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?

day 3: lijiang

on the third day of christmas, an angel gave to me...

a trip to the hairy yak meadow via cable car (3700m high). the jade dragon snow mtn, a virgin peak, looms over. At the foot of the mountain is the Baisha Land (means white sand in chinese), named for the bodies of the slaughtered Puni warriors (history loves a pun). The Naxi won the land at great cost, but the land itself was too infertile to grow anything but grass for the cows to munch.

ah mah ni bo mi hon--6 holy words that spin the world around. the monks at the top of hairy yak meadow make circles, with tins, rosaries, with their daily walk. big circles and small circles, around the words that called into being. did things exist before they had names? do words create consciousness, or does consciousness create words? a shedding of the beast.

we wandered off the path next to a "lawn no trample" sign. we laid in the grass, under the mountain, and listened to the ringing in our heads. the sky was big above us.

zhang yimou (director of crouching tiger, hidden dragon) produced the impression lijiang show we watched in the afternoon. it's basically a bunch of villagers leading horses around and line dancing. they kept yelling things like "i dance for you! i sing for you! i'm just a villager!" the open-sky theater that gazes upon the mountain was supposed to lend majesty, but the show was too obvious for me. i fell asleep with my head on my hands and my butt on a tree stump. i think jon liked it well enough, maybe b/c he couldn't understand what they were saying.

that evening we spent in the village of the dogs, aka shuhe village, which is 600 years old. i ate my favorite of the local foods: chicken eye pea rice cakes--it's a glutinous fried mass that's mixed with bean sprouts, vinegar, spices...mmmm glutinous, mmmm fried (i actually like yak yogurt better, but only b/c you can drink it out of a glass bottle. i'm a sucker for drunken yogurts. plus, since you drink it, it's not technically a food right? which obviously means it doesn't contain any calories and won't do you any harm if you have 4 in 1 go). anyways, back to the dogs. we saw everything from st bernards to huskies to pitbulls to collies to cocker spaniels (not to mention the countless roaming mutts). i fed a demanding little thing all the ham from our soup under the table. the heartless bastard lost interest in me as soon as we left the table. i mean, is it too much to expect a bit of following around?

day 1: shenzhen to lijiang

Flying out of shenzhen was...amusing. first off, there was a riot in the airport. no beer bottles thrown or anything, but definitely a crowd doing organized chanting and maybe a placard or two. they were concentrated around a specific check-in line, so i assume they were protesting an airline. it looked impromptu--a bunch of irate passengers with high senses of civic responsibility. democracy is alive and well in china, where ppl believe that they really can make a difference. imagine what would've happened if they'd done it in the US...blup blup blup blup (thought bubbles)...big men in black suits and dogs and cops and backrooms and shoot first, ask questions later (don't scoff, airport police really did shoot some poor guy who didn't speak english and was reaching for his cell phone--conveniently, i've forgotten any specific details that would allow a googler to check my facts). the shenzhen airport's response to the rioters? one bewildered cop, waving his arms around ineffectively. la di da.

a man hawked a loogie (sp?) onto the floor of the bus taking us from the terminal to the plane. about a minute later, the guy next to the spitter drops his cup of coffee, splattering only the spitter. jon says it's the world spitting back at him (gravity: "take that!"). i like it when karma is swift...i felt quite righteous.

en route to our hotel in lijiang, we passed a man squatting on the back of a tricycle, carrying a hawk on his arm. apparently, hunting is a popular pasttime amongst the native naxi ppl (by the way, that x is soft to make a shhhh sound...so the word doesn't sound like nazi at all). our guide says 1 hawk eats the equivalent of 2 cows in a year. i wonder how many quails it's got to catch to make up for that.

and now some color on the local culture: Dongba (as practiced by the naxi's). Dongba tribal culture is matriarchal and hellish from a girl's perspective. the women do all the work and inherit all the property. the men...cultivate their entertainment skills. a dongba woman prides herself on not letting the man lift a finger in manual labor. she wants her husband to be a very good conversationalist, so she makes him go and read while she slaves in the fields. in the old days, no one got married. the women slept in a big house, and the men would slip in at night and entertain them. if that's matriarchy, give me patriarchy any day.

the creation myth: in the beginning, there were 9 brothers and 7 sisters. the 9 brothers broke open the sky, and the 7 sisters broke open the earth. i guess then they got bored, so they got it on. the gods got mad and sent a flood. only 1 man survived. he procreated with a god's daughter, leaving 3 offspring: the progenitors of the tibetans, the bai tribe, and the naxi ppl. my favorite part of this myth is when they call on "the wise men and the able men"--which category do you fit in?

on our way thru the cultural museum, we saw a HUGE crossbow. it was taller than me, must've taken 2-3 ppl to shoot. i asked our guide what it's for--hunting. what did they hunt?--rabbits. WHAT?! upon further prodding--bears.

the curator also showed us some ancient barks with ancient writing. she said the barks will last forever b/c they're made from special trees. when asked how old these barks were--100 yrs (but apparently they have ones that're 600 yrs old in special storage, and some stored at harvard if you guys want to go take a look).

then we learned about the love suicides. marriages are arranged, since its a land based society, but love suicides are practically heralded as good life choices. the way the thing usually goes is this: the boy and the girl run for the hills, frolick in a cave for 2 days or so, and then they either 1)eat poison or 2)throw themselves off the cliffs (always make sure the boy goes first, giving him a gentle shove if necessary--this from our male guide who says it's b/c boys are more wishywashy about love vs life choices). according to the lore, those who die by love suicide achieve great peace in paradise; they ride deer for horses and use tigers to till their fields (apparently they still have to till fields, but i guess that says something about the work ethic of the society). weird. i mean, you don't like your arranged mate? come commit love suicide instead! no downside, we promise.

that afternoon, we climbed elephant mtn, which isn't a tall mountain, but is a very high mtn considering we started at around 2000m. li (our guide) thought we were crazy (i don't think he enjoyed the exercise). halfway up, i spied a couple making out in the bushes. i guess not many ppl pass this way. and no wonder. we could really feel the elevation--let it be noted that in the time of need, jon refused to share his water (altho he did just huff his way up, and i had been sitting in the pavilion waiting for a while--that's right, i beat him up (the hill that is, remember no domestic violence here, move along, move along)).

then we went to the old town, which only got older after the earthquake knocked down all the modern concrete buildings to allow for the erection of more "old" wooden buildings. its a nice, quaint place where backpackers spend months at a time. no cars allowed, only horses and i guess bikes (if you're suicidal and fancy hitting your face on the slippery cobblestones repeatedly). plenty of hostels and coffee shops and wifi. at night, a hopping club scene.

J really liked the rice cakes with brown sugar (above). I preferred the yak's milk yogurt. neither of us really liked the dongba baba (but it's hard not to buy b/c, well, who doesn't like saying the words "baba please").

we bought some native teas (pu'er is made here!) for our parents after an extensive tasting procedure. the tea lady discarded the first cups and used tweezers to handle everything. very professional. apparently, teas can cure all sorts of ailments, including obesity. tune in for next post's installment of lily's china vacation--transition free, we promise (and holy shit i'm long winded).

on a horse in old town square

spicy wontons, a post-dinner snack.

for $10, you can hire one of these to take your wish down the river.

the good fight

wow, so many things have happened. we bought a spinning bike from the gym for $1000 (around USD125). they're switching the old bikes out for new-fangled electric ones. maybe now that i have this way of letting off steam, i won't beat jon so much (kidding! domestic violence is never funny). jon wants to name the bike "whizz", so he can add ambiguation to the words "i'm going for a whizz"--he's a wit, that one.

and, we are proud owners of rockband, the most awesome ps3 game EVER. let's just say what with the drumset and the bike, my apartment is (even more) crowded. we may have spent the entire weekend playing it...i can't wait to get home tonight and design tattoos for my rockers. we have two bands called aural mayhem (in which i'm the guitar and jon's the drums) and frog face fish (roles switched). ok, enough about my pretend life.

the ankle is slowly getting better. today i hopped gently on it (while supporting with hands on bed). i'm off the ibuprofen, which means i can feel the full benefits of doug's "massage" (ouch!). and he says i have a golfer's elbow, so we're working on that too.

WHAT'S THIS ABOUT TOSCI'S?!!! Save the flavors!

day 0.5 in china: shenzhen

<-jade dragon snow mtn in lijiang

this is gonna get very long, so its pseudo linear with bumps along the way that have nothing to do with anything...i guess that's how i write anyways. and it'll be in installments. and the photos will be random (can you tell i'm adding to this intro as i go?) the first thing i did in china was lose $100 to a conniving cabbie. i was gonna pay him $140 to drive me 40km (from the hk-shenzhen border to our hotel near the airport). when we were getting out, i handed him $200 and asked for change. he said he didn't have change, so i paid him $40 more (in HKD), and he fumbled around his pockets a bit before handing me back my benjamin (err i guess its actually a mao, but mao's not very descriptive since every bill in china is a mao)--or so i thought (DUN DUN DUN)! he handed me a fake hundred! of course, i didn't find out until i tried to spend it (which i did several times in many ways: after crumpling it up, after soaking it in water, to a street vendor wearing gloves. apparently its a very very bad fake. jon thinks its printed on A4 paper, but it wasn't my fault! it was dark! and um, yeah, it was dark!). i'm a bit peeved, b/c i already think that $140 for 40km is pretty steep. come on, 25miles?! i used to drive 25 miles to pick up my groceries!

funny things seen on tv while in china:

1. a jolly, bearded caucasian man turned himself blue. the interview was in canto, so i didn't catch a lot of it, but i think he did it with a glass of water and an electric current.
2. a program about ppl breaking guiness world records--1 guy hung horizontally from a helicopter for a significant number of minutes using a bowl and his abs (the bowl created a vacuum).
3. a live variety show of police/army propaganda. lots of soldier/dancers doing choreographed kicks, choreographed marching in place, and choreographed...police barracades (?), all to music, very weird. i guess china is very proud of its large standing army.

that first night in shenzhen, we ate at the dongbei equivalent of a yakitori place (which means it had that extra splash of msg to make it authentically chinese, but i'm not sure what makes it dongbei specifically except that the owner/chef is from dongbei. i guess in china, restaurants are labeled by the loyalty of the workers, not by the type of food--which was HOT). everything came skewered, well, except for the BIG POT of spicy soup filled with yummy veggies. we daredn't (is that an ok contraction for "dared not"?) try the fuzzy egg or the various organs, but jon was very brave and crunched the cartilage like any old pro. of course, i ordered the corn, eggplant, and bokchoy (on a stick! all on a stick!), and they were delicious. we ate as much of the hot sauce soup as possible, fishing out the solids and dabbing them on plates to relieve them of their fiery bathwater. nevertheless, i was jonesing for a popsicle afterwards (in keeping with the sticked theme). instead, i got a "strawberry" ice cream cone--half the cone was missing, the ice cream tasted very artificial, and the "real fruit" turned out to be raisins. on the upside, 1 big bottle of beer only costs $4! 1 handle of rice liquor only costs $5! (not that we bought any, but it's refreshing to see that we could've gotten drunk cheaply--that's the equivalent of 50 cents, btw). and that's how we spent our first night in china.

again

i sprained my ankle last night at pickup. i didn't even step in a hole or on a foot/umbrella handle. all i did was step. i guess my legs were pretty tired from the 3 hours of beach disc sat night and the 8km run sunday morning...but today my muscles aren't sore at all. as sprains go, its pretty mild--definite tearing of stuff, but no discoloration. i had to hop up my 5 flights of stairs last night, but today, i can put pressure on it. i'm seeing the physio 3 times this week for ultrasound. i love health insurance.

other than that, the weekend was terrific. saturday, we played beach from 3-6. towards the end, we were playing games to 5, make it take it, which is an AWFUL idea on sand. turnovers cost so much more, and you're basically running nonstop. i tried to cover jon on two of his deep cuts, but he blew right by me. pshhh, boys. great fun tho. the next morning, we caught the 8:30am pats vs jags game in stanley at MAIN STREET USA, an ostensibly american bar with a swiss chef (they even had swiss fondue on the menu). very nice eggs. go pats!

afterwards, we jogged the catchwater back to parkview. the catchwater is the flatest jog in hk, except at the end where you're going uphill for 10 min straight. phew. i love jogging back to parkview, b/c linda and hubert always feed us well. last week, hubert made true german goulash (it stewed for over 24 hours). this week, we had smoothies. we just had time to ride the bus back to central and pick up our cleats before heading to pickup.

today, jon is home sick with a cold, and i'm gimping around the streets of the city. go us!

cat got my tongue

it's not that i have nothing to say, it's that last wednesday or so, i lost my coherency. all of a sudden it became incredibly hard to make sentences, english or otherwise. this is not good. it's especially not good for the people i'm interviewing. i can't hold up my end of a conversation to save a life (hopefully not mine). unfortunately, this doesn't seem to limit my penchant for talking. i mean, i was never eloquent, but usually, when i opened my mouth, something pseudo-ok would come out...i'm still opening my mouth, but i think i'm just confusing a lot of ppl, including myself. non sequiturs galore. sigh. i've gotta stop talking. it's making me look pretty dumb.

on the bright side, i had a dream last night that involved a smite reunion and a lot of hugging.

a dancing monk

its beginning to smell a lot like christmas

the promotions just came out, and philipp (my boss) is now an MD! yay! he insists that deep down, he's still the same old philipp, but just in case, i've taken to sir'ing him. "would sir like a coffee?" and so on. one never knows how careful one should be. jk. i only do it b/c it makes me feel very charlie brown and somewhat southern. yesterday he tried to make us stop sir'ing, to which we began sire'ing, and now we can sir to our big bald heads' content (who says hearts are the only organs seeking content? p.p.s. it's weird that content means happy but contention means strife).

hold that thought. i just lost a food challenge, and my face is covered in chocolate donut (not to mention egg). a bit of background: brian bought me a rice box from the congee place. as soon as he gets back to the office, a broker turkey arrives. keep in mind that i already have a box of half eaten lobster penne in the fridge and that i'm leaving for a 5 day vacation tonight. now. what would you do? hmmm? of course, you'd do your darndest to give both meals the respect they deserve. so. i eat all the beef and veg and egg from my lunch box. spurning the rest of the rice, i go whole hog for the turkey (mom would be proud--all those years of buffet meals has prepared me for just this moment in my professional life--its all about priorities). i can only describe free turkey meals at work so many times, but i guess once more can't hurt: cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, two types of gravy, sweet potatoes, nutty, mushroom stuffing, and of course a ham+turkey. i'm digging in with both hands, turkey bones hanging from my mouth, crunching on the cartilege, chewing the fat, wiping my brow, and carrying right on. finallly, i'm sated. full. i even say no to the proffered wing (what's the difference between proffering and offering? probably the same as between a raven and a writing desk). and then, as i'm taking a stroll around the floor (another tip taught by years of all-you-can-eating--when the pain sets in, a stroll around the floor always helps), drew (another new promotion) shows me the donuts.

the chocolate cake donuts are the only ones left, but those are my favorites anyways. he bets me i can't eat 3 in a minute. we line up a few more people on his side of the bet, so the stakes are: if i can swallow 3 in 1 min, i get HKD 800. if i can get 3 in my mouth inside of 1 min, we're flat. if i can't, i owe them all coffee. well, i couldn't. i got thru 2, and the last one sat soaking in my cups of hot water. i thought that would be an ingenious idea--presoaking them. turns out, i should've brought a spoon if i was gonna turn em into sludge. the coffee cost me HKD 160.

people kept asking me afterwards if i felt alright. they were concerned i would puke. but in all seriousness, folks, its only 2 donuts. i can eat 2 donuts in my sleep with both hands tied behind my back while yodeling. the only real after effect is the jitteriness. maybe its the sugar rush, more likely, its the adrenaline rush. i think i did alright for my first speed eating contest. normally, i'm a volume girl. aw fuck it. there's no graceful way to sign off from an entry like this. see yall later.

a memo to my adult self re disciplining future children:

1. make the suckers jump rope for punishment (thanks minwah)

2. have family bouncing circles to recount daily news (did you enjoy school today? (bounce bounce)). it'll be our version of family prayer or whatever it was that families normally did together (before tv, video games, and slim shady ruined the american youth).

3. serve up chocolate cereal as dessert (always plan for dessert).

as outraged as always

did you know (not that you care) that i can only see my credit card history for the past 60 days? anything beyond that, i have to pay HKD30 per month (!!). isn't that bordering on criminal? don't i have a right to my credit history? this is almost as bad as when i found out we have to pay for water. man, was i outraged. doesn't water seem like something one should get for free? just for being and breathing and living? the pre-germ theory me sure thought so (i mean, it doesn't grow from trees, but it sure does fall from the sky). anyways.

2 weeks till christmas! jon and i are going to lijiang, china. we're gonna ride horses, pick tea, and eat yak milk, all at the base of snow mountains. maybe we'll even see some tibetan monks (altho i'm told they're an endangered species). we're also spending a day in shangri la. (speaking of lovely things: i'm eating falafel and it is de-li-cious. my breath will no doubt smell of onions for the rest of the day, but i'm willing to make the sacrifice. how devoted are you to your falafel?).

what else...we got the wii mod'd so now we can play downloaded games. jon surreptitiously bought me ddr (dance! dance! revolution!!!) and pads, but i found him out. downside: no xmas surprise. upside: DDR!! hurrah for immediate gratification. (i can see the end of the falafel, and i'm sad about the upcoming dearth).

oh, and last weekend, i saw pink dolphins. they're actually called chinese white dolphins, but their blood circulation makes them pink. the wwf guide defended the name by saying they turn white after death. as in, they've found carcasses and the carcasses are white. oh my, how macabre. i wonder if the same naming mechanism applies to (white) people. ahem. we actually saw quite a few dolphins, and they swam right up to the boat--mommas with their babies (which are gray), friends swimming side by side, lone dolphins chasing fishing boats. i was very pleasantly surprised, since at the beginning of the journey, there's all this hedging talk about "we don't guarantee that we'll see any dolphins, pls keep all your eyes peeled, etc etc" (there goes the last falafel...sigh. remember that scene in ice age where the last female taekwondodo fell off the edge? that was awesome. TAE KWON DO DO!).

enough randomness for one day. now back to your regular scheduled programming.

he's on my list

every time i touch my forehead, i think of mike ying. mike ying is the bastard who winged a disc into my forehead on sunday. we had just finished talking about how we should throw to the wide open people, regardless of their field position. i was cutting in, and i was wide open. i guess subconsciously, at least, he remembered our talk. he wound up for a HUGE backhand, released in some crazy ass bladey way, and the disc ended up embedded in my forehead. actually, i managed to raise my left hand in time, so the disc hit my thumb really hard and only glanced off my head pseudo-hard. but still, hard enough to bruise. i got up and tackled him. but still. fucking mike ying.

(incidentally i touch my forehead a lot more than i realized)
(what is it with me and backhand injuries? my elbow is still crappy in a way that won't let me straighten completely. dr laura, pls help).

(jon and i (think we) saw the bat signal the other day. they're filming the new batman in hk, and there was this huge crane with a huge skylight right outside my apartment. so we didn't see the actual bat signal in the sky, but we could've seen the thing making the bat signal! wouldn't it be cool to be a movie set engineer? you've got 3 days to make something that makes the bat signal: ready, steady, go!)