  | | Wednesday, September 29 | | Happy Mid-Autumn! | |
| | It's the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival! A kind of moon and lantern festival combined. People stay up all night in the parks and on the beaches with their lanterns, bathing in the light of the full moon and eating mooncakes, like the ones pictured above. We're heading up to China for the night to celebrate in true Chinese style. Then we're off to Japan—Tokyo and Kyoto! See you soon!
| | Friday, September 24
| | The Curious Incident of the Chop | | Wildly divergent stories on the chopping are popping up in the media, what scant coverage it's getting. Chinese friend Pam tells me that the Chinese press reported it as a business venture gone bad. Version 1: Victim was in some sort of "logistics" venture with the guy who ordered the chop on him. There was a financial dispute, so this aggrieved partner took matters into his own hands and contracted some hired hands good with a meat cleaver. The choppers were said to be dressed in all black with black masks like ninjas.
Local English language daily, the South China Morning Post, who's editorial philosophy seems to grow out of the notion that you can never smoke enough crack, had an utterly different take. Version 2: Victim was a manager of a 7-Eleven (yes, they have colonized Asia) and was getting out of his car on the street when two assailants approached and proceeded to chop. Victim cried for help and the assailants took off; only one was dressed as a ninja. Victim suffered "severe chop wounds."
Who are you gonna believe? The paper that speaks the mother tongue? Or the expat hack who phoned in the story from his opium den in Thailand?
ETC:
It's getting ugly: Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible
Thank god for people like Joel Ryan who sort out the Britney Wedding Saga.
| | Thursday, September 23
| | New York is getting rid of newstands and it's a crying shame! What more can go wrong in the world? Wait, I don't want to know. More boring corporate uniformity to New York City streets. They are to be replaced with conformist boxes owned by Clear Channel (destroyer of the FM dial). But I wonder sometimes where all this dampening of the human spirit and creativity will lead — and it ain't pretty. We're slowing morphing into what the late stages of communism was like, where control of everything was concentrated into a handful of groups, and the people just simmered.
OK, this is addictive. and be sure to check out Courtney Love's scary rippled boob.
PS: Poor Dan Rather. I am saying novenas.
| | Wednesday, September 22
| | Somebody Chopped | | All this bad news in the air, beheadings, bombings, bad poll numbers, it's nice to know you can always retreat from the world into the pleasant confines of your neighborhood. Unless of course that happens to be a bloody crime scene.
Now, everyone has their cultural customs and the Chinese are fond of chopping people as a form of killing. (Not all Chinese people of course, just the homicidal ones.) It's the second most popular form of homicide after suffocation (there aren't many guns out here, you've gotta do it old school style). Legend has it that the ghost of the victim can't come after you if you've chopped him up. This quaint custom goes way back.
But I wasn't thinking about this as I was walking on my street this morning to catch my ride to work. When I saw a police van round the corner, I was thinking of how rarely you see a police vehicle in Hong Kong and of how unbelievably safe it is! But then I rounded the corner, too. First I saw the debris, it looked like a bag of stuff had exploded on the street; then I saw a van, it was cordoned off with police tape; next, the blood, pools of it on the street and smeared on the van. I was so freaked out. My immediate thought was that someone was hit by a car. There was no sign of the victim, but there were numerous police and photographers around the scene. I approached a Chinese man and asked what happened. He said "somebody chopped."
My friends in HK say it must be the work of the Triads, the notorious Hong Kong crime syndicate. They are known to chop the way the Sopranos whack. Someone told me a story about the feared "Broken Tooth" Triad gang in Macau who went into casinos and chopped off the arms of casino owners who were refusing to allow in prostitutes. The prostitutes were back the next day.
But my neighborhood is far from the Triad centers of Mongkok and really peaceful, and violent crime in Hong Kong is just nonexistent. Guess I'll have to wait for the story in the English language newspaper tomorrow.
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| | The scene of the crime, all cleaned up later in the day.
| | Monday, September 20
| | Hong Kong by Night | |
| | We made a journey up to the Peak this weekend to watch the sunset. There has to be nothing as visually dramatic as the view of Hong Kong's skyline from the tippy top of the island. If you look really hard, you can see our apartment building in the jumble of skyscrapers below. If you're thinking of visiting, better move fast. Time is running out...We'll give you the full treatment, dim sum, foot massage and all the fake Gucci bags money can buy!
On another note: Did you read this piece on GWB's lost years in the National Guard? What a slacker. Hmmm, I wonder why he declined his military physical, maybe he ate too many poppy seed bagels perhaps?
| | Monday, September 13
| | Singapore: Cleaner Than Canada! | |
| | Singapore is CLEAN and GREEN. Not only can you eat off the sidewalks, you can eat off the dinner plates at restaurants and not go home with the severe intestinal damage you acquire in other countries (ahem...peoplesrepublicofchina). The trains run on time. The cab drivers are perpetually cheerful. The parks are alive with orchids and butterflies and majestic Banyan trees. Indians mix with Malay and Chinese. Everybody speaks Singlish. The place is a model of civility. No wonder they caned that bratty kid for spitting gum.
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| | The Durian, a prickly, football-sized South Asian fruit, smells like rotting road kill. It makes you bypass the produce section of the supermarket. In fact, the smell is so intense that it is illegal to eat them on public transport in Hong Kong. That doesn't stop the Chinese from loving them for their taste and for being "heaty" (heaty foods (meats, starches) contribute to yang; cool foods (vegetables, broth) contribute to yin; yin + yang = a balanced chi). For some reason, Singaporeans revere this fetid fruit and even modeled their new performing arts center (above) on its shape.
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| | These Indian Sufi dudes tried to pick me up! They said I was "impressive." HA! | |
| | Me and B on a kind of tuk tuk outisde the famous Raffles Hotel. Stamford Raffles was the British colonial administrator who founded Singapore in 1819. Somerset Maugham composed most of his stories on the hotel's veranda, under the fragrant frangipani trees. Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling and Noel Coward also found the hotel inspiring. We were inspired to have a Singapore Sling here, it was yummy.
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| | More colonial splendor...on the grounds of Raffles. | |
| | The Boat Quay (for some reason pronounced "kee") on the river and our hotel, The Fullerton, all lit up. | |
| | The restaurant scene on the river. There are numerous South Asian delights to be found in Singapore by the way. | |
| | Everybody loves Ganesh! Things get a little more colorful in Little India. | |
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| | No shoes in the mosque on Arab Street. | |
| | Chinatown is all abuzz all the time. | |
| | Singapore is hawker food heaven! You can literally make several weeks of just sampling the various street foods. Of course, this being Singapore, they're all licensed and regulated by the government, so no tummy parasites (unlike you know who).
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| | But don't forget your mooncakes...the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner!
| | Friday, September 10
| | I am so obsessed with the US election, I've almost forgotten I'm in Asia! Heading off to Swingapore for the weekend, reputedly the most boring place on earth, worse than Canada even, will letcha know how it goes. See ya soon!
ETC:
My wacky British office mates rolled all morning about this one: the MS Word paperclip guy gets what's coming.
Don't you just love Japanese personality assessments.
| | Wednesday, September 8
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| | Ohio is showing the love for Kerry. It gives me a bit of hope to think Ohio might be deciding the election, having grown up in the Buckeye State and being well aware of its many gripes against the GOP, including my own dear, sweet grandma, who liked to refer to Reagan as "That Goose" and "a Freak from Freaksville."
By the way, Dick Cheney is making terrorist threats against the United States. Now would be the perfect time to deploy the Patriot Act and send him to Guantanamo, don't you think?
| | Tuesday, September 7
| | New Camera! | |
| | I have officially become a technology freak. It took almost a year, but like a worm it has bored into my brain and now all I want is what's new, what's small, what's available only in Tokyo. I admit, for the most part it's the result of mandatory social compulsion. Do you know what it's like to walk around Hong Kong with last year's model? These people are in the know, even small children give you sidelong glances when your technology is not exciting. You could just NEVER be seen with the likes of the Sanyo crap people carry in New York. It's like holding a dirty roll of toilet paper to your ear. And once you start upgrading you just cant stop.
Case in point, my new camera. Sony T11. Why? Because it's only available in Tokyo and here. Because it's posh. Because it's superfast. Because it has a really cool Macro setting that takes super close-ups. Because my last camera was stolen by a band of gypsies in Romania.
| | Thursday, September 2
| | Bush Administration: Parallel Universe | |
| | Viewing the Republican Convention, it's really not hard to imagine what horrible ulcers must have rotted the stomachs of the vanquished minority under Stalin or Mao, as they watched a dark cloud roll over the land, witnessing the defeat of reality with a catalogue of lies.
I guess this is what people resort to when they have nothing to show for themselves but a bogus war and a national economy down the drain, you just have to MAKE STUFF UP! I mean what are they referring to? Another country? Another Administration? Another WORLD? (No, wait, that was a soap opera my grandma used to watch.)
My theory is that (just as in the brilliant film Donnie Darko) a tangent dimension was created the moment George Bush took office and we are all living in it. As you are all well aware, time is fairly stable, but some superstring theorists argue that time can be corrupted and, if so, an alternate universe will be born.
My theory posits that time was corrupted that dark night in Florida. That George Bush was never destined to be president of the United States. That we are all trapped in some parallel dimension that should never have been.
The bad news is that a parallel universe (such as ours) is highly unstable (just like our current global geopolitical situation) and that it will eventually collapse upon itself, forming a black hole that will destroy everything, including the primary, real universe from which it was born. We can already see this happening with the unregulated logging, drilling, hunting, and killing.
Still unconvinced? OK, here's an example (care of slate):
Statement of Fact from the Primary Universe
Note that this economic report is dated PRIOR to the creation of the parallel universe. Gore did not concede the election until December 13th. George Bush was sworn in as president on January 20th, at which point the economy (and everything else) began to collapse. "The determination of a peak date in March is thus a determination that the expansion that began in March 1991 ended in March 2001 and a recession began in March." -National Bureau of Economic Research, Nov. 26, 2001
Bush Administration Parallel Universe Statements: "Under President Bush, and Vice President Cheney, America's economy is moving ahead in spite of the recession they inherited and in spite of the attack on our homeland." -Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-California, Aug. 31, 2004
"President Bush pulled our nation's economy out of the recession he inherited and put us on the right track." -Gov. Linda Lingle, R-Hawaii, Sept. 1, 2004
"When George Bush entered the White House, he inherited an economy that was sliding toward recession. The stock market was declining. The dot.com bubble had burst." -Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, Sept. 1, 2004
"This President inherited an economy that was spiraling into recession and already losing jobs in states like Ohio." -Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Sept. 1, 2004
"Four years ago America was about to tumble into recession. Today our economy is recovering." -Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-North Carolina, Aug. 31, 2004
"As President Bush and I were sworn into office, our nation was sliding into recession, and American workers were overburdened with federal taxes. Then came the events of Sept. 11th, which hit our economy very hard." -Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 1, 2004
"Led by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, Americans have moved our economy from recession to expansion." -Marc Racicot, Bush-Cheney '04 campaign chairman, Aug. 30, 2004
Creepy...It’s sad to think of what would not have happened if George Bush weren’t sworn in as president and set off this chain of events.
We are in danger people! It’s only a matter of time before this tangent universe gives way and we are all sucked into the darkness and the primary universe is lost forever! We have to set the world straight. We have until November 2nd. |
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