Blogging
From Abroad

Tim invited me to a hot pot dinner last night to celebrate the upcoming New Year. I assumed we’d have it at a local restaurant or meet up with others in the dorm but to my surprise Tim told me we?d have the gathering on the main plaza of Lingnan University. Ugh ok whatever you say. I walk out there and the place was packed with people sitting at round tables beautifully decorated while live music was playing on a stage. Geezie I had no idea this was here. I find Tim, meet about 8 of his friends, he hands me a ticket, and we find our table. This is really cool. After the New Year toast each of us grabbed our chopsticks and had a free-for-all at the huge bowl over a mini kerosene lit oven. This style of dinner is a Health Inspector/Germ-a-phobes worst nightmare because all 10 of us are double dipping into the bowl filled with shrimp, pig skin, tofu, chicken, steak, and carrots. (Sidenote: It’s hard for me to enjoy shrimp when it’s cooked with its legs, skin, and eyes still attached. I find myself apologizing to it before I eat it. I’m so sorry Mr. Shrimp. Please forgive me.)

After dinner we were entertained by dragon line dancing, a performance by the winners of the recent talent shot, and one heck of a raffle drawing. The raffles were picked by the students, teachers, and administration of the University. One student reached his hand in the box and purposely called the Presidents number. Of coarse the students went wild, they LOVE the president. The president walks up on stage and says he can’t accept the gift but will donate $500 to whoever’s name is called next. The $500 dollar donation from the different administration members carried on for the next 3 rounds.

I was sitting at my table, enjoying the atmosphere but completely lost. The raffle was announced in Cantonese so I was a bit in a daze and texting my friend Raisa to tell her where my table was located.

I noticed my table was getting restless and the crowd getting louder so I look up to find all of them looking at me and clapping. What’s going on. Then Tim yells, “YOU’VE WON!” I couldn’t believe it! lol I ran up on stage, snapped a picture with the VP and accepted my rice cooker raffle gift and $500 bucks. By this time, I was totally into it and made a fool of myself by running off stage doing the Rocky Balboa hand gesture and gave hand fives to each of the tables on my way back. I couldn’t stop smiling and laughing the rest of the night.

$500 bucks is a lot of money. Let me convert it into my favorite currency?
$500 HK dollars is like 5.98 pairs of shoes in Mong Kok.