Tourism in America

First off, update notes:
1) I saw one of the rarest sights in New York this weekend. No it wasn't a meteorite or a giant ape climbing skyscrapers. Rather, I got into a yellow cab driven by a white American male.

Seriously, I've probably seen a driver from just about everywhere, but never a guy who talked like me. The dude had gotten a Master's in Education so I wasn't quite sure what his story was but he made for a very entertaining cab ride. I asked him how many other American cab drivers he knew, and he said 20, out of a total of around 30,000. Perhaps Cash Cab is among these. So that was pretty cool. Along this note I just want to say something about cabs here in the U.S. - I hope I didn't put off the impression that I ws disparaging immigrant drivers or anything. That would be pretty counter to the theme of this blog. I generally really enjoy getting into the car with someone from another country and routinely ask people about their experiences in Ethiopia, Sudan, Pakistan or Yemen (the last 4 that I can remember). Its just that the taxi driving trade has evolved into an immigrant one in recent years to the point that a white guy deserves mention in this blog post. I would also like to point out that our cab industry is very uniquely American. Every cab driver in China was Chinese and most drivers in Dublin were Irish, and so on for the rest of Europe. In addition, I have never seen a driver abroad talk on the cell phone during a ride. These two points might be related, because if I was abroad somewhere where I didn't speak the language well, driving a cab 12 hours a day, I'd want to shoot the shit with my friends every so often rather than listen to the bitchings of some overpampered passenger. But on the other hand, it can be really rude.

2) It dawned on me recently that Koreans have somehow subtly but steadily entered my life for about a year now. In Beijing, I lived in Wudaokou, which in addition to being a very Western part of town, is also the Korea-town of Beijing. I sang karaoke at a Korean place and had my first dog at a Korean restaurant. In Dublin, my roommate Sanghyup, who turned out to be one of the coolest people I had ever met, was straight from Seoul. Back at Georgetown, my roommate had a Korean girlfriend (this one's a stretch). Now in New York, I'm living a few blocks away from Korea-Town and do my grocery shopping there. I don't know what this all means, but perhaps I'm meant to study Korean and prevent nuclear war.

3) I went down to the waterfront with my roommates Griff and Streeter on Sunday. It took a while for us to get up but we finally set out at 3. Luckily these are some of the longest days of the year so we had great light the whole time. We got off at City Hall and checked out that building for a little bit, grabbed a bite at Blimpie's, then searched for the World Trade Center site. The whole site was compellingly massive and all under a maze of construction. The sheer size of the rebuilding puts a physical context to the severity of 9/11 - metaphorically, the 3 acre gaping hole still present in downtown Manhattan shadows in comparison to the gaping hole still present in our nation. We didn't make it to the memorial, we somehow walked by it, but I'd like to go back sometime.

We did make it to the Waterfront and probably walked along it for a good 15 blocks all the way to Battery Park. The area was really nice and very serene - for New York - and really could have been any number of places. It brought me back to both Portland and Hong Kong. The view was nice although it would have been nicer if we weren't staring at Jersey, and the harbor had a few very expensive boats including a sick speedboat. Really though, I had decided to go down here in order to see the Statue of Liberty. I'd done the whole touristy thing of walking to the torch (now not allowed) when I was like 7, and while I don't really want to do that again, I really appreciate how great a symbol that green girl is. I think it's a symbol of immigration that is unfortunately no longer really present in the American consciousness. I might take the ferry to Staten Island sometime to get a better view cause it's pretty hard to see from Manhattan.

We walked back up to Wall Street. Despite being another symbol of New York, this area really reminded me of Boston. (That picture on the right of a waterfront restaurant seems very New England too.) The crammed office buildings, the way the subway entrances meld into the surroundings and the remnants of colonial architecture all made me wonder whether I had accidentally teleported to Government Center. Also near Wall Street is a giant metal statue of a large bull, the symbol of reckless capitalism. Evidently, Wall Street planners decided against building a corresponding bear, although if I ever have the capital to buy real estate in that area (some of the most expensive land in the world) I think I'd open an FAO Schwartz and plant a giant Teddy Bear staring at the bull. Btw, the bull has gigantic balls and many tourists were making lewd poses involving them.


Ok so that leads me to a theme that I've been thinking about for a while and the title of this blog post: Tourism in America. Basically I've been a tourist on and off for most of the existence of this blog. Any time you live somewhere you don't know too well and have the curiosity to know more about it, you can be a tourist - you don't need to be wearing a giant Canon around your neck or spend half your time squinting at a map. Since I returned to the U.S. in December, I haven't left the country, but I've realized that my perspective has changed and that I see everything in my own country differently now. After observing the practices within foreign nations, I'm trying to be very aware of cultural ramifications within our everyday actions. I've noticed how quickly Americans adapt to new technology, how resistant we are to physical contact with strangers and how impatient we are. When I'm in an elevator now and someone presses a button to a floor in my way, I get legitimately peeved!

So I think it was a Sunday in March at the beginning of Spring Break when I was out exploring DC. Seeing more of the city was one of my main goals for the semester and while I probably saw more of it in that 1 semester than I had in the first 4, it was still a failure. But that Sunday I walked through Eastern Market into the Capital and whatnot and I realized that I don't think I had ever been that close to the Capital before. I had never taken a tour of it (or the White House), not with Georgetown or in high school or with my family. I had played Ultimate by the Monument but hadn't been up close to this gigantic iconic building. Nonetheless, I felt that I was very familiar with it because it had probably been in my consciousness for most of my life. Its on schoolbooks, money, posters and the backdrop of most presidential addresses. I was staring at it throughout the whole inauguration but was too far away to see the details. So on this Sunday, very few tourists were around and I was right up next to the building, and it dawned on me how amazing it was. I thought back to Europe and how impressed I was with many of the buildings there. And yes those buildings are older and connected to great history and built by cultures that really valued art. I remember being particularly impressed with the Reichstag, the German house of Parliament that had housed Kaisers, then Hitler and then redone upon unification by Norman Foster and remade into a great building with modern and baroque themes. Its a very nice building. And it doesn't even compare to the U.S. Capitol. That building is stunningly immense, a very well-crafted and not overstated testament to American values. It's all white and not too fancy, which I think represents a lot about our country. It's a stately society that spun off from Europe and while we can't recreate the long history and master artistry here, we can create a new powerful style that spins off from the old and instead of nostalgically gazing back to the past, steadily looks to the future. At least that's what I got out of it. The Capitol houses the leaders of America and thus the leaders of the free world, so it better be fucking impressive.

Its amazing how much we take for granted in our country. I actually first noticed this in Europe when I see Europeans walking by their awesome monuments not giving the slightest care and I'm just like how can they not be so proud of this place? But when home is home, everything is going to appear ordinary.

I got a better perspective on this over Easter Break, when I met up with Ilana and Clarisse, two French girls who were studying abroad at Georgetown, in Boston. We walked around Charles Street, Back Bay, the river and went up to the Prud and whatnot. Its a pretty standard bumming around day in Boston, but for them they thought it was "supercool." I strained to see how this streets and sights could impress when compared with the places they saw in Europe and came to the conclusions I expressed above.

So its very strange now going through New York and even though I have the same desire to see cool things, I feel as if the game is very different. I don't remotely stand out here, not with my dress, appearance or accent. I don't have difficulty following the laws, hailing a cab or walking the streets or whatnot, but yet I'm still completely unfamiliar with the terrain.

Apparently Michael Jackson's death is the biggest news story since Obama so I'll put in my Jackson story. I had never understood the whole hype surrounding Michael Jackson because all I ever knew of him was t his creepy white man that simply did not look human. And then I read a Bill Simmons article that directed me to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzRCf5OtFBU It's from a 1983 Motown special and is the occasion in which he first busted out the Moonwalk. I didn't know what the Moonwalk was when I watched it but I instantly realized what it was when it came out, it was stunning. That 5 minute youtube clip changed my life a little bit. I realized how great an entertainer Jackson actually was - so great that it kept people mesmerized even after he went to trial over child molestation charges, had 20 plastic surgeries, changed colors, and dangled a baby outside a hotel in Berlin (been there :) ).

In other news, I had a pretty uneventful week of bad weather followed by a pretty solid weekend of questionable but successful ultimate throws, a good Kung Fu movie and a touristy Sunday exploring downtown in the waterfront. I'll try to blog about this tomorrow because I really want to write about tourism in one's home country, and then maybe I'll get around to talking about work too. I gotta sleep again now though cause I never blog in the mornings or afternoons.

New York notes

Here are some short points, and then some progressively longer ones.

-USA needed to beat Egypt by 3 and for Italy to lose by 3 in order to advance in the Confederations Cup in South Africa. It was a pretty ridiculous task, and somehow they did it. Charlie Davies scored the opening goal, demonstrating the quick footwork that helped him win Graves-Kelsey 4 times.

-I'm so addicted to my iPod it's awful.

-If I ever have kids, I expect that there will be a point where they go to school and learn US history. And they may study the historic 2008 election, and they may read about Sarah Palin. And they may just ask, "what the fuck?" I'm going to spend the next 30 odd years thinking of an adequate answer.

-The weather here has been Dublinesque. I may overreference places that I've been, but basically I mean that it's been raining a lot and kinda ruining the experience actually.

-Went to dinner with Sarah whom I met in Belfast. She ended up going to Zimbabwe the following semester so that was pretty cool. Found great cheap Indian food, then sweet Irish bar with people trying to play Irish music and a bartender from Derry. Good craic. There are tons of Irish pubs in New York City, which shouldn't be news, but there are surprisingly a lot of Irish bartenders behind them.

-The New York subway has some informational signs in 7 languages: English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Arabic and one language in the Roman script that I really just couldn't recognize. Outside of airports, you don't even see signs with that many languages even in Europe.

-Been to Chinatown a lot here. Really I've been going to the New York Chinatown for all my life because I doubt my parents have ever taken me to New York without stopping by this neighborhood. In additon I've taken the Chinatown bus, from both Boston and DC, at least half a dozen times, and I still can't fully navigate that numberless maze. But I really like it and I think I'll find myself there a lot this summer. It gives me a great opportunity to practice Cantonese and Mandarin - it's kinda amazing how much of a different country it feels like when you get there. It's actually an extremely multilingual area, with tons of people from Fujian and Toisan and wherever else and I can't make out a word of what they're saying. So many seem to know Cantonese though and nearly everyone some Mandarin, which really makes me feel terrible about my language capabilities. But I can stick to English.

-Went to a comedy show on Friday. This all evolved very quickly with me texting Lissy's roommate Steph asking what she was doing and her inviting me to this show. at the East Ville Comedy Club, the normal $20 entrance fee was waived if you get some promotional codes from freenyc.com, which Steph's other roommate Holly found out about. So I got into this club with nothing but a two drink minimum and heard a bunch of really good comedians. The only other comedy show I think I had ever been to was in senior year of high school at this sketchy bar near the Arlington T stop to see Matt Grzecki perfrom. That was a good but amateur show where a fight had nearly broken out. This club was small and still sketchy looking, all of which made the incredible show even more surprising. Everyone was a professional comedian and all seemed to have bouts with fame. The first guy appeared on Law & Order, another guy is a regular on 30 Rock, and the last act has lots of gigs on Comedy Central. The host was seemingly the only guy without an imdb page and he might have been the funniest, joking about how much of a guido he was and how he walks into clubs in New York and sees people who look exactly like him.

-The last act was absolutely hilarious although he played the race card a bit too much. But he kept making slightly educated jokes and then thanked the "smartest 2% of the club" for getting them. The most educated one of these was a quip about returning the Louisiana Purchase to the French, which I'm pretty sure I learned in 5th grade. I think this implies that only the top 2% of New York passed 5th grade.

-New York City seems to be one of the most unique places in the world to grow up. I don't say this lightly or with that educated a viewpoint, so feel free to disagree. But I think going through the playful runaround-and-skin-your-knees period of childhood in this crowded hyperactive metropolis permanently puts you on a different path than those of us who grew up in the suburbs or the country. Granted, lots of Americans probably overrate New York and assume it to be the biggest and most important city in the world. By population, New York only ranks anywhere from 3rd to 12th depending on what you define a city, and I'm undecided on whether I think Beijing felt more populous or no (it's certainly close). London is arguably a more international city, and plenty of cities have better subways (Seoul), cuisine (Paris), arts (Vienna) or skyscrapers (Hong Kong). Nonetheless, the mixture of all these qualities in the most powerful country in the world truly makes New York special. It might not be as international as London, or it might be its hard to tell (whatever that means), but its definitely more diverse. And New York has the only 24 hour subway in the world, which I honestly believe says light years about the city's makeup. However, this combines to make New York a very difficult city to leave. I can totally understand how a New Yorker would feel visiting Boston - they'd think there was nothing to do there, and even though every Bostonian knows that's bullshit, they'd be right. You simply can't live the way you live in New York, anywhere else in the world. So many of my office coworkers are New York born and raised and after a year of globetrotting, this just seems really unusual to me. Even more common are people raised just outside the city, whether in the Northern suburbs are in Dirty Jersey, and then find their ways in upon adulthood. I want to talk more about this in another post.

-I haven't really blogged about where I live have I? Well I'm on 37th & 6th, near Herald Square. The subway is about 2 blocks away, and work is a quick 4 blocks, which once again shows how charmed a life I live. The area's expensive though, more streamlined for the office day crowd, and as a result we haven't even once spent a real night out nearby. Mostly I've gotten to know the NYU area downtown very well. It's so expensive, even the corner grocery market rips you off. A sixpack of canned Coors Light is $10, and the same of bottled Heineken is an outrageous $15.50. How do I know? Gotta plead the 5th. Speaking of the 5th, that's a cool avenue too. Anyways, I learned recently that Herald Square is actually named after the New York Herald, a defunct newspaper that didn't need the internet to go out of business. There's a small park where the diagonal Broadway hits 6th avenue, and in the park there's a small monument to this New York Herald. I think it is really weird that they would name an area after a newspaper, but I do hope that Boston copies this trend. Cross your fingers and hope the Globe stays in business, but if it doesn't, I think they should create a cinema in its honor. Then when New Yorkers visit Boston and complain, we can say that they should have gone to the Globe Theater. Thank you the top 2% of my blog readers for getting that joke.

STO: The Hangover

The title of this post is largely inspired by the movie, which I did see last night, but also by my own weekend experience which somewhat paralleled the film and did actually feature a hangover. To recap:

Whereas weekdays at work consist of lounging around, simple dinner plans, maybe the occasional workout, weekends overcompensate nicely. This friday was our big rooftop bash and really none of us knew what to expect. Basically our 4th roommate Justin moved in last Sunday, about a week after the rest of us. Within an hour of his arrival, he had checked out the rooftops and said, "Yo, we should throw a party this Friday." Within an hour. A finance guy from Cornell working with the company formerly known as Merrill Lynch, Justin came in fast and has only just slowed down a week later. He knows a ton of Cornell guys in the city as well as bunch of fellow interns. So he singlehandedly brought about 75% of the party. We had resolved to stay on the rooftops and not let anyone really enter our place, and put most of the booze up there. This rooftop is an unbelievable surprise to our housing, complete with a closeup view of the Empire State Building, tons of space, even a makeshift bar setup, benches and tons of plants that got plenty of watering during the party. We didn't have music which was quite an oversight, but we still had a sick party with around 30 or 40 people there at its peak. Oh and it was definitely highly illegal - we didn't even clean up after we were done, but amazingly it seems no one minded.

Well the plan to keep people out of our apartment epically failed. I let people in for bathroom breaks several times and then Streeter and his girlfriend bought some friends there because they didn't seem to be too interested in the party. That was all fine and good, but then a few Cornell kids took a sick girl down there and before we knew it, there was puke on the floor. That got cleaned up quickly and this guy took her to the bathroom. However, there, she managed to get puke EVERYWHERE. Its really not too hard to vomit into a toilet, but the person taking care of her was evidently very fucked up himself and she ended up sitting on the toilet and puking into our bathtub. God this is disgusting just to type. Well a bathtub is a large target, and she still missed. None of us were particularly thrilled about this. Then two people also in the nycintern housing arrived at like 11:30 after the party had died, and I had to entertain them. As a result, I didn't leave until 12:15 and everyone was already scattered. However, with my cousin Jessica, we made it into the NYU area where Griff and many other people had relocated the party. They were in McSorleys though and by the time we got there at 1am, they were not letting new people in. Our friends inside wouldn't leave, so we walked around the area looking for cool bars - I don't think we actually entered one until we walked back across McSorley's and saw Griff and company walking the street. So we had a crazy drunken reunion and then tried to enter this really fratty bar that Jessica wasn't too excited about, but Griff's ID got rejected. We then wandered around for 20 minutes trying to find this Sake bar and ended up at this extremely underground Japanese bar. From the outside it was almost unfindable and looked so sketchy, but inside it was so sick. Its on the left, this picture really could be from Japan. However, they didn't actually let us go Sake Bombing. Their explanation was that some underage bros came in and made a big scene and a mess and ever since they've tried to be more classy. So I had a bottle of Sapporo and a bottle of sake, but only a small shot glass with which to mix them. This actually got me really fucked up and I'm not even quite sure how I ended up at this place called Bako where there was some other Asian rice alcohol thing that I took a shot of. All I know is I sent text messages at 4am and I think I got back around 4:30. Actually, I only just realized that I think I did black out.

Somehow I woke up around 10:30 and developed a hangover over the course of the morning. Our apartment was a mess - bottles and cups were everywhere, but amazingly the rooftop was empty as if the party had never happened. I had a frisbee game, my first in this city, at 1:30 and figured it was in Central Park. It wasn't until 12:30 that I looked up the field and realized it was on 215th street. For those not familiar with Manhattan, this island is huge. I'm on 37th street, right in midtown, and it took 50 minutes plus on the subway to get to this place, which was actually pretty decent. I've taken long subway rides in Beijing, but I think New York physically has by far the most extensive transportation system. It really is incredible that Manhattan is the smallest of the boroughs - this city is humungous and people can still get around.

The game itself was awesome because it was so relaxed but not crappy. I'm currently in the recreation league trying to move into a more competitive one so I was expecting a very easy game. I've played in some pickup games with really terrible talent and out of shape people, but this was not like that. Most of the players had been playing ultimate for a long time, but just never took it to a higher level. So basically there were lot of long time rec league players, so they knew how to play and adapt, and the game wasn't too full of throwaways and drops. DJ's friend Wilfred was there and I connected with him a few times. I threw like 20+ hucks, most of which got caught, and we won both our games. The weather got really crappy towards the end though so we came back in the rain very muddy.

I went straight home to the shower, and then to Chinatown for dinner with my brother and two of his friends. It was great but expensive, so I'm very thankful that DJ covered my $30 dollar share. Spending time with your older brother and his friends can be very fun, but if they're also all successful Harvard graduates, it can be very expensive. We then cabbed to a cinema, found out the show was sold out and proceeded to cab to Times Square, where there were 2 cinemas. We made a show that started at the same time as the show in the previous cinema. Only in New York can you get away with that. And we saw the Hangover, which matched and exceeded expectations. Its legitimately the funniest movie I have seen since never, I mean it's funnier than Wedding Crashers or Dodgeball or Superbad or whatever funny movies I've seen in recent memory. I definitely like the sense of humor more because it mostly derives not from the character's innate comedic genius, which always makes me feel bad, but rather from the ridiculous events surrounding them. A couple notes: this movie was such a guy movie. I wouldn't take a date to it. To indicate just how masculine it was, when we got out of the theater and headed to the bathroom, there was a lengthy line for the men's room and none for the girl's room. I think that's the only time I've ever seen that. The other thing, on a somewhat related note, is that these humor films aimed at college guys like me have an odd trend of putting more and more male nudity. Knocked Up had Seth Rogen's ass, Harold and Kumar Escape Guantanamo has an unnecessary bottomless scene, Forgetting Sarah Marshall two scenes of Jason Segal frontal nudity. Hangover takes this to an even further unprecedented level. That's all I have to say on that matter.

Afterwards, we met up with DJ's girlfriend Cat downtown, then ended up back in Times Square at a Pinkberry where we met up with Wilfred again. A large mostly Asian crowd assembled and spent nearly 2 hours together, much of which were spent making fun of DJ's pale skin and comparing him to me. Then around 1am when the place closed, I headed back to my place and chilled, relieved at such a fun but relaxing night after the previous debauchery.

But it was not to be. Justin bulled in shortly after I got back, and was in bed 15 seconds later. Maybe an hour later, some of Griff's friends showed up at our door, followed later by Griff himself and more friends. They were going on about a rooftop party, a return trip to McSorley's, and an absolutely absurd taxi ride in a limo with a driver. Apparently this driver once drove a model and they proceeded to have a relationship, but it ended when she jumped out of his car to buy crack off the streets. Yeah. We ended up having 5 people crash here for the night and a large spaghetti alfedo from Justin's crazy friend Ben, whose got some culinary schools from Cornell's Hotel school. The place looked like a battlefield in the morning.

Today was Sunday, and it was a day of rest. Seriously, I didn't go more than 30 yards from our place, sore from Frisbee and exhausted from the weekend as well as the cleanup effort. That kinda sucked because there's so much I want to do in the city, but the opportunity will happen. Tomorrow's an event at my office and I'll be ushering people after I finish up the office work.

Btw fuck the Lakers, and fuck the Magic for losing pitifully to them.

STO: New York, New York

Its been 8 days and 9 nights in the city that never sleeps and so far, my experience has been very comparable to my previous summer. The biggest differences are that I'm making money, not taking cabs, actually working hard at work, living with dudes, watching American sports, and people understand my speech. Actually scratch that last one, no one anywhere understands me. But seriously, like I touched on in the last post, coming to New York has reawakened memories of living in a big city that I haven't experienced since Beijing.

There was the initial first couple days of loneliness - here I was staying at my aunt's apartment and was too exhausted after work to really do anything except some minimal exploring. This only lasted about 2 nights until I moved into this apartment I'm at with other interns. Compared to my first few days in Beijing, before any of my friends got in the city and over their jetlag and when I was barely capable of ordering food...well this transition was easier. But there are many aspects of urban life, whether its the loud streets all throughout the night, the crowded subways and hectic early morning commuters, the sixpack in the fridge and even the urge to chill in the apartment and just blog. For some reason, all of that is missing when I'm in Dublin, Georgetown or Newton. It's a completely different world.

The underlying dichotomy that can be very hard to grasp though is that New York is at once both completely foreign and utterly normal to me. It's a place of real street ballers, the most random street performers, the home of the most important companies, filled with a million languages and just full of superlatives. Sometimes it seems like this city is an experiment: what do we get if we throw a ton of people from all over the world in one small island filled with tall buildings? But on the other hand, if I got in a car and drove East for 4 hours, I would end up right where I grew up. If I headed south for the same 4 hours, I'd be at where I go to college. New York is in the AL east, as well as half a dozen summer blockbuster movies. Both my parents went to college here and my brother has been working here since graduating his college. So New York has often been a topic of dinner discussion and that definitely adds to its mystique to me. Its this place that's always been readily familiar to me, but that I never truly understood. I bet a lot of Americans can say that - nearly all of us know about New York, if not from a visit than from Seinfeld or Sex in the City. But only those who have lived there for a long time really know it, and its a steep learning curve for NYC noobs.

I really approach New York from a Bostonian perspective. You kinda have to if you grow up in Boston. We're taught from birth that the Yankees suck and New Yorkers are rough and rude. Manhattan ruined the clam chowder, tried to take credit for the nuke and consistently overrates itself. But you know, you have to take things with an open mind and a level of impartiality, and so in fairness, I say that New York is awesome and beats Boston in many, many ways. In an odd respect, I think that Boston is a city of areas whereas New York is a city of places. I don't know how to explain it, but in Boston, Back Bay gradually shifts into Copley or Fenway. At some point you're in the Boston Commons, then at some point there's Chinatown and suddenly you find yourself in downtown Government Center. In New York, it seems that there's a formula to the whole city. You type in 21st and 3rd and bam, that's Gramercy. Plug in 40th and Madison and you're in Midtown. It's a city of well defined sections and pinpoint destinations, less flowing and sporadic than Boston, more planned. I may be completely wrong about this whole areas vs. places thing, but this is definitely how I see things in my mind.

Well that's me, and I have work early in the morning so I'll try to summarize my week pretty quickly. Works tough but good, I don't want to get into that. My brother's been a total champ and let's just say that even though my 21st birthday isn't for another 6 weeks (and 1 day), I'm not missing out on any of the bar or clubbing experience that I had in Beijing. Friday night I hung out with my friend Lissy from Georgetown, who's living in the same type of apartment with other interns and went to Bar None down by NYU. The $2 bud lights were pretty unbeatable. We stayed there for a while, just shooting the shit and then headed back to Herald Square where we did find a pub near closing time. Pretty lowkey night. The next night though I had lunch with my brother, his ex-girlfriend, and a bunch of Asian Harvard graduates. That was really cool until it came to the bill. Then I played video games with DJ, his ex-girlfriend and randomly Sol from high school, then went out to Korean bbq with his current girlfriend and bunch of NYU Asians. Finally the night ended with 3 hours of karaoke and lots of Sochou, which is a type of Korean rice alcohol that I misspelled. Sunday I hung out with back-to-back Georgetown girls, Hyun and Laura, one after the other. Both are heading out of New York within a week, but under a great sunny sky, I checked out Soho, Washington Square Park, Penn station 3 times, the Met and Central Park. Basically a great weekend.

So I'm looking forward to this summer. Work and funds will severely limit how much I can take this city by storm, but there is definitely fun to be had. I do want to blog later about how tourism in the US is very different than tourism abroad for me. For now, take care.

How hard is it to get into the NY Times?

Apparently pretty hard. The following is an email I received yesterday, months after I submitted a crossword puzzle to the New York Times:

Hi Cal,

This is [name] writing, helping Will with correspondence.

Will says thanks, but must send regrets on the following:

--Teetotaler 15x -- which didn't excite him enough
--Mission Impossible 15x -- it's a cute idea, but he thinks some people can raise one eyebrow. Also, some would say "door hinge" is an acceptable rhyme for "orange."

Sorry about that. Will did appreciate seeing these, tho. For information on the specs for manuscript submission, please go to www.cruciverb.com and click on Publisher Specifications.

Best regards,

[name]

For the record, Teetotaler was my T-themed puzzle (http://www.mycrosswords.com/237/ChristopherLee/Teetotaller.html) where I not only had 5 clues themed T, but an actual T in the grid shaped by black squares, as well as every single freaking clue starting with T. Mission Impossible (http://www.mycrosswords.com/237/ChristopherLee/MissionImpossible.html) was my masterpiece mostly because the non-theme clues and answers turned out to be good. The theme wasn't bad either, it had to do with "nearly impossible tasks" such as rhyming with orange and raising one eyebrow, as noted in the e-mail. Apparently Shortz didn't find these themes compelling enough, and then it really didn't matter how the rest of the grid looked. I've made over 25 crosswords, and these were the 2 very best, and they didn't make it. It'll take a great theme and then some luck to get in there.

ANYWAYS, I'm typing this from my Auntie Mary's apartment in midtown Manhattan. I just spent the last 2 hours communicating with friends on Gchat, Facebook and AIM. The last time I did that, I was in Beijing, and I realize how similar these situations are. I was so nervous when I first got into that city and I spent a lot of time trying to connect with the friends I missed from back home, as well as talking with the friends I had made there. I feel the same here in a way. I'm in a big city and when I step outside the apartment, I'm not sure where I'm going. There's nothing stopping me from going anywhere, but there's not the limitless urge to sporadically explore like there was in Ireland. Its difficult to pinpoint where the difference lies; is it the unhesitating disdain that city dwellers here show obviously clueless tourists? Is it the towering maze-like array of high rises that disorient your sense of direction? Or is it my subconcious guilty feeling that I should know this city, I should fit in, and that everytime this is proven wrong it stabs deep into my soul?

Not sure, I'll get back to you on that one. But just like Beijing, I am back to blogging. June and work start tomorrow. I'm wearing a suit.

Basketball and such

If you're obsessed with Sporcle and geography, this game should be right up your alley. I dare you to beat my score - 17/24 without any outside help, even for spelling.
http://sporcle.com/games/namethatcountry.php
I really like sporcle - I think during exam period, I might have spent more time on sporcle than on any one of my subjects. But I got a 3.67 so I think that's ok. I resolve to one day create my own sporcle game, which really shouldn't be too difficult.

In other news, the weather in Boston has been resolutely gloomy for the last 3 days. After two weeks of more or less glorious "I love Boston in May!" kind of weather, it has been consistently 50 degrees, damp if not raining, with not even the hint of sunshine. I even developed a cold, along with a sinus problem and headaches, which sucks cause I almost never get sick. After 2 weeks of seeing a Chinese doctor in Chinatown, my ankle has progressed to the point where I can do one legged calf raises, but it's still not really ready for ultimate movement. I'm moving out this weekend to New York and I think that's enough of a life update.

These NBA conference finals have been enormously entertaining. It's really revitalized my interest in watching full sports games. I'm not sure what it was, maybe it was a half year away from American sports or a disappointing Georgetown season or just getting older, but I basically never watch full basketball games anymore. Nor baseball for that matter. Both sports are worth tuning in before the end but it really takes a lot of patience to watch the whole thing. However, you can't call yourself a true sports fan if you don't watch the games - I won't pretend I know how one team is beating another just from what it did in the final 12 minutes. You don't see the adjustments, the different runs each team had, the way the Cavs got Dwight Howard into foul trouble. Anyways, I've been watching considerably more of these games and for the most part, they have not disappointed.

That first weekend was especially ridiculous, with the two Orlando-Cleveland games being 1 point dramatic affairs. It's been enjoyable watching some of the individual talent displayed too and while I haven't been as impressed by Howard, Rashard Lewis has really proven to be a terrific second (or even third) option. Mo Williams seemed to be a lot quicker earlier in the season though, now most of his points come off 3's. And then there's LeBron, whom you can't gush enough about. I think about 3 times a game he puts on a move that triggers uncontrollable audible praise - aka I stand up and shout Holy fucking shit. In the other series, I've been really impressed by Kobe and Carmelo. I was talking today about how Carmelo really looks like an average athlete, with his chubby neck and all. There's nothing in his body that suggests explosiveness, much less one of the best scorers in the NBA. It seems like he can score wherever, whenever. He's so much better when paired with a great point guard, and in retrospect, Chauncey Billups seems an obvious and enormous upgrade over Allen Iverson. Anthony can do so much without the ball and sets himself up well for easy layups. If they had an even better point guard, like a younger Jason Kidd, they'd be a championship team. But there's no way they'll be able to upgrade from Billups, who's only getting older, and that's why its hard to win championships. Kobe, who's never won a championship outside of Shaq, seems to have reached a real veteran level. He's so much smarter than he was the first few years after he booted Shaq from the Lakers and now knows how to get teammates involve and read his defender like a book. I think that's a product of being in the league for so long coming straight from high school. However, he also seems to be just pass his physical prime, which is also a product of coming straight from high school, as well as playing tons of playoff and international games. He can't go 100% for 45 minutes a game, like LeBron does, but when he turns it on like he did tonight eliminating the Nuggets, he's golden.

So the Lakers are in the finals. The Cavs-Magic series have defied most predictions and every single ESPN analyst picked the Cavs, most in 5 games. So while I think Cleveland will win tomorrow and force a game 7, I'm far from comfortable with that pick. But when you watch LeBron play at his A+ level, you really do wonder how the hell he can lose. But his support group is a firm B, while the Magic are A-/A all around and it wears the Cavs down. If the Cavs do win and get to the finals, the Lakers will probably be an easier match for them as that series would be more of a mano a mano between Kobe and Lebron. I would definitely like the Cavs in that series, whereas if the Magic make the finals, I'd go with the Lakers.

Update and Random Thoughts

First the random thoughts:

If anyone ever wondered if Olympic track could be exciting, check out this video from the 1972 Olympics. The American Dave Wottle, the skinny kid wearing a cap in lane 3, was a big underdog and the East German favorite hadn't lost a race in 4 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LHid-nC45k&feature=related
Take a look if you please, it still stuns me every time I watch it. And as someone who has seen Olympic track live, it's not bad, but they still haven't figured out how to make it a great spectator sport (every single seat is going to have a terrible view for at least some events).

Boston sports fans are pretty glum after consecutive game 7 losses by the B's and C's, and the Red Sox really aren't playing too well. You gotta be proud of the Celtics for even going 7 games with the rag tag group they had guarding Dwight Howard, who really doesn't have the finishing skills to abuse less talented defenders, and picks up bad fouls. Maybe he can step it up against the Cavs, but I doubt it; Cleveland could finish them quick. I was wondering though, how much impact the Olympics will have on the legacy of this season. Writers have talked about it, how all these great American players were living together and they realized, wow, Kobe really does work hard. Lebron, Carmelo and Dwight saw Kobe getting to the gym hours before they did and not only pushed themselves to win the gold, but pushed themselves after the Olympics ended. Its no coincidence that those 4 guys are each the undisputed leaders of the teams left in the postseason. If only Tayshaun Prince had followed their lead.

I'm not sure this merits a spoiler alert, because who cares about the plots in summer movies, but I had to pick apart two of the flicks I've seen. Wolverine was exactly what I expected it to be - great action, cool new mutant powers, and just a horrendous gap-filled storyline. I guess the most glaring is the fact that Sabertooth, who plays a huge role in this movie, does actually appear in X-Men 1 & 2 but with a different actor! (A Canadian pro wrestler actually) In those movies, he's nothing more than a henchman, I can't remember if he even had lines, and sorry if I'm spoiling anything, but the revelation in Wolverine that he and Wolverine are half-brothers is clearly yet unconceived. Then there's Star Trek, which Eva, my family friend, loved. The movie is really geared towards her audience, the former Trekkies, now in their mid 30s or 40s, which is rather unusual for a summer blockbuster. My biggest complaint with the movie is that this Romulan starship attacks Vulcan and Earth, home planets of two powerful races. They have this drill that is beaming a large hole through their service. The drill can be destroyed, easily in fact because Kirk destroys it with freaking handheld phasers. Yet, when it sets on Earth, in the vicinity of San Francisco, not one shot gets fired at it. Really, I hope that in 150 years, Earth is better defended than that. It would have been passable if the starship was seen destroying even a few defenses, but no. Oh and also, if you can create a blackhole intended to absorb novas, (novae?) do you really need to place it in the center of the planet to destroy it? And if some random unkempt stranger with a crazy Scottish accent beamed himself onto my ship without warning, I wouldn't immediately promote him to Chief Engineer. But that said, Star Trek was very cool, especially if all the characters and technology struck you with nostalgia.

Ok so I've been keeping busy in this week and a half of summer. I somehow got myself into helping this guy Jonah Keri write a book on the Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays. He's pretty well known in the sports industry, so even though I'm doing this for free and whatnot its pretty cool that I'm working for him. So I'm transcribing interviews for him which takes forever but occupies me pretty well.

Then I somehow got this gig with HSBC in New York this summer, which I'm pretty excited about. HSBC stands for Hong Kong Shanghai Bank of China originally, but it's actually now a UK bank and not really any more prevalent in China than in anywhere else. It's actually the largest bank in the world now. So that starts June 1, I'll move in the weekend before, and who knows, living in New York might give me something to blog about.