Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Vincent Kam @ Brock University, Canada (from CityU) 8 January - 3 May 2011
January 8, 2011 Sunday
—First day in Niagara Falls
Today is the first day in Niagara Falls, a small town of Canada. In fact it is the second day of life in Canada. I got off from the flight yesterday and I went to Niagara Falls from the airport. It took around 2-3 hours to my hotel. To ensure I could stay in my hotel, I booked the hotel and airbus. Niagara Airbus, a company that specialize in taking people from and to airport to their destination. The service is very nice. However, the price is very expensive. It cost around $800 HKD for a 2-3 hours trip which is a great difference when you compare it to Hong Kong. During the trip, I realized you can barely find a person on the street. Most of them will have their own car. Due to the big snow in winter, they seldom wash their car as the snow will cover their car very soon. I would like to use the word “dirty” to describe the outlook of those cars. You are not very likely to see those “dirty” cars in Hong Kong since vehicles are consider as luxury good in Hong Kong. Car owners spend quite a lot to keep the outlook of their car “clean”. I was thinking Canadian must be very practical and more likely to pay more attention to the uses and functions of products. Back to my life in Niagara Falls, I am living in a small but very nice motel. I am very satisfied with the facilitates and the price except the location of the hotel. It is located a little bit far away from downtown. Thus, I didn’t spend a lot of time to go into the downtown of Niagara Falls. I just had my lunch in an Italian restaurant which was quite close to my hotel. Their food was really good but expensive. It cost me around $250 for a lunch. I start to worry about I may need to spend more that I thought.
January 10, 2011 Tuesday
- First day for class
Today is the first day for the winter term. I have a bad timetable that I only get one day off. I can’t travel a lot because of the timetable. For Monday, I only have one class on 9:30am. It is international marketing. My professor is a very serious person. He set plenty of rules in his first class. For example, you can’t get in the classroom if you late for class. You have to bring a “passport”, which is a name plate for every class. You can’t talk to your classmate regardless of what situation it is. I think the professor is too harsh. I didn’t expect there is such a serious professor in Canada. You can barely find these kinds of professor in Hong Kong. I have to take this course whatever how serious the professor he is since I have no choice. My residence is so close to my classroom that you can get into the classroom from my room within 5 minutes. So, it’s not a big problem for me to have so many morning classes. I am living in a double room. My roommate John, come back at 6:00pm and invited me to have dinner with him and his friends. John is very tall and strong as he used to play ice-hockey. After the dinner, he invited me to join the welcome party in another residence. He is a very active person which knows a lot of students in different residences. We had some drinks in the residence with his friends. However, they used a lot of slang that I can barely understand. I found quite difficult to join their conversation. I was thinking it will be much better if I come here in September so that I am not the only one who is new to them. I found most of the Canadian enjoy drinking a lot. However, it’s not my style. I am not sure that John and I will become a good friend. I hope that I can have a good relationship with him in the coming months.
January 18, 2011 Tuesday
- Am I a racist?
April 2, 2011 Sunday
Today probably will be my worst day in Canada. Today I was invited to have a lunch with Elizabeth, another exchange student from City University and Kyungha, a Korean girl who I met in the orientation day for exchange students. Kyungha was talking about another student in here. I am not sure who she was talking about. So that I asked her: “Are you talking that brown guy?” After I said that, she criticized me about my wordings since I used color to describe a person. However, I didn’t mean to insult anyone. The race of that person was probably the most obvious thing that I could tell about him. I tried to explain to her I just referring a truth and I didn’t mean to insult him. However, she didn’t except my explanation and affirmed me I am racist. The atmosphere came bad and we quickly finished our meal and returned to our own rooms. Should I avoid using any color words to describe a person even I don’t mean to insult anyone? Am I racist? I keep on thinking these questions for the whole day. I remembered there is a joke told by Russell Peters, a famous Canadian actor who are good at stand-up performance. He told such a story in the show: One day Russell was in a bar, another friend told Russell that he saw there was another person who is looking for Russell. Russell asked his friends: “Is he a brown guy”? His friends reply Russell: “I didn’t realize”. So, should I say “I didn’t realize” as a reply to similar questions too? There is also a common term to describe westerners in Hong Kong. Many of us will call them “Gwailo”. Does everyone who use the word “Gwailo” are racist? Although I am sure I am not racist, I feel bad as someone misunderstand me.
April 2, 2011 Sunday
- Our birthday party
Today is our birthday. My friends in Canada organized a birthday of people who was born in April. Yukiho, David, Kenny and I were all born in April so that we had a party in one of our friends’ home. There are so many people came to our party. There were around 30-40 people in that house. Around half of them were new to me. We ordered many Chinese foods from Chinese restaurant since all the birthday people were Asian. One of our friends even brought his Hi-Fi to that house and pretended to be the DJ. We ate, danced and watched movie in that house. However, I realized that I didn’t enjoy a lot in the party. Indeed, I didn’t enjoy the party as it doesn’t fit my style. Usually I prefer to have a small group of people who are sincerely to celebrate my birthday. Even I did appreciate the effort of the organizers of this party. Many of my friends said I am so calm. It reminded me something. It was happened in 3 years ago. I was studying in the community college. I had a presentation on my birthday. After our group was done with the presentation, my groupmates sang the birthday song for me in the classroom. I was also very calm and said Thank you to them. My tutor suspected that whether it is my birthday or not since she didn’t realized that I am very happy. Also, I will not have a very obvious facial expression eo are dynamic. Maybe I should learn how to show my appreciation to my friends, especially those organizers.ven I am happy. It may become an obstacle to knowing new friends since people usually prefer making friends with who are dynamic. Maybe I should learn how to show my appreciation to my friends, especially those organizers.
May 3, 2011 Tuesday
- Can “I have a dream” to be actualized?
Today is my second day in Montreal. I come here to visit Vanessa, my final year project’s groupmate. Montreal is a very beautiful city. In certain extent it is quite similar to Hong Kong. Nightlife is very good in here too. Compare to St. Catharine’s, which my host university is located in there. St. Catharine’s is just like a rural area where Montreal is a city. I am very happy to hang out with Vanessa and his boyfriend Eric who came here 3 years ago. Eric is a really good tour guide that he knew a lot about Montreal. We talked quite a lot about Canada. He shared the same feeling with me is that Canada is actually a racial differentiation country. You can barely find a sales representative who is black people. These kinds of job are usually taken by white people. And local students will usually play with local students. For most of the friends I meet in Canada, most of them are either Asian or International students. I have asked those Chinese who was born in Canada. Almost all of their friends are Asian. The reason is they have a very different culture. I was thinking, even I could speak English very well. Is it easy to get very close to non-Asian? At the same time, those foreigners who work in Hong Kong, do they feel home sick or find it difficult to make friends in Hong Kong? Even country like Canada, a country with high immigration rate, they are not so united. Is it possible to actualize the dream of Martin Luther King? Can people make close friends with each other even they are different in color and culture?
Labels: 2010/2011 Semester B
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