Soaking Walls

One late night in October 2007 after a long day of work followed by an evening band practice I came home and opened my front door and saw something I didn’t even know was possible.  It was raining in my house.  I turned around and looked up at the clear sky, holding out my hands just to make sure no rain would strike them on this dry starry night.  I then turned back to the house.  I stood in the doorway, exhausted and confused, as my cats glared disapprovingly from the drier areas of the room at the water dripping from my sagging ceiling and my dogs playfully rolled in puddles and splashed about.  Something was definitely wrong.

Imagine trying to straddle this while you take a dump.

A pipe had broken in the upstairs bathroom, flooding the top floor.  The water eventually leaked through the floor and flooded the ground level, then leaked through and flooded my basement.  To make matters worse, it was hot water, so the entire day I had been paying to heat the water that was flooding my house.  For the next week had no bedroom and if I wanted to use the bathroom I had to do so next to an enormous dehumidifier.  Getting distracted and diverting my stream a few inches to my left could potentially end my life.

For the next few crisp October mornings I woke up early and walked out to my back yard to pee.  Since the flooding only destroyed the part of my house with the bedrooms, I was still able to sleep on the big cozy lazyboy chair in my living room.  My kitchen was a mess, but despite it being a bit chilly outside I could still use the grill in the backyard to heat up my frozen pizzas.  On the weekends I got away from the mess by spending time with friends who had spare bedrooms.  It was a great opportunity for me to connect with nature and spend time with friends, and it even sparked great relationship with a friend that I hadn’t seen in many years.

A few months ago I noticed a small water leak in my house here in Hong Kong.  It was slowly leaking through my bathroom wall and causing the paint by my bed to bubble and fall off. A week ago I finally got tired of cleaning paint chips and asked my landlord to repair it, which she agreed to do. 

Having lived through the experience of having the majority of a large house completely destroyed by a water leak, the one week repair of a small leak seemed like no problem to me.  I figured they would cut out a bit of drywall, patch up the pipe, repaint my wall, and be done.

On their first day or work, 3 polite and friendly (I think.  They didn’t speak English) men knocked on my door while I was getting ready for work.  One sat on my chair and started talking on the phone, another sat on my floor and started reading a newspaper, and the third man picked up a huge saw and started cutting my bathroom in half.

My small apartment was immediately consumed by a swell of dust as the man ripped apart the tiles in my bathroom.  I scrambled to cover as much of my house with plastic as I could.  I put my toothbrush and everything else I could think of in my refrigerator, wrapped the gaps around my closet doors with tape, and pushed as much of my belongings as I could fit my bedroom, which was the only part of the house with a door I could close.  But after a few minute it was more than I could handle.  I was coughing and gagging from the dust, as the two other men sat comfortably reading the newspaper and chatting on the phone.  I left my house and arrived at work earlier than I had ever been.

11 hours later I came back to my house.  The air was thick with dust and everything was covered in a thick layer of white grime.  Half of my bathroom was completely gone, and the rest of it was filled with tools and supplies.  My bathroom mirror was so filthy I couldn’t see my reflection in it.  Unlike my large house in the US, I had no other rooms I could escape into and no friends with spare bedrooms I could mooch off of.  The cleanest of my rooms was my small bedroom, but I had propped my bed up vertically against the wall to make room for my belongings.  My entire life was confined to one 32 square foot room, filled with furniture.

I laid down on the floor, my body twisting around the various items in the room.  I desperately wanted to poop and take a shower.  Both of those seemed impossible.  After a minute or two I got back up and walked to the gym, where I reluctantly confronted the superfluous agglomeration of wrinkly old man butts and needlessly exposed genitals as I walked through the locker room to the showers.

After one night of sleeping in a dusty room in which I clearly did not fit, my lungs felt like they were about to go on strike and I decided I had to find somewhere else to sleep.  Thankfully, I have a girlfriend who was willing to let me stay in her house.  But with no car my weekday round trip commute is about 4 hours, and there just isn’t enough space in her house for both of us to fit.  I have time to wake up, go to work, eat dinner, and go back to sleep.  I miss my big lazy boy chair, only having to climb over a large machine to use the toilet, and having friends with extra bedrooms.  One small leak has caused me more frustration than my house getting almost completely destroyed.  Now when I hear the ubiquitous drilling and hammering of Hong Kong I feel sympathetic and wonder how the person whose house is being repaired is surviving. 

I know I should be thankful for even having a place to live.  But what can I say, I’m spoiled and like having a bathroom and breathable air.  I like having extra rooms for large recliners and a yard big enough that I can pee in it without the neighbors calling the police.  But most of all I like having a private, quiet, and clean place that I can call my own.  Hopefully this construction will be finished soon so I can get back to my normal life!

Kicking Babies

A few days ago I was having so much fun playing Dead Rising and Forza on my xbox360 that I completely lost track of time.  I was supposed to meet my girlfriend in central for dinner that evening and by the time I finally glanced at my clock I was already 10 minutes late!  Not only that, but I had 20kg of laundry that I had to carry across an extremely crowded shopping mall and drop off at the cleaners before catching my bus!  I had to hurry!!

I threw down my controller, grabbed my phone, put headphones on, grabbed my giant bag of laundry, and ran out the door.  Earlier that day I had been listening to music with my regular open air headphones but was now using my in-ear isolation headphones.  In my rush I neglected to account for the volume difference between these two pairs.  At about 3/4 volume, I now had Trivuim blasting at a near deafening volume, and with no free hands to turn it down I was stuck with it.

I'm not sure if it was because of the video games, the loud metal, or that I was in a huge rush with a giant heavy bag I wanted to get rid of as quickly as possible, but I was in no mood to tolerate the wall of people occupying every inch of the mall between my house and the laundromat. 

I charged through the crowd like a maniac, weaving between people, taking every opportunity to pass, and intimidating those I couldn't get past with the giant puffy battering ram I had between my tired arms.  All was going well until I got stuck with a wall to my right, a slow fat woman to my left, and a tiny woman walking the opposite direction directly in front of me.  I thought about what my next move should be.  The fat woman to my left was unlikely to move, and barring some divine intervention, It was even more unlikely that the wall to my right would be going anywhere.  My bet was that the woman in front of me, who unlike me had plenty of space around her, would see that I was unable to move and go around me.  I watched her to see what she would do when suddenly our eyes met!  This was the perfect opportunity for me to solve my problem!

Since moving to Hong Kong I've developed a lot of creative tricks for getting through crowds.  I've used fake hacking coughs, air drumming to music, and skipping, but by far the most effective weapon I have is eye contact.  If I want somebody to get out of my way all I have to do is get them to look at me.  Once they do, I open my eyes as wide as I can and I stare, not at them, but behind them or slightly beside them.  No smiling, no blinking, no emotion.  Just two giant empty eyes.  Everybody reacts the exact same way.  Immediately after our eyes meet, they look away.  After a few seconds they look again with their eyes, not turning their head, to see if I'm still looking at them.  I am!  They repeat this maybe 2 or 3 times, then eventually turn their head and look directly at me, as if to say "oh, you want to have a staring contest?  bring it on!"  I hold my unwavering blank expression.  After a few seconds of this I abruptly switch from looking behind or slightly beside them to looking directly into their eyes, and give them a "why are you staring at me" expression.  At this point they realize that I wasn't actually looking at them, but at something near them!  Suddenly THEY are the asshole, and feeling foolish for having been staring at me for the last few seconds they step out of the way and let me pass.  It works every time!

This woman, however, was different.  When I shifted my eyes and stared directly at her over my big bag of clothing she just kept staring back at me!  She had absolutely no reaction to what I had done.  Was she trying to use my own trick against me?  I INVENTED that trick and there was no way I was going to let some lady beat me at it!  With no free hands for air drumming and the bag covering my mouth and keeping me from coughing I had no choice but to take evasive action.  But what could I do?  I was blocked from every angle, while she still had plenty of space to move!  It was as if she expected me to stop, press myself against the wall, hold my bag over my head, and wait for her to comfortably pass me.  Unfortunately for her, this was not happening.  She had to be moved.  If I couldn't defeat her psychologically, I would defeat her with force!

In the last few seconds before we collided my relaxed pace drastically changed to long and exaggerated steps.  I firmed up the bag in front of me in preparation for our impending collision and kept my eyes locked directly on hers.  I was sure this would make her move, but we just kept getting closer and closer, her path unchanged!  Eventually we got to the point of no return.  Our eye contact was broken as she got close enough that I couldn't see her over the bag in my arms and I braced for impact.  I took my last steps with excessive force and confidence, and as I threw my right foot forward it suddenly struck something a bit sooner than I had expected.  I moved the bag to the side to see what I had kicked.  It was a stroller.  Oh my god, I just kicked her baby!

I guess there is a first time for everything.  I never ate sea cucumber until a few weeks ago, and until this day I had never kicked a baby.  My mind spin wildly trying to figure out what to do next.  In my defense, with the thick crowd and the large bag in front of me, I really could not see the stroller.  Was this my fault?  What kind of a parent uses their child as a cow catcher?  I could think of hundreds of more ethical and responsible things she could have used to push people out of her way, but she chose to use a baby.  I thought parents were supposed to protect babies, not use them to push people!  What kind of mother was this? 

But no, I just kicked a stroller while intentionally walking at full speed.  There was no excuse for this.  I reluctantly stopped, pulled my bag to my side and prepared to attempt an apology in Cantonese when I took a closer look at her child.  There was a mesh cover pulled over the stroller, but I tried my best to look through it and see if the baby was ok.  As soon as I got a good look I realized that there was something very strange about this baby.  It was a Zara bag!

This lady was using a stroller as a shopping cart, no doubt with intentions of getting people to move out of her way in fear of kicking a baby!  This was even better than my staring trick!  Relieved, angry, and somewhat disappointed that somebody had developed an even better way of cutting through crowds, I resumed my pace and forced my way to the laundromat.  Thankfully I won't have to add "kicking babies" to the list of new experiences I've had since moving to Hong Kong!

Reptiles, Chickens, and Crazy People

For my first two months in Hong Kong it was easy to forget where I was.  The majority of my past year or so had been filled with empty meaningless days, and sitting around job hunting felt the same no matter what country I did it in.  However, since moving to Tuen Mun and working full time my life has gotten much more interesting.  Every day I am forced to confront the reality of living in a country where I am perpetually lost and confused.  Tasks like ordering a cheeseburger have become a frustrating game of charades, and figuring out where I am or where I’m supposed to be going has become downright futile.  To make matters worse I have had very little time to acquaint myself with my strange and bewildering surroundings. 

Today was the first day in over a month where I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and an abundance of free time.  I decided that I would spend this time intentionally getting even more lost and confused than I normally was, so I packed my bag with enough snacks and drinks to sustain myself for a day or so in the likely event of me getting hopelessly lost and set out for an adventure.

I started my exploring by exiting my building and bravely turning right.  This immediately took me out of my comfort zone because until this point I had only ever turned left after leaving my building.  It had always been open door, turn left, repeat.  I had no particular reason for avoiding the right side of my building; I just knew where things were on the left side and when I was hungry or walking to work I never wanted to deal with any uncertainty.  But today was my day and I was feeling wild, so to the right I went!

After walking under a highway, past a group of people with umbrellas that yelled at me for a reason I will never understand, and through an open square full of old men doing slow motion karate, I found an interesting looking wet market.  As soon as I walked inside I literally ran into a row of chickens.  There was wrapped chicken meat on the far left , whole chickens hanging from hooks in the center, and live chickens in cages on the right.  I had never seen living chickens so close to chicken meat.  I stood there watching them flap about nervously, trying to connect where each piece of packaged meat came from on their bodies, when an old lady snuck up behind me and started shouting in Cantonese and pointing frantically at the chickens.  I think she wanted me to buy one!  I tried to give her my best “I don’t understand a what you’re saying” face, but she just got louder and more energetic.  This made it difficult for me to concentrate on piecing together what little Cantonese I knew, but finally I said what I thought was, “I would not like to buy a chicken”.  She stood quietly for a few seconds and smiled.  Then she walked over to the cage and grabbed a chicken!  I panicked!  Had I accidentally told her that I would like to buy FIVE chickens??  My Cantonese is unintelligible enough that “five” and “would not” probably sound about the same!  I desperately tried to think of something else I could say, but my limited Cantonese was failing me.  I did the only respectable thing I could think of for a situation like this.  I ran away!

By the time I ran to the produce section of the market I figured I was far enough away to relax.  To redeem myself for using Cantonese so poorly I practiced by walking up to each vegetable stand and asking for the price of something, repeating the price, then asking them to confirm that this was correct.  After annoying every vender in the market and feeling pleased with my sufficiently inflated bilingual ego I left the wet market.

My next stop was Tuen Mun Park.  My house looks over this park, but I had never taken the time to properly explore it.  Despite looking like a large and attractive collection of foliage, it was actually the sounds that came from it that made me curious.  All day every day I heard what sounded like at least a dozen terrible concerts happening simultaneously.  There was always singing and music, but so much of it that it transformed into an eerie white noise of Chinese vibrato. 

Once I got to the park I found rows of tents spanning as far as I could see, all filled with old people, tambourines, and keyboard players.  This was outdoor karaoke for old Chinese people!  As I walked through the park, people started staring at me like I was on fire.  At first I was a bit self conscious.  I checked to see if my pants were properly zipped then felt the rest of my body and hair to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.  I even briefly glanced at my reflection in a pond to make sure I wasn’t actually on fire.  Thankfully I wasn’t.  Then it dawned on me.  I was actually the strange one in a large crowd that I found very strange, so I quickly moved along and started exploring emptier parts of the park. 

Out of nowhere I found a reptile house.  What a random but pleasant surprise!  They had turtles, snakes, lizards, and even an alligator!  I thought about how strange it was to have a reptile house in the middle of a park, but I guess it was no stranger than having me there.  Satisfied with my adventure around Tuen Mun I waved goodbye to my new reptile friends and started walking home.

While crossing a walking bridge over Tuen Mun Heung Sze Wui Rd to my home I wondered why anybody would give a big road such a long name.  I can’t imagine it being any less exhausting to say for fluent Cantonese speakers.  My philosophy on road names is that the more relevant the road is, the shorter the name should be.  It doesn’t even make a good acronym.  TMHSW.  If somebody asks for directions to my home I don’t thing I’ll ever be able to tell them because I know myself well enough to know that I will never remember the name of this street.

My concentration was suddenly broken by a tall man jumping in circles around me saying in clear English “hey hey hey, can you do 20 in 200?  Can you do 20 in 200?  In 200?”  I quickly tried to make a facial expression that would indicate that I’m French or German and don’t understand English, but in the moment all I could do was frown and blink while he hopped in circles around me.  Eventually he ran off down the bridge, started doing cartwheels, then exposed his genitals to a group of women walking the other way who gave him the finger as he ran away.   Suddenly I didn’t feel so weird.

I also honestly didn’t know the middle finger had any meaning here.  I always thought this was only done in America.  During a European vacation with a few friends in high school I remember us throwing the middle finger everywhere.  We thought it was funny and that nobody would care that we were doing it.  If it turns out that this is an international thing I’m going to feel really bad about ruining so many European travelers vacation photos. 

But this strange encounter was the first thing I had seen since turning right out of my house that I thought seemed normal.  I imagined that if this happened in Philadelphia, people would have reacted the same way.  I guess crazy is universal!  It is amazing what makes me feel like home!

Fast and the Furious: Hong Kong Minibus Racing

Why do people like roller coasters? I’m sure a psychologist or pathologist would ramble on and on about adrenaline, synapses, etc, but it just seems strange that we’ve evolved to crave and enjoy a certain degree of fear. I understand that evolution works in complicated ways, but this particular trait seems very counterintuitive to me. I would think our ancestors carrying the hunger for fear in their genome would have been eaten by tigers or toppled off cliffs. I can understand that the people who took the biggest risks may have reaped the biggest rewards and therefore been the most viable mate, but I doubt this characteristic was part of the evolutionary arms race for humans. The majority of those who didn’t grab that brass ring surely met their untimely demise.

I’ll be honest; I love roller coasters. I like them because they make me feel safe. Statistically, it is more likely for me to be hit by a bus while walking to the grocery store than it is for me to be killed on a rollercoaster. These are machines specifically designed to be safe as they carry riders around the air treating them to beautiful views and a nice breeze in their hair. Even sitting on a park bench there is always a risk of getting mugged or injured by a falling branch. During a massage somebody could be stealing your wallet, or during a nice relaxing dinner you could choke on a piece of chicken or get sick from chefs not properly washing their hands. I can’t think of a safer and more relaxing scenario than sitting on a chair high in the air with everybody around you locked to his or her seat.

But for those of you whom are adrenaline junkies and are thinking about visiting this part of the world, it would seem as though Macau is the place to go. They have bungee jumping off buildings, high stakes gambling, and exotic shows and experiences all geared to get your blood (and money) moving. Hong Kong on the other hand has much more relaxed and family friendly fun. Yes it has crazy parts, but these activities aren’t sold to tourists as publicly or abundantly as they are in Macau. Needless to say, I like Hong Kong!

But what can tourists in Hong Kong do if they need an adrenaline rush? Two words. Red minibus.

The Hong Kong minibus network has its roots as an illegal form of transport. Vans registered as taxis or goods carriers reacted to customer demand and an insufficient transport network by running unregulated service along corridors where climbing into the back of a stranger’s dodgy cargo van seemed like a pleasant alternative to riding on a public bus. The government initially turned a blind eye to this, but in the late 1960’s the growing popularity of minibuses began to pose a threat to regulated bus service. In 1969 the government finally acknowledged the presence and relevance of this illegal activity, but instead of enforcing and stopping it they opted to legalize and regulate it.

Today there are two types of minibuses, green vans and red vans. Green vans have government regulated schedules, routes, and fares. These busses operate just like a normal bus and run consistently. The red vans on the other hand have no set routes, no set stops, no set fares, and no schedule. They go wherever they want whenever they want. Their only goal is to get people in and out of the bus as quickly as possible while wasting the least amount of time and money covering gaps in service and latent demand.

Last Friday after a night of karaoke and a few drinks I found myself stranded in Tsim Sha Tsui at 2am with no bus or train service home. My only options were a taxi, which would cost about $250, or finding a red minibus, which would only cost around $20. The choice was obvious. I went looking for a red minibus.

Even though these busses usually don’t operate from proper bus depots, they are still relatively easy to find because somehow they know when you are looking for them. It is as if one of the qualifications for being a red minibus driver is psychic ability. While we walked down the street the appropriate bus pulled over, doors open and headlights flashing, with the driver calling for us to get in like a pimp luring lonely men into his whorehouse. We obliged, and the moment the majority of my body was inside, the bus accelerated down the street as quickly as possible, doors still open and me still clinging to the bars at the entrance step.

As I entered the minibus my first thought was that it looked and smelled like a mobile shed. The driver had bags of personal belonging, piles of dirty shoes and clothing, tools, boxes of random electronics, and a few brooms and cleaning supplies that clearly had not been used piled in the front of the bus. The seats were all wrapped in uncomfortable sticky plastic, the kind old people stereotypically put on their couches. After I sat down my first thought was to buckle my seatbelt. Where I expected to find a seatbelt buckle I instead encountered a large deposit of mysterious slime. I tried to wipe the slime off of my hand by rubbing it on the wall of the bus next to a sign warning that not wearing a seatbelt was illegal and may result in a fine, but this only made my hand dirtier. I then realized that the seatbelts had been wrapped under the plastic. Since accessing them was out of the question, I started thinking about where my head would go if the bus made an abrupt stop or was involved in a collision.

About 10 inches in front of me was a metal pipe, with an L shaped joint pointing directly towards the center of my skull. I assume this pipe was there to comfort passengers by letting them know that if the van was involved in a serious accident they wouldn’t have to worry about injuries or suffering because their head would immediately be split open by this strategically placed metal joint of death. In the very front of the bus hung a large red screen displaying the speed. According to the law, the maximum speed this bus was allowed to travel was 80km/hour, and at any speed above this the meter would start flashing and beeping loudly. It only took a few seconds for our meter to beep, and once it did, it never stopped.

This ride was a full sensory experience! I had the smell of burning engine and tires so strong I could taste it, the contrast of the lugubrious bus interior lit only by flashing red numbers with the brilliant neon lights of Kowloon flying past my window, the sound of a punished and tired vehicle trying to scream out warnings of its impending death over the high pitched beep of the speed alarm accompanied by the occasional chorus of screeching tires, and the G forces sliding me across the slippery plastic seat as the bus sped around corners with autocross intensity. I was scared! My heart was beating wildly and my sticky hands were shaking. I closed my eyes and tried to relax myself by pretending that I was on a rollercoaster, but it didn’t help.

Finally, on an empty back road near the gold coast, the bus came to a sudden stop at a red light. For the first time in about 20 minutes I could breathe! I looked around expecting to see a bus full of shaking and terrified eyes glimmering in the dark, but was met with one of the most bizarre sights I have ever seen. Everybody else had fallen asleep! Even my girlfriend had dozed off on my shoulder! How could people be scared of roller coasters but not of this minibus? Unlike a roller coaster, I was convinced that this bus ride was actually going to kill me! There were no bars or straps fastening me safely to my seat, instead pipes positioned specifically to destroy me. No attempts to adhere to safety rules had been made, and the mechanical condition of the vehicle had been clearly neglected.

But for now I felt safe and relaxed, breathing heavily at this red light. Then, from out of nowhere, a second minibus came to a sudden halt in the neighboring lane. Instead of waving a friendly hello to his fellow minibus operator, our driver glanced over with a scowl on his face. The other driver turned to face us and unleashed one of the most impressive scowls I’d ever witnessed. I guess having fantastic control over your forehead and eyebrows must also be requirements for minibus drivers.

At this point I had a stunning realization. This was not the end of my rollercoaster ride. It was the apex! Right now I was dangling over that big drop getting ready to fall. Whichever minibus was in the front would be the one to pick up the passengers ahead, and both drivers knew this! Suddenly our driver snapped his head forward to face the winding road ahead of us, grinded the minibus into 1^st gear, and started accelerating as hard as he could before the light even had a chance to turn green. We jumped ahead off the line, but the other bus was close behind. Our driver ran 1^st gear until the entire vehicle was shaking then quickly mashed the gear lever into second. When I looked to the right past my still sleeping girlfriend the other minibus was right next to us! No matter how hard our driver pushed they were neck and neck! Neither bus could pull away! This was no longer a drag race; it was a game of chicken! The busses just kept accelerating, our speed meter beeping loudly as the numbers crept higher and higher. Even around turns the busses just kept pushing harder, with speeds climbing well into the triple digits and tires screaming around turns as passengers sleepy heads bobbed back and forth.

Finally, the other driver decided he would rather miss the next few passengers than crash his minibus and plummet off the steep cliff beside us into the ocean, and abruptly slowed down. We had won! I felt an overwhelming sense of excitement and victory and almost started cheering, but quickly remember that everybody around me was still asleep.

A few minutes later we finally arrived in Tuen Mun and I exited the minibus as quickly as I could, still shaking. Before both of my feet could hit the ground the minibus was accelerating violently away from me. No roller coaster could have ever prepared me for the sheer terror of this ride. It really is one of the most exhilarating experiences in the world. Why would anybody pay to go to an amusement park or for bungee jumping and gambling in Macau when they could ride a red minibus for a fraction of the cost?

Feeling Surprisingly Normal

I'm typing this on my phone while riding a TurboJet boat in the middle of the night from Macau to Hong Kong. That sentence makes my life sound much more exotic than it actually is, and I like that! What did you do last night? Oh, I just hung out under the starlight in the middle of the ocean in Asia on a TurboJet speedboat! Anyway, this has been a very exciting week for me, and not just because of the fancy boats I got to ride on!

I'm happy to report that after over three months of living in Hong Kong things are finally starting to get more normal for me in many different ways. One of the biggest changes is that in about an hour I will finally be in Hong Kong legally! I now have a work visa and should even be getting my Hong Kong ID card soon!

In America we always hear about illegal aliens and the “trouble” surrounding them. I never thought I would be in those shoes. I always pictured the life of an alien as being much more precarious, hiding from the authorities and sneaking to and from work in the dark trying not to get caught. But it turned out, at least in my case, to be surprisingly easy. I just went along with life as if nothing was different. I shopped, went to restaurants, and have even asked police officers for directions.

I’m not saying my life here has been all smiles and sunshine. I have had a crushing amount of stress these last few months. Whether I would ever find a job, if me arriving in the country too early would threaten my chances of getting a work visa, what I would do when my bank account turned red, and just what the hell I was doing here at all haunted me every second of every day. I can honestly say that the first two months in Hong Kong were probably the most miserable and stressful of my life. Being unemployed in the US was hard, but this was a serious test of my mental stability. A test I came close to losing.

But now that my work situation is more stable I am also feeling better mentally. The next step is for my body to adjust to a normal life in Hong Kong. Part of coming here with no job and no direction meant also having no money for food or furniture. For the first 2 or so months I lived in somebody else’s empty house with only a folding mahjong table, a small stool, and a cheap bed on the floor. In the kitchen I had one cup, one bowl, one spoon, a water boiler, and a pair of chopsticks. No refrigerator, no pots, no pans, and no microwave. My diet consisted of cup noodles, tea, crackers, and peanut butter. Every single day was spent job searching from morning to night, and I would only leave the house if I had to meet Leona for dinner or if I ran out of cup noodles and crackers.

During this time I lost about 20 pounds. I think this could be the next Atkins! For those of you trying to lose weight, all you have to do is give me all of your money, cut out all nutrition from your diet, mentally destroy yourself with stress, and move to China. It’s that easy!

There is one more element missing from this diet plan, but I think it may be specific to me. When I travel I almost always end up getting, very much against my will, a tour of the many bathrooms throughout whichever country happen to be visiting. I know this isn’t a nice subject to talk about, but this is my reality. Maybe I'm allergic to rice, maybe it is the stress, I don’t know. If only they marketed shirts that said "I went to (insert country name here) and all I got was diarrhea".

I had to deal with this every time I went to Europe, when I went to Australia, and even when I moved back to the US. It usually lasts only a day then goes away, but in Hong Kong it lasted for 3 months. Yes…MONTHS! This brings me to another problem. One of the most exciting parts about moving to Hong Kong was being able to travel to other nearby countries that I would otherwise never get to see. What will happen if I go traveling somewhere like Mainland China or India, both notorious for their spicy and bowel disrupting cuisine? Food in Hong Kong is generally clean, safe, regulated, and cooked very well. To be honest I've loved almost every meal I've had since moving here, even if they haven’t love me back, but if it treated my body this badly I can only imagine how sick I would feel in some of the other countries around here!

As if this problem wasn't troublesome enough, the countries that are most likely to give me food poisoning are also the most likely to lack amenities I've become accustom too like toilets and toilet paper. Kind of ironic, don't you think? Maybe this isn’t as big of a deal as I am making it out to be, but as a spoiled American I have always believed that it is a persons inalienable birthright to have life, liberty, and a plentiful supply of toilet paper in public bathrooms. I am actually offended when it isn't offered free of charge and in great quantities to me every time I need it. Never in my comfortable life in America or Australia did it occur to me that such a thing might actually be considered a luxury. What a humbling realization.

But I'm not here to ramble and speculate about the quality of international bathrooms. When I finally build up the guts to travel I'm sure I will, probably against your wishes, post about it at great lengths. For now I am just thrilled to finally be feeling more normal again. I can eat almost twice as much as I could a month ago, my diet is healthy, I’m exercising regularly, and my pants are finally starting to fit again! Looking back I guess I should be grateful that I went through this stressful and sick time of my life in a place with laser motion sensors on the toilets. It is nice to be able to relax and look forward to getting my visa stamped instead of wondering what the bathroom situation will be like once we dock!

Crossroads and Cookies

I’ve traveled so much these last few years that I rarely feel far away from home. I’m not sure if this is a good or bad thing. On one hand it is nice to not have to deal with homesickness, but on the other hand I’ve been thinking more and more that maybe I no longer have a home to identify with. West Chester, PA will always be my hometown, but it isn’t my home. Here in Hong Kong I guess Leona’s house in Ap Lei Chau is the closest thing I have to a home, even though I have never and will never actually live there. I rent a house in Tuen Mun, but haven’t been there long enough to get that comfortable “I’m home” feeling from it.

But tonight for the first time in my life I actually felt what I could only assume was homesickness. I accidently fell asleep on a bus going back to Tuen Mun and missed my stop. Using very sleepy logic I decided to immediately exit the bus fearing that staying on it would only take me farther away from my house. I probably shouldn’t have done that. I was now standing by myself in what looked like an industrial park in the middle of the night somewhere in the New Territories. My first thought was to wait for the bus to come back the other direction, but I had taken one of the last busses out of the city and it was unlikely one would be coming back the other way until early morning the next day. I tried to use my iphone’s GPS, but couldn’t get it to work and I knew that nobody that could help me would be awake this late. At this point I could only think of one thing to do. I put on my headphones, picked a good podcast, and started walking in a random direction.

As I walked along empty streets and past closed factories I yearned for the comfort of all of the places I’ve called home over the years. I missed being able to navigate my way though Sydney so flawlessly, the constant flow of busses and taxis through Ap Lei Chau, and the security and freedom of my life in Pennsylvania. I missed being so acquainted with an area that I knew every backstreet and dead end. I suddenly appreciated all of the times I was able to read street signs and identify buildings. All I could do was walk, with Dr. Novella and the rest of the gang from The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe speaking softly in my ears about gamma ray bursts and the foolishness of UFO conspirators. I looked to the sky to see if anything was up there, but was met with only the ubiquitous haze that haunts the Hong Kong skyline. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so alone in a country so densely populated.

As I was walking I started thinking about my childhood. Maybe I should have joined the Boy Scouts. I remember my decision to not join so vividly. I was given the option of either going home and playing video games or staying at my school to make birdfeeders out of pinecones and peanut butter. My whole life I always wondered why any child would be crazy enough to stay after school to join this group, but I had also never been in a situation where I needed survival skills.

Then again, what survival skills would be useful in this situation? I wasn’t camping in a forest; I was lost in an industrial park. Even if I could make a birdfeeder I can’t think of any way for it to be useful. Plus I don’t even know if Hong Kong has pinecones, and last I checked I was fresh out of peanut butter.

Before I go on I want to point out for those of you reading this who actually care about my wellbeing that I’m fine now. Your life is probably stressful enough without having to worry about me, so I’m ruining the suspense for you. Right now I’m sitting comfortably in my apartment in Tuen Mun. I even stopped at a store on my way back and bought a delicious cookie! So don’t worry. For those of you who don’t know or care about me I’m sorry to ruin the ending, but not very sorry because I probably don’t know or care about you either.

Back to the story, since I couldn't build a birdfeeder my only option was to make a note in my iphone to buy more peanut butter then try to think of other knowledge I’ve gained over the years that could be applied to this situation. I have a degree in transport management, maybe that could be useful. I started thinking about urban design and street layouts. I decided to turn only at intersections where the perpendicular road was larger than the road I was currently traveling. This very quickly led me to a rather large road, which after only two blocks had a grade level railroad crossing. I assumed this was part of the light rail public transport network and started following a small path along the side of it. After a few minutes of walking my assumption was confirmed when a small commuter train passed by me. Not too much later I arrived at a rail platform and quickly boarded the first train I could. I wasn’t sure where the train was going or how I was supposed to pay for it, but figured I could ride it to a major interchange and figure it out from there. Luckily I didn’t even have to do that, because after 6 stops I could see my house! Hooray! My master’s degree was finally useful!!!

Looking back, this entire situation could be a metaphor for my life. When I get lost, I pick a direction and walk. Sometimes the road leads me where I want to go and sometimes it doesn’t, but if I keep moving I always end up finding something beautiful. In the last few years I’ve wandered so far away from the paths I intended to take that I don’t think I can ever go back. Instead, every few months I’m stuck standing at metaphorical (or actual in this case) crossroads wondering how I got there, where I should go, and why I didn’t take a path before that would have made me prepared. I can’t say I’ve made the best decisions in my life, but at least I’ve walked along some interesting roads. I also got to enjoy a delicious cookie!

The 10 Words/Phrases I Know In Cantonese

I once read in an excerpt from a book by Stuart Berg Flexner called I Hear America Talking that the ten most common words in the English language are “the”, “of”, “and”, “a”, “to”, “in”, “is”, “you”, “that”, and “it”. According to Flexner, these ten simple words make up over 25% percent of our conversations! It is astounding to think that somebody could learn only 10 words and understand over a quarter of what we say!

Obviously the English language is extremely complicated and there is a distinct difference between understanding words and communicating. Learning 25% percent of the words doesn’t mean someone will be able to decipher and understand 25% of the ideas being transferred. However, if we really do speak these words so frequently I’m sure that if a new English speaker learned at least the pronouns, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs in this list they would hear them frequently enough and quickly learn to identify and understand them. This would give the listener a vague idea of what or who the English speakers were talking about and be a great first step in building their vocabulary.

As a person living in a country where I don’t understand the common language, this information was especially interesting to me. Are there words or phrases in Cantonese people in my situation could learn that would be so prominent in conversations? Over the last three months I’ve been listening to the people around me and have put together a list of what I, as a non-speaker, think the 10 most common phrases and words are in Hong Kong. I will also provide what I think each one means based on my limited experience. I invite native Cantonese speakers to review this list and let me know what they think.

The words, in order of frequency, are “la”, “mmm goy”, “Ngo”, “iPhone”, “nay”, “hi”, “ting mut cow gun tam on”, “ho”, “iPad”, and “dim ah”.

1. La (spoken with a flat tone)– A few weeks ago I had a primary school student ask me if I knew how to speak “chinglish”. I told him no and asked him to explain to me what this was. He told me “you just speak English but say “la” at the end of every sentence. Where’s your homework la? I am tired la. I don’t understand la. See? It’s easy la!”

La is easily the word I hear the most in Hong Kong, but it is also the only one in the list I have not been able to figure out a meaning for. From what I’ve learned, it is usually used to dictate emotion or feeling. “Hurry up la” would be a more irritated version of “hurry up”. However, in other cases it is used to make a phrase or words sound softer or more polite. I honestly have no clue when or why it should be used when speaking. Very often the “la” at the end of sentences will be drawn out and exaggerated, one of the many aspects of Cantonese that makes it so fun to listen to! “ok lllllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa”

2. Mmm goy (the mmm spoken in a low flat tone . Goy, like boy with a g at the beginning, is spoken in a higher flat tone) – If you plan on traveling to Hong Kong but are too lazy to learn more than 1 word, that word should be mmm goy. It is the single most useful thing you can learn in Cantonese. Want to get a waiter’s attention at a restaurant? “Mmm goy!” Want to order meal number 3? “Number 3 mmm goy.” Want to thank the same waiter when he gives you your change? “Mmm goy!” Need people to move so you can read a sign? “Mmm goy!” Want to get the bus driver’s attention so he knows you need to get off at this stop? “Mmm goy!” Want to thank somebody for holding the door for you? “Mmm goy!” The list goes on and on. I use this constantly in my everyday life, and it is always understood.

3. Ngaw (this is kind of hard to say. It sounds like the “ng” at the end of “song” followed by the “aw” in “paw” and is spoken with a rising tone) – This one is simple and not fun la. It means “I” or “my”. Next word mmm goy!

4. iPhone (sounds like iPhone) – Go stand on any street in Mong Kok and listen to passing conversations. As people walk by you will hear "iPhone" at least once every few seconds. Does this mean something else in Cantonese that I am not aware of or are people in Hong Kong really that obsessed with their iPhones?

5. Nay (like the sound a horse makes, but with a rising tone) – Another boring one. It means “you”. If you want a Cantonese friend to hand you their iPhone you can say “nay iPhone mmm goy”.

6. Hi (spoken with a flat tone) – Hi means is/it is/am/are. This can be used to confirm that something is correct. For example you can go to a store and get the salespersons attention with “mmm goy!” When he walks over you point to the iPhone in the display window and say “iPhone mmm goy.” If he keeps trying to show you a BlackBerry and you get irritated you can say “iPhone la!”. When he finally points to the iPhone say “hi” to confirm that this is correct. When he gives the phone to you make sure you thank him with “mmm goy!”

7. “Ting mut cow gun tam on” – This was the first thing I learned how to say in Cantonese after arriving in Hong Kong. From what I understand, it means, “Please stand back from the doors. Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!“

8. Ho (like Santa. Ho ho ho! But with a rising tone) – Ho means good/very/well. When people say “nay ho” I always think of somebody saying “you ho” in a derogatory manner and giggle, but this actually means hello. If we were to continue our conversation with the store clerk in number 6 we can now say “ho ho” to tell him that the iPhone is very good.

9. IPad (sounds like iPad) – I arrive in Hong Kong right before the iPad 2 was release, so the markets and streets were filled with iPad and iPhone chatter. A typical conversation in Mong Kok sounds something like this. “Ngaw Cantonese Cantonese iPhone Cantonese Cantonese iPad Cantonese Cantonese la. Nay hi Cantonese Cantonese ho ho Cantonese iPhone Cantonese mmm goy. Cantonese Cantonese iPad Cantonese iPhone la!”

10. Dim ah (spoken with an irritated tone) – This one took me a while to figure out, but I think it roughly translates to the English slang “whatever”. For example, my friends in Hong Kong will see this post and say, “John is trying to teach Cantonese? Dim ah.”

I wish I didn't see that

Last Thursday while walking through the streets of Macau with Leona I saw a woman walk off to a secluded corner by the sidewalk, squat down, and empty whatever waste was in her body all over the ground. After she was done she wiped a few times and just walked away like nothing happened. You may recall from my last post that I get upset when people fart in public. Now that suddenly doesn’t seem so bad! I thought about taking a picture, but unfortunately my camera was in my bag and it would have been too dark anyway. Instead I just stood and watched, like a deer in headlights. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. She just seemed so nonchalant about it.

At this point in my life most of my friends have houses, a husband/wife, and a stable job. I’ve decided to live a somewhat more nomadic life. Friends say they envy me, but I’m not sure why. Instead of stability and money, I have a few pretty photographs and a story about watching a woman shit on the sidewalk. Would I have traded this experience for a house and some stability? Absolutely! But for better and for worse, this is the path I’ve taken. People tell all the time that I’m a risk taker and that it is great for me to be living my dreams, but that’s really not me. I love consistency and security. I’m an incredibly boring person trapped in an unintentionally interesting life.

As a boring and somewhat rational person, my trip to Macau last week was unusual for me. It was so last minute that I didn’t even pack my suitcase. I just got on a boat and went there, without my toothbrush or a change of clothing. Luckily, the only hotel room left for the night happened to be at the nicest I have ever seen, with the rooms including complimentary toothbrushes, lights that automatically turned on when you open the door, a shower with 3 shower heads, and electric curtains that opened with the push of a button to reveal a huge windows looking out to the ocean.

The toothbrush and shower were nice, but why would anybody need electric curtains? I could see them being useful if they were remote controlled or on a timer, but they weren’t. You had to walk across the room and press a button to open and close them. Despite having no practical use, I could have played with these for hours. Like a woman shitting in public, electric curtains was something I had never seen before.

For those of you not familiar with Macau, there is more than just electric curtains and feces. Imagine dropping Vegas on Portuguese island in China. Go ahead, work your imagination and get that picture in your head, because this is exactly what Macau is. The landscape and historical buildings are gorgeous, offering a fascinating mix of Chinese and Portuguese architecture and culture. Being able to stand at the top of Fortaleza Do Monte and see the ruins of St. Paul on top of a hill in front of the city was breathtaking. And the food! Oh my, the food was some of the best I’ve had in my entire life! The first night I had 4 meals, and given the opportunity I would have gladly attempted to eat another! (also, in Macau’s defense, I’d be willing to bet that the sidewalk pooper was a tourist. The actual Macau residents I encountered all seemed like friendly, clean, and genuinely good people. Can’t say the same for the clientele at various establishments).

But nobody goes to Macau to appreciate cultural heritage or eat delicious shrimp noodles and Portuguese pork sandwiches. They go to gamble gamble gamble! Cutting through the rustic low-level skyline are massive casinos. Inside these casinos the décor seemed so geared at attracting Mainland Chinese tourists that had it not actually been in China I would have considered it racist. Blinged out dragons and lions abound.

When I go to a casino covered with gold and jewels I assume they paid for this by screwing the people gambling there, but the more elaborate and lavish the casino, the more tourists there were throwing money away. And when I say throwing money away, I mean that literally. Renminbi were being physically thrown all over Macau. If a casino had a tree, window ledge, statue, or water, people would throw money at it. One casino had a gold painted plastic tree on a spinning pedestal. They referred to this as “the tree of prosperity”, and people were literally pushing me out of the way to throw coins and bills at it! Whose prosperity is supposed to benefit from money being thrown at this plastic tree? This made roulette suddenly seem like a responsible investment.

As a child I would always keep a penny in the pocket of my Roos. If I passed a water fountain I would throw it in and make a wish. I loved the concept of wishing. It was so magical, and it always made me smile because I really believed that one day if I wished hard enough my dreams would come true! If my parents asked what I wished for I’d tell them world peace or to end world hunger, but I was really wishing for one of those awesome Power Wheels cars or a Nintendo Powerglove (which I eventually got for Christmas. It’s so bad…)

You know what’s bullshit? None of my damn wishes ever came true (except the powerglove, but I think that was actually a curse)! Now that I’m older I wish I had saved those pennies and put them in a savings account so I could use the money today to buy some candy bars or perhaps a tasty cheeseburger. I also know that no amount of money thrown in fountains will make this bank account appear. In a way I feel guilty for not sharing my experience with all of the people wasting their money in Macau, but these were grown men and women. I stopped physically throwing away my money when I was about 5 years old. I don’t think there is anything I could say to change their minds at this point, and definitely nothing I could say in Chinese. If I tried to tell my story in Mandarin I probably would have accidentally ended up either insulting their mothers or ordering food in Cantonese. I really need to start working on my Chinese.

Once night fell and there was no more sightseeing we could do we headed inside the casinos where I spent hours drinking free drinks and watching other people gamble. I’m always amused at the way people rationalize irrational decisions. After we tired of watching strangers lose tens of thousands of dollars per minute we headed back to our beautiful hotel. As soon as I got to our room I pressed the “open curtains button” and ran to the center of the curtains. I stood there with my hands high in the air and as they slowly opened and imagined an army of people below, all cheering for their supreme leader. I would order them to find me a stable career and ban public defecation, and they would applaud my decisions and do my biddings. Much to my disappointment nobody was there. Maybe if I had thrown a few dollars at the tree of prosperity…

Elevator Farting

OK. Seriously, people in Hong Kong, please please PLEASE stop farting in the elevators. This isn’t just for the natives too. I’ve been forced to stew in the butt steam of westerners and expats during far too many ascends/descends. This is just about the lowest form of douchebaggery I have ever encountered. Dutch-ovening dozens of anonymous strangers? That is just sick! And once it is in there it lingers forever. I live on the 23rd floor! I have to stand there for twenty three floors of terrible stranger stink. Can people seriously not control their flatulence long enough to make it through an elevator ride? Perhaps I just never used elevators enough in the US or Australia to realize whether or not elevator farting is endemic to the entire world, but here in Hong Kong I travel between floors as many as 10 to 20 times per day. Maybe I just have bad luck (or stinky people living in my building), but this happens unacceptably frequently for me. It is disgusting, reprehensible, deplorable, and many other words I can’t think of right now.

Perhaps I am too hasty in my objurgation of these olfactory offenders. I almost never fart in public, even in open windy areas. I will hold it in and suffer until I am home and alone. Not just to the elevator, but completely inside my house. Very often as soon as my door closes I go off an elephant sitting on bagpipes. But does the world deserve to be free from my stink? Maybe I’m the weird one and people would find it strange to be so concerned about what other people smell. Perhaps it is time to strike back at a world that keeps farting on me! But even if I wanted to I know that I wouldn’t be able to subjugate strangers to what lingers in my lower intestine. What if an innocent child walked in the elevator after me? How could I live with myself after that?

Believe it or not my fear, or social awareness, or whatever you want to call it, about farting in public didn’t always exist. When I was maybe 4 or 5 years old I remember for the first time in my life feeling empathetic for the people around me after I passed gas. I never realized how unhappy my actions could make people, and I felt terrible. I never wanted to fart again! I still have this feeling to a certain degree and it is something that I think helped shape me as a person. To fart in an elevator is to be completely devoid of compassion. I bet Hitler farted in elevators.

Even if people must fart in public places, there are ways to go about doing it somewhat more appropriately and considerately. Shortly after my epiphany about the harm farting inflicts I asked my father to share his wisdom on the subject and he gave me what might be the greatest advice of all time.

Fart on smokers.

They are already producing an offensive odor, one that will likely cover yours. Elevator farters puff and run making the crime somewhat anonymous, but smokers stand right in front of you and pollute your air. This is your chance for revenge! If enough people fart on the smokers, they will eventually stop smoking in public, reducing the total of offensive smells. If a person eventually quits smoking entirely because people keep farting on them, then you could very well have saved them from lung cancer with your gas.

So there you have it. There are usually people smoking outside of any given building. Go let it out in the nice smoky open air. You’re welcome for the advice.

Creepy Fish Eyes

Wow, I sure do write a lot about food. I’m not sure why. Maybe I should change the name of my blog to “Words For Eating” hahahahahahaahaa! Wait, that doesn’t really make sense. Anyway, I’m upset today because my fish won’t stop staring at me. Almost every night at dinner there is a steamed fish, with its milky dead eye, gazing deep deep deep into my soul. It is like the mona lisa, always watching me. As a proud and accomplished omnivore I am no stranger to eating meat, but as an American I am not used to eating meat with bones, feet, and eyes. It is pathetic. When I finally got the nerve to take a big bite of the fish it was like putting a large piece of fish flavored Cinnaburst gum in my mouth, but instead of flavor crystals it had tiny needles. I spent the next 10 minutes swishing the meat around from side to side trying to gracefully spit out all of the little pointy bones. In my entire life I had only ever eaten fish filets. Is it sad that I never really thought about whether or not fish had bones? I mean, I knew they had bones (I used to watch a lot of Heathcliff cartoons), I’m not THAT much of an idiot (maybe)! I just never thought they would be so small, plentiful, and camouflaged. This is going to hurt a hell of a lot more coming out than it did going in…

In the United States we are separated from the reality of what we eat. I remember walking through the butcher section of food stores and seeing almost no bones. I’ve lived my life on boneless chicken breast, ground meats, filets, and patties. Even when I would buy a whole chicken I wouldn’t have to stare it in the eyes before throwing it in the oven. Remember that scene in A Christmas Story at the Chinese restaurant (Deck the hars with bawrs of horry)? I had that exact same experience a few days ago, minus the racist singing. My duck, golden crisp and delicious, was frowning disapprovingly at me. Duck is one of my favorite dishes. I’ve been eating it for years. I’m a grown man, damnit! I know where duck meat comes from! Even when my nephew was 4 and we asked him where ducks come from he said something along the lines of “First ducks are yellow and live in the pond. Then they get bigger and go on my plate!” But still it was weird for me. Fortunately was hungry enough to get over it and I ate the duck anyway. It was superb!

Are we so pathetic as a nation that we can’t face (literally) the reality that we are eating flesh? Does our food really need to be disguised so well? It’s like how parents pretend a spoon of peas is an airplane or train so their baby will eat it. Stupid baby, it’s still peas! Why parents think a baby would want to eat an airplane or train is an issue I don’t have time for in this blog, but you get the idea. It is one thing to divert a baby’s attention from the reality of what they are eating, but we as adults are being treated exactly the same! At this point are we even capable of eating a dish with bones, or will we shovel the food into our fat mouths to fast and with complete disregard for potential “obstacles” that we either choke to death or crap out needles for a week? This makes me so angry I could kick a turkey, and then make a delicious roast out of it!

Every time I go to Pricerite in Aberdeen I knock over the same stupid chair!

I don’t fit in Hong Kong. Physically that is. Actually, this isn’t a fair statement. I should say I am far too clumsy to walk anywhere in Hong Kong without oafishly knocking everything over. I am sure somebody much more graceful and elegant than myself would get by just fine. To make matters worse my Cantonese is bad enough that when I apologize for my clumsiness I’m probably saying something completely unintended and possibly offensive. A good example of this would be when I was corrected for my pronunciation of lobster balls while ordering food from a street vendor. Apparently I just kept shouting shrimp vagina over and over again.

Every day I wish I could be bilingual. I desperately want to understand all of the conversations going on around me, even the ones I have no connection to. While waiting in line, sitting on the bus, waiting on uncomfortably small chairs for my food to arrive, or walking through crowded streets I want nothing more than to understand what everybody is saying.

But why? Ironically, after 28 years of living in English speaking countries I’ve developed incredibly powerful selective hearing. I ignore just about everything everybody says in English because I know from experience that the vast majority of conversation happening around me are painfully uninteresting. Even knowing this, I can’t help but wonder about every word ever spoken in Cantonese within earshot of me. Next time you go out to dinner I want you to listen to how incredibly dull the conversations around you are and think about how boring the conversations at your table must be to other people.

Most of my recent dinners have been with my girlfriend’s family and entirely in Cantonese. This means I’ve been sitting at a table full of people talking, but I can’t understand anything they say. The feeling you get from an experience like this is difficult to describe, especially when it happens so frequently. It is like I am always eating alone, but surrounded by people I know. Sometimes somebody will say something that makes everybody laugh, so I will laugh with them. Then I immediately feel like an ass and try to pretend like I laughed at something funny that happened somewhere else in the restaurant.

I don’t have an exceptionally long attention span, so this has started driving me slightly mad. At first I found myself staring for minutes at pieces of food or objects in the distance, but too often these objects end up being people that most definitely become uncomfortable with me gazing blankly at them for so long. Lately I’ve been developing coping mechanisms to deal with the boredom. One of my favorites is trying to guess what everybody is saying. This is actually more fun than it sounds, but usually ends with me trying to keep myself from laughing hysterically at something I imagined somebody might have said. This probably looks crazier than laughing along with the Cantonese conversations.

I’d be willing to bet my imagined conversations are infinitely more interesting than the actual conversations that transpire around me on the bus, at dinner, in line, in a crowd, etc. I hate the phrase “ignorance is bliss”, but it does have a certain truth here. Maybe my life is more interesting not understanding what the people around me are saying. As soon as I can understand Cantonese the mystery and wonder will disappear from these situations. My selective hearing will almost certainly kick in, and I will just go back to ignoring everything. I guess I should enjoy not enjoying the conversations around me while I can.

soap and hoverboards

I’ve always been a “body wash guy”, but due to monetary restrictions I’ve had to buy bar soap for the shower. The transition from liquid soap to solid soap has been surprisingly difficult for me, as I’ve found it nearly impossible to clean myself without accidentally throwing my bar of soap all over the bathroom. On average I drop the soap about 10 times per shower. If I ever go to prison, I’m screwed (pun absolutely intended).

About a week ago I dropped my soap at such an unintentionally perfect angle that it slid down the side of the tub, back up the other side, and went flying across my bathroom. The weird thing is, once it left the tub it just kind of disappeared! I’ve been looking for this bar for over a week and it is nowhere to be found! I checked the trash, behind the toilet, I even looked to see if it was stuck on the ceiling. I find it hard to accept that there is some sort of kleptomaniacal soap portal in my bathroom, but at this point it is the most logical explanation as to where it went. Maybe Back To The Future time travel rules apply to soap, and when my bar hit a specific speed it traveled in time. The Doc’s epiphany did occur after slipping and falling in a bathroom. Perhaps slippery linoleum is the key to cracking the mystery of time travel. If that is the case and Back To The Future theories are real, then I want a damn hoverboard!

Seriously though, soap can’t just disappear. This is annoying and I can’t afford replacing my soap every time it leaves this dimension or travels in time! I also seriously want a hoverboard.