Was sagst du? 樣樣都德

September marks the beginning of the academic year in Hong Kong – as well as the beginning of many new things. 九月是新學年開始，有一番新「氣象」。 At the start of the month a new Mainland student came to join the lab. He originates from Shanxi province and has studied in Tsinghua University before. It was his first few days in Hong Kong, and he was already greeted by some typical local weather: continuous rainfall for days with heavy downpours from time to time. He asked me how there could be so much rain in Hong Kong, and honestly I haven’t experienced this for a long time myself either! 月初實驗室有個新來的國內學生，山西人但在清華唸過書，他剛到港，又遇上連續幾天連綿下雨，偶然還傾盆而下，叫他納悶，問香港怎麼會有下不完的雨？說實話，這樣大雨我也好久沒經歷過了！ One day another colleague of mine and I took him to lunch,. The colleague suggested to him a dish of beef briskets and shrimp wontons with dry noodles (specifically for mixing the noodles with the sauces of the accompanying food) so that he could try a few typical examples of Cantonese cooking all at once. The student was cur...

It’s quite a funny feeling living in my first home again after 20 years’ of absence; it’s a mix of familiar and new experiences, and those new experiences can be ‘fascinating but sometimes bizarre’ as quoted from an interview that I read from a newspaper last Sunday. After all I’ve spent most of my life in Western societies! 回到離開了二十年的家定居，既覺熟悉也有點新奇，那種新奇也可上星期日前在報章一篇訪問中那句 fascinating but sometimes bizarre （引人入勝卻奇異）來形容——畢竟我在西方社會浸淫太久了！ Then let me begin from my experiences shopping in the pharmacies, occasionally still called dispensaries here in Hong Kong. 那就先從我到藥房（藥店）購物的遭遇說起吧！ I arrived in the bright hot days at the end of July. Having lived in Australia for ages, sunny summer days naturally reminded me of sunscreen lotion. I decided to buy a couple of bottles from a local small shopping centre as I didn’t bring any with me. The shopping centre had two pharmacy chain stores and 4 smaller independent pharmacies. I first poked my head into those smaller pharmacies, and they all had ...