taken for a ride. literally.

So the first leg of our journey turned out to be a bit defeating. We left campus at 6 to catch our Air Asia flight to Bangkok. After arriving in Bangkok we got into taxis to go to our hostel and the following events ensued:

-The taxi driver drove us around completel unnecessary highways to make the trip longer and his pay higher, making us pay highway tolls and screaming at us the whole time. Elizabeth finally told him that she would pay him the 800 Baht just to shut up lol. She also gave him a piece of her mind screaming back at him saying "do NOT mess with me right now, I am TIRED and LOOK at my EYE, do you SEE how red it is?! Fianlly we decided to just get out and switch taxis, at which point we decided that by the time we got to the hostel we would have like one hour before having to head back to the airport. So we showed the taxi driver our flight info and told him we needed to the airport.

-25 mins later we arrive at this dinky little airport that wasn't even OPEN. Airport security told the taxi driver where we actually needed to be so we headed back to the international airport at which we had arrived 3 hours before.

-Once arriving the drier told us it was 900 baht and Anders told him noooo way and said he knew he was trying to "fool us". He accepted 600 and we got the heck out of there. When we got inside we discovered that the other norweigna guys had agreed to pay their driver 1500 baht... Talk about no barganing skills.

-Hung out in the airport for the next 4 hours eating terrible thai food, drinking starbucks, and getting extremely painful; thai foot and shoulder massages.

-The boys didn't being with them the credit cards they used to purchase their second plane tickets online so they had to get them cancelled and re-purchase with a different card.

-Got my diabetic meal on the plane, which consisted of an apple and orange... Ummmmm sugar.com. no thanks.

-Went to catch the fery at which point there was pretty much a monsoon and were drenched for the nexthour on the boat that was spent sleeping.

-Finally arrived at our resort, our bungalow is literally right on the beach and it is so beautiful. I kept commenting on how beautiful it was when we were all laying down to nap upon arival, and Elizabeth told me that if I wanted to continue commenting on it I could do so outside where not everybody was trying to sleep lol.

-Time to go eat (ps. we can charge everything to the room here... scorrrrre)

over and out. beware of thai taxi drivers.

100% deet. uhhohhh.

Most of this week has been thailandplanning.com (we leave tomorrow nbd). I've been working out like its my job and trying to stick to this rash diet. Throwing in the odd muffin or McDonalds sundae to keep myself sane. This week proved to be a turning point as I went out to LKF both friday AND saturday night, which hasn't happened for at least 6 weeks probably. Saturday night I went out wearing a flashdance tanktop and hipping headband, and I honestly felt like I do back at home, awesommmmmme. Everyone tends to really dress up here and I think tahts why I haven't been going out as much lately. But now that I have discovered my true self once more I'm back in action full time. Elizabeth kept telling me I looked like a 7 on the retard scale but that was hoenstly fine with me. Of course the flashdance tank is going to be a staple on the trip to thailand.

Spent most of the daytime sleeping this weekend... Maybe it's because of all of the destruction taking place in the gym, or in LKF, who knows. Today was spent trying to finish this stupid judgement and decision making assignment thats due Tuesday, but we need to hand it in tomorrow. Soooooo stupid, definatley not a fan, but thats the crap that comes along with university I suppose geeeeesh.

Elizabeth and I ventured to the Ladies Market yesterday in hopes of finding backpacks for Thailand. Mission accomplished. After convincing her that getting the child-sized one because it was pink, or the slightly larger than school sized backpack was a bad idea just because it was a nice shade of blue, we settled on these "Mountain Gear" matching backpacks (mines orange and hers red). How dorky to the max are we going to look on this trip?! Hopefully the real backpackers don't make fun of us for our beginner ways =S

Ramin loaded us up witha bunch of travelling shtuff such as 100% deet (to avoid malaria in the jungle), sleeping sheets, and anti-diarrhea pills, which makes me feel a bit more prepared. He also convinced us that we should go to the school clinic before we leave and get some antibiotics to bring just in case, so we might have to do that. I have yet to pack, which is a big deal on my part since Im usually the 2 week pre-packer; obviously this place is changing me. I honestly think I'm going to come home a bit of a different girl... In a good way I hope.

Well its late late late and I'm going to call it a night, I'll update tomorrow before I leave =)

cracking the code.

A friend on campus that goes by the alias "hank moody" has just updated his facebook status and I decided that it was something that needed to be shared, no questions asked:

"Congratulations! My little Chinese friends- you cracked the code!!!! The lift's speed increases exponentially with every time you press the button!"

lift=elevator. If you saw the way these kids stab at those buttons you would understand. If you don't find this even the least bit hilarious then you might want to re-evaluate your life. Thanks.

zero smooching on prom night.

This past week has been a blurr, I honestly don't even know what I have done with all of my time lol. Friday consisted of shopping for a dress for prom (which I didn't find so I just wore one from home), finding a "City Super" which had a much bigger selection of sugar-free products than any store I have found so far, skipping LKF in favour of a 3 mile run on campus and a decent sleep, and dancing around my room in nothing but my undies for about an hour (don't judge until you have tried it, quite liberating).

Saturday was the day of what was dubbed "hkust prom 2010" by Ramin himself. I had a nice sleep in and then hit the track again before deciding it was finally time to get ready. I attempted to straighten my hair, but once again the weird weather here didn't really cooperate with me lol.
At exactly 7 oclock the evening began; schedule of events to follow (directly from the fb event's page):

Ramin Ghaneeian March 19 at 12:47pm Reply
Hey Everyone,

The time has finally come. Moses Jooharian has been waiting for this moment since 1989. Prom Night. The Game Plan is below.


7:00pm - Girls meet in Hall 7 for a girls pregame
Guys meet in Hall 6, 10th floor common room for a guys pregame

7:45pm - Girls come to Hall 6, 10th floor common room for THE pregame

8:30pm - We get in taxis and go to Lawry's Steak House in Causeway Bay
http://www.diningcity.com/hongkong/restaurantlawry20/index_eng.jsp

After Dinner - We go to Club Mint in Soho
http://www.m1ntglobal.com/

Allow me to elaborate...

Girls pregame: Go to hall 7 to be met by bottles of both rum and vodka, as well as coolers and redbull to get the night started. Get decently boozed up before making the trek to hall 6 to meet the guys (since they refused to be gentlemanly enough to come to our pregame location)

THE pregame: Let the boozing continue, champagne is popped and a toast to Ramin is made for planning the evening (anticipated). Before we know it we are outside getting into 7 taxis all lined up waiting for us.

Dinner: Sooooo good. Choice of either prime rib, sea bass, or pasta. Accompanied by copious amounts of wine. Personally, I chose the fish... Best (maybe only good) choice of the evening lol.

Mint: Good from what I can remember. Bottle service. House music. Manoj getting pushed into a table and breaking a $400 (US) bottle of champagne. Me "losing" my camera for it to be later recovered in tania's purse. Elizabeth searching the floor of the club (lights off) for one of her fake eyelashes lol.

Post Prom: Making the cabbie stop at sev so that I could get a snickers dark (only to prevent hypoglycemia of course =). Eating a cup of noodles from the cending machine flavored "curry seafood", almost barfing when I saw it sitting on my desk in the morning.

Sunday was spent laying in bed recovering and having the biggest cheat day of my life. It also played host to the first time McDonalds has touched my lips since I've been away from home. It had the usual effect, great at first... Not the best an hour later. My roomate returned from the city at 6 am to find me half naked sleeping on top of my sheets only to ask "you're taking a nap?", to which I of course answered yes... A 6 hour long nap bahaha.

SO I've been looking for yoga on campus ever since I got to this place, and today I see this booth set up that has a poster saying something about the Health and Fitness courses the school offers (which I know has something to do with the yoga here) so I go up to the table and ask "Hi I was just wondering if you have information about the yoga classes?", which is followed by these 3 asian students giving me the blankest stares of my life. So I stupidly do this ridiculous yoga pose with my hands above my head and say slowly and loudly... "YO-GA?". One of them then turns to me and says (in perfect english) "ummm we're from the orchestra club". Well I took no time turning and getting the hell away from there, humiliating.com. I still ask myself whyyyyy the damn orchestra club would have a poster talking about the health courses... If only everything was in english.

I also had the pleasure of having my student card run out of money in the process of doing laundry today. Perfecccccct. So I ask this asian guy in the laundry room if I can reload it on the ground floor of our building, to which he responds no and tells me I have to go to the machine at LG7. On the way down there I run into these american guys who tell me I can in fact reload the card in my building, but after making half of the trek I just continued to the more distant LG7. I have said before that I had never seen so much laundry hanging everywhere. LIE. Today is the ultimate worst with clothes strewn everywhere in an effort to be dried on the asap.

So this has been my past week in a nutshell. I'll be sure to throw up some updates if anything comes to mind =)

baptist hospital. once again.

So I decided to throw a couple random hk updates in the mix, things that I keep meaning to include, but always slip my mind:

-almost half of the time I go to use the washroom on our floor (all girls floor by the way), the toilet seat is UP. And it's not like they've just been cleaned... Like someone has just come out of the stall up. I have no idea wat would possess a tiny asian girl to lift the seat while going to the washroom (chances are she's going to fall in anyways), and then not even put it back DOWN when she's done. Bothering.

-they are now doing work in the 8th, 9th, and 10th floor common rooms which means that I have t go all the way down to the 7th floor for hot water (the coffee and tea addiction has taken a slight break due to this inconveniency).

-I have now had the bbq pork from LG1 for lunch about 5 days in a row. What can I say, it's something that I can count on around here lol. Annnnd it seems pretty decent for me, so thats a plus.

-My blood sugar has actually been dropping BELOW normal lately (without any increase in insulin), which means that my diet and exercise must be doing their job. There are times when eating a meal I don't have to take ANY fast acting insulin anymore, feels so good.

-The fan has been mysteriously turning off again, and due to the fact that I only have one available outlet (my fridge uses the other one) I can't always leave my fan on. Lets not start this again, seriously.

I'm headed to the doctors in about 15 minutes, at which point they will pit me against my worst enemy once again, clearly the enemy in question is the fricken scale. If it does not read lower than last time I will have no choice but to bathe myself in ben and jerry's while consuming dangerous amounts of mrs. fields cookies. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

I officially have a date for "prom", which is on Saturday. Hakon asked me today only to recieve an "Of course!" blurted out of my mouth excitedly, I was getting a little nervous there for a while. This means one thing... Shopping. Based on the fact that the dr's is near a large, large mall. I'll probably pop over to look for something afterwards. This would be before I have to return for some stupid mandatory presentation that we have to go watch tonight (a wednesday), for a tuesday/thursday class that I have. This means I will arrive late to the St Patty's day festivities... Not Impressed. On my trip to the mall I will also need to acquire some new headphones, as the once-trusty air-canada ones that were given to me on the plane over here hae failed me. They literally do not work the tiniest bit, and as working out without music, and skyping without sound really aren't my idea of a good time, I have decided to invest in some new ones. So off I go to another visit to the Hong Kong Baptist Hospital, here goes nothin.

rational mexican hookers.

I have started a surprisingly interesting new book called "The Logic of Life", written by the same guy that wrote "The Undercover Economist" (for those of you who may have read it. I figured it was time to stop polluting my brain with stories of rich New York socialites "Trading Up", and move on to something a bit more... Educational? For a more educational read, this thing is hilarious; one of the many topics discussed is how mexican hookers use rational decision making in dealing with clients, and it actually makes sense! Needless to say, it isn't quite as engrossing as my previous book, but it gets the job done for distraction from my burning legs during cardio.

Today I had both my first, and my last, midterm. Judgement and Decision Making in Organizations was my task for the day, and ended up being less tough than I figured. Of course I totally blanked when it came time to compute certainty equivalents and risk premiums but that was only worth about 3 points anyways... So I should be okay. I spent the entirety of my day in my room studying for this bad-boy, leaving only once to get food before retreating back to the books.

I'm trying this new thing where I drink coffee before bed, as one of my friends told me it's supposed to help with weight loss? If not then he's just effing with me and trying to cut my sleep time, although that hasn't been an issue just yet. There are really no other updates, as the past few days have been devoted to studying. Tomorrow is St. Patrick's day, and may end up being my first time out to Wan Chai on a wednesday... Wish me luck.

the hunt is on.

So the latter part of my Saturday was an epic fail; consisting of me lying in bed for about 7 hours watching gossip girl and then losing the all mighty race against the clock for food on campus. Let me explain.

After a long morning/afternoon of playing soccer I decided I would shower and relax for a little bit. The got a little bit out of hand when I started watching Gossip Girl season 3. I should've known better than to even start, because I had zero willpower and continued clicking on the ensuing episodes. Next thing I knew, it was 845pm and I hadn't eaten since lunch at noon. I quickly threw on a pair of sweats and ran out the door. At this point I looked a complete disaster; ZERO makeup, air dried hair, sweats and a sweatshirt (lacking bra), and the trusty adidas flip flops. I went up to LG1, closed. I continued to the cafe, which had "chicken filet with tomato sauce" as their only option, which was not in the least bit appealing to me. I then took the elevator to LG5 (which I knew would be open) and barely got the door open before I turned away and started walking down the stairs. As some beautiful european boys were sitting in there eating, and there was NO way I was letting anyone I knew (especially these guys) see me in this state of disarray. So I went down to LG7, which was of course closed as well by this point. To my surprise, the Park n Shop (campus grocery store) is still open. I figure I'll just grab a microwave dinner or something, but apparently those don't exist in hong kong. I was just about to lose my mind in a hungry/angry/bitchy/low blood sugar way at this point when I spotted this mini-pizza in the freezer section. I scooped that thing up like it was a brick of gold and headed back to the dorm. I go into our 10th floor common room to use the microwave, which is of course missing, so I head down to the 9th floor, whos common room happens to be locked. I was about to give up on eating at all when I decided to give the 8th floor a chance. Score! I honestly felt like a caveman thousands of years ago on the hunt for food, and then having to come up with some way to cook it. I was almost in tears as while all of this was going on I was thinking about the fridge and full kitchen that my family would be enjoying at home during this whole debocle. Needless to say, I got that pizza in my mouth and down my throat in about 2 minutes. The damn thing even had olives and mushrooms on it (my 2 least favorite things of all time), but at this point it was all about survival; okay maybe not realllly all about survival, but it felt like it at the time.

Today was a bit better when it came to the food department, and ended up being quite productive. Sleep in, library, gym, grocery shopping, cleaning of my half of the postage-stamped size room, followed by of course some more gossip girl and green tea.

Ps. still don't have a date for this prom dealio. This event is stirring up more drama than anything that has happened on campus thus far. I would definately consider it the highpoint of our reality show, if we actually had one lol.

Enough stressing, time for sleep. I'm up to date on GG now, the next few nights will definately be filled with more shut-eye that the previous two.