Editing Blog/2024-08-14/Fearless American Women

Something that has always struck me about my time in the US has been the fact that women hear are positively fearless. Whether this is a cultural learning they have or that society here is safe enough that they can be so is unclear to me, but I have often been the beneficiary of this.

== NC State ==

[[File:Gorman St Grad Student Residences in Raleigh, NC.jpg|thumb|Picturesque. The view outside my window as I sat with crutches.]]

[[File:Google Maps Screenshot - Hunt Library to ES King Village.png|thumb|As you can see it's quite the way with one leg]]

When I lived in Raleigh, NC I destroyed my knee while skateboarding. Instead of heading to the hospital, the adrenaline was sufficient for me to make to skateboard to the library where I filled out my application to intern at LiveRamp<ref>This actually worked out since that's where my career got started and where I met [[Julie Yu Kang|the woman who would one day become my wife]]</ref>. Since it was already late, it was past midnight by the time I was done. When I tried to get up, I found that my knee was frozen open - I could not bend it without immense pain. There was nothing to be done but to attempt to walk back home and deal with this in the morning. Skating home (a quick 8 min job) was out of the question.

So there I am, limping along in the dark with overgrown trees hiding me at almost 1 AM carrying my skateboard, when a car goes by. The brake lights turn on, the driver pulls a U-turn, then comes up next to me and rolls down her window. At this time of the night, this young woman (who was surely barely out of her teens) offers me a ride home.

That was incredibly helpful since I was in an immense amount of pain and I still had a fair bit of rough uphill way to go.