I've been updating this blog extremely seldomly, far off my China pace. I owe this to a combination of less interesting cultural encounters, schoolwork, and the fact that no one actually reads this blog. But hopefully these next posts will be special, cause it's been a rather eventful week plus and bring an audience back.
I think I'll start with the Monday after Galway (two Mondays ago) when I started Karate. This has been a goal of mine for a while I guess - I've often said that if I could redo my life, I'd learn Kung Fu at an early age. The response I usually get is, "Is that all you'd redo? Really?" Well to all yall haters out there, I've actually picked up Karate now and I will come back and kick all yalls asses in. Actually I think I'm pretty terrible so far because Karate takes a balance and coordination that I kinda lack. Also my ankle is still giving me problems and I can't properly perform a few exercises. I wish I was learning Kung Fu, a Chinese art used by baller people like Wong Fei Hong and my 2nd cousin, as opposed to Karate, which is Japanese and used by people like Sean Connery. Right now I can't tell the difference, all I know is how to throw a punch and block one, all in slow motion.
On Tuesday nights, Ultimate practice has started up and I've quickly blended into this team. From a neutral perspective though, I'd have to say this team's really pretty bad especially in terms of organization, with practices fully incorporating brand new players. That's always one of the problems with Ultimate, because while the need to recruit and train new players is crucial, they can really slow down the development of the veterans and thus the A team as a whole. It seems here that the veterans, a few of whom are really quite good, play pickup on their own and don't actually try to improve at the team practices. The captain Dave is particularly sick - while playing pick up with him, he would burn his man deep and then actually catch the frisbee by spinning it on his finger. On the last point we played, he received a pass a few feet from the end zone and successfully macked it to an open teammate in the end zone. While the "purists" will scoff at these freestyle antics, I thought it was freaking sweet. I haven't sprinted yet, and on my ankle it's hard to even pivot. I've been point-blocked twice in play already, but during the scrimmage, I just took the pull and put a forehand 70 yards deep before anyone marked up on defense and a teammate caught it for a score. I think my forehand's gotten even stronger since the end of sophomore year. Btw, getting back from these late night sports practices sucks. Ultimate ends at 10 and the buses run so infrequently that it takes me over an hour to get home.
Friday night, my roommates Jason, Chad and his friend Pat and I all went out to the bars. We found out after quite a few drinks that Jason had just gotten a job offer from JP Morgan (amidst the financial free falls) in Boston. We each proceeded to buy him a drink, and when we tried to enter another bar, the bouncer actually stopped him saying he was too drunk. After extensive debate with the bouncer, we stumbled to another bar where this creepy 40 year old woman started hitting on us, and Jason entertained her with a dance. It was possibly the funniest dance I had ever seen and I laughed so hard that I'm no longer allowed in that bar. The scary thing is that I only made up that last part. Jason was hungover until 4pm the next day, and as hilarious as he is when he's drunk, he might be just as funny hungover.
I got to the Garda at 9:15am on Tuesday and finally got a ticket - I was #304, and the 234th in queue. I got out, grabbed breakfast, walked miles down the canal and still couldn't see the ocean, came back and waited another 4 hours. I chilled inside the bureau for a while, observing immigration at its finest. The country really was overworked by the amount of immigration they've been receiving, and I think that this one building in Dublin services the entire country. I saw passports from the UAE, Pakistan, Brazil, China, Malaysia, everywhere but the EU. After a lot of reading, iPod listening and occasionally talking to random Chinese people that I could find, I was called sometime after 5pm. I had all my papers with me and the process went by quickly, and amazingly the official waived my 150 euro charge because he said I was only here for 1 semester - if I was here the whole year there'd be some payments but he was really nice and told me to spend it well. I realized afterwards that I could have just gone there in the morning, gotten my ticket, headed to school and come back in time, but I learned early on in my life that if you have an excuse to skip class, use it.
Frisbee practice was a joke that night, with scattered rain and shifty winds that just destroyed all the newbies throws (and most of the vets). My friend Thuy from down the street had joined the team and came with me on her first practice and absolutely loved it, although she was soo clueless. Yeah actually, if I was making a movie about her, I'd name it that and set it in California. Although maybe I should check copyright services first. I still couldn't run during practice and decided staunchly to sit out the scrimmages. However, the scrimmages were on this tiny field and still no one could score. On the very first point, there were at least 10 turnovers and finally I couldn't watch anymore and I played the next point. Not good for my ankle but I threw for the score.
Ok the party the next day was quite legit. It was held in a University function room, which I thought was odd, but you know with the 18 drinking age, drinking can be sponsored by the university. So we really just destroyed a room that might be used as a classroom the next day. While they only had cider there, cider can get you drunk well enough and we played drinking games for several hours. Actually the first game that got going was Flip Cup, introduced to the Irish by yours truly and they seemed to really like it. Nearly all the Irish were unfamiliar with the game although some had heard of it. They were all aware of Beirut/Beer Pong but thought it sucked cause it involves relatively little drinking. Fair point. Moving on, we poured cider into Frisbees and started chugging with straws, 2 to a disc. I gotta admit I just couldn't do it. Although for initiation in the States nearly everyone has to drink a disc of beer, I was too full by this point and came nowhere close. I stepped up the plate and completely whiffed. Afterwards, we went downstairs to the student pub where we took a shot of vodka and bought a pint of beer, and it was good times all over. This kid Sean from Texas turned 21 that day and so we all were happy and bought him drinks. Then we caught the public bus down to city centre and basically turned the upstairs of a Dublin doubledecker into a party bus. Our captain Dave was chanting these call-and-responses that were just absurdly dirty and I wish I could remember them. One kid Shane actually passed out on the bus but somehow rallied into the club. At the club I splurged on another few drinks and danced and whatnot, it was a pretty typical club experience. I was going to catch a cab back with Thuy, but she was waylaid by a tall Irishman.
That was Wednesday. It was a lot of fun. Thursday was a different story altogether. Thursday quite possibly the most hectic day of my life....
Next up: London
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