I can't believe I haven't written about ultimate here yet. I've only written twice since I've moved to Hong Kong, which is pretty bad, but ultimate has been an immense part of my life here - more than it ever was in the states, which is hard to believe. Ultimate was only a part of my social life in the states, where I had friends from all sorts of school-related activities and other places. Upon landing here, I really didn't have any friends right away and so I found the ultimate community right away, which is a great way to make 30-40 quick friends. Ultimate on this continent is so great in so many ways, which might go counter to your expectations if you knew a little bit about ultimate. After all, it is an American sport and many, many more people play it in the states. In addition, unless you live in downtown Manhattan, field space is easier to get in virtually every American city than in Hong Kong, or most Asian cities. Even though it is very much a fringe sport, it's still relatively well known (at least people have somewhat heard of it) and it's relatively easy to find a league or pickup. The top teams are extremely competitive, to the extent where I don't think an athlete like me could possibly make an elite club team.
In Asia, the obscurity of the sport serves to make the sport more fun, not less. Spread by Americans, ultimate has invaded the rest of the world in some predictable ways. Countries with strong US connections, like the UK and Australia, have very strong ultimate programs. The top nations read somewhat like a G-8 summit, with Japan, Italy, Germany and Sweden also in the mix. Locally, the community seems to be about 60% ex-pats (a lot of Canadians) and 40% local Hong Kong players, though quite a few of those have experience abroad. The result is an interesting, diverse player base with vastly different experiences. However total, there are less than 200 active players here. The ultimate experience, which is a mixture of athletic and social everywhere you go, definitely leans more towards social in Asia. A lot of this is because of the numbers - it's easier to get to know everyone that plays ultimate in the entire city. When you aren't playing against different strangers every week, you tend to become closer to your opponents. In addition, for the ex-pat community, it is a chance to meet a lot of people also undergoing your similar experience, with a hobby in common to boot. One surprising thing I discovered was that many of the ex-pat ultimate players learned to play in Asia, and not from their home countries like me. They found the community here through friends and really clicked with it. Even many more were just casual players back in North America but more serious here.
Teams here are weird and not exactly set. There are many tournaments throughout Asia over the year, in places like Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Jeju, Hanoi etc. Individuals decide on their own what tournaments they can attend, and then teams are formed based on the people who go. Amazingly, you will see many of the same people from all over Asia at all these tournaments. Some former Asian ex-pats who have now moved home, often plan their vacations to return to Asia around these tournaments, playing in them with their old friends. It's quite a scene. You will see many teams of friends living in disparate cities who assemble at tournaments and form a team that has never practiced together. Some of these teams not only compete but win tournaments. In more casual tournaments in the US, this isn't entirely unheard of, but it's certainly rare. The US tournament scene in addition is dominated by the club championship series. Most club tournaments early in the season are opportunities for strong clubs to get experience playing together and to train for sectionals/regionals/nationals. These are teams with tryouts, practices and identities. Many teams here just have jerseys.
There is also the National Team scene. In the US this doesn't enter the conversation very much, because the US is the best country in the world at ultimate. To make the team, you have to be absurdly great. I've seen a lot of great players but I'm not sure any of them will be on the US team to World's 2012 in Sakai, Japan. Here in Asia, there are many countries, all theoretically with national teams, and a wide disparity in the talent between them. There are also relatively strict eligibility rules, limiting the number of foreigners a national team can have. In Hong Kong, to be an eligible local, you don't need to have a HK passport (which I don't have), just a ID card with 3 stars (which I do have). So through some very friendly rules, I was eligible for the Hong Kong National Team. Though I'm still very much an average player in the states, a marginal club level handler, here I'm one of the best males. I was one of the players selected to represent Hong Kong in the Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The AOUC occurred from Dec 1-4, and had an open (men's) division and a mixed division. The countries in the open division were India, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. In the mixed division we had Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and Japan. If you're surprised at the number of teams present, you should be. In all my time playing ultimate I've never been to a tournament with less than 8 teams - the average college tournament I went to had at least 24 open teams. With only 4 opponents, we played everyone twice. I think organizers were disappointed with the turnout, which was not an improvement over the exact same tournament held in 2007. Traveling for this tournament is difficult and expensive, especially for the many countries in the region with a low GDP or visa restrictions. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could have competed very well at this tournament, but probably could not afford to attend. China had meant to send 2 teams but its players could not get visas. We even had a player who was born in Guangdong province, who though had been in Hong Kong for over 7 years, could not get his visa processed. Only a first world country like Australia could send a team on 8 hour flights. Incidentally, this was India's first time at the tournament, but they were woefully underprepared. The team did not have cleats and barely had forehands. They scored 1 point all tournament.
At this point I will shift from informative to the old Cal travel diary story-telling style. It should be a different blog post but no one reads this anyway.
I couldn't make the Thursday games because of work vacation time restrictions. So I flew in on my own Thursday night with the intention of playing Friday and Saturday, still with the opportunity to play all our opponents. I was very excited all day, unable to sit still at the office. However early in the day I got an email from DragonAir saying that my 7pm flight had been moved to 9:55pm due to "operational reasons." I'd be getting into Kaohsiung after 11, which wasn't terrible but not ideal. Whatever. At the same time I'd been having difficulties with my phone. My American iPhone had been unlocked, but the unlocking was no longer working no matter how many times I repeated the procedure. My Uncle Andrew, who apparently travels with at least 4 cell phones, had given me his 2 year old spare and so I put my pin into that one. However, some point in the last 2 years, the phone's touch screen had gone haywire and it now reacted terribly. I could not type at all and half the time I pressed anything, it made a call. I also could not turn it off without taking out the battery. So I'm extremely frustrated with all this phone stuff, but I throw it all in my bag and worry about it later - after all I'm going to a foreign country where I won't have service anyways. I Google our lodgings in Taiwan - the Kindness Hotel, and check it out on a map and write down its name in Chinese. I wrote down the number, I saw that it wasn't too far from the airport and near a subway, etc.
DragonAir website said my 7 o'clock flight was cancelled. I had been under the impression that it was delayed. Still I had the email saying I was on the 9:55 one, so I hoped for the best and went to the airport early. I had walked all the way down to the subway and was waiting for the cars when I realized I didn't have my cleat bag. Absolute necessity. Went back up and got it. Whatever. The subway trip to the airport took about 45 minutes including 2 annoying but manageable transfers. Airport security however had issue with my nail clipping scissors, which are important for ultimate tournaments. Whatever, they're really blunt, but I'm here early so I'll go back and check them in. Second time through security and emptying my pockets and laptop, they check my backpack again. This time they discovered a mysterious sharp object in my bag. For the life of me I didn't know what it was. They went through all my stuff before finding this thing I use to remove my studs in my cleats. Completely harmless. Sigh. In a very pissy mood, I put all my clothes back into my backpack and glared at security.
I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all the way through the flight and hopped out in Taiwan, excited to be in a new country for the first time in over a year. After picking up my cleats, I confidently walked out to get a taxi, ready to pump out some Mandarin. However after telling the taxi driver where I want to go, he looks at what I've written down, pauses for a minute, and then finally starts driving. We're on the road for about 10 minutes when I happen to see a sign for the hotel on the side of the highway. We keep driving though, and I get suspicious that this driver is trying to cheat me. We drive another 10 minutes before I get uncomfortable and say I think we've gone too far. We insists that we're going to the right way, to Kindness Hotel. I tell him the address that I've written down and ask him what district we're in. He's like "Huh? I thought we were going to this place." Oh you're kidding me. He tells me there are like six Kindness Hotels in Kaohsiung. Crap. I order him to turn around and go to that street. Very conscious of how tired and frustrated I am, the drive back to 福德街 seems to take forever. He gets to the street and asks, "What now?" I'm like "huh? Take me to no. 22." At every street intersection he turns around to ask me what to do next. At one point I snapped and said "THIS IS MY FIRST TIME IN TAIWAN! YOU'RE FROM HERE! YOU'RE THE TAXI DRIVER. YOU TAKE ME THERE." I can't remember the last time I was this mad.
There was nothing at 22 FuDe street. It was a completely empty narrow alley. The driver turns around like "I told you so." He told me there was a Kindness Hotel 4 blocks away, and I was like great! take me there. We get there and I can't wait to get out. I'd been very observantly watching the meter this whole time and it said 35.0. I didn't know a thing about Taiwanese money or prices, just that it was less than Hong Kong, so I threw him a 100 dollar bill. He responded that it was actually $350, and with the airport fee, $400. You've got to be kidding me. This sounded like a lot - I didn't know then that this was about $10 USD. I didn't want to argue though so I just gave him the cash and ran away. I go straight to the concierge in a huff and say, "Room 715 please." They respond at me with blank stares and say, "we don't have a room 715." What?? I show them my booking information, complete with the address and telephone number of the Kindness Hotel. They tell me that I'm not at the right Kindness Hotel - there were 13 in total. At that I threw my cleats bag on the ground as hard as I could. They figured out which hotel I should have been at from the phone number, called me a cab and told the driver where to go. At this point it was 12:20am.
Somewhere along the cab ride I started freaking out. I had gotten my information about the hotel from Google - I had no idea at the time that there were 13 places with the same name. Everything I wrote down could have been inaccurate, including the phone number. There was a chance I had copied the phone number from the tournament website, in which case it would be correct, but I wasn't sure. I had no working phone, the only thing I could do was go to reception and ask to use the computer. I mentally readied myself to arrive at the wrong hotel and to get set for another half hour or so before I could sleep. However, right when I landed and opened my taxi door, I heard someone exclaim, "Cal!" I looked up and saw my teammate Mary, and my goodness she could have been a vision of Mary mother of God at that moment.
Luck had it that our first game was at 10 and I had plenty of time to sleep. I quickly noticed that, purely in terms of facilities, this would be unlike any tournament I had ever been to. Nearly every tournament I'd ever been to, my team had driven up in crowded cars and stayed 6 to a room in some crappy motel, and played very early in the morning in some fields in the middle of nowhere. Here, we stayed at a 4 star-hotel, usually 3 to a room. The showers had separate soap and shampoo for men and women - we also had a bathtub. The breakfast buffet consisted of more than bagels and frozen hard-boiled eggs, but instead had offerings ranging from toast to tofu, congee to cereal to ice cream. Yes, ice cream with cereal.
All games were held at 3 stadia spread out over the city, including the Kaohsiung National Stadium which was built for the 2009 World Games. I missed out on my chance to play there, which is a pretty special place with a dragon weaving design that hearkens to the Bird's Nest. We had buses shuttling us to our venues. It was a little weird, a little cool, playing in these giant stadiums with tons of empty seats surrounding us. After the games, Taiwanese food was catered to us, which certainly beat the bananas and peanut butter bagels I was used to stateside.
Host Taiwan was our first opponent. Ultimate had caught on strong in Taiwan and the organization there took this tournament very seriously. Talent wise, the team was only slightly better than us, but they had played together A LOT more. Supposedly the team was composed largely of a university team, and they had been required to take 2 weeks off together and basically go to a training camp for the tournament. Unheard of. That makes a huge difference in ultimate, especially in Asia where tournaments often consist of pickup teams playing together for the first time. After giving Taiwan a hard fight for the first half, our star Calvin left to fly back to Hong Kong for a work event. We got rolled pretty good in the second half. We were never at full strength for the rest of the tournament, steadily dropping players.
Australia is another regional power, predictable from its English-speaking ties to the US. They had assembled their team by broadcasting a call for people capable of attending to put their names into a hat. A committee had then selected the players based on what they knew of them, getting input from people in different regions. There were no tryouts. The process, which I actually think was really good, created a team of mostly older players who could afford to take a vacation to Taiwan, and included two players, Kwang in Guangzhou and Sarz in Shenzhen, who were located in China. They didn't play with great chemistry, but with a lot of veteran experience, they came together during the weekend. They had some very talented females who were able to huck to each other over all the men for scores. They beat us pretty good too.
Singapore was the one team we should have beat. This Asian city-state is even smaller than our Asian city-state and has a Westerner dominated frisbee scene. Still they managed to put together a talented young team with lots of athleticism and players willing to play defense. They made a lot of mistakes though and we went up 4-0 on them right away. Since we had lost by 3 the previous game, we needed to win by 4 to surpass Singapore in the standings. We were in position to do so at 9-6 when soft cap blew. We scored to make it 10-6, game to 11. When they made it 10-7, we knew that we had to win this next point. Unfortunately we didn't catch a pull that ended deep in our end zone, and ended up turning the disc right on the goal line. Just like that our dreams were squashed. 10-8 then became 10-9. That point seemed to have been played out entirely within 20 yard of their end zone but through several blunders and a dropped layout by me, we failed to score. On universe point, we drove right down to the end zone before dropping it. They turned around and hucked it, and all I could do was stare as a lucky breeze blew the disc away from our defender into a Singaporean player in the end zone to win the game. That was among the worst losses I have experienced.
The Japan team played us right after that. It was my first time ever seeing the legendary Japanese players in person. Japan is a preeminent world power, with their top club team Buzz Bullets routinely beating the best American clubs and winning worlds. With the upcoming 2012 worlds in Osaka, I think Japan should be favored. They are renown almost mystically in the US for a disciplined, unorthodox style of play. All of this was on display when we played them. Unfortunately we got rolled so hard (17-3) that I didn't even really get to see their full performance, but they were certainly impressive. The team never relented, keeping great form even when there was no need for it. A wide open Japanese cutter caught the disc at full speed, stopped and threw a low release flick just inches above the ground, with absolutely no one on her. This was one of the better teams I had ever seen - the other tournament teams would have lost to most good club teams in the US.
In Asia, the obscurity of the sport serves to make the sport more fun, not less. Spread by Americans, ultimate has invaded the rest of the world in some predictable ways. Countries with strong US connections, like the UK and Australia, have very strong ultimate programs. The top nations read somewhat like a G-8 summit, with Japan, Italy, Germany and Sweden also in the mix. Locally, the community seems to be about 60% ex-pats (a lot of Canadians) and 40% local Hong Kong players, though quite a few of those have experience abroad. The result is an interesting, diverse player base with vastly different experiences. However total, there are less than 200 active players here. The ultimate experience, which is a mixture of athletic and social everywhere you go, definitely leans more towards social in Asia. A lot of this is because of the numbers - it's easier to get to know everyone that plays ultimate in the entire city. When you aren't playing against different strangers every week, you tend to become closer to your opponents. In addition, for the ex-pat community, it is a chance to meet a lot of people also undergoing your similar experience, with a hobby in common to boot. One surprising thing I discovered was that many of the ex-pat ultimate players learned to play in Asia, and not from their home countries like me. They found the community here through friends and really clicked with it. Even many more were just casual players back in North America but more serious here.
Teams here are weird and not exactly set. There are many tournaments throughout Asia over the year, in places like Hong Kong, Manila, Bangkok, Shanghai, Jeju, Hanoi etc. Individuals decide on their own what tournaments they can attend, and then teams are formed based on the people who go. Amazingly, you will see many of the same people from all over Asia at all these tournaments. Some former Asian ex-pats who have now moved home, often plan their vacations to return to Asia around these tournaments, playing in them with their old friends. It's quite a scene. You will see many teams of friends living in disparate cities who assemble at tournaments and form a team that has never practiced together. Some of these teams not only compete but win tournaments. In more casual tournaments in the US, this isn't entirely unheard of, but it's certainly rare. The US tournament scene in addition is dominated by the club championship series. Most club tournaments early in the season are opportunities for strong clubs to get experience playing together and to train for sectionals/regionals/nationals. These are teams with tryouts, practices and identities. Many teams here just have jerseys.
There is also the National Team scene. In the US this doesn't enter the conversation very much, because the US is the best country in the world at ultimate. To make the team, you have to be absurdly great. I've seen a lot of great players but I'm not sure any of them will be on the US team to World's 2012 in Sakai, Japan. Here in Asia, there are many countries, all theoretically with national teams, and a wide disparity in the talent between them. There are also relatively strict eligibility rules, limiting the number of foreigners a national team can have. In Hong Kong, to be an eligible local, you don't need to have a HK passport (which I don't have), just a ID card with 3 stars (which I do have). So through some very friendly rules, I was eligible for the Hong Kong National Team. Though I'm still very much an average player in the states, a marginal club level handler, here I'm one of the best males. I was one of the players selected to represent Hong Kong in the Asia Oceanic Ultimate Championships in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
The AOUC occurred from Dec 1-4, and had an open (men's) division and a mixed division. The countries in the open division were India, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan. In the mixed division we had Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and Japan. If you're surprised at the number of teams present, you should be. In all my time playing ultimate I've never been to a tournament with less than 8 teams - the average college tournament I went to had at least 24 open teams. With only 4 opponents, we played everyone twice. I think organizers were disappointed with the turnout, which was not an improvement over the exact same tournament held in 2007. Traveling for this tournament is difficult and expensive, especially for the many countries in the region with a low GDP or visa restrictions. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines could have competed very well at this tournament, but probably could not afford to attend. China had meant to send 2 teams but its players could not get visas. We even had a player who was born in Guangdong province, who though had been in Hong Kong for over 7 years, could not get his visa processed. Only a first world country like Australia could send a team on 8 hour flights. Incidentally, this was India's first time at the tournament, but they were woefully underprepared. The team did not have cleats and barely had forehands. They scored 1 point all tournament.
At this point I will shift from informative to the old Cal travel diary story-telling style. It should be a different blog post but no one reads this anyway.
I couldn't make the Thursday games because of work vacation time restrictions. So I flew in on my own Thursday night with the intention of playing Friday and Saturday, still with the opportunity to play all our opponents. I was very excited all day, unable to sit still at the office. However early in the day I got an email from DragonAir saying that my 7pm flight had been moved to 9:55pm due to "operational reasons." I'd be getting into Kaohsiung after 11, which wasn't terrible but not ideal. Whatever. At the same time I'd been having difficulties with my phone. My American iPhone had been unlocked, but the unlocking was no longer working no matter how many times I repeated the procedure. My Uncle Andrew, who apparently travels with at least 4 cell phones, had given me his 2 year old spare and so I put my pin into that one. However, some point in the last 2 years, the phone's touch screen had gone haywire and it now reacted terribly. I could not type at all and half the time I pressed anything, it made a call. I also could not turn it off without taking out the battery. So I'm extremely frustrated with all this phone stuff, but I throw it all in my bag and worry about it later - after all I'm going to a foreign country where I won't have service anyways. I Google our lodgings in Taiwan - the Kindness Hotel, and check it out on a map and write down its name in Chinese. I wrote down the number, I saw that it wasn't too far from the airport and near a subway, etc.
DragonAir website said my 7 o'clock flight was cancelled. I had been under the impression that it was delayed. Still I had the email saying I was on the 9:55 one, so I hoped for the best and went to the airport early. I had walked all the way down to the subway and was waiting for the cars when I realized I didn't have my cleat bag. Absolute necessity. Went back up and got it. Whatever. The subway trip to the airport took about 45 minutes including 2 annoying but manageable transfers. Airport security however had issue with my nail clipping scissors, which are important for ultimate tournaments. Whatever, they're really blunt, but I'm here early so I'll go back and check them in. Second time through security and emptying my pockets and laptop, they check my backpack again. This time they discovered a mysterious sharp object in my bag. For the life of me I didn't know what it was. They went through all my stuff before finding this thing I use to remove my studs in my cleats. Completely harmless. Sigh. In a very pissy mood, I put all my clothes back into my backpack and glared at security.
I read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo all the way through the flight and hopped out in Taiwan, excited to be in a new country for the first time in over a year. After picking up my cleats, I confidently walked out to get a taxi, ready to pump out some Mandarin. However after telling the taxi driver where I want to go, he looks at what I've written down, pauses for a minute, and then finally starts driving. We're on the road for about 10 minutes when I happen to see a sign for the hotel on the side of the highway. We keep driving though, and I get suspicious that this driver is trying to cheat me. We drive another 10 minutes before I get uncomfortable and say I think we've gone too far. We insists that we're going to the right way, to Kindness Hotel. I tell him the address that I've written down and ask him what district we're in. He's like "Huh? I thought we were going to this place." Oh you're kidding me. He tells me there are like six Kindness Hotels in Kaohsiung. Crap. I order him to turn around and go to that street. Very conscious of how tired and frustrated I am, the drive back to 福德街 seems to take forever. He gets to the street and asks, "What now?" I'm like "huh? Take me to no. 22." At every street intersection he turns around to ask me what to do next. At one point I snapped and said "THIS IS MY FIRST TIME IN TAIWAN! YOU'RE FROM HERE! YOU'RE THE TAXI DRIVER. YOU TAKE ME THERE." I can't remember the last time I was this mad.
There was nothing at 22 FuDe street. It was a completely empty narrow alley. The driver turns around like "I told you so." He told me there was a Kindness Hotel 4 blocks away, and I was like great! take me there. We get there and I can't wait to get out. I'd been very observantly watching the meter this whole time and it said 35.0. I didn't know a thing about Taiwanese money or prices, just that it was less than Hong Kong, so I threw him a 100 dollar bill. He responded that it was actually $350, and with the airport fee, $400. You've got to be kidding me. This sounded like a lot - I didn't know then that this was about $10 USD. I didn't want to argue though so I just gave him the cash and ran away. I go straight to the concierge in a huff and say, "Room 715 please." They respond at me with blank stares and say, "we don't have a room 715." What?? I show them my booking information, complete with the address and telephone number of the Kindness Hotel. They tell me that I'm not at the right Kindness Hotel - there were 13 in total. At that I threw my cleats bag on the ground as hard as I could. They figured out which hotel I should have been at from the phone number, called me a cab and told the driver where to go. At this point it was 12:20am.Somewhere along the cab ride I started freaking out. I had gotten my information about the hotel from Google - I had no idea at the time that there were 13 places with the same name. Everything I wrote down could have been inaccurate, including the phone number. There was a chance I had copied the phone number from the tournament website, in which case it would be correct, but I wasn't sure. I had no working phone, the only thing I could do was go to reception and ask to use the computer. I mentally readied myself to arrive at the wrong hotel and to get set for another half hour or so before I could sleep. However, right when I landed and opened my taxi door, I heard someone exclaim, "Cal!" I looked up and saw my teammate Mary, and my goodness she could have been a vision of Mary mother of God at that moment.
All games were held at 3 stadia spread out over the city, including the Kaohsiung National Stadium which was built for the 2009 World Games. I missed out on my chance to play there, which is a pretty special place with a dragon weaving design that hearkens to the Bird's Nest. We had buses shuttling us to our venues. It was a little weird, a little cool, playing in these giant stadiums with tons of empty seats surrounding us. After the games, Taiwanese food was catered to us, which certainly beat the bananas and peanut butter bagels I was used to stateside.
Host Taiwan was our first opponent. Ultimate had caught on strong in Taiwan and the organization there took this tournament very seriously. Talent wise, the team was only slightly better than us, but they had played together A LOT more. Supposedly the team was composed largely of a university team, and they had been required to take 2 weeks off together and basically go to a training camp for the tournament. Unheard of. That makes a huge difference in ultimate, especially in Asia where tournaments often consist of pickup teams playing together for the first time. After giving Taiwan a hard fight for the first half, our star Calvin left to fly back to Hong Kong for a work event. We got rolled pretty good in the second half. We were never at full strength for the rest of the tournament, steadily dropping players.
Australia is another regional power, predictable from its English-speaking ties to the US. They had assembled their team by broadcasting a call for people capable of attending to put their names into a hat. A committee had then selected the players based on what they knew of them, getting input from people in different regions. There were no tryouts. The process, which I actually think was really good, created a team of mostly older players who could afford to take a vacation to Taiwan, and included two players, Kwang in Guangzhou and Sarz in Shenzhen, who were located in China. They didn't play with great chemistry, but with a lot of veteran experience, they came together during the weekend. They had some very talented females who were able to huck to each other over all the men for scores. They beat us pretty good too.
Singapore was the one team we should have beat. This Asian city-state is even smaller than our Asian city-state and has a Westerner dominated frisbee scene. Still they managed to put together a talented young team with lots of athleticism and players willing to play defense. They made a lot of mistakes though and we went up 4-0 on them right away. Since we had lost by 3 the previous game, we needed to win by 4 to surpass Singapore in the standings. We were in position to do so at 9-6 when soft cap blew. We scored to make it 10-6, game to 11. When they made it 10-7, we knew that we had to win this next point. Unfortunately we didn't catch a pull that ended deep in our end zone, and ended up turning the disc right on the goal line. Just like that our dreams were squashed. 10-8 then became 10-9. That point seemed to have been played out entirely within 20 yard of their end zone but through several blunders and a dropped layout by me, we failed to score. On universe point, we drove right down to the end zone before dropping it. They turned around and hucked it, and all I could do was stare as a lucky breeze blew the disc away from our defender into a Singaporean player in the end zone to win the game. That was among the worst losses I have experienced.
The Japan team played us right after that. It was my first time ever seeing the legendary Japanese players in person. Japan is a preeminent world power, with their top club team Buzz Bullets routinely beating the best American clubs and winning worlds. With the upcoming 2012 worlds in Osaka, I think Japan should be favored. They are renown almost mystically in the US for a disciplined, unorthodox style of play. All of this was on display when we played them. Unfortunately we got rolled so hard (17-3) that I didn't even really get to see their full performance, but they were certainly impressive. The team never relented, keeping great form even when there was no need for it. A wide open Japanese cutter caught the disc at full speed, stopped and threw a low release flick just inches above the ground, with absolutely no one on her. This was one of the better teams I had ever seen - the other tournament teams would have lost to most good club teams in the US.
ew up with Harry. Like I've said, I wasn't the only one, but I was put squarely in the middle of his incredible fictional/real life trajectory. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone came out June 29, 1997 but kids weren't lining up blocks outside the bookstore on June 28. Most of us heard about this boy wizard a few years later. I was in 5th grade (late '98) when another student told me about it and I picked up a hardcover from my elementary school's yard sale (true story). At the beginning of the book, I was 10, Harry was 11 and neither of us had ever heard of the Philosopher's Stone. (By the end of the book, I still hadn't, because the American version was idiotically renamed the Sorcerer's Stone) That first book was legitimately a children's book, meant perfectly for someone of my reading level at the time. I was hooked sometime after Harry received his owl, and immediately wanted the sequel after I finished. At the time, Chamber of Secrets was not out in the US yet, but I somehow managed to find Amazon.co.uk in the pre-Google days, and ordered the book. It said that it would ship within 2 days, and I figured the flight from England was only 6 hours, so I'd have it in 2 days and 6 hours or so. I was so disappointed when it took a week to arrive.
