Living someone else's life

So I've been in HK for two weeks now, but I haven't had the drive to make a post, although my minds been on many things.

The first few days in Hong Kong were a real whirlwind, getting acquainted with the city, I basically went into Hong Kong Island and Kowloon every day (HKUST is kind of out in the boondocks, a good 1 hr by public transportation from Central, Hong Kong's busiest downtown). Central, a grid of glitz and glam, with the most chic boutiques and hottest eateries. HKUST, in Clear Water Bay, has a beautiful campus... and really nothing nearby. Despite the fact that these two locations are less than 20 km apart, the people in them live lives separated by a nearly unbridgable social divide.

I spent my first few nights in Lan Kwai Fong, which is a few streets large district in Central where several bars, nightclubs, lounges. are clustered in a brightly lit slope. My first night a friend happened to hook Kristen and I up with some ibanking analysts and we were able to get into a trendy nightclub. Coincidently, the a modeling agency was throwing a party at that club. It was pretty ridiculous. The girls were georgeous and I didn't hear any cantonese while I was there, just English.

It amazes me sometimes where I've ended up - I'm just 20, and I can do things my parents would never had dreamed of (although its unlikely they would've wished such an opulent and perhaps decadent future for me). Even so, this psuedo-playboy lifestyle puts me out of my element - small town Washington, to a world-class city is a big jump. By merit of speaking English fluently, going to an ivy league school, we make the assumption that we, merely students, are high rollers (or at least will be- thanks FNCE 101 and Consumption smoothing!), despite the fact that we've hardly started earning (although perhaps this isn't the case with the REAL high rollers).

When I go out 'big' here, I can drop a cool 50-100 USD... and think...whatever.

I don't know how comfortable I am with that fact.

Pics to come..

Recent Quote of Note - 'I win on the conversion... I do what I want!'

btw. if you read and you blog, please drop me a link to your blog.