King of the court

What is Chapel Hill without basketball? The North Carolina Tar Heels is one of the most successful college basketball teams, having won 5 NCAA Tournament Championships and produced many NBA players, most notably Michael Jordan. The love of the sport permeates the campus, and I am naturally going to get involved as well.

Aside from the varsity and club teams, the two main gyms on campus have basketball courts which are always bustling. However, these courts are governed by rules and codes of conduct which are not obvious to the unaware foreigner, and thus I have learnt it the hard way:

1) Hierarchy. Centre court is the equivalent of pride rock - you are king - and you stay until you lose. Challengers can assemble and wait their turn / play on the outer courts. If a team is short, they will select a member based purely on whether they think he is an asset to the team; i.e. if you are a lousy player, you can stand around in line all day, but you'll never get to play.

2) The better you are, the more respect / game time / acknowledgement you get. This might seem obvious in an environment brimming with testosterone, but it is the law of the jungle. If you add no value, you feel as if it is 9 on 1 (rather than 5 on 5), but if you make good passes and especially shots, you'll be welcomed by the gruff cheers of "There you go, boy!" and fist bumps. I love fist bumps.

3) African Americans are physically amazing. There is a reason why some 70% of the basketball players at the gym are black. Either they are 6'5" and weigh 220 pounds, but still have a faster change of pace than I have, or they are 5'9" but still have the jumping power to dunk. I have never seen such agility, strength or explosiveness before in my life - and these guys are just amateurs having fun.

4) Every person has a role on the team. Even if you are not that good at making shots, you can still be an asset to the team. You just have to find a niche. I have identified the following types of players: the shooter, the driver, the passer, the center, and the joker. These are somewhat similar to the basket positions of shooting guard, point guard, small forward and center for the first 4 positions respectively.

Every team has a shooter who makes shots, can hit 3 pointers consistently, and lure out the defence. These guys are probably the most admired, and they often have the ego to back it up. The driver is a smaller, more explosive player, who can offset his direct opponent and drive towards the basket. They are effective scorers, but more common and easier to guard. If you have an exceptional driver, however, you have something akin to a one-man army. The center is basically some huge dude. Criteria are at least 6'6", some 230 pounds, and able to score from under the basket with 2 guys marking them. A good center often acts as a good defender against the opponent's center, so they are rarely the most dominant players.

Most teams at this level often have 1 or 2 of the above. They thus need some actual teamwork to shift the defence and create space. This is where the last two roles come in. A joker is an all-round player, typically small, fast, technical, and with a good shot, but not good enough to be an outright shooter or more valuable as a play-maker who can both drive and shoot. These guys are often jack of all trades, master of non, and there is a seemingly over-abundance of them. You have to be on a bad team to stand out as a joker. Finally, there is a passer. This is the role I am adapting to. A passer is the energetic bunny racing around creating havoc in offence. He will create space, and receive a pass under pressure. His objective is to quickly shift the ball to a team mate before the 3 defenders in the 1 yard radius all crush him with coverage. I see it kind of like a 1-2 pass in football - this double motion unbalances the defence and shifts the ball from the driver, via the passer, to the shooter, the center, or the joker at half-range. Often without too much pressure (thanks to the passer), they should make the basket.

So for now, I am brushing up on my dribbling, shooting, passing (everything), my intricate hand-shakes, my fist bumps and my Southern-accent slang, while increasing my weekly practices, my group of African American friends, and my reputation on the court. Welcome to UNC!

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen

Suffering from jet-lag, moving-in chaos, and an excessive amount of alcoholic beverages, the first days in Chapel Hill were very much defined by the actions of my American GLOBE friends. I owe thanks to their ability to drive, fetch, guide, recommend, gather, and sustain the incoming CUHK and CBS students. Naturally a few culture shocks appeared, but there was one above them all: Breakfast. Readers of this blog will recall my fond praises of the East Asian dim sum, with fresh produce in simple yet mouth-watering dishes at a total bargain. My first impressions of southern U.S. breakfast food was nothing of the sort:

Breakfast day 1:
Waking up abnormally early on a Saturday due to jet lag, we step through the doors of breakfast diner at 9 AM sharp. The place is exactly as you imagine - gruff, overweight men growling over their black coffee; young people in large, Carolinian blue T-shirts helping themselves to huge portions of eggs, pancakes and sausages; cheerful greetings from a bustling waitress in a sharp, high-pitch Southern accent, and not a single piece of wall space that isn't draped in blue-and-white T-shirts, newspaper articles, pictures, and banners. We sit down, my Danish friend orders a ham, tomato, and cheese omelet, while I go local and have bacon, eggs, toast and "grits" - coarsely ground corn boiled somewhat akin to porridge.

We learned a couple of things. The eggs were the healthiest item on my plate - the bacon was awesome (unhealthy as it should be), but toast was soaked in butter and the grits came with a huge lump of butter on them, to which one adds maple syrup. Omelets are originally made with cheese, so my friend's feta-cheese omelet was akin to a eating a fondue the size of a small football. He didn't even get half way.

Breakfast day 2:
Sleeping on a friends couch the following night (due to issues moving in) wasn't exactly the most convenient way to start the day, so he decided to take us to try "biscuits" at Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen. He said that American biscuits are similar to a savoury scone, having the same crumbling consistency, but being slightly larger, around the size of an open hand. You then slice them open and add cheese or meat, and enjoy them with tea. That sounds exactly like something this semi-Brit would appreciate. Alas.

Biscuits are very similar, except that they are greasy and quite salty, and you get them unnecessarily buttered and with cheese, egg, AND bacon. The tea, on the other hand, is not hot tea, but a sweetened version of iced tea - very sweetened. The salty biscuit makes you chug the tea, creating a horrible sugar rush at the same time that your body is trying to combat the grease and salt. You feel your arteries constricting, your heart starts to race, and you sit for 30 minutes feeling jittery but without any energy to move. An edible heart-attack, available only through drive-in, and yours for only 4,50 USD. Welcome to America.



I know first impressions can cause deep and consistent biases for the future, so I let me give an account of the first couple of meals

Flying West

After finishing 5 epic Olympic days and finishing at in style at P&G, a quick round of goodbyes later I found myself on a plane to America. Going for the cheaper option (one is a student), the two-stage flight meant a significant layover on our flight westward.

The plan was to fly from Copenhagen to Raleigh / Durham as cheaply as possible, but also accounting for time and convenience. After discarding all the flights which had two layovers (simply horrible) and ones over 20 hours, a fair few flights remained. Cheapest option was around 5900 DKR, but that was flying out at 4 AM, so a couple of friends of mine and I settled on a 6300 DKR deal via Toronto. Only catch was a 6 hour layover in the airport, but we had company and limited funds.

Turns out, trying to kill time in an airport after 10 hours of flying is painful. You don't want to sleep (your body thinks it is 1 AM, but it is only 7 PM local time) in order to minimize the jetlag, but you cannot really do anything else. Toronto Pearson airport has an extremely limited selection of entertainment, as well as some extremely uncomfortable seats - not really helping. A 1-hour flight delay meant we landed at midnight local time, and a 20 minute drive gave me my first impression of Chapel Hill. Second leg of international studying has begun!

The Copper Box

The Copper Box is the venue for the Olympic Handball group stages. Located in the Olympic Park in Stratford, London, it is a stones throw from the Olympic stadium, the Aquatics center and the Velodrome, and where I will experience my 2012 Olympics live.

Today was my first of 5 full days in London, 3 of which contain tickets for the men's handball group stages. The 12 teams are split into two groups who play a round-robin tournament, with the four best from each progressing to the quarter-finals and the ensuing knock-out phase. Great Britain, being hosts, have their first handball team in the olympics and are massive underdogs for progressing, let alone a match victory. But the remaining teams are top-flight, and some epic showdowns are on the horizon.

Every other day all 12 teams play, resulting in 6 matches split into 3 sessions of 2 games. A ticket thus gets you 2 matches in succession, which is great value for money and allows the crowd to get a better idea of what handball is all about. Today Croatia stuffed Hungary, after which Great Britain, after an enthralling first half, ran out of steam and were brutally whipped by Argentina. After losing by 44-15 and 41-19 in their first two games (to France and Sweden, admittedly), this was a great performance by a team just started 6 years ago.

The best part about it was the venue. The Copper Box seats 6500 and was packed with home supporters. No-one in England knows anything about handball, but the pace of the game and the stamina, skill and strength required appeals to British fans. Before the game, a 30 minute program was shown on the big screens to educate the spectators on rules, stats, tactics, teams, players, and history so that they weren't clueless when the game started. It is all a part of branding the sport for a UK audience for the coming years. The crowd seem to take a liking to it - of all the Olympic events, handball has received the best feedback from spectators with a ranking of 9.9 out of 10.

Bicycle repairs

Heading home from work last Wednesday, a woman stepped out of the bicycle path as I was turning a corner. 10 seconds before I had had full visibility of the next 200 yards of the bike path, which was deserted, so I had slightly more speed than would be recommended. As I see the woman I slam my brakes, causing my tires to skid and me to body check the metal fence just of the bike path. My bicycle fork took a beating as well, so my bike was set for some time in the shop.

With Copenhagen's bicycle-craze, repairs shops and bicycle stores are available, literally, on every street corner. But where demand is high, parts are priced accordingly. Rent and labour are not cheap either in central Copenhagen, so the best thing is often to do it yourself. Bicycle forks, however, are devious contraptions. They come in a variety of sizes, both regarding wheel length and frame size. The variation between sizes is 1/8 of an inch for the steerer and it must match the frame perfectly. Since they start at around 300 DKR when ordered online, I decided to drag it down to my local "pedal-pusher".

With the high prices for new bikes in Copenhagen, a large number of entrepreneurs have set up used bicycle shops and cheap repairs in small hole-in-the-wall joints. A majority of these seem to be people of other ethnic origin than Danish, perhaps due to the relatively low start-up costs and their greater work ethic. They have lower margins, but work longer hours and compete with higher volume. My guy is Sami, a 50-something year old guy from the Middle East with rusty, but understandable, Danish. He gave me a new fork (aluminium forks risk snapping if they have been bent and subsequently straightened), repaired the front brake, oiled it, as well as the whole bike, made sure the gears were working, and he did it all in a day. Price = 500 DKR.

I also bought a helmet. Having previously cycled as a sport, I am well aware of the need for head protection when blasting down a main road with 40 KPH. Copenhagen, however, has a vast network of bicycle paths and bicycle traffic lighting, as well as much more relaxed speeds. Not even 10% of the cyclists here wear helmets (not that that makes it ok), so I never valued it important. The bruises and cuts from this episode are enough to convince me otherwise, even though it (luckily) only affected my thigh, ribs, shoulder and collarbone.

Finally, a remark on not using a helmet. When asking why I am limping, and I respond that I hit a fence, most people ask: "Did you wear a helmet?". When I say no, they have a superior look on their face and say "ahhh", inferring that my lack of helmet was the cause of my injuries. This is retarded. Yes, wearing a helmet is a good idea, but the idea that a helmet is equivalent to not getting injured on a bike is excruciatingly poor logic. It also removes the uncomfortable notion that there is a degree of uncertainty in our lives by creating a causal story - you didn't wear a helmet, you deserved your accident - as well as implying the opposite: I wear a helmet, I'll never have an accident. Humans are programmed to construct causal stories, part of the reason why we are so bad at learning from statistics. We all know that cycling is dangerous, but to quote the social psychologist Richard Nisbett: "[Our] unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general is matched only by our willingness to infer the general from the particular". A moronic logical fallacy, but still the reason why I keep my skull safe for the next 3 weeks of cycling.

Tourists in Denmark

With the summer sun and the holidays, tourists flock to Europe's capitol cities and Copenhagen is no exception. This weekend I ended up being one myself - so here is the top-three for rookie tourists in Copenhagen.

1) Cafés. If you want to be social during the Danish summer, unless it is raining cats and dogs it is going to take place outside. The weather is pleasant, and if the sun does happen to shine through the clouds you will have made the most of it. So to catch up with an old friend from my time as a conscript, we had a burger lunch in the city and an afternoon beer in Nyhavn. Nyhavn is literally the "new" harbour, and its colourful buildings and old, docked ships makes it resemble Amsterdam. It is a tourist magnet located at the end of the pedestrian street Strøget, and although prices are accordingly, the cool Hoegarden + lime and the hour of sunshine was totally worth it.

2) Tivoli. An amusement park to the untrained eye and anyone with a child's mind (myself included), Tivoli also boasts eateries, parks, concerts, and exhibitions. It is ripe with a hearty atmosphere, and is a great place to get real, first-hand impressions of what Danes are like. I was invited by my aunt's family, who were tourists in Copenhagen for the day. I happily accepted, enjoying dinner with them as well as letting my 7 year old cousin sail me around a pond in an amusement ride.  While they took rides together as a family, I watched their bags, listened to the marching band which paraded around the park, took photos for middle-aged tourists, and enjoyed the view of a park submerged in metropolis.

The photography-obsessed Asians and the young families with children high on a sugar rush are naturally also there, but it is a place for old as well as young. Tivoli has history since 1843, and it retains a great deal of culture, such as the pasts fascination with the orient or typical Danish cuisine. But it has found its modern side as well, with more thrilling rides and events such as "Friday rock".

3) Christiania. The self-proclaimed autonomous neighbourhood on Chistianshavn has been full of controversy since it was established as a freetown in 1971. Christiania was seen as a place where one could build a new society, and popularised by the hippie-movement, it became synonymous with collectivism, activism, and hash. Although the place does have open hash trade (which is illegal) and therefore has much of the same fame with tourists as Amsterdam, people also go there for the nature, the cafés, and the alternative and slightly weird culture. A beer outside Cafe Nemoland in the sun can be recommended, but last week it was the scene for an afternoon stroll with my girlfriend. An inspiring moment was watching a 6-7 year old blond girl with a wreath of flowers in her hair dance alone in front of a stage where 3 heavily tattooed men where performing a rap-concept for the 100-odd people crowd - enough said.

Cycling back home last night, I realized perhaps the best thing about Copenhagen: everyone can get by here, because so many people speak English. I overhead 3 Americans bicycling beside me, and struck up conversation with them. They were hungry for local knowledge, and I was keen to offer it. Having spent so much time in foreign cities the past 6 months not knowing the local language, I see this as a blessing. My uncle disagreed, stating he was slightly offended when his waiter didn't speak any Danish. I smiled and shook my head at his comment, finding it charming that everyone can get by here and that language is not the most important trait. But it also shows that rural Denmark is nothing like its capitol. So for new visitors to Denmark, there is no place like Copenhagen.

Copenhagen summer

Copenhagen is probably one of the best capitol cities to spend a sunny summer. Part of the reason is undoubtedly the Danish weather the rest of the year: either depressingly dark and cold for 6 months, or chilly, gusty, and raining for most of the remainder. Granted, sunny weather is still a rarity, and showers are frequent, but some days are unbeatable. Last Sunday was one, and my girlfriend and I made the most of it - Copenhagen style.

Embarking from Frederiksberg, a 15 minute bike-ride took us to Vesterbro. The former market place, still bearing names such as "hay market", "meat town" and "fish market", used to be a rough neighbourhood some 30 years ago, but now hosts small, quirky coffee shops and hipster venues, as well as some great outdoor cafés. Only a stone throws from the bustling central station, Halmtorvet is a quiet, relaxed square with a handful of eateries on the old cobbled roads. We parked the bikes, ordered brunch, and I spent the next hour and a half happily eating watermelon, croissants, and scrambled egg in the cool, sunny early afternoon.

Vesterbro, due to its new trend as very alternative, is the place to go exploring. Right across from Halmtorvet, outside the older slaughterhouses of the meat market, there was a flee market going on. Rural flee markets as I know them are full of rubbish, but here it was everything from fashion clothes to old lamps to books and art. It was stuff people sold to create space, but it was not sold old that it was junk. We wandered around, and I took a liking to a stall selling male clothing, mainly from Filippa K. The two guys in charge were basking in the sun and were happy to let me try on shirts, suits and shoes. They told me this was a weekly event all summer, and that they were just here for the day. They turned out to be a couple, with one of them worked in a store (explained the abundance of Filippa K) and they were just clearing out their closet for winter season. I bought a white and grey striped shirt and a blue pair of chinos for 150 kr. - retail price: at least 1000.

From Vesterbro we biked down to the waterfront and north east up along the new buildings on Islands Brygge. Passing the old palisades, which are now a great walk in greenery, we kept going till we hit the canal on Christianshavn. Parking our bikes, we strolled between the small 17th century merchant houses along the old cobbled roads. The Eastern edge of the island provided us with coffee, a spot in the sun, and a view of the opera house, the new actors school, and Nyhavn, as well as of kayakers and rowers enjoying a day on the canals.

As it got more overcast and the clock neared 6 PM, we headed back and reclaimed our bikes. We took the direct route home, passing the characteristic Copenhagen architecture of the stock exchange, Christiansborg, and the town hall. We headed over Dronning Louises brigde on the lakes, calmly reflecting an increasingly magenta sky, and rolled into Frederiksberg. A cool Ale nr. 16 from a local brewery on Fünen in the garden, a light dinner, and Aftentouren (the Danish coverage of the Tour de France), and that candidates for the best day of the summer.