yangshuo

a couple of weeks ago, jon and i took advantage of the deadfest holiday to visit yangshuo. yangshuo sits about an hour away from guilin amongst some ridiculous karst scenery. limestone hills rise out of flat green fields. groves of orange and pomelo trees.

saturday, it drizzled, spreading a mist over the mountains--made me feel like a monkey king, somersaulting in the clouds. we took a bus to a village famed for its pickpockets (they've stolen all the way to india),
where we rode a
to the green lotus caves. Spelunking goes hand-in-hand with the holey mtns.

For lunch, we had the local delicacy, beerfish, but jon couldn't handle the bones.




And then we rode a "bamboo" raft down the Li river (the raft was actually made out of pvc pipes painted various shades of green). the scenary was beautiful, but i was FREEZING the entire time, and jon had to pee. as soon as we got off, jon sprinted for a bathroom, leaving me to pay...i didn't have enough RMB, so i tried to pay in HKD, but some stupid chinese tourist with a fake LV wallet told the guy that my HKDs were fake..."are you sure those are HKD? i've seen hkd, and they didn't look like that"--and then he proceeded to pull a $20 out of his stupid fake wallet. yeah, duh, of course a 20 doesn't look like a 100, but the damage was done. we had to wait till jon came back to pay in rmb.








atop some rooftop in a village that bill clinton visited. fang gui (our guide) grew up here.



saturday, we rented 3 bikes and went riding in the countryside, stopping at various parks along the way. this one has a 1000+ yr old banyan tree...and monkeys.



speaking of monkeying around...we spent RMB40 to roll around the river in a human hamster ball. standing was impossibly hard--knees and elbows flying all over the place.

after eating a home cooked meal and a ton of fresh pomelos from fang gui's yard, we went to a cave near moon mountain that the villagers used as a hiding place during the japanese invasion. we had to enter by boat, but eventually, the path rose above the underground stream for 3kms of pretty amazing tunnels. the whole thing was lit by naked bulbs...it felt like a scene from macguyver. in the middle of the cave is a huge mud pit with a mud slide. the mud was freezing, but if you stayed still, you could trap pockets of warm air around your body (like a frog). we wallowed for a bit before tramping the rest of the way covered in the stuff.

that night, we decided to spend the rest of our RMB food hopping. the rules: 1 restaurant, 1 dish, 1 drink, 1 postcard written. turns out, we didn't actually write that many postcards...a 1:1 food to drink ratio is bad news for me.





this was our last stop, mc blues. they had some pretty good snickers milkshakes. b/c it was sunday night, the whole top floor was deserted. as soon as jon asked me to play a word game, i knew. the first word game was a warmup, spelling some sentence about subway sandwiches. i played along. the second game popped the question. and then he got down on a knee and started talking, and i didn't hear a single word he said b/c 1) i was drunk and 2) HOLY SHIT! i was so overwhelmed that i accidentally said yes, altho the original plan was to say no the first 2 times so that he'd have to do it thrice, like in all the good old fairytales. i did still have enough of my wits about me to say that he better ask me again tomorrow morning to see if i remember any of it. it's really not fair getting a girl drunk before you ask her to marry you. it's not. anyways, by this point, i figured he didn't have a ring, but then he pulled out the my little pony box. it was a unicorn with the ring taped around its horn. ah fairytales.

the next day, we signed up for a half day climbing course. yangshuo is supposed to have the best climbing in all of china (self-proclaimed by yangshuo-ians). thru a combination of pulling and tugging and hanging on for dear life, i managed to get to the top of some of these routes. the guy belaying (sp?) me must've been exhausted. like hauling a piano up the stairs. jon liked it enough to want to find some walls in hk.

and here is the other regional delicacy: field snails. the shells are stuffed with ground pork, so you have to really suck to get the snail meat out. it's a noisy, juicy mess, but also quite satisfying to hear that POP when the snail shoots into the back of your throat.

west street, where the backpackers come.

kickin it old school

we downloaded streetfighter II turbo on the wii, but we can't play it with the wii controllers...you need the SNES or N64 ones...luckily jon figured out that they plug into the same ports as our ddr pads, so now we're kicking ass on our feet. it's really much harder to do the combo moves, but i imagine it'll be a much better workout. my life is silly.

toscars 2008

the theme was "a night with the maharajah"...which is basically an invitation to dress up as an indian stereotype...luckily, i had a bengal tiger outfit ready to go. i'm actually pretty proud of our last minute costuming efforts. jon's family is in town, so we had to come up with costumes for 6. all we bought was a monster roll of bubble wrap and 2 things of aluminum foil. i figured ppl could be creative. boy, was i right.

jon's bro in law (matt) went as an elephant...he made the nose and ears out of duct tape and bubble wrap. jon's sister (sophie) went as my trainer...we made her a whip out of duct tape and bubble wrap. jon went as a gay porn star of the 70s...and his brother (james) went as his afro'd cross-dressing friend (we had 2 afros lying around from past costumes). matt's friend (klotz, but i like to call him clyde frog) went as a...dolphin carrier? we reinflated seymour the wise (the balloon dolphin jon gave me for our anniversary) and made him carry it (we were running out of time and creativity).

but honestly, i liked my costume best. sophie made me stripes out of black duct tape. i made my teeth out of aluminum foil, and we drew my face with eyeliner. the ears and tail are something left over from durians bling for worlds. AND the only reason i had orange pants was b/c jon bleached my grey patagonia pants until they rolled over and said uncle (he accidentally turned them pink by washing them with my red 5 ulty shorts...). i went thru the whole night growling and saying things like "tigers aren't known for their punctuality" and "tigers are notorious for their love of corn on the cob", etc, except, since i had a mouth full of foil, i ended up sounding more like scooby doo than tigger. surprisingly, no one called me tiger lily.

and the best part of all of this? we still have a HUGE roll of bubble wrap leftover!

lots of stuff later, but first, a question:

where do people find friends if they 1) don't play ultimate and 2) don't go to church?



ok, i lied, a second question:

is it a unique expectation of our generation to have friends? i mean, everyone wants to fit in, but does it seem like we have this special need for people with whom we can share ourselves more platonically and more honestly? is this an expectation set up by sitcoms like friends and sex and the city? that we'll have ppl we can sit around with in coffee shops and talk about deep issues or nothing at all? that these ppl will not only tolerate but love our shortcomings?

it seems to me, that in our parents' generation, love was the holy grail of relationships. people expected to have a terrific first kiss, a terrific first time, a terrific, loving husband/wife. our generation is more jaded about love...we know it doesn't always work out, that a lot of ppl end up settling or divorcing or whatever. relationships require work, and we're ok with that. but we don't expect friendships to require work. we expect to have great times naturally and easily. after all, it was easy as kids right? your best friend was the kid you saw the most (unless that kid beat you up or something). but wherever you lived, you found someone to hang out with...even if you didn't like that person very much, as long as they could pitch a baseball and swing a bat (my requirements). plus, i guess most kids don't have the strongest personalities anyways, so not much to clash with...all my memories of childhood friends are of things they DID not things that they THOUGHT. and in a school full of freaks, chances are there's someone freakier than you willing to tolerate you, right?

but as "adults" there are so many more layers to peal thru...not to mention the lack of a forum where you can meet ppl. is that why so many of us go binge drinking till who knows when? or why ppl generally spend months feeling lonely when they move to a new city (barring ulty players and churchgoers of course)? i've had a couple of conversations with a couple of nonulty and nonreligious ppl about this recently...i mean, not deep conversations, just about them feeling lonely and not knowing where to find enduring friendships...i guess i've just been really lucky. thank god for ultimate.

ajkle;aghakd (in memory of yelena's blog)

the past couple of weekends have been some sort of fantastic. we didn't have the gumption to figure out a trip over easter weekend, so we decided to eat the HKD6000 that we would've spent instead. i had to cover the desk on friday, which meant coming in in frisbee clothes at 10am, going to the gym at 1, having lunch till 3 (at union bar...pretty good burgers), coming back, answering a few emails, and vamoosing at 6pm. and for all that, i get a day in lieu. i love working holidays.

that night, we splurged at stonegrill, a steak place that serves up it's meat raw on a 400 degree C slab of rock. jon's wagyu was slightly disappointing given the price (the most expensive thing on the menu, incidentally), but my superprime (whatever that means) was fantastic. plus some of the best scalloped potatoes i've ever tasted. i've never liked steak before, but man, this stuff was good. jon says we should go again...provided we don't order the wagyu, it shouldn't break the budget.

saturday, we hiked the twins and watched charlie wilson's war, dinnered at chili fagara, a small szechuan place that was too hot for me. jon liked it fine tho...i think we have different types of spicy tolerance...i can take mexican spicy till the cows come home, but szechuan spicy is beyond me. i will say that the mapo tofu there is the best i've had in hk.

sunday, we brunched at caramba, a swanky mexican place that doesn't carry ketchup and charges $22 for extra salsa! normally, these are enough to condemn any restaurant in my book, but mexican is hard to find in hk. plus, they serve a pretty mean breakfast burrito. then disc, then to kristin+grante's for guitarhero. also, they were leaving for cambodia the next morning, so we had the (always pleasurable) duty of cleaning out their fridge--homemade lasagna and cheesecake, come to mama.

monday, we went on a 45km bike ride, from tai mei tuk to shatin. tai mei tuk is a pretty busy little place. it sits next to a reservoir that they drowned a village to make, but the reservoir is no longer used b/c they get their water from china now. the bike etiquette is crazy. ppl ride really slowly and swerve all over the place. i almost killed a kid who was coming into a turn on the wrong side of the track...we were in a tunnel, both going downhill, so i couldn't see him at all. why would you ride into incoming traffic like that? and while riding across the reservoir, we saw a man with a bloodied head being lifted into an ambulance. another man had caught a really big fish (like the length of my arm) (unrelated incidents).

the masses thinned as we got farther from tai mei tuk. most of the riding was quite pleasurable, and relatively flat. a nice outing in the countryside with the sun shining and the air clear (we were pretty far from the city). i favored passersby with my rendition of doe a deer (a female deer!)...i only sing the verse where they shout the notes (RAY! a drop of golden sun...MEE! a name...). in shatin, we found a track that didn't kick us out when pulled out a disc (most places are all "no flying saucers!"), so it made a nice destination for the bike ride.

bike riding is a private affair. i felt like all the ppl who were going a different pace than i was were in a different dimension. you can do all these things you wouldn't normally do b/c in a second, ZOOM! you were outta there (or zoom! they were outta there)! you didn't have to share the time, so you couldn't possibly offend anyone (right?).

oh! and they also rented out these family death carts. they're 4-wheeled contraptions where the 2 ppl in the back pedal, and the rest of the ppl sit in a basket-like seat in the front. the front also tends to be wider than the back, and i think there's a steering wheel, but the driving wheels move independantly so if the two peddlers pedal at different speeds, then the cart turns independantly of the steering wheel...and if front wheels happen to be misaligned then the cart tips over. b/c they're hard to maneuver, these carts tend to crash...and most often, ppl place their babies and grannies in the front basket, and of course, no helmets. i can't believe it.

and then last weekend, instead of going to the sevens (the drunkest weekend in hk), jon and i dragonboated, brunched in stanley, climbed the twins in record time (58 min for him, 68 min for me), got massaged at sunny's paradise (not sketchy, i swear, but i'm peeved that the boys have TWO plunge pools and the girls only have saunas), watched HORTON HEARS A WHO (!!!), and had dinner at crystal jade. Horton Hears a Who is a fantastic movie. i was a bit worried going into it that i had outgrown non-disney animated movies, but yay, i haven't. fav quote: "i said what i meant, i meant what i said, an elephant's faithful 100 percent!". i'm gonna find a way to work it into a cheer, b/c seriously, have you heard a more cheerful thing? the animation will blow your mind too. the level of detail in the water, in the forest, etc...wow.

recently, we've discovered the pleasures of corned beef. so cheap, yet so delicious. fry it up with some scrambled eggs and onions, slather it with some horseradish sauce, and voila.

this weekend, we embark for yangshuo, which is supposed to be a backpackers paradise near guilin, famed for limestone "forests" and climbing/biking. hope the weather holds. hk is grey and bleary...back to winter.

double trouble and bubble

i love pepperidge farm verona cookies. they're the oft overlooked fruit ones. The sidepanel of the packaging describes the Art of a Cookie, which i thought would be a pseudo-recipe...you know, like, with ingredients and what not (the finest handpicked flours, etc). instead, the first thing it lists is: THE SOUL OF A BAKER! oh yeah, find a baker, pluck out his soul, spray it thrice with the spit of the fire-bellied toad (bombina bombina), and there you have your raspberry filling.

my coworker is a goat. like a goat, rushabh is a herbivore, but other than meat, he'll eat anything. today, he ordered vegetable buns from crystal jade, and we caught him eating the buns along with the paper on which they're steamed. also, those extra 8 peeps that merrick left from yesterday? yep, rushabh ate those too, all while muttering about how mediocre they are. reminds me of that simpsons episode where homer accidentally boils his pet lobster (oh sob...i miss him...marge pass the butter).

you know where it's going

peeps are on sale at wellcome--$3 per pack of 5...
...
...
i bought 3 packs (very restrained), and forced our newest colleague (he joined 3 weeks ago) to chubby bunny them :-D. merrick, the colleague, is a very small guy who eats salad everyday for lunch. i had hope tho b/c he has a very mobile face. alas, he only managed 6 before the drool got the best of him. he spit the peeps into the trash. poor peeps. at least he left me some to microwave. RAARRR MONSTER PEEPS!

appetizers

goccia, in a mad advertising scheme, just spammed me their menu for a 5 course dinner. apparently, for $888, i can eat things like "crashed potatos" (mayday mayday!), "crayfish foam" (rabies adds just that extra soupcon of je ne sais quoi), dried cod mousse, and warm cherry soup. maybe i should've gone into chefery after all. i'm a pro at funny names on funny ingredients. lessee...we could have such delicacies as flicked spinach in clownfish (pants) sauce, airbladder stuffed with foie gras, and for dessert, squirted cinnamon.

but seriously, why all the innovation in food? do ppl's palates really get bored? mine certainly doesn't. i can eat tomato soups till the cows come home (and then i'll have a burger thankee). variety, sure, i'm all for variety. but at the end of the day, gimme the good ole classics.

oh, and in an update in my life, i'm hungry (all the time. no, even more so than usual. usually, i'm not hungry but can eat an inordinate amount b/c in a past life i was (briefly) a goldfish (until i popped)...now i'm actually physically panging in my tummy constantly...and regardless of what i eat, i seem to never be full...which is actually quite nice, but still weird).

an initiative: i am trying to work the interjections "sweet soya sauce!" and "dagnabit!" into my speech. if you talk to me, pls help out by telling me shocking/disappointing things.

dreamcup 2008

they say a wise man climbs mt fuji once; a fool climbs it twice. therefore i did not climb mt fuji again (and now you know what kind of mood i'm in: rambly and irrelevant). but i did get my fill of calpis and onigiri. oh combini, how i've missed you. unfortuntely, i got my fill friday night, shortly after i landed, when i ate, let's say, 5 onigiri and an egg salad sandwich in a go (an onigiri is a tightly packed ball of rice roughly the size of my left ventricle--assuming i'm not some grinch creature with a triply small heart--poor heart, always losing turf wars to my belly and bladder--and poo to you anatomy takers who say my bladder is not in my chest cavity, mom always said i was a special one).

alriiight, away from the land of the fighting organs, we venture back to our heroine, who has embarked from a 4 hour plane ride to board a 3 hour bus ride, arriving at her hotel at 3am, to rise at 6am for a 50 min 9am game. and then we had a 5 hour bye till our next and last game of saturday. sunday promised a max of 3 games provided we didn't lose any, which we didn't, but i had to leave before our last one to catch my 3 hour train ride back to narita, which means, i played something like 100 min of ulty...which is the equivalent of one savage league game. let's just say the organization of the tournament left something to be desired. going back to the numbers: there were 60 open teams, 40 women's teams, 12 mixed teams (approximately), roughly 5 portapotties, 2 spigots for water, 1 big cauldron of soup, 1 mochi pounder, and 0 second chances. i guess in that sense, it was good that our games were sparse...i don't think i could've survived a real tourney with such meager field food.

the format kinda killed us--the whole tourney was purely elim. we were an expat team of women who are more used to playing mixed. we had never played with each other before, most of us are out of shape (or so we claimed), and honestly, i thought we'd be a team of swing handlers...as in that third handler in the ho stack who rarely touches the disc b/c some godsend boy always makes the dump cut, holds, holds, waits for it...HUCKS! plus, rumors were it'd be windy at fuji...and given my performance at kaimana, i wasn't optimistic about our disc skills in the wind. needless to say, it took us that first 50 min to filter into our roles. both teams had a fair amount of drops and throwaways; we had to learn to take the initiative for that first cut. i was surprised by how physically the japanese girls played given their size disadvantage.

losing the first game dropped us into some sort of beer bracket where we won the rest of our games for the tourney (if we won that first game, we would've matched up against fury). i mostly played handler, which is actually kinda terrific b/c the j girls all used a relatively flat mark that gave me a lot of backhand hucks. towards, the end, i was bold enough to try a flick huck, which went exactly where i intended, but was misread and not caught (receiver error!). and yelena, remember how you told me i needed to get low to throw upwind? i actually remembered this time, and i came home with a massively sore right quad and a two day limp, but at least my throws didn't do that fluttery crap anymore.

i have a theory that most j teams play the same ultimate. the better teams are just faster and connect a higher percentage of throws. so, playing j teams is like playing a video game--you get to choose your level. but regardless of speed/precision, they all make their first cut breakside from the front of the stack. if that doesn't get open, their next option is the openside in cut from the back of the stack, which will come in for a bit before it turns into an away cut up the side, which will recieve a loopy outside in throw. by our second game, we figured out a good switchy man d where the first man in the stack lines up on the break side of her girl, the second person covers io-ish, the last back is last back, and the second to last back covers in cuts. it worked well, at least for the level of teams we were playing.

by the second game, i had turned into the drill sargeant, running warmups and calling lines. not sure why, but women seem much more coachable than the mixed crowd i deal with in hk. maybe this is an unfair generalization, but what really struck me is the up calls, the counting of completed passes, the general encouragement and positivity. our team was a team of small egos (except mine) and hard workers. this is what salvaged the whole experience for me. we actually played very good ultimate, making the easy pass, dumping and swinging, cutting and clearing. we did a trap-dump drill, and then we actually implemented it during the very next game! we've been doing that drill for over a year in hk, and we still don't get it right. this tourney and kaimana make me realize just how much i miss women's ultimate.

and of course, i got to hang with katie wilson and her boobs (have we named them yet? and if not, why not? suggestions are welcome in the comments. hell, comments are welcome in the comments too). katie was sober the entire time that i saw her, but we still managed to get in some quality conversations about poop and butts. my favorite occurred while i was straddling her back, digging my elbows into her butt:

k: "can you feel that huge knot in my butt?"
me: "um, i dunno, i don't generally have lots of nerves in my elbows."

haha ha ha...ok, maybe you had to be there, BUTT (HA HA, um...) we had a good time freaking out the japanese bystanders. and she introduced me to some of her star teammates, which kinda went like this:

k: "hey guys, this is my friend lily"
me (waving frantically): "hi guys! wow! you're fury! wow! i mean, i'm not impressed, i'm cool, we're cool, yeah, cool. SNORT".

i didn't even try approaching sockeye...i might've pee'd myself. apparently, my living in asia has totally up'd the star quotient of good ulty players.

and now i'll pause and take a breath...

continuing in the theme of tidbit posts:

an email from jon:

on a lighter note, i've changed my cursor theme to 'dinosaur'. a little green dinosaur walks when my PC is busy. so cute.

that boy rocks my face.

AND! he just sent me a box of cupcakes attached to a huge dolphin balloon. to my office. in the bank. can you imagine me walking across the trading floor, with this happy dolphin bobbing above my head? (i actually put the dolphin in the plastic bag so you could only see it's tail sticking out, and now it's swimming freely under my desk). i can't stop grinning. i feel like such a kid with my cupcakes and my balloon. shall i name him seymour? seymour the wise.

where in the world is carmen sandiego

i've been going over 2007 travel for my tax returns...and i've done an impressive amt of skipping around since i've been here...

jul/aug: london
nov: perth (australia), manila (phillippines)
jan: hanoi
feb: bangkok
mar: malaysia
apr: atlanta
may: jeju (korea), tianjin
jun: shanghai
jul: boston/montreal
oct: phuket (thailand)
nov: manila (phillippines)
dec: lijiang (china)
feb: hawaii

and coming up this weekend: fuji city japan to play dreamcup!

sadly enough, i still can't find a lot of these countries on a map...southeast asia, pfffff...it's all french to me.

GENIUS!

i'm thinking about changing my standard reply to "how are you" to "hungry". it's almost always more true than "fine/good" and definitely more specific. how much free food do you think i'll score? (those of you who were worried this would turn into a political soapbox, rest assured--my priorities are intact).

setting the trap

according to the NYT's political blog (which cites the AP),

...two Vermont towns approved symbolic measures Tuesday calling for the indictment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for what they consider violations of the Constitution. The measures seek to have police arrest Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney if they ever visit Brattleboro or nearby Marlboro.

now we've just gotta find a way to lure bush to vermont...

and this is terrific (especially for garfield fans-the cat, not the president).

GO HILLARY!

hillary 2008!

i'm not often political or meaningful in this blog, but i just read the democratic debate transcript from ohio...and maybe she comes across better on paper, but how can you not be behind hillary? she's got so much more heart. you can tell that she really does do her homework. she knows the facts, she knows the voting records, she knows the ins and outs of the policies. how can you not vote for such a hardworker? she's not as smooth in front of the cameras; speechifying doesn't come naturally to her...maybe she's a bit wooden, but to me, that makes her all the more endearing. to me, she symbolizes all that got screwed over in this country by the bush villain. plus, wasn't that the complaint against gore and kerry? that they weren't personable? isn't it time we voted for someone who ISN"T personable? someone who's a bit geeky, a bit awkward, but knows her stuff? i'll be frank, i'm not up to snuff on all the policies, but i trust hillary to represent me, and i trust her to KNOW what she's signing and to research the implications her decisions will have. i loved the clinton white house. i think they did a terrific job, and she was there for every bump along the road, so i know she knows what's involved. maybe obama will be a great president. maybe he won't. it's not really a chance i'm willing to take.

over the hills and thru the woods

this weekend was nothing if not adventurous. the hedgefund sales desk organized a paintballing outing on saturday, so a bunch of us and a bunch of clients bussed all the way out to tuen mun to shoot little pellets at each other. truthfully, it was a bit of a letdown. i mean, you get shot once and you're out, so it's not like lasertag when you can run around and shoot rambo style...instead, it's a lot of waiting in brush, waiting behind cars, and sniping. i'm not good at waiting, so usually, you'd see me charging someone and getting shot in the process. i guess my ideal of paintballing was established by that scene in ten things i hate about you (we miss you mr ledger). you know, when they're dumping buckets of paint on each other? anyways, my key moments were 1) when i unloaded a whole magazine into jon's back b/c i thought he was the bad guy and 2 ) when i shot a guy in the head as he made his suicide run at me, but of course, he had momentum on his side, so he emptied his magazine into me anyways. you know those scenes in movies when ppl get shot multiple times and their bodies flail in the air? yeah, that was me. those pellets bruise! (do i watch too much tv? hey, at least it kept me off the streets).

saturday night, hubert made his signature homemade lasagna, so of course, jon and i went over to eat. turns out we weren't the only guests...turns out, every other guest was there to carboload for an action asia race sunday morning. um...oink oink? yeah, so i get talked into doing this race...the only thing they tell me is that it's a 12km run/hike, so i'm thinking it's mostly paved, probably a mountain somewhere in the middle of it. turns out they call it an adventure race for a reason. the trail is maybe 1-2km of flat running, before you turn offroad, run another 1 km or so in a stream (like literally, jumping from rock to rock, sloshing thru the muddied waters, hoping to god that your ankles hold up), and then you climb up a construction site off the side of the highway up this hill. once you top the hill (which was pretty steep and unpaved), you're running thru brush, ducking the branches. coming downhill was pretty fun, the path swerves quite a bit and the trail is pretty steep, but there are lots of trees, so you can swing from tree to tree. my strategy was to run run run run smack into a tree run run run rinse repeat. and then it's another river. i actually turned the wrong way down this river b/c of some stupid fake red ribbon tied around a tree (red ribbons marked the trail). i think i lost maybe 10 mins here? yeah, that's why my time sucked. the second river was much more slippery. i was falling all over the place...one time i fell straight onto a branch...as in, it went up my nose. that hurt. i'm surprised my nose didn't start gushing right then. other times i'd get caught up in vines while trying to go thru the bushes...those suckers are tough mfs. some ppl got scratched up pretty good by the thorns, but my tights served me well (also i may not have been traveling as fast as them). to come out of the river, you have to run along a concrete drainage area (like the race scene in grease) before flipping over a chest height guardrail. i think that was my favorite part. especially since it meant flat running for the rest of the race. i'm pretty slow on the scrambling parts, so i wasn't tired much at all by the end...i think i passed 5 ppl in the last kilometer, racing a guy into the finish. final time: 2:17. awright, completion!

i skipped disc b/c i had a massive headache (probably lack of sleep+dehydration), so i missed playing pickup with shuangy. i did catch her at dinner afterwards tho, and i got to meet her boy! he's mit 2005, course 18, random so they complement each other well. he's very nice and funny, but he has some strange theory about damp kids in horror movies...riiight james. after dinner, we played a bit of rockband, talked about how fast smite is, and then i handed her some clothes+a map and saw her on her merry way. until jazzfest, shuangy!

temptation

i was very excited about my doublecheeseburger meal from mcDs, but i accidentally ate a beef tendon noodle with lots of balls and entrails in it, so now i'm not hungry anymore. and i've run out of pear tea. do you have pear tea in the US? it is the best drink ever. my double cheeseburger is gazing at me sadly, but i'm sorry, i just can't do it (speaking of other things i can't do, i can't seem to stop sneaking fries...so very soon, the doublecheeseburger will be sad and lonely). can i get a market on how long i can hold out before eating this burger? i'm not very good at not eating food...

hot lava

a lot has been happening as of late. most exciting: my appetite is back! AND i'm peeing during daylight hours again (which is TERRIFIC for sleeping during nighttime hours). i mean, yesterday, i drank 1.5 gallons of water and only peed TWICE at work. i was practically standing on my head trying to figure out where all the water went. add to that that i hadn't been interested in food since i'd gotten back from hawaii, and i felt like a stranger's intestines had infested me (oh innertube, outertube, where is my innertube?). and when i say not interested in food, i mean, literally, not hungry. you have no idea how worried i was. i'm NEVER not hungry. i'd eat a couple bites of something and lose interest. for example, yesterday, i had half a banana and a roll. and this had been going on for 5 days. my arms and legs were all tingly, and i couldn't walk a straight line, but i still wasn't hungry much. by the way, i now know why holy men all starve themselves. you really do see visions. it wasn't unpleasant, just a nice high. Anyways, you'll be glad to know the ailment has gone the way of the sabertooth tiger. i can't wait to stick my face into an avocado (with salt! and lemonjuice! and a tomato).

the other thing i've recently gotten over is a nasty fever (the cough is a more persistent bedfellow). i've been sleeping for like 15 hours a day, which is darned nice, not to mention the time off from work, and the excuse to skip an offsite in macau (altho i would've liked to see the newly built venetian casino). seems like 4-5 ppl from my hot hot team came down with it, along with a ton of boys from the texas men's team...um...i plead innocent.

the thing i have NOT gotten over is how AWESOME my team at kaimana turned out. major props to lori for getting me in. we made it to the finals, losing to howling coyotes 15-10 (they're schwa players? and defending champs from last year). the rest of the weekend, in bulletproof form:

• on the flight over, we had to emergency stop in narita (japan) b/c some passenger got really sick. the pilot came over the intercom and said, "flight attendents, man the slides!"--i felt guilty for being so excited given the circumstances, but the SLIDES MAN!
• thursday, we tried to drive all the way around oahu, but the road ended, and responsible johnny forbid me from offroading in our rental...which was wise. we tried to walk to the other side, but instead we found a nature reserve and a albatross nesting site. albatross are HUGE, and they make these really funny noises with their beaks...click click whirr whirr arouuuga (kidding on the last one). i thought we'd only see 1 or 2, but they nest in droves...like clusters of 3 all over the place. and then lots wheeling overhead. awesome.
• friday we went on a hike with shwu+doyle+j9. it was like a scene out of lost (which incidentally, is filmed in hawaii)--jungle gyms of vines, bamboo forests, fallen logs, orange flowers, ferral chickens, and waterfalls.
• for lunch, we found some small hawaiian dig called ono. i can't remember the names of all the foods we had, but i didn't like the poi very much. my mom used to boil taro and dip it in sugar as a dessert, so i can't get used to the taste of it as a salty substrate. the other stuff was mostly meat wrapped in a huge glob of spinach, and of course, poke (which is marinated sashimi). and then...COLDSTONES! peanut butter and reeses cups in french vanilla ice cream and a chocolate dipped waffle cone. oh boy oh boy. i couldn't finish it, but we were picking lori up from the airport, so she drank the rest. yay lori!
• i met kate wilson at the friday night party, where she propositioned me for butt sex. turns out, this would be an appropriate introduction to my team, hot lava.
• jon and i went surfing sat morning (hot lava didn't have a game till 11:45). turns out he's really good at it...i guess i should stop making fun of him for owning so much billabong gear. i...could get up once or twice, but mostly i drank a lot of water.
• the surfing meant i was late for the team activities and missed the intros...whoops.
• we won 2 games and lost to yelena's team, superflown (couldn't defend their swing cut). yelena played really good fwisbee and went deep twice for amazing grabs.
• i spent the sat night party chilling with beautiful. she's just as neurotic as always. we decided we're jealous of cathy chu and her attentions elsewhere (cathychu! pay attention to US darnit!)
• i would like to take a moment in memory of the tourney breakfasts. they had soymilk. nuff said. (except i'd also like to mention the muffins and 5 types of cereals and fresh papaya and pineapple and smoothies). if you need caffeine, it is best to eat your coffee separately from your cereal...it makes your cereal mushy super fast (this lesson is courtesy of lily and her school of hard knocks).
• on sunday, we won both our games, upsetting #1 seeded howling coyotes (chelsea dengler's team), only to almost lose to phine (tucker's team). we pulled it out in the end tho, coming back from a 4 pt deficit in the first half to win on universe point. which means...NO CROSSOVER GAME!! we were done for the day! and then i got fabulously drunk doing team shoutouts, climbed some railings, went to subway, and lost my wallet. go drunk lily go! i'm definitely not allergic to alcohol anymore. that doesn't make it my friend.
• slap, the DD of the day (she faked her sips of shoutout), turned out to have a huge concussion...which probably meant she shouldn't have driven either. luckily, the concussion didn't hit her (har har) till the next morning, AFTER a night of the craziest styliniest, illest (ok, i'm not really fly enough to use ill as an adj, but i'll pull it out for slap) dancing i've ever seen. thank goodness for slap. anyways, slap drove a bunch of us to the beach. i think britta was riding on the hood, and i was standing out of a window. can i mention at this point that we'd probably already won the party?
• and THEN we went skinny dipping, which actually feels more different from normal swimming than i thought it would. yelena was also at the beach, but she wouldn't really talk to me until i put my clothes on again.
• the party was crazy good and full of dancing. voltron tried to hold a dance contest for the girls, which sucked (poor organization and no follow thru, what do you expect from boys?), except for the part where jen smith (who already had huge scabs on her hips from her sick layouts) got onstage, pulled out a killer backflip WHERE SHE LANDS HORIZONTALLY ON HER HIPS and goes straight into the worm, which she then turns into a backspin (think mikey of the turtles--you know, the one who's a party dude?). that girl is my hero.
• did i mention that britta halverson is a dead ringer for kathy dobson? i mean, except that she skinny dips and all that. but with clothes on, on the field, she looks so much like kdob that i was very happy for a lot of the weekend b/c i felt like kdob was almost there. yay kdob lookalikes. also, she (britta) is very good at frisbee, so its not like she's an abomination to the face or anything. i have to try kinda hard not to like her so much that i freak her out (KDOB! KDOB!), cuz i don't want her to think i'm a lesbian or a weirdo (not that there's anything wrong with lesbians, i'm just not one. and ok, i AM a weirdo, but not in a bad way). ok, this point is weird, move along.
• sunday morning, we won our quarters game against the UCSB alum team, our semis against phine (more comfortably this time), and lost our finals rematch against howling coyotes (so we didn't get to see any new teams). our finals rematch against howling coyotes? lasted 2.5 hours. oh yeah. it was a war of attrition. towards the end (or the middle?) chelsea laid out into mina's knee and tore, it seems, 3 out of 4 of the major ligaments. our prayers go out to mina.
• and then all of a sudden, it was over. one of the best pickup teams i've ever played on. i can't wait till kaimana 2009. you ladies are all class.

the rest of china

well, i should finish writing about the china trip before i go to hawaii...oh the burdens of my life.

after lijiang, we met our guide for shangrila--shiro. he's a tibetan with an indian accent, which makes him sound very rolly and jolly. there's a certain joy and kindness that emanates from shiro...he said at 1 point that he would've been a monk, except he likes women too much. maybe in the next life, shiro. anyways, we had a fantastic time with him hiking in tiger leaping gorge. there's a higher trail that you can take if you have 3-4 days (and horses and packs), but the views are basically the same and we were under time pressure. plus, 12km of walking in 3000-4000m altitude is enough for me.

lots of rocks to climb along the way...you just have to make sure they're stable. we saw beware of avalanche signs all along the road. at one point, there was a red+white chalk outline along the edge..turns out the dirt beneath the road had collapsed=>not good for weight bearing. yikes!

twin goats!

and cows too. we also met some villagers and their donkeys, dogs, and chickens. they're subsistence farmers, going into town very rarely, and only to buy clothes. they lost 1 out of 3 terraced fields to the road construction last year but didn't get any compensation b/c the road was built for their own good. from their hut, we could hear dynamite blasting above.

the yangtze river

we made it to tina's guest house by evening and had a delicious dinner of stir fried things. my favorite part of the dinner, for once, was not the food. it was the big coal stove grumbling under the table. and then the snickers bar afterwards--the lack of sugar was hitting me hard.

shiro told us about some of the various tour groups he's led. some ppl are really nasty and treat him like a servant. guess which nationality those groups are? wrong! not american. americans are the best ones, actually, and tour guides fight over who gets to take them (gloat) (and he wasn't just saying that for my benefit either. he thought we were both british). anyways, israelis are the worst about complaining and demanding things (as a generalization of course, i'm sure some israelis are perfectly angelic).

the next day, we woke up to a wonderful breakfast of flatbread and eggs and corn porridge before driving out of the gorge into shangrila. first stop: songzanglin. a beautiful tibetan monastery.

there are no age restrictions to becoming a monk, but you have to be sponsored by your family. it's a terrific honor for a family to have a monk (but it costs a lot to sponsor one). it doesn't sound like a bad life--you spend your time studying how to be joyful. we heard a monk listening to madonna on the radio (she's a fellow buddhist after all). the monks all seem rather upbeat and cheery.

shiro told us that tibetans believe everything is formed by natural forces (like physics), and everything has a soul. we occupy our forms temporarily, like hotel rooms. all things have the potential to achieve godliness by eschewing ignorance. true happiness is attained thru detachment from all desires.

monks have 3 ranks. the first follows 9 rules, lasting for 5 years. the second follows 30 rules, and takes another 5 years. once you've mastered that, you're in the last stage of monkhood, with 336 rules. the dalai lama has already achieved enlightenment, but he chooses to continue in his earthly form to help others. apparently, the higher lamas can choose their next form, and they'll leave hints about where to find them in the next life. boys of age 3-4 get tested extensively before they're recognized as a lama.

the monks open the doors to the protector room at prayer time to let in spirits who want to meditate too.

we got fleeced by a small boy for change (to take pics)--he promised us long life and "snow white happiness". 2 yuan bought his loyalty for the day. he would praise us loudly whenever he happened upon us in the monastery.

and liver, i know you liked that little floppy dog, which i agree is cute, but i'm getting a tibetan dog when i grow up. the one i'm holding is 30 days old, and that big one is its 11month old papa. they're so big and docile...gentle dopey monsters.

the little white lamb had a black face. jon refused to pucker up for the (disease-ridden) lamb in the photo, but he didn't think twice about oinking at the pigs (more to his tastes).

we gave a monk a ride into town, where i bought some oranges--sugar-deprivation!

in the afternoon, we went to shika snow mtn. we had to rent huge army surplus jackets to shield ourselves from the wind (even tho i was already wearing a northface). the cable car ride took 40 min to 4500m. the elevation made me sleepy, but shiro forbade napping (threatening to fine me 5000 yuan).

look! jon's throwing an iceball at me! and instead of ducking, i decided to take a picture of it! just kidding. i'm holding that iceball above the camera.

on the way down, shiro managed to wangle some digits off a girl who shared our cable car. i had a terrific headache for the rest of the day.

tibetan hot pot. the table is metal and coal heated. my sprite kept boiling. a beggar wandered to our table, and shiro gave him some money so we did too. he said that old beggars need the help, but young beggars should go out and work.

that night we watched a traditional tibetan dancing show. if you have altitude sickness, DO NOT drink the homemade barley wine (even tho the locals claim it has vitamins A-G). it was all i could do not to puke when the other tourists dismembered and tucked into the roast piglet. the yak cheese wasn't very good either--it tastes like old sour alcohol mash. no wonder no restaurants in the area offer "traditional tibetan food"...it's gross. on the other hand, the dancing style is very cool in a whirling dervish way. the copious amount of audience participation dancing tuckered me out.

here you see jon winning a tug of war contest.

the prize? a traditional smock, a thick black mustache, and a demure tibetan bride...

and here he's parading around his newborn tibetan baby...

and here he's in a pile of shit (napa lake--unimpressive in the winter. the boys had fun stomping on the frozen puddles).

hot spring in the Natural Stone Bridge Environmental Park. very relaxing.

last lunch in shangri la: yake meat broiled in soy sauce, minced and fried yak meat, cold pickled turnips, tomato+fried eggs, stir-fried wild mushrooms, cabbage soup. everything except the yak is imported.

An unremarkable last supper (we had gorged ourselves on oreos and toffee biscuits on the 5 hour drive back to lijiang)...j refused to eat until they brought the tater tots...classy.

and back to the old town. we sat in the 3rd floor balcony of a coffee shop, sipping yogurts and watching the bonfire dance below. the end.

gong hei fat choy?

i just had a very chill chinese new years, lounging at home, doing nothing much (and by nothing much, i mean playing rockband). i got off work early wednesday b/c i pulled the short chopstick. do you know how exciting it is to leave at 2pm when you normally leave at 8pm? i do. that night, we bullied hubert into cooking some babouti for us. it's a baked south african/malaysian dish involving goat+apricots-- like a moussaka, but much sweeter and spicier (the dutch used malaysian slaves in south africa...they didn't trust the natives enough b/c the natives kept stealing their cows--that's spunk for ya).

thursday, we spent a lot of time selling jon's furniture. some guy bought his bed for HKD500 (we posted at HKD1000), then took his screwdriver to reassemble the bed, then called him 3 hours later b/c he couldn't figure out the reassembly, so jon ended up having to go to the guy's place. british boys are too polite, and ppl are ridiculous. at least we got the screwdriver back.

we finally tried karaoke here. the song selection is a bit stinted but otherwise it's good times. they had 2 pages of spice girls songs, and only 2 eminem ones...which means i actually had to try and sing instead of just hollering white boy rap lyrics at the top of my lungs.

i've had a massive burger craving for the last 2 days. where is my red meat?! where are my red packets?