#ShowingUp

Ugh I f#&ked up I just realized
I wanted to share because idk,
maybe @ some point in future it could help you
not f#&k up like I have.

This is about showing up. #showingup. ;)

I'm keeping names and links out of it because
although I have nothing but good to say about anyone in the story (except me)
and it's easy to figure out who I mean if you know me
(and if you're reading this: odds are u know me)
and all facts are public on social media and media-media,
STILL
I'm personalizing a narrative
and don't want to name other people by name
as I filter their major events
into my own tiny observations.

There is a yoga class in L.A. that I love.
The teacher is unique and inspiring.
I like and admire many yoga teachers and classes, but this class: the challenge, the camaraderie, the sense of a community built over time -- it's unique and a gift and I'm so glad I found it.

The teacher--this wonderful, inspiring teacher--has been out for a couple of months.
He suffered a personal tragedy and he's been out.
Also, he's been working on projects for this cool other life that he leads, non-yoga.
Point is: he's been out.

We're not "friends", meaning I do not know him outside the class. So qua his tragedy, I feel okay qua my response: I've tried to ping and like things that he is posting to social media about his loss and the work that he's doing, being part of a substrate of support from his broader community. Perhaps I could've done more, but I'm not at all sure I could've "done more" without overstepping or in-fact doing harm, so that's not (I don't think) where I f*#ked up here.

But: I haven't been going to his class.

Cuz he's been out! Right? And it's a long drive! I know (and like) the sub who's replaced him; she's part of the community/camaraderie thing, she's cool and funny and good at yoga (teaching, doing). But it's a long drive and it's nice to have the flexibility of not doing a long drive any given day, right? et cetera. All totally reasonable.

I f&*ked up, though. I think. Here is why.

I saw a picture as part of these social media streams: the people in class, just a nice shot that got posted in support of the regular (absent) teacher, thanking his sub, talking about keeping "the flame burning" or a similar straightforward metaphor for "maintaining the continuity of this community that he's built with this class."

Lemme be clear: I'm not even in this story, from anyone's perspective but my own. It's not as if anyone cares or should even notice my presence/absence/whatever.

But I, for me, have f*@ked up.

If I respect this teacher and this thing that he's built,
if I value many aspects of this thing that he's built; his instruction, for sure, as the central feature.
But also the community, the excellence of practice in the room, the other humans,
all of that,
and I want in any way to be part of it,
for me,
then I have to show up.
Especially now.

So it's there, what he built, when he's ready to come back to it; and so this thing that he's built--to the tiny extent that each person contributes to something like that--maintains its strength, even grows, for whenever he gets back. Because in fact it's not even "about him" -- in a good way, that I think he'd agree with:

Because this thing that he's built has great worth in itself.

That's the point.

It's still a long drive! It's not a given I can make it any given day.

But I should start #showingup when I can.

The fact that he is not teaching should not take it off of my radar. That's transactional thinking: just about me and my experience; in fact, it's thinking about "my experience" in a rather incomplete and narrowly defined way.

I'm mortified that it took me a month and the click of a social media post to learn that. I am so, so dumb sometimes.

HliAT #19: Biking to / from Yoga

How Long It Actually Takes To...

bike from home in Topanga to Yoga Desa in Topanga, a distance of 1.9 miles that Google sez ought to take 8 minutes, kind of rushing because you left later than planned and you don't know how long this will actually take: 6:55.18^1,2

bike from Yoga Desa in Topanga to home in Topanga, a distance of 1.9 miles that Google sez ought to take 14 minutes, not rushing at all -- you did some yoga! ur khill!: 15:58.03<sup>1,2

1</sup>The difference in both estimates and recorded times is cuz uphill / downhill -- it's an incline of about 150'/mile.
²Each recorded time should be cut by 0:03 for the time it takes to turn off the screen on my phone and slip it into the funny and useful pouch my biking bag has for it.

My takeaway here is...way t'go, Google.

Upon taking a ballet class after not having danced for about 18 years

On Tuesday night, I took an adult's "Beginning/Intermediate" ballet class at Los Angeles Ballet Academy.

I am trying to remember the last time I took a dance class. Meaning a ballet class (or, I suppose, a modern class; but I almost know that ballet is more recent: modern was never my core thing). It was in college, I think. I think not even senior year of college--before that. Let's say senior year, to be sure we're avoiding hyperbole. At some point in college: I remember taking a couple ballet classes (literally: two) at The Dance Complex in Central Square. I remember shaking my head and laughing at myself, at all the things I could not do; I was part performing my disdain and part really feeling it. And if we say senior year, to definitely avoid hyperbole, we're talking 17-18 years ago.

Before that, growing up and till college, dance--again, ballet specifically--was my thing. I started when I was eight; the lore (the lore may not be true. I think, in this case, it's approximately true) is that I was visibly bored, doing steps in my seat, as I waited and watched the weekly little-girls' ballet class to which I accompanied my sister. And then my parents saw an open call for auditions for the School of American Ballet (SAB); they took me to audition (I vaguely remember this: a hallway, kids; numbers?).

I got in.

There's more to this story than the lore might suggest; not that my parents primed either me (or my sister) for dancerly pursuits, but I know for example that we took some kind of little-kids' movement classes before that, running around in circles waving scarves and what have you. But I think the "well gosh we just saw this ad and he got in" version of the story has essential truth to it, also.

So before I go on, here, an important proviso. I'm writing it here, saying it once so I don't have to repeat it. I'll say other things first--I'll be extremely clear what the proviso is, do not worry.

SAB, as you know if you know ballet, is one of the ballet schools in the world. Some would say best; I have no idea, I haven't trained at the others and I'm just someone who happened to get to go there as a kid. But it's certainly on the shortest of short lists.

It feeds into the New York City Ballet, which is ditto amongst ballet companies.

As a kid and a young adult, I got to do a lot of world-class $h1t with this school and this company, and with other opportunities they led me to. And I want you to understand from the outset, because it's important, that this is not because I was amazing at dancing. I'm not trying to be humble, or fake humble, or any of that stuff. This is important to the story:

I was okay at dancing! I had good training, clearly. I'm tall and pretty athletic and blond (I am not kidding. That helped me, I'm...96% sure). I worked pretty hard; not as hard as I now know I could have, but probably harder than some kids would've. But I certainly--this is not 'real talk'; this is some 'the ocean is salty'-type trewth--did not have the natural gifts that many young dancers around me had. The feet; the extension; whatever precision of twitch muscles pumps your jumps a little higher or centers your gravity for six pirouettes. I mean I guess in my life I have done six pirouettes, but not like...do you see what I'm saying? I was okay! I was a good performer. I was a fine dancer, meaning "fine" for the sandbox I got to play in, which was an amazing gift of a sandbox.

And it's just as important to note that, from pretty early on, I knew this. It would be a bad misconstruction of my relationship to dance, which is what this post is gonna now be about for like six-zillion words, to anchor on the idea that I was or thought I was "something special", "really talented", or any of that stuff. I had, if anything, a strong sense of myself as not that way: as kind of moderately okay with a good disposition and hey, he's tall, that's good.

But, because of context and geography and luck, I got to do crazy cool shit from pretty much age 8 till age 18, when I went to college. I trained at SAB from age 8 to age 12, and during that time I danced with New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet (my dad liked joking about "great Danes"), the Royal Ballet (I think), plus...I mean, literally I do not remember it was like "cool! another one of the world's great artistic institutions! neato." I was in the world premiere of Peter Martins's first full-length choreographic work as Artistic Director of NYCB, Songs of the Auvergne. I ran onstage at the wrong time once in that one. There was some ballet at the MET where I got to wrangle a dog and do a little solo: that was cool. These were all childrens' roles -- we're talking 8-12 years old, remember.

I knew that wasn't 'normal', but it's hard to parse your level of privilege as a kid; I knew it wasn't normal but internalized it as a normal part of my own collage, and the smells and rhythms and geometries of ballet rooms and hallways and dressing rooms and shoe leather and resin and marley are native to me and always will be.

When I was twelve I took a break for middle school to be a f*ck-up. The precipitating facts were that (a) continuing at SAB would've meant stopping going to 'regular' school, a sacrifice made doubly unpalatable by (b) some combination of personal chemistry and physical gifts (or lack thereof) knocked me off the hot track at SAB, in terms of which class I got put in. FWIW, my big thing above about not being so great aside, I think in this particular instance the 'personal chemistry'/politics was influential; NOT because my talent was unjustly thwarted, I hope I've made that clear. Just: that's how I think it went down.

I was a f*ck-up for a couple years, and it didn't make me that happy, being a f*ck-up, so in 9th grade I switched high schools and started dancing seriously again. Kind of all of a sudden, whatever the opposite of cold turkey is; I started at this challenging high school with lots of homework and I started dancing Mon-Sat, Sundays off (I think?). And I was happy, again.

This second round with dance was different from the first. The first I was a kid; I was shuttled to and from classes by my own or other parents; I had the world in my lap with these frequent amazing performance opportunities. This second period was less about those dizzying heights of the dance world, but I'm much prouder of it; I again got to be at wonderful and respected schools/companies and to the extent that I did achieve something in these years it feels like it was partly a result of my own motivation, combined with the generous investment and expertise of those around me.

Freshman year of high school, I trained at and performed with Ballet...Hispanico. I'd danced with them a little during my f*ck-up years; in 9th grade I danced with them a lot, and performed some with the youth company. I got to do Flamenco, which is amazing. Then, in 10th grade, I had the extraordinary good fortune to fall in with Francis Patrelle--a beautiful man and a beautiful teacher. Through Mr. Patrelle I got to perform with his company, Dances...Patrelle. I got what was and probably always will be my best notice in a major newspaper (last 'graph: HWHAM; I just opened my eyes really wide the whole time that's all I did); I got to perform with amazing young dancers from (natch) SAB and the Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet (CPYB) and got THIS review, which is actually the one of which I am proudest--if you click don't look for my name you won't find it, just mention of a "strong men's contingent" which...y'have to understand, these dudes were in this program, and well on their way to those careers, so just, y'know, credibly presenting felt (and feels) like a thing.

By the end of high school, thanks mostly to Mr. Patrelle's investment and mentorship, I got to spend the summer training at CPYB and was offered to stay on full-time: training and then perhaps shipping off to a good company (CPYB is amazing) and then...who knows! Or, come end of summer, I could head off to freshman fall at Harvard.

I headed off to freshman fall at Harvard.

And honestly that's kind of the end of the story. I resisted making dance my thing at college. I found that I couldn't have a 'healthy' relationship to it. Remember me shaking my head and 'laughing' at myself in those last couple classes, 18 years ago? Like many dancers--I've since learned this is a common experience, a clichè--I couldn't sorta dance. Like: in a reasonable way, the way one does a hobby: 3 times a week, sometimes 4 sometimes 2. I couldn't deal with what my body couldn't do when I was not training 8-10 times a week; it was like trying to operate a broken machine that you knew could do better. It became an all-or-none thing and I, like many before and after me, went with none.

In grad school, I met a woman who did ballroom. We'd meet up sometimes and do ballroom. That was fun. That, like...literally. That was it, for me and dance.

Till last Tuesday night: 8pm, Los Angeles Ballet Academy. Adult Beginning/Intermediate.

I can't really tell you why I decided to do this. I don't think I have anything to resolve. I wonder about not deferring college to do CPYB. Even just for a year. But not in a, "oh I would've been a dancer!" way. In a, "a wiser Slimbuttons would have seen that as a cool life experience!" way. But I decided to do this; I wanted to do this. I may even go back.

I was tired. I had a cold; I'd just done a solid workout at Hot 8 a couple hours before.

Those are my shins and feet. The feet have ballet slippers on them. They come with elastics sewn on now, which was a big relief. My dad always did that for me.

Reader, it may not surprise you to learn that the class was a head f#&k.

The studio was ideal. Just what I'd been looking for. I chatted with the lady at the desk as I signed in; I asked about the kids in the big windowed front studio, training late on a weekday night; she happy-bragged about a boy with the good extension who's "going to be a star". The whole tone was correct, and familiar; not some CardioBarre fitness thing. This is a place like the places I knew: a feeder for the SABs of the world rather than one itself, but no question they do serious dancing with integrity, seriousness, intent.

I walked into class and the teacher asked if I'd danced before and I told her, like 17 years, and she said, "It's like riding a bike." She was surprisingly correct: it's all deep in your body. The rhythm and steps were quick to come back; the things I was bad at (turning) I was bad at in similar ways, the things I was good at (jumps, aspects of adagio) I was good at in similar ways. All scaled for time and age and all this, of course, but I was familiar to myself as a dancer. I knew this guy.

But here was and is the thing. I was a very different guy. Everything was different. A total head-trip. A sad and strange and bittersweet head-trip. Because here is the thing:

Ballet is cruel. You probably know that even if you've never danced; you saw Black Swan or whatever. Ballet is beautiful, and ballet is cruel, and in its cruelty it guts and it burns down your dreams. As just a...like a routine, ordinary thing! That's what it does! There is no hidden angst or baggage to my own journey through dance--it was comparatively untroubled in all ways besides an eating thing freshman year of high school (which Mr. Patrelle was instrumental in my moving past). But even in my relatively untroubled, relatively unconflicted journey through dance that culminated in turning down a great academy to go to Harvard, for fuck's sake...even in that my gosh, sure: I had my dreams gutted and burned down lots of times! Constantly! Not getting to be Prince in The Nutcracker. Getting taken off the hot track at SAB. A period where Mr. Patrelle was doing a ballet with all the "good" young dancers and hadn't asked me to be in it (he subsequently did, and gave me a wonderful role, and I still to this day will bet you money that it was the compassion of the man's soul, seeing how I was for those 10 days where I thought he'd not cast me, that made the man do that. It was the ballet with the "strong men's contingent").

Ballet lives in that nexus of actual undeniable power and beauty, layered over with constructions of scripted prestige and status, and it holds these glittering unattainable gems on high and you over and over build your shitty scaffolds to get higher and higher and reach for the gems and you're almost there and then psssshh: burn it down, try again. Psssshh: burn it down. Psssshh.

And it's okay because you see the gems the whole times, and you're building yourself as a dancer and your dreams all up towards them. Building working building.

And the sad strange head-fuck of dancing now, at 37, is not how my body looks: I'll be str8, reader--it looks better than ever. It's not what I can or cannot do. It is that I have no dreamscaffolding left to burn down. Those gems are not for me; I don't even know where they are. They're not in my landscape. My dreams and my aspirations and hopes are all...they're wrapped up completely in other things. This thing, ballet, which for so many of my formative years held the very concepts of beauty, hope, dreaming inside it...it doesn't hold those things anymore. Even in Muay Thai, which I was NEVER nuts enough to think I was 'good' at, there's some funny idea of, ha ha -- maybe I'll win a belt someday. It won't happen. I don't think it will happen. But the concept exists as a bright burning light.

All those lights are snuffed in dance. Those ships have inexorably sailed. There is no such thing as a...or it wouldn't be me who...it's all done. It's an over, done, past-tense thing. It is a thing that lives in the wells of memory and hope pressed into my heart as a child, but which are now dried and done with. I have other things. And it is so strange and so sad and so weird and so...head-f#*k to come face-to-face (I mean, literally: you're looking in the mirror the whole time in most ballet classes) with yourself in the activity that held those aspirations and finding the activity, the you that is doing it, just...empty of those things.

It is so weird, and I have no idea if it will ever or can ever be a present-tense for me. It's an interesting and elegant and rewarding physical activity; I have some background in it. But what it is is this inherently conflicted palimpsest of the past on top of the present. It's a fascinating thing to have revisited for a night. I think I will revisit it again -- perhaps not as a regular thing, but occasionally. I bought those slippers you see on my feet in the pic, #ffs. But...yeah. I dunno. I dunno.

It was an interesting night.

I've been trying to write this out for a few sessions; I'm just going to hit publish now and be done with it. Sorry if there are some missing words or whatever. Thanks for reading (hi, mom).

HliAT #18: Some Quick Calisthenics

How Long It Actually Takes To...

Do some quick calisthenics* at home before bed because it was this crazy day where you were all over Southern California and did not in fact do a workout and you feel turgid without doing something: 13:53.29

*meaning:
(1) 60 of these weird push-ups you do where you keep your shoulders engaged and weight not sunk into them that you do for PT for your shoulder so that...well so that you keep your shoulder (muscles) engaged and not sunk into them (meaning: joints, tendons), especially in yoga
(2) 20 chin-ups
(3) 60 of these other weird push-ups, which ditto as (1)
(4) 20 pull-ups (the link in (2) explains the difference between pull- and chin-ups, if you somehow both care and don't know)
(5) 600 bicycle sit-ups, or 300 as you count them (one pair, touching right elbow to left knee then left elbow to right knee, counts as one)
(6) 60 of yet a third kind of weird push-up, which ditto as (1) and (3)
(7) 20 hammer-grip chin-ups (palms facing each other)

Also, somewhere in there (just before (3)?) you scampered outside to get a towel to lay on the mat)

Hong Kong #7: Things and How They Act on U (part two)

So I shared that kind of mopey stuff about time difference/loneliness/travel and how things act on you. This is kind of the flipside.

Let's start on the same side:

Our story begins at the graduation ceremony for Chicago Booth's AXP class. The ceremony is at Sky100, which do you have to click the link even to know exactly what "Sky100" is? It's a venue; it's the kind of venue gets called "Sky100". Is it is.

I'm watching the students' families, which is nice. The most impressive thing to me about the students on these courses I TA is that they undertake this degree in the context of having jobs and families and other obligations. It's nice to see the spouses, the kids. It's nice to see the students with them; it's very nice to be able to tell so-and-so's spouse, "So-and-so was awesome," and you basically always get to be 100% when you say this because if so-and-so has bothered to haul their poor spouses over to meet you, it's probably because so-and-so was a good student you connected with.

The kids DGAF, nor should they. Good on ya, kidz.

I'm sitting, feeling naked without "my phone". Even though the phone I'd given back to Booth the previous evening was not nor ever felt like "my phone", and further this phone had no data plan so it was just this tiny little computer that could make calls, which of course is no longer what the word "phone" even means in most cases. (I liked that about it, predictably.)

Anyway, I'm feeling its absence; specifically, daunted by this "Long Walk Kowloon" I have planned for after the ceremony, centered on Cantonese egg waffles. I have map printouts; I'm ready. And I'm not tired, in particular. But I'm tired. It was like those moments when I was training hard for a fight and my body was actually kind of doing okay--hungry and banged up but okay--but I'd nonetheless have to rest my head on the steering-wheel for ninety seconds before gathering myself to head into the gym.

And I realize, sitting there un-phonèd, that I'm done for this trip. Not like, "oh gosh this is so hard." Just I'm done; with scrabbling in the totally-fine but somewhat depressing tiny studio I rented;  with scrabbling my way through these walks and stuff, intrepid-ing cluelessly throughout the city. I love it, but it's been acting on me, wearing on me.

And I realize this because of a cool sure desire I have for what awaits me later that day: luxury. A professor on the course who is also a friend does this thing that actually makes sense which is that she books a late flight out the day of the ceremony but keeps her hotel room for that night, so that she doesn't have to clear out at like 11am or whatever but can go back after the ceremony, shower and change and sort herself out, and head to the airport in the afternoon/evening. This means she is left with an empty hotel room for a night, and I sometimes inherit that room. She stays at nice places; it's a good shout and very nice of her.

So I'm sitting in the graduation ceremony realizing that the mild wear of good things (adventuring around the city; barging into restaurants where no English is spoken) and fine-but-suboptimal things (staying in a blah AirBNB) have been acting on me, and so I am eager for the luxury of, say, an Island Shangri-la (sic, friendo).

I will skip the Kowloon Long Walk, perhaps writing of it elsewhere.

Point: man! It was a fancy hotel! The gym was solid enough, as opposed to the disappointing tiny room at The Upper House. The room, this:

The room had a great view. I was working at its great desk. I happened to look up at this moment.

The meal I enjoyed at the Summer Palace was terrific--Bean Curd Sheets, Chicken with Salted Fish hotpot, some tea. (I did not use the Note; I just asked for something interesting/adventurous).

And yup it was great to sink into, which--that took a minute, sorry--finally brings us to the flip of things acting on me that I promised.

I have never thought: "Man, I need to take refuge in luxury." I don't have the resources for lotsa luxury, sure. But I have some resources -- I could certainly engineer tastes of this stuff for myself. And I don't. But this night at the fancy hotel was so nice. I didn't like do great writing, but I did comfortably happily get solid work in; it was just nice to be there, at that desk writing, stopping to get food or go to the gym. It was a recharge, and I had not appreciated the extent to which I'd benefit from it.

Which was good, because getting home the next day was a sh1t$h0w...

HliAT #17: "It's Like a 5-minute Walk"

How Long It Actually Takes To...

Walk briskly from the "Finsbury Square/Moorgate" stop of the 141 bus in London, through bustling but not jam-packed morning sidewalks, to the front doors of Woolgate Exchange (actually the rear 'front doors'): 5:13.98

FWIW, Google says 8 minutes. Good accuracy on this one; I think the titular estimate is how most would conversationally describe this walk.

Hong Kong #6: Using (!) the Note

So I used it! The note! I totally used the note.

On my first trip to Hong Kong, last year, a particular restaurant caught my eye, but I never got to eat there (image: thanx, Google Maps Streetview). For those who don't hit the link: this intriguing restaurant is the "Best Food Restaurant" -- at least that's how its name has been rendered in English.

I liked this place because of its look, and because its (Englishly renderèd) name reminded me of Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Restaurant, a nice place in New York's Chinatown that I like for 3 reasons:
(1) delicious sea cucumber;
(2) misreading its business card, I for a long time thought it was called "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Best Restaurant" (rather than just "Yeah Shanghai Deluxe Rest." ⇐ I confused "Rest." for "Best", and added the "Restaurant" implicitly, because I did not expect ornate cursive script on a business card to be abbreviated); and
(3) Yeah Shanghai Deluxe is located at the address at which, or is at least very close to the address at which, we believe my grandfather was born 10 days after his parents arrived in America.

So thanks to these associations, as well as on its own scrappy merits, I'd wanted to try "Best Food Restaurant" on Belcher's Street, but hadn't had quite the time or the courage last year.

I walked in; I sat down.

I was not, in fact, that hungry. I'd been fed on campus. I had leftover food at home from other meals. I'd eaten some soy chicken already (and had, I suspected, gotten a little ripped off on the price).

But I'd kind of decided: this is what I am doing tonight. So I was doing it.

The place had the unprepossessing look of the kind of eateries I like in Hong Kong. Simple laminate-surface tables; light metal chairs; big groups of people clumped around tables with other tables unfilled. Not unhygienic. Not the cleanest room you've ever been in.

The waitress handed me 'the English menu'. This was disappointing; the existence of an English menu sort of turned my Note into a precious mannerism. They've got a nice menu for me right here! In my language! Why do this performative charade where I make them read some note in Cantonese Who am I impressing here?

However, the Best restaurant had mercy on me. Its English menu was almost surely incomplete: it had a pretty limited selection of not-very-interesting dishes. This was not just the menu, in English. This was the menu, redacted for speakers of English and their bankrupt paucity of food taste.

In other words: this was why I had the Note.

The waitress arrived. She was diminutive, round, ~60s with short-cut saltpepper hair and teeth that were hard to believe: two, only, in her whole mouth; on her lower jaw; one at each extreme visible edge of the jaw. The impression that this upward fanged-ness created was sweet and friendly, although it's possible that my view of her appearance is colored by the fact that she treated me with sweet friendliness.

I brought out the Note. She hesitated, then took it; then read it hesitantly then settled into reading it in earnest. A complex set of expressions passed over her face as she read. She ended on what I'm pretty sure was something like amused acceptance.

She held it up in her hand and looked at me. "No por' no beef?"
"Right." I nodded.
"Fish okay." She's staring; two teeth upwards.
I gave a thumbs-up; I'm not getting into which fish are  'okay' in this context; hopeless.
"Soup rice."
This was harder. Was that a choice? Was she asking if I...chose to eat soup, and/or rice? But I sort of knew (from recent dining experiences, I think, although I'm not sure how I knew, actually) that she was proposing a set meal involving both soup and rice.
I didn't really want rice.
"Yes, " I said. Thumbs up.
"Lemon tea milk tea."
Hard, again. It was clear-ish, but the very prospect of milk tea was so exciting to me that it mangled my thinking, especially since I thought milk tea was kind of a breakfast thing, and I hadn't expected it, so I vacillated but settled on "Lemon tea, lemon tea."
We got back on track. "Hot cold," she asked.
For some reason I felt the need to perform 'thinking about it' for like three full seconds before: "Hot."

And off she went. She seemed to confiscate the note -- she walked away with it, with no indication of any intention to return it to me. I was cool with that; it felt like part of the deal, somehow. Anyway I still had one printout in my bag could always print more at the office.

Within ~two minutes I got "soup". A delicious soup, probably a chicken stock, with some green leafy roughage and bits of almost-certainly not-chicken meat (probably pork). I had accepted this possibility. I ate the soup. It was tasty.

I guess rice came I don't remember? Maybe she read my mind and I didn't get rice? That's weird.

And then the entree! Now, I'm not sure. But there was one interesting dish on the English menu: something about fish with preserved vegetables. And I think perhaps (and this is no bad thing) that that's what I got. Certainly, it was a fish dish, with some slightly pickled/brined/something'ed vegetables.

Which made me happy, because it meant that the Note had yielded a result consonant with my desires, even if it it also meant that either their English menu was in fact less limited than I'd thought, or that they'd still limited my choices to the white-people options.

I ate well. It was a good meal. And I took some home; that interaction was pretty simple -- getting the takeaway containers.

Somehow, paying, I got myself totally confused again. Numbers aren't hard in these settings; what they do is they write it down on your receipt and point at it. I somehow thought at first that the meal cost implausibly much (like twenty dollars) then impossibly little (like a buck) before settling on actual price which was of course just the number the woman had written on the sheet all along which I believe was 58 HKD.

And here's where I got really happy that I'd done this.

It had been a neat experience and a lovely meal. I'd used the Note! I had tasty leftovers. I'd almost talked myself out of it; I was tired and a little down; I'd gotten semi-ripped off by the 40 HKD soy chicken a bit earlier. I'd been thinking: you get used to things. Even amazing, novel things like magical new cities. They become ordinary places where you are a bit tired and not actually that hungry because you snacked at work and also that guy maybe ripped you off for that chicken, that's a bummer. I'd fallen off my game.

And I'd forced myself to get back on it and go to this place I'd had a good feeling about for like over a year with the Note that my nice colleagues made for me, and I got the "fish with preserved something-something" and it was really delicious. Not just in a hearty greasy spoon ironic pleasure way; it was some good-a$$ food. And I'd had this really nice interaction with this charming and sweet waitress who'd totally rolled my Note and all that.

Out. World. Things. People.

Oh, and one last thing. I had a good idea during dinner. A writing idea. Maybe a good idea; I won't know for awhile because it's for a project I'm not working actively on right now. But even if it wasn't a gooood idea, i.e. isn't an idea I wind up doing (and, again: it might be, in a big way), the whole idea that you shake up your brain when you do things, that stimulating yourself and engaging novel experiences creates new pathways that lead...who knows where! That idea, which is an idea that I both find nice/optimistic and compelling, felt kinda validated.

Using the Note was really good.