Failure is an option

Just kidding, I think. Nevertheless, this is much harder than undergrad. Yesterday I woke up at 6a.m. to finish a paper and had to work on it, with minor interruptions -such as class- until 3:30. I never did this in undergrad. I didn't understand people who worked hard in undergrad. Here I have a look of hunted terror in my eyes that has nothing to do with, *sharp drawing in of the breath* my time in Vietnam. I'm kidding. I'll try to stop being ridiculous.

Two weeks ago I was toting a very expensive gun in the countryside of upstate New York. It was at a clay shooting range. We have a Texan here, and he wanted to go shooting. First we stood at the stations, and yelled pull, and the little clay things flew by, and I missed them all: 0-24. I was the only person who missed them all. Even the Indian girl who was smaller than the actual gun hit one of them. We had two shots, double barreled shotgun. She hit her first shot, then swung round to smile at us all, who were standing behind. The only problem was she pointed her loaded shotgun at us when she swung around. Thankfully I was hiding behind one of the other girls.

Last night I was in New York for dinner. Some people got done with their work early, and wanted to go to the Met. I was still desperately trying to finish an economics essay, so I couldn't join them until dinner. It was too much of a splurge. It took 3 hours, but it was amazing. Donna Brazile was sitting at the bar. The train to New York is 2 hours from here. I was utterly exhausted last night, having started working at 6a.m. and then gone to New York. It was uncomfortable sleep on the way back.

Before, however, we started back we attempted entry into the Yale Club. I figure that as a Yalie I am entitled to this Yale Club, right? Isn't that what the antiquated American ruling class is all about, joining very exclusive places to play squash? So with about 45 minutes to kill before our train, the four of us swaggered up to the doorman at the Yale club and informed him we would be going to the roof for a bit before our train left, and added that we had Yale student IDs. He quietly told us that as two of us were dressed in jeans, we certainly would not be allowed in. At no time is one allowed in the Yale club in jeans. He then suggested that we would be more comfortable at a Mexican restaurant around the corner called Tequilaville, and what is more just being a Yale student won't get you in. You have to be a member. At this point reactions in our group began to diverge. The New Yorker kept trying. Where is the membership information? Can I fill out an application here? The Norwegian was wearing a pair of jeans undoubtedly many times more expensive than the $10 cargo pants bought in Malaysia that I was wearing. I, typically, was ready to surrender and leave, and go to Tequilaville. Kidding. We did not go to Tequilaville. We got on the train and went home.

Touchdown, absurdities

I'm at Yale now and it's a profoundly strange place. I'm not a skull yet, at least to the best of my knowledge. Would even I know if I were a skull. I'd probably figure it out after several sitting presidents and members of congress started urinating on me. That's what skulls do to the new ones. I heard that somewhere... Alright.

Specifically, this place is so darn weird because of the internet. Al Gore, the inventor of the internet, attended this school, and setting it up has been counterintuitive in the extreme. In short, I had to admit defeat before I succeeded. Is this one of, "there is no spoon" things, a la The Matrix? From where I'm sitting, it smells like one. Extreme frustration, not an hour ago, gnashing of teeth. It was difficult, you see, because I figured it out. BBC was starting back at me. After successfully navigating the housing manual, finding the page that instructs you on how to get online yourself, and, haha, navigating the menus, I was surfin' the net. Astonished triumph. I never read the instructions, and one of the reasons why I never succeeded at science is I cannot for the life of me follow instructions. I hate them. Nevertheless, I was very definitely surfin' the net.

Then, I decided to restart the computer, without a real reason, but rather from a vague desire to consolidate my gains. I don't know why. Why did Hitler invade Russia? Some things can't be comprehended. I think I just compared myself to Hitler. Forget about that. It will ruin my 2026 congressional bid. Forget it now. I'm on the fast-track to SKULLDOM, and it doesn't matter what I say, and I can hyphenate as I please.

For whatever reason, my restarted computer was unable to surf the net. I lost my figurative marbles, perhaps that hints too strongly at insanity to convey the depth of my anger at this machine, on which I am now typing, but there was a distinct strain of purple insanity in my anger. Marbles is the right word. After a worthless and potentially embarrassing bit of shouting and gesticulating that lasted the better part of two hours, I gave up and resigned myself to a restorative dinner of high-sodium noodles, it helps me forget. When I slammed the door angrily, I was not the member of any network, literally.

Down into the 1920s era, stunningly beautiful, dining hall building, down into the hot, dark basement. Motion sensor lights. The motion sensor lights in the kitchen did not work. I ate in peace, relative peace, in the dark, until a woman walked in. I scared the bejesus out of her. Now she thinks I am the creepy guy who hangs out in the dark kitchen by himself. I'm getting a reputation here, and the disconcerting thing is, it's not much different from the one I have in DC, and China for that matter. I hate myself. Then I returned to my room and my internet was working perfectly.

An act of impropriety

I was hot and tired and worried about time in Qingdao when I was heading back to Hangzhou for one more night before flying back to Hong Kong on the way to the U.S. I didn't know why the taxi to the airport was taking so long. I couldn't understand what he was saying, and I hoped that I would not have to visit an ATM again. I spent more than I meant to, about 300$ more. Thankfully yesterday I got my tax rebate (with other assorted bills and unpleasant things in the accumulated month of mail at home) so I can blow it on an XBOX 360 and not worry about spending too much in China. Back at the airport I was distressed. I didn't know which counter to go to, I didn't understand why the guy at the door to the airport, not the security line but the door to the outside world, was screening my bag. My whole state of mind was bad. After sorting it all through, with much anguish, I finally approached the almost nonexistant security line, confident that my trials were about 99% finished, and this would be a formality.

A quiet man approached me, smiling, and launched into a Chinese explanation, with much pointing at signs and then at my bag and then back at the ticket counter. I knew immediately that he wanted me to check one of my bags, and this airport, for some reason, would only let you carry on one bag no matter what airline you were on, but as I stood there, exhausted, nerve wrought, I realized that I had to figure something out. To play for time I did what I do best: played dumb. I made him explain it about 3 times. He spoke no English and I pretended, if it is possible to believe this, that my Chinese was worse than it actually was so he would keep explaining. I would like to say that I came up with something that got me through, I didn't. A woman came up who spoke English. Before she started talking the man explained to her the situation, in Chinese, and he said my Chinese is terrible, which is true, unfortunately. However, I did understand it when he said it was terrible, so I guess that sort of evens things out, perhaps it doesn't.

The woman started speaking to me and said that she could speak to her manager. Perhaps I had something valuable in the bag? I blinked, realized there was some light she was letting into the situation and said yes, I do have expensive things in there. I suspose there actually were valuable things in my bag, cameras, and a few pearls for my mom and sister, but the real reason I wanted to hold onto my bag, and carry it on the plane myself was that I was tired. My bag was in my hand and I did not want anyone taking it from me. Maybe if I had been better rested, or hadn't wasted so much money on junk that I didn't need, or if the taxi ride hadn't lasted so long, maybe I would have complied and walked back to the ticket counter. Strike a blow against the old ugly American stereotype and play by the rules. But she was giving me a way out. Yes, there were valuable things in there. She said that if I were a VIP I could go through. Was I a student at Qinghua University (arguably the best or the second best university in China). Another flash of light, this time it was blinding, and I couldn't see that it illuminated a path I perhaps should not have walked down. No, I was not a Qinghua student, but I go to Yale. It was a magic word. Her face lit up. Well then, of course you are a VIP. Do not worry about checking your bag, follow me, this will be no problem. Do not tell the other passengers. They might get angry.

I don't know what this makes me, but this was a shameless exploitation of a name to get an unfair benefit.

Back in the States

Sitting in Nantucket now with my family. Jet lag affects me worse than most people. I don't really know how long I've been back. Five days, six? It all kind of blends together, like I'm emerging from some sort of swamp. I do remember getting back, and wanting to go to bed at about 3p.m., but forcing myself to stay awake. In the mornings I was wide awake and wanted to take very long bike rides, the mornings in America. I woke up at 4 a.m. for a few days. Now I can stay up 'till midnight and I wake up about 7:30. I still want to nap at about 3 p.m. Somewhere there is a line between jet lag and my natural sloth. I don't know where it is.

My last week in China was exhausting. I went to Qingdao with Stacy. It is full of German architecture, because it was a German colony. German architecture in China is a strange blend, but it works. It's right on the ocean, the street food is excellent. Really relaxed place. Hangzhou is uptight, beautiful, worth it, but up tight. In Hangzhou there is minimal street food. There are Porsche and Rolls Royce stores. Qingdao is about the same size and poorer. Qingdao will host some Olympic sailing events, so I saw Olympic stuff everywhere. Neon lights, huge roads, and the "One World One Dream" sign.

Hangzhou was a great experience. I miss the place and the people there. Yale starts in about 2+ weeks. The first thing I do at Yale is a 2 week long orientation. During my aunt's grad school orientation, she was sent to an island in the middle of a lake for several days with no food. The idea was that she would learn self-reliance. So if I don't post anything for a few weeks, you'll know what's up. I really don't want to go to an island in the middle of a lake. There I said it, does that knock my manliness down a peg?

Winding Down in China

Today is my last full day in Hangzhou. Things have been good here. There is a lake in the middle of town. The mountains are nice. I get to practice my Chinese. Earlier I didn't know if it was good or not, now I know, it's awful. Chinese grammer has got to be the most complicated subject in the world. I can't for the life of me understand it. At least I know now how difficult this language would be to learn. Nevertheless I would like to come back. Hopefully I can arrange a return here while in grad school.

Last weekend I went to Shanghai. It was my first time there, and the city is impressive. They have an IKEA in Shanghai. We were traveling with a Swede battling a severe case of diahhrea (that word is impossible to spell) induced by a tuna sandwich he ate at a cafe here which I happen to love. I just drink the coffee there you see, no food. He was miserable on the train to Shanghai, and my Dutch friend and I found this hilarious. I wish I didn't do this, but I find myself laughing at minor misfortune now. The Swede spoiled our fun by perking up immensely when we went by the IKEA. My first meal in Shanghai was of Swedish meatballs, eaten in the vastness of the IKEA's retail space. The Swede insisted.

Shanghai has a river down the middle of it, and on one side is the old, colonial Bund. On the other side is Pudong, modern and futuristic. We found a great hostel with a roof-top backpacker cafe just steps from the bund. From there we spent the evening watching the skyscrapers in Pudong light up. Of course we were not sleeping at that hostel. The Swede booked one on the other side of town, much closer to the IKEA.

The air quality in Shanghai did not seem problematic. Both times I've been to Beijing breathing has made me sick. My throat hurts and my sinuses start to act up. In Shanghai, no problem. There is a fairly kitcshy area called the Yu Gardens near the Bund where we spent a bit of time eating. It's supposed to look like "Old Shanghai." It's a little annoying, like Disneyworld. The food is cheaper in the Yu Gardens though. There is also an area of older, colonial building on tree-lined streets called the French Concession. We spent an afternoon there joking about how European it was and how we expected to see men wearing socks with Sandals. The Europeans I was traveling with cannot understand why we Americans insist on separating sandals from socks. They apparently regard their socks as a sort of security blanket.

The problem with Shanghai is that it is very easy to live a European/American life, and you are not forced to learn Chinese. If I come back here and choose to live in Shanghai I will have to be careful not to fall into that.

Tomorrow I go to Qingdao, provided my visa extension comes through as planned, and will meet a friend from undergrad for a few days before heading back to Hong Kong, and then back home.

huangshan

Last weekend I went to the Huangshan Mountains, aka the Yellow Mountains. Part of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon was filmed there. I was walking home one day and I passed a travel agency. I decided to go in there and try to set up a trip to the Yellow Mountains, we had been talking about it for a few days. Seemed like luck that I passed by. I walked in and they spoke no English. I did it in Chinese the best I could and figured that things were okay, I thought I had a bus ride, hotel, park passes, and tour guide arranged. Upon getting to the park I found that I had that arranged, and much more, my friends and I (3 people including me) were part of a Chinese tour group. The red hats, and the orange hats that line up endlessly at Tienanmen Square to see Mao, that was us. I got a red hat. We followed a guy with a loudspeaker. We were the only non-Chinese in the group, which thankfully was not huge. I thought the trip was verging on disaster and my friends were a little angry at what I had gotten them into. Their Chinese, hard to believe, is worse than mine so I was the go to guy. My friends and I wanted to hike up the mountain, they wanted to take a cable car. I realized that we would never find our hotel on our own, the mountain was huge, so after much confused arguing in English and Chinese, I persuaded my friends to go with the Chinese group. That was a low point. After we got up there, the scenery was incredible, although the crowds were huge. It is the China that you see in movies. We walked on the ridge line all afternoon and got to our mountaintop hotel just as the sky opened up in a huge rainstorm. Our guide warned us constantly that it was about to rain. We were fairly angry in general, so we did not buy a raincoat as an act of defiance. Thankfully we were not rained on. The rain cleared away after dinner and we saw one of the most incredible sunsets I have ever seen. The mountains are in the clouds. We stayed in a dorm room with about 5 other Chinese guys. I went to bed about 10pm, totally exhausted, but did not sleep much, because one of the Chinese guys had the most severe snoring I have ever heard. It sounded like animals were fighting in his throat. He probably will not live for very long, either because of whatever is causing that horrible noise, or someone will kill him out of annoyance.

We were awoken at 330am, time to see the sunset. We walked in the dark on slick stone sidewalks. Sometimes on the edge of hills, no rails, and steep drops. We walked to a hilltop, mountaintop? I don't know. I was almost completely disoriented. Some of our group were hiking in pajamas, two people, a mother and daughter. We called them the "pajama people." The pajama people were the slowest. My dutch friend has a light, and the guide asked us to walk at the back of the group, to sort of add some definition to where our group was in the darkness. The pajama people, however, kept slipping even further behind. Around 4:30, after hiking for an hour in total darkness, other than my dutch friend's light, we lost the pajama people. I asked the dutch guy if we should go back for them. He was even less sympathetic to the Chinese group experience than I was, and his response was "absolutely not," and he kept going. So we didn't see the pajama people for about 5 hours, and somehow they turned up at the bottom with us. I have no idea how that happened. We arrived at a hilltop to watch the sunset, but the fog or the clouds were too thick, we didn't see it. It was time to hike 8km down the mountain, all stairs. We were going down pretty well when we happened upon a possibly intoxicated, rather fat Chinese man. He kept daring us to climb an impossibly steep series of stairs up to a mountaintop. Of course we all tried to do it. The five of us (my group plus two Chinese from the large Chinese group - the five of us wanted to hike down together while the rest took the cable car down), sprinted up, holding onto a rope at the side of the stairs. About halfway up we realized that it was a stupid idea, and the Chinese man had left already so he would not witness our humiliation. I am slightly ashamed, but not really ashamed, to admit that we stopped, and the dutch guy kept going. So I sat on a very steep Chinese staircase on the side of a mountain for an uncomfortably long period of time, but the views were nice. The views were very nice. The scenery in the Huangshan is some of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The walk down 8 km of stairs completely exhausted us, and suggested that a walk up 8km of stairs the previous day might not have been possible. It seems in the end, that by going with the Chinese group, I might have stumbled into the right thing.

Hangzhou

I'm in Hangzhou, sitting in a Sofitel, and its about to thunderstorm. I wanted to find a cheaper place to use the internet, but its getting very dark all of the sudden, I just saw some lightening, and I seem to have no choice but to go here to use the internet.
I still don't really know where to go to use the internet cheaply near my apartment. I live in a huge building about 20 minutes ride away from the city center, something like my old situation in Hanoi, but here the scale is bigger, even though Hangzhou is a smaller city than Hanoi.
It is now storming violently, a lot of wind. I go to language school every day for four hours and have two different classes inside that time. One speaking for two hours and one grammer for two hours, but it all turns into speaking, because we are all terrible at reading, writing, and grammer. It's hard to say how good I am, but I am enjoying it.
Hangzhou was actually a great choice for a city in China to visit. It is not like Beijing, the air is breatheable, there are shady streets, and there is a huge lake to the west of the city. The city does not extend around the lake, because on the far side of it there are mountains. Supposedly there are tea plantations out there, and we plan on visiting them one of these days. Shanghai is about 1.5 hours north of here, and I'm going in a couple weekends.
I have about 10-15 classmates at various levels of Chinese. About 1/3 Americans. I'm probably going to eat dinner with a Swede and a Dutch guy. I live across the hall from a Chinese-Ecuadorian. It's a diverse crowd.
I actually like this city, which is more than I can say for any other Chinese city I've visited.
My room is tiny. I am figuring out the buses, or trying to. Nothing really unusual has happened, other than the first night here. I was supposed to be met at this hotel by a guy named Mr. Song. He didn't show so I was kind of stuck at about midnight on the side of the road. I found an expensive hotel, and it turned out fine.

Sittin' in Saigon

As I watch the world float by from the shaded veranda of this cafe, sipping the fine fruit juices of the Orient, I find myself contemplating the deep meaning of existence and the underlying futility of all for which we strive in this unending struggle of inputs and machinery that we call the world.

Is this what a blog is supposed to sound like? I think so. Am I supposed to, at the risk of offending my Catholic friends, pontificate? Yes, allow my mixed up ideas and poor syntax to dominate your mind!

I had to get that out of my system, and frankly, don't say you weren't expecting it. Cause you were. I'm in Saigon, day two of my trip. The city has changed a lot since I was here last, but not too much. There are still many more motorbikes than cars. I've forgotten where to go to get simple things done, like laundry, buy things at basement prices, use a computer, so I spend lots of time wandering around. I have good deal of time to do that though, because most of my friends are English teachers or Vietnamese teachers, and they work all day. I'm seeing a few American friends and a few Vietnamese friends for a few days, then it's over to China. I leave on Saturday.

I'm staying in the backpacker district. I walk through the backpacker district and occasionally fight the impulse to vomit. It's partially the jet lag, partially the sewage smell, partially the ramshackle westerners who get drunk with prostitutes every night, partially the Nigerians who sell drugs on the street corners. I walked home last night from a market, not that late, and was propositioned twice by prostitutes in the space of less than a mile. At one point I was used to all this. I guess if I were staying the uptake would be faster than it was last time, but it is still a shock to be here, but a good shock. Vietnam is a great place, and it is wonderful to see the friends who are here.

I figured out why Vietnamese people usually don't walk the streets and eat. Actually I've got two theories. One, if you are doing anything other than paying attention to what you may or may not be stepping on and the motorbikes whizzing by you, you will step on something horrible or get hit by a bike or car or bus. Two, if you are sitting in one place you will have a constant smell and set of sights you can get used to, allowing you to focus on what you're eating. If you walk and eat it's a constantly changing array of stimuli, powerful smells, sights, sounds of things rushing by, people asking you for money. You can't use all those senses at the same time. You don't enjoy the food. I walked and ate this morning, and spent about an hour drinking coffee, recovering. Thankfully, it's quite a bit of fun to recover with the coffee here.

Leaving in two days

It's June 20, and I leave Sunday June 22 at 6 a.m. I am sitting in a coffee shop in Terre Haute that has a pretty feeble internet signal. I'm the angry guy in the corner making obscene gestures at his computer. This blog entry is actually my 12th or 13th step along the thousand pace journey to insanity on which I so bravely embarked when I decided to quit my job in DC about 2 months ago. I know it has logic, grad school, Yale, yada yada yada, but it is a crazy process. All of my belongings except for 2 backpacks full of "necessary items" are crammed into a tiny room.

I'm in Indiana seeing my parents, sister, sister's boyfriend, grandparents, etc. Friends from HS I still keep in touch with are no longer in town. Hence, I am sitting here, trying to figure out what to write. I also got a video camera for my birthday, and I'm trying to decide if I should take it to Vietnam/China.

One of my friends was kind enough to email me a newsclip, highlighting an instance where a Vietnamese soldier went nuts with his AK inside his barracks and killed four people before committing suicide. Thanks bro, way to bring that to my attention. I am really excited about going to Saigon, and then to Hangzhou. My worry is that I will not like China. I'm supposed to like China, because I'm going to study it at Yale. If I don't like traveling there, then I've sort of picked the wrong horse. That's not a huge problem, because I can switch emphasis to SE Asia in my program pretty easily, but as I learned in DC over the last couple years, SE Asia related jobs do not grow on trees. There, in a proverbial nutshell, is my dilemma.

And I'm totes going to liveblog all of it, making everyone in the world hate me. I feel an emo song coming on...

The Background

I've never been able to get beyond the suspicion that blogs are figments of a self indulgent fad that we will come to regret in the future, like bellbottoms. I know not all of us are convinced that they are gone forever, and I applaud that, it's called sticktoitiveness, and there is not enough of that going around these days. Nevertheless, for me to be convinced that it is permissible to have this blog, it must have a purpose. I kept one of these things in Vietnam, a trip away from college in D.C. that lasted 1 year. I tried to write in it when I got back, but it never took off.

In my world a blog needs a purpose, because it is basically a surrogate for the email a friend from far away sends you to keep in touch. I don't want to bombard people with emails for a couple of reasons. That I'll forget to put people's names in the "to" line is probably the biggest one. And then there will be hurt feelings, recriminations, withering glances, nasty phone messages, death threats, restraining orders, appearances on daytime talk shows... I don't need that, and frankly neither do you (the plural you, in this case). And I also won't know how often to send the messages. You can be sure I wouldn't get the balance right, the messages will either come too often or too rarely. Furthermore, when I receive a message, I feel a slightly larger obligation to read it than I do to read some blog floating out there in the expanses of the internet universe. That is what this blog is, a point in the internet universe you can use to deduce my location, a lodestar, if you would.

That was insufferable, I know, and I still haven't really told you this blog's purpose. I was fortunate enough to get accepted to Yale's MA program in international relations. This means I'm leaving D.C. for two years (at least). If I can keep it up, this blog will be the way I update all you folks who care to shoot an occasional glance over here on what is going on in my self-delusional, paranoid world. My goal at Yale is the following:

TO BECOME A SKULL

and that is all I can say. Take care everyone. - Arlington, VA