auradis

For the first few weeks in Hong Kong, I pretty much neglected all worshiping activities in the hustle & bustle of settling in, exploring the city and making new friends. Although HK is not the religiously oppressed place that some of my friends assume [come on, it was ruled by Britain for a century: there are churches everywhere], Christianity [unsurprisingly?] does not have a large presence on campus. Sadly, I spent more time looking for a tennis/badminton club than a fellowship or church.

However, after a few weeks, while checking my Mizzou webmail, I noticed an email from the HKU International Christian Fellowship advertising their first meeting. That same week, I walked past the part of campus where organizations set up promotional tables; some even bring speakers to play music. I usually don’t bother to look, but I stopped in my tracks when I realized I was hearing Hillsong.

I quickly backtracked to the table where HKU Christian Society was selling Christian literature. All of the books on the five tables were in Chinese except for Bibles [The Message version], strangely. I approached the people sitting behind the table to ask if they had weekly meetings. The initial conversation was a bit awkward, but they eventually told me that the only English-speaking fellowship on campus was the International one.

ICF meets on Wednesdays around noon. After missing the first gathering [I was in Shenzhen], I managed to make it to the second one. It was located in a building that most students have never even heard of [I actually got lost trying to get back to the main part of campus]. The room, called Gatherland, was a cozy place with pillows, a rug and a couch.

When I arrived, I was astonished to recognize four of the eleven people there — they were all other exchange students that I had already met, most of whom lived in my hall and most of whom I did not know were Christian. This imparted an immediate feeling of security as I took a seat and munched on a slice of pizza.

The visiting pastor, Nathan [I think], was a young-ish man from HK Baptist Church who had grown up in Texas. Thankfully, he helped us do introductions — most of us were newly exchanged students, which was good for bonding [maybe] but bad for longevity. All of the people present labeled themselves as believers, so Nathan dug right into the message. Musical worship consisted of singing along to a recording, which was definitely a first for me in such a setting. Thankfully, one of the members elected to lead worship the week after, so they should have live music now.

Unfortunately, it turned out that I have to work at my internship during ICF meetings, so I was only able to attend that one meeting. I hope that the people I met for the first time don’t think I completely flaked out. If only they could meet in the evenings!

BAD TECHNOLOGY.

1 The proliferation of Macs: Most of the computers at HKU are Dell, and they all seem to be at least a few years old — dusty and bulky. There are a couple of computer labs on campus, all of which are filled to capacity at any given hour. This wouldn’t matter to me but for the fact that remote printing does not exist at HKU. The only way to print is to log into a computer on campus, which might be near impossible depending on how many students are [infuriatingly] surfing Facebook in the computer lab. Additionally, the computers in the library take literally five whole minutes to log in, which is simply baffling. Is HKU hurting for money? Can they not invest in some better computers? The campus seems to be advanced, but this printing issue [as well as the completely non-centralized course registration process] reveals that HKU is still technologically lacking.
Anyway, the computer labs I frequent at Mizzou are much more advanced [and less crowded!] than the ones here, and I will no longer take that for granted.

2 ACF [Asian Christian Fellowship]: I’ve spent the past two and a half years building and attending the same fellowship, and recently it has started to feel like a genuine family. This kind of love is difficult to replace, especially in a place where the main Christian fellowship on campus is strictly Cantonese-speaking.

3 Wal-mart: Need I say any more? Sure, Hong Kong is definitely not lacking in shopping, but it’s so hard for me to find what I need in their stores. Not only am I unfamiliar with the places, most of them are crammed to the brim, which is bad for my attention span and also makes it impossible for me to find hangers. Seriously, the first time I went to Wellcome [deliberately spelled incorrectly? Don’t know, but it’s the closest equivalent], I found a bunch of cheap hangers, but the past three or four times I’ve been there, I cannot track them down again.
Thus, the majority of my clothing is still in my suitcase, which lies on the ground at the foot of my bed. This lifestyle is okay with me, but one of my roommates has expressed her dissatisfaction with its presence. Well, aren’t I entitled to the six square feet of space at the end of my bed? It’s not my fault it’s in the middle of the room; I didn’t get to choose my bed :(

4 Flat land: Mountains are cool and all, but it’s a bit ridiculous to have to take two long sets of stairs and then an elevator just to get from the entrance of campus onto the actual campus.

The morning after I arrived in Hong Kong, I took a shower to scrub off the grime of traveling. I’ve never had communal floor showers before, but the stalls looked relatively clean, so I thought I’d give it a go. I entered the stall and turned on the water, but it sprayed harder than I expected and left a puddle outside the shower curtain.

I hopped into the next shower and turned it on, but it wouldn’t warm up, even on the hottest setting. The water felt tolerable on my arm, so I stuck my whole head under it. This turned out to be a bad decision, because the water was freezing. I tried to get minimally wet while washing my hair as I took the one of the shortest showers of my life. Teeth chattering, I wrapped myself in my towel and hurried back to my room, which was just as cold.

Rosaline was still sleeping, but Nadia was awake, and I asked her if the hot water turned on or off at a certain time of day, since I remembered that would be the case sometimes in mainland China due to water shortages.

“You have to turn on the hot water separately,” Rosaline mutter from underneath the covers.
“What??” I asked, thinking back to if I’d seen another lever in the shower stall.
“The switches are by the door, next to the light switch.”
“Ohh…”

The next morning, I was determined to have a pleasant bathing experience. Armed with my towel and shampoo, I marched to the shower room and flipped the switch for stall #4, closest to the windows [opaque ones, don’t worry]. Even though I turned on the hot water, it only got lukewarm at best. Disappointed, I cleaned myself quickly and jumped out. I usually shower at night, but since I had been staying out at night until 4AM, I could only shower in the mornings.

My next experience was only slightly better — the water was scalding in the beginning, so I tried to turn it down a little bit. I had a hot shower for two minutes before it turned ass-freezingly cold again. Nadia said that the water seemed to stay warm when she showered in the evening, so I tried that the next time. It was my first enjoyable shower of the week. I haven’t completely figured out the system yet, but I hope that consistently hot showers won’t be a luxury of the past while I’m here.