Okay, okay ... so I'm a bad blogger, I know, I know. Sorry. Blame it on the jetlag, which I whined about for at least three-four days as I found myself passing out at the oddest hours. Bryan's roommate, a sleep researcher, insists the body can only shift its rhythm an hour each day, and suggested I take melatonin to reset my internal clock. I took it on the third day and I'm not sure if it really did anything. Now I get tired at the early hour of 10:30pm.
The plan to sublet a room in Harlem fell through, so I've been manically checking craigslist for an Inwood summer sublet, making phone calls & visiting places lately. I think I've found a pretty nice, big 1BR apartment for cheaper than my Westchester place last summer, plus I get to live in Manhattan with a reasonably quick commute to work.
Being back in NJ is a bit disconcerting. While walking with Sophie down the streets of my picturesque tree-lined suburb, we both couldn't help remarking how foreign it felt, like walking through a movie set -- this one populated by young, smartly-dressed, affluent-looking parents pushing baby strollers. American flags abounded. Sophie couldn't stop gawking at the yellow ribbons tied to trees, poles, buildings ("You mean they really do that, like in the song?"). Worst of all, I couldn't find roast ducks hanging in a single store window.
Last night I dreamt that bugs were crawling in my bed and biting me. When I woke up, the dream had come true -- I found several bug bites on my leg. Freddy Kreuger's spiders?
here's what always bugs me: the plane leaves in 45 minutes, at 1pm, may 23. i fly for 16 hours or so, then arrive at JFK airport at 8:30pm, may 23 (asiana airlines flight #222, mom). oh, how the international date line vexes me so! i remember reading once some flippant technologist describing international air travel as functionally similar to a time machine: you get in, the machine vibrates a bit, and when you get out, you're in a different time and place than when you got in. okay, so that's stupid.
another thing that bothers me is that once i'm back, i'll have been around the world once -- i went to asia the first time through london, so i flew east to hong kong, and now i'm flying east again back to new york. i remember in "around the world in 80 days" they received an extra day for this trip. does this mean that soon i'll be walking around in america, an extra day older than if i hadn't gone round the world? this sounds ridiculous, so i'm probably just confused. maybe i just woke up too early this morning. okay, gotta run & catch a plane!
got back tonight, a bit darker and more relaxed from lying on the beach & drinking countless mixed fruit shakes. no SARS in thailand, making mosquitos (and malaria, i suppose) my only concern on the island. the weather got better after the first rainy day (and my previous blog entry), and it was quite pleasant afterwards. no temperature checks leaving bangkok, though an exciting thermo-camera contraption greeted us at hong kong.
i know "the matrix" sequel came out in the US lately, but last night i was disappointed that i couldn't find bootlegs of it for sale on the streets of bangkok yet, though they were showing "daredevil" and "anger management" (currently screening in the US right?) in the backpacker cafes. i already spotted a reasonable-quality version of "the matrix" sequel online, so i suppose it's only a matter of time before that hits the street in asia.
moving out in the next few days. sophie's almost finished packing already. i've become quite fond of hong kong, and it's a bit sad to be leaving. hard to believe that soon i'll be back in the US, channel-surfing, driving around in my ford escort, eating at diners, spending greenbacks. i'm expecting the culture shock to hit around the time when i find myself wanting a quickie bowl of pork chop noodles or some roast duck & rice, and i realize i can't just pop down the corner and grab some.
i'll probably be staying with bryan in harlem for the first few months this summer; i'm too lazy/cheap to find anywhere closer to work. not sure about after that, though it would be cool to get a phatty pad like manning says. this all hinges on the job search thing.
well, heading to bed now.
right, so i'm in bangkok. remember how i asked a few entries back "how much are tickets to bali going these days?" well, they were going for a bit more than i wanted to pay, but round-trip to bangkok was $120 on the lovely sri lankan airlines. we have a week free until going to the states (on the 23rd) so we figured white sands and coconut trees sounded like a good idea until then.
it's hot here. no SARS here either, and on arrival a doctor checked me with a stethoscope for some reason. only 4 new cases in Hong Kong yesterday (all traced to current patients, no medical staff), so they're pushing to have the WHO travel ban removed, but apparently this news hasn't yet reached the management of the first guesthouse we tried, who turned us down because we mentioned we lived in HK.
the orange juice is neon-orange and very tasty here. flying into bangkok and taking a nice air-conditioned taxi to the backpacker-hotel area of town is a bit different than starting in cambodia and coming across by motorcycle, boat (that broke down), car, and bus, and arriving scruffy and tired, like the last time we came here. our conversation coming in this time was more like "did you like the in-flight movie?" rather than "i'm filthy and still on medicine from my brush with dengue fever."
getting a bus to ko samet tomorrow morning. mm, beach...
Yesterday was Lord Buddha's Birthday, a public holiday here when most people get the day off. It also was the main parade day for the Bun Festival on Cheung Chau, a tiny island to the southwest of Hong Kong island. The Bun Festival is actually a Taoist festival that just happened to coincide with the holiday -- we could've visited a Buddhist temple and watched them bathe Buddha instead, but this seemed much cooler, so we caught a ferry and went to check it out.
It turns out most of Hong Kong had the same idea, so when we arrived we had trouble getting through the crowds clogging the main street. Very few people had masks on. It seems SARS fears have receded significantly, with only single-digit increases in new cases for the last few days, and only 7 new cases yesterday (compared to 40+/day in March/April). The WHO wants this below 5/day before they'll consider lifting the travel ban, but one of the headlines today was that a WHO doctor has said he doesn't think HKers need to wear masks anymore. No one's contracted SARS from just walking around town without one on, they say, and the new cases being reported now all are colleagues/family of other infected people, not mystery subway sneeze victims. So things are looking up.
Back to the bun festival. The parade wasn't an organized singular affair, but rather a collection of little troupes of teenage lion dance teams led by elders waving flags, winding through the little back alleys past old local grandmas mumbling in Hakka, butcher shops, and photo-crazy Chinese yuppies with expensive cameras. Some of the competing processions were also wheeling card-table-sized floats featuring infant girls dressed in imperial costume, literally lashed to a stand to give the appearance of an amazing balancing feat as one appeared to be holding the other in the air.
All the lions and floating babies convened near a temple where three enormous towers had been constructed, each covered with tasty-looking buns. Plus Chinese opera (in Cantonese), scary-looking Taoist effigies (I'm guessing some kind of fishing/sea god, as it always is here) and lotsa burning incense. We retreated to the waterfront for fresh shrimp and crab at the sidewalk seafood restaurants, the main draw for people visiting the islands. Yum. All in all, a good Buddha's birthday.
So my birthday has come and gone, and it's time for the wrap-up on the past year. So while I finish my dinner of cha siu pork and beer, here's the analysis: all in all, I had a good twenty-third year. I think I "broadened my life experience" more than I have in any other year.
I now have memories of places and situations that before were just big question-marks in my mind, or things I'd seen in movies or books. Now I know "what it's like" to be a backpacker bum in Asia; to walk with hundreds of thousands in the biggest anti-war rally in London; to work with scarily impressive PhD's at a huge research center; to chill out under a thatch roof on an island in the Gulf of Siam; to graduate from college; to finish an issue of "The Economist" in a Taiwanese mountain temple; to visit Herve, Belgium, the town that gave me my surname; to make sense of a Chinese newspaper; to be in a Dutch coffeeshop; to go to a Cantonese hardcore punk show; to get dengue fever; to attend a New England "hippie" music festival; to live with my girlfriend; to get extra pages added to my passport; to wear a surgical mask whenever I go out; to watch America in wartime from afar; to actually want a watch that shows time for three time zones; to be in the country where my mother grew up; to be an "expat" (well, "gweilo" at least) in Hong Kong; to climb to the top of Angkor Wat; to ice-skate at a rink in a big HK mall (did this yesterday); and to watch a subtitled Snoop Dogg on MTV Chinese (doing now).
So it was a fun year. The only criticism I can think of was that it wasn't a particularly productive year: I didn't get into grad school, nor did I make bundles of money or further my "career" very much. But from the outset I termed it my "year off," during which I wouldn't worry about those things, so perhaps it isn't appropriate to use this criterion. Plus, during the period when I had a full-time job (June-Oct), I was getting a more-than-reasonable weekly paycheck (which in turn paid for the rest of the year). So.
So. I guess, due to the nature of my "year off," though, these were all just "diversions": I have to "get serious" now, come back to New York and get a job, a life, a car, two kids, a garage, okay, I'm going overboard with this, but you get the point. Like my horoscope said yesterday: "Take the first steps towards planning the future you want." Time to dust off the ol' resume.
But I still have a couple weeks left before my flight home. How much are tickets to Bali going for now ...?
my horoscope in today's paper:
TODAY'S BIRTHDAY: The time has come to be decisive. You've been waiting for the right moment to make certain demands and begin long overdue changes. You now realise you create that moment yourself. What previously seemed obstacles vanish. Take the first steps towards planning the future you want, completely free of concerns about anybody or anything stopping you.
yep. it's definitely time to head back to the states...
Yeah, yeah, I know this is making the rounds on everyone's blog, but still, you just gotta hear Saddam rapping to "Gangsta's Paradise" on CIA/MI6 radio in Iraq:
"Bush wanna kick me, I don't know why and if I call him, he does me goodbye.
Smoking weed and getting high. I know the devil is by my side
My days are finished and I will die - all I need is chili fries."
Press writeups about the psy-op Coolio parody: BBC article, Newsweek "Periscope" blurb, AP article.
Also while you're listening to things check out Eisenhower's farewell warning on the military-industrial complex (RealAudio, WAV). It's hard not to notice how relevant his words sound these days.
Note to self: read new book The Iron Triangle, I saw the author on CSPAN's Washington Journal and he was very good.
Completing my li'l multimedia blitz, this Bush speech flash clip is pretty depressing.
Over here, we bought HKG->JFK tickets yesterday (for May 23). With Taiwan blocking HK visitors (even though new SARS cases are decreasing each day), we couldn't use the cheap fare through Taipei and are going through Seoul instead. Plus a bad cold I've had for the last couple days has given me a sweet Barry White bass voice and a lot of SARS paranoia, with me checking my temperature almost every other hour. I'm better now ... perhaps it's time to confront my chap stick addiction next?
Another email from Erin:
gates are officially locked, but much to my diappointment, there's no armed guard. i'm going to make a statue and put a gun in his hand just so i feel reassured that my jail experience is genuine. what kind of prison doesn't have an armed guard?! and paint some signs renaming the school a jail.
we spent pretty much all day at the beach getting in last minute soccer games and sunburn. well, i got sunburn, my chinese friends didn't burn too much. i've already called 5's on one of the roofs to hold classes. this way we can look at the street below us and pretend we're not being held captive. the wall is looking more and more attractive since i could easily jump off it and disappear into the alley. the only problem is that i don't exactly blend in here, so someone could easily call the school and report the foreigner being on the loose. shit, the foreigner escaped here cage...wait, that was just the monkeys from the zoo.
the good news is that the prison term may be shortened. i had a chat with one of my bosses, and she mentioned letting us out after 5 or 6 days. they're worried that because contrary to what was reported, the government didn't actually cancel the national holiday, people will come here from BJ. given they've allegedly blocked off the roads and are checking, i dont' know how this is possible, but again, i got one of those, well, there are so many roads... what, the one main highway? i mean, you're talkign about china... just put the fucking military all around and close of the border. shoot if they don't stop. it's not as though you've had problems using force in the past. this doens't seem to be the time to grow a conscience, now does it. i pointed out that you can't catch sars by walking along the beach. but what if someone comes and talks to you? how often deos that happen? theyll all be running around in their masks anyway. but just in case, it's better to not trust us to act responsibly. they told us last week all hotels had been ordered closed and not to accept guests, but apparently that version changed? oy.. so much ever-changing information. so after the holiday ends, they're thinking of letting us out for exercise and things, in a very regimented way. they've recreated the monitor system. every class has a monitor, who must check his classmates' health each day. all the monitors are men, naturally. so perhaps next week we'll be allowed to go, en masse to the beach, but no one is trusted to go out alone. only with the group. perhaps we can hold onto a piece of string and walk single-file as well. and sing nursery rhymes. however, following that, they may change to the more common practice where we can go out, but again no visitors are allowed to come in.
the combination of possible bj tourists and of course the migrants seems to be the problem. any reasoning at this point is beyond question. i may be camping out on the roof for a while or something. run laps around the courtyard?
my friend called me from dalian. apparently there're no cases there, but anyone entering the city has their temperature monitored and maybe a medical
screening. she was told not to go out, or at least as little as possible, and i tried to explain why that was silly if there were no sick people around.
ay, well i'm 6 1/2 hours into my prison term and already bored out of my mind.
erin
Having consumed at least one bowl of pork chop noodles each day for the last two weeks, I needed a break from Chinese food. I began to feel a bit peckish for pastrami after reading this NYTimes pastrami article. Luckily, Sophie told me about Archie B's, HK's own "NY-style" deli, which even imports its salamis from the famous Katz's Deli in NYC's East Village. We ran off to HK's trendy Soho district, where all the rich gweilos live and practically no one wears a mask (most have decided that SARS is a disease primarily affecting the poor -- after all, isn't that what the Amoy Gardens outbreak taught us?). Got some really excellent homemade gelato at XTC on Ice and then settled down in Pacific Coffee for a bit where we checked email and bought tickets for the Field Day Festival. Then on to the deli, where the pastrami was spicy and flavourific and the Chinese dude who took my order was being trained on how to put "Pastrami on rye, a little mustard, plus a Dr. Brown's Cream Soda" into the cash register. After that we saw the new X-Men movie, which was mutantorific.
Which leads me to this question: if you had to pick between being able to fly or invisibility, which would it be? I read somewhere that only sneaky people pick invisibility. And happy people pick flying. So, which one?