My sleep schedule is in shambles

We have had a hectic week this last one, with a few projects due over the last few days and other miscellaneous things popping up. On wednesday we stayed up late finishing a project with some year 3 students for the next day. Then spent the next day up real late working on another of our design classes, and then the next night up again for another design class with year 2 students. We had a presentation saturday morning that ended up lasting 5 hrs, and everyone in year 2 was running on 2 hrs sleep, needless to say there were naps taken afterwards. Following this week of work hell we went out for a local friends of ours' birthday. We were out late, and up late and it was very fun. That very next night though I was out working on school again.

While Drew slept I had to drag myself out of bed at 3:30am and grab a taxi out to Mong Kok to go visit a secondhand market that sets up in the morning. (Quick note: even though I think walking around the city at 4-4:30am should be as expected completely empty, it was not... there were many elderly men shirtless, standing around on the sidewalks and in the streets stretching and punching the air, slapping their bellies and massaging their legs.. It was surreal, hilarious, and all in all absurd. They were out for their morning exercises.) Anyway, I found a taxi and told the driver I wanted to go to the Mong Kok Stadium - a large soccer stadium that is a reasonably well known landmark - we were driving for probably 10 minutes when he turned around and handed me the cb radio to talk to the dispatcher. I had no idea why. He was motioning me for to use it, so I said into it Mong Kok Stadium, unsure of what I was being asked to do. Then he took it back and there was much arguing between the driver and the dispatcher, and a few minutes later we pulled up to a small community soccer field that looked like it had seen better days and was in no way the stadium that seated 8500 people, instead maybe 50. He pointed at it and repeated Mong Kok Stadium, and not wanting to bother arguing I got out here and decided to find my way. It took me another 15 minutes or so to find where I was going and upon arriving I stumbled upon the markets which I had been looking for.

Many markets are usually highly specialized, there is a road that sells strictly birds, another that sells antiques, and one that sells just business cards and wedding invitations. The first one I found was a flower market and at 5 am they were already in full swing setting up the stands and piling the flowers out on the sidewalk. Now, I should make the distinction that the ones above I have mentioned are legal and established.. the one I was looking for was illegal, hence the reason it sets up at 5am and closes at 7am as to avoid the police. I'm doing research for a class on an aspect of Hong Kong Culture and I was assigned Secondhand markets, which are essentially markets where poor people assemble any variety of goods from clothes to half full soy sauce bottles, toys to electronics. I had no idea what the market I was looking for was selling so when I finally found it I was more than a little surprised.

It was a highly specialized market, selling only aquarium equipment and fish food, as well as a variety of fish, goldfish and turtles. The woman selling the turtles really didn't seem like an animal lover as she treated the turtles who were in little tupperware containers as if they were dice in a yahtzee shaker. Maybe the craziest part besides the fact that they show up and dump bags and bags of goldfish all over the street to sell for 2 hrs is that there are a LOT of customers. Not only do they know about this but that it happens everyday and there is always a crowd, there is also a mad rush for the cheapest fish. They know what they are looking for as well, they come with flashlights to check the quality - but really who is buying these many goldfish, and what for?

Anyway to wrap up this long post, I guess overall even though school is consuming a bunch of our time it is offering some opportunities that we would otherwise never have been able to see or take advantage of. Hong Kong is still as exciting as ever, but right now I think I'm going to go take a nap.