Confessions of a Cat-holic (189)

Having seen both sides of the world, I somehow agreed with the communists that capitalism really was kind of evil. America rewarded the top 1% hard working people with more hard work until they worked you to death and gave you marginally better pay but with honors and prestige that kept you going.

Nevertheless, I needed to thank my best friend from LPCUWC, Ivan, for referring me to work at HKU's journalism department as an intern. He was also the guy who first introduced me the concept of anal sex by showing me in his dorm room a clip of Sasha Cohen as Ali G interviewing a porn star. He graduated from Harvard with a college degree in biology and economics. My mentor and boss of the summer internship was Andrew Lih, an expert in web-based journalism that helped shape our current world of information technology. He was also a Columbia alumnus, an engineering major for undergrad with a journalism master degree, both from Columbia. He even got me a google email account with my name on it when it was still unknown to many people that gmail was in operation. We visited his home at HKU's staff dormitory on Sasoon Road. He had a wife from Wall Street Journal Asia. Andrew Lih himself initiated this thing called wikipedia as a digital marketing expert. We all knew what it was now but back then it was just starting to the garner attention of general public.

It was a very rewarding experience. I did a 100,000 word research for Professor Gene Mustain about the hype of media coverage during SARS outbreak and translated the problems of the taxi industry in China for 錢鋼 who wrote the article 唐山大地震 that had since become every Hong Kong student's required reading. 錢鋼 gave me a copy of his written work 大清留美幼童 that had yet to publish at the time. I worked with a year 4 intern Bryan that summer and he got into Columbia's EELAC department as a phd student the year after but we never really kept in touch or saw each other again after that summer internship. I got to visit TVB's anchor desk and SCMP's office in Hong Kong. During my site visit at TVB's anchor desk, I asked the manager specifically if they would consider hiring me for an anchor's role but I was rejected right away. He said my Cantonese was not good enough. Whatever, I I always wanted to be a DJ not anchor anyways because I didn't like to show my face.

I was interviewed by Shing Po's journalist, together with other interns including 卓麗鳳 (Li-fung Cho), Ivan and Vanessa Chin from the United States. The reporter kept saying that they needed a 硬照 model for their food column and asked if I was interested. Urgh, I thanked her for the invitation and said yes, and then 敷衍 her and told her I really wanted to work in media myself too, while discovering that I could not even read an anchor's script that summer. I thought that the pay was too low and the workload was too much as a paparazzi and that you could only become a news reporter or editor with a journalist degree. Sometimes, my friends knew me better than myself. I had to thank Ivan's help and guidance.

Ivan and I lived in the same block at LPCUWC. We had the same tutor, we took the same classes, with the same teachers and we had the same academic interests in biology and chemistry with the same intended major in pre-med and biomedical engineering. Our profiles were like identical twins because I just tagged along all the activities and competitions he joined, so we had a non-competitive pact meaning that I would never apply to the colleges he applied to, aka Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Cal Tech, etc. And I was right; we both ended up in our target schools. I got into Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Duke and UChicago and he got into Harvard, Cambridge, MIT, and almost all the schools he applied to with Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund. I wouldn't know how he got all the information about the various extra-curricular programs and scholarship resources in Hong Kong; I needed to build my resume with awards and accolades the most because my application form for LPCUWC was ninety percent blank. I had nothing to write about in terms of extra-curricular activities; I recognized that it would be a problem if I wanted to apply for the schools in the states (even for the non Ivies) unless I would consider going to Foothill De Anza Community College where they wouldn't even look at my SATs.