I really just want to settle down somewhere and stop moving around so much, but once you start something, I guess it gets the ball rolling, and sometimes you can't turn the momentum around so easily. Actually, all I need is a home base, somewhere to return to, somewhere to feel anchored or rooted even if I am half-way across the world.
My first week in Hong Kong has been spent doing 應酬 things for the most part, visiting aunts and uncles I haven't seen in a while, relatives such as cousins and nieces and nephews. That stuff will take up a lot of time. Otherwise, I've been trying to do my thesis work, trying to get into the groove of a self-imposed work schedule.
What probably harkens me back to my nostalgic study abroad here in '03-'04 is that I've started up my Cantonese notepad again. Back then my energy and determination to learn Cantonese was so through-the-sky intense, I kept a pocket notepad to write down every single word or phrase I heard throughout the day, and would study it. I'd accumulate maybe 20 terms a day. The scariest part of course is using the new vocab. What's funny is that it turned my Cantonese into a half-fluent half-horribly accented combination. It was as if I was stitching up a totally foreign language onto an already very familiar language, and hoping that it would organically combine into one eventually. My new notepad continues the operation!
Today for lunch I walked with my mother to pizza hut. "Pizza hut here isn't like Pizza hut back in the US. It's much better here! Not like that fast food greasy stuff back in the US!" She agreed to try it out, and liked it very much (mostly because it was really Chinese-ified). A lot of so-labeled "Western" food here consists of rice dishes topped with cheese and some sort of meat, like dark-meat chicken or ham, baked. I guess if it's baked, it makes it "Western."
This entry is just a warming up of my blogging. My video blog is under production, as I experiment and toy with ideas in my head. The main reason I want to do it is self-improvement: working on my presentation, articulation, spontaneity.
My jetlag is almost totally gone. Next week I hope to get into my routine here in Hong Kong: Thesis work in the daytime, studying Chinese in the night time, Capoeira Tuesdays and Thursdays, Salsa once a week.
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