Riding shotgun from half a world away...

Well I received the permission I was anticipating, so let me introduce you all to OnHongKongIsle. I was able to trade emails with the author and congratulate him on his (currently being bound) master's thesis. He took a moment to view this blog and decided that he didn't stand to suffer too much harm by allowing me to attach my ramblings to his good name. And here we are...

A little (ok, very long winded) back story here to start this off. Steve and I (anonymity not being his M.O.) attended high school together in the Metro-Detroit area. After surviving four years of a school which provided us with great opportunities and learning on more levels than we likely ever wanted to encounter (and not all of it positive...), we went our separate ways and moved on to our undergraduate careers. Through some trick of fate, I was actually the first person from our high school graduating class that ended up visiting him at his college of choice. I actually had a regatta at that school and so was there on University of Michigan Sailing Team "business," but it still counted. This, I believe, was Steve's senior year of college.

Me, being less motivated, decided that undergrad was a bit too fun to cram into four years and so decided to take the "victory lap," thus my uncertainty on when this happened. I seem to recall this as my junior year, but was it my first or second junior year? Or did I actually have two senior years? And if in that second senior year, I was still taking 100-level classes, was that actually a super-freshman year? I have no answer to these questions. And that would be a massive digression...

Steve used to maintain a (almost) weekly email publication of sorts called the "Week in Review" that was addressed to us high school classmates and friends as he detailed his life in undergrad. In retrospect, this email publication (I lack any better term to describe it) was actually the start of many things. For Steve, I think, this was his entry into a very personal writing style that he has continued to work on and advance with his current website.

For many of us, the email was a way to stay connected with any number of former classmates and friends then residing in different locations. It eventually led to a yearly gathering at Steve's parents house around the holidays where everyone would gather and catch up on another year of college and life. From this holiday gathering we met old friends, new friends, their girlfriends, their wives, their lives that we were no longer witness to on a daily basis. People got degrees, got jobs, got families, returned home, and moved away. And somewhere throughout this, we all got older and started showing up with bottles of wine rather than two-liter bottles of Coke.

For me personally, the "Week in Review" (or the WIR for those in the know) was actually the beginning of this blog. It just took me an additional seven years to arrive here. What many of my readers, both casual and regular, may not realize is this is my third attempt at writing something of a blog. And this is certainly the most "successful" since I'm still writing here as we speak. I'll detail all three blogs and explain how this one became what it is.

We graduated from college and the concept of "going our own separate ways" grew even more massive. I moved to Chicago, Steve moved to China, and everyone else fell somewhere in between (which is only logical since there are not many more diametrically opposite locations than Chicago to Hong Kong that are actually populated).

Upon arriving in China and setting up his life there (teaching English at a university...I'll let you get the details of that from Steve's site), Steve created OnHongKongIsle. I think this was just a natural extension for him from the WIR, and it was opened up to a broader audience since the audience to his life had grown over the years as well. I too had decided to make an attempt at something like this.

The first incarnation was something of a personal posting, very similar to the stylings of what people wrote on sites like LiveJournal and Blurty. I quickly realized this was a failing effort as I didn't really care to let people know what was going on in my life. If you will allow me a quick bit of psychoanalysis (read: psycho...), I don't often like to provide much insight into my personal life. I have a couple of quick-hit topics that I let people know about (e.g. I sail, went to Michigan, am a lawyer, etc.) and then I usually hide behind those generalities. So clearly this idea of the personal blog wasn't going to get far...

My second attempt was a (sad) foray into humor. Since I couldn't really bring myself to write about the substantive details of my life (I mean who really cares about what I ate for lunch or what I did in school/the office on a regular basis?...even I don't, I'm just forced to live it...digression off...), I decided to return to the idea of an email broadcast and send my musings to people in the manner of sarcasm and otherwise bitter ranting. The people who know me are well aware that I have something of a dry and sarcastic sense of humor. I can take the seemingly most innocuous of topics and turn it into some kind of epic "disaster" meant to make people laugh. Of course this does not always set itself up proper on paper. And so I instantly started receiving return responses from people asking if I was ok. Apparently there is much to be said for tonal inflection and Gmail just wasn't providing that service yet...

Which brings us to v3.0. My initial intent in writing this blog was to improve upon the concept of version two and make it accessible to anyone who might happen to stumble across the URL. Then I remembered that I still didn't really have my content nailed down. I clearly wasn't going to provide people a window into my life because I couldn't comprehend subjecting others to reading what even I didn't want to write. I thought the easy way out of this was to use a lot of links to other sources and then just make my sarcastic comments on what was written by someone else.

The career of every great comedian is inexorably linked to the talent of his writers. And so I was going to scour the internet high and low to find the material that I felt suited my humor best. This approach worked for about the first two posts. Then I realized that I was wasting what I considered to be great source material. What this blog actually turned into had nothing to do with my intent or any inherent talent, but actually a complete accident and a realization that came all too slowly to the only person in a position to have it.

As it turns out, I eventually realized on my third attempt at writing a blog like Steve's that I should try writing a blog like Steve's, but in my own way. That is to say, writing my view of the world for anyone who chooses to read it and let the reader take it as they may. I was never destined to write the more personal posts in the style of Steve. His writing is/was a window into the world as he saw and experienced it. And it takes a lot of confidence and courage to hold yourself out there to the world as a live person and tell others what you see.

That self-awareness, or whatever you want to call it, is something that I have never had in any measurable supply. But that didn't prevent me from creating a window into the world as I read it to be. Emphasis on the "read." Reading is what I do. It is what I have always done. And so my perception of the world in many ways is not so much what I have lived or experienced (like Steve, for example), but what I have read and considered. In that way, I can provide insight into various subject matters. Or at least I keep telling myself that I can...

So where do we find ourselves today? Steve is completing his masters degree in English at The University of Hong Kong. He still has another thesis ahead of him and then is likely off to a Ph.D. program somewhere back in the U.S. I have a J.D. and passed the bar exam. For the first time in 23 years (consecutive, I might add), I am not in some form of schooling. And so I am forced to adjust to this new sensation while endlessly debating what my next degree is.

In the email I received from Steve granting me license to link to his blog, he made mention of the fact that my writing style has changed quite a bit since high school. I am only hoping that this is a compliment since I constantly re-read my posts here and wonder how I was actually allowed to graduate from any of these institutions. But in all seriousness, my writing has changed drastically in the past eight years and change. Just as I have. Just as we all have.

But in another line from Steve's email, he writes "A lot changes and a lot remains the same." Yet again, he is more correct than even he probably realizes. We met as a product of our educational paths. We stayed connected (to one degree or another) as we diverged on those paths. And now we both find ourselves at a crossroads in that same path and trying to figure out where it leads next.

I've been blessed. Steve has too. We are both very fortunate to have the abilities, the support of family and friends, the opportunities to be able to pursue our individual educations to whatever may be the fullest extent. For both of us, this process has been a defining characteristic of us at times, and at other times, perhaps something akin to a sickness.

Speaking just for myself momentarily, I don't know that I will ever be able to let go of chasing some level of a formal education, be it a masters degree, a Ph.D., or some other example of pieces od paper and letters after my name. I have a funny feeling Steve might consider that for a moment (if he hasn't already) and come to the same conclusion. Its because we are infected with this odd need to learn more, to "know" things. And unlike what NBC Saturday morning commercials would have you believe (read: "The More You Know, The More You Grow"), learning is not some great path to enlightenment. Learning is frightening because the act of doing so forces a person to realize how much more is yet to be learned. Its both a sickness and an addiction. And ultimately, it is what this blog has become.

I wanted to write like Steve. I was convinced I couldn't pull it off. Hell, I am still convinced. But I ended up writing like him anyway, just in a different style. He writes to provide a view into his world, what he has learned, what he has to teach. I write to provide my view on the world, to share what I have learned in the links I pass along, maybe not to teach, but to provide people with the opportunity to learn more like I must. And in the end, isn't the act of teaching just the presentation of a way for those who are so inclined a chance to learn all that they desire to know?

So from half a world away, I tried to mimic Steve. I thought I had failed at that mission. I eventually arrived here. And just extremely recently I have learned that I succeeded in this goal, and only when I finally learned what the goal truly was. So read OnHongKongIsle and learn. And keep coming back here and learn. I know I always do...


All men by nature desire knowledge.
- Aristotle, Metaphysics

The learning and knowledge that we have is, at most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.
- Plato


Also, this post was extremely out of character and I promise not to do this to anyone more than maybe once or twice a year...