The Tao of Sam

  • Chapter 68: A case of the Mondays

    7:00pm: Uncorking a bottle of red wine, I sit down to enjoy a viewing of High Fidelity. Chase is at his book club. Mike is cooking Key Lime Pie.

    8:15: Just as John Cusack recounts sleeping with Marie DeSalle, the fire alarm goes off. Mike and I realize the alarm is going off in the whole building and not just our room, grab our jackets and head outside. A small congregation of people starts accumulating. No visible smoke.

    8:30: Four fire engines show up and surround the building; ladders are raised, about 10 firemen go to what we are told is room 409 (we are 309). Chase comes back from his bookclub.

    8:45: A woman faints on grass, is treated for shock and wrapped in blankets, ambulence arrives, and is taken away. We are told she lives in 409, was making french fries, started a grease fire and fled the scene. The sprinklers had been on for quite some time. Spinklers spray water. Lots of water.

    8:55: Firemen tell crowd that “anyone not in rooms 309 or 209 can go back in”. Profanities are muttered by at least three white males between the ages of 22 and 23. Estimates of how good our day will end up take another exponential step towards a negative number.

    9:00: We are allowed into our apartment. The power is out, and there are waterfalls in the living room. Quickly inspecting the extent of the damage, we find no water in any of our rooms, and not over the TV. We quickly get buckets, pans and tubs to fight the rain from above. There is one main artery that’s draining our largest bucket every 10 minutes. We find all the leaks using our single working flashlight (note to self: buy batteries) and try to do some damage control.

    9:30: Police take Chase’s information. Building maintenance is on hand, helping us change water and offering what could be construed as a weak precursor to moral support. We accept an offer to stay in thier model apartment in the main building. A towel, shampoo, soap and three cans of Campbell’s Chunky Soup are packed into my backpack.

    9:50: As per my Dad’s suggestion, we put garbage bags over all electronics and clear out the TV and DVDs from the living room. Maintenance will be there all night to make sure things are okay.

    10:30: The bottle of red wine is reopened at model apartment. Phone calls to various important women are made.

    12:15am: Somewhere, in a small apartment complex in suburban Virginia, lying on a bed seemingly too short for 5’9″, someone felt alive.

  • Chapter 67: Why you go to Europe

    “Ahhh, amerikai!! Where in America you live?”

    The cool thing about Europe is that not many people know that Cleveland isn’t cool. It’s not a New York or a Los Angeles, but try telling someone from SoCal that you live in Oradea, Romania. Chances are they haven’t even heard of Bucharest, so they won’t know that you live in a backwoods town that isn’t really reaping any benefits from the fall of communism outside of those delicious Big Macs. Cleveland even has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and everyone has heard of Rock and Roll.

    “I went to school in Cleveland, which is in Ohio, but when I get back I’m moving to Washington D.C., where I’m going to work for the government.”

    It’s harder to impress another ex-pat.

    “Well, I’m going to work for the patent office. Yeah, I get to review patents and determine if they are new ideas or not. We’ll see how it goes. Uh-huh, yep, that’s what Einstein did. ”

    It’s the first day at a new school, excepts it’s everyday. A pack of college students and recent grads sitting in a hostel courtyard, each expecting adventure and insight from this trip. No one knows who is cool, who is weird, who is secretly a complete loser. We’re all instantaneously ourselves, or at least the selves we can project.

    “I don’t know. The job sort of came out of nowhere, it wasn’t something I really pursued so much as fell in my lap. I was planning on going to grad school but (that didn’t pan out) I decided to take a year off.”

    The longer you know someone, the less you’re able to change their opinion of you. Be it good, be it bad, it becomes harder and harder to look at the story you’re living objectively, life becomes habit, expectations are set. Most people don’t get asked astonishing questions by people they’ve known for a while. That part is often played by intriguing stranger #5 (always with a scarf), who just happens to be sharing a train compartment with you. Fate proceeds to take its course.

    “Beats me. I’ve always kind of thought I’d get a master’s in Computer Science, get a technical job and work my way up. I like coding, but I know I’m better at other things. Part of me thinks about law school, but … I don’t know.”

    Backpacks. Guidebooks. Maps. Trains. Mountains. Museums. Cafes. Parks. Benches. Food. Languages. Coins. Postcards. Insignificant compared to a simple question.

    “Are you happy with who you’re becoming?”

    Twenty three years doesn’t prepare you for much.

  • Chapter 66: Ten things Magic the Gathering has taught me

    1. A carefully constructed strategy can’t make up for poor decisions.
    2. Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it’s good.
    3. Real men don’t concede.
    4. There is no best deck, but there is a worst deck*.
    5. Just because it’s big and breathes fire doesn’t mean it’s useful to you.
    6. High cost often has an inverse relationship with actual usefulness.
    7. Everyone gets mana-screwed once in a while.
    8. The strategy that wins is often the simple one.
    9. Playing with people is more fun than with the computer.
    10. When in doubt, just repeat to yourself, “Untap. Upkeep. Draw.”

    * 59 swamps and a Zephyr Falcon

  • Chapter 65: The Parable of the Rock Climber

    You know how it is. You’re halfway up leading a single pitch 5.9 friction climb and you just ran into its nasty 5.10a crux. It’s a simple overhang, if you were two feet higher you could just pop your foot on your handhold and you’d be on easy street, 5.5 to the top. But there doesn’t seem to be a hold where you need it, and your feet can only find little wisps of rock and small patches of roughness. You lean back hoping to notice the bucket that your hands can’t find, or anything that closely resembles solid footing.

    “You’re only making it worse. Just move your feet up and trust it. You gotta keep moving.”

    Your belayer is right. The longer you sit there, the more tired you get. The more tired you are, the harder it is to do anything. You fall, because you’re exhausted.

    “Lower me, I’m too pumped to get it. Fuck.”

    Climbing is about rhythm and balance more than anything. No one is strong enough to hang on the rock forever, and the key is to just keep moving, to keep inching up the face. Everything always looks better when you’re an inch higher. If you sit in a comfortable spot for too long you stop seeing the available handholds, and you get very picky about what you’ll actually trust to hold your weight.

    In reality, all of the holds will hold your weight. Rock is strong, way stronger than you’ll ever be. A flimsy little flake might be just enough to swing you up to the biggest bucket of your life, but unless you trust it and make the move you’ll never know.

    Momentum is mental. You might be in a tough spot with limited options, but you have to keep climbing. Otherwise you’ll just get tired and fall.

    “If you cannot understand that there is something in man which responds to the challenge of this mountain and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go.”
    – George Leigh Mallory

  • Chapter 64: CIA World Factbook – Sam’s Apartment

    Background:
    Picked by Chase in the summer of 2005, the apartment has had continuous habitation by its current population since mid September, 2005. Situated close to a metro stop and the offices of our employment, the apartment provides a sanctuary for those in need (of a drink, a hug, etc).

    Location:
    an enclave of the United States in north-east Virginia, just inside the beltway

    Geographic coordinates:
    38.799N 77.066W

    Map references:
    Google Maps is the best

    Area:
    land: 0.00013 sq km

    Area-comparative:
    a little less than twice the size of the Oval Office

    Land boundaries:
    total: 0.046 km
    border countries: United States 0.046 km

    Coastline:
    0 km (landlocked)

    Climate:
    temperate, cold by the windows in the winter

    Terrain:
    mostly off white carpet with rugs and linoleum

    Elevation extremes:
    lowest point: kitchen linoleum 8.8 m
    highest point: ceiling of porch 12.2 m

    Natural resources:
    sarcasm

    Land use:
    Mike: 23.4%
    Sam: 11.0%
    Chase: 15.3%
    other: 50.3%

    Irrigated land:
    0 sq km (2005 est.)

    Natural hazards:
    none, now that we own a plunger

    Environmental – current issues:
    trash can occasionally get pretty stinky, Chase yells at me to clean up my room

    Environement – international agreements:
    party to: clean your own dishes, except when you cooked for everyone (then they clean)
    signed, but not ratified: take out the trash when it needs to be taken out

    Population:
    3 (2005 est.)

    Age structure:
    0-14 years: 0.0% (male 0/female 0)
    15-64 years: 100.0% (male 3/ female 0)
    65 years and over: 0.0% (male 0/female 0)

    Median age:
    total: 22.6 years
    male: 22.6 years
    female: #ERROR_UNDEFINED

    Life expectancy at birth:
    male: 74.2 (2005 est)

    Ethnic groups:
    White 66.7%, White Chocolate 33.3%

    Languages:
    English (official), French and Japanese (with encouragement, liquid or otherwise)

    Literacy:
    male: 100.0%

    Country name:
    conventional long form: Sam’s Apartment
    alternate forms: Mike’s Apartment, Chase’s Apartment

    Goverment type:
    direct democracy with yelling and spreadsheets

    Capital:
    couches around TV

    Administrative divisions:
    4 districts; Sam’s room, Mike’s room, Chase’s room, mutually administrated common area

    Independance:
    18 September 2005 (from US)

    Legal system:
    gentle reminder, followed by increasingly loud threats upon the accused’s life

    Economy – overview:
    Small, landlocked and without desirable resources, the entirety of the population work outside of the country in the surrounding United States. Though this does constitute the overwhelming majority of all economic activity, trade in slightly used electronics and furniture has flourished in recent months.

    GDP (purchasing power parity):
    $167,000 (2006 est)

    GRP – real growth rate:
    2% (government cost of living increase)

    Labor force – by occupation:
    patent examiner: 100.0%
    something cooler: 0.0%