Tuesday. I skipped few days as nothing special happened then. On monday I went to register to my school. I went to the Academic Exchange and Collaboration Office to do that. I got my student card after paying the caution money. I'm starting to have too many cards now: student card, octopus card, keycard to my room and some keycard for the building. They take security quite seriously here. You have to sign in with one card as you walk in through the gates and use the same card once again when inside. They also have quite many regulations in here. I wasn't interested in reading every rule. You are not breaking any rules if you just use common sense.
Along with the student card I got this information package about the PolyU. From there I read that you can apply for Hong Kong Identity card, the HKID. I don't need it as I'm going to stay here less than 180 days but I thought it would be a nice souvenir to take back to Finland. So on tuesday, I decided to go to the Immigration office and apply for the HKID card. Earlier I had made a little walk around the Hung Hom area where our Student Halls is located. On that trip I found out that there is a ferry pier south from our school. I just can't see it from my room as there is a big building in front of it. I guess many locals have lost their minds in the past when in their apartments the sea view has been replaced with a view of a tall skyscraper.
Anyways, I took the ferry to the island and went to search for the Immigration office. The ferry pier is connected to this shopping center. I decided to go to the Immigration office through the different shopping centers connected to each other. As usual, I got a bit lost in the malls and ended up to the exhibition and convention center. There was some international toy manufacturer exhibition so the place was packed. Once I got out of there I decided to go along the streets. Once I got to the Immigration office I found out that they had a daily quota for the HKID cards. I should have been there like 6 hours before that day:) It didn't matter much as I had other plans also for the island. I headed east to the Causeway Bay district. There were few things I wanted to see: the Victoria park and the Times Square shopping mall. First I went to the Victoria Park. The Park was very nice. There were lots of green stuff:) People were jogging or just relaxing on the benches. At one pond I could hear these weird noises. I went to check it out and found out that in this pond it was allowed to drive radio controlled speed boats. This one guy was driving his meter long boat in circles. The boat's speed was crazy and I kept wishing he would crash the boat, but he handled the turns very good.
After walking around the park I headed to the Times Square. I read that the mall is considered the first "vertical mall" in Hong Kong. Because the land space is limited and expensive in Hong Kong, it isn't cheap to build common western flat shopping mall. That's why Times Square shopping mall is 9 storeys high and not so wide. I couldn't find anything to buy from there. I haven't been in a mood for shopping as I don't yet know where are the best prices in HK. I just need some long shorts and a pair of sandals and at the moment they're trying to get rid of the winter clothes in here. I might have written about that earlier so sorry about that.
The other guy from my university has arrived to the Student Halls. I went to greet him and share the tips I heard from those two Finnish guys. During last few days a lot of exchange students have arrived to the halls. It's nice to get some more action in here.
No comments:
Post a Comment