Ming Dynasty (明朝, 明王朝, 명나라)

 There's a saying in trivia that you have to "protect your house," aka do well in categories that are your strengths, and in certain games like Jeopardy you can capitalize by betting big on daily doubles in those categories of strength. This makes a lot of sense, except a week ago when a recent medical school graduate bet almost everything on a medical category (called "stitches," and the previous 3 clues in the category had all been human body/medical related).......I would have done the same thing, except the clue turned out to be a clue any semi-regular baseball fan would know: the namesake of the most famous elbow surgery in baseball: Tommy John surgery. The newly minted doctor stared at the clue blankly, let the time run out, his score went down to almost zero, instead of having an insurmountable lead he had an unrecoverable deficit, he went on to lose the game, and his Jeopardy ended just like that. There's definitely such a thing as being TOO overconfident in a certain category: just because you're confident in it doesn't mean you know everything there is to know about that category. There are chinks in every armor, even in a medical category for a doctor. It's actually a huge risk getting a question in your "wheelhouse" on a quiz show: on the one hand you're more likely to know about it and get the answer right, but on the other hand, if you DON'T get it it's incredibly humiliating and embarrasing, like if I went on a quiz show and get a law question wrong. Do I get a notice of disbarrment as soon as that episode airs? 

I, personally, feel like I have an edge up in Presidents, geography, history, book titles, sports, math, law, but for sure there are holes even in my knowledge for even my best categories, and some I actually know less than the normal person: like Chinese dynasties. Apparently I'm not that good at them, as first of all I only learned of them in Chinese from my grandpa, but I also don't have all the dates down. I missed a question the other day about one of the biggest cultural revolutions in China from 202 BC- 9AD, and I just couldn't make the connection between Liu Bang and the stories I heard about him as a kid and guessed "Qin" instead of the correct answer, "Han." Also, I didn't know until I was today years old that the Manchu dynasty = the Qing dynasty, which is the different than the Qin Dynasty. Confused yet? All this is very unlikely to matter because American trivia writers don't care about Chinese history, but in the small likelihood it comes up.......Oh and the Ming Dynasty is actually a pretty regular staple in China, known as the one between the Mongol and the Manchu Dynasties, 1368-1644, and if you're pressed to guess a Chinese dynasty the Pavlov response (like guessing Kierkegaard when someone asks for a Danish philosopher) the one to go with is Ming. 

Speaking of the Ming Dynasty, they utilized the Great Wall of China pretty well (although they didn't build it) in defending against invading forces, and that's what I picture when I run around big cities and run in the skywalks connecting Hyatts/Hilton/Weston hotels. You know the ones? Where the big fancy hotel chains that built large complexes in big cities thought hotels would be a bigger deal and created all this fancy stuff, only to have it sitting unused and appreciated because hotels just aren't as profitable in the 21st century as must have been projected? Well I love running around them because they're still accessible to the public, they connect to cool areas around cities as was their original intended uses, and they have great views of the cities or some kind of swimming pool, pass over traffic. Great wall indeed, of unused hotel chain property. 

What was I doing in late 2017- early 2018? I guess enjoying newlywed life with MJ, but I just watched a documentary today (despite this being the big release weekend for movies of the summer Barbie and Oppenheimer) called "Glitch" and HQ Trivia, which was apparently a big craze during that time giving out prizes for answering trivia questions, reaching up to 2.3 million daily users (that's getting up to Jeoaprdy TV viewership level). Just a testament to how quickly things can change: 2018 I didn't care at all about trivia, 2023 I can't get enough of it. 

I learned today that there's a difference between Alan Arkin and Alan Alda. (I know, kind of late in the game to finally grasp that distinction). 

Back of the House (餐厅厨房, 레스토랑 주방, レストランのキッチン)

 "The back of the house" is a specialized term in English that doesn't exist in Asian languages, or any other languages that I know of, which means specifically the back part of the restaurant that customers don't see, aka the kitchen area. I've just used "restaurant kitchen" for the translations above. I usually don't care at all about the back of the house when I go to a restaurant, I don't want to see all the gross stuff that goes on behind close doors (there's a reason those doors are closed) like cutting meat, washing gross dishes, etc. Heck, for most of my life I barely entered my own kitchen, except to maybe heat up some water or microwave something pre-made, and I'd never worked at a restaurant as a line cook or anything to experience how a kitchen works. 

Which is probably why "The Bear" on Hulu is such a fun show for me. For 2 straight summers (last season was Season 1, and it got picked up for season 2) I feel like I've spent part of my life (at least 10 hours of my life watching the episodes) in a Chicago family-owned restaurant serving Italian Beef sandwiches trying to convert itself into a gourmet restaurant and implementing real 5-star resturant disciplines to its chefs. There are so many things that can go wrong like fire hazards (no smoking in the kitchen), walls falling apart, employees quitting, dealing with busy lunch hours that require everyone to work feverishly until their fingers fall off, and a lot of swearing. Like Wolf of Wall Street level of swearing (a notable trivia question of like 100+ utterances of the F-word in that movie), The Bear doesn't focus in one swear word but likes to spread it around with a diversity of expletives, even getting into a little controversy over its use of a forgotten Jewish slur (the forum I followed for that story devolved into arguing over if certain areas of Chicago were considered Chicago or Chicago suburbs, something that is intensely personal to Chicagoans. I'm technically from the Chicago suburbs, but I just say Chicago to save people time and for the recognition factor). 

Contrast the Bear's back of the house to the back of the house of Eleven Madison Park restaurant in NYC, "THE best restaurants in the world" at one time, where MJ and I visited for the 2nd time this past weekend for her birthday. For anyone going to fine dining establishments, I highly recommend always leaving a comment that you (or anyone in your party) is celebrating a birthday, the restaurant won't check, and they'll likely offer some extra thing to the arrangement, whether it be a small birthday cupcake with a candle, or a song, or...in the case of Eleven Madison Park, "THE best restaurants in the world" at one time (they certainly do charge best restaurant in the world prices, they allowed MJ and I to visit the back of the house and get a small treat. The small treat was not memorable and tasted like any other dessert fancy restaurants have (ever notice that some of the dishes at fancy restaurants start tasting the same?) but the visit was more valuable in my opinion, where I witnessed just how many chefs-in-training (probably recently graduated or waiting to graduate from the nearby CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, and Eleven Madison is great to have on your resume) were preparing different things back there. There honestly seemed like more chefs with toque hats (trivia question) back there than patrons dining in the front of the house. No wonder we're paying so much for a meal: it's like a 1:1 chef:patron ratio of what's being prepared. They of course all ignored me like I didn't exist, which I was fine with because it would have been quite awkward, but they all seemed to be experimenting with some new dish they were working on, of course all dishes with just a tiny scoop of ingredients and seared/diced/decorated to perfection. It was such a stark contrast with the grimey, sweaty, unsanitary, Health Code-negligent conditions depicted on the Bear; everything at Eleven Madison was tiptop, counters were scrubbed, sections of the kitchen were neatly defined, people seemed polite (no expletives were hurled across the room), and they were very serious about saying "corner" before turning a corner; I got so into the vibe I almost felt obligated to say "Corner" when I was leaving. So that's what working in a top-flight restaurant looks like. Good to know, and in general I do like seeing what the top level of any profession can be; I've seen it with law firms, most sports, trivia experts.....I guess not that many fields. Now I've seen firsthand the top of a fancy restaurant. I was impressed. I still didn't tip up to 20% though, even knowing there were so many mouths to feed back there in the back of the house. Really daunting when the tip you're paying is more than the entire bill you pay even at decent restaurants. 

cigarette butts (烟头, 담배 꽁초, たばこの吸い殻)

 Often our wants and desires are shaped by the unconscious, and humans often can't explain why they like or dislike something. One of the main reasons I suspect I dislike smoking (both for myself and other people) and fortuantely kept me from ever trying them was the gross amount of cigarette butts that litter the streets of urban cities. They're everywhere; like little pieces of garbage that were used up by the smoker and just laid out for everyone else to deal with. But also MJ and I both get grossed out by mass quantities of small objects, whether it be lots of small mushrooms on the ground, tiny dots in the air, little tufts of hair grown on a piece of moldy fruit (she probably threw up a little bit just reading that). I can resist the nausea better than her, but doesn't mean I like it: big city sidewalks are just full of cigarette butts, dog poop, and gross garbage water. So it really stings when I see someone smoking a cigarette, using it all up, and when it's all over, just throwing the butt out into the street or into the gutter, and in a disgusted arm motion like they don't want anything to do with it anymore, like they themselves were grossed out by it. Here's an unsympathetic thought: If you are grossed out by it, then quit! Don't smoke it! (I know it's hard and smokers hate hearing that). It's that lack of concerns for other people and the planet that's leading to climate change (2023 is becoming one of the hottest records ever) even if it's not the sole reason. Cigarette butts are actually a major source of the garbage deluge (overload) that we have in the world; there are people who actually have to pick those up and gather them into garbage. Not only that, it's the attitude: use up all the good stuff, discard, throw away like trash, don't deal with any of the consequences. I don't think it's that hard to find a garbage or an ashtray. It really turns me off sometimes about the city of New York, and art of the polar extremes I witness every time I go there: It can be simultaneously the best city in the world and the worst city in the world. 

Also, dog poop is kind of disgusting and the owners who leave their dog poop out on a sidewalk especially where thousands of people walk through a day should be ashamed of themselves, but at least it's "organic" and might wash away and be delivered back to the soil: cigarette butts don't. 

The MET museum might be on the opposite side of that "best/worst" ledger, as 2 exhibitions stood out to me on this, the something like 15th time MJ and I have gone together. The Van Gogh museum (Starry Night was on loan from the MOMA 30 blocks away) as part of a "Cypress" exhibition of Van Gogh works: never really studied these pieces of work in depth, but really should get the background on them. Despite having painted my own version of "Starry Night" in a Paint N' Sip activity way back when, I never knew that the large dark structure on the left side in black was a cypress tree, not a clock tower or some sort of Gothic cathedral like I always assumed. And to the right of that tree is the star Venus, the 2nd brightest star in the painting other than the moon. And the city is not Arles, where Van Gogh spent a lot of time, but Saint-Remy-du-Provence. It's really a masterpiece of art, I prefer it over the Mona Lisa or Girl with a Pearl Earring, or Guernica, not sure how it stacks with Botticelli's Birth of Venus. I noted that there was a guard on hand next to one of the most famous (and most valuable) pieces of art in the world because, well, there have been a lot of vandalism of paintings this year by climate activists like people throwing cake at the Mona Lisa, so yes a guard was warranted to protect things everyone can benefit from from people (like cigarette butt discarders) who are negative externalities. 

Also, the Karl Lagerfeld exhibit caught my eye, somewhat surprisingly more popular than the Van Gogh exhibit (could be timing sometimes as it might be the last day of an exhibit). I've been on record as saying fashion is just a waste of time and a popularity contest, but there was quite a lot to be learned about dressmaking (lace, tulle, crepe, chiffon) and surprisngly, lines (S-lines, aka serpentine, and straight lines). Fashion, more than any other trivia category, is one that has to be experienced rather than just read about, and the dresses are really just amazing; it's kind of too bad one person can only wear one of the dresses at a time. Much like MJ trying on different dresses in the mirror before deciding on one, sometimes people would wear multiple dresses if they could. Maybe that's the next big idea: clothes that change color/style/texture/everything depending on your preference; with the click of a button you can change into a whole new outfit while just standing there. Going to patent this idea now! 

Box Seats (包厢座位, ボックス席, 박스 시트)

 MJ and I took a much-needed break away from the daily grind of pre-birth procedures (I was very naive when I was a kid to know how much is required of childbirth, before the baby even comes out, and for some unlucky couples, what is required even before conception) to go to the Lincoln Center in New York City to watch Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets of all time. I need to learn all the terms in ballet at some point like stepping on tiptoes all the time (looks painful) called en pointe, which the prima ballerina was pretty much on all the time, one of the famously rigorous performances for a ballet dancer, Odette (the White Swan) and Odille (the Black Swan). Ballet is apparently live and well in many places of the world including NYC as it was packed, and MJ and I crowded into one of the side boxes with a partial view, sitting within close proximity to strangers. In fact, the guy next to me (in the other box, that's how close we were) either had a breathing problem or was coming in and out of sleep during the whole performance, because the noises coming from him were almost inhuman, somewhere between a snort and a snore. The performance itself was done quite well, with a pit of professional musicians (it's New York City and the next building over is the Julliard School of Music, so plenty of top-level pros) and the distinctive solos of Swan Lake finally allowing me to collect the dots in my head that "Oh, the melody I've been hearing on various shows and in the radio is from the genius mind of Petyr Tsaichovsky in Swan Lake!" It's been happening a lot lately actually with music, like I just learned that "Tom's Diner" is the name of the song that introduces a bunch of Korean game shows, and Tom's Diner was the tune used to create MP3's. 

Anyway, it struck me as novel/refreshing/eccentric/interesing that the ballet just started with no introduction by the conductor, no opening speeches, no subtitles to give the story, they just launch directly into the music, the performers perform, the intermission happens, the performers come back on, did another hour+ of feverish dancing, the audience went wild through various parts of the night, and they bowed and everyone went home. Not a single word was spoken, and it apparently didn't need to be; everyone was assumed to know the story of Swan Lake (I was a little fuzzy on the details but a show program cleared thinks up, Prince Siegfried is looking for love, finds Odette the Swan, but she's under a spell by Rothbart the evil sorecer, the two lovers find a way anyway despite a fake Odette called the Black Swan...) nor was the story really needed; the dancing just kind of speaks for itself I guess. No singing obviously, not an opera, and no dialogue was needed; this is just a physical form of art, with the tenor and mood and everything else the responsibility of the orchestra. Kind of like a baseball game or any other sports performance, actually: you rarely hear from any of the players, you just see them perform physically. Ballet may just be the arts' equivalent of baseball. 

Box seats: I always thought of box seats as a luxury, like the owners of a sports team having private amenities and plenty of room to oneself high above others, but apparently ballet's box seats are.....not the most desired. For good reason. I earnestly thought going into the box intially (we got there early) that we had entered into someone's dressing room with coat hangers and a bench (these were apparently for us to hang our belongings on because the boxes themselves were so small we needed every single inch to place our physical bodies), and MJ had a hard time getting a clear view of the stage due to other patrons in front of her craning their necks, also in pursuit of a better view. I was impressed, though, how rapt at attention the whole audience seemed: apparently we were in a room with very devoted ballet fans who knew exactly when to clap, when to react when the dancers performed a difficult technique, when to laugh when Rothbart suddenly popped his head out to scare us: this was sophisticated New York life, and I had to get in line and appreciate and embrace the elegance. I did.....no cell phones, no bathroom breaks, just a little squirming in my tight seat to get comfortable....a very memorable night at the ballet in the box seats. 

Sea Women (해녀, 海女, メイド)

 There's a group of badass women in recent popular culture who have gained attention called the "Sea Women," a group of Korean female divers who dive down to the ocean floor near the island of Jeju in Korea to fish for abalone. The story is captured pretty extensively in the book "The Island of Sea Women" by Lisa See, but also in other short Youtube video clips I've seen. "Female mermaid divers," the story kind of writes iself. 

However, the life of a sea woman, or "haenyeo," was tough; it's tough diving down into ocean waters to look for shellfish. I consider myself a pretty adept swimmer, yet my ears start popping and nose starts feeling sore once I get towards the bottom of the pool; it's not a comfortable feeling. Don't even mention salt water, with waves constantly changing direction and salt water getting into your eyes. There's also the danger of drownging, not by inability to swim, but by having your fishing tools get caught up in the abalone, and being stuck down there and not being able to escape to the surface for air. Not exactly as glorious a life as it seems (it sure seems exotic, living in and around the ocean all of one's life). 

And finally, of course there are the natural threats to a haenyeo's life: global warming. MJ's very worried about global warming in the future, but it's already come and taken away most of the haenyeos' livelihood, as there are less and less abolone to catch, and oceans changing due to climate change. Oh and pollution. Another reason MJ and I likely won't go on a cruise ship anytime soon: cruise ships just dump all of their garbage directly into the ocean, polluting it even more than it already is, but also just showing a totally lack of compassion for the oceans and the earth, it's like they're not even trying and getting away with it. And given what I see from the average American people in regards to leaving food on their plate, that's a lot of waste on top of waste that's being dumped into the ocean. 

Speaking of waste, that's something I just can't sympathize with some people about: not finishing their meal to the best of their ability and just letting it go to waste. I see this very often at restaurants like the one MJ and I went to for her birthday brunch today. I feel like restaurants do a decent job at serving the right amount of portions for most people's courses, and if anything if they overserve in portions you can always get a doggy bag or box to carry the food home with you, but nope, many restaurant patrons are just outright leaving the food there. Now I get some people are picky eaters and they just didn't like the food, but leaving an entire plate of food sitting there after taking a tiny nibble is just unacceptable to me. Even if I hate the food and how it tastes (very rarely but the few times it does), I understand the nutrion value at least and scarf it down anyway, packed with the knowledget that if I don't eat it, no one else is going to, and that animal, or plant, or whatever food, died for no reason. Also, I seethe at the thought that I'm paying extra for my food because the restaurant has to evenly distribute the cost of making more food because some bozo ordered more food than he or she could finish or wanted to eat, and restaurants have to keep raising their prices to keep up with all the send-it-backs and wasted food (I've NEVER sent anything back, by the way). MJ and I disagree on a lot of things, but eating up all our food is a solid 100% agreement, we always finish our food. I've never met someone who cleans up her plate as much as MJ does, sometimes I feel shame when I leave just a few grains of rice behind or few leaves of a salad left (or a small "ear" piece of orecchiette pasta, I learned about this today) and so it's a healthy competition between us to completely finish. She even eats the "pizza bones" (aka the crust) that I've been 50/50 about in my life whether or not to eat. Finish your meal, people! 

The Afterlife (来世, 死後の世界, 내세)

 Recently my favorite game show host and game show player to watch and creator of dad jokes, Ken Jennings, came out with a book called "100 Places to See After You Die," a funny title about a very serious topic: where do we go after we die? As someone who's spent quite a few wakeless nights pondering death and being deathly scared of it, maybe the afterlife isn't as bad as I fear? So many different cultures have so many different views on the afterlife, and most suggest it's some kind of other dimension that's completely separate from our current world, but I've recently wondered due to my reading about multiverses, what if the afterlife is just this world that we live in now repeated, except we go down a different path of life, instead of a lawyer I became a teacher? Or instead of moving to the U.S. at age 5 I stayed in China my whole life? Maybe these different versions of my life just keep playing out over and over again, without me knowing it. Maybe I'm in a version of the afterlife now, what's to say? The common thread for all of these afterlife Ken and others theorize about is, no one knows for sure. It's kind of fun to think about; Ken suggests it's maybe just a big neverending baseball game, where you're just in the seats watching games over and over again. This is likely too intellectually passive for someone like Ken, or even for me: I would prefer afterlife to maybe be in a bookstore or library reading all the books I never got to in my real life, just one after the other without ever getting bored. For those who think this may be a version of hell instead of heaven in being stuck reading all the time, I kind of get it, but maybe in the afterlife we don't have a concept of getting bored, there's consistent rushes of adrenaline and concentration that flow through us to keep us engaged and reading. So many books, like this weekend I just started A People's History of the United States, "The Candy House by Jennifer Egan, and MJ and I both read "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow," the Amazon 2022 Book of the Year, a favorite of video game players. Or it's a neverending chess game that I play continuously; for MJ maybe it would be a continous display of pictures of people with larger engagement rings than hers, or hugging cute cats, or arranging flowers and pictures on a wall in an aesthetically pleasing way. All good candidates. 

Speaking of chess, I'd stopped going to chess for a few reasons: 1.) summer is more for being outside and not indoor games, 2.) I was donating platelets on Sundays, and 3.) I kept getting my clock cleaned at the games and would start games against opponents I thought I had a chance against but then get humbled thoroughly in the process because I made an egregious error or miscalculated, and would come back feeling worse about myself and losing interest in chess. That feeling did not happen today. I was down in material (in a losing position) in all 4 of my games at one point or another, but in the last 3 games I stayed resilient, came from behind and actually won the matches, leaving me on cloud nine leaving the chess club and running home with an extra skip in my step. It's that feeling of victory over a a worthy opponent, someone who could have beaten me but instead I beat him, that drives the adrenaline of competitive people like me. Just like Major League Baseball speeding up its game by implementing a pitch clock, I think chess needs to evolve a bit to attract more players, by lowering the time limits requiring faster moves played with less time to think; the No. 1 player in the world Magnus Carlsen is already pretty much moving towards this by playing less "classic games" which could be up to 4 hours or more, to timed "blitz games" with 10 minutes per side. This is actually playing to my weakness, which is time: I make mistakes when I have to rush moves and think more slowly than others, but it definitely gives chess more of a feel of a real sport with thrilling moves and last-second wins. Maybe the afterlife will be continuous games of 10-minute speed chess.