VC Funky Fresh: Vassar Through Kyle's Eyes

Life After Vassar. What is that?

2010-10-07T07:02:00.000-07:00

So I suppose I haven't been as true to my promise to keep this thing updated as often as I should. Real life hasn't really provided much by way of entertainment, so I haven't been as motivated to write as I should have been.

My most recent stint starts five weeks ago: I landed in New York with a duffel and high hopes (no, my tale doesn't start on Ellis Island, although that could have been easier) in a dismal economy. Like many of my classmates, I was looking for a job after summer turned up nothing but open-ended "We'll be in touch" or "We'll call you" responses and a pessimistic outlook. "We went to Vassar, for crying out loud," we told ourselves. People should recognize the name of our school. And they did. The problem is, we're not alone. Cue alien film creepy music. Honestly, it took me a while to figure that out, even though I knew it in the back of my head. My reckless optimism told me to disregard the naysayers, forge on ahead, and the rest of all that blah-blah. I did, and came across countless folks in my exact same situation. After a week back on the ground here, I packed away my optimism like my interview suit, only to come out occasionally and when I absolutely needed it.

I decided to get in touch with my old supervisor at the China Institute about volunteering there. I've been in touch with her since leaving the Institute after the Annual Gala in May. She's helped me revise cover letters, made sure my resume reflects exactly what an employer wants to see, and has given me plenty of suggestions for staying afloat. She and the rest of the Development staff welcomed me back with open arms, eager for somebody to do the grunt work. I wasn't complaining, it was helping me fill my days instead of sitting in Central Park and building miniature log cabins out of twigs, or something. I've been helping organize materials for the upcoming summit at the end of October, after which, I'll be heading home again.

To quote a friend of mine, a fellow Bahamian who just happens to be the Chair of UNESCO, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Being in New York has made it a lot easier to respond to calls for meetings on short notice, link with Vassar alums and my general exposure to a wide array of professional options. At the same time, being international and not having applied for Optional Practical Training, or OPT (if you're an international and reading this, APPLY FOR OPT, THERE IS NO OPTION), it makes life a lot harder to attract a company that will gladly spent a few thousand dollars sponsoring your work visa. I really should have applied for it, I thought there was a larger window than two months after graduation, but the emotional smoothie that gets served to you after graduation can easily mess with your perception of time, as well as with what you can and can't do. Anyway, that being said, despite whatever perception this blog gives you of myself, I haven't quite figured out all there is to figure out about being successful yet. I've made mistakes, and my butt is probably sore from my kicking it, but I'm limping my way back to making something of myself.

Other than kicking myself for not planning for work, I'm now kicking myself for not planning for the weather. It got cold! The only outerwear I brought with me in August was my Vassar Rowing jacket. It only blocks out the wind. It will not keep you warm. I finally gave in to my island sensibilities and bought some sweaters and a light Autumn jacket. I'm much happier for it now.

Anyway, now that I've given you an insight into the last five weeks in a nutshell, here are my plans for the rest of the year: get a job. That's really it. More specifically, I've got a few things lined up for some stints in Beijing, plans to be disclosed when they come. My supervisor imparted a great piece of wisdom to me that I'm sure she wouldn't mind me sharing with my fellow jobless 2010 graduates: don't get excited about a job until they give you an offer. We can argue grammar later, but it's true. These days, everything can be so up in the air, it doesn't make sense wasting energy on something that may not even come close to following through for you.

This job hunting experience has been very formative for me, and I want to put out a very large public vote of thanks for my friends in New York who have been so gracious as to let me warm their couches at night. I've even stayed on a whole air mattress once! It's taught me humility, patience, perseverance and that blind optimism to the point of sheer foolishness can sometimes lead you across an opportunity you may never have known existed. The adjustment from college has been huge, and dealing with the adjustment still is, as it has been, something I'm trying to get a grip on. From living in relative popularity on a small campus into absolute obscurity in a big city, staying in bed to avoid all the work to be done to getting out of bed to find work, among others, is still very tough. I congratulate my classmates who had the luck, foresight or both to be working right now, and I can only pray that you won't see me on the subway singing a song and asking you for a dollar. Not that it's a bad thing to do, just that you don't want to hear me sing.

Until next time, perhaps in a warmer clime!

Here we go...

2010-06-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, as my life at Vassar has quickly and surprisingly come to an end, I suppose this may be my last entry. I may keep writing, just as an alum perspective on finding life after Vassar, which I think I may do, as I have grown quite accustomed to this blog, and the relationship I have built with you, my readers.

This entry comes a bit late; my week finishing up my internship has been hectic: carrying a piece of art worth $85,000USD, wearing a tux, sipping champage and such, it’s not easy work. Here is a reflection of it all, starting from two Tuesdays ago:

The past week has flown by faster than I would have liked. It has been shorter, and at the same time, longer than I hoped. It was more, and at the same time, less than I had hoped. Looking into the eyes of classmates, friends, past flames, past crushes and past crushers, I saw four years reflected back at me in the strangest of ways. Memories flood back to 45 minutes ago, when I surveyed my room for the final time: its bare walls, its empty drawers and a bed that hated me for putting rowing before our relationship, as I pull out of Poughkeepsie station for the last time of the Spring.

It started with the formal, an excuse for seniors to be fancy for no apparent reason in the face of the onslaught of confusion that is the future. I had a great time, but it was clouded by a sense of uncertainty, fear and stress that I just couldn’t shake. My friends, housemates and girlfriend looked great. I tried to feel festive but couldn’t. I hoped it wouldn’t be indicative of the rest of the week, and then tried to dance it off.

I had my senior project to turn in the next day, so my fun was cut significantly shorter than what it should have been.

I didn’t do many of the senior week events: just the formal and the ACDC brunch. We had commencement rehearsal right before the ACDC brunch, which was horribly timed on a day when all the ovens of the sky happened to be on their highest settings. I got a farmer tan. It was horrible. However, brunch at the DC made up for all of that. There’s always this enduring myth in my mind that breakfast at ACDC is the best thing in the world: better than a snow day, better than a wink from your crush in the corner of the class you steal glimpses at every time a slide on the PowerPoint changes, better than Pop Rocks, even. And Pop Rocks are pretty awesome. Anyway, I had to leave the brunch early, thanks to a photoshoot for an article, soon to come out in the alumni newsletter about my senior project. It’s an academic and life win.

Fast-forward to Saturday: the day where it all came crashing down. By “it” I mean memories, which means there’s a huge edit in order, and despite it being only a sentence away, I’m far too lazy to change it, as it is summertime. I schlepped over to Rocky to observe the Violet/Daisy photoshoot, basically just to slip into nostalgia, and also to make sure everyone was in attendance. It was very bittersweet watching the Daisies line up – working with them all year had been fun, and I remembered in my sophomore year that I was on those same steps getting my picture taken as a Violet. Now, on the verge of leaving, I realized that it was all hitting me hard. The oscillating waves of happiness and sadness really just hit the trough of sadness, and it stayed there for most of the morning. Soon, it was then time for the Lei Ceremony, organized by the Asian-Pacific Islander Alumni (APAVC). The floor was opened to parents and students to reflect on the experiences we’ve shared at Vassar, and as no one from the students’ side had gone up, Olivia shot me daggers with her eyes, meaning that I had better go say something.

My training in the Beautillion Society at home had left me with the gift of the gab, or refined it somewhat, and I got up to the microphone with butterflies in my stomach, and tears ready to leap forth out of my eyes. I thanked my friends for always supporting me, and my parents for encouraging me. And as spoke about looking ahead to the many great journeys we will face, I paused to think of all the many journeys we had struggled through together already: finals, insensitivity, times when the student of colour community had banded together in solidarity in support of one another, and just being friends along our road through college. I almost cried. I voice broke, and my knees began to shake. I mentally slapped myself – “Keep it together, Kyle!” I kept talking, but the quivering got worse, my knees got weaker, and my eyes began to well. Thankfully, I finished up and got back to my seat and held my girlfriend’s hand. The awarding of the leis went by without a tear as well. I also spied Lisa Kudrow in her rose sunglasses sitting in the back of the room. I made a mental note to walk over to get a picture with her, but once I had gotten caught up taking pictures with friends, she was gone.

From there, I rushed over to the Kente Cloth ceremony, sponsored by the African-American Alumni (AAAVC). I saw my mentor and friend, Ken Miles, who serves as the co-chair of AAAVC getting ready to go up to the podium. The alums-to-be were called to stand and receive our stoles, and another speech was asked of me. This time, much more prepared (in some ways), I recognized all those who came before us, not just our grandparents and ancestors, but the alums and older students who have acted as role models for us, and without whom we would not be able to partake in community as we had throughout our four years.

Following the Kente Cloth ceremony was the Baccalaureate service, celebrating students of colour. It adds a religious flair to the commencement week activities, and I appreciated it. Ryan Greenlee and I were called to sing the Black National Anthem, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing.” Nobody told us, nor the pianist, that only one verse was printed. We were told to sing two. So, I had made a fool of my self of the first time that day, but at least I wasn’t alone. And with emotions running high for all, I think it was taken in good spirit. Dr. Tricia Rose was incredible, and my aunt even wanted to buy her book. Gotta love how academia keeps pulling people back.

Fast-forward again to that night: the last party at TA43. I had left my wallet in my Mum’s purse, and my dad stopped in to bring it up to me. Little did he know we were having a party. In quite a shocked state, he handed it to me, went up to my room for a bit, then left. Oh, college, how I will miss you. My flatmates and I got our things together for the bonfire that is traditionally held before graduation. Thankfully, I had gathered all of my thesis drafts and other papers I had no need for ever again in a bag, along with everything else I detested. Because we lived in the TA’s, Ballantine was not far at all, so we left pretty late (it started at midnight, we left at 12:30).

Then it all came crashing down: after throwing all my papers into the fire and having a great time with my friends, I saw my best friend, CBS president, Dyana. She ran over and hugged me, and then she began to cry. At that point, all the feelings that I had tried to keep down and forget about all week finally surfaced. I cried. I cried like a baby, and I kept crying. I just couldn’t stop. We just held each other, and cried. We recalled all the times we probably never would have made it through Vassar without each other, all the meals we shared, and everything else inbetween. It was heartbreaking to know that we wouldn’t see each other for such a long time, and for me to show how I was truly feeling once again to someone who had seen me at my worst so many times, it was amazing to just let go and cry.

And it didn’t stop with Dyana. I saw other friends that I had met at different points in my college career and we cried together. When I finally got back to my girlfriend, who I can never remember if I had mentioned her before in this blog before, I was a mess, tears and snot all over my face and just unable to stop crying. Surprisingly, she was fine. There I am, rowing captain Kyle, crazy gym-beast Kyle, everyone else’s crying shoulder Kyle, a total wreck. And there is my girlfriend, doing what she has always done for me: supporting me. We even make jokes about it even though it didn’t happen too long ago. Once I was dry again, I walked slowly home and went to bed.

When I woke up in the morning, my eyes were still puffy from crying. Since I was twelve, I can count on one hand and name exactly when and where I have cried. Thankfully, for sake of my “masculinity” (and all you Vassar-heads out there, please challenge me to a debate about gender norms, I dare you!) it’s still on one hand! My housemates and I awoke for the last time as Vassar students and ate breakfast together for the last time, then donned the garb that would mark our passage out of the world we had known for the last four years into the “real” one.

With every motion leading up to my leaving the house came a new significance of what I was doing. The last time I could put on dress socks in the house, the last time I would look in my mirror, the last time I would look out my window in the morning. I put on my gown, followed by my hood, Kente cloth and finally my lei and stood in the mirror, transfixed and unable to move. I was not the same as when I had first stood looking in the mirror in late August 2009. Nor was I the same as when I first stepped foot on campus as a timid freshman three years before that. With my cap in hand, my housemates and I made the long walk to Commencement Hill together.

We lined up for a good twenty minutes, and finally, the march began. I stood in Group 7, and as you Vassar readers will find out eventually, this is how you will be arranged for graduation. Group 1 led off, and slowly we all made our way to our seats. A human river of black, with yellows, blues, greens and whites, oranges, greens and purples all mixed in, moved slowly to where we would be awarded our degrees. At the hearing of “Pomp and Circumstance,” a girl near me began to cry. I had cried out everything I had the night before, or I would have been there with her. We took our seats. Listened to speeches. Got our degrees. Then it was all over. Really, that’s how it felt to me.

Lisa Kudrow’s speech was brilliant: it was exactly what I needed to hear at that point in time. That I could graduate knowing absolutely nothing about what I wanted to do and still succeed; and that I could fail but still rise to success. It gave me a lot of hope for the days after graduation as I roamed New York during my last week at my internship looking for jobs and interviewing. Her project on genealogies also struck me as particularly interesting, as my interest in my own has dictated many of my feelings throughout the year. I may be getting in contact with her soon…

And this brings me to today. Exactly two weeks ago, I was getting ready to enjoy the senior formal with my girlfriend and my friends. I’m back at home, reflecting on how the past two weeks have flown past with shocking speed, and how I can stop the rest of my life from doing the same. Perhaps it’s just all too deep to tackle for now. Oh well. That’s what Philosophy majors are for, and I am not one of them.

I’ll be back from time to time, both at Vassar and on this blog, so faithful readers, fear not! I’ll still be providing wisdom from “Beyond the Gates,” as it were, on how to survive life after college, along with my own job search, and fun things to do when not in PK. If you want to see more of my mushier side, check out my senior retrospective here (http://www.miscellanynews.com/senior-retrospective-kyle-chea-1.2267487). I will miss my days at Vassar dearly, but I will remember them fondly. At the same time, it is this wonderful place that Vassar has become – not a college, but home – that connects all of us alumni/ae together, and I can’t wait to meet more of my new family both at home (whatever that means these days) and wherever I go.

Also, if any of you readers have any questions about anything Vassar-y or anything to do with college life, please email me, and I will be sure to get back to you. When I was in your position, someone took time out of their schedule to help me, and now it is my turn. We are blessed to be a blessing, and I intend to do just that.

I leave you now with one of my favourite poems, one that has shaped me and continues to shape me. Enjoy!

Ithaka by Constance P. Cavafy

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a Summer dawn to enter
with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Last piece, best piece & the deepness that is a deep end

2010-05-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

Thanks to what’s left of my work, I’m finally posting this latest entry.

This past weekend saw the last race of Vassar’s varsity rowing squad. The Dad Vail Regatta is the largest collegiate regatta in the United States, offering crews from across the country and Canada to compete for a shot at gold. The last time I was here, I was an alternate for the novice boat after narrowly losing a seat race. This time, I was to race as a captain and full-fledged member of the varsity squad.

My boat had its fair share of ups and downs. We had no time to taper, as that time was spent seat racing to compose the perfect heavyweight crew. In the end, the results were close, but next year’s captain Morgan Mako had made it into the boat. With Vince Marchetta at stroke, Kyle Sullivan at 3, Morgan at 2 and myself in bow, coxed by the extraordinary Andrew Tabenkin, we were ready to own. On the morning of 6 May, our boat had moved like it had never moved before. Each drive was powerful, each recovery was slow and controlled. There was no rush, there was no check. Our focus remained in the boat and our movement was only focused forward. Perhaps the fact that the last race of the season was upon us changed our mentalities, and everything we had worked on all semester finally came together.

Cut to a chilly Friday morning in Philadelphia. The heavyweight four are preparing for what could be our last row together. I try to retain composure, knowing that this well could be it. During out warm up run, I remembered all the times we spent together working on the ergs, pushing past the point of fatigue with sweat streaming into our eyes, our breathing sharp, our lungs on fire, our legs numb with pain. I realized that I may never find a more dedicated and hardworking group of men anywhere I would go in the world, and that deeply saddened me.

NOTE: This is not a sob story. Put the tissues away, punk. Resuming…

We put our hands in for what could have been our final chant of “VC!” as we touched the bow of the Weinberg, and we walked down with reverence and focus for the race we were about to row.

In contrast to the swing row the day before in 15mph+ wind, the day was still. We were one boat, we had one stroke. And we kept this mentality as we approached the starting line. Assigned lane 1 was a godsend: at the Dad Vail course, lane 1 has a swift current starting at around the mark signifying 500m left to go, and we were excited at our prospect of moving to semi-finals. We moved into our stake boat, reached alignment and took one last deep breath. The countdown began, and we were off. Two hundred strokes to the finish, two hundred strokes to position ourselves for a shot at the semifinals.

We were off. A high twenty at 42/43 and a settle into a 36/38. We were feeling good. The settle felt nothing higher than a 28, and it was relaxed and long. We got into our rhythm an exhaled with each drive, sending the boat forward and away from Binghamton and the College of New Jersey. We were on course to pull away from them and toward Dowling and Lafayette, when a crab slowed out boat substantially. Binghamton, the closest crew, still hadn’t pulled ahead, and we recovered and increased our open water on them. Soon, another boat-stopping crab held us up, just as we were about to enter our spring, providing Binghamton with the chance they needed to take us. They moved through us, but not past us. We kept contact and pushed out with everything we had left in our legs for the sprint, and finished 4 seconds behind Binghamton. We received a sound thrashing from the lead crews, who finished within 3 seconds of each other and beat us by 30 odd seconds, which, in rowing means half a century.

We were disappointed, but found consolation in the fact that we did row well and we moved well. Lafayette and Dowling were just too massive for us, and they had probably been rowing those line-ups from the beginning of the season, as opposed to us who had only been rowing together for 48 hours. We got off the dock and began to derig our boat, and I hung up my lucky red headband for good.

The other rowers had come down to see us race, and soon met us back at the trailer to help us. We had rowed the race of our lives, and it’s a shame we couldn’t have raced together more. Had we done so, we might have had a chance against Dowling and Lafayette. The world is just full of “what-ifs.”

Race day had just begun for everyone else, an the women’s 8+ was next up. They slid solidly into their semifinal, as did the lightweight men. But getting off the dock, the lights had a problem: 2 seat Ben Palacios had a stomach bug that had ripped through him in his exhaustion, and though he felt fine before and during the race, the stress he placed on his body made him considerably more vulnerable.

He had to go to the emergency room to be rehydrated, and in the end everything worked out fine. The lightweight 4+, unfortunately, had to scratch their race, leaving women’s 8+ as the only race to be watched. Once again, they sailed through the competition to a solid third place overall, placing them in the final. But the wind picked up to over 16mph, temporarily suspending the regatta. They were fine to settle for a third place overall, as they would have medalled, but as fate would have it, the regatta was resumed and the women were placed in the infamous lane 6. Lane 6 was dreaded in regular conditions because, unlike the rest of the river, the current stopped dead once they reached the 500m-to-go mark. However, when the current and wind were against the rowers, this was a godsend.

On my way up to the grandstand, I met two good friends from home, one a fellow All-Bahamas Merit Scholar studying at Drexel and the other, a friend from high school studying at Wharton. They came to see the races, and I was there to teach them what rowing was all about. Luckily, they came just in time for the women’s V8+ final.

A splashing of water, flashes of blades and they were off. As they rounded the bend at the thousand-metre mark, Vassar was fighting for first place. With 750m to go, Vassar was pulling ahead, and once they hit the 500m to go, they had sealed the deal for a gold medal.

As they crossed the line, the entire Vassar rowing team was ecstatic. We couldn’t hold in our happiness. Out came the cheers of “Vassar! Vassar!,” that selective liberal arts school in the Hudson Valley that had managed to dominate the Dad Vail competition in the first year its women were entered. We had much to celebrate.

When we got back to school, the joy soon wore off in the face of assignments and due dates, and at the moment, I am left to write my last eight-page paper of my undergraduate career. It’s nothing big, just a reflective piece about “War and Memory in East Asia,” with my advisor, Hiraku Shimoda.

At a History major’s senior reception, we bonded over a common favourite in beer, Stella Artois, and a confusion that came with graduation around the corner. Like me, he had no idea what he wanted to do after graduation, and so he went to work in a bank in Buffalo. Weird, no? Two years later, he returned to academia and never left. Perhaps this may be my path as well.

I’m realizing that life has its own little twists and turns and surprises, and often has a way of taking the plans that you’ve spent so long cultivating and manicuring, and balling them up and throwing them into the wastebasket. Who knows? Perhaps this is my fate, to be blindsided by something so random but so wonderful that I end up in a place I never dreamed I would, something like when I came to college. Perhaps I will continue on whatever path I intend for myself at this very point in time. Maybe I will be nobody like the man my teachers in high school envisioned me to be when I left their classrooms four years ago. I’ll leave that all up to God, and that’ll let me get back to this paper. Maybe I’ll even think of a great name for next week’s entry. Who knows?

Last 500 metres…keep it strong here, boys…let’s take up the intensity…bring the pain right here!

2010-05-02T13:51:00.001-07:00

Dearest readers, please forgive the rowing metaphors. They really are the only things I know how to write with these days. For the rowers among you, I don’t need to explain myself. For the non-rowers, this basically is the call that is both a boon and a curse. It means that the end is in sight, it’s so close it’s almost palpable. However, it’s also the time when a rower feels that there’s nothing left in his body: an indescribable fire rips through his legs, thousands of blades stab through his chest, all he can hear is the roar of his coxswain demanding he push harder and harder. The oxygen circles are becoming more distinct, and the distance between the head of the rower immediately in front of him is increasingly stretched out, as time and space are at the whim of the rower’s very ability to get oxygen to their depleted body.

Sound like fun? Not to the average person. It’s this part of the race that rowers fight for, to pass through that hole in the wall. Almost like Paul Atreides, the hero from Dune, who learns to pass through his fear, rowers come face to face with their own limits, but break them time and time again. This metaphor for breaking things doesn’t necessarily translate as simply to real life, but this is just about how I feel about the last few weeks of senior year. The end is near, uncomfortably near. On Wednesday, the classes officially rose after Spring Convocation, and I was started on a track to inevitable alumhood. Both speakers, Lee Zalben ’95 and Professor Livingston in CogSci, spoke about not having any idea what they would do after college, which made me feel a lot better about my current situation.

Since completing my thesis roughly two weeks ago, it’s been a real push. Getting motivated to search for jobs is a huge task. Many students here don’t realize that we have to go through the same doors as everyone else, despite coming from one of the nation’s most selective and prestigious schools. The corporate world is one that is gives no quarter, and the metaphor of birth is quite fitting here. At Vassar, we’re warm and comfortable. We’re fed, we’re safe. But come graduation, that uncomfortable and difficult push into the real world, we’re outside of the safety that has been our alma mater. Our ‘soul mother’ will always be there for us, but after graduation, we have to forge ahead to make our names in the exclusive Vassar alumni community.

Bah. Enough of these things. Full of scorpions is my mind, and empty is my stomach. Typical college student, no? But I am drawn again to reflections on transitions. As Daisy Chain co-coordinator, looking at my friends, as they have well become, dressed in their finery reflecting one of the college’s finest traditions, I remembered my days as an usher. The feelings came flooding back as we prepared them to march: I thought about how I would miss my senior friends and how I would feel two years from that day. The day came, and I felt helpless to the forces of time. My own senior Spring Convocation had come too soon. I almost cried. I wasn’t ready to leave this place I have come to call home. I’m not ready. But, like rowing, I have to step up and do what I’m supposed to do: I need to get over myself, get past my head, get past my fears and whatever pain may come, and push through. Just push through.

My senior project is coming along nicely; even though I haven’t been particularly diligent, I’ve been able to pump out some good pages of work with minimal sections for editing. Today, I found out how the Chea/Xie family around the world came upon our surname: a fiefdom in Henan province where there actually exists a Xie City. Once I found out about that, I put that down on my list of places I must absolutely go before I die.

This weekend, we’re off to Whitney Point, NY for the New York State Championships, my second-to-last race. Depending on the weather on Sunday, I have at most, three practices left with the team I love so much. Saturday saw the Men’s 8 enter the Petite finals after beating out RPI in the Men’s Varsity 8, with Marist as the eventual state champions. We had contact on Union for a good part of the race but failed to take them. After a somewhat disheartening race, the lightweight 4 went through to beast it out and take gold. The lightweights are the cream of the men’s team crop, embodying discipline and raw strength despite their scrawniness. The rest of the team envy them for their dedication, but are kind of glad we don’t have to starve ourselves, except for Peter Muhn who rows at 3 seat who’s kind of a bottomless pit. Today was the Petite finals early in the morning, as to beat out the pending thunderstorms. We went out on the water with an attitude to row hard and have fun, and as it was the last time Nick and I would be in the 8 (on top of having it be our last row in the 8 for the rest of season), we wanted to end on a high note.

We got off the line at a 44 on our high 20, settling into a 37/38. We had a lead on the Union boat! They must have been so confused. We kept our half/three-quarter boat lead on Union for the majority of the race, never slipping below a long and solid 36, and once we heard the wily call, “Welcome to the second thousand!” we knew we could take the Union boat. We passed them by the time the 500-metre mark was in sight, and we also began to walk on the Hamilton boat. With 15 strokes to go, we got up to a 38.5 to take Hamilton, eventually beating them by .38 seconds – our 6:29.16 to their 6:29.52. Union must have been confused. They beat us quite soundly yesterday, but today, we blew them out of the water. We got out attitudes right, and we were riding on the high of having our boys win gold. Now, back at Vassar, we seniors are really entering the 500m, and it’s the hardest thing in the world to keep that intensity up.

NEW BLOG TITLE PICTURE! YEAH!

2010-04-22T17:20:00.000-07:00

Just in case you've been following me for the past little bit, I've finally decided to change my blog title picture. This picture is of a bunch of Yoshino Cherry blossoms that we have here on campus, with the smokestack of the Old Laundry Building just blurred out in the background. In the spring, the cherry blossoms open and brighten up the path from the main part of campus down past the ALANA Centre to the Terrace Apartments (senior housing) and Walker Fieldhouse and Fitness Centre. If there is ever a time to visit Vassar, make it in the spring, around the first week of April when the cherry blossoms are out at their best!

"The Beginning of the End" aka "The Countdown" aka...bah, I don't care anymore

2010-04-22T06:16:00.000-07:00

So, the countdown to graduation has officially started. Well, I guess it officially starts from the moment you step foot on your college campus, but the inevitability of it really doesn't hit home until the last few weeks of senior year.

As an athlete, perhaps I am more prone to noticing that the end is near (also, please excuse me from sounding like an Apocalypse prophet throughout this piece). Our first race of the season was held two weeks ago in Camden, NJ. The Knecht Cup was a competition I'd only been to once before, as a novice and as an alternate, and did not row. This time, as a varsity rower and captain, and with three countries' worth of rowing experience behind me, I was finally getting a chance to row. The weather was a little chilly, but otherwise perfect. There was a tailwind on the course, making the warm-up row a little tough at times, but made the actual race piece so much sweeter. My first race was in the heavyweight Varsity 4+ with a great bunch of guys, and my novice cox who had come up the ranks with me. We had a great row, but since we weren't the biggest crew in terms of weight or height, we were muscled out of the semifinals by only 7 seconds. In rowing, seven seconds is a lot, but after the race is done, it does seem like something that could have been doable at the time. The second race was the next day with the Varsity 8+ when, once again, we were muscled out of a medal. Once again, our loss was only by about 8 seconds. For a first race, we put in some good effort, and we could see where we needed to work.

I remembered being a sophomore novice, and looking at the seniors that year and the way they looked at the water. I remembered how they looked when they pushed off the dock, the focus and determination they had to make this last season their best. Graduating with me will be my co-captain, Nick Perry, and I think having two seniors on the team really brings the focus that we want this season to be our absolute best.

Sign two that the end is nigh came this past Monday when I turned in my thesis. After spending the last half semester or so writing my about the British territory of Weihaiwei during November to March 1911, it is finally off my hands. The History majors celebrated our great milestone with cake outside Swift Hall, the History building, and thought about what we would do with our time now that we were finally free.

Unfortunately, I still have one more senior project to go. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am THAT international student. You know, the one that sits at the back of the class and works hard to answer correctly all the time, goes above and beyond the call of academic duty and strives, if for nothing else, to destroy that curve that may or may not exist in class. Yeah, that's me. Just kidding. As I mentioned before, it's my family history, and it's a labour of love. It's actually coming along quite nicely, so I don't think I'll have too much of a problem, other than getting around that fun Classical Chinese that I've been teaching myself. Alas, the joys and pains of a growing brain.

At this point I am being wrenched from my keyboard to sell sweatshirts of the senior class. We ordered some really cool ones incorporating the Vassar crest with Athena and an old really ivy-ish VC logo. I may get one, even though spring makes it tough to wear. Oh well, it's like a winter clothes sale in the spring. They're cheap! Until next time, faithful readers, and I hope that will just be next week!

Senioritis?

2010-03-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

So, it's been a clear two months since my last entry. In entry time, that should have been four entries ago, but it's just the latest one. My deepest apologies, my faithful readers, for not keeping up to task. Ironically, instead of working on my thesis, the very thing that has kept me away from blogging these past two months, I am now writing to procrastinate.

I can't say that anything particularly profound has happened to me over the last two months. Perhaps the most significant, and most scary, has been the fact that I am slowly realizing that I am, bit by bit, being pushed out of this place I have come to call home. I suppose it started with indoor winter training for rowing, the time of the year that no rower wants to face. It calls for 6AM wake-ups, and long mornings in the erg room. Still, it's a great time to build fitness and see gains in strength throughout the winter. It was my last winter season ever, and it was bittersweet. I started to think back to my first winter season in sophomore year, right after I joined up as a novice. It was just as tough, and as my captain, Gregg Orton, had done that year, telling me what I should and shouldn't do and how to erg properly, I took the novices aside and gave them some pointers. I felt like the old veteran, even though I had only been rowing for two years, one and a half of which had been at Vassar.

My thesis, which I wrote so extensively about starting to think about maybe beginning to write perhaps, began to get underway. My original plan was to write one page a day, and that worked out well for the first week or so. Then, things started to fall apart. Work happened. Other commitments got in the way. The one page a day turned into, "I'll make up my page a day for the last 4 days in one day," which just turned into the regular old Sunday procrastination. I ended up with a solid draft of 34 pages, the comments of which were returned to me just under two weeks ago. It's a solid body of work, and something that I am extremely proud of, especially considering that I only really started, in earnest, this semester.

I've also managed to over-commit myself academically again. Along with my thesis, I'm undertaking a Chinese senior project, my last unit before completing the major. I've managed to get a hold of my family history/genealogy, also known as the 謝氏家譜 for those of you who can read Chinese. It documents my family's 30 recorded generations. There were 20 before them, which is wild just thinking about it. It's been a huge piece of work that I started over spring break, and it continues to rob me of sleep.

Speaking of spring break, this marked my second and last spring break training trip to Florida with the rowing team. We made some good progress coming out of the winter season, but we still have a long way to go before our first race at Knecht Cup. On the bright side, we got some great training days. My double partner, freshman Vince Marchetta, and I got some awesome time in the double and even rowed it at our inter-team race on the last day of training. Managing to beat one VIII in the newly-dubbed, "Clarkoff-Tanatee," we were on quite a high for the rest of the day. On our one afternoon off, a few of us headed down to Blue Springs State Park to observe some manatees. There were eight of them chilling in the springs that day, and the actual spring itself was closed off for a few hours, owing to the fact that a calf and his mother decided to dive down into the boil of it for some warmer temperatures. Once they had enough, the spring opened up, and I actually dove down into it. It was my first time in a natural spring, and it's really cool. The water is light and fresh to the taste. You feel absolutely pure in it, and opening your eyes underwater is painless.

Now, back up at Vassar, I've finally found time write all this down. We've just held elections for next year's executive board for the Vassar Boat Club/Rowing Club, whatever we decide to be called. My role as a captain is slowly being phased out, and I am being pushed into the real world. It's quite exciting, but at the same time, a little sad knowing that this is a chapter of my life whose final pages are being written. I hope this one ends well. Stay tuned, and I promise that I'll write often leading up to the ever-looming graduation day.

Home again, home again, jiggedy jig

2010-01-21T20:53:00.000-08:00

So, as you will see at the end of the post, from New York, here's my latest entry, fresh from my desktop.
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Hey all, I’m currently chilling in a snazzy café in Heathrow on to the final leg of my epic journey. It’s been a wild whirlwind of playing historian, and now I feel like a real one, but before I get into the deepness of all, I’ll give you a quick recap of my visit to Bristol.

I left Edinburgh on a blustery evening, got to the airport a good hour and a half before my EasyJet flight, and it turns out, foggy conditions at Bristol delayed my flight a good three and half hours. I can’t say it was particularly convenient, especially as I was supposed to meet some friends down at one of my favourite pubs, but at least it meant that I would get some guaranteed sleep.

Come 1:30AM Friday morning, and I’m finally at my friend’s flat in Bristol. Callie, one of my flatmates from University Hall last year (can you believe it’s been a year since I was at Bristol?) moved right onto the Triangle (go to Bristol, you’ll find out what that is), and after a few hours of checking emails and administrative work, I crashed harder than a four year old after a pound of sugar.

Despite being so tired, the rest of Friday was pretty productive: I met with Dr. Robert Bickers, effectively my mentor in this project and we had a good historians’ chat about our respective research on Weihaiwei. He’s in the middle of writing a book about it, and I shall be keen to get it, but thesis first. The man is amazingly smart and knowledgeable, as are most people who have been in their fields for twenty years and more, but as I’m only twenty-one, the prospect of that scares me a bit. He gave me some good pointers, and then, unfortunately, whisked me out of his office to do some more writing.

From the hallowed bungalows-cum-classrooms of Woodland Road, I wandered up to the Arts and Social Sciences Library (if you’re a new reader, you figure it out) to meet my friend Sasha at a restaurant that opened since I left called Mocha Mocha. Decent food, but I was just about ready to eat anything.

I hopped up to the gym afterwards to prove that I wasn’t a lazy bum, and ran into some of my rowing mates who were giving the novices their second 2k test of their rowing careers. At Bristol, they manage to recruit monsters of 6’ and taller as novices, so a starting split of 1:30 is nowhere out of the ordinary, but they just take it up to 1:43 or something. Wild. I was just settling in for an erg after at least a week, and I definitely felt it. All that matters is that I keep up with the fitness, because this spring season, I’m going to beast it. Nor bars, no limits, just sweat and probably a decent amount of muscle pain. Just the way I like it.

The next day, I also hit the gym, but after a much needed rest of about ten hours. I did some work, before I decided it was far too beautiful a day to stay inside. I met up with some Suyin, another one of my old flatmates, her boyfriend, Adam, and our good friend, Eric. A massive pub burger is always good, especially when it’s the first thing you eat in the morning. Well, noon, but I suppose after al the sitting and reading I’ve been doing, I deserve to call noon “morning.”

Later that night came pub night with the University of Bristol Boat Club boys. We had stayed in touch all through the year, and for me to come back was quite a good excuse to go out for a night on the town. It was great to see them, and we exchanged stories, with good banter and tales of pain from the ergs. Rowing life is never as easy as it seems, no matter where you go.

That’s what great about the sport, though. Everyone is always pushing their body to shave off those extra seconds, or working for that goal split. Working alone will only get you so far, but by working with guys who are always trying to outdo the other will get you miles ahead of where you ever thought you could be. This blog post is brought to you by: Kyle’s Sports Philosophy Corner. Yeah. Moving on…

I left Bristol late Sunday evening after a great dinner at Nando’s with Callie and Sasha, and thanks to Vassar, rode back on the train in first class. Mind you, it wasn’t much different from standard class, but the seats were comfier, it was quieter, and I was alone, save for the other guy at the back of the car. What a life, huh?

Yesterday in London wasn’t particularly eventful: a trip all the way out to Kew Gardens for 9AM, only to find out that the reading rooms are closed on a Monday, so then a 45 minute trek back into the centre of London to the School of Oriental and African Studies to read the North China Herald, a daily paper that covered news from Weihaiwei and the rest of Northern China, printed out of Shanghai. By 4PM, I had quite enough of libraries and I was ready to get out. I ended up running into a Vassar student currently studying abroad at SOAS, Kendra, who hadn’t had a proper English cream tea, despite being in the country for a week. As I am always a sucker for a good cream tea, I offered to find a spot, and away we went. Clotted cream and jam are dangerous things, my friends. I will do almost anything to get a scone covered with them. True, and sad, story.

And now, I find myself about to board a flight back to New York, my friends, my flat and my girlfriend; not to mention my last semester at Vassar. It’s a scary thought that four years ago I was freaking about not knowing where I was going to end up in the coming year, and it’s exactly the same again. Ok, I’m shutting Kyle’s Philosophy Corner down until the next post. Be well, fine readers. Until next time, in New York!

Bonnie Scotland

2010-01-13T01:41:00.000-08:00

Hello again! Don’t you love having mad time just to write and having a decent amount of exciting adventures to write about? I kinda do.

I’ve been in Edinburgh for 3 days so far, well, I guess two full ones, and I have perfected the art of taking night pictures, since that’s the only time I ever get to take pictures. I flew in Sunday evening past, checked into the Budget Backpapers hostel on Cowgate (which is amazingly convenient and central if you’re ever thinking of going to Edinburgh for cheap), and then ran off to get some dinner. The first place I found was a Nepalese place, and it was delicious. I ordered the hottest degree of spiciness and the waiter looked surprised and probably thought I was crazy: “Who’s the kid with the American accent ordering the spiciest sauce? What’s wrong with him?” It actually wasn’t that spicy at all, and now I can say I’ve eaten Nepalese food.

Down to the description of business: reading. As repetitive as it may sound, reading through these manuscripts is like having a really wide window back in time, reading the letters in order around the time of the Chinese Revolution is like reading a novel; I just want to know if the revolutionary forces made it into the next town, or if the government official was protected adequately. My reading room in the National Library of Scotland on George IV Bridge is a nice little place; the only problem is that it lacks windows completely. I’m reading the actual manuscripts of Sir JH Stewart Lockhart, the first civil commissioner of Weihaiwei from 1902 to 1930. In London, I was just reading fun scribbly-scrawly bits of handwriting, which was really cool, but made my eyes hurt. Thankfully there were some telegraphed bits interdispersed between them, so it wasn’t too bad. Most of the papers here are all handwritten, and I’ve gotten pretty good at reading it. It’s still a bit of a pain, though.

I’ve come across all kinds of awesome documents: letters describing the transport of prisoners of war, documents surrounding the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor, the last Emperor of China, and other more mundane things, like government gazettes and schoolboy essays. I’ve put in orders for photocopies like I’m downloading music, or something. I also get really, really excited when a box of manuscripts shows up. It’s a big rush, followed by a few hours of sitting down, hunched over papers from the early twentieth century.

As academic as my trip may seem, the library does close eventually. You may be asking yourself, what does Kyle do when he’s thrown out of his element? My friend, Siwan, who I stayed with in Cardiff over Easter of last year goes to the University of Edinburgh, and we met up for dinner the night after my first full day. My friend, Anna, from Glasgow also came into town for drinks and dinner. We went to Buffalo Grill right on the other side of Bristo Square in the middle of the university, and followed that up by chilling out at The Standing Order, a Wetherspoons in the New Town.

Afterwards, Siwan went out with her friends, but two of her flatmates and I had early days for the next morning, so we finished the night up Edinburgh-style. First stop was McDonald’s for an ice cream, but the ice cream machine had broken down, so then I was off to Burger King for my soft serve fix. Next stop was the chippy’s, or the late night grease pit (in American). Siwan’s flatmate, Sarah, convinced me that I absolutely had to eat a deep-fried Mars bar. It may sound like county fair fare (a doozy, no?), and I know this because before moving in, my folks took me to lunch in Rhinebeck and we heard about the deep-fried Twinkies. Anyway, I got one. It was perfect for the cold Edinburgh weather, and my three-minute walk back to the hostel.

Funny enough, the next morning after ice cream, a steak and a deep-fried Mars bar, I was extremely hungry. I scoured my part of town for a pub that was open at 8:30AM, but I was running out of places to look and I was soon losing hope. Then, I saw a pub door open and a guy directing kegs inside and asked if they were open. I was about to fall over from hunger, and he told me to take a seat. I got myself a full, legitimate Scottish breakfast: an egg, back bacon rasher, sausage, black pudding, a puffed roll and, of course, haggis. The haggis was delicious! I’m a fan of its typical ingredients on their own (I advise you to eat it first before you find out what’s in it if you’re faint of heart) but it was almost like ambrosia. I think I may bring back a can or two.

After my full and hearty breakfast, I sat down for the next few hours, poring over letters and newspapers. Such is the life of a history major: it may not be glamorous, but you do get to travel. Until next time, in Bristol!

Back in the U(ss?)K

2010-01-08T16:38:00.001-08:00

And that was a poor Beatles reference.

So, I know it’s been ages since my last post. Blame it on a series/combination of exams, essays and friends being home over break. But, before I continue apologising, I’d like to wish everybody a prosperous and successful new year.

Ok, cool. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s my life. I had a few friends from Vassar come and visit over the winter holidays; Jeremy, Jonathan, John and Max all flew down for some good times and warm temperatures, which we finished off with an epic New Year’s Eve buffet and watching the Junkanoo parade. After seeing them off, one by one, it was time for me to leave my island for another one: England.

It’s been near a year since I first landed in England, and it’s much, much colder. I remember leaving DC and thinking the temperatures in London were quite friendly, but this time around, I guess I brought the snow from New York. Bummer. I moved quickly over to my friend Tommy’s, who lives in a quaint (all of London is quaint when you’re used to New York) area of town called Exmouth Market, near Farringdon station on the Tube. I was hoping to get some research done, but those plans were soon derailed by inefficient tube service, meaning that I probably wouldn’t get to the archives before closing since they were near an hour away. I decided instead to go to the British Library. I waltzed in with my liberal arts swagger, and lo and behold, I was stopped. I didn’t have a reader’s card. I was directed downstairs to register, but I needed some form of ID that had an address listed. I freaked out. My license didn’t have an address on it, and I hadn’t brought my passport (which was good, because if I made it all the way to the archives, I would have been a sad puppy), which also didn’t have my address, so I decided to do what women do when they’re stressed out: shop. Well, not walk around and shop for ages. I had one thing on my mind to help keep me warm, just a nice scarf. I knew of a shop that sold scarves made of Scottish lambswool and cashmere which are quite nice, as well as surprisingly affordable for college students; besides, I was cold.

Pause, and rewind. You may be wondering, how can I get to go to England, like you, Kyle? Well, it’s simple. Apply for an Evalyn Clark fellowship if you’re a history major. It’s a memorial fellowship that can be used to travel abroad for research. Since my thesis topic is rather obscure, not many sources can be easily found in the US, so I’ve come to England, where the Colonial Office and Foreign Office archives are held, along with Sir James Haldane Lockhart’s papers in Scotland. Even though it’s primarily for my thesis, the archives close at 5PM, giving me a good deal of time to re-explore London, check out Edinburgh while I’m up there, and hopefully not freeze in the process. Continuing…

After my epic purchase of all of eight quid, I made my way home, but not before stopping in at SOAS for a walk around. I tried to go in to see if a professor I was looking for was there, but I needed an ID. So much for being intrepid; the North American fails.

From there I trudged home through the ice and slush and a lightly falling snow. The sun had set at 4, and by 4:30PM it looked like 8. Tom decided to stay in from work on account of being ill, so I hung out with him and waited for his friend, Pierre, and his girlfriend, Jess, to come by for dinner.

Flash to the next day: Vassar swag, check; passport and F-1 form with address, check; potential industriousness, check. I go to the National Archives all the way out at Kew Gardens, get my reader’s card and I’m ready to go. I’d elaborate further on what I did, but reading is about all I got up to. Yeah, for reading! Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high, blah blah you know the deal, right? Oh yeah, I forgot there are kids born in 1991 who are in college now. They wouldn’t understand. What a sad world we live in.

As I write, I’m in the archives, waiting for my next batch of documents to come out of the darkness and into my cubbyhole. Then it’s off again into the wintry darkness and historic coldness that this week has produced. Who says you need to leave the Northeast for crazy cold temperatures?

Stay tuned, next post in Scotland!

Senior Year makes me busy...

2009-11-15T11:39:00.000-08:00

To all my faithful readers, forgive my lack of consistency, something like a jello mold gone wrong, but this semester so far has been a great bunch of ups and downs.

Getting back from October break saw lots of thesis work, and I mean, a lot of thesis work. Whenever I get books in, I just get really excited and work away, until I realize that I have other things due. Then there's the fact that I have to look for jobs, which is going alright-ish. I've gotten in touch with a few people and sent my CV out, but it's better than doing nothing. Hopefully I'll get some leads in the next few weeks so I can have a decent amount of security as to what I'm doing next year. It's also so my mum won't beat me for saying I haven't done anything to look for jobs.

Probably the most stressful part of the semester has been a drama that unfolded in the last week and a half. Our coach sent out an email to the team saying that we would be meeting with the Athletics Directors to discuss the future of the rowing programme. Discuss usually implies that there is a conversation going on. It turns out that the was not a discussion at all, but the AD's were telling us that our varsity status was being revoked and we would be, over the course of the next two years, be transitioned to club status. They claimed this was done for financial reasons, which is legitimate, but they refused to provide hard evidence in terms of spending, budgeting and any other figures in comparison to other teams. It was also a tad ridiculous that we were the only team that was cut, without any other teams taking sacrifices across the board. No rowers, current or alum, were involved in the decision, and nobody was notified in What annoyed me even more is the fact that the Miscellany News, our school newspaper, was notified of the exact situation before the team was.

Immediately after the team meeting with the Athletics Directors and Dean of Planning, Rachel Kitzinger, we mobilized. We contacted alums about the situation and the word spread like wildfire. Current rowers began talking to their friends, facebook statuses were all concerned with how much we love rowing as a sport, and especially rowing for Vassar. Rowing is one of a few sports that is location-specific: you can't row in Death Valley. If you happen to be on the plains of South Dakota (no offense to anyone from South Dakota), you can't very well row on a shallow stream. The best part of Vassar being in the "scenic Hudson valley" is that we have the Hudson. It's a mighty stretch of river that's made me learn to respect it many times over. It's one of the things that makes Vassar special, the fact that we have a river to row on and that we have such beauty around us that many other schools do not.

So, in a form of protest, as well as raising funds and awareness, we are holding a 5-day ergathon. This was a big departure from our 24-hour ergathon, and I think the 5-day ergathon is a lot more fun. We started on Wednesday at noon, and we finish tomorrow at noon. Our goal is for each rower to raise $200 per rower to a team total of $10,000. As of Saturday we had about $3500, and we rowed about 620 miles, roughly the distance from Poughkeepsie to Chicago. Personally, I've rowed roughly 62,000 metres, and I'm trying to meet a personal goal of 100,000 metres. Sounds like a lot, but it adds up pretty quickly. So, that's where I'm off to in a little bit. I can rack up another 21km today and 21km tomorrow, leaving me tired, albeit golden.

The semester's gone suprisingly quickly. It always manages to catch me by surprise how fast time flies around here. The week goes by so slowly, but the months just fly by. I don't want to think about what's going to happen after winter break, since I'm happy with things just the way they are. As much I'm excited to be a senior and in my last few months of school at Vassar, I really just want to stay asleep on our dangerously comfortable living room futon. I feel like I need to leave this conundrum alone for a few months, probably until May, when I actually do have to start getting myself together. The prospect is just so daunting that I can't get it out of my mind. Maybe some good erging will help.

Dusting off the Cobwebs

2009-10-17T08:08:00.000-07:00

And so, as you can tell from my posting schedule, the perils of Senior year have taken their toll on my blogging life. The last month and a bit has been a fun whirlwind, full of all kinds of things, and especially old moldy books from the late nineteenth century, which brings me to my first update: my thesis.

Thesis work just sounds daunting, but in reality, it isn't so daunting as it is frustrating. At least, in my case, where tons of my books are coming from overseas and less than 100 libraries worldwide happen to have copies, it can be a bit of a pain getting a holding of them. I'm writing about the British territory of Weihaiwei in China's Shandong province. Nobody's really ever heard of it outside the Asian/Chinese history field, so I'm pretty honoured that I was introduced to it by Dr. Bickers at Bristol. Since I started requesting materials, 7 or 8 books have been canceled due to their limited availability worldwide. If only I were a PhD or post-doc fellow. Or not. I have gotten some great books that have given me great insight, but only from the British perspective. This is to be expected when most of the local Chinese were illiterate country folk and farmers. We'll see if my quest doesn't try to make me rip out my freshly buzzed hair.

I'm currently in Boston on October break, chilling with some family friends. I should be heading over in a little bit to get some Boston cream pie while making my way over to the Head of the Charles Regatta. The men didn't get a bid this year, which was disappointing since I'd have liked to have row it at least once, but I'm finally in Boston for what hopefully won't be my last time. It's a really nice little place, it kind of reminds me of London a bit, or maybe that was just yesterday with the dreary clouds and what not. It's ridiculously cold here, Thursday it started snowing in Poughkeepsie. Well, it wasn't proper snow, just chunks of ice falling from the sky. I call it Quasimodo snow. It works, right? Anyway, it was really odd since the leaves haven't even changed yet, and for October, it was bloody cold. Oh well, that's what a boy like me leaves the Bahamas for, right?

Sunday should see me up at Mt. Holyoke to chill with Yan Lin, one of my good study abroad friends. I'm pretty excited since we haven't seen each other in a while, and it should be a fun time catching up. Until then, I'm off for a hot brew, some apples and whatever else Boston has to offer. Maybe I'll even have another post ready for the end of the week to make up for the recent lack. Til next time, faithful readers! Oh, and to all my Vassar folk, have a great break!

Back at Vassar again

2009-09-03T18:12:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm sorry for not giving you guys any updates lately. I've been back at Vassar for the last 3 weeks almost, getting readjusted and getting used to the idea that I'm a senior this year. Trippy.

It's amazing odd to be back. Everything seems just like how I saw it in my head while I was away: the green of the library lawn, the gentle afternoon sun reflecting off the surface of sunset lake, the crisp, cool late summer nights and all things Vassar.

Nick, the other men's rowing captain, and I started doing preseason practices to get in shape for an intense fall season. We've been back on the water and nothing beats time on the water. Rowing on my little piece of the Avon at Saltford made me forget how big rivers could be, especially a stretch like the Hudson. The feeling of breaking through the mist on a brisk Poughkeepsie morning is something that I've missed so much, and most people would call me crazy for missing rowing at 6 in the morning, but I have, and it's great to be back.

With senior year comes all the trappings and pomp of it, most especially Convocation. My housemates (two from last year, Reese and Olivia and a new one, Andrew) bought our gowns and caps, and made our way over to the Chapel last Wednesday to be convocated, I guess. It was so surreal to march with the freshmen looking on, when three years ago I was watching the Class of 2007 marching with their robes, not knowing that my time would come sooner than I realized. Sitting among the sea of caps, the tassels hung everywhich way because nobody was sure what side they went on reflected the insecurity that we all have going into this year. Some of us have job offers, but don't know what the world outside Vassar will hold. Some of us have absolutely no idea what we want to do, but have started looking, taking each step with trepidation and reluctance. Some of us are looking at graduate schools but are unsure if we will be accepted, or what we will do once there. We are three years wiser, but I feel that the beginning of this year is like the beginning of twelfth grade, not knowing where to go just yet, but feeling that the year is full of promise.

After Convocation, my house and I went to the top of Main building to participate in a Vassar tradition: the ringing of the bell. Vassar tradition mandates that for juniors to fully rise to become seniors, they have to ring the bell on the top of Main building. After waiting on the fifth floor for near an hour, we finally made it into the core of the building, with permanent marker written on every surface from the generations, marking each passing class down to this one. It was pretty sobering to look down from the top of Main on the residential quad, the main gate, the library and the rolling green hills that surround this place I have come to call home and realize that I only have one short year left here. But going abroad and coming back to realize this short season left will make me cherish it even more than I would have. So, here's to a good year, good friends and good times. Until next time, because I've got practice in the morning.

Better Late than Never...

2009-08-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

So I've finally landed back stateside, and I'm currently chilling near Times Square. It's great to be back in New York and I can't wait to get to Vassar on Thursday. Here's something from a while back, written on 4 August as I waited for my plane back to Hong Kong.

I’ve noticed that I have a horrible habit of writing blog entries in transit, but in some ways, I think that’s quite fitting. This time, I’m sitting in the Beijing Capital Airport waiting for my flight back to Hong Kong for the last chapter of the summer.

The last few weeks of this internship have been very busy, with more contracts and proposals to translate than I ever imagined could have come in. One day I even got the real work experience by having to stay late and come in early to meet a very specific deadline on a contract that was handed to me just before I was supposed to leave. As much as a desk job is a huge drag sometimes, I think I’ll miss the routine of it all: getting up, catch the bus, get on the metro, get on another bus and then start the day. Then do it all over again. I wish I had more energy to get out and around the city, other than the areas than I usually frequented. My entire life was essentially confined to eastern Beijing: the Chaoyang District and the Dongcheng District. Even though my program officially ended yesterday on Monday, I decided that Friday would be my last day, and I had a great time walking slowly, not having anywhere to be in a hurry, and checked out some temples. The Confucius Temple in on Guozijian Street (Guozi Jian indicating its history as a place where the imperial exam for entrance into the civil service was sat) was especially amazing. Overshadowed by it’s neighbour temple, the Yonghegong Lama Temple, which I later went to, the Confucius temple was awesome. After a walk down a shaded street lined with incense merchants, beads, and a few old people just hanging out, I reached the gates of the Confucius temple, called the Master Gate. After paying the 10RMB entrance fee, I walked into the silence of the temple grounds and smelled the summer. You know that smell of wet dirt and thirsty grass, the smell that wafts as the trees pant in the breeze and sweat their various smells into the slightly humid summer air? Yeah, that one. I think in the two hours I was on the temple grounds, I saw no more than 40 people, mainly Chinese tourists, strolling the weathered stone walkway and taking in everything the temple had to offer.

I read an article in the New York Times last night about museums, and how people roll through, snap a few pictures and say that they’ve been as opposed to the tourists of 200 years ago, when, with sketchpad or oil paints in hand, they would sit and set about attempting to capture the scene set before them. I may not have had by oils and sketchpad, but I found it amazing to sit in the shadow of stone tablets that stood for hundred of years and slip into the timelessness of the temple. I tried doing this same thing at the Lama Temple, but found it a little bit harder, since bustling tourists and tourist groups would come through and blow through the exhibition halls faster than the nonexistent wind.

And now I sit once again, with no choice this time but to sit, plus another three hours to sit some more. Sitting is one of those odd things that brings out the quiet in your head, the one that we usually try to find things to cut out. But in the waiting hall of an airport, with countless people passing by both right beside you and on the runways outside, I find it easy to slip into that silence once again as the gentle hum of the turbofans ripple through the air.

It’s been a pretty big summer for quietness: no internet at my flat, no Youtube, no Facebook since the beginning of July and a few train rides to occupy my time. No internet at home is something most people my age would find impossible to deal with, and cut straight to the nearest Starbucks. I talked to my parents probably once a week on the phone for about half an hour, and the rest was intermittently sent emails between projects at work. My connection at work was so slow that my perhaps ten minutes of Facebook were a gigantic luxury, and then it was gone altogether. The quiet that I was afforded was probably some karmic pendulum overswing, from a world of overstimulation to peace. It was like that week trip you take, where for the first 2 days without email you absolutely crave it, then on the third day you just let go and don’t care anymore, then once you get plugged in again, you never get out. I think I’ll probably get like that again, where staying connected is the only way to find out anything about classes, sports meetings and life in general. As I stand up only to begin another round of sitting, maybe I’ll relish my last bit of head-quiet like my last bit of time in Beijing. I’ll sit down, find my happy place and go along with the rest of it.

2009-07-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

Beijing leaves few opportunities to be bored, but during the past few weekends I had the chance to get out into the countryside and see some new places and some old friends.

Three weekends ago, my program director organized a trip for me to go to Chengde, an imperial holiday spot which is a four hour train ride north of Beijing. So, one Friday night turned into a Saturday morning, where I got back to my flat around 4, after a long night of karaoke and off to the station I went. I slept like a baby on Nyquil, despite the ridiculously stiff neck I got once we pulled into the station at Chengde. Since I am the only intern on this program, I went alone, with a tour group of Chinese nationals from all over and a few Singaporeans, my favourite kind of people (thank you, Mr. Brown). The tour was conducted entirely in Chinese, and surprisingly, I understood most of it and even managed to ask a few questions in my sleep-deprived, stiff-necked state. Our trip of the first day took us to the Mountain Resort, which was a pretty sweet spot. It's a huge piece of real estate with temples, villas and even it's own mock up of the Great Wall. Across a modern road is a mock-up of the Potala Palace, which various Emperors would stay in from time to time. It was really interesting to see that on the other side of the country, even in the 18th century, links between Beijing and Tibet were healthy, flourishing and appreciated enough to share Tibetan architecture with the Chinese people who never would have been able to visit, let alone imagine visiting, the land to the West. The next day was spent at the Pu Ning temple, a sprawling beautiful temple nestled in the mountains of Chengde. It just so happened that when we were visiting, there were dignitaries from other monasteries in town performing rites and ceremonies with much pomp, and it was really cool to see that. After lunch, we all boarded a train back to Beijing, and I met up with some friends for a delicious dinner of Beijing-style roast duck.

The next weekend gave me the opportunity to head down to Qingdao, a beautiful coastal city where the Olympic sailing and windsurfing events were held last summer. It is also where Vassar holds their summer language program, at the city university. I had a few friends who taking classes who I hadn't seen since I left Vassar in December, and I needed an excuse to get back down, so I hopped a six-hour bullet train early Friday morning. I got in around 2, hailed a cab and was across the city in half an hour. I was last in Qingdao in 2007, and made great friends with a local martial arts master of Northern Praying Mantis Fist kung fu. One of my best friends, Olivia, went back last summer on a summer program sponsored by Bard College, and she got to see him. Now it was my turn. He had moved from his flat in central Qingdao up to the hill that houses the Qingdao TV tower to be closer to his grandfather and open a martial arts school, in earnest. I called him as soon as I got in, and we arranged to meet the next afternoon.

After meeting up with my friends and dropping my bags, it was time for some SK, or shaokao, which is roast meat on skewers. We walked over to a restaurant I ate at almost every day for lunch two years ago with Olivia and some other students, but one day, service was so slow that we ended up paying only for the dishes that had come, and nothing else, and walked out. Thankfully, they didn't remember that, and didn't spit on our skewers. Usually, the skewers (Chinese: chuan) are decked out with lamb meat sprinkled with chili flakes. We got a good helping of lamb chuan, pork and chicken heart (my favourite), along with Chinese steamed bread that had also been grilled and wiped with chili paste. It was not the best decision, but an experience nonetheless. Of course, the Qingdao experience is not complete without a bottle of the world famous beer, and my summer afternoon was complete.

The next day was the Fourth of July, and Professor Du of the Chinese department organized a beach outing. Conveniently, I forgot my trunks in my flat, so there was no way I was getting my only pair of shorts wet having to meet my master later that afternoon, but I did help Professor Du's kids make a massive sandcastle. We started pretty far up on the beach, then decided to move down to make an avenue for the water coming in, and then make a small pool inside a little sand tower. This would prove tricky working against a tide that was quickly going out. In the end, with about seven other college kids, we made an immense avenue with two towers and a little sand village that measured something near twenty-two paces long. The locals definitely got a kick out of watching the crazy foreigners try build their own architectual wonder out of sand, but in the end, it was all in vain. And not a moment too soon, since I had to get downtown to the TV tower to meet my master.

By the time I reached his martial arts school, he was waiting out front for me. He looked younger and a lot happier, and the place lent itself well to being a school and dorm. On one side of the training yard, you could see the impressive TV tower, and the other side was lush green hillside. In his living room were collages of photos we had taken in 2007: training, eating, singing and of course, toasting with the local fare. Soon, old friends were coming over, and we all headed to dinner. Once we arrived, I was suprised to see another friend who was a chef there, and he whisked us up to a private room, where the dishes he prepared were sent up one after another. Once he joined us, toasts to friendships that crossed oceans, years and generations came just as quickly. Before I knew it, more than six hours had passed since we all got together, but I had to get back to the university to figure out how we would celebrate the Fourth. First order of business, I soon found out, was a stop in Tai Dong, Qingdao's shopping district with an amazing night market to meet up for ice cream and shopping, and then we made our way back to the university.

The rest of the night was spent playing a dice game made famous by the Pirates of the Caribbean movie, where you guess the quantity of a certain face value of dice based on the ones under your cup. I only know the Cantonese name of dai wah sik, but if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean. I also broke out an awesome Beijing snack that I brought along: green bean cakes, which, late at night, really hit the spot.

The next day, I made my way groggily back across town to the train station to catch a 12:30 train, and once I had settled into my seat, I was out again.

This past weekend was a bit of a sag, since I felt I was coming down with something since the middle of last week. Bahamian Independence Day was on Friday, and I took a half-day off at work to be at the Bahamian ambassador's flat for good down home cooking. Lunch was at 1, we ended up leaving around half 8, as any good Bahamian gathering should be: long and full of good conversation. I celebrated not by going out, but by catching an early night and getting something like fourteen hours of sleep. I was much better for it, and it left me in decent enough condition to meet up with a friend who I met last summer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's summer school. She just graduated from Middlebury and is living in this sweet siheyuan (a traditional Beijing home, meaning "four-walled courtyard) with a few foreigners who grew up in Hong Kong. She introduced me to this band called Hanggai, who are Mongolian and mix Western folk rhythms with Mongolian throat-singing and instruments in a really cool way. They were performing at a small, homey venue near Beihai Park, and I'm always down for a live performance. They were really good! So good, in fact, that in between writing a fellowship proposal and sipping coffee at Starbucks (while chilling on the WiFi, of course), I tried to listen to some of their stuff, but the connection still wasn't that good. I'll probably just crash my friend's place and get the music that way. I highly recommend them.

Til next time, faithful readers. May the fog stay here, and far away from you!

2009-06-19T09:50:00.000-07:00

Fun little note before you begin: I'm in Beijing at the moment, and I can't access my blog due to internet restrictions, so I'm having my parents do it from the Bahamas. See how hard I work for you readers? Or not. This week's entry:

So it's Week Number 2 in the awesome city of Beijing. I got in on a rainy Monday last week from Hong Kong, after waiting at the gate at Beijing Capital Aiport for more than two hours, thanks to a woman with an exceptionally high fever and a team of very thorough doctors covered in full body anti-swine flu suits, masks and goggles. I can't say it's been an overwhelmingly fun time, since I haven't gotten to go out much at all, whether with friends or just to walk around. I'm the only intern on this program with WISE Abroad, and the only one in my office under 33. I work in shipping and logistics, which is how things get from manufacturers to their designated port. I've done a lot of reading, a lot of scanning and a lot of translating. There's one proposal that I just finished translating from Chinese to English, and the last five pages have taken me three days to complete. There's so much specific vocabulary that comes with shipping that no Chinese class (unless it was a class on shipping terms) could have prepared me for it.

It is a bit of a drag though. My day starts out at around 6:30, where I grab myself breakfast in a flat that I apparently share with my host brother (who is currently too busy with work, so he lives with his mum, because her place is closer to his office), then I hop a bus around 7:30, and it takes me an hour. If I take the metro, it saves me fifteen minutes, only problem is surviving the bus ride from my flat to the metro stop. Space is a relative term: rush hour in the west doesn't mean that people will be all up in your grits all the time, so when you look down you'll find that there is actually someone's face about an inch away from being pressed up against yours. That's Beijing. Just when it looks like the bus has no more space, somehow, everyone magically fits on and breathes. It's really quite cool, and by cool I mean strangely fascinating.

The weather is another fun bit about this place. When the winds come through, there's no smog. No wind = lots of smog. It was so bad yesterday that I couldn't see the building across the street, and I could barely see the road from where I work on the 17th floor. The forecast holds that next week will be better, and I'm always amused at the air quality index that shows up on the weather forecasts every night.

I'm pretty much alone in this city, where I have a flat to myself, I have a desk to myself (in the corner, with a view when there's no smog), but I've got a host family that cooks dinner for me every night, so that's a nice bit of real human contact, if only for an hour and a half each day. I can't say I'm proud of how much I've navigated the city, since I'm in what one would call the suburbs, and central Beijing isn't walkable like central Hong Kong, London or New York. It's much more spread out. I was going to go walking about last Sunday, but I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out how to use my washer. In the end, I couldn't and resorted to handwashing like a good domestic, but my cooking host family came over and showed me what to do yesterday. Hopefully this weekend isn't spent so productively.

I'm starting to realize the awesomeness that is 5:30 (when I get off work) and the glory of Friday. I've got some friends in town from Hong Kong this weekend, so that's an excuse to check out some of the Beijing relaxation culture in San Li Tun, apparently a pretty popular place with young foreign professionals to grab a bite and a coffee. According to an alum here, the area's also home to the best burgers in the city. That's still a few hours off, but I could most definitely use a good espresso right about now. Til next time.

So this is coming a bit later than I intended...

2009-06-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

So, I wrote this piece on an especially long train from Bristol to London. The route had been diverted, so instead of the usual hour and forty-five minutes, it was almost two hours. Here goes:
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And so it ends. As they say, all good things must come an end, and in my life being an international student, I’ve seen more endings than I’d have liked to. But, without the ending, you can never appreciate what you had. This is just another one of those times.

Roughly four months ago, on this same track in the opposite direction, I was a jet-lagged, sleep-deprived student from Vassar heading to the University of Bristol on a cold January morning. I’ve passed this scene loads of times, going to and from London, Salisbury and Oxford. This time, though, the grass is greener, the sun is brighter, and the water of the Avon doesn’t seem so brown. Not it’s a little green-brownish. This time around, I am a student of the University of Bristol going on another adventure that will land me safely in the loving arms of Poughkeepsie.

It’s been one of the best four months of my life: figuring out what I wanted to cook for dinner every night (which, without fail, was different), helping a model from Singapore test baking recipes late at night, high times at the Coritap, hot chocolate in Clifton, a pitcher of Pimms on a pleasant spring day with a great view of the suspension bridge, and of course, the banter that would go down at Saltford.

I’m really going to miss Bristol and all it has to offer. Most people, when they think of studying abroad in the UK think immediately of London, Oxbridge or St. Andrews, but Bristol is really one of the best kept secrets. There’s a reason Skins is set there, people! If you’re reading this and thinking of studying abroad, Bristol is definitely it. Cheaper than London, with the western countryside at your fingertips. Last weekend, while I should have been studying for my exams, I had Sunday lunch with one of my dad’s lecturers who retired two years ago. My dad studied at Bristol in the mid-70’s, right when the Concord was being designed and built at Bristol. We had lunch in a small village outside Bristol and went for a drive around some of the other villages nestled in the Meldip Hills, The Wells Cathedral, established in 909, and completed in the thirteenth century, and the breathtaking Cheddar Valley, the home of cheddar cheese (no, not Vermont) all in one afternoon. It was amazing and one of the best day trips I’ve ever done.

What’s next for Kyle, you may ask yourself. It’s London for the night and Heathrow tomorrow morning to Hong Kong via Dubai. I really hope the shops in the Dubai airport are open, since I’ll be getting in at midnight and I’ve got three hours to chill there. Then off to my favourite airport. The next morning I head into the mainland to visit my relatives in Toi Seng, or Taishan City. From there, I’ll go see the village where my grandfather was born, and learn some more family history. Then it’s back to Hong Kong, where, two days later, I fly to Beijing to begin my internship, which I still have heard nothing about. For example, I’m assigned a host family, who I have absolutely no idea about, or what I’ll be done exactly at my job.

Then, from there, I’m back to Hong Kong and then back to New York to celebrate my mother’s birthday and move my sister into whatever dorm ResLife slots her into.

I’m quite excited about the prospects that the next year holds. As much as I love Bristol, it’s no Vassar. That’s the fun part about studying abroad: it makes you realize how much you take for granted. In my case, it was the sometimes forty-five minute walk (if there was rain or snow) from my flat into uni, where the library and the gym were, when sometimes I used think the fifteen minute walk to Walker was a big deal, or lugging all your stuff all of five minutes to the library from Jewett.

But then you need these experiences to teach you that sometimes it’s alright to have chickens at your boathouse, just chilling. Or that swans are actually pretty violent when they’re mad, and can be very scary. Or that crossing the Downs alone at night can be alright, if you’re always alert. I wouldn’t advise you to find these out on your own, just take my word for it.

We’ve just passed the white horse of Westbury, which is a massive horse carved by Neolithic people into the side of a hill in Westbury, which is where my train has been diverted through. I just made a mad dash for my camera, cuz on these First Great Western trains, you fly. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel like I’m going anywhere on the Hudson line back up to Po-town. But that’s ok I guess.

My last word of advice before I wrap up this long-winded plea for self pity: study abroad. Get out from where you are, go somewhere crazy. Bristol’s pretty crazy. Watch the Inbetweeners sometime, get a little Mighty Boosh action going on. I won’t say I feel like a Bristolian through and through, but I do feel like a Bristol student. I have prejudices against UWE, because we’re obviously better. I love cider. I think the Union building is ugly and horribly placed. But it’s all these things that come together and make you realize that we do need to go, in the wise words of Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss, “on beyond Zebra.” It’s the only way we’ll ever get anywhere, and hey, it makes for some sweet stories. Til next time, in Asia.
---
And whaddya know, I am in Asia. I've been busy this past week soaking up the greatness that is my favourite city of Hong Kong all over again. I studied here last summer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and it was a load of fun galavanting around with some great friends. In the last two days, I've been to HK Disney and got together with some Vassar pre-frosh who are in the middle of graduation, and my own flesh-and-blood frosh, baby sister Christie. Crystal Tung '11 came along as well, as one of my sweet group of internationals who I hang with here.

One of my flatmates from Bristol, who I also met up with here for coffee, hails from Singapore and just sent me this crazy video of a parody of the Wondergirls' song "Nobody" by a Singaporean personality, Mr. Brown. I've just spent the last 2 hours listening to his crazy webcasts and getting a sweet ab workout. But yeah. I'm Beijing bound tomorrow, and then radio silence until August. The mainland's kind of strict about blogging and what not, so I may or may not have access to you guys. In any case, I'll have people working for me, so to my faithful readers, keep posted and don't forget about me. Peace out.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year?

2009-05-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Finals are here again. Don't you love how the air changes once lectures are over? You can feel the relief for the first day or so, then it changes and you can smell the fear, feel every caffeine-induced twitch, hear every muffled drag of feel across the floor of the flat or the library. It's wonderful.

As my time in Bristol winds down, it all winds down to exams. The history courses I'm taking here are much more different from Vassar in that the contact hours have been much fewer, one two-hour seminar a week per class, and one class that was even two-hours fortnightly (that's every two weeks for people who aren't familiar with the Queen's English), but that there has been much more reading. On average, I've read seven or eight books to prep for each seminar, and it's been great. Unfortunately, you don't get marks for participation here. It's weighed on one exam, and one essay. The essay counts for about 25% of the final mark and the exam counts for 75%. It's a pretty big deal. At Vassar, you rarely have a history course above the first year that will give an exam, but here, exams come standard, no matter what the level. As I write, I am currently procrastinating trying to learn how to revise, all over again, and, you guessed it, it's still wonderful.

So, with two weeks left in the Kingdom and two exams to go, I'm feeling pretty confident that I can somehow motivate myself to revise fairly soon, otherwise, I may feel the pain. The pain of what, you may ask. I, myself, do not even know, nor do I really want to find out, so I probably will get started soon. Or not.

Yesterday, I was supposed to do the exact same thing I planned on doing today: get up early, walk half an hour down into uni, get to the library, take out some books, find a comfy corner and pump out some good notes. That didn't quite happen, as yesterday, my mind was preoccupied with the results of the Vassar rowing team captaincy, which I ran for an was voted captain along with Nick Perry, a teammate who also studied abroad, but last semester and in Ireland. It's gonna be a great year. (My apologies for talking about nothing other than rowing in these posts. It's what I do. My deepest apologies. *Sadface*)

I feel like there was something else really cool I had to talk about. Oh yeah, about yesterday. So the preoccupation was a factor in sending me to the gym and working out far too hard, leaving me absolutely cream-cracker knackered (tired) and therefore unable to revise (or so I tried to convince myself). So, instead of getting books from the library, I decided to get lunch at this place called HK Diner on Park St, which is one of Bristol's main drags for shopping and eating. I got myself a bowl of beef brisket soup, and was thus satisfied. Until I realized I needed a jolt, so off to the coffee shop I went, both for Wi-Fi to see if captains had been announced and to get my fix. Sadly, the shop we went to had no free Wi-Fi, so I sat and pined. By pine I mean study Chinese. But the preoccupation hit me like a scared cow, and I couldn't study anymore. I suggested to my friends that we go watch Star Trek, since the cinema was only around the way in Broadmead, so we did. It was a great life decision. I'm not a huge trekkie, but I've seen enough and know enough about it to appreciate the story. And I'd gladly see it again, and wouldn't mind an entertaining distraction right now. Not that this isn't satisfying or anything, but who would take a blog over flashing lights and explosions? Am I right or am I right?

And with that, I am off to prepare for another British cultural lesson in the form of the Eurovision Song Contest. Apparently, the Brits haven't taken it seriously, and so they've been trounced the last few years. Now, apparently, they're ready to win, with a song and composed by Mr. Andrew Lloyd Webber of West End fame. We shall see if it's up to scratch, shan't we? Til the next time procrastination comes knocking at my door, peace to the outside area (if you didn't catch that, peace out).

Varsity Boat Race and other fun shindiggities

2009-05-03T15:02:00.000-07:00

So yeah. It's been a while, but blame that on the excitement of the end of lectures and the winding down of classes all around. Gotta love it.

A recap of my latest adventures: last Saturday saw the epic Varsity Boat Race regatta between the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, otherwise known as UWE (pr. yoo-wee). Bristol is naturally better than UWE. We are taught this on our first day of living in student housing by all of our flatmates and tutors. This is an accepted fact and tenet of studying at Bristol. Anyway, "Varsity" is just the term applied to the competitions the universities have in the summer term, including rowing, football (erm, soccer), rugby, canoe polo and even ultimate frisbee. The rowing is one of the oldest and most exciting events, as it starts off with the president of the University of Bristol Boat Club slapping the UWE club president in the face with a glove, thereby challenging his club to compete in the Varsity, which takes place on the Bristol Floating Docks.

The Docks have a long history of slave-loading, a short stint at ship assembly, and then the Varsity. The course itself is a 1300m length of water that passes by Isambard Kingdom Brunel's SS Great Britain and ends in front of the Lloyd's TSB building on the Bristol Harbourside. Bristol did really well, winning the Men's 1st and 2nd Novice divisions, Women's 1st VIII and 2nd Senior boat. I will say that Bristol won the Men's 1st Senior VIII (hotly contested by UWE because they are sore losers), but we won the Varsity blade and all was well in the land again.

The highlight of my day, other than taking a picture with the whole UBBC with the Varsity blade, was taking a picture with GB Olympian, Pete Reed. He graduated from UWE, but that's alright, because the man is essentially rowing royalty, rowing in the Oxford Blue boat and then rowing his way to an Olympic gold at Beijing in the Men's coxless IV. He's huge. Oh, and I had to big up the Vassar Rowing, just because I could.

Later that night was the UBBC Varsity Ball, which was my first proper ball in the UK. I didn't have a tux, so instead I managed to get a blue bowtie that I hoped would match my suit. Luckily, it did. It was quite the "to do." It was nice to get together with the entire Boat Club for a nice dinner and a bit of dancing.

It was really cool. If they weren't so expensive, I'd go to more. In fact, I thought the Varsity Ball was so awesome I bought tickets to the History Society Ball last week. You'll hear about that, as well. But yeah. In the spirit of the moment, I made a speech, in a rare and unusually unsolicited sensitive Kyle moment, I toasted the Boat Club. Honestly, had I not rowed at Bristol, my experience would be nowhere as good as if I did. This is probably a fact. Also, this blog wouldn't be as sports-oriented or as exciting. At least, I think it's exciting.

Following the marvelous ball, a fellow exchanger, Yan Lin wanted to make a sweet tofu dish called Ma Po Tofu, with pork mince, chilies, tofu and some other wonderfulness. Here's a picture, please, feel free to drool, because I would too.

On an entirely different note, I think it was around that same week that my younger sister Christie decided on Vassar for sure, so, that means come August, I'll have my parents around to take me to dinner, buy me things and give me lifts to the Galleria, for no reason at all, other than that they'll be around. I mean, I'll also have my fridge stocked full of mad Bahamian food. Honestly, you haven't lived until you've had Bahamian food.

Since I am slightly homesick now, I'll run off some standard Bahamian food, so if you ever happen to end up in Nassautown, you'll know what to get:

Conch: Conch to Bahamians is what shrimp was to Bubba in Forrest Gump. Get where I'm goin?
Fish: Grouper, snapper, turbot, boxfish. All delicious.
Turtle
Peas n' rice
Macaroni (my grandma makes the best macaroni, as a good portion of the Vassar Rugby team can attest to)
Split pea soup
Chicken or sheep tongue souce

Ok. Yeah. Uh huh. Get it? Got it? Good.

The final chapter to this lovely post comes in the form of my friend Jeremy, who came from London for the weekend, so I had an excuse to go about and test myself on Bristol history and culture. Now that I was able to go around with my camera and capture some of Bristol's best tourist spots, you don't even have to leave the comfort of that wooden chair in the Class of 1952Reading Room, or maybe just your own office chair. It's all good.

It's starting to hit me now that I actually have to leave, and the picture of the town (with our Law library being the key feature) and the Clifton Bridge are just some of the places I'll miss the most.

Bristol (as seen from the top of the Durdham downs)

That's the Clifton Suspension brigdge over there. This blog has a funny way of not letting you put pictures on the same line, but that's alright I guess. I'm much too lazy to try harder to make it work.

Anyway, I promise there will be a dedication post for all things Bristolian later. But not now, because it's time to revise.

CARDIFF: Ble mae'r ty bach?

2009-04-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

When I came in from Croatia, I landed so late that I couldn’t get an overnight train or bus back to Bristol. Thankfully, I let my friend, Jeremy, know in advance that I might be in a bit of a pickle, so I was prepared. I caught a late tube train over to his and crashed. He was in Turkey at the time, so his flatmate let me in, and I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.

The next day saw a trip back to dear old Brizzle (aptly named for being arguably the wettest part of England) to dump out week-old Croatia traveling clothes and pack in some fresh clothes for Cardiff, and finally boarding a train for the Welsh capital.

This trip was actually quite cool, since I hadn’t seen my friend I stayed with in near three years. We met on a Global Young Leaders’ Conference (GYLC), one of those cheesy things you do in high school to try to seem cool. I guess they actually do make you pretty cool if you manage to finally see the people you meet on them. Siwan picked me up from the train station with her little sister, and in I jumped into the “Deathmobile.”

I hadn’t really been in a proper house until then, unless you count Bristol house parties and student flats, but Siwan’s house was a really quaint home. Well lived-in, and very cosy. I was given her little sister’s room, all the way up stairs with a great view of the Millennium Stadium silhouetted against the grey Cardiff sky. From that moment on, I wanted really badly to be Welsh. I was treated to Welsh beef for dinner, accompanied by Welsh beer and for dessert, Welsh cheeses and biscuits. If only I could have that every night, although that would make for much more of Kyle than you would see today.

The next day, Siwan took me to the famous Cardiff Castle in the middle of Cardiff, which was built on the foundations of already ruined Roman walls. In the middle of the castle yard was the still-standing shell of a Norman keep from the twelfth century. Cardiff Castle itself was built by a guy called the Marquess of Bute, which basically translates into a member of the gentry so rich, he decided to build himself a castle in the nineteenth century to use rarely as a holiday home. The inside of the Marquess’ house was amazing. It was kept really well, and the walls were intricately painted, the mantles and arches were all worthy of being put in an art museum, but when you keep a house that well, the entire thing is an art museum of sorts.

Following Cardiff Castle came lunch, which, for me, was cawl, a hearty Welsh soup with chunks of lamb, potato, parsnips, carrots and, of course, leeks, the national vegetable of Wales. Siwan’s friend Kate insisted that I get Welsh cakes for dessert, which I did without hesitation, and it was a great life decision.

That night, I had loads of salmon. In Siwan’s house, her dad chases her youngest sister around the house with a whole salmon. Unfortunately, we were too involved in watching Madagascar 2 at the time, so the chase was cut short, but it was still good fun to see a salmon head poked through the door.

Of course, no visit to Cardiff would have been complete without a trip to Cardiff Bay. Thankfully, I brought the Croatian sunshine with me, and combined with the Bahamian sunshine I keep in a small pouch for special occasions, it turned out to be a great day. We started out with an ice cream cone from Cadwallader’s, then a jaunt over to the pier, then to a funky thing called the Light-ship, where I had my first taste of bara brith, or “marbled bread,” which is kind of like a fruit cake, but only with raisins, and buttered. According to Siwan, it wasn’t good, and she promised to take me to St. Fagans, a Welsh outdoor cultural museum (this is coming, do not fear). After the Light-ship, we continued over to The Cylinder, which is a cylindrical UFO-looking visitors’ centre, which gives a great view of the bay and the science behind its maintenance.

In the afternoon, Siwan took me to Roath Park, where she and her friends Penry and Ben came along for an outing in a rowboat. It was really nice to go around and get harassed by seagulls for bread that we soon ran out of, and give Penry no less than six heart attacks. I managed to teach three people how to move a rowboat decently, and there was one point at which Siwan, the lone girl, was rowing around three boys. I think the people who passed us in all the other boats had a pretty good laugh.

So, my trip to St. Fagans Welsh museum. In a word, it was awesome. There were mock-ups of an old Welsh village, an old bakery where I finally got some great bara brith, along with Jelly Babies, an amazing gummy snack. On a related, but still totally random note, as my time in the UK winds down, I’m realizing more and more that I’m going to miss the junk food the most. We walked around to a mock-up of a castle with fishponds in the gardens, a little field with sheep and lambs, and loads of other Welsh things, too many to count, including an exhibit of a house through the ages, which was a typical Welsh house as seen in the Victorian era, the turn of the century, the 1930s, the 1950s and finally the 1980s. It was quite cool to see the progression culturally and historically, and to see that in one space, so much could change over a few years. Also, another highlight of the visit was an old store that was used in one episode of Dr. Who, an awesome British TV show, in front of which a piano was dropped. I thought that was pretty cool, too.

Siwan and I then headed back home for a great Easter roast, with chicken, swede mash, roasted parsnips, boiled cabbage and carrots. I do love a good Sunday roast. Of course, Easter Sunday brought all the wonderfulness that usually comes with it, including my first Cadbury’s Easter egg. For the Americans out there, Cadbury’s is a British chocolatier who puts Hershey’s to shame any day, except for maybe the Special Dark blend. Anyway, Cadbury’s makes these gigantic chocolate eggs (not solid, just a creamy milk chocolate shell) for Easter, and they are ridiculously dangerous. See, they just taste so good that they’re gone before you know it, and there’s also a massive Dairy Milk bar in there, as if they were expecting you to enjoy the egg so much that you’d need more (they guessed correctly) and then you start digging into that. Amazing.

Siwan and her sisters and I spent a pretty decent chunk of the afternoon outside, mainly with me trying to stoke her dad’s outdoor fireplace that would not hold a flame for longer than fifteen minutes, even with Welsh coal thrown in the mix. Easy come and easy go, I guess. After I finally gave up, I retired inside to the Dr. Who Easter special, smoked salmon blinis and a nighttime movie marathon of Borat and Trainspotting.

With Monday came my train back to Bristol, but before that, Siwan’s dad took us out for a spin to some of the local castles. Our first stop was Caerphilly Castle, a fortress built by the Normans to suppress the local Welshmen that later that held gunpowder for the Parliamentarians in the English Civil War. The tower that held the gunpowder had been blown up, taking a chunk out of the side of the tower and causing it to lean precariously but stably for the past 350 years. Next on the tour was Castle Coch, a castle also restored by the Marquess of Bute, just for kicks, or something. Then, home again, home again, jiggedy jig, in more than one way. The train back to Bristol was nice, not only because I sat the right way facing toward where we were going, but because I had time to take in everything that happened on such an awesome weekend. Although it’s a week since I’ve been back, I still think it’d be nice to relive that weekend every now and again, and not only for the good home-cooked food. If there’s one thing that needs to be said, it would be a hearty “Dioch!” to the Lloyd family for putting up with me for a whole four days. Oh, and go to Wales. It’s a happy country.

The Croatian Adventure, Part II

2009-04-07T06:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the radio silence, I've been without wireless (and still am without wireless) so I'm just chilling in my registration building pumping out another post for you, my loyal readers. Let's go back to where I last left off, somewhere in Croatia, I believe:

So scratch the Dubrovnik plan. My friends and I got to Korčula (pr. Kor-chula) from Vela Luka, on the other side of Korčula Island at around 11AM yesterday only to find out that we had missed all forms of transport from Korčula to Dubrovnik.

Our options were to either pay loads to get to Dubrovnik, or cancel our Dubrovnik hostel and spend the day in Korčula town. We decided to stay, and it was a really good decision. The old town was absolutely beautiful, with its stone cathedral spire rising high above the towers and walls, and the shaded and inviting alleyways that zig-zagged their way from one side to the other. After the other guys went back to the hostel that we found after stumbling across a tourist office, I decided to go for a run around the main town centre. It was quite small, and I cleared it pretty quickly, and thought it would be nice to check out some of the residential area. I got some really odd looks as I was going round, probably because there usually aren't many tourists this time of year, along with the fact that probably very few of the few tourists actually bother to exercise while on holiday. Oh well.

Later that night, after a shower and a fluffy warm towel, we made our way over to a restaurant in the old town where it was time for me to get something that used to be alive. I decided to go for the fish, as it was much more affordable than a steak. It was definitely a great decision, as it came with a steaming polenta made of local Croatian spinach that had a great zing to it, along with lots of garlic. The fish wasn't like anything I had eaten before, it was kind of circular with the spine going straight through the middle, but it was delicious, so I wasn't going to complain. Afterwards, the waiter stopped by to ask if I enjoyed the fish. Of course, I said I had, and then he told me to guess what kind of fish it was. Just to mess with him, I guessed shark, and I was right. Shark is delicious.

The next morning, one of the girls travelling with me, Arikka, and I needed to get back to Split in order to get back to Zadar the next day for our flight back to London, so we got an early night, and set off from Korčula harbour at 0600 hours. We got into Split nice and early at 0830 and hung about with a loaf of bread, biscuits and yogurt drink: the perfect Croatian breakfast. I was really grateful it was the slow season, otherwise we never would have made it into a hostel, and we dropped our bags and went off to meet Andrija, a friend of Yasmin (one of the other girls I travelled with), whose party we went to when we were in Split the first time. We spent the rest of the afternoon looking around the shadowed alleys of the old city, and for dinner, found a student canteen where I ate to capacity for only 4 kuna (about 1 USD). It was amazing.

The next day found Arikka and I eating pizza on a roof terrace right before we caught our bus up to Zadar. The 3.5 hour journey went by pretty quickly, and was punctuated by mainly Western pop music from this decade and the last four inbetween Croatian songs, one of which was about drinking, which I guessed from the gradual slurring of words and giggling on the track.

The Ryanair flight back to London was like any other: always on time (despite the apparent messiness at the gate and in the cabin right up to taxiing), extremely well-lit throughout and then the trumpet proclaiming "Another on time flight." I mean, it's what you pay 70 quid for, so I'm not compaining. They got me there and back, and now I'm back in the Kingdom. Stay tuned for my coverage of my Easter weekend in Cardiff, coming soon!

CONGRATULATIONS CHRISTIE!!!!

2009-04-04T12:56:00.000-07:00

Also, before I forget, I just want to make it public that my little sister, Christie, was accepted to Vassar. I am more proud of her than she knows, and I am looking forward to her joining me in the States in the fall, if not on campus. Fingers crossed!

The Croatian Adventure, Part I

2009-04-04T12:18:00.000-07:00

So at the moment, I´m chilling in the sweet seaside town of Split on the Adriatic Sea. Its (pardon my punctuation at the moment, Croatian keyboards are funky) my third day in this great country and boy, has it been a whirlwind three days so far.

After getting into Zadar late Wednesday evening, my companions and I caught a three hour bus to Grabovac, a small town near the Plitvice Lakes National Park, which are absolutely breathtaking. When we got in, the weather was horrible: it was rainy, foggy and all around miserable. My friends and I sat inside all afternoon, napping and eating baguettes from a nearby shop with local cheese. Mind you, it was a sweet way to pass the afternoon, but when there's a whole national park to be seen, its not very satisfying. From the forecasts, I only brought a water resistant shell, and it didnt stand up to the Croatian rain at all.

The next day, we got up early and our host (who spoke no English, only Croatian and German) excitedly drove us to the lakes. There really are no words to describe how beautiful the lakes were from the lookout. As we came to the edge of the gorge cliffs overlooking one of the lower lakes, the morning mist moved slowly across the water issued from a small waterfall from a slightly higher lake. The humidity added a chill to the air, which only added more to the excitement of being the first people in the park for the day. The first lake was like a mirror, and it was almost as though the waterfalls feeding it added seamlessly to it and didnt affect its tranquility at all. After discovering that a normal passageway to a ferry on a higher lake was impassable due to flooding, we found another way around through a path next to a massive waterfall. The whole thing was very Lord of the Rings, but with more Japanese tourists.

We climbed higher and higher, until we were on top of the opposite gorge cliff and, after about an hour, made it to the boat landing. The boat dropped us off next to some peaceful falls, and we began to climb the boardwalk. An hour and a half later, we found the bus stop, but then realized that due to flooding, that bus stop was excluded from the route. We walked back down, covering an hours distance in near half an hour. The ferry carried us over toward the shuttle stop, and we made our way back to the place where our host dropped us off. We headed back to our hostel, picked up our bags and then headed to the bus stop to catch our bus to Split.

One of the more harrowing sights along the way back home from the lakes was a house, not more than 300 metres away from our hostel. It was absolutely gutted: no roof, no windows, the walls were exposed down to the brick below the cement that covered them. Our host explained in broken English that it had been destroyed in a war (which war, I do not know), but it brought the realities of war much closer to home. Its easy to see it on CNN with the voices of a reporter barely masking the gunfire and grenade explosions, but seeing the remnants of a war is more shocking and sobering that one can really imagine or describe. When I saw the Adriatic across from our hostel in Zadar early Thursday morning, it was not at all what I thought of when the word ˝Croatia˝was mentioned to me. However, its one of the great parts of this country that show that where there is life there is hope, and in the midst of war and destruction, there is peace and beauty.

Flash back to our busride through the mountains into Split of slight discomfort and very wet shoes, and I am fast asleep from trekking through lakes and sloshing through wet undergrowth. We got in yesterday evening around seven, and made our way directly to our hostel, which is right outside of the old walled city. We spent most of this morning exploring it, meandering along the harbour embankment and headed to an old cemetery (which had since been demolished) to look out across the Adriatic.

And, perhaps the highlight of the day, was this amazing sky blue yacht that was calling at Split for the Croatia Boat Show. On the way back from the cemetery at sunset, I happened to see the thing at the gas station fuelling up for it's journey back to whatever ridiculously creative utopia wherever, where money grows on trees and the fruits have golden seeds, or something. I even got to touch it. It made me really happy. I think I'm gonna get one someday, and sail it on Sunset Lake for no reason, and that is one of the wonderful things one can do with a Vassar degree, or so I hope.

And, as most good things, this account has come to an end, mainly due to my being in a hostel and having other people waiting to use the net. Part II to come soon, if not in Dubrovnik, then definitely back in Bristol.

Last Head Race: cue "Aww moment"

2009-03-14T15:39:00.000-07:00

Not really, though.

It's been a sweet week, all in all, marred only by the death of my camera. It was kinda trippin' ever since the Inauguration, probably from exposure, but last week it decided to kick the can, like some Brits wish Jane Goody would already. At least I do. Oh, too soon? Nevermind.

This week has also been a bit hectic as I've been trying to finalize plans for my Easter holidays. I'm heading to Amsterdam after chilling in London for a while, then back to Bristol, up to Cardiff, back down to Bristol to fly to Frankfurt, go visit my friend Boris in Mannheim, then to Jersey to visit my awesome flatmate, Suyin. However, getting to Europe requires a Schengen visa, which probably should have been taken care of since last week, but after a run around with a German "consulate" which was down the street from my library, I ended up having to send my passport off to London for visa processing. Maybe I'll just have my children born in Singapore so they won't need to worry about visas when they're off travelling the world. Just a thought.

Anyway, today was my last head race for my time in Bristol, as well as the time my boat raced together. After rowing training in April, we'll be switching out two of our rowers for some of the rowers from the second VIII for regatta season, which is a sprint season with races having a standard length of 2000m. It's guts out, everything on the table, and usually pretty gruesome afterwards, but always a good time.

Today we rowed at Kingston-upon-Thames, right near the Hampton Court Palace, where King Henry VIII reigned from, and the ghosts of his dead wives still haunt the stairwells. It's a grand piece of architecture, but unfortunately, we didn't have time to take it in. We launched from less than 500m off the starting line, but we had gone for a short warmup row a little before. We queued up for the start, the adrenaline started pumping, we turned and we started. We had a bit of trouble finding our flow off the start, but we settled into our rate pretty well at 30 strokes per minute. Within the first 1000m, we overtook the boat that started just before us, and we set off down the course with some really good strokes making some good speed.

It was a really long course, around 5km, snaking around from the Hampton Court Bridge, past the Hampton Court Palace, and finishing past the Kingston Bridge, near the Kingston Rowing Club boathouse. With about 1.5km to go, we fell apart a little bit, and I admit, it was definitely hard work. I slipped twice, missing some precious water, but we managed to get up to a 32/34 over our last 1000m, and really got it together. All in all, I felt it was a good race, not our best, but a good race. You can tell if a rower has really worked hard from the look on his face at the end of a race, and all of our boat had that face.

After trying to sit upright and catch our breath, we had to turn around and paddle the 5km back to our trailer. It was a bit ridiculous, since in the head races here, all the boats launch at the same time, but are sent off at different times, so before the race, you can have an excess of one hundred boats on the river, and it gets a bit messy. On our way back, we saw this firsthand, but not as bad as we saw at Reading Head. The course marked for us on the way back was sticking hard to the banks of the Thames and as far away from the middle of the river, the race course, as possible. It was essentially a limp back rather than a paddle at the speed we were making with the mess of boats, but we made it back in good time, derigged and it was back home to Brizzle.

Now, I should be doing my Chinese homework or focusing on an essay that I've got due, but that's no fun if I did. I'm abroad, and having fun is what it's all about. Well, that, and actually studying. But with such little class contact time, and so much time for independent study and collaboration with classmates, I'm realizing that college isn't about taking classes, as necessary as classes are. It's about the people you meet and the things you learn from them that you take with you. This is where I pull the plug on my philosophical rant. Til next time, probably in London!

Epic Weekend

2009-03-12T05:51:00.000-07:00

So at Bristol, I have a sweet four day weekend, and so I decided to take full advantage of it this past week by doing some travelling. A few of my good Vassar friends are also studying abroad in the kingdom, and are conveniently at universities in the south, meaning they're not far away at all. As Vassar students, and as students in general, we decided to meet up in the sweetest place for any student to go: Oxford, probably the most recognized name in the entire academic world. My friend, Jamie, is study abroad there, and her boyfriend and one of my good friends, Jeremy, is studying at University College of London. As I had no place to stay, I contacted a friend from Singapore, Gerald, who is studing at Oxford's Pembroke College. Sweet place.

I got into Oxford around 4:30PM, just as golden hour was starting, so the photographer in me took over, and I walked all over Oxford taking pictures of things: down the Oxford Canal, past Christ Church College, down to Oxford Castle, through a few churchyards and across the Thames a few times. It's a beautiful place, no wonder so many ideas came from there. It's very conducive to sitting, talking about life and coming to grand realizations. That's the summary of it all, really. Around six, Jeremy came in from London, and we hopped over to a local burrito joint, The Mission, for a burrito with Gerald, who had just finished a tutorial. It was actually my first burrito (kinda weird having my first burrito in England of all places), but it was good. I approve of the burrito. They're good in my book.

Later on, we met up with Jamie at a local pub with a few of her Oxford friends, and since we were all tired from a taxing academic week at some of England's finest universities, we decided to call it a night. Gerald had to hop to London early the next day, so he let me stay in his room undisturbed. The cool thing about the Oxford colleges, using Pembroke as the example, is that they are their own self-contained communities. Only students of that college can come and go using scanners and things, which is pretty funny to see, since you've got this sick technology on the old buildings dating back some 500 years, in some cases.

I spent Friday walking around Oxford, with a guided tour courtesy of Jamie, and we passed some of the great sights, including this great street sign, rep it up to my Vassar folk.

On Saturday, I made my way down to London with Jeremy, because I was crashing at his place for the night. We got in pretty early, around noon, and met up with his mom, who would be in town a few days. We ate lunch in Russell Square, near UCL and SOAS, and then headed back up to Shoot Up Street near the Kilburn tube stop. It's a sweet little area with all this ethnic and cultural mixing, with a Baltic supermarket right next to the Chinese one, restaurants with names like, "African Grill" and "Brazilian Buffet" made the whole street so much richer. I met up with him down in Oxford Circus to chill with some friends and his sister, who had come in from Paris earlier that afternoon, for some chill time before bed.

The next day was race day. I headed down to Putney, as UBBC was boating from just off the Putney Bridge on the iconic Boat Race course. It was crazy to actually be there. Last week, I could say that I just rowed on the same river, but to be on the same stretch of river was really incredible. My boat had two outings, one was just a swing row down to the Hammersmith Bridge, where our race course ended, and then our warmup down past the Chiswick Bridge for the race itself. The Boat Race ends a few metres before you get to the Chiswick Bridge, and the whole time, I was kinda tripped out. My crew were mostly Londoners, as well as schoolboy rowers, so they all knew the course, they raced on the Thames all the time, and so it was no big deal for them. It was really hard keeping my concentration on the way down the row as we passed all the landmarks that you only see in movies like True Blue, but with what little willpower I have, I managed alright.

The start of my race was pretty epic, since when we first boated down toward Chiswick, the sky was blue and there were a few clouds. Mind you, we had to row near 7k to get down to our start, so there was plenty of time for conditions to change. First off, the Thames is a tidal river, making conditions a bit iffy when the tide changes. It just so happened we were racing when the tide was going out, making current a bit tricky to handle. As we approached Chiswick bridge to row past and turn, it began to rain. Not your drizzly typical English rain, I'm talkin Noah rain. Since it was sunny when we boated, nobody brought any shell with them, so we were literally chilling in race kit, getting soaked to the bone. I could feel the water slowly running down my back as it soaked into my longsleeve top, making things a bit uncomfortable, but in a race, you've got no time to feel uncomfortable, you just row and row hard. The wind added to the epicness, as the rain was blown across the boat. As we started down the course, it began to thunder, which was really, really epic. Every clap made the race seem more legendary, and we pushed even harder. Our base rate was supposed to be at a 30, but we managed to crank out a 32 straight from the start and overtook a boat within our first 2k, keeping them behind us the whole time, and we made some sweet distance on them for the remainder. The wind and the current made for an interesting mix of conditions, but we managed to plow through it all. Running back to our van for dry clothes and sheltering/shivering in the HSBC Rowing Club's boathouse until we got on enough layers to shiver mildly instead of feverishly. Then it was time to derig and go all the way back home to Brizzle.

Some other side notes from the day, I saw the Oxford and Cambridge rowing club vans and took pictures. I wet myself a little, I think. Also, once we were ready to derig our boat, the weather was nice again. It was a bit frustrating that the sun couldn't hold out for a few more minutes as it would have been nice to race in the sun, but hey, it's an outdoor sport. Occupational risk. It happens.

Til next time dudes.

First Race

2009-02-28T08:58:00.000-08:00

Hey all, so as promised here's the write-up of today's goings-on. We left Bristol at around 6.55 this morning to head over to Reading, which is about 80 miles away, which, from where we are straight across is half-way across the country. I knocked out right away and woke up right before we got into Reading proper.

We pulled up onto a curb in a sweet little suburban area and hopped out to find the trailer, which was chilling on a corner not too far away. Our club president, Adam, rolled up in his Land Rover and towed it over to a grassy spot near the bank of the Thames. The Thames, for non-rower folk, is a pretty legendary river. It flows through London and there is a particularly famous stretch on which Oxford and Cambridge beast it out in their annual Boat Race. Anyway, there were the classic English river barges lining the banks, with picturesque balconied bungalows stretching for a good length of the river.

Enough of the airy-fairy details, because just as the trailer was parked, we found out that we had roughly half an hour to rig our boat. Rigging is a fairly efficient process when you have enough wrenches, in American, spanners and rigger-jiggers in English. However, we didn't have many to go around, so it was a bit hectic trying to arrange riggers and screw them all securely into place. I was presented with a third-hand Bristol rowing kit, and now I was officially a Bristol rower.

We had a rushed warm-up and then walked our boat down to the bank and set off on our way to the start. It was a really, really nice stretch of river: calm and very little current. We passed under a bridge right after we passed the finsh mark (going the opposite direction) and made our way up past a few little islands. We had a great warm-up pace going, moving through the boat with a great connection, then we hit a huge traffic jam of boats a few strokes past the 2000 metre mark of the 4.6km course. See, the divisions weren't organized well, or at least the organization to get the boats to the start wasn't there, so all these boats were just jammed on a narrow stretch of river. We ended up inching our way through a jumble of school VIIIs, master's VIIIs and other universities, and one particularly impressive octuple (sculling VIII) full of kids, but was a bit annoying. After ages of waiting, we finally made it to the start, but didn't quite realize it until the official called for us to turn around and start.

We turned, made some great strokes, and we were off. It was amazingly smooth. On Wednesday we had done a head race style piece at our course at Saltford at a 30-32 stroke rating (strokes per minute), and it wasn't bad, but this was really, really good. We kept on at a 30 stroke rating for the first two and a half kilometres, and managed to pass one of the boats from the Imperial College in London. We kept it up all the way down the course, and managed to hit a 31.5 stroke rating in our last 1000 metres. It was the best rowing I'd ever been a part of. We moved quickly and smoothly, no rush, everyone caught and locked in the water, and there was excellent send of the boat. Each stroke came more speed and length, and once we passed the boat from Imperial, they just became smaller and smaller, until we rounded the bend and couldn't see them anymore.

As always, I wore my red headband for good luck. Back at Vassar, before one of our big races, I think it was our Liberty Leagues race, I put it on, and we rowed a great course. The tradition stuck, and now I've brought it here. I also shaved my head yesterday, just because my hair was getting to be a bit of a bother, and I prefer a monk cut anyway. It calls for less maintenance. And so that was my Saturday. I'm off to dinner now with a friend at Nando's, this sweet Portuguese-style chicken restaurant. If you're ever in England/Australia (according to my Australian sources, they have it there too), look for one, and eat up. It's absolutely delicious.

University of Bristol Boat Club 3rd VIII (L-R: Stuart, Adam, Alex, Me, Luke, Ivan, Lloyd and Tristan, and our cox, Jenny in the front)

To the 3rd VIII and Jenny, cheers for a great race and great rowing today. 3rd VIII, no faff.

UPDATE: 5th of 37 crews in the S4 division. Sweeeeeeeet.

The Culinary Adventures of Kyle T. Chea, esq.

2009-02-27T10:42:00.000-08:00

So, realizing that I'm on the Vassar homepage, I figured I'd write up a little "blogette" to give you nice people to look at while you wait for tomorrow's post (which will involve me rowing in my first head race with the University of Bristol Boat Club).

Little bit of background: I live in self-catered housing, which means no meal plan for Kyle. I cook my own food every day, which is usually a mixup of whatever looks interesting in Sainsbury's (the grocery store down the way) and what I've got lying around in my shelf of the fridge. Here are a few things I've been so proud of that I've had to take pictures of them.

Here, we've got eggplant, or aubergine (pr. o-ber-zheen). Don't ask me how it got that name. I get funny looks of confusing and xenophobia whenever I say "eggplant," but it's always a good time. So, what I've done here is cube the aubergine, curry it, and sautee it in coconut milk with onions and garlic. Then I sliced up another one and grilled the slices with basil, salt, black pepper and olive oil drizzled on top. But when I went to put them all together, I realized I didn't have enough space on my plate, hence the pileage.

For my next trick, I put out some char siu （叉烧） pork, a well-liked Cantonese dish. My friend, Jess, from Australia stopped in Bristol on her travels round the world, and I made it for her. I couldn't be bothered to cook veggies as well, as we had just been in Bath for cream tea (for those who don't know, tea with scones, with a side of clotted cream and jam), so we were a bit full, but still hungry enough to enjoy my homemade char siu.

On a much more random side note, I just found out how to put pictures up on these things, which is why I am excitedly writing a new post now, eager to try out this new-fangled thingamajiggy.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to photograph tonight's dinner, which was fish in sweet chili sauce, garnished with ginger, garlic and scallions. Oh well, next time. Keep posted for tomorrow's post-race post! (Yes, I know I wrote all those "post" words. Thank you.)

Bristol Snow

2009-02-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

So you may have seen all the crazy news reports of snow in London basically shutting the city down by now. That was us yesterday. Bristol is a fairly large city to the southwest of London, home to the University of Bristol where the Concorde was designed and constructed, where Rolls-Royce has a huge firm, and where Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and built a massive Clifton Suspension Bridge that spans more than 200 feet above the Avon Gorge, and is right down the road from me.

I've been in Bristol ever since my last post, but this time I am well-rested, well over jetlag and a bunch of other things. I've moved into self-catered housing, meaning I'm not on a meal plan, which is about a 45 minute walk from the main university precinct. It's a picturesque walk: as I walk up the hill to one of the older residences (Wills Hall where they still dress in robes for Friday night dinner), I can practically see the entire village of Stoke Bishop. Over the hill, past Wills, is a large field called the Downs. These extend all the way to the Avon Gorge, where the Avon river cuts deeply through the rocks and snakes its way past the Bristol docks. This is about a 15 minute walk across the Downs. Then it's down Blackboy Hill, along Whiteladies Road and then to wherever I need to go. So there you go, a two second geography lesson of the greater Bristol area.

I'm in three classes at the moment: The Myth & Reality of Mao Zedong, British Political Culture and Communication, and Contemporary Japanese Society. I'll be working on taking a Chinese course one-on-one with the prof, since Vassar has prepared me way too well to take Chinese here. Also, it's because nobody here signed up for the level I elected to take. Oh well.

On an extracurricular note, I've been rowing with the University rowing team, and it's been great. They're a great group of guys, and I'm in the 3rd VIII. Basically, the 1st VIII is a bunch of guys bred for rowing. They're all tall, lanky muscular beasts. Everything the ideal rower should be. Then you have the 2nd VIII, which are the guys which are also ridiculously good. Then you have the 3rd VIII, which looks like the rowing I'm used to. A bunch of average height guys who work hard at what they do, focus, and try to make up for what nature hasn't given them with crazy dedication (Third Eight, no faff!) Faff, for you Americans out there, means we don't mess around, in the most PG of terms.

Well, kids, it's off to start my reading, where here, there are no texts that you pick up at the beginning of term. You hop to the library after receiving your weekly readings, find em, check em out, and trek back to your room with them, and cuddle in for a good time. I kinda like that system. It saves money, and everyone reads something different. However, you're reading whole books instead of articles and excerpts, which I much prefer reading if I must read often. Just the way the cookie...err, crumpet, crumbles I suppose. Fair ways til next time.

Inauguration 2009

2009-01-22T13:42:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I’m speeding on a train from London’s Paddington Station to Bristol Temple Meads, the station near the University of Bristol, where I will be spending my semester studying abroad. The past few days have been quite a blur, but a very exciting, sleep-deprived blur.

The blurrage started around 11:30PM on the night of 16 January when I landed in Washington DC’s Reagan National Airport to overnight at a hotel before registering for a conference around the inauguration. It was one of those GYLC/CYLC/NYLF shoot-offs. The next day, while chilling in the airport I ran into Mark, one of my good friends from Vassar who I didn’t expect to be at the conference, but I yelled over to him, and it turned out we were staying at the same hotel, and later, the same floor. We got to the hotel (Omni Shoreham, on Calvert and 24^th) and then headed down to the Marriot across the street for “heavy hors d’oveurs.” It was a righteous mess. Five thousand kids in the University conference alone (there was also a youth conference and a high school conference, each with five thousand participants as well) made for only one plate of food after not eating at all for the entire day. Mind you, our keynote for the night, Luke Russert, is a cool dude, so that kinda made up for it. Following the address, I ran into one of my childhood friends from home, who introduced me to some of his good friends from his GYLC conference. We then consolidated our group of friends, making about a standard seven of us, and we hung out together for the rest of the conference.

The next day was the big kick-off to the inaugural ceremonies down on the National Mall. We wanted to skip the speaker before lunch so we could head down and get a spot, but one of our group (cough cough Sayuri cough) decided to stay and hear him. So we stayed and after a bunch of other inconveniences, we finally got started on our way down to the mall, and we managed to catch the last bit of the concert. So, to console ourselves, we rode the carousel near the Smithsonian. It worked out pretty well I’d say.

The next day was spent in preparation for the night, because our group of seven was going to head down to the Mall and camp out til inauguration time. DISCLAIMER: To the readers out there who ever get invited to a Presidential Inaugural Conference (especially UPIC), don’t go. We didn’t get any spot reserved for us on the Mall, despite paying near $3000USD. All they said was, don’t bring this, bring that, dress warmly, good luck. So, with this in mind, my friends and I went forth into the night. We got on the Mall at 2AM, but one of our friends thought it was way too easy to get on without security and what not, so she went to check in. We later found out there was a security checkpoint, so we hiked another 20 minutes to get there.

Now, picture this: You are crammed into an underpass with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people waiting to see President Obama’s swearing in. There are no bathrooms within a fifteen minute walk outside the checkpoint because they’re all within the secured inauguration perimiter. For about four and a half hours, you don’t move more than three feet forward toward the checkpoint gates. The temperature hovers around negative 17 celsius, and even after sunrise, you can barely feel your digits. However, there’s a sense of grand anticipation and excitement in the air, punctuated by chants of “O-BA-MA!,” the singing of the Star Spangled Banner and Lean on Me.

The historical and cultural significance of standing in line with all those thousands of people finally hit home at some point at around 5 or 6AM when all of a sudden, quietly and humbly, floated the call, “Lift evr’y voice and sing, til earth and heaven ring, ring with the harmonies of liberty!” In this underpass, there were two groups of us, separated by a road, and there was a very lively group of black Obama supporters that kept their energy all through the night, and when they heard the words, their tone changed. I understood why it was called ‘black national anthem’ for that very reason that night. We all stood at attention, and those who knew the words, including myself, sang out first softly, but growing in confidence and strength, despite the demanding range the song presents. Even people who didn’t know the words sensed something in the words and the atmosphere and the rowdiness temporarily subsided.

It was in those few moments, while we all joined in ‘the black national anthem’ in one way or the other that the momentousness of the day sunk in. Even though I hadn’t been able to see my toes for a few hours at that point, and even though my fingers were also going at that point, I felt a strange warmness that came with the solidarity we showed in support of the new President and the triumph it represented for the black community.

Then, I realized that I had to pee like no other. So I found a bottle, well, actually I begged and pleaded with my friend who was finishing her bottle of Fiji who finally gave it to me. After relieving myself, I began to get cold again. Anyway, fast forward to finally getting through the security barrier and near the start of the parade route, we finally made it through around 7:30AM. We sat down on the sidewalk and put down our blankets and tried to get warm again. We had gone to one of the thousands or porta-potties that line the parade route and were ready to hunker down for another few hours. We decided not to go back to the Mall, since the chances of us getting out in order to get to our conference gala were very slim, but then being exposed to the elements all night finally took its toll. We couldn’t take it anymore, so we decided to up and leave to go to one of the indoor locations the conference had reserved. We had about an hour and a half left to go, but in the end, I feel like it was a good decision. We were there, and we saw the armed forces forming the honour guard with the different police and state trooper contingents.

From the National Press Club in E and 14^th, at some time around noon, we watch Barack Hussein Obama take the Oath of Office to become President. Mind you, he had officially been President for a few minutes by that point, but watching him repeat the oath sealed the deal. At the end of the ceremony, even I was caught up in the emotion that transcended nations and stood up to sing the Star Spangled Banner with an Egyptian, Japanese-Canadian citizen, another Bahamian and a room full of Americans. It was a great moment.

Fast forward to now, after a six-hour transatlantic flight, I’m far from well rested, but I’m speeding down the track on a Bristol bound train, with gray skies and rolling hills around me. Oh, and there are some houses too. I’ll be there soon, and my computer will probably be dead by then, so I’m signing off for now. Until next time, kids.

Back Up your Work

2008-12-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

So it's been a while since my last entry, mainly because my hard drive crashed. I remember it clearly, 4 December, at around 9:20 PM, when my computer betrayed me. I lost all my work I had done on two final papers worth huge chunks of my grade, and nearly 30 pages of notes. Anyway, a few emails and extensions and a professor's new baby (Congratulations again, Professor Murdoch!), I finally finished and handed them it.

Then comes the wonderful time known as finals week, in earnest. A time marked by the awesome Primal Scream, which is when we all go out on the Quad the midnight before finals begin and scream away the stress that accumulated over the past weeks, and maybe even months. It's basically just legitimized insanity, at least for a few minutes. So, after a Chinese exam and one of my Palestine-Israel Conflict class (on my birthday, which shaped up to be an awesome birthday present), the pain and the agony was over.

Anyway, so as I began to write this latest entry, I'm in the city with my cousin down in SoHo, just chilling. I've finished all my preparations to go abroad: I packed all my stuff away into storage on Thursday, dropped off keys, library books, my basil plant, and everything else that needs looking after, and left this morning. It's odd to think that I won't be back at Vassar for another six months, but at the same time it's kind of exciting. I've been away for summer, doing crazy things in crazy places, but I think this will probably trump all of them. Mind you, rediscovering my family roots in rural South China was fairly awesome, and I think that's the only exception.

As I look back on the semester, it's been a great one, full of every kind of emotion there is. Well, I'm no girl (my suitemates would probably hit me at this point, along with every Vassar woman) but I've gotta say it's been tough. Between surviving papers and stress, pulling crazy hours in the library, and running off pure tea, I'm still around, and it feels pretty good.

This entry has been dragged out over a few days since I'm not really in student mode, therefore my word per minute count has dropped severely. I'm back at home in the Bahamas now, chilling in shorts, talking to my friends who are trapped in New England under a few feet of snow. Man, small town island life sucks, but it's better than being in New England this time of year. Oh well.

So, to all of you that are still trapped in the great north, my sympathies. To everyone else, Merry Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa and whatever else may happen to sideline you in terms of holidays. Happy new year to all and to all a good night!

They say he changes when the sun goes down...at 4:30PM (FIRST DAY OF SNOW!)

2008-11-21T14:06:00.000-08:00

That's the fun thing about Poughkeepsie. Well, being in New York state in general. Once daylight savings ends, say hello to SAD. Well, maybe. I kinda got it, but thankfully, the library basement is shut off enough from the rest of the world that I can hop down there before the sun goes down, be surrounded by some sweet artificial light and then come up at 5, even though it looks like 10PM by that point, and continue with my day like nothing ever happened.

Even more fun about the weekend, when you wake up mad late, you only get to enjoy the daylight for about 4 hours max. But that's cool. This weekend was particularly enjoyable thanks to Turkey Day (WOOOOOOOO FOOD). I've had a good bunch of interesting Thanksgiving experiences since I got to Vassar. My freshman year, some other international kids and I went with the Director of International Services, Andrew Meade, to his house where he and his wife, kids and friends treated us to a dinner out of this world. I think I was full until noon the next day. It was THAT good.

Last year, some other kids and I who live far away ended up staying in the dorm, Jewett. Thankfully, Jewett has the nicest kitchen out of any of the dorms on campus, and boy did we abuse having it. We got a 25lb. turkey, 4 or 5 cakes, 3 pies, and all the traditional American fixings for a good, nap-inducing Thanksgiving. It was great. There were about 12 of us and we started eating at 6, finished at 8, we were asleep by 9. I woke up and didn't know that it was 1AM. Good times.

This year, I went down to Manhattan with two of my good friends, Guillermo and Arjun. Gui's from Chiapas (in the south of Mexico), but lived a good deal in Mexico City. Arjun is from Bombay, which made the weekend much more meaningful, since Arjun lives across the street from one of the cafes that were attacked by the terrorists these past few days. Every now and again, he'd get a phone call from parents or relatives just letting him know they were alright. I can't imagine what that would be like. When it ended this morning, his folks were all good, although he did lose a few teachers from high school who happened to be in the area when the attacks began. I checked in with my other friends, Janeen (who also happens to be Gui's girlfriend) and Aniruddh, an investment banker who graduated last year, and they were all good.

Aside from that, it was a good break. I met up with a girl who was my partner in the Model United Nations class I took my freshman year who now studies at Fordham Law School, and I went to her apartment for dinner with one of her hallmates. It was excellent. She made a delicious turkey and to end it all, a triple chocolate pumpkin pie. It was absolutely lethal. Although, this year, I didn't pass out. We just ended up watching the Incredibles on TV and looking at failblog.org during the commercial breaks like good students.

We drove back to school yesterday with Gui's dad, since Gui got a new TV for his room, which is ridiculously sweet. To top it all off, we went to Thai Spice, the new Thai joint on Raymond Avenue, for lunch. Then the library for an afternoon of productivity. But I was wrong.

Turns out the library closed at 5, instead of 10PM like it usually does on weekends. Not like I would know that or anything, but I'm just saying. I only got about an hour of work in, and then decided to go erg with Peter, my erging buddy, and Lola, a coxswain for the women's team. It was a good time of sweat and bhangra mashups. It's the best for erging if you need some good music tips.

Now it's back in the library, and I've wasted enough time. I should probably get some work done.

Sweeeeeeeeeet.

Kyle here, nice to meet you!

2008-11-14T14:15:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, Kyle here. Wow, so I'm really new to this. I was approached last week by the Vassar College Relations Department asking me to blog for them. I have been a blogger, nor would I ever think that I would be a blogger. Kinda sounds and looks like booger, but that's ok too. Hopefully by reading this, you guys'll get a sweet taste of the Vassar life I live, and all the fun stuff that comes along with it.

So, by now, you know my name is Kyle. This is just like the first day of class, just online. And alone. So anyways, I'm a junior from Nassau, Bahamas (best city in the whole wide, wide world!), a History and Chinese double major, formerly on a pre-med track, and I live with three women in a suite in Jewett, one of whom (props to Reese Wong) helped me come up with the name for this blog. It's a wonderful life, so far. I'm learning how to be a good man, vacuuming on Fridays, washing the dishes, picking up my socks from around the common room, all the essentials.

So about some of my Vassar activities, I've always been into athletics since I arrived, starting with rugby in freshman year, then moving to squash for a short stint and then rowing. Rowing's basically stolen my heart, and I don't think I'll get it back, or want to. It's been a lot of fun bonding with the guys in my boat, as well as the women's team, and it helps make me a better rower. Plus, it keeps you whipped in shape, which is handy when you live in eternal vacation beach land.

Speaking of rowing, these past two days have been crazy. We had our first ergathon of the year to buy new oars, which involves hopping on an ergo machine, the rowing machines that you may or may not have in your local gym, and cranking it out in half hour shifts. I had a shift at 5:30AM to 6 with my good friend, Peter, and then later at 11AM to noon. The noon shift was absolutely insane. I beasted it out, and at the end of it, I had to wring out my shirt cuz it was so wet. Forgive me for that lovely image, but now you know why the blog name is "Funky Fresh." Sometimes I'm funky, like really REALLY funky, but other times I'm fresh and fly.

Just ask my suitemates. They made me get a fashion sense this year because they figured if they're gonna constantly be seen with me in public, I might at well at least coordinate.

And now, the hour of erging, along with a lazy Friday evening at Vassar takes its toll on my stomach. I'm headed off to one of the nearby Vietnamese joints, Miss Saigon, for a big steaming bowl of pho noodles.

So now you know me. Or basically know me. Sports, food, friends and a good time. There's also a bit of schoolwork thrown in the mix as well, but you'll hear about that later. It's the weekend and it's time to relax. It was nice to meet you, and I'll see you later!