(Not) laughing at the professor's jokes

Went to the orientation meeting for my first rotation today. Got to meet the people I will be spending most of the rest of the year with. To be truthful, I'm not totally amoured with them. They seem to be your typical Hong Kong people. And that means I'm going to hate them. That's because the typical Hong Kong person is your ill-mannered, not-very-friendly, selfish person who I rather be roasting over an open fire than be acquaintenances with.

You can tell I really hate Hong Kong and its people, more so that Hitler hated the Jews. Only in this case it can be a bit more logical. I can find faults with people from other countries as well. The British are still class driven, the French are snobby whilst the Americans are arrogant and fat. But nothing doesn't boil my blood so much than Hong Kong people.

I have two points just to illustrate with you, after only spending an hour with them. Firstly I ask the group representative that I don't have the recent notes for some of the interactive tutorials and I was wondering if he knew where I could get a copy, either by burning a CD or downloading them. The blunt answer he gave was, "Sorry, I don't have a copy." A rather more tactful answer, which Hong Kong people still can't give, would have been, "Sorry, but I'll find out for you." No wonder there are TV adverts on the local channels asking people to change the habits (for the tourists).

The other point is the poor quality of humour they have. They were laughing at the professor's jokes today and the jokes were terrible. Trust me, they were worse than my dad's jokes and my dad does really have some awful jokes.

I tend to believe that Hong Kong people suffer from, what I call, "the Matrix phenomenon" named after the movie. They come to accept the reality around them, that nothing can get any better because this is as good as it gets. An ex-friend exemplifies this phenomenon exactly when she had to ask me "what is wrong with Hong Kong" and I had to give my reasons but still she didn't understand or accept my answers, like I was some lunatic at a mental asylum.

God help me for the next year, because I don't think anybody else can.