it's tough being a trendsetter

check it, check it, check it - this is so rich. my friend, tanya, pointed out to me recently that the word 'uber' is soooo 2004 since it's on the "annual list of words and phrases that should be banned". my other friend, bean, called to tell me the same news, but also pointed out that the word 'blog' is on the list, too. i personally think i should get an award for combining these two offensive words. here's the story and the list...

hint: not a spider

what has eight legs and goes like hell?

gadgets

headed back to hong kong for a quick recharge this past weekend. for me, it's all about the details, and hk has a lot of them to notice. i went exploring/shopping in mong kok on saturday. check out this wallet i found - it has slots for extra sim and sd memory cards. it makes sense, really. i'm telling you, high-tech gizmos are so pervasive in hk that i'm sure everyone has to carry extra cards with them. it seems pretty common for people to have at least 2 or 3 cellphone sim cards for traveling in different areas, getting different rates for incoming and outbound calls, etc...

hoop dreams

this post goes out to my roommate, vera. vera loves hooping, so i was pretty excited last week when i was able to send her photographic evidence of the existence of hula-hoops in china. unfortunately, i didn't actually see anyone using the hoop - just some old homeless-looking guy breaking it down to toss in the trash and yelling like mad when i took the picture. all that changed last friday night when i caught sight of this rare specimen in shenzhen. immediately after this shot was taken, the hooper called me over so that she could have a look at the picture (actually quite a rarity in china - most people hate having their photo taken). she giggled at the shot and then promptly grabbed my forearm and beckoned me to follow her upstairs for a 'maa-saa-gee'. i politely declined, and moved along down the sidewalk to watch locals buy live snakes to take home for dinner...

getting around

so far i’ve failed to mention my primary means of transportation in humen – my own personal taxi driver. everyone should look into this in your respective cities – just make sure you get the one that takes you anywhere you want to go for 40 RMB ($4.87 USD). in bigger cities like shenzhen, it appears that cabs are relatively regulated – the cars look like and are labeled as taxis, and they have things like meters inside. not so in humen. it seems that if you have a car (or a motorcycle or even a bicycle), you can call yourself a taxi. everyone at the factory has warned me not to jump in a random cab or on a random motorcycle [duh] since prices can fluctuate wildly and other bad things can happen to a gwai lo (ghost guy).

anyway - the factory was kind enough to hook me up with some guy with a semi-pimped toyota minivan. semi-pimped = boomin’ system, two vats of liquid air freshener on the dash, and a ‘greddy’ sunvisor sticker at the top of the windshield. my driver picks me up from my hotel or from the ferry terminal at times pre-determined the day before. he’s never late, and he’s always smiling. he’s a pretty cool. i mean, he seems cool. he doesn’t actually speak a bit of english, so i’m not sure what he’s really all about. wait – that’s not true. he knows the word hello. he knows that hello means hi. apparently, he also thinks it means goodbye, pay me, take a picture of me, and – when combined with a gesture resembling shoveling food in his mouth - do you want to stop for something to eat? i’m certainly not criticizing him for this. after all, it’s about the same amount of mandarin and cantonese that i know. still, i was a bit surprised that he didn’t know more english since he stopped one time so that i could talk to his son, fu tsen yee (total guess at the spelling there). this little 10 year old kid runs up to the van and smiled really big.
me: hi. how are you?
yee: fine, thank you. how are you doing? what is your favorite food?
me: uh, pizza. do you like pizza?
yee: (pause) no! goodbye.

can you believe that? perfect english. his vocab was limited, but now i’m curious if english is taught to all children here.

yesterday, my 20-minute cab adventure back to the hotel turned into a 54-minute escapade. when we called my guy to have him pick me up from the factory, he told my colleague that he was busy but that he’d send a friend instead. the substitute showed up in a brand new mazda – 2300 km on the odo. clearly he got super-lost on the way back and we ended up in an even shadier back alley than normal. sure enough, he picked up not only a nail, but a nail and a block of wood in a tire. want to make friends with your substitute cab driver in a shady area? show him how to change a tire. we fixed it in record time (only 6 of the 54 minutes), but i thought it was classic that he had a baseball bat in the spare tire well...

weak stomach, strong mind

i should preface this post by stating that i've thoroughly enjoyed the food in china. as you might suspect, eating here is really nothing like eating at even the most "authentic" chinese restaurant in america. i love the fact that nothing is processed. what you see is what you get, even if it means seeing all the bones of a bird/pig/fish, and all the eyeballs & antennae of shrimp/fish/crab.

at the factory where i'm working, i share a freshly prepared lunch almost daily with my colleagues in a small dining room. the factory is run by some folks from taiwan, so the particular scene i'm about to describe may not be completely routine in mainland china. we are served six or seven dishes, all on a rotary plate in the center of the table. each place setting consists of a small plate, a small bowl, a pair of chopsticks, and maybe a toothpick. no drinks. meals are simple and quick - not a lot of small talk. the whole thing takes like 20 minutes. you walk in, pick up your bowl, walk over to a big rice crock, and load up with some badass sticky white rice. then, you sit down, pick up your sticks, and start digging in. i don't mean digging in and piling shit in your bowl. i mean grabbing a bite from this dish, putting it in your mouth, grabbing a bite from that dish, putting it in your mouth, and so on. there is no translation for the english term "double-dipping". the little plate is for spitting out your bones and crabshells and whatever. if you want something from the other side of the table, grab and spin. don't ask permission to do so. you might also get up to refill your rice bowl with some soup. or you might not. after you've savaged the dishes - very little if any food wasted here - you cap off the meal with some fresh fruit for dessert - apple slices, a banana, lychees, etc. today we had a fruit that looks and feels exactly like a tomato but tastes sort of like a plum. does anyone know what that's called in english? oh yeah, and does anyone know what's up with fruit skins here? i just realized today that nobody (other than me - whoops) eats the skin of any fruit (apples, that tomato-looking thing, etc.)...

i have to be honest - i still can't really get used to the slurping noises. in this culture, slurping - soup, some meat off some bones that you're about to violently spit out onto the tablecloth, whatever - is absolutely not offensive. in fact, i hope i'm not offending my hosts by not eating loudly enough - i've had one person comment on how quiet i eat. when i return home, let me know if i sound obnoxious at lunch. spitting at the table is kind of cool...

note - in china, i've yet to encounter a vegetarian dish i didn't like, but i have encountered some meat dishes that definitely turned my stomach. hey parents out there - are you having trouble convincing your children to eat their veggies? anyone else - trying to talk your friends into becoming strict vegetarians? simple solution: at the next dinner, serve one bowl of broccoli and one plate of boiled chicken feet (toenails intact) and see what happens. seriously, kids - i'm not sure why chicken feet at the dinner table are so visually unappealing to me. i mean, really - why is it so much easier for me to eat a chicken leg than a chicken foot? first of all, i guess i never really realized how big chicken feet are. in proportion to chicken legs, the feet are quite large. they also sort of resemble the hands of an infant human. fleshy little fingers attached to fat little palms. not to mention the anatomically similar bones...

yesterday's lunch almost did me in. my host at the factory took me out with some computer company execs from taiwan. it was a two hour ordeal, and it involved a lot of chicken feet, a lot of octopus chopped up and placed in a neatly carved pumpkin, and a lot of other stuff that i could not identify at all. my host made me - uhh, strongly suggested that i - try one unidentified pocket of stuff. i obliged and bit in, causing some "creamy" creamy filled center to ooze out. anyone who knows me knows that i'm a texture person. at one point with this stuff in my mouth, i almost started gagging involuntarily. not cool. snap out of it, uber. get your shit together. my problem was solved by simply imagining that i was enjoying a nice custard-filled donut. try it sometime; the human mind is pretty powerful.

in case you're wondering - yes, i'm now a badass with chopsticks, and no, there's no such thing as a fortune cookie (at least i haven't seen one yet)...

go vote

i'm back in china now, where everyone asks me about the presidential erections. how am i supposed to know about bush's boners? seriously, though - watching election coverage from over here has been fascinating this past week. compared with americans, people in both hk and china seem much more aware of not only what's going on in the world in general, but also what's going on in the usa. they are familiar with big issues, swing states, the electoral college system, and cowboy hats. some are worried that i won't be able to vote; i explained that i voted via mail before i left the country. btw - all people i've spoken with dislike bush, primarily because of the war, secondarily because of bush's policies concerning china...