My xkcd

Random trivia

I just saw that Wikipedia news stated that China announced the discovery of the tomb of Cao Cao. This is probably not relevant to anybody, but when I was teaching English in Beijing, I played a variation of 20 questions and Botticelli with my coworkers as an "exercise." Basically I wrote down the name of someone famous that we would all know on a card, and gave the card to someone to have as their person. Its very interesting to see what the pool of known figures is between you and a person raised on the other side of the Earth, and I guess I was surprised by how small the pool was. At the time, in the summer of '08, even Barack Obama was only known by like 75% of my coworkers. My favorite people to use ended up being people like David Beckham, Hilary Clinton, LeBron James, Mao Zedong, Kim Jung-Il, Thomas Edison, the Pope, Sun-Yat Sen, Pu Yi, Bruce Lee, etc.

Red Cliff was a popular movie at the time, a Chinese made film that crossed over to the American audience moderately well. It was about famous battles during the Three Kingdoms Era, and especially this famous general Cao Cao. So I had my coworkers explain these stories to me and started incorporating Cao Cao into my 20 questions game. There's my 2 cents. Now if only I was the hero in Slumdog Millionaire and went on a quiz show and was asked a question about Cao Cao for $1,000,000.

I have just come back from back to back trivia nights actually, the first at Johnny D's in Somerville, and tonight at Joshua Tree in Allston. They both use Stump Trivia, which I have learned is a game produced uniformly by a company and distributed to bars nationwide. So the questions are very professional and its organized quite well, and pretty different from Tombs Trivia. Either way, there are questions and you have to answer them. At Johnny D's, me and my Belmont Hill friends did pretty well for ourselves, but finished around the 30th percentile. The highlight of the night for me was getting "Valhalla" correct on a pseudo-guess, and then answering the question about what "female head of the Washington Post during the watergate scandal later ran a Fortune 500 company?" I didn't really know but I remember Katherine Graham, I believe from a Time Magazine article way back a decade ago, and guessed her and got it correct.

Tonight, it was just me and 2 other people. Somehow, our skills complemented each other enough for us to be in contention heading into the final round, when one of our trio had to leave to catch a train. So it was up to my friend Chris Jarrell and I. We were able to guess Ford Field for the location of the 2009 NCAA final four, and Jack Nicholson for the home of where Roman Polanski's sexual assault took place. Then in the final round, there were 2 questions where you wager an even number from 2-10. If you get it correct, you get that many points. If you get it wrong, you lose half that amount. The first question we didn't know and lost 2 points. The second question was what country assumed the presidency of the EU council after the Czech Republic in April of 2009? Well I took a course on the EU while studying abroad in the EU, went to most of those countries, and saw President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic speak at Georgetown in October! And....I didn't know the answer. I knew that I had read it somewhere and could cross off a bunch of countries, say Portugal and the UK, but I didn't know. Chris was thinking France or Belgium and was desperate enough to try to call for help, but in a rash move I put Sweden down, wagered 10 points, and ran the question in before Chris could change it. Then I heard from someone that the answer was Belgium, and was like, ah fuck. Oh well. 5 minutes go by before the trivia presider, who in a bizarre coincidence was a former acquaintance Katie Pope, announces the answer: SWEDEN. I actually jumped up in the bar, it was kinda embarrassing.

Recursive behavior

Have you ever wondered where the word etymology comes from? And then did you think about how weird or ironic that was? I mean it's like defining a definition, I don't know what the best word to describe this phenomenon is but it's something recursive. For the record, etymology comes from Greek, etymos meaning true, and logos meaning word. Here are some other examples of this: (WARNING: Some of these have been rumored to tear a hole in the fabric of the universe)

1) http://www.google.com/webhp#hl=en&source=hp&q=google&aq=f&aqi=g10&oq=&fp=cbc2f75bf9d43a8f
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
3) Using an easy button to find an easy button.
4) Studying how to study.
5) Using a time machine to go back in time to create the first time machine.
6) Fixing a problem on a microscope by using another microscope.
7) Putting CROSSWORDANSWER as the answer in an Crossword. I know, where do I think of these?
8) Having a robot create robot copies of itself.
9) Drawing yourself drawing.
10) Giving out an award for the best award.
11) Philosophizing about philosophy.

EDIT: I guess the word I'm looking for is that these things are META.

Halfway Done with Senior Year

It's winter break and I'm home and want to blog. It's been another great year and I really feel the need to encapsulate it. First semester senior year started off a bit like first semester freshman year - except that we knew what we were doing. There was all the newfound excitement of being 21 in Georgetown, reuniting with previously abroad friends, and taking in the benefits that come with being the premier class on campus. This culminated in either Senior Dis-Orientation, a thoroughly enjoyable shitshowvaganza, or the seemingly never ending Halloween weekend. There was one point where classes seemed easy, people were optimistic about getting jobs, and every night seemed like a good night to go to Tombs. Then classes started getting hard, the crossword became an anchor weighing me down, lots of friends didn't find jobs, the Red Sox got eliminated and the year ended too quickly. Still though, I will remember it as a great semester that, though my 7th, involved a lot of firsts. Since I love making lists, here goes.

Among the firsts: going to AASA's Fall Ball, renting a car, getting dim sum in DC, going to Tombs Trivia, stealing flowers from NSO, visiting College Park, Outdoor Education trip (horseback riding), visiting old town Alexandria, going to a Chinese grocery market in Tyson Corner, tutored for cash, ran to the National Cathedral, sampling numerous restaurants, going to a Bill Simmons book signing, attending a dinner thrown by the Greek club, mopping up a floor of shit, getting a keg, waking up 10 minutes into a test, writing a crossword not for the Voice, being a food judge, and throwing a party (twice).

Overall it was a semester of senior leadership in Ultimate, continued Ramen consumption in pots, job applications, catching up with all the people I always got along well with but never got to hang out enough with, trying to get off campus, working on math homework with Maggie, Liz and Emmie, working on computer science homeworks with Emmie and Henry and bugging DJ, watching less sports, going to 21st birthdays at Tombs (at least 10), great ultimate parties, forgetting people's names, and Tombs Trivia.

It's been a great semester but not without its flaws. Like all times at college, I feel we can all get so caught up in our busy lives that we don't do the things we do agree are most important, but are more often luxuries we put aside. For me especially, I have a hard time doing things that are perpetually low priority, and as a result we didn't have cable for 3 months after we ordered it. In addition, this was a semester that I feel I really could have had all A's. I don't have my transcript yet but it probably won't be the flat 4.0 so that's less than ideal, but I'm also at a point at which grades aren't too big a deal.

So it wasn't a semester of crazy adventures and lots of traveling, but it was one of hanging with great friends. Other people really made this semester happen and it's made me realize how strange friendship really can be, how little we might really understand of it and how much we sometimes take it for granted.

Song Lyrics

Every year during exams, I choose an exam song. I then listen to this song lots and lots of time during the period, including right before any given exam. This tradition dates back to I believe junior year of high school. While I won't reveal these songs, several of them are present in the lyrics that I have chosen.

Random song lyrics that are meaningful to me:

"Well I've traveled around, I've been all over this world,
Boy, I've never seen nothing like a Galway Girl." -Steve Earle, Galway Girl

"This is our decision, to live fast and die young,
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?" -MGMT, Time to Pretend

"And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy,
and my machine she's a dud all stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey." -Bruce Springsteen, Rosalita

"She used to run track back in high school,
Now she tricks on the track right by school.
She takes the loss cause she don't want to see her child lose,
So respect her, or pay up for the time used." -Wyclef Jean, Sweetest Girl

"And you know it might not be that bad,
You were the best I ever had,
If I hadn't blown the whole thing years ago,
I might not be alone." -Gin Blossoms, Hey Jealousy

"One minute I held the key,
next the walls were closed on me,
And I discovered that my castles stand,
on pillars of salt and pillars of sand." Coldplay, Viva La Vida

Winter weather

It was snowing the other day, first of the year, which meant that everybody is updating their Facebook status. Most people were really excited, which is a general reaction to the first snowfall in a while, but I wonder how many of them have actually stepped outside. I'm no eskimo, but I know that this is not the good kind of snow. Its hitting the pavement and instantly turning into slush, and there seem to be scattered raindrops intermixed with the snow. Snow is fun, slush is terrible. That's basically defined my winters wherever I've gone. It does remind me how miserable winters back home could be, and though I'm very glad to have grown up where I've grown up and had seasons and blizzards, done some sanding and salting and all that, there were some bad times in there.

And for some reason I want more. This thought came into my head this summer when I visited DC for a weekend. Surprisingly, I hadn't actually been to DC in the summertime since a week in high school when I went on a service trip and sweated a small person off me. It was hot and I was intimidated., and seriously, when factoring in summer plans, the hot DC weather definitely came up. It's not fun coming back from a pickup ultimate game on the Mall to Georgetown sweating profusely. Looking back on it though, this was pretty absurd because there are so many places hotter than DC, and even Boston can be pretty comparable in the summertime. But anyways, as should be eminently obvious from this blog, I spent the previous summer in Beijing, which is as hot or hotter than DC, as well as some time in Hong Kong, which is definitely hotter and more humid. When I visited DC this summer, I didn't find it bad at all. It simply didn't feel hot at all, and maybe it wasn't, but some of my friends still complained about it. In addition, spending time in Ireland has made me much more comfortable with being out in the rain. There were definitely some rainy ultimate practices this fall where some people were very uneasy about going out and I was like, hah, this was every practice at UCD.

The point is that the ability to cope with weather is not instilled at birth, it can change over time. I actually wonder how much scientific research has been put to the matter: is it like learning languages, where my "native weather" will always be Boston and all subsequent weathers that I learn will be "second weathers?" Or is it much more fluid and adaptable and you can easily lose your "native weather" if you leave it for a while? I'm more inclined to believe the second one, because I hear of people growing up in the cold, moving to California, and then being wusses around the cold. Bill Simmons is a prime example.

So how great would it be to spend one winter somewhere freaking cold, and just never being scared of winters again? Here are my top few, with approximate latitudes, average coldest month temperatures, population and comments. As always, all sources Wikipedia:

(For comparison purposes)
Boston, United States
Latitude: 42
Population: 620,000
Avg Jan low temp: 22

Edmonton, Canada
Latitude: 53
Population: 730,000
Avg Jan low temp: 3

Ushuaia, Argentina
Latitude: 54
Population: 61,000
Avg Jul low temp: 28

Anchorage, United States
Latitude: 61
Population: 280,000
Avg Jan low temp: 9

Stockholm, Sweden
Latitude: 59
Population: 825,000
Avg Jan low temp: 23

Murmansk, Russia
Latitude: 68
Population: 336,000
Avg Jan low temp: 7

St. Petersburg, Russia
Latitude: 59
Population: 4,568,000
Avg Jan low temp: 16

Trondheim, Norway
Latitude: 63
Population: 260,000
Avg Jan low temp: 20

Rovaniemi, Finland
Latitude: 66
Population: 60,000
Avg Jan low temp: 7

Reykjavik, Iceland
Latitude: 64
Population: 120,000
Avg Jan low temp: 28

Harbin, China
Latitude: 45
Population: 4,750,000
Avg Jan low temp: -12

Tromso, Norway
Latitude: 69
Population: 64,000
Avg Jan low temp: 20

Ulan Batur
Latitude: 47
Population: 1,067,000
Avg Jan low temp: -20

This research actually really surprised me. So I actually looked up all these cities and they passed my test for livability, or at least visitability. I've discovered that cities tend to look a lot cooler on Wikipedia then they are in real life - thus if a city doesn't even look cool on Wikipedia, it's totally not worth visiting. Of these, Ushuaia seemed the lamest, but I wanted to include a southern hemisphere city, and this is the southernmost city in the world and pretty cold. Note that the artic circle is at about 66 degrees latitude north, so the midnight sun can be seen in Tromso, Murmansk and Rovaniemi. Latitude really doesn't seem to be such a good predictor for cold and I doubt many people would have guessed that Reykjavik would be the warmest city in this list, and certainly Harbin and Ulan Bator's ridiculous coldness is pretty surprising. Ulan Bator is the coldest national capital in the world and Harbin is known for its standard Mandarin and where a large Georgetown study abroad program is based which must be such a hard program. Also, I really first came across these cities as a result of a trivia question from Tombs: What is the most populous city north of the arctic circle? The answer, which no one got, was Murmansk.

So of these cities, I actually think most of them I would not want to live in. The ones that are cool, like Stockholm, isn't even colder than Boston. Murmansk looks to be a very industrial port city and would suck, Rovaniemi is really just a tourist town for its natural beauty, Anchorage might be cool but once housed Sarah Palin, and I don't plan on ever living in Canada. I guess Reykjavik, Tromso and Harbin are the ones that really seem pretty cool to me.

Language Notes

So Saturday, emerging from a short shorts party and an epic collective apartment hangover, John and I descended to Virginia to watch Ireland play France in a World Cup qualifier. The place we had picked out was called the Four Courts and it looked great from the outside, classic Irish pub. We saw Guinness glasses and soccer on tv upon arrival. Unfortunately and to our incredulity, we learned that the Ireland match was not available to the pub. It was across the street though at this sports bar, for a whopping $20 cover. John and I elected to head home and watch it online from a stolen feed.

For some reason, the feed that worked best was in Romanian - I would have preferred English or even French, but this did provide some cool tidbits, including evidence of a Sprachsbund at work. Romania is surrounded by Slavic-speaking lands but is itself a Romance language. A Sprachsbund is basically when unrelated languages start to sound like each other, and Romanian sounds very much like a Slavic language to me.

Here are some random things I've picked up recently relating to language:
1) The Family Guy episode "Spies Reminiscent of Us" deals with Russian spies. In a closing gag, Meg gets hypnotized and makes a phone call to Vladimir Putin in Russian. Earlier in the show, Mayor Adam West delivers a much shorter line in Russian. If you think Meg's Russian sounds very fluent, it's because Mila Kunis, who plays Meg, was born in the Ukraine and didn't even learn English until her teenage years. Ukrainian is a different language, but very closely related to Russian and most Ukrainians speak both.

2) Some sports language notes. In a pretty random coincidence, two LA Lakers speak Italian: Kobe Bryant and Sasha Vujacic. It's well documented that Kobe speaks Italian, growing up there while his father played in the Euroleague, but I hadn't realized Vujacic is from Slovenia and played basketball in Italy, and can as well. Even more random is Ronny Turiaf, who played for the Lakers from 2006-2008, who also spoke Italian! He's from Martinique and spoke Creole natively, as well as French, English, Spanish and Italian. I think 5 languages is pretty impressive for a professional athlete and I'm struggling to find someone who has more.

3) Roger Federer speaks Swiss German, German, English and French. I'll give him credit for 3.5 there. Little known fact is that his mother is South African - he may have spoken English at home.

4) Yi Jianlian, from Shenzhen, speaks Cantonese and Mandarin, and his English isn't bad. Unfortunately, his jump shot is.

5) 3 different main cast members of Friends spoke French.

6) Marco Polo claimed that he learned 4 languages, but didn't specify which. Reading different historical accounts, these are believed to be Persian, Uyghur, Mongolian and either Arabic or Chinese. It's hard to understand what these even meant in 13th century context but I think that's pretty cool.

Travel Quiz

One of the biggest parts of my senior year has been Monday night Tombs Trivia. I'm a big fan of trivia anywhere, spawned by the large database of useless facts I've accrued from years of Wikipedia-surfing, sports page combing, Sporcle-playing and crossword-making. As this would suggest, I'm pretty good, and I've found a group of people led by the indomitable Maggie Lonergan and Arthur Smith, my roommate John Curtin and the mysterious Henry Fingerhut to form a consistent contending team. The trivia is divided into 4 rounds of 10 questions. The first two rounds have some sort of theme that can be very random, ranging from 4 letter words to the month of October. The next round is a music round where a song is played for like four seconds and we have to figure out what the title and artist is.

As such, I'm in trivia mania, and I've composed a quiz based almost exclusively on things I learned while traveling abroad. Here are ten questions that someone who's really followed my blog, and has a lot of useless knowledge, may do pretty well on.

1. Though Chinese is the most spoken first language in the world, the Chinese Wikipedia only has over 200,000 articles, compared to nearly 600,000 for Polish and 473,000 for Portuguese.Although the number of articles does not always correlate too highly with number of speakers, what is arguably the main reason why there are so few Chinese-language Wikipedia pages?

2. What European city did Ronald Reagan, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Michael Jackson and Usain Bolt all famously step foot in?

3. I passed by a covered kayak recently. On its covering, someone wrote Athens or Bust, but then crossed off Athens and wrote Qingdao. What did that all mean?

4. What is the least spoken official language of the European Union?

5. What are the four written scripts on a plaque in the entrance to the Forbidden City?

6. Where is Victoria Coach Station? Lake Victoria? Victoria Peak? Greater Victoria?

7. What novel written by an American author about a Polish city won the 1929 Newberry Medal?

8. What city’s main bridge was allegedly started on 1357 / 9 / 7 5:31am and with eggs mixed into the mortar?

9. What letter is strongly associated with a line in the UK and Ireland?

10. What European capital city has a psychological syndrome named after it?

Please post your initial answers or thoughts if you can.

Answers

Here are the answers to the questions posted above, with an explanation of how I conceived this question.


1. Literacy in China is 90%, and while computers are not available to a large portion of the population and typing in Chinese is difficult, I believe the biggest factor limiting the number of Chinese-language Wikipedia pages is that Wikipedia has been banned in China. You can read about the details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Wikipedia_in_mainland_China and actually the article states that currently the website are unblocked. The bans have mostly been to prevent people reading about topics controversial to the PRC government (Tiananmen Square). As a result, the website probably hasn't attracted a popular following and I'd be willing to bet that most of the articles on the site have been created by posters in Taiwan, Hong Kong or elsewhere in the world. Wikipedia's banning in China was a huge factor for me during my stay there.

2. This city is Berlin. Ronald Reagan gave his famous speech during the Cold War where he said, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Joseph Stalin entered at some point after the Soviets conquered the city at the end of the European action in World War II. Adolf Hitler of course worked here. Michael Jackson dangled a baby outside the balcony of the Hotel Adlon right near the Brandenburg Gate. Lastly, Usain Bolt ran a 9.58 100m dash in the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, breaking the world record he set in Beijing. Like many great cities, many famous people will step inside it. I mean, who hasn't been to New York? But Berlin is special because so much happened there in the 20th century, and the fact that all these famous people did famous things in that city in so many different walks reflects why I find the city fascinating.

3. The owner of the kayak was evidently an Olympic hopeful who failed to qualify for the 2004 Games in Athens and set his/her sight on the 2008 Games. Now every reader of this blog will know that the 2008 Games were in Beijing. However, since Beijing was an inland city, all the sailing and kayaking events took place in Qingdao, a coastal city that was once a German colony and more commonly known on Western maps as Tsingtao. The Germans set up a brewery in the city and now Tsingtao beer is the most popular in China and I am very familiar with its taste.

4. Irish is the least spoken language of the European Union. The official languages of the EU are simply the official languages of its member nations, although this was a relatively recent policy and Irish was not accepted as an official language of the EU until January 1, 2007. Irish, a Celtic language often miscalled Gaelic, is obviously the official language in Ireland (along with English), and just about all official signs in Ireland are bilingual. Well known is city centre, which in Irish is An lar, because we would see that on the buses about 10 times a day. Irish is taught in the schools very early on and for many years. However, I found that most students only had a basic grasp on the language, even after nearly a decade of study. The official data is that Irish has 355,000 native speakers and another 1.8 million claiming to have some knowledge. Wikipedia states that Maltese had 371,000 speakers in 1975, but the country's population estimate is now 413,000 and you'd have to imagine that the vast majority of them speak Maltese. Another source I found has 500,000 for Maltese. Estonian has just over a million and no other language is really close. In fact, several unofficial languages including Catalan, Galician, Russian and even Corsican have more speakers than Irish. Since they are not official languages of any EU member state, even though some are protected languages, they are not official languages of the EU.

5. The plaque to the Forbidden City that I am referring to is on the right. I am 100% sure of the scripts, although I may not be matching them up correctly, but from left to right, they are Manchu, Tibetan, Chinese and Mongolian.

6. Victoria Coach Station is in London, Lake Victoria is the African great lake that touches Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya (although this has nothing to do with my travels), Victoria Peak is the main mountain in Hong Kong and a place I've gone just about every time I've visited, and Greater Victoria is the metropolitan area around the British Columbia capital in Western Canada.

7. Eric P. Kelly wrote The Trumpeter of Krakow while studying in the city. The legend of the trumpet call is murky which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hejna%C5%82_mariacki . Anyways, I had forgotten about the book until I was on the train to Krakow and realized that I was going to visit the city of the book. I did hear the trumpet tune break off abruptly but it didn't seem as if most people there were even aware of it.

8. Charles Bridge in Prague was constructed on the palindromic date/time by King Charles. The construction was overseen by the legendary Peter Parler and he allegedly found the mortar to be too weak and ordered eggs to be added to it. All this was written on a sign in my hostel in Prague. A scientific study was done recently and found that the Charles Bridge mortar does in fact have an organic component.

9. The Irish and British do not "line up" - instead they "queue." On rare occasions, I would see signs ordering people to Q here, and it took me quite a bit to understand what to do.

10. The Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological response where hostages sympathize with their captors, and was named so after a bank robbery in Stockholm.

SPO: Great team names

I went to a Bill Simmons book signing on Monday night. It was actually the opening book signing with the release of the book on Tuesday, so books were only available at midnight. It was actually pretty stupid - they should have taken a leaf from Midnight Madness and released the books at like 10pm there. Midnight Madness, the first college basketball practice of the season, used to take place at midnight as well because college teams are prohibited from practicing until a certain calendar day. But then they realized that by midnight, some college kids may be too gone to be good basketball fans. Yet even with a 10pm start time, one kid was dumb enough to steal a gun and shoot a toilet. But I digress.

I didn't even want a book - I mean this isn't Harry Potter here. But Bill Simmons has been an idol of mine since late high school. I basically used to refresh Espn.com until his column came out. Now I just listen to all his podcasts, and I've learned enough about him to really see all his flaws. When I finally got to meet him, at 1:40am and after shelving out $26 for his 700 page hardcover, I stuttered through asking him to sign "To Cal, the freeflowing signature that occasionally touches on mature subjects." (It's joke from the opening warning on his podcast) Looking visibly worn at this point, Bill went, "Oh I like that," before writing, "To Cal, the freeflowing signature...Bill" and said "sorry my hand is falling off." Then I met Joe House, who's voice I had only heard on the podcast. He looked like a Russian hitman, yet had that gentle voice. I told him we were going to bring him 2 Subway footlongs because we knew that "12 inch double meat was his thing."

During our long wait, my friend Steve and I revitalized our sophomore year discussion about team names. We went over the best and worst team names in American sports. I believe that team names are extremely important that will definitely impact a team's financial success and may impact its on field success. Many team name are classic things, like Bears and Eagles. Others should reflect city or regional characteristics. Here are my favorites:
Pittsburgh Steelers, Baltimore Ravens, San Francisco 49ers, Texas Rangers, Colorado Rockies, Milwaukee Brewers, Orlando Magic, Buffalo Bills

Here are my least favorite:
Washington Wizards, Oklahoma City Thunder, Utah Jazz, Memphis Grizzlies, Washington Redskins, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Houston Texans, Carolina Panthers, Tampa Bay Lightning, Minnesota Wild

I've also compiled a list of fictional team names that probably will never be used as real team names. This concept started with my friend Layth bemoaning the awfulness of the Washington Wizards team name, and how they could have been the Washington Monuments (they changed their name in 1995 from the Bullets because of the violent connotations of bullets). This really involved into a project that occupied far too much of my time, but produced some downright hilarious results, as well as a few offensive ones. Without further ado:

Baltimore Wires
Boston Tea Party
Buffalo Wings
Chicago Deep Dishers
Cleveland Steamers
Hawaii Five-O
Indianapolis 500s
Kentucky Derbies
Los Angeles Riots
Los Angeles Smog
Memphis Pharaohs
Miami Vice
New Orleans Hurricanes
New York Minutes
Oklahoma City Bombers
Oregon Trail
Philadelphia Cheesesteaks
Phoenix Ashes
Salem Witch Trials
San Diego Anchormen
Seattle Best Coffees
St. Louis Arches
Texas Chainsaws
Utah Wives
Washington Monuments

I've even created a Buffalo Wings football helmet for your enjoyment.
Since this is an international-themed blog, I figured I might give you some international team names as well. Here we deviate even more from anything remotely presentable and just resort to silly puns. But you may enjoy:

London Bridges
Paris Hiltons
Brussels Sprouts
Berlin Walls
Prague Defenestration
Melbourne Identity
Seville Barbers
Dublin Mudslides
Seoul Trains
Bonn Voyages
Manila Folders
Kyoto Protocols
Vienna Sausages
Florence Nightingales

Whiteout Wipeout

It hadn't been the greatest week and so this Sunday I raced through some work in the morning and plopped myself in front of the Alumni Lounge TV for my traditional therapy - sports. Now sports are obviously a risky form of therapy when you're not playing them, because you don't have any control over it. And ever since coming back from studying abroad, I've questioned the role that watching American sports should play in my life. Still though, nothing takes away the past, and in the past I've had so many great memories being lifted by the Patriots, Red Sox or Celtics. I've also had moments, days and years of great sadness and futility imposed upon me by these same entities, and every Red Sox fan older than 10 should understand, and none worse than Super Bowl 42. But the Patriots were playing the 0-5 Tennessee Titans, so I felt pretty good that this game could be a relaxing venture.

Well it only turned out to be the most memorable sporting event I had seen in quite some time. Now in this mid-October day, I had woken up and complained bitterly about the 45 degree DC weather. Way too cold for an early fall day. Well, in Boston, it was snowing. Unbelievable. I'm not a huge fan of snow, because living in slush sucks, but football games in the snow are invariably awesome. There's something about people playing around in fluff that brings out the child within us all. The weather's impact on the play on the field also cannot be overstated. The cold can make it very hard even to get amped for the game and warm up, and slippery terrain changes what kind of routes receivers can run, the ball invariably gets slippy and will mess up some throws, and cold hands make for poorer throws and a ton more drops. Snowy days also tend to come with lots of wind which can also impact passes. I have experienced all these factors first hand through Ultimate, where snow impacts the game even more. You can't imagine how hard it can be to throw in catch when your hands are too cold to tie shoelaces.

So games in the snow tend to be low scoring games of minimal passing - lots of pound the ball forward for two yards and try to get a good punt off. The Patriots played a memorable 3-0 game against the Dolphins in the snow, in which the player of the game was the guy who drove the snowblower that cleared the field for the field goal that accounted for all the points in the game. A game against the Dolphins which I saw, in winter of 2002 or 2003 I believe, ended up 12-0 and had the fans throwing snowballs on the field, creating a fireworks-like effect. Snowgames rarely involve heavy scoring.

Sunday changed all that. The first quarter actually did seem to be any other snow game. The Patriots moved the ball slowly with a significant running game and short passes. They missed a field goal, but the Titans dropped a ton of passes and had difficulty moving the line of scrimmage. One of Tom Brady's longer passes to Randy Moss got hung up in the wind and fell short. Then, it seemed the Patriots got warmed up and the Titans rookie cornerbacks got exposed like no one before. The end result has been covered extensively and 5 touchdown passes in the 2nd quarter and a 59-0 final just about says it all. I attribute much of this to snow. Even though this was the first snowfall of the year, and thus the Patriots had clearly not practiced in it this year, they acted like veteran Eskimos. The Titans on the other hand, had no idea how to run in it. Their cornerbacks seemed afraid to change directions and gave the Patriots wide receivers a lot of room. Brady adjusted his throws and easily hit his massively open targets. His counterpart Kerry Collins though definitely struggled with the snowy ball, and his receivers were even worse, dropping nearly half of his passes, all of which contributed to an epic team passing yardage of -7. The Titans were awful in every respect, including 5 fumbles (3 lost), a shanked punt, and an interception by their backup quarterback Vince Young on his first play. Their only bright spot was Chris Johnson, one of the league's best running backs who still ran like it that day.

SPO: 2016 Olympics

Tomorrow in Copenhagen, Denmark, the IOC will decide who gets to host the much-anticipated 2016 Olympic Games. Really, these Olympics aren't any more highly-anticipated than any others, but I felt like that sentence needed an adjective. So I'm a big Olympics fan, generally support its entire movement, might even apply to work for them, and would potentially like to attend every single Summer Olympics from hereon out. So I have a lot of thoughts on this vote, even though I've only been to one of the candidate cities, Chicago, and not even for very long.

The candidate cities are Chicago, Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janiero. The IOC has its own elaborate criteria for selection that heavily accounts for financial facility, infrastructural capabilities and logistical feasibility, as well as diversity, international goodwill and reaching new target audiences. The other cities that submitted bids but didn't make the cut were Baku, Azerbaijan (which I had never heard of and had a terrible score), Prague, Czech Republic (which would have been cool) and Doha, Qatar (which actually had a higher score than Rio but wanted to have the games in October). Every city was assigned a score on technical merits and Tokyo had the highest one at 8.3, but I'm not really going to get into that because at this point that doesn't really matter. Every single city that remains has a legitimate chance to win and it seriously is way too close to call right now.

My own concerns for the game are from a fan and traveler's perspective. What city will have provide the greatest settings from inspirational sports moments? Who has the most passionate fans? What country or region deserves this the most? What place deserves the recognition that an Olympic spotlight would provide? What area of the world do more people need to experience? I think this has already given you guys a good idea of where I'm leaning. I am also realistic. I understand that the IOC needs to balance the Olympics' role as the most important sporting event as well as a gigantic conventional of international cooperation. This dichotomy need not be mutually exclusive as successful past Olympics have shown, but it is very difficult. The fact that only about 20 world cities have ever hosted the games, and that some real strong ones, such as my beloved Boston, could never host one, should say something about how difficult the task is. But without further ado, here is how I would vote if I was an IOC member, in reverse order. One of the main factors I am using will be called the Proximity Factor - how recently have the Olympics or another major international sporting event been in or near this city?


4. Madrid, Spain
I am really a terrible person to judge on this because I've just never been enamored by Spanish culture. A lot of my friends love Spain and their wine, siestas, bull running, tapas and partying until 5 in the morning. I just never found a connection with the country. I didn't visit when I was in Europe for a semester, and I've only been to Barcelona and Bilbao briefly. However, I've heard that Madrid is a fantastic city, a ton of fun, and Spain has been on top of the sports world for quite a bit in recent memory, winning the 2008 UEFA Euro cup coupled with Rafael Nadal's success. Clearly you cannot question the Spaniards' love of sports. Their crowds are crazy, nationalism will certainly be overflowing, and I can just see panoramic shots of city squares being flooded with people during events.

The Proximity Factor is not in Madrid's favor. Barcelona hosted the 1992 Games, and although that is 24 years from 2016, its not really that long in the Olympic timeframe, especially considering how relatively small Spain is. Now Barcelonans will tell you that those Games promoted Catalan culture, not Spanish and it is very true that the regional differences in Spain are strong and recognized. Nonetheless, it might be hard to convince the general global audience of that though - it's like me saying that Hong Kong should host the 2020 Games so soon after Beijing, because they're very different places. Perhaps most significantly, London is hosting the 2012 Games, so selecting Madrid would mean back to back European Games, which in this day and age, is not the IOC's goal. That reason alone makes me think that Madrid is the only city that really does not have a chance to host.

3. Tokyo, Japan
The only candidate city that has previously hosted (1964), Tokyo is the world's largest city and perhaps has the most ready infrastructure to support the mega-event. I've read that the greater metropolitan area exceeds 35 million people, which is about 2 Beijings, and that just boggles my mind. In addition, it is by all accounts an incredible city definitely worth visiting and has arguably exerted more influence on the world media than any other Asian culture. I don't know a ton about Japanese sports fans other than their baseball culture, which is stunningly different from American baseball culture. Once again, I'm not a good judge of this city, but I can ask these questions: would a true sports fan with no knowledge of Japanese fly out to Tokyo for the Olympics? The answer is undoubtedly yes. Tokyo is a much more Western-friendly city than Beijing, is fully capable of accommodating lots of foreigners. However, Tokyo loses on TV grounds. Its time zone is difficult for the ever important US markets and the European markets to work with, just like Beijing was. Unlike Beijing, we don't have the charm associated with a country hosting the Games for the first time.

The Proximity Factor also doesn't bode well for Tokyo. Yes Beijing in 2008 was another large Asian metropolis, and though every Japanese and Chinese will yell at people comparing the two countries, you can definitely argue that the Games need not be in Asia right away again. More relevantly, Japan also hosted the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. In the Olympic timeframe, yeah, Japan could definitely wait quite a bit longer. Also working against the Japanese? Nobody likes them. I'M KIDDING! But I've actually read that Tokyo does actually seem to be out of the running. I know I could have written that at the very top and not needed to say anything else, but I love typing.

2. Chicago, United States
So this is my home country, and I'm obviously very excited about the possibility to host them again. It would certainly make attending the Games a lot easier, seeing as I could drive there. However, being in my home country and having caught the traveler's bug, Chicago is actually the candidate city I would least like to visit. That's taking nothing away from the city - it's really awesome, just about everyone I know from there is really cool and they make great pizza - but its just that its by far the least interesting one to an American. Foreign cities are just cooler by nature. Now to an international panel, Chicago may very well seem very cool, which is one reason why it's got a very good chance of winning. As a sports fan, it would be SO COOL to see a sport like Field Hockey being played at Wrigley field. Imagine Dutch girls running into the Ivy wall. Soldiers Field and wherever the Bulls play would also be good venues, but I'm only commenting specifically on these venues because I'm American I don't know anything about the venues in the other cities. Furthermore, Chicago is lovely in the summertime.

The Proximity Factor isn't terrific for Chicago either. Atlanta hosted the 1996 Games, only 3 Olympics ago, and Salt Lake City had the 2002 Games. The 2012 Games are in London, another English-speaking country, and when you're representing the entire world, that matters. Linguistic diversity is just as important as geographic diversity in my book. These factors are somewhat mitigated by the fact that the United States are such a dominant country and its television market brings in I believe a majority of the IOC's revenue. American culture is so widespread, and three of the spokesmen for this bid, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan and Barack Obama, are among the most famous people in the world, period.

That brings me to another factor - the Barack Obama factor. Obama-mania is a global obsession and you cannot underestimate his impact on the Games. The rest of the world, especially liberal Europe, believe Obama will still be in office in 2016 (I'd bet on that too), and as he's so well-liked, the IOC would love for him to have a huge presence in those Games. How many people would tune in to see Obama make a speech at the Opening Ceremonies? Holy cows. With a global background spanning from Indonesia to Kenya and a solid jumpshot, Barack Obama himself represents much of the Olympic spirit.

1. Rio de Janeiro
I've never been to South America, and I would love to go. My main argument for this bid is the picture on the right. How sick does that look? I just did a simple Google image search of all the host cities and picked the coolest picture I could find, and as it so happens, I believe that the pictures are also ranked in order of how much I like them. So not only have I never been to South America, but the Olympics have never been there either! The Olympics have also not been to Africa, the Middle East and India, some very large regions of the world, and I think that needs to change. It starts here, with Rio de Janeiro, unquestionably an awesome place to visit. However, just like with Beijing, the first time the Games had gone to China, there is a reason there has never been an Olympics in Brazil. First, because it's in the southern hemisphere, the Games will take place in September and technically be in winter. Second, Rio has a reputation for danger, and security is definitely a huge concern for the IOC. They definitely don't want a terrorist attack, which the the Brazilian government might be ill-equipped to prevent, but mostly they don't want petty crime and gang violence, which is apparently widespread. A lot can change in the 7 years until the Games start, but the IOC would have to feel confident that there won't be horror stories of sports fans attending the Games and getting their kidneys shanked. Third, its unclear how cosmopolitan Rio will be by 2016, but from what I hear, it isn't necessarily the easiest place to get around as a non-Portuguese speaker. However, anyone who knows a thing about Brazilian soccer would be excited to see that event in the Olympics, and can understand how rabid their fans can be. Brazil has a huge population and though they only won 15 medals in the 2008 Games, including 3 gold, they have the same potential as China to erupt as the host and bring home lots of golds. I'm guessing they could win as many as 15 gold medals if they hosted in 2016, from soccer to volleyball to track & field to judo.

The Proximity Factor would seem to work very well for Brazil, given the Games complete absence in South America, but the 2014 World Cup happens to be in Brazil! While this should have nothing to do with the IOC, it definitely does in the minds of any international sports fan. Its a lot of big time exposure to one country in a very short span of time, relatively speaking. So really for the Proximity Factor, the IOC didn't do too good a job of picking cities - every single one has a huge flaw here. It'll be interesting to see how this World Cup factors in, but it is a big concern.


Overall I definitely like Rio de Janeiro the most. I think the Games needs to spread out more and that they have a lot of power in increasing global attention and affection to different regions of the world. The Olympics aren't about the economic impact - usually they actually end up costing the host cities and countries money - but rather about the building up international respect and understanding for the host nation. This was certainly what I took from my experience in Beijing, and something I'm sure the Brazilian committee is feeling. Brazil probably feels that they are underrepresented at the world stage and that an Olympics could go a long way towards changing that.

I think that Chicago though will win the bid. The Obama factor, his simple presence in Copenhagen, will sway some voters. I don't think it'd be bad at all if Chicago wins. While the world may not need more American influence, I think we could put on a fantastic Olympics and improve our international reputation. Anyways, I'm very excited for the vote tomorrow and can't wait to see how it all plays out.

Entering the Dragon

July is my favorite month of the year, not the least because it houses my birthday, but this year really outdid itself. I only have 3 blog posts to show for the month because I simply haven't had time. In the month of July, I hit up Independence Day, Queens, DC, Wildwood and turned 21, which was all pretty cool. And while I would love to talk all about that, that's not what this post is about.

It really all started some weeks ago when I went with my brother to a party at his friend's apartment. The "party" turned out to be more of a social gathering that involved us all moving into a small theater in his building and watching this Kung Fu flick called Ip Man. It turned out to be a great movie loosely based on a true martial arts master from China. At the end of the movie it was revealed that this guy Ip Man (叶问) became Bruce Lee's first Sifu or teacher. Pretty cool.

Fast forward to last week when I was reading around on Wikipedia during one of the many moments of downtime that I now have. I learned that they were making an Ip Man 2 and were going to feature a 10 year old and 18 year old Bruce Lee. This caught my attention. I did some research and found this:

The two selected actors will appear in "Ip Man 2", the new biopic about Bruce Lee's master. An 8-to-12 year-old is expected to play a young Bruce Lee when he first met Ip Man, and an 18-to-22 year-old will play the kung fu star as a young adult when he started studying under his master.

"Resemblance in appearance will be considered first and foremost, and then the resemblance of manners, and last martial arts and acting skills," said Wilson Yip, the film's director.

At this point I got freaking excited. I'm not sure if we all are like this, but I definitely have a primordial urge to break through the ordinaryness that I feel can constantly define us. I want to do something special and while I don't have any real desire for the fake glitz and glamor of Hollywood, I really did admire Bruce Lee and had seriously stated that I wanted to portray him in a movie. I truly have looked up to him as an influence, a respected monument to what is physically possible for a Chinese-American like me.

I don't have any acting experience, or really any performance ability, and my martial arts skills derive from a semester's worth of scattered classes in Dublin, of all places. But if those requirements are secondary...well I have heard that I do look like Bruce Lee. After all, I am related to him, as this family tree actually shows. Bruce is on the bottom, I'm on the top right in red; in short, his grandfather is my great-great-grandfather. So I tried to find out how to apply, because a website did state that they were announcing a worldwide casting call. These sites directed me to the Chinese TV stations Henan-TV and BTV-8. However I couldn't navigate through their Chinese-language sites and so I asked my dad, who was currently in Shanghai, if he could help me out.

My dad has a propensity to get carried away with things but I didn't expect him to with this. Well after an initial, "are you kidding me?" bewilderment, my dad got all into it. He found out the email contacts for the TV stations, the whole contest and texted me from across the globe to IMMEDIATELY email them my "resume, pictures and a brief mention of my relation to Bruce Lee." Apparently there was this contest that had ended on July 13, but he was going to see if he could get me entered. Well he called up and eventually talked to some of the head people at the station and they actually got really interested and forwarded my information along to Beijing. This whole though, I heard no word from anyone. I just took my dad's word for it the whole time.

I wake up Friday morning and go to check my email. Suddenly my dad Gchats me on says, " Chris, CAN YOU LEAVE FOR BEIJING TOMORROW???? I just spoke to Beijing, they said if you show up on Monday, 8/3, they will put you on the contestant list...."

This is a joke right? I tell him so and he's like, no I'm serious. He tentatively booked me a flight out of JFK for Saturday morning at 6 FREAKING AM, and a return trip that gets back Tuesday night. I calculated it out to be 36 hours of travel with about 52 hours on the ground. Well that's pretty brutal but ok, for a chance to star as Bruce Lee I'm willing to make concessions. But that's not even the half of it.

So I ask my dad questions. Why has no one contacted me? I had literally no word whatsoever that I was a finalist for this show, and it really felt to me like it would be insanely rash to take a flight to the far side of the planet without proof that there was a reason for it. In addition to not knowing for sure whether I'd be on the show, I didn't know what this show was all about! After all, I hadn't signed up for a show, I just wanted to go to a casting call or something. Well the show, called Wu Lin Feng, doesn't seem to appear on English-language internet searches, but from what I could ascertain it is a martial arts reality show. Oh and its all in Mandarin, which brings me to an interesting point.

Ip Man is a Hong Kong based film and in Cantonese. However, there is a major villain from Northern China who speaks thick, rough Mandarin. We watched the film in its undubbed language and were surprised that the characters were communicating in both languages and acting like everything was normal. Now, Bruce Lee was from Hong Kong and he was fluent in English and Cantonese but I guarantee his Mandarin wasn't even as good as mine, if he could even speak it at all. I would imagine that they would specifically want a Cantonese speaker so I couldn't understand why there was this reality show in Beijing to pick the next Bruce Lee. In a conference call between my dad, me and a representative from Henan-TV on Thursday night (before I knew they'd seriously take me) I asked this question, and in the long-winded response I got the gist that everything in China gets dubbed. It doesn't matter if you're speaking Swahili because it's all going to get dubbed. So it seems like its common for actors to speak in their native language, even if they aren't mutually intelligible.

So I make a Facebook status out of this and head to work, my head swimming with possibilities and uncertainties. At work I tell my story, and I'm met with laughter, amazement, derision and encouragement. "DO IT" seems to be a common response.

CUL: A spell-binding letdown

I like to refer to myself as part of the Harry Potter Generation. I discovered him when I was in 5th grade at 10 years old. He was 11 then as it goes. I finished the 7th book, just a day before my 19th birthday and thus we aged together as best literary and living companions can. So I have lots of very strong feelings about the books, all of which I loved. In retrospect, I think the 4th book is my least favorite because it is largely a side story separate from the greater plot and contains within itself a very large plot hole. The 6th book is my favorite though, the one that I read over and over in the long anticipation for the 7th book, where even during my freshman year of college I would go over random paragraphs for the slightest clue to what we could expect in the last book. I wasn't the coolest freshman.

Well I was very excited to see the 6th Harry Potter movie because of all this. While I generally dislike movie adaptations and hadn't been a big fan of these, the 5th movie had been very enjoyable. The trailer looked terrific so I was excited to see how boy Voldemort, Horcruxes memories, Felix Felicis, sexy Ginny and the Half Blood Prince would appear on the big screen. Like I mentioned before, I won tickets to see an advanced screening of this.

Btw, what have any of you ever won in your lives (not merit prizes but just luck of the draw things)? I feel like this is a cool list to make. Mine are 18 speed Mountain Racing Bike, these 2 tickets, a Hoegaarden Gift pack in Beijing that I never could cash in, and a cake tasting raffle ticket in high school. Post yours.

Oh but without giving away crucial plot details, here are some notes about it that help explain why I HATED the 6th Harry Potter movie:

1. This movie deviates more from the book than any of its predecessors. It seems to be a theme around Hollywood to take a celebrated brand and rebrand it with its own story despite the facts that these brands became celebrated because of their stories in the first place. Angels & Demons or any of the comic book remakes are recent examples, and while they aren't all bad, I fear something like Sherlock Holmes might fall flat. I understand that some parts of a book don't transfer well to film, and that it needs to be shortened a lot and rewriting is ok, but it seems that in this movie the changes they made didn't always make sense. They took out a lot of scenes obvious, that's understandable, but they added some too, and that's not.

2. Ginny Weasley. SO DISAPPOINTING. I think we saw this coming though. When they cast the first Harry Potter movie, Ginny had a minor role. Then the books kept coming out and we learned that Ginny grows into a hottie and then Harry's love interest. Well Ginny wasn't cast for that and I think that Warner Bros would trade in Clint Eastwood for a mulligan on her. Not only is she not hot (and she's not even done up to enhance her appearance), but her character is also not written well. In the book, Ginny is hilarious and fun loving, courageous and talented, as well as burdened by her first year mistakes. We see none of that in the movie. As a result, Harry's romance with her is shockingly unwatchable. There's no chase! The two just eventually agree that they both like each other and get together. How realistic. The picture on the right is the first Google image search of her and that's what I leave you with.

3. The fight scenes. All I'm going to say here is they take out the biggest fight scene and add in a completely random one. I can go on for about an hour about how ridiculous this is but first I am going to spend the night trying to think in the shows of the producers and try to understand this decision.

4. The book of the Half Blood Prince. This is a special book within the book and is really integral to the plot. Its doomed from the start in the movie though as it doesn't even look special but instead is more of a thin, somewhat worn schoolbook. I bet it was actually an old Algebra textbook that they replaced the cover. Anyways its a hard thing to show on the screen and as a result, epic fail.

5. Miscellaenous poorly shot scenes or bad writing, such as an omission of Rufus Scrimgeour. Oh and everytime Albus Dumbledore is on, it's like he's trying to make every single line a classic, a line that would sound great and deep in a trailer. But he's a real person in the book, wise but with a real relationship with Harry.

6. Awkward moments. There are many of them in the movie to the extent that silence is not only golden but a full 75% of the film. Harry is given a ton of just blank staring and few lines and I just don't understand it.

7. Helena Bonham Carter. I actually think she's a good actress and plays her part well, but the problem is that she's a big name - probably the actor or actress of the film most famous for her other works. So I think she insisted on having a larger part but her role is really not that large in this movie. So they rewrote in more scenes for her which is stupid.

8. The animators are obsessed with smoky shadows. If you go in knowing this, I guarantee you'll laugh.

9. The tone. The book is very dark and even depressing. The outer world is getting less stable and people everyday are dying or disappearing. This mood is well established in the book and non-existent in the film except for an opening montage of muggle destruction. Someone unfamiliar with the book may completely miss this but to me it was a very big deal. Also, Harry is pretty moody and guilt-ridden in the book (he had just caused Sirius to die) and anguishing over Ginny...in the film he ranges from unemotional to happy-go-lucky.

That said, here are some things to look forward to:
1. Cormac McLaggen - hilarious.
2. Horace Slughorn - he's redone a fair bit in this movie but it's not all terrible. He's darker and less jovial but well-played.
3. Boy Voldemort - terrific, so creepy.
4. The Cave where they search for the Horcrux - I really liked how they represented this.
5. Fred and George's jokeshop - its great, but this isn't exactly a big part of the movie. As you can see, the pluses in this movie are kinda few and far between.

So I'm honestly struggling to even tell my friends to see it. I mean if you're a fan, don't you kinda have to? But fans are exactly the people who won't like the movie. People who know the plot a bit but don't really remember it would probably be perfect for the movie. During it I tried to make the effort to act as if I hadn't read the book - it would have made the experience better, but it was too hard.

News commentary

I don't know how often I comment on political news on this blog, but its not often. I do try to stay informed but I generally get quite annoyed with politcos. But I'm reading a lot about the rioting in Urumqi, in the Northwest Xinjiang Province in China. Most people seem to be ignoring the story but even though I've never been to Xinjiang, this news stirred up a lot of thought with me. But first random thoughts:

- New York is about 10 degrees hotter than it should be. Its a combination of lots of cars, lots of skyscrapers trapping air, baked subway stations, exhaust from those subways, and the fact that you just can't take a leisurely stroll unless you're in a park.
- I saw someone wearing a Clippers Nation t-shirt today. I cracked up in front of him. It had what appeared to be the logo of the Los Angeles Clippers, although I can't be sure because I've never seen them on national television.
- Sarah Palin's speech on her resignation from Alaskan governor basically went as follows: "Life's too short to spend on things that aren't truly important." So really she's saying that life is too short to spend it governing Alaska.
- A commentator on Palin said that many people within her party criticized her for lacking "intellectual capital." That is one of the fanciest ways I have heard for saying that someone is stupid.
- Saw Transformers 2. It is a archetypal summer movie. That may or may not be a compliment.
- I saw a flyer on the 4th of July for a texting promotion to win tickets to an advanced screening of Harry Potter. I was somewhat inebriated at the time and thought "what a dumb thing. I might as well text to it." And I won. Now I have 2 tickets for next Monday, let me know if you want to be my date.

Ok now on to Xinjiang. So I learned when I was in China about how diverse the country really is. I had many pre-trip assumptions about China and because you never hear in the US about Chinese people who look different, I assumed that other people didn't exist. Well very quickly I learned about how the Chinese government classified 56 ethnic groups within the country. The big 5 are the Han, the Tibetans, the Mongolians (who conquered China), the Manchurians (who conquered China) and the Uyghurs (pronounced Wee-gers). Now the Han, which comprises most of my ethnic makeup (although my dad's family is actually part Manchurian), make up 92% of the country so it will seem much less multiethnic than the 56 number would imply, and when you go through most of the East where Shanghai and Beijing are, you will be hardpressed to find any non-Hans. But 8% of China means 8% of 1.4 billion which means there are well over 100 million minorities, or a third of the United States.

But the Hans were historically residents of that Eastern half, living mainly in an area maybe 30% the size of modern day China. Various Chinese dynasties managed to conquer large areas of land in the west, including Tibet and Xinjiang which are both gigantic provinces that make up all of China's western border. The steppes in Eurasia of which Xinjiang and many "Stan countries" are a part of have a very complicated history, being a very early place of human settlement but not of human writing. Basically though, lots of Turkish people were conquered by Chinese forces and during the 1949 Civil War, China re-conquered it and established its borders. There had been and still are attempts for Xinjiang to secede and create a separate state called East Turkestan but these have been repressed.

So you have a great number of Uyghur people and nearly all are fully within Chinese borders, and learn Chinese in school and adopt many of its customs though most practice Islam. I've had Uyghur food in Beijing and it is amazing, and one of my goals this summer was to find similar food in New York. However, faced with overcrowding, the Chinese government encouraged Han Chinese to move to the rest of the country, and now Uyghurs are a minority even in Urumqi, the capital city of Xinjiang.

I don't think there's a question that these are examples of Chinese imperialism. A powerful country is taking over land that it can despite it belonging to distinctly different people. Based on classical European definitions of what constitutes a nation, Tibet, Turkestan (or Uyghurstan) and maybe other areas within China can certainly claim to be a nation.

And yet Americans that decry this outright violation of sovereignty and ethnic repression might not be bothering to consider America's own history. Even recent history. Undoubtedly when you consider British, Spanish, French and Dutch settlers tearing this land away from Native Americans and then instituting slavery within it, the history of the United States does not look good to modern day sensibilities. And then there are the jingoist outings in the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam and now Iraq but I won't get into those. I think rather Puerto Rico and Hawaii provide direct comparisons for evidence of recent American imperialism. Hawaii is especially is a pretty similar example of an island with its own great independent history, culture and language that got annexed by the United States and then made into a state for military reasons. China had history in Xinjiang for millenia before subduing it into the PRC.

Ah but in addition, there's a very tricky part when we're discussing imperialism and its one in which people don't bring up enough. The classical European definition of a nation-state is one in which the people share a unifying identity, usually constituted by race, culture and language. What we tend to forget is that those variables are constantly in flux and to an extent all socially constructed. They may all seem clearly defined at any given moment but a group of people can change dramatically over a few generations. There used to be large tribes in France like the Franks, Burgunds, Lombards, the Frisians and the Visigoths, or something like that, but they've long lost their distinctions. I read about this in a book on nationalism. Anyways, they're now just all French. Nobody's talking about discrimination against the Frisians, it just sounds ridiculous. However, if you think about it, they probably suffered the ultimate discrimination because their identity was completely lost. My point is that modern day France has a strong national identity and unifying culture but this wasn't always the case. France certainly used to be an empire but now we look at the current country and we see a nation.

China is really an even better example of the ambiguity between nationalism and imperialism. The reason the Han ethnicity is the largest on Earth is that they assimilated, or Sinicized, many other groups. I believe that there used to be lots of groups within China, including the Wu around modern day Shanghai, and the Yue in Guangdong, that were once distinct from the Han (whom I don't even know where they're originally from). The Manchurians barely have a separate identity anymore and almost exclusively speak Mandarin. Once again people aren't clamoring for an independent Manchuria, they just accept them as being Chinese. (picture to the right is of Pu Yi, last emperor of China, a Manchu and yet another purported relative of yours truly)

So on a deeper level, the situation in Xinjiang has precedent and I believe the Chinese government thinks that given enough time, Uyghurs and Tibetans and everyone else will all be considered Chinese. In an age of celebrating diversity, this seems like an awful belief but you have to understand where they are coming for because it has happened many times before. But the current issues aren't really dealing with that. Though the rioting reportedly began in protest of a factory brawl in Guangdong that killed 2 Uyghurs, it's pretty much understood that tensions had been boiling up for a while due to government policies regulating Uyghurs. I don't know the details of the policies and I take both Western media and Chinese media with grains of salt - I've read inaccurate reporting by both entities. But from what I understand, China has adopted policy that while allowing Islam, seriously hampers it and seems designed to let it die (I've read that they prevent children from attending Mosques and only let people use a state-approved Koran). They're also slowly phasing out Uyghur-language education, although this should be compared to the rest of China where local language education was phased out very quickly. Overall, with regards to China's policies, I'd say I don't know enough about them, but from what I do know, they are very culturally destructive and I understand why the Uyghurs are protesting.

Their other main complaint seems to be that an influx of Chinese immigration has essentially taken over their land, and that most of best jobs in the region are controlled by Han people. In this context too it seems the Uyghurs have a very fair complaint. In Urumqi, protests against immigration are a display of nationalism. However, in the United States, anti-immigration protests in this same vein are seen as racist and intolerant. Basically both people are saying, "I don't want these people coming in, not knowing our language and taking our jobs." In the US the response has been get over it, and economic and cultural advancements are cited. You can make a very strong case for the same argument to be used in Xinjiang. In a sense, Uyghurs should feel somewhat lucky that they do learn Mandarin in school - they are being taught the language of power in that country and at least one barrier between them and social liberty within that country is knocked down.

I want to conclude that I really do believe that China is a racist country. The R-word is a very sharp accusation to throw around but in my own experience I've seen it to be generally true. I know the US to have plenty of racial problems, but I was surprised to find throughout my travels that most of the rest of the world is even further behind us on racial tolerance and integration. We assume Western Europe to be a bastion of liberalness, but you'd be hard-pressed to find Asian Germans and black Italians who consider themselves to be Germans and Italisn first and foremost. England seemed to have the largest influx and best integration of immigrants, mostly remnants of its empire, but it'll be years before they elect a black president. I noticed in Ireland that people were afraid to talk about race - people were hesitant even to ask what ethnicity I was, and most people would assume that I didn't speak fluent English. Furthermore in China, there were many an occasion where I was definitely treated poorly just because the locals felt like I was different.

Well through this all, I've come to the belief that outright racism doesn't just appear in violence and slurs - I can't recall coming across any flagrant incidents like this in any travel - but rather in the true mindset that what race you are matters. The people I encountered in China really believed that there are concrete differences between races. Stereotypes are laughed at or preached against but rather looked at analytically, even scientifically. The Chinese government subtly quantifies these in their Gao Kao test for admission to college. I can talk about how ridiculous that test is for days but in this discussion, the significant note is that different races are scored on different scales. In order to have more Uyghurs in their good colleges for example, they set a lower threshold score for them. This is state-mandated affirmative action. Whereas I think affirmative action is good for our country, I see it in China as serving a different purpose and not so much as contributing towards diversity but rather distinguishing differences. The only times I saw true diversity, when people of different races hung out together, in China always involved foreigners congregating.

So I don't know what the correct policy should be in Xinjiang. I do see the case as a microcosm of many important historical processes and am following it with great interest. I have seen a real riot like this with uncontrolled violence and burning, and I really hope that the world sees less of it. I hope that everybody in China can learn to live together, a simple notion common to Confucianism and Islam and one that is easily within our natural human capacity.

Tourism in America

First off, update notes:
1) I saw one of the rarest sights in New York this weekend. No it wasn't a meteorite or a giant ape climbing skyscrapers. Rather, I got into a yellow cab driven by a white American male.

Seriously, I've probably seen a driver from just about everywhere, but never a guy who talked like me. The dude had gotten a Master's in Education so I wasn't quite sure what his story was but he made for a very entertaining cab ride. I asked him how many other American cab drivers he knew, and he said 20, out of a total of around 30,000. Perhaps Cash Cab is among these. So that was pretty cool. Along this note I just want to say something about cabs here in the U.S. - I hope I didn't put off the impression that I ws disparaging immigrant drivers or anything. That would be pretty counter to the theme of this blog. I generally really enjoy getting into the car with someone from another country and routinely ask people about their experiences in Ethiopia, Sudan, Pakistan or Yemen (the last 4 that I can remember). Its just that the taxi driving trade has evolved into an immigrant one in recent years to the point that a white guy deserves mention in this blog post. I would also like to point out that our cab industry is very uniquely American. Every cab driver in China was Chinese and most drivers in Dublin were Irish, and so on for the rest of Europe. In addition, I have never seen a driver abroad talk on the cell phone during a ride. These two points might be related, because if I was abroad somewhere where I didn't speak the language well, driving a cab 12 hours a day, I'd want to shoot the shit with my friends every so often rather than listen to the bitchings of some overpampered passenger. But on the other hand, it can be really rude.

2) It dawned on me recently that Koreans have somehow subtly but steadily entered my life for about a year now. In Beijing, I lived in Wudaokou, which in addition to being a very Western part of town, is also the Korea-town of Beijing. I sang karaoke at a Korean place and had my first dog at a Korean restaurant. In Dublin, my roommate Sanghyup, who turned out to be one of the coolest people I had ever met, was straight from Seoul. Back at Georgetown, my roommate had a Korean girlfriend (this one's a stretch). Now in New York, I'm living a few blocks away from Korea-Town and do my grocery shopping there. I don't know what this all means, but perhaps I'm meant to study Korean and prevent nuclear war.

3) I went down to the waterfront with my roommates Griff and Streeter on Sunday. It took a while for us to get up but we finally set out at 3. Luckily these are some of the longest days of the year so we had great light the whole time. We got off at City Hall and checked out that building for a little bit, grabbed a bite at Blimpie's, then searched for the World Trade Center site. The whole site was compellingly massive and all under a maze of construction. The sheer size of the rebuilding puts a physical context to the severity of 9/11 - metaphorically, the 3 acre gaping hole still present in downtown Manhattan shadows in comparison to the gaping hole still present in our nation. We didn't make it to the memorial, we somehow walked by it, but I'd like to go back sometime.

We did make it to the Waterfront and probably walked along it for a good 15 blocks all the way to Battery Park. The area was really nice and very serene - for New York - and really could have been any number of places. It brought me back to both Portland and Hong Kong. The view was nice although it would have been nicer if we weren't staring at Jersey, and the harbor had a few very expensive boats including a sick speedboat. Really though, I had decided to go down here in order to see the Statue of Liberty. I'd done the whole touristy thing of walking to the torch (now not allowed) when I was like 7, and while I don't really want to do that again, I really appreciate how great a symbol that green girl is. I think it's a symbol of immigration that is unfortunately no longer really present in the American consciousness. I might take the ferry to Staten Island sometime to get a better view cause it's pretty hard to see from Manhattan.

We walked back up to Wall Street. Despite being another symbol of New York, this area really reminded me of Boston. (That picture on the right of a waterfront restaurant seems very New England too.) The crammed office buildings, the way the subway entrances meld into the surroundings and the remnants of colonial architecture all made me wonder whether I had accidentally teleported to Government Center. Also near Wall Street is a giant metal statue of a large bull, the symbol of reckless capitalism. Evidently, Wall Street planners decided against building a corresponding bear, although if I ever have the capital to buy real estate in that area (some of the most expensive land in the world) I think I'd open an FAO Schwartz and plant a giant Teddy Bear staring at the bull. Btw, the bull has gigantic balls and many tourists were making lewd poses involving them.


Ok so that leads me to a theme that I've been thinking about for a while and the title of this blog post: Tourism in America. Basically I've been a tourist on and off for most of the existence of this blog. Any time you live somewhere you don't know too well and have the curiosity to know more about it, you can be a tourist - you don't need to be wearing a giant Canon around your neck or spend half your time squinting at a map. Since I returned to the U.S. in December, I haven't left the country, but I've realized that my perspective has changed and that I see everything in my own country differently now. After observing the practices within foreign nations, I'm trying to be very aware of cultural ramifications within our everyday actions. I've noticed how quickly Americans adapt to new technology, how resistant we are to physical contact with strangers and how impatient we are. When I'm in an elevator now and someone presses a button to a floor in my way, I get legitimately peeved!

So I think it was a Sunday in March at the beginning of Spring Break when I was out exploring DC. Seeing more of the city was one of my main goals for the semester and while I probably saw more of it in that 1 semester than I had in the first 4, it was still a failure. But that Sunday I walked through Eastern Market into the Capital and whatnot and I realized that I don't think I had ever been that close to the Capital before. I had never taken a tour of it (or the White House), not with Georgetown or in high school or with my family. I had played Ultimate by the Monument but hadn't been up close to this gigantic iconic building. Nonetheless, I felt that I was very familiar with it because it had probably been in my consciousness for most of my life. Its on schoolbooks, money, posters and the backdrop of most presidential addresses. I was staring at it throughout the whole inauguration but was too far away to see the details. So on this Sunday, very few tourists were around and I was right up next to the building, and it dawned on me how amazing it was. I thought back to Europe and how impressed I was with many of the buildings there. And yes those buildings are older and connected to great history and built by cultures that really valued art. I remember being particularly impressed with the Reichstag, the German house of Parliament that had housed Kaisers, then Hitler and then redone upon unification by Norman Foster and remade into a great building with modern and baroque themes. Its a very nice building. And it doesn't even compare to the U.S. Capitol. That building is stunningly immense, a very well-crafted and not overstated testament to American values. It's all white and not too fancy, which I think represents a lot about our country. It's a stately society that spun off from Europe and while we can't recreate the long history and master artistry here, we can create a new powerful style that spins off from the old and instead of nostalgically gazing back to the past, steadily looks to the future. At least that's what I got out of it. The Capitol houses the leaders of America and thus the leaders of the free world, so it better be fucking impressive.

Its amazing how much we take for granted in our country. I actually first noticed this in Europe when I see Europeans walking by their awesome monuments not giving the slightest care and I'm just like how can they not be so proud of this place? But when home is home, everything is going to appear ordinary.

I got a better perspective on this over Easter Break, when I met up with Ilana and Clarisse, two French girls who were studying abroad at Georgetown, in Boston. We walked around Charles Street, Back Bay, the river and went up to the Prud and whatnot. Its a pretty standard bumming around day in Boston, but for them they thought it was "supercool." I strained to see how this streets and sights could impress when compared with the places they saw in Europe and came to the conclusions I expressed above.

So its very strange now going through New York and even though I have the same desire to see cool things, I feel as if the game is very different. I don't remotely stand out here, not with my dress, appearance or accent. I don't have difficulty following the laws, hailing a cab or walking the streets or whatnot, but yet I'm still completely unfamiliar with the terrain.