E: Examiner

S: Student

E: Alright, right now, in this first part, I'd like to ask you some questions about yourself. Let's talk about what you do. Are you a student? 

S: Yes. So I'm a student at the Education University of Hong Kong. I'm enrolled in double major program where I study language studies and education. 

E: What will you do with your degree after you’ve finished? 

S: That is an interesting question because I'm kind of caught between either pursuing the teaching career or maybe going for higher education as a master's degree, but I'm a little caught between that at the moment so I’m not entirely sure. 

E: All right, let's talk about free time activities. What do you like to do in your free time? 

S: So I like to read in my free time. I also, since I'm not originally from Hong Kong, I really enjoy the time video chatting with my friends who’re spread across the world. So usually, I have a camera on somewhere at some point. 

E: Do you prefer to spend most of your free time indoors or outdoors? 

S: I prefer a balance of both. So, some days I want to stay in with the book. Other days I desperately need to meet other people and beyond interacting. So I would say it's not specifically where I prefer one to the other. 

E: What did you like to do in your free time when you were a child?  

S: I liked to play with blocks. That was a minor obsession of mine, so be it LEGOs or just Jenga blocks, then I would turn into dominoes. And I hated dolls and Barbies, only blocks which was … 

E: Why? 

S: I think it was the build ability aspect of it. So before I wanted to be a teacher, I actually was thinking of pursuing a career in software engineering. And the reason for that is, like, again, you create something, something is a visible product of yours. So I feel like that started pretty young. 

E: What do you plan to do in your free time this weekend? 

S: This weekend I plan to study in my free time. Well, if you call it free time study. It's mid-term week, so a lot of quizzes and assessments. I don't think I have free time this weekend. 

E: Let's talk about travel. Do you like to travel? 

S: I love to travel. You know, I feel being in a non-native country of mine has opened up the borders to a lot many more. This summer, actually, I was on exchange when the pandemic happened. And so I was kind of stuck in Europe for that six months and in June, the borders open to Europe. So I was able to move around a little bit. And that kind of fed into a little bit of an addiction, I feel. 

E: Where do tourists like to go in your country? 

S: Tourists do not like to go to my country. So, a little bit of context, I'm originally from Pakistan. There is … the number of major metropolitan cities, you can count on your hand. And so if I were to assume, I would assume they would go to the bigger cities and stay in the maybe richer areas. But if I were to recommend, the north of our country is beautiful landscape. It's in the mountains and its wide-open fields that it plateaus down and there's beautiful snowfall. And there's wonderful resorts, if anybody does want to visit. Yeah, just to get away from it all. 

E: Is traveling abroad popular in your country? 

S: Very popular. So as a developing country, there's a lot of resources that aren't available domestically. So me and people like me who want to pursue specific careers and specific degrees, but no, there's no University in Pakistan who will offer that or a degree that won't really do anything for them do travel abroad for education and then further … sometimes for career purposes, they decide to remain abroad. It's actually one of the bigger problems in our countries of brain drain, where the more qualified individuals are no longer choosing to stay behind. So I definitely see that as … it definitely exacerbates the class disparity … what's happening there. 

E: Where would you like to travel to in the future? 

S: I don't think we have time. Everywhere, anywhere, any country I can name. But I'm more interested these days in traveling around East Asia, since I feel like I have, OK, I've seen Hong Kong, and that is my exposure to East Asian culture. But what is Japan like, what is Taiwan like, I don't know. And I really like to.