I just returned from a whirlwind three weeks in which I took four flights lasting over eleven hours and traversed about three-fourths of the world’s time zones. I was in Europe for a week, back in LA for three days, in Shanghai for six days, and in Hong Kong for five. I hobnobbed with European intellectuals in Geneva, had a lovely jaunt through the British Isles, and tore through China like a bull in a…well, you know. None of these cities were new to me, but it was the best kind of nostalgia tour. Like seeing a classic rock band and realizing anew why you loved their music so much.[1] It was full of old friends and new memories. Sure, we played a lot of the old standards, but the crowd still seemed to love our shtick.
When the World Health Organization (WHO) offered to fly me to Geneva to participate in an epidemic risk analysis conference at the last minute, I knew right away that Geneva was not where I wanted to spend the weekend. I arm wrestled with the UN’s unhelpful travel agency to extend my layover in London by four days on the back end of the trip and won a Stallone-esque, bad 80s movie-style victory.[2] And that meant two days in London and two more days in my favorite city in the world: Dublin.
If attending a conference on epidemic risk sounds prestigious and pretentious, it was and it wasn’t. I was part of a research team that published an infectious disease vulnerability index last year that ranked every country in the world from most to least vulnerable. The WHO wanted the epidemiologist who headed up the project; she was busy so instead they settled for the B Team, yours truly. As with every UN venture that I have been privy to, they had lofty, admirable goals, and there was no shortage of talking about what should be done. I’ll say this, there were a lot of very specialized, very qualified people in that room. And me. Two days in Geneva was more than enough to convince me that I had made the right decision to bail at the earliest opportune moment, despite a great night hanging out with one of my best friends from Haiti and laughing our way through the capital of chocolate and cheese.
London
I flew into London on the night of the Westminster terrorist attack. I got the New York Times alert on my phone in the airport in Geneva before I took off. The mood in the city was understandably somber, and the resigned disbelief of another attack in a major European capital hung in the air that night. I met a former student from Beirut and her friends for drinks, and as good as it was to see her, it was not a night for celebration.
The mood had lightened somewhat as I wandered around the city the next day, taking in the British Library, the Tate Modern, and the Globe Theatre. But there was a noticeably enhanced police presence, as there had been when I was in Paris the summer before. I remember a time when the policemen in Britain carried billy clubs as their primary form a defense. No more. They now carried assault rifles.
On the lighter side, it was a day of catching up with old friends. I met two good friends from the Haiti days for lunch at a charming pub near King’s Cross. We reminisced about the good old days of earthquake reconstruction and cholera and how much we genuinely missed the excellent crew we had in Haiti. Disasters really do bring out the best in people, be they local or expat. My one friend recounted her experiences with refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos, and we all shared our various experiences since Haiti in Africa and other disaster hotspots the world over. For dinner, I met my godparents’ daughter at a pub on the other side of King’s Cross, and she was predictably lovely. There’s a familiar comfort about meeting someone on the other side of the world that you’ve known your entire life. You may not see them often, but you have fantastic conversations on those occasions when you do.
So after these lovely meet-ups, I had one more rendezvous with a couple of gents I taught and coached at TASIS, the Swiss boarding school at which I worked for two years. I had a 6:30am flight so I told them that I could meet them for a pint at a nearby pub at 10PM. After all, what trouble could you get into when the pubs close at 11? They had different ideas.
They warmly embraced me upon entering and we reminisced about lifelong friends and shitty boarding school food. They had been living in London for several years and knew the town well. And they were determined to show it to me. I tried to beg off, and they wouldn’t have it. How many times were we together, they asked? In London no less. I acquiesced.
I’m happy to say that I made my flight. But just barely. The boys deposited me at the apartment at which I was staying at 5AM. We had hit no less than three clubs and bounced around town in a succession of taxis. I would have never found any of those spots, naturally, and had a frenetic but fantastic time. I ran in, showered, packed my things and left for the airport. My electric toothbrush sadly did not make the journey. I managed to get into a heated argument with the taxi driver, who was Turkish, about the intentions and effectiveness of Erdogan (the president of Turkey) but was still surprisingly deposited at the correct airport[3] and not taken to Gatwick or Stansted.
Dublin
I arrived in Dublin, much like that first time in 1995, exhausted and wet. I was staying with my good friend Stephen from the University College Dublin days. I found his apartment with relative ease, not too far from the airport, and since he was at work, took the liberty of sleeping on his couch all day. I did make it up in time to go for a glorious run in nearby Phoenix Park as the sun was setting. The weather had cleared, and I soaked in that inimitable shade of Irish green. Just the smell of the place, like slow-burning peat, brought me back to the mid-90s and my first journey there. The birthplace of my international adventures. I was running and reminiscing, and I literally jumped a few times from the burst of energy that being back in Dublin provided. There is no other city with which I feel such a visceral connection. It’s a bit difficult to put into words. It’s a sense of belonging coupled with an overwhelming feeling of contentedness. It’s the people, it’s the place, it’s the confluence of the two. I simply adore it. And am giddy as fuck whenever I get to go back.
Stephen and I were meeting up with another old UCD chum, our friend Declan, at a Dublin standard called Whelan’s. Twenty-two years prior, I had convinced several of my friends at UCD that they simply had to go see this new band that I loved called Blues Traveler. My best friend Dan was visiting from the States at the time, and they were in awe at the pure enjoyment we got out of seeing our favorite band with only about 100 other people in a pub in Dublin. Little had changed in Whelan’s, and we started with rounds of Guinness, followed by rounds of spirits, followed by some questionable dancing (mostly on my part). And we did all of this to the same soundtrack I remember partying to back in 1995. They played Blur’s “Parklife”. Oasis’ “Wonderwall”. Nirvana. The Pogues. The Cure. Pearl Jam. The Violent Femmes. It was as if I had purchased a jukebox from that year and allowed only 90s nostalgia songs to be played. It was such a fantastic, surreal trip down memory lane. Who says you can’t go back?
Saturday saw trips to the Jameson Distillery and the iconic Dublin pub the Brazen Head. Nothing was going to top the previous night, and we didn’t bother to try. Stephen did his country proud and proved, as ever, the most gracious host. I hopped a flight back to London and then LAX the next morning, happy to have revisited my spiritual home once more.
Shanghai
Three days later, I boarded another trans-oceanic flight, this time settling in for the lovely 13-hour flight from LA to Shanghai. I taught economics, history, and government & politics at the American school in Shanghai from 2004-2006, and this was my fifth trip back since that time. To say that I had a love-hate relationship with the city when I lived there is to put it mildly. I had perhaps the best, biggest friend group I’ve ever had during my stint there yet I was perpetually flummoxed and often maddened by systems I didn’t understand and a culture I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) penetrate. I often raged against things that made no sense to me while simultaneously reveling with my friends in all of the many joys that the city had to offer until the wee hours of the night.
Since I left, Shanghai has changed enormously. One of my student’s parents once told me at the time that Shanghai had a very well-conceived master plan for development, and I scoffed at this notion, seeing the chaos before me. He was right, I was wrong. Shanghai now boasts a modern, efficient metro system with twelve lines. It has finished an excellent highway network that, along with the metro, has greatly relieved the massive congestion in which I was constantly ensnared on my daily commute. A lot of the old areas and dilapidated buildings, at least in the downtown area, have been replaced by gleaming new structures. Now, this may be a Chinese gentrification of a sort, and it doesn’t mean that the poverty I witnessed wasn’t, at least in some measure, simply displaced. But it was clear, as it was in the summer of 2013 during my last visit when I helped run my buddy Johnny Cox’s legendary bar, The Rooster, that Chinese people clearly had more money and had developed a vibrant middle class that hadn’t previously existed.
I landed at Pudong Airport on the far eastern side of the city and remembered the chaos that used to greet me when I landed. People rushing to get off the plane, jostling you on their way out. An immigration line that was more like a mob and less like a queue and groaned at the prospect. But the airport, even more so than my previous visit four years prior, was clean and modern. I was still cut off and cut in front of a few times but much less often. And the immigration process was efficient and painless—much more so than its American equivalent. I sailed through immigration and customs and was back in the familiar Shanghai taxi on my way to the French Concession on the west side of the Pu River.
The old survival Chinese came back easily, and the familiar downtown landmarks sailed past through the window of the taxi. I arrived just as the sun was setting and the neon perma-glow that envelops Shanghai at night was settling in. I was staying at a friend’s apartment (what my brothers affectionately call Bill Points) and had arranged to meet my old teacher friend Bubba at The Rooster. We had drinks, reminisced, and he managed to lose his iPhone—all in all, a typical Shanghai night. I met up with different friends on Friday and Saturday night, hanging out my old UCD roommate Martin who has now lived in Shanghai for fourteen years. This is not uncommon in Shanghai as I have many expat friends who have lived there for over a decade. We had lost touch after Dublin and then ran into each other randomly on the streets of Shanghai. That’s just the type of place it is. The smallest city of twenty million people you’ll ever find. Saturday night turned into Sunday brunch, as it often does, and I found myself back at The Rooster.
Monday saw a few more reunions with former students, which is always welcome for me. If there’s a recurring theme, and my brothers constantly make fun of me for this, it’s that I meet up with or run into my former students all over the globe. There are plenty of them, in plenty of places around the world, and I genuinely enjoy seeing them and the people they’ve become. I’ve run into them randomly on the streets of Beirut, in the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca, in a club in Barcelona, and on the Promenade in Santa Monica, among numerous others. Most of them are in their mid to late 20s now (or even 30s in some cases), and they are usually really interesting, internationally-minded people with some kind of misguided fond memories of me.
Tuesday was my final day in Shanghai, and I got to see my great, enormous friend Dave (who makes me look like a hobbit—see photo). We yucked it up like old times, hit up The Rooster one final time for an impromptu karaoke session, and promised to keep in better touch. And I was off to Hong Kong the next day.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong, for those who have never been there, is a visual orgy. There are buildings on top of buildings everywhere you look. It’s neon sensory overload. But there is, and always has been, a method to the madness. Things just work in Hong Kong, and it runs on a certain precision that is a mixture of the British respect for systems and the Asian fastidiousness. I love the city. I’ve been there five previous times, all for short stints, but the food, the sophistication, and beauty of the place always captivate me.
My international travel crew was descending upon the city for the annual tradition of the Hong Kong International Rugby 7s Tournament. This bacchanalian affair brings in people from all over Asia and is one of the social and sporting highlights of the year in Hong Kong. Both of my brothers had decided to make their virginal trips to Hong Kong in addition to Johnny Cox and the rest of the group that had joined us at the World Cup in Brazil. It promised to be wall-to-wall madness, and it didn’t disappoint.
We went out each of our first three nights in the areas of Wan Chai, Soho, and Lan Kwai Fong, all fun in their own right for the quality of nightlife and the sheer volume of people, mostly expat because of the rugby. I took my brothers up to Victoria Peak which boasts probably the best view of the iconic city with its many islands, skyscrapers, and ports. On Friday night, I again met up with three former students and a former colleague for dinner, which was a highlight. But the real reason we were there was the rugby 7s.
We got up at 6:30AM on Saturday morning so as to get to the stadium and stake our claim in the infamous South Stands. This area, the only one in the stadium in which you can bring your drinks down to the seats, fills up quickly with those elements interested in a different kind of sporting experience. Everyone is wearing group costumes and is there to have a good time. To support John’s bar, we all donned rooster costumes with official Rooster t-shirts and red shorts. Comfort and accessibility are the most important elements of rugby 7s costumes, as you end up staying at the stadium or close to ten hours and going to the bathroom frequently.
The South Stands filled up by 8:30AM, the earliest it had ever reached capacity, and we knew we were in for a good day. The rugby didn’t even begin until 9AM. With 32-ounce Carlsberg’s going for 130 Hong Kong Dollars a pop (about $16US), it wasn’t going to be cheap, but we established a rotation system that ensured that we were never parched. And then the music began blaring out of the loudspeakers. Fittingly, the first song was GnR’s “Welcome to the Jungle”, and it only got better from there. The music in the South Stands is fairly predictably, with the Oktoberfest tune “Hey Baby” and the Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” featuring prominently. There were also classic tunes like the Proclaimers “500 Miles”, “Sweet Caroline”, and other sing-along staples. We sang, we drank, we danced, we reveled in the shared comradery that is the 7s. Rumor has it that there were even some rugby games played (actually, in a great match, the US throttled England, which was especially sweet for us colonists). Even John, who was celebrating his 18th tournament, said that it was probably the most fun he had ever had at the 7s. Having that incredible group of guys there made it that much better. And then we did it all again on Sunday.
I’m not going to lie, Monday morning, the flight back to LA, and the re-entry into polite society was rough. But it was so worth it. Four cities over three weeks. The best that two continents had to offer featuring two of my all-time favorite cities in Dublin and Shanghai (and London and Hong Kong are no slouches either). And one hell of a good time.
[1] This was the exact sensation I had last October when I saw The Who at the Santa Barbara Bowl with my brother. They’ve definitely still got it.
[2] If you haven’t seen Over the Top, well, don’t. But it is hilariously bad.
[3] London City—I highly recommend it. Much closer than any of the other options but with limited flights.
Too Many Thoughts, So Little Time 