Welcoming All New Students

Hey Everyone,

Today, I attended Hong Kong University's Inauguration Ceremony for New Students. The ceremony was the first formal University gathering for new incoming students, freshmen and graduates. We had the opportunity to meet the Vice-Chancellor, senior academics, alumni bodies and the President of HKUSU. During the ceremony, students were invited to put on HKU's traditional Green Gown, Following the ceremony, tea receptions with respective faculties allowed for professors and student to interact with one another.

This sounds all peachy right?

Inauguration Pamphlet left on everyone's seat

The celebration started at 10 am. I woke up earlier than usual, by summer standards of course, and got dressed. I was debating between a grey top and black pencil skirt but changed my mind at last minute to sport a blurple (blue and purple) coloured dress and thick belt. The invitation had indicated "formal" attire, so I grabbed my nude heels and stuffed them in my purse. I figured that I'd switch into them after hiking up the stairs needed to get to the University campus. When I arrived at 9:15am, I went to look for the lecture hall. It was not located on the map! How convenient, I thought to myself, at least I'm here early!

As I meandered my way through campus, I had gut feeling that something wasn't right. There were plenty of people around... but a lot of them we wearing black skirts, and white tops! "Uh-oh!" I thought to myself... please don't tell me formal wear meant business attire: white blouse and black bottoms...

To my horror, almost everyone
was wearing the same outfit!

The night before, I had spoken to my friend back in Winnipeg about "formal" attire. We wondered what that had meant? I mean, did formal wear mean "evening wear" or just dress up more, like a Sunday best? The ceremony was in the middle of the day right? Haha, boy was I wrong! Business attire! Yay... and here I was in a obviously very blue dress, at least I brought the heels and pulled off formal. Sure, I was fine walking in, and sitting down, but secretly I was cursing whoever wrote that lovely invitation... they should have just written, "Wear a white blouse, and black slacks or a skirt... otherwise people WILL stare at you!"

And yes, they do stare...

Image by C.Wong

Other than being one of the handful of people (aka foreigners) that didn't get the white blouse, black bottom memo, the celebration was actually quite enjoyable. I met a few of the professors from my faculty as well as was introduced to a couple other M.Arch students. Everyone was very friendly, and very interesting to talk to. Not a bad morning after all.

Well, after this experience, now I know. Their version of formal attire is a white blouse, and a black bottoms... I wonder if I would have felt out of place had I worn my first choice a grey blouse and my pencil skirt.... hmm... Probably!

Note to self:

Formal = business attire (white top and black bottoms)

Since I have no white blouses... looks like I'm going shopping!