The Thought Lab

Just woke up from my first night here at Fudan University’s International Students Dormitory. I have a single which includes a twin size bed, a closet, large computer desk, TV/TV counter, and a personal A/C. It’s actually a lot nicer then I had expected.

I woke up at 5am this morning and didn’t want to go back to sleep because I was afraid I would miss orientation at 8am. Its about 6:30am right now and I’ve been trying to learn some Mandarin from a CD that Czarin, former co-worker at the Paul Merage school of business, gave me. I’m feeling a bit disappointed right now because I don’t know any Chinese at all. There are some Caucasians and Middle Eastern students that speak Mandarin perfectly with the staff here at the university. I feel like I’m missing out on so many potential conversations because I don’t know the language. However, I will be working my but off for sure these next few days to master the Mandarin CD and be able to understand every word in it.

The Scott Nguyen before China

I think I last left off when I was at the airport which was about 1 ½ days ago. A lot has happened since, met cool new people, actually met some UCI Paul Merage Executive MBA students, watched a lot of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean movies (my favorite), got lost at the airport, toured Hong Kong, moved into the dormitory, among all other things.

The place where my flight awaits.

I mentioned earlier that my flight from Cathy Pacific was delayed by 2 hours from LAX and so I missed my connection flight when I arrived in Hong Kong, something I had hoped for. So the airline gave me a room at Regal International Airport, the hotels where all the flight attendants and pilots stay at.

The flight was about 14 hours from LAX to HK but was very enjoyable because I got a window seat and there wasn’t anyone directly next to me so I had a lot of legroom. The food was actually pretty good. Don’t think there was much to talk about with the flight except for the great selection of movies and music that’s offered by Cathay Pacific. I watched 4 movies I think and listened to like 10 Chinese albums, which I thought really help me get more comfortable with the fact that I don’t understand the language. Here are some pictures below at home, at the LAX, and in the plane.

My mom and I

My Sister, Mom, and me

My uncle who drove me to Del Taco + LAX

The counter I waited at for 4 hours since I was so early.

Taking pictures at the airport

I was really really bored

People watching @ LAX

In flight Dinner - Yummy

There was an older gentleman, around the age of 60, that was in the same row as me but there was that empty seat between us. I was reading the Los Angeles Times and saw him look at it so being the nice person I am, I asked him if he wanted to take a look at it and he said, “No thanks. I can’t read English.” We started cracking some jokes about languages and got into a conversation about ourselves. I found out later that he was a Vietnamese businessman who went back to Monterey Park to visit his mother. Little did I know that Mr. Thanh San was a multi-millionaire. He comes from an affluent family that works in either trading or construction in Asia and America. I mentioned that my flight from Cathy Pacific was delayed by 2 hours from LAX and so I missed my connection flight when I arrived in Hong Kong, something I had hoped for. So the airline gave me a room at Regal International Airport, the hotels where all the flight attendants and pilots stay at. Mr. Thanh San owns two condominiums in Hong Kong worth over $1,000,000 each and asked me if I wanted to stay over in Hong Kong to visit his family instead of staying at the hotel. I was a bit scared because I barely met this guy but I really wanted to see Hong Kong even if it was for a couple of hours. It’s a 30min drive with no traffic from Hong Kong to the airport so we decided that it wasn’t a good idea to stay over in Hong Kong because my new flight was in 7:30am the following day.

Mr. San and I waiting at the airport subway in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is such a great place. It so busy and even at 11:00pm when I got there, the shopping areas and stores were open and people where still crowding the streets. I didn’t really know what was going on so I’ll let the photos explain themselves.

Hong Kong from above

Different parts of Hong Kong Airport

Hong Kong Bus Stop outside of Airport

Inside a Hong Kong bus

Left to right: HK Tunnel, Random Bridge, Bridge from airport to downtown HK, 1 of 10,000 condo buildings in HK.