MKOTBlog

Forgive me blogosphere, for I HAVE SINNED!

After a month of steadfast dedication to posting daily to my daily photo blog, I finally missed a day yesterday. Can you ever excuse my heinous crime? To be fair, I have a good excuse… I was in Washington DC all day yesterday to mark the end of my internship, meeting with representatives from the World Bank, SAIS, and a government organization I will not name here.

To make up for it, this will be a two-part post; the first briefly recounting some highlights from my day in DC, and second, of course, a flashbackfriday.

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Washington, DC

As I already mentioned, yesterday was the last day of my internship with a think tank in Philadelphia, and we as a group went to Washington DC to meet with people from the World Bank, unnamed government organization, and the Johns Hopkins University’s The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (fancy, no?). I didn’t take a lot of photos through the day, because honestly, I felt a little uncomfortable as a non-US citizen taking pictures in buildings in which, to work there, US nationals must go through a complex security clearance process. But that’s not to say I failed to pick up some gems, like this:

Crazy times at the World Bank?

Yes, that is a condom machine found in a bathroom at the World Bank. If you look carefully, you can see that you have 3 choices: the 50 cent Bare Skin Ultra Thin Condom, the 25 cent Durex, or the 10 cent no name brand. First of all, do you think anyone actually stands in front of this to seriously consider the cost-benefit analysis of the differently priced condoms? “Well… I don’t know if she’s worth the high quality 50 cent one…” And second, this, in conjunction with the fact they sold beer at the World Bank cafeteria, completely changed my previously held opinions regarding the institution. If there was one place I never associated with naughty situations involving sex and alcohol, it would probably have had to have been, until yesterday, the World Bank.

Later on in the day we met with representatives from the unnamed government organization. I won’t say much about this… but we basically watched grown men and women, deeply engaged in the top security matters of global concern, make fun of and complain about other fellow organizations involved in the same line of business. Oh, and also, our escort (visitors without security clearance have to be escorted anywhere within the building) got completely lost in his own building after taking us to the bathroom, and I, a non-US citizen who could never work in this unnamed government organization handling some of the most sensitive foreign policy matters of today, had to lead him back to the room in which we were meeting. Brilliant.

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flashbackfriday

Now on to what this post really should have been about had I not sinned so badly yesterday. Being on a bus all day reminded me of the annual tours we go on with Mask and Wig. Alright, be patient with me, as there’s some explaining to do. Here at Penn, I am a member of the Mask and Wig club, the nation’s oldest musical-comedy troupe. We do two major productions a year, one in the fall, which is composed mostly of sketches, and one in the spring, which is a full-length Broadway style book show. Everything we do is original material written, produced, and performed solely by students. You can get more information here, but long story short, we take our spring production on tour around the country every year during our spring break. Future posts will refer to tour many, many, many times, as some of my favorite memories from college so far have been from this tradition. It is a glimpse into the rock star life (or the musical star life, close enough), where we do shows in different cities every night, party like crazy, all of this along with massive sleep deprivation for 10 straight days. Past tours have taken us to beautiful and action packed places like New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Montreal, Toronto, and Quebec City.

So naturally, I share this photo with you from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, taken on the first day of our 2008 tour.

Just like my Wal-Mart post, I think this photo sums up the area pretty nicely.

Let me regale you with a tale about how I witnessed human civilization regress about 500 years in front of my eyes.

Yesterday around 2:30pm I made my way to Chinatown in DC to take Apex bus back to Philly, and found a crowd of approximately 150-200 people waiting in the parking lot. I was fully expecting it to be busy given that it was a holiday weekend, but this was beyond anything I had seen before, as normally there are 30-40 people max waiting for any given Chinatown bus. I asked around to find out why it was so busy, and found out that 4 or 5 buses scheduled for earlier in the day had not arrived to pick up the passengers. Oh and by the way, I found this out from other passengers, not the representatives from Apex. When I asked one of the guys that I clearly recognized as one of the drivers for Apex, he simply shook his head and denied any association with the company. That’s customer service for you.

This photo fails to capture 75% of the other pissed off passengers.

You could feel the pure frustration steaming out of everyone in the waiting area, all pissed off at receiving absolutely NO information about where their buses were, and when they would arrive. Something was brewing in the air and you could feel that something was about to happen.

First bus arrives.

When the first bus arrived, after 3 hours of waiting for some people, madness ensued. Without even knowing to which company the bus belonged, or even WHERE the bus was going, passengers stampeded towards the door as it pulled into the waiting area. People used their suitcases as battering rams, trampling passengers including seniors and mothers with children. Some passengers emerged from the crowd bloodied from the rush. I could not believe what was happening around me. Civil order has disintegrated. I thought the whole thing was hilarious and stood there laughing, as I had the option of going back to crash at my sister’s place for another night.

Second Bus arrives.

Then, another bus arrived (seen in the background of the photo). Once again, without knowing to which company the bus belonged, or even WHERE the bus was going, passengers picked up their suitcases and sprinted to the bus elbowing their competition. Let me say that again, because it bears repeating, these people HAD NO IDEA WHERE THESE BUSES WERE GOING.

As each bus came, people would sprint to one from the other, shoving each other to try to get a seat. They wouldn’t even allow the passengers arriving in DC to come off the bus before trying to make their way in. It was a scene straight out of a movie like I Am Legend, Deep Impact, and appropriately, Independence Day, or any other generic apocalyptic movie where the masses were trying to escape from impending doom in the form of zombies, meteors, aliens, the plague, (insert world-ending object here), etc.

As the exodus continued and I rapidly started to lose faith in mankind, a shining beacon of hope – our new savior – emerged from this Chinatown anarchy.

Our Jesus Christ

This man in the red hat, pictured in the photo above, wrote himself into the history books this fateful Sunday. In an act so brave (in a setting so perfect), that I would easily compare it to this, this man climbed on the bus, hanging precariously from the mirror, and started screaming at the crowd to restore peace and order. The man ran from bus to bus, finding out their destinations and how many passengers they could take, and began directing passengers to their respective buses. And no, he did NOT work for Apex bus. While the employees of Apex stood idly by giving no answers, this self-sacrificing man stepped up to the plate big time to ensure we passengers didn’t resort to cannibalism and murder to get home after the holidays. What a legend. My friend Jon Kruse and I, along with fellow passengers, applauded this inspirational hero through the entire process, and easily agreed he should be the first Asian-American president of these United States. What a great country we live in!!! I had never felt to patriotic.

I finally made it on to the 4th bus that arrived to pick up passengers headed to Philadelphia and New York. As we made our escape through heavy traffic, I realized that George Carlin, the great comedian who taught me to find the funny in hot issues like abortion, natural disasters, and suicide, could not have said it better: “When you get right down to it, human beings are nothing more than ordinary jungle beasts. Savages… we still operate out of the lower brain, the reptilian brain, fight or flight, kill or be killed.”

My sister, having witnessed the beginning of the end of humanity as we know it, proceeded to write this review on Yelp. We both agree: Hey Boltbus and Megabus! Get off your asses and add a Philly-DC service! You already have a NYC-DC service, and the last time I checked, Philly is ON THE WAY. What are you people thinking? With your tickets as low as $1 and free wireless (actually, the silver lining of this story is that I did discover Chinatown buses also have wi-fi, but I won’t expand on this because in all other aspects, Chinatown buses blow), you can take these poorly run companies like Apex out of business. I’m watching you two very carefully. And to my readers: spread the word.

This is my favorite advertisement in DC, found at the Crystal City metro stop. Here’s the basic gist: according to the folks at DC Metro, alligators = escalators. Why? Because escalators can apparently attack without warning or mercy. I’m sorry, but I have a hard time seeing the resemblance between an escalator, a machine of convenience that allows you to travel easily between different levels of a building, and an alligator, a vicious predator that will VICIOUSLY KILL YOU.

DC Metro stop.

Fireworks from Key Bridge.

Another kablam-o.