Top 9 Phrases from HCF 2011

Taking after Mr. Posnanski, I've decided to buck this cliched reliance on the number ten and jock out with a list of the Top Nine* sayings, words, concepts, and states of mind from this past summer. Someone could say something along the lines of: "Hey John, that, like most of your ideas, sounds great, but how can you possibly distinguish between, say, numbers seven and four on a list like this? Though it'll be the dopest thing I read all week, this list could hardly have been empirically derived, right?" To humor such misguided naivete I would retort that only the most scientifically stringent measures have been taken to compile this list. On top of that, I have consulted with Chad "Thunder Thighs" Eason about this over a (very) tense lunch break, and if he's not a reliable expert then, well, can there really be hope for any of us?

*Nine is perfect for a host of baseball-related reasons. First and foremost, it's the number donned by none other than The Splendid Splinter himself: Ted Williams. Teddy Ballgame's career has inspired me beyond description, and just as he penned The Science of Hitting, I hope to one day publish The Science of Making Lists. Besides, it's also Reggie Jackson under the A's, and also some guy named Gordie Howe who was apparently halfway decent on the ice. Nine is also a conveniently manageable number that reduces my original workload by a whopping ten percent, time I could use to continue my subversion of the Chinese government. 


Without further delay:

• 9. "Merp"
• Though the precise meaning of merp remains unclear, it's applicability to all situations social has truly made it an essential feature of the HCF lexicon. Whether you're using it to introduce a random thought (Merp Studies doctoral student Darja Mihailova has posited that herein lies the word's archaic origins) or express a feeling of resigned confusion, there is no shortage of ways to make merp a cornerstone of any cultured person's daily conversational life. 
• 8. "Wu Kuai!"
• Whether you're haggling for a Tory Borch handbag at the fake market or seizing an opportunity to finally beat your mom at Yahtzee- basically anytime you've got to come through in the clutch- nothing gives you the upper-hand quite like exclaiming "Wu Kuai" with authority and gusto. This absurdly low initial price offering will have your foes so flustered they won't know how to handle the rest of the negotiations, especially if the product of interest costs less than 5 RMB to begin with.
• 7. "Makin' those popsicle moves"
• After a wild night of wondering back and forth along Huaihai Road, few things feel quite as good as joining parched tongue to frozen sugar following the purchase of a kuai-and-a-half Transformer's popsicle. But of course, everyone has his or her favorite- some prefer the Fruties McCubies, others the peach-a-paloozas, and the more affluent among us the classic Magnums. Wherever the fancy may lie, the one thing keeping us all together at a popsicle stand at five in the morning during a typhoon are these icy little guys. Note: Not something you should "Wu Kuai" for. 
• 6. "You tryna' go to Yang's?"
• We stumbled into this dungeon of delightful dumplings on our first day, and, as they say, the rest is history. Though I n00bed out in my virginal experience and got those gross ass noodles instead, I have since learned that I should only go to YFD to gorge myself with fatty, dehydrating cubes of fat. Anything else would be a wasted effort and an affront to the mission statement of  Mr. Yang himself. This little eatery is as go-to as Fisher in the fourth as the inquiry of general interest will never be met with a negative response (God forbid). Yang's is a national treasure, but with better actors than Nick Cage and more action.
• 5. 3.40 Suntory
• Costing just a smidgen more than Reeb (which just barely missed the top nine, though historically significant in its own right) and tasting just four smidgens worse than Tsingtao, Suntory is truly the happy medium so coveted by the likes of Aristotle and Siddhartha. This summer will be remembered in large part to the games of pong played on the 19th floor, overlooking Puxi under the stars, to say nothing of the countless road beers that surely contributed to the aforementioned confusion felt along Huaihai Road. And in this instance, the three-forty is as, nay, more important as the Suntory itself. Anything more is an injustice and highway robbery in its most flagrant form, whereas anything less, well, then you're getting decent Beer at Reeb prices. Life could be worse.
• 4. Herpaderp
• Any word that gives rise to the adjective "derpy" belongs in the upper echelons of any (scientifically stringent and totally legitimate) list. Herpaderp has become a part of the Hanting family, like an eighth sibling, in a sorts of sense. But the kind of ugly, annoying little runt of a brother that you swear must have been an M2-conceived mistake. Still, Herpes simplex has provided more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and while the herpaderp may come and go, the friendships forged by snickering at its utterance last a lifetime. 
• 3. "Everyday I'm Shufflin'"
• Although our summer-long commitment to learn this routine bore little fruit, the passion to Shuffle rages on like a pair of hemorrhaging loins. Oftentimes followed with an embarrassing attempt to mimic the techno-synthesized rhythm, LMHCFAO has tarnished the Fair Harvard name in too many public places to count, including subway platforms and Walmarts. Despite spending a good eighth of this trip watching different renditions of the dance on Youtube, I begrudgingly admit that our shuffling abilities are today still mired somewhere between abysmal and halfway horrible. Through all this, we still fist-pump and kinda-shuffle violently whenever the oh-so-cleverly meta "Party Rock Anthem" booms.  
• 2. "Let's just go to M2"
• Like the English Constitution, the reality that we'll probably just end up at M2 has become the unspoken Law of the Land. What day is it, Thursday? Well, I mean, it's not the best (that'd be the weekend nights), and it's not even the best weekday (Wednesday takes that one), but it's an option the only option. Besides, there's no cover charge, so we might as well...! M2 is Homer's Siren in venue form. There's no escaping its seduction unless you strap yourself down to a bar stool and have tequila half-shots syringed into your liver at Mural, and even then you may end up at Hong Kong Plaza "bu yao le-ing" to a flowered child. Hayek should write a sequel entitled "The Road to M2," a book that'll quickly rise to No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller's list, right behind "The Science of Making Lists."
• 1. "Struggle"
• No permutation of English letters better encapsulates the essence of this summer experience than "S-T-R-U-G-G-L-E." It captures the slow, painstaking hardships that have made us who we are, and perhaps even who we hope to become. Whether it's the bodily aches suffered from 14-hour train rides from Beijing (sitting or standing, but really especially standing- dear God...) or hair fungi, crippling ankle infections or being a black speck in a sea of red and yellow, this summer has been one long ride on the Fung Wah Struggle Bus. If I remember one thing from my sophomore year summer internship, it'll be for the moments shared through these struggles: from merps to M2s, there is no shortage of ways in which "The Struggle" has defined HCF Shanghai.