The Rest of the Summer...

So it's October now. Half the leaves are already gone, the MLB playoffs started and I've worn sweaters for 3 days in a row. Summer ended fast and the last post I have here is from Tianjin, which I only finished editing two days ago. Stuff has happened since then including a quadruple birthday bash in Beijing, a search for bottled coke in Hong Kong, a 3 day side trip to India, a really shitty flight, 10 days in Peru, eating guinea pig, getting attacked by fire ants, and moving into Capitol Hill and commuting 40 minutes to go to graduate school.

I'll just fill in the rest of Beijing and China really quickly. The week after Tianjin was my birthday week and also very near the birthdays of dear Beijing friends Vivian, Joan and Jeanie. We decided to group together to have a mega super quadruple party. In a memorable email that I composed, I dubbed it the Biggest Blowout outside of the Gulf of Mexico. We went down to this new club in Wudaokou one day called Solutions that was just empty. So we asked the owners if we could rent the place out for our birthdays and bring them a lot of business. Our end agreement was that we could just invite friends over, that they'd give us drinks and specials but wouldn't exactly reserve it or anything, and it turned out great - and terrible. Tons of people came, the music was great, everybody was happy and they had 5 kuai tequila shots. Well that wasn't so great because I hate tequila and kept having it forced down my throat. Anyways that happened and it was all fun.

The following Sunday was brutal. The following Monday we went to Blue Frog 2 for 1 burger Mondays. The Blue Frog is apparently a chain, with at the very least a location in Shanghai. The location in Beijing is set in Sanlitun village and is rather pricy, but on 2 for 1 Monday, we can afford it. Blue Frog also has great shot glasses, one of which I may have pilfered, and 99 special shots and a special reward for the individuals that consume every single one (presumably not in the same evening).

At this point I want to go over some of the small world moments from summer '10 in Beijing. Many of them have already been covered in previous posts but here's a total recap:

1. At Lush with Vivian we first meet Beatriz and basically force her to talk to us. She asks where we're from and I say "Boston." Beatriz (who goes to Simmons) then asks, "From Boston Boston or like Newton?" Indeed I am from Newton.

2. One night in Wudaokou I run into both Amy Burns, a Georgetown student whom I recognized but had never met, and Danny Mahoney, a Georgetown student whom I had met, completely randomly. They were both studying in the same program.

3. I got dinner with Amy and my friend's friend Wendy, who did not know each other. They then discovered that they were also in the same program and lived on the same floor.
4. After a frisbee dinner I walked to the subway with a guy named Larry whom I had not met. It turns out we know a lot of people in common because he went to Philips Andover (now NYU) and I know a bunch of people from there. Turns out Thao Nguyen is one of our good friends. Then I remembered that one day in the spring Thao had randomly been on Georgetown campus with one of her friends, whom I remember her telling me that her friend was visi

ting from NYU. That friend was Larry. So I randomly met someone in Beijing whom I had already previously randomly met.

5. I invited Larry to the Blue Frog night in question and turns out he knew half the people there.

6. My friend Vivian was involved with GCC and I went to a lot of their events. Later GCC would partner with the company I was working for and so I was doubly invited to their event.

7. One of my friends from summer '08 was Chirona and I found out on the BeijingUltimate blog that she was back. I found that she was living near Tsinghua and one day while on the internet in Bridge Cafe I emailed her. She then called me and asked where I was in Bridge Cafe - turns out it was 3 tables away.

8. I know Chirona through like 5 completely independent links. I first met her through my friend Frank, who was classmates with her in Brown at the time. Then we hung out on the Beijing Ultimate scene. Then I met through my roommate Austin his girlfriend Julianna, who plays ultimate at Brown with Chirona. Then it turns out my Georgetown friend Hyun was good high school friends with Chirona. Finally in Beijing 2010 I met Emily Haskel who also plays ultimate at Brown.

9. Vivian went to our usual hangout spot in Lush. She sees this girl and whispers to

me, "I think that girl was in my pro seminar freshman year." So I tell her to go and say hi and she says "She won't recognize me, that'd be really weird." "So? this is Beijing!" While we're having our little argument, this girl Dawn comes over and asks, "Excuse me, but do you go to Georgetown? I think you were in my pro seminar freshman year...." Later on I discovered that her boyfriend Rick, who went to Drexel, was best friends with this guy Bobby whom I randomly met through my roommate and his brother (who was in the same class at Drexel).

10. As ridiculous as those connections are, I think the most unbelievable small world moment occurred during July 4th. Having dinner with Amy and her program friends, we finished up and went to have our picture taken by the soccer ball in Sanlitun. I randomly found a Chinese woman and asked her "你可不可以帮忙我们照片？" She responds in Chinese and after she takes our picture, she points at us and asks, "HKIS?" We're all really confused until Amy

answers, "yeah...." Then the women says in English about how she recognized Amy and that her niece was in the same class at Hong Kong International School. Um, what?

BONUS: The flight attendant on my flight to Beijing was a Georgetown graduate.

BONUS2: Walking in the mall I passed by a guy wearing a Newton South shirt. I interrogated him and discovered that he did an exchange program there and lived within 5 minutes from my house.

So yes it may seem like a small world. In truth it is not a small world - it's a large world but a well-connected one (at least for some segments of global society). We have connections to people faraway that skips many people in between. The large scale movement of people is more predictable than intuition tells us, and this will become more and more true as network theory advances. This is a theme that I've learned which I will echo again. Many of those small world moments can be explained by their taking place in ex-pat locations, of which there are only so many in Beijing, but can still seem pretty unbelievable.

The rest of Beijing is a blur to me now, over two months gone. I tried to see everybody one last time, to go to all those restaurants and bars that I had been wanting to try, but mostly failed amidst the bustle of packing cleaning out my apartment and getting my deposit back. My landlord and his whole family came over to return the deposit and say goodbye, and I felt myself needing to give his son a gift. I saw my Red Sox hat ou

t of the corner of my eye and though I wanted to keep it, I bestowed it upon young Tony Chang and I hope that one day he finds it awesome.

It was very sad leaving Beijing early that Saturday morning. The last time I left the city, I was very ready to leave. I had created a whole list of things that I missed from home, including bagels, Dunkin' Donuts and fresh air. While I still enjoyed all those things, I thought more this time about the things I would miss about Beijing - 20 kuai dinners, late night grilled chuanr and other great street food (see pic), expatriate bonding, hot pot etc. This time I had successfully adapted - I had replaced those bagels with steamed buns, the coffee with congee. While it was sad to leave those behind, I didn't feel sad per se. My feelings were oddly mixed while I sat on that plane. The life I was leaving for would be very different, not necessarily better or worse. I've learned not to compare apples and oranges. I just knew that I was leaving behind an apple and going for the orange and that was that.