to guilt or not guilt....

This is probably something I could send to the NYT ethicist or Dear Abby or even that Savage guy at the Voice. But I want a relatively speedy response (assuming that you have the time to read personal blogs anymore).

This weekend, my friend's BF and his two other friends were in town for the Columbus Day holiday. My friend was not in NY and it was up to us (the nygang) to entertain them, or at least show them an okay time. It was also T's bday so of course everyone was busy getting him drunk. Not that it would've mattered that much anyway; the nygang is notoriously unsocial. I, however, took it upon myself to get to know these friends of his who were bored at the dive bar we were in and subsequently left the nygang to go with these visitors to a hip hop club where my shanghai friends were. Needless to say, the night got drunken but nothing happened, yet perhaps a touch and a touch there could have been misconstrued as inappropriate.

What do I do? I've been thinking about it for a few days now. I feel guilty, as if I should be telling someone. I'm sure it was nothing, but why do I feel this way?

My mom always seems kind of shocked and displeased that M and I do things w/o his GF, as if we were having some sort of illicit affair when the reality is that we're sitting on different couches watching movies on his awesome tv.

Perhaps these sort of feelings translated on to my feelings about this weekend's events. What do you think? help me, loklok.

Richard Li

Everyone knows who Richard Li is right? Yeaaaaahhh . Well, this is the cheapo who puts these shiny red labes saying "Compliments of Richard Li" onto every single one of the free copies of Financial Times that are given out at our Law School.

When I told my father about this, he said "you should make a rubber stamp of the text on the label, and stamp all of the toilet paper in the bathrooms exactly like that, so that when people reach to clean the poo of their anus..."

I would love to be a part of this prank. Any takers?

Suckers Up

I've always loved this very famous Gloria Steinem quote:

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."

which became rather relevant during out legal writing and literacy class today. The prof was teaching us how NOT to write and draft like a lawyer, and how to use plain English. Somebody brought up the point that, there are lawyers who write and draft like lawyers!! That is, in a convoluted and sometimes antiquated fashion! Why are you telling us that what we did is wrong when that is exactly what our bosses have taught us to do?

Obviously, the better lawyer you are, the less likely you would need to use language like that.

But UGH! This horrible guy in our class decided that this was the moment to suck up like a vacuum cleaner to the prof and say "oh, when I was a journalist I saw a lot of bad writing too! And we don't need anymore of that. " Ok, so he said a little more than that, but the tone he used was so obnoxious, so condescending, that I feel as if it's something only a guy could ever get away with.

Conclusion: Hell is other people.

A snippet that transpired in an email to an English friend

"... Starbucks does free refills? Another reason to emigrate. Totally moving to London, just for the free refills. No such thing in Hong Kong. I think it's because people are pretty unscrupulous here when it comes to saving the very last dime instead of saving face. I could totally see people passing on their Starbucks mug to their friend, and that that friend passing it onto the next, and the next... so that they could all drink for free. Although, there is something quite sweetly socialist about the idea, now that I think of it. Starbucks can operate on a smaller profit margin, can't it?"

Chris' interesting links

Wellp. This a guy who always has interesting stuff in the 'status' section of his gchat profile. This is a post dedicated the care he takes in selecting things to put in that sacred space.

W.H Auden's Poem. From this interesting link http://www.feer.com/tales/?p=893  

Hongkong 

The leading characters are wise and witty;
Substantial men of birth and education,
With wide experience of administration,
They know the manners of a modern city.

Only the servants enter unexpected;
Their silence has a fresh dramatic use:
Here in the East the bankers have erected
A worthy temple to the Comic Muse.

Ten thousand miles from home and What’s-Her-Name
The bugle on the Late Victorian hill
Puts out the soldier’s light; off-stage, a war

Thuds like the slamming of a distant door:
We cannot postulate a General Will;
For what we are, we have ourselves to blame.

AAaaaah. Auden is too good.

My mind is in the gutter ALL THE TIME.

Just a few thoughts on what I think my law school is... 

Our email system is called CWEM. Hur hur hur!!! It stands for Campus Wide E Mail, but by god, they need to put somebody in the IT department that knows dirty words. (errr qwim anyone? Or quim?)

Our head of faculty is known as the Koala Bear. He is a Koala bear that needs a bib. Awww can you imagine how cute that is? A koala bear in a bib! Not, however, if you're sitting in the front row of the classroom. I feel as if I oughta go to class wearing a fencing mask, so mighty is his froth. You know what I mean. You've had a prof exactly like this one. Large. Grey. Spits.

I have no friends in school yet. Boooo. Feels exactly like gradeschool all over again. Except, no playground. And no coathooks with out names and photos above. 

Some Laowai's Just Don't Get the Olympic Spirit....

UGHHHH!! Loretta, I don't know about you but i love love lovvvvvvvvve the Olympics. I get all teary eyed when I see the masses of athletes stroll into the stadium. I buy into all of the hype - camaraderie, love, peace, world unity, blah blah. And this year I'm even prouder because its BJ08!! While I don't think it's quite alright for China to misappropriate the occasion to announce it's arrival (or rather, after 400yrs, its return) onto the new world stage, I am still so excited!

Just saw on BBC World News that a bunch of foreigners (mainly American and British) were detained and later deported after staging an illegal protest for Tibet and for democracy in China. WTF. Chinese people didn't go to the Oscars protesting AmerBlogger: Banana Mamas - Create Postica's involvement in Iraq. They don't shit on our (haha, I can say that now that I'm an American!!) festivities! Of course, the Chinese people were smart and stayed away from these crazy foreigners. Who wants to get detained by the secret police and miss the chance to see Liu Xiang hurdle his way to glory for China or Michael Phelp's hot body do laps around us??? not me for sure.

Oh and come on, US cycling team. Wearing masks after landing?? WTF. That was so not an "accident." Why can't you be like other athletes and put the masks on when the cameras aren't rolling! duh!! It's only polite. If you were so scared of air quality probs, then you should've waited for London'12!

Haha, wow. I'm not being very sensitive to the athletes. Their bodies are very important to them and anything to pollute it would obviously not only affect their performance but also their overall health. woopsh. But for the protesters. come on. Even the Dalai Lama isn't raising a ruckus at this time. He knows that there is a time and place for everything, and the Olympics is not the time. I keep thinking that these foreign visitors are like bad guests who come to your house, without taking off their shoes, muddy up your carpet, drink straight out of the OJ carton and try to stage an intervention for your problems. blah.

I don't know what the coverage is like in HK. My parents get TVB via satellite but I'm not sure if it's like the Canadian news broadcast or straight out of HK, so I couldn't tell you for sure. How is it like in HK?