Typhoon #2: Ketsana

I'm currently trying to dry off in my apartment after wading through the pouring rain brought by Typhoon Ketsana. It hit the Philippines pretty badly, and is now heading for Vietnam. The name was submitted by Laos, and the Chinese translation (by the Macanese government) is 凱薩娜. The first character means "triumphant march" (as in military music), the second is just used as a surname (sa4), but the last character, depending on how it's pronounced, can be either a character used in a name, or it can mean "to move, shift." However, it's a phonetic translation rather than a literal one, so I wonder what "Ketsana" actually means in Laos.

Tracking Ketsana

It's a pity that the weather absolutely sucks, because today we had a visit from a group of NYU students studying abroad in Shanghai as part of Stern's "Business and Political Economy" program. They have a long break for the National Day holidays, so some of them are touring HK and Macau. We met a few on Saturday at the Fulbright retreat, then today they came to talk with Austin's and Susan's classes in the morning, followed by lunch in the library cafe and something of a casino tour. I have to say, for anyone interested in international business, the program is pretty awesome - you study abroad in London and Shanghai, plus they're getting a trip to Buenos Aires next spring.

As for my classes, I still feel like I'm trying to cram a lot of material into my students' heads, but with repetition and reinforcement, it's getting there. A good example is vocabulary - they're very good and memorizing definitions and such, but I've been trying to teach them different ways of learning new words, e.g. playing Freerice.com, looking for roots and related words, etc. Today while we were watching a Youtube video, one guy commented that the narrator's voice was very boring, so I taught them the word monotone, relating it to monogamy (a vocabulary word they already learned from the reading).

I'm also trying to get them to actually use the words so they become part of their working vocabulary, e.g. asking questions using those words, or having them write sample sentences. As much as it sounds like busy work, it's a better test of their knowledge than multiple-choice questions. After grading her first reading comprehension quiz last week, Susan realized that Chinese students are incredibly good at guessing the right answer for MC and T/F questions, but looking at their short-answer responses, they might not have any idea what the book was actually saying!

As for my own lessons in Chinese, we're going to have US Consulate-funded classes starting in a few weeks, with just us ETAs. I'll be in an "intermediate" group with Susan and Amy, although if I'm really going to make major progress, I may have to follow Susan's example and hire a private tutor. There are plenty of students from mainland China, even from the northern areas (so they have more standard accents), so it shouldn't be hard to find someone. I'm not quite as ambitious about my language study (Susan's aiming to take the HSK), but even with just the intermediate lessons and my own self-study I'm sure I'll be better by the end of this year than I was before, even at the peak of my Chinese school knowledge =P

Fulbright retreat fall 2009

This weekend I went to the Fulbright retreat, which was generously organized and funded by the Hong-Kong America Center. Susan, Amy, Holly, and I got up suuuper-early Saturday morning to catch the 7:00 AM Turbojet, where we hopped around the MTR and finally made our way to the Peninsula Hotel to meet the HKAC shuttle to the Kadoorie Institute Shek Kong Centre, way out in the New Territories. While on the bus, we met a few new faces: Lindy (a HKIE graduate who had interned at the HKAC last summer), Jarlene (a Penn State senior interning at the US Consulate in Guangzhou), and Mari and Brian (two Grinnell graduates who are teaching at MUST as part of the Grinnell Corps).

About an hour later, we arrived at KI and promptly jumped into the program, with a welcome from Glenn Shive (the HKAC director) and a talk from Edmund Ko on the transition to the new 3-4-4- secondary/tertiary education system in Hong Kong. After a delicious lunch (I especially remember the huge mussels, well-seasoned beefsteak, and chicken curry), there were more talks about general education (What does "liberal arts" actually mean?) and the challenges of revamping tertiary curricula in HK toward a more American-style education.

The gate of the Kadoorie Institute

The more interesting part of the afternoon was "opening the circle" for small-group discussions, with all sorts of different topics proposed by the various participants, so nothing felt like it was forced. One of the main rules was the "Law of two feet" - go where you want to go, leave if you want to leave (and join another group). Thus, no one should complain about being stuck somewhere they don't want to be =P

The accompanying poster

Dinner was quite an elaborate DIY affair: there were some pre-prepped foods, but most of the cooking (aka grilling over fire pits) was up to us. It was rather smoky but a lot of fun, nibbling on everything from purple yams and skewers of vegetables to grilled pork chops and meat/fishballs. Dessert was fresh-cut watermelon and a variety of moon cakes, the newfangled "Snowy" ones as well as some really good, traditional white lotus paste ones. The rest of the evening was left open - some people went to sleep early while others stayed up to chat. A bunch of us ETAs ended up playing Bananagrams, a game rather like speed-Scrabble, not going to bed until past midnight =P

Breakfast the next morning was a rather interesting mix of Western and Asian food: I had some scrambled eggs with mushrooms and a muffin, but also a small man tou and some cooked veggies. Another interesting addition was cherry tomatoes - they seem to treat it as a fruit rather than a vegetable, so there was just a big bowl of them next to the apples and bananas. Probably the best part: pomelo juice!

My breakfast - everyone keeps commenting on how my plates always look colorful!

The morning's agenda was a few more open circle discussions, then we "closed the circle" by talking about what we'd learned, whether it was favorite restaurants in HK or ideas for getting our students to participate more in class. It's nice to know there are lots of people who also want to travel, take cooking lessons, and do other cool stuff this year =)

After another yummy buffet lunch and a quick change into casual clothes, we took two buses down the road to the Kadoorie Farm, which is no longer just a farm but a huge botanical garden and nature preserve. Because the hills that make up the farm are extremely steep, we mostly traveled on the buses, getting off at various points to walk around and take (lots of) photos. Selected shots are below - the full set is available here via Facebook.

Map of Kadoorie Farm

Not sure what you're supposed to try to do with this plant...

The Kadoorie Brothers' memorial pavilion

A cheerfully burbling waterfall (of which there were many)

Statue of Kwun Yum

These leaves were HUGE!

The final part of the retreat was dinner at the Wesley Hotel Garden Restaurant in Wan Chai, hosted by the US Consulate. My table was definitely the "youngest" one, with all three of the HK research grant recipients (Neil, Reggie, and Brian) and most of us ETAs. Dinner was banquet-style, with courses coming out in rapid succession so that we were all stuffed by the end of the night. Some of the dishes were meh (the abalone was super-chewy), but others (like the lobster noodles) were absolutely scrumptious. With such rich food, I was very glad to finish off with more fresh fruit: melon, watermelon, and dragonfruit (the pink/white thing with black seeds):

More cherry tomatoes too!

Dinner ended fairly late (around 9 PM), so by the time I got to the ferry terminal, I had to wait for the 10 PM Turbojet, so I didn't get home until nearly midnight. All in all, a very fun but quite exhausting weekend...now time to sleep and get ready to teach again tomorrow!

Bunnies everywhere!

Starting last Saturday, I've been seeing a lot of these little guys around:

They seem to be made of wire and fabric - there's also a magenta pink version. At first, I saw them near an advertisement for some sort of children's amusement park, so I thought perhaps the bunnies were the mascots, and they were providing extra-visible publicity for the park opening or something. Today on the bus to work, however, I saw this at the top of a building:

I didn't get to photograph the whole thing, but it has a bunch of animal/vegetable figures interposed with the Chinese characters for "Happy Mid-Autumn Festival" (中 秋 節 快 樂). Therefore, I realized that the bunny statuettes are also supposed to be part of the Mid-Autumn Festival decorations, representing the white rabbit that is supposed to be the pet of the moon goddess. At the New Century bus stop, they even have some that are playing instruments, like this one:

Reminds me of Kevin (-:3

For whatever reason the bunnies are there, they made me laugh in the middle of a crowded morning commute, so it's all good =D

Agenda for this weekend: Fulbright retreat at the Kadoorie Institute in HK!

Mooncake mishap

Tonight after work, Susan and I went to get mooncakes at Sanmiu, the local grocery store. We needed to get at least two boxes as gifts, one for the security guy who has been super-helpful, and one for the UM Chinese teacher who went to Zhuhai to get textbooks for us even though we didn't end up taking her class.

After we picked out two boxes of white lotus paste cakes with egg yolks for them, we were super-excited about getting a box for our apartment to share. I recognized one box from mooncakes I've had in the US, but it was more than twice as expensive as any of the others! We didn't want to spend too much money, so we decided to try one of the locally-produced brands (but not the cheapest one). Susan is not a huge fan of red bean and I've had a lot of red bean-flavored stuff here already, so we opted for lotus paste again. The box looked promising, with a pretty cover that even featured the Ruins of St. Paul:
Susan wanted to try one of our mooncakes for dessert, but when we opened the plastic wrap, a very...inauspicious scent came out, a salty sort of oily smell. She cut it open, only to find a bewildering mess of chunks rather than the white paste we had expected.

Ick.

Turns out we didn't get lotus paste...we got "Five Nuts" filling instead -_- The ingredients list only shows lotus seeds, but we also spotted what we think was walnuts and sunflower seeds (not sure what the other two nuts should have been). There was an egg yolk inside, as promised, but it wasn't that great either.

The label we didn't see until too late

We're not sure what to do with this box of undesirable mooncakes, but on the bright side, if I avoid eating them, it'll be better for my cholesterol (the nutritional information on those is scary!) Maybe I'll just get one red bean cake for the Mid-Autumn Festival, then get a box when it goes on sale post-Festival =P

Egg tart #3 and Macanese elections

While Sam recovered from hiking on Coloane and Susan went to Fisherman's Wharf for exploring/shopping, I spent Saturday afternoon exploring more of the Three Lampposts district. The place is a huge street market (think NYC Chinatown but even more crowded), with everything from fresh fruits/vegetables and roast meats to little pet turtles and all sorts of clothes. There's even this one stall where they boil eggs/pieces of meat/various unidentifiable animal parts in dark brown vinegar...you can smell it a block away!

The three-branched lamppost for which the area is named

The dark red pagoda-like roof marks the edge of the alley that leads into the street market section of Three Lampposts. The vinegar-cooking stall is the first one to the right, across from the yellow building.

I got mostly healthy groceries - bean sprouts (豆 牙), tublers (空 心 菜), celery, and even a chunk of watermelon (西 瓜) - but as I was leaving, I spotted a small bakery where an elderly woman was popping these out of small metal molds:

Egg tart #3!

Since they were so clearly fresh, I couldn't resist purchasing a couple to try. No only were they cheaper than the ones in the chain bakeries (about 3 MOP each), they were also quite delicious, with a satisfying medium-thick crust, and a melt-in-your-mouth custard that was extra amazing for being warm.

Last night, instead of going to see the fireworks (Italy vs. the Philippines), I went out for dessert with Sam, Henry, Joseph, and Sandry. Sandry guided us to a small shop near the Three Lampposts district that basically served mango in all sorts of forms: mango soup, mango mochi, etc. Even the walls were painted a golden yellow. I ended up getting this big bowl of mango chunks with black herbal jelly, small tapioca beads, and a scoop of ice cream on top, while the others shared a variety of items like this mound of shaved ice with chunks of various fruits:

Joseph and Sandry with dessert part 1

I didn't end up going to church today because I was coughing/sneezing and didn't want to get anyone else sick (especially since there are so many young kids!), but it was just as well because today was election day. Pui Ching Middle School, right around the corner from our apartment, was a polling place, aka all the traffic along Hosta e Costa was even more crazy than usual.

I'm still not quite sure how elections work here because most of the ELC student workers and GAs said they weren't voting, but as far as I can tell, there were about 20 different parties vying for spots in the legislative assembly, each representing a different constituency (e.g. civil servants, casino workers, etc.). The campaigning is also pretty intense, with posters in prominent public places, trucks driving around with all sorts of songs/videos playing, and workers on every street corner handing out flyers/fans/water bottles.

Some of the election campaign boards in Senado

One of the campaign trucks blaring by

I have no idea which parties won, having no TV and thus no immediate access to Macanese news...I'm just glad that we don't have to cover our ears at the bus station anymore =P Now, time to cook dinner and finish my lesson plans for tomorrow!

Friday recap: Shanghai food + Senado

Last night we all gathered around Senado Square for dinner at a Shanghai-nese restaurant: all the ETAs except Emily (she wasn't feeling well), Henry, Joseph, and several of the UM exchange students from Finland and Sweden. While we waited for a table to clear for our (massive) party of 12, we could see through the front window into a (sort of) display kitchen:

We have no idea what he was cutting.

Dinner itself was quite delicious - I had been getting tired of Cantonese-style Chinese, so this was a welcome change. We ended up getting a set menu plus soupy dumplings (小 龍 湯 包), so there was plenty for everyone. Dishes ranged from fried rice (kind of sub-par) and noodles with seafood (too salty) to "pork ankle" (fatty but well-flavored) and boiled chicken with ginger and scallions (very yummy). Total price: about $11 USD for each of us.

Austin especially had fun with the chicken.

Afterwards, we needed to get moving, so we walked around Senado, which was all decked out in preparation for the 60th anniversary of the PRC and the Mid-Autumn Festival. By this time, it was around 9:30 PM so most of the shops were closed, but I liked being there with fewer people - there was actually room to breathe! The yellow-light lamposts, in combination with the tiled designs on the ground and the Portuguese architecture, gave the whole place a sort of Old Europe feel, which was an interesting juxtaposition with the brightly colored lanterns and the big red/yellow ceremonial gate.

Lanterns representing all sorts of fruits/flowers

The anniversary gate

We ended up just hanging out and chatting at a rooftop bar near St. Paul's Cathedral, which had a better ambiance than drinks. The decor was...interesting. I don't have photos of the blue psuedo-David statue or the screen with digital fish swimming through, but I couldn't resist snapping this big sculpture:

Big chopsticks o_O

As we left the bar and headed home, we had a great view of St. Paul's Cathedral, which looked even more surreal (movie set-ish) like this:
Today's agenda: pay the CTM internet bill, grocery shopping, and some more exploring around Horta e Costa =)

Typhoon Koppu

For those of you who might be curious, here was the track for Typhoon Koppu (巨爵). Incidentally, the name was submitted by Japan, so the meaning might be different from the Chinese characters, which literally translate to "giant nobility," or something like that. The No. 8 signal was hoisted Monday night around 8:30 PM, and they kept it up until 9:30 AM Tuesday morning. (However, I still had to get up at 6:30 to check the signal because UM morning classes are canceled only if the signal is still up after 7:00 AM.) You can see how close the storm passed to Macau before landing in Guangdong:

According to the local news, no one was killed, but there were a couple hundred injuries/accidents from things like tree branches and signs being blown around/falling down. Since the worst of the storm passed overnight, I mostly slept through it, but on the commute this morning, it was pretty clear that there was major damage, especially to the trees around the Portuguese school and the Hotel Lisboa. This is a picture of the trees at the New Century stop where I get off the bus every morning - lots of branches yanked off, and the sidewalks were covered with wet leaves.

Overall, first typhoon experience wasn't too bad - the only part I personally experienced was the strong winds trying to blow me off the UM walkways, and watching the sheets of rain coming down outside our living room balcony window. Thankfully, it should be the end of the season, so we hopefully won't be having any more major storms this year.

1-month checkpoint

Well, I’ve been here for a month now, and there are many milestones to count, both major and minor:

- First trans-Pacific (or trans-oceanic) flight
- First trip to Taiwan/Hong Kong/Asia in general
- First time I’ve ever seen a McDonalds that’s open 24/7
- First visit to one of my parent’s hometowns (and old school!)
- First time teaching an academic, college-level class (I’ve taught academic subjects before and I’ve taught college students before, just never both at the same time!)
- First tastes of Portuguese egg tart, “African Chicken” (a Portuguese dish), Macanese almond cookies, mango Tic-Tacs, melon-flavored gum, and various other foods =D
- First time (in many years) that I’m reading/writing in Chinese on a regular basis
- First (joint) purchase of a washing machine
- First Level 8 typhoon (Koppu)
- First time talking to Mom/Dad/grandparents on Skype…amazing what it takes to get people to adopt new technology =P

This past week has been super-busy because it’s only our second week of teaching, but our first real week of content-based classes, so all of us ETAs are busy drafting and revising lesson plans, making worksheets/quizzes, commiserating with each other, etc. I’ve barely had time to edit photos and get them up on Facebook, much less blog as much as I want, but I’ll try to catch up a bit this weekend, including last weekend’s trip to Coloane, more fireworks, and (of course) more foodie adventures!

Edit: Weekend recap now up!

Weekend recap: Hac Sa, fireworks, casino tour, and more

Friday evening after work, Susan, Sam and I got slightly lost in Z.A.P.E. after getting off the bus a few stops too early, but after some walking around we finally met up with the MPI girls for dinner at "A Taste of India" near the Kun Iam statue. I thought my spice tolerance had increased throughout college after rooming with Atisha for three years, but things here still seem to have quite a kick, and the combinations aren't always what I expect. For example, my chicken curry had a LOT of cilantro, along with some other unidentifiable spices...I think I chewed a bit of ginger at one point and there was something that looked like a raisin but smelled lemony. It was still really good, but quite, um, flavorful.

Sam and I were pretty tired so we went home early while the others went out bar-hopping, but we all slept late in preparation for the afternoon/evening full of activities. Things started off around 4:30 PM with the UM exchange students' barbecue, all the way down at Hac Sa (Black Sand) beach.

The beach, which I guess is more dark brown than black

A cool sculpture overlooking the beach

The exchange students' association, including people hailing from all sorts of places (mainland China, America, the Philippines, Finland, France, Germany, among others), had invited us ETAs to join the fun, and we took the opportunity to explore the area a bit more ourselves. Joseph and Henry, two local students, had also come along to meet more of the exchange students (they both studied abroad, so their English is very good), and because they had kindly agreed to guide us to a good local restaurant for dinner, but more about that later.

Hac Sa itself was nice and cool, partially because it was so cloudy, which made it perfect weather for the annual beach rugby tournament. Austin wasn't with us at the barbecue, but that was because he was playing rugby!

Attempting to dodge a defender

By early evening, we were getting kind of peckish, so Susan, Henry, and Joseph stopped by one of the little food stalls to get a snack...a very protein-rich one =P

Susan with her snack, which looks like it escaped from Davy Jones' locker. She said it was yummy.

For dinner, we headed back to Horta e Costa, where Joseph and Henry guided us to a popular local joint called Sun Iek. Amy and Holly joined us for dinner as well, so it was one big party. While I'm getting a bit tired of Cantonese food all the time, I thoroughly enjoyed the tong cai, shrimp with cheese, pork chop with spices/cheese, spicy fried pork pieces, and curry chicken in a giant bread bowl!

Yum.

Post-dinner, Joseph and Henry left us to start their homework and Amy went home, but the rest of us caught the 32 bus down to the Lisboa to watch the second round of fireworks: Taiwan vs. France. Both were definitely better than last week's contestants, although my photos aren't as nice because I didn't have the backdrop of the Macau Tower.
After the shows, Holly went home, but Susan, Sam, and I randomly bumped into Emily while walking around the MGM. We continued exploring the casino lobbies, some of which had some extremely amusing decor:

The light/water show at the Wynn

Chinese zodiac-themed dome in the Wynn rotunda

"Legend of the Golden Panda" at MGM

Mock Senado Square (which doesn't really look like Senado) in MGM

More pandas in the MGM =P

We stayed out until the wee hours of the morning, but it was a pretty satisfying night of explorations, so it was all worthwhile =D

My typical dinner

For the reassurance of my worrywart mother, a more typical example of what I eat for dinner, aka what I ate tonight:

Some carbs (noodles), some protein (a pork chop in this case), and lots of veggies (sweet pea pods + 空 心 菜). Note how over half the plate is green!

I have to admit, I'm semi-impressed by my own cooking-with-limited-resources skills: I made all this in a single pan. The noodles and pea pods I cooked just using water and a little chicken bouillon, while the pork chop I bought pre-spiced (the black dots are pepper) and lightly pan-fried. The 空 心 菜 (or "tubers," as my cousin Yi-Ning would call them) I also lightly pan-fried with some diced garlic. Yum!

Exploring Senado

昨 天 下 午 去噴水池 逛 街：買 了 一 條 皮 帶， 也 吃 了 上 海 煎 餃 和 台 灣 胡 椒 餅。

Yesterday afternoon, I went to walk around Senado Square (it’s just referred to as “The Fountain” for the large fountain in the middle). I bought a belt, and I also ate Shanghai-style fried dumplings as well as a Taiwanese “pepper-meat bun” (the translation just says pepper bun).

我 們 找 到 了 一 家 書 店 那 裡 有 許 多 英 文 和 中 文 小 說。 我 不 知 道 Roald Dahl 寫 了 那 麽 多 本！
We (Susan and I) also found a bookstore with many English and Chinese novels…I never knew Roald Dahl wrote so many books!

I may just have to buy some of the titles here, because I've never seen them in the US...the "new" ones appear to be geared toward older readers, mostly consisting of short story collections. Still, seeing a title like "Kiss Kiss" from the author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was a bit disconcerting. The rest of the bookstore had a semi-random hodgepodge of titles, but I may go back to find something simple to read in Chinese once I've improved my vocabulary a bit more. It's definitely true that context helps - I still have trouble just recognizing individual characters (one reason that typing in Chinese takes me so long!) but reading signs and stuff is usually ok because I can figure out what the whole phrase is supposed to be. Going home last night on the bus, I knew a restaurant served "seafood hotpot" even though I had no idea what the character for guo (kettle or pot) was supposed to be =P

I may just have to buy some of the titles here, because I've never seen them in the US...the "new" ones appear to be geared toward older readers, mostly consisting of short story collections. Still, seeing a title like "Kiss Kiss" from the author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" was a bit disconcerting.

我 在 噴 水 池 最 喜 歡 的 店：果 子 天 地！
This place is possibly my favorite shop in Senado Square: Fruit Wonderland!

Besides having lots of delicious American candies (Coca-cola bottles, gummy bears, even gummy penguins), they also sell an incredible variety of Chinese “snacks” like shredded squid (there’s a shredding machine right by the door), peanuts, and many dried fruits. Some of the English translations are pretty hilarious, as seen below:

The best part, though, is the fresh fruit juice. So far I’ve only tried the mango, but man, it’s gooood =D