BACK TO THE STATES!!

I've made it back to school - and am a bit culturally shocked.  So no time to blog. Well, a little shocked a little comforted. It's a new world and I hope to blog about it, but for now I have college days to enjoy! Will blog when feeling like it but that will probably be minimal.  Thanks for following along for the year.

Cheers to the world, Catherine

Sound of Music? Psh China

- Catherine

Crossroads Hong Kong

Here's a bit of the motley crue of interns - this is just a portion - those that got away from work Friday 1pm - 5pm.

Super cool thing - we did a simulation of poverty where we were split into families and we had to make paper bags out of newspaper with glue (flour +water - i guessed the ingredients correctly - hello! paper mache) and then we could make the bags in 3 10-minute increments. We had to then sell the bags 10 at a time to the "shop" - Food costs us 100 dollars, rent for our slum 180 and then a clean toilet 30 but that was optional. 

Trying to make the bags in a hurry, we scrambled to make more bags for more money, but ended up selling watches, shoes, "hugs" - yeah, a bit surreal and disgusting to realize how lucrative a "hug" was in comparison to the paper bags. After the end of the first 10 minutes, my group made only 210 dollars. Not enough for rent, but we sold some shoes to cover that. Because we didn't pay for the bathroom, we were penalized so only 1 worker was able to make bags for 2 of the 10 minutes, then the other 4 could join once "cured." We made more money that round after we sold more possessions, made sloppier bags, and gave hugs away like candy to the "land lord."

The final round had another level - if we made 500 dollars before the end of the third round we could send one of our children to school.  We became animals desperate to make a dollar - selling our selves, our bags, anything. We ended up having over 1400 dollars, but were so focused on bringing in the revenue no one dropped the 500 or even 1000 off at the "school" so no one became educated. By the end of the simulation, the room was trashed - no care for the environment when you are struggling to make a buck. No one in my group had shoes, watches or bracelets. We had covered our rent unlike some who were isolated to the other room giving all their bags to a loan shark, but because we hadn't paid for the bathroom only 4 of us survived.

What a surreal simulation of Slumdog's Oregon Trail. The growing trend of CSR - or Corporate Social Responsibility was the discussion point - that although it's a hot word these days, it's more and more just a dialy important reminder to each one of us that although we are struggling to get the offer or the promotion, one in 6 people in the world are struggling to make less than a dollar a day. Having to resort to such low levels of dignity and sanitation in our simulation, it was incredible to understand how this occurs in real life.  Pretty cool concept of creating a simulated global experience across the street from a beach resort in Hong Kong!   

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Day in the Life of an Intern

4:45 am: Wake Up, dance party, attempt to iron a shirt... throw it in a pile, one of many piles. See how fast that room got.. Catherine'd

6am: show up to work, look out the window (note this is not the 6am view - it's much darker)

2pm: Gangster Rap lunch with the spot traders - here's a view of the lone USA hockey jersey for some reason in the corner of the window

8pm: head home, try and resist the temptation of pineapple buns...



Somedays I'm good. somedays, its' Buns = 1 Catherine's waistline = 0 (ahha well maybe not zero, more like too big - they simply don't size me anywhere - intimidation even if I can fit their clothes)

10pm: bed time. But credit trading now has me up by 6am and home by midnight-thirty... different hours for different folks.




Exhausted and its the weekend... going to be ready for monday.. maybe,
Catherine

Upgrade: Home Sweet Home

Here are pics of my serviced apartment in TST - fantastic living I might say. I'll be a bit spoiled when I return the states... they change my sheets twice a week and towels too!

Pictures before I unpacked my ghetto old Shanghai migrant bag. Derek made fun of me for having one, he said I was too Chinese now.

My stellar view - or maybe it's their stellar view of me?

Dreading packing this mess,
Catherine