Zurich: Cheese, Lakes, Cheese, Mountains, Cheese, and Cheese

On July 8, 2024July 6, 2024 By TommyIn Minifig, Big World, Non-Daily Dispatch, TraveloguesLeave a comment

In September 2022, Lauren and I traveled to Zurich. It was always tough to travel together during her medical residency, as time off was rare and trying to organize flights to maximize our time within a very short window was a headache. After a failed trip to Greece during her intern year (our March 2020 trip cut short after just a few days when the President announced the border would be closed because of the rising threat of COVID-19), we didn’t often entertain the idea of trips to far-off lands during the remainder of her training.

That is, until her fourth year, when between a wedding I was attending in Turkey and her own bachelorette party, we saw a window of opportunity: 4-5ish days where we could meet up somewhere new.

I looked at places that would be both convenient for Lauren to fly to from Philly, and for me to fly to from Turkey. And after a lengthy search, I found that Zurich ticked our required boxes for timing.

Lauren would fly right after work on Saturday, and land Sunday afternoon. And I would fly early in the morning on Sunday, in the wee hours after dancing all night at the wedding, and land Sunday just before her. The perfect plan!

Despite airline strikes in Germany, we arrived on time and met up at the airport. After the appropriate amount of canoodling hellos, we headed into Zurich to check into our hotel, the Zurich Marriott Hotel. The Marriott was in a great spot for us: right along the main river thoroughfare and an easy walk to anywhere we wanted to go. And unlike a lot of European hotels, the beds would actually fit my uncomfortably long bod.

We wanted to make the most of our time in Zurich, while letting each experience breathe and not get too rushed between dozens of activities. So we divided each day into a theme and organized our events accordingly:

Day 0: Arrival and Exploring the Town
Day 1: Hike Day
Day 2: Lake Day
Day 3: Museum & Culture Day
Day 4: Departure

This let us really dial into the different experiences we were interested in. If there’s anything more exciting than fun, it’s regimented fun!

Day 0: Exploring the Town

After dropping our bags at the hotel, we took a stroll along the Limmat River into town. As we walked by, we saw people swimming in the river all the way down to Lake Zurich, which got us quite excited for our Lake Day. But that wouldn’t be coming for a while, so we buried our excitement deep down and continued walking to town.

We strolled through Old Town, passing wieners and beer places galore. I was obviously in heaven, but wanted to save my appetite for dinner. We found the Grossmünster, a church built in the 1100-1200s with two huge towers (one of the most famous landmarks in Zurich, probably?), and climbed to the top of one for a great view of the city and lake. And Lauren didn’t even burst into flames after entering a church!

I tried snapping a few pics of my minifig, thinking I’d rekindle my Instagram account, though I never posted them. Until now! Behold!

Based on how nothing is actually in focus, I’m realizing why I never posted this one.

This is actually not taken from the top of the tower, it’s an illusion. Don’t jump, Minifig!

Things were heating up, and anyone that knows me knows that even looking at a single stair can cause my sweat to flow like a river in Switzerland, so we stopped outside the opera house by the Grossmünster at a little cafe. There, we sat in a classic European square and had a classic European refreshment: the Aperol spritz.

Ah, the Aperol spitz… what an experience! Colorful and chilled, bitter and burp-inducing. A treat to be sure, and a welcome one.

As it was getting close to dinner time, we walked across the river, across the cobblestones, to Restaurant Zeughauskeller. There we sat outside and had beer and sausage, wine and charcuterie. Heaven for us both.

Restaurant Zeughauskeller (god bless you) is inside an old 15th century armory. Weapons and armor adorn the walls, though the Swiss are notoriously a neutral, non-warring folk. But it makes for great decor.

The food was traditional Swiss fare, with recipes dating back generations. I gobbled down a good number of wiener and had some delicious local beers, while Lauren sampled the famed Riesling from nearby Germany.

And after dinner, full enough to burst, we decided to walk it off. Hand-in-hand, we ambled along the river again, back to the hotel for sleep. Nothing more romantic than a stroll through the European autumn, someone might say (probably).

Day 1: Lake Day

Lake Day! Everyone loves a lake day. Our buried excitement from seeing the swimmers the day before bubbled out of us with all the force of a cheese on the lactose intolerant. We put on our trunks and swim suits and headed back east to big old Lake Zurich. Our destination was a little farther than anticipated, but we were able to stop for sausages on the way to replenish our energy.

We paid to enter the “pool” at Stranded Tiefenbrunnen, which had lockers, bathrooms, and a large section of lakefront with some diving platforms we could swim out too. No actual pool, but that’s Europe for you. We spent our day lounging on the grass, reading, and swimming in the water. It was incredibly clear and fresh water, so we didn’t have to get anything from the snack bar when we got thirsty!

After hours of lounging, swimming, and generally frolicking, we dried off and headed back into town for dinner. Right outside the Grössmunster, we grabbed a table at Restaurant Le Dezaley Zurich, where we split a pot of fondu.

Fondu is a famously Zurich dish, though it is typically saved for cold winter months when people need a hot cheese to warm up and get all their gas out to heat their homes. But many places will still serve it year round, and having been in the crisp mountain lake water all day, we were ready to be warmed. It was expectedly delicious.

With bellies full of cheese and Aperol spritz, we again made the walk back to our hotel to sleep and rest up for our big active day.

Day 2: Hike Day

After guzzling wieners and bowls of cheese, we knew we would need an active day on our itinerary to earn such tasty treats. So we planned for a day spent hiking the mountains of Switzerland. Switzerland is a notoriously lumpy land, full of mountains and valleys, inclines and declines. Not for the faint of legs!

Rising early, we caught two trains to reach the now-closed Sattel-Aegeri railway station, situated on the outskirts of the town of Sattel, in the Swiss canton of Schwyz (look ma, no vowels!). We had to get up to Mostelberg to begin our hike, and while there was a cable car that would go straight there, we decided to be fit and walk the 3 miles uphill to that town. Bold, and it would certainly come back to haunt us as we got into the main hike.

Once in Mostelberg, we had a coffee and snack before turning our legs back on and getting our hike going. We walked across the Skywalk suspension bridge, and then a few more hours uphill past country houses, cows, and scenic vistas, up to the bench on top of Hochstuckli. It was a lot of walking, and our dogs were certainly barking, but the views were amazing. We spent a lot of time taking pictures up there (do it for the ‘gram, I kept telling my legs).

Lauren posing on the Skywalk suspension bridge. I didn’t like looking down, it was very high.

Sometimes you need to rest your blocks on your way to the summit!

Lauren posing at the top — queen of the mountain! Ready to get our legs amputated.

It’s a lot harder of a hike when your legs are small.

On the way back down, we had lunch at Mostelberg, before opting to take the gondola to the bottom. It was a good choice too, since it began raining. Perfect timing! From there, we hopped on the train and returned to Zurich.

After showering off the dirt and pain, we walked (oof) to dinner at Rheinfelder Bierhalle, which is a classic Swiss beer hall. There, we both had some well-earned beers to cheers to our fitness. For dinner, I had the Jumbo Jumbo Cordon Bleu (because Lauren’s nickname in high school was Jumbo Jumbo). It turns out, a Jumbo Jumbo is a giant flattened cordon bleu, and it is amazing.

After a few steins, the day began catching up to us. We left the beer hall and grabbed a gelato at Dieci Gelateria before turning.

Day 3: Culture Day

In search of a day of culture, we mapped out some museums we wanted to hit, and took a stroll towards the lake before stopping at a small juice cafe for breakfast. The cafe was on an historic street, Augustinergasse, but I don’t remember exactly why it was historic. I don’t think it was for the juice place.

From there, we checked out the Swiss National Museum. Some cool exhibits, though they seemed to go to a lot of lengths to excuse their problematic neutrality during WW2. Overall, pretty cool, and definitely earned some culture points.

With that out of the way, we went to the real museum we wanted to see: the Lindt Home of Chocolate. I had never been a big Lindt person, though Lauren was, so we made it a priority to go for the history and also lots and lots of free samples.

We learned how chocolate is farmed, how the Lindt family got so popular, and all sorts of other fun chocolate facts. Then we had more and more samples of all the different flavors, and I got diabetes, probably. Before heading out, we grabbed another Aperol spritz in the museum bar. I decided I never wanted to eat another Lindt chocolate again.

We decided we enjoyed our Lake Day so much, we had to go back. So we did! And relaxed in the sun, hoping its rays would dissolve the kilos (a European measurement that means “pounds”) of chocolate inside us. And maybe it did, because we were hungry enough to try a new restaurant for dinner.

The restaurant, Raclette-Stube, was a fantastic little place. We had some delicious raclette and fondu, still spiting my lactose intolerance, and it was all amazing. We ended the day with another moonlit stroll along the river, romance in the air and cheese chugging along through our systems.

Day 4: Saying Goodbye

We woke with grief in our hearts: not only were we leaving that day, but we were also splitting up and going our separate ways for the next five days.

We had one more walk along the river early in the morning, when the town is quieter. We stopped for a traditional European breakfast (minus the cigarette) somewhere along the river close to the lake, before making our way to the airport.

One last picture of our favorite river in Zurich!

At the airport, Lauren grabbed a huge bag of chocolates to bring home to her girlies. No matter how many we had eaten the day before, she still didn’t hate them.

And that’s it! Lauren boarded her flight back to the States to go to her bachelorette party in Cape May and I went on to visit my friend Fred in Copenhagen. A very good trip for the time we had, and really great to get to travel together again.

A Non-Doctor’s Unconventional Journey on a Medical Mission

On June 8, 2024June 8, 2024 By TommyIn Non-Daily Dispatch, Travelogues1 Comment

WARNING: This post has detailed descriptions of medical procedures, dirty surgical tools covered in bloody bits, and a baby being born. If you are at all squeamish, maybe skip this one and read something else. I would!

The company I work at has an initiative to fund the travel portion of global health missions. The goal is to alleviate some of the cost burden of getting to high-need areas across the globe and allow medical groups to dedicate more budget to bringing along additional resources and doctors. In 2020, my employer added a new element to this initiative — company employees could volunteer to pair up with a global health group and actually go on the mission, providing organizational and on-the-ground support.

I was psyched. I already resonated with the company’s mission to help physicians in the U.S. with their day-to-day work, but this was an opportunity to take that a step further and provide direct support. And I felt I could truly help from the get-go as I already had a ton of experience organizing trips for large groups with a lot of equipment (when putting together several rowing tours to China over the past few years).

I immediately raised my hand and got paired with a group of physicians traveling to Chennai, India to assist in cleft palate repair. The trip was scheduled for April 2020, and I immediately began coordinating with the hotel and helping all the doctors book their flights. Unfortunately, the trip was cancelled in early March as the coronavirus bug that had been going around decided to become a bigger bug (if you ask my wife, big bugs are scarier than little ones). But at the end of 2021, I was told we were spinning up the initiative again, and there was a trip that December. Feeling just as passionate and excited about joining one of these trips, I jumped at the chance.

This time, it wouldn’t be for cleft palate repair in India. Instead, I was joining a team of OB/GYNs traveling to a hospital in Santiago, Dominican Republic. The local Dominican doctors were very knowledgeable and effective, but were struggling by a scarcity of resources, an overly large patient population, and hospital organizational issues. The visiting team had already been down to this hospital several times over the years, and so was pretty established in its role. But for this specific visit, the doctors had two goals: (1) continue training the team of local physicians on how to perform laparoscopic surgeries (minimally invasive procedures) using tools the local team didn’t normally have on-hand; and (2) review the hospital’s postpartum hemorrhage practices for areas of improvement.

The trip would consist of four full days in the hospital, performing surgeries and training the local physicians on new equipment and surgical techniques. The visiting doctors performed or guided the local team through vaginal hysterectomies, laparoscopic hysterectomies, prolapse surgeries, and emergent ectopic pregnancy interventions. They also held sims (lectures with visual-based teaching) on best practices for postpartum hemorrhage.

For a person who had never been exposed to the intricacies of obstetrics and gynecology, who had never stepped foot in an operating room, and who had only rarely ever seen a more-than-normal amount of blood, I grew more and more nervous as the trip got closer. The cleft palate trip was mostly going to be logistics, patient interviews, and photographs of patients before and after each repair. But this team had already been established in the area, they knew the hotels they wanted to stay at, they already had a driver and most meals sorted, and had their routine set.

Instead, they wanted me to scan through hand-written charts to identify deliveries that resulted in postpartum hemorrhage, coordinate lunches when they were too busy to, and take photos documenting the entire trip – including all the procedures being performed. The first two I was confident were in my wheelhouse. With a two-month crash course in Duolingo, I knew enough Spanish to order lunches and identify “hemorragia” in a chart. But it was the sitting in an OR, photographing things like c-sections, total hysterectomies, and vaginal prolapses, that worried me. I had only read about those things in books! And even then, not really. Who knew that things could fall out?? Not me! And now I’d have to photograph it, which probably meant looking at it? When I mentioned it to friends and family, they teasingly asked if I would faint.

My partner Lauren is an OB/GYN, so ahead of the trip I recognized terms like “laparoscope,” “prolapse,” and “hysterectomy” (from the dinner table talk I was privileged to hear when we would meet up with her coworkers), but I never really appreciated what each entailed in the OR. Having never even been in an operating room, I asked if there was anything I could do to prepare myself and make sure I wouldn’t pass out onto (or into) a patient. Lauren graciously offered to let me shadow her at work, but I felt guilty going into her hospital as the coronavirus Delta variant was rearing its head. So instead I winced through a video or two online, which really didn’t help much at all.

Also, no one had mentioned the smells! People’s insides smell different than their outsides, and that’s not a fun fact to learn in the moment. And when the doctors need to cauterize, it smells like meat cooking. Face masks don’t really block any of those smells out. I distinctly remember one of my first times hanging out with Lauren during her time in med school, and she was discussing with a classmate how she had finally been allowed to work the cauterizing tools in the OR. They both guiltily admitted that they thought it actually smelled good, and I was left thinking “Do I really like this woman? Was BBQ a bad idea for dinner?” Luckily, I wasn’t as squeamish during the trip as I had feared; there were only one or two scenes that forced me to look away and take a breath before getting back to snapping pics. The fact that doctors do this stuff everyday is wild. It was such an alien experience for me, and so commonplace for them.

Anyway, I flew down with the team, and it was very much a “hit-the-ground-running” experience. Minutes after first arriving at the hospital, I was told to quickly grab my camera and run into an operating room. In front of me was a pair of doctors, tugging and stretching a hole in a woman’s abdomen to make enough room to pull a baby out. I was aghast. Not only was it the first time I had seen a birth, it was also the first time I had even been in an operating room, and the first time I had seen someone’s insides. Apparatuses filled the room with beeps and gasps, people rushed all around to check on the patient, blood covered an alarming amount of the ground. And me in the corner: not a doctor, no real training to justify my presence. I managed to take my jaw off the floor long enough to take photos of the doctors, the baby, everything. I even made a gif of the baby coming out! (I’m not including it here. There are limits to what I would put my readers through!)

My uncertainty in my own value was quickly erased by the team after the c-section. They liked the pictures, wanted more of the other surgeries, and said I should feel free to come and go from the OR as I pleased. But first, could I go grab lunch for the doctors? And when I got back, could I start reviewing charts to help them gather the right hemorrhage research? And then run to the hardware store to buy and assemble some shelves so they could better organize their supplies?

The first day was a whirlwind, but by the end of it, I felt more confident and sure of my role. Each day, I grew less overwhelmed and more comfortable documenting surgeries, reviewing charts, and building a supply inventory. While the days were draining, I felt great because my work was truly additive.

But it wasn’t all lunch-runs, charts, and glamor shots. While the hospital does have access to a sanitation machine for cleaning surgical equipment, each cycle takes 12 hours and there aren’t enough spare tools to accommodate that schedule, even overnight. There are no OR techs (who, in the U.S., typically manage equipment), so the equipment and room cleaning is left to the doctors who just spent hours in a procedure. Because cleaning wasn’t actual surgery, it was an area I could help!

Let me set the scene for you. The cleaning process begins with getting gloves, a bottle of alcohol, and some gauze. Sometimes they don’t have your glove size, so the gloves will keep ripping off when you put them on, but eventually you squeeze in a pair without immediately tearing through. Then it’s time to go to town on each tool, scrubbing with the alcohol-soaked gauze to get the bulk of the blood and little bits of flesh off. Maybe the gloves tear again so you double up and hope both layers don’t rip and you don’t accidentally touch blood again. Safety first! You keep scrubbing and it’s taking a while — wow, there’s a lot of chunkies (medical jargon) and congealed goops (medical jargon) and body bits (medical jargon) on here! Once the bulk of the bits are gone, you let the instrument soak in some cleaning solution for a bit before it is rinsed the dried. Then you move on to the next one. Look at you, you’re an expert!

Anyway, I didn’t faint.

While this process may seem distressing (yes), it was actually one of the moments of the trip that I am most proud of. I can point to it and say, “They needed extra hands. I was able to come in and help.” My work scrubbing gave the doctors time to clean up faster and have a longer breather before diving into the next case. That might not sound like much, but actually experiencing how packed their days are, how early they arrive, how late they leave, and how many patients they see while they are there, every little bit counts. Even scrubbing bloody little bits.

When people ask me how the trip was, I usually say, “Exhausting, but worth it.” You often hear that doctors don’t have enough time in the day and that it isn’t easy to give patients the care they need. With this team, I lived a small portion of their experience and found that it’s all true: there is such a dearth of time that any bit saved truly helps.

And at the same time, I gained a lot more insight into how lacking health care is in certain regions, and how hard it is for doctors to do their work when there isn’t enough equipment, or support, or training. In places like the Dominican Republic, you don’t have support staff to clean the rooms and equipment, or to hand a tool to a doctor during a procedure, or to even organize the cabinets. That all falls on the doctors themselves, which means they have to spend extra time between each patient and during each surgery, and see fewer patients in a day. It falls to global health teams to negotiate donations from medical device companies, bring them to these high-need hospitals, and train the local doctors on how to use them. Even outside of the operating room, they spend time giving lectures on best practices, organizing and inventorying available resources, and building shelving space so the sutures aren’t stuffed into the same bin as the forceps, laparoscope, loose gloves, and lunches.

At the start of the trip, I was worried. I’m not a doctor, what if there isn’t anywhere I can pitch in? What if the doctors think I am just a hindrance? But that wasn’t how it went. I didn’t perform surgery (maybe next time!) (jk) (unless…?) (jk), but my work made it easier for doctors to do theirs.

I don’t have a ton of pictures to share of the inside of the hospital — even though the DR doesn’t have data privacy laws, I wouldn’t feel right about it. And because we spent most of our time either in the hospital or sleeping, I don’t have much from outside either. But I have a few to share below.

A hallway within the hospital. This wasn’t where we typically worked, which was an area much smaller and more crowded.

The maternity area of the hospital stores its surgical instruments in a tool box.

A pic of minifig in front of Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración. It was the only sightseeing we did, after dinner one night, so the pictures didn’t turn out that great. Which leads to…

The only picture I was able to get of myself! A blurry selfie in the dark. We had to keep our masks on most places since, in December 2021, the COVID pandemic was still very much a thing. Being around high-risk patients all day meant having to take precautions not only for ourselves, but for them too.

One more pic of that same monument, this one with a Christmas nativity scene. I really milked it for photos since it was the only opportunity for tourism amid all the work.

China Rowing Trips

On March 7, 2024June 30, 2024 By TommyIn Non-Daily DispatchLeave a comment

I’ve gone to China too many times.

In high school and college, I was on the rowing team. Rowing is a sport that can happen wherever there is a river long and wide enough to fit a few boats side-by-side for a good distance. Despite that pretty general criteria and the abundance of water on the earth (or maybe because of it), teams find themselves traveling all over the place to practice and race. Through my time in school, we traveled across the US for training trips and races in California, Florida, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Tennessee, to name a few.

This continued after college as well with alumni rowing, but with a twist. Instead of many short trips across the country, we with were invited to fewer races, but they were farther flung across the world. The first of these for me was to China.

As I was still folding up my cap and gown, I received a message from my older brother Jack, who had recently finished up grad school in the UK. His Cambridge team had been invited to send a boat of rowers to China for a week and half to race in three different cities, and they asked him if he wanted to go. He declined as he was busy working at the time, but he let them know that I was still fit (having just finished the national championships) and had absolutely nothing going on (which was a great burn on the fact that I didn’t graduate with a job lined up). So they agreed and I was invited along to race!

I got my passport ready and went to the Chinese consulate to get my visa sorted. Then I boarded a plane to go spend 10 days on the other side of the world with a bunch of people I had never met.

Most rowing trips in high school and college followed the same format: cramped flights or buses, two to a bed in a Days Inn or HoJo, bag lunches, lots of downtime, and straightforward racing. In high school, we also had to pay for most of the trip. All that is mostly what I was expecting on this first trip to China. We’d go to each city (Chengdu, Wuhan, and Linfen), do our racing, and have lots of pal-around time at the hotel in between some serious bouts of rowing. But this would be all-expenses paid—I just had to get my passport and visa, and they’d cover everything else. I was also told there would also be a banquet at the end of the racing, which was new to me but didn’t seem too out of the ordinary.

After a long, cramped flight on China Air, I arrived in Chengdu. That’s when I first linked up with Dave (my brother’s friend and the organizer for the Cambridge team) and met the rest of the crew. We were met at the airport by some of the organizers and some of our “handlers”. Having handlers seemed weird to me, but I supposed we needed translators. I later figured out that they were basically chaperones who were there to make sure we stayed out of trouble and were where we needed to be at the right time. They were all local students who were studying English, and they all seemed pretty fluent.

When we arrived to the hotel, I got my first sign that this wouldn’t be a normal rowing trip. The hotel was enormous, gilded everything, with huge rooms and no need to share beds. I shared a room with the other American on the trip, but we both had our own space.

I was worried: would I miss sharing a tiny bed with another giant dude? (Luckily, I got used to it.)

That night we all crashed early, exhausted by the long flights. But first thing in the morning we were up, traveling to the race course to take a look at our equipment and get it sorted for practice. On the way, we properly introduced ourselves in the light and figured out the lineup for the boat. Everyone on the team seemed great and I was settling in nicely. This would be a great trip, and nothing could go wrong!

We got to the course and that’s when the wheels started falling off. For most rowing trips, you bring your own equipment — boats, oars, cox-box, etc. And the boats are already wired up with speakers and have shoes and seats screwed in. These boats were completely empty, and in two pieces (the front and back were separated). There was a pile of shoes and seats off to one side, and a pile of oars off to another, for all the various competing teams to sort through. The Cambridge team seemed to know to expect this and they had brought their own speakers, wiring, and cox-box, and told a few of us to quickly go through the oars, shoes, and seats to ensure we had matching sets that fit the boat.

Why would the regatta organizers fly everyone over only to have equipment that didn’t match, or that was slightly broken, or in any way wasn’t good? I don’t know, and I never figured it out. This free-for-all was simply part of the competition, every time. Could you get enough workable equipment to get your boat in the water and take some strokes? If so, you were better off than most.

While half the boat went to scavenge from the piles, the other half went to work assembling the boat itself. After finding the right bolts and putting them together, we were met with an interesting hiccup.

It was over 100ºF, and these boats had been sitting in the sun for a few days. When we tried to tighten the boat together, we found that the heat had actually warped the fiberglass, and the two halves of the boat wouldn’t fit smoothly together. That means water would leak in through the seam, which just so happened to be at the six-man’s seat—my seat. So we did the only thing we could. We complained until we realized the organizers didn’t care, then we bought Vaseline and shoved it into the cracks, and kept some sponges in the bottom of the boat to bail it out when needed.

Finally, it was all put together, we had serviceable oars, and were ready to launch. The water was a nice neon green, like the ooze that made the ninja turtles, and the heat was oppressive. We asked our handlers if we could have water, and they said it would be ready for us when we finished practice. We tried to explain that in the heat, it’d be dangerous to work out without water, but they didn’t seem to get it.

So we launched and practiced, trying not to splash any of the water into the boat, and frequently stopping to bail out the leaks. But against the odds, the rhythm was nice, and the squad had some power. After a while we swung it into the dock and put it away. We looked for our handlers and the water, and finally saw them running over with a few boxes. We opened them to discover dozens of cans of Red Bull. As it turns out, Red Bull was sponsoring the regatta, and so cans of Red Bull were the only drinks provided to the athletes. We talked to them again about the need for actual water, and they assured us it would be provided the next day for the race. Which is a little true, they did provide bottles of warm, sweetened, flavored seltzer water. Better than nothing!

We headed back to the hotel to cool off and have lunch. Unlike the bagged meals for US rowing trips, all our meals were provided for. We usually ate at the hotel, which is what we did that day. Meals typically consisted of noodles, rice, and French fries, although Dave (who had gone on some of these trips before) was more adventurous with some of his snacks.

After lunch, we headed out of the hotel to go find some water bottles and granola bars to have for the next day. The handlers did not like that, they wanted us nice and cozy in the hotel, not outside in the world where anything could happen to us. Like what? I don’t know, nothing happened. But we frequently had to find strong excuses to leave the hotel, or simply sneak out.

Again, an early night, and we woke up the next day to race. Typical races are started fairly, with an agreed-upon starting sequence (naming each of the crews competing, then saying “Attention…Go”) and an umpire making sure the boats are aligned evenly. In China, it didn’t really happen that way. They started off with the names, but no aligner to make sure everyone was even. Then they said something very loudly, which may have been “Go” or may have been anything else. Whatever the case, we sped off the line and raced. We got 3rd place.

After the race, there was a short ceremony where they announced the top three finishers for the mens’ and women’s races, and then they set loose a bunch of ducks into the race course and a ton of locals jumped in to grab them. One of the French women’s team’s competitors jumped in to catch one, and she came climbing out with a duck in her arms. However, she must have gotten some of that neon green water in her mouth because she got very sick and ended up in the hospital. I don’t know enough about Chinese hospitals, but she was later airlifted home to France. We heard she ended up recovering.

After the race, we had our first banquet. We dressed in our blazers and had to perform a short skit for the organizers and the other competitors. We chose to do a dance routine to “Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting,” which went over very well with the organizers. When all else fails, just pretend to do karate in front of the Chinese officials and you’ll be golden.

We ate dinner, which was pretty good, but the chefs must have put the names of the dishes through a translator because they came out somewhere between humorous and terrifying. A few examples are: “This is good yo” (no idea what it was), “Baba rice” (lamb over rice), and my favorite, “Fragrant smell of urine” (not too far off, but I didn’t try it).

Noodles and greens, with a healthy amount of spice on top.

We were also introduced to Chinese drinking culture. The organizers would keep coming up to our table to cheers us with a “ganbei,” and then have us all finish our drinks. By the end of it, the organizers were obviously toasted (the rest of us too). I’ve never been to a race where the hardest part was keeping up with the drinking of the organizers. I kind of liked it.

Afterwards, we headed out to some clubs, where it felt like if you were tall and white, locals would invite you over to their table and give you free drinks. I don’t think I spent money on anything in China (which was just as well, considering my aforementioned lack of a job at that point).

The next stop was Wuhan, which has become internationally renowned lately. When we checked into our hotel (which was attached to a water park), I found that the hotel had learned it was my birthday, and they had sent up a birthday cake to my room. Great service! I was already warming up to this new city — I guess you could say I had Wuhan fever.

Aside from the racing (where we got third and were given a giant dish-sized bronze medal), we also took part in a dragon boat race, which we won (the other boat actually sank). Then we toured the mountain next to Donghu (West Lake) where we rowed, which had a temple at the top. And against the wishes of our handlers, a few of us took some roller-luges down the mountain to avoid the steps and make it down faster. Maybe they had god reason to not like us leaving the hotel. But it was too hot to walk!

Wuhan is known as one of the four “stoves” of China, since it sits in a valley that can get incredibly hot, especially in mid-July. Before leaving for Linfen, we cooled off in the water park attached to the hotel. Upon entering, we were greeted with the sight of a man running across the entryway screaming as he held is son in his arms, blood running off the boy’s head. The water park employees shuffled him into a side room, but the park went on business-as-usual, and we went on some rides. I think this is where I picked up my parasite, which caused me to loose around 20 pounds after I returned to the US. It was fun though, and I got better.

Posing in front of the view of the water park from my room.

The last city of this trip was Linfen, famously one of the most polluted cities on the planet. We heard through the grapevine that in preparation for the regatta, they had actually had the factories in town shut down for a few days before we arrived, just to clear the air a bit. It was still tough to breathe, let alone row. Much like the other cities, it was racing, tourism, and banquet, and then we finally went home.

But! Not before I spoke to some of the organizers and suggested they invite Princeton along to some future races. And the next year, I got a message—would Princeton like to send a boat to race in Wuhan and Changsha that summer? So I organized a boat, coordinated travel schedules, ensured everyone had all their documentation ready, and we went off for another trip, this time with the Princeton alumni. And another year we were invited along to a race in Xi’an, home of the famous terracotta warriors. And another we were invited to Shangyu. We kept being invited to go on these amazing, all-expenses-paid experiences through China, and coming home with medals, engraved plates, scrolls, trophies, and the occasional stomach issue. One time, they even gave a cash prize to the winners and we came home with hundreds of dollars each!

Each trip had its own special moments: two of the guys waking up to find a third had slept, and pooped, on their floor; one guy voluntarily doing shoe-ies over and over; another drinking beer out of a teammate’s unmentionables; watching someone pour an entire bottle of baijiu in their face and not even wince; watching someone take a sip of baijiu and immediately vomit; dancing to the Harlem Shake; dancing to the Macarena; racing in a number of suspect boats; showing up to a regatta we were told was going to be 2,000 meters long to find they hadn’t finished building the lake yet so it would only be 800 meters long; learning the story of the Yellow Crane Tower; having schoolchildren line up for our autographs and pictures; being interviewed on TV for the Shangyu News; bonding with the GCBs; and simply getting to travel with friends to completely new cultures and compete.

I’m very happy I did each of these trips. They are tough on the body, between the travel, the racing, and the drinking, but they are worth it, and entirely new experiences to standard rowing events. After coming home from each one, my body sore, my mind tired, my stomach sick for weeks, I always say that I would never go back. But then the next invite comes along and I’m excited again.

“These terracotta warriors are good construction — and I would know!”

I’ve had these one-in-a-lifetime experiences four times now. Maybe I’ve gone to China too many times, and I should give someone else a chance. But also maybe not.

What’s Cookin’: Buffalo Chicken Dip

On March 2, 2024March 2, 2024 By TommyIn Non-Daily DispatchLeave a comment

It started on the breeze, a whisper in my ear that came and went.

At first it was quiet, gentle, a voiceless intent that I could easily ignore.

But it grew louder and louder, more insistent.

The times it was with me grew more frequent until it was present more than it wasn’t.

I tried to block it out, but it shouted over all else.

Even as I slept, I heard it in my dreams.

A scratching on the wall would announce its arrival, portending it wailing in my ears.

Soon it never left me, a howl in my ears that commanded, begged.

Finally, I relented.

I followed its wordless directions.

I went to the kitchen.

I prepared the ingredients.

The sound wavered as I began to cook.

Finally, I was finished.

I took a bite.

The cacophony stopped.

While I never heard it again, the thousands upon thousands of repetitions in my head remain burned in my memory.

It goes like this:

INGREDIENTS

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter

• 2 teaspoons garlic, minced

• 2 cups cooked chicken, shredded

• 1/2 cup hot sauce

• 8 oz block cream cheese, softened

• 1/2 cup sour cream

• 1/2 cup white cheddar cheese, shredded

• 1/4 cup American cheddar cheese, shredded

• 1/4 cup blue cheese (garnish)

• 2 teaspoons green onions, sliced (garnish)

• Celery sticks or tortilla chips for serving

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 375º and arrange rack to middle of oven.

2. In oven-proof pan, melt butter over medium-high heat. Sauté garlic ~30 seconds. Add chicken and hot sauce and simmer until sauce has thickened.

3. Reduce heat to low and store in cream cheese. Mix until combined. Take off heat, stir through sour cream and top with both cheddar cheeses.

4. Bake ~10 minutes until bubbling around the edges and the cheese has melted. Broil for 1 more minute to brown the top.

5. Immediately garnish with blue cheese and sliced green onions.

6. Serve with celery sticks or tortilla chips.

My First Tabletop RPG

On December 28, 2023 By TommyIn Non-Daily DispatchLeave a comment

Starting in 2017, my job flew me out to San Francisco around 5 times each year for work. At the time, my older brother lived out there too, so I always used it as an opportunity to stay for a week and visit.

This was a win-win all around — while work would pay to put visiting employees up in a hotel, they preferred if we stayed with employees living in the Bay Area. To incentivize this, they would provide the visiting employee $100/day to expense in gifts for their host. My brother worked for the same company, so if I stayed for a full week, that was $500 to add to his dragon’s hoard each trip. And that’s on top of the main benefit of hanging out with me!

After about a year of these trips, I was invited to join in on a Star Wars RPG game my brother and some friends held every month or so.

Known by other kids as “That GameBoy kid” growing up, I’d always wanted to try playing an RPG with people, but the social stigma of being seen as a “nerdy D&D guy” kept me out of it (whether that stigma was real or not). Instead, I kept to doing karate in front of the TV when Power Rangers came on, playing GameBoy and Xbox, and eventually competing in sports. Not knowing anyone else who knew how to play or how to run a D&D game also kept me out of it, but it was mostly the stigma thing, probably.

However, in the past few years, RPGs have seemed to transcend beyond nerd culture (or maybe what’s nerdy has come into vogue) and become less of a “neckbeards in the basement sweating out their Mountain Dew” characterization — maybe due to its popularity in Netflix’s hit show Stranger Things (Netflix please pay for this name drop). Or maybe I grew up and cared less about being seen as a nerdy person. (It’s more the Netflix thing, probably.)

For the unaware, a Star Wars RPG is essentially Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) set in the Star Wars universe. RPGs are a mix between board games and improv: they are played with dice, and every player has a character in the story. Each character has aptitude in several skills and is terrible in others (shooting, persuading, lightsabering, swinging from vines in an ancient and overgrown ruin, etc.). The level of expertise in each skill is assigned a number that corresponds to how much of a bonus the player gets when rolling their dice to take an action: You want to shoot a big tentacled alien and are good at shooting? When you roll your dice, you get to add 8 points to your roll, which makes you more likely to successfully shoot that slimy, scaly, definitely-oozy, tentacled alien. Trying to charm the socks off a space babe and have no skill at speechcraft? When you roll your dice, you add nothing, which makes you more likely to fail and get a drink thrown in your face. Just like real life!

The players act out their character’s personality and actions (playing a role in the “roleplaying game”) and use their dice to progress through a Star Wars story of a friend’s creation (“the Game Master” or “GM”). The GM responds to the players’ dice rolls and describes their successes and failures in the context of the plot and their intended action: “You wanted to swing from the vine, but rolled 2 out of 20. You start to swing and the vine immediately snaps, dropping you several floors below where you wanted to go.”

For the players, it’s a fun combo of luck and acting. I always thought it sounded awesome, though was foiled by my lack of self-confidence and what other people would think of me, so never played. But now I finally had my opportunity to play a game — and unlike when I was a kid, I could drink beer and whiskey while playing!

The games were held at the home of Chris (one of our GMs) and his wife Jess while their twin toddlers slept. The other players were my brother Jack, his wife Kate, his roommate Alex (who traded off GM responsibilities with our host), and me.

From this group, Chris and Alex took the reigns of the story. Each session, one would run the game as the GM while the other played their character with the rest of us. In this way, they passed the narrative back and forth to create an original story in the Star Wars universe.

The Setting

Star Wars famously takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The galaxy is made up of hundreds of planets and alien creatures, but with a large portion of humans too (who knew a movie filmed before believable CGI would rely heavily on humans to fill their cast in an alien galaxy?). This particular galaxy is in the middle of a war (a “star war,” if you will) between the tyrannical Imperial Empire that rules with an iron first, and the plucky Rebellion that seeks to topple the Empire’s rule. For those familiar with the global phenomenon, this story took place just after Episode 4, in the wake of the destruction of the first Death Star.

The Characters

Our cast of characters included a human Force-user who frequently signaled that he would turn on us. He usually stuck by the team, but would often do things like recruit an enemy Sith to train him in the dark ways of the Force, or run away to the big bad villain to join them.

Another human character was our gunslinging smuggler. He had two blaster pistols named Chocolate and Peanut-butter, and had an aptitude for charming people, shooting people, piloting ships, and being on the run. It was his starship the group used to navigate the galaxy, a freighter named the Cream Cheese.

Our pilot was another human. She often took over piloting the Cream Cheese before she single-handedly stole her own Imperial Transport Ship. She was on the hunt for her missing sister who had potentially joined up with the Rebel Alliance — family drama!

The next character was also a human, and the group’s resident goody-two-shoes Jedi. Gradually learning more powers and gaining strength throughout the campaign, she had a strict morality that kept the crew from murdering everyone while she sought to discover the fate of her missing parents. While it sometimes felt like her morality restricted our potential actions, it ultimately led to more creative solutions when approaching seemingly straightforward situations.

Our mechanic and explosives expert was, you guessed it, a ~~human~~ Dug. Dugs are strange aliens that feature prominently in the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace with the antagonistic podracer Sebulba. They have short little legs that often don’t reach the ground, ridiculously long arms that they walk around on, and a head like a leathery horse with jowls. This character was played in a Russian accent, the only one who put on a fun voice.

My character was the pit droid 3F-D3 (pronounced “Eff-Dee”), a big game hunter with a rifle way bigger than his short metal body. Since it was my first time playing one of these games and I only wanted to dip my toe in the pool, I picked a character that wouldn’t require a ton of weird voices, or tough decision-making (droids can be calculated without empathy, which takes some of the trickiness out of decisions of morality). And since I was joining the group in media res, I picked a character that could easily have been found in a junkyard in between sessions — which is the plot hook we went with: the Dug (named Dug) found me in a junkyard and repaired me. I had no memories, so characterization would be easier for me. My only big quirk was that I was always looking for some big game to hunt. Strangely, we found that twice.

The Story

Since I was coming into the story later than everyone else, I missed a few sessions at the start where the plot got rolling. But I caught on quick: the pilot was looking for her sister who may or may not have joined the rebels. The Jedi was looking to save her parents, rulers of an entire planet currently under Imperial (and Sith) occupation. The smuggler had acquired the Cream Cheese, our means of traveling around. The indiscreet other Force-user was probably plotting some nefarious way to betray us. And Dug was smashing his hammer in the engine room to “Cum On Feel The Noize.”

As 3F-D3, I joined the crew on the Jedi’s home planet to help out with rescuing her parents. Our plan was to steal a boat and breach an enormous wall out in the bay next to the city so we could get inside. It’s a galaxy of spaceships and magic tricks, who would expect a boat?

Luckily for us, there was a Moby Dick-esque space-fishing boat next to the junkyard, complete with giant harpoon cannon. Unluckily for us, we were attacked by a giant fish monster. Thinking we would be playing a Star Wars space opera story, consider my surprise when we would actually playing Captain Ahab and his crew (in space) — not really what I expected, but it was surprising and fun, and I have learned that some of the best situations in RPGs are those that spin your expectations in strange and unexpected ways. And together, with the giant harpoon, we killed the monster, blew through the wall, found the Jedi’s parents, fought (and captured) a Sith Lord, and stole an Imperial transport shuttle before escaping off the planet.

The next several sessions were filled with planning how to rescue the pilot’s sister, making an alliance with the Rebellion, scavenging supplies, and hunting some big game. For the monster hunt, we had hoped to create a trap that disguised a giant cannon — when the monster stepped onto the trap, it would launch the monster up into space to blast into an Imperial Star Destroyer and take out two birds with one stone. But our GM thought that was a little far-fetched for a universe with laser swords, telekinetic monks with beards, and a Russian-alien mechanic that listens to Quiet Riot, so we took care of it the old fashioned way — guns and explosives.

Our final session consisted of us attacking the Star Destroyer and rescuing the sister. As luck would have it, a group of pirates were also attacking the spaceship at the same time as us. By the end, we rescued the sister, defeated the Empire and the pirates, and 3F-D3 charmed the pirate queen so well that she gave him her mask and when he put it on, everyone thought he was the pirate queen. The galaxy was saved and I was queen of the pirates!

It was fun!

As my first foray into D&D, the mechanics were easy to learn, the story was consistently engaging, and I had an amazing time. From there, we lost a few players, so the four of us remaining (Alex, Chris, Jack, and me) jumped into a new Star Wars story a few months later, with new characters and no goodie-two-shoes Jedi to keep our morality in check. But my time as 3F-D3 was so great that several games later, in a different fantasy world, the “pirate queen” idea had continued to stick with me, and I decided to play a pirate character, Captain Maelstrom.

And when thinking of what to make my header image of this website’s D&D-focused posts, I knew I had to memorialize 3F-D3 as one of the characters I included. Complete with his gun that was way bigger than his body.

What’s Cookin’: Chocolate Chip Cookies

On October 27, 2023October 27, 2023 By TommyIn Non-Daily DispatchLeave a comment

When I was a child, baking would bring the whole house together. My 47 siblings and I would hear the gas stove start snapping and the curses as someone would strike a match to try to light the pilot without setting the house on fire. I vividly remember the screams drifting out of the farmhouse window on trails of smoke as I played amid the rows of corn on our commune’s farm that went on forever, the smells of burning flesh when they would fail to keep the fire contained, and the cool breeze of a carefree summer evening.

There’s nothing quite like a good chocolate chip cookie, is there?

Chocolate chip cookies have existed for thousands of years, originally cooked on the tops of hot rocks warmed by the sun during the dawn of the Mesozoic era. Fossilized evidence has been vigorously taste-tested by paleontologists specializing in coprolites. But we don’t need to hear the paleontologists’ “yum” sounds to know the cookies were a hit; that they are still around today is fact enough!

Since their inception, chocolate chip cookies have been a mainstay in pantries, bake sales, and Christmas Eve fireplaces the world over. Brands like the nautical Chips Ahoy, the known and renowned Famous Amos, and the farm-to-table Pepperidge Farm have become titans of industry on the backs of these small delectable treats, making ready-to-eat “chocolate chippers” (as my mother calls them) available on store shelves the world over.

But as we know, home-cooked will always be better than store bought. That’s why you came to an online recipe blog! 😉 😉 😉

It’s not only because you can be judicious with your sugars, or the fact that you can taste Love itself in every bite, but because the experience of actually crafting the cookie releases dopamine directly into the brain during every step of the process. Science has proven it!

First, you measure your ingredients. Obviously with baking, you must exactly follow the measurements listed. This isn’t a willy-nilly process like grilling or driving. So make sure your measuring cups, measuring spoons, rulers, and litmus paper are each in accordance with the standards set by the American Cooking Measures Organization. Up-to-date standards are always set in ACMO’s weekly journal, and any cook worth their weight in 10,000 lbs of cookies would already be subscribed to that.

Measuring can be a therapeutic exercise in mental wellness. Preparing your spoon or cup, pushing the perfect amount of an ingredient in it, so striving for perfection that you can’t imagine a single extra grain of flour being in your dish… these motions and emotions help bring balance while the world outside your kitchen counter is a whirlwind of imprecision. But your preparations, your measures, they bring peace. I’m not ashamed to admit that measuring is my favorite part of baking.

Once you measure each ingredient, begin combining them according to the recipe. It’s important to taste the mixture after each step of the process. Any issues or errors will be immediate obvious, so you can quickly toss out the entire dish and start from scratch.

As a child, my mother would let us help with this part. We’d eat handfuls of flour mixed with sugars and salt, slurp at the yellowed yolk of a freshly cracked egg, and, most importantly, lick the beaters. While I prefer to hand-mix in 99% of cases, I am nostalgic for the experience of licking a beater covered with freshly mixed dough. A faint memory of one such occasion comes to mind: standing in the kitchen covered in flour, my eyes barely able to see over the edge of the counter. One of my siblings is reaching for the electric mixer, holding it up to his mouth. But the switch is still on, and as his tongue reaches for a tasty morsel, it is pulled and twisted into the beaters, wrenching out of his mouth to leave a bloody spray across room.

Sometimes, I think, it’s the memories that add an extra sweetness to our favorite treats.

Once the ingredients are all in the same bowl and mixed together, it is time to bake! Scoop them by hand onto a baking sheet, and put them into the oven. Don’t worry about how long; for me it seems to take a different duration to cook through every single time I bake. Just remain ever vigilant, and all will be well. Then slide them out, let them cool, and enjoy with a nice thick frosty glass of whole milk!

Here’s a tip! Make your entire batch of dough, cook only a small number of cookies, and put the rest in the freezer to “cook in the future” (i.e. eat a lot of raw cookie dough until you feel sick each subsequent night).

And I have one final treat for you before you go. A cookie of wisdom, if you will!

There is a Secret Lindeman Family Recipe™ for the perfect chocolate chip cookies, and today I’m going to share that with you. You can share your results with family, friends, and pets, but remember: keep the recipe to yourself. It’s a secret! Shhhh!

the lindeman daily

Category: Non-Daily Dispatch