So upon Hiren's suggestions, I've been working my way through some difficult cultural barriers here in Hong Kong with a kick-ass attitude :). First off, my cantonese is terrible and I live in a neighborhood with no ex-pats or english speakers. This makes even the mundane tasks like ordering from a restaurant extremely difficult. I can't read the menu and the waitresses are impatient so I have to struggle through each word to get my thoughts across. It's been a good exercise though, I feel that somehow this will all pay off in the future, yet to be seen though. Good luck, bad luck who knows... right?
Secondly, connecting with people has been harder than I thought. People in Hong Kong are a bit flaky and at the same time less casual than Californians. This makes interactions a bit strange for me, but I'm forcing myself to see through the temporary flakiness to find the commonalities and push for the meaningful interactions. After all, the whole point of my travels is to discover the intricacies and simplicities of human nature. I will find those eventually, so I keep reminding myself that it'll be hard at the beginning.
Reading the "Way of the Peaceful Warrior" helped (as suggested by Hiren). I'm constantly reminding myself to just do my best and that each thing I work on, accumulates and turns into positive change. Lots of incremental steps without staggering leads eventually to effective change.
Anyways, just wanted to put those thoughts down. Nothing deep today. Just bought a basket so that I can get fresh fruit every morning (more fruits and veggies in my diet will be good nutrition and energy for me), figuring out money conversion issues (just signed up for Fidelity mySmart cash with 1% conversion fee :), been trying to figuring out how to get more exercise... stuff like that.
Oh, and I will be having my first tutoring session tomorrow! Cantonese and mandarin! I'm very excited to finally be learning Chinese. I can't tell you how excited I am. I know it'll be very useful in the future.
