airport insomnia, round two
3:26 am, and I'm sitting in the Hong Kong airport having decided that it would be easier to come here the night before my 7:30am flight to Phnom Penh than to try to get a cab at three in the morning. The last flights arrived at 12:30 or so, and nothing starts arriving or departing again until 5:30, so everything in the airport is closed except the 24-hour Pacific Coffee Company.
I'm amazed--as I often am when I'm out late in Hong Kong--by just how much work gets done at night here: construction on the ceiling, massive wall-polishing jobs, rewiring (although it's not all work: as I wandered around about an hour ago I walked past a group of workers sitting around one of the airports' huge television screens, watching World Cup highlights). Over the past several months CUHK has been renovating the road outside the train station. Late-night walks to the bottom of the campus have taken me down there at two or three in the morning on several occasions, and I've been surprised to see teams of construction workers digging, paving, drilling, throwing off showers of sparks like shooting stars. Perhaps this is a function of the constancy of construction in Hong Kong--the daylight hours are all already booked? Whatever the reason, I like the sense that there's a nocturnal side to this city that has nothing to do with, say, barhopping in Lan Kwai Fong.
Now, a variety of unrelated snippets.
1. Requisite "yes, I am a dork" snippet: while browsing the MLA website (yeah, yeah...), I spent some time playing around with this AMAZING map they have of language use in the U.S. It is interactive and kind of the coolest thing ever.
2. When I move back to the states, I will miss double-decker buses. A lot.
3. Last night I went to a recital at the University; one of my students from this past semester (an English major hoping to pursue a career as a singer) was singing a few arias and invited me. She's had a fair amount of success as a singer in Hong Kong, so I expected her to be decent--but she was absolutely phenomenal, one of those singers who opens her mouth and gives you goosebumps, who makes you wonder what freakish, fortunate biological accident has given a small number of people the ability to produce that kind of sound. Watching Etta, who seemed at once completely natural and herself onstage and at the same time like some new, more luminous version of herself, made me feel realize how little of my students I really see--although I feel like I got to know my students this year much better than I did my first set of students in Hong Kong, I still have no idea what most of them do outside of their academic lives. Perhaps this isn't a problem--professional distance, impossibility of forging real relationships with everyone you encounter, etc. etc. At the same time, I feel like it's easier to be a good teacher to students one understands, and it saddens me slightly that I have no idea what many of my students are passionate about, or really good at, or disappointed by, or anything.
4. Some shameless blog thievery: I read on Jenn Yee's blog, which is a must-read, about photographer Michael Wolf's 100x100 series--100 photos, one of each flat in Hong Kong's oldest housing estate. Each flat measures 10 feet x 10 feet, and Wolf photographed each flat with its resident and all of his or her possessions. Many are really lovely, and they're quite an interesting window into a part of Hong Kong I've never seen.
5. The torrential rain has continued pretty much unabated since my last entry, which means I've spent a lot of time in my apartment doing inside-my-apartment things. For instance, reading Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, which I loved so much that I read it in one sitting and came very close to starting it again as soon as I finished. Watching very good, very disturbing movies, namely Happiness and Ju Dou, which is now my favorite Zhang Yimou movie. It features a frighteningly creepy child, a paralyzed sadist in a wooden bucket, and a lot of really gorgeous colors--need I say more?
6. Just started reading Wendy Brown's new book, in which she talks about two seemingly antagonistic groups "eating from the same mythohistorical muffin." This makes me more excited about Berkeley than almost anything else has in the last three months. Also, some day I too hope to incorporate breakfast-food metaphors into academic writing.
I'm amazed--as I often am when I'm out late in Hong Kong--by just how much work gets done at night here: construction on the ceiling, massive wall-polishing jobs, rewiring (although it's not all work: as I wandered around about an hour ago I walked past a group of workers sitting around one of the airports' huge television screens, watching World Cup highlights). Over the past several months CUHK has been renovating the road outside the train station. Late-night walks to the bottom of the campus have taken me down there at two or three in the morning on several occasions, and I've been surprised to see teams of construction workers digging, paving, drilling, throwing off showers of sparks like shooting stars. Perhaps this is a function of the constancy of construction in Hong Kong--the daylight hours are all already booked? Whatever the reason, I like the sense that there's a nocturnal side to this city that has nothing to do with, say, barhopping in Lan Kwai Fong.
Now, a variety of unrelated snippets.
1. Requisite "yes, I am a dork" snippet: while browsing the MLA website (yeah, yeah...), I spent some time playing around with this AMAZING map they have of language use in the U.S. It is interactive and kind of the coolest thing ever.
2. When I move back to the states, I will miss double-decker buses. A lot.
3. Last night I went to a recital at the University; one of my students from this past semester (an English major hoping to pursue a career as a singer) was singing a few arias and invited me. She's had a fair amount of success as a singer in Hong Kong, so I expected her to be decent--but she was absolutely phenomenal, one of those singers who opens her mouth and gives you goosebumps, who makes you wonder what freakish, fortunate biological accident has given a small number of people the ability to produce that kind of sound. Watching Etta, who seemed at once completely natural and herself onstage and at the same time like some new, more luminous version of herself, made me feel realize how little of my students I really see--although I feel like I got to know my students this year much better than I did my first set of students in Hong Kong, I still have no idea what most of them do outside of their academic lives. Perhaps this isn't a problem--professional distance, impossibility of forging real relationships with everyone you encounter, etc. etc. At the same time, I feel like it's easier to be a good teacher to students one understands, and it saddens me slightly that I have no idea what many of my students are passionate about, or really good at, or disappointed by, or anything.
4. Some shameless blog thievery: I read on Jenn Yee's blog, which is a must-read, about photographer Michael Wolf's 100x100 series--100 photos, one of each flat in Hong Kong's oldest housing estate. Each flat measures 10 feet x 10 feet, and Wolf photographed each flat with its resident and all of his or her possessions. Many are really lovely, and they're quite an interesting window into a part of Hong Kong I've never seen.
5. The torrential rain has continued pretty much unabated since my last entry, which means I've spent a lot of time in my apartment doing inside-my-apartment things. For instance, reading Ethan Canin's Carry Me Across the Water, which I loved so much that I read it in one sitting and came very close to starting it again as soon as I finished. Watching very good, very disturbing movies, namely Happiness and Ju Dou, which is now my favorite Zhang Yimou movie. It features a frighteningly creepy child, a paralyzed sadist in a wooden bucket, and a lot of really gorgeous colors--need I say more?
6. Just started reading Wendy Brown's new book, in which she talks about two seemingly antagonistic groups "eating from the same mythohistorical muffin." This makes me more excited about Berkeley than almost anything else has in the last three months. Also, some day I too hope to incorporate breakfast-food metaphors into academic writing.
posted by Sara at 3:29 AM
1 Comments:
it's about 615 am there now so you've probably already boarded your flight or about to.
hope you have a safe, enjoyable flight.
your student's musical performance sounds really amazing. reading that part made me almost miss my students, or just the fact that i used to have them. i bet you're a great teacher.
~lisa
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