(Post)^3 Modernism

Re-Up

2010-02-05T16:11:00.000+08:00

In about 18 hours I fly out for Bangkok, Thailand, where Kelsey and I will begin our two-week vacation in Laos and Cambodia.

We will spend the first couple of days in Bangkok, then head for Luang Prabang, Lao People's Democratic Republic. Fun times in the jungle highlands abound. We will also spend about three days in Siem Reap digging the wat temples, and a day or so in Phnom Penh. I'll return to six more months of Beijing on Feb 22.

Damnably excited. Especially after the stress-fest which has been dealing with getting the new website up at work. In the meantime, look out for a new BrainCanvas post come Monday.

My New Productivity Email and Task Set-Up

2010-01-31T19:00:00.000+08:00

I decided a couple of months back that I should take time to look into productivity for tasks and email management. On account of I have much more free time now than I did when I was a student, I look into such matters at my whim. Anything manageable would be better than my old system, which may have ruined a good bit of my GPA: keeping it all in my head and avoiding using any piece of paper whenever possible. I probably went crazy from trying to shove tasks along with study into my head and not letting it out on paper or into my email.

This is not comprehensive but for my purposes it has already improved my productivity and my sanity ten-fold. Many thanks to the amazing Web site Lifehacker, the task management tool Remember the Milk, and the die-hard fans of David Allen's "Getting Things Done" philosophy. I have not read the book (and I am pretty sure I won't jump on that bandwagon anytime soon), but the idea behind it is largely expressed through this setup.

What I do now with emails and tasks:

Organized Gmail with a series of tags called the "Trusted Trio," key among which are "FOLLOWUP" and "HOLD"
Got a free account with Remember the Milk to handle task management from everything between simple to-do and project management at work

Read email as it comes into my inbox. If it takes less than two minutes to reply to or follow up on a task contained therein, I do that immediately then tag the email with whatever accessory tags I choose (AIESEC, BrainCanvas, Travel, etc.) and then click "Archive" to move it out of my inbox.
If the email takes more than two minutes to follow-up with, I move it to the "FOLLOWUP" folder (along with tagging it with any other pertinent tags) and out of my inbox. I keep it marked unread so I can see how many emails I need to follow-up on; I also add a RTM task to deal with it.
If I expect a response to the email, or if it contains information that I will need to revisit soon like directions to a restaurant on Friday night or a plane ticket to Bangkok, I move it to the "HOLD" folder and out of my inbox.
Regarding tasks, I have set up Remember the Milk according to this blog post. This takes the most practice and patience to deal with, but it's powerful and enables me to accomplish a lot more than I used to. When I make a task (call my mother on her birthday this Tuesday), I type it out as specifically as possible and add as many pertinent tags and info as I can. This way, all the thinking about the task has been put into the to-do immediately and all I have to do to complete the task when the time comes is just do it, since all the info is right there for me to follow. It has also enabled me to do some great organization for multi-step work tasks. I even use it for "someday" wish lists, like "wardrobe overhaul" with the help of the tailors of Beijing.
The thing to tie it all together: do a weekly review in which I check up on all outstanding tasks and emails. So far I've been bad at this, but it's not a problem since I am not awash in tasks right now.

There was one much larger component of implementing this. After doing the general setup, I realized that I had not used Gmail to its full extent because I had wholly ignored labels, I used my gatech.edu email as my default email inbox until I came to China, and I had neglected the "Archive" button. My gatech.edu email was set up to copy all incoming email to my Gmail as well since January of 2008, but since I did not use Gmail as my mail client, every bit of email I've received since then, deleted or not in my gatech.edu inbox, was present in Gmail. One of the key sanity-saving features of this email setup is in keeping your inbox empty, so I had a task ahead of me. After deleting all of the auto-update emails from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, I had about 16,000 email threads stretching from December 2009 to January 2008. I resolved to tackle one month at a time, starting at the present and moving backwards, labeling, archiving and deleting one month of email per day. It was extremely interesting when I came to 2008: reading the history in emails of the July 4 letter's origins and aftermath, and the democratic renewal of AIESEC US, in reverse. I read each and every email related to the subject and was surprised to see some of the places where I made the right decision, the mistakes I made, and how I reacted to certain situations knowing what I know now. A lot to be learned from that time, now well-organized for future review. It was about two weeks ago that I finally reached the fabled "inbox zero." I keep it that way with rapid follow-ups and moving email to its right place - out of my inbox.

I have now joined the sycophantic ranks of bloggers about productivity, a set I generally distrust. However, I liked this setup enough that I felt it worthy of publishing here. If I had known about this when I started my LCP term, this setup would have become an integral part of task management for my EB team - and we'd have accomplished a lot more.

My Kind of Politics

2010-01-31T18:01:00.000+08:00

US President Obama talked to House Republicans on Friday, at their invitation, during a retreat they were holding in Baltimore. Plenty has been said of it elsewhere, but I particularly liked watching the videos of the actual exchange when he answered questions for over an hour. During that session, he was like the lone player on the dodgeball team catching everything they lobbed at him and then, one by one, tagging out each policy point and clearly putting the Republicans in the harsh spotlight of rhetoric exposure.

Hardball with Chris Matthews with choice excerpts from the session:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Full Q&A, courtesy of MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I liked it not only because his intelligence took center stage (for once in the last twelve months), but also because it could be a very positive development if this kind of exchange occurs regularly. There are many advantages to such public meetings, not in the least due to the transparency of testing policy points against different branches of government in the public view. The process won't be perfect, but I expect that weaker policy points would get dropped, ones that didn't get dropped would be refined through the questioning process, and the strong ones would gain more supporters.

Some people may say that a regular (monthly?) meeting of the President with different factions in the legislature would be against the spirit of the separation of powers. I do not think so. The separation of powers lies in each branch's ability to formulate and execute its Constitutionally-derived powers, and whether or not the President has a British-style "Question Time" with the legislature would neither change his ability to use his veto nor reduce the ability of Congress to draft legislation. I think of the intelligence agency situation prior to the September 11th attacks. Due to their compartmentalization, separation, and even bitter rivalry (even though they serve the same god!) was a significant obstacle to preventing those attacks from happening. There are reasons why different functional areas should be separated in different agencies, but a healthy network and knowledge exchange among those different agencies could only produce a more capable intelligence community, in which everyone knows their role at the same time as knowing more pertinent information about their areas of focus and to whom information should be delivered in a time of crisis.

The same ought to be true of the government itself, for so long as we have to have one. Building those rich inter-branch connections and regularly putting policy through the gauntlet can only mean a legislative branch and executive branch which can (more readily) agree that they are on the same team.

If this kind of exchange does occur more regularly, it would turn my interest somewhat more towards getting involved in the political process. I cannot stand the inane "that's just the way it is" attitude and reality of the institution, but with more opportunities like what went down on Friday, I would find participation to be much more valuable.

Jian Bing Outsourced Entrepreneurship

2010-01-19T21:58:00.000+08:00

When I worked out west in the CuiWei area of Beijing just north of the Wanshoulu subway stop, there was usually a food vendor cart just outside the Prime office in a little alleyway. The cart's husband-and-wife duo made jian bing and sold them for three kuai (about $0.44).

That is what most jian bing I have seen around look like: an eggy mass that tastes like breakfast and is delicious in its own right. However, that is not the kind of jian bing that was made outside of the old Prime office.

This is more like the style of jian bing I used to have for breakfast every morning. The cart was very similar to this, with the key point being that the round stone on which the crepe-like batter-egg mixture was cooked could be spun by the old man, which made the batter mix spread out over the large stone and made it thin and crispy when it was cooked by the hot coals underneath. He would crack an egg over the spread batter and use his big shovel-brush to spread the egg evenly over the spinning crepe. The egg would mix and cook right into the crepe, instead of being a noticeably separate mixture like with other jian bing. For an extra kuai he would gladly add another egg, subtly thickening the giant pancake.

Other jian bing usually have a haphazard mixture of spring onions and some bean sauces thrown in along with a large crisp of thin fried bread for substance and crunch. The result, after being rudely folded over, is an eggy "bag of food." My favorite jian bing, however, was much more user-friendly. After the pancake was finished cooking, the old man would use a spatula to slowly dig into the edge of the spinning crepe, separating it from the stone underneath. After the edges hardened for a few seconds, he would slow the spin as he dug his spatula more towards the center, carefully scraping off the pancake from the stone without letting it split or crack like a laowai's lips in a Beijing winter.

His wife then took over. She would fold the crepe into a sort of long burrito-esque shape, then take a brush to each sauce and evenly layer the sauces onto the surface of the crepe. This was so crucial to the flavor distribution difference between this type of jian bing and the "bag of food" variety. There was the bean paste and then a thin spread of a spicy sauce. On top of the slathered crepe she layed the requisite fried bread crisp, and then covered that with severeal leaves of cold lettuce. A final sprinkling of spring onions on top left only one step: the fold. She took the two ends of the crepe that were not covered by the fried bread crisp in the middle and folded them over the crisp and the lettuce, forming a light but sizeable burrito-wrap formation. She would usually slice this in half and there was my jian bing. It was light and refreshing to eat, yet substantial enough that it did the trick for breakfast until my work's late lunches which were lucky to begin by 1:30.

Ever since coming to the new office, I have missed the old jian bing style. The only food stall options around our shiny tower are all greasy and have meat in them, too heavy and messy for what I want for breakfast. Thankfully there is a Jenny Lou's foreign grocery in the Jianwai SOHO office park where I work, and I get a box of Nature Valley nut bars there every week to eat for breakfast.

I have been mildly fantasizing recently about an alternative, which would allow me to have my work in the GuoMao area as it is now and yet eat my jian bing too.

What if I could find some pair of Chinese people who could use a job outside my office, finance a cart setup just like the one the couple had over in Cuiwei, and pay the old man to train these upstarts in his school of jian bing creation?

The only truly major expense would be the cart setup, I think. I would want to pay the old man for training the new folks, and I'd be willing to pay a bit of a premium, but I don't expect having to pay over 200 RMB for such training - and that as a combination of a reward, a thank you, and taking up his time from otherwise selling jian bing. After this, I would have a reliably delicious and cheap breakfast waiting for me outside the office every morning - AND I would have created two jobs.

When I set about writing this post this was meant to be a musing of fantasy. Now that I look it over, I see that if the costs aren't prohibitive and I could find two jobless Chinese who would be up for this, this is a very feasible idea.

Mad Men, Haircut, Amilal

2010-01-16T19:14:00.000+08:00

Recently Kelsey and I have taken to having sort of virtual online dates, in which we watch the same episode of an episodic production at the same time while chatting about it with gchat. The first series we are watching in this way is the excellent Mad Men. The first three nights of the past week included watching an episode of Mad Men. Early on in this scheme of virtual dating, we made an agreement to not necessarily have to watch it at the same time while not advancing more than one episode ahead of each other. We quickly discovered that watching an episode at the same time together was about five times more enjoyable than watching episodes separately, so now we reserve it for the same time.

Wednesday evening I met up with Matt Schrader, who was a roommate with me at my first AIESEC conference, AIESEC US Winter Strategic Conference 06 in Dayton, OH. He has been living here for three years ever since coming over for a traineeship and is now, in his words (and at my insistence), a "minor thread" in the social fabric of Beijing. He took me to Fubar, which is an awesome speakeasy that has a secret button and wall at the back of Stadium Dog in Worker's Stadium near my apartment. We chatted for several hours and enjoyed reasonably priced happy hour drinks, one of which was a generous glass of Hoegaarden. I will certainly enjoy more evenings there, and a few more hot dogs from Stadium Dog.

On Thursday evening Ben, another foreign teacher from his school and I went to a tasty dinner of fish near their school in Xizhimen. That is an easy trip to make, since it's only about 15 minutes by subway from my own home station of Dongsi Shitiao. After dinner, I hit up Ben's place for the use of his electric razor for which he has differently sized cutting guards, and he gave me a haircut. It took a while and was risky as hell, but I would up getting a haircut that was about 65-70% as good as the one I used to get at American Haircuts in Atlanta, and my beard was nicely trimmed as well. I have promised him a quality beer for his effort, and since tonight we are going out to Lucky Street I will make good on my offer.

Last night I tried belatedly to whip up a number of trainees to enjoy some dinner on guijie and then go for a road-less-traveled night out in either Gulou or Nanluoguxiang. Only Jon from App State showed up, and as I suspected, the others who promised they'd come bailed by phone or text one by one as the night wore on. Nevertheless we had an enjoyable evening with a cheap but tasty dinner followed by a walk to Nanluoguxiang, where we wandered in search of a bar Matt had recommended to me called Amilal. After getting lost in the winding hutong area, we finally found its nondescript tiny alley entrance. This bar was well worth the search though; it occupies a renovated old Beijing siheyuan courtyard house. The interior decor is very warm and cozy, with colorful and intricately wrought woodwork, comfortable and welcoming chairs, good music (from Dylan to Tom Waits to previously unknown South American bands) and even two or three cats who wander the grounds, making for an overall gezellig experience in the middle of old Beijing. I daresay it has much of the feel of my ideal bar. We met an American guy at the bar who writes for the China Daily, the English-language Party line newspaper in China. Having grown up in Beijing he had a lot of interesting stories to tell about the city. I enjoyed an affordable and tasty Valentin Weissbier from Germany, but what will keep me coming back is 15 RMB Harbin and Tsingtao that top off the excellent draw of this low-key place. So many people want to just keep going to Wudaokou or Sanlitun and have the same too-loud grotesque bar experience, but Amilal is like a haven in the midst of the madness. I can reliably say that few will want to go there with me unless I drag them there, but then they will never look back.

Now I'm off to Lucky Street.

Village Vacation

2010-01-09T19:22:00.068+08:00

Immediately following New Decade celebrations, I got two hours of sleep and went to the airport for a short vacation away from the bustle of Beijing.

The trip was one that Arnab put together to check out some small villages outside of Nanchang, in the southern Jiangxi province of the People's Republic. They are Luotiancun, Shuinan and Jingtai.

View Larger Map

The vacationers included myself, Arnab, and his two Indian friends Swathish and Abhay. Our flight from Beijing to Nanchang was uneventful. I slept roughly the whole two-hour ride. Upon landing, we got a taxi to take us 30 km into Nanchang, and the ride was wild. There is no semblance of driving rules away from the major cities. Passing vehicles by driving into oncoming traffic is the norm down there, and no one goes faster because of it; gridlock is common on the smaller roads.

Arriving at the bus station at 11:30, we got a bus ticket for 14:00 to Anyi, the hub city from which we could reach the villages. In the meantime we ate a tasty and affordable lunch at a nearby restaurant, only about 23 kuai per person. As the only waiguoren (foreigners) in sight, we were stared at by everyone in the restaurant for a good ten minutes. On the way up the stairs, a girl who was coming the other way was heard to say "oh my God" in Mandarin when setting eyes upon our foreign visages.

We piled into the bus after waiting for about twenty minutes and a false start of getting onto the 13:50 bus. On the two-hour ride to Anyi I read a fair amount of The Razor's Edge, an intriguing book Kelsey sent me.

At Anyi we got a taxi to take us to Luotiancun's entrance. At the entrance there is a ticket office to get piao (tickets) for the stuff inside, but no one was on duty, so we were able to get in for free. The taxi driver was seemingly loathe to drive into the village because he was afraid he wouldn't be able to turn around. He also talked to an old man on the road in the local dialect, which neither Swathish or Abhay (who understand Mandarin) could decipher.

We stepped out and started snapping pictures, as the light would only last another hour or so.

We walked up the main street in the village to see what we could. On the way we met a group of three students from Nanchang who were also staying the night in the village. My mates were taken with them, but we saw little of them for the rest of the trip.

The older village resident they were with directed us to a shop where we purchased a local batch of their honey liquor for the weekend's enjoyment. It tasted pleasant, like a mix between port wine and brandy. The Chinese name for it escapes me, unfortunately.

We secured a room at the largest boarding house in the town, on the main square opposite the large pool. They served us dinner, which was tasty but overpriced due to a chicken costing 70 kuai. Nonsense! They were walking around the whole village like they owned the place. Surely a chicken could be had for 35 kuai or less. Oh well - you have to get ripped off somehow.

We spent the evening playing cards and drinking the honey wine and some beer. Nothing goes on in the village at night. Also, southern China has a tradition of no indoor heating and leaving the windows open even in the cold. Add in the higher humidity and a minor vacation from the stabbing dry frigidity of Beijing becomes only marginally more tolerable wet cold. We shut our windows and after thirty minutes or so our four bodies warmed the room up a bit. We went to bed at about ten o'clock, knowing that we would be waking up with the village between five and six. The blankets they gave us did wonders for me; after about five minutes I could feel my body heat radiating back towards me and I slept soundly. The others tossed and turned all night with the cold.

At six the next morning we were out wandering the village and taking pictures. Villagers were lively at this hour. We took our time enjoying what charm was left in Luotiancun, obviously both a benefactor and victim of foreign tourism and the investment of the government. The old rough-hewn stones which made up some of the footpaths were being replaced by gray bricks, and poured concrete shared space with pre-Communist houses. But Luotiancun's layout and lifestyle were a welcome vacation from Beijing. Abhay and I went together while Swathish and Arnab paired up at a different pace.

The tree and the old mansion were my favorite parts. High on the list was the two kuai noodle breakfast when I shared a table with two women who were at least eighty years old, and the children who screamed and fled whenever I pointed the camera at them.

Between Luotiancun and the next village, Shuinan, there is a nice 500 meter long pathway that is a part of the old trade road in the area. A few people were working in the tiny farm plots, and at the end we saw a buffalo.

In Shuinan, Abhay and I caught a short but interesting episode: the duck parade.

The old man who was herding these hundreds of ducks got irate at us for standing in the way of his charge and snapping photos. It was a phenomenon we could not miss though; just thirty seconds after the sound of many webbed feet padding against the pavement began, the last delicious-looking bird waddled out of sight.

The rest of the village trip, all thirty minutes of it, was unremarkable. The old charm of Shuinan and especially of Jingtai, the last village, had been rudely uprooted and replaced by filthy, sad poured concrete and dirt runoff. Luotiancun alone retained enough of its old style to be worth the trip.

We got a taxi back to Nanchang, which was much faster and more direct than the bus would have been. We made it into the city in time for lunch, and we spent the rest of the afternoon on a short trip into the Buddhist temple and in a museum dedicated to the Nanchang Revolt. There was plenty of propaganda to go around there.

The evening consisted of a subpar dinner and playing more cards and drinking more honey wine; there wasn't much desire to head out and party because our flight was to take off at 08:30 the next morning.

However, when we got in the taxi at 06:00 it was so foggy that a three meter visibility plagued us the whole 30 km to the airport, and the main road was shut down so the driver had to use a poorly maintained local road to get there. Our flight was of course delayed, not only because of the pervasive fog in Nanchang but because Beijing was experiencing its worst blizzard in 50 years. We whiled away the time slowly drinking overpriced coffee and beer and playing more cards. I noticed a foreign girl sitting lonely by herself in the airport and invited her to play with us. She was a Polish girl named Tosha who teaches blind and deaf children in Rome, and she was headed to Beijing as well to visit a friend. The plane boarded us at noon, but it was only to serve us lunch; we weren't able to get out of Nanchang until 17:00 that day. After touching down in Beijing (whew!), the flight board showed that about nine out of ten flights to and from the capital were cancelled. Lucky us.

At the gate to the airport express train, the way had been shut by the police due to too many people trying to get through. After a while ten officers marched up and prepared to open the gate just enough to let a slow stream of people through, but in true Chinese fashion the crowd pressed their way hard and consequently forced the gates open wider and wider. Even with heavy police effort to shut the gate more, the opening would slide open on one side while it slid shut on the other. One man almost got into a fight with a police officer. It was kind of exciting.

The trip was worth it overall even though it wasn't terribly packed with village exploits. Even what small time was had was a respite to the soul. Now I have mine and Kelsey's trip to Laos and Cambodia in February to look forward to. There the weather will be truly warm!

My Year-End Self-Analysis

2009-12-31T18:10:00.001+08:00

Per the advice of LifeHacker.

Done while listening to Neil Young's "Harvest" Album

Accomplishments

Started a relationship with a wonderful woman
Graduated Georgia Tech with a BS in Electrical Engineering, a Spanish Minor, an International Plan and Co-op Certificate, and a 3.06 average
Took my sister on a cool trip to Spain
Had a fantastic cross-country roadtrip
Summited Half Dome
Drew up plans with Kelsey for Entropy
Got a fine job in Beijing
Started the AIESEC Beijing Trainee Committee
Started BrainCanvas with King
Learned a good bit about my ancestry and shared it with the family
Had a wonderful Blue Plate Special shift on WREK

Failures

Didn't get distinction for graduating
Lost out on my bid for the MindValley traineeship
Didn't make it into the NOI BootCamp in DC in July
Didn't get the Eben Tisdale Fellowship
Didn't make it past the first round in the Unreasonable Institute selection
Got no job offers from the career fair
Fell off of good updating for BrainCanvas
Haven't started learning Chinese
Started, then stopped working out again
Poorly handled turning down the AIESEC Official Expansion Mongolia invitation

Five Pictures to Sum Up 2009

Looking Forward to NYE 2011

Making Waves in Washington, DC
Working Out my Body, Mind, and Soul
Learned Conversational Chinese
My Writing is Referenced in Influential Publications
Making Music Regularly

China So Far

2009-12-27T21:05:00.003+08:00

It has been four months now since I touched down in China, and this is my first personal blog post since then. Part of that, especially the first month, is attributable to Blogger being blocked by the Great Firewall, but I have a service called WiTopia which I strongly recommend to anyone who wants a secure Internet connection to the freer parts of the world.

I left Gadsden on Sunday August 23rd, and flew out the next day for Shanghai. My parents drove me from Gadsden to Atlanta.

Since I landed in late August, I spent three weeks in Shanghai going through the immigration process. I had to get an official residence permit at the police station within 24 hours of touching down, then I had to schedule and go through the official medical check that all people who are staying in China for more than 6 months have to receive, and finally with the positive results of that test I had to go to the provincial services office and hand in my passport to be processed to receive my final, permanent visa and work permit. Five days after handing in my passport I was given a slip of paper that acted as a visa while my passport and work permit were still being processed, and I was finally able to head for my destination, Beijing. But I still had to ship that slip of paper back to Shanghai where the visa service used it to get my passport and work permit, which they then shipped to me a week later.

However I spent some good time hanging out with AIESECers in Shanghai (after I finally got in touch with them) and doing a few things in the financial capital of the People's Republic of China. I even got a surprise visit from Tiffany and was privileged to eat in her grandparents' home.

In Beijing, I quickly secured an apartment rather than wait around, since I was tired for having lived in a hostel for almost a month. I was desperate to get my stuff unpacked and have a bit of breathing room. I settled on a place that's very well-located, in the Haiyuncang Community just outside the Dongsishitiao subway station on Line 2. Line 2 follows the path of the old Beijing city walls, and so I am technically just inside the old city. It's also a 10-minute walk to the "Ghost Street," or 簋街/鬼街 which is the most famous restaurant street in Beijing, and a 15-minute walk to the expat bar hub of Sanlitun. My home area:

View My Beijing Places in a larger map

I work at Prime Networks, as an assortment of things. Officially I am "customer service," but my primary job right now is to oversee the launch of the second version of our company website. For a while I wasn't receiving enough work, so I asked for more; now I am also the company's global market research guy. The office was way out in the Cuiwei area at Wanshoulu, five stops west of the west part of Line 2 on Line 1 (pretty far out), but as of the end of November we are in a much closer space to me, at Jianwai SOHO in the heart of Beijing's central business district, GuoMao.

I have made a few friends here, but most of them are expats. I haven't tapped into the Chinese culture as much as I could / should have, although all of my coworkers are Chinese. I'll start language lessons here soon, as one of the things I was waiting on before doing that was the office move.

Since coming to China, I have done and seen a few things, but my work schedule has kept willy-nilly vacationing at bay. In and around Beijing I have seen a few cool things.

I have walked around Nanluoguxiang Hutong and seen some nice traditional courtyards.

I have wandered the Forbidden City, that ancient citadel of the Middle Kingdom, at my own pace.

I have seen the Great Wall of China, the Ming Tombs, and the Temple of Heaven.

During the National Day holiday of October 1-8, rather than be mobbed by the entire country traveling home and the overwhelming nationalism, I hopped over to Seoul to visit Jeff, where we hiked in Busan over Chuseok and experienced the wonder of South Korea's capital.

I have also met some good people, people who are hustling to make their names and strike it big in the rapidly growing economy here. Being in Beijing and Shanghai is like being in New York City or San Francisco during their boom years. It's very exciting just to be here; it feels like Beijing is the newly emerging spearhead of history.

At the same time it is hard to feel like one belongs here. Many people come to China and "fall in love," turning a six-month stint into a five-year tenure or more with no end in sight. I haven't felt that, but I can see why many people do.

I was sad to spend the holidays away from family, as it's the first time I've ever done so in my life. But it enabled me to save up my vacation to spend two weeks with Kelsey in Laos and Cambodia in February, over the Spring Festival holiday.

Right now it's incredibly cold in Beijing, with the wind chill going as low as -18 Celsius (-0.4 degrees Fahrenheit). To combat it, I had a pretty cool winter topcoat tailored for 800 RMB ($120). Try getting a nice topcoat off the rack for that price in the West, much less tailored. I will be returning to the tailors for their service on other clothing, including getting a nice suit made before I leave China.

More of my general life experience will come. I can only post from home, since only my Linux laptop has Witopia on it; my work laptop does not. Now that the initial post is finally out of the way, I can get about more regular updates.

By the way, how crazy is it that 2010 is less than a week away?

Winds Blow East

2009-08-23T13:01:00.003+08:00

Again it has been too long since I have recorded anything in this blog. How unfortunate as well, as it has been a truly great summer with a lot of experiences, thoughts, and mental progress I think.

In short, since my last post Arcadiy and I completed our great journey West to California, where Kelsey met me and we had a fantastic two weeks in Big Sur, San Jose, Berkeley / Oakland / San Francisco, Napa / Sonoma Valleys, and finally at Get Golden with AIESEC San Jose at Yosemite National Park where we climbed to the very top of Half Dome - my greatest summiting feat. Then I flew out to New York to see some friends including Tiffany and A. King, who were on the cusp of beginning their terms as the first duly elected AIESEC US Member Committee team members in twelve years. I returned to Alabama, where Kelsey came down to visit again for a weekend, and I worked out and relaxed. In July I went up to stay with Kelsey for three weeks in Chapel Hill while also catching Independence Day in Washington, DC. After another week in Gadsden, I helped her move into a new home in DC, where we spent two weeks and said "see you later" for a year (or six months or so) the day before she started her new job this week.

The "see you later" is because on Monday morning I fly out to China for one year to work at a startup content delivery network company called Prime Networks in Beijing. It is a technical traineeship through AIESEC.

That came after a great deal of wrangling with three different opportunities over the summer, and this is what came out on top. Thankfully so, I believe. In China I will get to spend a year in a totally foreign culture, as the only time I've been to "Asia" was when I was on the eastern side of Istanbul for a month in August 2007. I will have the opportunity to learn as much as I can of a major world language, Mandarin. I will be working in an area that is related to my degree, and not just teaching English. I will be working for a start-up, to immerse myself in the entrepreneurial environment. From my perspective, although I don't want to get ahead of myself too much, I am getting a pretty good deal.

I know a lot of people get stressed and anxious and even teary-eyed when they go on a journey like this, leaving their homes and their loved ones. The leaving is not lost on me. I recognize and understand my feelings of separation from my good friends, my family, and my girlfriend very much. The same goes for the places I won't see for a year. But the drive to know and experience more, to know more people and be a part of more places and learn more from the wide world is orders of magnitude greater than the sadness. I have never been homesick before. I don't think I will start to in China. I feel propelled towards it, with the wind at my back and the path leading East for now. So much to learn and so much opportunity is a bell-clear beckoning on an early morning.

I must abed now, but soon I will be in Shanghai for two weeks to complete immigration. And then the task begins!

The Turner Experience

2009-05-12T11:35:00.003+08:00

On Wednesday morning, Arcadiy and I started out in Atlanta, Georgia, after eating lunch with Ben James and Willy B. We crossed the entire country in his white stallion. Last night we arrived in San Jose, CA, at the house of former LCP of AIESEC SJSU, Colin. He has continued on to Seattle; I am staying for two amazing weeks in the Bay Area.

Here is our entire trip that we just took:

View Larger Map

Each night, except for in Salt Lake City, we managed to stay with AIESEC friends and have a great time. Also we hiked up to Dream Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park on Saturday (we would have continued up the trail to Emerald Lake but it was too snow-packed) and stopped off at the Sierra Trading Post in Cheyenne, WY.

This trip has been an intense experience for me. I have been to San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver, and Oxford before, but (with the exception of Oxford) it was always via airplane. Driving across the country, inch by inch and foot by foot and mile by mile, watching every blade of grass bleed into every forest and give way to the flat green plains of Kansas to grow into the rising highlands of eastern Colorado, abruptly interrupted by the titanic Rockies and moving on up north to pass over the moonscape that is Wyoming, through the unfamiliar Western terrain of Utah's salt flats and Nevada's heavy mountainous deserts finally giving way to Tahoe's majestically beautiful summits rolling down to the Pacific coast has been a surreal and powerful accomplishment. I have come to understand and appreciate just how very vast and diverse this country is, and everywhere we passed by I thought of different histories, of 40 acres and a mule, of outlaws on the frontier, of buffalo massacres and Native American tribes, of Mormons crossing such an incredible distance to found Deseret and of the true end of the frontier coming from the western end as well. It has blown my mind and it has also been the very appropriate beginning to what I expect will be a wonderful few weeks enjoying freedom before I ship out to Asia (wherever in that even more vast land I choose to go).

Tomorrow Kelsey arrives and then we will go camping in Big Sur, we will stay with my cousin in Berkeley to hit up San Francisco, and we will go camping in Napa before Get Golden. I am ecstatic to be able to spend two great weeks in paradise.

More to come soon hopefully. I'm taking some pretty good pictures.

The Mountaintop

2009-05-02T10:49:00.002+08:00

I have finished Georgia Tech. I have taken all my finals. Most of the stuff is out of the Duplex ready to go back to Gadrock. Tomorrow morning I head to the Georgia Dome to go through commencement.

And it is looking like I will have quite a plate of options on the table. I have interviewed with / am in the process of moving forward with three different opportunities. One is being on the expansion team expanding AIESEC into Mongolia, and continuing the good work begun by my former comrade Alina and her band of merry Yalies. One is a traineeship for Prime Networks, Ltd., a content delivery network startup in Beijing, PRC. And one is for Mindvalley in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

They all represent radically different possible paths for this new stage in my life. The winds of fortune will have to be read carefully for me to take the wisest path. I intend to be out of the country by August, but if I choose Mongolia I will have to be there by July 1. As the possibilities weigh themselves on my mind at the crossroads, I remember the words of the checkout clerk:

If you want to find the truth, you have to walk through the darkness. In the depths of the darkness where no one likes to tread is where the truth lies.

Those are the words that swim in my head at night when I lay me down to sleep, that buzz through my brain while the steam of the shower awakens me while the morning light streams through the bathroom window. I think they are the calling of my destiny.

But until then, I go with a great companion on a long trip where he will begin his life anew in Seattle, and will drop me off in San Jose, CA; on the way we will commiserate and rest with old friends in Ohio, Kansas, and Colorado; we will hike a bit and chat aplenty. Then I get the pleasure of spending two wonderful weeks with Colin before he begins his MC term working with Tiffany and the others on the AIESEC US Dream Team, the first properly elected and selected such team in twelve years. I'll also be with my new ladyfriend, exploring San Jo, San Francisco (I'm particularly interested in checking out a Long Now Foundation Seminar!), camping in Napa Valley and culminating in AIESEC San Jose's Get Golden camping trip in Yosemite over Memorial Day weekend. Then I fly to New York to visit those people beginning their terms on the MC, and then back to Alabama on the first of June for some much needed R & R after five years of mental siege.

So much to try to experience and prepare for before the next chapter begins in this saga. I wouldn't have it any other way.

Drum Circle

2009-04-14T10:59:00.004+08:00

Yesterday I took the time to take my djembe out to Piedmont Park at 4 PM, when Shaun said the drum circle folks met every Sunday.

We sat down on a sunny, breezy afternoon in the small stone-paved plaza / overlook next to The Lawn. The core of the circle had already formed - a couple of experienced and well-practiced black conga players, and around them some people with djembes of various sizes. Mine was the largest and deepest. I can't escape the large instruments.

Shaun played first, and then I played two afterwards. The rhythms were varied, richly textured, and lasted a good long time. I definitely delighted in getting lost in them after I caught my groove. As the player of the lowest-pitched drum I was pretty important so I had to pay attention to providing a reliable beat, rather than indulging in adding garnishes or flair.

As we played to our hearts' content, people came to sit and watch, to listen. Children played and danced in front of us, and so did some adults - dancing skilfully to the syncopated beats, shaking every axis of freedom with the Sun and the people watching on. There were people unconventionally dressed - throwbacks to the '60s, some just not locked into the prevailing fashion, one woman looked like an African godmother. As I watched I became entranced by the very beat I was a part of creating. I closed my eyes and let it flow.

As I subjected myself to the charging tide of the beat of which I was a weaver, one of the paddlers on the grand boat down the river of music and art and life that was happening in the southeast corner of Piedmont Park, I thought about a world or a place where this gathering would be frowned upon, or illegal, or attacked. People dressed differently would be shunned, spat upon, pissed upon, attacked with rocks or sticks or bags full of old food. The musicians would be surrounded by the police, their instruments confiscated or smashed on the ground in front of the illegally gathered crowd who would have to flee for their safety, weeping with confusion and anger and desperation if they were caught. And when those expressing themselves were safely detained, the mouthpiece of the regime would declare to the park: "This has been an illegal gathering in violation of the Code of Peace. You are reminded not to attend unauthorized and unsanctioned cultural gatherings at the risk of punishment under the prevailing Ordinances. Return to your homes."

With that in my mind, I reveled in the small but remarkable moment of expression we were a part of. And I was thankful for the place I lay my head.

Finish Line Ahead

2009-03-26T10:46:00.005+08:00

I will blog more about Spain later, when I have my photos all nice and loaded up.

The other night I was at Trader Joe's, just getting some milk. I noticed there were several long-ish lines (for Trader Joe's anyway) at the checkout counters, but the one at the left end of the occupied counters had one person who was about to be done, so I went to it. As soon as I settled there, a man's voice to the left asked, "Are you a philosopher?"

I looked and where I thought there was an unmanned counter there was a worker, with no line in front of him. I walked and I said, "Not yet anyway." He replied while looking me in the eye and taking my groceries, "I hope not. Because if you can't find the free check-out counter in the grocery store, you'll never find the truth."

He continued as he rang me up, "And you know, most people think that the truth, it's like rays of light that shine down from above." He paused as he looked at me deeper, not really leaning in but pulling me somewhat closer with his eyes. "But you will not find the truth as revelation. If you want to find the truth, you have to walk through the darkness. In the depths of the darkness where no one likes to tread is where the truth lies." He bagged my last item and I walked out the door.

I think that statement is profoundly true. When I was still a Christian, one of the aspects of Jesus that I most sought to replicate and admire (and admittedly I still do) was the part where he "ate with sinners." This had a true effect on my understanding and interpretation of the faith and the way of life, but many of the authority figures around me often dismissed this aspect somewhat when I would try to explain it, or at the least they rarely encouraged it.

At this point it should be noted that this entry has been written over three separate periods, each time with me meaning to finish it, but always getting interrupted before my thoughts finished. Here's some more:

I've been working on getting the sort of ideal traineeship in China: a year in a fundamentally non-Western country, a place where I can learn a major world language, working in renewable energy and utilizing somewhat, but not overwhelmingly, engineering. I have been in talks with a company but it's slowing down, so I'm not sure how that's going to work out. So I am expanding my traineeship search. I'm probably going to apply to MindValley, which would be so off the chain, and a couple of other places. We'll see - main thing is to get out into a worthwhile thing for my own interests and development, and to wait out this economic thing. I like to read fivethirtyeight a lot because Nate Silver does a good job of making statistically interesting projections and analyses of the economic situation, which is hard to understand, at least as much as I would like to understand it - which is profoundly deeply.

Very soon I'll be done with GT and then I think people will see someone return who hasn't been here in a while - a calmer, more amicable me. My own mother tells me how much less happy I seem now than I did before college, and with an awesome trip to be taken in May with people I really want to be with and the prospect of a year of new developments, I think my mind will sufficiently rest and recharge itself, along with my soul.

Gone Ramblin'

2009-03-13T04:59:00.002+08:00

It only just hit me that, oh, I leave for the airport to go to Spain with my sister in a few minutes.

The first time I went to Spain it was like this huge movement and upheaval, but the next time I left the US for another country - to Istanbul, Turkey - it was more like sitting down in a room for 15 hours and then walking out in a new place. It wasn't a huge upheaval, it was just there. I think that's when I truly realized that travel had changed me at the core.

I like that a lot. I hope my sister will come to understand the same thing.

Another Set

2009-03-10T12:29:00.002+08:00

I don't have much time before I need to lay me down, but I need to continue the exercise.

I have an unholy mountain to climb in the next 72 hours. On Wednesday I have two tests and a presentation, on Thursday I have a test, and it ends about six hours before I need to be at the airport to volar a España.

It's so much that I almost can't even "see" Spain over the mountaintop. I have to give myself solace in the fact that I only have five Mondays left at Georgia Tech (not counting finals week). That's nice.

Another huge difficulty is in our senior design project, the maglev train. Very, very ambitious. Too ambitious probably. We'll see. We'll pass anyway, but barely. F+. Click.

I probably won't get truly struck with excitement for Spain until I'm there. That's just the way it tends to be with me and travel, it's just going down the road. It's all a long road that goes on forever, not some huge exciting sea change.

But I am of course looking for that sea change, if and when it comes. I'm ready for something completely new. New parts of my brain need to be stretched, and the parts that have been blown out and salted over for the last five years need time to heal. Whatever it takes. But the learning curve can't stop.

Catching Up

2009-03-06T11:33:00.003+08:00

It's been a really long time since I've posted, which isn't great. I've tried to keep up better as a legitimate right-brain exercise, since that's definitely a mental muscle I don't want to lose.

There are now less than two months until I graduate from Tech with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, with a co-op and international plan certificate, and a Spanish minor. I am counting down every day; it's like being on a very long run and seeing the finish line get closer. I am pretty much just on momentum right now with inertia, but I try to run every now and then - in real life and in this metaphor.

Speaking of running, I've run more regularly recently, at least three or four times a week for the past few weeks, but I've been sick with a mild ear infection since the weekend. The medicine leaves me really dehydrated and I overheat easily so I can't keep it up for now; disappointing since I want to badly to get back into a routine for getting back into shape. I've been (generally) eating better as well, or at least eating more consciously.

Last weekend was RoKS, which was my last in fact - my first was way back three years ago the same weekend in Jacksonville, FL in the spring of 2006. We went down there all the way because we had to accommodate the three kids from Miami to come there; naturally they quickly died out as they had before. Wasted money and time by the higher-ups. Anyway, I was a faci at our RoKS and it was a good experience, although I think a lot of the flow of the conference could have been better. I still made my session enormously late but I think I facilitated one good session I made with Dani from UNC about the AIESEC Way and the AIESEC Experience, and my big thing was to make it so the delegates got into small groups and had 30 seconds each to describe their most pivotal AIESEC Experience to the group. The person per group who gave the best story within the 30 second limit came to the front and said it to the whole session. It was designed to both prep them for the idea of selling the AIESEC Experience through their stories (and to keep the stories short and understandable) and to hopefully get the newbies hooked on the sweet stories of older members. I think it was a good move because the people who came to the front of the room had really interesting stories. Also we did a Twitter feed for the conference, you can see the results here.

I am listening to some really fresh rap on WREK right now on Wrekroom Renaissance. It's making for the perfect background.

Most of what's driving me on this blog is my interest in content creation. Think about how many people have really interesting and constructive ideas but don't ever put them down for anyone to know about? A great novel, a hit song, solutions to problems, a new recipe, an allsome film? We're uniquely lucky with the Internet to be very easily able to put information out for the whole world to see. Of course, this has to come with the right expectations of responsibility and a good bit of education on it, but I sure hope they never censor the Internet. Freedom is great.

Recently I've had several conversations in which I spent a while trying to explain my views on things like politics, religion, morality, the economy, etc. and it goes on a really long time and people get lost. Then at the end they say "you have to be thinking really long term, aren't you?" And I say "Of course I am!" I know most everyone's capable of thinking really long-term, but maybe a lot more people are indeed focused on the really short or medium term and not about their long-term future, or that of their children. I'll have to figure out how to better frame the logical progression from our current state to my desired vision so people see how it is causal and relates to the here and now.

Oh man, now it's that sweet funk on WREK, Electric Boogaloo. I LOVE Thursday nights. So very solid.

Only a week until I leave for Spain with my sister. We're going to Sevilla, Valencia for the Fallas where I'll stay with my old roommates, and Madrid. Truly she will learn the way of the nomad.

Okay, about time to hit it.

Pulling the Pavement from Under My Nails

2009-01-31T09:15:00.002+08:00

I totally randomly came across this girl on YouTube today. Her name is Ann Marie Calhoun and she is ON FIRE in more ways than one (if you'll use your eyes and ears).

This is her and her brother playing "Stash" by Phish:

And here she is with Widespread Panic, blowing the doors off of "Driving Song" > "Surprise Valley" in a way I've not heard since Mikey died in 2002:

Impressive!

Applications (BLAM)

2009-01-18T08:07:00.004+08:00

All the different little emotions I experience get caught up in the most interesting, vile, or annoying tapestries at times.

There is a feeling of stress which I'm definitely feeling right now that I must wonder if I will feel when I'm done with Tech. It's hard to put into words, but giving it ye olde college try I'd say it's "the stress of the imminent and omnipresent pressing me with the knowledge that I have too much to focus on / too much to do / can't get it done / won't get it done / won't get it done like I want it / can't do what I like / won't do what I like because instead I will do (THING)," on top of all of the other attempts to fill in the Pyramid.

By my estimate, I will forget this feeling for a long time after I graduate because I intend to only work in those things in which I have a sincere interest. I've felt that for just about none of my classes at GT, and they have been the aforementioned "imminent and omnipresent (THING)."

But it's pulling me back!

The Week and the Day: The System Failed

2009-01-14T12:04:00.003+08:00

The first week back of school has ramped up slowly but surely. Although my classes this semester won't be as debilitatingly difficult as Spring '08 or as rigamarole-esque (forgive me for that one) as Summer & Fall '08, it will be a pretty hefty offering with a good bit of homework. However, not being LCP is going to factor favorably into the success equation.

This past weekend was AIESEC GT's Leadership Team Retreat, and it was a really good one! There were no major incidences although some good solid constructive conversation was had, and best of all we finally finished the LC constitution we've been knocking around for three years! We even got a good bit of headway done on taking all the disparate "common-law" style LTR notes from the past three years and organizing them into a single living bylaws document. Both nights were packed with fun, fire, the stars on the lake, and Saturday night was host to an intense conversation on religion, human nature, the Gaza conflict, and other related items of import. It was a conversation of the type I haven't had for a long time, and the last time I had one was definitely while not in the USA - probably that Nordic circle from ITC in Romania in April '07. It was refreshing and empowering - a reminder of why AIESEC is so cool.

Monday was difficult, as all Mondays will be. I have a gigantic wall of classes followed immediately by our LCM. I'm trying to get back into running in the morning and, since I don't have any labs (except when senior design picks up) that keep me at school way late I think I'll be able to actually keep it up.

Today was really especially cool though. My old German mate from the language school in Gandia, Nikolai, was in Atlanta on layover for about eight hours and so we got to have a pretty cool day today. I freaked out yesterday because I saw the headlines about the new Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) which went into effect yesterday: if a national of one of the countries in the Visa Waiver Program (Germany included) vists the USA, the I-94 form has been replaced by having to enter your data online at least three days before your date of entry. By the time I read the article Nikolai had less than 24 hours before his bald head would be stepping out of the plane at Hartsfield-Jackson International. I texted him and tried to call him and sent him a facebook message about the issue, imploring him to at lesat try by entering his data. He managed to do so, and somewhat unsurprisingly, this morning at customs the customs man told him that almost every traveler was blindsided by the requirements and so since no one had their data they were just letting people through like normal. I was relieved to hear his voice on the phone when he said he was on MARTA on his way up to Midtown station just before 0800. We enjoyed a good Southern breakfast at West Egg, and then he wanted to see the World of Coke, so we parked at GT and we walked through Centennial Olympic Park and went there. It was sort of interesting, but not nearly on the level of the Georgia Aquarium, and unsurprisingly we drank too many soft drinks. He also had a hankering for a really good burger so we went back to my place and walked to the old standby, the Highlander, where he also had a Sweetwater 420 and said the burger was "the best he had had in ten years" - it having been a decade since his last presence in the US. We walked through Piedmont for a bit and then I took him back to the station. It was great to see him again.

Now I'm off to bed before another hard Wednesday.

Remote Bloglink

2009-01-07T13:16:00.001+08:00

To see my latest, check out the Atlanta blog.

Great Blue Ridge Hikefest 2008

2008-12-21T08:55:00.005+08:00

Well, we are back!

The trip overall was really great, much-needed and fairly diverse, but the one big disappointment was that it was so foggy no spectacular views, save one on a drive, were experienced.

Anyway, recap:

WHAT: Great Blue Ridge Hikefest 2008
WHO: Preston, Shanky, Davin, Rob
WHERE: The vicinity of Boone, NC; Shenandoah National Park, VA; and Roanoke, VA
WHEN: Tuesday, December 16-Friday, December 19
WHY: What kind of a question is that?

I woke up at 4 AM on Tuesday morning after hitting the bed at 1 AM trying to prepare stuff. Got Shanky and Davin at Davin's house just a mile from where I live, and then we were off to Loganville, GA to pick up Rob at his house. About 90 degrees out of the way, but definitely not in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. It was well after we got on 85 North - well over two hours after leaving the Duplex in Midtown - that the sun's first rays began to lighten up the dark cloud cover. We got into the Boone area, via US-221, at around noon. We started out at Linville Falls, which I had hiked around during the App Getaway, but the heavy mist provided a very interesting new perspective on the area. We then went to what I consider a highlight of the trip, a random trail near Boone that went under the Blue Ridge Parkway and went through a hilly bald area that seemed to be someone's farm - there was barbed wire and plenty of cow chips everywhere. The magnificent thing about it was that the heavy fog produced a sublime aura about the place, as if we had just walked into a dream world. I espoused mythological and pseudo-religious rhetoric, like "We have come to the court of the White King," upon seeing this scene. I do this all the time now after reading Joseph Campbell. As we came back down from the clouds, the light also ceased, and we made our way to Nate "Nasty Nate" Phillips' place, he who had so kindly put us up during the App Getaway just a few weekends before. We were dead tired, but Shanky's trail rice and baked beans made us feel better. Their LCP Laura and another AIESECer named Sarah came by to hang out as well, but we crashed around midnight.

This picture was taken at the foot of Linville Falls:

We woke up a little later than I would have liked the next day, and although the extra sleep was necessary it prevented us from doing any real hiking on Wednesday. We left Boone and continued up US-221 through Roanoke on our way to Shenandoah National Park. I must say that US-221, if taken from its intersection with I-85 in South Carolina all the way up to Roanoke via Boone, is an especially scenic road, and the part of the drive that is in Virginia made my heart skip beats. In that part, there are no subdivisions, no ugly billboards, no haphazard gas stations or bars or pawn shops with muddy gravel parking lots along the entire length. It was totally different from what one would see in North Alabama, or Georgia, or South Carolina. The imagery was almost saturated with bucolic qualities. Also, as I stated earlier the fog prevented great views for most of the trip, but this remarkable scene was witnessed as we came off the plateau of Bent Mountain just south of Roanoke:

We continued on the interstate up to Shenandoah. By the time we reached Skyline Drive there, it was after four o'clock, less than an hour before the park would officially close. Plus, as it's the off-season, all campsites are closed and so camping is technically illegal there. That didn't stop us from entering (there was no one at the entry gate), driving up to the first parking area with a trail (Jarmans Gap), and there we hiked up the Appalachian Trail for less than half a mile when we just cut across a river bed and up the ridge out of sight of the trail and the fire road. We pitched a tarp there, cooked dinner, and had a good time. The map below shows where we camped accurate to within about a fifth of a mile, I believe:

View Larger Map

Even though it was cloudy as hell during the day, that night was as clear as they come. I slept under the tarp but Rob and Shanky, the more experienced outdoorsmen, slept under the stars. In the wee hours of the morning however the fog came back, and with it wetness and cold. Breakfast was macaroni with pork sausage. We packed our stuff up, went back to the car, and continued up Skyline Drive.

I am especially disappointed by the fog in Shenandoah, as it is very famous for its views, but we seriously could not see ten meters in any direction. We almost hit a deer because of it. The only remarkable point for us, therefore, on Skyline Drive was coming to an overlook where we could make out a few mountains and we discovered by accident that the echo properties of that particular spot are almost divine. A shout or tongue click amplified as if it were at a rock concert.

We continued north until we reached a trail which Rob recommended, the White Oak Canyon trail. It is considered one of the best trails in the country on which to see many spectacular waterfalls. We hiked a good bit of it down to the first waterfall, but time was pressing as we were due in Roanoke and we had to turn away before getting too deep. It was still a difficult hike for me, proving how out of shape I am. Besides, the fog was such that the waterfalls were visible but not in all of their (intended?) glory.

We made it down to Roanoke at about six, where we were graciously taken in by the family of Kelsey Greenawalt, former LCP of AIESEC LC Chapel Hill. They made us a wonderful dinner, let us shower, and then they introduced to us a drinking game called "Indian," very much like "Bitches bitches" except with Native American-related names with hand motions. It was a riot! Then we just hung out and talked about various things, notably about hiking and nature with Kelsey's step-dad Brawdus. The hospitality we experienced was so warm and remarkable that even though it did not involve hiking it was a highlight of the trip. As one of our number said in the car the next day: "plus twenty cool points to Kelsey's family."

On our final day of hiking, Friday, we tackled McAfee's Knob, a solid 3.5 mile hike up the Appalachian Trail from Catawba, VA, just outside of Roanoke in the ridge. The fog cleared up a bit at the top of the mountain, but at the knob itself there was still too much fog to appreciate anything. That was also unfortunate as the pictures I've seen of McAfee's knob show a real treat for the viewer. However we did see a deer cross our path on the way back down.

We were going to hit up the Dragon's Tooth after that, but it was too late in the day. We just went on back to Atlanta, the overwhelming smell of our humanity riding shotgun on the eight hour ride home.

A particular thing which I pondered during the trip, and even on my drive home to Gadsden today from Atlanta, was how even though I was hundreds of miles away from Gadsden and / or Atlanta, I was exploring a geographic formation that is the same one I grew up around in Gadsden. Gadsden is situated in what is considered the "Great Appalachian Valley" slice of the Appalachians, nestled in between opposing edges of the "Ridge and Valley" province. In my hikes around Camp Sumatanga, on Mount Cheaha, and in North Georgia, I saw the same kinds of scenery and especially the same rock formations as I witnessed this week as far north as Shenandoah and in Roanoke as well as around Boone. It was fascinating to witness how I was plugged in to something that extended so far away from where it began and is overwhelmingly recognizably homogenized, if not uniform, in its makeup - at least to an observer like me. Culturally as well the similarities were apparent. Roanoke is like a larger, more successful, cleaner version of Gadsden (albeit with no river and with higher mountains). Even in the Shenandoah Valley, "Southern" culture was apparent. I had noticed the strength of Southern culture in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia and even in the peninsula north of it when I visited family there as a freshman in high school. The dividing line must be stark, then, as it's not evident at all in the DC metropolitan area.

Another point of note is that even though I printed out all the mountain music radio stations I could find in the area before leaving, only one quality "bluegrass" song was heard on them despite plenty of dial-switching - an ode to spending Christmas in Virginia on a radio station airing from Mt. Airy, North Carolina. This was disappointing as much of 221 follows "The Crooked Road," which is Virginia's music heritage trail, celebrating bluegrass and old-time music. I was hoping for a heavy dose, but all I got was the one song and then a bunch of religious polemic AM stations.

The trip, again despite the poor views, was a much-needed experience. I feel like I've come over a high ridge and out into the valley. But there are bigger mountains looming to the West, and I've got to prepare well to get the best view from the top.

Ramblin' On My Mind

2008-12-16T11:57:00.003+08:00

The finals are done.

The room cleanup is done.

And before I go back to my Alabama home, I've got ramblin' on my mind:

View Larger Map

I'm hitting up Boone, NC; Shenandoah National Park, VA; and Roanoke, VA, all for daylight hiking and nighttime jiving. In tow are Shanky, Rob, and one of Shanky's friends.

On a cold winter morning, in the time before the light, we'll light out for the territory and come back Friday night.

It's Been a Long Time, Since I've Seen Your Smile

2008-12-11T05:07:00.003+08:00

There is so much more I could be doing with my life than editing a poorly-written lab writeup by my lab partner.

Like:

Selling traineeships to Atlanta companies so awesome people from around the world could come here
Getting more involved in WREK, and promoting a better Internet approach for it
Learning to photograph better
Learning to cook better
Getting back in shape
Looking for traineeships for myself
Playing MUCH MUCH MUCH more music
Working on my plans to bust open the world
Reading more books
Smoking shisha
Blogging

WSJ Article on Drug Prohibition

2008-12-08T12:43:00.002+08:00

Consider the consequences of drug prohibition today: 500,000 people incarcerated in U.S. prisons and jails for nonviolent drug-law violations; 1.8 million drug arrests last year; tens of billions of taxpayer dollars expended annually to fund a drug war that 76% of Americans say has failed; millions now marked for life as former drug felons; many thousands dying each year from drug overdoses that have more to do with prohibitionist policies than the drugs themselves, and tens of thousands more needlessly infected with AIDS and Hepatitis C because those same policies undermine and block responsible public-health policies.

And look abroad. At Afghanistan, where a third or more of the national economy is both beneficiary and victim of the failed global drug prohibition regime. At Mexico, which makes Chicago under Al Capone look like a day in the park. And elsewhere in Latin America, where prohibition-related crime, violence and corruption undermine civil authority and public safety, and mindless drug eradication campaigns wreak environmental havoc.

All this, and much more, are the consequences not of drugs per se but of prohibitionist policies that have failed for too long and that can never succeed in an open society, given the lessons of history. Perhaps a totalitarian American could do better, but at what cost to our most fundamental values?

Why did our forebears wise up so quickly while Americans today still struggle with sorting out the consequences of drug misuse from those of drug prohibition?
- Excerpt from "Let's End Drug Prohibition" by Ethan A. Nadelmann

Smart, to the point, and "common sense" in the non-reactionary way. If only we were so enlightened.

Flobots

2008-12-02T07:17:00.002+08:00

I don't know how I wasn't into this band before because everyone has heard their single "Handlebars," but while I was in Tuscaloosa this weekend Mark turned me on to them and their social message, which I dig thoroughly. I am particularly impressed by the music video, which everyone but me had also apparently seen.

It makes me think more and more about what I'm doing right now, and what I'm building right now.