US College Sports - uniquely American

US college sports – there’s nothing like it in any other country. I realized this and how much I missed it when I was living abroad. On Saturdays, all across America, friends and strangers gather for a day of barbeques, beer, and ‘trash talking’ over multiple televisions blaring different college games. Yesterday was the official start of the college sports season with the first games of American football. I spent the day with friends, first at a bar to watch Cal (University of California, Berkeley) play Tennessee and UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) play Utah and later at a barbeque to watch USC play Arkansas. Both Cal and UCLA were my alma maters. UCLA won (31-10) but unfortunately Cal was beaten (18-35).



Sports are undeniably one of the strongest defining cultural elements of America. It permeates the weekend fabric of many Americans from the days when s/he is in elementary school to the rest of his/her life. I credit much of America’s competitive nature to this phenomenon. I’ve known a number of non-Americans over the last few years and it seems no other country has a sports culture as in-grained as America’s. Here in the states, kids are encouraged to play pee-wee football, little league baseball, or soccer as soon as they can either run, hit, or kick. From elementary school, we are later encouraged to play high school varsity sports and for those few that have the talent, are later recruited to play and attend colleges/universities with sports scholarships. At the college/university age, those that don’t play sports adopt our college teams as an extension of ourselves. After graduation, we still follow and root for our alma maters. This life-long love affair with sports and the spirit of competition, whether in individual sports or collectively in teams, helps define much of the weekend life here. Even in the ‘off-season’ where one’s favorite sport take a hiatus, a fair amount of us still participate by playing after work or on the weekends with friends, neighbors, and even strangers. I play about two or three team sports a week now… it’s a great way to stay active and a perfect excuse to have a beer afterwards.

Oh, incidentally, on a sport related note, the great Andre Agassi officially retired from tennis today after 21 years. He was beaten by Benajamin Becker (no relation to Boris) in the 3^rd round of the US Open in Flushing Meadows, NY. I did catch the game on TV. I will always have one memory of him and Steffi Graf... back in winter of 2001, I was with some friends at a sushi restaurant in the Rockridge area of Oakland eating at one of the tables when in comes this tall, striking blonde who instantly caught my attention. When after a few seconds, it dawned on me that it was Steffi, I looked at the guy next to her and noticed it was Andre! Wow! I was speechless. They took their seat at the sushi bar and had a quiet meal... everyone at the restaurant were respectful and no one bothered them during their entire meal.

The fun and perils of commuting in Shanghai

Ever wonder what it's like commuting on the streets of Shanghai? Want a sense of the everyday Chinese? Well, check out my friend's video blog for some fun, sometimes hair-raising videos of what you can expect to see and encounter while traveling through the bustling city of Shanghai. With the unmistakeable eye for the wacky and a British sense of 'humour', I think you'll quite enjoy his 'on the ground' view of Shanghai life.

The Crash Test Dummy
Shanghai by the seat of your pants - The Crash Test Dummy vlogs from his bicycle while commuting to work in Shanghai.

Here's a sampling... titled 'Left is right, right?'

Problems with new beta version of Blogger and IE

For those of you visiting this site with Internet Explorer and can't open the 'My Travel Pictures Map', there seems to be something wrong with either Internet Explorer or with this new beta version of Blogger. I will have to submit the problem to either Flickrmap.com and to Blogger.com to see if they can fix the problem (besides the map issue, the formatting of the page is a bit screwy too).

In the meantime, the quick solution is to use Firefox. Click the Firefox w/ Google icon on the left under 'My Travel Pictures Map' to sign up if you don't have Firefox already. According to many in the tech industry, Firefox is a far better and safer browser anyways. It is my default browser and everything on my Blog works and looks fine, including the map! Thanks.

California passes strictest environmental law in the U.S.

This morning, I heard a very encouraging news piece about the environment. NPR (National Public Radio) and numerous other sources reported that our CA state legistlature and the governor... yes, that governor (Arnold Schwarzenegger) had passed one of the strictest laws in the country to limit greenhouse gas emissions. The goal is to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of about 25 percent. This is incredibly encouraging for the direction of the country since California has always been a leader in environment laws and other states have historically followed California's lead. It's quite incredible to realize that California would be the 8th largest country in the world if it was a separate country. Thus, it's impact can be substantial not only for the US but the rest of the world.

Now, some of you may ask why I am writing about this in a 'travel' blog. Good question. The answer actually has a lot to do with my experiences while living abroad in Beijing. Earlier this week, I recounted the amusing story of how a sandstorm almost sidetracked a trip I took on the Old Silk Road (see here). Although at the time, we were near the edge of one of China's biggest deserts, sandstorms are a perennial problem in many western parts of China. Because of years of unchecked deforestation in those parts, sandstorms have become signficant problems even for cities much further east, especially in Beijing. When I lived there in 2002, there were quite a few days when a sandstorm would envelope the city in a gray-yellowish haze of sand and smog. Although the Chinese government has finally acknowledged the problem, fixing it is still years away. Given the continuing mad rush to grow its economy, it's hard to believe that China will be environmentally responsible any time soon. Last month, I heard scientists tested air particles on a mountain top near San Francisco and discovered traces of sand, coal, and sulfur that originated from China!! If that doesn't prove that our environment is in danger and that global warming is real, I don't know what will... for those of you who hasn't seen the film, An Inconvenient Truth, I strongly urge you to see it. It is a very non-partisan, fact-based documentary... the pictures of a rapidly receding snow line in Kilimanjaro (Africa) and melting glaciers in Antartica are startling.

As for traveling to Beijing, I would recommend checking with your travel agent about sandstorm risk for the period you plan to be there. If I recall correctly, sandstorms occurred around late Spring.

Sometimes, you have to leave the present to find your future.

Tonight, I had a long chat with one of my best friends, Frank (not his real name), about the challenges, frustrations, and politics of his current job which I can strongly sympathize. Although our chat was not specifically related to traveling, it later reminded me of a chat I had with another friend, Shawn (again not his real name) about a month or so ago. We both credit traveling for bringing fresh perspectives into our lives when we were facing some daunting life challenges.

The year was 2002. It was a pivotal year for me, as I was wrapping up my last year of business school with the prospect of no job in the near future, high rent, and increasing amounts of debt (the tech bubble infamously bursted in 2001, obliterating the job landscape for new graduates). As a result, I made the almost unfathomable decision to leave 'the present' situation and move to China. This was against all of my MBA learnings - the risks and costs were inordinately high - I practically knew no one there, had no job lined up in China, didn't speak the language, and the return was definitely uncertain. Yet, three years later now, and back in the US, I would have to emphatically say that it was probably one of my best decisions to date... In hindsight, I gained immeasurably in personal growth (picked up Mandarin fluency, had some indelible personal experiences, and most importantly, learned more about myself than sitting behind a desk for 3 years). While in China, I networked myself into a job where I led the creation of Bank of China's first Western-style mutual fund, started a popular cooking club in Shanghai, and consulted on numerous start-up projects - enterprising experiences far beyond what any 'office' job would have given me here in the US.

Now, I am not telling this story to toot my own horn but rather it illustrates the fact that changes and challenges in life can result in amazingly rewarding experiences. For me, living abroad and traveling around some of the poorest areas of China helped put so many things into a humbling perspective. For Frank, I hope over the next month he will take on a positive spin of the situation and allow himself to believe that change can be good and rewarding.

Any of you had similar experiences?