Wednesday I dropped off my shirts to have the 4Deserts and nationality patches sewn on the sleeve. Sounds like a simple enough exercise, but of course, nothing is ever simple for me, and so I had a bit of an existential crisis while thinking about what nationality patch to put on my clothes.
Displaying an American flag in many parts of the world can be an incendiary act. I am especially reminded of that sitting in Beijing today, 20 years after Tiannamen Square, where I am prohibited from accessing twitter, youtube, and even my blogging website. I can only write this post by accessing an international network via Citrix.
I am proud to be an American and proud of what the US flag represents especially the values of liberty, justice, and freedom of speech, but then I thought about the prospect of getting lost in the desert. The far western corner of China is home to many of China's military installations, and while it is IMPOSSIBLE that I will run into any of them, that other American value, pragmatism won out, so I will be sporting the HK flag on my arm.
Plus after three years of weekends spent in LKF, I think my future campaign to be POTUS is pretty much doomed anyway...
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