A little America in Asia

I think the Philippines was a first for me.  Since moving out to Asia and diving into the ultimate scene, I have met many, many Filipinos. Thanks to the miracle of WhatsApp, one of my Manila acquaintances has become one of my closer friends over here. The Filipino travelers I have met have been universally very fun-loving and nice and I'd very much enjoyed my exposure to Filipino culture abroad.  Thus seeing Manila Spirits on our tournament schedule brought me much excitement and I wondered if I would be entering a metropolis full of awesome fun people.  I can't recall ever having gone into a country for an initial visit having previously met so many of its citizens.

Over two full teams of Hong Kong players went to this tournament and over a dozen were on my Cebu Pacific flight.  Manila is just two hours southeast of Hong Kong and the flights in between are even cheaper than the flight time would indicate. A trip of similar length to Shanghai would cost about $2000 but I knew people who found deals for around $800 HKD to Manila.  The explanations for these price differences could be explained in an economics paper about supply and demand and international economics and suffice to say are outside the scope of this blog.

Passing immigration, we went through a No "Wang Wang" Zone, which no one has as yet properly explained to me.  Since we weren't stopped, I guess none of us Wang Wanged.  Stepping outside of the airport was a reminder that though the flight was so short, the climate change was quite severe. I had heard that the traffic in Manila was bad, but I wasn't prepared for our cab ride from airport to hotel to take over an hour, at 10pm on a Friday.  I had googlemapped the address at work and it showed a driving time of 15 minutes. Immediately I was depressed - how could people live in a city of such poor traffic? Manila does have a rapid transit, as well as jeepneys (more on this later), but I got the impression from talking to residents that getting around was a huge pain that people do need to plan around. It all made me more thankful to be living in Hong Kong.

When we reached our hotel off of Makati Avenue, we discovered a large festival going on immediately in front of our hotel. It turns out that every Friday night a delicious bazaar of food and music takes place right there. We checked into our rooms, Catherine Gainey, Juho and I, and dropped our bags off, briefly debated attending the tournament registration party but as it was already we late, we headed downstairs to check out the bazaar.  Beers at 7eleven were inhumanely cheap to the extent where I exclaimed my amazement that "beer is free in the Philippines." The bazaar had delicious pork belly cut while I bought a kebob and enjoyed a small live band covering American pop songs. American music is evidently very popular in the Philippines and I noted that the first 15 songs I heard were all pop songs that I knew and liked. When we had sat down and started the beer and pork, I laid back and listened to the Filipino singer performing Taylor Swift, I suddenly felt truly happy. The vibes emanating from that square in Manila were so pure and positive and joyous that I couldn't help but get really sappy wonder when I last felt like that. There's something simple and great about live music, travel, the excitement of a frisbee tournament the next day and the company of great friends.

A combination of bad traffic, long distance from the fields and early start times meant that we needed to meet at our rented vans at 6:30am.  Just pass 6:30am, Gainey came screaming into our room asking what time it was. I looked at my phone, which had somehow not charged properly and died overnight. Ah crap. Somehow our teammates hadn't really remembered us either and the vans had left without us. We ran out the hotel and somehow bumped into Michael Hsu, who was staying at another hotel, and we fetched a cab who didn't know where the country club we were going was. Nonetheless we figured that he'd find the directions from his handlers, and after talking in Tagalog and asking "Alabang country club" at least 15 times, we felt pretty good.  Half an hour later we pulled off the highway and our cab drove near a gate, then shouted at the security guard to ask where Alabang Country Club was.  Uh oh.  It seemed this guard didn't know.  He proceeded to ask another 5 people, some of whom pointed him closer and closer to our eventual destination. Apparently the Country Club is a huge gated area and we needed to indicate that we were playing in a tournament there to enter.  Michael Hsu shouted "Derek Ramsey" during these interactions, after the Filipino movie star who is well known to the population for playing ultimate.

We reached the fields with about ten minutes to gametime against the feared Boracay Dragons, a super beach team from the Philippine island of Boracay.  The Dragons play with unbelievable flow and a bit of flair but their game is designed for the beach.  We got some lucky breaks when they moved too fast for the own good and created some silly turnovers.  Though they were the #1 seed in our pool, we beat them 9-7 in one of the biggest upsets of the tournament.  We still ended up finishing last in our pool, getting drubbed by a great Taiwan team and a typically solid Singaporean DiscKnights squad. We won our crossover game over a young local Manila team but had already fallen out of our goal of a top 8 finish.

The vans were a great hire because catching a cab back from the fields were next to impossible.  It was also a particularly exhausting tournament, with brutal sun that cut through my sunscreen, heat we weren't used to expecting in November and stiff competition.  In most overseas the tournament, the consensus would be to have a huge dinner enjoying the local cuisine. In Manila, there was very little clamor of this nature. Though I enjoyed the chicken adobo they served at lunch, there's a reason there are very few Filipino restaurants worldwide.  Even in Manila, the locals didn't seem to eat much Filipino food as there were chain restaurants everywhere. We ended up getting burritos at a Mexican restaurant.  Most of the weekend was spent with my Junk teammates and while we would typically head to a tournament party early because we're so exhausted, this was Manila, home of the party happy Filipino ultimate players, and so we arrived late and left late.  The theme was Mayan Apocalypse and there were some great costumes including Haz Mat suits and inferno demons, but the party may be remembered for the extravagant dragsters that performed.  I had just arrived at the dance floor and just noticed the ladyboy lip synching when s/he left the stage and entered the crowd looking for some helpless soul to "drag." Of course s/he picked me.  All I will say is that, well, sometimes you just gotta go with the flow.  The night ended sometime after 3 and the next day started sometime before 6.

Ok so I wanted mainly to write about how similar the Philippines felt to America, but it seems I have digressed quite a bit.  From the first taxi ride through the city, I was stunned by how the roads seemed of exactly the same construction as the roads back home.  I could have been on I-95, Route 2, Route 66, stuck in traffic anywhere in the lower 48.  The palm trees made me think California especially.  It was the road signs (nearly all solely in English), the types of cars, the fast food chains (with a few unfamiliar faces hello Jollybee's) and the whole feel. It's interesting to think that our entire country could be transported across the ocean with the use of the same factories.  Before this trip, I had seen very little in Asia that reminded me of America.  It's fascinating to me how the Philippines could be an American colony for 40 years and absorb so much, whereas Hong Kong could be a British colony for 150 years (and up to very recently) and still not be very British. The fluency of English spoken by Manila residents was astounding (I didn't meet a single person I couldn't communicate in English with), way surpassing the level in Hong Kong.  I'm at a loss to explain this linguistically, perhaps the previous exposure to Spanish helped, except to say that cultural diffusion is clearly not linear.  I spoke with an American who had been living in Manila for 15 years and she explained that while Filipinos did love American music and culture, their own culture was still very Asian. Perhaps many of the similarities with America are superficial, but there's certainly something there.

The games on Sunday were difficult to say the least. Lincoln was so hungover he couldn't even warm up for our first game, much less play. Still, we had a memorable win by crushing a somewhat injured Beijing Big Brother team, the first time we'd beaten them in recent memory, and finished by beating a different solid Singaporean team. When I got the chance after play to look around, I realized that these fields were really quite beautiful. The large trees outlining the complex were like nothing I'd seen before, a cross between Banyan and Bonsai trees.  When our play was done the place provided a joyful haven to relax in. Two pickup teams played in the tournament final and the team with a large contingent of states-based players won.

This Manila trip was far too short. It was only really in the ride to the airport that I saw the real poverty that I know exists there.  Large shanty towns decked stretches of the shore beside the highway, the likes of which I had only briefly seen in India.  Clearly there is much of the Philippines that isn't like the US that I haven't seen, and I hope I get the chance to in the near future.  Until then, I'd like to write off into the sunset.

Twelve Random Thoughts

1) Today is 12/12/12. I started this post at 12:12am actually, and I'm going to wrap it up quickly. This will be the last xy/xy/xy calendar date for quite some time, after a streak of having one every single year for 12 years. Actually starting from 9/9/99, to 01/01/01, 02/02/02...10/10/10, and the epic 11/11/11, there have been a lot of repetitive dates since elementary school. 8/8/88 was the only other one in my lifetime and 2/2/22 will be the next date that's anything close.

2) I like interesting dates, I don't know why. It's probably the number geek in me. Anyway I remember 8/8/08 I was in Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games, 9/9/09 I was at Georgetown and it was my friend Frank's 21st birthday, 3/3/09 (square root day) I had a math test, 10/10/10 I was at Georgetown, and 11/11/11 I had been in Hong Kong for just over a month.

3) The world is supposed to end at 11:11 GMT 12/21/2012, or 7:11pm HK time. Note that I don't believe in the slightest that this day will have any real significance, one look at academic literature on the Mayan calendar dispels any of that.  However, this date has been reverberating in my head for a long time - I think I may have first heard about a 2012 apocalypse before the Y2K. I remember thinking that once 2012 rolls around, we'll still have to wait til almost the end of the year before finding out whether the world does end.  So the fact this date is finally coming has some odd prophetic anticipation about it.

4) I was having a bad day today.  Kinda felt monotonous at work and unmotivated and tired when I finally finished. I was sitting on the couch eating too many French fries watching the Patriots replay long after I had checked to see that they had won, mired in one of those stretches where everything was hard to accomplish.  Then I went downstairs to get laundry and made a stop at the mailbox, where surprise I had mail! Eva & Auntie ad sent me a lovely Christmas card and Maggie had sent me a postcard from Cambodia. I'm not one of those people who randomly have their day made by little acts like this, but this totally made my day. I need to send and receive more snail mail.

5) I ended up cooking a few pounds of spaghetti because I had told my coworkers I would feed them tomorrow.  It was a really interesting juggling act with lots of food and limited kitchen space. At one point I put several plates of ingredients on the ground behind me, and at another I was straining the spaghetti and found that a bit of it hadn't cooked. While trapping the giant pot with my elbow and holding the strainer in my right hand, I took a pair of scissors off the wall and cut the uncooked spaghetti away with my left hand.

6) Sometimes you think you can choose your friends, but you really can't. You can make an effort to be there for someone sure, but friendships are supposed to naturally happen. Some people you might theoretically want to be your friend but these things can't be forced.

7) It's extremely important though to recognize the friends who have chosen you, who think of you when you don't think of them. I think everyone has friends who are way better to you than you are to them. There should be a holiday to correct that imbalance, or you can just read this and go correct it yourself.

8) It's interesting how different family dinners are in Hong Kong and America.  I estimate the average 25 year old urban American who has moved out of the home, basically all of my friends in DC, eat 10-15 family dinners a year.  I estimate the average 25 year old Hong Kong local who lives at home (I haven't met a real local who doesn't) eats 200-300 family dinners a year.  I definitely felt when I came home this past year that I had prioritized friends over family. It's an interesting remark on our culture, but not necessarily a negative one.

9) I've previously noticed that I don't like to go out of my way on the morning commute, even like 3 minutes to get money at the ATM, here in Hong Kong. I don't recall it being such a problem in the states.  I realized today that it's because in those 3 minutes, hundreds of people "pass you." It's this psychological impulse to return to the fast-moving flow that you wouldn't feel if you were say walking alone in a wooded path to work. I'm going to see if there are psychological ways around this because I don't think it's a healthy attitude.

10) I applied for a year-long visa to China and ended up getting a 3 year visa.  Charity from the Chinese government?? There must be some catch.

11) I haven't had a discussion with anyone about the "fiscal cliff" and I couldn't be happier about that.

12) What were the most memorable events of 2012? Syria? Hurricane Sandy? Gangnam Style?  I personally think it was bit of a year for the nerds, with lots of mainstream public attention on the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars, the atmospheric jump of Felix Boumgartner and the potential discovery of the Higgs Boson.  All are so cool and so geeky. 

The Election from Abroad

The US election is just over a day away right now, but it can feel very far away. Nowadays I'm talking a lot of politics, especially with my western friends, but when you take a step back, it's true that the winner won't change my daily life too much over here. This is actually my second straight election spent abroad, though this time there's a chance I could spend the entire next term as a foreign resident.  And yet this is undoubtedly the election I've followed the most. This election does not need to alter my morning commute or my nighttime news to have an immense impact on my life.

Observing US politics from far away, you notice some embarrassing patterns. For one, the partisanship is unbearable. Campaign staffs monitor every event way closer than they should and look for every opportunity to spin a quote or hand gesture into an attack.  Every single reaction is so blinded by those ideological shades. It's funny that some very fundamental beliefs can align one's ideological leanings to a party line on so many issues, and that's a major reason why our country is so divided.  It starts from what role you believe government should play, and almost everything else stems from there.

This election is mainly about the economy. There are 1000 important issues but that's the one that matters most to most Americans, particularly swing voters. Specifically when you consider the us economy is still the #1 in the world and GDP has bee growing, you realize that the issue is really unemployment. Unemployment has only recently dropped below 8% after hovering close to 10% for much of Obama's term. If you are an Obama supporter, you'll believe that he inherited a mess from the bush administration and that he's prevented a real depression and has led us towards recovery. If you are a Romney supporter you question how deep that bush mess really was and believe that Obama has had plenty of time to fix things and hasn't. A PhD in Economics couldn't definitively tell you otherwise - is the sluggish economy Bush's fault, Obama's fault, Europes fault or inevitable? So your view on this crucial issue boils down to a matter of opinion more than anything else.

Popular national opinion is that we need to find a way to keep more jobs in America. We need to keep our manufacturing industry alive, we need to stand up China and stop sending our jobs and money there. Both Obama and Romney have echoed these sentiments. Nonetheless, both know that the logical and necessary solution may not follow their rhetoric. Romney the businessman knew that exporting jobs to China could help American businesses, and Obama the president hasn't complained about Chinese trade practices until recently. There is much mention in American media about the Chinese currency manipulation practices, but I have never heard someone explain the Chinese perspective. From what I understand, an immediate market correction of The yuan will help American laborers compete with Chinese laborers and reduce the price of American goods in China. It will also increase the real value of Chinese goods in China and Chinese products in the Us. The end result will be the goods many Americans buy will get more expensive, many poor Chinese will see their livelihoods reduced and perhaps starve, and our labor needs will go to Vietnam and the Philippines. But the only people who can vote are American citizens and all they want are jobs and so this rhetoric keeps being repeated. The truth is that our economy has been evolving and will continue to evolve. Maybe our days as a manufacturing and automobile leader are over. Maybe factories will disappear from the American landscape. But that doesn't have to mean our economy will suffer. We can press our advantages in technological innovations, our amazing higher education opportunities, our positive brain gain. These are perhaps the best qualities of America that most Americans just take for granted. But alas we want to be the best at everything, and telling people otherwise is a sure fire way to lose an election.

If being president only meant being in charge of the economy, Romney would be a good choice. The man has a proven track record of running companies well and resurrecting Bain & Company. I do believe that his experience in consulting is relevant to running an economy. But I don't believe running a country is similar to running a business. There are many things the leader of a nation must do that don't help the "bottom line" even indirectly. The President represents the entire country and has to understand the concerns of all sorts of underrepresented and less privileged groups, no mean feat in a country as diverse as the US. The president acts as the face of our nation to the globe. When we elect a president, we show the world the type of upstanding and accomplished people our country is capable of putting out there. 

In the many years Mitt Romney has been a public figure in my zone of awareness, I have never considered him a man who empathized with many different types of people. After examining his life story, he seems to me a person whose life goal was to be important. He went at that initially by going to business school and making a lot of money. After having accrued his fortune, he figured he was important in his circles but could get important on a much larger stage by going into politics. His entire political career has been one of changing political views whenever it becomes suitable, and I tried very hard to find evidence of a single issue that he was genuinely passionate about and had sought office to change, except maybe reducing government inefficiencies.  Perhaps I'm not giving him enough credit for his religious faith and his active involvement in charities, but he doesn't play that up either. This is all in contrast to Obama who seems like a classic bleeding heart liberal, who clearly is passionate about civil rights issues, evident from when he eschewed high paying law firms for community activism and civil rights law after graduation law school. No Obama has not been immune to pandering or ideological waffling either, particularly on foreign policy. But in essence, Romney and Obama represent two very different types of politicians who enter the game for very different reasons.

Of the many gaffes and flaws the media has covered on Romney in this age-old election cycle, the one I disliked the most was his comment on Palestinian economic inferiority to Israel. This was the time he claimed that "culture makes all the difference," implying that the Israeli culture was better suited for making money, and not the time he claimed that Palestinians are not interested in peace.  He made matters worse in my mind by defending his comments, saying he wasn't attacking Palestinian culture, that the same cultural phenomenon happens with US/Mexico.  So much of the last four years of my life has been about understanding different cultures and I'm very aware that the power of culture is strong enough to impact a nation's economy. But I also know how complicated it is to understand a culture different from one own, how so many of the little nuances and constantly evolving traditions cannot be boiled down into a statement like the one the Governor made. And even if you interpret his comment as one praising the Israeli Jewish culture as one that values economic prosperity, you open a whole new set of stereotypes and debates on what a culture should value.  It was a remarkably shocking statement for someone who spent two years living in France, and really makes me question Romney's foreign policy potential.

But he might win.  I believe my man Nate Silver and his model, which is still confidently behind Obama, but even he gives Romney a 14% chance to win. When I look at my Facebook feed and my friends here, I'm very hard pressed to find Republican voters. I have some friends from Georgetown who made themselves well-known in College Republicans, but from a life living in Massachusetts, DC, as a minority college-educated yuppie and now living abroad (where ex-pats are perhaps even more overwhelmingly liberal) has led to run in some very liberal circles. We are the ones turned off by conservatives' unequal attitudes towards women, gay rights, minorities. We see conservatives as narrow-minded, unwilling to help the poor, convinced by the lies that Fox News tells them, clinging to their guns and American-made trucks.  But we don't really know them. So who are these people who are voting for Romney? What is their deal?

To an extent I kind of get them. I try to put myself into a small middle America town. I try to grow up as a lower-middle class white boy in an all-white town, going to church with my community, trying very hard to be a good boy with good manners and a good work ethic. We know about these people in the cities but we don't bother ourselves with them, because they live sinful lives of debauchery, throwing around money, etc. We stick to our simple ways. Or maybe I'm in a former coal town in Pennsylvania, and this used to be a friendly community of factory workers. People would go to work, leave the shift and go en masse to the local pub, have a great time and leave their doors unlocked.  But now the factories are closing, and Hispanics are moving in.  Some are from Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico,  other American cities.  They're nice enough but they don't hang out in the pub with us, they don't embrace our community. They do a lot of their own things and neither of us feel safe.  We're not racist but we want someone more like us in charge, because we want a leader who can understand us, cause after all we're still the majority.

Maybe that's the thought process of some Romney voters. And maybe there are flaws there.  But these are Americans who believe that their parents' America was strong and aren't sure their childrens' America will be. It would take a long time to change these mentalities. So yes, I'm an Asian-American who loves diversity and strongly believe that Obama can connect with way more people than Romney can, but I'm also aware that there are a lot of white voters out there who think they're getting marginalized and wonder if they'll ever see a white president again. I highly doubt any of them are reading this post, but if they are, I want to tell them that they are the next changing demographic. They are the ones we will have to reach out to, for more mutual understanding, else our country is in trouble.  If Romney wins, we will likely have a president who wins 0% of the black vote and 20% of the minority vote.  We will have a country that despite so much progress, will be racially divided over its leader. If Romney wins, the core conservative white base may think that their beliefs have been justified, that they've been right all along and that they don't need to reach out. And wow that would be a dangerous outcome.

So this election affects me a lot here. I have some hope for the United States. I don't think our system and way of life is perfect but I think our methods are working and getting better. I think there are good candidates in our country and lots of ideas being heard and a lot of hard work being done.  I think democracy breathes life into a country and I think the system will get better and better and spread to more and more of the world.

America the Beautiful

Going home is a funny thing. It’s a timeless feeling, the core subject of countless songs, books, poems and the underlying plot of the epic of Odysseus. When you live as an ex-patriate in Hong Kong, a city “home” to countless third culture kids for whom the whole notion of home has been confusingly blended, you get familiarized with hazy definitions of home. You meet people with conflicting nationalities, or those who don’t define themselves at all by their nationality.  I feel lucky that for me, that was not something with which I seriously needed to wrestle. I was born and raised in the Boston area, and until I was 18 I didn’t know what it was like to live anywhere else. 

I returned to the US last Wednesday for the first time as a foreign resident, flying into Washington, DC, a city I called home on and off for five years. Coming back to take part in my brother’s wedding, my trip lasted about a week and a half and allowed me to take a trip down my entire American memory lane. I went through DC, New York and Boston, the only American cities I’d ever lived in. I had kept all three metro cards.

Wednesday evening I got off my plane at Reagan National Airport and strolled to the metro stop, walking past querying visitors with the swagger of a veteran who had plenty of Reagan entrances under his belt. I immediately boarded an incorrect yellow line train. After playing off my mistake as if I had chosen it, I noticed how old the subway system looked.  The plastic interiors of the train, the large concrete halls, the brick tiling of the platform – it all looked so 70’s. And there was space! My instinct when I entered the train was to stand, but as it started moving I realized there were several completely empty seats all around me. Nobody on the car was sharing a seat.

Soon I was at a barbecue restaurant near Maggie’s house, where I was staying, with three of my friends from school. I hadn’t been to a barbecue restaurant in a full year. I got my ribs, I got my coleslaw, I got my beer and before I knew it, I was having conversations about places and people that had literally not crossed my mind in that whole year. We gossiped about professors, former classmates, my friends’ friends whom I had never even met but knew about from conversations past. It was so surreal how fast it all came back.

Within a day I had several nuggets of reverse culture shock. I was crashing on Maggie’s couch on the ground floor, and while changing in the morning, I realized I needed to find a discrete spot away from the windows and peering pedestrians. For a second, I stood inexplicably dumbfounded, as if this ordinary task seemed extremely bizarre. Suddenly I realized – this was never a problem in Hong Kong. 99.5% of Hong Kongers do not live on the ground floor in a place where pedestrians could walk by and see them. I live on the 27th floor and my view is quite secure. I was no longer surrounded by apartments, I was actually in an urban neighborhood of houses. After I was presentable, I went out to the metro and had to wait 5 minutes for the train. 5 minutes is a very standard wait time on the Orange line, even at 9:45am as it were, but I found myself racking my brain to figure out how often I had ever waited this long for a subway train in Hong Kong. I came up with twice: once after watching the Eurocup final in the wee hours and taking a 6am train back, I waited 8 minutes, and another time I think there was a minor delay. Twice. My DC friends were absolutely wowed.

Sitting on a bus in the city, I gazed out at all the passing land. In stark contrast to Hong Kong, there was so much undeveloped green space. There was so much land that wasn’t generating tax, that instead probably took taxpayer money to maintain. There was certainly room for a Hong Kong style mall, an Elements or a Festival Walk, to sprout up, maybe around Foggy Bottom or Farragut West. As a professional in sustainable development now, it was my instinct to imagine Washingtonians operating in these buildings, using an improved infrastructural system. But the former resident in me instinctively bristled. In a sustainable world, isn’t there room for a life like this? Don’t we want to be able to walk down grassy fields by the river under the shade of trees? Don’t we want to be able to sit on a patio out on the sidewalk, drinking coffee and eating sandwiches? Don’t we want to be able to bike down wide streets without fearing for our lives? At that moment, I realized that I loved my life in DC and I loved my life in Hong Kong, despite how incredibly different they were. It is very difficult for me to reconcile these two loves.

I managed to see so many friends over Thursday and Friday, over 20, by meeting for coffee, lunch, dinner and drinks. Trying to sprint through 12 hours of jetlag, it was absolutely exhausting, but I was energized by not having to work and reminders of my youthful exploits in the town. On Saturday morning, I channeled it all. Despite coming home Friday night having closed out Tombs, I woke up at 9:30 and packed all my stuff, then headed into Georgetown for a pregame party before the tailgate. I left that party before 11am so that I could drag all my bags to the tailgate for the start of it. There I ran into another a couple dozen friends, many of whom I had to explain that I had moved to Hong Kong. Just forty minutes later, I finished my beer, said my goodbyes and grabbed my luggage and got another taxi, so that I could make my 12:25 train out of Union Station and attend the wedding rehearsal for my brother.

Suddenly the former classmates surrounding me were replaced by the relatives and family friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years.  There were all of DJ’s friends, some of whom I knew well, some of whom I couldn’t remember their names. Due mainly to our enormous extended family, most of the wedding guests were DJ's invitations.  I was whisked from the church where his ceremony would take place, to the hotel nearby where I wouldn’t be staying, back to the church, to dinner in Chinatown before breaking down and demanding solitude on my way to DJ’s Williamsburg condo.

The next morning I woke up really nervous. I didn't really know why, it wasn't my wedding day. I had no idea this was what wedding days felt like. My brother woke up early and seemed relaxed - Catherine had spent the night with her friends, obeying the tradition of the bride and groom not seeing each other until the ceremony proper. I milled about finishing the slideshow I had helped prepare for them, and rehearsing my speech.  DJ's groomsmen arrived between 10 and 11 and we got some food from Smorgasburg and put on our rented suits. They had all been in many weddings that year, including three who had gotten married, and so were used to the drill. It was my first time in a wedding party. A photographer came and snapped our every action. We did our thing then drove across the East River to the wedding. 

It was strange being at the actual wedding and having people come to you, telling you congratulations even though you didn't really do anything except fly 12 time zones and then leave a tailgate early. I haven't been to many weddings at all and certainly never felt like a VIP. We strolled to our spots in the corner of the church and waited, where things seemed to go according to schedule. Little did we know that the limo that was scheduled to pick the girls up was extremely late. Luckily the bridal party was sharp and decided to cut their losses and take a cab, or two because Cat's dress took up two seats. They arrived just on time and looked beautiful and we didn't hear that story til later. The wedding proceeded and I almost felt stage fright having everyone looking at my general direction. I wonder how DJ & Cat felt. I had the rings and kinda fumbled them out of my pocket but got them out and proceeded. Then they said "I do", it was beautiful, we all walked down the aisle and then the families of the bride and groom all lined up for handshakes. I let out a sigh of relief that my duties were over, before I realized that I was in the family of the groom. So I stood side to side with my dad and shook hands with people I knew, people I knew I knew but didn't actually know, people I didn't know if I knew, and a handful of people I knew I didn't know.  The whole time was picture time, and it was quite fulfilling and exhilarating when people lined out and the din quieted and we filed into a limo. We popped some champagne, took some photos, pumped up some jams, and almost got killed when the driver took a wrong turn just before we reached our Brooklyn reception site.  We sat in terror as the limo awkwardly did a 15 point turn in traffic to right itself.

The reception consisted of a lot more photos, some technical laptop setup, and a sprinkling of hors d'oevres and drinks. I was thinking steadily about my speech now and really quite nervous about it. It is probably to date the biggest speech of my life. I probably would not have even volunteered had I not taken public speaking in college and had some confidence going in. In truth, I had thought about the speech for a long time, even before DJ got engaged - I had the whole line about betting that I'd get married before him prepared. When I learned that Cat's mother could not speak English very well, I didn't want to leave her out and so I decided to make my speech bilingual in Mandarin.  This would also allow my Auntie to understand the speech, though the majority of my extended family cannot understand Mandarin.

I was very nervous about that part. I had given a real speech in Chinese and in a practice round with friends in Hong Kong, I was told that my accent was terrible. Which I was aware. I had hoped that by this time my Chinese would have improved more and this would sound fluid. I made up for it by really knowing my speech well and understanding everything that Jenny, my mainland coworker, had helped me pen.  My mischievous cousin Lincoln helped out as well.  Though I was having no trouble accessing the open bar on my own, Lincoln swooped in to "buy" me drinks. He told me it was important to settle my nerves. And again.  When I told him I was good, he brought in my cousin Karen who told me that we hadn't taken a drink together. And so we took a shot. And a double.  It took me to Sunday to realize that Lincoln wasn't trying to settle my nerves, he was really hoping for a train wreck. He subscribed to the belief that wedding speeches can only be memorably great or memorably awful, otherwise they suck. So yes, it would have been hilarious if I went in front of the mike and couldn't say anything intelligible. Maybe.

From the bridal party entrance to the three course dinner to the million people related to us to the Gangnam style dance to the tea ceremony, the evening was a splendid glorious stream of celebration of my brother's and Cat's life.  The whole time I wasn't feeling pure happiness for him, my heart pumped in anticipation for my coming role.  Then my dad spoke. My dad is well known for embarrassing my brother and I, but this time he started with a clever pun, offering picture evidence of how he raised DJ single-handedly. He then went on to make fun of Mom and praise Cat in one graceful swoop, and DJ and I were both spared and moved. His speech was long though, and as noted I had been drinking, and I had to go to the bathroom towards the end of it. So I sprinted to the bathroom, not knowing when my slideshow would be up. When I sprinted back, I saw DJ fumbling on my mac to get the slideshow started. I ran in and took over. However my hands were wet from washing them in the bathroom, and the mousepad didn't work at all. I wiped my hands on the table cloth and tried to maneuver the cursor again, but it didn't work as it had gotten wet. I could feel several hundred eyeballs boring into me, possibly wondering who let this drunk kid on the center floor. I wiped the mousepad with the tablecloth and finally started the Powerpoint. Then I retreated to my table and sipped some water.

The slideshow went over very well though perhaps too long.  I got a little teary not going to lie, it was quite an emotional night.  Then Cat's bridesmaids Hatty and Charlotte gave a joint speech covering some of their humorous exploits as NYU underclassmen and then castmates of the Asian version of Sex & the City. And then it was me. I remember deciding last minute to make fun of myself first, taking the mic from the host, and then opening with "各位好". I then said Mandarin isn't my native language, I know my accent is very bad. That got a surprising number of laughs.  I then went on to say how today was very humbling, how I had bet DJ that I would get married before him, and how despite being cooler, more charming and so much better looking, I have today lost the bet. I then said something simple about how hard it was finding that perfect soulmate in today's high-intensity world, and that while I haven't, I'm so happy DJ has. When I finished the Chinese portion, I actually got an applause. I then repeated the same joke in English, and when people laughed, I thanked them for revealing themselves as non-Mandarin speakers. Then I said how Cat and DJ are both extremely dear to me.  One obviously, is among the people I trust most in the world. Someone whom I feel I can go to for any issue, be it work, homework, leisure or relationships. Someone who has seen me change considerably over the years and whom I’ve seen change. And the other, is my brother.

It was really, really predictable, but the people who didn't know me laughed, and then I went into the mushy stuff, then got off the stage and hugged DJ.  I then took another 3 shots and went table to table.  When I came back and found my cake taken away, I realized I hadn't really eaten much of the great food there, because I'd been so busy going around the hall. I also wasn't that drunk despite what all this sounds, probably because I had spread things out over so many hours. And then the hours caught up, and an unbelievable exhaustion overwhelmed me until I was back in Williamsburg.

I spent another two days in New York sorting out post-wedding logistics and seeing friends. NYC and Hong Kong always get their atmospheres compared, but it amazed me how much more of a walkable city New York was. I would easily rather walk 10 uptown blocks in New York than 4 blocks in Mong Kok or Causeway Bay.  The street food in New York is iconic. The street food in Hong Kong is an obstacle. The city architecture consisted of so much stone, a completely foreign sight in Asia.  NYC still has its flaws, but it might be the best setting in the world to create a story.  Or maybe the stories there are more relatable to me than the stories created in Hong Kong.  Those were some of my random thoughts walking through the city, seeing people I could easily have become.

I took a Bolt Bus home and spent a much needed four days in Newton. I had looked forward to coming home, home home, the placed that raised me, where I learned to walk, talk, multiply, run, jump, read, throw a frisbee, use a computer, play the piano, make friends.  My past was all haphazardly arranged, as if it had not been told that I was coming back and had not bothered to get ready. The crossword book I had written senior year of college was sitting on top of the encyclopedia I had gotten as a Christmas present junior year next to the book on creoles I had read after graduate school next to the fiction book I had started in middle school and never finished. The piano was one we had bought when I was maybe in 8th grade, and the music that I found was partly the classical music my piano teacher taught me in high school, part printed chord sheets for pop songs like Viva la Vida and Love Story, the whole "Piano Man" music sheet, some of DJ's music, some a capella stuff... My room had wall posters from the Red Sox championship runs, now showing disgraced players. The attic, which was enlarged in high school, had the bench where I learned to do decline situps, that used to be in DJ's room. When I turned the TV on I still watched the same channels.  I ran down Beacon Street to the reservoir and around, a route I first completed the summer after junior year of high school.  Bounding down the exact same sidewalks as I had when I was training against hurdlers from St. Mark's and the like, it was bizarre realizing that I was now getting in shape to compete against ultimate players on the other side of the world in two weeks. I had never before run this route with so much sense of life fulfillment. I took a long detour home and maybe it was the suburban American air regenerating me, but I crushed the run. 

The night before I left I asked my mom if I could go over school stuff.  We were actually planning on selling the house, and the emotions of leaving this immense part of me were strong.  When I think about selling the house too long, I think about a couple dozen things, all of which make me want to cry, the most important of which was the uncertainty with where Auntie would go.  The rest of the stuff though I was prepared to deal with.  Nothing in life lasts forever and I was getting to the age where that needed to hit me hard.  Still I wanted to see what of my past was worth salvaging, what I had hidden away from myself. And I was also looking for something. In my junior year blue ringed notebook, I found it. I made a lot of stupid scribbling while taking notes for boring classes (including this Combinatorics class), and most of them don't last long. This was different.

24 year old Cal
30% New York City
20% Boston
12% Hong Kong
10% Washington, DC
5% Chicago
5% San Francisco
5% London
2% Belfast
2% Beijing
9% Other

I guess 20 year old Cal knew 24 year old Cal fairly well, although a 22 year old Cal would have dramatically readjusted those odds.  I think I actually did the same thing as a sophomore in high school, but those may have been gone forever.  I wondered what that person jotting the notes down would think of me now if he met me. I think I would definitely have been surprised by a lot of things. And I think I'd be happy with my life right now. I really hope my current self can look at my 28 year old self and think the same way. 

Leaving home was very, very hard.  Even when my current life is contained in a 400 square foot unit on the other side of the world, filled with all pieces of my life I've acquired since I moved out of that house, it really hurts knowing that this perpetually reliable space may close itself off to me. I wasn't really ready to fly back, I didn't have homecoming or a wedding waiting for me on the other side. But I knew where my place was. If anything the trip back to the US had reassured me that I was doing the right thing by being over in Hong Kong. It's important to know who you are, where you come from, who's important to you. But it's equally important to know what you want to become, what you want to accomplish, and I think my former self, my family and my friends all understand and agree here. Sometimes you need to go home and integrate yourself with yourself.  Other times, you need to create home where your heart is.

World's Ultimate and Guts Championships

World's is an ultimate frisbee tournament that takes place every four years. It features teams representing the best that their countries can offer, in five distinct groups (Open, Women's, Mixed, Open's Masters, Women's Masters) and conclusively settles world champions over a week long tournament. It can be thought of as the Olympics of Ultimate, minus the Ancient Greek prehistory, and is considered a significant deal in this burgeoning subcommunity originating in the United States.

This year's World's took place in Osaka, Japan from July 7-14.  I had been vaguely aware of this tournament while I lived in the United States, but never really gave it much thought and certainly didn't think I'd ever play in it. After moving here and within a month playing in a warmup tournament to World's in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, I realized there was a very real possibility of participating at that stage.  Our Hong Kong team was finalized in late March, at which point I became very, very very excited for this special opportunity.

Our team selection process was pretty interesting. A couple of the major players here organized the team and solicited interest from the entire community, including overseas people with Hong Kong ties. After they had an idea of who could come, they decided to make a men's team and a mixed team, and posted "advertisements" in a few ultimate forums to round out the team.  Through this, our captain Tommy Fung actually received what amounted to Ultimate CV's, leading to our mixed team picking up Mathieu Bordeleau, the captain of the Quebec City Onyx and one of the last cuts from Team Canada.  Though "Beau" as we called him has still never been to Hong Kong, he was an awesome addition to our team in every way possible.  In the end, very few people who asked for it were actually denied a spot on the team. The self-selection process was very good though. In my opinion, only one player did not really deserve to be playing at that level.  The teams we put out there were more or less the best teams that Hong Kong could have within the WFDF eligibility rules (with a handful of great players unable to make the trip or playing on other teams).

Anyway my excitement was hard to contain. This would undoubtedly be the highest level tournament I'd ever compete in.  Made possible solely by my move to Hong Kong, this unique opportunity felt very unreal to me, with various disappointments of my American ultimate experience in my not-so-distant memory.  How insanely good would the competition be? How good would we be? Could we win a game? What would be the impression of foreign teams of Hong Kong ultimate? Who would we play against? How much would I play? How well would I play?


Furthermore I was giddy for Japan. The tournament could hardly have been in a better location for me. Here was a country I had never been to, that I very much wanted to go to, and which was really quite convenient for me to get to. Were this tournament in Europe or South America, I doubt I would have gone. As such, it was in Osaka, a 4 hour direct flight from Hong Kong.  I really didn't know what to expect out of Japan.  I hadn't seen many Japanese movies or shows, and been exposed to little Japanese culture growing up in the US outside of sushi and Dragon Ball Z. Part of me thought it might be a futuristic society with incredible automated devices, squeaky clean metallic infrastructure and ultra polite and friendly public servants all around.  Part of me drew from my Asia experience, where every towering metropolis has a much more traditional, simple substratum devoid of the advanced technology, hearkening to the rustic days of yore.  Was that the real Japan? Or would it be kinda like the US? Despite a grueling schedule of 10 long games of competitive ultimate over 6 days, I was determined to see as much of Japan as I could.

That plan didn't start off so well.  I flew with teammates Kyle, Grant and Kristen with a stopover in Beijing.  Beijing isn't exactly on the way to Osaka, but this was the cheapest flight available, a solid 2700 HKD round trip on China Air. Our layover in Beijing was scheduled to be about two hours, but after taking a bus to and boarding our connection flight, we sat still for half an hour before they told us the plane had mechanical problems and we'd have to return to the gate.  It's no fun getting off a full a plane, grabbing all your luggage, and boarding a bus to an uncertain near future. We didn't know when we'd take off and by now it was getting late. In the mass of angry Chinese passengers mobbing the airport officials, the authorities were expectedly opaque in communicating the situation and certainly in no mood to translate into English. After about 15 minutes of hopping uncertainty, I caught the time of departure in Mandarin and it turned out to be only an hour away.  We reconvened and decided we had enough time for a beer. Amazingly we found bottled Guinness at a bakery.

We land in Osaka around 1am, seemingly as the last scheduled flight that night. We go through immigration, baggage and ATM hunting. We have lots of printed out information on the house/hostel in which we are staying, but we have no clear plan of how to get there. The trains into the city closed at midnight, and Kristen read up on the price of taxis on an inflight magazine: either 1700 or 17000 Yen.  1700 would be about $20 USD, which would be great. 17000 would be $200 USD, which would be unjustifiable.  I had heard that Japanese taxis were famously expensive (rare in Asia) and my fears were confirmed true when the price turned out to be the latter.  While we were rumbling around for cash and transportation options, China Air had unbeknownst to us provided our flight with a coach bus into the city. We discovered this and hurried on, but were told it was full.  That's fine, we'll stand or something. Nope. The bus was FULL, with additional chairs brought and passengers sitting all the way down the aisle. There was literally no room for the four of us to stand.

One airport official spoke English, and so we worked with her extensively to remedy the situation. Could they call a van? Did the airport have any petty cash that would help us with a taxi? Could she drive us? Should we wait until 5am for the trains to open up? The official was pretty slow on delivering updated news, and an hour later (part of which we spent working on our throws on the sidewalk) she informed us there was no cash, but we could get a cab and they would redeem it for us. They had no forms in English, but they did have some in Chinese.  We weren't thrilled about this idea, with the very likely possibility that said Chinese form would never get redeemed, and it was actually a relief when we discovered that we'd need a Japanese bank account for this to get processed. Idea nixed.

Now it was near 3am and we started really pressing on the officials. In the discussion I heard someone speaking Mandarin, asking "how many are they?"  "Four," I answered. Turns out he had a car, worked for China Air, and it was essentially part of his job to drive us home.  The man was from Beijing, didn't speak Japanese and only a bit of English, but we plugged our address into his GPS and fit everyone in comfortable and rolled out. During the ride, Grant asked me, "Cal, he doesn't speak Japanese right? The GPS is giving instructions in Japanese." I was aware, and just a tad worried. Turns out he could only get us to the general area of our house, the Shin-Imimaya station, but we had instructions from there and could walk. As the last people to arrive, we had previously seen emails from teammates complaining about how hard our house was to find, including one young player who gave seemed to have given up in desperation, found an internet cafe and emailed the team to go find him. We had laughed heartily at him, but as we circled around in confusion, we wondered if he would get the last laugh. The address system was so foreign, so we had no idea what 3-3-36 Ebisu-nishi really meant. Despite it being 4am, there were a fair number of Japanese milling about and I asked one on a bike to lead us to the address.  He wondered about it for a little bit, then started biking away with my paper. I followed him as briskly as I could with my luggage. He pointed left, then right, as if wrestling with his own confused mental map, then ultimately led me to an intersection. There he got off his bike, shook his head in frustrated apology, and pointed at the street name. I was excited! It was the street on our address. Then I noticed it wasn't. Here I could read the Kanji. Where our address ended with 西 (west) this one ended with 東 (east). We had gone to the east version of this street.  He apologized to me with a lot of short head bows, and then pointed me to the right general direction. We ended up walking back that way with some more gesticulated help and when we were finally in the right area and still couldn't find the house, the man on the bike reappeared and pointed at the correct house.  What he had done in the intervening 15 minutes, I don't know, but I'm pretty touched that he decided to come back.

So I'm sure you're all furious that I've written 1600 words and we haven't gotten into game action or Japanese living.  Well your fault for reading my blog in the first place. Our first game was in the late afternoon against France, and so we were able to get some sleep after our 4am arrival. The fields were in an immense complex called Sakai, to the south of the city. Navigating the metro system was quite a challenge. The Japanese system is legendarily intimidating to foreigners, with several privately owned companies operating the extensive rail system in addition to the municipally operated subway, totally 70 lines.  I had never experienced a privately run system, where a company metro map did not necessarily show the lines and stops operated by its competitors. If a private company went out of business, it's stations were liable to disappear. I think during my first visit to the rail station, it took us 10 minutes to figure out where to go and what appropriate tickets to buy, and we were aided by a rare bilingual old man. Not only was the system map complicated, with too many lines for the color palette and with all the Japanese names meshing together, but that was just half the battle. The incoming trains were, similar to New York, liable to be local or express or somewhere in between.  They were also, dissimilar to New York, liable to be women's only or first class (guaranteed seats).

The tournament provided shuttle buses from the nearest station, and we pulled into the massive complex seeing grass and flying discs everywhere. A soccer stadium that could seat 1000, where top games were showcased, welcomed us, followed by a fenced section of finely mowed grass fields. Our games would take place on these perfect pitches or on nearby artificial turf, which were a great change from the coarse Hong Kong fields we had trained on.

So onto the games!  Our team was assembled like a pickup team, and so we had some growing pains familiarizing ourselves with our teammates, trying to figure out good strategies and lineups.  The French team we faced was a polished one, that though not overly athletic, had a few stars and didn't turn the disc over against us. While stepping onto the field the first time, an intense sudden feeling came upon me. This was World's. It had arrived. I had thought about this tournament for so long, trained for it for so long, but here it finally was and the judgement would soon begin. I would have to guard some elite players and push myself through the deepest bouts of exhaustion. I didn't want to turn the disc over, I didn't want to drop the disc, I didn't want to do anything negative. I had to take deep breathes and remind myself to think positively, to not fear failure but to anticipate opportunities for success, to showcase what I could do.  Those nerves were hard to settle and I turfed the disc the first time I threw it. I learned quickly that playing ultimate at this stage made a huge difference.  Something about the setting, the fields, the uniforms, the officialness of it all really magnified the play.  France beat us handily that Sunday. The next day, a fast and familiar Philippines team beat us in the morning, but in the afternoon we beat a decent South Africa team for our first win.  Beau managed to get an unbelievable Callahan in this game, by making a layout D near the goal line that macked the disc back to the handler. He then got up, blocked the lane while his man ran behind the handler.  The handler finally dumped to Beau's man, who bobbled it, where Beau scrambled and jumped to snatch the disc and land inside the end zone.  Later I caught my first score by making a sharp S-cut off a turnover.

We'd finish the week with a close loss to Russia, a blowout at the hands of Japan, a decent loss against the US, a terrible game against Colombia played in torrential winds where we lost because they started first, and wins over Netherlands, China and Finland.  The play was top notch and every point I played was challenging. The games were long and intense, but with only two a day, none of us ever got as sore as we normally were at the end of tournaments, although it wasn't fun being sore for a full week.  Our team came together within the first couple days, both on the field and off, and aided by our Canadian imports, we were able to move the disc against anyone.

The ultimate that I took part in was the best of my life, but so was the ultimate that I saw the best I'd ever seen firsthand. USA vs Australia men's, a game that ended in heartbreaking fashion for the Wombats, was absolutely incredible.  The US team was Revolver + Kurt Gibson, a San Francisco based club team that hadn't lost in two years and featuring ultimate superstars such as Beau Kittredge, Mac Taylor and Robbie Cahill. The Australian team had extensive tryouts over the whole country, and everyone who made it had to sign up to do TWO tours in the US before Japan.  I saw many other notable games included the Canadian Master's Open team Nomads, every single Japanese team and seeing my college teammate Logan Rhine playing for New Zealand.

I fought the fatigue and tried to see as much of the city as I could. I ventured to Osaka Castle one morning when we had a bye, walked around the downtown area of Namba where I saw both an outdoor climbing wall over a busy street on the outer facade of a giant entertainment complex that spilled, and a "shoe kitchen" inside a department store. The Japan I saw didn't utterly shock me or seem like a futuristic society, but I did pick up some subtleties that leads to me to think that Japan is possibly unique as a modern non-Western nation.  While many Eastern and otherwise non-Western nations have become well developed, few of them can boast as many indigenous ingenuities as Japan.  To an extent, whether you're in Bangkok, Brussels, Boston or Beijing, if you're in a developed area, it can feel very similar. It's the same technology that has gone into the escalators and the streetlights and the computers. Many of these things were invented in the west and imported directly into these places. I have no idea  how different technological evolution has been in Japan, but to me it felt different. It felt like the Japanese started engineering cars, dishwashers, light bulbs and malls, and only kept a mindful eye towards how these same concepts were developing abroad. Some of these products turned out well and became very popular abroad, with Toshiba, Sony, Nintendo, Honda and the like all international household names. This has occurred to the extent where when I see a Sony Blu-Ray player or a Nintendo Wii, it simply doesn't cross my mind that these products are Japanese.  But then some Japanese products didn't leave the islands and they were cool with it. So you have all these toilets with remote controls and a dozen different settings that honestly kinda scare me. You have vending machines that pour beer for you, shopping streets giving off unique vibes, and game shows that are just frightening.

On Friday night I was one of the few Hong Kong players to attend the tournament party. The World's party turned out to be one of the best ultimate parties I've ever been to, spearheaded by an insane group of Kiwis and Australians, and a surprisingly fun Japanese open team that would have liked to have been playing in the finals the next day, but took solace in chugging sake from the bottle instead.  Located in the back room of a bowling lanes complex, the setting was odd, but it may have been the most international party I've ever attended. I'd like to think that's saying a lot.

Bolt

This Olympics has been a lot of fun, but the real Opening Ceremonies began with a gunshot and lasted under 10 seconds. To the untrained eye, every 100m dash might look exactly the same, but this was the fastest race ever. Where do we begin? With Usain Bolt, the man the myth the legend? With Tyson Gay running a 9.80, good enough to win gold in every single Olympics that Bolt did not take part in, but not even medaling (and bursting into tears afterward)?  Gay should be remembered as one of the best American sprinters of all time. He swept the 100, 200 and 4x100 in the 2007 World Championships in Osaka (a good location for World Championships I'd like to add). He ran a 9.71 to finish 2nd to Bolt in the 2009 Worlds, and has a personal best of 9.69 in the 100 and 19.58 in the 200, both numbers that would have been mindboggling just 10 years ago.  However because of Bolt, he will never be an Olympic Champion unless the US pulls off a miracle in the 4x100.  Can we talk about Justin Gatlin?  His story is phenomenal, winning the gold in the 100m in Athens before testing positive for testosterone in 2006 and ultimately being banned for 4 years.  He is now competing in these games as a 30 year old, extremely old for a sprinter (Carl Lewis, known for his longevity, did not medal in any individual sprints as a 31 year old in Barcelona), and ran a sensational 9.79 to grab bronze. Then there's the silver medalist, 22 year old Yohan Blake, who beat Bolt in the Jamaican trials and created a lot of hype for a possible upset.  He ran a 9.75 which was impressive, but not enough to compete with Bolt.  Can I also say a word about Asafa Powell? The world record holder in the 100m from 2005 to 2008 and the man with the most sub 10 second 100m's ever, Powell pulled up with a groin injury halfway through the race and pulled up to the finish. He will finish his otherwise-illustrious career without an individual Olympic medal.  However, I want to point out that he was still clocked at 11.99 seconds on his hamstrung run in London, which is amazingly faster than my personal best! Yes if I were to race Asafa Powell and he got seriously injured halfway through the race, he would still win.  Anyway, arguably the five fastest men in history ran in that 100m dash.

But it's all about Bolt. He's one of the reasons the others are so good - they're all chasing him. In a sport where the world record used to drop every few years .01 seconds at a time (and Carl Lewis' 100m record of 9.86s was a sacred number while I was growing up), Bolt chopped away tenths of seconds at a time and rewrote our entire conception of what is possible within the human species. He's tall, he's charismatic, he's got a trademark gesture "To De World" that both looks awesome when he does it and looks lame when someone else does it, and he's got a name for the ages.  He's never had any association with steroids but rather more association with McDonald's Chicken Sandwiches.

The race was at 4:50am in Hong Kong, which may be the least convenient time for a race ever.  I decided I was going to watch it, went to sleep at midnight and set an alarm for 4:30. Somehow though I set it for pm instead of am. I know right? However, amazingly I actually woke up on my own at 4:40am! No joke my body wanted to see the race.  I was dead tired but I dragged myself to the computer and got the live stream and witnessed that fastest race ever.

Tonight's the 200m at 3:50am and I hope to do the same thing again.  I expect Bolt to win again, it would be almost a tragedy if he didn't.  In the 100m race he had a characteristic slow start and I think was 6th at the 50m mark.   His last 50m showed that his top speed is so much faster than everyone else, and the 200 is where that is especially apparent.   I was really really hoping that he would run in the 4x400, which he did not rule out.  Jamaica's best 400m runner, Jermaine Gonzales, was injured and ran poorly in his individual 400m race.  However he raced again the 4x400 and didn't even finish, disqualifying the team.

SPO: Sitting on the fence, tankminton and the Olympic Spirit

Have I mentioned I love the Olympics? I don't have a tv and Hong Kong is in a terrible time zone to watch these Olympics but I'm as obsessed as ever. This has been a thoroughly entertaining one with many many storylines, including my own ill-fated adventure to watch the Opening Ceremonies. I'll get to that last. In the meantime, we have so many controversies! Who would have thought that tanking wouldn't be an issue in Beijing and would in London?  From Jordyn Wieber not advancing in the Woman's Gymnastics All-Around, to the South Korean fencer experiencing the longest second of her life, to the woman's badminton fiasco, there's a lot of people crying foul, and a lot of people crying in general.  Then there's also Phelps doing his thing or not doing his thing, Ye Shiwen (whom I could put under the controversies tab), and an awesome American table tennis player.

First, the US Women's Gymnastics Team won gold in the team performance, in a dominating performance beating the Russians by 5 points.  It was their first gold since on home soil in Atlanta after the memorable Kerri Strug broken ankle routine. But more people are talking about Jordyn Wieber, who finished 4th among all competitors in the individual all-around, but wasn't allowed to advance to the finals of 24 because of a rule limiting each country to 2 competitors. Alex Raisman (from Needham, MA) and Gabby Douglas had finished 2nd and 3rd respectively.  It's pretty rough finishing ahead of 20 odd people who you have to see advance ahead of you, especially when you had a legitimate shot at gold and that's the one thing you've been dreaming of your entire life.  However, I do find it odd that American media didn't report that this isn't the first time this has happened, and that in fact Anastasia Grishina, the Russian gymnast who finished 12th in qualifying also couldn't advance because of the same situation (and #21 from GB, and #22 from China). No it's not fair, but the rule isn't entirely broken. Each country is only allowed 3 competitors in the first place, and to have them all advance to the finals would not reflect the truly global nature of the sport. It's not that they don't want 3 Americans in the finals, but they don't want 3 Americans, 3 Russians, 3 Brits, and 3 Chinese.  We don't want to see a distance running finals of all Kenyans and Ethiopians, or a badmintons quarterfinals of all Asians. More on the latter later.  However, I think the rule could be amended that if the 3rd finisher of a country finishes top 5 overall, he/she should be allowed to advance. The Olympics is about international cooperation and showcasing different countries, but it's also about crowning the best athletes in the world.  Jordyn Wieber had a legitimate chance to win gold, much less medal, and she should really be allowed that.

Shin A-Lam has become an overnight celebrity as such that only the Olympics can produce.  She was in a semifinals fencing match against Britta Heidermann from Germany, and was tied 1-1 after regulation.  They then went into a sudden death overtime, where a coin was flipped and Lam was given priority, meaning that if no one scored in that final minute, she would be declared winner and advance to the gold medal.  That seems to me like a bs rule, but such is fencing I guess. And so Shin played to that strategy and it was scoreless in OT with 1 second left.  With one second left, Heidermann took a desperate last plunge. She missed and time stopped, or ended.  The official ruled that nope, there was still 1 second left. Another final desperate plunge. Another parry and miss. Another long consultation at the clock and video replay.  Still 1 second left. One final plunge. Hit.  Heidermann rejoices, and Shin is in disbelief. I haven't rewatched youtube clips of the bout with a stopwatch, and I understand that 1 second could very well be 1.9 seconds.  However, the world consensus is that that one second lasted way, way longer than it should. I'm just of the belief that it was very hard for Shin to focus and refocus after she had already thought she won (she parried every single attack all minute long and couldn't defend one last one?), and also that electronic timing is very, very good but not perfect.  And if their technology is so good, they should at least display the tenths of a second on a clock.  The NBA used to have a rule where you couldn't catch, turn and shoot a jumper in under 0.7 seconds, and that all attempts to do so when the clock was that low would not count, regardless of what it looked like on replay. I tend to agree with that principle. In this scenario, I think there should be a rule where you can have at max two restarts in one second.  Nobody is buying three.  Even worse was the rule that required Shin to sit on the mat during the entire 75 minute duration of her appeal, and allowing the world to see her in tears as she wondered whether her dreams of gold could still come true. I believe a lot of news sources reported incorrectly that Shin was staging a protest by refusing to leave the mat - this is untrue, her staying on the mat was a part of the formal protest procedure. There's a lot more to this story, including reports that the timekeeper was a 15 year old volunteer! I think it's a sad tale for her, but she's become an overnight celebrity and something good may yet come of this.

Now to the badminton tanking.  I was very confused about how the round robin system could lead to a situation where lowering your seed would be such an advantage that half the field would try to do it.  But ok here is what I think happened after staring at the standings for a while.  We have 4 teams disqualified, Wang/Yu from China, Jung/Kim from South Korea (both in group A), Ha/Kim from South Korea and Polii/Jouhari from Indonesia in group C.  A1 would play C2 and A2 would play C1 in the next round.  Another Chinese team advanced and would have played the winner of A1/C2 in the semifinals if things played to seed.  Wang/Yu were favorites and would have been A1, but lost so that they'd be A2 and would only be able to meet the other Chinese team in the finals.  However they were clearly the superior team in their field, meaning C2 would then play a weaker opponent than C1. And thus neither Ha/Kim and Polii/Jouhari wanted to defeat the other and face the Chinese team.  Jung/Kim from group A might have tanked to ruin the Chinese plan, or else to avoid facing their Korean counterparts.  I kind of get the original Chinese rationale for not wanting to face each other until absolutely necessary. If both teams have a legitimate chance to get into the finals, you don't want the luck of the draw preventing that from happening.  I then also get the Korean and Indonesian response.  We see this in American professional sports, especially when teams tank for the lottery.  However, we shouldn't see this in the Olympics and it's entirely preventable.

EDIT: Anthony Tao reports that Wang may have injured herself before the match and they eased up to rest her for the elimination round. That may have been a part of it but I'm not buying that that's the entire reason she tanked.

People have been decrying the round-robin format of this tournament, instead saying it should be an elimination format from the start. I should clarify that by people I mean American sports journalists who cover sports outside of the big four exactly twice every four years, and have no clue what they're talking about.  When every single competitor has trained their whole lives for this, the biggest event in their sports, and flown all this way and attended all these ceremonies, you don't want to send half of them home after one match. The round robin format is absolutely the way to go.  However, what you need to do is have A1 play D2, A2 play C1, B1 play C2, B2 play D1.  This is what happens in ultimate tournaments and makes the seedings much more difficult to rig, and prevents the chain of events from happening as it did above. What you could also do is reseed after the round robin start and go from there.  Pretty simple solutions. What the Olympic officials did, booting out the competitors for exploiting their own flawed rules, is awful. I cannot defend them for kicking people out for not breaking explicit rules, especially when these were medal contenders.  The officials did more to change the landscape of the competition than the competitors did by not trying their hardest.  However, I also think the athletes are entirely at fault here. These are the Olympics, where not only the pinnacle of performance is expected but also the pinnacle of sportsmanship. This is where you look at the potential seedings and swallow hard and just play your game, one point at a time, one match at a time. The Olympics is not the venue to pull something sneaky to gain an advantage, and definitely not the venue to not try your hardest.  It's an absolute disgrace to the fans who had an extremely difficult time getting tickets to the event, embarrassing to the countries you represent and to competitors of the same sport in past Olympics. The Chinese teams should have accepted it and realized they would have met in the semifinals, which meant that both could still walk away with medals. All these competitors deserve to be severely rebuked - booted from the competition is another thing entirely.


More controversies have arisen since I first published this! The bigger one is the Azerbaijani boxer who got solidly mauled by a Japanese fighter, hitting the mat five times in the final round, and yet was declared winner in a gross miscarriage of proper judging. I don't pretend to be an Olympic boxing expert. I saw it live in Beijing and it is extremely difficult to understand and very different from professional boxing. It's all about landing punches and scoring and less about inflicting immense physical pain. Still, nearly all reports agree on the travesty of this decision, and it was official overturned the following day amidst reports that British press uncovered a money trail from Azerbaijan towards boxing officials in the AIBA, allegedly $9 million to ensure 2 gold medals. Boxing is called the easiest sport to rig, and this stuff happens in the professional US circuit too (see Bradley-Pacquiao). Thank goodness that the decision was overturned instead of in 1988, when Roy Jones Jr. outpunched his South Korean challenger nearly 3 to 1 and lost in a blatant home country rigging. These are the obvious ones. How many matches that are close and competitive are fixed? Between the fixing, the concussions and MMA, I'm pretty convinced boxing is fast on its way out as a relevant sport.

The Brazilian women's soccer team, a strong medal contender, traveled by bus from Wembley Stadium back home a day before their game before GB. A comedy of errors unfolded in which the bus broke down, the driver was unable to get a call out for a while and when another bus was finally sent over, the driver said he had fulfilled his quota of hours and would not be allowed to drive them to London.  The delay took a whole five hours and caused the team to miss their usual training session.  They lost 1-0 to Great Britain the next day and cried conspiracy. Yeah maybe. I'm inclined to find British incompetence at managing this bus more believable than British evilness in messing with the Brazilians to gain a competitive advantage.  If I was on that bus, I'd definitely complain, but it wasn't on the day of the game just the night before. I've been gone to a few tournaments on severely delayed flights (including World's) and gotten very little sleep the night before play and still pulled through without excuses. That's what athletes are supposed to do.  I don't think this controversy is that big a deal.

Then we have Ye Shiwen, who made a huge splash by winning the 200IM and 400IM, notably pulling away from the field in the last 50m freestyle length in the 400IM and setting a world record at 4:28.43.  This raised immense eyebrows, since her previous personal record coming into the Games was 4:33.79, and her 50m freestyle was swam in a blistering 28.93s, faster than Ryan Lochhte's last 50m in the sam event.  To our generation, jaded by the countless name athletes and great performances now attributable to steroids, we immediately suspect something.  It doesn't help that other swimmers on the Chinese swimming team just recently got busted.  A top US official immediately raised the possibility of doping and a firestorm has kinda ensued.  I think as seasoned sports fans, we can't be too surprised or disheartened if something does come out. However, this performance isn't as fishy as it seems.  First, let's forget about her "beating Lochte." Lochte's total time was 4:05.18 and his race strategy involved setting an insurmountable lead, not relying on his kick.  Second, Ye is 16, and she was 14 when she set her previous pr. In the ensuing two years she's grown from 160cm to 172cm. Is it unreasonable for someone to improve by 5 seconds from the ages of 14 to 16 and especially shine on the biggest stage of them all? I wouldn't be surprised if that was indeed the truth. But I wouldn't be surprised if doping was involved, either.

2012 London Olympics

The 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom are days away, with opening ceremonies set for this Friday, July 27. I don't know about everywhere in the world, but hype is incredibly low here in Hong Kong. Maybe it's the come-down from 2008 in Beijing, maybe it's the lack of general sports interest in this culture, maybe it's that people aren't that interested in the Olympics in general. However, I am super interested in the Olympics and in fact, this blog originated as an Olympics blog. Regretfully, I have not really been following the buildup to these Olympics as well and am entirely oblivious on the state of many interesting sports.  Still, I think I can outline why I'm excited for these Olympics and what I will be watching for.

1. London will be the first city ever to host the Games three times, having acted as host city in 1908 and 1948.  It is without doubt one of the world’s premier cities in so many aspects, and has been for the entire modern era. Of course, this does not guarantee that the Games will run smoothly nor that the city will escape criticism, and it seems there are just as many infrastructure concerns with London as there were with Beijing (though less than there were with Athens).  There are worries with the traffic, the Athlete’s Village, the volunteers, security (London has been victim to terrorist attacks this decade) and even the logo (which has garnered incredible public disapproval and a few bizarre controversies). I think hosting an Olympics is an open invitation to ticky-tack international criticism and that most of these complaints will hopefully fade away after the Opening Ceremonies.  The city has undergone much redevelopment and renewal, with the Olympic Stadium being built in a formerly derelict part of town, hopefully springboarding the way to a vibrant post-Games neighborhood. The London Shard, the tallest building in the European Union and engineered by my company, Arup, opened in early July.  It's not the same hyperdevelopment of a city as it was for Beijing, when the subway doubled in anticipation of the Olympics, but it's some serious infrastructure overhaul.
2. Interesting sports.  A lot of people complain about the Olympics and how there are all these stupid, silly sports that you only see every four years.  The truth is that every athlete who shows up in the Olympics is absolutely ridiculously impressive, and it's your job to recognize. If a sport looks wacky, it's cause it's unfamiliar to you. Sports take a long time to learn, even to watch, and it always strikes me as humorous when American sports talk show hosts, who only ever watch the big 4 American sports, are suddenly made to comment on swimming and beach volleyball.  I wrestled for three years in high school and saw Freestyle Wrestling at the Olympics, and had to go back for more the next week in order to understand what I just saw.  To be able to appreciate sports takes time and study, like appreciating fine art.  Track and field times mean something to me, hence I enjoy watching it on the Olympic stage. Swimming times are meaningless to me, and hence all those different Olympic events turn to mush in my brain.  Most Americans thus just intensely follow the basketball team and then idly amuse themselves with the other curious sports.  If you really want to get into the Olympics, I would recommend picking a sport you are interested in but don't know much about, get to know the athletes and follow it throughout the Games. 
3. Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps.  The two biggest stars of the 2008 Olympics are back, but no longer guaranteed for gold.  Bolt owns the 100m and 200m world records with staggering times of 9.58 and 19.19 respectively, but hasn't gone full speed in these intervening four years.  He was beaten by 22 year old Yohan Blake in both events in the Jamaican Olympic trials. It is very hard to repeat in the Olympic Sprints (Carl Lewis was the last in 1984 and 1988) and Blake, who owns PRs of 9.75 and 19.26 himself, may very well be the world's next sprint superstar. Still, Bolt lit the world on fire in Beijing and has something special inside him that maybe only the biggest stage can bring out.  He's still just 25 and well within his prime. Meanwhile Phelps is coming off 8 golds in Beijing and 6 in Athens and really doesn't need to be here. He's 27, absolutely ancient in his sport, but will still compete in seven events in London. He's not expected to win seven golds this time, but if he wins any, he'll further establish himself as an Olympian for the ages. He is two medals away from equalling a Soviet gymnast for all time Olympic medals.
4. USA Basketball.  They should win the gold.  If they don't, that would suck. End of story.
5. The Opening Ceremonies.  This will not be the extravagant million performer affair that Beijing's was, but it will feature a short film of Daniel Craig as James Bond! The UK has long stated they won't do anything as expensive as China did, for very good reasons, but they can still put on a great show. So much of the world has been profoundly influenced by British culture that a performance celebrating the history and traditions of the Isles will hopefully be able to affect many billions worldwide.
6. Underdog stories and politics. This is what makes the Olympics the Olympics. It's Saudi Arabia sending women competitors for the first time (namely Sarah Attar in the 800m and Wodjan Ali Sejar in judo). Now every competing country will be co-ed. It's Afghanistan sending a female boxer in Sadaf Rahimi. It's Iran stating that it's athletes will face Israeli athletes after forfeiting in past Games.  It's even Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristou getting kicked off her Olympic team for tweeting something racist against Africans in Greece. The Olympics are a microcosm of our world, of our greatest problems, our greatest inspirations, our possible hopes and solutions.  It's where the places you come from, the name of the country on your back, matters and yet doesn't matter.

I really haven't followed these Olympics enough to write a great preview, but that's why I'm excited to watch. I know that something unforgettable and momentous will happen. I hope that nothing tragic will happen.  I also hope that in the pureness of athletic competition, the world will come closer together than ever before.