We are not in the 8th dimension, we are over New Jersey

When my husband and I return to the United States for a visit, we dread the inane questions from immigration officials. It’s like there’s a note in our files that says, “Fuck with these people.” And this last visit was no different.

Two years ago, the agent asked why we only filled out one arrival form when we clearly weren’t part of a household. You know, what with not sharing a surname and all. He then suggested I change my name to “make things easier,” and I realized we hadn’t entered the US but a time portal to 1955.

Last year, the agent asked how long I had been in Hong Kong. I responded that I live and work there now. His face took on a harsh expression and he followed up rather brusquely with, “Then what’s your business here?” Oh, I don’t know, I’m a citizen?

This year, the agent asked what my husband does for a living. To keep it simple, he answered, “IT.” The agent said, “IT? Let me ask you a question. If I have answering machine tapes that I want to digitize, how can I do that?” Oh. Okay.

My husband explained the process, and the agent looked disappointed. “Everyone keeps saying I need a computer to do this. Why do I need a computer? Why can’t I do it without one?”

These are the heroes keeping you safe from terrorists trying to sneak in the country. SLEEP WELL, AMERICA.

Going from Hong Kong to the US is kind of like spending the summer at your awesome grandparents' house, where you can do almost anything and punishments are limited to no ice cream after dinner, and then having to go back to your parents' house, where your drunk, racist dad and co-dependent mom fight all the time and if you do something bad, you're shocked with a Taser, imprisoned or killed.


At JFK, my in-laws were waiting for us. At their home, cannolis were waiting for us. I’m sure you can imagine which I was more excited about seeing. (If you’re reading this, Mom 2, obviously it was seeing you… coming out of the kitchen with the plate of cannolis.)

This was the first time we’d been home in the summer instead of during Thanksgiving or Christmas, so we wanted to take advantage of the warm weather and spend a few days enjoying a vacation from our “vacation.”

For nostalgia’s sake, we settled on Lake George in upstate NY. Lake George is the kind of place that when foreigners ask me "What's wrong with America?" I'm just going to show them photos from this tourist shop:













There’s not much to our side trip. We hiked, we biked, we shopped, we drank and we ate (take a bow, Ali Baba Express, for elevating dining in Lake George to that of a two-horse town).

But on the third day, I woke up with a terrible migraine, and by the evening, I had a sore throat and my temperature spiked to 39.5 C/103 F.

Not having health insurance that covered non-emergencies outside of Hong Kong, I did what most other uninsured Americans facing an illness do: popped Ibuprofen, drank copious amounts of alcohol and hoped for the best.



My fever had gone down a bit in the morning, in time for the drive home. Before hitting the NY Thruway, we stopped at a diner for breakfast. Not being very hungry, I opted for the stack of silver-dollar pancakes.

The "silver-dollar" pancakes were each the size of a CD, there were about 12 of them, and they were covering two bonus pieces of French toast. I ate less than a quarter of it, which the waitress commented on: “Can’t finish your plate, hon?” Who the hell can, sweetie?

Although it couldn’t compare to the “donut burger” at the New Jersey State Fair. It’s like food in the US is made out of spite. “You thought that was bad, motherfucker? Fuck you. We’ve got fried butter on a stick and no socialized medicine.Come at me, bro.”

From there, I went to my parents’ house. Visiting my parents often leaves me wondering if they actually want me to just stick them on an ice floe when the time comes.

They’ve settled into a routine in their not-very-old-but-they-act-like-they’re-going-to-die-tomorrow-anyway age, and my being sick was not part of that routine. As I vomited in the bathroom one morning, my mom politely knocked on the door and asked, “Are you going to be long? I need to do my hair.”

My parents have a long history of neglecting me when I’m sick. There was The Incident in 1989, an incident for which most normal parents would spend their lives apologizing.

Knocked down by a serious case of pneumonia, I spent the entire time between Thanksgiving and Christmas recovering at home. Hoping to finish her Christmas shopping, my mom decided to briefly leave me under the care of my father, with the order that he “keep an eye on [me].”

As my temperature rose to 106 F/41 C, my father was busy keeping an eye on Link as he tried to rescue Princess Zelda. Almost died because of Nintendo and still waiting for an apology decades later.

While my parents were unsuccessful in killing me, they pretended they did and replaced me with an obese, snorting, smelly canine that has more clothes than I ever did and gets ice cream after dinner EVERY NIGHT. Not that I am in any way bitter about it.

So, continuing the theme of passive-aggressively expressing my absolute delight about their new child by buying my mom pug-related gifts, I commissioned a popsicle-stick painting for her at a market in Bangkok.

While in New Jersey, I planned to meet up with old friends, the majority of whom still live in the area—many of them having never left our hometown. It’s a small, rough-around-the-edges suburb where you regularly receive birth announcements like: “Krystal, Tiger, Kylee and Bailee welcome new addition Bradlee!”

What I was most excited for, though, was my town’s 4th of July parade. The 4th had lost all meaning to me when the police cracked down on our god-given right to throw fireworks into bonfire and burn down our neighbor's house, but I’m old now and misty-eyed for the cheesy shit I avoided in my youth.


So, I watched the parade with my black friend, who I’ve known since I was 5, and her 3-year-old daughter, who I met for the first time.

Now, I don’t mention my black friend in the Republican sense of “Everything I’m about to say is horribly racist, but look, I can justify it!” I mention my black friend because as we watched the parade, a Civil War-themed float passed by. We looked at each other in confusion, and I asked, “That’s… that’s not OUR side, is it?”

No, it was not our side. The winning side. It was a float for the losing side, the side that imagines they’d have been landed gentry instead of poor white trash, the side that does mention their black friend to excuse the Chris Rock routine they’re about to quote.

Yeah, it’s the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and I accept that my hometown is in a border county, but that’s the border between people who say “sub” and people who say “hoagie,” not the Mason-Dixon line. What the fuck, guys? Turn off Fox News already.

However, I turned on Fox News while home because I don't get it in Hong Kong. Flipping between Fox News and “Toddlers & Tiaras” one night, it dawned on me that there’s a direct correlation between the number of child beauty pageants in a state and how aggressively women’s rights are being eroded there. May some graduate student in sociology searching for a thesis topic run with that.

The next few days were spent meeting up with friends, and on my second to last night in the US, I had pizza with my mom’s family. Dinner with them often feels like living out a version of The Aristocrats because by the end of a meal, I end up knowing more about my 65-year-old aunt’s sex life than any non-subscriber to Goo Gobblin’ Grannies needs to know.

Then there are my recovering-addict cousin, his unemployed and largely unemployable girlfriend, their baby and her three kids. The girlfriend’s ex-husband and father of her three kids now lives with them, in what’s sure to be the plot of the TV show that heralds Charlie Sheen’s triumphant return to the small screen, but he wasn’t there.

All of the kids have “K” names and are small for their age, probably due to malnutrition. Now, I’m not saying a woman who drinks Red Bull and smokes throughout her pregnancy and lets her diabetic son eat a meal of cake and deviled eggs might not make the smartest dietary decisions for her children. I’m just sayin’.

They have no concept of discipline and receive no emotional support, and you don’t need much of an imagination to envision what their futures are going to be like.

Ten-year-old Kevin, clad in an “I’m with stupid” T-shirt, stood over my 2-year-old cousin’s toy cash register and asked us, “Do you want to know how to open a cash register?” He then pretended to smash it with a toy hammer.

As a palate cleanser for that, my cousin said he had a “hilarious” video to show us of his trip down the Shore with the kids and his girlfriend’s family. Did I mention the 5-year-old girl’s nickname is Bubba? Because it is.

So, in the video, Bubba’s 3-year-old cousin danced in a pizzeria. He danced on the seat. He danced between tables. Okay, it’s a toddler dancing.

And then… and then… “Watch!” Bubba commanded us. “He’s about to grind on me!” Yes, Bubba’s 3-year-old cousin then, indeed, began to grind on her. It was okay, you see, because, as her older sister explained: “His dad is Peruvian. They do that.”

Knowing they likely couldn’t top that, my cousin and his family decided to leave soon after. As the children walked toward the door, little Bubba turned back, waved and bid us all adieu with: “Night night, keep your buttholes tight.”

That’s why we go home, us expats. For the precious, irreplaceable memories of our youngest family members saying good-bye with a tip on avoiding prison rape.

My last full day in the US was spent like I’d spend my last day on earth: with my husband, in an empty parking lot, enjoying the sun, drinking Dogfish Head 60-minute IPA and eating White Castle sliders. I’m not ashamed.

Back at JFK, with three hours to kill, we planned on putting up a fight about the newly installed backscatter machine if need be. Because I want to fight for your liberties, America, and then get the fuck out to the relative sanity of Hong Kong.

It's amazing how the TSA can turn any item into potential terror tool. "A calculator? Why do you need that? You gonna calculate a blast radius?"

Last year, they were concerned about cans of cat food I bought because I can’t find the brand here. I can haz explosion?

As we waited in the security line, we watched a Chinese guy who refused the backscatter machine get a 5-minute rubdown from two TSA agents. If he were back in Hong Kong, he’d have expected a happy ending when they were done.

The closer we got to the front of the line, the more emboldened we became. It’s time to take a stand against this oppressive security theater and reclaim the principles that made America fucking awesome for a small segment of society and kind of okay for most of the rest!

And then they motioned us over to the regular metal detector. Sorry, America, now you’re definitely fucked. We were your last hope.

Arriving back in Hong Kong, we went through the wonderful e-Channel line, settled into our seats on the clean and comfortable Airport Express, took a photo of the woman to the left of us and sighed, “Yep, we’re home.”