Exchange Diary (CityU Students): Yuki Lam @ Bocconi University, Italy (from CityU) 7 February

Friday, October 21, 2011

Yuki Lam @ Bocconi University, Italy (from CityU) 7 February - 1 June 2011

February 7, 2011 Monday

Tonight is the first night when I stepped on the land in Milan, I arrived at about 12:00am in mid-night. The first challenge our exchange buddies, who has been staying in Milan for a few weeks. Since we had only got notes, therefore we had to exchange for coins to make a phone call. However there was only one currency exchange shop, but they could not help us to exchange the notes to coins and just directed us to find a machine using Italian language. Therefore, my colleague and I could hardly understand what she was talking about. Finally, we found out an information desk in the airport who could speak Italian style English. Therefore, after a long and complicated conversation, we reached a machine which is used to exchange for coins. As there was no English instruction to teach us how to use it, so we used almost 30 minutes to get our notes exchanged. We had a pretty disappointed experience about their language ability although we have already known that Italian don’t always speak English, however, I was quite enjoyed the moment when we eventually figured out how to solve our problem. Although this was only ahas appeared which was about communication. I and my colleague needed some coins to use the public phone to contact very minor issue, I understood that communication is very important. I started to appreciate Hong Kong as an international city which could always help anyone to solve their problem. I started to understand that the competency of Hong Kong is not for granted. And I started to know that they are the outcome of government’s preparation to make it an international city. Thus, I swear to myself to always bear in mind that we cannot take everything for granted, so we must go through hard work in order to prepare our competency.

February 14, 2011 Monday

Today the school hold an exchange cocktail party for us. Almost every exchange student attend the party. It is a very fun and new experience to me as this is a rare culture in Hong Kong’s Universities. The wine culture is not that popular in Hong Kong than in Italy, so this was the first time I have ever tried to be welcomed by a cocktail party. After the party, we head to a restaurant for dinner. Again, this is a totally new experience to all of us. A restaurant in the afternoon will transform into a bar with buffet at night. We are taught with a famous Italian culture on that night, which is called “Apperitivo”. “Apperitivo” is an Italian food culture, where we can enjoy all the unlimited food with buying one drink costs 8 or 9 Euro in that restaurant. We were very happy because it was like we can enjoy a budget buffet in Hong Kong. Some foods were quite new to me, there were pasta, cheese, pizza, etc. the outlook of the pasta was quite weird as well. After today, I understand that this world is so large that we may not know everything, so whenever we have chance to learn new things, we have to treasure it and try to enjoy and experience of other culture such as the party, wine and food culture in Italy. Always keep an open mind, respecting our own culture while also appreciate the others.

March 1, 2011 Tuesday

Today I have acquired lots of new knowledge and skills. As one of my objectives to study abroad is to learn from other educational traditions and cultures. Therefore I take courses which do not covered in my University in Hong Kong. I took a management of fashion company course, as I know there is long history of fashion culture in Italy, thus, I know I must be able to learn many special knowledge apart from my original study. What is surprising was that the course professor had invited senior management people from many famous fashion companies to give us a lecture about their experiences such as Hermes, Gucci Group, Ray Ban, etc. these were really rewarding experiences for me to have a further understanding in Italian fashion culture. I enjoyed these lectures a lot and had learnt the Italian attitude of doing things as well. They love perfection, thus they value a lot in quality. Unlike Hong Kong, we always want efficiency, thus somehow we might neglect or forgo quality for efficiency.

After class, I go to ski, which I haven’t tried in my entire life, with the school tour. This is a fun and hard experience because we had not taken any course about skiing, all we did was to look at others and learn. After a thousand falls, we finally could ski for a short path without falling. I have acquired another new skill in my exchange life. What is more, this was not just a skill, but a training of my determination to be prepared any time to take on challenge. This was a good training before my graduation, because I know that there would always be challenges and difficulties when we work in the real world. Thus, I really thank for the school for giving us an opportunities to learn.

March 15, 2011 Tuesday

Another ability that I have trained up with is to do things independently. As we went for exchange and were far from our hometown and parents, we must handle everything on our own. Simple stuffs such as cooking, laundry, booking air ticket and insurance all by myself. Not only have I trained to cook a nice meal, but also handle difficulties on my own. I was living with some of my exchanges buddies on off campus apartment, thus, the host Universities didn’t help us when we had an unfair treatment by the landlord. The landlord accused us for bringing bedbug to her house which we knew we haven’t and we had suffered from this problem once we got into this house already. Then she asked some pest control people to come killing the bugs without noticing us and put all the cost on us which is a huge amount costs 1000 Euro. We were very angry and tried to seek help from host University, Chinese ambassador in Italy, however, no one could help. We were very disappointed, but we didn’t give up and tried to seek help from Italian friends and others to bargain for us. However, though it didn’t work at last, when I think back, I appreciated our efforts because we were united and had tried our best to solve the problem. I understand that when we are away from our parents and our hometown, we are alone, so we had to solve problem on our own. What is more, this is a very good experience to all of us that we have to be very clear whenever we sign any contracts as there might always be evil people trying to trick us. This was an important and costly lesson we learnt to protect ourselves.

June 1, 2011 Wednesday

Today is the last day of the exchange study, I had a farewell dinner with all exchange students. We are glad to know each other, we are happy to learn a lot from other countries and culture. This was a day and a good opportunity for me to review my half year experience. When I first came to Milan, I heard from others that Italy was dangerous, especially at night because there are many pick pockets and gangsters. And we have real experiences happened around us, some of our buddies’ wallet or other personal stuffs had been stolen. Therefore I had paid extra attention no matter when I was walking on the street or riding on the tram. Luckily, I haven’t met any of these robberies. However, when I looked back, I started to understand that this may not be related to luck, but the attention around the new environment. This was a really good training for me to protect myself. I know that although there are lots of evil people in the world, we can still escape from them once we know how to protect ourselves. After this exchange study experience, I really feel myself had grown to be an adult.