PodCast Away

Nobody speaks for a generation, but sometimes people speak to a generation. Or events. Or a technology. For my generation, I believe the podcast speaks to us, quite literally. My personal podcasting experience is in many ways emblematic of our generation and the ways we work, adapt and evaluate new opportunities.

For one, I’m not clear exactly when and how I first discovered podcasts. In the olden days, you bought new technology. You heard about a new device from a commercial or friend and then you went out to RadioShack or CompUSA and you bought it, whether it was a wireless mouse or a roomba. I think it’d surprise the adults of the 90’s how a revolutionary new technology like podcasting came upon us seemingly unannounced. I think it was 2007 and I had iTunes on my laptop. It periodically asked for updates, which I periodically clicked yes to, and voila one day an indeterminate time after an update I noticed there was a new tab that said ‘podcast.’ I don’t know if I investigated it immediately; after all I’ve barely ever touched the ‘radio’ tab on my iTunes. But pretty soon I realized it filled a gap in my life. Growing up in a northeast suburban house, NPR was on the radio a lot. The news shows dominated airplay time, but when the comedy shows Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and Car Talk were on, my mom would often yell me to come down from the second floor to listen in the kitchen radio. If I missed the Sunday afternoon shows, I’d try to catch the evening segments. If I missed both, I'd have to wait wait forever.

When I moved to college, these shows left my life because radio neither fit the interior requirements of my dorm room nor my spontaneous college schedule. But when I discovered this podcast feature, I searched Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and delighted in sudden access to such forbidden fruit. Amazingly the 50-somethings one hears on NPR are supported by 20-somethings open to new technology, and NPR embraced podcasting early on. I still didn’t listened to podcasts that much initially, because I was rarely alone at my computer for an hour at a time. It’s hard to imagine now but even in 2007, six years after the iPod came out, it wasn’t really socially acceptable to walk around with your headphones on (maybe it still isn’t). Podcasting first gave me real joy while I was taking the Bolt bus back from New York City, and I rolled through three or four Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me episodes. Suddenly, with nighttime illumination that eliminated the option of reading and a phone that could only make calls, I had an alternative to pure boredom. 

That initial podcasting period was about adding radio and TV back into my life. Podcasts gradually started adding new aspects to my life. ChinesePod was even suggested by my professor in Chinese class. Now I regularly listen to 10 podcasts totaling about 12 hours/week, and get supplemented by 4 other podcasts that I tune into less regularly. They are:

NPR Wait Wait Don't Tell (news/humor)
NPR This American Life (artsy journalism)
NPR Planet Money (non academic economics)

NPR Pop Culture Happy Hour
Freakonomics
ESPN BS ReportESPN Pardon the interruptionESPN around the horn
Stuff You Should know (random knowledge)
Sinica - Pop up Chinese (china talk)
It's an absurd number of podcasts with some overlapping range. I also have listened to language learning podcasts in French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, Italian and Hindi, to varying degrees of success. I listen on the subway, I listen in bed at night, I listen at work sometimes when doing mundane tasks. I multi-task often and listen with 100% attention very rarely, and sometimes I re-listen to episodes that I didn't properly take in. I am listening to PTI at this very moment. 

If I'm on a plane and listened out I can supplement these 10 with SBS (an Australian Cantonese news radio), the China History Podcast, Radiolab and the Football Ramble. And now I've added Serial into the mix.

Ah Serial. The real reason I'm writing this podcast now. While podcasts have been getting more popular and evolving both artistically and monetarily, they've yet to break into the mainstream. Serial seems to be a major breakthrough, a podcast gone viral. As a story made specifically for the long form weekly medium, it seems to be an introduction to podcasts for many people, including my mom. But for me, the popularity is confusing.  Serial is a spinoff from This American Life and utterly indistinguishable from any other TAL piece, except that it's not broken into acts. Seriously Serial. But This American Life was already fulfilling its market niche via NPR Radio when it entered the world of podcasts, and so it never had its phase where people would say, "You gotta check out this well crafted podcast about American stories." Serial has succeeded because it was good and new, and people love sharing good new stuff now. That said, Serial captures part of why I love podcasts. For whatever reason, I develop a level of familiarity with the podcast hosts in a way I never have with radio or TV personalities. I feel like I can predict how Sarah Koenig will react to certain evidence or how hard she'll laugh at a joke. I feel like I know Bill Simmons way too well, and I desperately want to grab a beer with Sinica's Kaiser Kuo. Maybe it's the length of these episodes, the fact that they seem like one-to-one communication. Koenig has really tapped into this well, and she's handled this really complicated true life story so well. Deciding which disparate elements to air in which episode must be a daunting task. She keeps us coming each week via the age old mystery routine, but I'm not complaining, and now she's asked us for money.

The financial half of the equation is a difficult one. I believe that if I had to give $1/year for each subscribed podcast right now, I would do so. $5 and I'd drop a few. But if any of these podcasts had cost even a cent before I listened to it, there's no way I would have started. The free nature of podcasts has been established and it is the model for getting earballs. Getting new listeners would take a really good podcast with a really evangelical fanbase. Convincing existing listeners to suddenly pay up has its difficulties as well, but I think is actually more feasible.

Suffice to say though, I've gotten tons of enjoyment from podcasts. Freakonomics and Planet Money have shaped my understanding of the global economy. The BS Report has made me laugh so hard. This American Life has made me cry. What multilingual skills I possess are in no small part due to voice actors and podcast technology. PTI allows me to pretend I'm watching NBA and NFL games.

I think that in podcasts, there are many lessons to be learned about internet commerce and the millennial generation. There's some poetry to the technology that magically makes goodness show ps overnight itself magically showing up overnight. It's now here to stay and forever changed how some of us learn, listen and simply walk around.

That last part is probably the most controversial part of our generation - we walk around with headphones on all the time. Such users seem ill-connected to the world, completely unaware and uncaring to the strangers passing them by. Such an assessment would be completely fair. But if I can speak for such consciously unconsciously members of society, we all struggle with it. We all know we look like zombies. We all know we should be enjoying life. But it's so good inside those headphones. It's great to have your own sound track. And with podcasts, the argument gets harder. Yes I can be walking around and being a part of the environment and I am inhabiting...but I am learning about the global economy. But I'm practicing Mandarin. But but but...and that's the double edged sword that's really the problem with the staring-down-at-their-phones age we have entered. We are so much worse at engaging in society...but we're kinda more productive individually. Like podcasts, not everyone has totally figured out the best way to make this work. How we as a society come to grips with these questions that people don't seem to seriously be addressing will define us moving forward,

3 Tournaments, 4 Weekends

Turn Up Taipei, Hong Kong Pun Asia and the Wuhan Open all occurred within 4 weeks of each other. I wasn't completely aware of this when I signed up for them, and I'm not sure I'd ever had such a packed tournament stretch before, not even in college. My experience with each tournament was extremely different and I mostly want to talk about Wuhan, but here's a quick recap of all three.

Turn Up Taipei: 

Taipei is the city everyone from Hong Kong professes to love. It's the smells of late night Chinese cooking but with people lining up. It's got the elbow room that has been squeezed out of Hong Kong with the culture that has been priced out of Singapore. It's a high speed rail bubble tea brewing metropolis with museums and Facebook access. It's a repository for traditional characters with a quaint Japanese respectful veil still faintly in the air. As I say this though, I am acutely aware of how much more I like the idea of Taipei than I actually like Taipei. I've spent all of 4 nights there. I know enough about Taipei to know its subway traffic can be unbearable too, that it's a city with rude people, incompetent government and factories trying to peddle gutter oil. 

But I do know that Taiwan Ultimate has some splendor with good players popping up among local university scenes in Taipei and southern Taiwan. Grouped with a core of talented and dedicated expats, Taipei's best club team Whisby Nation has found great success in Asia. They don't travel a ton though, and Taiwan had never hosted a club tournament like this aimed at international teams before (2011 AOUC in Kaohsiung notwithstanding), so there was very much an inaugural feel to the event.

The tournament turned out great for us. First, the combination of me, Blaze & Junk, was able to bring over 550 quick dry towels Katherine Tse, the tournament director, shipped to my apartment because the 200% import tariff was absurd. Distributing it to HK tournament attendees including Julia and Charlotte, who took 300 by themselves, the towels arrived on Saturday morning and we got some good karma from the onset. We knew it would be a competitive tourney with teams coming from Shanghai, Singapore, all over Taiwan, and a rare appearance from Japan. Guam even sent a squad, ironically without the one high level player who lives there.  Add three Abu Dhabi players and this first time event had some serious international draw.

We had a good tournament. Seeded second in our pool, we upset a undermanned Shanghai and held off upstart teams Guangzhou and Taiwan HaoCool and won our crossover. With an undefeated Saturday, we came into Sunday's semifinal matchup with Iku from Japan without having been seriously tested. Japanese ultimate is the best in Asia and my previous experiences against with the entity was a pair of 17-2 blowouts at the 2011 AOUC and the 2012 Worlds tournament. Iku was an expat team, and only the 3rd best mixed club team in Japan, but they finished top 12 or something in Lecco this year. I was really quite anxious about matching up against a lot of players I had only known from their vaunted reputations.  But Junk is a talented club team that trains together too, and with our strict regimented style of play and some big handlers able to put backhands upwind, we were a force to be reckoned with. The wind was extremely fierce that game, and we were strict about punting downwind whenever near the end zone. Iku was less strict and a couple of costly turns near their end zone gave us an upwind break. Down that break, Iku was on offense going upwind - scoring would put the pressure on us to go upwind to hold the break. We set a hard zone and got the turn but lost the disc quickly. In the confusion-laden aftermath of a turn, we scrambled to set up a cup and Iku took advantage. I saw a handler swing and break throw to a girl in the making, and without making a real decision, my body just started going for the disc and before I knew it I was in full extension laying out off the ground. I was never amazing at layout D's, and in the past year they've become increasingly rare, but this was one of my best. I barely got fingertips on my disc, and was so fully extended that I couldn't bring my arm back and landed fully on my shoulder. In incredible pain, I looked back meekly in terror to see a disc that I had only just barely macked. Luckily, the mack was enough to take the disc out of bounds, and the Iku girl was not able to drag it in. I immediately took an injury sub as I was unable to raise my shoulder, and my replacement helped us make the downwind convert. We won the game by 4 points and met Whisby Nation in the final.

Playing in the finals is a lot of fun. It's great having the whole tournament audience watch you, with heckling commentary coming from at least one outspoken member of our community. The pressure is definitely there, and I'm at the stage of my career where this experience is invaluable. Playing without pressure is almost completely unrelated to playing in the finals, where you don't want to throw that one costly turnover that swings the championship. Developing the right mindset where you aren't playing scared of that turnover but rather playing up to your own game is essential, and something I think is almost impossible to train. The pressure didn't really come up to me too much, as I played exclusively downwind that game where we could afford to throw turnover hucks, but it might have affected our teammates as we made several uncharacteristic turnovers at the edge of upwind scores. Whisby was a great team, with lots of fit fast players and an extremely disciplined and skilled handler core. Without the wind, I think we might have been blown out, as we were considerably slower and less in shape. With the wind, we made some upwind conversions and had a great chance to win. A slow turnover filled game ended up hardcapped 13-11 in Whisby Nation's favor, and we were left with the contrasting taste of a proud seed-breaking second place finish, but disappointing heartbreak over a legit chance to win our first major tournament.

Katherine (black shirt, center) having her birthday celebrated

Hong Kong Pun Asia

So I'm Communication Director of the Hong Kong Ultimate Player Association now, and during our board meeting in July, I mentioned that we need a theme for our annual Hong Kong Pan Asia Tournament. Gio, the tournament director, retorted "how about we call it Pun Asia?" because I have the reputation of being obsessed with puns. I don't know how serious he was, but we all had a good laugh, and then went wait, for real? And so Hong Kong Pun Asia was on.

I was predictably ecstatic about having an official venue to showcase my puns. I didn't know so much about organizing a tournament. How much water do we need? Where do you order it? Where do you keep it?

Gio organized the tournament so he did have those answers and a lot of logistics fell into place with only bearable pain. The executive decisions were more activity oriented, such as what were the Seedings to be? Where and when should the party bus pick up? What should the prizes be?

I took charge of the Seedings, player pack (left) and dinner. The Seedings seemed easy, because a lot of the top teams had played each other or previously in last years tournament. It seemed logical to rank the top 4, and even with unknowns in Korea, Philippines and half of the B pool, I didn't slave too much on the rankings. Afterwards however there was tons of second guessing.

For the player pack, well I tried to get as many puns into the tournament as possible. I split the teams into 4 pools and called them Infinity, Reflecting, Gene and Car pools. I had also been making graphical ultimate puns every week, from Darth Vader imploring the viewer to "Hold the Force" to Gio receiving a "backhanded compliment), so those were all recompiled in the pack. 

Dinner was really stressful actually. Tournament dinners are common and very fun in China and I was hoping to replicate the experience with a large, HK-style, affordable restaurant with lots of beer within walking distance of the fields. There aren't many restaurants around Prince Edward like that - space is a premium and I was expecting 80-100 hungry players. I took a tour and talked to owners and found them surprisingly receptive to booking out the place, and eventually agreed to a $10,000 tab at the Macau restaurant we eat at a lot. The owner spent a lot of time selling me on the menu, while I had a harder time being convinced we could fit so many people in the crowded restaurant. I spent a lot of time discussing extra seats. When I rolled in Saturday night a bit late, I had 10 people with me. I felt super embarrassed and stressed at the money I'd have to cover. We ultimately did get to 40+ thanks to some desperate calls, and it was a really fun and delicious meal (those yian-yeungs are amazing), but I wouldn't wish that stress on any event planner.

Prizes were hard. We wanted to think of something creative and interesting, not typical plastic trophies that would lose meaning and get thrown away. I decided to go with an engraved pan, cause that's both pretty and hilarious, for the winners. Other prizes included HK adapter plugs for spirit winners (I'd like to give a plug to a good cause), shoelaces (for the runners up), panda (punda) luggage tags (if you thought you were getting something nice, you were bamboozled). The champions were upset though because they didn't get their own individual prize or medal.

The most stressful part was just being the person people go to all the time, for issues that you have planned for, for issues that you should have planned for and didn't, or for issues that weren't your responsibility to begin with. I was constantly being asked questions and for once, I couldn't point them away to anyone else.

I made an inter-mission impossible at the party

I learned a lot about event planning, dealing with logistics, managing other people, managing complaints and stress and really made a lot of mistakes. The most important lesson learned though: at the end of the day, if you give frisbee players a bunch of fields, a disc and other people to play against, they're going to be happy.

Wuhan Open
I haven't played many China tournaments this year and so I took the opportunity when presented to play with a new group of players mostly based in Shenzhen. This assembly of Pride of Dongguan, as Colin our captain lovingly named the team, consisted of 3 other players from Hong Kong, 3 from Zhuhai, and some pickups from central and northern China in addition to the SZ core. Most of us were to take sleeper trains up Friday night, and then the relatively young high speed rail on the return trip Sunday night. Due to the dropping out of Shenzhen player Sean Keith, I inherited his already purchased tickets. I had never taken a sleeper train before, or many trains in China at all. This one was to depart Shenzhen Luohu station, on the border with Hong Kong, at 5:30pm. I worked longer that week for the opportunity to leave at 4:00pm Friday afternoon, no easy task considering the hangover from Pun Asia, and got to the border at 4:50, happily WeChatting all the way up.  Plenty of time considering you don't really need to show up early for a train, and I was glad I wasn't going through the stress that would unavoidably come if I had chosen to fly from Shenzhen airport. But the border was a borderline nursery, with so many little Chinese children running every which way. It literally took me a few minutes between seeing the foreigners line and getting in it. The foreigner lines were long and infuriatingly slow, and it was 5:15 by the time I got stamped and was free to run amok in China. Now I didn't really know where the train station was, all I had to go on was a photo sent into WeChat of the meeting point, which included a picture of a hotel. I find it on the skyline and run up a level to it. I get to it and don't see anyone there - while I'm matching up the picture to my actual view, I realize I'm not that near a train station and oh crap the train is leaving momentarily. I can still make roaming calls so I run and call Colin, to no avail. I call him 3 times without getting through. Panicked I run into what I think is the train station and through security, but it turns out that there is a separate train waiting room for a direct line to Guangzhou. I think to call another teammate and luckily Alison picks up. 

"Where are you!??!! Where is Colin?! I can't find the station!!!!!" I scream panickedly.
"Hi I'm in the line to pickup my ticket. I'm on a later train. You've missed your train," Alison freakishly calmly.
"WHAT?! No! shit balls crap aiya." 
"It's ok, just get on my train, come to the long distance train ticket booth."
"OK!"

So much for no train stress. I enter the long distance train ticket area in a complete sweat and find Alison in line. A minute later, Colin comes running in, swearing and sweating as well, making very clear that he had missed the train as well in an effort to wait for me. He had started running with 5 minutes left and actually found the gate shut on him while the train was still on the platform. Apparently you do have to show up early for a train. We wait in line together to buy tickets for the 6:15 train, and suddenly it's 5:55 and we are still in line. Our SZ-born teammate Esther helps us beg to cut a few spots in line, and soon it's just one guy ahead of us and I see him buy a ticket to 武汉 Wuhan. I jump in the second he walks out and ask for 2 tickets to Wuhan. After the service lady asks us several questions concerning what type of tickets we want (ANY) she says oh, it's sold out. WHAT? I just saw the guy buy a ticket to Wuhan! Apparently that was the last one.

So there Colin and I were, watching our teammates walk away leaving years of handling experience behind. I started thinking about options - trains to other cities like Changsha, planes, driving, giving up... looking out at the throngs of people around us and the Friday evening traffic, the airport seemed impossibly far away. Colin took the role of a captain and decided on taking a train to Guangzhou "and playing things from there," handed me a beer, and told me "we're going on an excellent adventure." Trains to Guangzhou were very frequent, so Cal and and Colin's Excellent Adventure got rolling and before even getting to GZ, included meeting a small Indian man from Kolkata who spoke Mandarin well but with a brutal accent and offered Colin a job, and a super cute girl who asked me for a tissue and then got off at Dongguan, which fairly or unfairly made her slightly less cute. The whole time, we were communicating via WeChat to teammates who were researching and offering to buy us tickets. I was almost further stressed by their efforts and the number of options available from multiple Guangzhou train stations. We got off the train expecting to hustle and make a difficult trip across town to catch the next train. Fortunately, Guangzhou really is a much bigger hub than Shenzhen and even at the station we landed at, there was a slow sleeper train to Wuhan leaving in 40 minutes. We got those tickets and some Burger King and before we knew it we were sharing fries and beer and checking out our fleas-infested top bunk beds on a Chinese sleeper train.

Now the train was an experience I had need to see for a long time. Besides the high speed rail option which was unavailable at the time, there were 4 types of tickets for the slow speed trains (from most comfortable to the worst): soft sleeper, hard sleeper, seats and standing. Soft sleepers are rooms with two double bunk beds, amounting more or less to a college dorm room in America. Hard sleepers are rooms with two triple bunk beds and enough space in between to stick out one elbow, amounting more or less to a college dorm room in China. Seats are your conventional train seats, which you might think seems preferable now to spending a night with 5 Chinese strangers in 3 cubic meters of volume, until you realize that the people actually do buy standing room tickets, and you might be sitting next to 5 Chinese strangers standing within 3 cubic meters of you. I cannot believe people do choose to stand for 12+ hour train rides, and I'm sure some buy them for 48+ hour plus rides. I read stories of these sorts of travels/travails during Chinese New Year, when the train system is overwhelmed like Brazil was overwhelmed by Germany, and it utterly terrifies me.

Colin and I were in separate full rooms, both with the top bunk. We hung out in the corridor until lights went off at 10pm and tried to get as much sleep as possible. If you're wondering how to get to the top of a triple bunk in the pitch dark, I'll tell you it's not for the unacrobatic. There isn't even a full ladder going up to the top, you kinda have to pull yourself up to some of the steps. Anyway, we were going to make it to the tournament, and if you're counting at home, this is #2 craziest getting to a tournament story, ahead of multiple Kindness Hotels in Kaohsiung, China Air driver in Osaka, but behind stranger Italian Moroccan driver in Lecco/Bergamo.

Our train was to get in around 8:30 and we woke up naturally shortly after 7. Colin's bunk room was friendly and chatty, and we learned they were on their way back to their hometown of Harbin, after a tour group trip of Hong Kong/Macau. Keep in mind this is a sleeper train, and Harbin is further north than North Korea. The elderly tourists we encountered and their 30-something daughter would be on that train for 72 hours. Their tickets only costed around 900 RMB, which I realized certainly puts long distance travel in the range of many Chinese citizens, provided they are tough enough to sleep in a triple bunk for 3 days. I realized that talking with them that much of my knowledge of China derives from conversations like these. It was interesting to hear their perspectives of Hong Kong and Macau. The tourists seemed to unanimously like Macau better, because Hong Kong was too dense and hectic. They were taken around by their tour group the whole time and seemed to have no freedom of their own and next to no interactions with locals (which is exactly why I hate tours). When I asked them what about the skyline in Hong Kong, they replied that Macau had cool tall buildings too. I was floored by this statement. Macau's tall buildings are fake casino structures with neon lights that scream "facetious" to me somehow marvels visitors from Heilongjiang to the same extent as the world class fabled Hong Kong skyline. I never could have predicted the way they saw these cities, but now that I think about it, if you don't have any real interaction with your environment, a place like Macau which is geared towards entertaining tourists will seem much more attractive than a bustling metropolis like Hong Kong where busy people could give a **** about tourists.  

Perhaps my understanding of China should come from books, tv shows, articles and historical 古文 texts but for me I am really shaped by these sorts of experiences. As I slept on that dirty top bunk in that cramped room and sped through Southern China, and realizing that Chinese college students might spend 4 years enduring what I find difficult to endure for 13 hours, I learned something about China. I realized that growing up in this environment, I would think often about how there are too many people and not enough space. I would dream about going into distant pastures and spreading out. With such a mindset, perhaps it's not surprising that China so firmly holds onto Tibet and Xinjiang. Perhaps my understanding of China from anecdotal firsthand experiences does have some ultimate relevance to national-level policies and global security.

 This picture does not capture the disparity of this field

We made it into Wuhan on time and were ready to sprint out of the train. Even on a Saturday morning, the cab stand at the train station was gross, and Colin accurately presumed that the fields were within walking distance. We hustled over in 15 minutes and discovered literally the worst fields I have ever played on. I have played close to 10 years of ultimate on three continents on artificial rugs, near an airport, near a sewage line, and in shin high grass in Anacostia, but these were just the worst. The grass was brown and patchier than an iTunes update, with a huge streak across the field where irrigation pipes had clearly just been laid. The ground was so hard that some of my teammates seriously considered not wearing cleats. The far field was even worse, with a rare green patch full of tall grasses that covered one of the cones, and the sideline just inches away from paved path. Given the pathetic field and the fact that it was public and not rented, we actually compla got some money back from the tournament organizers. 

The frisbee portion of the tournament was really a wash. The game we arrived late for was the most competitive game of Saturday, and we were down 0-3 when I stepped on. Against a Changsha team that had several former Tianjin stars, we still had the more well rounded team and should have won when they turned the disc near their end zone on universe point. Considering we lost that game and our elimination matchup with Big Brother on universe point and blew out weak opponents in every other game, the on field experience in Wuhan Open was not good. But the experience on a whole was way worth it as I bonded with many China players with whom I normally don't get to connect, plus the adventure making the tournament. Even the journey home was an adventure. On Sunday afternoon, we left the finals early to make sure we made our high speed trains back home, because I was not going to miss another one. We gave ourselves an hour and a half. After walking around the campus for 20 minutes and having only discovered dead ends, I started to sweat and panic. Roldy took charge at this point and started asking directions and dropped his bag with a teammate and started running for the main street. When we get to the main street, we're still having rough luck hailing a cab. Suddenly, a van stops in front of us. Doors open and people file out. One, two, four, eight, ten and now we are all engrossed watching this magical clown car van just file out more people. We see the now empty van has had its trunk modified to fit two benches up against the walls of the vehicle, perpendicular to the other seats. Roldy goes to the driver and asks if he can take all of us to the train station for 100 kuai. And voila, that's how I found myself cracking open a beer on a bench in the back of a modified, possibly illegally so, Chinese van with 9 teammates feeling like we were crossing the border.

It doesn't even end there. Remember, Colin had bought tickets for me. Actually he had bought tickets for his teammate Sean Keith, who subsequently dropped out. China train tickets are bought with ID and are name-designated, but according to Colin security never checks. Wuhan station security though is intense, possibly in the wake of the Kunming train stabbings of this past year, and they are most definitely checking tickets. I examine my ticket and learn that Sean Keith is actually Sean Zohar Keith. I take a deep breath, put on a poker face and put the ticket deep in my passport. A security woman then takes my passport, pulls out my ticket and then turns to the ID page of my passport. She clearly puts my passport photo up close to me and cross checks my name with the ticket name. I'm standing there, in too much shock to open up my bladder, and the thought pops up that I might just miss this train. I start formulating arguments in my head. "Oh yeah that's my other name. Oh I must have mixed up the tickets. Oh what does the name matter anyway?" Then inexplicably, the woman hands my passport and ticket back to me and shoos me through. I never look back. Perhaps she's illiterate in English?



So there it is, 3 tournaments in 3 jurisdictions of the Sino world in 4 weekends. When people ask me what the difference is between China and Hong Kong, I can simplify it so.
Question: How often do I have travel adventures in Hong Kong? Answer: Never.
Question: How often do I have travel adventures in Mainland China? Answer: Every damn time.

With Love and Peace

Protests at Causeway Bay

Sunday night, 28 September, began in a joyous mood. My ultimate team Hong Kong Junk had just played our best tournament in years, narrowly losing in the finals of the inaugural Turn Up Taipei to take 2nd place. Sweaty and exhausted with mixed emotions, we arrived at Taipei Taoyuan Airport and took advantage of the free wifi. We were immediately greeted with a bombardment of texts about riot police and goggles and tear gas. I came back to Hong Kong to hear the airport's public announcements about how due to an "incident at Admiralty" that public transportation to Hong Kong island were limited. The initial impact of the events took me completely by shock. Momentum had picked up over the weekend and protests that were supposed to take place for the October 1 National Day were pushed forward to carry on with the success of the student's strike. Then the tear gas came down and the umbrellas came up and Hong Kong social media blew up. The situation was so unclear as I made my way home - among the rumors I heard were the movement of People's Liberation Army (PLA) tanks down the eastern harbour tunnel and that work would be cancelled on Monday.

But Monday morning proceeded as normal. The subway was not filled with policemen and the office was not abuzz with talks about rebellion. I figured that like most post-tournament Mondays, I'd be the most exhausted person at the office. But I bumped into my coworker whom I saw for the first time without gel in his hair. I casually asked him if he'd gone to the protest and he nodded yes. When he told me he arrived at Occupy Central around 10, I figured he meant AM. I realized my faulty assumption when he told me he slept a bit on a skybridge and then came straight to work. He had heard about the escalation of the police reaction mid Sunday and decided he needed to participate. He then brought a change of clothes into the office, went off the to protests, came back in the morning and showered in the office. That was when I saw the real conviction of the youth of Hong Kong, whom this protest is really for.

It's been a few days and I have a lot of thoughts on this #Umbrella Revolution. I'm not at a position to give a sophisticated analysis of the entire political dynamics. There's too much to talk about and I couldn't do it justice. I'm not an expert on Hong Kong either and while I do care passionately about Hong Kong, I don't care the same way the organizers of these protests do. I'm not an expert on the People's Republic of China either, and I don't know exactly how they are thinking. But I'm coming in from an international perspective, born in a democracy to two parents born in Hong Kong. My mother's family has been based in Hong Kong for 5 generations, while my father's Hong Kong fled from Shanghai to Hong Kong after the Chinese Civil War, and from Hong Kong to Sierra Leone following the more violent 1967 riots. In my three years here, I've learned a lot about Hong Kong and China but wouldn't say I've particularly gotten closer to becoming a Hong Konger. I'm very much an expat and it's reflected in the way I spend my free time and consume my media. Still, I'd like to think I have absorbed enough about Hong Kong, China and the international world to give a nuanced opinion of the views of these three parties.

Ocupar centro

• Background: These movements have been a long time coming. Hong Kong was separated from China and a British colony during a very tumultuous time in China's history. The fall of the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese invasion, the Chinese Civil War, the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square crackdown took place in mainland China whilst Hong Kong took in refugees and developed into an industrial manufacturing economy, a shipping hub and then a global financial services hub. Most Hong Kongers can trace their family back to mainland China within one or two generations. Many came to Hong Kong for a reason and have acute memories of the Cultural Revolution and lasting resentment against the Communist government. These feelings propelled loads of Hong Kong residents to emigrate in anticipation of the 1997 Handover. The fears did not totally materialize when the Handover came to pass, with free press, free internet and left-handed driving continuing uninterrupted. But this does not mean those fears went away. The Basic Law, Hong Kong's current Western-style legal system, was set up in a Sino-British joint treaty and guaranteed to last for 50 years, but with the signees of this treaty all likely to be dead by 2047, it's anyone's guess what the situation will look like then. Since 1997, many Hong Kongers have been very aware of little signs of China's infringement upon their autonomy. The announcement of a "National Compulsory Education" was deemed a form of patriotic brainwashing and met with enormous protests and ultimately revocation. This democracy issue is another sign of infringement. I find it a little strange that the British, which never allowed any semblance of democracy upon Hong Kong colony, stuck this provision of transition towards democracy into their treaty. It sounds an awful lot like passing the buck and seems to rely on some premise that a country can go from unready to ready for democracy. This democracy has been pushed back to 2017, but now that the PRC government has declared that it will be "democracy with Chinese characteristics" or as my uncle called it, "choosing between several assholes." As we have seen, the Hong Kong people have not taken well to this PRC declaration.
• When I first came to Hong Kong, I thought locals were pretty politically apathetic. I thought that people didn't really care about world events because Hong Kong had absolutely no say in them. I thought that people felt powerless in their own situation but not the need to complain because life in this first world city was pretty good. To be fair, I was coming from Washington, DC where if you're politically apathetic, you basically have to give up going to bars every four years. I've definitely come around on this opinion. Hong Kong's position as a financially strong but politically handcuffed entity does lend itself to a very unheroic notion of great power without great responsibility. Nonetheless, many Hong Kongers have shown that they will not shut up because they are well fed; they are extremely passionate about their own future and have well-formed ideas of justice, political process, human rights and social welfare. 
• Protests create surreal scenes. My friend texted a picture of a major highway in Causeway Bay shut down and compared it to "I Am Legend", the movie about a post-apocalyptic New York City devoid of human life. I was shocked the other day to walk out of my apartment and onto Nathan Road and to find the busiest road in Kowloon closed to vehicle traffic. Walking down the middle of the road towards the protest in Mong Kok did not feel like real life. A bus was parked in the middle of the intersection. I don't know how it got there but it was being covered with paper slogans.



Not pictured: wild cheetahs

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  Occupy Mong Kok

• Protests lend themselves to bandwagons and people wanting to feel a part of something special. I don't know if this has always been the case for all of history, but social media certainly adds another layer. Many people treat social media as a place to showcase your special moments, and so when special moments happen to you or your surroundings, people may feel a pressure to have to broadcast it. I've certainly been Instagramming the protests - I almost feel I have to or I'm expected to, to be the on the ground journalist for my friends. I don't want to get this post on a social media tangent, but I do want to point out behavior that our society should be careful of. We should be aware of the uncomfortable position of protest tourists, who unassumingly revel in the hardships of committed protesters because it makes for impressive pictures. We should be conscious of meaningless shout outs of encouragement to the protesters just because we want to remind the world that we are in Hong Kong, or we are connected to Hong Kong, or we are Economist-reading politically aware people. This protest works if it is not about you. It's about the people of Hong Kong using the avenues available to them to stand up for their rights and negotiate with the PRC government as best they can. To note: I haven't seen any particular social media behavior that I find truly objectionable, but I want people to be aware of their own role.
• In a related aspect, most of my friends here are expats or overseas educated Hong Kongers. The issues at hand are important to all of us, but I can't honestly say it's equally important. For ex-pats, we love this city but we can leave whenever we want. The worst case scenario for me is a one way ticket to Boston. Similarly, many Hong Kongers have Canadian/American/British/Australian passports and speak English as their best language and could leave easily, albeit with tears in their eyes. For the vast majority though, while emigration is an option, it's not the preferred option. Hong Kong is such a unique city that an unusually high percentage of people who leave eventually return due to homesickness. Outside of Guangdong, it's the only place with Cantonese as an official language and lots of residents aren't particularly keen to cut it elsewhere in Mandarin or English. To me, the conversations about the protests I've had with true locals are very different from the ones I've had with westernized locals and expats. Love for the city overlaps all these groups, but their alternative realities differ, and that very much matters.
• A lot of Hong Kongers are on board with these protests, including much of my upper management, which you might not expect if you buy into all the economic disruption the protests are theoretically causing. Not all of them are, including youths who don't agree with disrupting public areas and commerce, an older generation who thinks this whole charade is pointless, and a small minority of strident China Nationalists.
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• There are two major issues at hand. The first one is the headline regarding democracy in Hong Kong. The second is the gradual erosion of promises made by the PRC government. I feel that these issues are distinct but parallel and shape the direction and mission of the protests.
• Democracy - This is the one that Communist Party supporters will stand up and argue with you all night. The issue can be examined ideologically across East vs West. Since the liberal revolutions that replaced monarchies with democracies in Europe and continuing through the Iron Curtain, Westerners tend to associate democracy with progress and development. It's a fundamental pillar of the American Dream and as an American, I find it unnatural to argue against democracy, ever. But whereas the Western world is largely made of First World democracies and Third World dictatorships, Asia is home to Third World democracies and First World semi-authoritarian regimes. China firmly believes that the West has had far too much influence on deciding how the rest of the world should run their affairs, and that not all Western technologies and systems are spun out of gold. They'll insist that China is too populous and too undeveloped a country to effectively run as a democracy, and that the authoritarian government makes quick and firm decisions that have brought it unparalleled economic development that would simply not have been possible under democratic rule. And they'd have a very good point. Westerns jump back and retort that this marvelous economic growth has not benefited everyone equally, and that minorities and political dissidents are being severely repressed and that these human rights violations, a hallmark of authoritarian regimes, trump any economic gain because you can't put a price on a human life. And they'd be right too. The Chinese can then say "in China you are watched and you know it. In America you are watched and you don't know it." And they'll say, "we are going to vet the candidates before democratic elections in Hong Kong. Isn't that what the big corporations and major donors do in the United States elections?"  And Americans can respond with, "we are focused on fixing a maligned but just system while you are focused on perfecting a broken system." Anyway, it's a tough and long debate and not one I had in high school world history, but one you need to have if you want to understand why Beijing is against true democracy in Hong Kong.
• Another debate I am particularly focused on is what happens if true democracy is won in Hong Kong. So then we can elect a candidate we want (yes I get to vote), who hopefully will be a capable and representative leader, and we will have for the first time a government legitimized by the people. But what will that government be able to do? Their power is still limited in scope. The Chief Executive of Hong Kong is essentially a glorified mayor, able to control inglorious municipal services. I'm not sure he/she would be any more able to make decision on Chinese immigration into Hong Kong, or compulsory national education, or the possibility of a mandatory draft in Hong Kong were China to engage in warfare. Furthermore, local social justice issues are not necessarily better addressed even with a legitimate government. It would take more than a popularly elected Chief Executive to change social ills especially with some prejudices held by the majority of the population.
• The second, and arguably more motivating, factor that Hong Kongers are fighting for are the eroding freedoms (or perceptions thereof) from the Chinese government. If the Chinese government take away the promise of democracy from the Hong Kong people without resistance, then they can slowly take away the remaining freedoms that distinguish the SAR from the PRC.  My coworker pointed this out succinctly to me by teaching me a new 成語or proverb: 《溫水煮蛙》 The proverb means that if you throw a frog into boiling water, it'll freak out. But if you throw it into room temperature water and slowly boil the water, it won't realize it is being boiled. You can argue that the distinction between voting for your China pre-approved mayor and your unapproved mayor is not worth blockading city blocks, but if you don't send the message, you don't know what's next. And this isn't mindless paranoia. I believe China's plan all along starting from 1997 was for it to catch up with Hong Kong in development and society over 50 years and for Hong Kong to become more Chinese. The catchup part of the plan has worked, but the Hong Kong assimilation has not. China is acutely aware that Hong Kongers are not on the path of submitting lovingly to their motherland, and Hong Kongers want to make acutely known that they have no intention of doing so.
• I believe that the Chinese government has a hard time grasping this. They probably hoped that by now Hong Kong would love to be a part of almighty China. To China, it's as if East Germany had reunited with West Germany and been like actually, can we keep our state-owned enterprises? That's why they wanted to institute the national compulsory education, to teach the youth of Hong Kong that China is pretty great.



Sign at the edge of the Mong Kok protests. Translation: You are now leaving Mong Kok People's Square and returning to the world of CY Leung.

• The gap between Hong Kong and China sometimes surprises me when I think of it. After all, most Hong Kongers are only a couple generations removed from China. They may have inherited the history and home traditions, but the daily lifestyle has evolved so much in Hong Kong that traveling to China precisely is traveling to a foreign country. Even though this generation generally speaks Mandarin decently, they tend to absorb a lot more Taiwanese culture than they do mainland culture. There's also plenty of prejudice against mainlanders that reveals the lack of mutual understanding between the two. I've seen many Western-educated Hong Kongers, who would never make racist comments about other races, say extremely offensive things about mainlanders and not feel bad about it. "It's not racist because we're all the same race." There has just been this gap between the two cultures, where public spitting is ok in China and not ok in Hong Kong, where public urination is looked down upon in China and total bloody murder in Hong Kong, which the majority of people don't fully appreciate the nuances. I would probably harbor these same prejudices had I not spent the summers in Beijing and been forced to grapple with the realities of living in China.
• I wondered if there were many people in the mainland anxiously watching over these events. I wondered if there were many people in the PRC who want to protest against the government but can't, and look to Hong Kong as their inspiration. It's hard to understand China, every time I think I learn something about their people I meet someone who defies everything I've learned, but I don't think this is really the case. The majority of people in China do not think about Hong Kong very much. It's not in the top 100 pressing issues in China. Moreover, a lot of mainlanders think of Hong Kongers as arrogant and  think they're super special. Coupled with the Chinese media's disgustingly deceptive coverage of this and I think the general attitude in the mainland towards this unrest is simply indifference.
• I've read some Western perspectives that miss the situation. This happens a lot actually. A writer who somehow has a job with the Economist said after Beijing announced their election policy that China missed a golden opportunity to experiment with democracy within their state. From a Western mindset, this sounds like a clever use for this Hong Kong situation. I don't know how the Chinese government thinks, and with their incredibly opaque method of announcing decisions, it's very hard to really understand how they think. But I don't think anyone was thinking of Hong Kong as an experiment ground for an eventual transition to democracy as so much as a potential model for separatist groups within China to cling onto. China doesn't want to admit that perhaps its form of government isn't the best way to handle affairs. And it doesn't want to give too much power away to Hong Kong, or else Tibet and Xinjiang will demand the same. I'm extremely aware that I as a Westerner, often do miss the boat on the type of thinking between Chinese and Hong Kong parties. 
• The economic argument is one that I see more from the banking community and generally more conservative thinkers. Hong Kong may be a towering skyscraping economy, but it's completely dependent on China. This isn't really an argument, as Hong Kong literally gets the majority of its water and electricity from China, and doing business with China is the economic backbone of the city. Detractors of Hong Kong will say that it is already overtaken by Shanghai, and that its position as the gateway to the west is an obsolete role. Shipping can go straight to Shenzhen now and there's really no need for Western businesses to base their operations from Hong Kong. It's another common Western fallacy to think that Western businesses, and the Western 2% of the population, are what makes this city great and special. Even if Hong Kong fails to outshine major Chinese cities in the near future, economics is not a zero-sum game. This city has reached critical mass where it wields too much influence to fade, its industries too diverse for the economy to drop off, and its people too well-educated to fail to adapt. Outsiders should not underestimate the self-contained parts of Hong Kong's economy either, the significant amounts of work done in Hong Kong by Hong Kongers for Hong Kongers. 
• China has all the power. They really can afford to sit back and watch, because there's really nothing Hong Kong can do. Foreign powers and the UN are pretty limited too. The UK, as the treaty signer, can insist that China uphold the stipulations of the treaty but they wouldn't be able to do much more than pound their chest unless they impose economic sanctions. These would probably hurt the UK more than they would hurt China. The best move China could do is to give Hong Kong its own Scottish referendum and have it vote for its own independence. Once Hong Kong becomes independent, they can roll their tanks in and take it over and rip up the Sino-British treaty and the Basic Law.  And nobody would do anything about it. In all seriousness, I don't know who will hold out longer.



Occupy Central

• Many people are bringing up the Tiananmen Square protest, which began as a non-violent student protest as well and kept on for four months. A few days into this one, I can't believe they kept on for four months, although to be fair they were occupying the square and not real streets and business districts. That one ended with tanks, and we are very much hoping history does not repeat itself 25 years later. I think that the serious protesters right now are not expecting to encounter serious violence, but if things change, I believe there are some who will sacrifice their lives if they need to.
• For me, Hong Kong is a pretty great city. Keeping the status quo and continuing to address the local social issues is the ideal solution.  I don't know if such semi-autonomy could be an acceptable permanent situation, but it seems to me the most pragmatic one.

So that's a lot of thoughts. I just spent 7 hours putting this together. I don't know how long this will last and even whether history will particularly remember these days, but I do feel moved to support it and learn as much as I can about the issues at hand.

To be honest, I don't know a lot of Cantonese songs. There are only a handful I ever pick during karaoke sessions here, but one of them is 海闊天空 by the best Hong Kong band ever, Beyond. This song has been played a lot in recent days, and though it's not written with these politics in mind, it's very applicable and resonates with people.

原諒我這一生不羈放縱愛自由

Forgive me for I've been a wild person all my life rejoicing in freedom

也會怕有一天會跌倒

But I also fear that I would one day fall

背棄了理想　誰人都可以

Abandon one's ideals, anyone can do

那會怕有一天只你共我

I'm not afraid if one day it's just you and me.

The song touches on the basic human desires for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I think it's reminding people that behind the layers of politics and history, we share all the same fundamental desires and we are fighting to uphold these desires. I hope this is the message that gets sent and heard.

Getting away Scot-free? Far from a Loch.

Freedom is kinda a big deal. If you think about national heroes, people who show up on currency, they are probably around 15% scientists or brilliant thinkers, 5% athletes, and 80% leaders who either brought about the independence movement or expanded the country while in power. Immortalized heroes have gone on hunger strikes, marches, guerrilla warfare and been tortured, executed or assassinated in the name of freedom. And now Scotland is getting a chance to vote on it, because they’re tired of dealing with shit from the English. And here, freedom is still a big deal. It has huge effects on Scotland’s healthcare system, national security, natural resources and currency, not to mention national pride. But amazingly, this has so much comedic value, so much more than any national movement has ever had before, besides perhaps the establishment of the nation of Sealand. There was a comedic event at Edinburgh called “The Referendum.” I doubt there was anything of the sort in South Sudan. Most national movements involve long periods of struggle and oppression, but whatever gripes the Scottish currently have against London rule, they are not currently oppressed. Yes there have been centuries of tension and some second guessing since King James became simultaneous King of Scotland and England, but Scots have been a firmly engrained part of the United Kingdom with nary a riot for some time now.

This is not a conflict zone

I hesitate to get into this topic because I’ve spent all of 2 days of my life in Scotland and have about 5 Scottish friends. So let’s avoid the complicated political issues and get into the interesting/funny parts.

• Scots who are living abroad are not allowed to vote. Non-Scots who legally reside in Scotland and are citizens of EU or Commonwealth nations are allowed to vote. This means that Polish and Indian immigrants to Scotland are deciding on whether Scotland remains in the UK, but Scots living in London do not. Coming from America and our brutal green card hurdles and our absentee balloting, this is mind boggling to me.
• The Scottish currency situation should it go independent is not determined. This seems to me gross incompetence. London is saying that they won’t let Scotland stay in currency union with the pound, but that could be a scare tactic as it seems to be the best issue for both sides.
• Scotland could still use the pound anyway. If so, the land that produced Adam Smith will join the likes of Central African Republic, Monaco, El Salvador, and Gabon as nations who do not control their own currency.
• Scotland could be forced to use the Euro as a condition for entering the EU.
• Scotland could use their own currency, which is always fun, especially coming up with names. That’ll be 5 Haggis please.
• Scotland has a model and also serves as a model. Just across the straits lies the Republic of Ireland, a former part of the United Kingdom and successfully independent nation using the Euro. It’s very possible to have multiple nations and even borders in the British Isles. Meanwhile Wales in particular will be watching how Scotland votes and fares. There’s less incentive to leave the powerful UK when you are as small as Wales, and ditch your main vowel importer to boot, but Welsh people actually still speak their national language and have plenty of national pride.
• The national animal of Scotland is a unicorn.
• The Scottish Parliament First Minister is named Salmond and Deputy First Minister is named Sturgeon. Could we have a fishier 1-2?
• Lottery winners contributed 3.5 million of the 4.5 million pounds that the Yes Scotland campaign has received. To me, this fundraising is surprisingly low. But I think that this shows how the vote is more about pride and less about money.
• The amazing thing is that this won't actually change all that much. Sccotland already has a lot of autonomy. This includes their own education system able to provide reduced tuition for Scottish students at Scottish universities and their own football team that has qualified for several World Cups.

For me, this whole process is just utterly fascinating. Scottish Independence movement cuts across many political factions. You'd have to be an expert to fully understand the currency and legal implications of the separation, but anyone can still feel profoundly affected by the decision. Nationhood! It arguably has less effect on the welfare of citizens than say a Presidential election would - after all the leadership of the Scottish Parliament isn't changing -  but it gets more people animated and talking.

What nation am I in??

So many places would love to be able to vote on their independence. I live in one of these places. This Scottish vote comes only a month after Beijing basically told Hong Kong that it will never really be independent or democratic. Coincidentally, Hong Kongers would probably welcome a vote on whether to join the United Kingdom. It's by no means a consensus, but has been a fun speculative question to ask around these past few weeks. It's been interesting for me living here in a place with a compromised identity, debating the ideals of freedom versus the impracticalities of a mandatory national service. It is not a simple question, but for many Hong Kongers, it's never been a question truly worth investigating because the option simply won't present itself. For Scotland, amazingly the option is present.

When Progress Isn't Progress

I don't know how it got to here but I can't help myself. As I lie sprawled on my couch watching John Oliver on YouTube, guilty thoughts seep into the front of my mind. "How many push-ups have I done today? Did I write any code today?... I need to look for jobs....when was the last time I listened to a Mandarin podcast in full?" Ok ok, there's only 5 minutes left in the video. The right corner of my screen an some quick calculation tells me that by 9:40 I'll be off my computer and on the ground doing a set of push-ups. 

The video is hilarious. John Oliver is on point, his deliberate Englishness belying his astute understanding of America. Time for push-ups because I want to be a better athlete, and because I've never really had sculpted pecs and now I don't have a gym membership. As I get up I see my bookshelf and the unread half. There's McCarthy's Bar, a novel about drinking in Ireland that my mom got for me that I haven't read. The book on Chinese wind energy that my professor wrote that I  need my full mental effort to crack, and may be irrelevant within 2 years. That teen romance book that my aunt mistakenly thought would make a decent present. That book on choice that caught my eye at Eslite, I really thought I'd have read it by now. That book about the history of trade - actually read that one. And then there's the huge hardcover about mathematicians that all my guests notice but I've barely opened. When does life have time for these? They're more fixtures of my interior design than published media.

I break my gaze away from the daily reminders of stuff I haven't read and get ready to tackle the daily exercise I haven't done. But as my hands hit the floor I'm not even sure what I want to do. A full set of normal push-ups? A set of 30 clap push-ups to get more explosive? Or finger push-ups til I drop to make my flick huck stronger? I opt for 100 of the traditional and push my way through,  digging deep in the 90s. Getting up I can barely raise my arms as I go wash my hands. Staring into the mirror, my reflection tells me I need to do sit-ups as well, and work on my obliques and lower back. And now that I think about it, I should be doing calf raises to help this ankle heal.

Back on my laptop I close YouTube and see another 10 tabs to manage. The article on big data in the smart grid that dad sent, the Wikipedia article I wandered to on a Hungarian polymath patriot, the CodeAcademy course for Python - and of course my blog. Without even realizing it, I've put on a podcast on sports that I've already listened to.

When did my apartment become a repository for reminders to be productive? Do I live in a one bedroom rental, or a terribly inefficient factory manufacturing Cal's life? Maybe my ADD is feeding off this place. Maybe it's the busyness of Hong Kong that has removed any sense of calm from my life. Or maybe this is me working hard to be the best person I can be. In fact, I would say that much of my happiness this past year has been derived from satisfactory productivity.

And this is why I can't stop. There are so many things I want to do and even more things I think I ought to do.  My life has devolved into an ever-evolving to-do list which has made the time go by way too fast and left me often tired, but I guess I kinda enjoy it. I tie so much of my self-worth to my athletic, social, professional and miscellaneous advances. I can no longer even understand how people can be happy just being. Every workout that leaves me sore, every new recipe satisfactorily executed, every job applied leaves me a little more hopeful for the future, and don't get me started on how I feel when I finish a real book.

I open my fridge to get a drink of cold water. Bending down, I see the literal overriped fruits of my ambitions, purchases made in the pursuit of balanced vitamins but forgotten in the pursuit of everything else. It's somehow already 11:30. I'd set a goal to get to sleep by midnight, which means I really shouldn't do sit-ups now. I still have 11 tabs open because the internet has made it easy to find all the tools to finding everything you ever wanted to learn, but hasn't really made it all that much easier to learn it. I miss my midnight bedtime by an hour and a half.

Part of this lifestyle is to be blamed on my values. I should know better. I know that none of this stays when I die, that knowledge gained from the books will be buried with me, that lifeless lips don't speak any language. Jesus conveys this message and I think I really do get it. But when I apply it to the society I'm living in, I really think I can cheat the system - I'll work so hard that I can leave something eternal behind. But as soon as I type this, I know that nothing humans create is truly eternal.

We'll always have Lecco

The best traveling requires a lot of sound planning and a lot of sound improvisation. As I've explored more of the world, I've explored the balance between these forces and consistently pushed towards the development of improvisational skills. This means quickly recognizing signs, figuring out how airports and train stations and urban transportation systems are laid out and generally not freaking out when arriving in an unfamiliar situation. Planning before a trip is required to understand a sense of what worthwhile activities are available in a new setting, but active observation once on the ground is crucial for discovering new enjoyable gems.

For 17 days in late July - early August, I was off on a special well-planned trip. The 2014 World Ultimate Club Championships were being held in Lecco, Italy and my Hong Kong club team had received a bid. Though this was my second World's after the WUGC 2012 in Sakai, Japan, I don't take these experiences for granted. I am not nearly a good enough player to make a World's level club team in the USA, so my pure luck in being in Hong Kong allows me entry into this tournament over numerous more accomplished players. The location in Italy was an additional stroke of luck, as our team had two core members of Italian extraction: Giovanni Lion and Luisa Zhou. They were a couple who had moved to Hong Kong several years ago to bring a family business into a new market and had discovered ultimate there. They both dove headfirst into the sport and after a proposal on the sands of Boracay during Asia's largest beach tournament, they were also engaged. The WUCC in Italy gave them the best opportunity to combine their loves of ultimate and each other, and bring their Hong Kong community to their home. And so they planned their wedding in Padua a week before the tournament, and about half the team took an extended vacation and joined them. I was part of that crew and let me just say, if you have a chance to attend an Italian wedding in Italy, do it.

More planning had me breaking off from the wedding crew the following day and taking the 30 minute train ride into Venice, where my parents were waiting for me. Venice was part of my parent's honeymoon and my mom's favorite city in the world. She was so happy to be back among those delicate canals after a decade and a half of absence. With a US return trip looking unlikely for me this year, family reunions are very hard to come by, and so we decided to tour Venice and Austria the week between the wedding and the tournament.

My preparation for the trip had actually begun in January, when I decided to learn Italian. With a flimsy foundation in French and Latin (and a failed year of Spanish) under me, I figured I'd annoy my three Hong Kong-based Italian friends (hi Michele!) and learn some Italian for this trip. With the help of the app DuoLingo (highly recommend) and lots of GoogleTranslate, I had some conversational ability after seven months. As a linguistic nerd, it was very fascinating to discover how the language spun off from Latin and differed from the other Romance languages. As a traveler, just knowing a few key phrases (posso avere, vorrei, dove, bano, acqua, birra, grazie mille, prego, perche) went a long way. A lot of Italians not in service jobs didn't speak English very well, and most were always very happy to see some foreigner bizarrely wanting to learn their language.

I won't recount the Innsbruck to Salzburg to Vienna trip with my parents in this post. Nor will I go over the week of World's ultimate and the gelato-filled walks along Lake Como in the evenings. But I do want to get into how I got from the former to the latter.

I didn't have any plans to get from Vienna to Lecco (outside Milan) until just two weeks before the trip. Flights from Vienna to Milan were insanely expensive, north of $600 USD for an hour and a half flight. Knowing how useful Europe's rail network is, I looked for flights from Vienna to other Italian cities such as Genoa, Torin and Rome. I still couldn't find anything reasonable. A direct train ride would take 14 hours overnight, but was starting to look like the best option. Bordering desperation, I suddenly remembered a bit of trivia. Vienna and Bratislava, Slovakia were two of the closest national capitals on the planet - perhaps I could fly out of the Eastern bloc? Boom, Ryanair operates heavily out of Bratislava, and there was a direct flight at the perfect afternoon hour from Bratislava to Bergamo, the closest of Milan's 3 airports to Lecco. Could this plan be any more perfect? I was going to get to Lecco by the power of trivia and Irish thriftiness.

And so I departed from parents in Vienna (they headed their way to Budapest), boarded the hour long train to Bratislava, saw the center of the town formerly known as Pressburg, boarded a bus to my Ryanair flight, landed in Bergamo and caught another bus to that town's train station. Along the way I had hawkishly searched for outlets and kept my phone at a healthy charge. Everything was going according to plan.

Bergamo train station gave me my first hiccup. It was 8:04pm, and as I navigated the ticket vending machines in the twilight glow, I realized the Lecco train would leave at 8:08pm. I quickly inserted my credit card, but the machine baffled me by asking for a PIN. My credit card doesn't have a PIN, and when I used my debit card's PIN, it rejected me. I tried my debit card, but that didn't work either. Flustered, I ran to a machine that accepted cash and threw in all the change I had in my pocket. The ride to Lecco was only 4 euro, but it was too late, I had already missed it. No worries, there would be another one at 9:08. After a McDonald's break across the street, I was back at the station prompt and early waiting for the Lecco arrival on Platform 1. At 9:00pm a train arrives at Platform 1 and I lug my bigass suitcase up onto the empty train and take over 2 seats. Soon my cabin becomes partially occupied by what seems like high school kids with too much time on their hands, jumping around and fooling around. The train gets going at approximately 9:08 and I text my friends in Lecco that I'm on the way and will be at the station at approximately 9:40.

As the train rolls through the night and into dark, empty suburban station, I realize I have no ability to tell when I would arrive in Lecco. It was difficult to read the station signs in the dark. So I asked a nearby passenger if he knew where Lecco was and he was completely confused. I pulled out my ticket and showed him Lecco. "Ohh LEHHH-COO," he replied in what I thought was an exaggeratedly Italian pronunciation of the city name (complete with hand gestures). "No, this way, no Lecco." Merda. The train stopped at that moment, and in sheer panic, I got off of it. Fortunately, an African woman got off at the same time and she could clearly see my disorientation. "Where are you trying to go?" she asked me in English. "Lecco!" She paused and thought, and then told me, "Ok, you can't get there directly from here. You need to wait and in 20 minutes a train will come back on this platform going the opposite direction and take you back to Bergamo. From there you can catch a train to Lecco." Her English was excellent and her directions very reassuring. I thanked her over and over again and watched as she walked out of the station to the dark featureless town behind it. Til now, I'm not sure how I caught the wrong train. I think I'll chalk it up to the stereotype that Italian trains are never on time. Likely, I was on an earlier train that had been late and left platform 1 at the time the Lecco train was supposed to leave. The Lecco train probably then left later.

This station was really lonely at 9:30pm. There were no high rises in the horizon, and the sound of cars was eerily replaced by that of crickets chirping. I was really alone in a completely random isolated train station somewhere in Northern Italy. I took a deep breath and reminded myself that I am from a suburb and that this is no different from what Newton Centre station would look like at night. At least the weather was nice and cool. A flash came across the sky, followed by a cackling roar a dozen or so seconds later. A storm was brewing elsewhere in Lombardy. I looked around the station and noticed just one covered bench. A man was stretched out, possibly asleep, on said bench. A brief wave of speculative panic swept over me. I hoped that the kind woman's directions were correct, otherwise I might have to spend the night sleeping at the station in a rainstorm sharing a covered bench with an Italian hobo. That was the first time I thought about the practicalities of spending a night in an Italian train station.

The train did come and I relaxed as I made my way back to Bergamo. As the train pulls into Bergamo and I rushed off, I suspected that the train to Lecco was leaving soon or had just left. My suspicion wasn't far off - there were no more trains to Lecco. There were no buses nor taxis. It was 10:15pm and I had failed the Italian train system.  And outside, the storm I had seen in the distance had arrived. I called my driving teammates and told them of my stranded situation. I was only an hour away from Lecco, surely one of them could come and pick me up? But everyone had arrived that day, some driving from as far away as Rome, and were too weary to make the 2 hour round trip. Plus, ultimate games had actually already been cancelled for the following day and I suspected that heavy drinking had commenced upon the reception of this news. My teammates told me to bunker down in Bergamo for the night and come to Lecco in the morning. Looking out of the station into the pouring rain and seeing no hotels or inns, only the McDonald's, I told them that I'd figure something out.

I was a little surprised that there no taxis at the station. Even Newton Centre will have the occasional yellow cab, and Bergamo is a city of 120,000 with actual tourist attractions. The train station was in a miserable state too, with over 2/3 of the building under repair and covered by white cloth specked by construction dust. There was no where to sit that wasn't a public circulation area, and after a quick contemplation, I ruled out sleeping at the station. I couldn't find an outlet either, so I would have less than 40% charge to get me home. At this, I went back into the station ticket counter area, and approached two men in suits. "Excuse me, could you help me call a taxi?" The men immediately reacted with awkward taken-abackedness, and it was clear that English was their medium of choice. I stuttered out, "uh...telefono...taxi? Per favore?" The guy gives a nod of understanding and gets on the phone, asking me "where? uh, where Lecco? Lecco central?" I told them I had the address, figuring that with GPS there'd be no trouble finding our hotel.

15 minutes later I was walking with two strangers into a third stranger's sedan. They explained to me that they were all Moroccan-born and had been living in Italy for many years. The driver was actually a professional, and he would drop me off for 40 euros "dopo" dropping those two off. The two guys at the station spoke some broken English, and surprisingly poor French. One of the guys kept trying to throw Spanish words at me like "vamos", figuring that "sono Americano" could mean that I was from anywhere in the Americas. The driver however, spoke about as much English as I speak Swedish. Furthermore, he had no GPS, and was unsettlingly giddy about the opportunity to take me for a ride. I called my teammate, telling him that I was hitchhiking a ride, and to call the police that if he didn't hear from me by 2am. I texted him the license plate number, and then got into the car with three Moroccan-born strangers who seemed friendly. At this point, I was aware that what I was doing was crazy, but all my planning had gone to shit and I figured it was time to use any and all of my spontaneous charm to get me 50km to Lecco. I ascertained that the two men in the train station were young, younger than me, working class immigrants who had come from a long shift in Milan at some service job where they were required to wear suits. The driver was their friend who drove for a living. All were in the course of their honest business when I approached them in desperation, and 40 euros and the chance to do a good deed seemed like reasonable motivation for letting a polite Asian stranger speaking broken Italian into their car.

The driver successfully dropped off his two friends, then invited me to the shotgun seat and tried to figure out where to go. He made me call a friend who spoke Italian, so I dialed up Gio and handed the phone over as Gio explained our address in Civate, a town next to Lecco. I hadn't realized we weren't actually staying in Lecco. We then embarked on a lengthy journey on back country roads and little town rotaries, rarely exceeding 50 kmh. I think my driver was named Omar, and I used every single Italian word I had ever learned in trying to buddy up to him. "Quanti anni vivi in Italia? Di dove sei in Morocco?" "Quanti sorelli o fratelli hai?" I learned that he had lived in Italy for 7 years, was originally from Casablanca and had 4 sisters, all still living there. Casablanca!? Really the one Moroccan place I have any familiarity with. "Casablanca! La filme! Molto famosa!!" He laughed and said si si si. I tried to use some of the quotes from Casablanca on him, "Play it again Omar!" but it didn't appear as if he had ever seen the movie in English. Omar then asked an elaborate question, pointing at my seat then his wheel then the road? "Something something posto something something guidare something something in America?" I searched through my Italian app looking for words relating to driving, before suddenly realizing he was asking me what side of the road people drive on in America. "La misma! I mean uh...stesso. La dextra...noi guidamo a la dextra...si....the same..." He laughed and nodded then said "Fast and Furious. Me piace." Ah that was his favorite film! I chuckled and went along with this new bit of conversational material, before retreating into terror at the thought that he might emulate any of the stunts from his favorite movie.

Omar really didn't know the way. We'd get to a rotary and he'd drive around slowly looking at the signs, inevitably missing the exit and doing another round or two around the rotary. I did keep seeing signs for Lecco, so my fears that I would be kidnapped to an undisclosed location were slowly being assuaged. Suddenly my phone rang and I remembered that I had promised my mom that I'd whatsapp her when I successfully reached our hotel. It was 11:45pm and I figured that if I had told my mom I was riding next to a strange Moroccan man in a black cab on some random Italian country road without a clear idea of when I'd arrive, she'd probably freak out and try to get Navy Seal Team 4 to extract me. "Hi Mom. How's Hungary? I'm fine."

"Are you with your team?"

"Uh, no. No, but I'm on the way. Don't worry about me mom."

"Ok."

Back to the strangely enjoyable awkward chitchat with Omar. I realized as it was happening that this experience was nuts, and it dawned on me that I had been in a not too dissimilar situation before. In fact, the last time I had gone to World's in Japan, I had been given a late night ride by a stranger who only spoke Mandarin (read about it here http://cal337.blogspot.hk/2012/10/worlds-ultimate-and-guts-championships.html).  That story hadn't ended with getting out of the stranger's car, and neither would this one. We kept driving agonizingly slow in unclear directions and my phone battery dipped below 25%. Omar explained that he normally did drive "stranieri," foreigners. "Sono strainiero anche!" I exclaimed, figuring that I was exactly his clientele.  He gave a polite chuckle, non-verbally indicating that no, he actually didn't typically pickup unannounced travellers who were coming from Hong Kong but were really from the US and were here for a wedding in Italy but had flown in from Slovakia. I had difficulty expressing my full story to him in Italian. Finally, after navigating several road closures and asking for directions, I saw Lecco Stazione, empty and staid, before me. We exchanged 40 euros, bid each other ciao, and I waited patiently at the empty steps for my teammate Will to pick me up.

I had been informed that the drive to the station was about 15 minutes. 20 minutes after I called Will, he texted me that he was on his way. Again it was dry, but I saw lighting bolts at the distance. 10 minutes of silence went by and the lightning came closer. For the third time that eventful evening, I wondered if I would have to sleep at the train station. It was hard to believe that I had had breakfast in Vienna and lunch in Bratislava, dinner at a McDonald's in Bergamo, and here I was now in an empty train station in Lecco. I walked out of the station, and saw one car parked right outside the driveway with one dude sitting with a cigarette, staring towards the train station. What the hell was he doing?  There was no way he was up to any good. I edged back up towards the station and prayed that Will would quickly find me.

Will called again, saying he'd reached the station but he thought it was the back of the station. Since I didn't see any sign of him, I quickly ascertained that I was at the front of the station. "Can you just drive around?" "Not sure, the GPS is telling us to go down this road that is closed." "Fuck.." "Well keep looking around, hang in there."

Another 15 minutes go by. It's now 1am and I'm strolling around with my luggage, keeping a wary eye on sketchy Italian dude sitting in his car. Suddenly I see a tall white man walking towards me! "WILL!" No response. I forget that I'm in Italy and not Asia, and that the local inhabitants can also be tall white men. I sheepishly keep ambling about with my luggage, and don't raise my hand at all when I see a second tall white man approach. This one was actually Will though and he led me to the parked car that his wife was driving. Within 90 seconds of entering the car, the storm reaches us and it starts absolutely pouring. Somehow I reached our hotel safe and dry and slept on a bed and not a train station. Basically according to plan.