sushipanda

My first year at Berkeley I lived on the 6th floor of Putnam Hall in Unit 1. A few rooms down lived a wiry, red-headed nut named Ethan Lindsey. He was taller than I was but probably half my weight, yet he talked as if everyone was 100 feet away and couldn’t hear him. He had an opinion on anything that would enter our floor’s discourse at the time, from Tribe breaking up to vacation planning in Belize to girls with big hands. He introduced me to Michael Antonioni by yelling at me for being a film major and not knowing who Antonioni was, and then promptly fell asleep while watching Blow-up in his room. He signed up to take a film seminar with me but only ended up flirting with the girls in the class on the few days he attended. When Wilkie moved in later in the year, he became Ethan’s roommate, and Ethan was one of the first to point out the buckles on Wilkie’s shoes and to start calling him “Wilma.” He never got up before noon.

I didn’t keep in touch with Ethan much after that first year in the dorms. By the end of freshman year most kids had enough of an idea of who they were and who they wanted to hang out with. I think Ethan and I left Putnam Hall on fairly good terms, but both knowing that we wouldn’t play signficant roles in each other’s lives, if any role at all. Sometimes I saw him roller-blading on campus. If we ran into each other I’d always say hi and he’d yell it back. A few years after we graduated he added me on Friendster, but as is typical for 4th-5th degree social networkers, the connections stopped there.

This morning I popped in my ear buds and headed out to catch the shuttle. I’m one of those iPod users that actually squeezes the life out of the machine; I use it constantly. On my commute I usually catch up with the rest of the world through the podcasts that are constantly downloading on my computer and synching with my anti-social inducing music player. One of the podcasts to which I subscribe and have recently begun listening to on a regular basis (since I’ve re-entered the stock market) is American Public Media’s Marketplace. I kicked back as the shuttle started its engine and proceeded to catch up to the previous week’s shows.

Imagine my surprise when host Kai Ryssdal returned from a musical interlude to introduce the next report with this:

Oregon voters will go to the polls in a special election a week-and-a-half from now — and what they see on the way there might well have an impact on how they decide.

Technically, they’ll be voting on a measure that will limit development. It’s a tit-for-tat response to a highly controversial pro-growth initiative that passed in 2004. But it’ll have cosmetic implications for Oregon’s well-traveled roads.

Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Ethan Lindsey reports.

My ears perked up. Ethan Lindsey? I rewinded and listend again. Yep, same name. And then I heard the voice. Ethan’s volume-challenged voice. On the mellow airwaves of national public radio.

I felt a sense of eerie dissonance hearing my college dormmate on my iPod. Listening closely, I detected hints and droplets of that old, crackling firecracker that seemingly was waiting to pop out of this reserved, cooly intonated shell. But they were only hints. What I was hearing now was still something new, a product of a near decade of growth and whatever else happens to people on their way to figuring their lives out. It made me wonder if my voice had changed any, given the regressions in various aspects of my life.

But what I mostly felt was this very satisfactory sense of wonder, and I listened to the rest of Ethan’s report with a huge grin on my face (and I never grin on my way to the office). I mean, how cool was this? Basically, I was able to reconnect with someone from the past in just the very place-shifting and time-shifting manner that makes me love technology so much. And as much as I bemoan Thomas Friedman and his signature (and overdone) phrase, sometimes the flatness of the world does seem to seep into a little air bubble of everyday life and make it just a tad bit more awesome. Well, as awesome as an early morning commute to the hinterlands of Min-hang district can be.

Every now and then a special event unfurls itself across my lap, and I end up at one of the many fine dining establishments dotting Shanghai’s highbrow landscape. Last Friday was one of them, as Lydia closed out her first quarter century, so we ended up at Laris for the first time. Unlike its downstairs rival Jean Georges, our friends spoke of Laris with nary a hint of controversy, highly recommending the place for the quality of food and the service. As we say here in the office, there were definitely some key takeaways from the experience. Some of them below:

• Only in such a place as Laris does foam smack of being high-end. My previous experiences with foam have been decidedly low-end: Hyun and I killing snails in my backyard with pesticide; a totally skeezy spring-break party with Roger and Tracy and her friends in Rosarito; descriptions of rabid dogs. However, put a glob of foam over an incredibly undersized portion of [insert meat name nere] and you’ve got a $30 delicacy
• Don’t ever go to the gym and forego a big lunch prior to going to a place like Laris. You’ll be craving McDonald’s as you walk out of the restaurant.
• Never take your shoes and socks off and start picking at your feet. Apparently, even in China this is not allowed at Laris (though it’s quite welcomed at Motel 168)
• Don’t pour Sprite into that 400 RMB glass of Bourdeaux. Sprite’s a rip-off at 50 RMB a glass, so don’t do it.
• If you want the expensive and delectable meal to linger on your palate, do NOT: go to I Love Shanghai and pound a pint of Carlsberg, go to New Heights for a 7th glass of wine, book a last minute table at Volar and split a bottle of Grey Goose with Chace, then stagger over to Guandii and have someone accidentally pee all over you as you’re squatting down puking your $120 tasting menu onto the grass. Yeah, definitely do NOT do that after eating at Laris.

The massive NBA marketing machine rumbled through Shanghai last night in the first of three “China Games,” the latter two to be held in Macau beginning tonight. The pre-season game between the Orlando Magic and the Cleveland Cavaliers was held at the Qizhong Sports Stadium in the Min-hang district. Some observations:

• The stadium is FAR. We’re literally talking “120 RMB cab ride to a place literally off the Shanghai city map” far. The sad thing about it all? It’s a hop, skip, and a jump away from my office! Damn those municipal tax benefits doled out to huge corporations!
• The NBA sure sees itself as a premium product here, with ticket prices ranging from 800 RMB all the way up to 10,000 RMB. That’s quite a mark-up for a pre-season game with no implications on the standings. Maybe that explained the spattering of empty seats throughout the upper rows, and the handful of scalpers chilling in our seats as we arrived.
• Without Yao Ming on the floor (as was the case with the first China Game a few years back), the fan favorite on the court was clearly Lebron James, who sat out the entire fourth quarter (it is the pre-season, after all) and never seemed to break a sweat. That didn’t stop him from dishing out some nice assists and scoring on a couple of beautiful spinning lay-ups and an alley-oop that got most people jumping out of their seats. The star that got the second loudest round of applause? Try the Chinese acrobat during halftime who skillfully kicked bowls up onto her head while balancing on a unicycle.
• Kudos to the public address announcer who bellowed out in both Chinese and English, who pronounced “Larry Hughes” perfectly but struggled with “Zydrunas Ilgauskas.” We have no idea why this was the case.
• Celebrity sightings: Jet Li in a box seat with a group of kids with leukemia, Hong Kong tween favorite Edison Chen, and Kenny G, who seems to be quite the icon here in Shanghai. Which, of course, he totally deserves to be.
• Even midway through the fourth quarter, the cabbies outside were already in negotiation-only mode. We hate to think what the crush would have looked like had we left with everyone else after the game was over. We hear there were shuttle buses taking people back towards People’s Square, but given that we sat in traffic for 15 minutes just trying to get close the stadium, we didn’t want to take our chances.
• Oh yeah, the Magic won 90-86. Read about it here

Cross posted on Shanghaiist

I played basketball with Jamie and a couple of other friends on Saturday. It was so intense that after the first two games, I basically played zone in my little corner on the baseline, occasionally waving my arms around to feel active. I was so out of shape that I just couldn’t cut it. Well, I cut a few, but I couldn’t really compete and flourish the way I was used to. I mean, I used to be an awesome basketball player. Back in 1st grade when I was the tallest one out of my group of friends, I routinely overpowered them on my way to a dunk. After all, I was the only one that could palm the Nerf ball.

Unfortunately, my other teammates were pretty good players, so we kept winning and I had to stay on the court. Even Jamie was excellent. Prior to Saturday the only balls I could imagine him playing with were his own. Balls of angst, that is (you perverts). I say unfortunately because this meant that we kept playing and playing and playing. Which meant I had to keep waving my arms and occasionally setting a few picks. It was on one of these picks that someone stepped on my big toe, and the nail that had hung so precariously by a thread of flesh for three weeks finally popped out.

After I went home I put the toenail in my drawer…then I took it out immediately and started admiring it. It’s not very often that one gets a chance to hold a fully formed big toenail in his/her hand. The fact that it was my own made the experience so much more visceral. I had originally planned to put it on Lydia’s pillow as she was coming out of the shower, but I thought better of it and placed it back in my drawer. I would later tell the a-yi to boil it and make a nice soup stock.

The past few days I’ve been walking around in flip flops, just to get a rise out of people on the street. For all the spitting and hawking and nose squirting that happens in Shanghai, you’d think people wouldn’t flinch at the sight of a toenail-less big toe. Oops, that assumption is wrong, my friends. Not only do they gawk, they actually come up and poke. I’d kick them in the face if I didn’t enjoy it so much.

Next post: I’ll try to get my photos from our Vietnam trip up here. But, I’ve been saying that about my Thailand trip ever since May. Be patient, you fluttering hearts!

Last week I flew from San Jose up to the Portland area for a two day meeting with the rest of the finance team. The morning of the first meeting, I woke up to use the bathroom, and on my way back I jammed my right big toe into the large suitcase I had foolishly left in front of the bed. I hopped up and down in pain, waiting in the dark for it to subside so I could go back to sleep. I reached down cautiously to make sure I hadn’t cut myself or anything, which is when I felt the toenail flap up and down against my finger.

FRACK!

I spent the next hour or so scrambling online for a home remedy for taking care of an essential toe whose nail had nearly been detached. The last thing I wanted to do was to go see a doctor; cheap-ass that I am, I had skimped on paying a premium on my health insurance package for the international coverage. Years of working for a large corporation abroad had absolved me from the anxieties and fears held by many Americans about the rising cost of healthcare in the U.S.. I had read about this at an extreme arm’s length, separated by thousands of miles and the relative health and lack of responsibility incurred in my own life. And how, here I was, face to face with this economic reality all because of a stupid toenail accident.

By the next day, I was limping at a snail’s pace in the office from room to room and avoiding trips to the bathroom because the walk was too slow and painful. Word had gotten to the rest of my co-workers too, and Nikki was scolding me for not taking advantage of being in “mature market” and visiting a healthcare professional who could at the very least instill a sense of confidence in me. Referencing the vacation I was about to take after the meeting, she said “You’d rather get it treated in Vietnam than here?” I concluded that she was right, sucked it up and drove down to a medical center, where my uncovered ass will now be paying a few hundred dollars for about 5 minutes of a doctor’s poking at the nail, 5 minutes of the nurse bandaging it up, a bottle of antibiotics, and a tetanus shot.

Whether the mental relief that came with this visit is worth the financial cost is debatable. What is without argument is the level of stress that exists now right below the surface of my brain that didn’t exist before. Shit, I now have to worry about paying for health insurance! For now, it’s OK, but what about if I leave my company? What if I start a family and have to be responsible for more than just myself? This pressure, this fear that paralyzes the minds of so many millions of people, had now implanted itself in me for the first time in my life. Like a fucking bucket of ice-cold water doused on the remaining embers of youthful, carefree Shanghai living, this bitter taste of “growing up” totally sucks. Almost more than dragging two suitcases through three international airports in the span of 28 hours to get from Portland to Shenzhen on one ghastly infected big toe. Almost.