don't forget to flush.

So Elizabeth and I both went to the campus clinic today... She was feeling overall pretty sick, and I went to let the doctors know about my condition and to find out if they had extra supplies on hand in case I needed them. The doctor was this super funny energetic little asian man who kept tell me over and over that they were going to take care of me and that that was the number one concern at this point and time. He wrote me a referral letter that I can take to any of the hospitals in kowloon in order to see an endocrinoligist (diabetes specialist) who will be able to work with me to keep everything under control while I am here. I can't even imagine how relieved my mom is going to be after reading this lol. He told me that all of the doctors will speak english, but I might ask one of my cantonese-speaking friends to come along jusssst incase. In my experience here, it is never safe to assume someone can speak english, better safe than sorry.

Everyone headed to Happy Valley tonight to watch the horse races... I opted out because it was so crappy, humid, and periodically rainy out, and I have started to get a sore throat and runny nose, so I figured a night in my room taking it easy would probably be what I needed. Sidenote: if you tell the clinic you have either of these symptoms, or a fever or cough, they make you wear one of those facemasks! It's actually super super common here to see people wearing masks. I guess it's quite curteous in a way, but still a little strange to us westerners.

So since I had made the executive decision not to go out on the town with everyone else, I opted for a little adventure of my own... Laundry, dorm style. So down to the hall II laundry room I ventured, laundry bag and random asian brand stain remover in hand, hoping for the best. I had actually tried to do laundry yesterday but my stupid student card was "invalid", whatever THAT means. Annnyways, you stick your student card (once you have loaded money onto it) into this little slot, choose your machine, enter your code, and thats how you get either the washer or the drying up and running. It costs about 1$CDN to do a load in the washer, and 1$HK (.12CDN) for every 6 minutes you want the dryer to run for. So figuring I'm a laundry-master like my mom, I ran the dryer for 24 minutes, grabbed my stuff out and marched back on upstairs, fairly pleased with myself. Until I dump my laundry onto my bed and realize about half of it is still damp. A normal laundry master wouldve gone back and started the dryer again, but what can I say, I'm an amateur... And a lazy one at that, so everyone keep your fingers crossed that my bottom drawer half full of slightly damp socks doesn't turn into a mould-fest.

Me being super classy in hanging my non-dryer clothes from every hook and hanger possible. lol you gotta do what you gotta do.


I decided to be bigtime canadian creepster and take some comical pictures of our Hall II, Floor 10 bathroom... Aka my next door neighbor. Let me begin by saying that apparently HKUST is trying to cut back on paper consumption, because what looks like a regular bathroom toilet paper dispenser at first glance, is actually our "paper towel dispenser".

But as far as I'm concerned, "paper towel" doesn't come off in teeny tiny little bits that stick to your wet hands after washing. The best is when you try to pull off a piece and you rip off about a quarter of the square of tp because its the crappiest 2-ply garb on the market.

Another addition to the HKUST anti-paper wasting "campaign" as I call it, is a dainty little sign in the bathroom that reminds you not to use too much paper. Soooo you don't want us to use paper to dry our hands... Semi understandable (even though there is no dryer either), but not wanting us to use paper to wipe our butts, I'm not really sure where theyre going with this one.

Last, but most definately not least, is the sign I have looked at every time I've gone to the washroom since I got here and every single time thought "I need to get a picture of this"... Today turned out to be that day. Enjoy.

So I was sitting writing this blog about 20 minutes ago when I thought, man it would suck bigtime if the fire alarm went off.... Just a random thought. Until it went off about a minute later! It's actually probably a good thing, because I legitimately have zero idea where I was supposed to go, but still, fire alarms at midnight... NOT good times. Ah well, could've been worse. My roomate was in the shower when it went off and had to march down all of the stairs, down the hill, and onto the tennis court in her towel. Truth is, I had been planning on taking a shower then too, but then my inner greaser got the best of me and told me to screw it and just head to bed. Thank YOU haha. Time for bed, 9am class tomorrow, booooo.

Ps. save paper and don't forget to flush.