Politics and Life: June 26-30

Australian politics is something that is generally regarded as particularly tedious. I suppose we see it as more of a joke than anything else, and it's a sign of either an amazingly inept cohort of representatives or, more likely, a sense of complacency in the general populous. Really, we don't know how lucky we are to have Australian politics.

I've learned a lot over the past week just talking to the local students about their thoughts on Hong Kong politics. I learned that while everybody is entitled to a vote, only half of the representative house is comprised of this general, public vote. The other half is reserved for a 'professional' vote, where businessmen and women or 'people of influence' (read: people with money and people who benefit from having a government closely tied to money-making China) are entitled to more than one vote. One student told me that a woman disclosed to the media that she was able to vote something like forty seven times. So there are two halves to the House - one comprised of a legitimate vote and the other as a shadow house. If a bill is to come into law, it must pass both houses. I can guess that you see the problem with this system.

Current issues in Hong Kong stem primarily from a concern over basic housing. A twenty square metre apartment in a salubrious suburb (say, around Mong Kok or Yau Ma Tei) can cost upwards of four hundred thousand AUD (or 3 million HKD). Most people in basic retail earn close to eighty thousand Hong Kong dollars in a year. While the basic needs of everyday people fall to the wayside, billionaire moguls holding monopolies over property and retail, like Mr. Li (EDIT: Not Mr. Lau, sorry for that error), dominate the capitalist structure of Hong Kong. Mr. Li's name seems to rouse much contempt on the streets. He owns a grand scale of property, business and his son holds HK's largest tel-co, PCCW, (I believe another son owns rival company 3; no conflict of interest there, nonono...) (EDIT: Mr. Li is actually a noted philanthropist, donating billions worldwide to both China, disaster relief and research). I suppose this illustrates Kong Kong's wealth gap, the extremes of hyper-capitalism.
 
Perhaps the most twisted thing I heard from a group of students was the government's influence on everyday life. Business here is strictly linked in with China - what is good for business is often good for China, and the opposite is true. I guess this boils down to something like this: a friend said to me that she's planning on attending some of the mass protests in the city tomorrow, but she's afraid that if the media and government catch her face and identify her, all hopes of a government job (the professional, well paid jobs) evaporate.

(EDIT) Oh, and there's something I forgot to mention. There are shops in the Central district that will refuse to sell their wares to the HK populous. These stores offer expensive wares, jewelry and fashion, and will only sell to mainlanders with bags of cash. National Geographic ran a recent article (June 2012) that told a story of a mainlander who walked into a Central store with money in hand and yelled, 'Take me to your most expensive items.' Naturally, Hong Konger's are pretty pissed off with this.

And this is a democracy. When I compare it to the Australian political system, I feel a sense of frustration and great sadness for the people of Hong Kong. At the same time, I'm immensely grateful that I can live in a country where I can vote for who I like and know that there's no shadow cabinet controlling the passage of law, or that Julia Gillard isn't kowtowing to the Premier or any other major power (even though we're still too comfortable with jumping into bed with America, we still like to be independent).

So there's a protest tomorrow. It marks Hong Kong's 15th anniversary of the handing over of power from British rule to Chinese rule. Some three hundred thousand are expected to turn out to voice their anger at the cost of property, at the visiting Premier Hu Jintao, at the CEO of HK, at the suspicious deaths of anti-corruption activists in the mainland...It seems anti-mainland sentiment is bubbling up.

I'll be attending too, to take photos and see what it's like to witness people raising their collective voice in protest for something that I take for granted.

http://www.amnesty.org.hk/html/node/10592
http://hk.asia-city.com/events/news/hong-kong-prepares-record-july-1-protest

Labs and Typhoons: June 29

This might be a good opportunity to write a little about my work here in HK. My labwork revolves around two areas: a protein called RuBisCo, and toxicity of heavy metals using algal colonies as bioassay models. English: RuBisCo is an enzyme found in most plants, essential for freeing up trapped carbon for use in carbon dioxide. If you cast your minds back to high school, you'll remember CO2 is essential for plant growth via photosynthesis. RuBisCo is the world's slowest enzyme, converting three molecules per second (a normal enzyme can push out tens of thousands of molecules per second). Because the protein is so slow and yet so crucial for plant function, plants have to make a hell of a lot of RuBisCo to work and their total protein bulk comes from RuBisCO (40% total, I think?). 

So, I'm working on cloning the RuBisCo large and small subunits for study and I'm also working on the effect of heavy metals (like copper) on the growth rate of algal colonies.

Here's what a lab in Hong Kong looks like:

My desk is towards the end, just past those pot plants on the left shelf.

I'm not sure if these are for somebody's project or just ornamental. There's a girl who grows these plants and they cover her desk and the surrounding shelf area.

Messy, but homely.

A fridge full of stock algae samples. Mine are somewhere in there!

Algae, exciting stuff!

Central corridor. Labs are on both sides, with office cubes running parallel.

Zebra-Fish, the ubiquitous animal model.

One of the three areas I call home.

Looking out one of the blue windows in that crazy building I showed you in my first post. This is looking out from one of the parallel corridors that flank the labs. 

How cool are these protein crystals! This is a poster on one of the doors.

Everything feels familiar in these labs. I guess science is the same no matter which country you're in. Ovens, autoclave machine, PCR machines, fridges full of cells and enzymes, ovens...it's all here.

I should grab lunch now before I head back to work, but another thing I might mention:

Yeah, there's a severe storm heading to Hong Kong tomorrow with winds of...85km/h, so that should be fun! There's a university-wide (and city-wide, I believe) typhoon warning system. Standard protocol is to head inside and stay inside until the storm passes. I just spoke with a friend in the labs; it's going to be a category 9 storm, meaning that everybody usually stays home and work/school are cancelled! There goes any plans for Saturday (and also, perhaps, for any July 1st protests marked for Sunday to voice anger against the government/visiting Premier). More on that later, though.

Food: June 26-27

There's something delightfully wrong about a full plate of rice and meat that costs only $2AU on campus. There's also something delightfully wrong about a fried chicken's head:

(nobody touched it)

Two nights ago, the summer school students attended a rather fancy, ten course seafood dinner replete with the staple of all Chinese meals: sweet and sour pork and too many dishes with corn. Even though I wasn't meant to be there (I'm not an ISS student, technically, so I had to pay up front), much fun was had by all, except when the chicken head came out! The restaurant was in Tsuen Wan, which is above Kowloon and slightly to the West. Google-map it!

Food on the campus itself ranges from bearable to outright strange. As I mentioned before, everything is dirt, dirt cheap. A burger costs close to $2, a good noodle soup: $3, a nice coffee...does not exist. The kitchen staff use this horrible condensed milk with all tea and coffee, which gives the drink a consistency like sludge. Not a vacation for the taste buds, I can assure you.

But then there's genuinely nice food:

Like this mango pancake with cream and mango, and a side of blueberry icecream

Or this Vietnamese prawn dish I had last night

Or this Sushi platter I had last night (I had two dinners. After bumping into a group of ISS students in Mong Kok, I decided to tag along. Don't worry, Jono, Hukuya is better!)

And these cotton candy bunnies, in the same restaurant that served the chicken head.

And genuinely nice company also helps:

Dinner last night

Desert the night before, after our ten course meal.

Tomorrow, I'll show you around the labs. For now, I'm about to head into the City in search for the perfect chicken's head.

Arrival: June 24-25

Hong Kong has to be one of my favourite places on Earth, so to have another change to go back and actually live in the city...it's an amazing opportunity. I love the culture, the polished, controlled grit of the buildings, the amazing MTR service, the technology, the people. It's a surreal mix of Modernity and Western lifestyles, yet unique within the Asian region with Japanese pop culture, Canto culture and a little bit of everything else splashed together. I love it, wholeheartedly.

A little while ago I decided that, between semesters, I should probably try and get an internship for my Advanced Biology course. One idea stuck in my mind. Last year, I went to Hong Kong as part of a little team of undergraduate researchers to present a group talk at iGEM. This bio-engineering competition took place at HKUST, on the Eastern side of Hong Kong. One morning, I met a professor from CUHK on our bus trip to HKUST (CUHK is a university right next to the hotel we stayed in). So, when I was deciding where to do an internship this year, I thought I might as well contact this same professor and see if anything could be organised. One thing lead to another, and here I am at CUHK, studying in the bio/biochem labs.

First, I had to actually get to HK. The weeks leading up to my departure were a blurry mess, leaving me with the strange impression that I wasn't actually heading overseas, despite having to arrange visas and flights between three exams and work. It's hard to describe the feeling; I felt as if all the preparation was ephemeral, and yet Dad, MQ and myself put so much effort into the process. In any case, one look at the plane sitting neatly outside the airport gate with its wings gleaming in the chill, ten degree morning brought home the fact that I was leaving for a full six weeks. And it was a good feeling.

On the flight I met a girl studying hospitality/management at UWS, flying to Lebanon via Dubai via HK. I didn't envy her 24+ hour flight time (she had 12 hours of stopover time in total!). The flight was a pretty standard affair: watched a movie with Denzel Washington in it (mandatory), and a movie about Sarah Palin called Game Change that was insightful, quite sobering and a little scary.

So, Hong Kong. Well, if you do quick calculation of the pictures to words ratio (P:W) and their relative worth...you know the metaphor. I do enjoy my words, but I also enjoy my pictures! I think it'd be nice if I show you what my Sunday night and Monday morning looked like:

This is the region surrounding CUHK, my university. I thought the moody clouds, the humidity, the mountains and the city worked so well together. It was a beautiful sight.

The view from my room!

Some of the other summer school students haven't lucked out view-wise. A girl I spoke to said her window opens out on bamboo scaffolding.

Dinner! So that's (clockwise) a rice pizza, shaved ice with mango syrup and icecream and a display desert (there was a whole cabinet full of them!) 

From the bottom of the University, this building really stands out! See those green windows? I didn't know it at the time, but that is where my labs are located, and where I am writing this blog post! It's certainly a very colourful science centre!

And this is Daisy Li hall, part of New Asia college. I live on the second floor in the room furthest to the right. Be jealous, yes please do.

Ok, I think that's all I'll do for now. I'll write another post soon about what I did yesterday evening, what work I'm actually doing in CUHK, what the university is like etc...