Odd sports in even odder places

I'm Canadian and grew up playing hockey. However, I live in Hong Kong and am surrounded by the remnants of British colonial influence, so when I mention that I play hockey I invariably qualify it as "ice hockey." Readers with experience in British or European-influenced countries will know that "hockey" is mainly "field hockey" outside of North America, Scandanavia and eastern Europe. It's actually pleasing to return to Canada and talk about hockey with the full understanding that the audience is visualizing Zambonis and faceoffs, not sunshine and curry.

I've come to realize that hometown sports are defining objects to many people, and no matter where they are located they will go to extremes to either participate or watch. So the Canadians seek out hockey games and gather for beer, coffee or both in hotels and bars around the world come June and the Stanley Cup finals. Americans congregate for the SuperBowl. Europeans pull out their national team jerseys and find their fellow countrymen during the major rugby and football championships. I was in Amsterdam two weeks ago during the Champions League final and ran into a British friend in town on business and away from his Bangkok home. I hadn't seen him in ages and we agreed to get together for the single evening we were both free. But...we had to find a bar with the Liverpool/AC Milan match. "Haven't seen you forever, would love to catch up, but I really need to watch this game, mate."

About 15 years ago some Canadians got together and launched a hockey league at Hong Kong's only rink at the time. Not only was it far away from downtown, but it was, get this, L-shaped. Not to worry--the water was frozen, the guy from Calgary had a couple of pucks and the folks were gladly shipping over the equipment that had been in their closet for 12 years. A new rink opened at the Dragon Center in a highly suspicious district called Sham Shui Po.
The rink was small, but decidedly O-shaped as a good slab of playing ice should be. One small distraction--The indoor roller coaster that whizzed kids past during games. You think I'm kidding? It's the prominent yellow track arcing above the goalie in the picture. A full time sports management company, Asiasports Ltd., evolved from aftergame discussions with the real enthusiasts with real money to put up. It was a labour love--During my MBA program we studied a business case on Asiasports and the class decided it was a bad idea. One thing they forgot was that businesses produce more than just financial returns. I had to explain that these guys just love hockey. The founder named his first son Cooper, and it wasn't until later that he confessed to his wife that it also happens to be his favourite brand of hockey equipment.


Hong Kong has five ice rinks, and unbelievably I need to count on my fingers to get to that number. It's not "the" ice rink we visit here in tropical Hong Kong, but "which" ice rink. Just tonight my wife and I took two of our boys to the latest rink at the Megabox, which is the first purpose-built hockey rink in town. We finally have a nicely shaped rink with the proper dimensions, smooth ice and all the trappings like red and green goal lights, curved glass walls around the corners that lets the puck whiz smoothly around, and the theme from Hockey Night in Canada blasting between AC/DC over the speakers. If it weren't for the new Japanese burger joint and nearby noodle shops I could be in Toronto.

There are hundreds of adult hockey players in Hong Kong, and the same number of youth players. Women, mainly Chinese, love the game even though they have to get dressed in a small, private closet and are probably tired of seeing half naked fat guys sitting around with steam rising off their backs after a game. And more people are joining up. The current rink is booked solid with hockey training and games, every night, seven days a week. Unlike previous rinks, the new ice is dedicated to hockey and hasn't gone through a "hockeyization" remodelling to take out handlebars around the rink and to install nets so that onlookers don't take a puck in the teeth.

One of the five rinks doesn't even allow hockey skates to be worn on the ice. For some reason the managers equate skates with fistfights and deadly slashing attacks by 100 kilo gorillas. Where I grew up, figure skates were considered, let's just say "unmanly" and when I've had no other option I reluctantly strap them the darn things on and wait for the inevitable face plant after toe points dig in.

In the old days an L-shaped, tiny rink was good enough for desperate hockey players. Today, we're not satisfied until the corner glass is rounded, the ice is like glass, the entire Highway to Hell CD is available on demand, and I'm not forced to drag myself around in figure skates that my mind tells me is equivalent to wearing a bridesmaid's dress.

The New York Times Crossword Puzzle

On an airplane last year I saw a documentary called "Wordplay" featuring Will Shortz, the editor of the New York Times Crossword. He's a big fish in a small pond, but it's a frothy, fascinating body of water. "Wordplay" documented the Annual Puzzle Tournament and all its associated drama. "Boring" you say? Not so! Will himself is the sole holder of a B.Sc. in Enigmology, a self-conceived degree concering enigmas or simply put "puzzles." The film profiled several top finalists from previous years and documented their days leading up to the event and then through the tournament's finale. It also features well known puzzle enthusiasts and we now know that Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart and The Dixie Chicks all reach for the NYT every day.

I've never been a big puzzle fan because they always seemed impossible ("Key of Beethoven's 'Fur Elise'") or too easy ("Meower") but I started doing the International Herald Tribune (not knowing it was the NYT) and USA Today. Intrigued I was, so I bought a one-year NYT online subscription and downloaded Across Lite 2.0 to do puzzles on my PC. Each person has their own way of doing the puzzle: Purists like the NYT newsprint copy, some print out the online version, others like me prefer to download the file to their PC, and many choose to compete publicly and finish the grid online in a "fastest" competition that tracks users over time.

I'm now hooked, and have come to understand the nuances of the NYT puzzle, the style of the various creators and the editing preferences of Will Shortz, who refines each puzzle to just the right level of difficulty, wit and cleverness. Monday is the easiest and I get through the grid completely in under 10 minutes. Occasionally I have a mental block on an answer that results in a Homer Simpson head slap, but that's not common until later in the week. Tuesday is somewhat harder than Monday, and again on Wednesday. Thursday, however, jumps significantly in difficulty and I often need to use the internet for answers that I just need to know, e.g. "Author/journalist Fallaci." Who? "ORIANA" if you are interested. Friday is very hard and I normally only finish about three-quarters even with the internet. And Saturday...well, Saturday is one of those grids that only the craftiest can consistently complete and if I fill in a quarter of the answers then I'm pleased.

Sunday is the real treat--It's "The Big Grid." An extra large puzzle presumably for brainy New Yorkers who laze about Manhattan sipping strong coffee on Sunday morning while effortlessly recalling operas, composers, literature and foreign languages. Or if you're like me you're beating your head on the monitor at home while the dog is harrassing you for a scratch because the kids are all off at Sunday school during my home alone time.

Today's Tuesday grid was unusually bothersome and I actually had to get some answers online. The tough ones follow, but I only had to look up the starred ones because they were connected and I just didn't know the answer. So when JATO and ERITU are joined by a "T" and you don't know that it's a "T", well you just have to use Google.

One-named singer for the 1960s Velvet Underground (NICO)
Categorical imperative philosopher (KANT)
War god on Olympus (ARES)
Skunk River city (AMES)
* Verdi aria (ERITU)
Bird in the "Arabian Nights" (ROC)
* Actor Gulagher (CLU)
Throat dangler (UVULA)
Secular (LAIC)
Soft drink since 1905 (RCCOLA)
* Mil. plane's boosed launch (JATO)
Actress Hagen (UTA)
"Mockingbird" singer Foxx, 1963 (INEZ)
Oklahoma native (OTO)

In addition to completing the grid, the real payoff is seeing some real cleverness that makes me laugh. For instance, Bill Clinton's self-crafted puzzle contains the clue "You're in this before you're out" and answer "UTERO." I also learn a lot of (possibly useless) knowledge that is often frequently reused. "Actor Morales?" Whoever "ESAI Morales" is, your vowels have been ploughed many times over. Chinese may be the most spoken language on Earth, but "LAO" and its useful vowels fit into many words. However, in the last few days we have seen "LOMEI" ("Food used with chopsticks") and "ENLAI" ("Zhou ...") so even our local language makes it in. Luckily my French is good enough for the frequent questions en francais ("These" to Emilie" (CES) or "One of the seasons in Cannes" (ETE)). I can handle the Italian clues (e.g. today's "Italian flowers" (FIORI)) but the Spanish and German clues are my weaknesses.

This kind of mind work keeps your brain excercised and I believe research shows that an active mind protects against diseases such as Alzheimer's. So shell out the $40 and prevent the onset of an addled brain--Too bad you can't claim it on your insurance as preventive medicine.

Digital diaries

I'm 42, and will turn 43 in about 6 weeks. From the 1980s when I was in university through the first few decades of my working life, I pushed back against paper organizers and diaries for some reason. I think it was something to do with wasteful paper, but I'm still not sure what event or series of experiences formed that behaviour. So I don't know why, but I've always had some aversion to wasteful consumption and have been waiting anxiously for this digital revolution.

Email was a great first step. I never liked the tedium of writing memos to someone around the corner in the office. When we moved to Hong Kong in 1991 I had been dialling up local PC billboards in Canada using X-Modem, then Y-Modem and for those of you who remember ... Z-Modem! Of course you couldn't download much, but it was fun leaving messages for the webmaster or whatever the term was back then, as the "web" hadn't been popularized. Then Compuserve and AOL became more and more prevalent and I got my first email account around 1992. Problem was, hardly anyone had email despite my frequent requests and lobbying. It slowly made its way into everyone's home and the question changed from "Do you have email?" to "What's your address?"

I'll save a blog for MS later; I think they're a great company that made North American companies very competitve, helped launch SMEs that continue to drive the economy, and still provides good value personal PC software despite the common rant about Big Brother. When Microsoft introduced Outlook with a Calendar, Contacts and Tasks, well that about solved my problem with paper diaries. The only problem was trying to connect to company email outside the office. Depending on how tough your IT guys are on security, you can do it easily or not. For me, it's not easy and I got sick of plugging in cables at hotels, playing with local providers, dialling up once again through fax machines because the PBX didn't connect to modems, and so on. So when the Blackberry ripened and dropped out of some engineer's brain, well it was yet another quantum leap forward in gettin' to your stuff quickly. Many rant against the intrusion of the Blackberry. Guys, let me tell you something: Turn the thing off if you like. It won't kill you. Otherwise, if you're like me and you don't like to just stare, bored, out the bus or taxi window, make use of your down time and keep yourself occupied.

Technology is getting better and more useful. I've been doing three things more and more: 1) Using Skype/VOIP to not only make cheap phone calls, but to stay in much better contact with people, particularly those I haven't seen for a long time; 2) Enjoying being able to use wireless anywhere in the house and other places like airports (even more so when I make a free Skype call at the same time); and 3) Editing digital video and doing things like uploading to YouTube. I spent the afternoon yesterday figuring out how to get an MPG onto my PC, splitting it up into segments and then adding titles. Back in early 2007 I formed a one-night band with my son and our single performance was on video and in need of making it up to YouTube for friends and family to see. I got the hang of it and did a decent job: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7pS-I08cAA will take you to a playlist. I'm listening now and boy did we (I) push that first instrumental along! About 20% too quick, but it was the first time for most of us.

Right now I'm connected to our wifi network and blogging, doing some work and listening to our YouTube file that loaded when I copied the link. Not quite Eric Clapton Unplugged, but not bad for some amateurs. I'm listening to my nervous, prerecorded voice that I now know is "pitchy" or just plain "off key, dude" in IdolSpeak.

So technology is a great thing that you should adapt and put to the right amount of use in your own life. Don't ignore all the great tools these days otherwise you will simply get more disenchanted with the buildup of what you don't know. This is where grumpy old folks get their start--By ignoring what's going on around them to the point where they can't fit in, they don't understand what's going on and they simply revolt. Stay young and in touch by staying online.