Nintendo, 10,000 Buddhas, Exchange fair

So its been a little while since I posted last. I finally have schoolwork and have been busy exploring places, and playing games on sporcle.com (so addicting!).

I finished up my cultural extravaganza this week with a concert at the Hong Kong Sinfonietta. Their pieces included a world premier of a work for Nintendo Gameboy, Electronics, and Orchestra, Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1, Lutoslawski's Dance Pieces for Clarinet and Orchestra, and Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta. Overall the concert was pretty good. The orchestra was small but powerful, but it was still different than the big sounds of the CSO I am used to. The Nintendo piece was tamer than I expected. There was some interesting moments of dialogue between the orcehstra and the electronics, but ultimately I kind of wanted something more...especially given the experience I have had playing world premiers in Wind Ensemble. The composer (a Hong Konger who is now a post-doc at princeton), came out in an orange prison suit and talked a little about the piece and then took his place in the back of the orchestra with all his "toys" (literally!). The rest of the concert was good, especially the Bartok. The soloist of the Chopin (Sergio Teimpo) was pretty virtuosic, and I even got his autograph! He's still young, but maybe it will be worth millions someday.

I also went on a walk in the Causeway Bay area. You can see some of the pictures in the last album I posted. I guess some of the coolest things on this walk were the temples. In Hong Kong, there seem to be random temples in the middle of the city. In the midst of all the high rises and modernity, you turn the corner and there is this tiny little temple. Because they are so small, it is kind of hard to breath because of all the incense. One of the temples had coils of incense hanging from the ceiling that burn for 2 weeks!

This past Saturday, I went up to Sha Tin in the New Territories to see the temple with 10,000 buddhas. Out of all the places I have been to so far, this one was the only one I struggled to find. Throughout Hong Kong, virtually every street corner and MTR exit are clearly labeled with the directions to attractions near bye. For this temple, I would have had no idea how to find it had I not been to Sha Tin before on an ikea run and saw a sign. Still, we got a little lost and ended up walking through a cemetery-ish complex that we thought was the temple before we got found the path to the actual temple. Walking through the cemetary, lots of people were giving us weird glances and when we got to the top of the cemetary and saw all these gold buddha figurines on another hill, we figured we were in the wrong place.

The actual temple was pretty cool. The steep and winding path leading up to it was lined on both sides with life size, gold buddhas, each one being different. That was cool, until we got to the temple itself. It was a large room where the walls were filled floor to ceiling with little buddhas, again every one of them being slightly different. I read that there are actually more like 13,000 buddhas in this room alone, plus all the life size ones....a whole lot of buddhas! There were even more buddhas around the temple, plus a cool red pagoda.

Also this week, HKUST hosted an exchange fair where exchange in students and former exchange out students for each school had a booth in the academic concourse. It was especially fun to talk to students who were at Cornell last semester and hearing about their experiences and reminiscing. They all agreed that Cornell was much harder than HKUST. So that makes me feel better about not doing so much work here (and about all the work I deal with at Cornell). I also met some of the students who will be going to Cornell next year.

So now I've officially been here a month. I can't believe it is March already. Before I know it, I will be on the plane back to Chicago! There is still so much I want to explore. I'm going on a trip to Taiwan this upcoming weekend. Hopefully some more traveling in SE asia will happen soon, but I really want to spend a lot of time getting to know Hong Kong.

View the pictures from this adventure on facebook!

adventures before school starts :(

So I have been trying to cram a few explorations in this weekend before I have to face the responsibility of school. Things started off a little rough...I was planning on taking a bus to a trains station on the green line. From the directions I had in my orientation packet, the bus I got on would go there and the sign on the bus said it would go there too. So I had no reason to believe I would end up somewhere else. When the bus stopped at the end of the purple line and all the passengers were getting off, I figured something went wrong. But after a little damage control and extension to my excursion, I made it to where I wanted to be.

That night, I went out to dinner with my buddy to a thai restaurant in Sai Kung that could give Taste of Thai a run for its money (although I'm sure Taste of Thai needs its money anyway after the little problem it has now...). Following dinner, we went to this chinese dessert place. They had things like ice cream and smoothie like things, but the majority of their desserts are kind of sweet, cold soups with bean pastes, fruit and jellies. I tried the Mango Glass Jelly. Here is a picture of one I found online (I need to start taking pictures of my food like somebody I know...), but it was basically a sweet, creamy milk with ice chips, a chunk of fresh mango, and flavorless, gelatinous black cubes called "grass jelly". Overall, was surprisingly good!

Today, couple of people I have metand I headed across all of Hong Kong to the Po Lin Monastery and "Big Buddha" on Lantau Island. It took about an hour to get there, but after a bus, 3 different train lines and a cable car ride up to the top of the mountain, we made it. It was quite busy since it was Sunday and part of the new year, there were many people who made the trek for religious reasons as well as many tourists. The cable car ride, while comparatively expensive (107 HKD! or approx 14 USD) showcased wonderful vistas.

The Buddha itself was pretty neat, as was the monastery. The incense at the monestary was so thick it was hard to breathe! It was kind of weird to be taking pictures while many people around us were praying to the Buddha. Another strange thing about this place is that it is relatively new...its only been around about 30 years, even the Buddha and parts of the monasteries Parts of this place seemed akin to Disney World or Six Flags...toursity and ridiculously over priced and complete with a Starbucks. All in all a good and tiring day.





More pictures of Po Lin will soon be posted on facebook albums. Due to poor lighting, the pictures are kind of yucky. Maybe I will photoshop a few of them when I have the time. I also recently posted a few more pictures of campus that I took with my phone.