So my Tuesdays end up being extremely light, which gives me a lot of time to think about my time in Hong Kong. The one idea that has been strong in my mind recently is the sheer amount of humidity in Hong Kong, even though it is still considered Winter here. My entire sight of the bay that come right up to the edge of the the mountainside campus of HKUST is covered with a thick fog that is making everything wet. Quite inconvenient!
This humidity starts making me notice many of the engineering decisions that are made in Hong Kong. Tiles are often used to create walkways on campus, which I found quite confusing as it became extremely slippery and visibly dirty whenever it gets wet. What I found was that tiles were used because of the humidity because it would degrade slower than cement and is easier to replace.
Similarly, all of the windows are able to open ajar in almost every building I have been in. I found that very confusing as I would think that they would want to keep the humidity out. After seeing how much moisture accumulates in building even with climate control, I am quite glad they can open...
That being said, finding fellow full-time engineers to actually be hard in academic Hong Kong. I actually found out that engineering is not as popular in Hong Kong. Because Hong Kong is the financial center of the world, there are many high paying jobs in the financial sector. So much, that it is more cost effective for Hong Kong to import its engineers, making the pay for engineers based in Hong Kong to be undesirable by most developed nation's standards.
I would say that this conclusion has a large impression for me as an developing engineer. The lack of desirability of engineering in Hong Kong has left the quality of engineers in its universities lower than I expected. Even though HKUST is renown for its engineering in Hong Kong, I feel that its level might only be mid-ranged in the highest echelons of schools. There are many good labs in Hong Kong, but it is not quite to the scale in America, so I recommend searching elsewhere if you want to advance in engineering.