Today I went to school in late morning to do some logging and editing with my partner, James. It was good that he is familiar with Final Cut Pro. Which reminds me...Sunny's baptism video. So he taught me a lot of stuff. It took forever to log and capture clips. And then while editing, we had different opinions and it was really hard to have two persons edit on one computer and yea, he raised up the issue and so we are just going to do our own editing. But we will see each other progress and see how we can merge after the rough cut. I think we have different ideas and it would be best for us to do it separately for more creative freedom and practice with FCP.

Afterward, shared drinks with my other classmates, Thunktan. We hung around for like an hour before splitting off. A very happy guy actually.

I finally got a burger here for dinner. It wasn't a very good one. It didn't have beet in it, but it wasn't bad. I need to get a better one haha. I still haven't had any McDonald's and KFC coz they are expensive, it's just a bit strange for me that fast food cost as much as dinning food. Hong Kong really has some of the cheapest fast food/food in the world. When I went back to US for the summer, food price went up a lot, especially with fastfood. It was creepy. On the other hand, restaurant food only went up a bit because of the bad economy. Coco's was very resonable actually, same with Denny's. Each restaurant has an affordable menu or item.

Food are expensive here, but things are still okay at the supermarkets and grocery. And it's much cheaper to cook your own food here.

The night before I had dinner at an auntie's place and I got to go back to Beverly Hills, I got off the station and just kind of walk to their place on my 5 years old memory. It felt good. I passed by my old doctor's office, King George St and it was nice. I still recognize the house, it has not changed all these years. The place still looked pretty new. So we had hot pot. Good to see Joe again but didn't hang with him for too long because he had tutor. I realized one thing, college students are still very young and kid-like. I didn't know that, but it is also that I realized to, we were pretty stupid back then. I think in some ways I thought I was old but I was pretty stupid, we were still kids. I got a lot older, or grew up a lot after working for 3 years. Had a good time with the aunties and uncles.

So today I got to go back to Kingsgrove, the place I first lived in when I was in Australia. The street basically look the same. Several shops are not there now but a lot of things are the same. The old charcoal chicken place was still there except now it is run by Chinese, that is a very common sight now actually, a lot of the businesses are now run by Chinese or Asians. So for dinner I had the choices of charcoal chicken, fish&chip or burger, I got burger. Didn't feel like fish&chip.

And went to small group for the first time. Phil gave me a ride. It was good. It was funny two of them I knew as kids and they were so small back then. They were like year 1 or 2, at most 3, when I left so it was like, what are you guys doing here? You guys are babies! You guys are from another group. I felt old. You were babies when I left and now they are like 21, in uni, almost graduating and about to face the world.

But I am quite amazed at them actually, in some ways they are more mature then I imagine. More grounded and mature than I was. In ways they are much more mature than some college kids or even working kids in US and HK. Some of them are already taking responsibilities at church, in ministries and doing and serving others. Quite amazing really. Many kids in HK and US don't even think about that when they are in school. For HK kids, I think university is like liberation from the atrocious secondary school system and finally, they get some freedom to play. For some, U is for play. Kind of like Japan too, once you get into U, then you can just chill, have fun and just cruise.

US is a little different, a bigger range of people. There are people who play hard but also work extremely hard. Crazy amazing people who can manage studying, working and partying. There are people who don't try really hard but do well, they just know how to get good grades. Some already aiming for postgraduate studies. Actually a lot of people do that. Grad school is a actually quite a natural choice for educated Americans, a BA or BS is just too common and the economy awards specialties and higher skills. You can basically make your living going into anything...except art i guess. US has a huge and very diversified economy that support almost anything you can think of.

But yea, one of the girls is mentoring younger students. I was amazed. If you think about it, what re U students doing, esp in HK? Finding ways to have fun, get the best deals, get a bf, party, self-promotion, shopping, thinking of the next trip to go to. Mentoring??? Where does that come from? And they are all pretty much involved with youth ministry in some ways.

So it's really good and healthy, the slightly older group is mentoring and nurturing the younger group and so on. That's very good. I just read on the paper that 25% of youth in Aus have mental problems or depression. I just find it amazing that at such a young age and in a time of "me-first", these uni kids are offering their time to kids. And it's not like they are not busy. They got work, school and other stuff as well. So, where there is often the case that kids just leave the church when in U. Very big contrast.

In reflection, I know, actually I experienced first hand that Chinese people, like HK people often like to take advantage of things, like sales, shore's membership, beating the system and etc. Very materialistic. Where as foreigners from elsewhere seem to be slow, not taking advantage of loopholes and deals. They are considered to be morons by some HKers. They are slow, slow thinking but they are actually quite mature. Just think of mainland China and US, and other western countries. People just think differently. They have some really good values ingrained in their cultures.

I think Communism took a lot of good values from the Chinese thanks to the Cultural Revolution and etc. Now there is a vacuum in values in Chinese and even the Communist party has to teach values to Chinese. You can read them on Chinese airport with slogans and signs that say, "Be civilized citizens when traveling abroad", "Be civilized tourists representing your country" and etc. They are everywhere. It's sad, for a place like China with the longest living ancient civilization to be reminding its citizens to be "civilized".

It's true, when you mature, you do things for others instead of yourself. You give yourself basically for good causes. It's something that Chinese struggle with. If you look at businsses in Europe, these companies invest back into their countries' next generation, where as HK or China is more of a opposite. Do rich people care? No. Just think about all the food poisoning and scandals with food and in the business world in China. It's a sad state. Not a lot of giving back. It's a poor state. Can the message of Christ change China? There's a vacuum now, the time is now I think and the window is closing. Greed, capitalism, consumerism are filling that void.

I am going to answer all the questions from the farewell eventually. I think I should...so here it goes.

Q: Do you mind when people call you 朱仔 ?

A: I have some mixed feeling with 朱仔 . It is actually a nickname that people used on me when I was small all the way till 13. So from 0-13, people referred me as 朱仔. So in a way, it gives me a very 親切 feeling. But I don't like it if you use that term in relation with my dad as in 朱's 仔, even though I know where it is from, because I like to have my own identity, I wanted to be seen as a separate person. Generally I am okay with it.