May Your Madness be Meaningful... and Mad ~ Travelog Thursday

As I sit in my living room with the patio doors open pouring in fresh spring air, i have two laptops on my desk and our tv on rotation with three of the four NCAA basketball games on every possible way. A mirage of sounds are coming out of apartment 2B; shoes squeaking, cheerleaders making out-of-rhythm cheers from all the 9 teams currently playing , in-depth announcers spatting out the plays, and crowds roaring at various big plays. What is in front of me? My brackets ridden with cross-outs, fill-ins, and highlight marks. A warrior's prep kit sits in front of me; a glass of Crystal Lite to get hydrated before the holiday of drunkenness commences tonight and my St. Patrick's green clothing folded on my coffee table, ready to be adorn shortly. Today is March 17^th. Most would consider this a glorious day for the Irish and alcohol lovers, but for me, that plays second fiddle to the unofficial holiday I am celebrating today. This is bigger than Christmas, it's more exciting. It's more significant than Thanksgiving, it's more meaningful. This is more patriotic than Independence Day, fireworks happen sporadically and not in an organized finale.

My set up for the first day of the NCAA tourney. Two computers, several brackets, HD tv, and a glass of Crystal Lite. Yup.

This is the first day of March Madness. If there has been a consistent sporting event that I have written about throughout my life, it has been the NCAA tournament. I remember the very first time I filled out a bracket for my dad's pool. I knew a little bit about college basketball as a 12 year old, but that moment it clicked. My first tournament pool and my first victory against adults. It was invigorating. From then on I have filled out a bracket; at 13 I made two and wrote a poem about how fun it was, at 14 I had three brackets and spent hours on research, by high school it was a full-fledged addiction. I skipped school and took “sick days” for the first two days of the tourney. At 15 I sat and watched every game with the each timeout break giving live updates on the start of America's war in Afghanistan. It was a memory I will always have, having the thrilling excitement of the first games and brackets being tested but the lows of teenage friends having to watch as our country embarked on war. Once college tipped off, it was not even a question, classes took a backseat.

So I had ten years of pure ecstasy of the tournament and then I left to live abroad in Thailand. College basketball was nearly impossible to find on television in The Land of Smiles and so I did not pay very much attention to the regular season other than my favorite Tar Heels of North Carolina. The regular season came and went and I got my usual college basketball tournament invitations. A tradition is a tradition so I absolutely signed up.

Can you judge a country by a book? Or vice versa?

So the old adage to never judge a book by its cover served new meaning when referring to travel within China. A country that has one of the world's most deeply-rooted histories and also some of the most well-known traditions can be very easily be typecast by the western world. My original impression of China, before traveling throughout the country, was of billions of people on top of each other, strict law enforcement and tremendous organization. Some pretty extreme typecasts.

Being the avid enthusiast of His Holiness The Dalai Lama, I was very interested in trying to get a sense of both sides of the story in reference to The Dalai Lama and his relationship with the Chinese government. So before starting my month long journey to China (and with wishful thinking Tibet), I began reading "Freedom in Exile" by His Holiness. Although hearing the rumors of the Chinese police kidnapping and arresting people who read The Dalai Lama's books, I wanted to actually see if that was true. So I took the risk, with the book in hand, as I stepped off the plane in Guangzhou. I made sure that the front of the book, which has a photograph of His Holiness, on it was to my side.