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.

Riiiight.

I found this on my brother's blog, so I did a scan on my own...

Apparently my blog is:



Right.

Note: The appearance of the word "Gay" was noted by the blog-rater website and counted towards this grade.

Apologia.

I'm a little exhausted, so my writing is going to be particularly uninspired, unrevised, and basically dry and explanatory.

...I haven't really had a good chance to post anything in the last week, although, for the first time, I will have to say it's been fairly eventful...at least in a "living in a crazy-ass new city" sorta way...

Let's begin with some observations...

Hong Kong has one striking similarity to the US. It's filled with Mexicans....sorta. It's extremely bizarre to interact with the service industry and wander the streets of Hong Kong, because it feels intensely familiar to the US in the sense that there seems to be a burgeoning, ever present group of Filipinos and Vietnamese women. They are the waitresses in the restaurants, the clerks in the lower end stores, they wear different clothes, and they are noticeably darker in skin ton. On several occasions, I unconsciously identified people I saw on the streets as Mexican or Hispanic...when I realized I was in friggin' Asia, and it made no sense for huge numbers of Hispanic folk to come over here. All I will say, is that the dynamics of brown skinned southern brethren working and living amongst a more light skinned northern bunch is so familiar and so similar to the US that I am constantly surprised.

The one really interesting outgrowth from this population is something like a Sunday picnic for all of these women. Every Sunday, all day, in every shaded area (in covered walkways, in large covered plazas, on stairs underneath the trees, under bridges), there are huge congregations of Filipino women eating tons of awesome looking food, gabbing away, giving each other makeovers, playing cards, or whatever else consumes a lazy Sunday afternoon. Here's a shot I found on the net (because I feel somewhat shameful taking pictures of this phenomenon)...but looking at the picture, I can tell it is the HSBC building, exactly the spot I walked by today. This is what it looks like (times about 30).
To be honest, I find the whole thing to be really wonderful. I know it's the typical American reaction to see ethnic community bonding and partaking in exchange, food, and the pleasure of company as exotic and wonderful...but I really do think it seems like a great phenomenon and great way of life...even if the truth is that each of these people aspires to own their own car, house, and air-conditioner so they can sit at home alone and watch their flat screens. In any case...nice. (It was explained to me that since they are mostly in-house maids and the like, that they essentially have no place to live on Sundays...so they simply go outside and congregate in public because there's nowhere else to go.)

Another observation, which I've probably made several times...is that Hong Kong is fucking HILLY. This is the hilliest, steepest, most treacherously unflat city I have ever seen in my entire life. It is as if the curvature of the Great Wall of China (likely comparison, eh?) in all its mountainess steepness and brutally steep slopes were crammed together as the streets of a 10 square mile city. Besides my typical bitching...I find it insane how much uphill walking I have to do these days. (Buns of Steel eat your heart out.) What that means, in addition to the 99% humidity and 100 degree weather...is that I'm sweating ALL the time. The humidity makes the weather here far more brutal than it ever was in India...

So onto what's been going on....

Monday Night:
The firm took us to a barbecue seafood joint for the welcome party. Nothing spectacular, but it was a nice little get together where I overate, and then overdrank. At 9:30, I promptly came home to my apartment and dialled into the conference call for the deal I'm working on. 5 minutes into the conference call with a super high ranking NYC partner and several HK lawyers, I fucking fell asleep from the mass volume of beer I had consumed the few hours earlier. Now I don't know if I snored, or if I was asked any questions, or even how long I was out. Needless to say, the heartracing panic of waking up drunk in the middle of my first conference call was not good.

Tuesday:
I woke up early to join in the second conference call at 9:30...and I stayed awake the whole hour!!!

And luckily, Tuesday was a holiday. It was Dragon boat day! So the three of us summer associates took a bus down to Stanley Beach and watched the Dragon Boats race! The races, although incredibly Asian looking, are actually done in large part by large groups of white people racing with their respective corporate groups. So banks v. banks v. corporations v. consulting groups. In other words, white v. white v. white v. asian. Here's a shot of that...

Work:
Office work has consisted of hours of poring over the world's most boring prospectus and making markups and editorial changes in pencil. (Note: Chinese English, although often technically correct, fucking blows.) I tried to stab my pencil into my eye.

Actually...I'm getting way too tired now to write anything interesting, so I'm going to cut to the chase.

Saturday was a fantastic day. We all got up early as balls and set off for a long hike on Dragon's Back.
Before this trip, I had no idea that Hong Kong was this beautiful, tropical, lush mountainous island. I always imagined it as a concrete jungle with glitzy skyscrapers. Not so.
(Those are the two other summers) So we set off on a 2 hour hike through this beautiful mountain terrain, surrounded by the oceans on all sides, sun beating down on our necks. Actually, as the picture below demonstrates, the sun was so vicious and hot that I didn't let the sun touch my neck. (I do sorta like the enormous mountain man look I have going though)

We trekked all the way until we hit a little beachside town called Shek-O. We found a Thai and Chinese seafood hole in the wall, gorged ourselves on fresh fish, shrimp, veggies, several enormous Tsingtao beers, and very refreshing Coca-Colas. Here's a shot of the aftermath of the meal. That's the other summer Patrick.

There we basically lazed around on the beach, swam in the clear green waters surrounded by green peaks, and rocky outcrops far out in the ocean...and completely had the chance to unwind and relax. (Actually, I ended up wandering out into the ocean by myself after they passed out asleep on the beach.)

After all of that, we were soaked, covered in sand, salty, disgusting, smelly, out of clothes, sore, severely sunburned, and exhausted. But content. So what did we do?

We went to Jolly Foot...to get foot massages. For an hour.

Then afterwards, in a strange twist of fate, we ended up with people who appeared to be the Paris and Nicole of Hong Kong, and ended up in super exclusive hidden clubs hounded by the paparazzi. (It really had nothing to do with us. I barely spoke to the girls, and thought the clubs were overpriced, overlame, and underwhelming in every respect except the lavishness of the decore. That basically means the people sucked.)

'Tis All. I'm tired. I'm going to bed

Day 1: Hong Kong Corporate Confidential.

(Is it just me, or is life a constant barrage of new experiences and situations requiring constant adaptation and readjustment?...)

The first day in the HK office was uneventful, but nice. The office is really small, with approximately 18 lawyers (85% Chinese or Chinese descent), and the feeling is much more laid back, much more collegial, and much more informal than in Manhattan. Instead of 15 floors of 500 lawyers encased in elegant offices, there is a single floor in an ugly building.

So my jet lag woke me up promptly at 8 am (apparently I picked up my wakeup call and hung up immediately an hour earlier) and I took the hotel shuttle to work. After a 10 minute, sweltering, sweating, humid, muggy, no good very hot walk, I arrived at the office, wrapped myself in the delicious air conditioning, and promptly sat around for 5 hours passing the time. Other than that, we had a lunch of random pizza and caesar salad (have you ever had lox and cream cheese pizza?), had a lawyer's weekly lunch, and then spent 2 hours falling asleep while proofreading a prospectus for a Chinese company. (Chinese people fucking suck at English. I have never encountered such technical perfection, yet complete unintelligibility in single, multi-clause, multi-modifier, molto confusing sentence.)

Actually, I'm not even going to go on and describe the rest of my day. It's too boring. Even for me to recount. So...I went to dinner, I got full, I drank beer, I sat in on an hour long conference call from the cell phone they gave me (I actually fell asleep drunk on my couch at some point during the conference call when the head partner began discussing issues of corporate taxation in determining acquisition structures...and I'm not entirely sure how long I was gone...but I don't think they caught on.)


So...tomorrow is the huge dragon boat festival in Hong Kong...and I will go promptly after I attend a conference call in the morning with Beijing and New York (huff on fingernails and buff them on my lapel. diffidently.) And hopefully I'll update then.

Hong Kong.

So I have arrived in Hong Kong...

Let's start at the top...The story is very snooty. Because the circumstances under which I have been operating have been inherently snooty. And lavish. And absurd. And thus, I will discuss them as such. Because that's just the way it is...bitch.

I believe this picture serves my purposes well. Aside from the Aristocratic
bearing of this fine gent, he's got a gesture on his
hand that makes it all somehow bearable.

So on Thursday afternoon, after getting slammed with work from the M&A partner I've been working closely with, the summer supervisor gives me a ring and asks if, by chance, I would like another assignment. Eager to try something new, but not knowing how the fuck I am supposed to get my work done before the end of the day Thursday...I hesitantly say yes, and take on a brand new capital markets assignment. And thus, the "don't come in on Friday before your flight" turns into a "Shit, it's friday, my flight is in 4 hours, and I have 3 assignments to complete."

The end of this brief story, of course, is that I'm awesome. And I finished. And got to the airport in a black luxury car in my pinstripe suit to board my 16 hour business class flight to Hong Kong. So I checked in, went upstairs to the first class lounge, ate about 15 mini sandwiches, lounged on a beach chair sipping a free Heineken and reading the Times when I realize I don't have my cell phone. The cell phone I did have while I was in the car on the way to the airport....Jesus Fucking Christ. (Long story short, I call up my omni-competent assistant, and I believe that it's been taken care of...but I'm really not sure.)

Anyhow, I want to take a moment to describe Business class on an Asian Airline (Cathay Pacific). So the seats are huge. They are each fully encased and fully enclosed in the back, so when you lean back...the person behind you doesn't actually have the seat invade their space.

Then, the seat slides down mechanically in its own little cubby, and becomes almost horizontal. And there's tons of leg room so that a 6'2" Chinaman is able to extend his legs fully for the first time in his life in an airplane. With the pink silken pillow, 'tis bliss to be flying.

Then comes the movie selection....of which, I shamefully admit, I overindulged. If you're going to be sitting on a plane for 16 hours, it's no time for class. It's no time for thinking. It's no time for anything except the guilty pleasures. So out of the 60 movies on demand to choose from, I chose: Ghost Rider. Letters from Iwo Jima. Shooter. And...yes...Because I Said So. (Which none of you have heard of, because it is the Diane Keaton Mandy Moore vehicle. Even as low as my standards go, it was not good...) And then I watched 5 straight episodes of Sex and the City (for some reason the nudity wasn't blocked), the Office, and Scrubs.

And then came the meal. A 4 course meal brought out cart by cart. The first course, a Mesclun salad, a roll, and braised carmelized scallops on an avocado puree. The second course, either steak, chicken, or pasta. The third course, a choice of fruit, cheeses, and olives. The fourth course, tiramisu and coffee....and thus the flight was over. And so soon!

Hong Kong. It's fucking muggy man. It's like 100 degrees, and you could eat the humidity with a spoon. (I've decided that cliches are awesome. Especially if you just slightly modify them.)
I did learn a few things.

1) I had no idea Hong Kong was tropical. I believe it's further south than Delhi. that's not good.

2) Hong Kong is actually like...a Mountain. It's extremely hilly, and the mountain is always in the background...covered in tropical foliage.
3) Hong Kong is a very dense dense city. Full of white people.

So...we were picked up at the airport by those funny little people holding up signs, and we got into the car and jetted off to our hotel/apartment.


This is where I'm staying.

These pictures do not include the kitchen or the second flat screen located in the bedroom.

And then I actually went out into Hong Kong.

Verdict?

Eh. It was ok. The first place I went was about 40% white people. Which...all of you should know how I would react to. The second place was just boring.

So the actual Hong Kong Saga has not begun. I will go to work early tomorrow morning and see how my first real day goes. So...until then....

I continue...

So things have been pretty uneventful to be honest...

My time at work isn't bad. I actually find a lot of the work very interesting in its own perverse sort of short-sighted, money money money attitude. I don't say this in a spiteful or hateful way as to suggest any evil greed or republicanism (you like how comfortably I just toss that into the same string of descriptors as evil greed?) (note: I didn't say conservative. I said republican.) Anyhow, I think I just see a general human shortsightedness where it is nearly impossible to look at the transactions we are involved in, and see the very human and systemic consequences down the great chain of economic being. I mean, when you take a shit, can you really tell me where goes, what other human being has to touch it, which sewage plant processes it, and which person drinks the purified water squeezed back out of it? (Yes. It's the water cycle.)

The life is deceptively nice, though. The people will never be my best friends. I will not likely find a soulmate in the crowd. But they are friendly. They are personable. And they are not evil. Just a little detached. Or with different priorities. My work has involved white collar defense for hedge funds, pulling together an enormous outline for a partner's presentation on an extremely cutting edge legal issue amongst investment banks and hedge funds, and another domestic violence pro bono divorce case. Although I haven't really gone to a whole lot of absurd restaurants (except for a banquet at the Rainbow Room), I think it's been a fairly positive experience.

The next step, of course, beginning this Friday, is a 4 week rotation in Hong Kong. Isn't that fucking crazy? I feel like since I will no longer be spending all my evenings doing things with AHJ, I will have more time to update and speak as to my experience there.

As usual, I don't really have internet, and as a result tend to respond neither to emails or blog posts...especially because I don't want to do it from work.

But all of this ignores the TRUE driving force behind this post....The Monster Pig.


FUCK! Gives me the willies.

Two Assholes

Today was a day of Assholes. No personal interactions mind you, but just observations about assholes.

Asshole Number 1: The Asshole who decided he was too “intelligent” and “well-educated” (yes, he actually said that) to be isolated for carrying drug resistant tuberculosis around the world on several airplanes in several countries. If the news article I read was correct, he actually refused to stay in Italy after knowing he had drug resistant TB by flying to Prague and then to Canada, and then drove back into the US. That’s an awfully Herculean effort just to be an asshole.

I’m not entirely clear whether his TB is dormant or not, which is a good thing because it would then be less infectious…but drug resistant TB is no fucking joke….ridiculous. Although…I will say his chances of dying are fairly high.

Judging by this picture and the fact that he’s a personal injury lawyer is enough to proclaim him ASSHOLE. (There is a bizarre anti-world conspiracy feeling to this whole uncle works for the CDC doing TB stuff thing though…)

Asshole(s) Number 2: I spent my morning in a divorce training pro bono session at a major midtown law firm in a room with 50 or 60 other summer associates from other law firms and I’ve decided that Blackberry’s annoy me. Or at least summer associates at law firms who compulsively check their Blackberry’s during a presentation training us to represent battered women in their divorces. I can’t exactly pin down what is so assholey about it…but it almost seems like these people seem to believe that the possession of a Blackberry makes them more important and indispensable to the Street. Nay, to the world!

Anyhow, I know I check text messages a lot. And I know that a Blackberry is going to be a major part of my life in the future…but if I ever get out of hand with it, and adopt an air of an asshole with it…you have my permission and my request to simply give me a weary deadpan and simply say “Asshole.” And every time I try to explain why I have to check it, please interrupt whatever I’m saying with a simple word: “asshole.” (I’ll probably still have to check it, but still say it.)

Oh, while surfing for a picture of super durfwad Asshole number 1, I found asshole number 3:

Samir Patel misspelled a word in fifth round of the national spelling bee. His mother appealed. “Based on subtle differences in how the word’s final syllable can be pronounced.”

…Jesus.

…And finally, I’d like to point out the existence of what appears to be, incredibly, a Reversal of Perpetual Assholism. I haven’t seen the details (caveat emptor), but apparently Bush has called for 30 billion for Global AIDS, as well as a Kyoto-like curbing of greenhouse emissions. (Environmentalists are still bitching, of course, but at least it means our President isn’t completely, absolutely, 100%, undeniably, supremely fucking crazy. Just almost completely so.)

‘Tis All. I was in the office until 8 pm working on a project I have no business doing…and that’s all I really have to report about work.

New York

Well I’ve been AWOL (not that there is anyone who would have noticed of course)…but the reality is that in the midst of all the ridiculous infrastructure, skyscrapers, wifi hotspots, and thousands of computers….I actually don’t have internet….which will explain why I haven’t really responded to emails, posted comments, posted on the blog, paid my credit card bills, or anything else of that nature.

That being said, I am 6 days into my life at BigLaw, BigLaw being Wall Street, corporate, grey suits, and the overt pursuit of the Almighty Dollar. The firm itself is beautiful. The artwork on the walls is (generally) tasteful, the woodwork and carpeting is lavish, the offices have huge peering into the majestic views of…the sides of other buildings…and the people are actually quite friendly, intelligent, and easy to be around. So far I’ve been paid a ridiculous salary to read the Wall Street Journal, check my email incessantly, and complain to my two officemates about how I don’t have any work to do. The summer gig seems to be a long summer of “self-discovery” about what type of corporate lawyer you want to be, and a long schmoozefest attempting to convince you that life at a law firm is as nice as it would seem in the ideal. That means 3 hour lunches twice a week, at the restaurants people without corporate accounts tend to not eat at, and summer events like Trapeze School (HELLLLL YEAH) and meeting the Mets and playing ball against the Mets organization on the field at Shea Stadium (I would be excited if I wasn’t such a woman.)

I think I’ve grown to like New York a lot more than I thought I would. The honest truth is that I’ve always been anti-big city more or less because I have been too insecure, scared, and frankly intimidated by big cities, especially places like New York which is the biggest of big cities – the rich Wall Street investment bankers, super trendy hipsters, punk rockers, hippies, movie stars, super models, sex and the city, and all of the other things that I’m too lame to be immersed in. But now that I’m here, all of those aspects of the city are really the lamer parts of the city. There’s a large contingent of middle class white kids feigning poverty and authenticity in clothes from goodwill and studded chokers, small tee-shirts and slim fit jeans…a lot of Greek Duke University-types bringing Carrie Bradshaw’s New York to life merely by trying so hard to live it that they actually create it…and plenty and plenty of people who simply aren’t attractive at all. In short, it’s just a really busy city with lots and lots and lots of people doing lots and lots and lots of things. So I like it.

This is definitely not to say that I am or ever will be a New Yorker by any standards. I don’t fit in here, I’m sort of ambivalent to a lot of the bullshit that New York and New Yorkers seem to carry around, and I don’t think I really will be for a very long time…but for the time being, I can see myself here and think things will be OK.

Anyhow, I think it’s about time to go to bed…and I feel like after this first post I’ll be posting more. Let me know where you are, how you are, what you’re up to and if you’re gonna come to the city!

I wrote this two days ago...but forgot to post it.

Well that was just plain fun…

After a night of scrubbing, sweeping, drinking Belhavens and watching “The Prestige” and “10 Items or Less” (Both movies which I highly recommend), I went to bed and woke up at 8 to finish up the move-out.

So I packed up all my crap, did some final laundry, ran some errands, and arrived back in my apartment to find that the young gay couple who were taking my apartment had let themselves in, believing that I had already left. And after getting them all set up, I said goodbye to my apartment for the summer and hopped in my car at 2 pm.

…And so I was off, for a surprise visit back to South Carolina. I admit there’s really no reason to drive 1000 miles with gas prices over 3 dollars a gallon, simply to fly back to New York 24 hours after my arrival…but I felt like it would be fun. A way to unwind, relax, and to see my parents, since I don’t really speak to them all that much.

So off I went, with 10 new CDs and a long robusto Cohiba cigar. 5 of them were Barack Obama’s “Audacity of Hope”, read by the Senator himself, and 5 of them were “Heat” by Bill Buford…a fantastic book about a cook’s life in the kitchen of a major Italian restaurant in Manhattan which dives into the life history and character of Mario Batali, explores the experience of working as a cook in his restaurant, and eventually takes the author on multiple trips to Italy to learn the old ways of butchering, handmade pasta-making, and the history of Italian cuisine. A splendid book really.

And here I am at 3am somewhere north of Durham, having covered 700 miles, 2 gatorades, 1 Aquifina, 1 Quiznos sub, 3 cigarettes, 1 cigar, finished “Heat”, listened to 4 of 5 cds of Obama’s book, told 6 lies to my mother about where I am and what my plans were, and one cup of coffee.

Good day.

(I also change my mind about Bird and the Bee. I actually DO like the cd. Or most of it.)

Kirk Cameron

Kirk Cameron is an absolute basketcase...

If you don't recall, Kirk Cameron played Mike Sever on 'Growing Pains' in the 80's. These days, he is marauding as a fundamentalist Christian nutjob who tries to evangelize us heathen folk by starring in such movies as "Left Behind" "Left Behind II" and "Left Behind III." (The latter two aren't the real names)
If somehow you have escaped awareness of what the "Left Behind" series is, it's essentially a fundamentalist interpretation of the Rapture and the return of the Anti-Christ...which revels in the massacre of non-believers and places the head of the UN as the Anti-Christ. (By the way, given that these are some of the best-selling books of our time...it's terrifying to realize that increasing numbers of Americans have embraced the series as an accurate assessment of how things will generally turn out.) I'd also like to note that this is just the next logical step in the line of brilliant scholarship that produced works such as this (as some of you may remember):

Two things to note: First, the exclamation point. "Gorbachev!"
Second, the author is from Greenville, South Carolina.

In addition, I would like to point out that there is now a Left Behind videogame.More importantly, I'd like to point out that the premise of the game has been the focus of some controversy. Why?
Because one of the major premises of the game appears to be this: Non-christians must either be converted or killed.

Jesus would be proud.

Anyhow...the real purpose of the post was simply to mock Kirk Cameron...which got out of hand as I started down the "Left Behind" pathway...Here's reason 1:


This is a line of argumentation that is perfectly acceptable to large portions of the (voting) population. That is TERRIFYING. And funny.

The second reason is that Kirk Cameron recently went on Nightline to debate the existence of God. Slate wrote up a nice little article about it here....and here's a great little excerpt:

If Nightline wanted to host an enlightening discussion about religion, it would have invited some intelligent believers to mount a defense of faith and to talk about why faith and proof of it are mutually exclusive. Instead, the show served up Cameron goofing on Charles Darwin, apparently the preferred target of dimwitted theists. At one point, Cameron, mocking the theory of evolution, held up a photo-illustration of a duck with the head of crocodile. Seeing this, [the opposing party], stunned, could not help but mutter, "Oh. My. God."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHYEA!!!

Finished with Exams!

Edit: I promptly came home, tore the sleeves of a t-shirt, put on my headphones, and rode around the city on my bike for the next 3 hours running errands (ie. Buying the new Bjork cd, Riding out to MIT to look at the Gehry building.)

Rodrigo y Gabriela.

I can't tell whether or not I'm momentarily drawn in by the novelty and energy, but I gotta say I am definitely impressed and loving Rodrigo y Gabriela and right now. They're ex-thrash metal guitarists from Mexico now producing enormously full sounds with two acoustic guitars...although you wouldn't guess it from looking at them, especially Gabriela. The broken english and timid Spanish doesn't hurt either...

In any case, they're pretty fucking wild...Here's some live clips if you're interested...although the stuff on their myspace page is much higher quality and better to listen to...





And here is some random video where they sit down and explain how they play their parts....CRAZY.


Finally...they have spawned a generation of You-Tubers attempting to play their songs...This one is actually pretty impressive. Ok. I a little deficient...


But better than these two white guys...



......If you made it this far and actually watched even ONE of those clips...You must be pretty interesting. Or at least find this interesting. In which case you should get in touch with me and we should try to see if we can see 'em live. Unless you're a minority.

God People are Funny.

I mean, c'mon! That's just funny.

(KUTV) SALT LAKE CITY A Salt Lake County woman has been arrested, accused of attacking her husband with a hammer on Friday night.

Joel Ricks told authorities that his wife Amy told him she had a surprise for him. He said she blindfolded him and led him into the basement of a Holladay condominium.

The woman then allegedly struck her husband with a hammer multiple times.

The man was able to escape and called 911. Deputies arrested his wife for aggravated assault.

Although another news story off of Fark was about a man who stabbed his 70 year old father to death, and then immediately after managed to kill himself by decapitating himself with a chainsaw. I'm not exactly sure how he managed to do it, but it seems like he managed to completely cut his own head off. (Shudder)

Nature is Crazy.

I'm sure glad I don't live in Ohio anymore....I was terrified of these things as a kid, and I think for damn good reason...

Look at how these things descend from the sky...if I saw that tendril coming down, my eyes would slowly get wider and wider with alarm until I no longer looked chinese.



Or what the hell were THESE guys doing? I bet that car smells like empty bowels and full pants. (I actually haven't heard these videos because I'm in the library, but the YouTube comments indicate that they're morons or something.)

Black People.

(How many white people just did sort of a startled mini political correctness test to see if that title is offensive? Since surely your gut had some sort of reaction...)

Anyhow, this post doesn't really have to do with that. I was just trolling around on the internet and stumbled across this interesting article about black people, college, affirmative action, and all that good stuff. It's confirmatory rather than eye-opening, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Here's some excerpts for the lazies who don't feel like reading the article:

Among students at 28 top U.S. universities, the representation of black students of first- and second-generation immigrant origin (27 percent) was about twice their representation in the national population of blacks their age (13 percent). Within the Ivy League, immigrant-origin students made up 41 percent of black freshmen...

[Black chick in the article] would like to know why. She asks if her cause has lost its way on U.S. campuses, with the goal of correcting American racial injustices replaced by a softer ideal of diversity — as if any black student will do.

“To white observers, black immigrants seem more polite, less hostile, more solicitous, and ’easier to get along with” the study said. “Native blacks are perceived in precisely the opposite fashion.”

That idea immediately found detractors.

“I can’t speak for white people, but that’s crazy,” said Adoma Adjei-Brenyah, a Columbia University student with college-educated parents from Ghana.

I would offer a snide and breezily caustic remark that paints everyone involved in this debate as stupid or ridiculous...but I think it's actually a really interesting issue to think about...and i'm not sure how I feel about it.

I do appreciate how they framed their spokesperson for the African perspective though. Very balanced with no insinuations.

Thoughts? (This sort of bald solicitation for other people's thoughts generally amounts to nothing. I know. Shut up.)

I admit...

...It actually took me about a minute to figure this out. Plus, I was on the phone, so Josh can attest to the fact that I sat there....silent....not quite sure why he thought it was funny.

But...it is funny....




And now for something else that I found interesting...

(This will take you through a guide of how I use modern media too.)

After watching Marie Antoinette (Yes. My quality of life has taken a dive. But it was Sophia Coppola. That has to mean something.), I naturally went onto Wikipedia to read about the real Marie Antoinette. You know, the same shit. To see what she looked like. To see what actually happened. Whether I should replace my understanding of history with Kirsten Dunst...etc.
...and...after being horrified by the unbelievable inhumanity and bloodlust of the French Revolution, I noticed that one of her loyal ladies in waiting was decapitated for refusing to betray her loyalty to the queen...and had her head placed on a pike, and the severed head was paraded in front of Marie Antoinette's window. (Actually, if the ol' Wiki is to be believed, she was gang raped, had her breasts cut off, she was mutilated, possibly had her genitals cut out, and THEN her head was placed on the pike. More reason to hate the French eh?)

As was also natural, I went to look up who played this lady in waiting in the movie on IMDB...remembered who her character was...and then went back to Wikipedia. As if that would enrich my experience, right?

So then I kept reading, and I found out that some lady named Madame Tussaud, made a death mask of this lady, named Princess de Lamballe. And I thought to myself, "what the fuck is a death mask?"

So in the ever handy upper-right corner Google searchbar of Firefox, I typed in Death Mask....and the rest of the night was pretty much lost.

Up until and past the time of photography, apparently, for purposes of identification, or for making statues, or for various other reasons...it was common practice to take a waxen or plaster cast of a dead person's face. This sparked my interest. Because I have always really wondered what old dead people actually looked like. For example, these are all pictures of James Madison.






I find this Profoundly unhelpful. I want to know what he actually looked like! Apparently he was 5'1" and 110 pounds. That is not what I see. So for people like Madison (unfortunately, he doesn't have one), I could actually see what they looked like! So I searched and searched...and had a jolly ol' time...until, well, hours later I did my evidence homework.

Anyhow, here's a few:

This one is obvious, but serves as testament to its accuracy.

This one is not obvious. It's Napoleon.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure will never be the same.....