My Favorite Holidays

Trivia question: What is the only month in which America does not celebrate a holiday?

As I write this during spring break, I realize that holidays are very important to me. Now they're obviously very popular amongst everyone, but I think I particularly like to break up the monotony of the daily grind by celebrating random segments of the calendar. It helps knowing that as the days tick by, there's something to look forward to every week or two. Case in point is Exelauno Day. Exelauno is an ancient Greek verb meaning to "march forth." Thus on March 4th, my classics-loving private high school "celebrates" by mandating that all of the student body wears coat and tie and every Latin or Greek class select one member to act out a skit in that dead language, in front of everybody. This is now broadcast live on the web. To me, I love this holiday because it is an institutionalized celebration of a bad pun. If we would all have lightsabre fights on May 4th (may the fourth be with you) then life would be even better. But anyways, now even 5 years removed from high school I still smile fondly when the calendar moves from 3/3 to 3/4. I also like wishing people happy holidays in other cultures, such as Bastille Day or 国庆节, and it did strike me when I first went abroad how cultural holidays are. The only holiday that most of the world shares is New Year's, and even that doesn't always hold true. This list here thus reflects absolutely no one's holidays except my quirky own. My eleven favorite:

11) Patriot's Day

The third Monday in April commemorates the Battle of Lexington and Concord, or the start of the Revolutionary War. This is not to be confused with 9/11, now memorialized as Patriot Day. Patriot's Day is actually only celebrated in Massachusetts and Maine, but here it was always a day off. Not only that but the Boston Marathon is staged on Patriot's Day, and runners go through Commonwealth Avenue within a few blocks of my house. The Red Sox traditionally play an 11am game as well, timed to finish at approximately the same time runners would reach the Fenway area. It's often a great, sunny spring day that celebrates all that is great about Boston. It's also still in April though, where April showers bring May flowers (and Mayflowers bring white people to America) so there are plenty of ugly rainy days as well to remind me why I went south for college. Patriot's Day can escape your notice outside of Massachusetts and I must admit I completely forgot about it last year.

10) Easter

The most important holiday in the liturgical year, Easter is ranked a little bit lower than you might imagine. After all, there's usually a lot of chocolate, a delicious brunch, eternal salvation and the chance to do everything you gave up during Lent. The problem is that I am often coming off 40 days of trying to not do whatever lofty goal I failed to meet. Easter is of course a family holiday, but not one that most people get days off for and so rarely justifies any type of travel or reunion. But since it's a family holiday, it's not a time where one meets up with friends either. In addition, though recently changed, daylight savings time used to start on the first Sunday of April, which often fell on Easter. So we'd lose an hour of sleep, which did not make the long morning mass any easier. But going to a Jesuit University, I've had Thursday-Monday off for a few years (an awkward break, but good enough to come home and relax) and appreciated the holiday. On top of that, the secular benefits include spring weather, bunnies, chocolate eggs, painted eggs, the White House egg hunt and good spirits all around. Easter loses some points for it's absurdly complicated dating system: First Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. How good can a holiday be if no one can figure out when it occurs?

9) April Fool's Day

Really just a great day for those who love to take part in practical pranks. However, for a large portion of the population, this day is completely ignored. For another small part, this day is mishandled and filled with bad, lame jokes. But then there's me. I once convinced my mom I was dropping out of school, then convinced my roommate he had an STD. Yeah. Only MIT students can top that.

8) Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is the holiday where we celebrate all the things we are thankful, but especially food and football. I love all of that so so much. The reason this holiday is lower than you think is that we also celebrate family during this time. For me this time has tended to be a joyous break on Wednesday, a great feast on Thursday, and then 3 days to kill in the worsening winter. In my experience I've found it hard to get people together in those times since so many people travel for reunions. Also traveling is never worse than during Thanksgiving - they say the Wednesday before has the most traffic.

7) New Year's Day

I like New Year's a lot. Though I've yet to be out of school so it's always been a part of my winter breaks, New Year's is essentially just one party. However it's a great party, where many people who don't normally get drunk will make an exception. There's champagne, decorations, countdowns and new year's kisses, of which I think I'm 0 for 23. But if you really think about it, the countdown looks pretty silly and arbitrary. And New Year's resolutions are just stupid. I think I have this a little bit lower than I perhaps should because I've had some pretty mediocre New Year's in recent memory. Nevertheless I'm convinced that house parties are the way to celebrate this - nothing appeals to me less than spending hours in Times Square in the cold without easy access to bathrooms or booze. That said, I do hope to make it to Edinburgh for NYE at one point in my life, where they supposedly do it best.

6) Super Bowl Sunday

This is also a one day party, but one that people talk about for 2 weeks or 2 months ahead of time. It's an American tradition unlike any other, that gets girls to actually watch sports. This past decade has featured some great Super Bowls, including 3 Patriot wins, so I have very positive memories associated with this holiday. It's great for those who love sports, funny commercials, making fun of bumbling commentators, guacamole and salsa dip, junk food and beer. The Super Bowl is basically our country's largest annual cheap banquet where everyone faces the same direction.

5) Halloween

I waffled a lot on the following few holidays before ultimately placing Halloween fifth. It's a great holiday for a few unique reasons: 1. Almost any crazy costume that you ever wanted to wear becomes socially acceptable 2. These costumes give you the opportunity to make your puns visible 3. Girls, and guys, often wear extremely revealing and occasionally attractive outfits 4. It is socially acceptable to stare and comment on these outfits 5. There's a lot of candy around, and trick or treating is still fun. In past years, especially this last one, some of the best parties I've attended were Halloween parties. This year also marked the first time that I gave away candy to trick or treaters. In time I've grown very accustomed to Halloween to the extent that I'm bouncing costume ideas off people in September. In fact this is one of Halloween's added bonuses - it provides good conversation material throughout the year. However, I've still come up with some lame costumes over the years and being well-dressed is often a very stressful and costly activity. Neither spending $100 on a costume nor cutting a hole in a trash bag and going as Darth Vader (as my brother once did) are very appealing options. Also, whenever Halloween falls in the week, it creates a very awkward situation. Do you celebrate the Saturday before? The Friday after? Or that day? Sometimes this splits into 3 parties, none of which are as good as they should be.

4) St. Patrick's Day

Not everybody likes stupid excuses to drink. Not everybody enjoys getting drunk during the day for no apparent reason. Not everybody like the taste of Guinness. Not everybody would be the one Asian who studied abroad in Ireland. I am very clearly not everybody. In the last 3 years, I've planned my week and wardrobe around St. Patrick's Day. Two years ago, I was walking/stumbling to my combinatorics class when I ran into Liz. I wished her a "happy St Patrick's Day" and she asked me what I was doing that night to celebrate. I replied, "same thing I've been doing all day." Last year, I bought lots of Jameson and Baileys in Tulsa, OK where the prices were much cheaper, and dragged it all the way back cross country with me. I spent Monday gathering Irish music. Then on Wednesday when I had the most classes, I finished all my homework and looked over notes beforehand, then pregamed all four of them with an Irish Car Bomb. I wore green and spoke with an Irish accent the entire day and ended the night with an awesome party. So yes, I like St. Patrick's Day for entirely juvenile reasons. But tomorrow, I can also see who else share these same tastes just by the color of their clothes.

3) Chinese New Year's

This is without doubt, 100% serious, one of my favorite times of the year. The highlight here is food whereas the highlight of the preceding holiday was drink, and in the end food is much more important. 年糕, the year cake dessert that I've only ever eaten around New Year's remains timelessly delicious. Dumplings are also strongly associated with the holiday and are always tremendous. The festivities are so grand in Chinese communities, greater than anything Americans ever do for days like July 4th, probably because cultural celebrations are more important in older cultures. While I'm never excited for Lion Dances, I like the general atmosphere and hope to be in Asia at some point in my life for CNY. It's also the biggest windfall holiday in my life, with laisee and new clothes out the wazoo. At some point when I'm the one handing out the money on CNY, perhaps I'll think of this holiday differently. But for now, it's so great.

2) July 4th

As pointed out in the previous holiday, July 4th is less of spectacle than Chinese New Year's. However, it is as big a festival as we have in this country and it's a good one. It seems to me to be always a sunny day off with good barbecue, watermelon and fireworks. It's a little bit like New Year's Eve except in the summer and with patriotism. America really is a great country and it's easy to feel that way on the fourth of July. I've been abroad two of the past three July 4ths, and while that's tough it's a great occasion to bond with fellow Americans abroad.

1) Christmas

It's impossible to top Christmas. A season more than a holiday, the three weeks of overplayed music and overcrowded shopping is too much for many people to handle, but I love it. I love snow in December (but hate it in January and February when it's gotten old and cold), shopping for those closest to me, breaking my alternative Christmas music playlist and the long winter break. I love giving, I love getting, and I love the spirit and hearing "happy holidays" from strangers and saying "merry Christmas" back. As a secular holiday, it celebrates all the right things in life, to the extent that it doesn't matter that it's spawned from a religious holiday that not everyone celebrates. As a religious holiday, it celebrates the birthday of the most important and most admirable person to walk the Earth. For all the Hallmarkness and consumerism that modernity has brought to this ancient holiday, I still love waking up on Christmas morning and feeling like a kid.

Honorable mentions (no particular order): Pi Day, Labor Day, Festivus, Groundhog Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, Earth Day, Ides of March, Leap Day, Harry Potter's Birthday, Handover Day, March Madness.

Trivia Answer: August

End of the year charts

2010 has been a great year. You can never say you've seen it all this year, but I've seen a lot. From the slums of India to the Andes of Peru, from mono during graduation to getting my mind blown at Inception, from late hours in Wudaokou to long hours in St. Mary's, from observing someone else's logs on a plane to finding my own bottle of beer underneath 18 inches of snow, from line dancing to piranha catching, from a visit to a Chinese mannequin factory to a night as a Georgetown Cupcake, it's been a good year. It's a shame that it has to end but I think this is the nature of years - they end and the one that follows is bound to be greater. At least mathematically, 2011 > 2010. Yeah it's funny how that works.

But trying to understand the world mathematically, instead of in flowery superlatives, has been a big part of this year for me. I almost stopped blogging after starting full time graduate studies this fall because work has been so busy. This semester has felt next to nothing like college and sometimes I wake up Friday morning and wonder what I did all week, and it's hard to remember because it's been a blur of math. But for delving so deep into the subject I can now see many more layers to the world - probability distributions, random variables, functions and vectors that define our surroundings and happenings. Nearly everything can be put into a mathematical model which often makes us better understand, or differently envision, phenomena. Sometimes these models can be used to make predictions, but sometimes they are meaningless without larger context or a multi-disciplinarian approach to understanding the forces behind our data.

For example, in this year's NFL MVP race, Tom Brady and Michael Vick stand out. A lot of numbers are thrown around like Brady's 8 game interception-less streak and Vick's 9 rushing TDs. However it's hard to understand how amazing (or not) Brady's streak is unless you take a deeper look into the types of passes he throws (how many of them are risky?) and if he's abnormally lucked out by defenders dropping picks. Similarly many of Vick's rushing TDs are not equal - some are 1 yard dives, some are flashy 20 yard sprints, some are 3 yard scrambles that involved a half dozen jukes. Thus, it is often said that statistics is math + bullshit because it can be so easy to mislead with numbers. I find it good protocol to always view stunning statistics with a good dose of skepticism and try to visualize all the complications that the simple number effectively masks. Did you know? Tom Brady has more touchdown passes (34) this year than Michael Vick (21) and Brett Favre (11) combined. Did you know? Michael Vick has more career jail time (23 months) than Brady, Peyton Manning, Philip Rivers, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers combined.

Anyways here are some ridiculous graphs I created.

The 2010 US Census told us that there are 308 million Americans. Over half of them were aware after the US national soccer team tied Slovenia 2-2 on June 18 that there was a country named Slovenia. A considerably smaller percentage of our geographically inept country was aware before that. And the population of Slovenia (just over 2 million) is in fact represented accurately on that graph.

This graph shows how "blown" my mind is on any given date, going back to late September. As you can see I'm normally not too thrown off by any surprises and keep a relatively level head that varies around a 0.75 on the Berfatz-Julenweiss Scale (named after two pioneers in Mind-Blowing). However you may notice that in early December my mind was devastatingly blown apart upon a monumental event. On this occasion I was informed that Willow Smith, she of the song "I Whip My Hair," was none other than the 10 year old daughter of Will and Jada Smith.

For more on pop artists and age, here is a graph of the Billboard year-end top 25 artists, with their positions vs. their age. When the artist was a band I just picked their most famous person. We have an interesting scatter here with people near my age already successful such as Lady Gaga (24) and Jason Derulo (21). Outliers include Lady Antebellum (Linda Davis is 48) and Susan Boyle (49) on the high side, and Justin Bieber (16) on the low side.

World Cup Bids

Did you know that tomorrow (Thursday, December 2), a FIFA committee in Zurich will decide the host nations of both the 2018 and 2022 World Cups? Probably not. This news just caught me by surprise. As I loved speculating on the locations of the Olympics, I wanted to write something about the World Cup. However, not that I know very much about the inner workings of the IOC, but I know even less about FIFA. Nonetheless, I can still speculate. For some quick history, 2018 and 2022 will be the 21st and 22nd World Cups respectively, with the first one taking place in 1930. The Cup will be held in Brazil in 2014 and of course just occurred in South Africa. Europe and South America have the primary hosts, with a few Cups in North America and one each in Asia and Africa.

2018

The 2018 World Cup will be in Europe. That much we know, because the only bids now are England, Russia, Belgium/Netherlands and Spain/Portugal. Yes those last two are joint bids. If you recall, the 2002 World Cup was the only previous joint bid in history, taking place in South Korea and Japan. Both these joint bids make better sense, as none of these nations are separated by open sea and have closer linguistic and cultural ties than South Korea and Japan. Belgium and Netherlands have even successfully joint held Eurocup 2000. Some things to be aware of here are that all host nations automatically qualify, so with the joint bids, this would mean two automatic bids. This is probably less of an issue with Spain/Portugal, two very strong sides, and more with Belgium, which has not qualified for the last two World Cups. England is a very strong candidate here, as the birthplace of modern football has not held the Cup since it won in 1966. I think Russia though has a very attractive offer here though, as the Cup has never really approached Eastern Europe or Central Asia. Fourteen geographically diverse Russian cities (though none in the far east) are prepared to host games. Spain of course won the last World Cup, which I imagine can only help their bid. In addition, the Netherlands/Belgium bid has plans for some sort of mass transit bicycle distribution, which I think is quite cool.

Prediction: Russia. Globalizing football by bringing the World Cup to new places has been a big theme for FIFA in this millennium. Russia is a logical new choice without the infrastructure concerns of South Africa or even Brazil.

2022

The bids are South Korea, United States, Japan, Australia and Qatar. The latter two would both be first time hosts which always helps. South Korea and Japan are recent hosts, which always hurts, enough to even rule them out. The United States always has a strong bid, and their message this time, delivered by former President Bill Clinton was diversity. No matter who is represented in the finals, the stadium could be filled by those nations' supporters. The 1994 World Cup was an attendance bonanza though its lasting effects on promoting soccer in the US is debatable. Nevertheless, the infrastructure is undeniably present. Qatar is a very interesting choice. The FIFA president has already stated that he wants to bring the Cup to the Arabic world. Qatar successfully hosted the 2006 Asian Games and may be the most experienced Arab nation in hosting large events. Doha was even a bid for the 2016 Olympic Games although their desire to move the events to October was shot down. There are no plans to move the World Cup out of the traditional June and July slot, which is a problem because temperatures reach over 40 degrees Celsius in summertime Qatar. In response, the nation has stated it will show off its oil wealth and unveil air-conditioned stadiums. So yeah there's a lot to take in right there - Qatar's bid has the most extreme positives and negatives. (An additional Qatar negative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtHIa9AHgLk) The Australian bid is also very interesting. FIFA does want to bring the Cup to Oceania and the infrastructure and passion seem to be in place in Australia. It is a very remote country which makes international travel difficult.

Prediction: Australia. I think it'd be tough for Qatar to overcome all the doubts and I don't see international clamor to bring the Cup back to the States. Australia would be just different enough to be cool.

A Really Shitty Flight

My departure from Bombay marked the start of an epically lengthy journey home. The drive to the airport itself took well over an hour. On the side of the highway, many Indian couples were pulled over on their motorcycles and making out, apparently one of the few socially acceptable ways to get around the state-enforced "No PDA" rule. I did get to the airport with plenty of time to spare, enough time to photograph an Indian phone booth, which prominently displays STD out in front, for Standard of course.

The 6 hour flight to Hong Kong was a red eye, followed by a 5 hour layover in Hong Kong. By an odd fortune of circumstances, my dad had booked a room in the airport hotel for him to use before realizing he would not be flying out of Hong Kong with me. Still the room was booked, and so I checked in and took a shower and a quick nap. My parents tried to reach me about seven times in this span, but since I neither checked my email nor activated my Hong Kong phone their efforts were in vain. They even called the hotel front desk, where apparently I left an impression because the concierge did remember me and my funny Cantonese. Anyways, next up was a 14 hour flight to Chicago.

On a large United flight, I sat window on an exit row with a set of 4 bathrooms next to our row. The flight proceeded without incident for about 8 hours, although I had a lot on my mind, trying to absorb my recent trip to India, contemplate my uncertain future in the states, and deal with my long and exhausting trip and my newly single status. Dazing in and out of dreamland, I was suddenly jerked awake by the man sitting next to me standing up and hurriedly bolting down the plane. Confused, I asked the girl sitting in the aisle seat what the commotion was. In a cynical flat tone, she told me that someone had apparently taken a crap on the ground between the bathrooms. I had to chuckle at her absurd statement. "I'm sorry?" I leaned over to look at the ground between the bathrooms and holy shit, there was a pile of you-know-what right there on the airplane carpet. I asked her who did it, but of course no one spends a flight looking at the bathrooms, even if someone does happen to squat down and drop one in plain view. Her best answer was that she thought she had seen an old guy behaving strangely around the bathrooms. Well I figured that the stewardesses would immediately scoop up this situation, but no one seemed to be making a big stink out of this, as if fecal disasters are commonplace on intercontinental flights. I stood up and called a stewardess over and told her that "someone has pooped on the floor." The young flight attendant doesn't seem to understand what I'm saying, and comes to me and asks me to repeat myself. "Someone took a shit on the floor," I repeat and point to the puddle of mud that is still very much in the way of bathroom goers. Well, now she gets the idea and loses her shit, no pun intended, and runs for help. Sigh. Well the smell was getting pretty unbearable right now, and if plan #1 of getting assistance wasn't working, I guess I'd have to go with #2 and run away.

However it was dark in the airplane cabin and as I mentioned, the crud was quite an obstacle towards lavatory use, perhaps mentally as well as physically. Amazingly the news, and smell, had still not spread to the entire plane and people were still using the bathroom with impunity. I tried to warn as many people as I could, but unfortunately some people had a knack for stepping right in deep shit and, *icky moment*, spreading it around the floor. I warned a Chinese girl just too late. "Be careful! 小心！ 你的鞋！Your shoes!" She had already stepped in it, but she took a look at her shoes and screamed the sort of scream you only hear in Godzilla movies.

Finally the flight attendants got their shit together and sprung into action. They perhaps overreacted, closing off the section (sealing access to all four bathrooms) and bleaching the entire floor. A kind flight attendant, who told me she had worked in the industry for over 20 years and never seen something like this, took me away from my seat at ground zero and into an unoccupied First Class seat, and told me to "keep quiet." Apparently she didn't want people to think that if someone defecated near their seat, they could get an automatic upgrade. Well I moved all my stuff up a couple dozen rows and never moved back. Spending six hours in first class, which is about six hours more than my mom has ever spent in first class, was not a bad consolation prize. The movie selection was incredible and the seat could recline into a bed, and I helped myself to a very much needed beer.

I spent some time pondering whether there was something poetic, ironic or punny about getting dumped and then dumped on, or if this was just the worst thing ever. My conclusion? When you're sitting in first class, who gives a ****?

Bombay

From Hong Kong I took a flight aboard Kingfisher Airlines to a heretofore brand new country, India and it's economic capital, Mumbai, to see Komal. There's quite a bit of confusion over the name of the city, which is officially Mumbai now but used to be Bombay. The switch in its English name happened in 1995. While the different names have their own political implications which I know little about, Komal and her friends call it Bombay, and so I call it that too. Depending on your definition of a city, Bombay is as high as the 2nd most populous city in the world. Without going into semantics, Bombay seemed to me to be at the same level of immense urban sprawl and density as Beijing and Shanghai and a level above New York and Hong Kong. The city is very much a coastal city, shaped like a sharp peninsula extending into the Arabian Sea. Downtown Bombay is located towards the point of the peninsula and the suburbs are located more inland.

I had a little adventure getting my Indian Visa. I went to the Consulate in Beijing about a week and a half before I was to leave. After initially going to the Embassy by mistake, then waiting for half an hour in a small room and then dealing with Chinese paperwork with the Consulate workers (all Chinese), I was finally told that they'd process everything in 10 days. I did some quick math and realized that the 10 day mark would be the Friday before my Sunday flight. If they were even a day late, I would not have my Visa, or more importantly, the US Passport that would go with it. After the panic subsided, I found out the phone number for the Indian consulate in Hong Kong, where I would be spending 3 days, and called them to see how quickly they could process a visa. They said that if I had a HK ID, they could process it in a day or two. Luckily I did have the ID, whew! I was able to bolt from the Beijing consulate.

The Hong Kong consulate visit was very painless. The person before me was an Indian man who spoke fluent Cantonese, which is always cool. So before I knew it I was on a six hour plane ride to India. Though it might not be intuitive, Hong Kong to Mumbai is further away than New York to LA. This plane ride was my first indication that I was journeying to a strange new land. The full airliner had maybe 3 Chinese people, maybe 3 white people. The rest of the airplane was all Indian. We all had television monitors in front of us with a nice selection of Bollywood and Hollywood. The woman next to me seemed to be watching an awesome Bollywood film, but every single time I picked a Bollywood film, it sucked. I ended up watching Chariots of Fire, which also did not live up to the hype generated by its theme song. Walking to the bathroom, I noticed that nearly every single monitor was tuned into Bollywood - just one was bucking the trend, showing Friends.

I asked the woman next to me how she enjoyed Hong Kong. She told me that it was nice, but very dry. "I beg you pardon?" I couldn't believe her. Hong Kong was the most humid place I

have ever been - it makes DC seem drier than a medieval history lecture. Then I stepped out of the plane, got hit by a tidal wave of humidity, and I figured out what she meant. It's hard to put into words the intensity of Bombay's marshlike air. Come to think of it, I've never been in a marsh, but I imagine one feels a little like Bombay. It wasn't quite a sauna but you could definitely feel the air.

Then I got my bags and went through immigration and without a cell phone, walked out of the airport hoping there'd be someone waiting for me. Luckily Komal was, with a driver, and we left for her father's apartment in Malabar Hill. Now although I did not see an elephant during the weekend, I do realize that there is an elephant in the room. With full regard to that, I need to say that my relationship with Komal officially ended during that car ride from the airport, and yes it did suck. I had had the whole summer to deal with this so it wasn't as difficult, but it certainly led to one of the most unusual weekends I think I will ever experience. For the first time in a long time, I was legitimately scared. I was in a very large city in a very foreign land around which I did not know how to navigate. But the worst part was that the uncertainty in my physical environment was matched by the uncertainty in my personal life and I would not wish that combination upon anybody.

However I was in a cool foreign city with a good friend and it was a pretty special opportunity. Komal's apartment was incredible, honestly the most amazing apartment I had ever been in, and staffed with several residing workers who didn't speak any English. A full two stories of marble floor overlooking the beach, the apartment was fit for a real estate mogul. Early the next morning though, Komal had work and I was left alone in the most foreign of homes. Though I was very comfortable in this mini palace, armed with the Hindi words for food and water if I needed sustenance, I constantly felt uncomfortable. I felt that as I was in such a different place I should go out and explore, but my lack of phone, language skills and familiarity with the surroundings made this a bigger difficulty than ever before. It was one thing to lodge in a hostel and be given free reign but I was staying in an apartment with police officers continually camped outside and I couldn't exactly leave and come back whenever I wanted. So I took a quick walk along the beach, which was pleasant but extremely dirty, and waited until Komal's driver came. By now used to communicating without full verbal fluency, I got the point across that I wanted to see the

Gateway of India and the Taj Mahal, and so he dropped me o

ff there and presumably went to find parking nearby. Again for all I knew I could have been stranded there with only a faint idea of how to get back, but I proceeded to walk around and admire some of the finest sites that Bombay had to offer. The Gateway is a large stone arch structure built to welcome Queen Mary and King George's visit to the city. It does impressively stand out on the water and I'm sure the sight is rather spectacular coming at the end of a long sea storage. I managed to find some Taiwanese businessmen and asked them to take a picture of me in front of the arch.

I found the neighboring Taj Mahal Palace & Tower (hotel named after the more famous

mausoleum in Agra) even more impressive. The Taj was probably the most iconic building to get hit by the 2008 terrorist attacks, and the image of the structure burning is still engrained in my mind. I think the building is beautiful with Indian-style minarets and classical-looking stone structure. I'm no expert on Indian architecture but I just thought that that building fit in so well there as a symbol of Indian grandeur. The Palace didn't actually completely reopen until about two weeks after I visited.

I got beset by a beggar while staring at the Taj who asked me to buy milk for her starving baby. I had never quite seen this particular approach but she was so stubborn that I considered just doing it for her. Then she said come walk with me and started walking towards lesser crowded places. I have no idea what her true intentions were but red alerts blared in my head and I stood firm, tossed her 60 rupees and ran for my driver.

That night out one of Komal's friend's drivers was on duty so he was able to shuttle us around to different spots. I'm not sure how many peoples' nights outs revolve around personal drivers but it was very much the norm here. We first went to a country club where I sampled the

legendary Indian Chinese food. I had heard glowing reviews from Indian people about the Chinese cuisine brewed within their borders, but having just come from the Chinese capital and not seeing a single Chinese person I was skeptical. Nonetheless I was very much surprised - the dumplings there were particularly good. I also sampled an Indian Coca-Cola knockoff (later bought by the Coca-Cola company) called Thums Up. I noticed there was no B, which apparently was news to Komal and one of her friends. We then went to a slick new club which apparently had a cover charge of like 3000 Rupees which is an absurd $66. Maybe I have that number wrong but it was definitely the steepest cover I had ever seen outside of New Year's Eve. However, one of Komal's friends who knew the club owner was having her birthday there and thus we entered for free so yeah pretty sweet deal. Believe it or not, people dance in the clubs there like they do in Bollywood movies.

That may or may not be true but you should at least pass my little tidbit along to other people.

Okay so that was fun. Anyways just about nobody wears short sleeves in Bombay, ever, and certainly not at a nightclub. So despite the earth-shattering humidity, I manned up and wore a nice button-down long sleeve and the one pair of jeans that I had brought to China, though I'm the kind of guy who prefers comfort over style and always wore shorts into Vic's. I write this now with an awareness that this is much ado about nothing, but I think that in the American culture in which I was raised, we are taught to be afraid of the elements. We blast AC during the summer and heating during the winter, and complain loudly whenever we have to do without them. But of course large portions of the globe live their entire lives in weather either hotter or colder than we ever experience and consider it simply the norm. At the least, I didn't hear a whole lot of weather complaints from locals in Beijing or Bombay.

Over the rest of the weekend, I experienced a minor monsoon (felt like a Noreaster), saw a Bollywood film to get in the spirit, went shopping for some fine Indian cotton, entered Victoria Terminus aka Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, aka the train station at the end of Slumdog Millionaire where Jamal meets Latika. The train station was actually a tremendous experience besides for the cinematic experience (I wasn't even sure that it was the station from the film while I visited). First, its exterior, designed in Victorian Gothic style but with decidedly South Asian elements, was an amazing display of architecture. But the interior held more stories than the glorified facade. I had used the train stations in Beijing this summer and nothing stateside had prepared me for those crowds, but that paled in comparison to the bustle ongoing at VT on that rainy day. The outside was a zoo of stubby black cabs, and the inside was a jumble of sales transactions, hurrying passengers, departing trains, trilingual announcements and security, for this was the most deadly location for the 2008 attacks. Seeing the crush of humanity in person, it is actually painful to imagine the effects of a gunmen entering and opening fire. Mumbai apparently doesn't or didn't have a fully operational metro system, and intracity transit (as well as intercity) was mostly done with the suburban rail system. That was how Anish moved around from his spot up north in Santacruz near the airport into the downtown. I could wax on and on about my thoughts inside the station, and indeed I would need to spend more time in Bombay to fully understand them. But perhaps the most significant to me was that all the cars were gender segregated. Indian society is run with a moral mandate, and in addition to a strict no kissing in public, men and women are only allowed in separate cars. The station was also very filthy - the monsoons seemed to only spread the city's dirt around rather than the cleanse it.

What I heard from Anish's experience was also pretty incredible. A second generation English citizen of Gujarati descent, Anish was in suburban Mumbai for the year doing Teach for India, which is exactly like Teach for America except that while America has drastic educational deficiencies for a first world country, India has drastic educational deficiencies period. While many American high schools have awful dropout rates, more than 1 in 3 children in India drop out before the FIFTH GRADE. So yeah I think it's safe to say it's a completely different game. Plus though I think Anish teaches in English and doesn't speak much Hindi, all the kids are still learning the language. Oh and the pay is even worse. Suffice to say it was very interesting meeting up with him, particularly since I found his experience as a British-Indian, who spoke Gujarati and now learning Hindi, living and working in his ancestral homeland's largest city very analogous to my experience in China.

Indeed, as my experiences with large world cities in developing countries is very limited, I could not help but to conceptualize Bombay through my understanding of Beijing. Both gigantic Asian world cities of 18 million plus have migrants from all over the country and investment from all over the world. Each city has their impressive skyscrapers, each city has their difficult slum conditions and both definitely face overcrowding and urban sprawl dilemmas. Both countries have booming economies and over a billion people, and face similar social, energy and political issues accordingly. Also in both cities I had great meals. However, differences in foreign domination, internal political movements, religious movements and even climate have molded the two cities and countries into perhaps fundamentally different places. Even in three days, I experienced some of these differences. I would like to preface that I'm not sure how well Bombay can act as a microcosm for greater India, or even Beijing for China, but I do believe that both cities in some way contain a large portion of their nation's cultural heart.

Anyone who knows me well knows how much I like diversity. On this measure, I loved Bombay. Coming from Beijing, where my even slightly ambiguous racial features had occasionally drawn attention, I fully expected to stand out like a sore thumb among the considerably darker Bombay populace. Not even slightly true. There was not a single instance where I thought anybody gave me an unusual glance, questioning why I was in their land. You may think to yourself, "I'd hope not! I'd hope people don't act like that in a large cosmopolitan city." But still, people in Beijing who have surely seen members of every nation still occasionally gawk at the tall Westerner or ask the African-American to pose for a photograph. I bet every single white or black American who has ever spent a week in China has a story like this. However, I don't know whether they have those stories in India. What led to Bombay's more casual acceptance of foreigners in its midst? The answer is likely twofold. First, while China closed its doors to outsiders for so long, India has historically had more foreign contact including nearly continuous foreign influence from the Persians to the British. Second, the country itself is extremely diverse. Sure China has over 50 minority groups, but the country is still about 92% Han Chinese, and the great Eastern cities like Beijing and Shanghai even more Han. Meanwhile, India does not even classify its population among racial lines. South Asians seem to have a different conception of race. In the United States, would pan-ethnically self-identify as "brown" in a way that Koreans, Japanese and Chinese would never self-identify as "yellow." Even further, many Indians are decidedly "not brown." Many people were clear to point out to me that I could conceivably have been from the northeast of the country where the inhabitants have more East Asian features. Did you know that Burma was once a part of British India and could have been part of the modern state? This great diversity is very much manifested in modern day Bombay.

As a result, demographics in India are more commonly drawn by language, where there is clearly no majority. While Hindi is perhaps a lingua franca in Northern India and is spread greatly by its use in Bollywood films, the South largely speak completely unrelated Dravidian languages. Other related Indo-Aryan languages like Marathi and Gujarati are spoken by large chunks of people. I don't know too much about this language family, but I think perhaps that these languages are perhaps about as related as Mandarin, Shanghainese, Cantonese and the Chinese dialects are. Though there is a lot of differences between these "dialects," it is taught in China that they are all part of the Chinese language. In India, there is no such conception of an "Indian" language. Even the language situation in Bombay confused me. Set in Maharashtra, the area traditionally spoke Marathi. However it seems that monolingual Marathi speakers are very much the exception now, "mostly fishermen," one of Komal's friends told me. Hindi seemed to be the language on the streets and in the media. However, certainly within Komal's circle of friends, English was far and away the most spoken language. In fact, one of her friends was an aspiring actor and taking "accent classes." When I asked him what was wrong with his accent, for his English seemed very good, he admitted that his Hindi was not where it should be and that he had a Hindi coach. Here I drew parallels to my knowledge of Hong Kong, where a similar colonial heritage has pushed English to its high status as the white collar and upper class language. However I don't think the situation is as similar as it would appear. In Hong Kong, many local kids who go to international school will speak English with an American or British accent and their international classmates will likely speak no Cantonese. Other locals may speak less fluent English and a large portion of the poor working class will speak little to no English. You either speak "mainstream" English, or you speak bad English. Hong Kong doesn't entirely have its own brand of English like Indian English. I believe the reason here is that in Hong Kong, English is used to communicate with the city's many Westerners, but communication with other Chinese will be done in Cantonese or Mandarin. In India, English is more than any other language the country's lingua franca, so there is plenty of communication with other Indians done in English. As a result, many street beggars came to me begging in English, which I hadn't heard in either Beijing or Hong Kong.

Decades of very different political rule has surely left other legacies upon China and India. I didn't see any of the slums in Bombay, but I still have the impression that the gap between the rich and poor is more pronounced in India than in China. I also definitely felt less safe in some parts of Bombay that I really ever have; for all its problems, Beijing is a surprisingly safe city.

Religious is perhaps the aspect of greatest divergence between China and India. It would be an oversimplification to say that organized religion had no effect on modern Chinese life, but compared to India that's almost a fair statement. The sheer number and visibility of religious groups in Bombay really struck me. When I was alone with Komal's driver, the few English words he knew were proper names common to Hindi and English. Thus he would point out temples to me: "Jain" as we drove past an unremarkable grey structure, "Farsi" as we glimpsed a somewhat hidden temple. Whether Sikh or Hindu or Muslim, citizens openly announced their religious beliefs with their clothing. Komal took me to a Hindu temple on my last day, possibly my strangest experience there. First she told me, "we'll have to take off our shoes, and they might get stolen." Luckily we found and paid someone to hold them for us. Then we walked up a densely populated hill, up curving stone steps that suddenly turned into old stone rooms filled with carved sculptures of different deities, ringing bells, chanting people in prayer, and flowers milk and dyes being poured on the sculptures in tribute. It was a lot to take in at one moment, and while I thought people would stare me out as a non-believer, nobody seemed to notice me. There was no exterior of the temple to speak of, for it seemed to have simply been built into the hill and the surrounding buildings. There were quiet pilgrims, loud adorers and some people in the corner who seemed to be studying texts. The scene was quite a lot to take in all at once.

Though it didn't seem like it at the time, I did and learned a lot in that short weekend. On Sunday I bought more souvenirs, including a keychain with my name in English and Devanagari, ate special Indian pizza with local spices (really delicious), natural ice cream, visited the Hindu temple and walked along the beach. It certainly was not nearly long enough to get any real grasp of what India was like and if I ever do return, I will make sure to stay at least a month. I think I could easily say that was the strangest or most interesting weekend of my life, but that didn't even begin to match the return trip...

Why I Travel

Why do I like traveling? The short answer? I learn things. Among the things I've learned is to always start with a joke.

A man is sleeping with his neighbor's wife. Suddenly they hear the front door open - the husband is back. "Quick," the wife says, "in the closet." The husband comes into the bedroom, kisses his wife and opens his closet. "Joe! What are you doing here?" Joe shrugs, "I gotta be somewhere."

Everybody has to be somewhere. For a lot of people, that somewhere will rarely change, and even more rarely radically change. And if you like where you are, and who you're with and what you do, maybe there's no reason to move and leave all those things that constitute your life behind. But for me, I've discovered a more macro, impartial outlook on life. I've spent all my life living in the United States - why? Yes it's home, and nothing will ever change that, but it's just one country among many in this great big world. My strong connection to this awesome country shouldn't blind me from the rest of the world. So I see a map and all I look at are places I haven't been and I want to diversify. There are so many sights I've never seen, so many things I haven't done. The US is only a small part of the world, it needn't been the only part of my world.

It's like someone who grew up never eating chocolate. If you never tasted it then you don't know what you're missing. So the person without chocolate could feel perfectly content, and may be skinnier and have less cavities for his troubles. But wouldn't eating chocolate, that first bite of milky brown goodness, add some happiness to his life? Chocolate might never have been something this person ever desired, but upon tasting it he finds himself in a slightly richer and fuller life and will inevitably want more. Traveling is the same way. It might not be something you're aware of, but once you get exposed to the wonders of travel, the blinds are permanently lifted and you transcend into some higher dimension with more countries, cuisines, languages, currencies and concepts you previously didn't realize existed.

Everybody has to be somewhere. This somewhere can be home, and for most people, their current location will eventually asymptote into a (more or less) permanent home. The ideas and experiences gained from traveling often don't resonate until you are displaced from where these experiences took place. It's easy to go somewhere fabulous and come back and tell people all about it. This was precisely my modus operandi right after I got back from study abroad. "Oh Prague is absolutely gorgeous during all times of the day. The Guinness in Ireland is way better than it is here. I could've spent a day inside the Vatican." That's cool and interesting and whatnot and I'm sure all my friends whom I made listen to me were at least mildly interested. But those experiences aren't truly meaningful until they're gone from the surface of your memory and been internalized into who you are. It's the surprise feeling months or years later where something comes up and you realize, "Oh yeah. I have been to Prague." You're at a bar with friends and sip your draught and understand, "Yes the Guinness isn't quite the same here." You walk into an art gallery and recall, "Painted ceilings really are inspirational."

Because anybody can go to a place and tell you what's there. There's nothing really special about you having been to Paris. Anybody else can go and duplicate your trip, see the same Louvre, go to the top of the same Eiffel Tower, eat the same croissant. The fact that you've been to Paris isn't intrinsically special - it usually just means that you're fortunate.

What's special is what you take from the experience and what you went through in the process. Yes anyone can go to Paris but not everyone will experience it the same way. One person might understand and appreciate the Gothic architecture, another might love the theater scene, another the Nutella crepes and another the Algerian influence. One person I met booked a hostel for only two of the three nights he was there and spent a night homeless in a park. Another friend was prevented from flying in from Rome because of a strike and had to take a a last minute crowded train. Going to Paris is cool and special because it is a great city conducive to visitors coming out with a great experience, whether you're a conqueror from Corsica or a backpacker from Belmont.

The funny thing about traveling is that though it's something many people look forward to and spend a lot of money on, it's not always fun at the time. In fact a necessary component of travel is that one is taken outside of their comfort zone. Nearly all travelers will live more comfortably at home. A fun trip usually involves walking a lot, waking up early, staying in uncomfortable accommodations, having difficulty finding good food, going through transportation hassles and braving the unknown. But what really makes traveling isn't just the great sights that make you happy you waited in line or woke up early, but the contentment derived from the trip long after it is over. Simply put, it really makes me happy knowing that I've been to the places I've been. I will have to think more about this contentment to truly discover its source, but it exists and it is the main reason I travel.

So be somewhere and be there with a purpose. You'll learn more about the world and you'll learn more about yourself.

The Rest of the Summer...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tianjin

So at some point I decided to do a long-discussed day trip to Tianjin, a city of 12 million people located just south of Beijing and whose name means Sky ford, or Heavenly Ford (a river runs through it). A high speed rail line connecting Beijing and Tianjin opened in time for the Olympics and reaches about 300 km/hr, or nearly 200 mph. Despite being two huge metropolises by our standards, the cities are very close. In fact, the train ride to Tianjin (~35 minutes) is faster than the subway ride from my place to the Beijing railway station (~40 minutes).

Even with the proximity and ease of travel between the two cities, I quickly discovered than Tianjin was very distinct from Beijing. Though most people still spoke with the r sound, Tianjin Mandarin definitely sounded a little different from Beijing's. The city was a business city, with considerably less major tourist attractions and thus considerably less tourists. In fact, Westerners, businessmen, students and tourists alike, were extremely scarce. This was a breath of fresh air (and indeed the air was marginally better) because there was more real Chinese culture and less Chinese people trying to speak bad English to me. So I woke up relatively early (9:30), wrote down in my little notepad the names of the cool tourist sites in Tianjin, and hopped on the metro.

After the high speed trip, I get a big map of the city at the train station and find myself rather confused because this is quite a sizable city. The main tourist attraction is the Ancient Culture Street (古文化街）which looks to be a half decent walk from the station. So I decide to cab it and soon find myself underneath the station where a tunnel is filled to the brink with blue cabs. The scene is hectic with a typical Chinese line of waiting riders continually breaking rank and boarding taxis far down the line. It takes about 10 minutes to navigate through this mess but the taxis clearly have it worse, as I soon find out. I enter a cab and tell the 司机 to hit up the Ancient Culture Street and get a silent nod of recognition. It's not until the driver leaves the tunnel that he turns to me and complains how "I waited in line for an hour and you want to drive somewhere 5 minutes away!" Haha oops. Well if I was in a worse mood I might have been like "sucks to be you" or "maybe you shouldn't wait in the train station like the rest of the city's drivers." But instead I was in a good mood of exploration and explained that I was a tourist just visiting for the day, and asked how he felt about driving down the river and giving me a little tour of the city. The driver is very happy to hear this and starts conversing with me and pointing out various landmarks. Tianjin's got a bunch of cool bridges, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm all about bridges. We also drive through a street known for its colonial style European buildings which are now used by modern Chinese banks. I had read about the street on Wiki and heard about how it was a good representation of Tianjin's former exposure to Europeans and was looking forward to it. I didn't need to get out of the car though to realize that it was pretty lame. I've been to Europe, I've seen European buildings, and these were really uninspired for European buildings. It was like any boring office street in Frankfurt or London, and in this case, just because they were in China didn't make them any more special.

I asked him if there was any good food near the Ancient Culture Street and he said that why didn't I go to the snack street (食品街), another landmark in my little notepad. I said why not

and found myself outside an interesting hall - the bottom looked new and manufactured like a shopping center, while the top was an imperial style gate. I paid the driver about 25 kuai, which was probably double what he would have gotten if he hadn't given me the whole tour, but still not a lot of money. The inside looked like this picture on the left, a very Chinese jumble of cheap goods stalls, food stands and vertical advertisements. I got a very unremarkable but totally memorable duck sandwich which was just a piece of roasted duck stuck into a bun and struck me as a very normal meal for a local. The area was interesting enough to keep me occupied for about a half hour before I ventured off to see the Culture Street.

The walk there showed me that Tianjin, though certainly a business city with its skyscrapers, had a more suburban feel to it. The neighborhood that I ventured to felt oddly uncrowded, a very typical experience perhaps everywhere in the world except China. The streets were still as trafficked as ever, but the sidewalks were very sparsely populated.

The Ancient Culture Street was a cool collection of antique stores, street performers, statues, craftsmen and people. This area was not sparsely populated at all and while Beijing and Shanghai have their similar places, I still felt like I was walking in a unique location. Maybe it was like Newbury Street in Back Bay - sure it's just a street of clothing and bookstores, but it's neat. It was a fun walk but without notable purchases cause half of my time in China had been spent buying useless street souvenirs. Eventually I made my way to the monastery in Tianjin which I believe once held a skull relic of Xuanzang, the famous monk from the Monkey King tales (those stories may have been the most Chinese part of my upbringing). However the monastery was closed and I resorted to taking pictures of the gate and wandering around it's tourist shops, one of which sold me a beautiful jade dragon necklace.

I left the closed monastery for a riverwalk and came within sight of Tianjin's perhaps coolest landmark, a bridge with a ferris wheel right on it. Yes that Ferris wheel is on a bridge, with cars and such driving right underneath it. It's called the Eye of Tianjin (creative right?) and is the only ferris wheel of its kind in the world. Walking towards the eye, suddenly I heard a giant bang. I almost hit the deck and no joke, my first thoughts were as to what foreign powers were involved in the attack. No one around me reacted though, which rather confused me. Soon on the walk though, I discovered tons of used fireworks (also pictured right) right on the street and put two and two together. Nonetheless I couldn't figure out what the fireworks were for. Many of them remained scattered on the road where cars still whizzed by. Only a few workers were doing cleanup and there was no crowd or anything gathered when I walked by, nor signs of any festival or anything. No one who I asked gave me an answer. I walked on, under the ferris wheel bridge, still confused. On the other side I hailed a cab and searched for a final tourist site, the St. Joseph's church. This church is well publicized on Wikipedia, it's actually one of the main images of the city, but it seems that its prestige on the online encyclopedia is significantly larger than its prestige among Tianjin residents. The taxi driver I hailed actually had to look up its address. We then got into a very great conversation. Everybody I talked to in Tianjin asked me "你喜欢天津吗？Do you like Tianjin?" I had only positive things to say. This driver told me about the characteristic of the city, most of which I did not understand, except for Zhou Enlai's name when we passed by his memorial. He proceeded to list a bunch of famous people from Tianjin, of whom I recognized maybe 2. Then he said "let me guess how old you are. 22?" And I was like holy shit and started laughing, and I was like in 2 weeks yes. He was like, "guess how old I am?" He looked pretty old but I went for an underestimation of what I really thought, so I said "54." He starts cracking up and says, " so close, 55." I didn't even believe him, but he pulled out his ID and I pulled out mine and we shared one of the more bizarre laughs of my lifetime. He then recommended a good "Goubuli bao 狗不理包" place within walking distance from the church which I thought would be an awesome local place, but it turned out to be one of the main restaurants that charged about 70 kuai for 6 buns. Goubuli baozis are Tianjin's famous local buns. I only learned after having the six that they are all different flavors - it seems there is no standard goubuli bao. The church was cool too, I went into a nearby Starbucks to take better pictures of it. How often do you say that?

Inside the restaurant I caught the last part of Tianjin culture that I was hoping to see - xiangsheng, an old esteemed form of Chinese poetry/rap that involves very complicated wordplay and knowledge of the language. The intricate puns and messages that the guy was spitting out were way beyond me, but I still really appreciated his performance, although it seems everyone else was too used to these bards to clap.

The return journey on the train featured one last memorable encounter. A black girl boards the train very late and with two giant suitcases that she was struggling with. I pause then ask in English, "do you need help there?" to which she immediately responded "yes please." After helping her bring the bags inside, she told me that she was going home after spending the semester in Tianjin. I asked her where she was from, fully expecting her to be American (couldn't discern an accent) so when she said, "Zambia" I was really surprised.

The lovely day trip was really quite simple and rather painless. All of my planning was contained within looking up various sites and figuring out how I'd get there once I got there. In the process I think I learned a lot about China. Here was one city where life went on regardless of what a foreigner like me did or thought. This was a real part of China not as transparently broadcast to the world. Interestingly, many of the people I met had never been to Beijing. I was stunned, the city was literally 40 minutes away. You could drive there no problem or take a bus if you couldn't afford the train. Tianjin to Beijing is very similar to Baltimore to DC right down to the train prices and one end's presence as the nation's capital. So I don't know what it says that a lot of residents hadn't left the city even to see the wonders of freaking Beijing, but it certainly has something to do with the strength of the economy. It's strange though, since Beijing has a large composition of transplants from around the country. What an odd dichotomy.