The first impression I had of ICS are the nice people around, be it teachers or students – at least, they remember my name! Like I pointed out in the last post, things are not only organized here, but also very neat and well-planned out. I really like the class environment here – funny, relaxed, but I can still learn things.

Luckily, I got well with some of the students here and joined the programming club. Somehow, they called me a “pro”, and wanted me to teach the rest about HTML/CSS/Websites design. Seriously…. what just happened?

Adding/Dropping

So, I mentioned that I signed up for honors Amer. / Brit. Lit. for my English course. After the introductory 20-minutes lesson, I find out that I am in the wrong class. Mrs. Stephen, the teacher of the course, is a nice lady, who reminded me that “other students have read 5 books in the summer and each wrote about 10 pages notes on each of them. You might want to start them now since we’ll have 6 other books to cover in this semester. Mmm, how about this, you won’t have to write notes, just read those books and come and talk to me about them.” Although the list of books she required included some books that we read in SMIC, like Lord of the Flies, Of Mice and Men, etc., still, that means I’ll have to read 11 books in a short 4 months! Even more scarier, is that they are covering two entire books of “Literature” (the same book we use at SMIC) in one year! WOW.

But what can I do? That is like the only English course available in F block. The course I wanted to take, Advanced Composition, is available in G block, which I have Chinese during then. Then, after taking the introductory lesson, I made my decision: If I can drop Chinese, I will do everything to do so. The class is like the most boring class I have ever taken in my life.  (Or perhaps I am used to the relaxed style of Ms. Ma’s?)

So in the next day, I got a drop/add form, and started gathering signatures. Mrs. Stephen, the English teacher, signed right off the bat without even having to ask me for reasons. Wow, okay. Then, I went to my Chinese teacher,  but the reaction was the complete opposite. I asked her really politely, but she responded, “You won’t have the credits transferred from your old school! “ WHAT? HOW CAN IT NOT TRANSFER OVER? “Yeah, we had a senior that had to take both French and Chinese courses just so he can get 2 Language credits to graduate.” THAT CAN’T BE POSSIBLE! “Fine (it sounded like “You don’t believe me?”), go to the Dean and ask him.”

So I went to the Dean, and asked him about the credits. “They should transfer. Go talk to Ms. Farley the counselor.”

Fine. I had to then go to the counseling office to find Ms. Farley. I was originally asking her for suggestions for what to do, but she actually did the whole add/drop for me. Yes, without my Chinese teacher’s approval! Wow, that’s got to be the best day of my life – I don’t think I would want to go up to her and ask her to sign my form.

Let’s talk about my courses… in the order of my schedule.

Block A – Bible 11

Nothing special, I guess. Surprisingly, the class wasn’t just about memorizing Bible verses and all that, it is quite fun actually. I think. Our first project is “Search for God’s Hand in my life”. I have to give a presentation about… well, you can probably guess from the name of the project and write something for the teacher. Fun fun fun!

Block B – P.E.

I seriously don’t know why I signed up for P.E.. Again, nothing is special. We actually voted on the sports we want to play and we ended up with Volleyball, Bowling, Badminton and (argh, I forgot! I guess that’s a sport that doesn’t interest me). Yeah, you read that right, Bowling is in the list.

Block C – PreCalculus

Keywords: “I miss Ms. Han”

My teacher, Mr. Ward is a cool guy, but perhaps I am too used to Ms. Han’s style. For probably every new thing he teachers, he has a story to accompany it. Don’t get me wrong though, it is awesome, but the class moves a little too slow.

For example, today, we learned composition of function. You know f(g(h(x))) stuff. For Ms. Han, it probably takes an hour; for Mr. Ward, it took the whole class period – that is, 72 minutes. He even used graphs on computers to demonstrate! We would have to discuss with neighbors about the answer of f(g(x)) when x = 3, g(x) = x-1 and f(x) = 1/2x+2. And that took about 10 minutes. Man, I wish there is an honors class.

Oh speaking of honors, there isn’t a separate class, but we can get honors status if we finishes all questions in the test, teach a 72 minutes section and do a project for each unit.

But overall speaking, Pre-Calc here is still fun. I guess, not as stressed as Ms. Han’s.

Block D – Physics

Our first project in Physics is to design anything that can tell us how long 2 minutes is. I, along with two other people, designed a “sandglass” that didn’t work. On the day of testing, today, we simply didn’t follow the sandglass at all, but counted to 2 minutes ourselves, and it turned out we only missed it by 2 seconds! Wow, people here are awesome.

Block E – MicroEcon

This is probably my favorite class so far. The teacher taught this History course in a way that I don’t think it is about History at all. He uses really good examples and yet sticks to the right amount. (Again, I am not saying anything.) I am starting to see that Econ is not about money like I thought it was, at all, but a completely new subject… which I  now enjoy!

Block F – Intro Media Production

I chose this class after dropping honors Lit., and I think I made a good choice. The class takes place in the studio of the school, with like 7 of 24’’ Macs, really professional equipments and all. In the class, we learn about film and other media. In the one class that I was in yesterday, we learned about different type of angles and camera shots. While I feel I personally understand the concept already, as I look closer, I did realize I can learn so much about film that I can’t learn without a proper teacher.

Just why isn’t there such course in SMIC? This would be such a beneficial class to MVC and its members!

Oh, I forgot to mention one of the projects we have to do. We have to survive without internet for at most 4 days to experiment how important “Media” is in our lives. I haven’t planned when to do it yet… but I tell you, if it’s not for this project, I won’t even imagine how I can do this.

Block G – Advanced Composition

All I can say is, wow. This is an English class, but perhaps the most fun one of all classes (along with MicroEcon, I guess). The teacher, Ms. Manchester, is an Asian that speaks with slight British accent. She has stories along with probably every sentence she makes. For example, a simple attendance roll could take 10 minutes because she “made fun” with all the names. Hahaha…

Block H (the last block) – AP Comp Sci

You would think this is the easiest class for me, but actually not. My teacher looked through my transcript and found no prerequisite courses taken in SMIC. I had to prove to him that I am not a total noob in this area by taking a test on next Thursday. He gave me a 800 page book about Java and told me that I will be given a final from last year. Wow, good luck to me!

While I have to prepare for that test, I have a test coming on right tomorrow for the basics of computers. Good luck to me!

Block P – Choir

I guess most of you are most interested in learning what happened during Choir class. Nothing has happened so far, and I think I am going to take a test tomorrow regarding which voice I am. I chose to be Tenor, but I don’t fully know that I will sing Tenor yet until tomorrow.

I am kinda nervous.

Conclusion

Lots of stuff are still coming regarding my experience in ICS. So far nothing much has happened, but I will tell you guys when something has.

Anything you guys are deeply interested about?

August 10th, 2009, I had to wake up at 6 a.m. to prepare for my “first” day at ICS. I took a quick shower, changed into my uniforms and turned on the TV hoping there is a typhoon or something so that I don’t have to go to school. (Oh by the way, best wishes to all the Taiwanese involved in the recent typhoon, hope you guys are okay.)

Uniforms? Yes, you read that right. We DO have uniforms, and luckily it’s only a polo and a khaki short, nothing THAT rediculous:

But it turns out, there were no typhoons. Sighing, I left home at around 6:36 (I was actually planning to leave at 7, but my mom rushed me out of the house at 6:36). Then I went to a bakery downstairs to get some bread:

I got a “Cheese + Sausage Bun” or something like that. And for your information, it is much better than Mai Zi Shou Le at SMIC.

My school, located at the Sha Tin area (B), is quite far from where I live (A), Aberdeen, near Ocean Park. Google Maps estimate about a 25km trip. But I mean, since I am using public transport, it is much longer than that.

Here’s how I am going to the school: taking the 107 bus, then changed into MTR trains East Rail Line at Hong Hum, heading for Tai Wai, change at Ma On Shan Line, and finally get off at Shek Mun stop.

Really, I am amazed at how many people are there already at 6:40. Wow.

Okay. enough pictures. Time to tell what really happened at ICS. (Sorry, didn’t take pictures)

So I arrived at ICS at around 7:50 (and the orientation actually starts on 8:15), sat in the secondary school office for like 30 minutes. Met some friends too, like Isaac, a new senior who is also interested in filming. It finally started after a while of waiting. Mr. Buckner, director of Admissions and Student Services (I think that’s how he called himself) , opened up with a short speech and prayer, then handed the floor to Mr. Chan, Dean of Students. He introduced the “buddies” of ours. Honestly, I originally thought this idea was such a lame and overdone idea that is always boring and never works out. However, by talking to my “buddies” more, Tim Au being one of them, I did indeed find out a lot about the school and begin to think “you know, buddies might not be that bad”.

We then were given a tour of the school, looking at everything from the art studio, to the computer lab, chapel, then to the auditorium/theatre. To sum up the experience: everything is way better than SMIC’s.

In the computer lab, we get to login to our school organization website “eClass” – something that I wanted to setup for SMIC a LONG time ago. Sam, Stephany’s friend in Pleasanton, apparently didn’t receive anything – including logon credentials, student ID, schedule, etc. etc.

After then, we all had some really nice pizzas. I ate about 6 of ‘em. Yum. Played some dodge ball and basketball afterwards, and got kind of well with other students. During then, I went up to the Dean of Students to get my schedule set. It was more than complicated.

I wanted to do PreCalc, Physics, Advanced Composition (English), Micro + Macro Econ, Graphics Design, and of course, AP Comp Sci. However, when we sort out the schedule, in seems that the blocks I demanded are either full or unavailable to me. At last, I had to join honors American + British Literature (the “most demanding course with the most demanding teacher”, according to the Dean of Students) instead of Advanced Composition, and PE instead of Graphics Design (I am still trying to get Graphics Design, nevertheless). Oh and by the way, I am forced into “Choir”. Do NOT laugh.

School starts 7:40 on Monday, Thursday (“Advisory”, or homeroom, times) and Wednesday (Chapel time), and 8:50 on Tuesdays and Fridays. Ends at 3:15, but there are designated club times. In every way, ICS is much more organized than SMIC.

TO sum up, here are 5 great things about ICS:

• 5. Long + little classes (5 periods at approx. 1 hour each per day)
• 4. Awesome lunch
  
• 3. Can sleep in on Tuesday and Friday
• 2. Great organization with eClass and stuff
• 1. Awesome people! (Need I say more?)

So… just a quick review of what happened in the last post. We were stuck in a service area because of our flat tire, and we needed to wait for the next morning when we can get visit the local town for new tires.

The technician called for like at least 100 million people and then regretfully told us that there aren’t any tires available for our kind of car. When we are all depressed and stuff, suddenly the technician discovered something: there was a rubber ring blocking the tire to be inserted! He removed the ring and tried to insert our spare tire that failed last night, and it worked perfectly. Wow!

Our family was so happy that my dad ran to the “supermarket” (more like a tiny store) and bought a watermelon for them (which apparently was like heaven’s food for them (remember, we are in central China)) and ate together. Man, my dad even ask me to take a picture of him and the technician! (Sorry for the bad exposure)

After they finished all the final touchups and stuff, we started heading for the road.

And this was the repairing company name – “Shang Rao Service Area Repairing Department”

I must say, China has really impressed me with their highway network. On our trip, we switched to about like 5 highways but never got lost. They have neat signage and a clear code system. Not bad, not bad!

We have around 1000km to go today. The car’s license is expiring at midnight, so we have to arrive at Shenzhen by today. Since we have quite a long journey, we did not stop over at one of the largest city in central China, Nanchang, but to head for Shenzhen directly. We then therefore had to eat in service areas (again). And mind you, although the highway system is neat, the service areas are definitely not. There are flies around and the cafeteria looks just as bad as our school’s. But, what can I complain?

I don’t think I need to tell you again about the scenery and stuff. Feel free to visit my Picasa Album again, though. Oh wait, except for this:

Apparently, there is a town in Guangdong called “He Ping” (pronounced H-ugh Ping), which means literally “Peace”. (Don’t believe me? Check the characters on About.com and compare it with the one in the signage. They are the same characters.) So, in a sense, we are only 26km from peace. (yay!)

So we just drove, drove, and drove, and finally arrived at Shenzhen at 11:30 pm. We were dead tired when we arrived, and decided to find a motel to sleep instead of searching for blankets from our luggage and sleep on them at our new house. It wasn’t bad at all, only like 200RMB (25USD) for a double bed room.

And… that concludes the road trip. Next post: “The Move In” Thanks for reading!

Visit the complete gallery of pictures!

A lot of misfortunate things happened during the trip, such as an (to us, at least) uninformed close of an important highway so we had to find and go another way, flat tires, my dad being really tired (the only driver), etc. But nevertheless, it was still fun. I was at my new house in Shenzhen at the third day, which isn’t equipped with internet yet. I didn’t come back to Hong Kong until yesterday when I stayed in my uncle’s house with a broken router.

But erm well, that’s life. I had a chance to organize my photos, and here they are!

Before introducing anything though, let’s have a look at our car – a Mazda MPV ‘00. There aren’t new features like Cruise, buttons (media controls, etc.) on the steering wheel, or a CD’s managing system (you know how like some cars can have 6 CD’s at the same time), but I like it =).

Let’s begin now, shall we?

We planned to start our trip at 7 a.m., and so I woke up at like 6:30. Ethan showed up at my house at 6:45 to say a final good bye (thanks). However, as usual, my parents “had a lot of things to do” and so we didn’t actually start until 10 a.m. In addition to the late departure, we couldn’t find the right highway to go on (A8, Hu Hang Expressway), and so we made a huge detour in order to leave Shanghai. (Note that “A8” is blacked out on the left sign)

Unfortunately, the weather was REALLY bad when we left (I heard it is even worse after that). Visibility was really low.

Because of the bad weather, we had to stop at Jiaxing for a stop… mainly because my dad decided that it was too dangerous to continue driving in such a bad weather, and that we were hungry for some famous zongzi’s.

Weather was getting a little better, so after a short rest for about 30 minutes, we started the trip again. Skies start to clear up, and we are now starting to see a beautiful scenery.

Road trips are indeed boring – you see the same thing over and over again for the whole day. Other than music from the Jason Mraz CD’s, there were still some Chinglish jokes that cracked me up. For example, a sign saying “Overspeeding Prohibition” (when it truly meant “over speeding prohibited”), or a sign saying “exprots” (when it meant “exit”… I guess that’s because the word “export” and “exit” use the same word in Chinese… and then when they typed it they messed it up.)

At around 7 o’clock, we arrived at Quzhou, a small city located at very west of Zhejiang. It is a fairly small town. We went to a small, suburban, yet very friendly restaurant and had some REALLY nice fish there. Almost comparable to those in Hong Kong.

After dinner, we booked a hotel at Nanchang, capital city of the Jiangxi province. However, on our way there, our tire suddenly broke and we had to call in for a towing truck. It happened at around 9 pm. We tried to use the tools available for us (which was insufficient) to get it fixed, but we couldn’t. They took us to a service area nearby (and my dad didn’t allow to take a picture of the towing truck for some reason). By the time we got there, it was already 11.

Here is when the bad news start. Apparently, the family who owned this car before we did put some heavy custom work on the car in Hong Kong, which made us extremely hard to screw the tire down – the place left for screwdrivers to “get in” and unscrew is extremely tight. We started trying everything we can, including flamethrowers (yes, you read that correct).

But… apparently the wheel was made out of some sort of gold alloy that is basically immune to burning… the flamethrower left a white mark on the wheel, but dealt no damage to it at all.

One of the more skilled technicians was then woke up by the technician that was working for us. He woke up and started making his own thin screw driver that could go in the hole. After about half an hour, he did it. He successfully got rid of the broken tire, and it seems that if we can get the new tire up, we can continue with our trip.

But no, they couldn’t get the new tire up – the car was too over modified that the spare tire didn’t work with the current wheel. Frustrated, my dad decided to sleep in the car and wait for wheel dealers to wake up tomorrow to get a new set of ‘em.

And so we did. By the time we actually slept, it was around 1:30am already. All of us were tired and didn’t care how we could sleep. Just within 30 seconds after saying “goodnight” to everyone, I could hear snores from my sister already.

End of Day 1. Continue with our journey with the next post!

We started disassembling everything in my room yesterday. My desk, my computers, everything. (But then I realized I needed my computer, so I had to assemble it again)

As if I am not busy enough, I think there are still like 5 things on my to-do list: MVC stuff, SAT stuff, some coding for the next release of CubePoints, etc. etc.

BUSY BUSY BUSY!