October 2004

10/31/2004
Sunday

I got up late today because of the party last night. I cleaned my apartment with Raj at about 3, and it was a disaster. We even had to clean many of the walls with soap and water, and every surface was sticky. There was enough trash in the apartment to fill one of the full-size trash cans that sits in the stairwell of every floor.
After I cleaned the apartment, I cleaned myself, then I went to meet Johanna at her building. We walked to the computer lab and I stayed there until 6. At that time I went to meet Kaisa on the sidewalk and we walked to Mcdonalds for dinner. After that, we went to a DVD store and a eyewear store(Kaisa needed contact lenses). Next, we walked to Park-N-Shop, where we bought some groceries. We then walked back to my apartment and watched Shrek 2.
We were talking after the movie and I bet Kaisa that I could throw a little ball of foil into an open beer bottle that was sitting about 4 feet away. The bet was that she had to jump off the balcony if I did it. I threw my foil ball at the bottle….and Swoosh……it went in perfectly. I could throw that foil ball at the bottle for days and not be able to do that again. Kaisa said that it was a sign that she should jump off the balcony, but we decided that she should do it later when she got back to her apartment on the 18th floor. Another interesting thing also happened; I noticed that regular plastic lighter I had bought in Macau had the letters “KKK” engraved in the metal on the top of it. I am bringing that home with me, but what will they say at the airport when they see communist memorbilia, Osama bin Laden dolls and lighters with KKK on them.
Kaisa left at about 11 and I then noticed that somebody had left a portable hard drive sitting on my computer. I found about 10 Gigabytes of music on it, which I copied to my hard drive. Raj came home at about 11:30, and he played computer games while I built my collage for consumer marketing class.

10-30-04

Johanna called me at 9 today and I went to her apartment to help get her laptop to type Finnish characters. I did this for her two weeks ago, but it quit working. I was able to fix it, then I had her take some pictures of me with my camcorder on her balcony. I need the pictures for the collage I have to make for my Consumer Marketing class.
After leaving Johanna’s apartment I went home and ate some instant noodles, an apple-pear and a chocolate cream filled cracker. I spent some time typing on my computer, then went to the computer lab at 1. I could not get the color printer to work there, so I moved to another lab. There, I printed out all the pictures I took for my Consumer Marketing collage and the 20 page paper that goes with the project.
At 4 I walked to the supermarket and bought a posterboard and glue stick to assemble my project. I called Johanna when I got home and then went to her apartment. We spent a couple hours working on a group project together. At 7 I walked to Mcdonalds for dinner. I saw Mary there and we ate together.
Next I walked to the supermarket and bought 4 beers and one pack of cigarettes. I then went home to get myself and the apartment ready for the haloween party. Raj came home at 8 with face paints, which we both used. I designed a face that didn’t really resemble anything and I wore a chinese shirt that I had bought in Beijing. The last two Halloweens I have been something that didn’t make any sense, and I think it is now going to be a tradition.
Guests started arriving just after 8, and the first were 3 chinese. They were the only ones there for almost an hour. One of them had a portable hard drive full of music, which we hooked up to my computer and listened to. Raj and I set up candles all over the apartment, which provided all the light. By 10 o’clock there were about 20 guests there, and about 30 by 11 o’clock. Almost every single person had a costume, and many had spent lots of time on them. I especially liked Guida’s(Portugese) Cleopatra costume because she looked just like Cleopatra. Anybody who came without face paint was forcefully taken to the bathroom and painted. The only exceptions to this rule was Delphine’s parents, who were her visiting her from France.
My chinese friend Eric came to party, and I had not really hung with him since August. He is kind of serious and does not usually go to parties. I was worried how he would react when the mob painted his face, but he said he didn’t mind because he had never been to a Halloween party before.
Raj made everyone leave together just after midnight so we would not have any problems with the police. Most of the people went to continue the party at clubs in Macau. I stayed at the apartment with Johanna, Kaisa and Johan. We talked for about 30 minutes, then they left.
After everyone was gone, I noticed just how bad the party had been for the apartment. Face paint hand prints were all over the furniture and walls. The floors were covered in beer, and fake blood was dripping down the walls in the bathroom. **

10/29/2004
Friday
10:51 pm

I walked to campus at 11 this morning and went to the computer lab until my Business Communication class started at 12:30. After class I walked to the supermarket and bought a package of four apple-pears and a jumbo package of snack crackers with chocolate cream in them.
When I got back to my apartment, I cooked some instant noodles. For lunch I ate those, one of my snack crackers and an apple-pear. Raj was home when I got there, and he stayed and watched TV and slept while I worked. I installed some video editing software I downloaded from the Internet, studied for an International Business test, worked on a group project for that class and started a paper for Consumer Marketing class.
At 5:30 Raj went upstairs to give his rent money to Yolanda, and he came back with good news. For 3 weeks I had been asking her for more furniture, because we had almost none after she took one of our couches away then. Today she told us that Maja and Caroline had moved out of their 20th floor apartment, and their furniture was available to us. She took us to the apartment and helped us move almost everything out of the living room. We took a couch, table, 4 chairs and a coffee table. It was quite difficult moving everything because we had to fit it all on the elevator. Yolanda held the door for us while we stuffed it full of furniture. I was surprised that she gave these things to us because I thought that there was only a tiny chance that she would actually get us anything. Our apartment looks nice now, and just in time for a big Halloween party we plan on having tomorrow.
Raj left at 6:30, and I prepared the apartment for the party tomorrow and continued working on my consumer marketing paper. I also called Dash and Eric to invite them to the party tomorrow. At 8 I walked to Mcdonalds and ordered a Big Mac meal to go, then walked back home. After my meal, Guida called to remind me about Chloe’s birthday party tonight at 11:30, which I had completely forgotten about.
I spent the next couple hours typing more of my Consumer Marketing paper, in which I have to describe what I would do with a million dollars. I called Johanna at 10:30 and talked to her for a while, then walked to the supermarket. There, I bought two Pabst Blue Ribbons and walked to apartment 13S, where the surprise birthday party was being organized. The birthday girl lived in the neighboring apartment, so everybody was trying to be really quiet so she would not catch on. At midnight, she was brought over and everyone sang to her and gave her a cake with candles. I discovered that if you throw balloons off the upper floors of these buildings, they sometimes go straight up into the air as far as you can see.
I left the party just before 1 and walked home with Raj. At the apartment, we looked at some pictures that Poy had given him, then I went to sleep.

10/28/2004
Thursday
8:49 pm

I got up at 7:30 today so I could meet with Francis Piron(the consumer marketing teacher in my Int. Food Video). My other group members and I got to his office at 8:30 and he spent about 45 minutes talking to us about our main project for the semester. He wants to meet with each group in the class before they start the project, and the only time he will meet anybody is 8:30 in the morning. Despite this flaw, he is actually the best teacher I have had in a while. His class is always interesting because he tells odd stories and has a good sense of humor. He told my group today that our last paper was above student level and that he even sent it to his family to read.
After our meeting, I went to the computer lab for a while, then bought a piece of bread from the little store on the courtyard. They have fresh baked bread there every morning and I tried it for the first time today. I was surprised when I found that it had a piece of Spam-like material in the middle of it, but it was not bad. I walked home as I ate my bread.
I had to walk back to campus for my 11'oclock class, and I met Johanna on the way there and walked with her. After class we went to the computer lab for a while, then I walked to International Business. There, we got the rough draft of a group project back. He told the class that each group should interview 200-300 tourists for the project. It took me an hour to get five, so I think that Macau is going to have to get some imaginary tourists soon.
My next class was statistics and it was almost impossible for me to stay awake, but I managed to do it 99.9% of the class. At 3:30 I went to the courtyard store and bought two sandwiches and a bottle of water, then took it to my favorite campus rooftop. I ate the food, then studied for my 5'oclock Mandarin test. Johanna called me a little after 4 and told me she was thinking about skipping class, because she was not ready for the test. I told her I would help her if she came to my roof, and she appeared there at 4:30. We studied the chinese characters that represent some simple words and cities. I tried to invent creative ways to remember them and Johanna thought my methods were hillarious. She laughed so much that I started laughing, and then we just gave up on the idea of studying because we couldn’t take it seriously anymore.
The classtime was just as hillarious. We learned how to say the word cat today, and it sound almost just like “meow”, but more like a tomcat in heat. When the teacher asked the class to say the word dog, several people barked. After class, Johanna, Kaisa and I went to the computer lab for a few minutes, then walked home.
I decided to prepare for a group meeting on Monday, so I tried to read two chapter of my Consumer Marketing book, but all I could do is fall asleep. I slept for a little over an hour, then made my second attempt at reading.
Raj came home soon after I got up, and he stayed home for the evening, which is very rare. I cooked some noodles for dinner and ate an apple-pear. Guida called me at 8:30 and came over to borrow my International Business book. I think I am one of the only students who owns the book, I should have saved my money.
I kept skimming over chapters in my consumer marketing book until about 11. Pedro came over at about that time, and I talked for a while with him and Raj, then went to sleep at 12.

10/27/2004
Wednesday
6:40 pm

Delphine called me at 10 today and asked me to look over the English in a paper she had written. She came over at 10:30 and we spent 30 minutes editing it, then she stayed watched the Simpsons with Raj for a while longer. Next I called Johanna and took a shower, and she came over at about 11:30. She was surprised to see that I had a picture of her on my computer wallpaper. Delphine came back to the apartment at about noon with her project disk in hand. She had taken in home with her and found that it no longer worked, so she tried it in my computer again, but it was hopeless. She lost all 5 pages of the paper that I had helped her with.
Delpine soon left again, and Johanna and I listened to some music, I pushed her around in the office chair and we talked until 1:45. She had to meet with a class group at two, so I walked with her and went to the computer lab.
Johanna met me at the computer lab when she was finished with her group work, and we looked at some of the pictures on my website together. At 4 we walked back to our apartments. I then spent some time reading and listening to music.
I had a business communication test at 6, so I walked to campus at 5:30. The test was being held in a place called X-hall, which I did not know of, so I had to ask students. I found a girl who knew where it was, and she even showed me to the door. There were several hundred students waiting to get it. I saw Eric there, and I talked to him for a few minutes. I then waited in the garden until the doors opened.
When I entered the building I surprised at what I found. This was my first mid-term test in China, and the procedures here are quite different from what I am used to back home. The X-hall is a giant classroom which is designed specifically for test taking. There are hundreds of desks aligned in perfect rows throughout the huge room. Each of the desks has numbers, and each student is suppost to sit at a specific desk. I asked a student worker where to sit, and she told me to go back outside and check for my number on a sheet posted by the door.
I found my number, desk #228, and went back inside. I found my test on the desk and I started it. I have mentioned before that all I do in my Business Communication class is learn English, but the test was a new surprise. I think that many of the things they are teaching in this class are just wrong, and some the test questions seemed to center on these things.
After the test I sat in the garden, went to the computer lab, and talked to Johanna on the phone for a while. I then walked to Mcdonald’s and got a McChicken, which I took home with me.
I ate my food, then worked on a video of yesterday’s International Food day. Milan and Lisbeth came over for a few minutes, then I continued my work on the video. Milan came back over again later and I showed her the finished product. I was asleep by 1 A.M.

10/26/2004
Tuesday

At 12 I left my apartment, then walked to the photo store by Mcdonalds, where I bought a new tape for my camcorder. I needed this tape to film International Food Day at the university. The students of each country prepared thier local foods, and set up booths by the university courtyard. There were about 12 different countries that participated. The university gave each country $125 to make whatever they wanted(I did not get money because I am technically not a Business major, and they funded the event). A few countries decided to buy alcohol with the money, which was allowed, but most served food. I got to the event at about 12:15 and things were just getting started. Santiago gave me a big mixed drink with milk and rum in it, and I tried a few countries foods - Click here to see a video.
I went to business communication class at 12:30, then returned to the event after class. By that time, several students had gotten very drunk, and nothing was the same as when I had been there the first time. Everyone was yelling and singing, and most of the Chinese people had left. I took some great video footage of this, which I hope to share soon.
Everyone began packing thier leftovers up at about 2, and Johanna asked me to take the Finnish food home because she had class and it needed to be refrigerated. So, I took the crackers and fish eggs home to my fridge, then returned to campus to use the computer lab.
At 3:30 Johanna met me at the computer lab and we left the campus together. We saw Kaisa on the stairs, and the 3 of us decided to go hiking in Coloane. I went home and changed clothes, then took the Finnish food from my refrigerator and headed to Johanna’s apartment. We waited there for Kaisa, then the 3 of us got on a bus and went to Coloane.
When we arrived we decided to just sit on the beach instead of going hiking. As we were walking down the beach, we found a playground and took some pictures of each other the equipment, then we walked on and found a place to lay in the sand. By the time we sat down, it was getting dark and the sky had filled with clouds. Click here to see pictures.
We layed on the sand for about 45 minutes, then walked back to the bus stop. We tried to find some ice cream at the nearby shops, but could not find what we wanted, so we just got on the bus. When the bus got back to Taipa, Kaisa and I decided to get off at Mcdonalds to have dinner. After dinner I walked back to my apartment, and Raj came home shortly afterward. He pushed a grocery cart from Park-N-Shop into the apartment, and Tibo was with him. They had been shopping and just decided it would be easier to push the entire cart home with them.
I talked to them for a few minutes, then walked to the computer lab. After about 45 minutes, Johanna called me to ask if I wanted to go to the computer lab with her. I told her that I would take a break and walk down to meet her at her apartment in 15 minutes. On the way there I stopped at the supermarket, where I noticed some gum that she told me she had been looking for, so I bought it for her. The gum has some kind of chemical called Xylitol in it that cleans your teeth, and the chemical was invented in Finland.
I next walked to Johanna’s building, and she came out with #2, who walked to the university with us. We stayed at the lab for about 45 minutes, then walked back to our apartments. I spent the rest of the evening moving music from my computer hard drive to cd’s, and getting some pictures ready for the Internet.

10/25/2004
Monday

Raj was awake when I got up today, and I talked to him for a few minutes and ate a banana, then got ready and left for school. I met Johanna in front of her building and walked to consumer marketing class with her. After class I had to talk to my group members about a meeting with our teacher, then Johanna and I walked to the computer lab. She asked me to put some pictures of her weekend trip(the one I was suppost to go on!) on the Internet so her sister could see them -Click here to see them.
My 12:30 class was cancelled so all the exchange students could be at an International Day that took place on campus today. Each countries students recieved about $100 to buy thier customary food, and each of them was suppost to act out a scene that had to do with thier country. I was not invited to participate because the event was sponsored by the School of Business, and my major is classified as Humanities. My International Business teacher asked me to participate anyway, but I couldn’t afford to feed people with my own money.
After I left the computer lab at 1:30, Johanna and I walked to the canteen and had lunch at an outdoor table. We did not get done eating until after my 2:00 Statistics class had already started, so I decided to skip it for the first time. Johanna and I then walked back to our apartments, and I planned on starting to write my next paper for Consumer Marketing class, but I didn’t. I noticed that the construction workers across the street were raising thier crane several more stories, and I have been wondering how they did that, so I sat and watched for a while. Afterwards, I felt unusually tired, so I fell asleep for an hour and a half.
Mandarin class was suppost to start at 5, so I got up at 4:30 to get ready. Just before I was leaving, I got a message from Johanna saying that class was cancelled. I then sat down at my computer and installed some software I needed for working on my website.
At about 5:30 my doorbell rang, and when I answered the door, nobody was there. I thought that somebody was playing a joke on me, and that they might still be hiding somewhere on the 5th floor, so I closed the gate behind me to make them think I had gone back inside. As soon as I did this I remembered that my keys were not in my pocket - I was locked out. I walked up to the 7th floor to talk to the property manager, Yolanda, and here sister got her on the phone for me. She told me that Raj had taken the spare key several days ago, but had not returned it.
I went back down to my floor and sat in the hallway, trying to think of ways to get in. The gate was locked and the inside door was open, which allowed me to see through the bars and into the apartment. My keys were sitting on the couch just two feet away, but my hand would not fit through the bars. I tried lifting the gate off its hinges, but I guess the designers had already thought of that, because I discovered that it does not raise high enough to be removed when it was closed. After this I sat down for a while longer and thought of ways to get in, then decided to look for a long wire. I unsucessfully searched the stairwells, then went towards the supply room on the first floor. I could not explain what I wanted to the chinese-speaking guard, so I snuck in the room when he wasn’t looking. I quickly found a coat hanger and headed back to the fifth floor.
When I returned to my gate, I bent the hangar and tried to hook my keys that were laying on the couch. This seemed hopeless, so I began trying to hook the latch that opens my gate. I spent about 15 minutes trying to do this, and almost gave up, but then it finally happened.
When I entered the apartment, I found a note on the door with the picture of Osama Bin Laden’s California drivers liscence printed on it, and the words “Yeah right, see if you can find this guy first”. Two days ago, Robert put wood in my door locks, so I left a note on his door that said “What you did was a terroist act. Do you not remember what Americans do to terrorists!”. Today, Robert had put this note on my door and caused me to get locked out. This is war.
Raj came home with Tibeaut just a few minutes after I was inside……to bad he wasn’t there 30 minutes earlier. Tibeaut hooked his laptop up to my computer and let me copy 12 gigabytes of music from him. My harddrive is almost full now. At 8 I walked to Mcdonalds and had a Big Mac meal for dinner, then I walked to the computer lab.
I spent an hour there, then decided to walk back home. As I was leaving I saw Catherine, and she asked me if she could come home with me and borrow Farenheight 911. She followed me to my apartment, and I then gave her the movie and talked to her for a minute before she left. Raj came home shortly afterwards, and we watched an episode of the Simpsons. He left the apartment shortly afterwards, and I spent the next 2 hours on my computer. I moved some of my MP3 music to CD so I could free up space on my hard drive, and I made a new video - Click here to see it.

10/24/2004
Sunday

Johanna called me at 9:30 this morning. She had returned home from her trip to the mainland early this morning. I had not expected her to return until late tonight or early tomorrow morning, but her and Kaisa came back early because Kaisa needed to study for tests she has this week.
On the phone, Johanna and I decided to go to Coloane and find the hiking trails that we have heard about. I took a shower, then met her in front of her building. We went to the bus stop and I asked some local people which bus we should take. A young guy told us that there are trail nears Hac Sa beach, so we got on bus 25 and went there.
When we arrived, Johanna said that she had been hiking yesterday, and that it would be nice to just sit on the beach for a while. We found a big rock by the water, and sat on it for about 30 minutes, then decided to find a more comfortable area.
I bought a straw mat from a beach vendor and we walked about 10 minutes down the beach. We found an area by some boulders, where the beach was more pleasant looking and there were not as many people. We laid on our mat for over an hour. The sun was very bright, but there was breeze that kept us from getting too hot.
At 2 we decided to go back to the bus stop. I bought some water on the way, and then we took a bus back to Taipa. After the bus dropped us off, I went home to drop my beach mat off, then I went back to Johanna’s building and met her and Kaisa. The three of us walked to a restaurant that is near Mcdonald’s. It is larger and classier than most of the other nearby restaurants, but the food prices are almost the same. It also doubles as a bakery that sells lots of different kinds of fresh breads. I ordered a Taiwanese noodle dish, which was very good.
After lunch, we walked to Park-N-Shop and did a little bit of shopping. Next, we all walked back to our own apartments. Raj came home with Delphine shortly after I arrived. The three of us talked for about 30 minutes, then both of them left.
I spent the next couple hours editing video on my computer and doing a little homework. Johanna called me a little after 7, then I met her on the sidewalk and we walked to the computer lab together. At 9 we decided to go an a walk along the Taipa shoreline, and then we stopped at a park. We stayed in the park for the rest of the evening, and spent most of our time talking on a bench.

Saturday
10-23-04

This morning I continued writing the “My Favorite Things” project for consumer marketing class. At noon I cooked some instant noodles for lunch, then decided to go to the supermarket. On my way there I stopped my Milan’s apartment to see if she needed more cigarettes, because I knew I had smoked one of her last ones last night.
At the store I bought drinks, cigarettes, and a bag of seaweed flavored potato chips. When I got back to my floor of the apartment building, I stopped at Milan’s apartment to drop off the cigarettes and talk to her for a few minutes. I then went back home and finished the “My Favorite Things” project, and it is 20 pages in length now. I still have to make a collage depicting the things I wrote about, though. I feel like I am in grade school again, because I have to make a collage, but our papers then only had to be about one handwritten page.
At 4 Milan came back over, because I had asked her to take some pictures for the collage of me with my fan. -Click here to see pics. Raj finally got out of bed as we were finishing the pictures. He said that he stayed up until 7AM.
At 5, Milan and I walked to the computer lab. There, I learned how to use a website called Skype.com, which will allow me to make phone calls to the US for about 2 cents per minute, but I have to be on a computer to make the calls. So, I soon plan on going to the computer labs after midnight and making the calls when nobody is there.
At about 6:30 Milan and I decided to go and get some food, and we walked to Panda, where we both ordered a really good spaghetti dish. Kent and Johan came to the restaurant while we were there, and sat with us.
Milan and I had earlier discussed going to a dog race in Macau at 7:30, but by the time we finished our food it was already past that time. We then decided to get ice cream at McDonalds and walk home. We bought some beers on the way home, then went to my apartment and played Rummy. She didn’t know all the rules at first, but had played similar games in Holland, so she learned quickly. We played until 300 points, and she almost won, but my last round put me ahead.
After the cards we watch The Matrix II, then Milan went home at about 1:30. I spent a few minutes cleaning up the apartment, and then did some writing on my computer.

Friday
2:14 am
10-22-04

I woke up at ten this morning and took a shower. There was no school today because it is a national holiday, called Chung Yeung Festival, when families visit the graves of thier ancestors. I then did some writing on my computer in the morning, and Bora came over at 11 and asked me to give a message to Raj. Milan came over for a few minutes at 11:30, then I continued my work on the computer and cooked some instant noodles for lunch.
Santiago and Carla(his Chinese roommate) came over at 12:30 and got Raj out of bed. Santiago invited me to dinner at his apartment tonight for 40 Pataca, which is what each person was paying him for the cost of food and drinks. I went to Milan’s apartment to ask her if she wanted to join us, and she came over and also gave Santiago her 40 Pataca. Raj, Santiago and Carla left around 1:30. I talked to Milan for a while, then she went home and I continued working on the computer.
At 2 I went to the computer lab for two hours, then came home and worked on a paper for consumer marketing class. I have mentioned this paper before, and it is called “My Favorite Things”. It is a project that is open to a lot of creativity, and I am having fun writing it - Click here to read some of it.
At 5 Milan came back over and we both did schoolwork. At 6 we walked to Santiago’s apartment for the dinner. They asked us to go to the supermarket and buy the drinks, so we went there and bought enough for all the ten people that were expected to arrive.
When we got back to the apartment, a woman was operating on Pedro’s foot in the bedroom. He had an ingrown toenail, and the university clinic told him that they did not have the tools to work on it, so he took matters into his own hands. The woman that did the operation was Carla’s mom, and she is only an amateur doctor. She would not accept any payment after the operation was complete.
The dinner was excellent. It was tacos with about a dozen different toppings. Santiago is from Columbia, so he knows his tacos well. I ate about 10 of them, and there were still a lot of leftovers.
After dinner we all looked at pictures from the party last night, then Milan and I decided to go to a free concert at St. Pauls cathedral in Macau. We met Pierre on the street and the three of us took a bus to the Kentucky Fried Chicken, then got ice cream at Mcdonalds and walked to the cathedral.
The concert featured a band called The Ding Sisters. The stage was set up at the bottom of the massive set of stairs that leads to the cathedral. There were about 1000 people sitting on the stairs. The band had two female lead singers, who must have been the Ding sisters. They both had beautiful voices and usually sang in harmony. The sound and light systems were done very professionally and an impressive fireworks display took place while the music was made.
The band must have been famous, because a couple hundred people rushed the stage after the show was over. The sisters came off the stage to sign autographs, but a shoving match developed between the fans and security guards. This scared the sisters, so they left and went backstage.
We then bought some beer and walked around Senado Square, which adjoins St. Pauls Cathedral. We saw more violence here. An English speaking Chinese man was having some kind of conflict with a mainland Chinese man. The mainlander would not let go of the English speakers duffel bag. I couldn’t understand most of the yelling, but I did hear the English speaker say, “This isn’t Beijing you idiot, you think you can put your hands on my things? Get your hands off my things”. Within a couple minutes, a crowd of about 100 people had gathered around the men. Two women stepped out from the crowd to translate for the men, and the situation was then quickly resolved.
We moved on after the excitement was over, and went to sit on the fountain to finish our beers. When we were done we took a bus back to Macau. Pierre went home and Milan and I walked back to our building. We watched two episodes of the Simpsons in my apartment, then Milan left at about 12:30.

10/21/2004
11:42 pm

I walked to school this morning at 10:30. I saw Robert on the way there, and he asked me what happened last night. He said that he had been to Milan’s apartment this morning and she told him about the late-night knocking. Robert then told me that he had just helped her get revenge by putting little pieces of wood into the lock on our door.
At campus I bought a sandwich and some water at the courtyard, then talked to several of the other exchange students who were standing there. Raj and I discussed how to get the wood out of our locks.
In consumer marketing our teacher showed us the website Kontraband.com, because we were discussing certain kinds of commercials. If you have never been to the website, go there and click on TV ADS, then select the video“Rolled with Love, not by hand”. You might no want to do this in front of any children or if you are easily offended, though.
In international business we discussed Ebay for a while, and Joseph(teacher) asked me if I had ever sold anything online. I told the class about my recent experience selling the Chinese merchandise, and about my dad selling car parts. Joseph asked me to teach half a class in November about Ebay and my family’s experiences with it.
Statistics class was boring as usual, but I had a quiz today that I probably got a perfect score on. After class I walked to Mcdonalds and had a McChicken, then walked home. Sure enough, there was wood broken off in the gate lock. I took the keys off of my keyring and bent the metal into a straight shape so I could try to pick out the wood. Luckily, it came out in one piece and I was able to open the gate. Then I tried to open the door and was surprised to find a piece of wood in that lock also. This time it was not as easy and I could not get it to come out in one piece. I picked out as much as I could, then just jammed the key into the lock. Fortunately, the key pushed the wood into the innards of the lock and the door opened. There is now wood in the middle of the door, though, so I hope it does not cause me problems at a later time.
I picked up my passport, then went to the bus stop and took a bus to Macau. I had chosen bus 33, thinking that it would take me directly to the immigration building, but I was wrong. When I noticed the bus was going in the wrong direction, I got off near the Bank of China building and walked about 20 minutes to the immigration building. I went there in order to straighten out the situation with my expired passport stamp. Yesterday, Grace had asked me to take my student visa application receipt here. I showed this and my passport to two female guards at the desk by the door, and they told me to go to another room and take a number. I did this, but I soon noticed that my number would not be called for at least an hour, so I just walked inside and went to the same desk that I had been to two weeks ago when I tried to pick up my student visa. I told a man there about my situation and he said that my application receipt was a legal document, which made the expired stamp obsolete.
So, both the people I talked to at the consulate and immigration buildings on Monday did not know what they were talking about. If I had known this at the time, then I would be in China right now with the Finnish girls. At least I gained a nice office chair by not going, but I would easily trade it for the opportunity to be with them.
When I left the immigration building, I had 30 minutes to get back to Taipa and make it to Mandarin class, where we were suppost to have a quiz. I got on a bus called AP1, which I always see stopping in front of the university, but it was going in the wrong direction. It took me to the China border, where I changed busses at 4, which was when my class was starting. It took this next bus almost 30 minutes to get back to the university. By the time I made it to class, the quiz was already over, but 50 minutes of class still remained.
Afterwards, I went to the computer lab. There I talked to Milan for a while, then logged on to the Internet. Catherine was there and she asked me to help her with the English in a letter she was writing to her professor.
At 8 I decided to get something to eat and go home. I saw Milan and Bora on the sidewalk and they invited me to eat with them. We went to one of the nearby restaurants that has live fish and snakes in the windows. I ordered a very disappointing spaghetti dish. Boro left after he finished his meal, and Milan and I walked back to our apartment building at 9. We decided to meet again in a few minutes and go to a party across the street.
Milan and I met in the hall about 20 minutes later and walked to the supermarket to get drinks. The party we were headed to was Manuel’s birthday party, so we decided to bring small gifts. I bought him a peanut butter spreader with Mr. Peanut on the handle. We saw Pierre at the supermarket and he walked to the party with us.
I stayed at the party till about 11:30. It was at the same apartment that my fireworks video was shot, which means that it has a view of the entire Macau skyline. About 25 people had arrived by the time I left, and they were planning on stopping the party at midnight because the police have told the university that they are about to start arresting people if the parties continue after midnight.
Milan had come back home just before I did, so I knocked on her door when I got home. I sat on her balcony and talked to her for a while, then came home.

10/20/2004
2:20 am

Today I did not have classes, but I walked to campus anyway to use the computer lab. As I was leaving I passed Johanna and Kaisa, who were getting ready to leave for the trip that I was not able to go on with them. After I said goodbye to them I walked to Ming’s office to find out what to do about my passport problem. She was still gone to lunch when I got there, so I waited for her to return. She didn’t really know what to do, so she told me to talk to Grace on Monday when she gets back from vacation.
I then left the school and walked to Panda for lunch, where I again had the shredded chicken and noodles, which I discovered last weekend. This time I also discovered a small octupus tenacle in my soup. Maybe that is what gives it such good flavor. This is not the first time that I have found something new in a dish I have tried before, and other exchange students have shared similiar experiences with me. Hana, a vegetarian, told me yesterday that she recently found 3 pieces of ham at the bottom of a vegetarian dish that she has eaten many times.
When in doubt, there is always Mcdonalds, which also probably serves all kinds of disgusting things, but at least these things are processed into tiny peices and then formed into things like hamburger patties. Even though there may very well be octupus tenacle in my Filet-O-Fish, or a chicken eye in my McChicken, I never have to think about it.
As I was walking home from Panda, I saw Riitta on the pedestrian overpass. She was with her friend who had just came into town, named Johanna, who was joining the girls on the trip that I can’t go on. That means that there will be 3 girls named Johanna traveling together, because Johanna #1 and #2 are also going. Seeing Riitta and #3 again reminded me how upset I was at China for not letting me in thier country.
I have decided to make the best of my time that I can’t go on vacation, and spend the next few days catching up on my Statistics class and finishing my “Favorite Things” project for consumer marketing. I figure that since the people I spend most of my time with are gone, then I will stay at home more, and when I am at home, I will study. It is a good plan in theory, but everybody knows how easy it is to procrastinate when trying to study, do we’ll see what actually happens.
At 3:30 Ming called me to say that Grace had come back from vacation early. I called her and she asked me to come talk to her about my passport at 4:30. I went to see her then and she told me the opposite of what the immigration officials had said. According to her, my status as student aid applicant overrides the stamp in my passport. She said I should go back to immigration tomorrow. Somebody is wrong and I will find out who tomorrow. If Grace is wrong, then I am in the country illegally, and I don’t know what will happen when I show my expired stamp to the immigration cops. I can’t believe that Grace knows more than the immigration officials, but this is part of her job, so maybe she has dealt with this situation before.
After leaving Graces office I went back to the computer lab for another hour. As I was walking back home, I saw Robert on the street. He told me that Ooly was flying home tomorrow because he just learned of his father’s sudden death. Ooly is the most fun-loving exchange student here, so everyone is going to be really sad to see him go, especially under these circumstances.
I got back home about 6 and cleaned off my desk, then blew the dust off my statistics book. I then spent two hours studying, and completed most of the problems in the book that have been assigned since school began. At 8 I decided to go to Mcdonalds and get a Big Mac, and I found something great as I was walking down the street. Next to a dumster was a huge black office chair, which was clean and in almost perfect condition. My apartment is almost bare of furniture, so I ran to the abandoned chair as soon as I saw it. I was so eager that I ran out in front of a car, which slowed down to honk at me. When I reached the chair, I examined it more closely, hoping not to find something terrible wrong with it. It looked perfect, except for one small seam that was coming apart on the seat. Better yet, it was on wheels, so I could even roll it home.
As I started rolling the chair, I noticed that everyone on the sidewalks had thier heads turned to look at me. Either they wanted the chair, or they thought it was wierd to see a gwai-lo taking garbage. I pushed the chair into my building, then onto the elevator. When I got it to my apartment I sat down in it for the first time. I have alot of open space and hard wood floors, so I rolled around for a while. Then, I discovered a lever on the side of the chair. When I pushed the lever, the chair reclined a little bit, and it reclined a little more when I pushed it again. On the most reclined setting it was as flat as a bed. What a wonderful chair.
After exploring my chair for a few minutes, I walked to Mcdonalds to get my Big Mac. I took it to go and ate it at home. After I finished it, I spent another hour with my Statistics, then I started cleaning. I took care of every room in the house, except Raj’s, of course. After I was done, I decided to make one last attempt at cleaning the heads of my camcorder, but a miracle happened. I took it out of it’s bag and turned it on……and it worked perfectly! Sorry camera haters. Maybe it started working because Johanna and Kaisa are far away in China, and cannot focus thier negative energy at it from that distance. If this is not the reason, then maybe it is because the alcohol I put on the heads last time just needed to soak in for a while. Or, maybe it will just quit working again tomorrow…who knows, but I hope it keeps working, and you should too, because that means I can show more China videos on the Internet while I’m gone. Please focus some positive energy at my camera to counteract the effects of Johanna and Kaisa.
Once I discovered that the camera worked, I started editing the footage I took at my party on September 10th. Click here to see it.I worked on this til midnight, then called Milan so I could show it to her. She came over and watched it with Hana, and she told me that she had been with Ooly at the beach when he got the phone call about his dad. I was suppost to go to the beach with them this morning, but slept to late. The girls went home to bed after about 20 minutes at my apartment.
Next, I decided to watch The Matrix and sit in my new chair. About an hour into the movie, Raj, Pedro, Bora and Santiago came home. They had all been drinking for hours and were looking to cause some trouble. They first decided to ring Milans doorbell rapidly at 2AM, then run back into the apartment and hide. I tried to talk them out of it because Milan was sad about Ooly, but they still did it several times. She did not get up, so they decided to do it again at about 2:30. I figured that since I couldn’t stop them, I might as well videotape it. Milan did answer the door this time, and I was surprised how well she took it. When she came to the door, they told her that they just wanted to apologize for the first time.
I decided to go to sleep at about 3 AM, but I heard glass breaking shortly afterward. I got up and discovered that the guys had thrown a beer bottle off the balcony. They had been trying to hit the construction site accross the street, but the bottle had hit a balcony on the sixth floor of our building. Somebody is going to end up in jail before this semester is over. They thought they broke a window, so they had all the lights turned off. I peeked outside and saw the window, which was not actually broken.
Next, they decided to take a night ferry to Hong Kong and party. They spent about 30 minutes trying to talk Santiago and me into going, but neither of us was willing to consider the idea, so they all stayed. I went to sleep at 4, and the rest of the guys stayed up the entire night.

10/19/2004
Tuesday

This morning I ate some instant noodles and a pear/apple before I left for school. The pear/apple is half pear and half apple and it is great. It has the crunchiness of an apple and the taste of a pear. There are all kind of other new fruits here that I have not tried yet. Maybe I will try the giant deformed grapefruit next.
On campus, I bought a bottle of water, then went to Business communication class at 12:30. After class I went to the computer lab, then home at about 3:00. Johanna had called me earlier in the day and asked me to help with her computer this afternoon. She called me at 3:30 and I went to her apartment shortly afterwards, where she had me try and reprogram her keyboard. The Finnish alphabet has an “a” and an “o” with two dots over them, which she wants to be able to type with her keyboard. I changed it last week for her, but the layout was inconvenient, so I told her I would make it better. I brought over a program that I downloaded on the Internet and tested on my own computer, but it would not work on hers.
After the failed attempt with the computer, I stayed and talked to Johanna another 20 minutes, then she had to leave to pick up the Visa for the trip that I should be going on with her but can’t because the government won’t give me a visa! This trip sounded so perfect, and it even included a one day river boat ride from one city to another.
As I was leaving Johanna’s apartment, Milan called Johanna’s phone looking for me, because I had mine turned off. I had told her earlier in the day that I would possibly go on a walk up the mountain trail with her and Lisbeth. They had never been on the trail before, so they did not know exactly how to get there, which is probably why they were so persistent at getting ahold of me.
I met them and Anders in front of my apartment building, then we went on our walk. It took us about an hour to complete the entire trail, then we walked to the peak of the mountain, where the pagoda is.
All of us were hungry afterwards, so we decided to get pizza at restaraunt that is about 1 block from my apartment. This is the only place to buy pizza in Taipa, the only other option is to go to Pizza Hut in Macau. Before we went to the restaraunt, Milan and I went to the supermarket to buy some water. She had been singing Christmas songs on the trail, and in the store she told me about the Dutch version of Santa Clause, which sounds like a Catholic priest dressed in red.
After we left the store we met Quintin and Robert, then our group of 6 went to the pizza place. After we got there, we were joined by Hana, and later Kaisa and Kent. The restaraunt was very nice, but also very small, and our group took two of the three tables. We each ordered a pizza, and everyone’s came at different times over the next 45 minutes, except mine. I finally asked, “where’s my pizza”, and they said “what pizza”, then I said “never mind”.
I walked with Hana to Mcdonalds and I ordered 2 Fillet-o-fish. She ordered an apple pie, then I walked to her apartment with her so I could pick up a backpack that I left there at a party last week. We ate our food there, then I walked back to my apartment. I then talked to Johanna on the phone for a while, and she said that her keyboard will now not type Finnish characters at all.
At 9 Milan and Robert came over, and they watched 3 episodes of the Simsons with Raj and I. Hana came over just before everyone was leaving. All the guests and Raj left the apartment by 11.

10/18/2004
Monday

Johanna called me this morning to ask me I wanted to purchase plane tickets for the trip she and others are taking to China on Wednesday. I had to decline because I could not afford the tickets. I had earlier planned on going if they had decided to take the trip by bus or train.
My first class was cancelled today, so I did not go to the university until after 11. I then bought a sandwich and chips for lunch. After I finished my meal, Kaisa called me to say that she and Johanna had decided to travel by bus after all. This meant I could go with them, and I was looking forward to getting out of Macau and into the countryside.
I next went to the computer lab til 12:30, then statistics. After class I went home to pick up my passport, then took a bus to Macau, so I could apply for a Visa. I went to the same travel agency that I used for my last trip, called Juventude, but they told me that they could no longer process American passports. I walked across the street to another agency and they wanted twice the price, so I decided to walk to the government building that processes Visas, which was about 15 minutes away.
When I got to this building, I took a number and filled out an application. My number was called before I even finished the application. I took my information to window #1 and the lady behind it began examining my passport. When she got to the page with my Macau stamps, she called another lady over to look at it. These two ladies then told me that I could not get a Visa because my current stamp expired tomorrow, and that I should go to the immigration building next door.
So, I followed their instructions and walked one block away to this other building. I showed my stamp to a man sitting behind a desk at the entrance. He looked at my stamp, then his watch, and appeared to be thinking about something. He finally gave me some bad news. He said that if I would have come 5 days before my stamp expired, then he could have just put a new stamp in the book, but now I would have to leave the country and come back to get a new one at the border. Without a Visa to China, my only option to leave the country would be to go to Hong Kong by boat, which is expensive.
I left the building with a headache. I now knew that I couldn’t take the trip to the Chinese countryside, and my failure at getting the Visa had uncovered new problems.
These new problems should have never happened. I was suppost to have a student visa two weeks ago, which would have extended the date of the stamp in my passport. But, when I went to pick up my student visa two weeks ago, they told me it would not be ready for another month. They never bothered to tell me that my old stamp would expire in the meantime. The university also knew that the student visas were delayed, but they failed to mention it also. A lot of things here don’t make sense, but this is the worst thing they have done yet.
After I left the immigration building, I went back to the first travel agency I had been to, because I had earlier told Kaisa and Johanna that I would check bus schedules for them. An employee there printed out some bus schedules for me, then I took a bus back to Taipa.
When I got back to the university I was already 30 minutes late for Mandarin class, but there was still an hour left. After class was over I went to the computer lab for about 20 minutes, then to Mcdonalds for dinner.
I took a Big Mac meal back home with me. My headache had been getting worse for the last two hours, and after I finished my meal I didn’t feel like doing anything but lay down. I fell asleep until 10, then woke up with the same headache. I took some Tylenol and watched two episodes of the Simpsons while I waited for it to start working.

Sunday
10-17-04

Delphine came over just after I got up today. She asked me to go to China with her during the day on Tuesday, but I told her I could not do it, because the visa is very expensive and I have class on that day. Lisbeth then came over also, and the three of us sat and talked for a while.
Raj got up just before Delphine and Lisbeth were leaving, and the two of us went to lunch at a Chinese restaurant across the street, called Panda. I had a dish of shredded chicken and noodles, which was one of the best things I have every eaten in China, and it costs about $2.
After lunch I came home and got some pictures ready to put on the Internet, which are from my trip to Beijing in early SeptemberClick here to see them Guim called me around 2 and told me he was going to come over to work on our group project. He never came, then he called me again at 4 to tell me he was on his way. I told him I was going to the computer lab, and that he could come with me. I met him by the entrance of the building and we walked toward the computer lab. On the way there he asked me if it would be OK if we just discussed the project in email. I told him that would be fine, because I already had finished most of the part we had been working on together.
He went home, so I messaged Johanna to see if she wanted to come to the lab with me. I was waiting at the bus stop for her to reply when she walked by with Riitta. They asked me if I wanted to take a trip with them to the Chinese countryside on Thursday. Friday is a holiday here and the rural areas will be very cheap, so I am probably going with them, but I still have to pay almost $50 for a visa.
I continued to the lab after I talked to the girls, where I found Kaisa sitting. I spent an hour working on my group project and talking to her. I also saw Catherine, who had asked me for help with the English in her masters thesis last night. She had then emailed it to me to look at later, but today I had to tell her that I would not have time to help her with it. When I told her this, she asked me if I would just help her with a few more things, which I agreed to. She opened up the project on my computer and I answered some questions for her.
While we were working she told me that she thought George Bush used funny English. I thought she may have come to this conclusion by watching “Farenheight 911”, because many Chinese have seen it. I asked her about this and she said no, then asked me if I owned it. When I told her yes, she asked me if she could borrow it. I said that she could, then she asked me if she could come home with me to pick it up. I told her that I had to do something, but I would bring the movie to school tomorrow.
I continued helping her with the thesis for about 20 minutes, then I told her I was going to have to go. She saved the file that we had been working on and something went wrong with the computer, which deleted the file. I spent a while trying to determine if the file had really been deleted. I could not find it, so I left the computer lab.
I went home and took a shower, then Johanna called and told me she was going to the computer lab. We met at her apartment and walked to the lab, where we found Lisbeth sitting. The three of us talked some, and I did several things I needed to do on the Internet.
At about 8, Johanna and I decided to talk a walk up the nearby mountain that has the trail on it. We walked to the peak, where a pagoda is located. There is a very long stairway that goes all the way there. It is surrounded by a dark forest, which makes the stairs very hard to see at night. Luckily I had a little LED flashlight in my pocket, that I always keep attached to my USB drive. My sister gave this to me almost 3 years ago as a Christmas present, and it has always been most useful.
Johanna and I sat in the pagoda for a about an hour. The view from this location is great, as you can see the entire Macau skyline and part of Zhuhai, which is the city of 6 million people on the Chinese mainland.
After our time in the pagoda, we walked back down the mountain and went to a supermarket, where we bought some food. Johanna looked at what I was buying and said, “You don’t eat enough fruit”, so I picked up some pears and she asked, “Are you just buying it please me?” I then said that I like both her and pears.
As we were leaving the supermarket, Raj called and said that he was locked out. I went back to my apartment to let him in, and Johanna went home. At the apartment door, I found Raj and Pedro waiting for me to let them in. Milan came over shortly afterward, and she was soon followed by Kent and Lisbeth, who wanted to borrow my flashlight.
All of us talked a while, then I spent some time using my computer and watching the Simpsons with Raj and Pedro.

10/16/2004
Saturday

I slept ’til about noon today because I had stayed up so late last night. I used my computer to work on a rough draft of a group project that is due Monday. It is a project I have mentioned before, where my group must decide if an international chain of souvenir stores should expand to Macau. For my part of the project, I previously decided to analyze the competition, so I wrote about the pictures I took yesterday with Johanna. The CEO of this company, Island Souvenirs, is suppost to come into town and look at our projects soon, so hopefully he will like my ideas and give me a job, because I need money.
At about 2 I called Johanna to see if she wanted to get something to eat with me. She was in Macau with Kaisa, and she asked me to come meet her. I went to the bus stop and had considerable trouble finding a bus that was not packed like sardines. I eventually found a very attractive looking bus #22, which I took to Senado Square.
I met the girls by the fountain and we went to Mcdonalds(it was their idea to eat there). After the meal we looked for a USB drive, which Kaisa needed, then went to a camera store to see if they could fix my camcorder. An employee at this store gave me the address of a JVC service shop in Macau, which I will go to in the near future.
Next, we briefly went to a computer store, then a store that sold home decorations and stuffed animals, where Kaisa had earlier seen something she wanted. Here, I found the best pillow in the world for about $4. I hate my current pillow, as it is too fat, so I am very happy to own a new one. Johanna discovered the pillows first, and there were only two of them, a blue and a pink one. She grabbed the blue one right away, and would not trade with me, so I had to get the pink one. Kaisa bought the thing she had seen earlier, which is some kind of funny looking pillow that is designed to resemble a flat rabbit-like creature.
After we left this store, I bought some water and the girls got some ice cream, then we took it to the fountain and consumed. While we were consuming, I heard a crash. After we finished consuming, we walked the bus stop, I then discovered the source of the crash. A small van had been hit head on by a bus. This is the first accident I have seen here, which is surprising considering all the crazy driving.
This accident had caused a huge traffic jam, and all the vehicles had come to a near halt. There was a line of about 20 city buses stopped behind the smashed van, and lots more other vehicles among them. We walked down the line until we found the right bus, but the driver would not open the door, even though he was just sitting idle in the traffic jam. We went further and found another bus, and this friendly driver had his bus door standing wide open.
The bus dropped us off in an area that was a little bit out of our way, so we had to walk about 15 minutes to get back to the apartments. Before I went home, I went with Kaisa to show her some computer stores in Taipa, because she was still looking for a USB drive. About 3 blocks from my apartment there are two small computer stores, which are located side-by-side. The second one had USB drives that were 100 Pataca cheaper than anywhere else in town, so she bought one there.
After the purchase, we walked back to our apartments. I was still tired from last night, so I went to sleep. Johanna called me at 6:30, and we went to the computer lab together. After we had been there for about an hour, a Chinese girl sitting across from us asked me to help her with the English in paper she was writing. Her name is Catherine and I think she might be the most energetic person I have ever met. She is a reporter who is working on a graduate degree. I thought that she had just one or two questions, but she showed me her entire masters thesis. I helped her for a few minutes, then had to tell her I was leaving, because I had my own work to do. She emailed the masters these for me to review, but I don’t think I’m going to have the time to go over that much information.
Johanna and I left the lab around 10. She went home and I went to McDonalds, where I got a double-cheeseburger, Filet-O-Fish and a soda to go. In front of the restaraunt, I witnessed the police arrest someone for the first time. They had a teenager in custody, and he was squating on the sidewalk, with his hands flat on the pavement.
On the way home I dropped the soda on the sidewalk and all of it spilled out onto the ground. At home I took a shower, then spent 2 hours working on the same paper that I was working on this morning. At midnight I finished it, then watched the movie “Oceans 11?.

Friday
10-15-04

I had to meet with a group in the campus courtyard at 11 today, and it is the same group that I questioned tourists with last Saturday. Three of our 7 members did not show up, so 3 chinese girls and I worked on a plan for a rough draft that is due on Monday. The other exchange student finally showed up about 30 minutes late, just as we were finishing.
I went to the computer lab until business communication class started at 12:30. Today our teacher wrote all the text messaging abbreviations on the board and made the class try to guess what they meant. We then had to seperate into groups and decide the pro’s and con’s of using email. After class I went back to the computer lab.
I walked back home at about 3:30, then I called Johanna. She asked me to come over and change the keyboard settings on her new laptop computer to Finnish. I did this for her, then we got on a bus and went to the tourist area in the center of Taipa. Here, I took pictures of a store that sell special Chinese biscuits. I had to do this for a class project.
After I took the pictures, Johanna and I decided to walk around this area of Taipa. Niether of us had ever really explored this part of the island before and it is full of very narrow streets with lots of shops and homes mixed together. We eventually came to a small mountain with a road going up it, which we decided to check out. We found a park at the top, which had a statue of a Portugese poet at the mountain’s peak. We sat by the poet for about 20 minutes until it started to get dark.
After this we walked back to the apartments and met Kaisa. The three of us went to Park-N-Shop and 2 other stores. We bought some drinks for a party that was being held in Kaisa’s apartment later, and the girls bought some other things also.
Next, Kaisa and Johanna went to thier apartment building, and I went to two other stores, where I bought a bottle of wine and some food. The food was beef with vegetables, kind of like a stew. I took my stuff home and found Pedro and Raj there watching the Simpsons. Raj bought the first 3 seasons of the show in China for about $4 each.
I ate my stew and watched 2 episodes of the Simpsons. Raj and Pedro left to play basketball, and I took a shower. Afterwards I worked on a school paper for a while, then walked to the party at 10. I was surprised to be the first person at the party, even though it had been suppost to start earlier. Over the next hour, about 20 people showed up, many of them were wearing thier pajamas because it had originally been planned to be a pajama party. All the people that came in pajamas got mad because more than half of the people were not wearing pajamas. They eventually decided to leave us and start thier own party in another apartment, where pajamas were required for entry.
At around 1 A.M. several police officers showed up and started threatening us with arrest, so we went downstairs to another apartment, but the police followed us there, so we then decided to go to Macau. Johanna, Kaisa, Manuel and I shared a cab, and we went to the Mandarin hotel. About 20 other people from the party also came to the hotel.
There was a live band playing and everyone spent most of the evening on the dance floor. Johanna, Kaisa, Milan and I took a cab back to Taipa at about 4 A.M. I spent some time talking to Johanna on the phone before going to sleep at about 6A.M.

Thursday
10-14-04

I slept 16 hours last night and I do not feel sick anymore. This cure is effictive for me 90% of the time. At the first sign of illness I just sleep double-time.
At 10 I went and ate a bunch of Mcdonalds food for breakfast. Johanna sent me a message at 10:30 and asked me to walk to school with her, so I went to her building after I finished my breakfast. I waited outside a few minutes for her, then we walked to class. We went to the computer lab after class, then I walked to international business at 12:30. There, I watched the second part of a video about Singapore. Class was released early, so I went back to the computer lab while I waited on Statistics to start.
After statistics, Dash called me and asked me if I wanted to get lunch with him. I told him I was going to the computer lab, and he offered to bring lunch there for me, but I was not hungry because of my huge breakfast. When I got to the building that the lab is in, I decided to see if I could get on the roof, because all the other buildings have roofs that are open to everyone. Sure enough, the main stairway went right to the roof. It was a nice roof and the weather was nice, so I sat down. I sat there for a few minutes, then I heard the sound of a police radio behind me. I looked up and there was a guard with some kind of weapon pointed at me, which looked like a taser. When I turned my head, he looked at my face, then put down his weapon and walked away. I don’t know what that was all about, but he never came back.
A few minutes after the guard incident, I went to the computer lab and stayed there until Mandarin class started at 5. We learned how to say the names of chinese cities today, and to say what city we are from. After class I went back to the computer lab with Kaisa and Johanna. We only spent about 20 minutes there, then Johanna and I went to Mcdonalds for dinner. While we sat in the restaraunt, we noticed some strange things on the wallpaper in the childrens area. There is a large scene printed there, which takes up two walls and depicts all the Mcdonalds characters on a beach. Some Mcdonalds in the US also have this wallpaper, so next time you see it, take a real close look and you might notice some disturbing things.
After Johanna and I left Mcdonalds, we went to the supermarket and then both went back to our apartments. There I worked on a school paper for an hour, then Lisbeth knocked on my door and asked me if I would go on a walk with her. We first walked to the university to look for something she lost, then walked along the shoreline at the base of the university’s mountain. It seems like everytime Lisbeth and I hang out we only talk about people dying, so we agreed to change the subject after tonight.
I got home just before midnight and was preparing to go to sleep when I heard people singing a Dutch drinking song outside. The exchange students have chosen this song as thier official drinking song and I hear it all the time. The music was coming from the building next door, and I had earlier been invited to a party in apartment 15H of that building, so I figured that must be source. I had one beer in the fridge, so I put on my shoes and grabbed the beer, then headed next door.
There were just 4 girls in the apartment; Cloe, Guida, Hana and Delphine. They were all drunk and in the process of answering an online questionaire about sex. They had me sit down and answer all the questions with them. I was surprised to find that the girl I would have voted most innocent of the 4 was actually the extreme opposite of that.
I stayed at the apartment for about an hour, then went home to sleep at 2.

Wednesday
10-13-04

I took a shower,ate some instant noodles and did some homework for a few minutes before leaving my apartment at about 12:30 today. I took bus 22 to Macau and went to a camera store near KFC, where I bought a cleaning tape for my camcorder. It has been giving me problem lately and I hope it is only because it has never been cleaned. All my stuff has been breaking lately.
I checked the prices in two different camera stores, then bought my tape for 60 Pataca at the first store I had went to. Next I crossed the street and took bus 22 back to Taipa. When I got off the bus, I then took the shuttle bus up the hill to the university, and went to the computer lab.
About an hour later I walked back to my apartment and tried to fix my camcorder with the cleaning tape I bought. I was unsuccessful, and I think that the camera may be finished. I don’t have money for a new one until next semester, so I will unfortunately not be able to post any new videos for awhile. It will still record video, it will just not play it back, so I will keep recording things and then put them online in January.
At 5 I went to Mcdonalds and had dinner with Kaisa. She had asked all the other Finnish girls to eat there with her too, but they declined. At 5:30 we walked back to our apartments. Raj was home when I got there, and Milan came over for a few minutes also.
I had been feeling like I was getting sick all day, and I felt completely exhausted at 6, so I went to sleep. I only planned on sleeping for a little while, but I did not get back up.

Tuesday
10-12-04

This morning I finished addressing the packages of the items I sold on Ebay last week, then I put them in my backpack and walked to the university. On the way there I saw one of the world’s largest piles of Styrofoam. The New Century Casino is under renovations and there was a mountain of Styrofoam beside the building today. Some of the pieces were the size of small cars, and there were hundreds of them. The pile was overflowing onto the parking lot and sidewalk, and was about 15 feet tall.
The first thing I did at the university was take my Ebay packages to the office in the administration building that sends mail. I seriously underestimated the shipping costs of the 3lb Buddha statue, and it cost the same price that I sold it for. I didn’t have enough cash with me, so I put the packages back into my backpack, then went to see if I had any mail in the FBA office(this is where my incoming mail is sent). They have a box on the counter where they put all the exchange students mail. Inside I found 2 letters for me, but they were letters I had sent that had come back “return to sender”. I asked a lady behind the desk what was wrong and she told me that they were sent back because I had not declared their contents. The post office had attached a green label to the back of them, where they wanted me to describe the envelope contents. The post office could tell there was something else other than paper inside, because the envelopes were puffed out and lumpy. Both of them had a small piece of the Great Wall and Chinese paper money inside of them, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to write that on label, so I just wrote “small stone and paper”.
Next I went to the small store in the courtyard, where I bought a sandwich and a grape soda. Business communication class started at 12:30 and we once again had to re-write English sentences that were incorrect. After class I walked home and picked up some money so I could mail my Ebay items. Raj was just getting up for class when I arrived. We walked back to school together and took the shuttle bus to the top of the hill.
I went to the computer lab for about 2 hours, where I worked on my website and tried to find some solutions to my computer problems on the Internet. I had though that the man at the computer store fixed them last week, but last night they started up again. Johanna, Kaisa and Raj came to the lab while I was there, and I talked to them for a bit also.
At about 5 I walked back home, and there were trucks in front of the New Century Casino taking away loads of Styrofoam. I walked to Mcdonalds and got a Big Mac Value meal to go. I walked back to the apartment and ate it. Raj and Tibo came in the apartment shortly after I arrived. They only stayed for about 30 minutes, and when they left I fell asleep. Johanna called me at 7:30 and we then met at the bus stop and went to the computer lab. There I spent some more time trying to find information about my computer problems, and I think I may have found a solution.
Johanna and I left the computer lab about 9 and decided to go on a short walk. We walked just a few blocks to Park-N-Shop, bought a few things there, then walked back. We saw Riitta, Bora and some others at a store near the apartments. Riitta, Johanna, Bora and I decided to watch a movie. We went to the girls’ apartment and started watching “50 First Dates”, but after about 30 minutes I decided to go home.
At home I applied the solution I found on the Internet to my computer problem, and I think it works. At midnight I was working on a school project, then Milan knocked on my door. She invited me with her to our neighbors apartment, so I picked up a couple drinks, then went to Roberts and Delphines apartment in the building next door. Several others came shortly after me and we sat around a table and played the drinking game where you try to bounce a coin into a cup. I really don’t like drinking warm beer with a dirty coin in it, but I would have gotten kicked out of the game if I didn’t drink it.
About 3A.M., Milan and I walked back to our building, and she was so drunk that she kept making animal noises most of the way back, mostly sheep sounds.

Monday
10-11-04

I walked to school at 11 with Lisbeth and Milan. During class I spent my time either listening to the teacher or passing notes to Johanna and Lisbeth. I told them how the lecture hall was only painted halfway up the wall, and that some of the fixtures were halfway painted over (it is not under any construction or remodeling).
At the end of class I got a message on my phone from Kaisa, which said “Could you please take that shit about me off the Internet”. She was drunk two weeks ago, and she had me film a video greeting to her friend, then asked me to put in on the Internet. She had just received my email with a link to the page, but she didn’t remember asking me to put it there(she later remembered).
After class, I went to the computer lab with Johanna for a few minutes, and then went to international business class. We had the same guest speaker whom I have mentioned before, but luckily today we watched a video, instead of listening to him. The video was about the history of Singapore. Did you know that they have the 4th largest income per capita? That’s impressive for Asia.
Next I went to statistics, and we started discussing probabilities today. The teacher kept using the rolling of the numbers “666” on 3 dice as an example. The first time she said it, the students started mumbling things to each other, but the teacher did not appear to have any idea why. When the mumbling started, she stopped for a second and gave the class a puzzled look, then continued with her evil lecture. She wrote “666” on the board and kept saying it over and over as she discussed the problem at hand.
After class I got a message from Johanna, and she asked me if I would go to Macau with her to pick up our student Visa’s, which were suppost to have been ready on October 9th. I quickly went home and picked up my passport and visa application receipt, then met Johanna at the bus stop.
We accidentally got on the wrong bus and it took us all over Taipa before crossing the bridge to Macau. We got off at the immigration building and went to the same place that we had applied for our visas at 3 weeks ago. Luckily, I saw my would-have-been dorm roommate there with a group of Chinese students that were applying for visas. He and a university staff member were able to tell Johanna and I which desk to go to. We took our passports to that desk and an employee took them and told us to wait. After just five minutes, another person came into the waiting room with our passports, and led us to another desk. There, he told us that our visas were not ready yet, and he gave us a piece of paper telling us to come back on November 25th. Johanna and I then got some snacks at a store across the street and decided to take a cab back to Taipa, because we would be late for Mandarin class if we took a bus.
We learned about directions in class today, and the words are a little bit harder. After class, Johanna and I spent 30 minutes at the computer lab, then decided to go to dinner. Dash called, and he wanted to go with us, but he was not going to be ready for a while, so we had to tell him we were going without him. Johanna and I walked to the Macau Kitchen, which is a Chinese restaurant that is near Mcdonalds. I was surprised to see a sirloin steak on the menu, so I ordered that. It surprisingly came served with fries, which I have never seen at a Chinese restaurant. Johanna told me it was weird that I ate my fries with my fingers. My steak was red in the middle and she told me that it was gross that I ate it like that.
After dinner we walked to a supermarket and compared the image of Mr. Peanut to his Chinese counterpart, who looks much less sophisticated. The Chinese version just looks silly, but Mr. Peanut appears to have some real class. After we quit making fun of the food, we actually bought some things, then we both went home.
Soon after I got to my apartment, Lisbeth came over and talked to me awhile, then Milan also came over. Shortly after Milan got here, Maja and Caroline also joined us. These two girls told me that they were moving from the 20th to the 7th floor, but the new apartment had too much furniture. They had noticed I have a shortage of furniture, so they offered me some. I followed them to the new apartment and they showed me two things that looked like hotel furniture, but they were nice. They also said that I could have the apartments large stereo system if I was willing to take the hotel furniture. I am suppost to pick it up next week.
Next I went to Lisbeth and Milans apartment, because Lisbeth had made tea for the three of us. After the tea and a slice of watermelon, Milan and I went to my apartment and watched “Road Trip”. After the movie I spent some time using my computer before going to sleep.

Sunday
10-10-04

This morning I typed a couple pages for the “My Favorite Things” project, that I mentioned earlier. The first part of it is suppost to basically tell our life story in a few pages, and that is the part I worked on. At noon I called Johanna and she said she was feeling very sick. I decided to get her some flowers, but I didn’t know where to go, so I went out to find a store that sold them. I found a housewares store first, and I bought a vase there. The cashier tried to tell me where a flower store was, but I couldn’t understand. Over the next 30 minutes I asked several other people, but each time I recieved new directions, the flower store was nowhere to be seen. Finally I went back to the store I bought the vase at, and found the cashier out front smoking a cigarette. I asked him again and he actually walked with me for several minutes and lead me right to the store. Good service.
The store was half produce and half flowers. Little cats were sitting everywhere and watching me. There was a man and a woman working on a bouque and the woman stopped to help me. She showed me some roses and I got 4 of them. They trimmed the roses, then put them and some other small white flowers in the vase.
The store was just a block from Johanna’s apartment. There was a group of several exchange students standing at the entrance to the building, and they made fun of me when they saw the flowers. I went to Johanna’s apartment and Riitta answered the door. She saw the flowers and turned red, because she was so shocked that I was bringing them. While I was talking to Riitta, Johanna came out of her room, and she seemed just as shocked when I handed them to her. I talked to the girls for just a couple minutes, then went back to my apartment.
Lisbeth and Kent rang my doorbell at 3 because I had earlier told Lisbeth that I would go with her to a dragon boat race. I had offered to film her there and make a video for her to send to her father for his 60th birthday. The three of us took a bus to the Bank of China building in Macau, then transferred to another bus, that took us to an area near the Macau tower. Here, we waited in a restaurant parking lot for others to meet us. When we first arrived, we briefly walked inside to see if anybody was there. The entrance to the restaraunt is a cave that was carved into the side of a hill. As you walk through this cave, there is a stone stairway with waterfalls on all sides. Very impressive.
We waited outside about 30 minutes for the rest of the group to arrive. Before this time, I had believed that we were just going to watch a dragon boat race, but more was actually in store for us. I then learned that we were going to pilot a dragon boat. This was a required project for a class that I was not in, but I went along anyway and nobody seemed to care. One of the last people to arrive was Raj, and he shocked everyone when he emerged from a cab sporting bright blue hair. He had just returned from an overnight trip to China and it appeared that he had a good time.
When everyone had arrived, our guides led us to an area on the shore which had a lot of canoes stacked up. We were a group of about 20, and the first thing we did was stretch. Our guides demonstrated several exercises that were specifically designed for dragon boat teams. Next, we were given oars, and then shown how to use them. Finally we received our life jackets, and then we were ready to go. Our guides waded out into the water and retrieved one of the dragon boats, which were anchored a few feet out. Everyone took their shoes off and we then entered the boat, one at a time.
A dragon boat looks like a long canoe that holds 20-30 people. Once everyone was on board we received a few last minute instructions, then we headed out into the bay. At first everyone was very unorganized, and we kept banging oars together as we tried to row. With the help of our guides, we quickly got better, and our boat was soon moving at an amazingly quick speed. We rowed to the middle of the bay, and then did two 500 meter sprints. Between sprints, some people were told to switch places, and I thought that they would surely flip the boat. After about an hour at sea, we guided our ship back to port. Click here to see the ride
Next I walked to a bus stop near the Bank of China building with Raj, Pedro, Lisbeth, Kent and 2 others. It took us about 30 minutes to get there, then we took a bus to Taipa. We had all planned to go together to the Indian restaurant near the apartments, but Raj and Pedro got lost somewhere and did not make it to the bus with us.
At the restaurant we met Johan, and then the six of us ate the hell out of some Indian food. I had beef curry with rice, and a Tsing Dao beer. It was my first real meal of the day and everything was perfect. During the walk back to the apartment I told Johan that I was really in China to hunt aliens, and I don’t think we have ever had a serious conversation.
Raj was home when I arrived and we decided to watch a movie. He had brought back several new ones from China today, and we decided to watch Euro Trip, but it didn’t work. Our next choice was a movie that we have never heard of, called 1900, and it kind of reminded me of The Terminal. There is a very original movie and I give it two thumbs up, unless you require lots of action.
After the movie, Milan and Hana stopped by and asked us to go to the Irish pub with them, but we were both too tired.

10/9/2004
Saturday

I woke up and took a shower at 11 today, then ate some flavorless instant noodles for lunch. I went to the computer lab at 1 and printed out a tourist questionnaire form that I needed today for one of my international business group projects. At 2 I took a bus to Macau to meet my group members in front of the Bank of China building. All the Chinese students arrived by 2:45,but the other exchange student did not show up. He called me at 2:45 and told me to wait five minutes. I told the others to go ahead without me so I could wait on this guy. At 10 after 3 he called me and said that he had gotten on the wrong bus and could not make the meeting.
I walked to Senado Square and looked for western tourists that were willing to fill out my two page questionnaire form. I looked for people that were sitting down or leaning against walls. Over the next 45 minutes I walked from the main square entrance to the ruins of St. Pauls Cathedral, which are on top of a hill. Every westerner I asked to fill out the form did it with little or no complaint. Once I had my 5 forms completed I, got a McChicken value meal at the Mcdonalds there, then took a bus back to Taipa.
I then went home, picked up a blank CD and walked across the street, where I knocked on Karim’s door. I needed to copy some pictures from his computer and pick up some money he owes me, but he was not home, so I walked back to my apartment. I spent an hour cleaning up the place, then I went to Milan’s apartment and talked to her and Maya for a few minutes. At 7 I went to Mcdonalds with Milan and Lizbeth, where we met several other exchange students. I ordered some ice cream, then later ordered a double cheesburger. This is way too much Mcdonalds for 1 day.
At 7:45 I went home and picked up my computer, then took it to the store that I bought it at. Last night, the guy there said he would help me with it at 8 tonight. I found him in his store playing games and he made me wait for him to finish before he helped me. Despite his slow start he was quickly able to fix my problem. My video editing program kept crashing, and he increased the amount of virtual memory, whatever that means. He got more polite while he was working and even gave me an Oreo. I spent about 30 minutes at the store, then victoriously carried my computer back home.
Milan called and asked if her and some others could watch a DVD at my apartment, and I also got a message from Johanna asking me if I wanted to go to the computer lab with her (Riitta and Kaisa all returned today from thier trip to Shanghai and Xian). I told Milan that she could come over and watch a DVD while I was gone, and Raj is out of town tonight, so the girls are at my apartment without supervision. I hope they don’t have a party.

Friday
10-8-04

I left my apartment at 11 today and had lunch at the resteraunt downstairs. I ordered a beef sandwich and a bowl of noodles and beef. The beef sandwich had 3 little flat pieces of meat on it that were each about 1 inch squares, which did not even cover all the bread. The beef noodles were good, but had big chunks of pure fat in them.
Next I walked down to the computer store that is testing my memory card. I wanted to pick it up, but the store was still closed (most stores do not open till noon, but they stay open til 8 or later). I bought a soda at a store near there, then I walked to campus. I spent a few minutes at a computer lab, then I went to business communication class. I had to walk across the courtyard to get to this class, and I was surprised to see two girls swordfighting there. At first I just thought that this was how the chinese settle disputes, and maybe the girls were fighting to the death because of a guy or something. Then I realized that the fencing club was putting on a recruitment show.
When I got to class, the teacher told us about an incident at a Hong Kong bank last week, where construction workers accidentaly threw away 80 safe deposit boxes. The bank was being remodeled, and the boxes were already in a landfill by the time bank employees realized they were gone. This landfill was searched as much as possible, but they were only able to recover half of the boxes. The people that did not get thiers back will recieve a check for about $6000, then if they don’t sue the bank, they later get another check for about $13,000. Can you imagine your bank throwing away safe deposit boxes?
After class I went back to the computer lab for a while, then walked home. I did some homework for chinese class, then I called Dash, who said he would help me with my computer today. I carried it downstairs and met him at my front door, but he said that the guy at the computer store would not be in till 8, so I carried it back upstairs. We then walked to the store and picked up my memory card from the lady that works there. We took it back to the apartment and tried to get things working properly, but I still cannot use my video editing program, which is the reason I bought the computer.
Dash and I walked to Mcdonalds at about 6:30 and I ordered a Big Mac meal and an ice cream cone that was covered in chocolate. Dash then left and I went back home. I spent some more time unsucessfuly trying to get my computer working, then I packaged two things that I sold on Ebay today, which are a Mao Zedong watch and a Buddha statue with a swastica on it. I cut up pieces of styrofoam to package these items and made a huge mess. It was almost more trouble than it was worth because I only got$10 for the watch and $15 for the statue, but it is twice what I paid for them. While I was working on this, the Swedish girls came by and invited Raj and I to a party at thier place.
At 8:30 I decided to carry my computer to the store and try to get the guy there to help me with it. When I got there he was working on something else and asked me to come back tomorrow. I carried my computer home and got ready to go to Hana and Maya’s apartment for the party. When I got there I saw several people I did not know, who were visiting another student. There were only about 10 people at the party, and we played a fun game that was new to me. It is not easy to describe, but I will teach people when I get back to the US.
At 11:30 the police came, which really surprised me, because we were not loud and it was relatively early on a Friday night. They cannot come inside the apartment, but they stood at the door and asked for the passport of the person who answered, Hana. Hana just said that she did not have it, and the police left. They came back about 10 minutes later and someone else answered. The police again asked for a passport and this time it was Maya at the door, and she again told them that she didn’t have it. We decided that this was a good time to leave, so we all headed to another apartment accross the street.
There were two cops at the door and one of them had dark glasses on. While we waited on the elevator, people began trying to speak to this man in Chinese. None of us know any chinese except for what we have learned in Mandarin class, so they were saying things to him like , “Nice to meet you”, etc. At first, this cop looked very serious in his dark glasses, but after a spending a few minutes listening to our bad chinese, he started to laugh at us. When we got down stairs he got on his police motorcyle and everyone continued speaking to him and he even started answering. The building security guard also endured this at the same time.
As we were walking to the other apartment, I saw a cab go by with a old man hanging his head out the back window. There was vomit all over the side of the car and it was dripping out of this man’s mouth. The cab stopped and I think this guy was about to get kicked out.
The apartment we walked to was at least 20 stories high and had a balcony with a very low rail. I sat there and enjoyed the view for a while, then went back home. There I talked to Raj for about an hour before going to sleep.

Thursday
10-7-04

I got up at 9:30 today, then took a shower and walked to campus. I bought a sandwich and a water at the little store by the courtyard. I sat outside and ate that, then went to the computer lab until class started. My first class was fine, but international business again had that terrible guest speaker whom I wrote about two days ago. I just tried to do other homework and ignore him. In statistics class the teacher had a student come to the board and do a problem and he took so long that I left class. The class had waited in silence for about 20 minutes as this guy wrote a bunch of numbers that were impossible to read.
After class I called Dash, who is also in Statistics with me, and we had lunch at the canteen. I ordered a beef noodle dish from the fast food area, and it is the best thing there. Florian came into the canteen and sat with us as we were finishing our meal.
Next I went back to the computer lab and waited until Mandarin class started at 5. We started writing Chinese characters today and practiced the speaking that we have already learned. After class I went home and found Raj and Tibo there. We sat around the apartment for a few minutes, then Raj and I decided to go to the pool. This pool is available to all the residents of my apartment building, and I paid $2 for an Id card to use it, but I had never been there before. Before we went to the pool, we stopped by the computer store that was testing my memory card, but the lady that works there just talked in Chinese and said the word “friend” several times. I think that she meant, “we will call your friend(Dash) when we finish”.
Next, Raj and I went stopped at Mcdonalds for dinner, then we walked on to the pool. It is right next to the New Century Casino, and it looks very nice. It is inside of a building that is made completely of marble and it is very clean. There is also a small weight lifting room and sauna downstairs. Unfortunately, we arrived here just 10 minutes before closing time, so we just smoked a cigarette and looked at the water until the attendant told us to leave.
Back at the apartment, we watched the movie “Shawn of the Dead”, which advertises itself as a “romantic comedy with zombies”. It is an English movie and the accents are heavy. Some parts were very funny, so I guess it was worth watching, but I only rate it at a 6. Santiago stopped by for a few minutes during the movie, then left again.
Raj left after the movie and went to Macau to sit with some others by the ocean, but I decided to stay home. At 11, Pedro and Santiago stopped by looking for Raj, and after that I went to sleep. I fell asleep quick and had dreams that were so bizarre and realistic that they woke me up at 12:30. I think this is the result of watching the “Exorcist” last night. When I got up there were tiny misquitos all over my room and I realized that I had already been bitten about a dozen times, but only on the arms. It was polite of the little mosquitos to only bite me there, as arms are an easy and unoffensive area to scratch. Despite the politeness of the mosquitos I needed to counter-attack. I brought my fan to the room and turned it on high, which brought the mosquitos some gloom as they were unable to fly (that’s poetry!).
I was still not able to really fall asleep and I got up again at 3:30.

Wednesday
10-6-04

Today contained little excitement. I did not get up til almost noon, and then I took a shower and tried to fix my computer. It keeps crashing when I run my video editing program and I think that it is a problem with the memory. I tried to call Dash at 2 and asked him to go to with me to the store that I bought my computer, because they speak no english there. Dash didn’t answer the phone when I called him, but he called me back a few minutes later and said he would go with me at 4.
I walked to the computer lab and spent 2 hours there. Dash did call around 4 and I met him at the bus stop. He had his scooter with him, so I put on his extra helmet and rode on the back of it. We went to my apartment to pick up the memory chip, then went to the computer store. Dash explained the problem to a lady there, and they are suppost to call him when the problem is solved. After we left the computer store, I bought Dash a Fillet-O-Fish Value meal for his help. I sat at the restaraunt for about an hour and talked to him, then walked back home.
Back at home I didn’t know what to do without a computer or music, so I decided to open my statistics book for the first time. I fell asleep on the book for an hour and a half. When I got up, the apartment was still empty, and I had not seen Raj all day. I found the “Excorcist” on DVD and watched that. During the movie Florian stopped by looking for Raj. He left Raj a note and left, and Lizbeth also came by looking for the silverware that I borrowed from her two days ago. After these two left, I continued the movie.
After it was over I read a National Geographic magazine that Mike and Carolyn gave me when I left Carbondale. I learned about 6 foot killer squid. Raj came home around 11 and I talked to him just a few minutes before going to sleep. I couldn’t go to sleep because I had already slept too much, so I got back up at 1:30, and was suprised to see Raj get up also. I talked to him for about 30 minutes, then went back to sleep.

Tuesday
10-5-04

At 11, I had to meet a new group that I am working on an international business project with. I got up at 10 and took a shower, then walked to the meeting spot on campus. I waited at this spot in the courtyard until about 11:10, and nobody had come yet. When I was getting ready to leave, the other exchange student in the group showed up, Gium. We decided to wait a few minutes, so I bought a couple sandwiches at a little store that is next to the courtyard. Gium and I waited 10 more minutes, then decided to leave.
I went to the computer lab, and I had only been there 5 minutes when I got a call from Gium. He told me that 3 of our group members had just arrived, so I left the computer lab and met them. There were 3 girls from Macau there and we talked about the project for 15 minutes. When I asked them a question they would sometimes just giggle together.
The first thing we have to do for our project is interview some tourists in Macau, so I agreed to create a questionaire, and we are planning on doing the interviews in casinos on Saturday. We are suppost to use this information to decide if a chain of Philipino souvenir stores should build in Macau. I feel like we are being used because our teacher is friends with the owner of this company, who is actually considering building stores in Macau. This man is suppost to speak to the class soon, and I am going to ask him to pay us, in front of all the other students.
After the meeting I went to the computer lab for a while longer, and talked to Delphine(French). At 12:30 I had my business communications class. Today we discussed proper paragraph structure and we reviewed an assignment that was due today. The assignment was to write two six-sentence paragraphs about the olympics. After a one hour discussion about how a paragraph should look, we were asked to rewrite our paragraphs correctly. The first sentence of mine read, “Aurther Peterson was born in Edmonton on August 10, 1979?, and I considered rewriting something like, “Birthed on Edmonton in August 10 1979 at Aurther Peterson”. This is how most of the students here write, but I decided to just change the words around in an alternativly correct way. We were given about 10 minutes to rephrase the paragraph, then asked to trade papers with another student and rewrite thier paragraph. Nobody wanted to give me thier paper at first, so I just took one from a guy behind me and handed him mine. I rewrote his paragraph and waited about 10 more minutes while him and the guy next to him discussed and rewrote my paragraph. When I got it back, the first sentence read something like, “Birthed on Edmonton in August 10 1979 at Aurther Peterson”. As much as I make fun of the chinese english, I have to give them credit, because thier are millions of them all over this country trying to learn english. Chinese is the most spoken language in the world, but very few foriegners that are trying to learn it. In America, almost every foriegner can speak some english, but here almost no foreigner can speak any chinese.
After class I went to one of the smaller computer labs and spent two hours typing the questionaire for my group project, and doing other things on the Internet. At about 5 I walked back home and quickly ended up falling asleep. I got up at 6:30 and started working on a video documentary about my trip into China, which I just started two days ago, and I have 3 tapes of footage to go through. At 7 Lizbeth came over and asked me some questions about a project we are doing in consumer marketing. It is called “Favorite Things”, and we are suppost to write 15 pages about our favorite 3 possesions. Lizbeth had just written 8 pages and she told me that she had included information that was so personal it made her cry. I’m going to keep the paper a little simpler than that, as my favorite 3 possessions in China are my fan, phone and computer. I don’t think that can get too personal, even though I do have very strong feelings for my fan.
After Lizbeth left I went to the grocery store downstairs and bought a whole roasted chicken for less than $2. A man cut it up into little pieces, which I did not really want to happen. I took the box of chicken pieces back to my apartment and was surprised when I found it to be ice cold. It had appeared to be under a heat lamp, but I guess not. I don’t have a microwave or an over, so I just ate it cold, and it was good anyway.
Next I spent an hour an a half working on my documentary. Raj came home about 8:30 and started watching a movie. At 9 I got ready to go to a party in a student apartment accross the street. On the way there I stopped at a store and bought 4 Pabst Blue Ribbons. The party was on the 13 floor and there was only 2 people there at first, but within an hour there were 20. There are 3 French girls that live there and they made 2 buckets of Sangria, which resulted in lots of drunks. At about 11:30, the security guards started making repeat visits to the apartment. They came about 5 times over a 30 minute period, but the girls that live there just said, “party on”. About midnight I was standing on the balcony and I saw a police cars and motorcycles pull up. Some of the police entered the building and others stood on the median of the road and shined flashlights at the balcony. I waved at them, but they didn’t wave back. Two officers came to the door and pointed at the hall, meaning “leave”. They must hate us because I heard that they were called to a party last week because the students were spraying the fire hose on the fifth floor.
When I got to the sidewalk, the group I was with was surround by other police who just stood there and stared at us. When we started talking to each other they said “shhhhhhhhh”. One of the guys spit on the sidewalk and the cops pulled him to the side and said “ID”. Since SARS, there is a 2000 Pataca fine for spitting, but this guy was able to play dumb and get out of it.
Most of the people from the party ended up going to a nightclub in Macau, but I walked back to my apartment building with Lizbeth and Delphine. I was tired when I got home and just talked to Raj for a few minutes before heading to bed.

Monday
10-4-04

On Friday night there was a storm, and ever since then the weather has been getting better and better. Today was the best since I have been here, with a temperature of about 75, with full sun and a little bit of a breeze. At 9 Raj and I went to Mcdonalds, where we had some coffee and breakfast, then walked to the computer lab. I sat there until first class started at 11. On Mondays and Thursdays I have 6 hours of classes, with a break from 3:30-5:00. Today they were the most boring yet. My international business teacher is out of town and he had a guest come and teach the class. This guest talked about his Phd. work for an hour and a half, and it almost drove me crazy. He is coming back again on Thursday and I am skipping class for sure. At 12:30 was statistics, and I don’t think I need to explain why I hate that. While I sit in class I think to myself…..There are 3 kind of lies-Regular lies, Damn lies, and statistics.
During my hour and half break I did not eat because I was still full from the gigantic breakfast that I had in the morning, so I scanned pictures in the computer lab,which you can see here. I walked to Mandarin class at 6, which is just one floor above the computer lab. Today we had a small quiz and learned how to talk about our nationalities. The teacher talks in chinese to each student individualy in class, which can get a little boring while you wait, but it does make you prepare to speak to her. She spends about half the class doing this, and is always very patient and friendly.
At 6:30 I heard the words “Xie ke”, which means “class is over”. I walked home to meet Raj because we had planned on having people over for dinner tonight. He was cooking his Indian food when I got home. He worked in the kitchen for about 2 hours too make enough to feed us and the 9 guests we were expecting. I went to the store downstairs a couple time to get some things he needed; papertowels, beer and water.
At 8:30 Raj went downstairs to meet some of the guests by the bus stop, and waited inside for others to come. By 9:30 there were 9 people in the apartment. They included, Pedro(Argentina), Santiago(Columbia), a girl from Columbia, 3 girls from Brazil and a Chinese girl. I had never met most of the girls before because not all of them are attending school right now.
We did not have enough plates and utensils to serve everyone, so Pedro brought some plates and I borrowed silverware from Lizbeth and Milan. We had a salad first, then moved on to the main dishes, which were both great. After dinner we sat in the living room and talked for an hour, then all the girls left. Pedro and Santiago stayed for another hour. At midnight I cleaned up the kitchen.

Sunday
10-3-04

I woke up at 6 this morning on Lizbeth’s couch and heard Raj coming home accross the hall, so I went back to my real bed. I slept til 10 then used my computer to make some more videos for the Internet. At 12 I took two disposable cameras to be devoloped, which I have had for at least 2 months. I had lunch at a Chinese restaraunt and I ordered Taiwanese noodles with beef. It was so good and it had so much beef in it, which was so tender it fell apart when I picked it up.
After dinner I came home, where I talked to Raj and used my computer some more. At 2:30 I went to the photo place to pick up my pictures, then to the computer lab. Lizabeth came there after I had been there an hour, and I talked to her for a while. At about 5 we decided to go to the grocery store and find some things to cook for dinner. We walked to a Purtugese store by Mcdonald’s, which is a little bit cheaper than the Park-n-Shop that I usually go to. We bought some vegetables and pasta for dinner and took it back to my apartment.
Lizbeth was really bossy in the kitchen and gave me lots of vegetable chopping work to do. She even told me I was chopping some of the vegetables wrong. Raj was asleep in his room and got up to eat with us. After dinner I cleaned up the kitchen and Lizbeth and Raj left to do other things. I spent the rest of the night trying to learn how to better use the video editing program I make my videos with. They are going to get alot better, as I have now learned how to improve the quality without increasing the file size, and add more special effects…..sorry camera haters. Try this one…..

Saturday
10-2-04

I got up at 7:30 today and tried to play a tape in my camcorder(which overheated last night), and it just tells me “head cleaning required”. I then went to the computer lab to send an email to Johanna. Last night she sent me a text message, asking me to email her about the attractions I had been to in Shanghai. Her, Kaisa and Riitta took a train there that should have arrived at 8 this morning. I spent about 30 minutes typing a detailed email and when I hit the send button a message came on the screen that read, “You session has timed out”. I lost the email and had to retype all of it.
I left the lab around noon and walked to the bus stop. I was going to take a bus to a camera store in Macau so I could buy a head cleaning tape for my camcorder. After a few minutes of waiting for a bus I decided to just walk around Taipa and look for a camera store. The only one I found did not have the tape I was looking for, so I just bought two double-cheese burgers and went home. There I talked to Raj for a few minutes and I was able to get my camera to start working again……sorry camera haters.
I did not get up til almost 5, as I have been very tired the last two days. I then took some laundry out of the washing machine and found that it was still dirty. The regular cycle had shredded my clothes a few days ago, and now the delicate cycle had not even gotten the dirt off the bottom of my socks. I put some of the laundy back through a second time and I did some work on my computer. Raj and I cooked some noodles for dinner, then we went to the bus stop to meet others for a party at 7:30.
Nobody was at the bus stop so we went to the apartment of the guy who was throwing the party, Florian. He is from France and Karim is one of his roomates. We stayed at the apartment for an hour while more people came to meet us. Some of the people were nonstudents that I had never seen before. By about 8:30 the apartment was full of people and we left for the beach by bus.
There are two beaches in Coloane and I had never been to the one where the party was held tonight, which is smaller, but also alot quieter. To get to here you have to walk down a mountain staircase. There were about 20 people with us at first, then some Chinese and Brazilian girls came later. I stayed there until about midnight, then I left with Kent, Lisbeth and Toamas.
We walked to the top of the huge staircase and there was no traffic on the road, and the buses had stopped running for the night. We followed the road down the hill for about 20 minutes, then a taxi passed us and we flagged it down. When I got to my apartment I realized that my keys were in my room and not my backpack. Luckily, Lizbeth lives on the same floor and she let me sleep on her couch.

Friday
10-1-04

Today was the second national holiday of the week, but only cities in the mainland have celebrations and nothing happens in Macau or Hong Hong. People here just get 2 days day off of school and work. The first holiday was Tuesday, and I knew that my class was cancelled for the day, but I did not know it was a holiday. I was just surprised when I woke up because I didn’t hear any noise coming from the huge construction project across the street. Every morning about 200 construction workers start making aweful noise at 8 am, and they don’t stop til dark. They work 7 days a week, and Tuesday was thier first break since I have lived in my apartment.
A little after 11 Lizbeth knocked on my door and asked me to give her the address of my website. I am going to have to be careful what I write about people here, because quite a few students are reading this. I almost got caught saying something sarcastic a couple days ago, but luckily the person didn’t properly understand the english. To anyone that is offended, I say……Sorry, but don’t take yourself too seriously!
After a shower this morning, I took some pictures of some things I want to sell on Ebay, then I walked with Raj to the computer lab, where I posted two small Chinese Statues and a Mao Zedong watch on Ebay.
At 5 we went to the rec center and met Gium, a French guy. There we played squash for 1 hour, then tennis for another hour. I am terrible at tennis and I don’t understand the scoring. As we finished the game, the wind started blowing hard and lightning began to flash. When we got outside the rain came down hard, and we stayed on the sidewalk, under the roof of the rec center. The bricks in front of the building became as slick as ice when they got wet, and we saw a girl fall flat on her back as she tried to get into a car, but she just got up and laughed. We smoked a cigarette, and the rain had mostly stopped by the time we were done.
Back at home, Raj and I cooked some noodles and tuna, then started watching the DVD “The Day After Tomorrow”. In the beginning of the movie our 20 story apartment building started to shake, and I at first thought it was just more lightning, or maybe a title wave, like in the movie. I saw red and green flashes outside and I remembered tonight was the last night of the International Fireworks Competition. Raj and I walked to a pedestrian overpass nearby and watched the show, which was great.
Afterwards, we walked back to the apartment and finished watching the movie. When it was over I used my computer for a while. My camcorder was sitting next to it and I noticed that the power light was on. I picked it up and it was very hot. I had forgotten to turn it off when I took the Ebay pictures earlier today, and the automatic shut-off must not be working properly. I tried to play a tape with it and it wouldn’t work. I hope that it works when it cools down or you won’t be seeing any more videos soon. Some of the people here might be very happy about this, especially Johanna. All the time, she says, “I hate your camera”, and I think that this negative energy she focused onto it made it break. I blame her.