TOTW: Baseball. ... ugh.

So I came up with this idea this past week for a blog challenge. Considering that Al and I both enjoy writing and have been slacking off on our blogs, we'd challenge each other with a topic of our choice every week, and do our best to write something decent.

TOTW (topic of the week): Baseball

Now that Al's given me the most f'ing boring thing to write about, ever, let me preface this post with this: I have never watched a baseball game live, so none of this will apply to an actual live game. My opinions on baseball here are strictly based on what I've seen on TV and what I know about the sport itself.

So with that said, this is what I think about baseball -- it fucking bores the shit out of me. Even on steroids, baseball is bo-ring.


(Momentarily distracted by an incredibly angry guy who just got ditched by MUNI. I'm scared that if I were outside and I tried to say something nice to him, he'd just fucking kill me)

Back to baseball.

I don't find that many sports to be engaging in the first place. Golf? Gag. Hockey? Zzz. Tennis? Meh. Shit, I don't even watch the Olympics. Not because I don't find the best athletes of the world mesmerizing, I just... don't think about watching the Olympics during my spare time. Basketball, football, rugby and maybe soccer are among the more interesting spectator sports to me (and by spectator I mean a couch-spectator). The only live games I've watched have been basketball (Clippers) and soccer (Paris). I got really excited during the World Rugby Cup when I was in Paris, but I think the environment had most to do with that, considering France beat New Zealand to move on to the semi-finals. Meaning, people were fucking shitting themselves, screaming and running down the street with french flags, crawling over cars in traffic, honking and drunkenly singing. I think the last time I got really stoked and pride-filled at a game was back in 6th or 7th grade, rooting for SAS (Shanghai American School) in the basketball matches, while also sighing and deeply crushing on this beautiful Japanese boy from Japan International School.

I think maybe it just comes to my feeling like I have no ties to any local teams. And without that, what do I have to base my fanfare on, if I don't actually know a lot about the sport itself? Maybe just the whole raucous surrounding watching sports. But besides that? Pretty much nothing.

Sure, I root for the Lakers. But not because Kobe is so amazing or that I actually know what I'm talking about. I just happen to be from Southern California, and know enough that the Lakers are solid, and know that I can tag along this huge Lakers bandwagon and have a lot of fun doing it. If I were to watch an Angels v. Giants game... shit, I'd probably just root for the Giants because San Francisco is that much cooler than LA. Warriors v. Lakers, though... well, I don't know. Nor do I care all that much. It's just fun. That's all. I don't really care about the sport itself all that much. I can enjoy it, I can get excited, but the majority of watching sports, to me, is the fun that you share with the crowd. The spirit, the tension, the uproars and the andrenaline.

So with all that said -- baseball is boring to me because I don't actually care for the sport itself, nor do I know anything about any players, nor do I go to live games. My friends don't sit around watching baseball, talking trash and getting amped. There is no equivalent of a Super Bowl Sunday amongst my social network for baseball. Baseball players aren't even attractive (soccer players, helllloooo). With that, what motivation do I have to care for, much less like basebal?

None. Zip. Nada.

Case closed.

Oh, and my topic for Al? Menstrual cycles. COME ON. So much better.

Food, Incorporated, indeed.

For the first time, I thought about going into food policy.

With the whirlwind of activity going on with studying for the LSATs, worrying about law school applications and admissions, and accounting for that likely chance that I don't end up doing what I plan, I've been scourging my brain for an alternative that I actually would like to explore. Law school is the safe choice -- not to say it's not a good choice or a wrong choice, but it's safe because I've had years to think it through, have had plenty of academic exposure to it, and have taken my time to work in various legal environments to know that I do want to pursue it as a career. But I've always looked upon it with a rather... limited perspective, for a lack of better description. Transitioning my focus from criminal to constitutional to corporate to cyber/IP, I feel like those are all rather well-established fields and... "safe" fields. With the exception of the last, I would maybe even venture to say that they are all conventional.

There's no denying that I love food. My first blog entry was dedicated to food, but it was so incredibly difficult to communicate where this passion came from. I have a reputation of being a glutton, a foodie, a die-hard fan of gastronomy, because people often assume that the fervor I have for food comes largely from the sensory aspect of it. But all that is such an extraordinarily small part of what food means to me. I guess it boils down to this -- food is an essential means of survival, and access to an ample and healthy supply of food, I believe, is a basic right that needs to be fulfilled and provided by the government. Speaking strictly in terms of the US, I don't think the majority of people understand what food can mean, what the consequences can be, and how easy and necessary it can be to introduce a healthy and sustainable diet -- at the same time, people also don't realize how easy it is to literally poison themselves and their family by the same effect. We are so plagued by a culture of convenience, short-term satisfaction and competetive costs that the most basic need of maintaining a proper diet has largely been ignored.

The topic has recently received a lot more attention with the whole organics trend, the focus on obesity, cooking shows/competitions and celebrity coverage like Jamie Oliver's TED talk and show. I think people are becoming slightly more aware of what's going on, but we're still nowhere close to where we need to be. And there's no denying that there's a strong, strong correlation between socioeconomic status and obesity, which opens a whole other can of worms in terms of diseases -- and that is something that is just astounding. Heartbreaking. Children in these situations have no choice. Parents in these situations have few, if any. Nobody is educated enough to be able to make the right choices, and if they are, support is scarce.

I guess this all kind of came about when I watched Food, Inc over the weekend. I didn't know what to expect, nor was I expecting much, but I was crying within the first 20 minutes of the movie. It wasn't about slaughtered animals or the fact that children were dying from contaminated food supplies from factory farms. The facts from the documentary weren't all completely new. It simply cemented the fact that we, as a society, have so completely fucked up a promising potential to live well at the most basic level, and food has largely become what too many other things have become -- a massive, power-wielding, monolithic business with little to no human elements. It has become a consumer operation, where all the loss is being suffered by the consumers themselves, as well as the small number of farmers who try to tough it out. And the part that sucks the most is that it really isn't anyone's fault but those who are never held responsible, those who are making the most money.

So I'm not really sure what I'd like to do with food policy. A very brief moment of research has yielded results for food policy at law schools only in the Midwest. I figure, with a legal degree, it could go towards efforts such as helping non-profits, farmers, or class-action suits against egregious behavior on part of major food companies that produce defective/contaminated foods. It's an idea at a very immature stage, but I think it's something I'd like to seriously consider.

My roommate said to me -- "Chieh, if you don't go to law school, you should go into food policy. And if you do end up in law school, you should go into food policy."

I like the ring of it.