Name: Natari Mohammed
Blog #1
Student life.
It’s always interesting to learn about a new culture, to embark upon a social journey which not only educates you but surprises you with similarities and teaches you how to appreciate the differences and diversification. This mini “journey” lead me and my classmate Marc, a fellow freshman at Baruch, to the 11th floor – room 130 inside the Vertical building on Lexington Ave. I am not quite sure if there was a sign on the door which indicated the happenings that was taking place inside but we went and investigated nevertheless. As we entered the room, for the first 10 seconds, we seemed invisible to the congregation who were busy chatting away and devouring some unfamiliar cuisine.
Shortly after we were approach by an Asian guy who obviously recognized our unfamiliarity to the event, “welcome to the Hong Kong club, step in, join us, we don’t bite”, very ironic he should say that – as he chewed and swallowed the last piece of snack he had gotten from the free food counter meters away from us. The room was mostly female dominated, and filled with the ethnicity of Asians. When I consulted with a few of them to inquire their origin, none came directly from Hong Kong. Some were just embracing their ethnic background, some followed a friend and to my observation some followed their appetite.
Soon I met up with the President and Vice President of the organization, Rebecca and Derek. In our dialog we spoke about what type of club it was, “we are mostly a social club,” Rebecca mentioned, “we have some cemented members but weekly, at each meetings, we continue to see new faces. Derek reiterated the idea that Hong Kong club is a social club by listed a few events that one might want to partake in, such as: movie nights, general meeting, Contanese language class. I even learn a few contanese language myself. But the most interesting of them all is the big singing competition which is called “Sing Kong” which is slated to happen sometime in April, I am looking forward to that. For the most part it was a recline environment – quite comfortable despite the cultural differences, and I rather enjoyed the background music by Jay Chou, Chinese artist that I had never heard before, was entertaining.
