Beware of Dog

The elevators in the Beijing Airport warn you not to bring dangerous animals aboard.

How to Score Free Tea

Visit a hotel, explain you're organizing an international academic tournament, and ask if they'd be interested in hosting about two hundred participants for at least three nights. Ten minutes later, you'll be drinking your choice of tea, coffee or juice with a friendly sales rep.

One Puffin or Two?

"Would you like one puffin or two?" the waitress asked. (Years ago, applying to Harvey Mudd for college, I selected the puffin as the animal I would most like to be. I never anticipated eating one.)

Later, walked around town, which felt like something built (with help from IKEA) for a ScandinaviaWorld amusement park: very prim, neat and colorful. Even the buses.

Late Sunrise

At 10 in the morning, Iceland is tidy, cute, and still very dark. I'll write more about it when the sun comes up. (I'm assuming it will. We're not that far north... are we?)

Right now, I'm huddled in a cafe with a dense mixture of tourists and locals, indulging in a second almond croissant. Somehow, I've gotten in the habit of eating too many desserts lately. No doubt it'll have consequences later on. My friend Chuan-Mei, who persuaded me to take this trip, is off at a museum being a better tourist than me.

Fruit Basket

Not long after the networks called Ohio, the Republican Headquarters up the street sent us a bunch of (appropriately red) apples. It was an odd gift, but we appreciated it.

Living the Hearsay

An older man stopped in front of the office and stared inside. Thinking he might want to volunteer, I went outside to greet him.

"I've been a conservative Democrat for sixty years," he said to me. Then he pointed at a sketch of Obama in the window and added, casually, "I wouldn't vote for that nigger if he was the last man on Earth."

Alpacas for Obama

Volunteers at the Obama campaign office in Asheboro, North Carolina.

Biscuitville

I've been told it's sort of like a bagel shop.

Juan y Danilo

I should have figured I would get stopped in a rural North Carolina parking lot by two well-groomed men from Colombia and Peru desperately seeking directions to a wedding.

I volunteered my iPhone.

Able Bodies

Somehow, my grandfather ended up on the cover of a book about exercise. He may not be related to the rest of us.

It's Not Particularly Noteworthy

But I'll blog it anyway: a dog just peed on me at the park.

Maybe I bear a passing resemblance to a tree.

Syracuse

"Ladies and gentlemen, the fuel truck is here."

I celebrated quietly over my laptop.

"Unfortunately," the pilot continued, "the airport has only one set of air stairs, and only person to drive them, so they aren't available right now."

We're currently stuck on the tarmac at Syracuse Hancock International Airport, waiting to be refueled before continuing on to New York City. The weather there was so bad that we ran low on fuel circling JFK.

I'm puzzled, though. What do air stairs have to do with refueling--does a man stand on the stairs holding the hose?

Economic Stimulus Package

I wish someone would nominate me for vice president so I could get a new wardrobe.

Subscriber Base

We recently sent out this brochure in hopes of securing more pro-America DemiDec subscribers.

Damages

Our rental car company charged us $15 for a dinged hubcap. I think we got off easy, considering we effectively went off-roading in a Yaris.

Bandits with Badges

A bit of a stressful night, culminating in a confrontation with five Nicaraguan police officers demanding $50 for a fictitious foreign driver's penalty. Resisted with help from my iPhone, which confirmed their claim was bogus and advised requesting their badge numbers and names. It worked: when I pulled out a pen to write down their information, they handed back our documents and let us go. We shook hands and parted about as amicably as possible. Lots of fake smiles.

Now at a small hotel directly across the street from the airport, itching.

Next Time, Flip-Flops

Looking for a rumored beach in Nicaragua, south of San Juan del Sur. We had to abandon our rental car along the side of the road and carry on by foot. Later the police escorted us back.

Horsing Around

Driving from the Managua airport to the colonial town of Granada was mostly uneventful; the highlight was not hitting a horse that had decided to graze on the highway. Now camped at a small hotel with very pink walls, an open courtyard, and lukewarm showers.

Sweet Violence

I was reserving a place to stay in Nicaragua for the weekend and came across this gem of description on a hostel website:

According to official UN reports regarding personal safety, Nicaragua is the second safest nation in the Americas, after Canada. If you come to Nicaragua and someone tries to mug you, all you have to do is yell. The assailant will then be captured, beaten, tied and handed over to the police by the citizens themselves. This is Nicaragua, sweetly violent.

We Are Foreign People

I don't rant in here often, unless you count my political posts. So allow me a moment, please.

I've been blessed with the chance to grow up not just in America, but in a part of the country where diversity is a fact of life. Yes, I attended high school at a time when sentiments against illegal immigrants were running hot--and I'm ashamed that I let them get to me as much as they did. (My father immigrated illegally from Chile.) Both before and after that, however, I've felt very little to make me uneasy about my background. (I suppose I'm also blessed with the ability to look native in lots of places, even northern China.)

Tonight, though, was one of those moments when I spotted something ugly lurking underneath a pleasant face.

My parents are selling their house. Long story short, they're running into some trouble with the buyer over water intrusion issues. Their real estate agent (one Jeff Gysin, theoretically representing them, and, indeed, professionally pleasant) wrote the following to the other agent.

"They are foreign people and don’t understand."

He then accidentally forwarded it to my parents. There's more, but that's the gist of it. In one sentence, he undermines his own clients and pinpoints their origin as the reason why they're being uncooperative.

In a phone call, he denied ever writing it. Ugly.

There's prejudice in the private sphere (bad enough) and then there's exposing it in your professional life. It's especially frustrating that my parents thought this man was looking out for their interests, when apparently he was just hearing their accents.

That One Leads 3-0

I must not have been following the news closely enough this week. In tonight's final presidential debate, McCain kept mentioning Joe the Plumber, who is apparently becoming a YouTube sensation. Problem is, I never imagined he'd actually refer to someone as "Joe the Plumber." That kind of thing would make me--what--Dan the DemiDec guy? (Okay, no comment.) Still, I naturally assumed his name was Joe DiPlaumer and he was... maybe Italian.

Other moments from the debate that I enjoyed included John the Senator rolling his eyes and blinking a lot. He was either channeling Amy Poehler channeling Katie Couric or in need of eyedrops. Also, was it just me (and the five hundred people watching with me), or did McCain refer to Governor Palin as a breast of fresh air?

Fatherly Advice

My dad is a political pundit. Every so often, he declares, boldly, something he knows to be true. In October 2000, he assured me that no Republican would ever again win the White House. (Of course, he then went out and voted for one.) In 2004, unabashed, he predicted Bush had no chance of reelection. The Iraq War, he said, was a disaster. A few swift boats and flip-flops later, he was at the local polling place... voting for the incumbent.

Nearly a year ago, he offered his latest presidential prognostication. Hillary Clinton, he said, could win against any candidate. Barack Obama had no chance. My dad derives a lot of his insight from conservative talk radio, but this particular belief was homegrown, since conservative talk radio was no fan of Clinton's.

About two months ago, he changed his tune somewhat. Obama could win if he took Clinton as his VP pick. Otherwise, he still had no chance. When Obama chose someone else, he said it was over.

Now, he says McCain can't win. I don't think he says this because he follows the percentages of http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ (to which I've outsourced all my political analysis. Seriously. Friends used to ask me my opinion. Now I give them that link.) Actually, he's probably just buying into conventional wisdom. But, for once, I believe he's right.

To qualify, though, my dad does have a bit of advice for McCain. Drop Palin and announce Romney as your new running mate. I don't think this would save him at all -- probably just make him look even more erratic. Not to mention, it would be the All-Multiple-Manors ticket. So, I hope this takes care of the "my dad is usually wrong" quota and that his broader prophecy comes true.

Sanjai's Wedding

Believe it or not, the picture below has nothing to do with this year's presidential election.


Nearly a decade ago, my friend Sanjai and I participated in the first-ever Shakespearean political protest in Washington, D.C.. (We were the only participants.) We created a sign that looked a lot like this one and marched up and down the street in front of the White House until the Secret Service shooed us away.

I recreated the sign to use as a surprise visual aid for my toast at Sanjai's wedding. It worked; Sanjai looked dumbfounded as he pulled it out from under a rug. Since I had given an otherwise identical speech at his previous wedding, I figured I had to shake it up a little. (The previous wedding was the previous weekend, and to the same woman; otherwise, I'd have written a new toast.)

Behind it, you can see VNS Chicken, an up-and-coming Korean fried chicken chain whose owner also dabbles in SAT prep. SAT prep has its share of critics, but it is better for you than fried chicken.

The Easiest Answer

The barista at the Starbucks near YBM recognized me from a year ago. I recognized her, too - she always had a big smile and greeted me energetically.

Today, she asked me, in very basic English, "What do you do?"

There were any number of ways I could have answered this. I considered showing her a file or two on my computer. Or asking her to judge at next week's competition. But I haven't slept well this week. And my answers usually confuse people even when we speak the same language.

So I just pulled an alpaca finger puppet out of my backpack and presented it to her.

"Puppet!" she said.

"Alpaca," I explained.

Difficulties Getting Clean

This morning I presented the staff of the Metro Hotel with a showerhead.

It had been the showerhead in my bathroom until I I tried to adjust the direction of water flow from "toward the toilet" to "toward me".

Afterward I still wanted to be clean, so I took a bath. I turned out to be about 50% longer than the bathtub.

100 Won

Just for reference, parking meters in Pasadena offer a favorable conversion rate: 100 won for 25 U.S. cents, for a net savings of about 15 cents per 12 minutes of parking.

The Obama Comma

It struck me tonight that the reader comments on articles about the Democratic primary race remind me of book reviews on Amazon of The Da Vinci Code.

At least when I last looked at those reviews, about a year ago, most of those critical of The Da Vinci Code were highly literate, well-written, even stylish. They also tended to be grammatically sound. (There were exceptions, of course, especially those that criticized the novel not for flat characters or a predictable plot, but for its sacrilegious content.) Reviews praising the novel had a lot more mistakes in them - and sweeping assertions.

I'm finding that, in general, comments in support of one of the two remaining Democratic candidates are much less well written than those in support of the other. They tend to use more all caps and exclamation points. I leave it to you to determine which candidate I mean.

Unreasonable Disagreement

I haven't written much about the election here since the Iowa caucuses. I've stuck by my assessment then, in the waning days of December: that Obama is the more electable Democrat. In Wisconsin, two-third of voters in the Democratic primary agreed with me. He is far more likely than Clinton to build an effective governing majority in the Congress - and, like it or not, to inspire the American people.

Along the way, though, I've met supporters of the other candidates. In fact, in New Hampshire, I spent time with a couple who hosted the Clinton wedding thirty years ago, and with various Edwards and McCain volunteers. They all impressed me with how polite, affable and considerate they were - especially the McCain folks.

The New Hampshire defeat - what can I say? At the time, it was a surprise, and a sad one. But, in retrospect, it extended the contest in a way that has allowed voters in state after state to become part of the process. It's been an amazing form of enfranchisement. Not only does every vote matter, but, for once, every state does too. No matter who wins in the end, at least it wasn't just Iowa and New Hampshire deciding for the rest of us.

But the campaign has also gotten uglier.

* * * *

I met a woman tonight at a dinner I stopped by briefly. (I left before eating.) She belonged to a demographic that has not been voting for Obama in large numbers: older, Jewish, female. Needless to say, I'm related to this demographic down various branches of the family tree.

I've had plenty of conversations with individuals who support other candidates--not just volunteers in New Hampshire, but folks in California and elsewhere -- but this woman was Mark Penn's dream voter. She had absorbed all the Clinton rhetoric, and then some.

I can't vote for someone whose middle name is Hazan, she said. (Someone else at the table corrected her, though she didn't seem keen on Hussein either.) She went on, predictably, to declare Obama a Muslim. Others in the room chimed in. He has no experience, she said. Maybe in four years she could vote for him. (Of course, she earlier said that she could never vote for him, but I let this go.) He has no plans, she said. Millions of Americans are voting for him, she agreed. "But they are American," she said. "They think with their asses."

Her conclusion, with regard to his campaign: "What is this shit?"

My sister was there. At this point in the conversation, she suggested I leave, which seemed prudent.

There is a spiteful part of me that hopes Obama wins just because I want the bigots to be defeated. Maybe they'll see, a few years down the line, that a man with the middle name Hussein can be every bit as American as they are. The strength of this country isn't in those who it excludes, but in those who it embraces.

The Bees of Yemen

The check-in agent looked over me critically. "You're not from Yemen, are you?"

"Nope," I said, resting my pillow and a stash of banana bread on the counter. "Not Yemen. Why?"

"Well, the computer says you are."

I admitted to her that I wasn't sure I could locate Yemen on a map, unless it was a very little map and I could gesture generally toward the Middle East.

She said she wouldn't have known either, if not for the honey. They don't have any, she explained. Yemen has no bees. (My mother would like living in Yemen, I thought.) She continued: because Yemen has no bees, it has to import all its honey. (This seemed reasonable.) Every Tuesday, when she worked at SFO, many people headed to Yemen would check in with boxes and boxes of honey--more boxes than their free luggage allowance afforded.

All that talk of bees and honey made me think of Pushing Daisies.

She leaned in across the counter. "They'd try to buy me off with honey," she confided. "To avoid penalties. But rules are rules!"

Incumbency

As the Iowa caucuses open tonight, it looks like Obama is opening a slim but consistent lead in the polls on the Democratic side. For example, the Zogby tracker I mentioned earlier, which refreshes 1/3 of its results each day, had Obama move from two points back on January 1 to a near-tie yesterday to four points ahead today. For the numbers to swing 4 points in Obama's direction when the results from December 30 were dropped and the results from January 2 added, he must have been running 12 points better on January 2 than on December 30. This seems to confirm that momentum has shifted to Obama in the closing hours of the race.

Whether this was merely reflected in the January 1 Register poll or helped along by it is up to your particular theory of polling and public opinion. I tend to think it's a combination: the trend had to be there in the first place, but waking up on New Year's to see Obama "in the lead" couldn't have discouraged even more Iowans from choosing to vote for him.

But, instead of focusing on today's poll numbers, I wanted to say something more general about incumbency. An "incumbent" candidate is one who is running for reelection. Bush was an incumbent candidate in 2004, Clinton in 1996, etc. Incumbents tend to begin races with very good name recognition, while their opponents tend to be less well known. This usually gives incumbents an early lead in polls that shrinks as their opponents become better known. This is also one reason why incumbents try early on to "frame" the popular description of their opponent before voters can come to their own conclusions.

In 2004, George Bush had nearly as dramatic a history of "flip flopping" as John Kerry. He opposed the Department of Homeland Security before he supported it. He was against intervening in other countries before he was for it. Etcetera. One could argue the Kerry campaign didn't successfully hit back on Bush for this. But it would have been hard to: Bush already had four years of incumbency to form a public opinion of him. People had made up their minds about what kind of man he was. Those who opposed him opposed him because they saw him as dumb, stubborn, and so on. Those who supported him supported him because they saw him as a good, strong man of steady conviction, someone they'd rather have over for a barbecue. They wouldn't have been swayed that much by reminders of an inconsistent record that they had already lived through and chosen to support.

However, in the closing days of a race between an incumbent and a challenger, undecided voters tend "to break for" the challenger. Why would this be? A well-regarded 1980s study suggests that undecided voters already know nearly everything they need to know about the incumbent. They've had years to figure out whether or not they like him or her, and if they're still not sure a few days before the election, they can't have liked him or her very much. The challenger, at least, has the potential to be different. In 2004, this effect was probably offset by fears of terrorism, stoked by Bin Laden's last-minute message to the American people, but in general it's held up, including in the 2006 mid-term elections.

I bring this up because one Democratic candidate chose to run for the nomination as if she were the incumbent. After all, she had the name recognition of an incumbent. She had (she claims) the experience of an incumbent. Unfortunately for Clinton, it seems she also has the flip side baggage of an incumbent: many Iowans who haven't made up their minds yet are breaking for one of the challengers.

This may be one reason she's a distant third when it comes to voters' "second choices" - which will be very important tonight, since many first choice supporters of Biden, Richardson, and the other Democratic candidates will probably find their candidates not viable and be given the chance to choose again.


It's still possible Hillary Clinton will win the Iowa caucus. The numbers are tight enough and the caucusing process sufficiently unpredictable. If she does, it's a clean road to the nomination. It'll vindicate her strategy of positioning herself (some critics would say posing) as an incumbent. But it's increasingly likely she'll take second or even third, behind John Edwards. If Obama wins a convincing victory tonight, it could boost him past Clinton in New Hampshire, where he's running a few points behind but a lot of people remain undecided. (And we know how that goes.)

Clinton's campaign will continue no matter what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire, because she remains very popular in many of the big states that will vote on February 5. But if the tide is going to turn against her nationally, it'll start to turn tonight.

I'll close this section of my post with a quote from today's Zogby poll analysis. It will seem very apt if Clinton loses Iowa, and rather premature if she wins-though even then, it's something she'll need to confront in the general election.

"When it became clear that voters in Iowa were looking for change, Clinton became the candidate who kept changing, not the one of change."

* * * * *

A quick anecdote. I was sharing with a male relative of mine, who proudly voted for Bush in 1988, Perot in 1992, Clinton in 1996, Bush in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 (whether this makes him independent, indecisive or merely remorseful I can't say) that it looks like a lot of independents and Republicans will be supporting Obama in Iowa, and that this foreshadows his crossover appeal in the general election were he to win the nomination.

"They're only pretending," he said to me, "so that Clinton isn't nominated. They're afraid of her."

In other words, he sees an Iowan right-wing conspiracy.

* * * * *

So, a peek at the right wing. Until recently, it's been very confused. But it looks like Huckabee could pull out a convincing victory against Romney tonight, clearing the way for McCain to upset the deflated Romney in New Hampshire. (Huckabee, a charismatic guitar player who doesn't believe in evolution, isn't polling well in New Hampshire and has very little ground organization there.)

Once McCain wins New Hampshire, he instantly becomes the front-runner against Rudy Giuliani, who has been sitting on the sidelines simmering in scandal soup. Meanwhile, Romney implodes and goes back to hunting varmints.

It seemed unlikely a few months, but a match-up of McCain versus Clinton or Obama is more plausible by the day. And he'd do well against either.

Against Clinton, McCain can play the character card--he's a man of conviction, not a political opportunist. With his appeal to independents and moderates, he'd probably (to quote Charles Bibilos) "clobber her".

Against Obama, McCain can play the experience card--only more convincingly than Clinton could. This match-up is a tough one to call. It could go either way, especially if Obama selected an experienced running mate, like Joe Biden, and McCain selected someone younger and more hopeful, unlike Joe Lieberman. But regardless of the outcome, McCain versus Obama would probably be something that we haven't seen in a very long time in American politics: civil.

Kentucky Fried Primary

In lieu of my own post today, I refer you to the rather greasy analysis of a fellow DemiDec editor, Charles Bibilos. I disagree with him somewhat about Huckabee's chances in the general election, but concur in most other regards, especially when it comes to the fried chicken. You may also enjoy reading about his adventures with dengue fever.

The Register

Happy New Year! Due to some impending deadlines in Korea, I don't have time to write in much detail, but I wanted to add a few more words on recent developments in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register poll came out last night. In 2004, it correctly predicted the Kerry, Edwards, Dean finish. (It didn't predict Dean's scream, but polls have their limitations.) It's easy to forget now, but Kerry wasn't the favorite even two weeks before the Iowa caucuses: Howard Dean was. Both Kerry and Edwards soared in the closing days of the campaign. The Register poll picked up on that. It's well-regarded for accurately assessing who is likely to participate in the caucuses, something with which national polling companies have less experience.

With that said, the Obama campaign seemed braced for bad news. It held a morning presentation yesterday about how it was positioned to continue campaigning in other states no matter what happened Thursday. Rumors bounced about on the Internet that his numbers were looking dim. The Clinton campaign had already stabilized a lead in most other polls, including Zogby's, and some had Obama slipping into third.

The Register poll turned those findings upside-down. On the Democratic side, Obama had the support of 32% of likely caucus-goers, compared to 25% for Hillary Clinton and 24% for Edwards. On the Republican side, it showed Huckabee maintaining a similar lead over the hard-hitting Romney (32% to 26%).

It's tempting to look at these numbers and cover them as what pundits call a horse race. "Obama soars to a lead!" "Edwards stumbles in the final lap." That kind of thing. I had a professor at the Kennedy School who felt otherwise, but I believe this kind of coverage in the media has the potential to affect the margins of public opinion. Undecided voters may be more likely to choose someone with a better chance of winning. It's similar to the phenomenon in sports known as "bandwagon fans". Even my beloved Clippers had some bandwagon fans a couple years ago.

So, let's not go overboard with these results. Let's check out some of the headlines, though. In the Register, the most widely-read newspaper in Iowa, the headline reads:

"New Iowa Poll: Obama widens lead over Clinton"
MSNBC matches this word for word, minus "New Iowa Poll".
Similarly, the Washington Post runs with "Poll Shows Obama Holds 7-Point Lead in Iowa"

-- These headlines imply (a) that there is such a thing as a lead and (b) that Obama had one. The former depends on how you look at things (you could argue that not a single vote has been cast) and the latter negates the last two weeks or so of media coverage, which revolved mostly around Hillary Clinton's growing lead (particularly plausible given recent foreign events) and an angry John Edwards surging past Obama. Obama got a lot of coverage for ostensibly implying that Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience amounted to drinking tea with the wives of foreign leaders.

The Edwards and Clinton campaigns were quick to discredit some apparent quirks in the Register poll. For one, it predicts that 45% of the people attending the Democratic caucuses will be independents and Republicans. They strongly favor Obama. If they don't show up, Clinton "pulls ahead" in the numbers. This underscores my point from the other day: Obama is the candidate who, for whatever reason, most successfully reaches out to independents and Republicans. It would make him a very effective nominee, and very hard to defeat if the Republican nominee lacks similar crossover appeal. (It's ironic that for Democrats to nominate the Democrat with the best chance of winning next November, they may need help from some non-Democrats.) However, in 2004, only 19% of caucus attendees were independents and Republicans. So for the poll numbers to hold, there has to be a significantly different turnout in 2008. It's possible, but you never know.

Similarly, the poll shows that 60% of those attending the caucuses will be doing so for the first time. This would be remarkable. Since these new attendees heavily favor Obama (75% of those who said they plan to caucus for him say they've never caucused before) it makes his position a little precarious. The best predictor of future behavior, in relationships as well as in voting, is past behavior. Then again, the Clinton and Obama campaigns are working incredibly hard to turn out new caucus-goers, so it's not at all implausible that participation rates will soar.

What to make of all this? Probably the following.

1. Obama needed some good news with which to close out the campaign. This gives him momentum heading into the caucuses. His campaign will ignore the other polls unless they change in his favor. His opponents will do the opposite, but the Register is the most widely-reported and respected poll in Iowa. Advantage: Obama.

2. Turnout is key. This is a political truism; turnout is always key. But it really, really is. The winner Thursday will depend largely on who shows up for the first time.

3. What happens within the actual caucuses is also important. They're, to say the least, peculiar, especially on the Democrats' side. People gather in a room and publicly declare their candidate preference. They gather in groups accordingly. Groups which represent less than 15% of the room are required to dissolve; their members have to choose one of the remaining "viable" candidates (or, presumably, leave, but then they might lose out on the sandwiches being provided by the Clinton campaign.) Precinct captains for each campaign try to persuade the reallocated voters to join them. Reputably, there's even some wheeling and dealing. All this makes things unpredictable.

There's not much time left, but if you like the horse race, keep an eye on the Zogby three-day daily tracking poll. Remember, it's had Clinton in the lead for a few days. Each day, it adds a new day of results and removes the oldest day. If it reflects a tightening of the race tomorrow, it could mean that the Iowa poll results helped some late breaking voters decide for Obama. A third of caucus-goers also said they were still willing to change their mind before Thursday, so what looks like a tight race could break wide open for one or another of the three leading candidates before the end.

Not Exactly Harry Potter

This last week, I've been writing and editing children's passages for English learning books in Korea. I thought I'd share a couple examples to give a sense of where my mind's been lately when it's not studying polls.

Help! My time machine malfunctioned. I wanted to visit the American Revolution, but I looked outside and there are gigantic animals everywhere. I think they are dinosaurs. They are definitely not American.

If you find this message, please send help. Tell my friends that I am stranded many millions of years in the past. I need someone to rescue me as soon as possible. For now, I will try to hide in a cave. I just hope none of the dinosaurs are hungry.

---

Couple seeks reliable computer geek to take care of two baby robots, R2 and R3. They do not need food or love, but they are very smart and like challenges. Their favorite games include Sudoku and chess. They communicate with blinking lights and beeping sounds. They shut down automatically at bedtime.
R2 and R3 are toilet-trained. However, in case of accidents, knowledge of computer programming is a plus.
Candidates must be available evenings and weekends.
Pay rate depends on experience.
Please reply to: Mr. and Mrs. D2

---

Today, I faced off against a wizard named Anzor. He wore dark robes and held a smoking wand.

He cried, “You had better surrender, farmer boy, or I will destroy your home!”

I hesitated. He was a level five wizard and I wasn’t very strong. But I had a secret weapon.

“I will fight!” I typed, lifting my magic shovel.

“A magic shovel?” Anzor laughed. “What will you do? Dig a magic hole?”

He waved a hand. I was pinned down. Behind me my farm disintegrated.

Sigh. So much for the shovel. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go back to playing Scrabble.

Collision

Last night, a small boy was staring at me as he walked up the sidewalk. His head swiveled as he moved past me. I looked back at him. I wasn't sure if he was amused or trying to pick a fight, but he seemed about three or four, so I figured if it were the former I didn't mind, and if it were the latter I would probably win.

He kept staring, and kept walking at the same time, until he collided with a glass wall and began to cry.

A Redcoat Perspective

As a follow-up to my note/analysis from yesterday, I recommend this article that came out today in the UK. It very aptly summarizes the different candidates and their approaches, with a focus on those candidates who leverage fear as a campaign strategy.

Looking ahead, tomorrow should see a spate of polls released. Will be interesting. If time permits, I'll write another ramble.

Less Electable

Today, a friend of mine called me from Austria to share that he used Clorox wipes on himself in the bathroom by mistake. He thought of me when it happened. I'll let that go.

---

On a more serious note, the Iowa caucuses are coming up, and I wanted to offer my two cents in rebuttal to some colleagues and family members who are supporting Hillary Clinton because they think she's the most electable Democrat next November.

I'll qualify my remarks by admitting I don't know that much about Clinton's actual policy positions. I do know she's shifted them quite a bit over the years, or even during debates, but that's easier to criticize than it is to avoid in practice. I'm actually fairly sure she'd make a good president - if she were elected.

So, let's assume a few things for the sake of discussion.

(I'm about to lose my Republican readership.)

(1) Any Democrat winning in 2008 is a positive. This is, of course, a disputable assumption. Let's set it aside for now.

(2) The Democratic candidates are more alike in their policy positions than they are different. They have different health care plans, but they all have health care plans. They all want to change No Child Left Behind (even those who voted for it). Edwards is more protectionist and anti-business, Obama is more into community-building, Clinton is--more experienced. But in general, any of these three candidates will steer the country in a much more progressive direction than his or her GOP counterpart. Democrats should be happy no matter which one wins (if one of them wins at all).

(3) A president is more capable of enacting daring policies if Congress lines up behind him or her.

(4) Congress is more likely to line up behind the president if the president's party has a significant majority in Congress. The greater the majority, the better the chances for the president's agenda to pass, especially once the blush of days 1-100 fades.

(5) Representatives and Senators who oppose a president will be cast as obstructionist if the president is popular enough with enough Americans - a la Ronald Reagan, or George Bush in 2002. Conversely, if a Democratic president is a polarizing figure, Republican congressmen can go home and boast of defying her, while Democrats will face added peril in midterm elections.

With that said, we should evaluate which Democrat has the best chance of (a) winning a general election, (b) working with a supportive Congress and (c) motivating the opposition to support him or her or risk political fallout.

Polls are a good place to start. They are notoriously inaccurate, especially exit polls in Ohio, but my sixth assumption will be that, taken in sum, they have some value for seeing where the electorate is.

Polls consistently indicate that Clinton has a commanding lead nationally in the primaries - 15 or more points on her closest rival, Obama. Asked why they're choosing Clinton over Obama, many Democrats say it's because she has the best chance of winning the general election. For example, according to a recent LA Times/Bloomberg poll, "Democrats seem to agree that Clinton has the best chance of beating the Republicans in 2008--38% in Iowa, 45% in New Hampshire and 48% in South Carolina."

At the same time, polls consistently indicate that of the major Democratic candidates, Clinton fares much worse than Obama in hypothetical matchups with the major Republican candidates. She sometimes beats Huckabee and Romney, but almost always loses against Rudy and McCain. Here's a typical poll demonstrating this. For those of you who don't want to click, here are some numbers from last week.

Obama (D) 53%, Romney (R) 35%
Obama (D) 47%, Huckabee (R) 42%
Obama (D) 48%, Giuliani (R) 39%
Obama (D) 47%, McCain (R) 43%
Obama (D) 52%, Thompson (R) 36%
---
Clinton (D) 46%, Romney (R) 44%
Huckabee (R) 48%, Clinton (D) 43%
Giuliani (R) 46%, Clinton (D) 42%
McCain (R) 49%, Clinton (D) 42%
Clinton (D) 48%, Thompson (R) 42%

(http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1404)

Notably, these are the same people in each sample. That means, for example, that for every 100 people surveyed, six people who would vote for Obama against Giuliani would not vote for Clinton against Giulani. The same phenomenon is evident across the board. Some people who would vote for Obama against anyone would not vote for Clinton against that same anyone. Something similar happens when people are asked, generically, whether they would support a Democrat or Republican for president. The unnamed Democrat runns far ahead, usually about 9% (the same was true before the 2004 election). As soon as names are inserted, we get the results above. That means people who think they would vote for a Democrat change their mind when they learn that she's the Democrat.

This points at a curious contradiction: Democrats who support Clinton because they think she is the most electable Democrat may not realize that she's not - that she's still a polarizing figure for many Republicans. Clinton might manage to win the presidency, but unless she's running against a weak GOP candidate, she would win by a thin margin at best: hardly a mandate. It would be another 49-49 election (or worse).

Furthermore, because she attracts so much of an opposition vote, her presence on the ballot could hurt downticket Democrats in vulnerable areas - that is, Congressional and gubernatorial candidates also running for office next November, especially incumbent Democrats in strongly Republican regions. Many Democrats were elected to Congress in 2006 in a strongly anti-Republican wave. To stay in office, they need a lot of people to vote for them again who would traditionally vote for Republicans.

What the Democrats need, then, is someone who will not only draw more Democrats to the polls, but who would persuade independents and other moderate Republicans to give Democrats a chance - both for president and for lower offices. A person who comes and votes against Clinton by default because they hated the Clintons in the 1990s (even if today's Hillary positions herself as a moderate) is more likely to vote against other Democrats too. (This is known as the "coattails effect".) Even more worrisome, a person who votes against Clinton because she's been successfully cast by the opposition as a political calculator instead of a person of principle is likelier to lump other Democrats in with her.

As John Edwards put it in a recent debate, "America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent..." This shouldn't be a surprise. A lot of admiration for John McCain comes from the fact that he (reputably) always speaks his mind - and usually speaks it the same way. Bush had this going for him in 2004, even if I didn't agree with much of what he kept saying the same way. Obama, too, has shown consistency. To his credit, so has Edwards, except for a brief detour on the Kerry ticket. But Clinton, like Kerry before her, has changed her mind - a lot. Now, I change my mind a lot too. I think mind-changing is morally defensible; as new things come up, old views can change. Changing your mind for political convenience is less defensible, but understandable.

However, the American electorate doesn't like inconsistent candidates. Recent elections have emphasized that lots of people vote for president more on perceptions of character and likeability than on the issues. Republicans flayed John Kerry as a flip-flopper in 2004, and Hillary Clinton suffers from a similar degree of doublespeak. I'm not here to disapprove of her changing her views, but to point out that they will allow her to be caricatured - as in an October debate when she seemed to come out both for and against granting driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. It makes for great campaign commercials. Anyone remember Kerry windsurfing? Here's a little piece from the Edwards campaign that previews how the GOP would treat Clinton. You can trust the Republican ads would be even better. (For example, here's an ad designed by top Republican strategists attacking Mitt Romney for pretending to be a lot more conservative now than he used to be - or for pretending then and telling the truth now. It's hard to know.)

Certainly the GOP could attack Obama as inexperienced. But inexperience can also be portrayed as an openness to new ideas, or as an echo of JFK and Bill Clinton. Inconsistency is just inconsistency.

In 2004, Democrats overwhelmingly favored John Kerry in the primaries over Howard Dean and John Edwards because he was the "most electable" candidate with the most experience in government. They chose to overlook his inability to inspire and his history of saying one thing, then saying another. That didn't work out so well.

Hillary Clinton would run a better campaign than Kerry did, but she has similar vulnerabilities and lots of baggage. Those who want her as the nominee simply because they are hungry for a winner may be in for a disappointment.

Then again, maybe McCain the Man of Conviction or Rudy the Warrior Mayor wouldn't be so bad?

Hot or Cold

Was working at a coffee shop in Korea. It was very warm, so I asked a gentleman behind the counter, who had previously supplied me with a cup of darjeeling, if he could lower the temparature. I did this mostly with pantomimes. "Hot," I said, and demonstrated that I would rather it be cold by hugging my body tight and pretending to shiver.

He nodded in sudden understanding, then turned up the heat.

This is why you don't want me on your team for a game of charades.

The Stars and Bars

I was mistaken for Korean for the third time today, by my cab driver. He proceeded to bash the United States. "They talk human rights, then their kids shoot other kids," he said. "Is that human rights?"

He also expressed concern that my fellow Koreans were being corrupted by American culture.

* * *

Later, I flew out of Changi Airport to Cambodia. I did something that probably means I ought to be on a watch list: I agreed to check in someone else's bag. She was distraught, a Singaporean woman whose son had just left his Chinese flute on a cab. Later, she and her family treated me to dinner in Phnom Penh: Cambodian chicken, Cambodian fish, Cambodian eggs and Cambodian rice. All hormone-free, she explained, and tastier than their Singaporean equivalents.

* * * *

"There's something pointy in your bag," the woman at airport security insisted. She dug into my backpack--and pulled out a Confederate flag. She held it high for inspection: for the first time, the Stars and Bars flew over Singapore. She gingerly poked herself with the miniature flag pole, then carried it over to her shift supervisor, who decided it wasn't a weapon and allowed me to keep it.

They probably thought it was the flag of an innocuous nation in Europe.

I looked around to see if any Americans were present and shooting me dark stares. None in sight.

Of course, you may be wondering what I was doing with a Confederate flag. Would it suffice to call it a good luck charm during the World Series, meant to aid my friend Craig win his furniture? I picked it up in New York a few days before that, not realizing I would soon unintentionally become an international representative of the South. It's a mid-length story related to Robert E. Lee, AK-47s and the Battle of Shiloh; too sleepy to relate it, but at least I had better luck traveling than my colleagues on the Trent.

Enjoy the Experience

I just arrived at my fourth hotel of the day. First, the one in which I briefly showered, changed and edited ditties in Manila. Second, the one I had ostensibly reserved here in Singapore, named for Captain Sulu's old ship. It, however, blamed a burst water pipe on the 24th floor and sent me somewhere else, except it was the wrong somewhere else: there are two Park Royals in town. At any rate, I'm now settled in a triple, very sleepy, not really ready for five meetings today, including with my old friends from ACS who came to Worlds last year.

Also, I should note that Manila seemed less shopping mall and more parking lot to me, but that may simply have been the road to the airport. A variety of public transportation options, too. Little sidecars attached to taxi-like motorcycles ("tricycles"), open-air SUVs with passengers crowded to the edge, a hammock strung on the back of a pickup truck... the last wasn't exactly public, but seemed like a very good idea.

Last thought: it's love at first flight with Cebu Pacific. When checking in, I had pointed out my pillow (it usually comes up) and how nice it would be to have a row in which to sleep on it. "I'll block one off," said the woman behind the counter, smiling. She really did it, and I stretched out and slept for three solid hours. A bargain for a flat bed.

Speaking of bargains, Singapore's Budget Terminal offers this slogan when you disembark: "Enjoy the experience." The experience was fine. Dozens of cabs. And an immigrations officer who didn't mind that I had filled out my form in green pencil.

Macaroon #4

Yesterday, I lost very profoundly at a game of "Xs" and "Os" at the YBM Teachers Banquet. "The average goldfish lives only two months before being flushed down a toilet," was the statement, and I, for reasons I can't fathom, thought it sounded reasonable, though I did pause to second-guess whether the test-writer had considered goldfish that didn't live in human custody. I should've gone with that second guess. In any case, maybe it's a good thing I don't compete in the Super Quiz anymore.

I'm about to board the least expensive international flight of my life--a $70 fare from Manila to Singapore, on Cebu Pacific. I don't know anything about the airline. Maybe it'll serve sandwiches and be delightful. More likely, I'll pass out on board. My only sleep since yesterday has been on a bus in Seoul this morning and on the cab to Manila's airport a few minutes ago.

Manila is this strange combination, for me at least, of Asia and South America. The language here is enough like Spanish to give me a bit of a headache when it blares on the radio, though that may have been the sleep issue. Neither my cab driver nor I had a watch or a working cell phone, so I spent the whole drive either sleeping or convinced I was running late (the driver had guessed it was 6:30 when it was actually 5:45).

"My hotel's near the giant mall," I said to the principal of the International School of Manila today.

"That doesn't help," he said, "That's all of Manila."

He seemed interested in the Scholar's Cup, which was great--it made this pitstop between Seoul and Singapore very worthwhile. I hope to see a team from Manila in Seoul on May 31.

I passed the Hotel Prince yesterday, where last year's SCUP teams stayed on arriving in Korea (I got evicted due to a room mixup). It was odd to think that we're almost halfway between world competitions. It was odder to think that there'd been a world competition at all. I was a little--distracted--the last time around.

Yesterday's banquet at YBM was inspiring. I'll write more on that later, I hope. Afterward I settled down in the lobby of the hotel where it was held and edited children's workbooks over three cups of coffee and six macaroons. A local band covered American songs; they crooned "even heroes have a right to bleed" around macaroon #4.

The Secretary's Way

Yesterday, Alaina at YBM asked me a question she gleaned from the book she was reading, a Korean business publication called The Secretary's Way. I put it to you: would you prefer to work with someone immensely talented but not entirely loyal, or someone a measure less talented but much more loyal?

Jordan's Furniture Bets Obama will Strike Out

Boston, MA – Jordan’s Furniture has announced a follow-up to its successful Red Sox promotion: any customer who purchases furniture during the month of November will receive a full refund if Barack Obama wins the presidency in 2008.

Other furniture stores have not matched the promotion, though industry sources suggest that IKEA may endorse Al Gore.

The promotion has generated controversy. David Gergen, former presidential advsior and a professor of political leadership at the Kennedy School of Government, warns that, “Massachusetts electors may be swayed to break with the popular vote in their state if they purchased particularly expensive mattresses.”

“We took an insurance policy just in case, just like we did with the Red Sox,” said Jordan’s Furniture owner Eliot Tatelman. “This one cost less.”

Obama has not specified whether he shops at Jordan’s. However, he will be making a previously unscheduled visit to the Jordan’s Furniture factory in Cambodia to discuss worker’s rights and free trade.

In a press statement, the rival Clinton campaign noted that “Senator Clinton shops at a variety of furniture stores, including Jordan’s, and is supportive of most things with which she does not disagree.”

A Headmaster in Malaysia

Once, I wrote a story featuring a character named Malaysia. I don't remember her so well; I think she had something to do with an epidemic raging in New Mexico. I was going through a phase in which I thought I could describe landscapes. I've mostly given up since, but for the sake of argument: a long rim of palm trees, and clumps of tall apartment towers with open-air stairwells. That was my view on the train from Kuala Lumpur Airport to the city center.

A poster in the airport proudly noted that it was voted the best in the world in 2006 and 2005. This year, it took third to Seoul Incheon and Hong Kong. Notably, I started in Seoul this morning and connected in Hong Kong, thus apparently completing the "Top Airport Trifecta." All three are very well-lit, with wide open spaces in which you could fit Air Force One or the entire LAX international terminal.

It was an uneventful journey, unless you count my carry-on tumbling down an escalator into a woman in a veil. (I think she forgave me. I hope so.) On my second flight, I sat next to a Texan who chatted with me industriously before switching his attention to a movie about a haunted hotel room. Where are you from? he asked me at one point, a question my friend Tracy can certify I'm increasingly not very good at answering.

In other developments, DemiDec opened a school in Seoul this week. Yes, it puzzles me too.

This is a good moment to look back at how I ended up in Korea in the first place: one Randy Xu, now in China hedging funds, an agent of chaos who led his Decathlon team to a third place finish in Texas in 2000. Randy had a car accident that led him to need a lawyer that led him to e-mail the Harvard alumni list that led me to e-mail him a reference that led him to recognize my DemiDec connection that led him to work with DemiDec. A few months later he suggested that we go teach in Korea for three weeks as a kind of vacation.

It's been a very interesting three weeks.

And Again

Dante Coffee. Down the street from NTU. The producers of my life are saving money on new sets.

The Streets of Hsinchu

In Taiwan, after a massive day: I woke up Sunday morning in Boston and somehow it's become Tuesday over there. Slept some in the back seat of a cab and on a red-eye flight from Vegas that featured a barking toddler. "Woof!" he cried, over and over, as I tried to edit.

Searched for a shower at Incheon Airport on landing this morning. Helpful flight attendants pointed me toward the basement, in which I discovered a miniature hospital. The receptionist advised me that the neraby sauna was shut down. Couldn't tell if they meant permanently or just until later in the day, but I had a meeting anyway coming up in Seoul proper, and went without.

Now at a hotel, the worse for wear but with reasonable water pressure, called the King Dom. Tomorrow morning, the schools of Hsinchu. For now, I sleep in Hsinchu. I was going to write about the streets of Hsinchu, but I'm too sleepy. They were bright.

Not Knowing Much

"Have you lost a loved one recently?" a close friend asked me today. His father passed away unexpectedly last night.

The answer is that I haven't, not since Sam, and he was my sister's loved one, not my own. I've written on this topic before, but it reminds me again how lucky and unlikely I've been: four living grandparents (knock wood) and not a single friend lost to disease or accident.

One cousin passed away, Benny, in my sophomore year of college. I took the phone call from my mom. It hit me hard, but maybe not for long enough. He drowned in a shower. He and I would play cards a lot when I was small, in a house in Chile with a cavernous dining hall. We'd eat red chicken watching television in the kitchen on nights when my parents and his dad were out on the town.

Benny's death shook my uncle to the core; he hasn't ever been the same. He still smokes out at his son's grave.

I don't know how I would handle a loss like that, or like my friend's, but, given my history, probably not too well. Here's hoping the best for him and his family and that I can help in whatever small ways are possible.

The Iambic Foreclosure

(verses written after watching Henry V and a conversation over rice pudding)

The suburbs perish home by home, the loans
Too large to pay in full; the "owners" moan
And writhe in subprime agony, while banks
Send notes that agitate; a market tanks,
A bubble pops! And there you have it... Kate:
A dismal fate some hedge funds celebrate.

America or Burst

"Sometimes I think my life is like a sitcom," I said to Craig, a few seconds after a large pepper grinder on the stove clattered into me, and eleven hours after we searched the apartment for a pink blanket that turned out to be under his bedspread.

"Daniel," he responded, "We all think your life is like a sitcom."

The other night we played an informal round of "name that tune" with sitcom songs from the 1980s; I instantly recognized the theme from Perfect Strangers. I learned a lot of life lessons from Balki, the sheepherder with a dance of joy who got himself (and his cousin Larry) into one curious fix after another.

As a kid, I was a Star Trek fan foremost, but Star Trek was only silly by accident; I'm often silly on purpose.

A Weight Off My Shoulders

On Friday, I bought a new backpack at Incheon Airport, in Seoul. On a whim, I picked one that was blue. Then I carried it to the Japan Airlines lounge, where I transplanted everything from my black backpack of the last two years in about five minutes. This included all the debris at the bottom; I didn't have time to sort out the chaff before my flight to Tokyo boarded.

(Incidentally, I didn't realize I knew the word "chaff" until I just wrote it down. I've clearly been playing too much Scrabulous.)

I write about it because the experience was remarkably cleansing. Literally, a weight off my shoulders. That black backpack had been lots of places with me: Egypt, China, Korea, Singapore, Boston, half the states in the Union. Some had been good places, but combined they had worn the backpack out. When it was empty, I dropped it in a wastebasket. This probably set off a bomb alert later in the afternoon, though at least I didn't wear a circuitboard around my neck. Then I scooped up the new one, slung it over my shoulder, grinned at how light it was, and hustled to Gate 39.

Averting the Debacle

I write this at an airport, which is to be expected. I must have written a third of these entries in transit between places. Today, though, I'm not flying anywhere at all. I was going to travel to Taiwan, to visit a friend and meet her puppy, but a mixup with Thai Airways left me here at Incheon.

There are worse airports at which to be stranded, including my hometown LAX.

A few months ago, we held the first World Scholar's Cup here in Seoul. I was distracted and sleep-deprived, neither of them an uncommon condition for me. For three days, students from Singapore and the United States filed wearily into this airport on the bottom floor. My expanding cohort and I greeted each new arrival with Haagen Dazs and bus tickets.

It's hard to believe, in retrospect, that we pulled the competition off. I owe a lot to my friends and especially to Chris Yetman, scrimmage coordinator extraordinaire. He brought a computer, calculated the scores, set up the Scholar's Quiz and basically managed everything.

It was, in some ways, the culmination of eighteen months. Scholar's Cup had been a glimmer on a mountainside in January 2006. "Let's make it real," I said to David, in an odd echo of the way DemiDec had begun. The previous day we had held a fake Super Quiz for our students at a camp. (I say "we" but, in fact, David had been asleep or looking for something to eat, which was hard on him given his distaste for anything that can fly or swim. He mostly ate candy bars and Ramen for those three weeks.)

It's true I had envisioned something larger. But any larger than this, and it might have turned from "trial run" to "opening debacle."

We'll see what next year is like. By then, there'll be a new Scholar's Cup site at www.scholarscup.org. My old DemiDec teammate Brent Russo has been wandering Asia recruiting schools, with good results. We may hold the competition in Singapore (though it's more likely to be in South Korea one more time.)

Down to the bottom of my citron tea. Time to face a commute back to Seoul, though I may stay overnight near the airport. My housing with Sasha is generous (it includes unlimited advice) but it's a little warm at night (i.e. stifling) and towels don't make the best blankets in the world.

The Straits of Singapore

Singapore is so pretty when the sun is rising; there's a long strip of park along the waterfront that runs nearly to the airport. I wanted to jump off the cab and stroll through it, maybe set up a picnic and gaze across the straits to what I think may have been Malaysia.

It was a quick trip. I landed yesterday, and today I'm off to Beijing. Yesterday, I met a warm welcome at ACS, the school here competing in Scholar's Cup: another school I might been happy to attend. There's a perpetual student in me, that's for sure.

By the end of my visit, I was probably visibly deteriorating: I become a snowman in May when I haven't slept in a day. I got back to my hotel, stripped off my suit and, scarcely one or two e-mails later, pulled myself into the "business-class" bed.

Then my room phone rang. It felt like no time had passed at all since I shut my eyes. Whoever it was hung up, so I figured it was my 5:30 am wakeup call. I called down to the desk in such a confused state of mind that when they told me it was 10:30, I asked "am or pm?" After hesitating a moment, the person on the other side answered "pm."

There, he must have said to his colleagues, is a guest with jetlag.

Hotel Hawaii

I'm at a hotel in Hawaii with a band playing Hotel California outside, and in Korea I used to stay at the Hawaii Hotel. Life can feel so intricate sometimes.

Cafe Les Verts

Every time I think I've encountered the perfect WiFi cafe, Korea does me one better. I came across Cafe Les Verts a few minutes ago walking from my hotel to--what else--Java City. Oversized square maple tables that don't require mousepads, organic teas and coffees, curvy porcelain cups, a bank of iMacs on a shiny metal counter circling a leafy tree--coupled with perfect lighting, and outlets everywhere, with just enough jazz music to put a bounce in your fingertips. And, of course, the Internet is free, not your usual Korean NESPOT "buy our overpiced card only at the airport 50 miles from Seoul" service.

Secret Agent

The woman in a blue suit looked me (and my pillow) over critically. "I am secret agent for Northwest Airlines," she said.

"A secret agent?"

"Yes."

She proceeded to interrogate me (not very secretly) about my travel plans. "Why do you fly so many airlines?" she asked, at one point. "It is more expensive."

I whispered, "Actually, because it's cheaper."

Before she released me, I had to show her my Scholar's Cup ID Badge and a business card. "You're the president of organization?" She seemed incredulous.

"Yes, president with a pillow," I said.

Later, at immigration, I was asked, "Are you soldier?"

The pillow seems less effective than it used to be as a way of making me look innocent.

Signs Seen in Bangalore

Things are much blunter in India. From my taxi, I see one sign advertising a clinic. Among the things it treats, in bold lettering: “Sexual weakness." Next door, a prim blue building is labeled “Home for the Mentally Retarded.”

Somewhat further down the way, a restaurant offers "Chainese Food"--by which maybe it means it offers orange chicken from Panda Express?

I'm writing this at Cafe Coffee Day, which is sponsored by Microsoft Vista. The menu is shaped like the Windows logo, and the "Vista Coffee" is their classic brew with a "delightful splash" of orange.

It's unrelated, but I should also note that earlier today, a teacher very interested in the Scholar's Cup insisted to me that he was the younger brother of Hare Krishna--and Jesus Christ.

Deutsche Post

I just had breakfast with the managers of DHL's consumer division for Southern India, who happen to be staying in the same guesthouse as me. They were very pleased to hear that DemiDec ships about a thousand boxes a year with DHL.

I didn't mention the lost alpacas of Texas.

Over pancakes, the conversation turned to politics.

"India is a democracy," said Ragu, the older of the two. "Short-term, China will grow faster, because it is military. Government says what to do, people do it. But long-term, India will succeed more. Here, we debate, debate, debate, then in the end, do the best thing."

Laptop Service

I couldn't find a bank that would take my ATM card anywhere within walking distance of my guesthouse here in Bangalore, but I did locate a Chinese restaurant and a Toshiba Authorized Notebook Service Center.

Notes for Future Travel

Notes to self:

1. Always print out the address of your hotel before arriving in an unfamiliar place, particularly if the hotel is a tiny "inn" in Bangalore that no one at the airport has ever heard of.

2. If the hotel is a tiny inn in Bangalore, don't be surprised if they're out of rooms, forgot they were going to pick you up at the airport, have lost your reservation, and proceed to send you to another tiny inn in Bangalore, which they assure you is even nicer but has people sleeping in the hallways.

3. Always carry toilet paper, even if it means carrying fewer alpaca finger puppets.

4. Always bring a towel larger than your hand (and softer than your Lonely Planet.)

5. If there is a bucket placed near a showerhead, be ready for low water pressure. This likelihood is reinforced by signs offering dire warnings such as, "Please save water; it is precious."

6. If the sign at an airport bank advertises, "We buy and sell all currencies," bear in mind before bounding up to them that they may not consider Korean Won to be a currency.

7. You don't really need sheets for sleeping.

Hot and Sour Soup

I've sat here before--about fourteen months ago, on my way home from my first stint in Korea. I'm at a lounge in the Singapore airport, once again drinking hot and sour soup and, this time, writing TOEFL listening questions. (Dean Webb wrote the lectures and conversations on which they're based, which means the depicted professors and students are clever, and a little sassy.)

On that last visit, I had just spent an entire night first wandering downtown Singapore overeating (to recover from three weeks of Korean dorm food) and then catnapping in a public lounge facility. I recorded a "farewell" to my "1% camp" students using a webcam I purchased downstairs--but I have no memory of what I said to them. I probably aimed for profound and achieved melodramatic--or aimed for funny and achieved confused.

Speaking of drama and humor in combination, I've now seen two Korean romantic comedies, When Romance Meets Destiny and Two Hundred Pound Beauty, and I liked both a lot. These Korean films seem to combine the funny and the melancholy in just the right blend to suit me. Maybe that's how I perceive the story of my own life... or maybe they're just good entertainment. It's also true that the subtitles force me to focus on them. I can't multitask, as I do even while watching 24.

Tonight, I'm on my way from Seoul to Bangalore. Earlier I stopped in Bangkok, which had a beautiful and almost empty new airport. I never imagined my first visit to India would be for a three day teaching conference--let alone one that DemiDec is helping to sponsor. I'll be presenting to about two hundred teachers on the Scholar's Cup, which is our new academic competition for Asia that is off to a tough but promising start. I'm hoping that some of them will want to be coaches this coming year.

Meanwhile, next week is the Korean national competition. It remains to be seen how many teams show up.

Leaving Korea on that first occasion last January, I had no idea that I would be back over a dozen times in the little over a year since. I lost track at my fifteenth trip or so. Sooner or later, I'll have visited it more often than my family's home country of Chile.

This latest visit (from Monday until this morning, and resuming next Monday) has been a little harder than most. For one, I'm still, as Tom put it, traveling on "a bad wheel." Healing from knee surgery turns out to be a little more challenging than I imagined. Every so often the knee gives out, or I slip in the rain and yelp. The hardest part is sleeping, because the bruised area contacts the mattress. (In the end, I gave in to an opiate after all.) Second worst is getting out of taxis. Nonetheless, I'm better by the day, and expect to be running through airport terminals again soon. But another reason the trip has been harder is that our first Korean curriculum projects are due next week--and it's always hard to pull together good work in time for a deadline, especially in a whole new field. (In addition to the Scholar's Cup, DemiDec is delving into producing curriculum materials for the TOEFL and other ESL-related areas.)

Nothing has gone exactly as expected since then, from Seoul to Evanston, which may be why I find a familiar (if lukewarm) bowl of hot and sour soup in Changi International Airport kind of comforting. At least it's better than its equivalent at the Kong.

Mishaps

This morning, I had surgery on my right knee, five months after falling (for no particular reason) at an Academic Decathlon camp in Northern California. Since then it's hurt to run and to climb steps, both things I like to do (for example, to catch a flight at the last minute.) The surgeon found, and removed, a centimeter-diameter "rock" jammed in my knee joint.

Naturally, I gave him and the nurses alpacas.

I now have a bottle of Percocet I hope not to take, two crutches I probably won't need to use, at least not at the same time, except when I'm avoiding falling down the stairs, and a pouch of ice that I won't let out of my sight for at least another day. All in all, it's been a very relaxing day, with episodes of 24 sandwiched around mailing out of DemiDec applications. By Sunday I'll be on my way back to Korea.

In fact, my only post-operative mishap involved stepping in a puddle of puppy pee, which isn't uncommon, given that my dad likes to keep a special rug for the puppies to pee on (he claims otherwise, but it is the perfect color, fogettable brown, to hide nearly anything unmentionable.)

Mouthwash

After eating fish and chips, I needed something to make the taste go away. A pickle didn't do it, so I went to my room, where I took a swig of hotel mouthwash.

Except... I misread the label. The mouthwash was shampoo.

Aircraft Downgrade

Behind me, two men are arguing; one, about 60, figured out that the other, about 80, had sat in the wrong row. Says the older one, who has a cane and a dog: "I'll have you know, young man, that I'm a Marine, I fought in World War II, the Chinese Civil War, Korea... but I'm eighty now, I'm a little befuddled."

"Young man," responds the younger older man, "I didn't do as much as you did, but I also served my country."

Meanwhile, everyone in rows 23 and beyond has discovered that their seats are missing. An apologetic flight attendant just announced that a last-minute switch to a smaller aircraft means that all passengers in the last five rows need to disembark and ask for new seat assignemnts. "I think there'll be enough," she concludes.

The passengers in question are fighting to get off.

"That's not my dad, it's my dog," says the older older man, now one row behind me, in response to a question he must not have heard quite clearly.

I can't wait for this one to be over.

Library

I'm pleased to report that the Library in Alexandria has recovered handsomely. There's even free wireless--and Turkish coffee.

The Unlikeliest Alpaca

I met the cutest puppy today. It was tucked in a duffel bug, with only its head sticking out: perky ears and a toothy little grin.

"What kind of puppy is it?" I asked the owner, as I scratched it behind the ears.

She looked at me, slightly exasperated, and said, "Kangaroo."

Professional Geek

I haven't written much in here lately, and I'll try to post an explanation for that soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to add that I've been visiting the Texas Academic Decathlon state competitions this weekend, in Houston and San Antonio, and I feel so lucky: I have a job in which I can study interesting subjects, write footnotes, meet wonderful people and share alpacas with the world.

If you're a Decathlete, or a coach, or anyone else involved in the program, thank you so much for this opportunity.

Man and Elevator

"You're welcome to it," said the man, standing in front of an open elevator door.

I figured he was going up, so boarded, noted that the "L" button (for "Lobby") was already lit, and waited a while. The elevator doors didn't shut.

"It's stuck?"

"Yeah."

"Know where the stairs are?"

He shrugged. I looked around, spotted an exit sign, then found the stairs behind him to his left. They led directly to the lobby's "Cafe by the Lake."

"Stairs work," I said. He declined to come with me, which at the time baffled me--but in retrospect, maybe he was injured.

Severe Thunderstorm

I'd never heard an emergency siren before a few minutes ago--a screeching, awful thing, evocative of my childhood nightmares about Soviet nuclear strikes. "What's that?" I asked my driver.

"It is for severe thunderstorm," he explained. "It is to warn us."

"What should we do?"

"Nothing different," he said, "It is just for knowing." He turned left toward O'Hare, hitting the brakes. I'm in no particular rush because my flight is delayed ninety minutes. "Rain turn highway into parking lot," says my driver. The wipers swish back and forth. Mostly, I want to sleep, and with my pillow here, it's hard to resist.

Writing for the Screen and Stage

Twenty years ago, I had no idea I might like to write for the stage and screen someday. In fact, I spent most of my childhood reading novels voraciously and railing against what I saw as the dangers of television. I'm embarassed to admit I once carried a math textbook with me to a performance of Phantom of the Opera.

But there were signs. Early on I was a fan of The Smurfs, Transformers, even, ah, Rainbow Brite. What kept me glued to these shows from week to week were what I now know are called “story arcs,” or plots that unfold over a long series of episodes. There was one arc in particular, in which the Smurfs went exploring the world on a great ship, that seized my imagination. Later I devotedly watched Star Trek—though I was disappointed in how predictable and self-contained most of the episodes were. I knew Picard could never develop a serious love interest, that what happened in one episode wouldn’t matter in the next.

In college, I didn’t have a television, but I was so impressed by Shakespeare that before long I wrote a faux Shakespearean play about my high school Academic Decathlon team. (Imitation is finest flattery, etc.) By my senior year, I was trying to write the lyrics for a musical set in England during the Industrial Revolution. I collaborated with a composer with whom I completed two songs; we both dreamed of writing the soundtracks for Disney movies. Later I contributed (albeit minimally) to the book for a student-authored opera on the voyage of Magellan. In a persuasive technology lab, I worked with an engineer to script the lines and personality for a prototype singing doll, Hap the Happy Bear, that would persuade children to eat more McDonald’s (I’m still uneasy about it.) Later, I created storyboards for new product ideas at CASIO. And not long ago, an Internet communications start-up, Yackpack, asked me to create monsters—in theory, as entertaining characters to converse with users of their service. (Shamefully, I never delivered them, even though I tried inventing them to the soundtrack of Avenue Q.)

In all these instances, I’ve treasured the opportunity to collaborate with others; I like to believe that my imagination, whatever its other shortcomings, has very low walls. All along I continued to think of myself as a writer of prose fiction at heart. I enrolled in short story workshops, and I enjoyed the experience very much. But my stories gradually grew more focused on exchanges of dialogue than on long passages of description and narrative. I just don’t visualize scenes that way, in strings of sentences. And once I was out of college, I began to consume—or, more aptly, gorge myself on—series that I found brilliant and entertaining: shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I had, sadly, resisted in college because of its silly name), Angel, Six Feet Under, Firefly, and, more recently, The West Wing and 24. I am in awe of those producers and writers who successfully balance an evolving storyline and complex cast of characters with the need to draw in new viewers—to keep the story from descending into self-referential soap while also maintaining dramatic momentum from episode to episode.

In my final year at the Kennedy School of Government, I was blessed with an instructor who didn’t mind my taking a different approach than the traditional policy memo. Among other things, I wrote a new chapter to the bible, in which Moses was tried for war crimes, and a dialogue between Lao Tzu and Lincoln in which they contested the nature of good leadership. In writing them—and in watching the dialogue performed—I realized again how much I enjoyed entertaining others in slightly unconventional ways.

I still don’t know exactly in what form I’ll ultimately channel all this. But I've had the good fortune of a career thus far that, while motley at best, affords me the freedom to pursue old dreams in new guises. So, today, I leave to Chicago, in said pursuit. I'm not sure what I'll find there. I figure it's time to pack a coat and see what happens next.

Teatime

This afternoon I needed tea. I was on the verge of falling asleep. Unfortunately, most of the accidents in my life involve me on the verge of falling asleep... otherwise I wouldn't have hit an invisible car earlier this summer, or dropped my cell phone in a toilet two weeks ago. So I astutely filled an electric tea pot with water, placed it on the stove, then lit the stove and strolled away.

It didn't take too long to evacuate the apartment.

An RMB Saved is an...

ATM machines are always polite, asking if you mind extra fees and never hesitating to take no for an answer, but the ones here in Shanghai are extra thoughtful. They say, "Please take cash and advice."

My advise, sadly, looked a lot like a receipt, but I couldn't tell for sure: it was in Chinese.

Tonight I walked back to my "magnificent" hotel through People's Square. There were four benches enclosing a tree at the southeast corner. On one, a young couple kissed desperately. On the bench next to theirs, a prone beggar perspired in the heat.

My hotel room has no chair, only a stool. The last hotel room I was in that had no chair was in Corpus Christi. Since I'm staying here for a few days, I decided to liberate a chair from the hotel restaurant. I'd have made it, too, if the elevator hadn't taken so long to reach the third floor that a waitress spotted me. I was duly reprimaned.

Later I decided to go by the book and asked the front desk for a chair. Smiles and nods all around. When I got back later in the day, they had delivered a second stool.

Now, if you mount two stools together and stick a pillow between them, you do sort of get a chair. And the air conditioning works. Also, there's a street full of yummy food stalls nearby--today I ate a fresh egg wrap for 2 RMB, or about 25 cents. So I'm not complaining.

Speaking of food, though, I had the best salad of my life (seriously) at a place called the Coffee Beanery near one of the schools I visited this morning, in Pudong. (The Coffee Beanery shouldn't be mistaken for the Coffee Bean, which also operates stores here in Shanghai.) Their so-called "Hawaiian Salad" was a Caesar plus pineapple, fresh chicken bits, and crunchy nuts. It was weird to eat something knowing that any salad I ate in the future would either be the best salad of my life or not as good as this one.

Alas, I doubt we'll be seeing any Coffee Beaneries opening up in California, unless they change their name--preferably to something other than the Tea Leafery.

Throughout the day, I've been editing Dean Webb's "Rest of Us" guide to Chinese history; if at any point the PRC confiscates my computer and finds the file, I might end up writing the sequel to One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich instead.

Kowloon by 'loonlight

I'll admit I don't know as much about the world as I would like to. For instance, yesterday, shortly before procuring pajamas for my former Spanish teacher's grandchildren, I rediscovered that Ottawa is the capital of Canada. I feel like I discover that fact periodically, then forget it again.

In a similar way, I'm embarassed to admit that I had no idea Kowloon was in Hong Kong until I reserved a hotel here: the Ramada, which is generously described as "rustic."

I've been to a lot of Asian cities by now, and a lot of them share the "welcome to the future" aesthetic. Huge neon signs, enormous shopping malls, talking toilets, etc. But passing through Hong Kong on the train, then Kowloon on a bus, I really felt as if I'd shown up in a different century. It was New York washed in halogen and brimming with mostly Chinese people and with shops still open at 11 on a Sunday night--clothing, electronics, espresso. Buildings towered so high over narrow streets that I felt completely enclosed. A city in a cavern, with rooftops in space and lots of ATM machines.

---

I fully recommend Team of Rivals as the single best biography I've ever read.

You're Welcome

A man here in the Cathay Pacific lounge (where I'm camped out drinking tea and editing) just stopped one of the employees in front of the magazine stand.

"Is there wireless here?" he demanded, in a very pleasant British accent.

"Yes," said the employee.

"Does it require a password?"

"No, sir," said the employee.

The man walked away to rejoin his travel companion, a woman in a scarf.

"You're welcome," said the employee, softly.

---

"You're Welcome" was also the title of one of my favorite fifth season episodes of Angel, in which Cordelia briefly returns to help Angel to find his way.

Move Over, Mountain View

In fact, move over Seoul, too. The streets of Taipei have been fully "wiflied" by an ISP called WiFly, with funding from the city government. What's more, you can even roam the network using a Boingo account, though it turns out the service costs 12 cents a minute. I wish that the fine print explaining that had been in English before I blissfully used the network for five hours. Today, I've wisened up. I bought a one-day WiFly account for 100 New Taiwan Dollars (about $3 U.S.) If your path brings you to Taiwan, I recommend one. You'll be able to surf the web on taxicabs. Today, I'll try it on the subway.

It Was Only Ten Days

...and I spent the last three mostly writing my thesis. But it was something on the first night of my spring break in Taiwan that led me back to NTU today. Our hosts had taken us out for snacks at the various food stalls. We wandered in a large group, down to a street that forked at about a 45 degree angle. There was a minimart near the corner, and stinky tofu nearby. I'm not sure why I remembered that particular spot. But this morning, as I rode in a taxi to meet with the Bethany School about joining Scholar's Cup, I looked up from my laptop and saw it.

I felt that quick tingle of recognition as past and present geographies matched in my head. I timidly glanced to the right at the next intersection, glimpsed some palm trees. That was a second clue. NTU is the Stanford of Southeast Asia.

The counselor I met at the the Bethany school confirmed it: we were just a couple blocks away from the university's main entrance. After our meeting she let me me out the school's gate. As we crossed the blacktop one student asked her if she had a date. "August 25," she answered. Then a giant steel grating rolled up and out I went to Roosevelt Street.

Within a block I had passed a dark-haired man making Middle Eastern sandwiches. I remembered him; he spoke English with a French accent. A little further and there was Dante Coffee: Dante, where I'd tried to write my thesis but mostly written in this blog. And within a few hundred meters of Dante was the front gate to NTU.

Palm trees lined it. Students were biking in and out. Girls walked with umbrellas. I stood next the giant campuis map where I once asked someone if I could borrow her cell phone. I felt the flutter of an inappropriate nostalgia. I was here not ten years ago, but one and a few meager months. For some reason it felt like I was visiting a place much older in my life.

I crossed campus, poking my head in the room where once, I screamed like Howard Dean. Microphones lined all the tables this time. I snapped a photograph and in my head I photoshopped in everyone I'd gotten to know here. Our welcome breakfast too.

I walked on. The building next door to our dorm now featured a Japanese tea shop and various other restaurants. The Seven-Eleven that had sprung up there overnight had apparently been only the beginning of a larger renovation.

The dorm was mostly unchanged--even the computers were the same, in the lobby. I borrowed one to check my e-mail. The puzzled security guard objected at first, then relented when I pointed toward the stairs and said, "I stayed there." If only it were always that easy.

Not too far away, Jon and David had once stood on a table to make their closing remarks. Presumably, another HCAP group had visited since, and other closing remarks been spoken.

I'm not sure why this last year has felt so--long. I suppose it's a blessing that years feel long: it promises at least the illusion of a longer life.

To end on a less melancholy note, tonight I'll be having dinner with several of the HCAP alumni--Buddy and Tina for sure, and maybe others too. Looking forward to it. Yesterday, I saw Chuan-Mei (and devastated her bathroom)--so this trip has been a nice combination of Scholar's Cup meetings, farce (see "Down the Drain") and reunions with old friends.

Down the Drain

Last night, in my frantic packing for a flight to Taiwan, I dropped my new cell phone in the toilet.

I'll try to post more tomorrow. But a brief recap: I rushed from Taipei airport to the city of Taechng, where I saw Chuan-Mei for breakfast, then worked at a Starbucks tucked in the lingerie section of a local K-mart clone until my meeting at a local high school, Morrison Academy. I was there to invite it to join the Scholar's Cup. It went well! Several students attended, including one who claimed to have competed in the Nevada Academic Decathlon. As Nevada hasn't fielded a team in several years, I was puzzled, but decided not to protest.

Pomimo

A year ago, but only twenty entries or so as the blog goes, my family and I lost a little puppy. A vet gave her too much vaccine; she died a couple days later after clinging to life on an IV drip. We never sued the vet. We probably should have.

On the scale of things, I know losing a puppy is not a big deal. People die, some violently, many prematurely, every day. Every minute, really. Once, in China, I saw a man with a crushed skull sprawled on the side of the freeway, near a motorcycle. And another time, I stood over the corpse of my sister's boyfriend at a hospital while his mother screamed.

That was tragedy. A lost puppy may be a loss, but, surely, not a tragedy. Even when the call comes in at 3 am.

Yet even a non-tragic loss has its impact. I tasted salt. And when the breeder was kind enough to send a replacement puppy, I found her adorable too--but I didn't adore her in quite the same way. I was still grieving that non-tragic loss. That first puppy had been remarkable: spunky and at ease from the moment I picked her up at a plantation in Louisiana.

In a way, that made my summer easier. I didn't mind leaving the house as much as I would have, had that first puppy lived.

I wish my summer had been harder.

Then, one day in Xi'an, I encountered a mischievous little white dog that looked like a mixture of a Pomeranian and an American Eskimo. A crowd gathered to watch me play with it. (They were also upset that I had put my China Lonely Planet guide on the ground.) I watched that puppy leave with its owner thinking I would have taken it with me if I could.

That night, I realized I was--for lack of a better term--ready again. A google search revealed it had probably been half American Eskimo, half Pomeranian--a mixture called a "pomimo." I e-mailed a breeder. She had two small white ones available. Both had a mischievous-looking father, one a more cheerful mother. I chose her.

Last week, she arrived from Nebraska, and I brought her home to my parents. Wrapped in a blue blanket. And this puppy is not--a replacement. Either she doesn't have to keep measuring up to a puppy just lost, or maybe she just measures up very very well. She has that same spunk and ease. Whatever the opposite of a non-tragic loss is, she has become.

And yes, my family and I are a little crazy about our pets. But surely you knew that already. Just wait till I have an alpaca.

Beef Noodles

In one odd incident en route, the beef noodle soup on the flight had beef, and noodles, but no--soup. The flight attendants were mystified. One suggested the noodles may have absorbed all the water. I doubt that, though. They weren't very moist noodles.

Nanjing Road

An interesting thing about coming back with a friend to a place where you've known both pain and joy is that only the joy is there for the sharing.

Game 83

"After nine long years, this wasn't so much a celebration of what happened here. It was a celebration of simply being here." -- Orange County Register

"It started with the suit. It ended with a shot that had all 19,162 fans in Staples Center holding their breath." - L.A. Times

"A sea of red and blue overtook Staples Center, and for the first time in the seven-year NBA history of the arena, purple and gold did not dominate the look of playoff basketball in Los Angeles." - L.A. Daily News

Clippers win, 89-87.

Riverwalk

"Is it natural or manmade?" I asked a waiter at the "cutting-edge tex mex" restaurant downstairs.

"It flows in a circle," he replied.

Enough said.

On every other trip I've taken to San Antonio, which is just about annually for the Texas state competition, I never even made it to the Riverwalk. This time, I haven't left it yet. I've been tutoring an Austrian gentleman named David Schlaff for the GMAT--a test I took once after hitting my head.

The bottled water in the hotel is very pretty.

Frequent Trimmer

I'm now a member of the frequent haircuts club at the Coex Mall. "This way you collect miles," explained the cashier. "Every eleven haircuts, one is free."

I wonder if I will be in Korea enough this next year to collect one.

Counting the Ballots

A quick update: Kent is about to give a presentation to over 1,000 mothers on how their children should balance Friends, Grades, English, Entertainment, Art, Family, Culture and Exercise. I have the diagram in my hands; it looks a bit like a spider's web. He calls it "Wise Moms."

I indulged in the Election Day episode of the West Wing this morning. The result was to my liking, even if I didn't quite believe it. I expected the moderate Republic with a broken hand to win. The startling thing to me, though, was how engaged I got with it--as if states were actually being called for the different candidates. I guess there's a reason I went to the Kennedy School after all.

As for yesterday's presentation--it's too early to call the outcome. But the presentation went, I think and hope, very well. The CDI officers who attended seemed intrigued. They asked lots of questions. David and I took turns answering. If I had to guess right now, I'd say some kind of Scholar's Cup *could* happen--and the next step is... unclear. But should be more clear soon.

Strawberry Milk

Over the course of a generally feverish night, I dreamed of nuclear annihilation. The first time, I was in Chicago and saw a mushroom cloud sprout up over the lake. I think it was the middle of last year's DemiSummit. The second time, I was further from the blast and got to watch the war unfold, at least metaphorically; I saw bright lights zipping back and forth inside a cup of milk. When the lights died out, the milk turned pink.

Election Day

Monday morning, 11 am--that's 11 hours and 12 minutes from now. It's not the be-all and end-all: the meeting could go well, and Scholar's Cup not work out. Or, the meeting could go poorly, and Scholar's Cup still succeed. So many paths possible.

I go to bed a little dizzy and a lot hopeful.

Just Not My Day

I just got sprayed in my ear with cleaning solution. It was an accident involving a trashcan. I'll either have very clean ears or go deaf.

Missionaries

"Hello!" one of them said brightly, as I passed them in the mall: three well-dressed young Korean women.

"Hello," I said, not sure if I knew her.

She answered that by asking, "Do you read the bible?"

"This isn't a good time," I said, honestly, "But I do wish you well."

"Only five minutes," began another, "The bible--"

"Sick," I interrupted, gesturing toward my stomach. "Thank you, the bible is good, but where is the bathroom?"

"Aaaah." They seemed to take in my sweaty expression and vaguely doubled-over condition. I probably looked like I was doing a bad imitation of Jack Bauer craving a fix in Season Three. "That way, to the left," said the first one, pointing to the right.

It's been a long day...

Rehydration Packs

For some reason (well, I guess it's a self-evident reason, as I struggle to hold down a cup of tea) I'm reminded of the day after Paula, Karen and I finished hiking the Inca Trail. We had come down to Aguas Calientes, a small town a few kilometers from Machu Picchu, and spent the night bathing in their hot springs. The next morning Karen woke up very sick to the stomach. Paula and I searched the town looking for something to help her. All we could locate were cholera rehydration packs. I think they helped, though it took a while; we were delayed there a couple days while she recuperated.

I wonder where they are now. Last I checked, Paula was a medical student in Portland. That tends to take a while, so I bet she's still there. I don't know about Karen, though. She was a consultant in San Francisco. I've only seen her once since the night that we parted paths at a hookah bar in Istanbul.

Above the Second Cataract

I'm falling asleep, so a quick post: earlier today, at a Renaissance fair in the desert, I witnessed a pseudo-crucifixion and walked a plank. The CDO team and I also ran into an alpaca. It looked like a DemiDec cover wrought in flesh and sunlight. We asked if we could pose for pictures with it.

"Yes," said the caretaker, who told us the alpaca's name was Peru. "But you might want to give him a flower."

We got him a light green rose. I didn't realize that Peru would eat it out of my hand, but he did--happily. I've never seen an alpaca slurp before. Such big teeth!

Barbarians and fairies were also present at the fair, though like the alpaca they weren't mentioned in this year's Super Quiz curriculum.

Later I had tea with my high school Spanish teacher, Dr. Serfaty, a.k.a. "arbol," then went with her and the most recent iteration of my team to an Ethiopian restaurant, where slow service combined with excellent food, questionable jokes and an erratic paper towel dispenser. Farhan got so hungry waiting for our dinner he went next door and bought a candy bar. We nearly lost Zac to a hot green pepper.

There was also some questionable driving, not mine for a change.

I go to bed with a sunburned nose and tingly ears.

Java City Cafe

I admit it: I'm nutty about coffee shops with wireless Internet access. In the United States, that usually means a Starbucks or, in California, a Coffee Bean. I'm not sure about Caribou Coffee out in the Midwest, but still, at best, there are a few chains, and try as they might with the occasional gingerbread latte, they aren't anything special. They smell of java but reek of sameness.

Enter Korea. I'm in a shameless state of bliss. I type this entry at a Java City Cafe with about 1500 square feet of room, plump pinstriped chairs, cherrywood tables that don't look like they could be dragged onto the patio at a patron's whim. There are ten other chains with equal attention to detail. About half of them imitate Starbucks, but the others transcend it.

I hope they stay in business. But I look around and this enormous cafe is empty. The perfect lighting falls on my laptop, one man reading a book, and two couples. That might be enough to fill the corner Coffee Bean, but here, we're so far apart we could fit additional coffee kiosks between us.

And yes, Korea has those too. I photographed a few today in a futile quest for the Chinese embassy. I'll post them at the fotki site soon.

The World Turned...

In Korea, "La Paz" isn't a Tex-Mex restaurant, it's a coffee shop.

But never fear: burritos are available, from Hyundai.

Don't Know How Long This Link Will Work

Click here

Congratulations to Zac, Dean, Julia, Monica, Farhan, Atish, Michael, the two Davids, Miss Paul, and Dr. Berchin...

Shorn

One pastel smoothie bar in the CoEx Mall advertises that "we are coffee." Nearby an actual Coffee Bean attracts a trickle of patrons; behind it a larger Starbucks is crowded to the brim. As for me, I've found a Holly's Coffee about one underground block away, where I'm not sipping my green tea--since I plan to nap in a few minutes. Afterward I'll be meeting David at the thirteenth entrance to a designated subway station.

Elsewhere in the Coex Catacombs I got my hair cut. Haircuts in places where no one speaks your language are not only fun, they're low-stress: there's no need to make small talk, and I don't have to figure out how I want my hair styled, since there's no way to communicate it anyhow.

The stylist, who introduced herself as Sohyung, had an assistant whose job was to occasionally tap what looked like an eraser against my face and neck.

The Closest I've Ever Been to Hawaii

After a long absence, I'll see if I can rouse this blog back to life.

Last night I returned to Korea. On the plane, I sat next to a small Japanese man in a tophat.

I'm back to work with David Kimel to start an academic competition for middle and/or high school students. We've dubbed it (tentatively) Scholar's Cup. Our hope is that someday it would become the Scholar's World Cup. I'm convinced it could succeed, but as with many plans, it's not clear how to execute it. We'll see what happens. But something's bound to.

David found me a place to stay: the Hawaii Hotel. It's a mid-sized, perfectly rectangular black structure with small windows looking out on a construction pit. This is how he describes it:

"...in the area, very comfortable (American television, Internet access in every room, near a giant mall, etc.) and pretty cheap (about 50-60 bucks a night, if memory serves)."

I should add that it's also the most decked-out hotel room I've ever been in. There's a Sparkletts-style water dispenser. Gigantic shampoo, conditioner and body wash pumps. Shaving cream, toothpaste, something called an "emulsion." A computer with an LCD monitor. Robes. Sandals. And, tucked discreetly by the bed, two complimentary packets of condoms.

"It's a business hotel," the woman at the front desk assured me, when I asked for a discount.

I see. Business. Uh-huh.

"G for Gendetta"

Not sure why, but my gmail account was suspended overnight, for "up to 24 hours" (though you never know.) With typical google humor, it describes this as a "lockdown in sector four"; more seriously, it alleges that my account violated gmail's terms of service.

I figure one of two things did it: the e-mail I sent to coaches about the resurrected message board, or my downloading messages to Thunderbird to respond to on my way home. Since I send e-mails to coaches from time to time and this hasn't happened before, it was probably the latter. Either way, I'm probably "going dark" as an e-correspondent till it revives.

All in all, this is the perfect bookend to a trip that included my luggage visiting Tennessee, my cell phone taking up permanent residence at O'hare, my solitary confinement at an abandoned airport in Madison at 2 am, and my (brief) assignment to someone else's hotel room.

La Vida Loca

I don’t write random musings very often anymore, which maybe makes it even more cliché than usual that I would choose to write on a dark beach on the coast of Mexico. I’m sitting about twenty feet from the water. It foams but doesn’t rise very high. The Beatles are singing “Let it Be” somewhere in the nearby hotel; they’re louder than the surf. I once karaoked that song in Boise; another time, in Shanghai. The song is bittersweet enough without the memories.

I walked nine kilometers today, maybe ten. From the center of Mazatlan to this “golden” periphery peppered with motels and mid-tier resorts. I limped the last few blocks, but I don’t think it’s my age catching up to me. It seems to be more a matter of bad shoes and thin socks. Conceivably I should also exercise more.

I’m not really sure why I’m in Mexico. At least in London, I had a secret mission and could enjoy the first class seat. Here, I think I came to prove that I could follow through on a travel whim. I had, after all, just cancelled a trip to East Timor in order to work with Bill Cathers at L.A. High this coming Saturday. More than once I had driven toward the airport, then not actually gotten on a plane. So this time, I did. It wasn’t unlike my motivations for doing Decathlon the second time. Regret minimization.

Also, I had told Chuan-Mei I would come—and this was my last chance to make good on that. Of course, I had abortively visited so often that she assumed I wasn’t actually flying here and made other plans. So I’ve been wandering Mazatlan on my own. Not a bad thing. I needed the peace and quiet. I do my best storytelling with an audience, but not my best planning.

I caught the tail end of Mazatlan’s Mardi Grass. Steaming crowds of—Mazatlani?—crowding the beachfront to watch a series of floats. The floats were crawling with dancers, some disinterested, others flaunting their curves. One float was for Alamo Rent a Car. I bought a coconut pastry of some kind, which left my fingers oily, then a cup of corn kernels mashed with cream and cheese. It was tasteless, maybe because I asked them to hold the chili; I tossed it out at a pharmacy where I bought water. I had expected it to taste of Chiapas and my journey with Sanjai.

I think this moment may have made the whole overnight venture worthwhile. Writing on the beach. I’ve always been a sucker for melodrama. Yet there’s something to it. Buried in me—perhaps entombed, at this point—is still that writer who loves words more than alpacas. It takes a lot to let him out. But when he comes out—or, as he is doing now, pokes a tremulous finger through a crack in the wall—he proves that he wants to come out.

I hear threads of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in my head. Memories of the summer after my sophomore year, driving to Venice Beach to meet Sasha and Jessica. Two years earlier I had tossed a Frisbee and run back and forth through Serrania Park. At night I would sprint through a different park with Ali and Jeff. Already I already felt like that had been the distant past. It’s startling how quickly Stanford installed a wall for me between high school and the thereafter.

A lighthouse blinks in the distance. A faro. Last year, I worked for a Grupo Faro, in Quito. That almost feels like Frisbee already. The walls come up more often now. I finished the “thesis” the first couple days of April, from a beautiful hotel in Taipei—after a week of good times and transient friendships.

Taipei. China. Singapore. When did Asia begin to feel more comfortable than Los Angeles? Maybe I am a natural expatriate—or someone who needs regular doses of alien-ness. One could argue that I always feel different from those around me, and that being in a foreign country allows me to manifest that difference, shamelessly.

The Fifth Airport

When I booked my flight back from Seoul to Los Angeles, I paid little note to the stopover in Singapore. Only much later did I learn that Singapore is no closer to Korea than Los Angeles is to New York City--and that it's in the opposite direction from both of them.

Then, as soon as I boarded my flight in Singapore, the pilot announced we weren't headed straight back for Los Angeles, but for Tokyo. It was the first time I ever boarded a flight not knowing where it was going. This also meant that I flew six hours southwest from Seoul to Singapore to catch a connection six hours northeast back to Tokyo. Er. My flight path looked like a noose.

I'm still in a state of bliss from the Singaporean night markets. I wandered up and down the streets, first of Chinatown, then of Little India, stuffing myself with as many treats as possible and forgetting, bite by bite, a month of spicy pickled things.

Now I'm in LA for two full days of pupsitting while my family is away before begining my journey back to Boston (not, thankfully, via Midway Island.) So far, LA's included a concert (Josh Rouse), two maverick Israelis (www.trustedopinion.com) and a DHL man delivering my own puppy back to me.

Stopover

Writing this in the lounge on the second floor of the airport in Singapore. Eating tiny bits of ham and cheese while sipping coffee and green tea at the same time.

Fragments of a journey thus far:

My shopping marathon ran out of steam circa 3:30 am, when I abandoned Mustafa's and checked into a "napping center" at the airport. Windowless little chambers without doors, separated by shoulder-height wooden partitions. Blanket and extraordinarily effective air conditioning provided. I bought three hours of time; exactly at the three hour mark, a woman tapped my foot to wake me up. Definitely more effective than an alarm clock: I experienced a momentary adrenaline surge and prepared to defend my bunk.

Such yummy food. The approach of Chinese New Year meant that the streets of Singapore were crammed with people and booths even at midnight. Somehow, before I knew it, I was the proud owner of a red pillow displaying a happy dog. And after weeks of Korean cuisine, I was a veritable glutton--sipping from a coconut while eating dried fruits, tea-soaked eggs, mooncake, mushrooms and something not unlike mu shu pork. Also spicy Indian pancakes. Mmm. Street stalls.

I think my copy of the Star Wars Holiday Special--which I hoped would supply entertainment on the flight--lacks subtitles. Who in their right mind would broadcast a movie 90% in the Wookie language? Eeew. I counted. Ten minutes of mewling noises between lines of English dialogue that make Revenge of the Sith a veritable work of Shakespeare--most of that time filled with Chewie's little son snatching cookies, then courting death upon a balcony. The existence of Wookies would discredit intelligent design in a heartbeat.

Time to board. Farewell to the tropics--fifteen hours of seatbelt fastening and unfastening ahead...

Epiphany

I discovered tonight that when students appear to be looking up
words on their little electronic dictionaries, as often as not they're
actually playing Tetris.

Human Rights Violations

Yesterday night, three Koreans at a bar asked me if I realized what Hollywood movie star I looked like. "Here we go again," I thought. Their verdict: Ed Norton. My inner penguin was nonplussed.

Speaking of movies, I'll admit a little bashfully that I've consumed about two seasons of The West Wing since leaving London. I tend to read, and watch things, in bursts; I love seeing story arcs unfold.

Debating what to teach tonight... I'm thinking of doing "bad" leaders for a change: "Bin Laden and Buddies." Or maybe fan campaigns to revive TV shows (Star Trek, Firefly, Family Guy) as (rare?) examples of successful popular movements in modern-day America. Fictional leaders could be fun. Ooh, Ammar versus Rodrigo (from The Lions of Al-Rassan, perhaps my favorite novel.) I'm going to miss this job.

In Boston, I frequented a Korean tea shop, called Dado. So I came to Korea expecting bountiful and delicious tea. Alas, tea isn't as easy to find as I had hoped; there are coffee vending machines at every corner, and more Starbucks clones than you can shake a fist at, but tea seems to be the choice of a past generation. And not a single tapioca shop. It's clearly not Taiwan.

When I was little, I was so addicted to teatime on my family's visits to Chile that once, when we had skipped it, I was inconsolable until my grandparents agreed to serve teatime as the first course of dinner. Me, spoiled? Absolutely.

The number of camp casualties continues to increase, a fact little-noted in the Korean media. Yesterday, one girl broke a finger playing basketball during the obligatory PE hour, and another chipped a tooth running down the hall and tripping over an object (she's exercised her fifth amendment right, or the Korean equivalent, not to identify what the object was.)

In creative writing, most of the kids' short stories so far have featured murders and/or love triangles involving Katalina, usually both. (The latter suggests they might be more perceptive than they're sometimes given credit for.) In one story, another TA (the engimatic EJ) got flushed down a toilet, whereupon Katalina turned into King Kong and ravaged the town. For their final story, David and I instructed them not to include any camp personnel as characters, and to secure permission from a teacher before killing anyone. Yes, we're cracking down on free expression. It's fun to be authoritarian, even south of the DMZ.

I shared the opening of The Lovely Bones with them as an example of how to hook a reader. Not everyone knew what a salmon was (oh, how I miss sushi) but they all gasped at "I was murdered on December 6, 1973..." I'm trying to figure out why I found that novel so compuslively readable too. I think it's very much the characters (they're roomy characters; I find a place to fit inside each of them) and the smooth narrative; it's also the unique, understated yet weirdly believable point of view. I think I'm better able to suspend my disbelief regarding an omniscient narrator when that narrator is in a place where she has every right to be a little bit omniscient... yet still very human, and very young. I cringed when her father got his knee bashed in: not moving on literally made it harder for him to move. I loved the flashes of Ray's family (I forget his mother's name--Ruana?) And I was cheerfully surprised when the situation with the despicable yet frail Mr. Harvey was resolved off-stage, or at least out of focus. I wish you all a very good life.

Back at camp, the youngest student, Doyee, set his story on the USS Enterprise. He was captain, of course, implying Picard either met a grisly fate or left the fleet to perform in a Klingon version of the Christmas Carol. It's nice to know Star Trek fans survive--and continue to spawn--abroad.

To my surprise, the girl who got tortured a few days ago now walks arm in arm with her alleged torturers again. I'm not sure if I'm witnessing a great reconciliation, poor short-term memory, or the tip of some sociological iceberg.

Randy and I recently finished downloading the Star Wars Holiday Special. I won't subject the kids to it but I do plan to watch it on the flight home--probably on the Seoul-Singapore leg, as there'll be more cities nearby for an emergency landing should I require defibrillation.

Drama

A new soap opera unfolds: one of the students, a girl named Anne, gossipped about three other girls and they found out. They exacted retribution, first creating disgusting beverages for her to drink (including toothpaste), pouring what she refused to drink down her shirt, and then hitting her, etc. No word on whether they tried to make her faint. The ringleader is the youngest girl in the camp, who seems exceptionally sweet-natured but writes short stories about serial killers. Her name is Jenna. The camp coordinator is holding a summit with the TAs on what to do next.

Of Modes and Medians

I type this quick, quasi-furtive entry as students listen a practice TOEFFL oral response section playing on my laptop. From time to time they present me with their answers, which I then score on a scale of 1 to 5. Average score so far, closer to 2 than to 4. Yep, I've been called to emergency English-testing duty because one of the other teachers (the one who was going to host "Old Boy") was hospitalized for food poisoning after eating raw fish this weekend.

The Korean sashimi experience is a little different than I'm used to. Among other things, you pick your own fish.

Chicken Soup for the Expatriate Soul

Things are fairly quiet over here. I'm getting to know the town, which seems to be of uniform density. Lots of fish for sale, though no giant felines in sight, unless you count Hello Kitty dolls. In fact, several of the students keep inventing things with Hello Kitty themes, such as a Hello Kitty sandcastle mold. David has declared he would marry Hello Kitty if he could.

I'm also getting lots of practice speaking in public (a presentation a day keeps the jitters away) though the public in this case comprises 17 Korean children ages 12-15 and one camp coordinator, Kent, who nods a great deal and occasionally draws inappropriate things on the board.

I arranged to have French fries delivered in the middle of my talk on the history of McDonald's last night: edible multimedia. Every evening is turning into a kind of storytelling hour. Tuesday I did FDR; tonight is the rise and demise of the American department store, and tomorrow, maybe Ronald Reagan and the 1980s.

But--speaking of McDonald's--a quick thought on Korean food. Yesterday, Kyle knocked on my door to wake me up from a morning nap. (Eh, my mornings aren't very hardcore.) He explained that there was a very special meal in the cafeteria that he didn't want me to miss. It turned out to be chicken soup. Only in a country where nearly all the food is pickled and/or spicy would boiled chicken in plain broth be considered remarkable.

Okay, time to hike back from town to campus to prepare for tonight (and for the afternoon invention workshop--hopefully featuring no more Hello Kittiness.) It's a very pleasant n degrees below zero out there. I love my earmuffs.

Campus Store

Randy and I took a day trip there to Taegu yesterday, where our discoveries included giant chestnuts, the cleanest subway stations I've ever seen, and a "campus store" selling exclusively Harvard and Yale merchandise. They really do like Harvard here.

Accidental Daybreak

So I just woke up, showered, put on my teacher costume, and then walked out to have breakfast with the other teachers--only to discover that everyone was still asleep, except for one masked man prowling the corridors with a vacuum cleaner.

It turns out I miscalculated the time. It's not 8 am. It's 6 am. The last time I did this I was a freshman in Canaday. Similarly disorienting to realize the sun won't rise for another two hours. I now have all that time to (1) sleep a bit more, which is a more appealing prospect by the minute, and (2) perhaps more pressingly, figure out what I should teach today. There really is no curriculum. In my class, I have three girls, three boys and one TA, Kyle, with a crush on the other TA, Catalina (who helps David next door and claims descent from Confucius.)

In my case, he's not a family relation, but the students think I look like Mr. Bean.

Hello, My Name Is

I'm falling asleep in the "faculty lounge"--really, just a classroom with a chalkboard, two podiums, and a bunch of ethernet cables. Happy to report that my first class was a really good experience (at least for me--I hope for the students too.) We discussed a number of quotes--from Mark Twain to John Keats. I asked students to share personal experiences related to the quotes to break the ice. It turns one lied to his father about comic books and was caught; another poked her cousin in the eye for, er, pooping in the bathtub. One fought a schoolyard bully and lost, but won a moral victory. All talked about their images of love and beauty. Each shared a mistake. They argued the distinction between ignorance and stupidity. Michael Jordan came up (no mention of the Clippers, however.) Most of all, I think they got comfortable with one another. I'm looking forward to the next few weeks.

Heat Pump

Walking back from the welcome party, Randy and I spotted a plate of food in front of David's door.

"Look," I said, "David left pizza in the hallway."

Randy walked toward it, saying that though he wasn't hungry right now, it couldn't hurt to have some extra pizza. Then he stopped and doubled back.

"Wait," he said, "It's probably in the hallway because it's so cold out here that he's using the hallway to refrigerate it."

If Not You'll Go to Liechtenstein

The students arrive in about 3 hours, and then... the fun theoretically begins. But in the meantime, the camp coordinator, Kent, decided that it would be a good night to sneak out of the dorm (which locks up at 11 pm) and check out the night life in our little mountain town.

This translated to a bar, followed by a karaoke place, followed by another bar, where we stayed till the dorm reopened at 6 am. At the karaoke bar one of the TAs announced her boyfriend had just broken up with her, at which point several other guys in the group sought to, ah, comfort her.

While watching the requisite soap opera develop, I also learned a lot about Korean drinking games, at which it turns out I do well enough to avoid drinking. Despite being nominally in charge, Kent drank himself into a stupor, roused enough to reenact the "king of the world" scene from Titanic, then slumped back into his seat and began to snore. He also mentioned his mother a lot.

An update to come on the students and whether, in fact, Kent wakes up in time to host the "opening ceremony." If not, I might volunteer to substitute for him and offer a lyrical verse or two for the occasion. Something like,

"Welcome, students, to the camp,
we'll make you into creative champ!
Just do your work, and you'll be fine,
If not you'll go to Liechtenstein."

Shutruk Nahunte

I'm about to teach my first class. I met my students this morning. There's only six. With any luck, I'll learn all their names in a day and won't confuse them too much. In other news, the camp coordinator drank himself into a stupor last night.

Pink Down Jackets

I'm writing now from Gimpo Airport, near Seoul, at a stand available for public use by passengers on Asiana Airlines. I'm usually an American Airlines kind of guy, but this trip is an exception: Star Alliance all the way. I flew on the top floor of a 747 for the first time from L.A. to Tokyo, writing my application to an MFA program at Columbia and watching West Wing episodes for eleven hours. It was beautiful.

Alas, because I procrastinated on the application, I've only slept about 5 hours since New Year's Eve, but I'm holding up surprisingly well so far. A couple observations before my flight to Taegu boards.

As my bus--a.k.a. "airport limousine"--pulled up to Gimpo Airport, I spotted a woman in a puffy pink down jacket and white skirt standing in the middle of a crosswalk, dancing, smiling and not moving out of our way. Her cheeks were blushed bright red. Just when I was starting to wonder if she was a deranged courtesan waiting for us to run her over, she curtsied and moved aside.

The bus rolled on, and someone dressed exactly like her waited at the next crosswalk.

---

(A little girl in a blue coat just looked at me, then whispered something to her mom. I said, "hello," and she shyly responded, "hello." Her mom laughed.)

---

At the airport cafeteria, I was pressed for time. My flight was about to board on the other side of security. I must have looked hurried, because when I ordered the sushi combination platter, the woman at the counter warned me, "That will be slow. Take ten minutes."

"Ah, I said, "That won't work. How about the kimchi and pork cutlet?"

"Faster," she said, smiling, "Take ten minutes."

I ordered that. Really good. And took only eight.

The Biggest Bookstore on... Europe, Sort Of

I remember when Amazon's slogan was "The Biggest Bookstore on Earth." At the time, I quietly, maybe quixotically, favored Barnes and Noble's newer online venture, bn.com. It featured faster shipping, but mostly, it was the market underdog. Remember, I'm a Clippers fan.

Now, I swear by Amazon. They hooked me with their "prime" shipping program--unlimited second-day shipping for a flat annual fee. I'll order anything from them, even shampoo.

(I like collecting different shampoo bottles. They make such extravagant promises.)

Anyways, I digress. The point of this blog is to note that I am, suddenly, more or less unexpectedly, in London. And on my first and possibly only night here, I was drawn to the largest bookstore in Europe, Waterstone's.

I'm being charged by the minute for this connection, so I'll write more later.

Peet's

Back in Boston and settled in for breakfast at Peet's Coffee and Tea. A schizophrenic (?) man keeps saying, "Laptop is newspaper," and rocking back and forth. An employee named Lily has just told her third customer since I got here that there are no bagels here (I was the first.) The beauty of jetlag: I woke up at 7 am totally refreshed (though still fighting off a hint of Sasha's flu.)

Lisbon

En route to Lisbon via Zurich. This blog may yet be recalled to life.

Stanzas Written On The Road Between Florence And Pisa

I first encountered Lord Byron's poem as a sophomore in English class. I think there were three poems that really hit me hard in high school and that still echo in my head from time to time--this, "The Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock," and "A Dream Deferred."

---
Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory;
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
'Tis but as a dead flower with May-dew besprinkled:
Then away with all such from the head that is hoary!
What care I for the wreaths that can only give glory?

O Fame!—if I e'er took delight in thy praises,
'Twas less for the sake of thy high-sounding phrases,
Than to see the bright eyes of the dear one discover
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her.

There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee;
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee;
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story,
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory.

Gone With The... Kimel?

I don't write here very often anymore. This is in part because I haven't been moving around much lately--but more because most of what I've had to say feels as if it would be uninteresting to people outside of my head. Posting progress reports on DemiDec releases = not so intriguing.

On second thought, I probably ought to have written something about our DemiDec retreat in Mexico, but at the time we were all so busy eating tacos and wrestling with a publication crisis that it didn't even occur to me.

They were really good tacos. It was a really good trip.

Anyway, if anyone actually still visits this blog -- thank you.

A parting pointer: www.gonewiththekimel.com.

Woof

Daniel: my heart just jumped
i accidentally knocked over the subwoofer
and it made the noise
of a very hurt dog
demidec.chen: Appropriate noise for a subwoofer...

Hiatus Coming to an End

I've been in Boston this week. I accidentally brought along hydrocortisone cream from Mexico and, in a confused moment, applied some as sunscreen. I then washed it off vigorously hoping my whole face wasn't about to deflate.

On Hiatus

Will return once DemiDec is published.

Not Vanilly After All

Mini is resting comfortably on her first evening in town.

Not Fade Away

I should share why we named little Milly little Milly: because just then, when I had woken up my mom to wish her a happy birthday, we decided it was a little miracle that she had recovered and would be coming home in the morning--and the Spanish word for miracle is milagro.

Little milagro = little Milly.

Sometimes, life presents timing so ironic that it sounds like a screenplay someone's writing at a Starbucks.

But I have some good news. The breeder, Julie, in a very considerate gesture, is sending us Milly's sister on Tuesday. She'll have some big paws to fill, but we look forward to her arrival.

And Craig suggested the perfect name: Vanilly.

Didn't Make It

Just got the call. Little Milly died at almost exactly the moment we finished naming her...

Mysterious. Serious. And Better.

Happy to report that vet's update today is that Mitty/Tuaca/Sitka is doing a little better--upgraded from critical to serious. She's no longer minute-to-minute, in other words, and the real problem is that they still haven't figured out what's wrong with her (or her kidney.) Still, I'm optimistic, and hopefully she'll be able to come home soon and resume chewing things.

"Critical But Stable"

So says the puppy hospital. If she makes it through the night, she might make it, period. So I'm guardedly (and perhaps unjustifiably) hopeful.

Too Short a Stay

If she doesn't make it, my family and I will have had the most awesome pup ever for the shortest possible time. And if she lives, she'll be not just the most awesome but the most spoiled, too. Heck, she can have the giant alpacas.

Oopsie? Blizzard? Taro?

Doppio? Igloo? Bear?

Boba? Fuji? Stormy?

Casio?

Wounded Dell

Tonight my laptop screen fell off -- but only halfway. What amazes me most of all is not that it broke (it's mine, after all) but that it's still working, even with a half-amputated display.

Tremendous thunderstorms all evening long. If I were Charles Dickens, I'd describe it as a night full of symbols and portents for the future. Since I'm not, I'll instead note that I had dinner with my cousin's boyfriend's older brother. There's family, there's extended family, and then there's... my cousin's boyfriend's older brother.

A Tale of Three Taxis

I inspired two taxi drivers to fight today. One pulled the other out of his car and punched him. The other whacked back. Nothing too fancy, just your typical sidewalk brawl. Not because they each wanted me as a client, but because each wanted the other to take me instead. The people behind me in line were much older, wore jewelry, and didn't carry backpacks. They probably looked like better tippers. While the two of them brawled, I walked down the street to a third taxi.

This driver, a Russian man, waved at the fight. "America wonderful country," he said, "But sometimes too much freedom."

The Demise of a Dropout

My Final Return to Harvard University
or
scribblings on an airplane

My friend Sasha, who ran away to Europe to become a composer and buy a house in Belgium, would warn me against using the word "final" too loosely. "You've said it before," he'd say, "And look where you are now."

He's right. I've always been too aware of endings--even of endings I've invented ahead of time, to mark progress in a life that has been more spiraling than straightforward. As a second-grader, I used to be sad that I would never be a first-grader again.

But he's also wrong. Because while from time to time I may still walk the streets of Cambridge (no doubt observing the increasing dominance of chain stores), and will undoubtedly have many more chances to pass through the Yard and study my Canaday A-13 window before some daring university president finally knocks the building down to make way for something less depressing, I have no reason to believe I will ever be back as a student.

Perhaps as a fellow. Or even a professor. These seem remote prospects, but I've learned not to discount the remote: in almost every case it's only a hop and a bus ride away. That's how I found Patzcuaro, a town in the Mexican mountains where I wrote parts of my undergraduate thesis. Arguably that's how I founded DemiDec (though you'd have to substitute a jaywalk and a Chevy Blazer for the hop and the bus.)

As I write this, I'm flying across the Midwest. A few minutes ago we crossed over Chicago; I looked out the window just in time to see it disappearing into the Great Lakes.

I have a template I ought to be designing, for Resources. I have poems that I kind of feel like writing, old-style sonnets, the sort that I like to utter now and then in cheesy homage to past greats (and, more than that, just because I love the way rhymes sound.)

But nostalgia has the upper hand for now.

The first time I flew to Boston, I did so with a teammate, Becky, and her mother. One week earlier we had won nationals, eaten Reuben sandwiches and--to the best of my knowledge--said our farewells to Decathlon. I brought along a trenchcoat. It seemed like the appropriate thing to wear. The next day, I would be standing on the steps of a dorm feeling the wind lift it a little, pondering whether I could spend four years in this place full of bricks and homeless men, when a student unexpectedly approached me with a psychic flash.

"I know what brings you to Harvard," she said. "You want to be a writer."

Maybe I looked the part: hands in pockets, studying the grass, at a slight remove from everyone else. Or maybe everyone who goes to Harvard either wants to be president or a writer of prose, and I just clearly wasn't the former. I was still digesting the import of a year in which M Building defined the outer limits of fun and purpose. Those limits were busted, the purpose fulfilled, the fun captured in an album full of anecdotes. It seemed reasonable to imagine that anything was within reach, if I only designated to it the same passion that had helped my teammates and I find our way, via mischief and, well, mostly more mischief, to New Jersey.

...to be continued...

The Unknown Enemy

"I don't like avocados," said Su, as he slipped a slice of pizza covered in avocado slices toward his mouth. The three of us were sitting outside at the below-mentioned "Sicilia Fresh."

"So," I said, "You dislike a food you don't recognize?"

Suddenly suspicious, he stopped before biting down.

Goats and Rhinoceri

Reading about this odd couple brought me a spark of morning "awww" after an all-nighter devoted to DemiPlanning.

My Last Column

At dinner tonight, a high school senior was aghast at the idea of someone going to Europe on her own. “It would be like—like driving without a cell phone,” she said to me, between bites of a BLT. “So dangerous!”

Having both gone to Europe on my own and driven for years without a cell phone, I felt lucky to have lived this long. And I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I got my first ticket (for an illegal left turn) driving out of the cell phone shop parking lot.

Yes—I was playing with the buttons.

Only one person I knew had a cell phone in high school. His parents used it to track him down at night, thereby interrupting our breakfasts at Denny’s and our various exploits with the school keys. They made up for it by taking us out to sushi.

Now I carry my phone everywhere (though I’ve resisted PDAs and iPods, both of which are bound to eventually become part of our cell phones anyways.) When I graduate from the Kennedy School in two weeks, I’ll be traveling with it to Boston on a flight I booked at www.aa.com, staying with it at a hotel I pricelined™ and carrying a laptop with a Verizon wireless card on the same account, for broadband access anywhere in the city.

Nowadays, this sounds passé. But then I look back again, and remember that I didn’t even have an e-mail address until I got to college.

The first day of orientation week, I shot off a message to a friend at U.C. San Diego. We had been told that starting college meant losing touch with almost everyone in your past life. That wouldn’t happen to us, my friends and I figured: this new e-mail thing would keep us connected.

It mostly did. I think we remained more closely-knit than if we had gone our separate ways just a couple years earlier. I can only imagine how much more true that might have been if we’d had livejournals, free nights and weekends, and the Facebook.

I only discovered the World Wide Web at the start of my sophomore year. It was a barren place. No Napster, just a few pioneering class web sites, hardly any flaming. Amazon was two months old—and had been around several weeks longer than Internet Explorer. The term “cable modem” made us think of modems with cables sticking out of them, and DSL sounded like some kind of foreign shipping company. Hotmail was what happened when you sent a letter to Arizona.

But it wasn’t just the Internet that was different then. Californians had only recently discovered the appeal of blending fruits, yogurt and ice to make smoothies (to the delight of a fledgling company called Juice Club.) The SAT still had antonyms (I never understood why they went away.) Bookstores were places where people bought books. “Is” never meant anything but is, and an animated movie signified something hand-drawn, not Shrek but Beauty and the Beast. Airlines served meals and your parents could walk you to your departure gate. Buffy hadn’t slain any vampires yet—at least not on TV.

There were no TVs in Tressidder, let alone flat screens—and, alas, by the time they were installed, Buffy wasn't slaying vampires anymore. You had to file paper forms to get pretty much anything done, from transcript requests to selecting your classes. The parking lot didn’t take credit cards. And people who regularly snacked on froyo from the now defunct CoPo were busy founding companies with equally Stanfordish names—like Yahoo.

By now I probably sound primeval. But I graduated from Stanford not that long ago, in 2002 (true, I took two years off along the way.) Some of you were around then; you probably remember how poorly cell phones worked on campus even at the start of the 21st century. None of this was very long ago.

Still, there are times when I look back at my original Stanford days (because there are bound to be more) and miss that palpable sense of opportunity in the air, that feeling that tomorrow hadn’t been shaped yet—and that we would be the ones to shape it. Every few days it seemed another friend had left Stanford to join a start-up—or had come back post-IPO to recruit the rest of us.

Then I remember that Stanford’s probably always been that way and undoubtedly still is. Our "wind of freedom" continues to blow towards the future (though not always towards Washington) and from our place on the Farm (or the Arrillaga Alumni Center) we get to help make the weather.

---

This fall, Daniel Berdichevsky will be traveling overland (on his own, but with a cell phone) from Malaysia to Madrid. For details, e-mail him at dan@demidec.com.

Sicilia Fresh

I'm writing DemiDec "letters of engagement" at a restaurant that looks suspiciously like Baja Fresh, right down to the white lacquer tables, except it serves Italian sandwiches, pizzas and salad. There's even a salsa bar, which features coleslaw (I wish it had gelato.)

There's wireless Internet, and to the side of the restaurant is an integrated coffee shop with its own tables, Starbucks-style. That's where I'm working. The chairs have cushions.

At the table next to me, eight women are holding a knitting party.

* * * a few minutes later * * *

One of the women, her hands moving quickly, is talking about how her two dogs, Spike and Ernie, died within a month of one another: the first of of lung cancer, the second of diabetes. I can ignore Starbucks music, but this I can't help but listen to.

Now, another is talking how her dog got cancer. "They amputated his leg to get rid of the tumor. But the chemo was so expensive that my husband would go to Tijuana every few weeks to buy the drugs. They were much cheaper there."

A third chimes in. "Mine died, too. Glaucoma and then kidney failure."

Someone else tries to change the subject by saying, "I like this sweater."

Doesn't work. "I had a cat who got cancer after having a deworming shot," interrupts a fourth. Everyone expresses outrage. "Yes," she confirms, "A deworming shot. It became a fast-growing cancer, and they couldn't close the wound. At the time, I took him to a pet oncologist and he'd never seen an animal come down with this after a deworming shot..."

This is apparently turning into a pet loss support group. I may need to leave before I ask if I can learn to knit with them.

Quiet Days

Today I met a Polish plumber. He cut my dad off in the middle of his describing exactly why he wanted more water in the toilets. For this, I was thankful.

Earlier I visited with the USC/MAST Decathlon team. They fed me delicious chips and salsa. "We don't want to be forgotten," their coach explained, and I don't think they will be. They're starting early and are poised to have a tremendous year.

This made me giddy yesterday--the opening to The Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy. My friends Ali and Igor basically fell asleep during the rest of the movie, but I was won over by the rhyming dolphins and never looked back.

...the world's about to be destroyed /
there's no point getting all annoyed...

Now, if it had been alpacas singing and doing backflips, I might have died last night a happy man.

Faro and Away

As I drove away from a house that was sort of a home this morning, the radio played a couple lines by the Eurythmics:

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory.

The rain was actually yesterday, and here I was wearing sunglasses and pondering a dash to the beach, but it still seemed fitting.

Link to my latest column at the Stanford Daily: http://tinyurl.com/coykf. It may be interesting to compare how it's published with how I wrote it.

I just finished reading Spin, a novel in which mysterious forces shield the Earth, then accelerate time all around it, so that for every year that passes on the surface, a hundred million pass in outer space. Imagine: in just 40 years the sun would be expanding into a red giant. We're talking serious global warming.

The author, Robert Charles Wilson, is masterful at coming up with interesting "big ideas." It used to be that his characters, his plots and his endings didn't measure up to them. Now his characters and his plots do, and his endings are quickly catching up. Between Spin and The Runes of the Earth, the muse in me is stirring again.

Last quick (but important) update for the day: I learned this morning that I passed my thesis. My advisor's comments were kind, and her criticisms valid:

This is not necessarily a traditional PAE in that there is not an obvious theoretical framework - a gap I lament. Moreover it must also be said that during the process of researching and writing his PAE, Mr. Berdichevsky availed himself only very occasionally of faculty input. However, having said this, it is also the case that he is a gifted writer, a smart student, and an entrepreneur who in this case was clearly committed to his client, Grupo FARO. It should further be said that his final product, tellingly titled, "As Faro As I Can See," is full of practical recommendations, tactical and strategic insights, and also some cautionary notes which, under the apparent circumstances, seem entirely justified. Because Mr. Berdichevsky is so gifted in so many ways, I would not claim that this document represents his best work. It's less deep than it might have been, less well organized in its overarching framework, and less far reaching in its implications than would ideally have been the case. Nevertheless, it's professional and practical. And, from the evidence at my disposal, it's seems the client came out well ahead, and was in general satisfied with, and grateful for, the relationship.

Which means I'm really graduating in three weeks (!) and that it's time to start looking toward next Fall, when for the first time in several years I won't have school to attend. I'm tentatively planning an overland journey from Malaysia to Madrid.

Dry Erase Pen on the Door

This is it. The last time I'll sleep in this house. I've never really known it that well, as I've mostly been in Boston and in the Bay Area since my parents moved in five years ago--but there's still a lot that's happened here for me.

I watched the 2000 Election, witnessed 9/11, rooted for the Clippers. The neighbor and I once had a serious disagreement about shrimp. Mike, Steve, Sheldon and I gave birth to a board game in the bedroom. Misty bit a magazine salesman at the front door, and years later died in the kitchen. And, of course, much more. It's odd, though: a lot of the things I remember about this place are the places I left it to, from great trips to grad school.

I didn't get to say goodbye to my Cambridge apartment. It was rented to a new tenant while I was in Taiwan finishing my thesis (which was not on Taiwan.) Perhaps better that way: a clean break, free of seeing the shelves empty, the boxes piled up.

Inevitably, a lot of things turned up in the process of packing. Among them, my sophomore year roommate's missing keys (sorry, Sasha), a CASIO check I forgot to deposit (henceforth a high-opportunity-cost souvenir, not unlike my CASIO experience overall), and my tenth grade journalism ID (I had poofy hair.)

Column Six

Three weeks ago, I was nearsighted. Once I would have had little choice in the matter. A few laser bursts later, I see 20-20.

I’ve heard innovation in science and technology described as the process by which the impossible becomes possible, the unimaginable imaginable, the unprofitable profitable. These things may be as true as they are grandiose; I don’t presume to judge. But here’s my take: innovation, and “progress” in general, steadily shrink the role of the arbitrary in our lives.

Flat irons straighten hair, perms curl it. You can have longer fingernails in about five minutes. Air conditioning makes it possible to live (and die) in Las Vegas. Perfume, deodorant and Listerine strips let us choose how we want to smell.

Electric lights allow us to achieve sleep deprivation. Cell phones and the Internet (Facebook, anyone?) mean our friends aren’t just limited to people who live nearby (though it doesn’t seem to reduce the incidence of dormcest.)

Not even the day someone’s born is completely arbitrary nowadays. Sure, you have no control of it—unless you’re very spunky in the womb—but expectant mothers can schedule C-sections for particular days, and now that the mystery of conception is a little less mysterious, many couples try timing pregnancies to fit larger life agendas.

Web sites where you can “virtually hunt” have been in the news lately. You select an animal you want shot, and the company does it for you. It’s ghastly—but it’s in keeping with innovation’s erosion of the arbitrary. Why let the fact that you live in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan stop you from terminating an elk in Missouri?

People change their names. There’s even a newly-minted Jesus Christ with a driver’s license in Washington, D.C.

People change their faces. Makeup has allowed this for years, but now we have Botox, facelifts, rhinoplasty, photofacials and whatever Michael Jackson did. Sooner or later there’s bound to be a pill to stop hair from going white. In the meantime, there’s dye.

People change their heights. Children can opt for growth hormone, and adults for surgery—a painful procedure, involving the intentional breaking of bones, but in a world where higher shoulders correspond to higher salaries, maybe not an absurd one.

People can even change their gender. Their moods. Their attention spans. The sizes of their various parts.

First cable TV supplied us more choices; now DVRs permit us to watch what we’ve chosen whenever we want to watch it (VCRs once promised the same but nobody could program them.)

Our location and local climate no longer limit what we can eat. Fast shipping and good refrigeration give us apricots in February and cheesecakes as far as UPS can ship them.

So when I consider what future innovations may bring us, I look toward the things that are still more arbitrary in our lives. For instance, Red Bull notwithstanding, we still have to sleep. Someday we may see treatments that reduce how much.

To some extent, we’re still limited in where we go to school by where we live, and we’re still limited in where we can live by how much we own or who we were born to. E-learning promises to give us more choices no matter what our location or economic condition. Controversial political innovations, such as vouchers, address the same issue.

We can’t control the weather—but once we couldn’t predict it, either. We can certainly change it (see global warming) and someday we may be able to do so intentionally. For instance, scientists have been working on ways to divert hurricanes and to seed rainstorms during droughts.

The fact that most of us can’t learn languages as well as native speakers past a certain age—and that we don’t get to choose the language we natively speak—is arbitrary. Tools and treatments to allow genuine language mastery later in life would be a hit, and not just with expats, church missionaries and the spy industry.

Studies have shown that on average people tend to be attracted to others who look a little like them. But why should the length of someone’s second toe (which correlates closely in married couples) make a difference in your choice of life partner? “Love at first sight” is the most arbitrary thing of all. Companies already sell perfumes laced with pheromones that claim to increase your physical desirability. Someday, someone is going to hit on the right formula. On any given night you may be able to choose not only how attractive you are, but what kind of mate you want to attract.

A hot debate in politics, one that may have helped sink John Kerry in the final presidential debate, is whether or not people choose their sexual orientation (in other words, whether it’s arbitrary or discretionary.) So far science has weighed in on both sides, and this isn’t going to stop anytime soon.

What definitely isn’t arbitrary is whether technology ought to keep pushing newfound options into every nook and cranny of our lives. We should pause more, evaluative and decipher an innovation’s significance. Drugs aren’t the only things that have side effects. Maybe some things are better off within the realm of choice—but maybe others, like our children’s hair color or the age when they enter puberty, shouldn’t be.

Of course, even all-holds-unbarred innovation ultimately runs headlong into some immutable arbitraries of life.

Men can’t bear children (with one notable exception who can’t run for president because of where he was, arbitrarily, born.)

We can hide it, but we still grow old.

We can defer it, but we still die.

Did I say these things were immutable? I take it back. I’ve imagined them (and I’m far from the first one) so they aren’t unimaginable. They may sound impossible, but so was FedEx, once. And they’re bound to be profitable.

Notes on Harvard

My family is moving, which means I'm packing boxes and finding old things. Tonight I came across the notes I wrote when I first visited Harvard as a pre-frosh. Here are some excerpts...

* * *

The good: Freshman accommodations generous, campus beautiful, free long-distance calls for pre-frosh. Food not unpalatable. Lunch area very polished. Well-versed professor. Spring weather.

The bad: My host was late and very hungover. Some people look unfriendly. Some dorms remodeled, many not. "It takes six months to develop friendships." -- Stranger #1. "The change in culture and climate can be a shock." -- Stranger #2. Limited conversation at lunch table, almost a reluctance. See no fire, only ice.

* * *

I flip on. The notebook is filled with my small, black script. Different pages are dated different years. Here and there, an e-mail address. Physics notes. A blank page labeled, "Notes on AP Government." A story sketch titled, kind of pretentiously, "For Peace to Endure." Notes on health, from when I took it with my running coach over the last six weeks of high school (it was that or not graduate.) Diary entries from each time I visited Harvard, for whatever reason, between when I left as a freshman and when I returned for grad school. One of them leads off with, "What you leave behind can find you again." On another page, I lament the loss of Baja Fresh's original "to go" dishes. I flip again, and find an equation: "E equals h times v." Next to it, a quote from my friend and teammate Sage Vaughn, now an artist: "Creative ideas are sown in the soil of noncomformity."

The Replacement (Not)

Apparently a local raccoon (or maybe a carbs-obsessed coyote?) realized we were short a pet and nominated itself as Misty's successor.

I was up late (still am), reminiscing a bit, writing a bit, when I heard noises coming from the kitchen. This didn't exactly cheer me up. So my mother and I went down to investigate. Nothing there. We returned upstairs.

About fifteen minutes later, the noises resumed. We all went down again, and this time I admitted to myself that maybe I was still a little afraid of ghosts. After all, this was the same kitchen.

But if it was a ghost, it must have been a very hungry ghost. We found shreds of Chilean ayuyitas (sort of like biscuits) all over the counter. It's nice that the pet door is still getting some use. Nonetheless, we reject the nomination.

The Only Explanation

I've been thinking, and I've concluded Misty must have been at least one-tenth alpaca; nothing else could explain how cute she was.

Sunday Night

In the end, she didn't make it. My dad and I just found her, stiff but peaceful, in the kitchen.

When the Mist Recedes

I wish more of you had met Misty when she was younger--even just a year ago, when she could still climb the stairs and jump up and down like a kangaroo. Now she is dying. Several times a day she goes into convulsions, then falls over. Sometimes she yowls: a cry of pain as if she were being eaten by the neighborhood coyotes (the sad fate of many pets in Porter Ranch each summer.)

It's been a sad week, in a cumulative sort of way. I could see 20-20, but one of my grandfathers went blind for ten minutes--most likely a small stroke. My grandmother suffered a stroke, too, a larger one, or a combination of several, and lost the ability to walk. My mother flew to Chile to spend the weekend with them. That left me Misty. And I want her to live long enough for my mother to get back and say goodbye.

* * *

In happier news, I attended a political rally yesterday. John Kerry came to Valley College to endorse Antonio Villaraigosa. In many ways it felt like a leftover bit of the 2004 campaign. Bush-Cheney supporters showed up chanting "four more years" and flaunting anti-Kerry signs.

At one point, the microphone blew out. Kerry continued to orate, in his kind of clumsy, kind of affable way, for a few mute seconds before realizing no one could hear him. The crowd grew uneasy. The Bush-Cheney chanting grew louder. Then a man with a shock of white hair and a considerable tummy stepped forward, lifted his hands, and began singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Everyone took it up--and while that melody of hope and pride drifted off-tune through a warm spring afternoon, the Bush-Cheney supporters quietly exited stage left.

Saluting South Carolina

I don't often post about current events, but in light of my apparent graduation from a School of Government, I thought I'd dip my feet in the pond.

First, you may have heard about recent Republican moves toward preventing Democrats from fillibustering (i.e. prolonging debate indefinitely) in order to block certain Bush appointees to the federal courts. Some conservatives, apparently including the Speaker of the House, have been making the case that Democratic senators who oppose Bush's nominees are really just against people of faith--and that these Democratic senators must themselves lack faith.

I therefore admire Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina for urging flat-out that this stop. Sunday, he said on Fox:

"What I do not want to do is cross the line and say those who oppose these nominees are people who lack faith. I don’t believe that. I don’t think that’s appropriate."

* * *

In other news, the bodies of two children were found in a pool of sewage in Georgia. Investigators are still not sure if foul play was involved.

Right. Because children drown themselves in sewage all the time...

Between this and the train disaster in Osaka, it's been a sad day out there.

"...your invisibility notwithstanding..."

My Kennedy School advisor wrote me today to say, "It will please you further to know that your invisibility notwithstanding, I gave your PAE a [passing] grade."

I'm grateful. To her, to FARO, to the friends of HCAP, to everyone else who helped me finish my second thesis on schedule for a change.

What's more, I think this means... with or without a bibliography... I'm actually graduating.

Column Five

I was lucky to attend an elementary school where the teachers served us trail mix during standardized tests. I came to think of them as an opportunity for snacking. But years later, when I took my GRE on a computer, the administrators forced me to stash my trail mix in a locker. Either they were worried I had written vocabulary words on the peanuts or that I would spill on the keyboard (given my history, the latter would be a perfectly reasonable fear.)

At any rate, computers permit more than just taking traditional tests on a screen; they enable entirely new testing methodologies. Thus, the GRE and the GMAT are now computer adaptive, which means that they get harder when you answer questions correctly and easier when you make mistakes. This allows them to pinpoint your score by seeing how far up or down you diverge from the performance of an “average” test-taker.

Such a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure approach to test administration may be more efficient, but it also introduces new sources of test-taking anxiety. For instance, you can’t go back and change your previous answers, or skip tough questions and return to them later. In fact, you can’t skip questions at all. Worse, if an easy one comes up, it’s cause for panic—since you must have done something wrong to deserve it. And if you get an incredibly hard one, that’s great!—except you may not be able to answer it.

This new emphasis on computerized testing may explain why after 27 years, the nation’s leading producer of mechanically-scored paper testing forms, Scantron Corporation, spun off a new business unit to explore opportunities on the Internet. This unit’s products have included web-based software that allows students to “take their tests online or on paper”—a clear concession to the growing popularity of Internet testing, and one sure to strike fear in the heart of #2 pencil manufacturers.

It’s one thing to have computers decide whether you answered “b” correctly and then adjust the next question accordingly. It’s another for them to score the quality of your prose. In Michigan, computers are doing just that, grading sixth graders’ essays. One company, Pearson Knowledge Technologies, offers products employing “Latent Semantic Analysis” to perform “automatic writing assessment.” Pearson claims that its software, unlike human graders, never gets tired or bored. It even rates essays for style.

I do agree that essay test responses should be typed whenever possible. Nowadays people grow up using word processors that allow them to cut-and-paste; it seems awkward to test them on a skill (straight-through-writing, for lack of a better term) that they don’t practice very much. Typed responses also eliminate potential bias against students with bad handwriting.

But in life, we don’t write for computers (unless we’re in the CS department.) Computers don’t shop at bookstores. They don’t really understand the difference between the verse of Walt Whitman and that of a Stanford Daily columnist who dabbles in rhyming ditties. Do we really want our sixth graders conditioned to write text in a way that will satisfy a software algorithm?

I’d rather consider existing problems in multiple choice testing and look for new ways to resolve them. For instance, some current standardized exams aim to penalize guessing by deducting a portion of a point for a wrong answer. However, most test-takers are still advised to guess as much as possible, particularly if they can eliminate at least one answer choice.

Instead of a straight-up guessing penalty, I propose introducing a new aspect to multiple-choice testing: a “certainty factor.” If it were implemented, you would be able to choose not only your preferred answer—a, b, c, d or e—but also how certain you are of it—20, 40, 60, 80 or 100%. If you were 100% certain and you got it right, you would receive full credit—say, 1 point. If you were only 60% certain and you got it right, you would only receive 0.6 points.

Conversely, if you were 100% certain and got it wrong, you would incur the full wrong-answer penalty—perhaps 0.5 points. But if you were only 40% certain and got it wrong, your penalty would shrink to 40% of 0.5, or 0.2 points.

This kind of testing would require students not only to know something, but to consider how well they know it. Critics might complain that this makes test-taking too much like gambling. I disagree—it’s simply a formalized extension of what is already taking place every time someone decides to make a guess. Furthermore, the testing process would teach important lessons in risk management and decision-making—and significantly reduce the possibility of people who are naturally "good test-takers" guessing their way to a high score.

Are certainty factors the future of testing? I’d love to say yes, but I know it’s not too likely. I’ll give it… 20%.

Daniel Berdichevsky hopes his editor doesn’t run this column through “Latent Semantic Analysis.” He welcomes e-mails at (a) dan@demidec.com, (b) demidec@gmail.com and (c) dberdich@stanfordalumni.org.

March 2001

A long time ago, I didn't know what a blog was, but I sort of had the idea: I would write travel update e-mails from different places. I just found four of them, from Turkey and Georgia, and posted them here. They're probably more fun than eye surgery. If you're interested, you can click the March 2001 archives in the lower left.

Rereading them reignited my wanderlust. And early May 2005 sounds like a good time for a trip...

E-mail and IQ

I just read an article on CNN.com suggesting that checking e-mail during the workday lowers IQ relative to checking it less frequently.

This is troubling... maybe if I play Mozart I can counter the effects.

The Rain is Gone

Saturday morning. Last night, I lost the archetypal struggle between "man and bed" as follows:

Bed: "Come here."
Me: "Yes, but first..."
Bed: "Come now, or I'm going to start tossing your pillows out the window."
Me: "Good try, but I know better: a bed can't toss a pillow. No hands."
Bed: "Try me."
Me: "Umm..."
Pillow: "Help!"
*distant plopping sound*
Bed: "One down. Two to go."
Me: "Aaah! Okay, I'm coming. Please, anything, but not the pillows..."

Thank Apu Pinchau (Incan creator-god of the alpaca) I was able to escape the clutches of "bed" around 7:30.

* * *

I'm sipping Earl Gray tea made with an infuser. Thank you, Sun and Julia, for reminding me of Captain Picard's favorite brew. I picked it up at Whole Foods yesterday in a massive tea-acquisition expedition, from which I also came home with white, green and decaf vanilla maple.

* * *

So, I've promised a post about what the LASIK procedure was like, and it's time to deliver.

Before the procedure began, my mother and I waited in the "Freedomvision" lounge watching the TV talking heads debate the new pope's "hard-line" views. After a while, I lost interest and instead admired the letter "v" in the Freedomvision logo. It looked like a bird. Not all birds have good vision, but eagles do, so I was reassured.

Eventually my doctor's younger colleague, Dr. Shaw, came down to greet me. He is an energetic man of Indian descent, and looks about 25. "I'm here to give you your Valium," he said.

I thought the Valium was optional, I said.

"It is," he explained, "But you really should take it."

He then lectured me on the benefits of being sedated. When he was done, he smiled like a defense attorney who had made a very good case, or Garfield after eating lasagna.

"Thanks," I said. "But I think I'll opt out."

He walked off, disgruntled. A few minutes later he returned with Dr. Gordon. "So. you taken your happy pill yet?" asked the older optometrist, fixing his eyes on me, one bright, one dull (from two different procedures.)

"Two weeks ago, you said it was optional," I reminded him.

"Yes," he admitted. "But you really should..."

"I've spent the last two weeks preparing to come in today in a state of--" I gestured up then down with my hands, thinking of Weber, Cathers and the team from Granada Hills--"High energy and low anxiety. I don't need it."

Or at least I didn't till you all started pressuring me to take the darn thing, I thought.

The standoff continued for a little while. I asked if the Valium would improve the chances of the procedure working out. No, he said, it's really for afterward, so you just go home and sleep.

"I'm sleep-deprived enough that won't be a problem," I said. (I didn't tell him my plan was actually to go home and blog.)

At last they relented, and it was time for the actual procedure.

It began with Dr. Gordon putting little marks in my eyes. "I can write any initials you like," he offered. "They'll be very small but last a few years."

I thought about it for a while. "D and D," I said. For DemiDec.

"Okay," he smiled.

There were, of course, no initials. He just put dots in m eyes. But I give him credit for fooling me with the straightest face you can imagine.

Then I walked into a larger room full of equipment, the lead surgeon (Dr. Elkins), a nurse (Laura), and a teddy bear (whom I named "alpaca.")

"Is the bear here to squeeze or something?" I said, amused.

"Exactly," said the nurse, and handed it to me.

At first I was skeptical, but it turned out that squeezing a bear when someone is slicing a flap in your eye is a really really good idea.

The slicing itself was the most painful part--or, rather, the setup involved. Dr. Elkins placed a suction cup in my eye, and then a circle of bright white lights began to whir. The cup was so highly-pressurized that I went blind right after it came on. The whole world shrank away into darkness faster than I could blink (not that I could have blinked if I'd wanted to--they'd pinned up my eyelids.)

Each eye then took 40 very long seconds to perforate; fortunately, the second one went faster when I began (very quietly) reciting poetry.

The weirdest part (for lack of a better description) was when the surgeon pulled back the flap with a tiny edged instrument. I could see my whole field of vision slowly floating away and to the right. Then when it had been totally removed, I could see straight ahead again, but only very blurrily. "Air bubbles," explained Dr. Gordon.

The actual LASIK part was easier (as opposed to what they call "Intralase"--the removal of the flap.) I had to stare up at (in their words, "fixate" on) a bright red light which flickered for about 20 seconds. The hardest part was seeing it with my right eye--everything was just a pale smear. With my left, the light was a beautiful, fixed point, like a red giant from this year's Super Quiz curriculum but without any contradictions.

I smelled something burning; I decided not to ask what.

Between eyes Dr. Gordon said, "You're doing well, Daniel."

"Thank you, Dr. Gordon," I said, politely.

The nurse then said, "You're doing well, Daniel."

"Thank you..." I began, and realized I had lost her name.

"Laura," said Dr. Gordon.

"Thank you, Dr. Laura," I said. Then my second eye caught fire and I went back to squeezing the teddy bear.

When the procedure ended, I stood up slowly. The world was bathed in milk--but painlessly so. Within an hour it felt as if I had a giant eyelash trapped beneath my right eyelid. I took a quick nap, watched The Hostage, and then pondered how to sleep with goggles on. (Still haven't figured that out, and three nights to go.)

By the next day, I could see 20-20 out of my left eye. My right one is still catching up, but already the world is an amazingly clear place--reading license plates is particularly fun--and to celebrate I've been drinking lots of tea (though not eating any meatballs.)

* * *

Just scheduled an appointment at the DMV for this Thursday. I need a new license that doesn't require me to have corrective lenses. It might be the first time in my life I'm happy to visit the DMV.

A Thought on AP Classes

If AP classes truly seek to model the college experience in a high school setting, they should allow unlimited absences.