I've uploaded some more pictures of Sylvia to: http://s9.photobucket.com/albums/a68/SlowLife/Sylvia/ if you're interested (having no access to facebook). They include photos taken by my brother when he was in Paris walking el Camino de Santiago.

I don't know if this is common knowledge or not, but my brother told me that there will be a service at Glide Church in San Francisco on October 10th for her.

He went to the memorial service in New Haven. He shared with me the program as well as his experience:

Sylvia's memorial was wonderfully evocative of her and her life. The
main event on Saturday was a large potluck with probably 80 of her
friends and family from middle school, high school, college and both
France and the US. Everyone talked of her and her life, and then
afterwards a group returned to the "Bingham Camp" where we'd be
staying and stayed up late into the night with Steve telling stories
about Sylvia.

The next day was the service. It rained the majority of the day,
which was upsetting and yet fitting. The close friends and family
spoke, Natalie john sang a song, and there were a lot of readings. I
can't really describe it well, but it was beautiful and incredibly
sad. After the service, they put on a powerpoint of pictures of
Sylvia and everyone was invited to tell stories of her into a video
camera they had set up. I shared some stories from our time in Paris,
and expressed all of your sympathies as well.

Steve and Francoise have set up a foundation in her honor,
(http://sylviabinghamfoundation.org/), and there are other memorial
sites on blogspot (http://sylviabingham.blogspot.com/) and facebook
(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144127420805).

Just letting you know, China has somehow managed to block To r as well as Freeg ate, so I currently have no ability to visit or post on facebook, blogspot, et al. It might just be because of the approaching national holidays, but still, I didn't think it was technically possible to block them, so... yeah. I'll keep you updated, because you care.

Aight chillins, travel blagoblag is up at: http://michael.travellerspoint.com
Still fleshing it out blah blah blah. I'm not doing it here because the cousin of my fake uncle's third brother once removed will be looking at it, and he's a deviant little bastard. These are Hallowed Grounds. <--- (Name of a student-run coffee shop at UChicago)

Before I go any farther (further?) writing about adjusting to life here, I wanted to thank you all for a really really enjoyable summer. It´s still unclear to me why I continue to leave the Bay Area when I love it and the people contained within it so. One day I will grok it.

9/3/09
San Francisco

Flight from San Francisco to Seoul, Seoul to Shanghai. Throughout my waiting on my journey I would continue Stranger in a Strange Land. Mom noted how apropos it was; I just felt bad for not finishing it beforehand. The other books I brought that I hadn't started/finished were High Fidelity and Man's Fate.

While sitting at the terminal in San Francisco, a man sat next to me and introduced himself as Justin. He was surprising one of his cousins (Joe) by accompanying him on the same flight to visit the family back in Korea, unbeknownst to him. I was enlisted to video the exchange when it happened, so that a third cousin going on a different flight could see it.

He was around 35 years old. We continued talking, and he turned out to be a financial consultant with Microsoft. He had gone to a state school in Washington before heading to Apple in 1997 for the dotcom boom. He then sold his soul "with eyes wide open" and joined Microsoft. He talked about John D. Rockfeller (he had recently read a book on him named Titan), which he broached because Mr. Rockfeller founded UChicago. We talked of billionaires and investing.

He was ambivalent about his career in finance, wishing that he had taken a gap year or travelled to figure out what he wanted to do. But then again he seemed content with what working in finance had given him. Anyway, it was very interesting to talk to him.

9/4/09
上海 Shanghai
Sticky and hot. Bus taxi hotel nearby restaurant hotel crash.

9/5/09
Shanghai -> 杭州 Hangzhou
Leisurely woke up at 9:30am, subwayed over to Little Wang's Sheng Jian place, a pan-cooked soup dumpling restaurant that I love near People's Sqaure. Got four to go, finished them on the way back, checked out of the hotel, taxied to the train station, trained to Hangzhou.

I got to Hangzhou in the early afternoon, took the hour bus ride from the train station to near campus, then taxied to the general area of the dorm (it doesn't have a street address). The dormitory is located within an old enclave of dorms nearby the campus. Run-down but functional. Checked in, got my room (B201), roommate had already been living there but for now was nowhere to be seen. The room is across from the bathroom/laundry, which has squat toilets, no toilet paper. Rooms have no internet, but my roommate has a dsl modem so I think we'll be able to get a router and share the happiness.

The rest of the day was spent frentically trying to find living necessities. ATM trouble prevented me from being able to get any money, but thankfully the leftover money Neil gave me (from when he visited me in China in 2007) would last (by 50 yuan) until I could find some money.

Visited the Internet cafe, went to 兰州拉面 (Lanzhou Handpulled Noodles) for dinner, hadn't eaten lunch, had a bowl of mutton noodles. When I returned to the dorm, my roommate was there. Benoît, a Belgian, he speaks fine English (in addition to Dutch, French, Chinese, and some German). Seems like a cool guy. He had just gotten back from couchsurfing in Wuxi, visiting some friends there. It seems as if his entire Chinese department class at university has come to China, as he has numerous classmates/friends in various Chinese cities, as well as in Taiwan.

His existence immediately made being here more bearable. Talked a fair bit, then to bed.

9/6/09

Authoritarianly humid; hot and sticky. Went about fixing my money issues. Tons of road construction everywhere, many women carrying umbrellas as parasols. Got some money, still haven't quite figured out why my debit cards weren't working at the China Construction Bank.

Benoit helped me get a sim card, and now my phone works in China. It still displays the wrong time, which is annoying...

Slowly figuring things out... registration with the college is tomorrow.

Blogspot/blogger and facebook are blocked here, so until I can get my own internet I won't be able to access those. LJ works for now. So I don't know quite yet what I'm going to do for 'blogging'. We'll see. Right now I´m using Benoît´s computer, the keyboard is azerty, it´s weird...

- 迈肯 Maiken

Mailing address:
P.O. Box 1542
Oversea Students Building, Yuquan Campus
Zhejiang University
Hangzhou, Zhejiang, P.R. China 310027

Room telephone (calling from US):
011 +86 571 87933556

Cell phone (calling from US):
011 +86 571 15988833602

Videochat online (once I have my own internet):
http://www.tokbox.com/Michael9462

Memories of Trains. Let me know how you like.

Also, something mighty amusing from the intarwebs: Auto-Tune the News!

ALSO, free BT concert this Wednesday in the city if interested. Information.

So, I finished my BA thesis two weeks ago, meaning I now officially have FREE TIME. It also helps that I have only three classes rather than four, which almost makes me feel like I don't even go school. (The evening of the day I turned in my BA I beat Braid, which is a really wonderful story/game that I heartily recommend.)

Last week/end was Scav, popularly known as The Hunt, which was epic and amazing. I worked on electronics this year, meaning I helped make a mp3 bowling ball player, a proselytizing wall-mounted trout, and a pre-amp and speaker that fit inside of two altoids tins. Pretty awesome stuff. Some of the showcase (i.e. big points) items included a vending machine, a labyrinth game (those things with the ball that you tipped to get the ball to the end without it falling into one of the holes) at the scale that the ball is a bowling ball (conveniently playing the Labyrinth soundtrack! Yes, one of the themes this year was David Bowie. The other was Oregon Trail! So. Good.), a harpoon gun that was tipped with a boxing glove to be used to hunt down Mobius Dickius (exactly what it sounds like), and a sapling that turned into a tree by automated processes (a la the Prestige).

You can see the latter in its full glory here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AUspZ_AU30 It was the most amazing thing of all Scav and I heartily recommend a watch. It probably helped that everyone was two days' behind on sleep, but it was real science-magic. Another pretty amazing scav item that transfers well to real world-presentation is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2UX9wnJHJ8 , which is pretty self-explanatory (and awesome). Notice the other teams' faces. Not only did Snell-Hitchcock end up winning this year (third year in a row!) but our arch-nemesis (Max Palevsky) got 3rd! Excellent...

Speaking of excellent, this Saturday I spent part of the day watching the finals for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, which is... amazing. There was one song which I was infatuated with and hoped would win (even though I didn't really understand how any of it worked) and it ended up winning by the largest point margin ever! Which is sweet. The song was Norway's, the artist was Alexander Rybak, and the watching is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8JRtGMBUz0&fmt=22

As a comparison, here's Ukraine's song, which has the most ridiculous show/dancing ever. Just look at those Spartan guys. RIDICULOUS. Imagine a party that involved people dressed AND dancing like that. It would be THE BEST.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-yl8EcIg6E&hd=1

Tonight was my final MEME concert, which went really well. During soundcheck, I played the violin part of Fairytale, to many's amusement. Afterwards, we all went to Cedars (Middle Eastern food) where we had a ~24 seat banquet table and ridiculous amounts of food. When it was getting closer to closing time, people pulled out their instruments for an hour of drunken jam sessions and dancing. It was awesome.

Not that it needs to be reiterated, but I'm highly looking forward to coming home and having summer party-extravaganzas! There's a Grizzly Bear concert that's happening at the Fillmore on June 21 if peoples are interested. I'll be coming home before that, but I'm not quite sure when yet (I need some time after gradumacation to ship stuff etc.). Here's the concert details:
http://www.last.fm/event/966568
http://www.livenation.com/edp/eventId/405041

EDIT: Their Sunday show is now sold-out, their Monday June 22 show is still available though: http://www.livenation.com/edp/eventId/408996

Also of course listen to their new album to see if it interests you. I kinda hope they'll play Department of Eagles songs too, but I don't really know. Also, my most recent concert listening experience was the worst, so hopefully you guys can make it better? For our viewers at home, let's just say it involved the experimental noise-rock band known as Yann Tiersen... :'{

Much love!

Long story short, I'm going to be in China next school year studying Chinese at Chinese University!

Long story medium, I've heard back from the four grad schools I've applied to: Berkeley (nay), the Monterey Institute (yay), the Hopkins-Nanjing Center (yay), and MIT (nay), and have yet to hear back from the Boren or Pickering fellowships. I'm most likely not going to get the fellowships (seeing as how every student ever will be trying to get them), so I would probably have to get loans etc to pay for grad school (not something I'd like to do right now). The Monterey Institute offered some scholarship monies ($6000) and TAing opportunities but I'd still need to pony up some goods. Haven't heard anything from HNC regarding money, but it doesn't really matter, as...

Life story short, I applied for and got a Chinese Government Scholarship to study Chinese in China for a year. They pay for everything (travel, lodging, classes) and I get a meager monthly stipend that goes pretty far in China. Weird part is, I choose three universities and then the government chooses which of them they want me to go to, so I don't know yet where I'll be going... As of now, it's 1. Nanjing University 2. Zhejiang University (in Hangzhou) and 3. East China Normal University (in Shanghai). It'll be a normal September 2009 to June 2010 thang, with a two/three week vacation during January (for Chinese New Year).

So... yeah! Go figure. I can always apply to grad schools next year, and not only will this make me a stronger candidate, but it'll buy me some time to figure out what I want to do with my life. Sad times will be the fact that I'll be by myself in China, so a warning shot across the bow of our relationship: perhaps invest in a webcam? The intarweb chatcamera can easily repair any relationship damaged at sea, as the HMS Michael has borne witness.

It also means I'll be around for summer!

I'm planning on taking a class at the Ali Akbar Khan College of Music (it's on 5th street or something), so if any musically-inclined people want to learn some bebopin' hiphopin' Hindustani music on their respective keytars...! And it's just one evening a week, nothing huge, so there'll still be plenty of time for our daily LARPing sessions.

Look for my coming on the first lack of light on the fifth day of the third week of March. At dusk, look to the South!

(...I'll be arriving late afternoon March 20.)