Town of food and tailors

My bus to Quy Nhon was a 3rd-world experience. There was no 1PM bus, as I'd been informed there was, and the 3PM bus seemed to be full. The lady at the ticket window advised me to stick around to see if a seat opened up, which I did until about 2:30, but by then everyone had arrived and claimed their tickets. My 1PM deperture became a 4PM departure, so I killed time in a nearby pagoda that was much more peaceful than the bus terminal.

My bus's driver thought he was Schumacher. He cut aggressive paths through curves, leaving passengers hanging on to the armrests. The 1A highway, Vietnam's major North-South route connection HCMC and Hanoi, is one lane each way and involves passing lumbering dumptrucks on blind curves on tortuous coastal mountain roads. In some spots the road is perfectly paved, in others the ground under the asphalt seems to have sunken away, leaving unmarked pits requiring evasive action. Pedestrians and motorbikes hurry across the road in the dark.

The one nice part of the trip came at night. It was raining and dark as we raced past a bay. There were lights out on the water that I at first thought must be a bridge, but as we got clser I realized they were boats with batteries of fluorescent lights hanging off the sides, presumably to draw squid to the surface. One island was surrounded by hundreds of these boats, an eery sort of fairy necklace or halo of ghost boats. They seemed other-worldly and beautiful in the distance, but I imagine that closer-in they would be cold, wet, and miserable.

In Quy Nhon the motorbike taxis chased the bus through the station gate. One driver hopped off his bike and kept trying to pull open the locked sliding door. Because the bus (actually a Sprinter) had power locks, they wouldn't open as he pulled on the handle. In disgust I skipped the motorbike taxi again, instead opting to hike my gear 4km up the beach through town.

It was a Friday night, and as I walked I was passed by gangs of teenagers on identical motorbikes. They cruised slowly up and down the streets, 2 or 3 to most bikes, but there was the occasional lone wolf who'd from time to time stand up on his scooter and rev the little 50cc motor for all it was worth. They were a ridiculous spectacle circling back and forth, especially as frustrated cars and trucks laid into their horns, trying to pass the band. Gaggle? The bikers would eventually ease into a single lane to let people pass, but they'd take their sweet damned time about it.

Quy Nhon was quiet. It's a beach town, but the weather wasn't any good during my two days there, so I checked out the temples and churches and spent hours wandering the streets. I hung out with some backpackers at the hostel- drinking beers on the beach or in the lobby. We also hired a boat to take us to an island in the bay. There's a statue of a Vietnamese hero pointing defiantly towards China, apparently telling the invaders to go back where they came from. There used to be an abandoned US tank that emerged from the surf at low tide, but unfortunately the city government recently had it moved. I tried to run along the beach, but the town's fishing industry ensured that there weren't too many litter-free stretches nearby the hostel.

I opted to take the train from Quy Nhon to Hoi An, in hopes of getting some sleep and maybe not dying. The trip is actually from Dieu Tri, 13km from Quy Nhon, to Danang, 30km from Hoi An. I got a seat rather than a sleeper, planning on relying on the tray table as a pillow and saving some money, but I got one of the 2 seats in the whole train car that didn't have a seat in front of it for a tray table. I didn't get much sleep.

It was raining in Danang when I arrived at 5:40AM, and in the last moments of darkness. As I walked out of the train station I overheard a couple of foreigners say that they were going to Hoi An, so I latched onto them. They turned out to have been traveling for 7 months, and had picked up a nifty trick. They had met a tour group bound for Hoi An while in the sleeper cars, and they planned to hitch a ride on the group's bus if there was room. There was, and the driver decided on the arbitrary price of 50,000 dong ($3), which I assume went straight into his pocket and not the tour company's account. I had been prepared to pay up to 100,000 for a motorcycle taxi, but that wold have been a cold and wet 30km. My other option was a public bus, but that required hiking to the Danang bus station and then from the Hoi An station into town. This tour group's bus was fast, cheap, and convenient, and by myself I never would have thought of it quickly enough to hitch a ride before they left.

I spent an hour wandering town and asking about hotel roooms, but it was still only 7AM and rooms were either too expensive or the staff didn't yet know whether there'd be check-outs. I'd resigned myself to paying $15 for the first night and moving the next day, so I went back to a cheaper hotel to reserve a room for the next day. When I got there the receptionist told me that they did in fact have one $5 dorm bed, which she didn't tell me about the first time. I snapped it up. I heard a lot of people asking about rooms to no avail, so it's fortunate I was there early.

I went to breakfast with some people from the dorm room. Dennis, a heavily pierced and tattooed preschool teacher from Holland, Takeo from Japan, whose English wasn't very good, and Sarah from Melbourne. Sarah turns out to be half Thai and half Iranian, a combination that apparently produces very beautiful people. We ate noodle soup and crispy rice pancakes at a morning market, surrounded by Vietnamese buying produce and meat. Then we got coffee at plastic tables under an umbrella by the river. It may have been the best cup of coffee of my life. They have a plastic bottle filled with concentrated black coffee goop which they dilute with hot water and serve. It sounds unappealing, but it was amazingly good.

We split up at that point, and I spent most of the morning going to tailors. My first stop was a cobbler that had Converse All Star high tops out front. The draw was the fact that the Converse logo was stitched by hand, which was completely awesome and ridiculous. I talked to the store owner, and for $13 I designed my own Converses. They're red, lined with a a red and white stripe pattern, with an identical tongue. I spent a while looking at fabrics before I picked one of the more modest tailors to copy a shirt I had with me- my pink and white striped Gap shirt that fits me so well. I had it done in pink, white linen, and white with blue and orange pinstripes. 3 shirts made to order for $30, in less than 24 hours. Today I went to get 4 more shirts made, at a different place with more fabric. I got another copy of the same shirt, this time actually making the waist a little narrower, plus 3 shirts with French cuffs that they fitted me for. I even had them dye cotton to match a color I requested for one of the shirts. The total for those 4 shirts was $48. Today I passed a corduroy jacket on the street that caught my eye. They'd run out of the fabric color they'd used in the display model, so I took the one off the rack and had them alter it for me. So, in total, 7 button-up shirts, 1 jacket, and 1 pair of shoes, all made to order and fitted, for $116.

I said that in addition to being full of tailors this town was foodie heaven, but I'll wait until I've had my cooking class to elaborate on that, especially as I'm sick of typing.

Bald.

I'm bald again.

I recently caught myself judging photos of me by whether my thinning hair was evident. Contrary to popular opinion, my hairline has in fact not receded since high school, but it's definitely thinner on top. So, completely disregarding seasonality, I've shaved my head. I didn't really like the 1/4" thing I'd done in the past, so now it's as short as my electric razor will make it. I haven't decided what to do with the beard yet. I know I'm keeping it in some form. I don't think it's so bad as is, but I might transition to something closer to a goatee.

I don't mind thinking about my appearance. I like being in shape, I like clothing, and I like tattoos and my piercings, no matter how inconvenient the eyebrow is with jiu jitsu. What I don't want is my thoughts about my appearance to come from an attitude of apprehension or disappointment or insecurity. My concern was especially useless because of the relative inevitability of losing my hair. I guess I'd rather be bald by choice than by inaction, and let my appearance reflect conscious decisions.

The first pillar is filial piety.

10/29

Pictures from the weekend.

My dad visited this weekend. He was in China for a conference in Shanghai, and arranged a side trip to Beijing to meet with a potential collaborator at Tsinghua, then stayed around for a couple of days. He brought me a whole shopping list worth of stuff, like my sweet new sleeping bag and a mini tripod that might actually work with my front-heavy camera.

We did some of the requisite tourist stuff, including a Forbidden City visit and a trip to the Great Wall. The Forbidden City is big enough that I can go back a couple more times before I think I'll have seen it all and be sick of it. We ended up going to the Mutianyu section of the Wall, one I hadn't been to yet, and that turned out great. There were more people there than at Simatai, and it was more restored, but there was still plenty of vertical movement and it seemed a bit exotic. The trees were settling into their fall colors, and there was even snow in the shade and on the peaks from the previous night's pollution-clearing precipitation. I was afraid the wall might be slick, or that it'd start raining once we got there, but the weather stayed clear enough that you could just make out downtown Beijing some 60km away, probably the farthest I've been able to see in the area.

Daria is coming over Thanksgiving, and she's probably my last visitor before I finish my UN gig. That's likely a good thing, since there's a lot of work left to do and not many weeks to fit it into. I have a meeting tomorrow with a guy from the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy, and I'm trying to set up meetings with some biotech companies in town, both local and international. I need to start writing more soon, I think, since writing works well to bring into focus what I know and what I don't. It's also a process I enjoy, and when I have a something down on paper I feel like I'm making progress, a feeling that's been elusive for a while.

I'm still not sure what I'm doing next. There's definitely a trip to Vietnam coming up, probably from about December 20 (when my visa expires) until around the 10th, when my brother Mike is tentatively coming to visit. After that I may hang in Beijing for a bit if I end up renting my apartment for another month, then probably touring some of Western and Southern China, as far into the boonies as I can get. My friend Scot is helping me look for English teaching work through his extensive network of contacts in-country, and I'm shopping around online, too. I could get a job tomorrow, it seems, so the point of this exercise is to find the best job in the most attractive location- likely the lower Himalayas in Yunnan province or in the plains leading to Tibet in Qinghai province. I'll write more as I figure it out.

Catching up with life

Well, I never got around to typing up the rest of my Thailand trip. I threw all of my remaining pictures from the vacation together on the new photo page, here, so you can check them out.

Disappearing CIA agents and kicks to the head

Photoblog link

09/18/07

I started my day by going to see Jim Thompson's house. He was an OSS/CIA operative during World War II who fell in love with Thailand during his posting here, and returned to the country after the war was over. He became interested in the Thai silk, an unknown product at the time. He promoted the silk by bringing samples to New York and Paris, creating interest in fashion circles there earning huge profits by exporting it. His home is actually a compound of several traditional teak wood Thai stilt houses he had disassembled and transported to Bangkok. He preserved most of the style and observed traditions like moving in on an astrologically favorable date, but he added western comforts like electric lighting and a table and chairs to eat at.

Jim Thompson disappeared while on vacation in Myanmar in the 60s. He went on a walk and never returned. No one knows exactly what happened, but theories include being eaten by wild animals or being hit by a truck driver who panicked and disposed of the body.

Things I learned on my tour of the house:

-Chopping off a Buddhas hands and head is believed to cancel their protective powers.

-Thai houses typically had their front door facing the canals, which served as streets.

-A Thai pastime involved placing mice in small mazes built to resemble houses. Bets were placed on which mouse would emerge first.

After the house I went back to the hotel, taking a pass on the expensive silk products available at the gift shop. Dad was napping. After he woke up we got free drinks at the hotel lounge before rushing out to Lumphini Stadium to see muay thai fights. We took a taxi, but it quickly became stuck in traffic, so we hoofed it to the subway and then to the stadium. We heard the stadium before we saw it- crowds cheering and shouting.

The touts at the entrance fell on us quickly, and got oddly angry that we didn't want to talk to them. One woman asked dad why I wasn't listening to her as I was walking away trying to scout out the entrances. Due to a miscommunication between us at the hotel it turned out that neither of us had enough money to buy the tickets that turned out to be twice as expensive as the Lonely Planet had said, so we turned around and walked (ran) back to the ATM at the subway stop, not noticing a couple of ATMs along the way. When we got back another tout approached us. The first has offered to take us inside to show us seats, this one was trying to tell us about the fights. I bought tickets at the official window as he was talking to us, which made him pretty angry. He snatched away the 'free' fight sheet he'd handed me, snarling something about how other people wouldn't care about us like he did. Whatever. It turns out the fight schedule was free at the door and there was no assigned seating, so I don't understand what their business model was.

The fights were obviously in progress when we got in, but we were far from the last to arrive. The biggest fighters weighed 136 pounds. Some of them looked 15 to me, but dad said he'd heard the announcer say that the minimum age was 18. The announcer was marvelous. Between her accent, the bad sound system, and the crowd noise we caught maybe one word in ten.

We tried a few different vantage points for the best view, finally giving up on our front-row (of the 3rd class section) bleacher seats for a spot 20 feet closer leaning on a railing. That 20 feet gave a much stronger sense of immediacy to the fights, and it also brought us closer to the densely-packed Thais betting and cheering.

Before each match the fighters dance around wearing spiritually protective arm and head bands. The dance also seems to be a stretch and warm up. They pray, and then they sit on chairs in shallow metal trays in their corners as their handlers spray them with water and rub them down.

The 1st round is slow. They feel each other out, but the consistent lack of action, and the fact that the Thais pay zero attention to the 1st round suggests that there may be some inviolable tradition about the 1st round being slow. The 2nd round starts fast and hard. After the fighters clinch, the ref sometimes leaves them to knee each other (the arms are too locked up), but sometimes breaks them apart. We couldn't figure out how the decision was made, but my guess is that it involves the way the arms are positioned. After the ref splits the fighters there's no lull as they feel each other out again, they lunge right back at each other. Muay thai has more action and seems generally more brutal than western boxing, but there was only one KO in the evening. That fighter took a kick to the head and kept throwing punches, then collapsed after taking a glancing punch. It seems you have to land 2/3 of the blows in the fight to win, so the matches were mostly tied.

High wattage

Photoblog link

09/17/07

I found out that I could crash the IEA conference dinner that evening, so I spent the whole day keeping my eyes open for yellow clothing, the theme of the evening. Monday is yellow day in Thailand. The king was born on a Monday some 80 years back, so now every Monday a huge portion of Thais wear yellow clothing. The monarchy is one of the most loved institutions in the country, and hugely respected. Besides the crowds of people wearing yellow, the king's image was sold on amulets and icons right next to images of Buddhas. Religion is the other widely respected institution. Thai men are expected to become monks at least twice in their lives, usually once while children as 10-vow novices, then again maybe after school as full 227 vow monks. I don't really know what the vows entail, so that's probably worth looking into when I get back.

My first stop of the day was the Grand Palace, home of Wat Phra Kaew and the Emerald Buddha. The emerald Buddha isn't really emerald, just a dark jade, but it's still spectacular. The king no longer lives in the grand palace, but the Wat there is still his personal temple. Every season he changes the solid gold clothing on the Emerald Buddha as part of an elaborate ritual. Again, I don't know how to describe everything that I saw, so I'll let the pictures do most of that. I especially liked the juxtaposition of classical European architecture with traditional Thai design. There was one building that reminded me very much of Versailles with the wood and mirrors and chandeliers, but instead of fleur de lis on the wallpaper there were Buddhas.

I asked a lot of different people to take my pictures. The Chinese lady was surprised that I was talking to her in Mandarin, but the guy I asked in Spanish responded in English. Ah well.

I'm not sure where the tactile boundary is in a place like the Grand Palace. What part is simply a building, something you interact with and touch, and what's considered art? There are mosaics on most of the walls, and some parts were roped off. Does that imply the rest of the mosaics are fair game to handle? Maybe it doesn't matter here. Yesterday the Reclining Buddha's feet were well worn, and I have clear memories of people touching paintings at the 798 district in Beijing.

In one park near the palace I had corn forced into my hands by a couple of different people, the immediately transparent scheme being that I feed the pigeons and then they hit me up for cash. So I resisted for a while, actually tossing the unopened bag of corn back at one girl from 20 feet away so she couldn't hand it back. One pair of guys actually dumped the corn into my hand, saying, “Present. Happy new year.” I walked down the sidewalk without throwing the corn on the ground, being mobbed with pigeons. I eventually dropped the corn, and when they asked me for money I explained to them that since I didn't have anything they'd given me and I didn't want anything from them now they didn't have any leverage, and that they should strive to live by the mantra of 'get the money first'. I'm only exaggerating slightly, and and I'm certain I confused them. As I walked away I smiled, waved, and bade them a happy new year. I've been generally very friendly on this trip, smiling a lot, as the Thais do, but there's only so much haranguing I can take.

After the Grand Palace I tried to find the river and ferry dock to cross to the other side, but I kept getting turned around in the rabbit warren of markets that hugs the shore of the river. I spent a while wandering a market in a more open area selling everything from washing machines to underwear to herbal medicine to new tires for cars. What do they do with the washing machines when it's time to close for the night? I tried to find yellow clothing, but all of the ubiquitous yellow polo shirts with the king's seal seemed to be for women.

I finally found the ferry taking near Wat Rakhang, but when I got to the other side I promptly became lost again. Next trip like this I'm brining a damn compass. Wat Rakhang, when I found it, wasn't visually spectacular, but it was a 'working' wat, with monks' orange robes hanging to dry, locals making offerings, and a small school attached with classes in session.

My next stop was Wat Arun, the temple of the dawn, which has an 82m stupa that looks like something out of Angkor Wat. (Note: I later found out that it's a 'prang', not a stupa. Chedis and stupas are the typical Thai style. A prang is Khmer, and that's why this looked Cambodian to me- it's the same design as Angkor.) Up close to the tower you can see that it's covered in mosaic. There's a fair bit of Chinese porcelain built into the decoration. It turns out that Chinese merchants sailed ships to Siam loaded with broken porcelain as ballast. They dumped it here when they loaded up on whatever they were bringing home, and the porcelain was dragged out of the harbor by the Thais to incorporate into their temples.

After Wat Arun I crossed the river and took the express ferry all the way down the shore to where there's a dock below a skytrain station. I like how you get around in Bangkok- some combination of car/tuk-tuk/motorcycle taxi/bus, skytrain/subway, boat, and walking through alleys.

I got back to the hotel just in time to shower before racing over to the mall next to the hotel to find yellow ties for dad and me to wear to dinner. The meal was a western menu, which was disappointing, but the entertainment was MCed by what I imagine were typical Thai presenters, a guy and a girl who were, for lack of a better word, cute. There was live music and a dance troupe performing a sampling of traditional Thai dance. The 4 women had numerous costume changes. One of the girls, now wearing a tail, paired up with a guy in an ornate, stylize monkey costume (that looked a lot like a demon) to tell the story of a mermaid and a monkey falling in love.

Meditation on a rainy Sunday

Today's photoblog link

09/16/07

After breakfast, a lavish buffet with Western and Thai dishes, we went to the Red Cross snake farm to see a snake handling, feeding, and milking demonstration. The slide show was interesting and informative, and the presenter was good except for an accent that led to gems like 'lespilatoly fairule'. The presentation itself was fun. We sat in bleachers under a canopy as it poured down rain outside. The handlers seemed very unconcerned about their safety around cobras, pythons, and vipers, despite the presenter's comment that every handler at the hospital had at one point been bitten. His own story involved a Siamese cobra and a paralyzed, necrotic finger that was saved by grafting a big chunk of tissue from his forearm. The cobras struck a lot while we were there, but didn't hit anything.

It was still raining after the presentation, but less, so we decided to push on to our next destination- Wat Pho. We took the subway to near a river dock, but by then the rain had started again in earnest so we holed up in coffee shop. Oh, the subway. It uses a different system from the skytrain, meaning to transfer between the two you need to buy tickets twice. The skytrain uses a paper card with a magnetic strip, the subway uses a small, black, plastic token with an embedded RFID chip. The subway itself was modern, had AC, and was nearly empty, which seemed stranger. Maybe it was a Sunday afternoon thing. Also of interest, there was a cop checking bags at the entrance to the subway, but not hard enough that I couldn't had carried, say, 10kg of high explosives on with me.

After sitting with our coffee for a while, dad reading the guidebooks and me catching up on journal writing, the rain eased off again and we pushed on. We got a bit lost, but a Thai guy stopped and tried to point us toward the boats. He gave up, but another Thai guy came over. He was friendly, spoke good English, and gave us some story about being a schoolteacher. He said that the boats weren't running because of the rain, and that Wat Pho was closed for a holiday. For some reason my father, who's read the same scam advisories I have, bought the story and was trying to get info on this guy's recommended Wat as I was trying to get us out of there without explicitly saying that he was full of shit. I finally pulled my dad away (“I want to explore this neighborhood”) and waved off the tuk-tuk driver who was conveniently standing by. When I outlined the characteristics of the guy's scam my dad felt suitably foolish, and we both got a good laugh out of it.

We couldn't find the dock. We walked through back alleys and poor neighborhoods trying to find the place, but none of the alleys were on our map and we didn't even have the sun to navigate by. We were approached by another Thai guy who suggested a different Wat, but in the end he gave us good directions, and it was unclear how he might have profited from the situation, so I guess he was probably on the level. We finally found the dock and waited for our boat.

On the boat, the orange line of the Chao Phraya express ferry, they tore our tickets in intricate ways that made us afraid to hold the damn things for fear of invalidating them by some subtle fold. The river itself was opaque brown and fast-flowing, carrying patches of floating vegetation as it moved. There were ferries like ours, long-tail river taxi boats with outboard motors driving long propeller shafts, and one gargantuan barge carrying an indeterminate cargo. On the way we passed a combination of river-front slums, gleaming white luxury apartment towers, the naval headquarters, and the imposing Wat Arun.

We got off the boat right at Wat Pho. I don't have much to say about the place that can't be better conveyed in pictures. We took off our shoes and entered a side temple, kneeling on a plastic Winnie the Pooh mat in front of an 800 year old golden Buddha. The main Reclining Buddha was huge. Again, the pictures tell the story better, except for having to fight small crowds to actually take them, and this was a rainy Sunday in the low season. The Reclining Buddha's toes were inlaid with a gorgeous mother of pearl depiction of other Buddhas, but were rubbed down right next to a 'do not touch' sign.

After Wat Pho we quickly hit the amulet market outside of nearby Wat Mahathat before heading in. We were there for meditation classes, and at 6PM we sat down with a Buddhist monk and 3 other Americans. He gave us a primer on meditation theory, most of it fairly vague to my unenlightened mind, but my dad, who's read some texts on meditation, understood some of the subtleties. One idea the monk had that was new to me was the idea of moving a hand slowly up and down with your breath in order to help you focus. He also suggested banishing wandering thoughts by identifying them and repeating them 3 times, for example, 'pain, pain, pain” or, “noise, noise, noise”. After the primer we practiced walking meditation, in which you focus on the soles of your feet, then seated meditation, where you focus on your abdomen. The seated meditation lasted until 8, over an hour, and got pretty excruciating. That was by far the longest I've ever tried to sit still and not think.

Landing in the land of Thailand

This is a partial transcription of my handwritten journal for my trip to Thailand, September 2007. Note: I'm posting the same text with accompanying photos on my domain here. I'll continue to post the text of these entries on this blog as I type it, but I think it'll be more fun to read with the photos.


09/14/07

Flying into Bangkok, I was amazed by how far I could see lights. There doesn't seem to be the Dongbei haze cutting off visibility after a couple of miles. Right now I'm holed up in a corner of the airport behind some palm trees, thinking about getting some sleep before I head through customs and find a cab downtown.

I'm less prepared for this international trip than I've been for any previous. I don't even have a guide book until dad arrives with the Lonely Planet, only some phrase lists I printed off of the internet and the names in the Thai alphabet of a couple of tourist sites I got from Wikipedia. Escalators and moving walkways in the airport go forward on the left side. Do they drive on the left side of the road here? (Note: Yes, they do, and it's more confusing than I thought it'd be.)

(Written the next day)
I ended up sleeping at BKK for a couple of hours before going through customs. I tried to lie on the ground behind some palm trees, but the stone floor was sucking the heat right out of my body, so I ended up across some chairs.

I decided to take the public transportation into town, so after wandering and reading signs 2 or 3 times over I figured out that I had to take a shuttle to the bus station. At the station I got on bus 552, paid the bus attendant after I figured out he wanted to know where I was going, and was off. Again, I was amazed by how clear and blue the sky was. I guess I'd gotten used to the haze. I listened to what other passengers told the attendant and I noted someone with the same stop as me to follow out of the bus. I got off at On Nut, the terminal stop of one of the Skytrain routes (Bangkok's elevated rail system). I figured out how to get change for the ticket machines by asking an attendant. You tell them your stop and they give you the fewest coins necessary to buy the ticket, the rest comes back as bills. The fare varies with distance, and at 35 baht my long ride was 6-7 times as expensive as a bus, so I guess the locals enjoying the fast, air-conditioned ride were of the privileged set. I got out at the Siam Square stop, probably at about 8AM, and wandered around the still-shuttered shopping district. (As an aside, my total cost from airport to hotel was 67 baht on public transit. My dad's cost later that day was 1400 baht for a BMW limo.)

It was hot, maybe mid 80s, and humid when I stumbled our Pathumwan Princess Hotel. It's a 30-story tower abutting the MBK shopping center. I went in, unsure of whether I'd be able to check into my room so early, but they let me in right away. I think the nicest hotels I've ever been to have been on my dad's business trips, with the possible exception of the Westin Dragonara in Malta, where I myself shelled out $200+ a night for a couple nights. The Princess has several restaurants, a huge pool, a spa, a gym, a running track, and a cold 'check-in drink' handed to you in the lobby. In addition to a concierge it has a limo desk, a tour desk, a business center, and a lounge for corporate guests (including me, ha!). The view from our room on the 17th floor was spectacular. There's a university nearby with the traditional red-peaked Thai roofs. The towers in the distance have architectural twists that make them distinctively Thai: a gold pyramid on top, a gold Buddha's crown coat of arms on the side, minarets, etc.

After oversleeping from my nap, I caught the skytrain to Chatuchak market. Most of the 'new' Bangkok, the parts I've seen so far, have been very rich. I've seen beggars in the streets, but only a few hovels. One of the shacks seemed to cling to the side of a building right next to a clean, shiny skytrain station.

Chatuchak market sells everything- used and new Converse shoes and jeans, silk bed covers, wood carvings, music, books, household consumables, food, electronics. Everything. One thing I immediately noticed was the large number of Thais shopping there, not just tourists. The place smelled of pleasant things rather than slime and waste, a pleasant change from Chinese markets. I bought red shoelaces to go with the black Converse hightops I've been trying to find for ages and was convinced I'd get here, but as in China the shoe sizes available top out well below my far-from-freakish 11.5 feet. I got my first hit of Thai food at the market- red curry over a bowl of rice, which would have been great but for the bones, coconut milk, a fresh-squeezed orange juice, a styrofoam container of lo mein-like noodles, and a bowl of spring rolls. I also had a weird green popsicle out of a steel drum that somehow keeps them frozen. On the way out of the market I stumbled on a separate market selling produce, where I bought excellent caramel-sesame cashews that would last us the rest of the trip.

I went back to sleep when I got back to the hotel, waking up when my dad arrived at the room to chat a bit before we called it a night.

If my posts had fewer subjects it'd be easier to come up with clever titles.

8/24

Night out at 5:19

I decided that I should go out to a bar. I was sick of sitting around watching TV and eager to try to meet people, and I'd seen on the thatsbeijing forum that a member was performing at a place nearby called 5:19, so I decided to check it out.

5:19 was quiet. There was the forum member playing guitar and singing rather competently, plus maybe 10 other people on the first floor. There were others upstairs on the roof, but I didn't know that yet. So I ordered a drink, much to my regret turning down the Bombay Sapphire in favor of the dramatically cheaper Gordon's Dry in my gin and tonic. I chatted with a few of the guys sitting around on some couches. They turned out to be Americans working in construction on the new US embassy, and were all pretty drunk. The conversation was much as you'd expect a chat with drunk construction workers to be, revolving around booze, women, and sports. I politely declined their invitation to go next door to dance with the Filipina girls, explaining with a straight face that I was waiting for a friend.

I chatted with the bartender and owner, Dave from Canada, who was running the business in his retirement. I asked him why he'd stayed in China after his decade-long contract with the mining company was up and after his wife divorced him, and he answered that he couldn't imagine readjusting to civilization.

I met the musician, who I'd previously chatted with in the online forum, and we went upstairs to the roof to hang out with some others. There he introduced me to an older guy from Montana working on the communications infrastructure for the Olympics.

I took the opportunity to ask how he felt about potential protests, which was apparently a red-button issue. It ended up a 3-hour, heated debate about freedoms, respect, and the 'greatest stage ever set on earth'. I thought for a while he was drunk, but it later turned out he was a recovering alcoholic and he'd been drinking tonic water. Anyway, we had radically different points of view. In the young and naive corner, I supported protest and free speech and the ability and obligation of individuals to change the world. He had a much more jaded attitude about the potential for change, and he also believed that the Olympics shouldn't be interrupted by dissent. His arguments weren't very good, but one that held up for me was that public protest would inevitably disrupt some poor athlete's proudest moment. He also had this weird belief that Olympics were about hope for the Chinese people, and that protesting would somehow betray that hope. I personally think that most Chinese see the Olympics more as an opportunity to make a quick buck by whatever means they can than they do a source of hope or pride. Anyway, he argued on the grounds that protesting against injustices in China during thr Olympics was somehow taking away hope from the Chinese people, which was just weird. By this point the bar had closed, which I didn't think they did in Beijing, and we were standing outside the front door debating. He finally misquoted Ben Franklin at me, saying, "He who sacrifices hope for security gets neither." (What?) When of course it's, "He who sacrifices LIBERTY for security deserves neither." So when I pointed his error out to him, trying hard not to jump up and down in glee that he made my point for me, we agreed to disagree and I went home for the night. I didn't meet anyone my age and I didn't meet any girls, but at least I got out of the house.

8/25

On Saturday I met my language exchange partner for the second time, this time at a Starbucks in Guomao halfway between our places. We haven't been very diligent about studying, to say the least. As much as I loathe Starbucks, it was nice to overpay for a giant coffee; I had no idea how much I'd miss the drink. So we chatted for a few hours, asking questions and taking notes. I managed to drop my pocket PC with my electronic dictionary off of the table and down 2 flights of stairs, but it survived intact, probably thanks to the heavy metal case that I've hated lugging around.

Bike repairs (Or, "No, no. Night time is when I fill the hole with water")

It was getting dark when I got back to the subway station where I'd left my bike. I had already put on my helmet and flashing lights and started riding down the street when I realized that my rear tire was flat. Fortunately, China has bicycle repair 'shops' on just about every corner They're really just 3-wheeled carts with supplies and a grease-covered older guy sitting on a stool, but they work. I remembered that only a moment ago I'd seen one across the street from where my bike was parked. Then, as I got off my bike and turned around, something clicked- those bastards flattened my tire. Furious, but trying to act cool, I walked my bike over to the cart and asked to use his pump, hoping they'd just let the air out. So I pumped up my tube and stood around for a minute poking at the tire. It was leaking, so I asked the guy how much it'd be to change the tube. He wanted 40RMB, but I talked him down to 25RMB ($3.50 for parts and labor), plus I get to keep the dead tube, which I'll throw away to prevent him from pawning it off on someone who doesn't know a new one from a patch job. When he took the tire off I checked it for anything along the inside which could re-puncture the tube. Assuming he's competent, he should have done that himself if he didn't know how the tube was damaged. He had a water bowl, so I pumped the tube up and slowly ran the length of it through the water until I found the leak, an invisible line of holes along the seam. It could have been a slightly split seam or it could have been someone with a needle poking my tire a few times. Who knows, but after he put my wheel back on I waited for a few minutes to make sure all was kosher before I paid him and left. I don't know if he actually did kill my tube, but everyone here I've mentioned the incident to thinks he did.

8/27-28

On Monday and Tuesday I got little done at work, or so it always seems to feel. I'm calling and emailing a bunch of people in the government and research institutions, trying to get information and set up meetings. I finally managed to schedule one with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science on Wednesday, but other than that I mostly got passed around from person to person and played phone and email tag.

Alessandro, one of UNIDO's permanent staff, has been really helpful about suggesting names and sending emails out through his account with his name on them, so that's been encouraging. We also have fun chats during the day on everything from his part-time job at the opera during college, where he chatted with Pavarotti and had to carry around large, 'dead' sopranos on stage; to articles in the Economist; to hiking and climbing. He's much older than I am, has a wife and a kid, but it's cool to have someone at work to interact with on a social level.

This week I was also tasked with writing the copy for the new UNIDO China brochure. I don't mind doing some of this kind of work for the people here; it makes me feel like I'm pulling my weight and it keeps them happy.

Exercise, plus what do do with my time

The evenings have been slow and long since my 1 month membership for yoga expired. I would have re-upped it, but I'll leave for Thailand before the full month and it seemed expensive to waste that time. As a result I'm going home earlier and still not doing much when I get there. I've been thinking about getting back into martial arts, so I've been shopping around. I found a well-regarded jiu jitsu school down in SOHO, about 15 minutes from work by bike, which I'll probably check out, but I realized that since I'm in China I should probably take advantage of it by learning something local. I've been asking around about taiji and kung fu teachers, but they're elusive. Most of the best teachers seem to be old guys who teach in parks, just not in the parks near me. They also charge lesson by lesson, payable in cash, and aren't cheap. So I'm looking, but I don't know if it's a practical idea.

The other fitness thing I've recently stumbled on is this yoga retreat outside of the city. It's not cheap, but neither is it too expensive- on the order of $100 for a weekend with food, transportation, accommodation, and classes included. It sounds fun, but the most amazing part is the setting; one location is an old Buddhist temple, another has property around a crumbling stretch of the Great Wall. It seems great, assuming I can handle that big a dose of hippie-ness in a weekend.

8/29

My first work meeting with a 'local expert'

After much debate I ended up wearing my suit to my meeting at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. I seriously wonder what people think when they see me walking around wearing a jacket, tie, and eyebrow piercing. I sort of like the contradiction, and I guess I'll settle for it if I can't dye my hair fun colors. No one in China dresses up; it's like casual Friday meets the Caribbean, with short-sleeve button up shirts all around for the elite businessmen and officials and track pants and polo shirts for the rest. It's sort of a shame that a country with such a cool sartorial tradition has settled on the lowest common denominator of Western dress. Even during the Cultural Revolution, although the clothing was uniform, it was unique and interesting.

I got up at 6:30 to make it to my meeting by 9, biking to work to collect my notes and drop off my computer, then catching a cab to Haidian, some 15km away, during rush hour. I got to read papers and jot notes during the ride through the morning traffic, so I understand the appeal of chauffeurs for people with money and stressful jobs. The taxi driver didn't know exactly where to go, but we managed to navigate there successfully, marking the occasion as the first time the Chinese GPS software on my pocket PC has been useful, and even then it wasn't while hooked up to the GPS. The campus of the institute, along with the rest of China, was gutted by construction, so I hiked in dress shoes over piles of dirt and under tin roofs until I found the right building.

The man I was meeting with, a Prof. Huang, had come downstairs to meet me when I called him to tell him I was nearby. We shook hands and headed up to his office. After the business card swap ritual we got down to business, but as an aside, how are you supposed to take the card you're accepting with 2 hands while simultaneously offer your own the same way? I assume you take turns, but who offers first? The actual trade ended up a weird tangle, but I don't think he cared. He spent a couple of years at Cornell, studying abroad as everyone here seems to do, so was probably lower key about some things than he could have been.

Prof. Huang is the head of biotech research at the institute, a scientist, not a suit. He was wearing a tie, however, so I just took my jacket off and the clothing thing worked out after all. I started by telling him about my research and my goals, and then we dove right into my list of questions. Unfortunately this whole exchange was in English. His wasn't great, but he knew the relevant vocabulary, so it went better than it would have if I'd tried to come up with Chinese for 'cultivars' or 'herbicide'. I ended up with some good notes, a powerpoint presentation with stats, and an introduction to a guy at the Chinese Center for Agricultural Policy whose papers I've read, so all in all it was productive.

When I got back to work I took my taxi receipts to the administrative assistant to figure out how to get reimbursed. She asked me to write my name and the purpose of the taxi trip on the receipt. "Just write, 'meeting'," she said. So I did, she added up the total for the 2 receipts on her calculator, asked if I could break a hundred, and handed me cash on the spot. How cool is that? In a country filled with red tape, in an organization known for bureaucracy, I got my taxi receipts refunded from petty cash out of a drawer in the assistant's desk.

World in pictures

I haven't really been doing much, just sort of settling into the apartment and to work. I've watched 2 movies the last couple of evenings: Wang Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love and Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern. I need English subtitles to get through them, but I think they're probably helping my Chinese at least a little bit. I wanted to try to watch some unsubtitled Chinese TV, but I can't seem to get the TV to work and my flatmate has been getting home late. Hopefully I'll get a bike this weekend and be able to get home before 7 or so.

Now that I'm beginning to get into a routine, the next priority on my list is learning some Chinese. I figure watching TV or movies can teach me to a certain extent, and I've been sorta fried after work each day, so it's been relaxing. I'm starting a campaign to learn words for food so that I have some clue what's in my dumplings. I might try to find a semi-formal language exchange partner or something.

I'm mainly posting now to put up a few pictures. I actually haven't taken too many yet. Maybe I'll get out this weekend and have some more adventures. Anyway, here are some from LA and others from Beijing.

Wearing a shirt and tie to work does NOT make me a grown up.

What have I been doing? Hell if I know, but it seems like I've been here a lot more than 4 days.

7/1

On Sunday Scot and Catlin and I went to the Zuzhi Park. We didn't really know what to expect, it was just a beautiful day following a day of torrential downpour. The rain got rid of some of the smog, which is nice, but I think the rain itself is pretty insidious. When my clothing from Saturday dried it had these white mineral-like deposits on it, and I don't really care to know what they were But Sunday was gorgeous and we were up early after our 8PM bedtime the previous night. We skipped the Great Wall because it was supposed to get really hot and we ruled out the Summer Palace because it takes an hour and a half to get to, so we picked a random park with a museum near it and went. When we got there we wandered around bamboo gardens for a little bit and went for a boat ride in a pond filled with lotuses, lilies, and dragonflies.

We left when we got hungry and the heat started to get to us and walked across the street to a really casual restaurant. When I say casual I mean there were guys sitting at a table shirtless and others ashing their cigarettes on the floor We got real kung pao chicken (gongbaojiding), which is nothing like its American bastardization, and green beans with hot peppers and bits of meat. Most of the meals I've had here are family style, with everyone eating off of plates in the middle, or at least moving food off of them onto individual rice bowls. After lunch we got yogurt and green tea flavored popsicles next door to the restaurant and sat in the shade on a wall by the river while we planned our next move. (As I read that sentence it sounds very picturesque, but the river is stagnant and filled with algal blooms and it runs parallel to a 10 lane road maybe 100 yards away. It was still nice, but let's be clear that this was a very urban river.)

We decided to go to an art museum behind the park, so we started walking. We tried to get off of the main road and out of the sun, so we took a shortcut through some back roads. That was the end of the art museum plan, because soon we were lost and having loads of fun exploring residential streets and commercial alleys. There were, among hundreds of other vendors, people selling street food like melon slices on sticks or rows of quail eggs fried in little compartments that line them up on sticks (which I'll forever think of as quailsicles). There was a pet dealer with bunnies in cages no bigger than the animal itself and turtles trying to crawl up the sides of rice bowls. I'm pretty sure that was a prostitute that smiled and waved at me and not an actual nail stylist, but I'm not sure. We felt (and were) very conspicuous carrying around high end cameras and wearing relatively nice clothing, but the only place I think we were really unwelcome was one side street where an old shirtless lady smoking a long pipe wordlessly waved us off. That was the first alley we tried to turn onto, so I'm glad we tried again or we would have missed an adventure.

We eventually made it back to the subway to meet up with a second group of 3 MISTI students who were in town for a couple of days. We were going to a dumpling place near Tian'anmen, so I got my first glimpse of the square as we walked over.

Also, now that I'm thinking about it, the car market here is pretty strange. There's one brand, which I'm pretty sure is called Honde and rips of Honda models, with a logo that looks like a Star Trek communicator. Buick's are very popular and seem to be an upper-middle range car. Nissan's are higher end, and have great names like Bluebird and Sunny. The upper reaches of the market seem to be dominated by Audi. I see 10 black Audi A6s for every BMW or Mercedes, so I think that someone at Audi bribed a government official a while back or something, and once the government started using them they became the car to have for business types. I had been told that Beijing is decreasingly a bike city, and I think that's probably true, but they're still everywhere in swarms.

Anyway, Tian'anmen. It was big. There's a huge street running out front. Those were my first impressions. Scot and Catlin and I met up with the other 3, we had dinner at the jiaozi place, then wandered back through the gardens to the square. By that point it was dark and they'd lit the buildings up with little bulbs around the trim, giving the whole place a sort or circus or Broadway feel. That and the CCTV cameras that bristled off the lamp posts were my second round of impressions. We didn't stay for long; after a bit of walking and a lot of waving we finally got cabs to take us to Sanlitun, a bar district.

I was exhausted at that point, but we got a couple of drinks at a place off a side street called Butterfly. It ended up being less than half the price of the main drag joints even though it was only 100 yards away. Despite the fact that at that point my head hurt too much from the sun and dehydration and the long day to deal with haggling I was determined to try some baijiu (Chinese liquor), so Scot handled the negotiation and we drank out of the bottle on the side of the street while we waited for a cab. I did end up chatting with the cabbie, who confirmed that drinking on the street is completely legal, which is cool to find out. We got back and went to sleep. Well, we were about to go to sleep when Scot remembered he'd thrown out the air conditioning filters in the morning, thinking they were disposable, so he went downstairs to dig through the trash for them, then we went to sleep.

7/2

I started work. Catlin and Scot and I got rice porridge, wonton soup, and soy milk for breakfast, then we went our separate ways. I took a cab to work, or at least most of the way. My directions weren't very good, so I still ended up walking like 15 minutes after the cabbie dropped me off. I toured the office, scored zero in the introduction lightning round, then got set up at a desk. I don't think I'm staying in this office very long or I'd post a picture. I didn't do any real or interesting work, just some background reading. It turns out there are some younger people here in the office, at least for now. There's a Harvard sophomore here for the month, a Korean Kennedy School girl here for a fellowship, and a girl who just finished her master's who I think is employed full time. The four of us plus Dimitri, one of the younger UNIDO officials, went out to lunch on the corner, so I got to chat with them a bit. Mercifully, there's a coffee machine in the office. I hate desk jobs; I think I'll probably have a 6 cup a day habit by the end of this.

I took the bus back to Scot and Catlin's after work. Well, actually I took two buses to a corner 10 minutes from their place over the course of about an hour, but I wanted to try out the bus system. It was crowded and hard to navigate, but I think once I figure out some routes I'll take them more often. The fare for each of the buses was 12 cents, and I might have even been able to get a transfer or something that I didn't know about.

Scot and Catlin's Chinese flatmates cooked dinner, which was very tasty, then I packed my bags and moved to my new apartment. I don't really feel like talking about the place now, so I'll put that in a later post. For now I'll just say that it's on Chaoyang Gongyuan Xilu, the Chinese equivalent of Central Park West.

Marco Polo

(Written starting on 6/30. I don't feel like going through and editing for style or grammar right now, and I wanted to get something up from China, so here's a start)

I'm in Beijing right now at my friend Scot's apartment. He's generously putting me up for a couple of nights while I look for my own place. I only found out afterwards that he has a roommate, his friend Catlin, who I'd never met, who's been generous and enthusiastic about me being here. They're in the bed, I'm on the couch, and last night a couple of the MISTI China people from one team crashed on the floor. The MISTI crew had bad luck with illness and getting all of their luggage stolen and such, so I get the sense that they're licking their wounds for a couple of days before heading off to their next city for teaching.

6/28

The flight over here was uneventful. Mike gave me a ride to the airport after a 5AM Civilization session. Traffic going the other way was crazy, but not too bad heading west to LAX. They have metro stations between the two sides of the highway, with a lane to pull over and drop people off. I wonder how much use they get. I was stunned by the line of people waiting at the United ticket counter at LAX, but it actually moved along at a decent clip. I was worried about the weight of my bags, which combined was exactly 100 pounds on the way to LA, but I'd redistributed it and figured one of the bags was probably over the max of 50 and the other under. The guy at the ticket counter didn't even bother to put my big duffel bag entirely on the scale, so it came up as thirty odd pounds and he slapped the sticker on it. That saved me from shifting things or carrying more on with me, so that was nice.

Going through security, one of the TSA staff yelled, "Code bravo!", which was then shouted by the rest of the screeners in unison. Everything shut down and they made all of the passengers freeze. I was next to the security control station, so I got to hear descriptions come in over the radio: "5 foot 9, caucasian, brown hair blue eyes, no warrant." Then we had to wait at our gate for maybe 15 minutes because a woman on the previous flight had a heart attack. They had paramedics come to take her off, and we finally started boarding. I was a bit nervous because I only had an hour to make my connection at SFO, but when we were airborne the captain said we'd only be about 10 minutes late, which was reassuring. However, as we started to land the pilot came onto the intercom and said that the entire SFO airport had been put on hold for 30 minutes, so we flew in circles over Santa Cruz. I didn't worry this time because the attendants said that since the whole airport was on hold they'd delay the outgoing flights. Of course when we did touch down I saw on the monitors that my flight was boarding, so I got to sprint a little bit. I was the last person they let onto the bus between terminals ("Pleasse? I have to make my connection to China.") and the last onto the elevator up to the international terminal, so by virtue of sheer luck I made my flight, and my luggage even made it along with me.

6/29

In Beijing I got cash at an ATM at the airport (which seems to have only cost me 50 cents on a $200 withdrawal) and caught a cab downtown to Guomao. I followed the guidebook and suggestions from forums and made sure to get an official cab from the official queue, but I still got ripped off. I didn't feel like arguing with the cabbie over $10 when all of my luggage was in his trunk, so I accepted the fact that I'd been used and got out at the subway stop where I'd asked to be dropped. I had spoken with Scot about meeting him nearby, so after lugging all of my stuff the wrong way down the street through thick crowds and over broken pavement in the sweltering heat and humidity I finally got my bearings and made it to the spot where I was supposed to wait for them. I didn't get up the nerve to ask a random stranger walking by to use their cell phone to say that I'd arrived early (I would have, but no one stopped in front of the building to smoke a cigarette or anything, they all just hurried by), so I just waited. The guard at the building didn't seem to happy that I was hanging out there, but he accepted that I was meeting a friend. He just wouldn't let me sit down.

After half an hour Catlin came and introduced herself, then rescued me from the heat and we caught a cab to their apartment. I showered and changed, then we met Scot at his job in the Soho district. We met up with the 3 MISTI students to get dinner at a Muslim style restaurant, which was my first exposure to real Chinese food. It was pretty good, and definitely more spicy than I was planning on. Scot and Catlin and I were thinking about going to a bar afterwards, but by the time we'd finished with dinner and seen the others on their way I was exhausted and we just went back to their place to sleep.

6/30

On Saturday morning we all woke up early (as in before 7), in part because their room gets a lot sunglight. We all sat around poking at our computers for a bit, then met up with the same 3 people for breakfast. We got steamed buns stuffed with meat, rice porridge, and soy milk all around in a little place just down the street from the apartment, with the bill for 6 people coming out to $2.80. While Catlin and I waited for Scot to chat with the MISTI kids (he's the student organizer for their program) I decided I needed caffeine and so we went to the Starbucks across the street. I don't go to Starbucks in the US, but the dearth of available coffee shops drove me into its insidious embrace. One small coffee? $1.50.

We all met back up at the apartment, and after the MIT-China folks worked out some logistics for their next stop we all went to Wangfujing, a shopping area near Tian'anmen, to buy cell phones and cell phone accessories and such. After much haggling in broken Chinese I managed to get my dream phone, a monochrome brick with almost no functions beyond an alarm, a phone book, and a phone. If the battery life is good I'll be in love. So it's of course difficult to haggle for a phone. There's the phone itself (which I got them down to $46 from $62), the SIM card, and the card you buy to put minutes on the phone. We probably drove them nuts, a bunch of us there trying to get the best price we could and understand what we were buying, all of which was conducted in deficient Chinese. Scot's pretty good, so he sort of had the rest of our backs as we talked.

I split up with them after getting my cell phone, taking the subway up to Dongzhimen to meet a prospective flatmate. It had been drizzling, but at this point it started pouring down rain, so between that and not knowing which direction was east I caught a cab. Fan Xie (Bobby) seems pretty cool. He speaks pretty good English, which is a blessing and a curse, and we have a lot in common along the lines of social preferences. He's also really into art, which is something I hope to take advantage of in my explorations of the city. We had a beer in his living room and I checked out the place, then I told him I'd get back to him and left to meet back up with Scot and Catlin for dinner, which was leftovers from Friday night in their kitchen. We'd already eaten the messy noodle leftovers while walking down the street, so that left chunks of chicken and potato, some eggplant, and flatbread. They also don't have any silverware or chopsticks yet, so I ate with a measuring spoon. We decided to go out to a bar after failing the previous night, but we were all tired so Catlin suggested we take a quick nap. So at 8ish we fell asleep. I woke up at 2AM and took out my contacts and brushed my teeth, then went back to bed. We were all up at 6:30 or 7, feeling pretty sheepish and old.

Center of the Universe

In addition to all of the more philosophical (pretentious) stuff I just posted, this is also a journal, and one of the things I really wanted to talk about was this past weekend. On Friday I drove down to NYC with a few friends from No. 6, partly to go to the Annex party at the Sixer apartment in the Upper West Side and partly to get out of the house while we hosted prospective freshmen during campus preview weekend. They annoy me with their bright, "We got into MIT!" faces. Also the house is dry while they're around, and my liver demands consistent exercise. It's like walking the dog, only with more slurred speech.

I'm not even entirely sure what to write about. I know that every time I go to NYC I love the place more and more. I grew up as every good kid who likes to think he's from Boston does, hating New York very passionately. It's just that I try to think of myself as a scientist, and this unsubstantiated ideology demanded testing that proved it to be unfounded. I love New York. I love that it's open all night, and that it's huge and busy and chaotic. I can picture myself living in a few places I've been to. Berkeley for sure. Maybe Tuscany. The idea of Vancouver sounds nice, but I've never been. But I feel like I could absolutely live in NYC. One problem is that I have a biased opinion of the place. I tend to go on weekends, with friends, to have a good time. I've never had to work there, for example, so my memories of the place are all happy and fuzzy. Well, the fuzziness is probably more the booze than anything else.

So this trip had a few high points for me. The first was on Friday night. We went to a bar in the Upper West, and then a few people expressed interest in dancing, so we went downtown to a place called Home. Three of us taxied down with Conor, who as we got out of the taxi told us to have $20 ready and to only talk to the transvestite, but not really anything besides that. So we walked straight past the winding line and Conor palmed the be-lipsticked and fur-hatted man a $20. I guess he was more of a doorman than a bouncer, he wasn't very intimidating. But he said, "4 people is an awful lot for $20", all the while looking with disapprovingly-pursed lips and a frown at my jeans and t-shirt. So I wordlessly hand him my $20 and walk past him. Now, the other two guys with us could have followed me right in, but since Conor had told them to be ready with $20 they each handed him the bills they were holding as they walked in. I think they thought they were paying a cover, the idea of bribery hadn't quite sunken in. Ah well. The inside of the club was really upscale. The people were all attractive and rich, the decor was red and leather and decadent, and the place was packed and bouncing. The DJ was playing 80s music layered with hip-hop beats, think Sweet Child of Mine meets Mos Def. This was also the first place I've ever been to (anywhere) that ignored the public smoking ban. I don't really dance much, so I decided to justify the cover with the fact that Conor was buying the drinks and that I had an opportunity to play anthropologist. I spent a long time watching guys with popped collars get shot down by girls with short skirts. There was everything shy of actual intercourse happening on the couches and against the pillars around the room. My favorite, though, was watching the other wall flowers. I feel like I was having a lot more fun than they were. They seemed to want to be dancing or flirting or whatever, but for some reason weren't. I, on the other hand, knew that I was completely and utterly out of place, and that somehow freed me from feeling uncomfortable, which was pretty cool. After the club we got pizza at the Pizza Bar, outside of which a homeless(?) guy hit me up for a contribution to the Rockefeller Negro Pizza Fund, which is apparently a common line, but it worked on me for a buck. I have a lot easier time giving money to people who make me smile than to people who try to make me feel pity or guilt. Anyway, that night was great.

We followed it up the next day with a an Irish pub brunch that started at 2 and lasted until 6. We rolled into the pub 9 deep, so they opened up the glass doors for us and we basically owned the place for a few hours. We lingered after the meal and had a few pints. I don't normally drink during the day, but there was something so appealing about sitting around after eating, watching people pass on the street, and chatting with friends that justified an exception for me.

We left the pub and I split up with the group to see Ting Qi, a girl I'd met at a party in Cambridge the previous week. She's four degrees of separation from me, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, from Taiwan to Costa Rica to Wellesley. Her friend (3 degrees) hooked up with Anton when they were at the house last week, and Ting Qi and I spent the time while she was waiting chatting in Chinese. She goes to NYU, and I mentioned that I would be going down the next weekend, so we decided to get dinner.

I had some time to kill after the pub and before meeting her, which I managed by wandering around Chinatown. That was the farthest south I'd ever been in NYC; I tend to stay more uptown. It was awesome; the feel is completely different. I'm amazed by how quickly the neighborhoods change. You cross an avenue and all of a sudden all of the signs are in Chinese. You cross a street and you're in Little Italy and the restaurant window decorations are signs for cappuccino rather than roasted chickens.

The Grand Street subway station in Chinatown comes up in a park. I saw a big crowd watching people playing handball (which I'd never seen before), so I stuck around. I figured out by watching that this was a grudge match, as far as I could tell between members of gangs. The people on one side of the court all seemed to be wearing blue hats of different types and people standing on the other side all had clothing with hearts on them. There was lots of shouting, some of it angry, and a lot of the spectators seemed to be from the neighborhood but not directly connected to the players. I wish I'd asked someone to tell me what exactly was going on that made this game so important, but I felt like too much of a voyeur and a tourist. So I just watched. I don't know anything about handball; I was trying to figure out the rules as I went, but everyone else seemed to think that it was a really well-played and close game. Only when one team finally won did it occur to me that maybe I didn't want to be around to see the fallout. Nothing dramatic happened. I watched a lot of side bets resolved; big wads of money changed hands. One of the losing players, the guy who missed the last play, walked off quickly, to my mind trying to avoid eye contact with his 2 little children following him out of the court. That handball game is my archetype of New York. There was a tight, local community that I didn't quite understand, a subsection of this huge city that I didn't even know existed. It was a street event that I just stumbled on while wandering around. It was diverse and urban and maybe a bit seedy. I loved it.

So I waited a bit longer, then met Ting Qi and a couple of her friends at the subway station. We walked a few blocks to a Cantonese restaurant, where there was a long wait for a table, during which I recognized several faces from the crowd at the handball game. Dinner was good, and apparently authentic, and my Chinese is definitely getting better, even if we did spend almost all of the time speaking English. After dinner Ting Qi and I went uptown to the No. 6 Annex party, which was fun if unremarkable. Ting Qi went home to Brooklyn (which I've still never been to) at 3 or 4 just as the party began to die down and it started to rain (which hasn't stopped since). The Annex Sixers managed to fit 10 guests on the couches and a small blowup mattress, we watched some Aliens on TV, and all fell asleep.

So that, and a long drive back in the pouring rain and heavy traffic and the dark, was my weekend.