I hate rollercoasters. You can ask my College Prep Program students whether or not I chickened out from riding on Batman. Definitely did. The whole thing with rollercoasters, generally speaking, is that they are Instant Consquence Decisions. One sees a rollercoaster, is then pressured until he breaks, and finally sees his whole life pass before his eyes with every single click-clack of the elevator chain. The whole terrible process is over in maybe 10 minutes and the victim swears of all ICD for the next 23 seconds.

This is to be compared with Delayed Consequence Decisions. These DCD move through stages. First, some sort of exciting or seemingly innocuous decision is made.

*"We're getting married!"
*"Let's adopt that puppy"
*"Going to China sounds important..."

Then numerous binding agreements are signed, triplicated, sent to government agencies where they're triplicated again. Promises are made to friends and family alike. Thousands of dollars are often spent. Finally, one realizes that the C of his DCD is about to happen and that it's not exciting at all, but rather executing and he is strapped to a huge rollercoaster that instead of being over in 10 minutes will affect the rest of his life and probably kill him first.

Great.

This is the part where I start realizing that I am standing in line again and where I look up to the top of the coaster and I can't see it. It's up in the clouds, beyond anything I could ever predict. The difference with Michael version 2 is that I have ridden this coaster, or its variant, once before. And that if I am not dead yet, it probably won't happen for a while.

Above: My favorite place to ice skate, Bei Da (Beijing University)