Super Pissed.

I was excited to find that our problem set in secured transactions only had 4 problems today.

...Except Problem 2 has five separate subquestions with references to 23 separate statutes.

FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm an American, Bitch!

I tried to take a part of the new citizenship test for the US, which is supposed to be too hard.

100% Bitches!

Taser This: Fuck Bush.

So, if you have been horrendously bored in class, you have probably ignored a little headline regarding a Colorado student newspaper that printed a column with the title above. As could be expected the Young Republicans are trying to get him to resign, businesses have withdrawn their advertising, and even CNN is reporting on this fast breaking calamity. Just a few points.

1) That doesn't make any sense. "Taser this: Fuck Bush?" What? That's idiotic. (Unless of course he was trying to get tasered, at which point he could proclaim that he shouldn't have been tasered because that is in violation of his First Amendment rights. That or he was just trying to say something provocative that he is entitled to say under the First Amendment...just cuz.)

2) I wish people would stop invoking the Freedom of Speech. Seriously. This is probably something very obvious to everybody, but I just want to make sure: The freedom of speech applies to the government. The government cannot pass laws or take action abridging your right to speech. If you say something that's really fucking stupid, I can choose not to go to your business. I can put up billboards against you. I can tell every person in the world about the douchey thing you said. The media can shun you. The populace can shun you. And they absolutely should.

When the Managing Director of the company that produces Cristal says he wishes black people wouldn't drink it...then of COURSE Jay-Z is supposed to say fuck you and bring the house down. When Don Imus talks about the "nappy headed hos", there's no problem dragging him through the streets (figuratively) and utterly destroying his career. In fact, the aftermath of both events was quite amusing.

Free speech does not make you unaccountable for making douche-bag comments. It's just (supposed) to keep you from being Tasered by your government for saying it.
(Note: I've never taken First Amendment...so if anyone wants to weigh in on how what I'm saying is incorrect, feel free. I'm just sick of hearing the oft-repeated refrain implying that people are not accountable for what they say because of the First Amendment.)

(I appear to be posting a lot more now...I'll only say that there hasn't been a single post this semester where my textbook wasn't open in front of me next to an uncapped and ready-to-roll highlighter.)

Ahmadinejad.

I have to admit...the stupid bastard is very charismatic. I do find a lot of the things he says, and the actions his government takes to be disgusting, but I don't actually hate him. Of course, I don't really care about him all that much either. I think a lot of my indifference to him is that most reliable sources indicate that he actually doesn't have all that much power. He runs the civil government of Iran, but Ayatollah Ali Khamenei still holds absolute power...and can basically slap ol' Mahmoo-cow out of office and out of power whenever he feels like it. For fuck's sake, his title is Supreme Leader. (Incidentally, even Khamenei allows stem cell research and cloning, according to Wikipedia, and believes in economic privatization...Go figure.)

The real point of this post is to point out that President of the Islamic Republic of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad....has a blog. No. Seriously.

Here's an eloquent response to his posts...


Edit:

Admittedly the other dude is really tall, but the effect is fantastic.

Just Cuz, bitch.

This is what I've been watching everyday....so I thought I'd share moments of my life with you. Take a moment. Kick back. Relax. Have a beer.








These aren't even the best....just what I could scrape up. Except the slap in the face.

Awful. Simply Disgusting.

For those of you who went to the beach, I know that you share my aversion to catfish. Especially that big one that made that wet glomping sound as it ate someone's spit/fish food. I shudder at the memory.

Just for you, I decided to not do my secured transactions homework, and instead, bring you Disgusting (and terrifying) pictures of Catfish!



And of course, the Catfish who choked on a four square ball. Blech.




Here's a video for good measure. It takes a while...but...JESUS.

Ignore if you don't give a shit about Feist.

So I came across this video of her performance of 1234 on Letterman. I have to say I'm surprisingly shocked at how good her voice actually is, and how crisp, clean, and fantastic this performance was:



Dayum.

(If you still don't know who she is, you probably know this song...although oddly, the music doesn't fully rise to the surface front and center until about 30 or 40 seconds in.)

The Monster's Outta the Cage!

For the three or four of you in the know, it turns out that Matt Christensen lives down the street from me. I've seen him several times walking home the same route I take, and today I'm absolutely certain it's him.

Part of it, of course, is the brief look of apprehension when he saw me walking toward him wearing a "FOCUS" shirt. (Duke has a program called FOCUS.)

Triumph!

In our second Flag Football game of the season, we emerged Triumphant!
Aside from my spectacular touchdown grab (which, of course, was the product of a spectacular endzone pass), and my spectacular 30 yard long-bomb caught on the run resulting in a near touchdown...I only had one disappointment. We didn't do any endzone sumo dance when I scored a touchdown. (Crouch. Left foot stomp. Right foot stomp. Massive chest bump amid yells.)

The picture itself is explanatory. Peace bitches.

If you're smoking, you're still breathing, right?

I’ve noticed that most smokers over a certain age are fat.

They aren’t morbidly obese. They aren’t generally the super-fat, embarrassingly large, I-can’t-believe-they-don’t-love-butter types. They’re the soft ones. A little pudgy with rounded doughy shoulders, a conspicuous absence of muscular architecture, and a hint of jowliness. More than the exhortations of the Truth folks who apparently stage die-ins in front of the building of a major tobacco corporation (as I have learned from several movie previews)…the specter of becoming (more of) a bag of wet cement with cankles is much more effective in cutting down my smoking.

Maybe it’s because when we were younger, smokers still hadn’t stopped growing and reaching their sedentary low adult metabolism…or that people who can’t resist the sublime allure of tobacco also can’t resist the irresistible tractor beams of butter, beer, and watching TV on the couch. (Personal note: Eating a stick of butter with a cigarette in one hand, a hearty brew in the right, and watching The Office on television….awesomeness.) I honestly don't know what it is, but the more fat smokers I see, the more uneasy I get about this lovely habit of mine.

Ahh....the Good ol' Days.

For good measure, just in case this post was boring, here's a picture of a Starfish eating a mussel. Hardcore! (and terrifying and blegch!)

Don't Tase Me Bro!

Ok...by now you've all seen the kid getting Tased.



My first reaction, of course, was anger. I thought it was unnecessary brutality. I thought it was shitty (and stupid) of the cops to Tase the kid. (I 'm not sure what the whole thing says about Free Speech, but let's just say I find the use of "Free Speech Zones" to cordon off protesters to be a bit more troubling.)...In any case, suffice it to say that I find the whole thing infuriating. So let's get that baseline out of the way...

Now let's move onto what my other reaction is: At almost every slightly controversial or political speech I have attended (at least since I've been in Cambridge), there is always someone like this kid. There is always someone passionately idealistic, dogmatically convinced of their rightness (and righteousness), and an absolute conviction that the data points and dots they've connected in their minds is sacred gospel - that they are truth incarnate. (For some reason they're always...semi-hippies too.)

I discussed my first encounter with this last year when I attended a speech by Pascal Lamy, the Director General of the WTO (who has absolutely no authority by the way. His speech focused primarily on poverty alleviation and changing the international trade paradigm to pay less attention to the free-market approach (the Washington Consensus) and instead turn to a more humanitarian, more practical, and softer Geneva Consensus. As expected, about 8 or 9 young hippie types wearing "NO WTO" bandannas would stand up every 7 minutes or so and start railing against the WTO, until they were bodily dragged from the premises. (Incidentally, from the perspective of someone who has studied international trade, development economics, and issues of development and policy...these people clearly knew very little about the subject apart from the slogans and fearmongering they attempted.)

Another student made an attempt to argue the Global Warming case in front of Justice Scalia during his friendly visit to the university. Besides the fact that impassioned statements such as "How can you look at yourself in the mirror at a face that will be responsible for killing millions of our grandchildren?" don't go over particularly well with Scalia-types, the zealous self-righteousness which infected his diatribe made it completely certain that his words would have no effect whatsoever.

I have nothing against challenging these speakers with honest questions. I don't begrudge them their belief in their causes. I think they may serve a greater purpose in many respects. I also respect their courage.

...That doesn't mean I don't think they're irritating. That they're dogmatic ideologies aren't so completely wrong that I might have to declare myself conservative just to not be associated with them. That they often have nothing useful to say. That there's a remarkable consistency in their unwillingness to listen. Just because I believe in freedom of speech, the power of dissent, and in the accountability of our governments does not mean that I actually give a shit what you say. So sure. Speak. I still think you're a douchebag.

Here's a meaningful contribution in the aftermath.
The bandanna around his neck is for later.

Anyhow, I'm not sure how I got off on that. I just get very irritated whenever someone has to be dragged bodily from one of these speeches. The indignation about their right to speak, which is accompanied by semi-violent resistance just leads me to think that they aren't actually collecting the dots on what it means to have the freedom of speech...much like the moments when you're 5 years old and poke another kid in the back with a stick, to which the kid objects, and your response is "what're you gonna do? It's a free country" thus rendering him speechless.

....Because there are people who stand up during these forums and ask hard questions. Very hard questions. And they do it without the hostility and self-aggrandizement we so often see. And even when they get upset and get into sometimes heated and important discussions with the speaker, never do we see these people dragged out forcibly.

And finally, I'd like to just note that Taser boy is actually an asshole. He stood at a busy intersection with a big sign that said "Harry Dies" while waving the last Harry Potter book around. Who cares if it's true, not true, or whatever. It's fucking annoying. He's a dick.

So I say, let's take back the Tasing from the Kerry speech, rewind the tape...and drive-by Tase the kid as he holds up the sign. Then, truly can it be said that justice is served.

Ding Dong...

...the stupid, ridiculous, revenue-killing, readership-ending, loyalty-crushing BITCH called TimesSelect is DEAD!!!!!!!!

I remember the days when I read the NYTimes columnists on a daily basis. This was back in the day when William Safire was the resident conservative and Nicholas Kristof hadn't yet descended into making me want to smack him all of the time. And Krugman still wrote about economics. (Incidentally, the fact that Kristof i's married to an Asian women, albeit a very impressive Asian woman, doesn't surprise me.)

I actually wonder if I'm going to go back and read the NYTimes columns anymore...I remember feeling uneasy when the service first came on and trying to find the columns any other way...but as time has gone on, I stopped reading them completely, and because I stopped reading them, I even started to slowly turn away from the NYTimes Online. Boy, that sure was the stupidest thing attempted by a group of seemingly smart people.

I FUCKING HATE SECURED TRANSACTIONS.

My fucking asshole of a professor assigns problem sets everyday. Plus, he's one of the guys who still decides to cold call random students every single day, believing that all students should be prepared everyday. It's just so unnecessary.

Aside from the 20 pages of reading every day, which I can live with, the problems he assigns often include 15-20 sub parts. Furthermore, the problems all refer to statutes we have not seen yet in the materials.

Today's problems? References to 23 different statutes in the supplement, many of which are a page long.

Fuck this guy. With a big rubber dick.

Hooray for Squirrels.

So I found some videos about Squirrels. Ask not where, why, how, or anything of the sort. Merely enjoy.

First, the amazing abilities of squirrels. Crazy. Especially the windmill part.



Then, the labors of a drunken squirrel.


That's all the time wasting for today....on to Secured Transactions and Bankruptcy!

Life can be really tough.

Example:

Just a few minutes ago I took a really big mouthful of coffee which was interrupted pre-swallow by an intense impulse to sneeze.

...Like I said, life can be tough.


More importantly though, I'd like to go right ahead and state my support for the album "The Reminder" by Feist. For those of you at the beach, I continually popped it in while we were sitting in the pool (or getting volleyballs thrown at us in the pool). For those of you who watch TV, it includes the song featured in the new iPod nano video commercial (video below). In either case, I'm a fan...and it's much better than the last album.

No, YOU'RE a Chump!

Stop using stupid facebook applications. Or at the very least stop using them AT me so I can stop clearing out the multiple notifications I'm getting:

Do not bite ME, Chump!
I will not play zombie.
I am not a virtual vampire.
I will not tell you about your uggo-hood in your honesty box.
I will not play with your virtua bunny. That means no petting, no feeding, no dueling. (I trust you've seen this one? Dueling seems promising....)
I do not want to be compared to your other friends.
Please don't send me your movie quiz.
Don't compare me to your other friends.
I'm fairly sure I don't care where you've been. Because if I do, I already know.
...and no, I certainly don't care about your blog. (Ha!)

If you do find a good application. And it's not designed for 3rd graders. By all means give it a shot.

...and....just for good measure

My Life (non Clinton version)

So at this very moment I am sitting in my Global Financial Regulation Seminar. The entire class is full of LLMs (for the non law students, that means foreign students getting a masters in law. For the law students, there’s only one Chinese guy. Shock!)

I thought I’d keep it simple: Here’s what I do these days….(I guess this is what a blog is actually supposed to chronicle right?)

1) Executive Editor of the Int’l Law Journal (I just spent 7 hours last night from 7-2am writing emails and selecting staffers). As EE, me and my co-EE are basically in charge of the whole editorial side of the journal. (The journal has a submissions side, a editorial side, online journals, an online blog of current events, yearly symposiums, and various outreach programs. I imagine my position is roughly approximate to EiC for journals that just do publication.) We select the Article leaders, the intermediary editors, and direct the editorial process from selection to book. In short, my time is completely consumed by this. I applied with the hale and hearty belief that I was underqualified, under experienced, and totally not going to get selected. The interview was awful on my part, the worst I’ve ever done. But here I am…slightly overwhelmed but still standing.

2) Taking Federal Courts and the Federal System, a 5 credit class generally understood to be the “hardest class at HLS” (avg. time reading for each class = 6 hours). This class is unreal. Incredibly dense, incredibly arcane, and full of each and every gunner that walks the halls of HLS…(basically everyone in this class intends to clerk for a federal judge…which means they have the grades, the determination, and the ambition to actually acquire one.)

3) Taking Secured Transactions with one of the driest, old, slow-talking professor who assigns problem sets (last night was 20 problems with 15 cross references to statutes in the statute book.) Every day. And continues to cold call like we’re 1Ls. God I hate that.

4) Taking a Global Financial Regulation Seminar which basically involves doing several independent research projects, writing several papers, and producing original research. The course is a year long advanced international finance seminar. (How the fuck did I end up in there?!)

5) Agreeing, ambitiously and stupidly, to work as a research assistant for a bigwig Finance professor at HLS. I will be writing a chapter for his textbook on China’s Financial System. The first piece about the Chinese Banking system will be due in November. The second piece, laying out the Chinese securities system, will be due in March. Exciting? Absolutely. Time? No. (I walked out of his office with his “China Files” as a starting point. The stack of papers is 2 feet tall.

6) Reading Julie/Julia, a lipstick memoir about a secretary in Queens who decides to cook Julia hild’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. I try to squeeze a few pages of this in everyday just to maintain my sanity. That being said, it’s not that great. Incidentally, she also blogged about her cooking project…which I now will do with my cooking as well, as soon as I get my life back. Or every once in awhile. What shall I cook? One of my friends (my college roommate sophomore year “K”) has decided it is one of her favorite hobbies to bake pies. She just bakes lots and lots of pies. And that’s awesome. I think I’ll just make lots and lots of meat.

7) Phone calls to StL. when the time permits, even if I have to lose a little sleep. (sorry!)

8) Flag football! I’m the tall (and wide) receiver. We got our asses handed to us last year. It’s going to happen again.

9) Working out 3 times a week if I can find the time.

10) Trying to spend some time with people at school so I have some semblance of a life

11) Apparently I find the time to blog?

In spite of all of this, I’m fairly happy. I’m exhausted, sleep-deprived, and can’t believe I’ve only been at it for 5 days….but I’m not unhappy. Maybe I’m just too occupied. Go figure.

Anyhow, that’s all for now. I figured I’d give an actual update about my daily life instead of more garbage about fat people who eat popcorn and play with golf ball retrievers.

By the way, you DID watch the second video right? With Star Wars Kid and the laser shot deflections? So good!!!!!

Awww...

Random news story from today's Times...

A fondness for microwave buttered popcorn may have led a 53-year-old Colorado man to develop a serious lung condition that until now has been found only in people working in popcorn plants....

[N]othing in the Colorado man’s history suggested that he was breathing in excessive amounts of mold or bird droppings, Dr. Rose said. She has consulted to flavorings manufacturers for years about “popcorn workers’ lung,” and said that something about the man’s tests appeared similar to those of the workers.

“I said to him, ‘This is a very weird question, but bear with me. But are you around a lot of popcorn?’ ” Dr. Rose asked. “His jaw dropped and he said, ‘How could you possibly know that about me? I am Mr. Popcorn. I love popcorn.’ ”

The man told Dr. Rose that he had eaten microwave popcorn at least twice a day for more than 10 years.

“When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” Dr. Rose said.

For some reason that I can't explain, this guy gives me this warm, fuzzy vibe as a human being. That he'd be someone I'd like. I find the fact that would bury his face in a fresh bag of popcorn and inhale because "he liked it so much" to be strangely moving and poignant. Maybe it's because of how much he seems to love something in his life, or the intensity of his pleasure for such a simple thing. In either case, I wanna hug him.

And just in case you weren't aware, here is my old hero, who is yet to be replaced, Popcorn Sniffer or not. I present, Ghyslain Raza (pre-editing, post-awesome).

Help!

I have to buy a new laptop (again.)

My Toshiba was a disaster.
My IBM turned into a fiasco (although it began with coffee).
Both are functional, but neither is reliable.

The question is this:
Should I get a Mac? Am I going to have any problems using my external hard drives? Or any sort of incompatibility problems with networks? Can I still easily watch all my windows media player stuff? If I want to download a program from a website like download.com or some warez or something, do I need to find specific mac versions, or are they all basically the same now?

Anybody? Everybody? Please?

AH!!!!!!! (Giant animals are scary.)

I post these pictures for two reasons. The snails I post because in the course of getting my family history from my mother on the 5 day road trip, it turns out her master's thesis involved chopping up Giant African Snails (pictured below) into tiny pieces so they could be centrifuged to reveal a parasitic worm larvae, which were then fed to rats. My mother proceeded to hold ether rags to the faces of the rats, knocked them out, and vivisected them. (This is why, apparently, she prefers working with bridal dresses. No live rat slaughter. Thus, the snails.

This picture, of "Ton Pig", a Chinese freak of nature, simply terrifies me. The reason, I suppose is the eyes.

Luckily, however, the terrifyingly human and pain-laden eyes are probably not expressive of reality, as this is the stuffed and mounted body, with, I hope, artificial eyes.

(This post was brought to you by avoidance of Secured Transactions)

The Past Few Weeks.

The last few weeks have been pretty good, I must say. Of course there have been some pretty bad downsides, like having to end the fun that is summer, returning to Cambridge, returning to Harvard, returning to classes, moving far away once again from AJ and returning to long distance, and getting my asses handed to me in class everyday.

On the other hand, things could be worse.

So we begin with my roadtrip back to Cambridge. My mother decided it would be fun for her to tag along with me and make a 5 day road trip with me back to school (note: the driving would only take 2 days). All in all, it went fairly well. I could tell she was really treasuring the time, mostly because she kept saying "I treasure this time", but I think that small things like that are all she would ever really ask from me, so I am glad to give them. We drove up through to Baltimore to see Hass (my brother), I slept 3 hours on his couch, then we drove up to New York to visit my East Village abode and spent 3 hours cleaning the apartment to be sure to get our security deposit back, then drove up to Boston (I slept 4 hours on the bed), then we spent an entire day touring the city in all its touristy glory (ie. Chinatown and old Boston), and then came home to my apartment to clean (I slept 3 hours on the couch), then spent a whole nother day cleaning the apartment and visiting Harvard Campus, where my mom took it upon herself to buy one Harvard jacket, one harvard Hoodie, three Harvard pens, and one Harvard T-Shirt. This is on top of her pre-existing Harvard Vest and a Harvard collared T-shirt. (She is much happier about Harvard thing than me. But then again, she also bought me an iPod, so all is forgiven.)

And that brings me back to school. Which did not start well. The whole first few days back, I felt like I had been immediately transported back into the shell and personality that I had all of last year. Solitary, purposely ignoring people, basically drifting like a shadow through campus and having as little contact as humanly possible with my surroundings all the while wishing that I had some friends of some sort. I hated seeing common areas filled with talking people, I hated the gatherings by the stairs, I hated watching the people play beach volleyball, those going to happy hours at the student center, those talking about what they did last weekend etc. It truly was miserable last year. The new year didn't seem to start out all that well either. I would be sitting with a group of transfers, and all sorts of other students would stop by and chat with the people at my table, and they would all seem to know each other except for...of course...me. And of course you run through the "Hi, I'm J." "Hi, I'm [Nathaniel/Edith/Rupert/Ivanka]" and then we would return to our mutual state of not knowing each other and never speaking or acknowledging each other again. Ever. Then there was the constant fear of running into people I kinda sorta talked to at the firm, but not really...and wondering if I had to do a stop-and-chat with them (which I wanted to avoid), or if I could just say hi, or if I should just ignore them, at which point we would pass into a state of awkward and artificial mutual nonexistence until we were forced to be together at the firm. And of course, there is the moment where someone else is sitting at your table, you try to introduce yourself, and as it comes out of your mouth, someone manages to inadvertently distract the person so that they don't hear the "Hi, I'm J. by the way" (while everyone else did), and you really can't do it again. So you sit there.

On some days, I suspect i suffer from some sort of mild social anxiety disorder. On other days, I suspect I'm the coolest mother fucker in the world. On most previous days at Harvard, I suffer from a moderate to severe form of social anxiety disorder (verbalized as disdain for Harvard students....which, ok, sure, I do have some of.

The truth is I always felt like Harvard took something away from me. It wasn't the fault of the school or the people necessarily, but I felt like I lost a big piece of my soul here. I lost my will to do good work. I lost my ability to talk to people. I lost my ability to make friends. I lost my willingness to reach out and speak up. I just felt very alone, very isolated, and trapped. The circumstances I was in were so miserable and so new to me that I realized it was quite possible that I had possibly locked myself into some mode that could be the beginning of the rest of my life. That I would be this way forever. That there was no guarantee, and certainly no reason to think that life would get better again, because we dictate a lot of how we feel about our own lives, and my fear, anxiety and all around insecurity kept me from ever breaking the mold...and made me wonder if I would ever summon the courage to fix it.

This summer made me realize that such a state was not permanent. Spending time with AJ in New York, freeing myself from (what I perceive as) the judgmental eyes of Americans in Hong Kong, living in a place where the variety and craziness of people is so diverse and in such a broad range that I could do and be whatever I wanted (NY), and going to the beach with a lot of the people I feel most comfortable with and care about most....all really brought me back to me. At which point I came back to Cambridge and promptly felt myself shutting down, feeling anxious, and feeling awful as I sat silently staring off into the distance while everyone else around me happily socialized. (Of course, I pretend that I'm just feeling tired, or feeling quiet...but it's always the same. I just don't know what to say.)

Now that all sounds really dire, but three days preceding the first have been a drastic improvement. An improvement so drastic and so welcoming, that I think it's fairly safe to say the whole storm has passed, and that "summer Jay" has returned and may have some space to grow in Winter Harvard. (I say Winter Harvard both because it sucks and it's cold, but also because it's REALLY FUCKING COLD.) I actually seem to be quite the social busy bee these days with flag football, drinking on weeknights with friends (every night this week), and generally being in close and frequent contact with a lot of people. It's nice to feel like I actually have friends again, even if for a moment. I never realized how easy it is to end up alone and to feel isolated, but I don't think I will ever again take for granted what it's like to have friends.

Anyhow, next time I will post something about my classes and my journal. (Both of which are going to KILL me.)

Hope that wasn't too boring.

No Time...but.

I just want to point out that the low in Boston today is exactly 3 degrees higher than it is in....

...Anchorage, Alaska.

Boy do I fucking love this town.

(incidentally, my classes are crazy hard, my penchant for inappropriate social drinking during the week is increasing, I'm way out of my league for my journal position, I'm taking on a research assistant job, I have to write a 3L paper, and I'm totally exhausted after one day of class. Love it.)

CNN.

Always startling.


And just in case you didn't see the link in the comments of the last post..Holy Jesus Christ. I feel so bad for her! (just in case she's actually aware enough to realize how stupid that really was.)



In more relevant news, I return to school soon, so the posts will be updated more frequently after that, when my life returns back to nothingness.

Ahhh....

So, as half the readership of this lame little blog already know, the beach trip was absolutely, utterly, unquestionably, fully awesome. (In a spectacular way.) The sun blazed from dawn til dusk each and every single day, the water in the pool was crisp and cool, the ocean was warm, the food was delicious, the alcohol was plentiful, and the company was sublime. Plus, everyone got to witness my utter humiliation in "Butts Up". Could everyone send all the photos to a central repository (read: me) and then I can either post them all here, and everyone can retrieve them from the blog, or I can send them all out. In either case, gimme!

In other news, I've recently been reading/listening to "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer, the wunderkind of American literature. I have to admit that I actually think it really sucks so far. It's not quite purple prose that makes the book irritating, but something more akin to purple concepts. Images and imagery that seem to be completely superfluous that are unnecessarily extravagant or grasping for depth. The child narrator is also irritatingly precocious and I actually would rather smack him in the face rather than sympathize with his plight. I'm only halfway through though, but I figured I'd trumpet my irritation.

I'm also reading "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain. The book is a behind the scenes look at the restaurant culture, namely drug, sex, blood, alcoholism, crime, and a bunch of losers who couldn't hack it in the mainstream. The book also reflects Bourdain's perspective on food, which is what I'm really after. So far, I give it only 3 out of 5 stars. I mention this book, because I'm also looking for more books to read about food. Good books. Books i have read in the past have been Omnivore's Dilemma (awesome), Heat (awesome), Fast Food Nation (too shrill and not actually advancing my interest in food), and now Kitchen Confidential. Anyone? Suggestions?

And Happy Two Year Anniversary AJ! I love you.

Update.

Update:

1) SJewB is probably not coming.
2) Whitford and his girlfriend are coming.
3) Shogun is going to try and come.
4) Drumsets, guitars, guitar amps, microphones, and PAs are likely to be coming as well.

Sweet.

Beach Trip.

Just to give an idea...it appears that the most random, far-scattered, and assorted people in my life will all be converging on this beach house at some point over that week to see my extra 30 pounds of New York law firm summer life flab (no really.)...Just to give you an idea....this is what I'm aware of...

1) Derick and Melissa (Wash U and St. Louis.)
2) Kate G. (Wash U./St. Louis) (possible roommate too)
3) Jon T. (Wash U./St. Louis/NYC)
4) Nik R. and Aarti S. (Greenville/SanFran/Minnesota?)
5) John H. and Sara Beth M.(H?) (Duke/Nashville)
6) Roger S. (Jew.)
7) Mark O. (Greenville/Clemson)
8) Andrew N. (Wash U./St.Louis/NYC)
9) Andrea P. (Wash U./St. Louis)(maybe)
10) Emily N. and Dave N. (Duke/Philly/Georgetown)
11) Me and Ashley.
12) If you're missing from this list, it's your damned fault.

I vouch for you all. Well...most of you. And if you have any social unease, there will be plenty of booze to wipe it away. And a completely, aristocratically private beach. Once again, here are the pictures...

The house fits 20 people...so it appears as if we can squeeze a few more in (since many people are coming for only a little bit...) or we can squeeze a lot more in, if you're in more of a spring break mood. (Relax DA...you and wifey have already been guaranteed the master suite.)

Asian Cup.

I'm not sure if it was major or minor news, but Iraq recently won the Asian Cup...a prestigious international soccer tournament. I imagine the victory is a tier or two down from the world cup ( I mean, it is Asian), but apparently the celebrations in Iraq were riotously joyful and euphoric.

I must add, of course, the footnote that several car bombs went off when they first made it to the finals, killing 50 people celebrating the joyous occasion....and that "celebratory gunfire" also killed several people, although only in the single digits.

Anyhow, the reason I mention this, besides the sort of small uplifting feeling I have when I think about it...is a picture I came across in the NYTimes. This picture haunts me...because this is the Iraq that I somehow don't think about as much, or I never really see...and it is really just hits me hard because this is where the car bombs land.


But, despite my outlook, she looks thrilled, and she looks like she still has a childhood....so that's good!

Super Long Post: Part II

I wrote this post as part of the last super long post, but thought it was too long and too boring...so I decided to cut it into pieces and bore you twice...I'm not gonna bother editing it, because it was like 3 weeks ago, but I thought I should post it.

Reflections

This whole experience has been quite absurd. I remember, quite distinctly, that for my entire childhood and even up through some of college, I always thought that my family was quite wealthy. Or at least solidly “upper middle class.” (If I’m not mistaken, we are actually upper middle class.) And by all measures of being and economic welfare, I do still believe that my family is very well-off and that I could never ask for more than I was given…but I no longer harbor any sort of delusion that we are considered, at least in this world, to be wealthy. Which, of course, I also view to be a positive thing. I couldn’t have grown up in a better environment. Anyhow…

…suddenly here’s this strange life I’ve taken on over the past 2 months. Where I actually consider getting my shoes polished. Where I must engage in conversations about "the market." Where people are used to having certain luxuries and accommodations “expensed.” Where instant gratification is the expectation. And where self-reliance exists in an alien form – because while you may be self-reliant in the professional world, your basic needs of laundry, food preparation, grooming, and transportation are all packaged not as necessity, but as luxury. I think maybe that is, in some small sense, part of what constitutes conspicuous wealth. Turning the everyday moments into pleasure. From a desire for comfort to a satiation of the need for constant pleasure. It’s hedonism, really. Luxury is little but the conversion of the everyday into something extraordinary. (I mean, sure, I like it. But what the fuck?)

Loving Hong Kong

I will say, though, that I am increasingly coming to love Hong Kong. (see above.) The city itself is not nearly as Asian as you might expect. It is sometimes actually difficult to find a nice Chinese restaurant, because there are so many hundreds of Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Indian, American, Greek, Japanese, Lebanese, or whatever other types of restaurants around the city. It also lacks the dirtiness and cheapness of China. The restaurants don’t have a faux sense of decor and elegance. The elegance is real. This truly is a world class city in many respects. It’s not like China where “French Onion Soup” is a watery onion broth, or where an enchilada will be a horribly compromised mishmash of flavors stuffed into a gummy bready tortilla and served with a package of ketchup. French onion soup is actually French onion soup here. White wine seafood risotto is actually a white wine seafood risotto. It may not strike you as that odd, but after spending time in India and China, it’s very strange to stumble into a foreign restaurant in the city and actually eat food that hasn’t been bastardized into a weird Chinese form.

Of course such a “westernized” style of living has its drawbacks. Hong Kong is fucking expensive. In a city of investment bankers and businessmen, I guess I was naive to believe it could be otherwise…but I am paying out the nose for so many things. Another is that there are white people everywhere (which might be ok if you like such things). A third drawback is simply that Hong Kong doesn’t have any particular culture. It exists somewhere between the US, China, the UK, and the ideal of a capitalistic society. It is its own melting pot, and lacks the richness of a native soul. (Of course, I’m very very new here…but that’s just what I thought.)

It is wonderful though. On the south side of the Island there are gorgeous white sand beaches surrounded by emerald green waters and lush green mountains. There are jungle-like mountain paths to go hiking on the weekends, and lots of little islands surrounding Hong Kong island with hikes ranging from 1 to 12 hours. And it’s tropical, which means that some of the plants leaves are so thick, so juicy, and so prehistorically large that they almost seem like animals. There are quaint villages and skyscrapers. Concrete and wilderness. Mountain biking and dragon boats. The Four Seasons and the shack by the sea. Clearly I’ve been converted.

Speaking of the tropical plants, I’d like to go back to these leaves for just a moment. Do any of you know what I’m talking about? The plants with the leaves the size of a pizza. The type that stegosaurus probably loved. The ones you look at and say “holy crap, did I just take mushrooms? or did I just step into Super Mario Bros.?” I love those huge plants. They just seem so other worldly. Only in these tropical areas could produce plants with such enormous leaves. I bet these things produce a bucket of chlorophyll per day. They just look so healthy. So thick and organic. And enormous.

Anyhow, that must have been, by far, the worst passage I’ve ever posted on this thing. A rambling talk about large leaves. Well too bad. It continues. I talk about them only because I took an amazing run last night on the side of a mountain. This is more or less the view from the path on the left. I began at 8 o’clock, when the night had already gone dark and the primarily illumination came from the forest of skyscrapers and their Hong Kong neon lights…and after I somehow, painfully, but persistently managed to pound out a 6K…it began raining…and I heard the sound of a thousand raindrops hitting a thousand (giant) leaves. The thing is, this was not the sizzling sound of drizzle on maple leaves. This was something much more substantial. Something corporeal. The sound of fat, heavy drops of cool tropical rains pounding into fleshy enormo-above-ground-lily-pads. The sort of satisfaction you can get out of a bass amp when it’s tweaked just right, or when a bass drum has been properly mic’d up and sends a thump through your chest. Just awesome. It’s a sure sign of being away from home when I see leaves like this. But it always carries its own sense of home as I flash on memories of India and my awe the first time I ever saw one of these large plants. (I am quite possibly the most boring motherfucker who has ever walked the earth.)

...and that's the end of the post. I'll be back soon with something more interesting.

Here's some pictures and commentary:

This is a picture from Thailand, which I had nothing to do with. But I thought it would give you all the flavor you would need to understand Bangkok.
This is a beachfront public barbecue...
This is the haircut I adopted for our "let's be absurd" night. (Notice how fucking lame her "absurd" hairstyle is. And look how pissed I am that she did that.)
And as a symbolic demonstration of how transformative my influence and the influence of Hong Kong were on those around us...we managed to turn THIS Kid....

Into THIS at 5am Karaoke. (Bow.)

Test of Coolness.

If you have an immediate gut reaction to this. A familiarity you would feel as if you just met your long lost brother. Or a feeling of completion, contentment, and satisfaction as if, somehow, miraculously, you were given a new lease on life... or thirty...

Then you are cool.

Compensation.

Ok. Admittedly that was lame.

I actually do have like 6 pages of posts from Hong Kong I never put up because my internet was all fuzzed out. I will attempt to do so soon.

More importantly, however, is your compensation for the Woody Woodpecker shit. Which is that...

....I got a Wii.


Now how does that benefit you? It really depends.
1) You can come to NYC, Boston, or the Beach House in North Carolina (to which you are all invited, as there are up to 10 spots still open for anyone who is a friend) (no really, you can come. with your friend. or wife. or significant other.) (August 17-22, and it's going to be awesome. some of you have already agreed to come.)
2) You can feel good because I feel good.
3) You can suck it, because I got a Wii. (which benefits you because you'll finally have the opportunity to suck it.)

Boner.

Has anyone else ever suddenly realized that the name Woody Woodpecker is both stupidly uncreative and extremely (un)funny in the most adolescent way?

(more to come.)

Super Long Post: Part I

The past week has been an absolute whirlwind. I can barely keep pace. I haven’t posted for a variety of reasons…some of it has been exhaustion. Some of it has been work-related. Some of it has been spazzy internet in my room. And a lot of it has just been the occurrence of a few very upsetting issues that I don’t really feel like talking about…so I’m just gonna write to pass the time.

So…I’ll do what I can. We start with the boring. I’ll break this into pieces, because I’m sure no one wants to read all of this at once, if you read it at all.

My Life at Work.

I was ushered into a big M&A deal this week. Chinese company. UK financiers. Weeklong negotiations to be wrangled over in our conference room. Titans. Locking horns. Fierce battles over millions of dollars...

…let’s just say not quite.

I did spend approximately 30 hours locked in a tiny room with a company executive, a private equity manager, 2 Chinese counsel, my boss, an associate I worked with, and a few other various characters who came in and out. That much is factually true. Except for a few moments where our client was turning red and on the verge of jumping over the table and strangling the little Chinese man who was suddenly asking for an additional hundred million dollars after a year of negotiations…the entire fiasco was actually quite boring, and more frequently infuriating. The infuriating part was that the Chinese PRC lawyer who was on our team was an absolute waste of oxygen.

Don’t get me wrong. The guy was a real sweetheart. A lovely older gentleman with a sunny disposition. Unfortunately, he had the type of voice that lacked any crispness or clarity. Sort of a human foghorn-like irritating bleat. And he refused to enunciate. And his accent was atrocious (apparently even after 20 years in the US.) And he seemed to have a real talent for saying irrelevant things, or repeating exactly what he had said two sentences ago. Over and over again. I am certain, and I mean certain that we spent an extra 6 hours locked into that conference room because that guy consistently, persistently, and unceasingly tried to interject himself into conversations, make stupid jokes, in the midst of the most fruitful moments of negotiations, and endlessly mistranslate from Mandarin to English, and back again. As a result, instead of asking a question and receiving a response, a question would be asked in Chinese, the attorney (we’ll call him Jackass) would misunderstand the question, mistranslate the question (even though he wasn’t the translator…), receive a confused clarification from his (rightfully) bewildered client, and then he would promptly mistranslate the response, releasing free radicals of confusion and misunderstandings and mistaken issues for the next hour. Of course, when the question would finally be reclarified after 30 minutes of careful explanation…Jackass would promptly say exactly the confusing thing he said the first time. And another hour would lapse.

…And my anger would slowly grow. I refuse to work with Chinese lawyers until this older crop of dinosaurs disappears…

…And that was my week. A long week of endless meetings. And because I was surrounded by big dogs. I was one tired pup who sat around all week having no idea what was going on…I will say that I learned a lot, that the experience was valuable, and that I was very impressed by the other attorneys on our team. But Jackass’s presence alone was enough to make me boil.

…and so we move to the slightly less boring.

My Life (because of) Work.

Being a summer associate in a branch office is a very different experience than being one in the main office. Besides the fact that the entire branch is contained in a tiny office space half the size of a single floor of the home office, the “summer events” are also much more informal and much more personal, and in some cases, much more extravagant. There were two events this week. The first, was a day-long trip to Macau. The second, was the Hong Kong Handover Anniversary celebration. We begin with Macau.

This is the 5th year (in front), the 1st year (in back) and his girlfriend (right)

Macau is an island off the coast of China. I always knew there was such a thing as Macau, which was vaguely Chinese, but I never knew what it was. As I understand it, Macau was a Portuguese colony since a very very long time ago, and returned to China in 1999, much like the way Hong Kong did in ’97. As a result, though, Macau has a very pervasive Portuguese influence. The architecture of the old city is very European, the central attraction is a large cathedral facade, and the Portuguese language is pervasive. And the island is beautiful. The contingent consisted of Me, another summer (guy), the other summer (girl) and her boyfriend, a 5^th year associate and his fiancee and mother in law, and a first year associate and his girlfriend. We hopped on the Turbojet ferry from the Hong Kong docks, and an hour later arrived on the shores of Macau. We immediately jetted across the island to a fantastic restaurant that served Macanese food, which is an interesting hybrid between Portuguese and Chinese cooking. Deep aromatic sauces, pervasive use of garlic, wine, butter, spices, fresh meats and fishes, crispy hot bread, bottles of white wine, and fantastically Chinese ingredients with more European influences. So I ended up gorging myself. (Part 1.)

We then set off for a long walk through Macau’s older city, which as pictured below, is actually a European-looking area with tons of tourists and tons of people. It was interesting, and an absolutely beautiful day…but nothing really interesting enough to report. (Except the fact that I made my fellow summer do this to a cannon…merely by declaring “Frat boy Photo time!”, to which he immediately complied.) We spent some time roaming around the old city, eating random deserts (chilled milk jello, Portuguese Egg Custard tarts which are ohmigodsomuchbetterthanIcouldhaveeverexpected, and, of course, egg rolls), and really just passed our time in the city.

This is the chilled milk desert and eggrolls.

Afterwards, we immediately went for another meal at a famous ol’ place called Fernandos. In the cab ride over, in typical form, I had a heart to heart with the cab driver. Apparently, the guy had swam across the ocean to Macau in 1979 to escape the poverty and Communism. It took 3 hours, in the middle of the night, to avoid being shot by the Chinese shore guards. Unreal. Besides the sheer danger of swimming for 3 hours through the ocean, once you leave the harbor it’s just open water on all sides. I don’t see how it would be possible to swim in a straight line across the ocean and actually not stray off by a couple of degrees and end up swimming to your death into the open water. I’m so impressed.

Anyhow, we had a phenomenal, incredible Macanese meal at Fernandos, which is some sort of super famous (again, rightfully so) restaurant, which had the feel of like a barbecue restaurant with checkered red tableclothes and huge pitchers of sangria (gorging myself Part 2)…and then the event was over. As we left the restaurant we all split up, and the 5^th year, his fiancee, and the mother in law called it a night, and hopped on the ferry back to Hong Kong. The rest of us stayed.

What I didn’t mention about Macau, is that it is in the process of becoming Asia’s Las Vegas. Yes. There are casinos. Tons of casinos. Enormous casinos like the Venetian, the Sands, the Wynn, and other staples of any huge casino strip have started to consume the skyline, and the glamour and luxury of Vegas exists within the four walls of these casinos. So, since it was Saturday night, we figured we should give the place a whirl. We gave our best shot to slots, blackjack, roulette, and eventually several types of Scotch in celebration of the guy summer’s birthday, which he quietly announced after midnight. And so we had to make the night more special. If only with MacAllan’s 18. (and me betting nearly 80 dollars on the 2 to 1 column in Roulette as a birthday gift to the kid. Which we promptly lost. And I promptly regretted. Magnanimity’s a bitch.)

(There isn’t a whole lot to describe about the night. We won. We lost. We lost some more. We lost a little bit more. We won. And then we lost. And then we caught the 3 am ferry back to Hong Kong.) And thus, was Macau.

And so we move onto the 10-year Handover Celebration.

I admit I did not take this picture. Mine didn't turn out so well.

So the basic History of Hong Kong is this (which I assume you already know.) Hong Kong was a British colony. Blah blah blah, there was a flurry of wars over opium trade, trade with China, and other economic issues, and Hong Kong was essentially the British gateway to China. And in 1898, Britain and China signed an agreement that Hong Kong would be handed back to the Chinese in 1997. (I find it crazy that countries make agreements with such long timeframes…and that they are actually upheld.) And so, in 1997, amidst enormous fear, trepidation, and concern for what the future held, Hong Kong was returned to China. On July 1, 1997.

Fast-forward to July 1, 2007. Hu Jintao flies down to Hong Kong. 18 million HK dollars (>2 million USD) are spent on the firework show. Boats absolutely fill the harbor to watch the firework show to celebrate the 10-year anniversary. The event, not technically a summer event, was our participation in the festivities of the night. The firm had rented one of the most famous “junks” in Hong Kong: An enormous wooden sailboat, fully equipped with silken sails of deep maroon lashed to enormous bamboo frames. This boat was by far the largest junk in the harbor. The night was to consist of hor d’oeuvres, dinner, and unlimited quantities of wine, beer, liquor, babies, children, families, music, fireworks, and celebration. Oh, and Cuban cigars. (I had 2. 1 Partagas and 1 Romeo y Julieta)

The weather was beautiful. The night was clear. The fireworks were spectacular, ending with a jarring barrage of mortars. The beer was plentiful. The talks were pleasant. The boat was amazing. And the night was, altogether, quite nice. The boat rocked gently in the water as the older children (6-8 years old?) let off huge party poppers, and the babies (and there were like 10 babies) were rocked to sleep…as the adults had their own version of playtime. I remember eating excessively, drinking excessively, smoking cigars excessively, and having long talks with a partner and counsel. ) I had to remind myself what everyone always said about partners and summers…which is that they will never be this nice to you again. The moment you step into the office as a junior associate, the wall goes up, and you can’t be friends for 8 years. Which actually, I think I prefer.)

But all in all, was an amazing night to sail around Hong Kong Island and have some of the best seats in the house for the 10 year celebration…even if we were, on other days, not entirely Hong Kongers ourselves.