Hong Kong
Our trip to Hong Kong began on a Thursday afternoon. Matt and I hopped on a bus to Chengdu where we would spend the night at a hostel before flying to HK in the early hours of the morning. Upon arriving in Chengdu, a wild goose-chase led us to our destination that afternoon: a modeling studio. Matt and I walked in for our voice test and read an advertisement for some company in a sound room. I then read a similar transcript in Spanish (but there were more spelling and grammar errors than I could count) and we were told we would be contacted if anyone wanted us to read or act in their advertisements. Wish me luck—I imagine moonlighting as a model would be pretty fun and a great source of Frisbee-tournament funds. I then met up with one of my friends from the Kunming train ride (吴彤) who lives in Chengdu. We went and had a great dinner and then found an open area to throw the Frisbee a little bit. I made it to the hostel and fell asleep around midnight so I could wake up at 5:30am to catch the flight to Hong Kong. When we got up, nobody else was awake, and the hostel door was chained shut (fire hazard?). Fortunately, someone got up to let us out. My airplane nap was only interrupted by a really good breakfast omelet that comes with your dragonair ticket (remember when you used to get food on US flights?).
After a bit of wandering, Matt and I found our hostel and tried to check in. The story gets long and tedious at this point, so I’ll skip to 6 hours later when our security deposit was returned to us and we ended up getting a cheaper room in a different hostel. Our room had been given to someone else (ultimately) and we found a different one with luck (someone else canceled at the last minute after seeing their room, and Matt happened to be there at that precise moment). Anyway, after getting lodging worked out for that night, we headed off to the registration party for the tournament. There, we met our team, most of which I didn’t know, or had only met once before (either at worlds, or at the practice I went to in Shanghai). I also met Derek Ramsay, a big-time movie star in the Philippines who plays ultimate. He was a super nice guy, and was surprisingly chill about hordes of girls constantly running up and getting their photo taken with him. He told me “yeah, it’s really annoying sometimes, but if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have a job.” We returned to the hostel and crammed 5 people into our room, taking up every bit of available bed and floor space.
The next morning after another hostile negotiation with hostel #1’s owner, we headed off the fields. I’ll spare you the specific drama of the games in favor of some more general ideas. First, I was the tallest person at the tournament, which was awesome. Second, our team was really fun to play with. Our girls were really good, our team as a whole was really spirited, basically everything you could ask for. Day one found us at 3-1, with our loss coming to the one-seeded team at the tournament (also Derek the movie star’s team). A group of us left the tournament a little early to head to our sleeping spot for the night: an island that’s an hour ferry ride away from Hong Kong proper. We hopped on a ferry (Matt managed to get on the wrong ferry to a different island) and made it to our camp on the beach(!!!!) where we set up tents and went swimming. A sky full of stars and an ocean full of shimmering phosphorescence brought back memories of a trip to Mozambique with my parents. The float also rejuvenated my tired body, and after a beach shower I felt ready to head back into town to take on the tournament party.
The tournament party was located on the 29th floor of a posh hotel on Lan Kwai Fook (street) in Hong Kong. The theme was reality TV and after some discussion, our team decided to go not as any specific show, but rather as the film crew for a reality TV show. Someone managed to put together a couple fake cameras (black tape, boxes, Dixie cups) and some pretty real looking sound booms (pvc pipe, cotton balls). When we arrived, the party had just been opened to the public (no longer a private Frisbee party), but we grabbed our fake cameras and began taping a party with a bunch of fake reality TV shows going on. Unfortunately security was fooled by our fake cameras, and they were taken away from us. Our attempt to fake-interview a security guard was apparently not very funny. A walk and a ferry ride later I fell into my sleeping bag, only to be awoken 4 hours later to go play Frisbee.
Upon waking up, I think I would have described myself at “about 30% health.” Lack of sleep 3 nights in a row, a hard day of 4 games of ultimate, general dehydration, and the few beers I had the night before all caught up to me, and as a result I felt little more than a zombie for the trip back to the fields. A boat ride and a warm up helped refresh me for a couple tough games against the eventual champions and 2nd place team. We fought hard but lost both games by a few. I had a couple good tall-man plays (it’s really fun to be the tallest guy at the tournament) and a couple easy throw aways, but now I feel really ready to get back into good ultimate shape. Not sure what the next tournament is for me, but I’m already excited. Lots of basketball practice and weight room for the next couple months.
We stayed around and watched games for most of the day before heading to the ferry and then back to the beach. A very silly Amelia (a Colombian girl on our team) sang into the cab radio for most of the ride back to the ferry (I’m pretty surprised we didn’t get kicked out of the cab actually) and we had a totally delicious bacon cheeseburger at the dock waiting for our boat. We spent the rest of the time in HK swimming in the ocean and hanging out on the beach. Just before leaving we ran into an old friend from college who is working at the kids camp that we were using. Chalk another one up to random Whitman connections around the world. That evening I was back at Jinjiang College teaching my sophomore art majors new vocabulary words. A hurricane of a trip, but a great one. Next up—review of my national holiday from a couple weeks ago.
