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.