Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Cheng Pak Hei @ Syracuse University, USA (from CityU) 25 August - 25 November 2010
2010-8-25
Sitting on the grass in front of Hendricks Chapel, I recalled what happened to me last academic year in CityU. With the ambition to strive for the best in my studying life, I have attended several business competitions, gained several awards, and had an excellent internship in Shanghai. But I don’t really feel good about it, I even can’t stir up a weary smile last year. Yes, I was just too into the aggressive competition.
Luckily, I was allowed to stay into a professor’s family in Syracuse. Everyone in the house is nice and honest. Like me, they are all Christian, we will just start our one-hour-long morning worship every morning. Hopefully I can have a nice semester!
Syracuse University is a quaint university with an array of colleges and faculties spreading across the campus. Newhouse and Maxwell School are very famous in America, I just can’t wait to start my semester here!
2010-9-5
Still a lot of things to be settled down, I am just preparing my own necessities with the help of my new friend, Aniaka, an African studying International Relations here. He helped me just packed things up, went to grocery, and bought me a new cell phone with a new phone card here. It is so expensive, I can’t imagine how such technological advanced country could still charge us US$45 per month with unlimited call and SMS within the same SMS provider. This is so sick!
Anyway, my professor drove me to Niagara Falls last Saturday. Going along with some Chinese Students, I made a lot of friends studying here. They were majoring in Media, information, and business, this lifts me a room to train up my Madarin. Nagara Falls is fabulous, there was a ship just rowed me to an area closed to the Falls. It is a really nice experience for me to see how strong our nature is. Yes, I got wet.
2010-9-20
Look at my study, I can’t just concentrate on my study well. Students and teachers here speak too fast. Because I have picked some courses on Media and Creativity, there is only one Chinese here, that is me! I can only understand 40% of what they are talking about. They required me to read an array of articles and news by myself within a few days, that is really hard. Studied in Chinese-language-based secondary school, I cannot even finish an English book in my leisure time. This is too much to me. “Dennis, could you please come to my office this afternoon?” asked by my lecturer of the course named Global Marketing Strategy. I felt so depressed because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, I just missed the deadlines of some assignments even though I concentrated so much in the class. It is too much to me.
The only moment I feel well is to participate in church activities. My housemates, Tony, Li Ya, Shela, and Ivan gave me a lot of support. Sometimes I did not live quite well with them, maybe this is a matter of cultural difference. I didn’t like to speak too much, they may feel that I am not a nice guy, but it is obviously wrong! So I just accepted their invitations to go to the same church every Sunday. That was an impressive moment that I can look at how different my church in Hong Kong and America is. People here is relatively more emotional when worshiping God, they will stir up their smile and happiness in the God grace. But when look at Hong Kong, people there is relatively sad when praying, maybe they feel so stressful in Hong Kong. And me? I am just trying to stir up a weary smile.
2010-10-15
My friends having exchange here have been to so many places across America, I still stick to my own place. But my life here is so fruitful, I have made a lot of best friends. Simon, a Hong Konger studying Architecture major in Syracuse for five years, always find me to have a lunch or dinner. I do enjoy the moment with him, we both shared lots of happiness and sadness throughout our university life. When I talked about my life in CityU, I felt depressed, because I spent so much time of competing. Yes, I won a lot of rewards, but is this what I really need? It is still a question.
After one-and-half month studying here, I become a bit faster in reading newspaper everyday. My Media course required me to read newspaper everyday for a weekly quiz. This is so harsh! I tried to finish my reading within four hours, but I can’t. but I started understanding more about US culture and history.
I don’t like the partisanship in America. Both parties just pointed their figure to each other because of the seats in Congress. Hey! Please have a look at US economy, there are so many unemployed screaming on the street and asking for government’s help. I am so tired of the noise posted on newspaper everyday. Therefore, I was required to finish an article on US congress election this semester. That’s my time to reflect the partisanship of America!
2010-11-25
Thanksgiving week is a special holiday for me. I had a big Turkey meal with my friends in a Chinese’s home. He is a lawyer and he has two young daughters. The house is big, but it is not as expensive as I thought. It costs around US$400,000 for a four-story house in outskirt area, far bigger than 600-square-feet flat in Hong Kong.HHHhdfj; We came together to give thanks to God, and then started sharing and eating. Once the sharing session started, they pointed their fingers on me. At that moment, I understood that I am an exchange student, they wanted to know more about my life in Hong Kong.
After the dinner, I started planning our strip at the end of semester. I decided to hang around east coast of America including Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New York. With an afterthought of an array newspaper reading, I started to understand what’s wrong with America. American is too sticky to their “American Pride”. The overconfidence leads to a fear of the challenge from China, this can be viewed that so many negative openings of articles about China were posted at the front page of newspaper.
Time is the beast, the more articles I posted here, which means, the fewer time I have in Syracuse, it is the end of November now. Please, don’t kick me off from America!
Sitting on the grass in front of Hendricks Chapel, I recalled what happened to me last academic year in CityU. With the ambition to strive for the best in my studying life, I have attended several business competitions, gained several awards, and had an excellent internship in Shanghai. But I don’t really feel good about it, I even can’t stir up a weary smile last year. Yes, I was just too into the aggressive competition.
Luckily, I was allowed to stay into a professor’s family in Syracuse. Everyone in the house is nice and honest. Like me, they are all Christian, we will just start our one-hour-long morning worship every morning. Hopefully I can have a nice semester!
Syracuse University is a quaint university with an array of colleges and faculties spreading across the campus. Newhouse and Maxwell School are very famous in America, I just can’t wait to start my semester here!
2010-9-5
Still a lot of things to be settled down, I am just preparing my own necessities with the help of my new friend, Aniaka, an African studying International Relations here. He helped me just packed things up, went to grocery, and bought me a new cell phone with a new phone card here. It is so expensive, I can’t imagine how such technological advanced country could still charge us US$45 per month with unlimited call and SMS within the same SMS provider. This is so sick!
Anyway, my professor drove me to Niagara Falls last Saturday. Going along with some Chinese Students, I made a lot of friends studying here. They were majoring in Media, information, and business, this lifts me a room to train up my Madarin. Nagara Falls is fabulous, there was a ship just rowed me to an area closed to the Falls. It is a really nice experience for me to see how strong our nature is. Yes, I got wet.
2010-9-20
Look at my study, I can’t just concentrate on my study well. Students and teachers here speak too fast. Because I have picked some courses on Media and Creativity, there is only one Chinese here, that is me! I can only understand 40% of what they are talking about. They required me to read an array of articles and news by myself within a few days, that is really hard. Studied in Chinese-language-based secondary school, I cannot even finish an English book in my leisure time. This is too much to me. “Dennis, could you please come to my office this afternoon?” asked by my lecturer of the course named Global Marketing Strategy. I felt so depressed because I can’t figure out what’s wrong with me, I just missed the deadlines of some assignments even though I concentrated so much in the class. It is too much to me.
The only moment I feel well is to participate in church activities. My housemates, Tony, Li Ya, Shela, and Ivan gave me a lot of support. Sometimes I did not live quite well with them, maybe this is a matter of cultural difference. I didn’t like to speak too much, they may feel that I am not a nice guy, but it is obviously wrong! So I just accepted their invitations to go to the same church every Sunday. That was an impressive moment that I can look at how different my church in Hong Kong and America is. People here is relatively more emotional when worshiping God, they will stir up their smile and happiness in the God grace. But when look at Hong Kong, people there is relatively sad when praying, maybe they feel so stressful in Hong Kong. And me? I am just trying to stir up a weary smile.
2010-10-15
My friends having exchange here have been to so many places across America, I still stick to my own place. But my life here is so fruitful, I have made a lot of best friends. Simon, a Hong Konger studying Architecture major in Syracuse for five years, always find me to have a lunch or dinner. I do enjoy the moment with him, we both shared lots of happiness and sadness throughout our university life. When I talked about my life in CityU, I felt depressed, because I spent so much time of competing. Yes, I won a lot of rewards, but is this what I really need? It is still a question.
After one-and-half month studying here, I become a bit faster in reading newspaper everyday. My Media course required me to read newspaper everyday for a weekly quiz. This is so harsh! I tried to finish my reading within four hours, but I can’t. but I started understanding more about US culture and history.
I don’t like the partisanship in America. Both parties just pointed their figure to each other because of the seats in Congress. Hey! Please have a look at US economy, there are so many unemployed screaming on the street and asking for government’s help. I am so tired of the noise posted on newspaper everyday. Therefore, I was required to finish an article on US congress election this semester. That’s my time to reflect the partisanship of America!
2010-11-25
Thanksgiving week is a special holiday for me. I had a big Turkey meal with my friends in a Chinese’s home. He is a lawyer and he has two young daughters. The house is big, but it is not as expensive as I thought. It costs around US$400,000 for a four-story house in outskirt area, far bigger than 600-square-feet flat in Hong Kong.HHHhdfj; We came together to give thanks to God, and then started sharing and eating. Once the sharing session started, they pointed their fingers on me. At that moment, I understood that I am an exchange student, they wanted to know more about my life in Hong Kong.
After the dinner, I started planning our strip at the end of semester. I decided to hang around east coast of America including Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and New York. With an afterthought of an array newspaper reading, I started to understand what’s wrong with America. American is too sticky to their “American Pride”. The overconfidence leads to a fear of the challenge from China, this can be viewed that so many negative openings of articles about China were posted at the front page of newspaper.
Time is the beast, the more articles I posted here, which means, the fewer time I have in Syracuse, it is the end of November now. Please, don’t kick me off from America!
Labels: 2010/2011 Semester A
Chan Wing Huen @ Copenhagen Business School, Denmark (from CityU) 19 August - 29 December 2010
19 August, 2010
Upon my first arrival on Denmark, the adjective of this country comes up to my mind is, discipline. In my concept before I go onto exchange, I have to some extent stereotyped that Europeans live on a free and casual lifestyle, in other words, they do not like to stick to rules. However, when I first arrived on this Scandinavian land, I found that most of the people there are very self-disciplined.
In their metro and train stations, they do not have the gates at the entrances and the exits as we do in Hong Kong. People there merely clip their cards and get onto the metro. The whole system all rely on the inspectors who randomly get onto the metro and the self-discipline of people. If this happens in Asia, I am afraid that many people would take the risk of not paying the fee and sneak into the metro. I would not come to a conclusion simply by that. But I think at least this is one of the examples which tells the difference between people from Europe and from Asia.
21st September, 2010
There has been a month since I came to Copenhagen. I am glad that I have a chance to come over to here, not only to study, but also to experience how to enjoy life and appreciate the nature here.
In September, I have travelled to Malmo of Sweden and Berlin of Germany. I realized that I have got emotional shock when I travel to other places, especially in Berlin. In my high school, I was a History student who had stuided about the two world wars and the cold war. T
herefore, Berlin is particularly a place charms me a lot regarding its historical background. In the trip to Berlin, I have joined the free tours and I truly admire those tour guides. Many of them are not German. Instead, they are people from around the world who are interested in German history and have read a lot of information about the place so they are very knowledgeable about the German history. Somehow, I think joining the tours can learn a lot more than merely sitting in the classrooms listening to the teachers and reading textbooks and stencils.
31st October, 2010
I have just finished my semester break and I have travelled to Spain and Italy together with my dorm mates during the break. Both of the places are great, which they are both full of ancient and historical architecture and there are a lot of beautiful places to go around. However, I start to realize that not until you travel to Europe that you realize how good and convenient Hong Kong is. One of the major problems we came up to in both of these two places is language.
Before I came to Europe, I thought that except French most of the Europeans would speak English. However,
as a matter of fact, it is not. When we realized that most of the Spanish and Italian do not speak English, even for the easy and simple words, we realized how big the communication gap is between us. We had difficulty even to buy a meal in McDonald’s or to buy the train tickets. However, this has forced us to use our most basic language, our body gestures, to communicate with them despite of language barrier. It also gave me an urge to learn and master at least one more language apart from English and Mandarin.
30th November, 2010
There have been three months since I’ve been to Copenhagen and studying here. In these few months, I have noticed how differently the way of students from other countries st
udy and the way of Hong Kong student do. In general, Asian students are more likely to be exam-orientated. There may be times that we think that foreign students do not really work hard to study, but we are wrong. Students here are much hard working than we have thought. They do a lot of readings, not only their textbooks, but doing lots of research online or in the library. I have also realized that they lend to learn more from everyday life rather than merely from classroom. I guess this is not what Liberal Studies in Hong Kong can easily replace.
29th December, 2010
It is my last few days in Copenhagen. I am glad that I have a chance to have stayed in this peaceful and beautiful place for a couple of months. My journey ends with my Christmas trip to the place Berlin again. I have visited the German Christmas market. Also, I have joined some history tours again which make my most meaningful and knowledgeable history class. If I have chance to visit Europe again, definitely I would visit the rest of the tours.
Upon my first arrival on Denmark, the adjective of this country comes up to my mind is, discipline. In my concept before I go onto exchange, I have to some extent stereotyped that Europeans live on a free and casual lifestyle, in other words, they do not like to stick to rules. However, when I first arrived on this Scandinavian land, I found that most of the people there are very self-disciplined.In their metro and train stations, they do not have the gates at the entrances and the exits as we do in Hong Kong. People there merely clip their cards and get onto the metro. The whole system all rely on the inspectors who randomly get onto the metro and the self-discipline of people. If this happens in Asia, I am afraid that many people would take the risk of not paying the fee and sneak into the metro. I would not come to a conclusion simply by that. But I think at least this is one of the examples which tells the difference between people from Europe and from Asia.
21st September, 2010
There has been a month since I came to Copenhagen. I am glad that I have a chance to come over to here, not only to study, but also to experience how to enjoy life and appreciate the nature here.
In September, I have travelled to Malmo of Sweden and Berlin of Germany. I realized that I have got emotional shock when I travel to other places, especially in Berlin. In my high school, I was a History student who had stuided about the two world wars and the cold war. T
herefore, Berlin is particularly a place charms me a lot regarding its historical background. In the trip to Berlin, I have joined the free tours and I truly admire those tour guides. Many of them are not German. Instead, they are people from around the world who are interested in German history and have read a lot of information about the place so they are very knowledgeable about the German history. Somehow, I think joining the tours can learn a lot more than merely sitting in the classrooms listening to the teachers and reading textbooks and stencils.31st October, 2010
I have just finished my semester break and I have travelled to Spain and Italy together with my dorm mates during the break. Both of the places are great, which they are both full of ancient and historical architecture and there are a lot of beautiful places to go around. However, I start to realize that not until you travel to Europe that you realize how good and convenient Hong Kong is. One of the major problems we came up to in both of these two places is language.Before I came to Europe, I thought that except French most of the Europeans would speak English. However,
as a matter of fact, it is not. When we realized that most of the Spanish and Italian do not speak English, even for the easy and simple words, we realized how big the communication gap is between us. We had difficulty even to buy a meal in McDonald’s or to buy the train tickets. However, this has forced us to use our most basic language, our body gestures, to communicate with them despite of language barrier. It also gave me an urge to learn and master at least one more language apart from English and Mandarin.30th November, 2010
There have been three months since I’ve been to Copenhagen and studying here. In these few months, I have noticed how differently the way of students from other countries st
udy and the way of Hong Kong student do. In general, Asian students are more likely to be exam-orientated. There may be times that we think that foreign students do not really work hard to study, but we are wrong. Students here are much hard working than we have thought. They do a lot of readings, not only their textbooks, but doing lots of research online or in the library. I have also realized that they lend to learn more from everyday life rather than merely from classroom. I guess this is not what Liberal Studies in Hong Kong can easily replace.29th December, 2010
It is my last few days in Copenhagen. I am glad that I have a chance to have stayed in this peaceful and beautiful place for a couple of months. My journey ends with my Christmas trip to the place Berlin again. I have visited the German Christmas market. Also, I have joined some history tours again which make my most meaningful and knowledgeable history class. If I have chance to visit Europe again, definitely I would visit the rest of the tours.
Labels: 2010/2011 Semester A
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