Perspective

Today, we had a picnic in the park near CICAMS instead of the weekly meeting. It was actually very fun, with yummy food...though one of the items someone brought was pre-packaged dog meat.

Anyways, I was talking to a past Fogarty about Tianjin, a city that Alison and I might go to this weekend as it's 40 minutes away by bullet train, and supposedly is a fun day trip (it comes highly recommended by all four of our non-Fogarty friends in Beijing hahaha). During the conversation, I was stunned by the difference of perspective:

Hao: I have to go to Tianjin this weekend.
Me: Have to? Do you not like it? We were thinking of going there Sunday.
Hao: I don't really like it. I mean, there's nothing to do. It's so small.
Me: Small? I thought it had over 7 million people?
Hao: Yea. It does. Way too small.

So apparently, a city that is slightly smaller than the biggest city in US (our superstar metropolis, NYC, with 8+ million people in all 5 boroughs!) is too small to have anything fun to do.

Insane, right?