Post the Seventh - Physics Death

As per the title, Physics will kill me. So here are my classes and my analysis

CSIS1120 - It's a lot like CS 231 for right now; we're doing number representation at the minute, but we should shortly be moving on to the new stuff... I hope. But I will review it just so that I don't get caught off guard. I still feel really bad for the professor, but I give him props for teaching on top of the talking.

STAT1301 - Not a bad class, but that could change. The teacher is a self professed gambler (English is not too bad, but he stutters with "ah...ah...ah..." frequently)and has gambling examples for everything...but he's not a bad guy. There are two other exchange students there, so it shouldn't be so bad. We'll see

PHYS2627 - Quantum. My mind wants to explode. But I met a very nice local student who's also in 1415 AND a physics major, so I have someone to back me up. This is my only female professor, but the English is heavily accented. Luckily that's translatable... her handwriting, on the other hand, is not...

PHYS1415 - Holy Hell. I will seriously die. The man keeps saying "Oh, you're HKU students, it's a prestigious university, you know all this." GAH. The professor speaks English perfectly fine, although he tends to lapse into Cantonese. I've met a few local students here and have had dozens of questions asked about the US and the education system (they want to study abroad). I put up a disclaimer immediately, but I guess I'm the only direct source of information they have...

On that note, Week One is done, I'm mindlessly scared of my work, but this weekend is when all the tours take place, so I'm going to have to work diligently. I've already got my first 1415 assignment, due next Friday before the break, but after that, I've got nine days to catch up. I was planning on going to Bangkok, but it turned out to be more expensive than expected... so that got nixed. But hopefully I will be able to see another part of Asia before I go... if my classes permit...

For now, life is good. Food is pretty easy to come by; I've stocked up on snacks and the like for vegetarian days and have taken to drinking soy milk and V8 (I need vegetables!). Milk tea is a popular drink here, and I like it (it reminds me a little of Indian tea). So here's how the food thing works here:

There are several amenities centers, and each of them have restaurants. There's a dim sum/fast food restaurant in the Pokfulam Amenities Center (right next to my dorm), a coffee shop in the Global Lounge (where we ate sandwiches at orientation), another restaurant down at the amenities down Pok Fu Lam Road next to Starr Hall and Lady Ho Tung, and several restaurants in Chong Yuet Ming, which is in the dead center of campus. I generally eat there, so this is how the system works:

There are two food options there: one is a sandwich and tea shop, and the other is a conglomeration of restaurants: Chinese fast food, Chinese BBQ, International, and Western Cuisine. You pick what you want from the menu and order and pay at the counter before heading into the lines. Here (and in a good portion of restaurants), you put your receipt on your tray so that the people behind the counter can see it and call it out to the chefs. They place your food on your tray, and then you're off to find a seat and eat.

The food is very good and costs about US $3, which gets you quite a sizeable meal and a drink. The problem is finding a seat when it's super busy... the local students aren't really all that approachable. But it's worked out so far.

Well, that's how things are on my end. From Hong Kong, good morning.