Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

Ha Long Bay, Vietnam

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Pulau Bintan, Indonesia

Cao Dai Temple, Vietnam

Geylang, Singapore

Recently I had to turn in a poster presentation for a geography class at Hong Kong University. At first I thought it would be the same as in elementary and middle school, when I would buy a cardboard poster from Office Depot, stick on a few pages and graphics and call it a day. However, at HKU the professor wanted me to finish and print out the paper from the computer! I had never done this before but after doing some research and help from my classmates I pulled everything together. Here are some helpful tips if you want to print a poster using Microsoft Powerpoint ( for those that are skilled with Photoshop, your probably much more knowledgeable than just making a poster).

1. Know your poster size. i had to print out and do an A1 poster ( which is used quite commonly in Asia) which was quite confusing at first. Simply google up poster size on wikipedia and record the necessary data. You find the chart here.

2. Open Powerpoint and go throughFile->Page Setup. Under Page Setup add in the specified dimensions. Landscape makes your poster wider while portrait makes your poster longer.

3. Now you have your A1 Poster. You can know find templates to setup your project or you can just start from scratch. Something helpful for geography posters is to take charts or tables and rip them onto the poster. On a PDF file, simply go to Tools->Select and Zoom-> Snapshot. Just highlight the area and you can copy and paste it into a Word or Powerpoint file.

4. After you finish, you have to have a special printer or a print shop to print it out.

Hope these hints help!

Tsim Sha Tsui overlooking Victoria Harbor and the famous Hong Kong skyline

bustling food stalls and markets near Temple Street

Hong Kong is commonly seen as a sprawling metropolis dominated by tall skyscrapers and other buildings. But I was pleasantly suprised that there were many well kept trails around Hong Kong. Some, in fact, are on Hong Kong Island itself! Hong Kong has suprisingly rugged trails tucked into its hills and mountains just a stone throw away from the city. Sai Kung can be found to the East of Kowloon, Lantau has great trails and Hong Kong Island has a great hike on the Dragon’s Back overlooking Shek O and Tai Long Wan. The tallest mountain in Hong Kong, Tai Mo Shan, has a paved road up for those who prefer a less rugged trail for hiking.

The best web site to get you started would be Nature Touch, which grades hikes from a scale from 1 to 4 and divides hikes into the different Hong Kong islands. I have accomplished only one level 4 hike and it is doable but quite tough. Each hike has its own descriptions and directions to get there, all layed out in an excellent format.

Hikes that I have done and recommend-

1. Hike from HKU to Victoria’s Peak- quite simple, just take the trail up past Run Run Shaw. After a pleasant 1 hour hike past a small waterfall you will see the wonderul view from the Peak.

2. Sai Kung Hike to Tai Long Wan- this hike is actually quite tricky for me at first as there is more than one Tai Long Wan (Deep Wave Bay) in Hong Kong. This hike involves a speedboat, strenuous hiking and a beautiful beach, possibly one of the nicest in Hong Kong.

3. Dragon’s Back near Shek O- This hike starts at a large cemetery, but soon enough your riding up and down the mountains overlooking panoramic views of the ocean. Easily accessible on Hong Kong Island.

Here are some pictures of one of the hikes i did on the Lantau Trail- (Sunset Peak)

on a hill in the background

Valerie posing near the top of Sunset Peak, the third tallest mountain in Hong Kong. Notice the thick fog shrouding the background

Overlooking the hike to Lantau Peak, the 2nd tallest mountain in Hong Kong

Giant spider

on the bus in Macau

(the same goes with the great friends I made in Singapore and Taiwan, you know who you guys are!)

Mandarin Chinese is the most spoken language in the world and is an increasingly useful asset to pick up. Although I had taken 10 years of Chinese Saturday schools and a year of Chinese at UCLA, my writing and reading skills are still subpar.  When I worked at the Taiwan Think Tank, there was an initial struggle of trying to translate policy papers, polls and editorials from Chinese into English. My goal is to improve my Chinese enough so that I can read a newspaper and write with strong proficiency. Here are some steps outlying how to improve one’s Chinese ( assuming one already has a background in Mandarin Chinese).

1. Use Xuezhongwen.com- This is an excellent free online resource that allows one to directly copy and paste Chinese sentences and break them down and translate them into Chinese. Note that the translation will not create a coherent word for word translation such as those found from Google Translator or Babelfish. Instead, one can use the translated pinyin and to understand the words that make up the sentence. I find this helpful in understanding new terms that I commonly see but have never fully learned. This website can also function as a dictionary for Chinese-English translations and vice versa.

Coupled with websites that have Chinese articles such as Yahoo! Taiwan Xuezhongwen becomes a powerful resource. One would look up interesting articles on any subject- politics, sports, etc. in Chinese and try to read it over and skip words that cannot be understood. Afterwards, copy and paste the entire section into the translator and look over those offending words. Write them down and memorize them so that they won’t be forgotten next time. With due time there should be a sharp increase in Chinese reading proficiency.

Another great way to learn Chinese is to watch soap operas online. By listening to collaquial Chinese one can increase speaking fluency. A great site for Chinese/Taiwanese dramas and movies can be found in Crunchyroll or Mysoju.

Finally, one last option is to study abroad or go to a country that uses Mandarin Chinese and learn it there! By forcing yourself to use it everyday your Chinese will improve in no time.

The group eating inside a hole in a wall for some home cooked Filipino food

Sunset on White Beach

Poi performers on the beach. They were especially good.

Parasailing!

ATV riding up to Mt. Loho

Brian poses in the cockpit of our propeller plane

our snorkeling boat for 4 hours

If I ever had the chance I would definitely go back to Boracay Island in the future.

I will list the steps I used to plan for this trip. If anyone has advice or anything to add, please feel free to comment! The first thing I tried to nail down was transportation. With a group of 11 people, I wasn’t too comfortable on just “winging” it when I get there. After scouring online websites for domestic carriers, I finally decided on my itinerary. I was to fly Tiger Airways ( a trusted budget airline based in Singapore) from Macau to Clark. An important point to note is that many if not all of the budget airlines stay away from Hong Kong Airport because of the exorbitant taxes charged there. Instead, flying through Shenzhen or Macau would be preferable (accounting for the ferry costs to and back from Macau). From Clark we were to take a bus to Manila. From Manila we would take a small propeller airplane via PAL Express to Caticlan. From Caticlan we would take the Jetty to Boracay Island. Coming back, we would take a direct flight back to Clark through SEAIR. Whew! To top it off, each time someone ordered a ticket prices would jump up, meaning some of us had to take different flights to lower costs.

After transportation comes living. There are many great websites that offer cheap and clean hostels that go as little as 5 dollars per person! Some sites I used include Hostelworld, Hostelbookers and Directrooms for places in Asia. I tend to look for cheap rooms ( under 10 USD per person) and a high approval rating from past experiences. During this trip I stayed at the Best Western La Corona in Ermita for 20 USD ( not exactly budget but you get what you pay for around Manila), Frendz Hostel in Boracay Island for 8 USD and Ponderosa Inn in Clark for 5 USD. I highly recommend all of them as all were clean, staff were courteous and their advertising met my expectations.

Afterwards I plan what activities I would want to do or tourist sites to see at our travel destinations. I first start out with Wikitravel, a branch of Wikipedia that focuses solely on traveling. After familiarizing myself with the surrounding area, I look into the Tripadvisor forums to see where other people like to eat, sleep and have fun in the Philippines. Again, instead of reading an outdated guide book I prefer other people’s insights and experiences and to make my judgements from there. However, one can still get Lonely Planet guidebooks at the nearest bookstore as their highly entertaining to read and are quite helpful as well.

Here are some pictures from my trip-

Sunrise in Ermita, Manila

Me in front of the PAL Express Propeller Airplane in Caticlan

White Beach, Boracay Island. Simply Paradise.

Sitting by the Palm Trees

The girls enjoying the sand and warm waters

When we first arrived to White Beach, I felt like I was directly thrusted into a Corona commercial. We went during the end of low season so we basically had a huge expanse of beach to ourselves. White ripples of sand formed in the pristine waters as small sailboats glided peacefully in the horizon. The water was beautiful with many different shades of blue colored like a pastel painting.  For someone that has never been to the beaches of Hawaii or the Caribbean, I easily understood why Boracay Island was known as the “Jewel of the Philippines”.

I’ll add in more photos in my next post.

The first thing in playing with stocks is to gain experience. For example, last year when I had some free time I would go to Borders and read up on some stock books. However, my friend told me that while these books are great to dip your feet in the water, following them word for word is a recipe for disaster. Instead, make your own game plan and test to see if it works.

A great way to start doing that is to first “ghost trade”, or trade without using real money. Ghost trading simulates how stocks are being traded by using real information in the current financial markets. A great site recommended to me is Virtual Stock Exchange. Joining up is totally free and you can even join my stock game to compare how your stocks are doing with other people! Stock games are better for short-term investments as long-term stocks would require one to sit on it for a couple of years. Some people have told me that playing in the current volatile market would skew my data but all I want to do now is gain experience regardless of whether it is a bull or bear market.

-Travelingbruin