Singapore – An Apple City

I haven’t been publishing for some time now. But rest assured, I wrote some stuff up in the mean time. Here are my thoughts about my trip to Singapore 2.5 weeks ago.

Two days before we flew to Singapore, there was a presentation in our hall about some neighboring countries, Singapore among them. I figure that Singapore is in a lot of way like Apple products.

Singapore is restricted, but nice and clean. Essentially, Singapore follows one narrow, clear path. And I happen to just like this path. Just like Apple. All their products are very restricted and even closed in quite a few ways (in spite of Apple supporting a number of open standards).

You can not:

• Buy chewing gum
• Smoke in many places (same as most of Hong Kong and China)
• Eat or drink in the subway
• Litter anywhere
• Consume non-mainstream drugs (i.e. not consume any other drugs than Ethanol, Tobacco and light medicine)

Contrary to other countries, punishments are extreme. Consumption of illegal drugs has the death sentence on it. Breaking most of the other laws named above will incur a fine of 250 – 1000 Euros.

All that Singaporean restriction leads to a very clean, safe and enjoyable place.

I have heard some people saying that Singapore is too sterile. Maybe. If you’re into seeing poverty and chaos, Singapore is just not the right place for you. And seeing poverty and chaos is an educating experience. Same as reporting from war zones. For everything else, there’s the nicer places. Like Singapore.

Instead, Singapore is probably a great place to start technology companies or enjoy relaxing holidays (as opposed to adventurous holidays).

Greedy Grades and Not Asking Serious Questions

I am beginning to become so glad that I did do my bachelor’s degree in Germany, or at least not in China. It seems like there is plenty of stuff messed up with undergraduate studies in Hong Kong. And the HKUST is probably still the best university in Asia, so this is just the tip of the iceberg.

It seems like everyone here is only interested in grades. Grades again are measured by pointless exams that verify how well people have learned fact knowledge. Exams here focus on details and technicalities instead of applications on real world application. And as we all know, facts are the somewhat “boring part” of the memory, the declarative memory. Sure, facts are important to some degree. It’s handy and without a doubt also necessary to have some facts at hand all the time during your day. However, detailed knowledge about stuff usually is not what really helps you. It helps you only in producing standardized results. It helps you in reproducing dogma, “which is the result of other people’s thinking”. What really drives you forward though, is “thinking different”. Sorry for borrowing two quotes here from Apple, but they describe the core of this issue very well.

Right now, the first midterm exams are taking place. So everyone is learning, rushing around the campus. While I think having frequent midterms is a great idea, the university encourages people to learn facts all the time by doing this.

Only grades count

What’s fundamentally wrong with the system is that for every kind of application at the university, only grades count. Whether you want to do an exchange or enter an honors program, it’s all about grades. And those grades, again, are based on how well you reproduce facts. Together with exams all the time, this means that students are the most part of their 3-4 years of undergraduate studies spending their time on something that we in the Western world have found to be secondary.

The students do not have time to build any serious skills. There is no time to ask about why something is. If maybe what the teacher says is not up to date any more. If maybe what the teacher says is just not a good idea at all. In humanities classes, people learn even more facts instead of discussing the topics among other and reflecting on it. I remember, last week in class we were talking about how to build a software that translates one language into another (like Google Translate). People were suggesting to add more and more levels of abstraction and features. Finally, I asked the question “what is the real goal here”. It seemed like everyone else was just following the path that the professor intentionally lured them on. It appeared that “why and what exactly are we doing here” was not the first thing that come to their minds. Of course not. They have been programmed to just follow orders without first rethinking them. Note the emphasis on first.

Origins of the Military Style

I am not sure where this military-style not thinking about stuff comes from. I noticed it during my time at CDTM, the Center of Digital Technology and Management. The CDTM is an interdisciplinary institution that brings engineers and business students together. I think too many business life conventions were just accepted as OK. At CDTM it was mostly details that annoyed me, so I kind of ignored them as the benefits of trying to study how business students work seemed a valuable trade. Still, I always felt strange about it.

The issue with this military way of doing things is that form seems to be more important to people than content. I very often had the impression that the way how slides look like, how we dress and if there are slide numbers on every slide were more important during presentations than what we had to say. Also, no one seemed to understand that having slide numbers, slide headers and all that useless nonsense is plain out wrong. Even further, the business guys always printed out slides and treated them like a script. That again, is wrong. Instead, the content of the slides and what you say verbally should be disjunctive sets. Slides also never should be distributed after the presentation. Instead, a proper script that explains things in full sentences instead of bullet points should be distributed. It’s impossible to express something properly with bullet points and slides with bullet points distract the attention away from your speech. So having slides as script and presentation is a comprise that actually makes everyone unhappy.

Of course, the slides example is rather a detail. And it’s subject to personal taste. But it shows the attitude. And I think this attitude can make you blind towards the real goal, so you should avoid it.

I would not quite jump to the conclusion that this misapprehension is inherent to business schools or maybe systems that are influenced by the United States. However, both CDTM and the HKUST try to copy an American system and both of them are dominated by business people. And both institutions seem like they did not understand everything before copying it. It’s somewhat like Windows, which is a tasteless copy of the Mac, or Chinese fakes. Sorry, for this strong comparison, but now maybe you’re listening I still love all my friends at HKUST and CDTM and am grateful that they let me study there. Still, I hope that more care is applied in the future when copying styles from the United States.

Try More

I think we all can do better. People should start discussing. People should accept that hours may be wasted on pointless philosophical discussions. But these discussions might also turn into very fruitful, interesting discussions that they did not appear to become within the first two minutes. People should try more.

Try to be different, not just better and better at the same game. Not more features, more money, more resources are what makes you happy. Quality makes you happy. And you can’t buy it. It’s expensive. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s uncertain.

You can encourage it, but not plan it. You can go that way, but you never know if and where you will arrive.

After all, it seems to me like European-styled education, which offers more time to ask questions and get quality, is the better way to go. In Asia, they rush through everything too fast, but do not really learn anything at all, because they can’t really transfer their knowledge. That also is similar to what other people, both Asians and Westerners have told me countless times.

Shopping in Hong Kong is awful

Getting the stuff you need fast in Hong Kong is impossible. There are basically no online shops.

Whenever I needed something in Germany, I would get it from Amazon. It was fast, cheap, convenient and secure. I knew that the product would be good, as I had read the ratings. I could return it within 2 weeks, without reasons.

Here in Hong Kong, there is no Amazon. Nothing close to it. Amazon China ships to Mainland China only, not to Hong Kong. There are no alternatives. Seems like Hong Kongers are not very serious about shopping. Who would voluntarily go to the city everytime and use up hours for something that would take minutes in countries which are more civilized in this aspect?

Oh, right. There still is the option to have electronics that is probably made in Shenzhen shipped from Amazon US. At least, they offer that service at all. But 30 Euros for every package is quite a price. Especially when the item itself is cheaper than that.

It seems like that must be a lot easier just 50 kms up north in Mainland China. Really confused now.

HKUST’s rankings are impressive

HKUST has quite some impressive rankings.

Its School of Engineering (the one I am in) is ranked at rank 39 internationally, better than TU Munich and better than Harvard.

Its MBA program is even better. This university is just 19 years old and the Kellogg-HKUST EMBA Program is the best in the whole world, according to Financial Times.

iVillage Orientation

Remember the special living and learning community (LLC) I wrote about yesterday?

My hall consists of these subcommunities. Every one has a unique motto. The so called iVillage, the one I am in, is about internationality and cultural exchange.

Today, we had an introductory meeting. It was quite many people. I would guess it was around 50 in just this part of the building. They said that there would be people from 20 different countries. I find that quite amazing.

Berkeley in Hong Kong

“This university has more people from Berkeley than any other university.”

Just as a shout out to my CDTM friends who are currently over at UC Berkeley

First Day of Classes

Today was the officially first day of classes and a welcoming ceremony of all the new undergraduate students.

There was a reception in the Atrium, which is like the entrance hall. Also, student societies were presenting themselves to convince students to join them. Student societies are like student clubs that are about a wide variety of common interests both academic and recreational. For example, there are societies for most majors, mainly for the business majors (like finance, marketing etc.) But there are also ones about drama, making music, learning languages and sports.

It is quite a pity though that many societies’ websites seem to be not very well updated. Also, many of them are in Chinese, which creates the impression that they are not open to international, not Chinese speaking students.

I will probably focus on learning languages next to the courses I will be taking. There seems to be quite some effort to promote learning languages and many different people interested in learning various languages.

In the evening, we got to see most students of the student hall that I am in. It is the best and newest hall of all the halls on campus. The building was only finished last year and some now call it “hotel” due to that. It also features the concept of special sub communities within the hall. The building consists of 7 floors and almost every floor makes up a community whose inhabitants have certain things in common. The community I am in, iVillage, is about internationality and intercultural exchange. Others are for example about creative freedom or green living.

It is also interesting to note, that many professors are directly associated with student halls or communities in student halls. Obviously, the university tries to avoid professors from becoming too distant from their students.

The Honeymoon

Today, we had our first introduction sessions at HKUST. We were introduced by a few professors and students to the campus, campus life, Hong Kong (again) and many other stuff we partly already knew.

We were told what we may do (study all the time) and what we can’t do. They are strangely strict about some stuff like bringing alcoholic beverages into the student halls. I think it is OK though, as there is a bar on campus (which of course serves Alcohol) and I can imagine that they have good reasons based on past bad experiences. After all, they don’t want to ban it completely, but just control where it is consumed. Seems like there are many rules like this in Asia that do not prohibit things, but regulate how and where they may be done.

And today I also met the former exchange student from HKUST who was at the TUM last semester (Karry). I told him how excited I was about the university up until now. He replied the first weeks would be our “honeymoon”.

I also admire the many language learning and conversation groups here. Having so many exchange students and many languages in one place, they really try to leverage that. There’s courses, material for self-study and weekly groups where you can practice what you have learned with native speakers. All on one campus. That’s the way it should be. Just imagine what it would be like if we had such a thing at home.

It’s really like they seem to care more about many things here at the HKUST and do them better. The whole campus looks nicer than any German university I have ever seen, people are more helpful, more interested in each other (with the exception of mainland Chinese students who I hardly get to talk with as they always seem to be mentally absent, possibly thinking about what to learn by heart next).

Also, the professors that held the introductory sessions today seemed nicer, more emotional and less boring than German professors. Kind of like you know it from the United States.

In any case, the HKUST appears to be very similar to a US university. Hong Kong was a British colony and they obviously try to closely copy many elements of US universities. They take mentorship seriously. Every students gets one. Right away from day one. Not hidden behind forms and special insider knowledge (that’s the way it is at my home university) .

Finally, even the administration seemed to actually care about us exchange students. At HKUST they want to make me feel at home. It seems as though they would want to keep us here for more than just one semester. And I really like it here. The campus, the people.

Tomorrow, classes will start. My first and only course tomorrow will be the Mandarin second level course (LANG114). Let’s see if it’s just learning facts by heard without structure as I have sometimes been told or if they actually live up to the standards of the nice welcome of the last few days.

Hello Hong Kong

So. I am starting a blog about my experiences in Hong Kong. I will be in Hong Kong for (at least) 4 months on an exchange between my home university, the University of Technology, Munich (TUM), and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

I chose to write it in English as it will allow me to republish parts of it later. The CDTM guys asked me to tell about my experience in Hong Kong.

So, let’s start with Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is some not quite romanization of its Cantonese name. Wikipedia romanizes it as Heunggong. In contrast to Mandarin’s pinyin, there still is no standard romanization for Cantonese. Wikipedia will tell you more facts about the name and so on. I won’t repeat that. You can read it there.

My first week in Hong Kong has now almost passed. I arrived at the campus of the HKUST a few days ago and today the other local Hong Kong students also arrived. In the first days, only exchange students were there as the semester only commences on Sep 1st.

In my first few days, I was discovering the “basics” of Hong Kong, i.e. the central districts of Kowloon like Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui as well as the parts of Hong Kong Island that tourists usually go to (area around Central and Admirality).

In the beginning, I was quite surprised to find that most people outside of the airport actually do not speak anything close to English. They neither understand you, nor is it easy to understand them. Instead, the speak Cantonese. Cantonese is like the mother tongue of the Guangzhou province. People often call Cantonese a dialect of Chinese (i.e. Mandarin). But actually, that’s totally wrong. Chinese and Mandarin (Putonghua) are two completely different languages that belong to the family of the Chinese languages. Just like Swedish and German are two completely different languages, even though they both belong to the family of the Germanic languages. Speakers of one language can not understand each other without actually learning the other language. So, they are not dialects by modern linguistic definition.

Therefore, neither my English nor my basic Mandarin was of any use in the first days when talking to the native population.

The first part I explored was Mong Kok in Kowloon. It’s probably the most busy part of all of Hong Kong. And the most dense one. And the loudest one. There’s only big buildings with on average 15 floors. Furthermore, it is a huge shopping area, especially for electronic stuff. There is almost no individual traffic on the streets at all. You only see buses, trucks and taxis. Lots of them. There are mostly shops and restaurants in the streets and you can see huge signs everywhere.

The great metro system, the MTR, was also surprising to me. Most stations have about 5 – 15 different exits. Completely different than anywhere in Europe. Also, there often are multiple bus stops, which makes you go around a lot if your initial idea is to look for a bus in only one place.

There is also many Chinese and Japanese style fast food restaurants, which serve quite good and cheap food. You pay around 3 – 4 Euros for a full meal incl. a soft drink, which is cheap for Hong Kong standards. Hong Kong usually is a lot more expensive than the rest of China, almost as expensive as European cities (like Munich).

Tsim Sha Tsui is a very touristic region in the south of Kowloon, one of the main parts of Hong Kong. From there, you can also see the famous Symphony of Lights. You can find dozens of videos of that symphony on YouTube. I am not quite sure, why it’s so famous. It’s nice, but definitely not very special. Tsim Sha Tsui is definitely worth a try at night. Don’t spend too much money there, it’s a touristic region.

Last week, I also had the luck to be invited by a fellow Cantonese student who studied in Munich the last semester and now came back to HKUST. He invited me to a big Chinese style dinner with his family in a real Chinese restaurant. In an area without any tourists. Besides his other invitees, I was the only European in the whole big restaurant.

It was a very interesting experience: The Chinese often cook everything. So, many people sit around a big round table and in the middle are two big hot cooking pots.

You constantly get new stuff delivered by the staff that you then can put inside the pots and cook. That includes both vegetables and meat. It’s like an all you can eat. My friend told me you pay around 15 Euros per person with food and drinks included.

Also, in the restaurants you will often find living fish that you can choose from. They will then take it out of the water in front of your eyes and prepare it right away. Now that’s fresh!

When I finally arrived at the university campus, everyone seemed a bit clueless. It seemed like they were expecting us exchange students, but did not really have processes in place. In retrospect, it still was better organized that it would have probably been at my home university. German bureaucracy is not even matched by Chinese chaos, especially not the very mild Hong Kong edition of it.

The campus looks very nice. It is also very new. The HKUST is just 19 years old. But it surpassed my home university already. And many other top international universities. Its MBA program seems to be among the best ones worldwide. And it’s not even that expensive compared to what the top US universities demand.

When discovering Hong Kong, I found many signs about what not to do or what to be warned about.

Today, I did the biggest tour. It was on the Lantau Island, the biggest island of the Hong Kong SAR. This is the island, where you can also find the famous huge buddha statue. Wikipedia has lots of pictures here, I won’t repost them. There is a cable car from part of the island, directly next to the Hong Kong airport, that leads to the area with the statue. The area of the statue is extremely touristic. In that small village, there is – right in the middle of the mostly unpopulated country side – a Starbucks coffee and a Subway sandwiches outlet. And all the other shops like 7Eleven and so on.

As the tour was organized by the HKUST for exchange students, they sent a long a PR team. Very professional. I wish my home university would finally be serious about that.

Finally, we visited the Tai O fishing village and the Tsing Ma bridge. It is a very big bridge, bigger than the Golden Gate one in San Francisco. See Wikipedia for details and again lots of pictures. I’ll leave you to WP as I did not find these last two visits that interesting and WP contains lots of info.