OH, i get it now
i now know why a visit to china can be so dangerous to one's body. THE FOOD IS SO FREAKIN' GOOD. and cheap.

so yesterday, my family followed my uncle to work at his factory in china. he gave us a tour of the entire place, and i must say, i never knew making model toy cars took so much work.

after a deliciously cheap lunch, we stopped by some massage place. i got a 2-hour full-body massage for about $4.50. did you hear that? let me say it again. i got a 2-hour full-body massage for about $4.50. it was awesome. that alone made the entire trip to china worth it.

so after every inch of my body was nice and relaxed, my family decided to do a little shopping. we bought 25 dvds for $34. amazing.

the last memory that i will have of china is an interesting incident at mcdonald's. me and my brother were trying to order food. my brother's mandarin was better than mine, but that's not saying much. i just kept pointing at the menu and my brother would just say a few butchered mandarin phrases. it was great. i'm not sure if the girl working there was more amused or confused, but it's alright. bunch of laughs all around, and in the end, she pretty much got the order right.

i guess this all shows that i need to learn mandarin. or..i mean, everyone needs to learn english. yeah.

fat, lazy americans
one thing i've noticed in the short time that i've been here in hong kong is how unbelievably tired i am at the end of the day. or maybe the middle of the end of the day. ok fine, sometimes even the beginning of the end of the day. one thing's for sure: it sure ain't the jetlag.

i think i know why there are so many fat people in america, and especially why houston is the #1 flabby city in the united states. one word: public transportation.

i don't know about you, but i don't really consider houston a "real city." the main reason is rather absurd. yes, i know that houston is HUGE, with about 28390472 people, but still, it doesn't qualify as a real city. it just doesn't have that "city" feel to it, ya know?

in my humble opinion, a real city has public transportation.

ok, i know houston has had METRO and has just finished implementing the new RAILWAY thing or whatever, but still, cmon, don't kid around. EVERYONE IN HOUSTON DRIVES EVERYWHERE. personally, i don't even see why there are even sidewalks in houston.

on the other hand, hong kong has amazing public transportation. subway, bus, railbus, taxi, you name it. everywhere you look, there's people walking. sure, there's still cars, but there's a good 309840 to 1 ratio of public transportation vehicles to cars.

ok maybe not, but onto my point. i have looked and looked and looked, and i have yet to find more than 5 obese people here. and 2 of these people were tourists, so that shouldn't even count.

everyone is skinny. why? because they exercise more than just their right foot whenever they have to go somewhere. for example, you want to go to the shopping? if you're in houston, what do you do? get in your car and drive to galleria. how about in hong kong? USE YOUR LEGS, FOOL!

ok i think i've proved my point. anyhow, my aunt needs to go to sleep now, and i am using the computer in her room. so, goodbye for now.

and thanks to everyone who sent me emails, you guys are awesome =)

our God is an awesome God
God is faithful.

i just want to share a quick story about last week. when i got back from rec week, i checked my grades online. i found out that i had received a D for ba324h, bringing my GPA for the spring semester down to a 2.87.

big problem. the minimum GPA required to stay in business honors program is a 3.5 for the year, and in order to keep my $5000/year scholarship, i had to have a 3.65. even with a 4.0 for the fall semester, my overall in-class GPA still fell short, equaling a 3.43.

i quickly emailed my professor asking what was going on. he emailed me back, saying that he would look into it to see if there were any mistakes.

a few days passed, and all of a sudden, it was friday morning, the day before i was leaving for hong kong. i got a letter in the mail from BHP, basically saying that i was going to get kicked out because of my GPA unless i appealed by june 7.

i started to panic. i made about 782930482 calls wasting 2890348923980423 minutes. half of the calls were made to try to get a hold of my professor; the other half were to various people asking for prayer.

i then sent about 20 emails to people at UT who might be able to help me out. and then i just waited.

7 pm, i checked my email again, and my professor had replied to my emails! however, instead of telling me that he would bump me up to at least a C so that i would be able to stay in BHP like i had told him, he merely sent me all of my grades that he had on his computer.

i took a couple minutes to calm myself and promptly called his cell phone. after speaking with him for about 5 minutes, he agreed to give me a C, bringing my GPA to a 3.53!

a few minutes later, i checked up on my scholarship, and i found that the GPA requirement is also a 3.5!

so, after countless phone calls, several emails, and dozens of prayers, God showed that my trust in Him was worthwhile.

this whole thing kind of reminds me of the well-known bible story of Jesus calming the storm (matthew 8:23-27)..

Then he got into the boat and his disciples followed him. Without warning, a furious storm came up on the lake, so that the waves swept over the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went and woke him, saying, "Lord, save us! We're going to drown!" He replied, "You of little faith, why are you so afraid?" Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the waves, and it was completely calm. The men were amazed and asked, "What kind of man is this? Even the winds and the waves obey him!"

what kind of man is this? this "man" is my God =)

to everyone who prayed for me, thank you so much. i really appreciate it. take care.

lay ho ma?
so it's been about a day and a half since i've arrived here at hong kong. and my body is definitely feeling the effects.

JETLAG
as expected, i am experiencing a bit of jetlag. hong kong is pretty much as opposite from sugar land as it can get, 13 hours apart. day is now night, and night is now day.

SICK
i have a sore throat and a minor fever and a slight cough. nothing TOO big, but i would definitely appreciate a few prayers. thanks =)

EAR-POPPING
believe it or not, over 36 hours after getting off my 3rd flight, my right ear has STILL not been fully popped. i've been trying EVERYTHING -- yawning it out, holding my nose and blowing, etc, but to no avail.

well i'm about to head out again. i'm sorry if this entry was rather bland -- i was planning on posting a picture update, but the UT webspace page was down. so, i'm sorry, but the picture update will come soon for all you bored-out-of-your-mind people back home.

you're welcome.

hallo!
I have made it safely to Hong Kong after 3 plane trips:

Houston --> Minneapolis
Minneapolis --> Tokyo
Tokyo --> Hong Kong

these 19+ hours on the plane consisted of the following:

MOVIES

Starsky and Hutch
good, funny movie. hey. do it.

50 First Dates
what a tearjerker. sigh. pretty good movie.

Zoolander
2nd time watching it. just as funny as the first.

Out of Time
this movie was provided by northwest airlines, on my final flight from tokyo to hong kong. unfortunately, for some unknown reason, people were always standing up in the aisles, taking away half of the scree from my view. and to make things even better, the pilot kept making random announcements on the PA system like "put on your seatbelt" or "we are halfway there" or "check out the airline shopping catalog." and THEN, of course, each announcement had to be TRANSLATED into CANTONESE. and THEN once more into JAPANESE. AGH. it seemed as if the pilot planned the messages too, because each time they came on, it would be at a very crucial, exciting part of the movie. but nonetheless, a decent movie.

Terminator 3
this movie was retarded. i got so bored i fell asleep. what a waste of laptop battery life.

SLEEPING

of course, on a plane, one must use some time to sleep, and that i did. i realized that i twitch and spaz a lot when i fall asleep in a chair or an awkward position. i almost spilled my cup of coke several times because i kept hitting the table with my hand. or at least that's what my brother said.

one of the most memorable moments of the 19 hours was me kicking the seat in front of me. the blow was pretty much full-force. i think the man was sleeping too, but i am not sure if he turned around. i quickly pretended to fall back to sleep.

aite it's 1 AM over here, but unfortunately my body is still in houston time, which is 12 noon. time for lunch? i mean, a midnight snack.

later guys.

(btw, just found 2 more "thug of the week" candidates. congrats to biG popZ, the current TOTW. send me more pics if you find/take any)