What March Madness looks like from the other side of the planet

On Sunday night in the U.S., Kansas and North Carolina played in the Elite Eight of the NCAA basketball tournament.

On Monday morning, I watched the game live.

Right now, Hong Kong is 12 hours ahead of the east coast, meaning a 4 p.m. tipoff in St. Louis equals a 5 a.m. alarm clock for me. It's a little surreal. Hong Kong is a bustling place; some nights it doesn't seem to sleep. But by 5 a.m. on a workday, it's pretty quiet. As I set up my laptop in our living room, nothing was moving outside except the gentle waves on Victoria Harbor.

It was an exciting game. Yet at this hour, and with Mrs. Blog fast asleep in another room, yelling, cursing or even whacking my forehead was a bit to boisterous. I resorted to sending frustrated e-mails to friends in the U.S. who were watching the game too.

If you squint really hard at the upper-right-hand corner, you can see me in my living room.

But the quiet was also helpful. During timeouts, I could look out the window at the lights across the harbor, watch the sunrise start to paint the edges of the sky, and take a deep breath. (It also helped that I planned to go back to bed after the game, meaning no coffee and a lower heart rate)

In the end, Kansas pulled off the upset, beating a UNC team with perhaps a half-dozen future NBA players on its roster. And as the sun rose, I took a deep breath and smiled: KU was going back to the Final Four.

Of course, that means I'll be awake again early on Sunday morning.