Yoho!

It's been a while and I know what a lot of you are thinking.  To quote
Led Zepplin, "it's been a long time, been a long time, been a long
lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time."  I'm sure that Robert Plant had
the "Life of Kai Letters" in mind.

So here is a quick letter to ease the troubled minds of those who are
trying hard to avoid doing anything even remotely like what I would
do.  Well, OK, so it's not so short.  I get to rambling.  Skim it over
a lunch break or something.  I really do this just to make you feel
like dung for not writing me any email and force you to finally
drop me a line or six about what's up.  So do it!


Life of Kai: 9/9/97


I finally dyed my hair purple, and it's been more fun than I could
have ever imagined.  My favorite quote so far: "Daddy, I want my room
to be THAT color!"  I've been warning everyone to check the expiration
dates on those old bluberries in the fridge.  Baaaaaaad news!

Actually it's been quite the ice breaker.  I think everyone should do
something bizzare like this to their appearance at least once.  While
many people who do not know me try to act as though they don't notice,
some walk right up and start asking questions or making (sometimes)
witty comments.  The people who don't actually come up and talk to me
will always remember who I am.  In a rapidly growing company or
martial arts group, that can be pretty useful.  "Go talk to Kai about
that.  He's the guy who had long hair that was shaved and then turned
purple."  "Oh yeah!  That guy!"  When I first shaved my head two women
I had never seen before were walking into the building and one of them
freaked out and shouted, "No way!  He shaved it all off!"  You can't
buy that kind of publicity!

As to other new movements in the Kai world, I am playing "Go" on a
more regular basis.  Go is the eastern intellectual game equivalent of
Chess.  You've probably seen the classic 19x19 grid with the white and
black stones.  While very simple in concept, the intricacies grow
amazingly quickly the more you play.  There are many Korean, Chinese,
and Japanese masters who dedicate their entire lives to it.  Go is
also an intersting computer problem; more difficult, in fact, than
Chess.  A Taiwanese master has offered something like 2 million
dollars to anyone who can write a program that will beat any 3-Dan or
higher ranked Taiwanese player.  As a gruesome historical/legendary
note, the Chinese boards are hollow and it is said that they were used
to hold the blood of the losing player, who was beheaded after big
high-dollar matches.

Kuk Sool Won is going well and I expect to have my brown belt soon.  I
haven't decided whether I will compete in the October tournament yet,
but I will definitely be there to watch the usual eight year old kids
doing spin kicks over my head, breaking cement blocks, and falling
safely from insane heights.  Very humbling.  I'll probably sleep on
the beach in Galveston again, but I'll try to spare myself the
intense frying the sun gave me last year.

Weishi is off to China again this week picking up her mother.  It
sounds like Beijing is still the very laid-back and cool city I left a
few months ago.  Unfortunately, the number of people "waiting on jobs"
(as the Chinese gov. puts it) has gone up even more drastically since
we left.  The conversion to a more capitalist system is really
going to be painful.  I guess I should save any more comments about
China for the "Life of Kai" letter I should have sent long ago and
hope to send out soon!

I've been ordering too much from Amazon.com lately but my wallet is
emptying faster than my brain is being filled.  I need more time to
read all of these books!  If you haven't stopped by Amazon.com, do
it.  What a great way to search for and buy books.  You can't actually
hold the book in your hand and page through it, but you can read
reviews, search for new books by a favorite author, and order at
20-30% off.  (No, I'm not a stockholder.  Yet.)

In other money-blowing ventures I grabbed a few new Miata suspension
pieces as part of my grand scheme to construct the ultimate road
machine.  The front shock tower brace feels great and the anti-sway
bars look terrific on my living room floor.  (I'll have them in soon!)

As far as world travel plans go, JR is cruising across the USA.  Ori
is almost completely packed and ready to go.  They should be meeting
in San Fran. to jump a cargo ship sometime in a few weeks and I can't
wait to start hearing the tales.  Hopefully I will be able to learn
from everything that they screw up and it will improve my chances of a
great trip when I leave in three years.  Anyone else up for a journey
of unspecifed length to unspecified locations about the globe in three
years?  Contact me soon.  I've got a list of skills to learn before
then including SCUBA, rescue, survival, martial arts...

We were planning to have a Burning "the Man" festival on Labor day
weekend to commemorate Ori's escape from the corporate world.  Build
and burn a headless paper-mache man with a tie and a briefcase... you
get the idea.  We ended up rafting on the Guadalupe river instead and
I proved myself a hero by catching the flying lens of my suddenly
mangled glasses in the air while spinning wildly into the rapids
and bouncing back and forth off of rocks like a pinball.  Quite fun.

Meanwhile the real Burning Man event was the media circus I expected.
Turnout was not signifcantly greater than the last year, which was
interesting.  My guess is that the higher price and the promise of a
media morass kept many of the original participants away.  While the
media music was much louder and fuller, it was interesting to note how
the tune had changed.  In previous years the event was labeled a
"pagan ritual" or a "satanic desert cult".  Although nothing about
Burning Man changed this time around, suddenly it became the key to
getting a finger on "tech culture".  Apparently many of the
journalists who came this year convinced their managers to fund their
trips by telling them that they would be able to get a grasp on the
elusive and mysterious "cyber" or "tech" culture.  What B.S.  While
there are certainly tech people present, many of whom travel from the
computer holy-ground of the Bay area, they are a small percentage of
the group that includes artists, hippies, ravers, bikers, pilots,
geologists, NASA people, mimes, mechanics, and more.

If Burning Man continues on next year, (they are currently $100,000 in
debt after having to fund police and firefighter presence along with
numberous permits etc forced on them by the money-hungry county that
wanted a piece of the action) I hope that the media has done their
thing and will look elsewhere.  Then maybe I'll return and contribute
once more.  More than likely, however, it's time to find the next
underground event and get in on it before it gets regulated.  (Please
write me immediately if you know about it already.)

Keep your perspective,
Kai

--
Editor's Note:

There have been complaints that these generalized letters written to
everyone are too impersonal.  For an immediate, custom, one-of-a-kind
email letter delivered direct to you, simply write a nice long letter
about what's up in your own life and send it to me.  Satisfaction
probable.