Selfish Crab

1. United States v. Reynolds, the Supreme Court case establishing the “state secret” privilege, was founded on a factual record which ironically demonstrates why the privilege should be narrow. [source, Act Two] [more info]
2. A properly knotted tie is supposed to have a dimple in it. [source]
3. Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter during the late 1700s, was a brilliant business innovator, using a factory-line, showroom, and direct marketing to generate extreme wealth. He left much of it to his grandson Charles Darwin, who spent his leisure time sailing on a beagle. [source]

# 2009 Sep 30    {Links}    #

The urge to blog about work is strong, but I will have to resist. An activity like that is probably calamity on a precipice. I will say this though: my life’s new phase evokes Revolutionary Road, though with loveless missteps of a different kind.

Having income is damn fine. Have not purchased much outside of menswear. I’m enjoying the dress up, with fitted shirts and bright leather oxfords abound. I am a dash and a half. Thinking about adding Lucky Strikes to my resumé of nasty habits– or wait is this actually just the new season of Mad Men talking.

Any new toy ideas? I am tempted by the PS3 price drops, but don’t I need actual leisure time to enjoy these things? Still getting through the Swiss alps photos; learning Lightroom on the fly is proving to be an involved enterprise. A stack of dusty books.

Maybe I will start a new anonymous blog about my exciting new life as a patent attorney, sprinkled in with adventures on match.com, with indie rock band album reviews as interludes. Yes, you heard me; that’s a threat. Stand back.

# 2009 Sep 30    {Life}    3

On the 6 train. Heading downtown. On a Friday night. I get on the car. Visual assault of teenage flesh. They are precisely young, and wear cocktail dresses they fill with neither curves or experience. Their speech patterns, the well-known warbly sing-song, fascinate me. Every sentence ends upward, flush with optimism– or is that disdain– every tone is flung recklessly, like a wild scarlet hankerchief fluttering for attention. They disembark at 23rd st, surprising me.

# 2009 Sep 29    {Life}    1

A quick succession of travel destinations and trip companions has compounded in my mind a distinct travel philosophy. It follows.

Preamble. Travel is condensed life, a concentrated Every-day. Travel re-illuminates your own origin as much as it instructs you about your destination. Most of all, travel produces novel experiences otherwise unavailable to you, because of time, locality, culture. This philosophy guides one’s decisions about dining, accommodations, and activities, in such ways as:

Dining:- I prefer foods the region is known for, but am weary of tourist trap dishes. When in France, I ate as much cheese as possible; Switzerland, chocolate; Hong Kong, street stall food. I sample any exclusively local cuisine and ingredients. I do not shy away from big brand names either; even they localize. The McDonalds in India serves the best McVeggie I’ve ever had; KFC in Bali is spicy and sweet. Coca-cola South America produces Guaranà, a soft drink based on a plant in the Amazon rain forest. I don’t insist on ordering American foods; do you really need the Thai interpretation of spaghetti bolognese? I do relish “exotics” like insects or innards, but should you decline, rest assured that no one will think less of you for being unable to set aside your conventional ideas about what is proper or improper vehicles for sustenance, you close-minded yokel, no, certainly no one here.

Accommodations:- Safety is my only true prerequisite for considering a place to lay my head. Comfort levels vary between people, I acknowledge, but so long as neither heat stroke nor hypothermia afflicts me, anything should do. Who needs frills if all you need is space to sleep at night? The exception, naturally, is when your entire day is spent in bed, in which case, i say, go for broke, congratulations, have a good honeymoon and remember to stretch first. Generally, though, resort hotels are antithetical to the present philosophy. These are walled gardens, far from the main street, leaving few convenient walking paths, replete with luxurious distractions, designed expressly to flush away any desire to leave the grounds and explore.

Activities:- here it is: I always seek the local experience. I dare to reject the check-the-box approach of tourism. If one visits Paris, does one really need to see the Eiffel tower? Wouldn’t you rather enjoy a languid lunch, in a cafe, along the Sienne, arguing geopolitics with haughty Parisians. I’m there to experience life. The richness of, say, French life, is not the sight of some archway, but rather, is bound up in the fact that the French take their food very seriously, that they close shops and offices for lunch and Sundays and think nothing of it, that they speak, well, French and only French. I acknowledge I am courting controversy here. Still, I hold forth that there is little to gain from “seeing the sights” out of mere obligation. Such sites are just backdrop and context. ¹ When I visit a new city, I don’t want to see this city’s respective Times Square, Southstreet Seaport, or Meatpacking District. I would rather: argue with a denizen, puzzle over the subway, down a homegrown poison, howl at awful television programming. This is the good stuff, the stuff that resists transport to another place, that is immune to capture by someone else’s photograph. This is the stuff that colors your life with new perspective, that lays down the soil for real adventure.

That’s how I travel.

1. No New Yorker’s identity or living experience is tied to the Empire State building or the Statue of Liberty. The best way to experience New York is to walk the city, experiencing each neighorhood, avenue to avenue. [↩]

# 2009 Sep 27    {Life}    #

I do not use “emoticons” because I have, y’know, motherfucking words.

# 2009 Sep 20    {Life}    #

In all, an outstanding trip. I saw beautiful things, considered life, and returned better looking than at my departure.

The glaring subtext to my adventure had been the impending start of my new career and, more generally, undeniable adulthood. Being in your “Mid-To-Late-Twenties” means your self has reached a hardened, stable state. Hopefully you have taken full inventory of your sharpest weapons and your armor’s chinks. You have a sense of your potential and your limits. You have some career inertia going. Now what, really, is the question.

Hearing I did this trip alone, people have asked me if I came to any grand conclusions about life, believing– justifiably so– that I spent much of my time squating on a mountain top, stroking my beard. Sure, I did indeed contemplate the depth of the human condition, but mostly, I replayed the entirety of my life through my mind. I watched my polite childhood, my awkward growth, my supposed bloom. I traced and retraced where it all went wrong (somewhere in 6th grade, with an ill-fated rivalry). I reviewed my entire career as a romantic companion (a true blooper reel). I surveyed love and measured marriage. I plotted my own life against about those of bright and distinguished stars. I marshalled my every what-if, perhaps-so, dreamy-eyed, phantasmagorical aspiration, and… and… and… I don’t know.

Each day brings me closer to both (1) comprehension of this world, and (2) death, and that’s just something I’m going to have to get used to.

Those days immediately proceeding a return are always the most provocative. You still have that travel state of mind, but are clearly in your comfortable surroundings. Do you use your new eyes to take stock and reevaluate your Everyday? Part of me wants to purge my life and feed reader, and start anew. Digest a few more books. Send a few more letters. Romance a conversation with a bottle of wine. Love someone.

Who knows. How’s that for a conclusion?

# 2009 Sep 19    {Life}    1

I say goodbye to Rosario and Lucas, trying to express as much gratitude and love as is possible at 7 am. Morning flight to Geneva. I have 24 hours in this city.

Geneva. A machine at the arrival gate spits out a free train ticket, to go from the airport to the city. Once in the city, guests of any hotel, hostel, or guesthouse are, by law, given a free transport card to be used throughout the city’s bus, tramway/light-rail, or train system. I feel welcome. I grab a tourist map from the hostel and plot my 24 hrs.

First, Red Cross Museum. A guidebook description suggested there would be photographs from war time, depicting humanitarian efforts, but it’s more like art inspired by Red Cross history and principles. 11 exhibitions, contained on a single floor. Takes an hour to explore. The place comes across as a love letter to the Red Cross. Probably not worth visiting. Still though, it inspires me. If I had a child, I would send them to volunteer for Red Cross. It would be good for their character and integrity. It’s all part of my plan. Though I am still 59 steps away from having children¹, I have a detailed child-rearing plan worked out. I won’t elaborate on it, but you can assume a good amount of character building and woodlands is involved. Believe me, everyone’s got such a plan, and more or less, it’s a direct inversion of their own childhood.

I tour the Old City, up a few cobblestones streets, past the Cathedral, into a bland restaurant across from the Pallas du Justice (court house). I swear I see Kofi Annan strolling down the street, but no one believes me. No sign of Moon.

Souvenir shopping on the main shopping street. 3 lbs worth of Swiss chocolate in as many bizarre flavors as I can find. Swiss army knife. Sigg water bottle. The citizens of Geneva are worthy of a good people watching session. Many women, many double takes. I estimate this is the effect of spending weeks in the mountains, surrounded entirely by mountain men and climbers. I get anthropological about my gawking: one may categorize American women as either 1) Fat, with varying levels of comfort, or 2) Skinny. Some women here seem to exist in an entirely different category of Just-Right. They have shape not quite volumptous. Their skin is also noticably blemish-free, but I may be vulnerable to the ruse of cosmetics.

Dinner at the restaurant Les 5 Portes based on a great tip from the hostel reception. I sit alone, outside, on a balmy night. Waiter brings the menu; it’s a giant chalk easel, leaned against another table, for my use. Can’t read a word of it, so I trust his recommendation for Lamb shank. Delicious. I eat, write, and flirt with a new habit: sitting with one’s legs crossed. I am cosmopolitan by inches.

The couple next to me weighs communism against socialism. I google the difference.

Thought: other people’s children. Angelic miracles or relentless growing machines that highlight your own advancing age (“He’s eight years old already!?”)?

I stretch my legs and walk the streets. It’s a Thursday night with few lively parties or active discoteques. I walk guided by a vague sense of direction and a tourist map. I stumble upon Geneva’s “ethnic block”, highlighted by a spate of döner kebab joints on one side and streetwalkers on the other. My pace is now brisk. I reach the waterfront, witness the thumping music of the hotel bars, and turn for home. I walk a dark alleyway shortcut home, a path I would never otherwise attempt.

Bed time. I walk into my dorm room at the City Hostel, and the two Frenchmen are deep in conversation. The room smells ripely of manhood. I crack the window and make overt preparations for bedtime: large brushing motions, loud yawning, flinging of bed covers. They accommodate me by moving their conversation to across their bunkbeds. The French, i have concluded, in some ways, are the Chinese of the West. At a glance: nationalistically self-centered, xenophobic, rude to strangers, strong food culture.

9am morning flight to Newark. Blow the last of my Swiss francs on airport chocolate. And that’s it for me.

So long, Europe.

1. on purpose [↩]

# 2009 Sep 15    {Life}    #

Some stories fall through the cracks, some stories die at the publishing deadline. These are the remainders.

Day 15: During my four hour tenancy at Papperla Pub, I may have immersed myself in the surrounding tables. One table featured a local business owner, entertaining two friends. He calls the waiter’s name, Edwin, in alternating singsong accents. They make a joke of formal stilted English (“Thank you so very much Ed-win!”).

My favorite table of the entire trip saunters in an hour after I finish eating. They are an American family, and boy are they ever. A blonde Aspen mother, aloof pepper-grey father tethered to a phone (stepping away every quarter hour to take this one, hun), a brood of four, every one firmly lodged in the awkward era of adolesence. The daughter is excitable, and had
scouted the restaurant like a good herald (“Ma, Ma, they’ve got BURH-gers, Ma, look!). The big one, Lester, has a lumbering gait, and mumbles answers to the good Father’s questions, to which Father pleads directly to Mother, “what did he say? I can’t understand him,” of course in Lester’s presence. Lester, I hypothesize, is not a large taker in the family will. The little one is a prize winner, with a permanent IV of rocket fuel into his blood, rocks back and forth in his chair, a blathering stream of high pitches, like an infant performing a James Joyce reading. The middle one, bless his heart, is the only one with a chance. He’s bright, calm, observant, all demonstrated by his ability to use the WC independently and without incident. On his return: “How’s the bathroom here?” asks the reclined Father without turning his head, removing his sunglasses, or adding inflection to his voice. This is the bastion saint of hands-on parenting.

Daughter: “Mom, can you order for us? I want the piz-ZA.” “Okay, honey.”
Waitress arrives, signalling the climax of this story.
Mother: “okay we’ll have three diet cokes–” “ME too Ma!” “–okay, four diet cokes. And we want the nachos, but can we just have the cheese on the chips, and on everything else, the other toppings, on the side?”
Waitress: “…”
Mother: “and a medium pizza, is that spicey at all? Please, no spices. And I’ll have the seared tuna salad, dressing–”
Waitress: “on the side?”
Mother: “on the side please.”

I have had enough sun, and move to the shade on the other side of the patio.

# 2009 Sep 8    {Life}    #

And as suddenly as I arrive, I leave tomorrow. Rosario and Lucas decide to spend my last day on a quiet beach over the mountain. They pack a proper picnic.

Our small car whips up the countryside. Lucas puts in a hissy cassette tape, and out comes old Spanish songs, belted properly by a cantodor, the accompanying guitar starting and stopping. The road is winding and the car dances around the sharp curves, its tail swinging with a flourish, to the music. The sun shines, the grassland is dry, everything is a shade of amber.

A few cars are ahead of us. We shares look of concern over our beach’s exclusivity. But no worries, they eventually turn off at a fork. “The tourist way,” Lucas sniffs.

It’s a short walk through brush, and voilà, small quiet beach, enclosed by rocks and warm shallow water, with a view of the Islas Sanguinarias. Apparently, unlike in the States, empty quiet beaches are a rarity in Europe. Lunch. Drink. Serenity. We play dominos on a beach blanket. It takes me a few games to grasp strategy. Dominos has elements of spades and Big Two, in that you have to count cards to calculate your ability to control a given round. After a few bumbling games, I win a string of three. Lukas wins the next one, and jokingly boasts, “Ah, do you smell that. A fragrance so sweet in the air. It is Victory.”¹ Too comfortable and forgetting my status as Most Favored Guest, I retort: “It’s not something one smells very often.” Rosario roars in delight and gives me a high five, but I know I have awoken Lucas and tempted the fates. He wins the next 5 rounds.

A picturesque sunset and we’re home. I help cook dinner by peeling (read: butchering) carrots. Dinner: lentils, carrots, saucisse du marteau. Simple but delicioso. The addition of French mustard surprises me with its sublime heightening of flavor.

On the patio, we dine and talk. Given our make-up, our conversations are a mix of English, Spanish, and French. I only speak the first and surprise some with my occasional comprehension of the second. I try to tune into the French psyche, and, true to the literature, Lucas is game to wax on about the enlightment of France. We all know about the food, the long lunches, the generous vacations, the cultural pride. This suggest the French care deeply in their quality of life, refusing to sacrifice it even for individual material gain. They take seriously what they do, with a high degree of pride and care, demonstrated from the waitress to the CEO. There’s no concept of grinding out a living or checking the boxes. Or so he says.

1. Trust me, it works in a French accent. [↩]

# 2009 Sep 7    {Life}    1

Today is a travelling day.

4:30am. Arise to darkness. I break camp by headlamp. First train out of Zermatt to Geneva. I fret about not having bought a ticket yesterday for my 5:38 train… for nothing, the ticket office opens at 5:15 sharply. 92 francs, directly to the airport. I have to transfer to the InteRegion line in Visp, with a 20 minute holdover; he tells me this in a tone suggesting that that is an absurdly long time. The train leaves precisely at 5:38. I set my watch to it. On the train with me at that hour: other airport-bound passengers, commuters, and teenagers going to school. At the transfer, I take my time, using the restroom, which is lit entirely by UV light. My skin is blue, but a common carrier bathroom is exactly where you want an irradiating light; are you listening Penn station?

My flight is to Ajaccio, a coastal city on the French mediterranean island of Corsica. The plane flies over the Alps in the most scenic window seat experiences ever. I try to trace my haute route, but it’s too sudden. The woman in the aisle seat gives me a nice introduction to the French people by jamming her camera by my face and
at the window. “Pérdon” will only get you so far, sister.

Corsica. The Corsican people are fiercely independent and threaten cessession from France regularly. They’re all about Le Corse. Businesses not started by local Corsicans are boycotted, even firebombed. Corsica liberated itself during WWII, two years ahead of the mainland. Ajaccio is the ancestral home of Napolean, and everything is labelled accordingly. Corsica is also home to the esteemed hiking trail, the GR20.¹ Thus ends the unconfirmed fact portion of this post.

I meet my friend at airport. Nancy is a law school classmate, one of those rare breeds, the ones that I actually like. She is just starting her bar trip, due for Paris and Italy. But now it’s us in Corsica. She has an old family friend with a house near the beach here, and I’m crashing the party. With glee.

Nancy is shocked at my appearance. Two weeks in the Alps have turned me into a wild man: skin darkened to the bone, hair now a mane, my face and body emaciated, testing the limits of my Teddy-bear, anime-character good looks. I give it 1 month in the States and it is back to status quo.

Her family friend Rosario and her husband Lukas open their homes to us. She is an itinerant Colombian with a heart of pure gold. He is a freespirited Frenchman, nearly a stereotype, complete with French pride and shoulder length hair. They feed us otherworldly food every day: lamb chops, foie gras pasta, saucisse de marteau, feta cheese tuna salad. I’m a proper guest, eating everything and asking for seconds, polite and winsome, my checkmate being a truckload of Swiss chocolate. Mama Crab didn’t raise no sea urchin.

We hit the beach daily. Toes in the sand, napping, reading a novel, intermittent dips, the dutiful scans of the beach. Vacation. French beaches are liberal, natch, and I grow as a person. I hope to reach the level of maturity wherein I am completely unfazed by the sight of boobies in the wild. I am close; could have used a few more days.

I do not bother seeing much of town, outside one 50m stretch of sand and one evening outing through the old town. The streets are relatively empty. With French summer season officially over (aug 31), the crowds are gone; and only the French vacation here. I can’t decide if the serenity gained outweighs the people-watching lost. Still, it’s vacation.

1. but please, Im here for R&R on the beach. [↩]

# 2009 Sep 5    {Life}    #

Last day in Zermatt.

In the morning, I find a beer left at my doorstep. My tent neighbors, Czech college kids, have left and have given me a present. It pays to be social.

I walk out to the Schöeblhutt. Takes me 4 hrs to reach the hut, up a long gradual ascent, facing the Matterhorn nearly the whole way. It’s a pleasant walk, through grassland, thru the village of Zmutt, up along morraine walls, alongside the Zmuttgleischer, passing melting glaciers strung around like tinsel. The final view from the hut is exquisite. Diners stare up at the Matterhorn with binoculars, looking for climbers. I see nothing. Glaciers everywhere. Hear the occasional crack and rumble, as ice and rock shift, break, and fall from their perch. A German couple chats me up at the viewpoint. When I travel, I like to assume I’m the first Asian person they’ve ever seen in real life, and try to represent myself accordingly. Politely assertive, charming and winsome, open and diplomatic. Got to set the record straight, person by person, country by country.

Slow walk back, realizing this is my last walk through the Alps. It makes me wistful. I soak it up, taking deep breaths, drinking the light with my eyes. I’ll try to carry this memory for a while.

Dinner: Nelly’s bar. Quietly one of the better restaurants in town, in my opinion. Evidence is their refusal to serve rösti. Instead, springbok steak (think African mini-antelope), medium rare. Tender and tasty. Bonus points for the jazz music played overhead, replacing the usual Swiss mix of pop single gems like Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me”. Eventually, the jazz standard
“Love and Marriage” comes on, reminding me of Married… With Children. Let me posit right here that MwC is culturally the most British show this country’s ever made. Firmly working class family. Mostly unattractive cast. Near constant lesson to never try to rise above your station. It’s all there.

{ Walking back to camp, I see the girl from my first night in town. She spots me and closes the distance with alarming ease. We are talking. This girl won’t quit. She has the absurd notion that I love her deeply and will never let her go. It probably did not help that, on that first night, I told her, “I love you deeply and will never let you go.” see, problem was that she said it first. “I love you, ya’know.” Just like that, casually. Real breezy. Each of those words are nuclear weapon components– “love”, of course, being the most toxic of them all– assembly in the appropriate order, well now you have a potent weapon of mass destruction. What sort of thing is that to have in your back pocket, someone’s love? A hard line into another person’s soft center. “Are you leaving tomorrow?” she asks. “Yes,” I say. }

My Czech beer and sleep. Goodnight Zermatt.

# 2009 Sep 4    {Life}    #

Daylight. I’m sleeping soundly in my tent. It’s a beautiful clear day, but I have already decided today would be a rest day. After walking kilometers for every day for over two weeks, a day’s rest would be nice, thanks.

Breakfast made after a supermarket run. I have been eating a bar of chocolate a day, trying as many types of this Swiss specialty as is nutritionally permissible. This tasting strategy is probably negating all my gains (or rather, my losses) from hiking, but it’s alright, I can continue to get by on my boyish charm still, right? That never gets old.

Find a cafè with wireless and settle down for a while. Hot chocolate. I finish Revolutionary Road. 3 dL of beer. I try to digest the meaning of the book. I try writing a few more posts. I pen a few emails.

I go for a walk, camera slung behind me. This town reminds me exactly of Lijiang, with its old town charm hollowed out and served into a distinct neighborhood to the cartable masses, with a pretty iconic mountain in the background.

I visit the climber’s graveyard, where fittingly, one of the best views of the Matterhorn can be had from town. Each headstone tell a concise story. “Michael 1968-1985, Died on the northern face,” one reads. The members of the first party to ascend the Matterhorn (half died tragically on the descent) are there.

I check out the souvenirs shops, debating whether i need more junk. Got to say, the Swiss have a great design to work with. Take anything, make it red, slap a white square cross on it: instant Swiss gear. Unfortunately they don’t stop there; they also slap an elegant “SWITZERLAND” on the front too. Must everything be so obvious? A
small logo above the breast, a wink, an inside joke. We were there, we know, you weren’t, you don’t, you’ll have to ask (“oh this old thing? Why Johnny and I got this in Zermatt, Switzerland, hey honey, do you remember when we went to zermatt, yes, zermatt. Zer-matt. Two T’s. No, that’s in Spain. Zermatt. You lost your glasses there. Yes. Yes. That was Zermatt. Anyway, I got this in Zermatt.”)

Somehow it’s dinnertime. Tonight is my dinner date with Paul and Kate. We dine at Chez Gaby and swap final tales of our last few days. We do some more Brit-American comparisons. On the menu is something called “Chinese Fondue” which instantly has my defenses up. Google tells me this is, in fact, just hot pot, but I still suspect it involves something with gongs and ching chong wing wong. Anyway, we all have röstis (this now my third). We talk smack about the Dutch. They head back on a train to Täsch, where they’re staying, but not before we exchange email addresses and wish each other well.

I go to bed. When I wake up the next morning, I have a feeling in my bones. I half-unzip the tent flap. Clouds. Down to the trees. ugh. I go back to bed. Hike to Schöublehut (7hrs round trip) cancelled.

Arise again at 9am and make another lazy day in Zermatt. I walk the entire town, all the way to the suburb of Winklematten. I find a pub patio to settle into, Papperla Pub, whose name i didn’t understand until I heard a norwegian say it outloud, at which point I hated it.

By 11am, the sky is completely clear. My lunch arrives, a wrap, and a 5 dL of Kronenburg 1664. A line on my glass marks the exact volume. I am getting a very precise and scientific buzz. Read three of Nine Stories by JD Salinger. After this, I’m taking a break from 1950s American fiction. Everyone is a fucking lush. They drink like they lived through Prohibition and are afraid it’ll come back any day. Another 5 dL of Kronenberg 1664. I might just get quietly drunk here all by myself. The fine thing about drinking in alpine towns is that any flush can be attributed to sun exposure. Hiccup.

I decide the legs could use a stretch. Broad daylight, high sun, there I am, teetering down the glamorous streets of Zermatt, honking people out of my way. Honk. Honk. Hallo. Perdón.

Highly disappointed by the lack of Helvetica in the store signs. This font should be everywhere.

Supermarket. I discover these amazing “paprika chips”, which I’ve decided is merely barbeque flavour. I conjecture that barbeque is not a compelling notion to Europeans. See, I am learning much about other cultures on this trip.

# 2009 Sep 3    {Life}    1