In a Kafffeehaus in Wien

If there are two things that unite this blog, it's traveling and coffeeshops. With that in mind, this post is the embodiment of this blog. I am in the Cafe Central in Vienna http://www.palaisevents.at/en/cafecentral.html) and I can't think of many more grand locations I've logged on the internet with my computer - the Library of Congress might be it. Like many buildings in Vienna, the style of this cafe is quite ornate with large crisscrossing arches spanning the ceiling supported by Corinthian columns. A piano player in the center of the cafe alternates between classical tunes and modern renditions (I'm pretty sure I heard a Gwen Stefani song), and the seats are all covered by a plush maroon fabric. The cashier and pastry making area are centrally located, and I'm sitting literally next to where the desserts are placed before they are brought to guests. The cafe has an impressive history, with a lengthy list of famous frequent visitors from the turn of the 20th century (Leon Trotsky, Sigmund Freud). As a result, its modern rendition is understandably touristy. It's not clear to me whether it still a haunting ground of great literary minds, or whether they're all at some hipster place across the Danube, but I'm enjoying my time here.

I don't have much of said time though, so here are some bulletpoint thoughts of this trip which has been Padova to Venice to Innsbruck to Salzburg to Vienna (thus far):

• Vienna in German is Wien. How does such a short lackluster name gain so much elegance in translation?
• Venice doesn't feel like a real city. It is incomparably unique. Water instead of land will do that.
• In addition, of all the cities I've been to, Venice is the one most overrun by tourists. Sites like the Great Wall of China, Bagan, Statue of Liberty, Vatican etc. you expect those to be completely inhabited by tourists. But Venice used to be a center of world trade and a naval powerhouse. Now it seems like a place where it's hard to have a "real" job.
• Innsbruck is amazing. It's a small town with similarities to Aspen and Bruges. It's got Alpine views, a roaring river and old town Medieval feel, and has hosted 2 Winter Olympics.
• There wasn't classical music at every street corner in Salzburg, which was a bit of a disappointment.
• I can't remember many of the trips I took before the age of 12. I'm even hazy on a family vacation to Lisbon at the age of 16. It sparks the philosophical debate of whether travel is worth it for little kids.
• I forgot to bring my camera on this trip, so I'm constantly whipping out my phone for pictures. It's not helping my phone addiction, and also making me question the role of pictures in trips. Often they seem to be the only thing I remember from trips, and thus have too large an effect on my memory of the trip. I used to think it was so important to just enjoy the moment and not distance myself behind the lens of a camera. But there's something to be said about having something to share with others. Plus sometimes you're so overwhelmed by a place that you can't process it properly your first time there, and only get it after returning numerous times to your pictures.
• The pianist just finished "Misty." So lovely.

Football from the mouth of the son of a soccer mom

Even though it's probably the original reason I went abroad, watching sports haven't been a real part of my life as a full-time expat. With the exception of a dozen odd NFL games on reply, one AM World Series game and the radio feed as the Red Sox won, I've missed over two full seasons of American sports. I meant to get into soccer, from hereon out referred to as football, as its the only sport Hong Kongers really get into, but the timing for the European league games aren't great either and I haven't found a team. But I've gotten super into this World Cup. Super into it. And I've realized how much I missed being able to talk about sports with people. Coming into work after seeing a great Pats comeback against the Broncos and not having anyone to talk to about it made me die a little inside.

So this World Cup comes and suddenly I'm in deeper than I could have foreseen. I mean, it's a great World Cup. The times here are terrible, with opening round games at 12am, 3am and 6am and half the knockout games starting at 4am. This schedule is brutal for the Asia audience (probably over a third of the global World Cup audience). But a combination of staying up late, waking up early and reverse naps and I come close to satisfying my fill.

In the daytime there are no games, and so I talk about the games. With coworkers, with friends, with taxi drivers, with the building staff. Most everyone is into it, and conversations about Brazil, Messi, Germany and Tim Howard. I dig in to the football media, listening over and over again to "The Football Ramble", a podcast suggested by my British friend Conor Quigley. It's just four dudes shooting the shit talking about football, but I can't get enough of it. I've never been this deep into football before, and to hear unfamiliar names and teams casually dropped. And I listen to American media too, and the comparative shallowness of their knowledge and the complete different conversation was very revealing.

My perspective of the World Cup here has allowed me to see an incredible example of how America is viewed abroad.  People from all over the world are passionate about their nations, but no other country are as in your face about their patriotism. I'll hear citizens of the world sing their national anthems and chant their countries' names and cheer hard, but the "USA! USA! USA!" chant drowns them out. Now most of the hardcore American bravado I usually see and participate in is largely tongue-in-cheek. I think it's cute and funny when we go overboard on Americanism, and hilarious when we tie in historical events. For example:
American to a Frenchman: "Do you speak German?"
Frenchman: "No..."
American: "You're welcome."

I think that an amount of American exceptionalism is necessarily tied into this sort of behavior though. Almost three years removed from living there, it's now more apparent to me when an American blindly believes they come from the best country in the world and that their country deserves to be a leader in everything important. It seems to me that other nationalities are proud of their origins but also proud to be a piece of the puzzle. But Americans have a history of success at many world stage events, and so when they see an international event of the magnitude of the World Cup, our lack of success there becomes an issue of national security.

So I think the world is really good at football. There's no way to measure this, but I think the top level of football is better than the top level of any other sport. It's a combination of the size of the pool that actively aspire to professional levels and the lifelong commitment to training required to attain such levels. Great tennis players nearly all train hard from before the age of 6, but they tend to be limited to a wealthier segment of the population and tennis is no country's national sport. Basketball is restricted mainly to individuals of selective height and athleticism, which can override the need for longterm skill development. Hall of Famer Hakeem Olajuwon first started playing basketball at 15, and even LeBron James was getting beat by his peers at the age of 12. Sports like running and swimming are pretty universal but still don't compare to football in terms of sheer hours needed to develop a complete skillset.

I think controlling a ball with your feet is very very difficult. We have hands for a reason and we do most activities with them. To run at full speed and stop a ball flying from 40 yards away with your feet seems to almost defy physics, and to immediately send it in another direction with power and accuracy for a one-time volley is mind-boggling to me. And the nations that have a full roster of world class players have dedicated training academies that get kids practicing these skills who knows how many hours a week.  Countries as diverse as China, Saudi Arabia and Peru invest a serious effort to compete and still are far from making the World Cup. It takes both time and skilled labor to establish this sort of infrastructure, as well as a cultural acceptance that such an infrastructure is of value to society.

As readers of this blog might know, I think culture is one of the strongest forces in the globe. Why Americans aren't that good at football and why they don't care that much are two separate questions, but they can both be answered by culture. We so happen to have developed several indigenous sports that gained popularity, namely baseball, basketball and American football, and so football has always had more to compete with. Based partly on our isolated geography, we were much less influenced by what other countries played, and could reach critical mass domestically for the other sports to thrive without the need to expand.  And so these other sports get popular and publicized and in turn the children have their own ambitions shaped by what they watch. So while football has spread as a game for the poor throughout most regions of the world, in the US, inner city blacktops have basketball hoops built into the ground and rural fields have basepaths cut into them. Football instead becomes a low-investment non-contact sport preferred by suburban moms, including my own. This segment of the population will tend to have other economic options outside of being a professional athlete. In times all these factors build on each other and voila, it's not so surprising that world class American soccer players are so rare.

But Americans still like to watch sports, and how many American football fans ever played serious American football? Hong Kong isn't producing any world class footballers anytime soon, but they still have world class fans. Again, competition with other sports plays a large role here. When you're already following three sports, it's hard to follow a fourth. Secondly, I really think that football is a sport that is much more fun to watch at a high level. In basketball, as long as both sides can dunk, the game can be enjoyable. In American football, if the quarterback can throw forward accurately, he can put on a show. If a batter can hit a home run, baseball gets a lot more fun. That's why these three American sports can be popular at both the collegiate and professional levels. But in football, if you can't dribble well enough to beat a defender one-on-one, if you can't shoot hard enough or accurately enough to score from outside the box, if you can't put your head on a long ball that comes your way, then it becomes awfully hard to score. And it's not fun to watch 0-0 games with bad offense. It's not a sport where the offense and defense scale evenly. Basically, this is why I don't watch MLS.

I think Americans will watch the best European leagues, particularly the English Premier League. The time zone difference is a factor now, but people will get over that. The league structure is also a setback - it is so different from what we are used to that it'll take some time for people to get a feel for how the season flows and what these midseason tournaments mean. There is certainly a vocal minority of Americans who are watching the EPL, but the vast swarm of Americans who tuned in for the World Cup are not going to join them. I really believe that this will only change when we have a superstar offensive player who does well overseas. Clint Dempsey and Landon Donavon have had their stints in England, and never really shined. Tim Howard has been great for years, but as a goalkeeper, has yet to compel Americans to tune in (this may change after his superstar celebrity World Cup performance). When we really have someone to root for, people will tune in and support that player's club. And when that happens, we'll be better able to talk sports with foreigners, even during the years in between the World Cup!

Famous Math Majors

"So what are you going to do with that? Teach?" Every math major has been asked this question, possibly hundreds of times. The average person, regardless of nationality, seems to have a limited conception of the capacities of mathematics and relate to it only through the classes they took in secondary schooling.

While doing research for a presentation I made at work about mathematics, I decided to compile a list of successful people who majored in mathematics. There are plenty of adept individuals who get Ph.D.'s in mathematics and contribute to the academic field. A handful of these become famous outside their field into popular culture, and by a handful I mean John Nash. But there are many individuals, also adept in their own ways, who study mathematics and then pursue careers outside the traditional math arenas. As one such individual, I've collected stories over the years of other like-minded examples to potentially serve as training data for my career model (woh Cal, slow your stat analogies). There's this list out there, but its outdated, overly finite and generally not that good:  http://www.math.uh.edu/~tomforde/famous.html 

So I made my own. I hope you appreciate the range (and domain) of this list.

Sergey Brin
I would say there are three other fields where people traditionally double major in mathematics. Computer Science is the first one. Brin was born in Moscow in a family of Russian Jewish academics - in fact his dad was a math professor. They immigrated to Maryland and his dad taught at College Park. There Sergey would double major and then go on to graduate school at Stanford, where he met Larry Page. The rest is history, and if you don't know about it, you should Google it.

Steven Chu
The next field in which people often couple their degree with math is physics. Steven Chu got his double degree at the University of Rochester followed by a Ph.D. in physics at UC Berkeley. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics while at Bell Labs doing laser cooling work. He then later served on Obama's Cabinet as the Secretary of Energy. He's arguably had one of the more notable and important careers of any Asian-American, and is a very prominent campaigner for a sustainable society.

Peter Diamond
The third field would be economics. This should be no surprise to people familiar with this field. High level economics nowadays involves very serious theoretical math with theories all backed up by axiomatic proofs. Digging through lists of notable economists, I was able to find several with undergraduate degrees in math, but I actually honestly don't recognize any of them. I'm sure Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman and such know their set theory, but they just happen to have stuck to economic degrees. I chose Peter Diamond (math bachelor's at Yale, Ph.D. economics at MIT) for his Nobel Prize in 2010 in something related to the job market and unemployment. He has a long career in social security research.

David Robinson
Now we get to a list of more interesting careers more outside the traditional mathematical sphere of influence. David Robinson's life story to all who know it has always been notable for being so unusual for an NBA player. Robinson wasn't a good basketball player in high school and only joined the varsity team as a senior when he grew to 6'6". His father was an engineer in the navy and he followed by going to the Naval Academy and studying mathematics. He soon grew to 7'0" and ended his 4 year career at Navy as unquestionably the best basketball player in the history of the school. The Spurs drafted him with the first overall pick and waited patiently as he did 2 years of service. His career with the Spurs included the 1995 MVP, 4.49 blocks per game in 1991-92, a quadruple double, the 1999 and 2003 Championships and sportsmanship and SI Sportsman of the Year awards for his philanthropic efforts and general good nature. In fact, the NBA's Community Assist Award is actually named the David Robinson Plaque. While his rival Shaquille O'Neal called himself the "Pythagorean Theorem, because no one could solve him," I will bet David Robinson could produce a few proofs of that theorem.

Corazon Aquino
Benito Aquino was a Filipino Senator who spoke out strongly against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos. He was imprisoned for many years before seeking medical treatment in Cambridge, MA and settling in my hometown of Newton for 3 years with his wife and family. Upon returning to the Philippines, he was gunned down exiting his plane. His widow Corazon found herself in the spotlight. Corazon had studied in the US, majoring in math and French at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in New York City. She ended up running for President in 1986 and after a disputed election, ascended to rule the country for six years. Her son is the current President.

Dara O Briain
The hilarious Irish comedian double majored in math and physics at University College Dublin, where I also spent a semester studying "maths." Geeky material very often appears in his standup routine. He worked after college as a children's TV presenter, and started standup on the side. He has now blown up into a majorly popular television personality, panel show host and global touring standup.

Zaha Hadid
This award-winning architect was the entry on my list most surprising to the engineers and architects I presented to. One of the leading architects today, Zaha was born in Iraq and got her degree in math at the American University of Beirut. She moved onto London to study architecture and would set up her practice there in 1980. Her work is all over, but the ones most familiar to me is Dongdaemun Design Plaza & Park in Seoul and Innovation Tower at Hong Kong Polytechnic University. MAXXI in Rome might be her most famous. Maybe this is an example of posterior bias, but I think I can tell her mathematical roots from her architecture which feature prominent sharp angles mixed with smooth curves. There seems to be an analytic geometric basis behind her designs.

Alberto Fujimori
The former Peruvian President is a pretty interesting dude. The son of Japanese immigrants to Peru, Fujimori got a bachelor's degree in agricultural engineering in Peru. Apparently he had a thing for the more fundamental fields of his study, rather than just the study of fields, and studied physics at the University of Strasbourg before getting a master's in mathematics from the University of Wisconsin. He continued with a career in academia, before getting into politics and becoming President of Peru. In this time, he oversaw great economic growth, led a coup against his own government, divorced his wife, was accused of human rights violations, won a second term overwhelmingly, rewrote the constitution to legalize a third term, won the third term in a runoff afflicted by voting irregularities, resigned from office while in Tokyo, was charged with human rights abuses and corruption (embezzling possibly $600 million), stayed in Japan under the protection of the Japanese government who would not extradite him, before being arrested in 2005 in Chile and eventually being sentenced to 25 years of prison. Then his daughter finished 2nd in the 2011 presidential election. Wow. Well for all that's worth, math probably helped him somewhere along the way.

Jasper Tsang
The Hong Kong politician got his degree in math at Hong Kong U, and actually did the stereotypical profession of teaching secondary school math after graduation. He became a school principal before somehow moving from there to politics. To be honest I should know a lot more about Hong Kong politics and don't, but Tsang is one of the major supporters for universal suffrage in Hong Kong.

Art Garfunkel
The taller half of the great folk duo Simon & Garfunkel somehow started studying architecture at Columbia before graduating with a B.A. in art history (maybe to honor his name), then staying on to get a M.A. in math. It's a pretty gnarly combo, and of course Garfunkel's following singing career is an even further diversion from any of his academic focuses - although his hit song the Square Root of Silence might have been inspired by his love of math. The success of his music career had some incredibly lucky breaks, and it seems that Art was  keeping some other professional options open.

Herman Cain
From his super awkward answers about US involvement in Libya and his understanding of foreign policy (Uzbeki beki beki stan stan), you might wander what Herman Cain studied. Well before he was the CEO of Godfather Pizza, Cain got his B.S. in mathematics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, then a M.S. in Computer Science for at Purdue. He worked as a ballistics analyst for the navy, then for coke as a computer systems analyst and whole-heartedly diving into the food and beverage industry. His 2012 run for Republican nominee for president had its ups and its downs and its outright bizarre moments (he "suspended" his campaign during an event which looked like a parade) and many women accusing him of sexual misconduct.

Rachel Riley
I learned about this British television presenter from watching 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown. In the show, she basically handles some numbers in which the contestants, generally famous funny people, have to use to solve math puzzles. The job doesn't really require an advanced mathematics degree, but nonetheless Rachel has one from Oxford.

David Leonhardt
I discovered this name in a New York Times article I read after posting this. The editor of Upshot, a New York Times venture covering politics, policy and other subjects (I'm lifting this straight from his byline), won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize and graduated with a B.S. in applied mathematics from Yale.

I hope you've enjoyed this rather random list and appreciate its breadth in achievements and diversity in origins.  I'm not trying to make any statements or pretend this is an in-depth study that studying math can lead to success in any field (although it can!) and yes I'm aware I'm just conglomerating a lot of Wikipedia knowledge. But it's often said that math is the universal language and I think even in our modern society of advanced specialization, there is this age old wisdom that spans everything.

More like Steve Baller

P.S. Just about all the pictures are in the Golden mean.

EDIT: True story, I considered putting Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in the list but figured a lot of regular people wouldn't know who he is. He studied applied mathematics alongside computer science at Harvard and has done quite well for himself. Then he dropped $2 billion to take the LA Clippers from the truly awful Donald Sterling, and now a lot of regular people know who he is. I'm not entirely sure how he calculated that $2 billion for a city's second basketball team and who don't even own their arena will pay itself back, but he probably knows what he's doing.
I also want to give a shoutout to linguist Guy Deutscher, who wrote this fantastic book Through the Language Glass. Before getting his Ph.D. in linuguistics from Cambridge, he got an undergraduate degree in mathematics there.

Geographic Analogies

For no reason at all, I am going to do a post examining analogies between geographic entities, where the relationship between two cities for example is compared to the relationship between two other cities. I will look at how the analogy makes sense and where it falls apart. I'm not entirely sure if there's anything to be learned from this exercise, but I think it should be fun. Very often you hear people call a place "The Paris of South America" or the "Harvard of the South," which means nothing except a guarantee that this city is not as beautiful as Paris nor the school as good as Harvard. Sometimes however, comparing two knowns to two unknowns can be very helpful in explaining regional dynamics.

Delhi is to Mumbai as Beijing is to Shanghai

How it works: 
Beijing and New Delhi are the capitals of the two most populous countries in the world, countries that share much in common just due to their innumerable citizenry. Both cities are immense and inland and contain much historical and cultural importance. Shanghai and Mumbai are the largest cities of their respective countries and are the economic capitals, with both on the coast. Shanghai and Mumbai both have stock exchanges, lots of finance and shipping and tall buildings. In contrast, Beijing and Delhi are centers of policy making.  The analogy holds under even historical scrutiny, as Delhi, while ages old, was for many years ruled over by Afghan and Turkic rules and came to prominence under the Turko-Mongol-Persian Mughal Dynasty. Beijing is also as old as time and the capital under Mongol rule during the Yuan Dynasty and under Manchu rule during the Qing.  Shanghai and Mumbai were never capitals of a united China or India, and are much younger cities with their histories more closely tied to colonialism. Shanghai historically spoke Shanghainese, related but different from Mandarin of Beijing, and people of Bombay historically spoke Marathi, related but different from Hindi of Delhi, yet in modern times you can get by with Mandarin in Shanghai and Hindi in Mumbai. The capital cities are also considered to have better universities than their financial city rivals.

How it falls apart: 
For starters, a lot of countries have a big capital city and an even bigger second financial city (Russia, Germany, Spain, US etc.) With China and India being such different countries, it's hard to get too extended with any analogies between them. Delhi has one of India's 3 metro systems and appears to have a better public transportation than Mumbai, which runs on a large but overcrowded rail system. Shanghai is considered the better developed Chinese city and arguably has less traffic issues. Delhi is considered much less of a party city than Mumbai, while Beijing is arguably more of a party city. And I haven't even mentioned how New Delhi is actually the capital city of India. The real flaw in the analogy though is that Mumbai is considered a city with soul and culture and an edge, the home of the thriving Bollywood industry. Please never mistake Shanghai for a city with a soul, Beijing is China's cultural capital, and China's  movie industry is not good enough to have a city associated with it. Also fun fact: Connaught Place is an area in both Delhi and Hong Kong.

United Kingdom is to Europe as Japan is to Asia

How it works: 

Both are island nations off the mainland of their respective continents, together bookmarking the Eurasia landmass. Isolated from the mainland, they both developed cultures quite distinct from the continental countries nearby and still sometimes find difficulty deciding to what extent to align themselves with the larger continent (i.e. UK not adopting the Euro, Japan and its disputes with China). Both countries have had extensive history of war with continental rivals, especially England with France and Spain, and Japan with China and Korea. They have also long been one of the dominant powers of their respective regions, and formed the extensive empires behind the strength of their navies. The English are the dominant ethnic group in the UK and descend from the Anglo-Saxons, who migrated from continental Europe to eventually displace the Celts as rulers of the land. The history of the Japanese people is not as well understood, but it is possible that the ancestors of modern day Japanese people or Wajin, migrated to the islands and displaced the ancestors of the modern day Ainu people. The capitals of these respective nations, Tokyo and London, are two of the world's true alpha cities. Also both the British and the Japanese love tea.

How it falls apart: 

The Imperial histories seem to be one of the biggest similarities between the two nations, but in reality they weren't very similar empires. The British Empire's main holdings were outside of Europe, geographically disparate and extensive and lasted for centuries whereas the Japanese Empire seized the areas nearest them, Korea and Taiwan, before massive expanding throughout East and Southeast Asia for a short period during World War II. Japan also has a much more isolated history, resisting foreign influences for centuries, and as a result is even today objectively more culturally removed from its continental neighbors. It is a very homogenous nation, with the Ainu barely a distinct contemporary ethnic group and with 1.5% of the population foreign citizens. 8.3% of the UK is foreign born, and I think a fleeting glimpse to either nation is suffice to prove that the UK is much more multicultural and diverse than Japan. As such, the essential relationship between the UK and Europe is nothing like the relationship between Japan to Asia. English operates as a lingua franca among Europeans (and the world) among whom it is not uncommon to study at British schools. Japanese is a studied language in Asia and people do study in Japanese universities, but it is more specialized and undertaken primarily among those with a unique interest in Japan. In addition, I haven't gotten to how England, Wales, Scotland & Northern Ireland make up the United Kingdom, and the role of Ireland in all this. And really, who doesn't love tea?

East Germany is to West Germany as North Korea is to South Korea

How it works: 
The end of World War II and the start of the Cold War divided these two nations. One nation became communist (with planned economies and state-owned enterprises and the like), the other capitalist, and decades later the capitalist one was a thriving economic powerhouse with global car brands and the communist one was a struggling starving poor piece of land. A sharp symbolic boundary divided the split nations, with the Berlin Wall in Germany and the Demilitarized Zone in Korea. The splits were dramatic, separating families and creating sharp enmity. The two countries treated each other with suspicion and espionage, though there was always a confusing overhanging cloud of reunion. The golden goal for both situations, reunion could occur peacefully or forcefully. The capitalist countries allied themselves with the western powers, while the communist countries relied on their big strong communist neighbor, Soviet Union and China respectively.  All the countries had fancy names for themselves that took the focus off the split: German Democratic Republic (East), Federal Republic of Germany (West), Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North), and Republic of Korea (South).

How it falls apart:

One is a East-West split and the other is a North-South split.  No just kidding. The main difference is that East Germany was much smaller than West Germany (16 mill to 63 mill in 1990), and largely controlled by the Soviet Union. North Korea is more comparable to South Korea in size (24 million to 50 million present day) and adhere to the principle of self-reliance, Juche, despite all that China helps them with.  East Germany was poorer than West Germany, but it was one of the more successful Eastern Bloc countries and the GDP/capita was over $10,000 USD a year. In comparison, the GDP/capita in North Korea was $1,800 USD/year in 2011. Perhaps the East/West Germany and North/South Korea economic divide were comparable in the late 80s, but now the split is so much wider in the Koreas than it ever was in the Germanies. 

I don't think I need to elaborate too much further on this because I think most people are more familiar with these two situations than perhaps others on this post. But Jon Stewart adds this other analogy: "Dakota, like Korea, has a rather mild south and a north that hates the world."

Many Chinese Cities to US Cities

How it works:

I don't know who did this but somebody bothered to give each Chinese province and most major cities a US equivalent. It's a huge effort worth applauding, but some of the choices are very peculiar. Beijing is labeled LA, probably because of its large population, urban sprawl and smog. It is certainly not an appropriate comparison in terms of its history, culture, weather or transportation. Shanghai is New York, which is the only suitable choice. Some comparisons are pretty nifty. If Beijing is going to be LA, then it makes sense that Tianjin will be San Diego. Nanjing is paired with Philadelphia, and giving their histories as former capitals, that seems fair. Qingdao as Seattle and Dalian as Boston both get seals of approval from me. Hainan is where Chinese people go for their beaches so that'll obviously be Florida. Taipei is Atlanta....maybe because Atlanta was one of the major cities of the Confederate South? I'll run with it. I was very confused about the association of New Orleans, one of the most interesting cities in the US, with Zhanjiang, a town I hadn't even heard of, until I did some research and learned that Zhanjiang was a French colony for 50 years. Wuhan is Chicago and Chengdu is Dallas by virtue of size, and it seems that Chongqing is completely omitted from the map. Inner Mongolia is given the associates of North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, which I'm sure should thrill everyone from all those places. In this map, the old Chinese name for San Francisco (旧金山) seems to be assigned to Hong Kong, and as two cities that I love, that sounds perfect.

My biggest issue from this map is Kunming being labeled as Phoenix (and Yunnan as Arizona, wtf, entirely a southwesterly geographic choice). Yunnan is a mountainous region that's much cooler than even Beijing in the summertime, whereas Arizona is one of the hottest places in America. Kunming is actually a really good match with Denver in my opinion. Their size and importance relative to the country is comparable, they are both at over a mile in altitude, and are home to the hippies of their respective countries. Also, neither Kunming nor Denver were able to participate in Super Bowl 48.

Shenzhen is to Hong Kong as Johor Bahru is to Singapore

How it works: 
Hong Kong and Singapore are both Asian city states  with many similarities including histories as important British colonial ports, centers of major economic might, Chinese populaces and small territories with lots of people. The Chinese and Malaysian cities across the border form their economies primarily around trade with their neighboring city states and contrast starkly with their lower quality of life. JB is primarily a Malay speaking city compared to quadrilingual but English-dominated Singapore, while Mandarin dominates in SZ due to large scale internal Chinese migration compared to two-languages-three-vernaculars but Cantonese-dominated Hong Kong. Both Hong Kong and Singapore draw water and power from their larger neighbors and face issues with immigration from those same countries. Many Hong Kong and Singaporean residents treat SZ and JB as their playgrounds to the north, places to go for a spa or amusement park fling (SZ has Windows of the World, JB has Legoland Malaysia), for a short time to avoid dealing too long with the perceived lower quality service.

How it falls apart: 
Hong Kong is technically part of China, while Singapore are separate sovereign nations. This distinction has important consequences. Hong Kong doesn't keep a standing army, with its waters patrolled by the Chinese navy. Meanwhile, mandatory service is required for all Singaporean men, so that in case of invasion by Malaysia and Indonesia, Singapore won't get completely wiped out. Water supply is also a huge issue. While Hong Kong draws the majority of its water from the Dong river in Guangdong, it sees little problem with this relationship (even though it should since it doesn't totally control the pollution that the river is subjected to). On the other hand, Singapore's treaty to receive raw water from Malaysia expires in 2061, and they are preparing themselves to be self-reliant on water by then. As Malaysia is under no obligation to renew the contract and has previously asked for a hike in prices, Singapore is aggressively pursuing a plan of water conservation, manmade reservoirs, desalination and reclaimed water (branded NEWater). 

Also, Johor Bahru's initial expansion occurred in the mid 1800s under Sultan Abu Bakar and has a distinguished history of its own right. Shenzhen on the contrary can trace its entire modern history to the 1979 establishment of a Special Economic Zone. While both economies are now inexorably tied to their adjacent city-states, JB's came about naturally while SZ's was established explicitly so. SZ has grown exponentially though, developing into one of China's major cities and its port may soon eclipse Hong Kong's in net traffic.

Canada is to the United States as Ireland is to the United Kingdom as New Zealand is to Australia

How it works:
It seems all the major English-speaking countries in the world have an English-speaking neighbor that is much smaller in population and economic weight but while possibly being better places to live. Can you guess which population ratios correspond to which pair of countries - 1:9, 1:14 and 1:4?  Hint: they're in the same order as the section title. 

How it falls apart:
I have never told this analogy without someone getting offended.

SPO: The Redskins debate recontextualized

As a kid learning about the NFL teams, the Washington football team name surprised me. Redskins? That sounds pretty racist - are they sure that's ok? We had so many lessons at school about how the color of your skin doesn't matter, so isn't Redskins exactly what they're teaching us isn't ok to say? But it was the name of an NFL team and no one seemed to be complaining about it, so I just accepted it and watched the games. I thought even less about the Cleveland Indians or the Florida State Seminoles, and the Atlanta Braves tomahawk chant actually seemed cool to me.  The Native American legacy in American sports, or rather that white American assigned legacy to Native Americans, was deeply engrained but totally not well understood by me.

Flash forward to 2013, and inexplicably the Washington Redskins name controversy has seemingly come out of nowhere to be front page debate. Of course, there had always been movements against the names, but these movements only emerged into the mainstream in this past year, without a lightning rod event. In the time being, I've spent a lot of time thinking of racial and historical issues in America and was thus much more opinionated on this matter than when I first encountered it. When I started really diving into opinion pieces though, I began realizing how different this issue is than most modern social issues . Why? Well for starters, as far as I am aware, I have 0 friends who identify as Native American or Indian. Seriously zero. I think I talked to a girl one time who had significant descent from a First Nations tribe in Canada and spoke some Ojibwe, but I don't recall anyone else ever telling me they were significantly descended from Native Americans. The 2010 Census reported that nearly 2% of Americans reported as American Indian or Alaskan Native and nearly 1% did so without checking off any other boxes. From my anecdotes, American Indians are thus WAY underrepresented in the circles I ran in. I mean supposedly there are 2.9 million Native Americans and I've met none of them. Meanwhile I met people who were Mongolian (2.9 million), Icelandic (320,000) and from Wyoming (570,000) in the US and Mauritian (1.3 million) here in HK. In politics, sports and high profile jobs, Native Americans are few and far between, with Sam Bradford (Cherokee, Rams QB), Jacoby Ellsbury (Navajo, Red Sox OF) and Elizabeth Warren (fake, US Senator, MA-D) coming to mind.

Point is, there are not enough Native American voices not just in this debate, but in all mainstream American discussions. I'll argue that current American Indian issues and thought are not well understood by the vast majority of Americans. They teach us quite a bit in school about the early Pilgrims encounters and a lot of the dark devastation that occurred to Native Americans throughout the 16th to 19th century. But we only barely covered the Trail of Tears in AP US History, and I graduated college knowing very little about the modern day life of Native Americans, both on and off the reservations. I think the word "Redskin" is an inherently offensive word that also comes with loaded implicit historical baggage, but I don't feel like I have the proper perspective for my opinion to really matter. I do know that not all Native Americans will agree on this issue, that they generally have bigger issues of social injustice on their mind, and I do think that even if there were no Native Americans left, it still wouldn't be ok to use the word as a team name. However, what I can do is imagine an alternative history where the plight of the Native Americans also occurred in Asia.

If East Asians of the 1400s did not have immunity to the devastating diseases such as smallpox, they very likely would have had catastrophic population loss. Imagine a scenario then where 90%+ of the inhabitants of areas spanning Japan to India perished, and the lands were settled by white Europeans. There'd be pockets of survivors, maybe integrated into white society, maybe a poor marginal minority, and maybe on their own small semi-autonomous communities. I could be living in one of those communities in present-day South China, maybe an hours drive away from the bustling white-majority metropolis of Canton named after a native settlement that had been built on the same site. Imagine then that someone asked me about "Native Asian issues," or the plight of my fellow "Native Asians" in the coastal area of the Philippines who were living in traditional villages and had just been devastated by a strong typhoon. I'd be at a loss for what to say. What would I have in common with the "Native Asians" in the Philippines, or in Vietnam or Korea or those island people in Japan?  We spoke unrelated languages and had far different cultures pre-contact, and what cultural diffusion had made common across the continent might be just a small part of our way of life. To be fair, being minority survivors in a white society would give some sort of group identity, but this would be a newly created one and not an innate historical one.

There are over 20 Native American language families as currently classified.  As an aside, it's a possibility that some of these language families are related, we just don't know the languages well enough to figure it out. Indeed, it would seem unlikely that there were 20 individual intercontinental migrations pre-Columbus. Nonetheless, the Native Americans were/are linguistically diverse, much less culturally and geographically diverse. Perhaps the diversity is not as large as that of Asia, a place of more people and lengthier history of human settlement, but it's not all that far off. It's certainly not so far off that we should be grouping all Native Americans together. Having an individual or group speak for all Native Americans seems a lot more ludicrous in this light, doesn't it?

So I think the ultimate legacy of this Redskins debate is to put Native American issues, so marginalized for so long, more into the forefront of American issues. Even though the discussion concerns sports and not income inequality, cultural transmission or issues more relevant to reservations, and though the issue seems to be fading, it's at the very least made me more aware of the state of modern Native Americans.

Twenty Five

5^2=25.

I like that equation, there's an odd symmetry about it. It's also my current age and a good one. I feel as if I'm still young, young enough to tell my age to both college students and mid professionals and not alienate either.

Recently is the first time I've felt old. Oddly it was the NBA draft that made me feel old. An ESPN Classic was run on the draft ten years ago, 2003.  As the special went over the Lebron Darko Carmelo Bosh Wade draft order, I remembered everything vividly. I remembered watching Lebron at St Vincent St Mary's in ESPN's first ever televised hs basketball game, then following the regular season with interest as the Cavaliers and Nuggets tanked it out. I remember watching Darko Milicic highlights, reading an ESPN the mag special about him on my flight to France, about how he did 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups every night and I started doing more on that very trip. I remember watching Wade lead Marquette to the final 4, watching the confident quick point guard who could dunk in traffic pick up a rare tournament triple double. I remember knowing nothing about Bosh because his Georgia Tech team sucked. And of course I remember freshmen Carmelo, Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara winning the title.

That was all 10 years ago. The point is, it's a new experience for me, having this memory base that is both so detailed and from so long ago. It's the first time I feel like I could teach a history lesson based off I personal experience. And as a generation now enters high school without memories of 9/11, our experiences are only going to seem more historical from hereon out.

25 seems much different than 24. It seems an age relatable to both college kids and 30 year old professionals, neither too young to have adult conversations nor too old to discuss switching majors. It seems to hold more responsibility - it seems less an age where it is socially acceptable to go explore yourself and go backpacking. It's an age where many people graduate law school, or go to business school, or get their first promotion. Sure there are no set life paths and life is not a race, but life does have a progression, unpredictable though it may be. I have found that as I've aged, priorities, values and responsibilities have all evolved, and thus my whole decision making basis.

When I turned 25 the first thing my mom told me was that she got married at 25. This wasn't news to me, but it was still a jarring fact to internalize. I'm not getting married at 25. I don't think my mom's experiences in the late 70's is a benchmark for me, but part of the challenge I find now is having any benchmark or measuring stick. I'm at a place in my life where I don't quite see too many people in similar situations, with much of my peer group older than me, and so I'm entering uncharted waters largely unsure of where I am, where I can be, where I'm going and where I can go.  It's been a great thrill so far, but I am hoping the path becomes clearer as I venture further.

One of my mindsets when I moved to Hong Kong two years ago was to learn more about the world. I didn't know what that would exactly mean, but I figured it would involve a lot of traveling. I wanted to understand why taxi drivers in DC were often very well educated Africans, why young people get radicalized, how the people away from cities and technology see the world. I don't think I'm close to answering those questions, but I've learned so much more about the world just from absorbing what's around me and being curious. What would have surprised the me that came here two years ago would be how much my perspective has changed. I was very ideal and very proud when I got here, and there's no doubt that in the past 24 months I've become a lot more jaded and had many humbling and sobering (ironically) experiences. I had a conversation with a mirror when I had dinner with my friend who had just graduated Georgetown. I saw in her the exact same attitude and demeanor and optimism for breaking the bounds of society that I had held when I took my diploma without a real good idea of what I would do with it. We have been given so much, are so talented and willing to work so hard - what could possibly go wrong?

Nothing has gone wrong, in the grand scheme. There's just a lot less guarantees, and a lot more time required for real change to occur than I understood two years ago. Or perhaps I understood and just chose to believe it'd be different for me. I remember my mom telling me when I started at Arup that I should expect to stay there for at least two years. My feeling at the time was "don't be too sure" because man two years was a long time. Well it's been two years and I'm still here with no plans to leave. In an industry where buildings routinely take 5-10 years to go from concept to occupancy, 2 years isn't really very long.

To sum up my mindset coming in, and indeed my generation's mindset, this tumblr has really put my experiences in perspective: http://www.waitbutwhy.com/2013/09/why-generation-y-yuppies-are-unhappy.html It explains so much about our generation, the millenials who grew up in a very hopeful world where previous technological and social barriers routinely fell, how we want so much and thus often find ourselves so disappointed. It's very true, this blogpost really did speak to me, even if it did simplify everything into stick figures. It reinforced the lessons that I'd already been learning the hard way, of hard work and humbleness and lack of entitlement. Along the way I've picked up an edge that I would have previously called "jadedness." 

I've seen people get more excited by hope and the call for change, rather than change itself. I work in environmental sustainability, an industry or buzzword that came about entirely to address longterm problems. A direct consequence of this is that the impact of good work isn't easy to conceptualize in a human time frame.  It's hard to get excited about the well-maintained operation of a building or a society that gradually reduces its reliance on fossil fuels. The metrics of success have either not been well-defined or not well measured. Thus it's the rollouts of sexy new plans, schemes for a new technological rollouts, setting of ambitious carbon reduction figures that get the attention rather than the completed actions that are invisibly not hurting the environment (as much).  Two years has shown me how easy it is to talk about the great things we want to achieve, and how promises can be empty even if there is conviction in them when they are made.  This doesn't apply just to the environment. Think about the scenes from Tahrir Square in Cairo from January-February 2011. The mass demonstrations and popular uprising against Mubarak inspired so many all over, and the dramatic tears of joy shed over Mubarak's resignation was a generational moment of raw emotion associated with societal-altering events on par with the fall of the Berlin Wall. But if you had told those ecstatic Egyptians how little things would change and how they'd be right back at it with their next president, I'm not sure if their celebration would instantly deflate. A parallel exists in the United States. So much effort was exerted getting Barack Obama - "Change You Can Believe in" - elected in the President. His victory was equally emotional. Far less emotion has been spent on helping Obama accomplish all that change. We are so much more excited for hope, for the prospect of potential change in the future, than for the victories in a real world which does not clearly define victories. Yes We Can elect Barack Obama, but no we can't eliminate poverty, failures in the educational system, violence, racism, pollution, injustice and disease.

But this blog post shouldn't be a giant typhoon over our collective parade. I think I've made my point that my cynicism has grown since entering the work force. Fundamentally though, I don't think I've changed. I haven't wavered from wanting to make a difference in this world. I believe we can prevent catastrophic global climate change. In fact I don't think there's a choice. In a lesson I learned writing crossword puzzles in college, you have to believe there's a solution in order to find it. And to get this solution, it's going to take understanding a lot of very different but interconnected processes.

So back to understanding how the world works. I really feel that here I've come a long way. I think a lot more now about the lives that we lead and what makes them possible. I think about all the items around me and how they got there, from concept design to the materials behind them to the manufacturing to the shipping. I come from a decidedly not blue collar town, and here in the city of finance I still notice how much the world is driven by working class industry. I see how the factory workers that make leather in Vietnam, T-shirts in Bangladesh and just about everything in Guangdong are pushing the world economy. Through a combination of traveling, observing stories and great podcasting journalism, I understand much better how people are moving from village life, the backbone to their whole lifestyle for generations, to cities. The trip to Burma the spring of this year was great for me as I saw people with less wealth and more measurable problems than I'd ever seen before. I gained an image to reference when I next hear about rice paddies or remote Southeast Asian villages. A growing understanding of this world helps to complement the world of first world cities with which I'm already quite familiar.

Hong Kong is one such first world city, and it's a busy one at that. If it were a superhero, it's kryptonite would be its busyness, disguised as productivity and success. It's a city where everyone spends their short commutes engrossed in their smartphones, an unfortunate consequence of the incredible underground 3G coverage. I am fully aware that this infrastructure is double edged. It enables productivity and communication, but it takes away from the reflective time and makes days go by faster and less meaningfully, and even while I'm aware of this, I find myself trapped by the ease of it all. I play it off as me being extra productive, reading CNN or doing social tasks so that I can be more productive at the office or at home. But I'm not sure if these tasks are really freeing up my day, plus half the time I'm playing CandyCrush. Between a demanding job, a social life, an obsessive athletic hobby, family and a dozen books on my reading list, I'm struggling to figure out how to best organize my day to learn more about the world.
Perhaps I can spin that into the greatest blessing about being 25. I'm at an age where I've actually done some stuff and learned some stuff, but I'm far from being done. My habits are still evolving, my life views well-based but open to change. I have the excitement of not knowing what I'll be able to do, but I've eliminated the fear that I'll completely fall flat on my face on my own.

SPO 2020 Olympics

One of my favorite affairs to blog about are the Summer Olympics, and one of my favorite posts of all times is this one analyzing the possible 2016 host cities http://cal337.blogspot.hk/2009/10/spo-2016-olympics.html. Well it's been four years and the IOC will select the 2020 host city in Buenos Aires on September 7. I've heard absolutely no buzz from the event this time around and I wonder if anyone cares. Well even if they don't, I do and I'm going to blog about it, mostly for the sake of tradition. In case you didn't know, and you probably didn't, the candidate host cities are Istanbul, Madrid and Tokyo.  Candidacies are declared years in advanced (Rome, Baku and Doha were rejected or pulled out) and as you'll see, each candidate city has seen developments since their original bids that will hurt them.

(See also http://cal337.blogspot.hk/2010/12/world-cup-bids.html for World Cup bids)

The factors that I'm interested in are not the same as the factors for IOC voters. I care about how cool the city is, how well prepared its infrastructure is to support the Olympics, how recently the city/country/region has hosted the Games, how novel it would be, how interesting it'd be to attend, how much it would help the city, how much the region loves sports etc. The IOC cares mostly about how much money that city government has used to bribe its voting members.  And to lesser extents infrastructure and government relations and financial windfall.  Here is how I would vote if I were an IOC member, but I'll conclude by telling you who will actually win.

3) Madrid
The Spanish capital bid for the 2012 and 2016 Games as well, where it finished 2nd to Rio de Janeiro. If you clicked on the first link above you'll have noticed that I ranked it last back then as well. I don't want to appear as a Madrid hater, but it's still a less exciting city for me than the other two.  In the last 4 years, the Spanish economy has really tanked, with national unemployment rate exceeding 27%, youth unemployment exceeding 50%, although you wouldn't be able to tell from the €100million transfer fee paid by Real Madrid for Gareth Bale.  The city of Madrid has debts of €7.4 billion, and its bid for the games was dubbed "The Hunger Games" in a Spanish left wing opinion piece. That said, the bid is remarkably frugal, offering a $5 billion Olympic Games. In comparison, some estimates put Beijing's spendings at over $40 billion for the 2008 Games. Previous experience has shown that the Summer Olympics do not make the city money in the short run, and probably don't in the long run either.  Sure, the Olympics bring in construction and speed up infrastructure development and may create jobs in the years leading up to the Games. It'll of course attract swarms of tourists (even after the Games). However, in Spain, it's not clear that more construction is a good thing. Sorry that was a low blow (or a high blow)?  


Madrid does have some world class facilities, including Real Madrid's home stadium Santiago Bernabéu.  It's a great sports country with the world's best football team (the national team). It's already got a great infrastructure and is a world class high speed rail hub, the recent train disaster not withstanding. As a tourist attraction, it's got a lot going for it as a beautiful city that lots of people love to visit (top 5 most visited city in Europe) and it's not an overcrowded behemoth. In terms of recent regional redundancy, Barcelona hosting the 1992 Games is probably largely irrelevant now, but Western Europe held the 2012 Olympics in London. For an Olympics that keeps trying to branch out, keeping the host cities Eurocentric goes against that philosophy. Still the biggest hurdle Madrid faces is the financial crisis. You can't have a city that takes on massive debt to host a sporting event, and you can't have swathes of homeless people bumming around during the Games.  Will the committee members think that the Spanish government can afford the Games? Will they think the Games can be a boon to the beleaguered economy?  Will the 3rd consecutive bid be a charm?

2) Tokyo
Tokyo also bid for the 2016 Games. Repeat bids historically help, as infrastructure gets laid out and plans get to become more detailed and refined. Tokyo is the only previous host in this competition, although the 1964 games are ancient history (Detroit was a candidate city that year, dear God). As the world's biggest city, they probably deserve to be a multiple host city, and they certainly have the infrastructure prepared including some stadiums built for co-hosting the 2002 World Cup. In fact, Tokyo is billing themselves as the safe choice. The Rio Games are behind in their preparation, as was London slightly and Athens majorly in 2004. Tokyo shouldn't have much trouble pulling together the funds and getting a precise, reliable Japanese-style Olympics. The real wild card is the Fukushima disaster, which puts radioactive leaks into the equation. Whether or not scientific evidence can prove that there will be no lingering effects by 2020, the conception out there is decidedly mixed.  Some athletes will be scared of competing in Japan and some committee members will reflect this in their vote. Beijing held the Games in 2008 and Pyeonchang of South Korea will hold the Winter Olympics in 2018, but that's really not too much exposure for the continent holding most of the world's population.

Will committee members put faith in the Japanese to put a reliable, successful Summer Olympics? Will Japanese ingenuity make these Games a very special affair? Or is the fear of radioactivity too much to overcome?

1) Istanbul

If you know me, you know that I like diversity and spreading these sort of events to parts of the world where it has never been before. It's no surprise that I'd rank Istanbul #1. However, I'm not alone with this mindset. The 2008 and 2016 Summer Olympics, 2014 Winter Olympics and 2010, 2014, 2018 and 2022 World Cups are all spreading their events to uncharted territories. Istanbul would be remarkable mainly for bringing the Games to a Muslim-majority nation and a Middle Eastern nation for the first time. Turkey is an up and coming country with some similarities to China in 2001 (when the Beijing bid was won). Most excitingly, placing the Games in Istanbul would have the novelty of spreading events across Europe and Asia.  Istanbul previously bid for the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 Games and is very familiar to committee members. Can the IOC reject Istanbul again??

What's Istanbul's recent Achilles' heel (an ancient Achilles' heel perhaps being Achilles himself)? Well the conflict in Syria probably shouldn't be a factor by 2020, but it's definitely in people's minds right now and refugees from Syria have been spilling over into neighboring Turkey. God forbid there's conflict so far down the road, but I think there is a red line that you can't host the Olympics with a war raging nearby. Istanbul is also under question for its handling of protesters in its public park this past year. It's thus seen as the riskier host city with potentially great intriguing reward. I think it'd be awesome, it's an unbelievably beautiful and special city and would make for a memorable Olympics. Istanbul has hosted major sporting events before, including the 2010 FIBA World Championships, and it'll probably be up for the challenge as much as Rio de Janeiro is.  The Olympics would bring a crowning achievement and recognition to a city with storied history that much of the world needs to relearn. Bring the Games to the Bosphorus or you'll have a lot of people giving up on the IOC cold turkey.

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In addition to the host city, the IOC will vote to add one more sport. The main contenders are baseball/softball, squash and wrestling, 2 of which we're talking about re-adding. Wrestling was unjustly removed last year, a shocking victim of the Olympics cutting weight, because apparently some IOC members don't associate wrestling as one of the quintessential Olympic sports. Wrestling is international, with medalists from all sorts of countries including Kazakhstan, India, Japan, Cuba and Mongolia. It's difficult, impressive and athletic as hell, and it's not a bad sport to watch in person or on TV as long as the announcers are competent. Really I don't have much to add. Wrestling is a perfect Olympic sport, I wrestled in high school, and it better be added back to the 2020 Games.

The three cities involved are all awesome. I really believe these Games will be great to watch in any host city and I'd love to attend and eat tapas, kebabs or sushi. Tokyo however is an overwhelming favorite, and even though Madrid is catching up, expect to see the Games in Japan.

No Lack of Backpacks to Track

So this was what riding on a motorcycle ride felt like. I was sitting behind a Burmese man whose name I couldn't really pronounce, cruising 50mph down a dirt road that doesn't show up on Googlemaps (I checked). Of the new experiences I was hoping to have on this vacation, a Hells Angel ride was not one of them. It would not be the most unexpected new experience though, but we'll get to that later.

We would later pass her

On Easter Sunday, we had taken the early bus from Bagan to Kalaw, which similar to our flight, was predominantly white tourists. We were very much traveling by the seat of our pants - Jackie was leaving Burma much sooner than I and her tight schedule motivated us to fit in as much adventure as we could in as little time as possible. We were hoping to hike from Kalaw to Inle Lake, a 2 or 3 day affair we'd read, and hopefully could start as soon as we hit the ground in Kalaw, despite not having made any bookings.  It was an improvisational type of trip which is the best kind of trip.

When we reached Kalaw, any worry I had at booking a hiking tour was instantly acquiesced by the group of tour promoters swarming our arrival.  Kalaw's main industry clearly was hiking to Inle Lake. We were led to a hostel while trying to figure out scheduling. It was around 4pm and they told us it was too late to embark on the hike - we looked at a bunch of maps of the routes and nothing would work. When I offered to say we could hike fast and sleep on the road, the hostel runner Robin laughed and brought up snakes. Robin suggested hopping on for a motorcycle ride to the last checkpoint, and then doing a 1 day hike and reach Inle by the following evening. So we met our drivers, divided 3 helmets among the 4 of us (guess who didn't get one), "checked in" our larger bags to magically reappear when we reached Inle. I took my valuables with me.

Robin for the record was one of many very very interesting people we'd meet on this leg of the journey. Robin's family were all descended from Punjabi Sikh Indians, but he was 3rd generation Burmese. He spoke Punjabi, Hindi, Burmese, Nepali and English (semi-fluently) and "some of the hill tribe dialects." He had a large family with 3 boys and they were all helping to run the hostel and tour business. They seemed to be doing well but he had never left the country. He said that when he was younger he had really wanted to see the world, but now he says running this hostel, the world comes to him. People from all over the world stay there, and he reads CNN, so he feels he has a pretty good beat on the world. He probably had a point, but I still hope he gets to travel.

So there we are on our motorbikes, cruising down some very rural areas. The landscape was beautiful with low flowing mountains and vegetation that flushed the tan brown and green parts of the color palette. On one occasion I saw what looked like a controlled forest fire. The ride was different than I expected - there were side handles, so I didn't have to clutch the strange old Burmese driver for dear life. With the milder weather of higher altitude and the bike speeding through the breeze, thermal comfort was ideal.

The ride was about an hour and a half, but it didn't feel like real time. I felt suspended along the space time continuum, with unfamiliar scenery flying by me. The motors were loud enough that I felt alone - despite the three people with me, I felt like they couldn't intrude into my moments, that I had all the serenity I needed.

The road twisted and turned and rose through several mountaintops, before the drivers slowed without warning and pulled in front of a monastery.

We met lots of European backpackers on our trip. There was the Dutch girl who only just graduated high school and was backpacking before studying medicine, the Danish couple who had one year left of graduate school, and the German guy who might just have been unemployed. There were lots of similarities to their stories and all of them had been on the road for several months and to several Southeast Asian countries - no backpacker starts in Myanmar. We had only scratched the surface of bizarre characters. At Kalaw we met Frank the French engineer, who had done projects all over the world and been to China 7 times, including months of wandering through Sichuan and Yunnan, and even more unbelievably only knew a few words of Chinese.  He also talked about his Cambodian girlfriend, who he met while he was alone and bored at a bar there. His girlfriend was a waitress at the bar and equally bored - and then he pulled out his ringed hand and told us they were engaged.  They'd only been dating for a year, with much of that time long distance, but he said that her family wants her to get married soon and "some compromises have to be made." I'm not sure if the word compromise has different connotations in French, or really if the concept of marriage is completely different to this guy, but I found the whole story a bit absurd.

Our guide, who arrived with two hikers, was named Sunny and also a cool character. He was also a 3rd generation inhabitant of Myanmar, with his roots in Nepal. He mentioned wanting to visit there sometime though he didn't have a passport and it was very difficult to obtain one, and also spoke about a year working in Bangkok previously. Those two stories didn't make sense to me until he told about his journey to the border and the three stages of bribes he needed to cross the border, on what was a well-established illegal migration route supplying Thailand with many laborers and domestic workers. He had worked at a tailor shop for a Chinese merchant, met a Nepalese-Burmese girl who became his girlfriend and had overall a positive experience in Bangkok, although he did mention being extremely lonely and sad at the start.  He had come back after a year because his father wanted him back, I forget the reason exactly, and started leading these hikes. He looked young but I assumed he was in his mid 20's - I was shocked to learn he was 19. I'm still not used to dealing with people younger than me, particularly people I hire (sounds strange to type that), but I shouldn't have been so surprised. We met so many teenagers and even pre-teens working in the tourism industry that I wonder what the nation-wide high school graduation rate is.  Sunny did graduate from high school, at the age of 16. He had some strong opinions of politics, partially shaped by his experiences in Bangkok and his interactions with tourists. He was critical of Bangkok's culture-less expansion that hadn't particularly helped the poor, and was hopeful that Myanmar would "open up, but not so fast." It would "make the poor people only sad."

And then there was Michael. Michael had grown up in the deep south during the height of segregation (but had made a pact at the age of 6 to not speak with a Southern twang, and didn't). He graduated from UNC in 1968 as an ROTC and was soon piloting planes in the Vietnam War. He worked with Continental Airlines after the war and the company was bought by United after 5 years. He was laid off, but his retirement package was insanely generous, and he's flown free on United since and 10% on most other airlines. 10%, not 10% off. So he's been retired for a while and basically been traveling nonstop. He met his French girlfriend Claire in the Gaza Strip (an underrated single's hotspot) where they were both protesting on behalf of the Free Palestine movement (which he got involved with in part because of the injustice he saw under Jim Crowe laws). They said they met in December, and since they were rather advanced in age I figured they meant December 1979, but no, they meant last December. Michael was full of stories, but I'll remember him for the story he added to our trip.

The monastery was devoid of electricity except for a few solar powered light bulbs, my first encounter with renewable energy used for off grid supply. The shower was hand pumped by a smiling novice monk into a bucket and used behind concrete walls about shoulder high. Lucky we hadn't hiked and didn't need a shower. The rest of the group were exhausted, especially Michael and Claire, and they gritted through the shower/bathe/bucket pour.

Darkness quickly settled and we ha a candlelight dinner with Michael, Claire and Sunny. A cook had driven along for the tour and prepared a very nice simple meal, pleasing to both the palate and the digestive system. Michael and Claire retired early due to their fatiguing hike, and Jackie and I chattered on with Sunny for another hour or two. This was when we learned about his experiences in Bangkok, his political views, his schooling, his family and the surprising fact that he has Facebook (about 1% of Myanmar has access to the internet - even Mongolia has 20%). We met the female guide leading the other group, who was also Nepalese Burmese.  I forget her name but she had been friends with Sunny since childhood and like so much of Asia had gotten interested in Korean dramas. She subsequently studied Korean in university and occasionally guides to Korean tourists. When we finally decided to let Sunny a rest, we strolled into the monastery. Cots had been laid out onto the floor and split among thin curtain dividers. Each divider probably held about eight cots and there were around eight dividers. Since only two small groups were on this hike, Jackie and I had our own divider to ourselves - or so we thought. 

I had just brushed and tiptoed in when I heard some rhythmic heavy breathing. The breathing crescendoed slightly and became distinctly audible, and was soon accompanied by the sound of bodies rolling on the cots. I looked up at Jackie, who was completely still and intently listening. Is this really happening? Is this what I think it is? I whispered to Jackie. She responded with a nod and a smile. Who do you think it is? I asked. As the couple next to us made themselves more known, the paper thin dividers suddenly seemed so inadequate. We heard enough of the male voice to deduce that we were likely a few feet away from Michael, who I guess did have a generous retirement package that allowed him to be a frequent rider. The couple was definitely trying to keep quiet - but not nearly enough. The identities were secured for me when after a rather subdued finale, I heard a woman with a strong French accent say, "I thought you were tired. You found your second wind!" My immediate thoughts were 1) I did not need to know that 2) "second wind" is a really impressive colloquial phrase for a foreign English speaker to know.

I saw Michael outside the monastery at 7am the next morning. Unbelievably, his first words to me were "How did you sleep?"  "Fine. Yourself?" His response, I swear, was nothing more than a knowing smile. I hung my head in amazement and walked away. I resolved never to repeat what Michael and Claire did, and certainly not on Easter Sunday in a Buddhist Monastery.