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…