention to the outside world), and generally craned our necks to see the Dragon.

Lanterns in Victoria's park which Kat and I visited after the dragon walk.

More lanterns and lights! There were lights strung up all over the park with lantern displays scattered around below. Quite romantic. We found several couples enjoying the ambiance.

Finally the Fire Dragon's walk began. We could tell because suddenly the air in front of us was filled with arms and smart phone screens. We had our pick of screens through which to watch the dragon. What a selection of choices! We had the classic iPhone, the samsung, even a few DSLR cameras. But the best part of the dragon that the smartphones couldn't capture was the smell of incense that filled the air. The dragon was stuck with hundreds of burning incense sticks that left a fiery trail of smoke and smell in their wake as the dragon raced by.

Happy to have seen the dragon, albeit only barely through the gaps in outstretched arms, Kat and I began to weave our way out through the crowd. Then began one of the oddest conglomerations of cultures I have ever witnessed.

"Are those bagpipes?"

Slowly rising over the noise of the crowd came the strains of scottish bagpipes. Kat and I gaped at each other. There, marching down the path that the fire dragon had just taken was a troupe of musicians playing the bagpipes. I even recognized the tune, Amazing Grace. How… interesting.

Kat and I taking a stellar selfie on the iPhone at the lantern display

Part of the skyline across the harbor.

Another highlight of this week was our school tour of Hong Kong. We spend Sunday wandering around bits of the city seeing the sights, taking pictures, and generally being tourists. Best part of the day for me: learning to count to ten in Cantonese. It took me the better part of the afternoon to get all the numbers straight in my head (ten whole numbers is a lot to keep track of) but once my friend taught me a little ditty to sing them to I was a pro. I spend the rest of the afternoon and evening contentedly singing the numbers to myself under my breath. I felt five again and it felt great.

A better view of the skyline from Victoria's peak. It was a super smoggy day but no complaints about the view.

Darren attempting to buy Asian pears in a market we found.
Asian pears are a cross between a crunchy pear and a large
apple. Super yummy!

Helana enjoying some shade. Sun umbrellas are quite popular around here and I'm beginning to understand why.
News alert: the sun is hot!

Hi from Hong Kong!

For anyone who knows the song, "It's five o'clock somewhere," I can verify, it is indeed always five o'clock somewhere. I flew with my classmate Kathryn from Chicago to Hong Kong and we had five o'clock lighting nearly the entire way. We also flew over the north pole (cloudy, unfortunately, so no santa sighting) so I'm not quite sure what the time was at that point. My guess is there's a hole in the fabric of space-time at the north pole because we spent 15 hours in the air, but landed 17 hours later according to time zones. This is the conclusion I reached in my sleep deprived and mentally addled state.

Flight path from Chicago to Hong Kong

We've now been in Hong Kong for a full week! I will be spending the term studying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong through the engineering exchange program at Dartmouth. Before anyone asks, no, I speak no Cantonese and yes, my classes are taught in English. The locals speak English to a varying degree and most signs have an English translation. I'm here with five other engineering students from Dartmouth and six hundred other international exchange students from all over the world. There's also about 20,000 local undergrads at the university who we are taking classes with (not all in one class, that would be absurd).

The view out of my dorm window. Those are university dorms in the foreground and the mountains we hiked in the background across the bay.

We spent orientation period generally being disoriented: getting lost on campus, wandering around in the city, trying street food: it's a great way to figure out a place!

I plan to use this blog to share anecdotes on day to day life in Hong Kong and any adventures I find along the way. Hopefully I'll share thoughts at least once a week but no promises during midterms.

Here we go! What better place to start than with a hiking story:

Trail sign!

Last Thursday, I set out on a hiking adventure with two other exchange students. For anyone who hears Hong Kong and thinks urban jungle, yes, there is a city (which I actually haven't visited yet) but Hong Kong is actually mostly forested jungle over mountains. Super awesome! My legs have mostly recovered from the Dartmouth 50 a month ago (hiking 50 miles in 27 hours. Good times) so we figured we'd do a short hike to ease into the hiking in Hong Kong. But the terrain isn't the problem. Unlike New England trails, (which don't believe in switch backs because why walk back and forth when you can climb straight up the mountain) trails here follow lovely meandering paths going back and forth up the steep sections. No, the problem was the fauna. An hour and a half into the hike and a quarter of a kilometer from the summit, we ran into a massive spider on a massive web.

I'm not afraid of spiders. I love spiders. They eat bugs. The look cool. So naturally I volunteered to pass by the web first. Come on guys, I told my hiking companions as they edged backwards down the path, it's a spider. It's more scared of you than you are of it.

Famous last words.

I crept up to within a foot of the spider. Right at mouth height. It raised its two front legs and snapped its finger-joint sized pincers at me. Once, twice. Yup, that's enough of that.

The picture doesn't do it justice. It was a big as my hand. My open hand.

Back down the path we sprinted, every step imagining the spider in hot pursuit. Shaking with adrenaline and dripping with sweat we paused for breath a suitable distance down the trail, no spider in sight. We never did see the view from the summit. Maybe another week. Or maybe a different peak. Just to be safe.