Miss O'Kistic

Electric sex gleaming in the window

2011-12-28T11:28:00.001+08:00

When I was growing up, Christmas meant three days of the house smelling like a women’s rest-stop bathroom as dried cod fish soaked in the kitchen sink and a week of winter vacation avoiding my alcoholic, bah-humbugging father who tried his jolly best to spread holiday misery to one and all.

So, I can’t pretend that being 8,000 miles away from home during this time of year is anything other than wonderful, and the only sentimentality I attach to the holiday are the repeat viewings of “A Christmas Story” that helped maintain a bit of the Christmas magic and prevented me from becoming a total black hole of despair as December 25 rolled around each year.

Trying to explain the popularity of “A Christmas Story” to non-Americans isn’t easy, but what better captures the religious and cultural superficiality of the United States than our most beloved holiday movie being about a young boy who desperately wants Santa to bring him a gun on the day that celebrates the birth of our savior? Everything you need to know about America, you can learn from little Ralphie and his family.

This Christmas, my husband, two American friends and I decided to pay the ultimate tribute to the movie by going out for Peking duck at a Chinese restaurant in China—well, as much as you can consider Hong Kong part of China.

Based on a co-worker’s recommendation, we went to Cuisine Cuisine, a restaurant in The Mira hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. I generally avoid hotel restaurants here because they’re overpriced and underwhelming, but I give the place credit. The barbecue pork and Peking duck were some of the best I’ve had in my four years in Hong Kong, and I won’t even hold it against the waiter that he thought Wild Turkey was a type of cocktail and needed to have the concept of bourbon explained to him.

We gorged ourselves on plain duck, duck wrapped in pancakes and stir-fried minced duck. We warned my friends’ baby to be careful with the swizzle stick she was playing with or she’d “poke her eye out” (hey, close enough). We laughed about the time my sister-in-law's not-exactly-the-sharpest-knife-in-the-drawer ex-boyfriend froze his tongue to a light post. We cursed Scut Farkus. It was the greatest “A Christmas Story” Christmas ever. Then this happened.

And now I can die because nothing--not even going to the leg-lamp factory in China like my friend did--greater will ever happen in my life. It was a true Christmas miracle.

The 12 Days of Hong Kong Christmas 2011

2011-12-09T11:27:00.002+08:00

Coming soon to a theater near you...

2011-12-07T11:15:00.000+08:00

Samuel L. Jackson's Chinese brother

2011-12-06T01:32:00.003+08:00

I have had it with these motherfucking snakes in my motherfucking soup!

We're a culture, not a costume

2011-10-29T09:30:00.020+08:00

Inspired by the American campaign against racist Halloween costumes, I've created one for Hong Kong. (For those of you not from HK, that's Donald Tsang, the city's chief executive.)

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

2011-10-08T09:08:00.000+08:00

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.”

Brief newcomer’s guide to Hong Kong: Tips about food

2011-08-04T15:23:00.002+08:00

The first thing you need to understand about Hong Kong is its basic philosophy, which can be summed up as: “Burp like no one is listening, walk like no one is behind you and wield an umbrella like it'll poke out someone's eye. “

Hong Kong is not for the timid or the insecure.

Hong Kong will stare you down until you’re so uncomfortable that you run for a mirror to see if you have ketchup or just gweilo on your face.

Hong Kong will fill your lungs with pollution, cover your skin with eczema and make you think “double confirm” is good English.

Hong Kong will make you want to leave after the first year of your contract is up or make you want to go the distance for permanent residency. Permanent residency is like a scar to be worn with pride because few understand the suffering you went through to earn it.

You’ll learn why soon enough.

FOOD
There’s a common saying about the Cantonese that “If it has four legs and isn’t a table, wings and isn’t a plane, and swims and isn’t a submarine, they’ll take photos of it and obsessively post them to OpenRice.”

Eating is a major pastime in Hong Kong—second only to training for races from subway platforms to empty subway seats—and if the only Cantonese you ever learn relates to food, you’ll be able to understand 80% of conversations. Learn how to curse and you’ll get the other 20%.

Pork is considered a vegetable. If the English translation of a dish is “Rice and vegetables, LOTS AND LOTS OF VEGETABLES OH MY FUCKING GOD THIS THING IS LIKE VEGETABLE PARADISE PAUL MCCARTNEY WOULD ORGASM ALL OVER THIS CORNUCOPIA OF VEGETABLES,” you’ll need to dig through pork to get to the vegetables. What, it didn’t mention there’s pork? Right, because pork is a vegetable.

Pineapple buns do not, in fact, contain pineapples.

Hong Kong is often called a “cosmopolitan” city, but this refers to the alternate-dimension Hong Kong where there’s an expansive range of both Western and non-Western restaurants that build their reputation on quality and consistency. In our dimension’s Hong Kong, most restaurants are owned by soulless cynics who care more about style and buzz than making tasty and/or innovative food at reasonable prices.

Why are there sausage, mayo, shrimp, hot dog, pineapple, and cheddar and mozzarella cheeses on my pizza? Because fuck you, that’s why.

In Cantonese, the Italian word “bolognese” loosely translates as “why is there so much damn sugar in this sauce?”

Most Italian sauces sold here are made by well-known Japanese characters.

In the West, steakhouses either have manly names—like Big Earl’s Colorectal Cancer Meat Shack—or simple, refined ones—like S&M Steakhouse. When you’re in the mood for sirloin in Hong Kong, you naturally head to a place that sounds like a Polly Pocket playset—like Sweetheart Garden.

Until the invention of public-service announcements, Hong Kong residents regularly died of botulism and stupidity.

The sesame seeds are never in the supermarket aisle you expect them to be.

Names given to “Western bread” here are fantastic. I recently bought a bacon tunnel, which is surprisingly not yet slang for vagina.

When you turn a corner and it smells like something died, came back to life, rolled around in raw sewage, crawled into a rotting corpse and then died again, you’ve stumbled across stinky tofu.

People wear their finest clothes when eating at noodle shops.

The popularity of a beverage is dependent on how much you want to be bukkaked with it.

The two biggest supermarket chains are Wellcome and Park N Shop, which I call Poop N Shit because that’s generally the quality of the products you’ll find there.

Each month, Poop N Shit sends out circulars listing their latest themed deals, as well as useful tips for using the products.

Fancy expats and locals go to grocery stores like Three-Sixty, Oliver's and City Super, which I refer to as Shitty Super. Okay, so I’m only capable of inventing fecal-related nicknames for grocery stores. Because they're all pretty much shit. It's better to stick to the wet markets for produce and find a butcher for your meat.

Milk tea is delicious.

So is hot Coke with ginger.

On Friday and Saturday nights, expats descend upon Soho like a plague of locusts, devouring all of the overpriced, underwhelming food in their path.

You generally choose snacks based on your gender.

If you have a craving for American food, look for the sign with the Statue of Liberty surrounded by all kinds of processed, high-fructose-corn-syrup-laden products. A little-known footnote in U.S. history is that the original phrasing in the Declaration of Independence was “Life, liberty and the pursuit of Cheese Nips.”

Every lunch with local co-workers will take 20 minutes longer than necessary, as they spend 10 minutes discussing the menu with the waitress and another 10 minutes taking photos of the food.

Taking photos of food is a popular hobby. Not like you foodies in the West, lovingly memorializing your Oysters and Pearls at French Laundry. Expect to attend parties where people snap shots of chicken wings catered by Pizza Hut and then put them on Facebook.

And, finally, two words for you: meat sundaes

Nerd love

2011-08-03T16:56:00.000+08:00

Sit back, kids. Grandma O’Kistic is going to tell you a tale about a time when AOL was serious business, people hated cats and predators were what Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Glover tried to catch.

It was 1994.

Your dad tried his best to hide the floppy disk he’d bought of Dana Plato giving a double blowjob, but if 2 girls were eating a substance from 1 cup, it was almost certainly not feces.

Modems zipped along at 9600 bps. You paid by the hour to dial into your online service, and you liked it – until someone picked up the phone and interrupted your 3-day odyssey of downloading Doom.

There was no 3G, no Angry Birds, no Google, not even Friendster, and all you had to entertain yourself in the bathroom was a dog-eared copy of “Reader’s Digest.”

Few of your friends had PCs. The ones who did primarily used it as a replacement for their parents’ ancient typewriter. Meeting people online was not normal, and the people you met online were not normal. You had to be dedicated to embrace the then-burgeoning online world.

My parents went through several online services – Compuserve , Delphi and GEnie – before settling on Prodigy. Or * P * as the cool kids referred to it.

As more people discovered the Internet and online services grew in popularity, Prodigy instituted a policy of charging for emails. Can you imagine paying US0.25 PER EMAIL after exceeding your allotted free emails? These were dark times.

My online friends and I didn’t care for that, so we used our genius 2600-reading brains to deduce Guns N Roses fans were fond of using “garden” as a password and added ourselves to their accounts.

“Hackers” still hadn’t been released, and the general public was mostly oblivious to the threat posed by dangerously smart, spiky-haired 1337 kids who could fuck your technology up while riding skateboards.

So, my parents weren’t concerned that they never paid for my Prodigy usage nor did they understand why there never seemed to be any long-distance charges for calling the boy I’d met from New York City on the teen discussion message board.

We were 15.

Our parents didn’t mind us chatting online or talking on the phone, which we did for hours at a time thanks to a phone-phreaking acquaintance, and they didn’t object to us meeting in person. They just didn’t want to put much effort into making it happen.

I realized if I was ever going to hang out with the boy of my angsty dreams, I’d have to do it on my own.

After yet another explosive fight with my parents, I told them I was going to the deli down the street to grab a sub, but instead, I called a taxi from a payphone. Before I left, I told my uncle where I was going and swore him to secrecy.

The taxi took me to the Trenton train station, which began my long trek to the wilderness of Staten Island—a place so backwards that it wasn’t totally wired for cable TV until the early 1990s.

From Trenton to Hoboken to the World Trade Center to the Whitehall ferry terminal to the Staten Island ferry terminal, where the boy was waiting for me in the arrivals hall decked out in his finest clothes of a Skinny Puppy T-shirt and Docs.

We took a bus to the movie theater to see John Waters’ “Serial Mom.” The theater was almost empty because, well, it was Staten Island, the borough where culture and dreams go to die.

After the movie, we sat and talked at the bus stop, each secretly hoping the other would make a move. But we were introverted and awkward and just being in the presence of another human being was overwhelming enough.

A half-hour later, the bus arrived and our date came to an end.

At the ferry terminal, it dawned on me that I now had to make the reverse trip during the early-morning hours in a NYC that still hadn’t been Giulianified and Disneyfied, and the only other people around me at that hour were already home.

So when I saw the boy walk into the waiting area 10 minutes later, I was relieved. And then I saw his dad behind him. His angry garbageman father who needed to be up at 4 a.m.

Hoping he hadn’t gotten a good look at me yet, I took out my nose ring and hurriedly shoved it into my pack of cigarettes. Because it would have been the facial piercing and not the multi-colored hair and Crass T-shirt that would have freaked him out.

His dad glared at me. “Come with us.” The fear of having been busted was not as great as the fear of being a 15-year-old Jersey girl alone in NYC at midnight.

I climbed into the Isuzu Trooper for an awkward 20-minute ride back to their house. I took my nose ring out of the cigarette pack and played with it. No one said anything.

At their house, I met the rest of the family. His mom looked horrified, and his sister stood by silently, mostly due to her archaic orthodontic headgear making it difficult for her to speak.

Not long after, the doorbell rang. Two men who looked straight out of central casting for “Homicide: Life on the Streets” walked into the kitchen. They introduced themselves as NYPD detectives.

During my absence, my panicked parents had worn down my uncle and discovered where I had gone. My father, being a cop himself, figured the NYPD would be on his side and send out every squad car to look for me.

He asked my future mother-in-law to call her local precinct and explain the situation to them. The sergeant on duty told her: “Lady, they’re on a date. If they’re not back by tomorrow, call us then.”

My father learned the harsh lesson that fraternity is often limited by state lines, but he managed to persuade the NYPD to give a tiny shit about his missing daughter and to arrange for an escort home.

The detectives directed me to their unmarked car, and I slipped into the backseat, a metal grate separating us. As we drove toward New Jersey, Munch and Bayliss tried to engage me in conversation.

Intrigued by this growing technology that gave kids new tools to get themselves killed, they asked: “What the fuck were you thinking? He could have been an axe murderer!”

But he wasn’t, I responded.

”But he could have been,” they argued.

We went a few more rounds.

They drove me as far as the New Jersey side of the Goethals Bridge, where state troopers picked me up. They brought me to their station and gave me a turkey sandwich and coffee. I didn’t like coffee at the time, but that little Styrofoam cup had the delicious flavor of freedom and fuck-you-Mom-and-Dad.

At home, my mom chain-smoked her Salems but said nothing as my dad raged and threatened to have me sent to juvenile detention. I laughed. They hid the modem and sent me to my room to think about what I’d done.

And what I’d done was awesome. Not many first dates start with a John Waters movie and end with a police escort but they’re the kind of the first dates that lead to a 17-year relationship that takes you all the way to Hong Kong.

A brief newcomer's guide to Hong Kong: Finding an apartment

2011-07-29T09:56:00.011+08:00

Hong Kong will make you want to leave after the first year of your contract is up or make you want to go the distance for permanent residency. Permanent residency is like a scar to be worn with pride because few understand the suffering you went through to earn it.

You’ll find out why soon enough.

FINDING AN APARTMENT

Hong Kong is divided into four main areas: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the ominous-sounding New Territories and the Outlying Islands. I’ve created a map (to the right) to help you get your bearings.

While public transportation provides extensive coverage of the city, you should figure out the most convenient route to your job and how much you value your life. If it’s not much, look at cheaper, farther-flung areas primarily linked to civilization by minibuses.

Think about what nearby amenities, like supermarkets and gyms, are important to you. For example, if you want access to a wide-range of quality Western goods, be sure to stay in your home country.

After you've decided where you want to live, you’ll need to find an agent or two or three or four to help you with your search. Walk into an agency in your preferred neighborhood—you’re never more than 10 feet from one—and talk to whichever agent looks the most competent. You can base this on any number of factors, but generally, go for the one who isn’t drooling or rubbing his hands together greedily like Mr. Burns.

Never forget: Agents are liars. They will lie about how quickly you need to sign the contract. They will lie about there being other bids on the apartment (so hurry up and sign the contract!). They will lie about how long building renovations will take. They will probably even lie about their name. I mean, Woodie? That doesn’t sound very Chinese to me.

Most of all, they will lie, excuse me, fudge the math, on how big an apartment is.

If you're from the United States, you're used to space. Space in your yard. Space in your house. Space between people in line. You want to spread out and sprawl. It's your manifest destiny.

To you, a 1300-square-foot house might as well be a hut. A 700-square-foot apartment is essentially a prison cell--but in Hong Kong, 700 square feet is spacious.

Of course, that’s assuming the apartment is really 700 square feet. The magic phrase you need to know is “efficiency ratio.” The apartment might be 700 square feet on paper, but that could include the ledge where you put your herbs or domestic helper.

You want to know how much usable floor space you have and no two 700-square-foot apartments are necessarily alike.

So, furnished or unfurnished? Furnished often sounds like a great deal, but keep in mind that your Western sensibilities might not mesh with those of the mainland Chinese landlord. Have you watched “Real Housewives of New Jersey”? Because while the Chinese may not have actually introduced pasta to the Italians, they did turn them on to tacky furniture and marble-topped everything. I call this “Chido” (Chinese + guido) style.

A furnished apartment I saw recently had a giant built-in fish tank that took up a significant portion of the living room/dining room space. I asked the agent what she expected us to do with that and she cheerfully suggested, “You can put plants in there!” While I’ve often toyed around with the idea of starting my own grow operation, I kind of just want a free wall for my TV. But you might prefer being the newest drug kingpin on the block.

Don’t get an apartment for the view. There’s a good chance it will be blocked by some new development with a ridiculous pseudo-upscale name like the Varicella. (“The Varicella, you’ll be itching to get in!”)

Don’t expect an oven. Or more than two burners. Or counter space. Or any type of kitchen layout that assumes the occupants consider cooking anything more than a chore for the maid to do.

You will never use the clubhouse.

Rent is negotiable, and the sooner you can move in, the more likely the landlord is to accept your low-ball offer. You can also ask that s/he provide curtains, replace light fixtures and, for God’s sake, do something about that doorbell playing “Oh My Darling Clementine.”

This all may sound overwhelming, but don’t worry. After you're here long enough, you'll just be grateful when the toilet isn't in the shower, the hallway doesn't smell like cabbage and incense and old ladies, and there aren’t floor-to-ceiling gold-leafed mirrors that somehow manage to take up 20% of the usable space.

And if you’re still pining for the McMansion you gave up to move here, give thanks you don’t live here:

2011-04-09T23:23:00.003+08:00

Just when I think I'm over ridiculous English T-shirts in Hong Kong...

Soy Loco Por Ti America

2011-02-24T11:04:00.003+08:00

I go home once a year to remind myself why I moved 8,000 miles away in the first place. This year, I went back to New Jersey for Thanksgiving instead of Christmas because I hate snow and the previous year, we landed in a major blizzard and spent two days shoveling at my in-laws’ house. I vowed to never go back when that foul white precipitation was a possibility. And, of course, there was a lovely mix of snow and freezing rain on Thanksgiving. Fuck you, mother nature.

These are the highlights of my trip. Three months late.

MY MOM

My mom hates cooking. You can taste the bitterness and resentment in every bite of her food. It was worse when I was a kid because she worked a full-time job and didn’t want to plan and make an elaborate meal when she got home. We lived off Hamburger Helper, Spam, Hungry Man, Lunchables and other staples of the white-trash diet. If it was sold in a can or at 30 degrees F, I probably had it at least once.

But one dinner stood out. It’s the dinner that defines her culinary endeavors, the one that is brought up frequently to remind her what a terrible mother she was and how it’s amazing I lived past the age of 10 with the nutritional deficiencies I experienced.

One day, she brought home a frozen meatloaf. Not any frozen meatloaf. A frozen meatloaf with a coating of frozen ketchup. It was the most vile frozen meal I’d had, even worse than the frozen clams casino. And so to honor her on her birthday, I had this cake made, albeit months before the actual event.

Now that I’ve moved to another continent, my mom has replaced me with a dog. Not that I’m bitter or anything about him having a better, more-expensive wardrobe than I had when growing up or being treated to ice cream after every meal. I celebrate that she’s found someone to love and who needs her because it means I never have to hear “When am I going to have some grandkids?”

While walking around Mong Kok, an area of Hong Kong noted for its abundance of clothing stores selling ridiculous shirts, I found the perfect Christmas gift for her. And made her wear it to prove she still cares a little bit about me.

FAMILY

You haven’t lived until you’ve played drunken Pokeno with an aunt and uncle who are fundamentalist Christians, a germphobic aunt who refuses to shake hands and a cousin who converted to Islam in prison during a stint for drug dealing. Unfortunately, that wasn’t this year’s festivities.

The cousin no longer follows the path of Mohammed. He found his latest salvation by knocking up an unemployed, married mother-of-three who spent most of her pregnancy downing Red Bulls. One of her kids is a 6-year-old girl nicknamed Bubba and another is a 9-year-old diabetic boy who wanted me to add him on PSN so we could play MW2 together. His user name has “187” in it. And he needed an emergency insulin injection after dinner because his mom just lets him eat cake and deviled eggs.

Oh, and these are the cups from which we drank our jug wine. Because that's how we roll in the 609.

FRIENDS

“Karaoke in a tiki restaurant. Cans of Four Loko.” That’s how friends enticed me to hang out with them . It doesn’t take much. I don’t think they sell Four Loko in Hong Kong—at least I’ve never seen it—but I’d followed the controversy in the US and was curious to try it. I can’t wait until the 2060 HBO series “Frathouse Empire,” about Jaxson Taylor and his Four Loko bootlegging operation.

The tiki restaurant is Lee’s Hawaiian Islander in Lyndhurst, NJ, and its décor and waiters haven’t been changed since the 1970s. The food is typical Americanized Chinese cuisine, meat and seafood smothered in a sickly sweet sauce of deliciousness. I’m happy for you foodies who crave legit Cantonese-style food and pooh-pooh what Happy Panda No. 4 serves up, but I eat Cantonese food almost every day. I wanted General Tso’s chicken. For the vegetarians, the waiters very enthusiastically try to sell their “poo-poo for two.”

The drinks are all some incredibly alcoholic variation of hard liquor and a citrus juice served in a tacky faux Polynesian-style cup that you drank out of with a straw.

And on Friday nights, when we went, they have karaoke. If you’re a Hong Konger or long-time resident of Hong Kong, yeah, karaoke, what-the-fuck-ever. You’re over it. You’ve had your fill of playing dice drinking games while aunties warble through Cantopop ballads.

No, this is karaoke sung by guidos in a tiki restaurant owned by former Hong Kongers. You are not that jaded. You would find this awesome too.

Around 9 pm, karaoke night started and the disabled Hong Konger waiter hobbled over to the DJ stand to sing along.

This is the place in North Jersey for otherwise creepy, anti-social people to show off their crooning skills. One guy was there alone and sang from the Pedophile Karaoke Soundtrack: "Father Figure," "Into the Night" and "Every Breath You Take."

Then there was the middle-aged Italian-American couple who looked like Ginny Sack and Bobby Bacalhau and sang from the Mafia Movies Set in the 1960s Soundtrack. And they call it puppy loooove.

It was so perfectly New Jersey, I teared up a bit.

As for the Four Loko, it's still in my in-laws' refrigerator.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I thought immigration agents welcoming back US citizens by shooting at the ceiling and yelling "America, fuck yeah!" was a bit over the top. Very over the top was, upon learning that I now live in Hong Kong, the immigration agent asking, “Well then, what’s your business in the US?” Um, I’m a fucking citizen. Here’s my passport. That’s my reason.

Surprised US doesn't have their own version of Hong Kong’s e-Channel that can scan if citizen/resident is too swarthy and lock them in for enhanced screening.

Passed a dwarf in a Santa hat riding his Rascal scooter in traffic and knew I was really home.

The tractor trailer accident that closed all lanes on Route 1 and left me waiting for two hours was a big welcome home. Like a good Jersey girl, I used that time productively, bitching to other drivers and doing my nails.

Beer-battered burgers in Atlantic City. That's what's up.

Only I go on vacation and end up at the county prosecutor's office to give a statement about suspected healthcare fraud.

In two days, I ate 8 slices of DeLorenzo's pizza, 7 slices of Denino's pizza, a a pint of Halo Farms ice cream and four cannolis from Pasticceria Bruno on Staten Island.

Overheard at Trenton hospital while visiting my uncle: "I can't believe we're gonna sue them over some damn flip-flops." I didn’t want to know.

Worker at pizzeria was so fascinated by my Hong Kong money, he paid me US$3 for a HK$20 bill and then taped it to the wall.

Staten Island tattoo shop's sign said they "fix old and poor tattoo's." I don't think I'd trust them with that.

I love that kids have no concept of adults' ages. I was throwing the ball around with my parents' neighbors' boys when one asked, "Are you home from college?" HELL YES, KID.

Husband and I went to my father-in-law's American Legion post. A veteran there told us: "You're American. Don't forget your roots. New Jersey and Staten Island. Don't turn..." And he slanted his eyes.

Forgot how friendly Americans are. Learned all about the Burlington Coat Factory fitting-room attendant's chest cold and irritable bowel syndrome.

I now laugh when Americans say their kitchen is too small. Oh, you can only fit a dishwasher, oven, fridge, microwave and small table? Poor babies.

Visited friend with 2-year-old. It's amazing how conversations with toddlers sound like porn dialogue. "Do you want to hold your banana while you play?"

My mom's bacalhau. Divine.

Realized Amish cuisine is just inbred white-people soul food.

I visit in-laws in Staten Island just for this. Father-in-law: Do ya want King's Arms for lunch? Me: Where's the King's Arms? Father-in-law: Up the queen's ass!

Pennsylvania drivers are like mainland Chinese: slow moving, stay to the left and don't know when to get the fuck out of your way,

Waitress in Mexican restaurant: Hola. Mother-in-law: That's all I heard when I was on vacation at that resort in Mexico! Hola. Hola. Hola. Me: Yeah, it means, "Shut up, whitey."

And you know you're in America when this number of eggs is the standard for an omelette.

Today we are all cheeseheads

2011-02-22T10:31:00.002+08:00

When I file my taxes each year as an expat, I find myself wondering what benefit there is to being an American citizen, other than the Navy rescuing me from Somali pirates in a daring raid.

Then I think of my solidly working-class cousin, his wife and their two kids who benefit from state-funded health care and public schools, and I remember that taxes exist for a reason: Because humans are selfish assholes who need a push to contribute to the upkeep of a society that we grudgingly admit benefits us.

I don’t want my friends and family to live in a third-world shithole, and if the prospect of owing US income tax despite never planning on moving back to my place of birth means they can continue to pretend the American dream is real, I’m okay with it.

But the Republican party has started an all-out war against the American people, focusing on turning women into chattel by defunding vital health and welfare programs, creating their own death panels by voting against programs to help the uninsured and underinsured, and overturning hard-won labor laws—including restrictions on child labor—by pitting working Americans against each other.

Yes, those lazy, greedy Wisconsin teachers who only work half days with summers off and who aren’t willing to subsist on a pittance even though molding the minds of our beautiful, perfect children should be reward and sustenance enough for them.

This divide-and-conquer tactic is working by preying on people’s base prejudices and fears and by moving us away from the inclusiveness of “Ask what you can do for your country” to the Mad Max Thunderdomeness of “Fuck you, country, I got mine.”

A blue-collar worker who dares to have “Cadillac” healthcare coverage and a pension like members of Congress is decried by Republicans as a thief who is all but bringing down our economy, but a white-collar executive linked to the largest Medicare fraud in the nation’s history is rewarded with the governorship of Florida.

You—the American who cannot afford to be without a job—are expected to embrace personal responsibility, but the people who want to hold you to that standard do not want to be held to it themselves.

If it weren’t for a union, my father wouldn’t have been able to retire on a disability pension, with lifetime health benefits, at the age of 42 and then spend the next 14 years welded to the couch watching Fox News and regurgitating their talking points at taxpayer expense.

He’s typical of those who embrace modern conservatism but who are not at the top of its food chain: Bitter people resentful of those who have succeeded or who manage to have a positive outlook despite failing. They can only find some semblance of meaning in their lives by being spiteful and wanting everyone to be as miserable as they’ve made themselves, and the Republicans have given them a means to do so.

No, it’s not “fair” that suburban New Jersey police in low-crime townships can easily earn US$100,000 with overtime, just like it’s not “fair” that Kim Kardashian’s ass can charge US$30,000 just to show up at a party. But that’s what happens when you have leverage. If you don’t have it, find a way to get it. And the best way to get it if you’re not part of reality TV’s elite is to collectively form a union and speak as one voice.

Chances are, I wouldn’t like you in person. You smell funny. You insist on pronouncing Buenos Aires like an Argentine even though you’ve never left Cherry Hill. You participate in a capella flash mobs on the subway. You think “Two and a Half Men” is the greatest sitcom since “Alf.” But you know what? We’re all in this together.

The ruling class wants to turn the country into one big company town. Bush’s goal of an ownership society is coming to fruition, and it’s not about you owning shit but about someone owning you.

So, today we are all cheeseheads. Velveeta la revolución, motherfuckers.

Jen and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Very Shitty Vacation

2011-02-18T10:53:00.001+08:00

Each year, my company hires a fortune teller to recommend the luckiest days to close the office for Chinese New Year. We don’t know those dates until a week prior, making it difficult to plan vacation.

I took a chance and booked a five-day trip to Bohol based on a recommendation from my husband’s co-worker – and none of those days were ones the con artist ensured would prevent us from getting sued again. Bastard.

Because we were booking at the last minute, flights on the airline we usually take to and within the Philippines, Philippine Airlines, were sold out or overpriced. We ended up on Cebu Pacific, which is like the real-life version of “Soul Plane.”

The flight from Hong Kong to Manila was due to leave at 1:40 a.m. but didn’t depart until after 3 a.m., and the song they played as we boarded was Cee Lo’s “Fuck You.” Snoop Dog may or may not have been flying the plane.

Cebu Pacific flies new Airbuses, but there are no TVs and the in-flight entertainment is limited to a brief trivia game about the company. Hint to future passengers: The answer to “What is Cebu Pacific’s website?” is not “Service unavailable.”

We landed in Manila around 5 a.m. and then spent 4 hours in the airport. A lot of people complain about the quality of Manila’s Ninoy Aquino International Airport, but they’ve clearly never had to spend 9 hours in Doha airport—the crossroads of the world, where mullahs meet mullets and the A&W doesn’t even sell root beer.

The flight to Bohol was unsurprisingly late, but luckily, our ride from the airport wasn’t. That’s about the best thing I can say about the resort: their driver is waiting for you when you arrive, so you don’t have to risk your life by taking a trike.

Yeah, I know, taking trikes makes for an “authentic” experience, but you know why they all have messages painted on the back about God protecting them? Because even the drivers know they’re unsafe and wouldn’t be in one if they had alternatives.

I’ve gone back and forth about whether to name the resort, but because the owner is a lawyer and because this is the kind of review that can cause a place to lose potential customers, I’m just going to refer to it as A Casa de Merda. If you plan on going to Bohol, consider avoiding a hotel named after the Portuguese word for a certain pastel color and that is very well regarded on TripAdvisor.

My first impression of the resort: “There sure are a lot of cocks out.” The animals, not skeevy Russians in speedos. My final impression: “This resort is great if you like food poisoning.”

I have fairly low expectations of hotels. Bed with sheets not caked in blood? No dead hookers shoved in the closet? Bathroom with functioning shower and mold kept to a minimum? Door that locks? We're good.

That's because hotels generally act as a home base, a place to simply lay your head until the next day’s activities. An isolated resort like A Casa de Merda becomes your home, and so amenities and service are more important to the overall experience.

So when a resort does something like charge a fortune for a tour that includes a stop at the official tarsier sanctuary but you’re instead taken to a depressing roadside attraction with a chained monkey eating potato chips and a python with its mouth taped shut – well, it’s somewhat unforgiveable.

And thanks to this trip, I’ve added a new requirement for hotels: Don't try to kill me. I’ll even reconsider my stance on dead hookers if you promise to cook your chicken properly and not give me salmonella poisoning.

I’m not angry with the staff at A Casa de Merda. The reason why it’s cheap to vacation in places like the Philippines is because life is cheap there too. You get what you pay for when you decide to head to a place like that: contaminated food, bus hijackings, ferry sinkings and terrorists kidnapping foreigners. Don’t try to take advantage of impoverished people in a country with minimal infrastructure if you’re not willing to accept the consequences. And there were consequences.

I hadn’t puked that much since my wedding night or shit that much since a bacterial infection in 1983 ruined my entire collection of Underoos. As I writhed in pain on the bed and my fever rose to 39.5 C/103 F, a group of joy-filled Filipinas sang gospel songs under my balcony. I wanted to die. Take me, Jesus. Yes, take me into your arms.

By the third day of the illness, I felt well enough to leave A Casa de Merda to go to a pharmacy and get something to help ease the symptoms.

Having lived abroad and traveled extensively for close to five years, I’ve become an expert in pantomiming, but I’m grateful they speak English in the Philippines because I was stymied as to what gestures to use for “seemingly endless stream of diarrhea.” Buying a can of Boss Coffee and pouring it out at ass level while making pained groans?

And, you know, what’s great about Philippine pharmacies is that I can pop in for anti-diarrheal medicine and pick up umbilical cord clamps while there. Total one-stop shopping!

The pharmacist gave me some pills that would, I hoped, stop the symptoms long enough that I could make the flights back home to Hong Kong.

Non-American friends asked why I didn’t see a doctor sooner. Even a rural hospital with only basic tools to assist me would have been better than going it alone and hoping for the best, they argued.

Look, I’m American and Americans don’t see doctors unless we’re concerned death may be imminent and we’re confident our health insurance, if we have it, will cover treatment (see handy flowchart I created to the right). No matter how inexpensive and accessible health care is in the rest of the world, I will forever carry the insidious American mentality of “Suck it up” with me.

But after arriving back in Hong Kong, stopping the medication and realizing I was still a lean, mean shittin’ machine, I decided to go to the private hospital near my apartment.

Public hospitals in Hong Kong are superior to private hospitals, and if you’re a Hong Kong resident, the cost for treatment is as little as HK$100/US$12. But when you can barely make it from the living room to the bathroom in a 650-square-foot apartment without the risk of shitting your pants—and you have health insurance—fuck it, which hospital is closest? So what if private doctors here are the Keystone Kops of medicine?

The doctor quickly determined I was severely dehydrated and admitted me for treatment and further tests.

When the first test results came back, the doctor informed me that on top of the food poisoning, I also had a bladder infection caused by the bacteria hitching a ride.

Kirk Cameron and his evangelical ilk will argue that the banana, a fruit allegedly made to fit perfectly in the human hand, is proof that God exists. Well, I argue that two holes so close together is proof that there is no God or that the GOP is right and God hates women.

I spent three days in the hospital. Three days with an IV drip. Three days of eating plain congee. Three days of watching god-awful K-pop videos and CNN. And then it was time to pay the bill.

The cost for treatment is jacked up during holidays and weekends, and my visit fell during both. How much treatment costs depends on the type of room you choose: general ward, semi-private or private. The level of care isn’t different. They just know if you choose something posher than the general ward, you’re either wealthy or have health insurance and they can milk you for all they can.

Still, the cost of three days’ worth of hospitalization, tests, IV fluids/antibiotics and take-home medicine was inexpensive by US standards: HK$14k/US$1800. Consider my husband’s four-day hospitalization for a seizure in the US cost US$50k, and my visit seems like a bargain.

I went home with six different prescriptions because doctors in Hong Kong dole out medicine like nose candy.

Filling prescriptions here feels shadier than a drug deal behind a Staten Island White Castle. Every appointment ends with 5-10 baggies or envelopes of pills with no inserts or warnings, and if you don’t check Google to see how many of the drugs you were given are contraindicated, you will probably die. This time, the doctor gave me two medicines that shouldn’t be taken together and that can cause kidney dysfunction, seizures or increased risk of severe muscle damage if you do.

My husband tried to be supportive when I got home, but as he grew up in an Italian-American household in New York City, he has a bad case of Italian Prince Syndrome, which leaves sufferers with a heightened sense of entitlement and lowered ability to empathize with others. So, his contribution to my recovery was limited to eating pizza in front of me while asking, “How ya doin’, Poopiepants?”

It’s two weeks later, I’m just about finished my course of Cipro and Poopiepants can say, “I’m almost better but I am never fucking eating chicken again.”

And for my next trip, I inadvertently booked a stay in Bangkok during the Thai water festival of Songkran in April, so keep an eye out for my exciting blog post about coping with cholera.

Best Hong Kong ads of 2010

2010-12-31T09:40:00.050+08:00

When advertising agencies
copy gay porn DVD covers

In the future, women will
wear dildos on their heads.

Taiwan tourism campaign
in MTR is apparently
aimed at Kiwis.

Bestiality is an interesting
direction in which to take
your campaign.

Sperm are giving nutritional
advice because they're
full of protein.

For when you want to feel
like a man after a day
of carrying your girlfriend's
knock-off Coach bag.

In other news, Chiquita to
use American-born Chinese
in upcoming ad campaign.

Ad for first clinic in Hong
Kong to perform full face
transplants. The future
is now, Castor Troy.

IS IT?!?!?!

Biore Men: When you need to
look like a middle-aged lesbian

First ring guaranteed to get you laid.
By King Fook. Really.

12 Days of Hong Kong Christmas

2010-12-14T23:00:00.009+08:00

On the first day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the second day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the third day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the fourth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the fifth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: HK$5 million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street. (five keys to food safety.. http://twitpic.com/25tca9)

On the sixth day of Christmas, Hong Kong to me: six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the seventh day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me: seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the eight day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, eight sperm giving nutritional advice, seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the ninth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, nine two-star Michelin restaurants that probably all suck for the price, eight sperm giving nutritional advice, seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the tenth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, ten years off my life from pollution, nine two-star Michelin restaurants (that probably all suck), eight sperm giving nutritional advice, seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, okay, I've got nothing for 11 so enjoy this photo, ten years off my life from pollution, nine two-star Michelin restaurants (that probably all suck), eight sperm giving nutritional advice, seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street. fine, I don't have 11, so enjoy this photo

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, a 12-hour wait for fashion, I've got nothing for 11, ten years off my life from pollution, nine two-star Michelin restaurants that probably all suck for the price, eight sperm giving nutritional advice, seven years for PR (oops, not for you), six years for perv teacher… five million lost… four dead in building collapse, three molested flight attendants, two stolen wine bottles and a shark fin that was dried in the street.

Istanbul: Cats

2010-09-16T07:52:00.001+08:00

Istanbul should be the Serious Business headquarters of the Internets.

Every day is Caturday there. Cats stroll mosque grounds like they own the place—and they do. Shopkeepers sit on stools in front of their stores and tease the endless supply of kittens with string. Neighbors leave out dishes of water and food and build makeshift shelters for rainy days. One guy walked down the street each night, throwing chicken bones to them. As the hotel’s manager Mehmet noted: “There aren't many dogs here.”

Cats are specifically mentioned in the Quran as creatures that should be protected and anyone who harms one has a guaranteed ticket to hell, a fact I’m sure would lead to a mass religious conversion of /b/ tards if it were more widely known in the US.

Maybe if the planned Islamic center two blocks from Ground Zero also housed a cat shelter called the Meowsque, there would be less opposition. Who can be against people who love cats?

As we left the hotel each morning, a phalanx of felines greeted us wanting a handout. One guest, a girl around the age of 9 staying with her family, brought milk and leftover food from the breakfast buffet to them. I thought that was cute until she told us that she also took photos of them with her high-end DSLR and planned to sell the prints. I hate precocious kids who own more expensive gadgets than I do.

Happy Days is my favorite theme song

2010-09-13T10:31:00.000+08:00

Pity white Americans, forced to have a higher standard of living and greater access to education, resources and power.

How terrible it is to walk around your own neighborhood at night and not have police confront you because you don’t look like you belong. How heartbreaking it is to commit criminal acts or violate social norms and not be judged as harshly, if at all, for them. How tragic it is to openly and menacingly carry a gun to a political event and be considered a patriot instead of a thug.

Yes, life sure is rough for us whites in the United States. A struggle every day against the shackles placed on us by our skin color. A burden of unimaginable horrors. A… oh, come on.

Being born a white American is like winning the fucking lottery. I’m thrilled to be a white chick from the United States for the same reason I’m thrilled I have all five senses and full use of my limbs: It doesn’t make me a better person, but it sure makes life a hell of a lot easier.

Being white means the world is yours, something I could intellectually grasp but didn’t truly understand until leaving the United States for Brazil and then Hong Kong.

I’m from a lower middle-class family where, if someone’s name is in the newspaper, it’s undoubtedly in the police blotter section, and I’m the first member to graduate from college. My father dropped out of high school, and my maternal grandfather managed to support a family on only a fourth-grade education. My background isn’t that dissimilar to those of many poorer non-white immigrants, but see, I’m not an immigrant.

Living abroad, I learned that I am an “expat.” On the surface, there’s not much difference between an expat and an immigrant. Both generally leave behind their homeland and families for economic or educational benefits or to escape social or political environments they find oppressive.

Where the difference lies is that an expat is a Westerner, generally white, who is praised for deigning to learn five words of the language of their new country, while an immigrant, generally not white, is criticized for the same.

I first experienced this in Brazil, where I routinely (and with encouragement) violated the terms of my student visa and often preferred to speak in my native tongue than in Portuguese—and everyone thought I was wonderful, especially self-loathing middle-class Brazilians who put a premium on “superior” American culture.

Yet a darker-skinned Bolivian or Peruvian playing the flute in Praça da República, who likely shared the same visa and language difficulties that I did, was spat on. “Look at these foreigners, living here illegally and not learning Portuguese!” You mean like 90% of white American English teachers in the country?

But, hey, we can’t be immigrants, illegal or otherwise, because we’re expats. Rules shouldn’t apply to us. Look at the English-language forums for Asian and Latin American countries where white Americans seek advice on how to get around visa restrictions or how to not be caught violating them. If Fox News found a Spanish-language forum for Mexicans seeking the same advice, they’d get a month’s worth of sensationalist programming out of it.

How many shows on the Travel Channel involve a white guy traveling around poor countries and figuring out how to cross borders illegally? “I’m about to enter Russia without a visa because I can’t be arsed to obtain one. Let’s see what happens!”

What happens is they’re stopped, held and questioned for a few hours before being released and uploading a video they surreptitiously made with their cell phone. Would a non-white, non-Westerner view illegally entering a country and being arrested as just another wacky adventure to share with the world?

When conservatives like Rush Limbaugh “threaten” to leave the United States for countries like Costa Rica or Panama, we laugh. “Oh, you silly right-winger. Don’t you know those places are more socialist and less free?” Sure, that’s true—if you’re a local.

For white Americans, rules rarely apply. That’s why those countries are so appealing. It reminds them of the good ol’ days, when being white meant something. Even if you were poor, at least you weren’t a—well, you know—and the few scraps of power doled out by the elite to the unwashed masses were tipped in your favor.

That imbalance isn’t as pronounced today and whites are more likely to be judged on their merits alone, which angers quite a few people who think they should be able to skate by on race. That’s the heart of the Tea Party movement: “How dare you hold us to the same standards as those people.” Who’s really playing the race card?

In Asia, being white is considered a valuable job skill. A black American woman with a PhD in linguistics would have less success finding a job teaching her native language than a blonde, blue-eyed college dropout who thinks “conversate” is a real word. There’s weight behind the words of whites.

When a mainland client of my husband’s employer has an engineering or programming issue, the company doesn’t send an engineer or programmer because they’re Chinese. They send my husband, who has no ability to fix the problem, so he can sit at the client site and be white, while the Chinese employees address the issue behind the scenes.

Because sending a white person shows you’re taking it very seriously. They even printed fake business cards for him that list US contact information. Because sending a white person from far overseas means you’re taking it super cereal.

And Asia is a sexual playground for white guys who can’t get laid in the US because us uppity bitches dare to have standards and options.

Last year, I went with my husband to his company’s annual conference at a beach resort in Thailand. One night, we went to a bar where bikini-clad Thai women danced on stage and you could spank them with elongated inflatable tubes. Pure class. My husband’s morbidly obese, old-as-Yoda, white co-worker smirked at one of the women—a girl, really—and said, “I’ll see you later, honey.”

The look of disgust on her face is one I’ll never forget. Because she knew she would have to see him later. And that was a turn-on to him. Not just that she was young, but that he had absolute control and it was his whiteness—a slowly dying advantage back home--that gave him that control.

If you’re a white American, there’s an assumption in many parts of the world that it means you’re intelligent, educated, powerful and/or wealthy—and thus will add something to the community or have something worth taking advantage of, unlike those shiftless, swarthy immigrants.

A Brazilian friend is a manager with the São Paulo office of a large US technology firm, and he and his Brazilian co-workers deal with Americans on a regular basis. They were shocked to discover that Americans are just as ignorant as the countrymen they so frequently derided. Absolutely shocked. Like it never occurred to them it was within the realm of possibility to be simultaneously white, American and barely evolved from Neanderthals.

But thanks to the inanity of the Tea Party movement and the global attention it’s receiving, the word is finally getting out: White people can be dumb, poor motherfuckers just like everyone else, and the ones most invested in maintaining their privilege are the same ones doing their best to destroy it.

Welcome to my hell

2010-09-06T23:02:00.002+08:00

My in-laws arrive in a week. Please, enjoy my suffering.

Istanbul: Part I

2010-08-27T10:12:00.000+08:00

I needed to get out of Hong Kong. I needed to get out of Asia. I needed to go to a place where I wasn’t an obvious outsider, where there wasn’t someone who looked at my face and immediately thought, “What can I sell her and how much can I charge for it?” I needed to relax.

So, naturally, I decided on Istanbul.

My main purpose for choosing Istanbul was to eat. If you're a foreigner living in Hong Kong, you understand. Despite what the travel books would have you believe, Hong Kong is not a cosmopolitan culinary city. It's easier to procure two hookers and an eightball than to find the ingredients necessary to make a non-Chinese meal, and the Western-style restaurants rely on novelty rather than any real substance and they charge a fortune for it.

You know you've living in a food deadspace when you're excited about going to the airport because, goddamn, there's a Popeyes, but when you get there for your late-night flight and it’s closed, you shake an angry fist at the heavens and shout, “Popeyes!” like you’re William Shatner. Or is that just me?

After sorting through Tripadvisor reviews, my husband and I settled on Hotel Niles, a small family-owned establishment in the Beyazit neighborhood. It's on the outskirts of the main tourist district of Sultanahmet, in an area of wholesale-clothing stores and on a quiet street overrun with cats.

Even though the hotel is only a five-minute walk from the Grand Bazaar and tramline stop, there weren't too many obnoxious touts bugging tourists along the main street.

I'd read Turkish touts have an uncanny ability to guess one's nationality. Most mistook me for a local, but to the rest, apparently, je suis française.

As I walked by one of the Grand Bazaar salesguys, though, he proceeded to sing Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro.” If you’re a white woman with darker features and a, let’s say, regal nose, you’re bound to be compared to Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse. Eventually.

When I was younger, I wanted to look more like my mom. Blue eyes, blonde hair, twee Aryan nose. Now that I’m older and more traveled, I’m grateful for the dark hair, dark eyes and larger-than-average shnozz. They’re like camouflage for an American because, to the majority of the world, women from the US are fat and blonde and have giant, fake tits.

It’s not that I’m ashamed to be from the United States. I’m not. Most of the time, I’m honest because I want foreigners to know not all Americans are ignorant assholes. Some of us are very enlightened assholes.

But any American who travels abroad enough knows that owning up to your nationalityinevitably means getting into a political discussion, and even if you agree with the person’s arguments, that’s the last thing you want to talk about on

vacation. That’s why I was Brazilian on this trip.

My husband, unfortunately, doesn’t get that. “Why should I lie?” He’s like The Big Bang Theory’s Sheldon, socially and culturally oblivious. This is the guy who confessed he often confuses Ayn Rand and Maya Angelou. I know why the ca

ged bird sings about the free market.

I tried explaining to him that one, Israel just killed a bunch of Turks in a badly planned raid and the US and Israel are linked in many minds, and more importantly, if salesmen think you’re from a less-developed country, opening prices aren’t as high and there’s more room for negotiation.

Now, I hate shopping. I’d put it somewhere between eating tripe and attending a Lars von Trier film fest. My husband loves it, though – the consequence of being raised by an Italian-American mother who considered Fortunoff more sacred ground than her parish church.

So he was in heaven at the Grand Bazaar, and I was in hell because I had to do all of the bargaining, while he was actively working against my efforts. I don’t understand why you need a backgammon board so badly, but fine, I’ll try to get the price as low as possible, j

ust stop saying things to me like, “Why are you walking away? Why are you telling him we don’t have enough money and it’s our last day here? Why can’t I whip out a huge wad of cash and beg them to take every last lira?”

He got his precious backgammon set, and there it sits on a shelf, unplayed.

At a small shop selling honey and cream in Kadikoy, the shopkeeper asked where we were from and before I could answer Brazil, my husband opened his big mouth and told the truth. You could feel the chill. Thanks, Obama and Netanyahu.

I joked we'd be eating saliva-filled honey, except he was batting 0.0001 that week and forgot that honey, in this post-9/11 world of ours, has the potential to take down an aircraft. He packed it in his carry-on bag, focusing on the more logical possibility of the jar being broken in checked luggage than on it being mistaken for weaponized deliciousness.

Watching the agent pour the honey into the Security Theater Bucket of Mixed Liquids broke my heart. There are starving people in Appalachia, and here we are, wasting perfectly good food products because of the extremely unlikely event that my bal might go boom.

Taiwan: What Happens Here, Stays Here

2010-08-22T21:18:00.000+08:00

Thanks to a tourism campaign in the TST MTR station, I learned some amazing facts about Taiwan. Did you know that in Taiwan, they like...

...drinking pearl milk tea?

...singing karaoke?

...and fucking sheep?

It's Always Sunny in Macau

2010-06-20T15:14:00.005+08:00

January 8 is a good day to be born. It's when eccentrics, geniuses and those who like pissing on underage girls enter the world. Elvis, David Bowie, Stephen Hawking, R. Kelly and me. I’m not telling which category I fall under.

To celebrate, my husband decided to surprise me with an overnight trip to Macau because it's about as exotic of a vacation as he can plan. He booked a room at the Lisboa, one of the older and sleazier hotels, and sold it with, "The porn and mini-bar are free!”

Lazy journalists refer to Macau as “The Las Vegas of Asia,” but they’re nothing alike. One, prostitution is illegal in Clark County. Two, there are US$2 blackjack tables in Nevada.

And three, there is no Las Vegas hotel that has regular rooms with a blue-lit, multi-function, sexy-time shower and free adult channels showing porn of a frumpy middle-aged Japanese woman sticking a butt plug up a guy’s ass while jerking off his micropenis and then feeding his own come to him from her hand.

After being thoroughly horrified by what turns on Asian men, we did our usual Macau evening routine. We ate at O Porto Interior and then headed to the Grand Lisboa to enjoy the hotel’s cabaret show of plasticized Eastern European women dancing around in capes like tranny super-villains and to watch the prostitutes do their laps around the lobby and negotiate with customers.

The big plan for Sunday afternoon was the go-kart track. If there’s one thing I miss the most about the US, more than pizza or pork roll sandwiches or occasionally my family, it’s driving. Just speeding down a desolate NJ Turnpike at 3 a.m. with music blasting and a get-out-of-jail-free PBA card in my wallet. Go-karting is the closest recreation here.

I’d been to the go-kart track previously, and I knew it wasn’t the safest place, but isn’t that one of the main draws?

We arrived a little after 2 p.m. A sign on the gate said the track would be closed from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. for a private group, but they fit us in for a 15-minute session. Lucky us.

The last time I went, it was with my husband and one of his visiting American co-workers, and we shared the track with another group of foreigners. Although we all drove like maniacs, we drove like maniacs who had driver’s licenses and understood the mechanics and physics of vehicles.

That day, it was the two of us sharing the track with a Chinese couple. Hong Kong has one of the lowest rates of car ownership in the world, and that means most Hong Kongers have little to no driving experience. It showed. They were all over the track and didn’t know how to regulate their speed.

As I was going around a blind curve, I came upon the scene of my husband’s kart stopped to the side and the Chinese woman’s kart stopped at an angle in the middle of the track. She’d almost hit him but they managed to avoid a collision.

I stepped on the brake, but still rear-ended my husband’s kart at about 25MPH, which caused me to jerk forward and then slam back into the hard seat.

My husband and the Chinese woman got out of their karts, and one of the track employees sped over on his motorcycle. I tried to move, but each time I did, the pain was excruciating.

The track employee told me to stay where I was and that they’d called for an ambulance. My husband was nervously laughing, and the Chinese woman was freaking out because she thought she’d caused an accident that paralyzed me.

And I was thinking, “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” and then, “Oh, that poor private group is missing out on track time.” Because I’m considerate like that.

About 10 minutes later, the ambulance arrived, and the EMTs asked if I wanted to go to the public hospital or private hospital. Being American and used to insanely high medical bills, I wanted to go to whichever hospital was cheapest.

I doubted my insurance would pay the bill because they have an exclusion for acts of asshattery, but a track employee insisted the private hospital was superior and wouldn’t be that expensive.

Then the EMTs put a neck brace on me, and yat-yi-saam, lifted me out of the kart and onto a backboard for the long ride through traffic to Kiang Wu Hospital.

But before the ambulance could drive away, a track employee shoved a liability form through the driver’s window and said my husband needed to sign it if he wanted them to pay my medical bills.

Kiang Wu Hospital was all but deserted. I guess most locals can’t afford it, and the ones who do have the money for private treatment head to Hong Kong.

A nurse came into the curtained area to take my vital signs and cover me with warmed blankets. Not long after, the doctor arrived to ask what happened and if I had any allergies. Yes, I told her, sulfa – which she then had to look up on a computer because she had no idea what it was. Very reassuring.

By then, a huge, painful lump the size of a tennis ball had formed on the impact site on my back. Given that I could turn onto my side and move my toes, they were more concerned with possible kidney damage than a spinal injury. Before sending me off for X-rays and an ultrasound, they shot me up with a muscle relaxant that did nothing.

The first stop was the radiology department, which had a poster on the wall of a fetus imploring, “Mommy, please tell them I’m in here!” If that’s a big problem, I expect a generation of mutated Macanese children on whom Troma can base a movie franchise.

The orderly helped move me from the gurney onto the X-ray table, and the radiologist pantomimed for me to slightly pull down my jeans. I'd forgotten that I was wearing sheer underwear, and he kept saying, "Nice, nice." For my own dignity, I pretended he was happy about my being in the proper X-ray position, and I didn't glance over at him as he said it because I half-expected him to be licking his lips and rubbing his thumbs and index fingers together.

When he was done, it was off to the ultrasound room, where the technician put goo on my stomach, rubbed it in with a phallic wand, handed me a paper towel, turned away and told me to clean myself off. At that moment, it was strange, but I felt a special bond with the women working the circuit at the Grand Lisboa.

Then it was back to the ER to wait for the results, which took less than a half-hour. I had a few broken and cracked ribs and a likely muscle tear in my back, but no serious injuries.

Since I wasn’t going to die or never walk again, my husband felt free to play up his injury, as men do. He started by dramatically rubbing his neck. Then moving it from side to side while moaning. Then coughing to get my attention. Then saying, “Does my neck look swollen to you?” Then accosting to the doctor when she came back and asking her to take a look at the alleged whiplash that was sure to lead to at least two weeks of listening to him whine.

She gave him two days’ worth of muscle relaxants to shut him up – which was more than she gave me. All I got was glorified tiger balm, advice to take it easy for a couple of weeks and directions to the billing window.

The total cost for the ambulance ride, consultation, X-rays, ultrasound and medicine was about MOP$1500. It's not an exaggeration to say that would have cost upwards of US$10,000 and another 8-10 hours of my time back home.

So I paid the bill, slowly made my way to the taxi stand and somehow made it onto my originally scheduled ferry back to Hong Kong, all the while in agony.

But you know what the worst part of the weekend was? I saw a porn magazine called "30 and Up" at a newsstand and realized I'm now old enough to be a fetish. Happy birthday.

Boracay

2010-05-01T13:30:00.002+08:00

Thousands of miles from home, at a popular tourist destination in the Philippines, I found a little slice of the Garden State.

And a little slice of the United States.

And even a reminder of my time in Brazil.

How is babby formed?

2010-04-16T19:29:00.001+08:00

So this explains the low birth rate in Hong Kong.

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of fuckery

2010-04-15T15:17:00.005+08:00

"And say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God, 'Fuck thee, for I haveth mine.'" -- Revelation 3:17, Revised Fox News Bible

The two questions I hear most from foreigners are: "Why are Americans so fat?" and "What is with Fox News and these, what is it they're called, teabaggers?"

We're fat because Quadruple Bypass Burgers are delicious (aside from the complicated socioeconomic issues I know you don't want to hear about), and Fox News and the Tea Party? Well, I'll try to explain.

Today's conservative noise machine has this uncanny ability to construct narratives that don't exist. Obama is a secret Muslim who was genetically manufactured in a lab on Krypton using the DNA of Malcolm X and Jane Fonda. Obama wants to ban apple pie because there is nothing more American and he hates America, especially down-home, gut-following patriots like you.

Yes, I can totally see how some people think Obama is turning the country into a Marxist paradise by implementing Reagan's original proposal of a 1/3 reduction in nuclear arms, by maintaining most of the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies, and by making the strategic decision of not using his secret Nation of Islam army to confiscate guns openly carried by protesters at healthcare townhall meetings.

The US has moved so far to the right that Richard Nixon would be considered a liberal today.

It's awe-inspiring how they pull off these massive psychological ploys, leveraging anti-intellectualism and using consistent fear of false enemies as a tool to get their message across.

There's seemingly not much progressives can do about it because the very essence of progressivism is to be forward-thinking and to not pander to people's raw emotions the way Fox News does. To use conservative tactics, we claim, is "beneath" us, and thus we have no central rally point and we don't vote as a bloc. And we can't vote as a bloc because the standard for being a liberal, progressive or moderate these days seems to be as low as just thinking retarded people shouldn't be executed by the state. There's no cohesiveness.

Then Fox News comes in and says, "This is how it is, you sheep, and fuck yeah, let's gas those killer 'tards!" while the decidedly non-liberal media of CNN and MSNBC say, "This is how a sane, rational expert sees it, and this is how a batshitinsane blogger from Iowa sees it. See, we're the real fair and balanced!"

Progressives come off as wishy-washy and weak due to governing by committee and giving credence to all beliefs no matter how nutty, and because most people like to be told what to think or to at least be told in a way that makes them think the belief was their own, it's natural they'll gravitate toward political parties and media outlets that have a strong, decisive voice, particularly a voice that confirms many of their fears and prejudices.

What Fox News has tapped into is this pathological fear of what some Americans perceive as someone having it better than you. This is why we must hate unions, health care reform, and illegal immigrants, and why we must blindly support regressive taxes because we dream of ourselves magically becoming multi-millionaires someday. "Sleep is where I'm a robber baron!"

The opposition to progressive change in the US is based on thinking that someone who isn't you--and even worse, doesn't look like you or doesn't worship the same god--is having their life improved and that is infuriating largely because of Americans' childlike obsession with "fairness." Yeah, sometimes your stupid, poopiehead sister gets the bigger slice of cake, but guess what? Sometimes you do too.

My father loves Fox News and spews every talking point put forth by Glenn Beck. He's a typical viewer of the channel: middle-aged, made a good living due to white-male privilege despite his lack of a high-school diploma, benefited from government protections, and absolutely terrified of change and willing to cut off his nose to spite his face to stop it.

He'll tell you unions are bad, even though it was the police union that handed him the amazing benefits he enjoyed and that saved his ass from being fired several times. Social Security is bad, but that's a moot point for him because he never paid into the system due to the law at the time he joined the police force. Instead he has an enviable pension that, yep, his union negotiated for him. Government health care is also bad, even though that's why he's still alive and why his brother has had $200,000 in much-needed surgery in recent months. Welfare is just awful, except for when his parents were on it because someone had to support those seven kids. Illegal immigration is tearing apart our nation, but the Irish girl illegally tending bar and her 50,000 compatriots are dandy.

That's the heart of the popularity of Fox News and the Tea Party: fear of the changing of the country's guard and of losing the intrinsic value of being white. They pine for the days when being white meant something, when even if you were poor and uneducated, you at least earned a small modicum of respect for your skin color. It was, and largely still is, the racial equivalent of scoring 200 points on the SAT just for signing your name.

But now they're learning what non-whites have known for years, that the political and corporate powers that be genuinely don't give a shit about them, and it hurts. No one wants to feel disrespected or cast aside, and having occasionally been looked down upon due to my working-class roots, I understand the anger and frustration that comes with being dismissed.

"Who are you to tell me I'm not good enough?" I get it. But the solution to the problem isn't to fight against your own interests just to ensure "those people" (wink, wink) don't get a slice of the pie. If you honestly think the country is going to hell, then demanding less government and lower or no taxes, thus removing many of the opportunities Americans have for improving their lot in life, will lead to the situation getting a lot worse.

So, let's stop pretending this is about a valiant battle against high taxes, creeping socialism, and government waste and intrusion. Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress passed an insane amount of legislation that fucked over the little guys and handed an inordinate amount of power to the federal government, and aside from those wacked-out LaRouchites setting up tables near government offices, I didn't see too much public protesting from those who lean right, nor do I see very many conservatives acknowledging that Obama has actually cut taxes for most Americans.

As the chairman of the Tea Party Express explained: "Political correctness led to 9/11. Political correctness led to Barack Hussein Obama. We have a full blown case of AIDS and we're the cure."

Or as translated from Teapartyish into English: "Coons, fags and camel jockeys don't know their place any more." They're scared of the chickens coming home to roost, of people who aren't them gaining power, because they know how they act when they're in charge. They see the worst in themselves and assume all of mankind to be petty, small-minded tyrants.

Obama isn't going to take away their guns or throw their cancer-ridden grannies into the Thunderdome, but they can't envision a government that wouldn't use the full force of its authority for anything other than the total submission of political opponents.

Of course, no Tea Partier would admit to being racist. Racism in modern America rarely involves an act as explicit as lynching. Racism is posters of our president dressed as a tribal chief with a bone through his nose or as a pimp. Racism is describing a black person as "articulate." And racism is championing Sarah Palin as a populist hero.

This is a woman who attended four colleges in six years, can barely form a coherent sentence, is proud of her intellectual incuriosity and willful ignorance, abused her power as mayor and governor, and has a son who was shipped off to the military to avoid punishment for a costly vandalism act, a teenage daughter who got knocked up and whose illegitimate child is covered by government-provided health care, and another teenage daughter who most likely was involved in burglarizing and vandalizing a house while the owners were away.

Does anyone believe that if Sarah Palin were black and had those credentials, her keepin'-it-real-stupid shtick would be held up as "folksy" and the sign of a "real American"? Of course not. She'd been drawn as a fried-chicken-and-watermelon-eating caricature.

Tea Partiers think they've found an ally in Palin and Fox News, but all they've done is sign on to be rubes for some blatant opportunists. Palin and Fox News don't care about lowering taxes, repealing the Bush-era Patriot Act, stopping illegal immigration or banning abortion. They care about using dumb Tea Partyin' asses to regain and maintain power and to pass legislation that benefits them.

Most GOP leaders and those wealthier and powerful members of the conservative movement view people like my dad as convenient pawns. I have a hard time imagining them heading down to the local watering hole to drink Michelob Light and play a round of darts, you know? Glenn Beck might make it there, but he'd probably just spend the night in the corner crying into his O'Doul's and trying to decipher the hidden socialist message in the bar's name.

But if the Tea Party Express keeps chugging along, we'll soon learn that when fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a $5 US flag T-shirt from Wal-Mart and carrying a misspelled sign about niggars.

They're coming to take me away

2010-03-21T20:46:00.004+08:00

Every weekend for the past couple of months, someone has placed these banners across from the US Consulate. Wireless mind control weaponry... so that explains the popularity of Chrissie Chau.

You know you're from an Irish-American family when...

2009-12-19T20:43:00.000+08:00

You know you're from an Irish-American family when your great-grandfather deserted his wife and five kids, went on a bender, died in the back of an abandoned tractor trailer and was identified through fingerprints because he had an FBI file. A relative recently sent me this 60-year-old letter from the Boston police department about the circumstances surrounding my great-grandfather's death. Interesting bit of history.

"On August 3, 1950, the body of a white man was found dead from apparently natural causes, in an abandoned trailor truck, rear of 1340 Cottage Place this city. Body removed to County Morgue and described as 55 to 60, 5-8, 140lbs, blue eyes, brown and grey hair, poor teeth, med. build, ruddy complexion, large nose and round face.

"Fingerprints identified by FBI as thier 1592807 and being those of Clifford (), alias Clifford (), Clifford Eugene (), born Feb. 27, 1898 in Amity, Ohio. In our investigation learned that mother, Mrs. Jesse Dickerson resided in () Ohio. Upon being contacted she identified subject as her son but stated she was financially unable to claim the body. She stated that the subject's former wife, Ruth () and a son Robert resided at 83 Lawley Street, Dorchester, Mass.; also three other sons, Victor, William and Ralph also a daughter Barbara residing on Lawley Street, Dorchester, Mass.

"On September 1, 1950 the body was taken from the County Morgue and buried in Oak Forest, Illinois, unclaimed. We are enclosing a photo of the above named in an effort to locate above named relatives and have them view the photo for identification purposes and advise them what disposition has been made. Please advise and return photo when it has served its purpose-mark reply Attention Missing Persons B urgent."

2009 Asia Adult Expo: Come as you are

2009-12-07T14:03:00.025+08:00

If you were wondering where all of the Filipina butch lesbians in Causeway Bay disappeared to yesterday, they were at the 2009 Asia Adult Expo at the Venetian in Macau with me.

My husband and I arrived early at the terminal for our 11 a.m. ferry and to kill time, we browsed packages offered by the on-site travel agencies, including ones for "spas" and "saunas" (that would be "brothel" to you).

You have to admire a guy who plans that far ahead. I'm more of a spontaneous, impulsive gal, but I remember well the advice from my grandmother: "Always book your hotel and pussy in advance, sweetie. You don't want to be left out on the street, looking for any port in a storm."

The day was already off to a sextastic start.

Before heading to the expo, though, we stopped at O Porto Interior for my favorite Portuguese food porn. In fact, that was my plan from the beginning, but I couldn't convince my cheapo husband to shell out money for ferry tickets just to kill my craving for bacalhau à Brás, so I had to lure him there with promises of Japanese porn stars. I may have even mentioned there would be, instead of a kissing booth, a bukkake booth. Oh, the gullible fool.

Once I'd filled up on my favorite bacalhau dish, we left for the expo. I brought a doggie bag with me, which, I won't lie, smelled kind of disgusting, and my husband didn't want to sit or stand next to me because he swore everyone would be revolted by the stench. "Dear," I said, "we're going to a sexpo. Who's going to notice a fish smell in there?"

Upon entering the hall, I was surprised by how small it was. (Yeah, yeah, that's what she said.) But as the PR material said: "In Asia, adult related products and services have become a significant industry over the years and the related market is expanding. However, due to Asian traditions, there may be secrecy or even negative feeling towards adult products and services industry that limit its growth."

To help pay my way through college, back when the Internet was new and fresh and you could easily make money just by being the first of your kind, I wrote for the online versions of several well-known adult magazines.

It amused me then and continues to amuse me how seriously the sex industry takes itself. Not that you can't make big bucks selling sex in all its forms, but that there are trade shows and networking events devoted to discussing the business like you would discuss the latest advances in nanotechnology.

I imagine executives from Lelo and Fleshlight, two of the attending companies, getting together for drinks after the expo closes for the night: "So, are you having much luck penetrating the Asian market with the Fleshjack?" "Uh-huh-huh-huh, you said 'penetrate.'"

One Chinese company, in fact, was proudly displaying their knock-off of the popular Fleshlight a few stalls down from the original maker. Unfortunately, they didn't challenge each other to a cock fight over patent violations.

Most of the companies were from the Mainland, selling some of the most awful sex toys I've ever seen, including a blonde-wigged head with an attached pump that, when pressed, caused the mouth to unerotically clamp down on your manly bits.

But the company selling that product did have heart: Among their marketing material was a huge poster showing you the factory itself and the workers making the inflatable dolls. "This is Chen. He attaches the penis on our tranny model. Thanks to our factory providing jobs to the neighboring community, he was able to buy an apartment for his family."

The company with the best set-up was Soft on Demand (strange name for a business devoted to making men hard), a Japanese porn conglomerate and distributor of Tenga masturbation toys. They had a row of products to sample, all of which were well lubed -- much to my surprise -- and one of the representatives handed me a moist wipe to clean off the goo from my finger.

We noticed a group forming in front of the booth's small demo area, where a TV was playing commercials for their line of products, including the awesome Egg, which almost makes me wish I had a penis just so I could stick it in discreet sex toys.

After a few minutes, the representatives entered the stage and began throwing samples of lube into the crowd. People joke about desperate single women scrambling to catch the bridal bouquet, but you've never seen a mad dash like Asian guys trying to grab packets of jerk-off juice.

My husband encouraged me to try to get one, and as soon as I raised my hand, a representative started (poorly) tossing packets in my direction -- and when the guys around me saw that he was throwing them to a human being with tits and a vagina, it was like Moses parting the Red Sea. They moved away from me so that when the packet landed near my feet, I could pick it up without any interference.

There's honor among perverts. "Dude, it's a CHICK. That means she's going to jerk off someone with it! Don't stand in his way of a quality handjob!" And truly, this is a company that knows its lube.

But the star of the expo was Yantai 4D High-Tech Biochemistry Co., Ltd. It just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?

In their badly translated information packet, they make outrageous claims about their latest line of condoms, such as the 10-rare-Chinese-herb-infused lining "absorbing" STDs like HIV and both preventing and treating it. Not only that, the condoms can tighten "slack" vaginas, lengthen a man's "sexual life," and "enhance the possibility of getting orgasm at the same time to both male and female."

The vagina-tightening model is "mainly for the women having had delivered a baby whose vagina cannot be the same condition as before" and is called "Green Lemon."

Both my husband and I had an "a-ha!" moment about that condom as we sat in McSorley's Ale House drinking a beer after the expo. "Green Lemon? What a stupid... hey, what does eating a lemon make you do? Pucker your lips. Green Lemon... makes you pucker your vagina. Fucking genius."

In case you find their claims dubious, there are four pages devoted to all of the certificates they've been awarded. You can usually tell when a company is based in a developing nation when they highlight their certificates. Developing nations love certificates and other sundry official documents.

I'm certainly looking forward to complementary products, like herbal turtle jelly lube for women that cures HIV, UTIs and frigidness.

There were a few entertainment acts, like Pricasso, a fellow who paints with his privates and looks like he could be a member of the band Revolting Cocks based on appearance rather than musical ability, but none was particularly noteworthy.

Overall, the 2009 Asia Adult Expo was a letdown compared to other adult events I've been to , but at least it's a start for the regional market. And even Cambodia had its own booth, selling affordable toys for the lower-income masses.

A drug mule and a terrorist go to Borneo: Part I

2009-12-02T18:36:00.005+08:00

As a friend says about my ability to plan vacation: "You're afraid to commit to travel like men are afraid to commit to marriage."

She's right. When it comes to making decisions, having more than two or three choices overwhelms me, and planning a vacation, with a whole world out there to explore, often makes me want to collapse into the fetal position.

But back in April, after popping 10mg of Adderall and reading "You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?! A Self-Help Book for Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder," I easily settled on a destination: Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia.

To get there, though, first my husband and I needed to make it past Hong Kong International Airport's crack team of security personnel.

Now, bless his heart, my husband is a lovely man, but when you combine Irish, German and Sicilian genes with Belarusian genes that were invaded by Mongol hordes, you end up with a guy who, to many Hong Kongers, looks like he might be a son of Islam. It's his curse: sufficiently ethnic to be suspicious to airport staff but not ethnic enough to avoid offers of copy-watches-copy-suits in TST.

I, on the other hand, have a look that seems to say, "An hour ago, I swallowed 50 balloons of heroin for Russian drug traffickers. God, I hope I don't get caught, but if I do, please let me get my own episode of 'Locked Up Abroad.'"

We've never had problems with our respective shady appearances anywhere but Hong Kong, and this time, as giddy as the security official was, he must have thought he'd hit the jackpot. Terrorist and drug mule! My God, the cells and cartels are combining.

After making our way through the metal detectors without a hitch, my husband was pulled aside for additional screening and testing of his carry-on bag -- sadly, he'd left his bomb-making materials at home that day.

When the official realized we were traveling together, he pulled me aside and asked me to open my bag. He then pawed through my belongings, confident he'd find something nefarious, and he did. My highly dangerous Revlon tweezers, which he ran across his arm to gauge their level of stabbiness.

Not too stabby, unfortunately for the official, who had to admit that we were crafty indeed and he'd find no terrorist instruments or traces of drugs on us that day.

Look, to the officials at HKIA, I can 100%, absolutely, beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt guarantee you that we are neither drug mules nor terrorists, and we are most assuredly not smuggling anything from the Philippines, so no need to stop us at customs to check our luggage again on the way back from Manila, and as flattered as we were that about 15 immigration officials met our flight back from Kuala Lumpur to say "hi" and check the passport of every non-Chinese-looking passenger, I'm also quite confident that whatever criminal shenanigans naughty people typically engage in while visiting Malaysia, we were not part of them. Okay? Thanks.

Once we were through security, we made our way to our gate and then onto Kuala Lumpur, where we had a two-hour stopover. There's not much to do at KUL, particularly in the domestic terminal. There's a Burger King and a bookstore, which stocks a wide array of reading materials for all types of travelers, from a man trapped in an unhappy relationship to a middle-aged woman dreaming of hot sex with a sparkly teenage vampire to, you know, your run-of-the-mill anti-Semite.

The flight was supposed to leave at 4 p.m., but torrential downpours delayed it for close to two hours. Thankfully, there was free wifi (ahem, hint, hint, almost every airport in the United States), and the Malaysia Airlines ground staff kept us informed of the latest updates (ahem, hint, hint, almost every American airline). We finally took off around 6 p.m. and landed in Kota Kinabalu around 8 p.m.

The 12 Days of Christmas, Hong Kong Style

2009-12-01T06:36:00.002+08:00

On the first day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, the HKIA airport auntie

On the second day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the third day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the fourth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the fifth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the sixth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the seventh day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the eighth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, lucky number eight, seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the ninth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, nine sexual encounters, lucky number eight, seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the tenth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, ten expats busted, nine sexual encounters, lucky number eight, seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the eleventh day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, 11 injured in acid attack, 10 expats busted, nine sexual encounters, lucky number eight, seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

On the twelfth day of Christmas, Hong Kong gave to me, 12 dorks protesting hot models, 11 injured in acid attack, 10 expats busted, nine sexual encounters, lucky number eight, seven days of quarantine, six gay guys prancing, five... thousand pieces of junk mail, four jailed for market manipulation, three-year-olds with ulcers, two shots fired and the HKIA airport auntie

Spit or swallow?

2009-11-19T19:28:00.000+08:00

Well, it sure beats amputee burn victims with leprosy and botflies.

Food is an important part of a balanced diet

2009-10-30T12:39:00.007+08:00

I'm not a a gourmet, a gourmand or a foodie. I grew up in a family where the cabinets were stocked with canned creamed corn and Spam, cube steak with the flavor and consistency of a shoe sole was on the menu twice a week, and frozen clams casino from the local Shop N Bag was an exotic, extravagant treat. My palate is hardly what you'd call sophisticated, but I know shit when I taste it.

One aspect of Hong Kong that I hate is there are seemingly no objective English-language publications or websites. The expat community is small and incestuous, and those involved in creative industries don't want to piss off potential clients, advertisers or employers (or lose access to free swag and meals).

If a restaurant flat-out sucks, either you're not going to write about it or you're going to write a review that glosses over the negative points while spotlighting the few positives and leaving the reader to try to read between the lines.

For example, if someone ever suggests Fat Angelo's is a great restaurant to take your visiting Italian-American family for a "taste of home," run as far as you can while you're still in control of your bowels.

But I worked for a newspaper. I get it. The problem is that if you don't understand Chinese and thus aren't privy to a more robust food-reviewing scene, you're at the mercy of looking at the pretty pictures on the Chinese-language OpenRice and hoping that the reviewer puts a thumbs-up/thumbs-down or happy face/sad face under them to give you a clue as to the quality.

Because of that, I stick to restaurants that are inexpensive but consistent and rarely eat in Soho or at overpriced Western restaurants, instead choosing to cook at home most of the time.

Excluding restaurants serving some flavor of Chinese cuisine, there are essentially three types of restaurants here: sucky-if-sober-delicious-if-drunk and relatively cheap, sucky-to-maybe-mediocre and slightly-overpriced-but-haha-sucker-where-else-are-you-going-to-get-a-burrito-or-pizza-in-this-gastronomical-wasteland, and mediocre and Jesus-fucking-Christ-I'm-going-to-have-to-sell-my-firstborn-for-this-steak-that's-about-as-delicious-as-you're-gonna-get-here.

Somehow, though, I got sucked into eating at a newly opened Singapore-style restaurant on Peel St. in Soho last night. Well, it was more of a gauntlet-throwing challenge from my husband who claimed that I "never try anything new." Yeah, BECAUSE NEW IN HONG KONG USUALLY IS AWFUL. But I'm not one to shy away from having one more "told you so" to hold over his head for the next 50 years, so I agreed to try SH!OK.

I have no idea who the owner of the restaurant is, if he's a known culinary prankster who opens shit restaurants to see how many suckers he can con, but that's the backstory I'm going with because it can be the only explanation.

The menu was limited because, as I overheard who I assumed was the owner explain to another table, the full menu wouldn't be available for another two or three weeks. Now, I know some people will argue that if a restaurant is in a beta phase, you should cut them some slack, but if a restaurant is open for business and happily taking my money, they damn well better have their game face on. Otherwise, pay me for being a guinea pig.

We decided to play it safe and stick to the basics: nasi goreng, mee goreng and rotis. How hard is that, right?

Yes, I know, "roti" can be an all-encompassing term for bread, but when you put "roti" on the menu, you know what most customers are expecting, and it's not going to be kaya toast, toasted white-bread "sandwiches" stuffed with butter/margarine and kaya that are traditionally served for breakfast or in a coffee shop. Their kaya toast was mediocre, with the bread not being warm enough and the filling being too sweet, probably because they used condensed milk instead of butter.

We also ended up with a roti of toasted slices of white bread filled with chili fish (I think). I have no idea what that was, never had anything similar in Singapore. It wasn't awful, but it also wasn't what I was expecting.

It was when I was nibbling on the bread that I saw the assumed owner for the first time, schmoozing with a table of diners who seemed to know him. When I laid eyes on his Ed Hardy shirt and Converse, I knew the meal wasn't going to end well. Ed Hardy, fedoras and popped collars are huge, flashing neon signs of impending suckitude and/or douchebaggery.

So, we waited for the main courses, dreading what was to come.

When I go to a Hong Kong-style restaurant and order a dish with the vague translation of "vegetables with rice," I'm not remotely surprised when the vegetables turn out to be some sad-looking cabbage and mushrooms while the rest of the plate is covered in chicken feet, mutton, tripe and eye of newt with a dash of pig's blood for sauce. You roll the dice when you don't read Chinese.

When I go to a Singaporean restaurant in an expat enclave and order nasi goreng, I expect it'll be in a more traditional style and not full of squid and other assorted seafood. I know there are countless ways to make nasi goreng -- hell, throw in chicken feet, mutton, tripe and eye of newt -- but seafood is one of those things you want to know about in advance, particularly if you happen to be an evolutionary failure with a serious allergy to it.

But, okay, I can handle surprise seafood. It was the heavy-handed spicy seasoning that obliterated any other flavors (if there were any) in the dish and the rubbery squid that made me push the plate away. And the egg on top was sunny side up, not fried. AND THERE WERE NO PRAWN CRACKERS. God, what savages. The mee goreng was even worse, an oversalted, inedible spaghetti.

We ate very little of it, and when we asked for the bill, the waiter didn't even ask if, you know, maybe the food wasn't up to par. You'd think they'd be interested in quality-control issues.

I wanted to say something, but my husband hates confrontation and rationalized complaining wouldn't achieve anything, and given that once my bitch-switch is flipped, it occasionally ends with being escorted from premises, I understood his hesitation. Because by that point, I was wishing I had a white glove I could slap the owner with and challenge him to a duel. "Sir, I demand satisfaction."

My parents taught me the value of a dollar, and sure, it was "only" HK$189, but as terrible as it was, it might as well have been HK$1890. And HK$189 is, what, a whole day's wages for a KFC employee? I think that's going to be my new standard for restaurants: Would I toil in a fast-food joint frying chicken for an entire shift just to earn the money to eat there?

So, SH!OK? More like SH!T, amirite?

Jesus was a way cool gweilo

2009-08-20T22:16:00.000+08:00

Because many Americans aren't familiar with the "one country, two systems" policy, they view Hong Kong as simply another part of godless China. A capitalist paradise filled with Jesus-hatin' communists.

It's surprising for them to discover that many Hong Kongers are just wild about the son of God.

I thought when I left the United States, I'd be saying goodbye to religious fundamentalists, but I landed in a place that is home to the world's first life-size replica of Noah's Ark and where officials seriously debated the merits of teaching creationism in schools.

Even with such classics as "Raped by an Angel 4: The Raper's Union" being available on pay-per-view, Hong Kong remains rather prudish and puritanical, as evidenced by the outrage over the appearance of "pseudo-models" at the annual Hong Kong Book Fair last month.

When I heard about the planned protest at the fair, I decided to check it out, but after seeing Kissy Chrissie's photobook, with an image of her dripping a sticky, white substance down her chest, I thought perhaps they had a point.

So, instead of spending the day feeling smugly superior to a bunch of uptight book nerds, I walked around the convention center and came across the greatest series of books about Christianity in Chinese ever ("Cool Knowledge About..."). I have no idea what they say or if they're serious, but Paris Hilton, Spiderman, Jack Sparrow and Ronaldinho all make appearances. And it was good.

Signs about town

2009-08-17T16:36:00.002+08:00

In Hong Kong, keeping the streets clean is serious business. Hitler demands that you pick up your dog's shit, du Schweinehund.

Savez-vous qui d'autre avait des jurés de la mort?

2009-08-07T16:36:00.009+08:00

I'm sick. Not a few-sniffles-eh-maybe-it's-just-allergies-I'll-pop-a-few-Sudafed-tablets sick, but the kind of sick that a couple of months ago would have gotten me quarantined in a fine Hong Kong hospital. That swine-flu-kind-of-sick.

You're probably wondering what the doctor said about it. The doctor? That's hilarious. I'm American. I don't go to the doctor.

I'm from the finest stock of European immigrants who had both the intellect to foresee and the strong survival instinct to flee the Marxist-Socialist-NWO-Lizard-People-Illuminati-Bilderberg takeover that would happen in their former homeland.

Americans rip out cancerous tumors with our bare teeth during commercial breaks of 'So You Think You Can Dance.'"

But since I've come down with this mystery bug, every conversation with a non-American friend begins: "Are you still sick? When are you going to the doctor? You should go the doctor. Really, you should go to the doctor. Doctors are your friends."

With my American friends, the conversation is rather different: "Your temperature is 39.5C/103.1F? Pffft, mine was 43C/110F once. I didn't take even one sick day, and the hallucinations actually improved the quality of my work, the convulsions caused only minor brain damage in a section I don't use much anyway, and the fever-induced sterility should be temporary. Eat some chicken soup, and you'll be fine."

We love to suffer in the United States, but what we love even more is to one-up anyone who dares to think they know what real suffering is because to be American is to be hardcore.

Watching the healthcare-reform debate from thousands of miles away, surrounded by people who have grown up with socialized medicine and can't imagine what life would be like without that safety net, I'm horrified by the lies being spread and by the puppetmasters making their little right-wing marionettes dance.

David Bowie had it right when he said he was afraid of Americans. In what other country would people turn violent and almost riot over the government proposing affordable, equitable healthcare options? Those commie bastards took away our freedom to go bankrupt and lose our homes!

What Americans don't understand is that in the developed world, and even in much of the developing world, health care is not an all-consuming issue. You're sick? Go the doctor, pay nothing or a small fee, get medicine, get better. And if you want care above and beyond that, buy supplemental insurance.

In Hong Kong, I have private insurance but have only submitted a bill to the company once, when I went to a nearby private hospital's out-patient clinic after an all-day vertigo spell. At the clinic, I was seen by a doctor within 5 minutes, diagnosed with an ear infection within 10, and out the door with three prescriptions and newly dewaxed ears within 30 -- all for US$130. That seems like a bargain to an American, but is actually on the expensive side in HK.

That's a non-negotiated rate, by the way. As far as I know, since the patient pays upfront and submits the bill for reimbursement to the insurance company himself, there is no special discount rate for patients with insurance, like there is in the US.

Of course, if I didn't want to pay that much, it'd be just as convenient to go to a public hospital's outpatient clinic for non-critical or non-serious issues. I might wait longer, but I'd pay only about US$12 and see a doctor who is likely to be more attentive than any I've seen in the US.

If I had a serious health problem, like cancer, I could choose to use my fancy insurance and have faster access to treatment, more choice of doctors, and a spacious hospital room with satellite TV and a luxurious dim sum lunch on Sundays and a private concert by a Cantopop star, but if I didn't have that option, I could make use of the less-glamorous public system and receive the same medical treatment without any fear of losing my life savings. Again, it might take longer and I wouldn't have as much freedom to choose a doctor, but if your only alternative is, you know, dying, it doesn't seem so bad.

My husband sees a private doctor and -- this is going to shock you Americans -- they take bloodwork and dispense medication right in the office. And it costs about US$50/visit, which he pays in full and is reimbursed for by the insurance company. And the doctor doesn't deal with 10,000 billing codes from 10,000 different insurance companies with 10,000 different reimbursement rates.

I had to explain to my husband yesterday that if we returned to the US and he didn't have a job that offered health benefits, no insurance company would offer him an individual policy because he has chronic health issues that require medication. He is a medical money pit, and no company would want to take that on. He'd either be stuck with a policy offering minimal coverage at an exhorbitant rate or no insurance at all. Yes, he's American and he had no clue because he's always had coverage through his employer.

Americans obsess over health care because it casts a shadow over every aspect of our lives, something that few foreigners understand.

When we look for jobs, we have to consider if the health benefits fit our personal needs, or if benefits are offered at all. If we want to start our own business, we have to consider if we can afford an individual policy. If we're dating someone, we might marry them (like I did) or move up the wedding so we can use their insurance. If we want to divorce an abusive spouse, we might not feel able to do so because we have a chronic illness that requires expensive treatment we couldn't afford on our own. If we're married and love our spouse but can't qualify for current government benefits, we might get divorced to become eligible. And if we're sick, we have to weigh the cost to see a doctor versus the benefit of any possible diagnosis and treatment. In every major life decision, health insurance plays a part.

But having health insurance is no guarantee of health care because the companies employ numerous loopholes in place to deny coverage.

When my uncle thought he was having a second heart attack, he had to first call his primary care physician to get permission to go to the in-network hospital that his doctor was affiliated with. At the hospital, the attending doctor told him he had indigestion and to go home and take some Tums. Instead, he went to another hospital, where a doctor confirmed he'd had a heart attack and needed to be admitted.

He fought with the insurance company for the next couple of years because they didn't want to pay the bills since he went to a hospital not in his network and not affiliated with his primary doctor.

Last week, my mom's insurance company approved a doctor-recommended treatment, but with the caveat, "Pre-authorization does not guarantee payment," meaning in two months, they can decide the treatment wasn't necessary and refuse to pay, leaving her to pay the full cost.

About 7 years ago, I received a bill from a doctor's office for a $15 co-pay they claimed I owed for a visit. Except I'd never even heard of that practice, much less had an appointment there. After arguing over the phone with the billing department for close to an hour, I had to take a day off from work to go down there to solve the problem.

It turned out one of the doctors in the practice was someone I'd seen once two years prior. He'd brought his patient list with him and was using it to submit bogus claims to insurance companies, figuring no one would catch on -- until someone accidentally sent me a bill.

They wisely dropped the issue after that, but what if they hadn't? That fraudulent $15 co-pay could have been reported to a credit agency, who would have put it on my credit report, which could have made it difficult for me to buy a car or a home in the future, and could have possibly caused me to lose out on job opportunities if a potential employer chose to run a credit check to determine my "trustworthiness."

All that over one doctor appointment. Imagine what it must be like for Americans who run up tens of thousands of dollars in medical debt. The cost for my husband's four-day stay in the hospital after a seizure (four days because no specialists were on call during the weekend) was more than US$30,000. Would we have gone to the hospital if we didn't have insurance, knowing we'd face a bill like that? Probably not.

But I guess that's a good thing because we're Americans and we're tough and we love freedom and do we want to be like the UK, where nursing mothers are forced to give their excess milk to the government to nourish poor immigrant Muslim babies? True stuff. I heard it on Fox News.

What are you looking at, nerd?

2009-08-03T18:02:00.002+08:00

This weekend I went to Ani-Com 2009, an annual convention of toy collectors and comic book enthusiasts, cosplayers, and lonely and perverted men hoping to get upskirt and downshirt shots of female cosplayers with their Canon-and-Nikon-branded penis extenders.

I'm not into toys, cosplay, or lonely and perverted men, but I do admire those who have that level of dedication to such seemingly pointless pursuits, which is the polite way of saying that I enjoy quietly judging and laughing at nerds.

Loving you is easy cuz you're beautiful

2009-05-27T12:32:00.004+08:00

Remember the days when all you had to worry about on the MTR was a crazy guy threatening you for coughing without covering your mouth? Such simpler times, such innocent times...

Now there's Mr. Pole Humper, and if you'll excuse me, I think I'll be heading down to Watsons to buy some anti-bacterial wipes and a Hazmat suit for my next subway ride.

*Thanks to Miss Fong for making me aware of the original of this video. I shortened it and added the music. Because all acts of public perversion should be accompanied by a loungey soundtrack.

Riding the crazy train

2009-05-26T13:08:00.006+08:00

First there was Bus Uncle, then Airport Auntie, and now the Subway Demented Dad (placeholder name until someone comes up with a better one).

Swine flu paranoia causes man to freak out after a young boy coughs near him without covering his mouth. He yells at and mocks the kid and his guardian, and when they ignore his ranting, he hits the boy and makes him cry. If this had happened in NYC, it wouldn't have surprised me if the entire subway car had beaten the guy to death.

I don't speak Chinese! Whaddya want?!

2009-05-25T14:20:00.017+08:00

During one slow night at my job as a copy editor for a large-ish daily newspaper, I showed a co-worker photos from my one-month trip around Europe. When she came to one of the Spanish Steps in Rome, she exclaimed, "Wow, it's just like on TV!"

I tried to explain that, no, by watching a special about Italy on the Travel Channel, you're not getting the full experience of a creepy, perverted Italian guy following you around and making comments that imply he'd like to show you his salametti.

You kind of need to be there, I told her, but she assured me that the United States has everything you could possibly want -- I mean, Manhattan has a Chinatown and a Koreatown -- and anything else she needed to know about the world, she could learn from cable TV and magazines with pretty, glossy pictures.

But if she somehow found herself in Hong Kong, she'd feel right at home in Langham Place.

As part of its new online "Big Deal" campaign, Langham Hotels ~~has~~ had created a series of videos (since removed) that depicted Hong Kong as a place where East meets West, and West is, like, totally not cool with East and its rudeness and copy-watches and bizarre culinary habits.

The tagline could easily be, "Langham Hotels: Where white people go to pretend they're not surrounded by filthy Chinese."

Each video starts with a foreign tourist disgusted by a common Hong Kong stereotype, like a non-English-speaking waiter misinterpreting your strange sign language and giving you a bowl of rice porridge with a side of chicken feet, before finding refuge in Langham Place or the Eaton Hotel.

The company that created the marketing campaign claims it's satire aimed at tourists who don't dive headfirst into local culture, but it's difficult to read anything into it other than: "If you happen to be a racist twat who has been forced to travel to a scary foreign land by your employer or by an uncaring significant other, Langham Place is an oasis of civilization for you."

It's not a matter of viewers not "getting" the humor -- it pretty much hits you over the head -- but of the company being completely tone-deaf to its audience and of mistaking "poor taste" for "edgy."

Although with growing outrage about the campaign online, I think they're trying to make amends with their latest video in the series:

Keep clean! Be healthy!

2009-05-20T21:51:00.006+08:00

So, we've repeatedly established that Hong Kong is a nanny state trying to protect its citizens from, well, life. Today's tip from the government? Don't buy dirty street food that's been stored and cooked improperly from a fat guy with man boobs who is smoking a cigarette and wearing a shirt that is two sizes too small. Noted.

Yeah, I'm around

2009-05-17T21:45:00.000+08:00

I've been meaning to update, particularly about my trip to Borneo, but I'm caught up in the sheer enjoyment of teaching Brazilians how to curse and use slang in English. Did you know an afro is called "cabelo black power" in Brazil? Cultural exchange, 'tis a beautiful thing.

I have no motivation and I must write

2009-05-10T00:17:00.004+08:00

One thing I do like about Hong Kong is that no matter where I am, I can find graffiti that matches my mood.

Hey, gringo... tranquilo!

2009-05-03T00:15:00.019+08:00

When I was in elementary school, there was an unpopular kid we'd nicknamed "Mucous Marcus." While our overworked mothers would require a limb to be falling off before they'd indulge our whining, his was at the forefront of the helicopter-parent trend, and he paid the price for it.

If we needed to wait outside of the school in the morning for the teachers to let us in and it was a hot day, she would wait in her car and, every few minutes, would bring him water, wipe his brow, shower him with kisses and provide us awful children with more fodder for our taunts.

Her motherly paranoia prevented her from reacting to life's complications with a proportional response.

Hong Kong is that smothering mommy figure taken to the extreme, an extreme that would find logic in quarantining hundreds of guests and staff at a hotel where one person tested positive for swine flu and would make statements like, "We will be draconian in our policy."

Yes, Hong Kong has quarantined an entire hotel, the Metropark in the business-by-day/red-light-by-night district of Wan Chai, for seven days and those who refused to stay at the hotel were moved to a "suburban holiday camp."

The government, with SARS still fresh on its mind, is reacting disproportionately to the threat. This is, by recent accounts, a relatively mild strain of flu, and the Mexican tourist who caused the hotel lockdown is doing just fine.

But it seems like the quarantine is a great way to spread the virus if others are infected. If you had the sniffles and would normally go the doctor to be checked out, would you really risk being forcibly placed under quarantine for up to a week when, even if you did have swine flu, you'd probably recover without medical intervention?

Who wants to end up in an isolation camp because it turned out they were feeling sick from the chicken parm at Fat Angelo's? (Note: Never eat at Fat Angelo's, no matter how much your visiting in-laws beg you for "a taste of back home.")

And have we learned nothing from zombie movies? Like the secondary character who has been bitten but doesn't tell anyone out of fear of being shot in the head and, hey, maybe he'll survive it just fine anyway, but then does turn into a zombie and infects others and creates bedlam in what had been an otherwise safe hiding place?

I thought we'd all agreed that everything you need to know about surviving a pandemic, you can learn from George Romero? Someone send his oeuvre to the Hong Kong government.

Anyway, after seeing photos last night of medical workers dramatically entering the Metropark in Hazmat suits, like the zombie apocalypse itself was upon us, I went by the hotel this afternoon to see the circus for myself.

As tempted as I was to dance in front of the police line while singing, "I escaped... I escaped... cough, cough," I figure I've already used my one asshole-foreigner card for my stay here, but I was able to take great delight in freaking out passersby who were gawking and taking photos by sneezing and saying loudly, "Creo que tengo gripe." Jajaja.

Does anyone think this is a rational response?

PS. And don't pick your nose and eat it

2009-04-30T00:32:00.003+08:00

Hong Kong knows a thing or two about pandemics and coupled with its status as the premier nanny state in the region, we are going to fucking kick this swine flu's ass. You do not want to mess with Honkers, you punk-ass influenza A, subtype H1N1 virus.

The government has vowed to shut down all schools if even one student comes down with it and will undoubtedly slaughter every last pig even if it puts every last Tai Hing Roast restaurant out of business. Surgical masks are on display more than usual, and leading the charge in educating the public about common-sense hygiene efforts is, once again, our friendly building supervisor. As seen in my apartment building's elevator.

Things I kind of, sort of hate about Hong Kong: Part II

2009-04-26T14:40:00.000+08:00

In the United States, we don't need friends. We're a country that doesn't need anyone for anything. You can live alone and off the grid in your cabin in the woods, writing your manifesto about how the rise in autism is linked to a secret government mind-control program gone awry -- and you'll survive just fine. If you don't, well, that's what happens when you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

We don't like when strangers, or even our neighbors, engage us in idle chit-chat. It scares us. We think they're weird or mentally ill, and they probably want something from us anyway. We prefer our isolated, every-man-is-an-island lifestyle that causes us to view everyone with suspicion. I'm not immune to it, and I mostly prefer my own company and, occasionally, the company of the small circle of close friends I've built for myself across three continents.

Except none of those friends live in Hong Kong, bringing me to Reason #3 I hate living here.

There's a reason why tagalong ex-pat wives who can't find full-time work often turn into breeding machines: once you've slipped on vomit in Wan Chai and visited every mall attached to an MTR station, there's not much left to keep you occupied or to give you a sense of purpose and, hey, you can pay a Filipina nanny US$500/month to do all of the dirty work for you. And naming babies is fun, you know?

As the dependent one in my marriage, I've found it difficult to find friends here because aside from the misanthropic nature that makes me slightly unlovable, those home during the day tend to fall into three categories: a) married women with kids who spend their afternoons at Mommy and Me Ashtanga Yoga classes; b) childless tai-tai wives who use their husband's money to live out a "Sex and the City" fantasy; and c) single women who have created a look-at-me-I-am-so-risque image for themselves. Like the middle-aged Scottish woman who, over drinks at an African bar, confided in me how much she loves to fuck black guys, particularly the black guy singing on the stage at that moment, who was trying desperately to avoid eye contact with her. Nothing screams "rebel" like lovin' big, black cock. Come on, who doesn't?

And unlike in Brazil, there's not the same level of mingling between locals and ex-pats, so I've gone to the ex-pat meet-and-greets to be amongst "my people" but have yet to meet anyone I'd want in my tribe, and while Couchsurfing was a reliable source of entertainment in São Paulo, here, it's mostly a group for dictatorial types who chastise you for not being able to accurately predict when your epileptic husband might have a seizure, thus ruining their junk-boat cruise. You know how I can predict when he's going to have a seizure? I wake him up with strobe lights.

I thought perhaps I'd found my salvation when I picked up a recent issue of Time Out Hong Kong and flipped to an article about a social group created by three ex-pat wives. Sassy Hong Kong, they named it. I hate the word sassy. I hate when women describe themselves as sassy. Sassy is a word that bitches use when they're still too insecure to describe themselves as such and continue to look for outside approval. "I'm bold and in control, heyyyyyyy, but not so much that I'm threatening!"

Sassy women hold "fashionista-recessionista" events, with mani-pedis and free-flowing wine and canapés and stylists telling you how to be less schlubby. Sassy women actually use words like "recessionista."

Unfortunately, I'm not sassy or sophisticated, and I'd feel guilty about going out with my girl-friends, drinking mojitos, and having my asshole waxed while my stressed-out husband was at work earning the money for my pampered evenings.

So, what's a bitch to do in Hong Kong? Apparently sit in her apartment and watch "Tango & Cash" while drinking whisky and writing for her blog.

Happy Easter from Hong Kong

2009-04-12T04:26:00.004+08:00

Things I kind of, sort of hate about Hong Kong: Part I

2009-04-10T22:08:00.006+08:00

Let me get this out of the way: Hong Kong is a truly awe-inspiring land. A land of contrasts and plenty and opportunities and hope and peace and convenience stores.

Its subways run on time and don't reek of urine, and there aren't any thugs threatening to kick your ass because you accidentally made eye contact with them. Barbecue pork and rice with a salted egg and choy sum is the most perfect meal ever. Paying for your purchases at 7-11 with your Octopus Card is easy, paying your bills at 7-11 is inspired, and a 7-11 on every corner is genius. Buying medications without a prescription is convenient; buying women is too, if that's your thing. Stores stay open late and on holidays. And you can punch a cop and not only will they not shoot you, you'll only get fined US$60 for it (mileage may vary if you're an illegal mainlander).

Now, the the first in a list of annoyances I've grudgingly learned to accept:

1) It's fair to say that pausing on the stairs in a NYC subway station to read a text message or losing yourself in thought on the sidewalks of Manhattan will lead to either a brutal verbal or physical assault. And I like it that way. Keep moving, Grandma, or do you want another broken hip?

In Hong Kong, you'd think its residents were strolling through a quaint seaside village on a lazy Sunday morn as a refreshing ocean breeze carries the scent of salt water rather than a steel-and-concrete jungle of commerce where the winds bring with them the stench of pollution and stinky tofu.

It's not the snail's pace that bothers me so much (although it still bothers me a lot) as the complete inability to walk in a straight line. In the US, you keep to the right and you don't stagger around like a drunk toddler. Left foot, right foot, straight fucking line. It's quite simple.

Not here. Here, it's like everyone is navigating a minefield only they can see. They abruptly stop and contemplate their next move. They suddenly swerve to the right and then back to the left. And you can't get around them because they can read your mind and will match your movements, and you will be stuck behind them until some tiny opening magically appears and you can dash through it to sweet, fast-paced freedom.

But I've managed to find some fun in it: When someone is coming straight at me and neither one of us knows whether to go to the left or the right, I try to anticipate which way they'll go and I'll go that way too... and again... and again... and again. I like to see how long I can block their path until perhaps something clicks in their brain that makes them see that this problem would be easily avoided if everyone just agreed to stay to the fucking left or right and stuck with that direction.

2) In a quest to become environmentally friendly, a growing number of stores no longer provide plastic bags unless requested, and some charge a nominal fee for them. This wouldn't be so objectionable if more pressing environmental issues were addressed, like the ever-present pollution that causes allergies, asthma and skin problems for many residents.

The pollution is so bad that the Australian government issued a travel advisory about it to its citizens and when "The Dark Knight" filmed scenes here, producers allegedly axed a scene where Christian Bale would jump from a helicopter into Victoria Harbour because they were afraid the industrial waste in the water might melt him.

So, when I break out in hives and my eyes feel like they have shards of glass in them during the walk from my apartment to the grocery store and I'm then greeted by Ping the Merciless who makes me beg like Oliver Twist for a plastic bag and then chides me with, "Next time you bring own bag!" I think someone's priorities are a bit out of order.

Of course, now I do bring my own, even though I normally re-use the bags for garbage. Not because I love the environment but because the rashes and frequent upper respiratory infections make me too weak to fight, and God, Ping is just so much friendlier now that I meet her approval. She even told me about a special they were having on pasta, and she'd never done that before.

Scenes from Hong Kong

2009-04-08T18:23:00.002+08:00

Walking around the area of Central where Chinese antiquities and Communist-themed tchotchkes meet, I found this woman carefully sorting through a box of CDs on the steps in front of a junk store. After investigating their contents, she tossed them into the growing pile of official releases of software and unlabeled CD-Rs.

Me and viscera, perfect together

2009-04-06T11:13:00.012+08:00

I don't think an American can travel or live in Asia without being asked by friends and family back home: What's the strangest thing you've eaten?

Because they've rarely even left their home state, they live vicariously through us globe-trotters and excitedly expect us to answer that we've feasted on bosintang (dog soup) in Korea or sustained ourselves on aborted fetuses in China, so we're a little embarrassed when we confess we've gotten as far as tripe on a stick from a street vendor in Hong Kong -- and we spit it out after the first bite.

I admit that I'm not an adventurous eater. I eat food because I'm not ready to die, and I eat food that I suspect will taste good to me. Like most people, I have a psychological block on certain foods due to texture, appearance or smell, and I'm okay with knowing I could be missing out on the tastiest snow-leopard-penis dish ever.

And if you'd explained to a sober me ahead of time what shiokara is, I never would have agreed to eat it, so thank Asahi Breweries for giving me the one "What's the strangest thing you've eaten?" story in my Asian travels.

The last time I visited Tokyo, my husband's co-workers took us to an izakaya in Ikebukuru, the kind of place you'd never find unless a regular took you there. We entered through the sliding wooden door into a tiny, dimly lit dining area that seated maybe 20 people at tables and a long bar.

Our Japanese hosts ordered for us and not long after sitting down, the beer started to flow, and as it had been a sweltering June day, I was knocking back the Asahi and Koga-san ensured my glass stayed full.

By the time our first dishes of edamame, pork belly and octopus sashimi arrived, I had a buzz. By the time the chicken hearts, various vegetable skewers and shiokara arrived, I was so drunk that I'd started to remember the Japanese I'd learned in college and wasn't ashamed to use it.

At the time, I'd never heard of shiokara and I wouldn't know what it was until well after I'd eaten almost the entire dish myself. Our hosts had ordered it as a joke, since none of them liked it and they'd hoped we'd be sufficiently disgusted by it, but I didn't realize they weren't laughing at my attempts to speak Japanese but at my inhaling something that's an acquired taste for even the Japanese palate.

"So, you... like shiokara?" Koga-san asked.

"Koga-san, I love shiokara," I answered.

After going back to the hotel and sobering up, I went online to see what the hell shiokara is, and as I read about it, I could feel the bile of horrified vomit rise in the back of my throat.

Shiokara, you see, can be summed up as "fermented squid with guts." The raw viscera of the squid (and occasionally other marine animals) are mixed with about 10% salt and 30% malted rice, packed in a closed container, and fermented for up to a month.

And while I'm thankful I now have an answer to the above question, the now-in-place psychological block means I won't be trying shiokara again.

Smile for the nice man

2009-03-30T17:42:00.011+08:00

Camera commandos stalk their prey through the streets and convention centers of Hong Kong, dressed for battle in their oversized backpacks and cargo pants stuffed with weapons of photography.

You know you're a gringa in Brazil when...

2009-03-17T16:40:00.007+08:00

Versão original em português

1. You go to a restaurant, read the menu, and wonder, "X-salad? X-burger? X-chicken? X-bacon? X-WTF?" ("X" sounds like "shee" in Portuguese, and it means cheese is added to the sandwich.)
2. You're afraid of escova progressiva (a popular hair-straightening process that uses chemicals known to cause cancer).
3. You ask for "pau" in a bakery. ("Pão" is bread but without the nasalization, a sound that's difficult for foreigners to make, it means "wood," which is also slang for "dick.")
4. You can't read "kkk" without thinking about a racist group. (Americans laugh "haha," but Brazilians laugh huahuahua, hihihi, rsrsrs or kkk.)
5. A Brazilian tells you that you speak Portuguese better than Henry Sobel and thinks that this is a compliment. (Henry Sobel is an eccentric American rabbi of Portuguese descent who has lived in Brazil for decades and speaks the language fluently, but for some reason, chooses to speak it with a ridiculous American accent.)
6. You discover that people from Rio think they're better than people from São Paulo, people from São Paulo think they're better than people from Rio, and people from Rio Grande do Sul refuse to accept they're Brazilian.
7. You teach English under the table. (Because as much as foreigners complain about the process to gain a work visa in the United States, it's about 10X harder for an American to legitimately work abroad because most countries are far more protectionist.)
8. A friend tells you that the party starts at 7 p.m., so you arrive at 7 p.m. And no one is there. (Time is relative in Brazil.)
9. You send emails about David Goldman.
10. You're given a nickname based on your skin color, and you think that's racist. (Brazilians don't view race in the same way that many Westerners do, so it's quite common to encounter nicknames that translate as "Little black guy," "Little Japanese girl" or "Ghost girl.")
11. Now when you go to an American beach, you think the other women look like they're wearing diapers. (No, Brazilians don't typically wear thong bikinis, but bikini bottoms are considerably smaller.)
12. You were almost hit by a car when you entered the pedestrian crossing because you trusted the drivers would stop.
13. You feel guilty about having a maid.
14. It took you a while to realize why there was a small trash bin next to the toilet, and by then, you needed a plumber.
15. You wonder, "Why aren't there any seatbelts in the backseat of cars? Does a magical forcefield protect passengers?"
16. You almost had a heart attack the first time you used an electric shower.
17. You go to a soccer match and still think it's a sport for girls.
18. You forget what it's like to live in a country that follows laws and learn to embrace the "jeitinho." When you return to the US, you try to bribe a government worker and are arrested.
19. You have Orkut and even know how to pronounce it "correctly," but you think Facebook is better.
20. You have dramatic friends who delete their Orkut profiles because an ex is "stalking" them or because they've decided Orkut is garbage, but two weeks later, they create a new profile and add you again.
21. Your friends ask you to bring electronics back from the US. And you do. For a price.
22. You think it's strange to put corn, mayonnaise or mashed potatoes on a hot dog.
23. You think a motel is a place where you sleep. (A motel is not a hotel. In Brazil, like in Italy, many people live at home until they're married or have achieved a certain financial standard, which presents a problem when they want to have a little, ahem, fun. So, they go to one of the many love motels, which often have themed rooms and individual parking garages, so no one sees who you are.)
24. You don't understand why a lot of Brazilian women will wax their bikini line but bleach their thigh hair.
25. You make a lot of mistakes in Portuguese, but no one realizes because they make them too.

Happy Vagina Day. Now make me a sandwich.

2009-03-08T17:49:00.012+08:00

I'd never heard of International Women's Day until a couple of years ago, when a Brazilian friend emailed me to send his congratulations for "your day."

If you're an American woman, you've probably never heard of it either because it's a global celebration of female empowerment that's of little relevance to us. The United States whipped sexism's ass years ago and so we don't need a special day to highlight the work that still needs to be done in achieving equality. Because we are completely equal to men in all aspects of our lives. Like, last night, I totally had a threesome with two hot guys and I know y'all think that makes me a... wait, what's the word for a female stud? Oh, yeah, "slut."

Oh, no, it's okay, I'm kidding. Sigh of relief, right? I'm actually a respectable married woman and haven't had sex in months because, you know, once the ring is on the finger... but I've got an amazing collection of shoes and I practically have an orgasm each time I slip on that $600 pair of Christian Louboutins. So, who needs my husband? Well, until it's time for him to sire the children I'll use to screw him over in the inevitable divorce! You know how us women are. It's all shoes and chocolate and stealing sperm and shiny things and emasculation and ACK! ACK! ACK!

I've never understood the Andrea Dworkin school of thought or that "men are from Mars, women are from Venus" nonsense, philosophies that both exist to justify shitty behavior based on allegedly unchangeable gender differences. I've found it far more useful to break down the world into assholes and non-assholes, ignoring reproductive plumbing as a qualifier. You don't cheat because you're a man. You cheat because you're an asshole that happens to have a penis. You don't demand a $10,000 engagement ring because you're a woman. You demand a $10,000 engagement ring because you're an asshole that happens to have a vagina. See how simple it is!

So, today, on this day to honor women's achievement, I was walking around the brothel-ridden neighborhood of Yau Ma Tei and came across this sign, a sign that was clearly written by an asshole. Because only an asshole would put a value on a woman's vagina based on race or nationality.

And in other news about assholes that happen to have penises and authority based on possession of said penises:

"They have told us that my two eyes are equal to one of his because in my country each man is worth two women. They are not the same"

Bangladesh women, children bear scars of acid attacks

The alleged abduction and gang rape of a woman was dismissed as harmless fun by a female defence lawyer in a Bahrain trial yesterday

A Saudi Arabian court has sentenced a 75-year-old Syrian woman to 40 lashes, four months imprisonment and deportation from the kingdom for having two unrelated men in her house

A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church

Be careful, devils inside

2009-03-04T18:49:00.006+08:00

Since the start of the global financial collapse that's ultimately going to force us all to wander the earth in bands of painspike-armor-wearing marauders, Hong Kong has weathered the crisis better than most, which isn't saying much. Residents are feeling the effects of the volatile economic climate, and small protests have been springing up around the central business district for months. I pass them almost every day, and the signs laid out in front of bank buildings seem to be multiplying. Today I spotted this one, which was against mini-bonds, something I'd not heard of before.

Behold my giant crystal vegetable

2009-02-27T18:16:00.006+08:00

When my husband needed to take a last-minute business trip to Korea that affected our weekend plans, the customer felt so bad for the inconvenience that they bought a silk Gucci scarf for me as a token of apology. It was ugly and tacky and not something I'd ever wear, no matter how much a night of soju-drinking affected my perception of fashion, and so I gave it to my mother-in-law for Christmas. It goes nicely with her knock-off Dolce & Gabbana bag.

So, I'm envious of my old friend, who is back in China to meet with manufacturers for his job as design director for a pet-toy company. He gets all of the good adventures and gifts.

AnonymousNJGuy: i am now the proud owner of a giant crystal cabbage

Me: Is that slang for something?

AnonymousNJGuy: no no no
AnonymousNJGuy: it seems there is a communication breakdown when sarcasm is used
AnonymousNJGuy: it's actually a giant 10" crystal cabbage that i now have to drag on the plane with me and carry around for the next week and a half

Me: Uh, why?

AnonymousNJGuy: well i saw this thing and started laughing and my travel companion asked if i liked it
AnonymousNJGuy: and i said i loved it
AnonymousNJGuy: and then he said he was going to buy it for me and my wife
AnonymousNJGuy: and i could not for the life of me convince him that it was a joke and that i did not need it
AnonymousNJGuy: i demanded and stomped my feet and walked away
AnonymousNJGuy: but i guess really, this was meant to be
AnonymousNJGuy: i mean everyone is expecting another chinese hooker story when i get back so this time it's more tame but there is an artifact

Me: Maybe he knew it was a joke and was turning the tables on you for mocking the giant cabbage that plays a huge role in Chinese history.

AnonymousNJGuy: i might believe that if it weren't for the fact that the last thing he said to me in the shop was that all the jewelry and paintings in the store have significant chinese history
AnonymousNJGuy: BUT
AnonymousNJGuy: my vegetable is just a vegetable

Me: This is a better story than the hookers. Every business guy who goes to China leaves with a hooker story. Or maybe an actual hooker. How many leave with fancy crystal vegetables to display on a shelf next to their Dunny collection?

AnonymousNJGuy: good point
AnonymousNJGuy: this all stemmed from the red envelope

Me: The magic of the red envelope. I guess they were impressed you knew to give them out, even if the New Year is over.

AnonymousNJGuy: yeah i did a little research but really the cash came out of my expense account anyway
AnonymousNJGuy: so now i feel like i should have just spent my own money on crystal vegetables and foregone the whole envelope thing
AnonymousNJGuy: here it is

I've got no luck in China. No fun, either. No getting hookers drunk in karaoke bars and no giant crystal vegetables.

Be well, John Spartan

2009-02-24T18:26:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong is like the helicopter mom who drops you off at college for your freshman year and, while clutching you tightly and sobbing, runs down a list of all of the activities you shouldn't engage in because she suddenly realized that she forgot to instill any sense of personal responsibility in you the previous 18 years. And every day, she calls your floor's RA to ensure you're eating right and not having any orgies in your room.

Aside from the surface puritanism of Hong Kong (good luck buying lingerie not designed for comfort), my two biggest peeves are pedestrians who don't seem to grasp that they're not the only person on the sidwalk and how nanny stateish the government is.

Last summer, during a particularly brutal heat wave, I went to Shek O beach for the first time. It was packed with oiled-up Chinese men in speedos and pink Crocs, but the poor sartorial choices weren't what bothered me.

As I was sitting in my beach chair and reading a book, a voice blared over loudspeakers in Chinese and English. It's very hot today. There's an advisory in effect. Don't stay in the water too long or you might get burned. Make sure you take refuge under an umbrella every once in a while. Drink plenty of fluids.

On the subway home, there were, I can only assume, official MTR employees running an "Always Hold the Handrail" campaign, complete with hand-shaped flyers.

Living here sometimes is like being in "Demolition Man." It wouldn't surprise me to hear a disembodied voice announce there'd been a murder-death-kill or to enter a public bathroom and find three seashells next to the squat toilet.

Are Hong Kongers that lacking in common sense?

Over the weekend, I decided to document every sign I came across that highlighted how little faith the government has in its citizens.

Getting the kinks out

2009-02-23T20:50:00.001+08:00

After my first experience with a massage parlor in Hong Kong, I learned two important lessons: 1) Australians are nothing but trouble and 2) Cheap massage joints are abundant but worthwhile only if you have a penis because you're sure as hell not shelling out $20 for a trained masseuse to lead you through some deep, transcendental Ayurvedic experience.

Since that adventure, I'd been hesitant to seek out a legitimate massage because the sound of the man in the curtained room continued to haunt me, and I didn't think it was treating my body like a temple to lie down on cartoon-character sheets that someone jizzed on 10 minutes prior. I'm germphobic like that.

I'm also cheap like that and couldn't bring myself to pay the prices at spas that probably change their linens regularly and where the employees are allowed to maintain some sense of dignity.

But last October, I went to Bangkok, where massages even at high-end spas are embarrassingly inexpensive by American standards and I was curious about traditional Thai massage.

My first full day in Bangkok started with dicks at the Lingam/Tuptim Shrine, where I was careful not to accidentally touch any lest the fertility myth turn out to be true, and ended with dicks in Soi Cowboy, where drunk ex-pats and tourists go to have them touched.

Along the way, I passed questionable-looking massage parlors on almost every corner, often with pasty, obese, middle-aged men entering or exiting with huge grins -- and on one occasion, with a small group of Thai women huddled around a tall, lanky white guy who sat on a stool as one woman cut his nails.

For most Americans, the word "massage" is indelibly linked to prostitution, and that didn't inspire confidence in finding a place that was either upscale enough to disappoint guys expecting a happy ending or downscale enough that they'd even service women. Because maybe I'd like a soapy, sexy massage too. I admit, I'm kind of jealous that men pay the same price that I do but get an additional service. I doubt it's a service I'd want if it were offered because I can't even bring myself to call someone on the phone out of fear I might inconvenience them, so I can't see myself exploiting someone who's selling herself to support her family in an impoverished rural village or whose only escape from poverty is to marry a gross, socially inept Western guy.

But Jesus, at least ask.

I gave up on finding a place that didn't offer some type of love-you-long-time service and was willing to settle for one that looked like it probably wouldn't give me scabies. While walking in an area near my hotel, I found Lavana, an honest-to-God spa that had staff in real uniforms instead of hot pants, sold its own brand of overpriced products, offered a customer-loyalty card, and provided herbal tea and a cream brulee-like dessert topped with pistachios.

It was more expensive than the other places, but a 90-minute Thai massage cost only US$16 and the most amazing treatment known to mankind, the four-hand foot massage, was only US$28. The foot massage and regular oil massage were relaxing and peaceful, whereas the Thai massage was like childbirth: painful and causes regret while doing it but the rewards manifest themselves the next day.

After my husband's oil massage, I excitedly asked him if he'd gotten the full treatment, and he seemed sad as he answered "no." I became indignant and asked, Why not? He gave me a confused look and asked, "What, you wanted them do it?" Well, yeah, isn't that what you're paying for? You got ripped off, babe.

I'm sure my husband thinks I was setting him up for some kind of battle-of-the-sexes, ohnoyoudidntmotherfucker confrontation that I can lord over his head for the next 50 years because another woman touched Mr. Winky, but no. Between the years of using a computer and playing video games, my handjob days are just about over, so God bless the young thing without carpal tunnel syndrome who can knock off 20 dicks a day. Enjoy your muscular flexibility while it lasts, girls.

Lavana turned me into a massage convert, and I vowed I'd find a place in Hong Kong that was affordable and had soundproof walls in each treatment room. And I did: Bua Hom Thai Massage. It doesn't have the ambiance of Lavana, but it also doesn't use Spongebob Squarepants sheets on beds they found lying curbside. A 60-minute Thai massage was US$25, and as my husband was in the same curtained area with me, he remained happy endingless, the poor bastard.

(But I hear if you utter the secret phrase, "lobster bisque," other options are offered.)

Lavana Bangkok
No.4 Soi Sukhumvit 12 Sukhumvit Road., Klongtoey, Klongtoey, Bangkok 10110
Tel : +66 (0) 2 2294510-12
Fax : +66 (0) 2 2294514
E-mail : lavana.bangkok@gmail.com
Opening Hours : 09:00 am - 02:00 am
Last Reception : 23:30 pm

Bua Hom Thai Massage
Rm501-2, 5/F
California Entertainment Bldg
34-36 D'Aguilar Street, Central
Tel: +852 2234-9322
Opening hours: Noon - Midnight

American Gringa Gweilo: Taxis

2009-02-19T00:10:00.001+08:00

[This is the third part in a series of articles examining cultural differences between the United States, Brazil and Hong Kong, the three countries in which I've lived.]

I didn't use taxis much in the United States. Who does? Taxis are for rich New Yorkers, poor everyone else, and the occasional drunk. Other than going to and from Newark Airport, I've never used a taxi service there, and the extent of my experience with drivers is possibly convincing two of them to try their hand at smuggling electronics into heavily taxed Brazil to sell at a profit. Hey, it helped pay my bills.

In São Paulo, I didn't take taxis that often, even preferring to make the long trek on foot from Consolação station to my apartment in Higienópolis at midnight.

But not long after moving to the city, I was unceremoniously kicked out of a friend's huge 3-bedroom apartment in Jardins, where I'd been crashing until I found a place of my own.

This friend regularly hosted gringoes and gringas passing through when his businessman father, who owned the apartment, was traveling. Once he realized his son was running a boarding house, he said we'd all have to leave because, God, we might stuff their 42-inch plasma TV into a backpack, take it to Carnaval in Rio with us and exchange it for Sambadrome tickets.

After I'd miraculously found an apartment on short notice, he packed me and my life's possessions into a taxi and clearly told the driver the address, and the driver nodded in understanding. The trip from Jardins to Higienópolis is an easy one, one that should be familiar to almost any driver.

But I was a foreigner. A foreigner who did not speak Portuguese even at a basic proficiency, other than greetings and curse words. Picture Henry Sobel yelling, "Oi, tudo bem? Vai tomar no cú, seu filho da puta!" That was me. And it meant the taxi driver saw an opportunity to make a little extra cash by taking the long way.

He finally made it to the street my building was on, and as he approached it, I said, "Aqui." He didn't acknowledge me. I furiously pointed at the building and yelled, "AQUI!" He smiled. And kept fucking driving. He drove past the apartment and down several other streets, stopping for about five minutes to have a leisurely conversation with other drivers at a taxi stand and pretending that he was asking for directions.

By the time he decided he'd screwed me over enough and "found" my building, I was angry and had no intention of paying whatever jacked-up price he wanted to charge. He showed me the meter, smirked and shrugged, and I was able to use some Portuguese I'd learned in my first week of language classes, "Isso é um roubo!" This is a rip-off.

He said nothing. "Isso é um roubo!" He started to yell back at me, but I didn't understand him. "Isso é um roubo, asshole!"

I calculated what the fare should have been, handed that to him, grabbed my bags and got out. He started to exit the taxi, and I turned around and, with all of hatred in my heart that I feel toward scam artists, shouted, "Vai-te foder!" Go fuck yourself.

That was my only bad experience with a taxi driver in Brazil, but then, I only took a taxi about five or six times.

Two weeks after my move to Hong Kong, I was supposed to attend a conference with my husband in Sanya, China. A week before the trip, we left a laptop bag, which also had our passports and cell phones, in a taxi. We didn't get the driver's name or the taxi number, and other than the token gesture of leaving our information with the taxi lost and found hotline and reporting it to the police, there wasn't much we could do.

I thought we might get our passports back, if the driver couldn't figure out how to make money off of them, but I didn't expect to see the laptop or cell phones again.

A couple of days later, the police from a station in New Territories called to say that a taxi driver dropped off the bag, and everything was still in it. When we arrived at the station, after confirming our identities, the police handed us our items -- all of which had been placed in individual plastic bags, and they'd removed the battery from the laptop to prevent it from draining.

We wanted to leave a reward for the driver, but he refused to accept it and said our appreciation was enough for him. Hong Kong is allegedly one of the worst places in which to lose a cell phone, but I've never had a bad experience in the 70 or so times I've taken a taxi here (other than the drivers who don't understand "Cyberport").

And that's a good thing because I have no idea how to say, "This is a rip-off, you son of a bitch" in Cantonese.

I have no tongue and I must scream

2009-02-16T15:32:00.004+08:00

There are allegedly thousands of other Americans in Hong Kong, but I've met fewer than 10. I chalked this up to my admittedly misanthropic nature and not being much of a whoremonger or drunk or baby-machine, the three most common participatory activities for ex-pats here. Until I came across this menu posted outside of a cafe. And now I know the fate that's befallen my countrymen. They're lunch.

You can't take me anywhere

2009-02-10T23:55:00.000+08:00

When traveling and living abroad, I live by one maxim: Don't be that asshole.

It's worked out pretty well for me, except for when it comes to the paperwork needed to become a legal resident. I hate paperwork. I hate bureaucracy. Anything that cuts down on it, I support. You won't find me criticizing illegal aliens in the United States because have any of you ever emigrated to another country? That shit is hard.

I'm all for opening the borders and letting people in with just a video store member card as proof of identity. The US didn't collapse after processing -- without the use of RFID-chipped passports and fingerprint scanning -- all those Irish drunks and criminals at Ellis Island, like my great-grandfather, and now we dress in green, drink beer and act like idiots one day a year to honor them. Cultural exchange is a good thing.

When I entered Brazil with a student visa rather than with my tourist visa, I needed to register as a resident foreigner within 30 days or face possible arrest and deportation or a daily fine. But it's Brazil, you know?

At that time, the Federal Police were on a work slowdown. That meant Brazilians wanting to renew their passports faced 14-hour waits, if they were lucky, and foreigners wanting to register as residents, well, I think we all went to O'Malleys to drink and complain and figure out a way around it. Like those assholes.

I never ended up registering because the potential fine was less than the time and money I'd invest in becoming legal, and with the slowdowns and strikes, the RNE card probably would have arrived around the time I expected to leave. At the airport, no one noticed I was a bad girl and I left without any punishment, smug in the knowledge that I could play the jeito game too.

Moving to Hong Kong was much smoother. My husband's company took care of all the paperwork, and within a couple of months of arriving, I had my residency card, which allows me to move in and out of Hong Kong freely -- without ever having to step through customs.

Once you've got your resident ID, you can breeze through e-channels at the airport and at the Macau ferry terminal. I can't see the US ever introducing something similar for American citizens and residents. As it is, I'm treated like a suspected terrorist whenever I reenter the US: "Where did you go? How long did you stay? What were you doing there? Did you meet any swarthy men who worship Allah?" I can't imagine what non-citizens go through, with the fingerprinting, photographing and stool samples.

Then it came time to renew my visa, and through a series of events that involved my admitted scatterbraindedness and my husband traveling outside the area on business (I needed to bring his passport with me), I missed the deadline.

When I went to apply for the now-late renewal, instead of strip-searching me, putting me in jail and banning me from reentry for life, or whatever it is the US generally does to visa scofflaws, the immigration officer handed me a piece of paper and said, "Here, write why you were late. Address it to 'Dear Immigration Officer' and say you're very sorry. Then sign it and return it with your application."

So, like a child, I wrote an essay to Dear Immigration Officer, apologized profusely, promised that it would never, ever happen again, and signed it, "That Asshole." That was it. About 20 minutes later, they returned my documents and gave me a sheet of paper that told me when to pick up my new visa.

Not long after and not thinking much of it (or not thinking at all), I agreed to go to Macau with my husband and one of his co-workers who was visiting from the US. Macau is a special administrative region, like Hong Kong, and it has its own entry requirements.

I did ponder if my smart card would work on the e-channel leaving Hong Kong since I didn't have the new visa yet, but I figured it was worth a try. My card worked, but when I put my thumb on the scanner, the little hourglass figure kept loading and loading...

An immigration officer came over to me, let me through the exit door and took my documents to examine. He noticed that I had an expired visa and said I needed to go with him. TO THE BACK ROOM.

I've always been kind of curious to know what happens when you're taken to the back room. In movies and on TV shows, it sounds so dramatic, like you're being led to your execution or to a very sound beating. It was rather anti-climactic, then, when I was led to a well-lit room in plain sight of the immigration checkpoint. They even let my husband and his co-worker come with me.

At that point, my husband was mumbling under his breath that he couldn't take me anywhere and that I was embarrassing him, but his co-worker seemed to be enjoying the adventure. Maybe she was expecting me to get knocked around with telephone books. That would have been a great story for her to spread around his old office.

When the immigration officer returned, sans telephone book, he told me I needed to pay for a one-day visa, so I could properly exit and return to Hong Kong. I paid and figured I'd be on my way, except my ticket to Macau, which had been in my passport, was missing.

I asked the officer if he knew where the ticket was, perhaps he'd taken it out and placed it somewhere when he scanned my passport. He and his partner went to look for it, but returned empty-handed.

"Miss, are you sure you didn't drop it outside the checkpoint? Do you want to go look for it? We'll let you out."

No, I told him, I had the ticket when I entered the e-channel.

"Are you sure?"

Quite.

He started to look nervous.

Don't worry about it, I told him, I'm just going to head back home, and they'll go to Macau without me. No problem. But the boat is leaving in a few minutes, and they really need to get going.

"No, no, miss. Are you SURE you don't want to look for it more? It must be around here somewhere. Come on, let's look."

No, really, it's fine. It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it. Do I look like the kind of person who cares about Russian hookers and Wheel of Fortune slots anyway?

He looked genuinely upset, like he had totally ruined my day and I'd never forget the cruelty of it all and I'd one day go insane with rage and kill a bunch of Hong Kongers and turn them into dim sum, even though it was my own ignorance that started the chain of events.

"Follow me," he said, and he led us down to the ferry boarding area. He spoke to one of the agents in Cantonese and got me on the boat without a ticket. I thanked him and then spent the day in Macau, racing go-karts, watching awful Eastern European "dancers" at the Sands, and coming to the realization that sometimes it does pay to be that asshole.

The Great American Store

2009-02-08T21:01:00.001+08:00

When we move abroad, it's the little conveniences from home that we miss, like drawstring garbage bags, freshly baked everything bagels, and toilet paper that couldn't be used to sand walls.

In Hong Kong, most of the imported products in supermarkets are geared toward British and Australian ex-pats, but there's a place called Gateway in Central that caters to the American who longs for the days of buying 10lb bags of pistachio nuts at Costco. Because if there's one thing we love more than liberty, it's stocking up on giant boxes of Cheez-Its in preparation for the Apocalypse.

But I still don't understand this sign from the store's management. Does baking soda have a distinct taste for those not used to it in products? Or do they think it's going to cause their stomach to explode?

Hong Kong Exploitation: Ebola Syndrome

2009-02-04T20:36:00.004+08:00

When I was a kid, my dad loved to entertain me with stories from his police beat. We didn't have much else to bond over, so he overlooked the age-inappropriateness of letting me read his reports detailing crack busts and prostitutes beaten by their pimps, and he took a particular pride in recalling the infamous Zelinsky murder.

The murder took place in Trenton in 1978, a year or so after my dad joined the New Jersey State Police and a couple of years before he joined the city's police department. The short of it, Zelinsky got tired of her mother's criticism, so she hacked off mom's head and put it into a bag, drove her car onto the State House steps and crashed it into a pillar, and threw the bag at the feet of state troopers (including my dad) stationed at the building's entrance.

He claims that at the scene, he motioned to a rookie that "someone" wanted to talk to him, brought the rookie to the other side of the crashed car, and picked up the head and pretended it was speaking. I doubt it's true, one of those bullshitty cop legends that gets passed down, but for me, it sparked an early (and probably disturbing-in-an-8-year-old-girl) interest in the macabre and absurd.

In later years, that translated into a fascination with horror, gore and trash films, and with my move to Hong Kong, I've started delving into this special adminstrative region's library of exploitation movies. These are some pretty sick films and probably not for those who didn't grow up with dinnertime conversations about talking decapitated heads.

One of the classic examples of Hong Kong exploitation is "Ebola Syndrome," a 1996 movie about a restaurant worker who escapes to South Africa after killing his boss and quickly finds employment in a new business. Not long after arriving, he rapes a Zulu woman infected with the Ebola virus, contracts the virus himself but discovers he's only a carrier, murders his new boss and the boss's wife, turns his dead employers into burgers, and serves the Ebola-infected meat to unsuspecting patrons -- who become infected themselves. When police start to suspect him, he moves back to Hong Kong and starts an Ebola epidemic there.

The movie stars Anthony Wong, a half-Chinese and half-English actor that often plays the bad guy in Hong Kong movies, including the similar role of real-life serial killer Wong Chi-Hang, who turned his victims into dim sum.

In an interview with a magazine in 2000, Anthony Wong said that his mixed background initially caused him to be typecast as a villain due to racism in the film industry. I guess Halle Berry should be grateful that Hollywood's racism only led to her being offered roles as junkies.

Below is a trailer for the movie, and this is a YouTube video of a very not-safe-for-work scene and this is a site to view the movie in its entirety.

Vai pra puta que pariu

2009-02-01T00:05:00.001+08:00

After a long break, I've started updating my Slang 101 for Brazilians blog. As mentioned before, a Brazilian guy I met on Orkut inspired my mission. He told me he's an English teacher in São Paulo and that he teaches his students funky-fly slang like "def" because he loves "NY niggaz English," and every week or so, he IMs me to ask for explanations of Wu-Tang Clan lyrics. Yeah, I know. This is a country in need of serious linguistic assistance, and I'm here to help.

For six months, I taught private English classes in São Paulo, and as someone who was hit by a car and broke numerous bones, almost died from bacterial pneumonia, and watched all of "Alone in the Dark" while sober, I can say with some authority that teaching English is the most miserable experience I've ever had.

Mostly because the majority of my students had studied English before but with Brazilian teachers who had invented their own bizarre rules and interpretations of the language (like "gift" and "present" not being interchangeable), and they wanted to fight every step of the way. Of course, this was when they actually showed up, but once I figured out to demand prepayment, I stopped caring if I lost a few hours waiting around for this inevitable phone call:

Student: Teacher, I couldn't make it to class. I'm so sorry!
Me: What happened?
Student: My sister had an accident and needed to go to the hospital!
Me: You don't have a sister.
Student: I meant my sister-in-law.
Me: Your brother isn't married.
Student: I meant my brother's girlfriend. She's like a sister, you know?
Me: Isn't your brother gay?
Student: Um, damn Claro, I think I'm losing the...

So, it's nice to teach English without having to deal with any actual students. Anyone want to offer suggestions as to what Brazilians need to know to get by in our wickety-wack language?

V is for victory and vagina

2009-01-30T20:26:00.008+08:00

So, the California woman who gave birth to octuplets already has six other children, including a set of twins. They live with her parents in a three-bedroom house, she has no husband, and she seems to have an unhealthy obsession with procreation. The babies will be in the hospital for weeks, and future health problems or learning disabilities are likely. And if news reports are any indication, even her mother doesn't like her very much.

One could argue the irresponsibility of giving fertility treatments to a woman who already has a brood, lacks a strong support system and clearly is not financially stable, but all I could think while following the story is, "Jesus Christ, Asian lady on the medical team, why you gotta be a cliché by giving the V sign?"

Please stop ruining photos with this nonsense. Especially you, Asian lady in the photo I took of a traditional Portuguese folk dance troupe in Macau.

You read my mind

2009-01-29T16:25:00.007+08:00

It's been one of those days, so I went out for a long, peaceful walk. Well, as peaceful as this place can be with clueless tourists taking up entire sidewalks as they look at their maps, exhausted Filipina nannies trying to corral the bratty charges that refuse to get on the escalator, nannyless parents using their stroller monstrosities to take out their resentments on innocent pedestrians, old people shuffling along to their slow deaths, and the average Hong Konger navigating the invisible mine field that only they can see.

Along the way, I went to the grocery store to pick up ingredients to make chocolate chip cookies. They didn't have baking soda. OR CHOCOLATE CHIPS. What a sad country where chocolate chips are a luxury.

Did I mention I woke up with a migraine? That has yet to go away?

After the fruitless trip to the market, I took a detour down Hollywood Road. I don't usually go down that way, since it's mostly antique shops, but it tends to be fairly quiet in the afternoon once you get into the Sheung Wan area. And, as if by some vulgar miracle, I came across graffiti that beautifully summed up how I'm feeling and that will become my stock answer to everyone that annoys me.

I don't know who you are, Mr. (or Ms.) Crude Graffiti Artist, but at least for today, I love you.

Kung hei fat choy!

2009-01-28T17:01:00.008+08:00

Lunar New Year is the most important of Chinese holidays, a time when families gather together and try to violently settle grudges that have been passed down through the generations -- if my upstairs neighbors are any indication. I awoke on the third day of the new year to sounds of screaming and stomping above me, which gives credence to the Chinese belief that only the first and second days of the new year are appropriate times to visit kin. By the third day, you're full of fried food and weary of your relations and their idiosyncracies, and arguments and caged death matches and a battle between the Three Storms and Wing Kong are more likely to ensue.

It's also the magical season when confused foreigners are introduced to the concept of lai see. It's a custom of giving red envelopes filled with a small amount of "good luck" money to... well, it can take a while to figure that out, and you're bound to commit at least one faux pas.

At the office, bosses pass out the envelopes to subordinates, and married employees give them to unmarried colleagues. It's like graduating to the adult table at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner. Once you're married, you can say goodbye to your lai see (unless a generous relative or friend chooses to give you one) but you're expected to dole it out to almost everyone who is still unmarried, and you give two packets to each person (one from each spouse). Unmarried people typically give only to service workers and kids.

How much to give? It depends on your status and the status of the person receiving the lai see. A HK$10, HK$20 or HK$50 bill is usually a sufficient token, but it has to be a new, crisp bill to demonstrate your consideration to the recipient. In the weeks leading up to the new year, people either preorder new notes from the banks or stand in long lines to get fresh bills that are printed for the holiday.

To avoid offending anyone, it's common to carry an assortment of envelopes with varying denominations in case you bump into someone. You don't want to be embarrassed if someone gives your son a lai see and you have nothing to give in return.

Stores also give out lai sees to customers, but instead of money, you get, say, a coupon for HK$5 off your next purchase of a bird's nest and harsmar crystal jelly drink.

Although Hong Kong is not predominantly Christian, they go all out for Christmas because, I guess, Jesus and Santa are cooler than an ox or a rat. Or because they haven't figured out a way to repackage and commerciaize it for global consumption like the West has with our holy day. So, Lunar New Year decorations tend to be more low-key.

The tourist highlights of the holiday in Hong Kong are the flower market in Victoria Park, where people go to buy orange trees (for good luck) and inflatable meat on a stick, and the Cathay Pacific night parade, where people go to watch floats blasting music from the "Grease" soundtrack and carrying the message that pirated goods are very, very bad.

This is a video from a lion dance at the Man Mo Temple, not far from my apartment.

And these are photos from the 2008 and 2009 Lunar New Year celebrations.

But I wanted a melamine omelet

2009-01-24T10:38:00.000+08:00

I noticed this on the menu of the Wellington Street (Central) branch of Tsui Wah, a chain of Hong Kong-style diners. I'm not sure what constitutes a "pollution-free" egg in China or if the quotation marks are being used to indicate that they're not really serious about the claim, but I also don't know why the diner translates its name into Portuguese as "Restaurante do Wah do Tusi."

Talkin' 'bout good and bad hair

2009-01-23T15:23:00.007+08:00

I have bad hair. I know this because whenever a magazine or television show makes over a woman and her hair has the least bit of curl or wave, the stylist always straightens it and everyone then claps their hands and gushes about how gorgeous she now is. Not like the trollish social-worker look she was rocking before.

My hair is a wavy mess that stretches ponytail holders to the point of breaking but it's okay because my hair is so thick that I can wrap it into a stylishly messy bun without any accessories.

I've been called Cousin It on more than one occasion, and I could strangle grown men with one strand. The picture at right is after putting in intensive leave-in conditioner -- and yet it still looks like that.

I don't go swimming unless I know I've got a few hours to spare afterward to undo the damage caused by the chlorine or salt water, and it's only remotely manageable on a daily basis because I discovered the black aisle at Sally Beauty Supply and stocked up on cholesterol conditioner and olive-oil sheen spray.

When I put effort into styling it, women fall over themselves to compliment me on how "lucky" I am to have such "beautiful" hair, but I'm going to be alive, at best, 80 years and I don't want to waste 10 of them with either a hair dryer, flat iron or curling iron in my hand.

In the black community, there's a constant struggle to achieve "good hair," which equates to the long, silky, poker-straight hair of white women. Well, white women other than me. In his new documentary, comedian Chris Rock explores the the insane lengths that black women will go to in order to tame their hair and to try to fit into a white society that has declared non-straight hair to clearly be "ethnic" and anything ethnic, of course, walks that fine line between exotic and ugly.

In May of last year, the Brazilian newspaper O Globo published an article in which the journalist said that soccer player Ronaldo had "bad hair" because he didn't properly style it before appearing on TV. A proper style would, one assumes, be one that denies his heritage out of shame and conforms to whiter societal standards instead of working the 'fro.

Yes, I know, there is no racism in Brazil (cough, cough), so I'm sure that comment had absolutely no racist undertones whatsoever and was an innocent jab at a celebrity. But when I was living there, I succumbed to pressure from friends who insisted I also had "cabelo ruim" and I decided to have escova progressiva, which is a special Brazilian chemical process to straighten hair that involves a mixture of battery acid, embalming fluid, cobra venom, and the tears of midgets that has been blessed by an Umbanda priestess.

Between the humidity and my hair's rebellious nature, the results lasted all of 3 weeks instead of 3 months, and I'll probably grow a tumor the size of a volleyball in 10 years because of it. By the time my friends started teasing me again and trying to drag me to salons, I'd met a Brazilian woman who had alopecia universalis and had no hair anywhere, except for a lonely blonde mustache that she was oddly grateful to have because, hey, any hair -- even bad hair -- is better than no hair.

Nanja korya?!

2009-01-22T17:32:00.009+08:00

When I tell people about my time in São Paulo, what surprises them the most is discovering that the city is home to the largest Japanese community outside of Japan. It doesn't fit with their image of what a "Brazilian" is, but in the years between the turn of the 20th century and the start of WWII, tens of thousands of Japanese emigrated to Latin America, primarily to Brazil and to Peru.

Rather than being safe havens from the discrimination and hostility that Japanese-Americans experienced during WWII in the United States, Latin American countries acted against their Japanese populations in varying degrees.

The internments during this period are a well-documented and shameful part of American history, but few realize how far the reach of the US government's anti-Japanese fervor extended.

Brazil banned Japanese newspapers and the teaching of Japanese, but Peru, in acknowledging the growin g resentment directed at successful Japanese in the country, reached an agreement with the US government that allowed the forcible extradition of Japanese-Peruvians to US "alien detention camps."

After their "parole" from the camps, with few options available to them as the Peruvian government made repatriation nearly impossible, many were recruited by a food-processing plant in rural southern New Jersey: "Gentlemen, what have you to lose? You are not making any progress by remaining in camp--I say come out [to Seabrook Farms] and see it for yourself. We'll pay your transportation..."

Read more:

Telling the story of a Japanese-American community in Southern New Jersey

Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center

Obon the Jersey way

Passage from "America's Japanese Hostages"

How to spot a brasileira

2009-01-20T18:56:00.002+08:00

When I went out with my blonde and surgically enhanced roommate in São Paulo, people assumed she was the American and I was the Brazilian. Even though she spoke fluent Portuguese and I stumbled over proper names like Rua Guarará (those r's close together kill me), they insisted we were pulling one over on them.

To them, she represented in large part what they imagined an American woman to be: flaxen-haired with big tits but minus the obesity that plagues many of us. And I'm a thin brunette whose B-cup chest would cause my roommate to comment that her plastic surgeon was one of the best in Brazil, she could get a discount for me on the surgery, and she'd take care of me during the recovery.

It's true, some segments of the American population have a distinct look or style about them. I experienced a bit of reverse culture shock while I was home and found myself among so many sloppily dressed, Ugg-clad, zaftig women. It wasn't their weight that was distinctive -- there are plenty of fat Chinese in Hong Kong -- but that they simply weren't put together in the way that many Europeans, South Americans and Asians of all sizes are.

Americans are built for comfort, not style, and you can often spot one abroad because they look so boring.

Spotting a Brazilian woman can be easy at times, since each year the government provides all citizens with new green-and-yellow "Brasil" and local football club T-shirts as part of its Camiseta Família program, but when they're hiding their national pride, it can be troublesome because the country is largely a mix of descendants of African slaves, Italians, Germans, Japanese, Lebanese, and Portuguese. And they don't all have big asses, although if my former roommate had her way, they would. She can get you a good deal on butt implants. Just ask.

But there's one way to spot a brasileira that has yet to fail me: these ridiculous Frankenstein platform boots. I first spotted them on a trip to Brazil in October 2006, as I waited in the check-in line at Newark Airport, and everywhere I've traveled since -- from the streets of London to a hotel in Hong Kong -- I've come across Brazilian women sporting these monstrosities.

Each time I spot them, I bet the person I'm with if the wearer is Brazilian, and each time, I've been right. I have never seen them on women of any other nationality, which I concede might be confirmation bias, and I don't understand why they're so damn popular in Brazil. Anyone?

I'm cold. Put on a sweater.

2009-01-19T03:42:00.007+08:00

Last winter was the coldest in 40 years in Hong Kong, with temperatures going down to 43F and the cold spell lasting 24 days. For those from my home state of New Jersey, currently experiencing wind chills as low as -10F, I know that sounds balmy, but very few apartment buildings in Hong Kong are insulated or have central heating, so it's often colder indoors than outside. At least Americans have a refuge in their homes. We're at the mercy of five layers of clothing and space heaters.

But this winter has been mild, and it reached close to 80 degrees yesterday. I wouldn't have known that from the temperature in my apartment, where it felt about 50, and I dressed for a cooler day but ended up stripping down to a tank top and carrying around my jacket and sweater.

So, it was strange to step into my building's elevator (I usually take the steps) and see tips for staying warm, when I was more concerned with staying cool.

The building management loves to put up advice and passive-aggressive admonitions, and I think they might secretly be Jewish mothers. Although I'm confused as to how much clothing I'm supposed to wear and exactly how much layering causes one to comically fall over.

You can't teach a Sneetch

2009-01-18T21:20:00.009+08:00

On Sunday, most domestic helpers in Hong Kong have the day off, and the Filipina maids take over areas of Central to hang out en masse -- doing each other's hair in makeshift salons, playing Bingo with dried beans as markers, and gossiping behind temporary cardboard walls about their employers. I pass them on my way to the subway at IFC, like I did today, when I went to Causeway Bay to buy a convection oven at Sogo.

At Causeway Bay on Sundays, I have one thought: "Why are there so many stout Filipina lesbians with badly dyed mullets?" Because that's where that particular set seems to spend the day, and it's where most of the Indonesian maids, often dressed in trendy Western clothes and colorful hijabs, congregate.

Today, some of the Indonesian maids joined a protest against Israel's attack on the Gaza Strip. It had the highest police presence I've seen of any protest in Causeway Bay, and officers were curtly telling gawkers to move along.

There's no point to offering an in-depth opinion on what's unfolding in the Middle East, because while Dr. Seuss ultimately concluded that you can teach a Sneetch, I don't have the same level of faith in mankind.

Mostly what I took away from the protest and what I've taken away from online and TV coverage of the violence is: How do you distinguish those who support Israel because they hate Arabs and those who support the Palestinians because they hate Jews from those who genuinely care about either side absent of a personal agenda?

Home for the Holidays: The In-Laws Part I

2009-01-12T22:56:00.001+08:00

After 15 years of knowing my in-laws, from the punk rock teenager I once was to the bitter adult I now am, I've grown to love them like you grow to love that recurring bout of genital warts. We have nothing in common, other than our liberal politics, and we clash often, but they're my special STD I acquired from my husband and I love the bastards for all of the drama they've provided me.

I get on well with my father-in-law, who is the type of detached father figure I wish I had instead of the type of detached father figure I did have, and we have our own joke about a diner on Staten Island, wherein I ask, "Where's the King's Arms?" and he answers, "Up the queen's ass!"

But if my mother-in-law could define me in one word, it would be "succubus." I stole her precious Italian prince from her and made him, literally made him with the controlling power of my soul-devouring pussy, into an atheist who doesn't want kids and dared to move farther than 10 blocks away from the family compound in Shaolin.

To her, every choice I make in life is an overt attempt to invalidate her own life choices, and she's always trying to convince me to play by the rules she's set for herself, mostly to base your entire existence around a husband and children. That worked for her for years, but as she's discovered, if you've done your job right (her son), your kids don't need you anymore and if you've done your job wrong (her daughter), they'll need you in ways that drive you mad and make you wish they'd go away.

When I got married for the very unromantic reason of losing my newspaper job and needing health insurance, I didn't change my last name. It wasn't a purposeful feminist stand, a kick in the balls to the continually emasculated American male. It just never occurred to me that I would change my name, much like it never occurred to me that someday I'd get married at all, have cutey babies or grow up to be a princess-ballerina.

It was off my radar, and no one in my family ever encouraged me to follow those traditionally girly dreams. Mostly, they wanted me to be a shit-kicking lawyer who'd one day help them in their destined-to-be-bitter divorces, and their efforts went into making me the first person in our very large family to attend college.

Not changing my name sent my mother-in-law into an apoplectic fit. She considered it my way of judging her own decision to become a proper Mrs. All she wanted was a compliant daughter-in-law who liked to browse Lladro figurines at Fortunoff and make gravy for Sunday night family dinners.

After the wedding, she sent a congratulatory card addressed to "Mrs. NOT O'KISTIC," even though she knew that wasn't my name and wasn't going to be my name. It was a passive-aggressive slap in the face, her way of showing her displeasure with and disrespect of my choice.

I'm not a subtle person when angry -- you will feel the mighty blows of my hammer of self-righteousness -- so I wrote on the envelope "Return to sender, no such name" and put it in the mailbox. For her birthday, I addressed her card to "Ms. MAIDEN NAME." I was Ms. O'Kistic from then on. Point taken.

A couple of years ago, she started taking doctor-prescribed happy pills because, as she put it: "I used to be sad sometimes, but now I'm not." Because God forbid people experience and embrace the full spectrum of human emotions, including the anger, frustration, disappointment and sadness that the world can provoke in us.

Since then, she's seemed to have lost the ability to filter her thoughts before they leave her mouth, and now that her mind is on full display, you'd think the woman grew up in the corn fields of Nebraska rather than on the gritty streets of Brooklyn for as unworldly as she seems. So, going out with her during the holidays was... an experience.

When we went to the mall to take advantage of the meager sales, she got into an argument with the poor Hickory Farms kiosk girl: "This is the last day you're going to be in the mall and you're only discounting 30%? What's wrong with you?" As if this teenager were the gate-keeper to $1 smoked sausage logs if only my mother-in-law complained loudly enough. She walked away, still shaking her head and muttering about the paltry discount.

We took her to the Museum of Modern Art, where she loudly talked on her cell phone about tenant issues in her parents' apartment building (and was called out by guards for it) and made very loud comments to us like, "Oh, my God, is that a Monet? Oh, my God. It can't be. It... can't... be. But it is!" YOU MEAN THERE'S ART IN AN ART MUSEUM? GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.

After that, we went to see the tree in Rockefeller Center, which we found not by using our deductive reasoning skills of observing street signs and following the crowd being directed by police through barriers but by her asking everyone within earshot, "HOW DO WE GET TO ROCKEFELLER CENTER?" Once there, we stayed far enough away from her that no one thought we were together and thus would not try to mug what they thought were out-of-town rubes but close enough that we could keep an eye on her, in case she followed some random shiny object and got lost.

Each Christmas, after pleading with her not to, she compulsively buys clothes for me that she knows will all be returned to the misses section at Macy's. One year, she bought a bizarre sweater that came with a cape/scarf attached at the neckline, but this year, she went for a wardrobe that cried out, "I am a 40-year-old newly divorced woman who wants to participate in this cougar phenonemon I've heard so much about so I'm going to buy slightly risque silk shirts with a metal chain belt attached at the waist from Kohl's because isn't that what the kids are wearing?" I didn't take any of it with me.

But she bakes 20 pounds of Christmas cookies and ships them to Hong Kong, so I suppose I can't hate her that much.

American Gringa Gweilo: Pharmacies

2009-01-11T01:27:00.000+08:00

[This is the second part in a series of articles examining cultural differences between the United States, Brazil and Hong Kong, the three countries in which I've lived.]

I meant to post this a few weeks ago, when Hong Kong raised the avian flu alert from Code Tweety to Code Big Bird after infected chickens were found on a poultry farm. Since being hit with both SARS and bird flu, Hong Kong is rather paranoid about possible infectious diseases and seems to go into panic mode if even two elementary-school kids end up in the hospital with flu-like symptoms.

Elevators have signs on them to comfort riders that cooties are cleaned from the panels and doors every 2-4 hours, you can't wear a hat while going through customs at Hong Kong International Airport because there are automatic temperature readers to see if you're a bioterrorism attack waiting to happen, and people walk around with surgical masks on to not let the germs in (or the germs out, if they happen to have a run-of-the-mill cold and want to be considerate).

With the latest round of bird flu, my apartment building has posted warnings on precautions we should take, and the Korean fried chicken place wants to ensure customers that it's not using Chinese meat.

What does this have to do with pharmacies? Part of the problem in Hong Kong is that the smaller Chinese pharmacies (as opposed to the larger ones attached to a British-based drugstore) have no issues with doling out antibiotics without a prescription, leading to more drug-resistance strains. "I want Tamiflu!" Okay. "How about some Cipro?" Why the hell not?

They're not as regulated as in the United States, where you're treated as a common junkie or criminal and forced to hand over ID if you want an over-the-counter medication that will knock you unconscious for the duration of your illness. And when you need a basic medication, such as birth control pills or acne medication like Retin-A, you need to pay for an office visit to get a prescription (because everything requires a prescription) and cross your fingers that it's covered because if not, you'll be paying an amount far higher than the rest of the world.

Birth control pills are sold over-the-counter and at a cost of about US$15 for a month's supply in Hong Kong, and I routinely describe the symptoms of my latest illness to the local pharmacist at a chain drugstore and he helps me choose the appropriate medications, which cost considerably less than they do in the United States if you don't have a prescription drug plan.

Pharmacies in Brazil are similar to Hong Kong in how they operate. Most medications can be had without a prescription, more readily at some pharmacies than others, and birth control pills don't require one. When I was sick while living in Brazil, I'd go to the pharmacist as I do here, and she'd walk me through the store to find the appropriate over-the-counter medicines after giving me more potent ones from the pharmacy. Pharmacists in Hong Kong and in Brazil aren't pill counters, like ones are in the United States. They're viewed as legitimate experts in the health field and aren't beholden to god-like doctors for basic diagnoses.

So, while I might die of drug-resistant avian flu due to underregulated, lax pharmacies, at least I can get a real cold medication without being prejudged as a meth head and my name going in a database.

Dark horse or DOA: Will the Zeebo fail in Brazil?

2009-01-10T09:26:00.071+08:00

(UPDATED AUGUST 27: The Zeebo debuted in Rio on June 5, with a limited release, and reviews are not very positive so far. Some gamers are trying to be diplomatic out of respect for a "national" product, but none of the games gets a big thumbs up due to poor graphics and controls and slow load times. "Celular de mesa" or "tabletop cell phone" is being used as a description, and gamers are already mocking the inferior quality.

Tectoy finally released Resident Evil 4 [US$13] and Ridge Racer [US$7] after a 6-week delay, and if the comments on the company's blog are any indication, someone might want to start the Zeebo death pool. The comments mostly include words like "sad," "disappointment," and "shit", and criticisms like, "I want to shoot zombies, not Smurfs." They're outraged that the company is charging so much for an inferior mobile port when a pirated PS2 game of much higher quality costs significantly less.

There are also various problems that need to be worked out, such as the system crashing at random times and, weirdly, incorrect team colors and symbols in FIFA 2009.

Now that Zeebo Inc. has announced plans to expand into Mexico in a partnership with Telcel, Brazilians are extra pissed off because the Zeebo will be sold for US$50 less there and will come with additional features. They're also annoyed by comments from John Rizzo, the company's CEO, who brushed aside the massive amount of criticism of the console in Brazil by claiming it's only "hardcore gamers" who don't think the Zeebo is super-ZOMG-awesome. Rizzo went on to say that the woman who rejected him at a bar last weekend wasn't that hot anyway.

Based on comments on Mexican blogs and forums, Rizzo might want to stock up on sour-grape-flavored soda because it seems that Mexicans are even less enthused about the arrival of the Zeebo, since due to their proximity to the United States, they can buy newer consoles at a reasonable price.

At best, Brazilians are holding out hope that the console will show its true potential by its nationwide release in October -- but in an era where technology moves quickly, will anyone be around to care?)

In January, Gamasutra interviewed John Rizzo, the CEO of Zeebo Inc. It was an interesting article in that three months after official news of the console hit the media and only one month before the trial run of the system in an undisclosed Brazilian city was expected to occur (and didn't), even the head of the company seemed to have no idea what the current or long-term business plan was.

I first heard about Zeebo last January, when it was still in the planning phase and codenamed "Jeanie," from an old friend who worked for Tectoy Mobile in Brazil and moved with the project as it transtitioned into the San Diego office. He was coy about the subject, but he told me enough NDA-violating information that it piqued my curiosity. When I asked him what he thought about the Zeebo's chances of success, he answered, "We'll sell at least, hmmm, 100 in São Paulo." Not a lot of confidence.

I read and post to a couple of Brazilian gaming forums and most of my Brazilian friends are gamers to some extent, so I've gotten a lot of feedback about the system and about Tectoy (the Brazilian gaming company that owns 57% of Zeebo to Qualcomm's 43%) and the Brazilian gaming market in general, the kind of feedback that's absent in the English-language sites that have posted news about the Zeebo.

On those sites, Westerners praise the perceived innovation of the system, primarily as it's from a company in a developing nation where don't they still play with sticks and rocks for fun anyway, and they gush over how wonderful it is that even poor people in emerging markets can now share in the technology that those of us in developed nations have enjoyed for decades.

BRAZIL IS NOT RURAL SOMALIA, PEOPLE

It's rather insulting to treat Brazil like it's straight out of "The Gods Must Be Crazy." People aren't going to run around the streets of Rio in a frenzy because a Coca-Cola bottle fell from the heavens. In many places, Brazil is as modern as any Western nation, and in other places, even if the conditions are poor, the residents aren't living in a bubble.

They have access to the Internet, they have TVs, they have electronics stores... they know what's out there. Even if the existence of an Xbox 360 is completely irrelevant to their lives, it's ridiculous to assume they, particularly those in the younger generations, don't know what one is or don't know that the Zeebo is a technologically inferior and antiquated product.

INSULTING POTENTIAL CONSUMERS

In an interview with the Financial Times (23 March), Rizzo said: “Instead of the consumer having to take a bus and go to a favela [shanty town] to buy pirated software, they can sit on their couch, turn on the Zeebo console and buy directly from home."

What? Seriously? Now they're playing into the stereotypes that citizens of developed nations have of Brazil, like it's nothing but a lawless land of violence, drug trades and big ol' bumbuns bouncing along to funk carioca. Maybe MC Créu can write a baile funk jingle for them: "É Zeebo! É Zeebo nelas! Vambora, que vamo! Pra joga Zeebo tem que ter disposição. Pra joga Zeebo tem que ter habilidade."

Or I'm seeing a commercial set on a bus: Eu podia tá matando, eu podia tá roubando, mas tô aqui, vendendo esse primeiro console do Brasil-sil-sil-sil.

PIRACY IS ENTRENCHED

I'm not justifying piracy, but as someone who modded her Wii and bought countless pirated games in Brazil, I know that piracy is completely accepted in the country, even among the middle classes. You sure as hell don't have to travel to a slum for your pirating needs. I've even seen pirated PS2 games in places as random as pharmacies.

If the Zeebo is targeted to lower-income Brazilians who can't afford a current-generation console, there's a good chance they already live in a favela and can walk outside of their door to buy pirated software. They won't feel any guilt about it and are only looking out for their wallets.

If they don't live in one, they don't need to make an epic trek of dodging bullets and glue-sniffing children to go to one to buy a modded PS2. And they won't feel any guilt about it either because they're looking out for their wallets too.

So, why would you buy a Zeebo and pay US$10 to download a mobile port when you can walk down the street and pay US$5 for Final Fantasy XII?

Oh, and those dreaded favelas? In them are LAN houses, where for US$1-2/hour, these poor children who surely will be wowed by Quake 1 are, um, already playing PC games like Half-Life, GTA, Call of Duty and Counter-Strike. And they're probably pirated copies too.

"CRUEL BRAZILIAN REALITY" USED TO SELL CONSOLE

In a more recent Gamasutra interview, Reinaldo Normand, one of the creators of the Zeebo said, "For us, Quake or Tekken 2, well, we played that ten years ago, right? But for most of these guys, they might be playing for the first time." Except Normand is Brazilian, meaning if he played it 10 years ago, so did other Brazilians... Brazilians who aren't exactly going to get down on their knees and thank Deus for an outdated game.

I'm not sure who should be more insulted by this campaign of disinformation: Brazilians who are being portrayed as if they're all extras from "City of God" or the Western press who are being treated as if they're too ignorant and uncurious to do a little research because this conveniently fits into their notion of what a "third-worlder" is.

They're also being disingenuous in presenting the cost of consoles in Brazil. Contrary to what they're telling English-speaking audiences, only an official Wii costs US$1000 (and that's due to ridiculous protectionist import taxes). A modded, black market one costs about US$500 and, well, that's what everyone buys. Still expensive but it's not that unrealistically out of reach, particularly when a Zeebo is expected to retail for R$499-599 (US$240-288).

That's not an "affordable" cost in Brazil for the market they're allegedly targeting. It's ridiculously expensive for what the console offers, on par with releasing the Atari Jaguar for US$1500 in Western markets today, and it only seems like a decent alternative cost-wise because of the jacked-up, protectionist import taxes in the country -- taxes that Tectoy itself, I'm told, helped to usher in decades ago. If Brazil were open to competition, Tectoy would be lucky to give away Zeebos, but with the market as closed as it is, they can charge a fortune for outdated technology and it's Brazilians who suffer for it. This console is hardly a "favor" to them.

It's interesting to note how differently they present the console to Brazilian and Western audiences.

SO, WHO IS THE TARGET MARKET?

Honestly, I have no idea.

If you're so poor you can't afford a PS2, which is the standard for consoles in Brazil, and instead have had to settle for a Polystation or Tectoy's Mega Drive 3 with 86 embedded games, I can't imagine that you can afford the more-expensive and untested Zeebo.

If you can afford a PS2, that's what you'll buy, especially now that Sony has announced a price cut and will be manufacturing the system in Brazil, because that's what you know, that's what your friends have, and that's what will provide the most bang for your buck with its extensive library.

And if you're in a position to spend a little more, you'll buy a Wii, which is also aimed at the casual-gaming market and, like the PS2, is a known quantity and has a huge catalog of games. Or you'll buy a DS or PSP. All of which you can mod.

The company says 10-13-year-olds are the target demographic, but by that age, kids are aware of what consoles are out there and which ones are "cool." If they said this was more of a "My First Wii-Clone Console" for kids from 4-8 and drastically lowered the price, I could see it being a success.

It seems what they're banking on is the idea that Brazilians, as a whole, feel unethical and embarrassed about buying pirated games and have just been waiting for the opportunity to buy a console with affordable legitimate ones, no matter how poor the selection. I think they're seriously underestimating the acceptability of piracy in the country -- or at least having the option to pirate games, if that's what one chooses.

PRIDE IN NATIONAL PRODUCT?

But, I know what you're saying, isn't there pride in having a national product? Such as something put together by teams in close to 10 countries can be considered "national."

Some Americans will buy American goods no matter how poorly produced, but I don't know how many Brazilians will say (or can afford to say), "Huh, I can buy the modded version of a well-known foreign video game system with an extensive library of cheap pirated games for R$350 or I can spend R$499 on the unproven video game system of a Brazilian company who has spent the past few years supporting themselves with karaoke machines and 10,000 versions of the Master System. Yes, I'll go with Tectoy!"

There's patriotism and then there's stupidity, and if you're earning a monthly salary equivalent to US$500, there's not a lot of room for stupidity -- even if you can spread the cost over 72 convenient payments at Casas Bahia.

And don't underestimate brand-name appeal.

The best jeans I've ever owned were from Brazilian stores, but most Brazilians I know think Gap jeans are the greatest, even though they're poorly made and expensive. But it's American and has a cachet that most Brazilian stores don't. Gap means you've made it. Imported body sprays from Victoria's Secret means you've made it. A PS2 or PS3, an Xbox or Xbox 360, or a Wii is a sign you've made it.

A Zeebo will, unless it pulls off a successful marketing campaign and adds features that are unique to the system, be a sign that your parents just don't love you very much.

LACK OF MARKETING

And that's part of the problem: Where is the marketing for the console? Well, other than the current campaign to encourage consumers to buy a Zeebo so they won't get shot going to buy a PS2.

I've heard from friends that Tectoy's marketing is notoriously bad, and on gaming forums, even those who would like to see the console succeed are slowly losing faith in it. To give you an example, Tectoy released to the Brazilian media a demo video of an upcoming in-house game for the Zeebo (Zeebo Extreme) using unlicensed music from The Strokes. So, a company bragging about its console being anti-piracy and pro-copyright apparently doesn't believe in extending those rights to musicians.

Besides that, if you weren't looking for information, you wouldn't find it.

The Zeebo was unveiled to journalists in Brazil back in November, and since then, there's been little news about it from Tectoy, even though it's had an official release in Rio. I guess you could forgive journalists for their lack of interest, since the console was presented by its Brazilian creator with all of the enthusiasm of a mildly depressed housewife with a Xanax addiction.

If you look at Tectoy's blog, where employees ostensibly are meant to highlight the awesomeness of the company to consumers and get them excited about new releases, the posts about their "revolutionary" system have been sporadic and almost all are links to outside sources who scooped them on their own news.

There's a reason for the negative maxim "Brasileiros são uma praga" ("Brazilians are a plague") when it comes to the Internet, because Brazilians love new technology and they will flock to it and sing its praises. But they haven't been given a chance, and I have to wonder if that's because even Tectoy doesn't have faith in this console or they just don't know how to market it. Or if, as some Brazilian gamers and investors have speculated, this isn't so much about selling a console as it is about generating royalties from their patent.

DELIVERY SYSTEM

The console is innovative in its delivery system, even if the 3G network is still bad in most areas -- but I question how long Zeebo can afford to subsidize users' free access to the network, especially if the console doesn't take off.

I'm guessing that once they have users hooked and if they add support for online multiplayer, they'll start introducing tiered plans, something that Rizzo seemed to hint at in an interview.

It's true that online distribution allows for the development of games like World of Goo and with larger studios afraid to stray too far from past successes, this model encourages smaller teams and more risk taking, and I think that's what the industry needs.

But in Brazil, like much of the world outside of the US, there isn't the same culture of buying goods online -- people generally prefer to exchange cash for a product in hand -- and I don't know how well it'll go over that you (apparently) have to repurchase deleted games. Will people in countries like Brazil and India accept the concept of essentially leasing games rather than owning them? I have serious doubts.

INCENTIVE TO BUY GAMES?

Another problem with the Zeebo is that casual gamers don't buy as many games as hardcore gamers. Wii might be the best-selling console but how many owners have more than Wii Sports and Wii Play? Price is an issue for casual gamers, but for many of them, they simply don't need the latest games.

For a good portion of Brazilians who own PS2s, many of them care about one game: Winning Eleven. They have their weekend soccer championships with their friends, and that's all they need from the system.

At release, Zeebo will come with six games either stored in the memory or available for download: Super Action Hero 3D, Brain Training, Need For Speed Carbon, Prey, Quake, and FIFA 2009. A handful of others, almost all mobile ports, will be available at release.

The soccer game alone, especially for a lower-middle-class family, would provide enough replayability for many owners that there wouldn't be much incentive to buy new releases unless they offer something truly unique (e.g., the ability to play online).

On the other hand, even though its library is currently stocked with mobile ports and a rather uninspired original game from Tectoy itself, it could have the potential to become an indie developer's dream (or shovelware dumping ground). And I think that's where the key to its success lies, in attracting local indie developers (like the makers of Taikodom and Capoeira Legends), but how freely will they distribute the SDK and how easy will the game-approval process be to navigate?

WHAT NEED IS IT FILLING?

But what's the purpose of the Zeebo? Is it really a video game system designed to attract "the next billion gamers"? Or a vanity project for its creators?

Is it for developers, who are always searching for new ways to cripple technology and to force consumers to use their products as they see fit in the name of preventing piracy? Is it a new way for Qualcomm to earn money through licensing?

Or is it little more than a cynical ploy to generate profit through advertising to a captive and largely unsavvy and uneducated market?

"Enxergamos um potencial muito grande para advertising nesta plataforma. Vamos comercializar espaço, sim", afirmou Fernando Fischer.

"We see a very huge potential for advertising on this platform. We're going to sell space, yes," confirmed Fernando Fischer, the CEO of Tectoy.

I guess if Tectoy ever hires a marketing department, someday we'll know, huh?

***An analysis of Zeebo in the Chinese market
***Here's a great analysis on the Zeebo's chances in India: Why the Zeebo Will Fail in India

tokyo game show, unicom, omobile, china mobile, bpl, Tata Indicom, hutch, vodafone, airtel, aircel, mtnl

yappa, japan, mike yuen, gdc, gdc2009, games conference, lagc

Feliz Natal

2008-12-25T01:07:00.003+08:00

After a 15-hour flight from Hong Kong, which mercifully had no crying babies but did have yammering, annoying Christian youth returning from a mission trip, I'm back in the United States for my first Christmas home in three years. I almost didn't make it due to an ear infection and the perfectly rational fear that with my luck, my eardrum would rupture on the plane. It didn't, and here I am, in lovely Staten Island, staying with the in-laws and watching "Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood" with them.

I'll write more about my trip later, but until then, here's a video that embodies the Christmas spirit of my Brooklyn-born mother-in-law:

2008 Asia Game Show

2008-12-23T01:26:00.018+08:00

"Despite the global economic downturn, we congratulate and appreciate you for supporting the game industry. Your presence at Asia Game Show reinforces our belief that gaming is 'recession-neutral' and that gaming offers psychological pleasure without spending much money." -- Official pamphlet for the show

Lured by a cosplay competition and demos of upcoming PS3 games, my husband and I made the trek to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai for the 2008 Asia Game Show.

The theme of the show was, "We know we're entering tough economic times and people around the world are reevaluating their priorities in light of massive layoffs and restructuring, but instead of looking at the overall cost of a game, think of the high rate of entertainment return provided by 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Also: Hot Asian chicks holding PSPs."

The crowd seemed to be split 50/50 between gamers wanting to play the latest or upcoming releases and pervy photographers wanting to add to their cosplay collection. I was there for both, but if you're a female, it's slightly less skeevy to take photos of young girls in revealing anime costumes. Slightly.

Asian photographers scare me, though. I don't know what it is about combining women and technology, but you'd think Angelina Jolie herself was hawking an inexpensive Korean-made memory card in front of an electric cherry blossom tree.

If I worked in the marketing department of a video game developer and wanted to expand my fan base, I'd create a campaign geared toward the underserved market of 30-something women whose biological clocks are ticking but who are disappointed at the quality of men in the dating pool who won't give them a second glance because they're starting to get crow's feet and a non-procreative bulge in the tummy.

The commercial opens with an average-looking woman of average weight in average clothing walking down a nondescript Main Street, staring longingly at every baby that passes by in a stroller. Men pass by as well but don't look at her at all. She stops in front of a generic video game store, shrugs her shoulders and goes in, intent on buying a portable console to fill her free time, of which she has scads as she is without a husband to provide her with a passel of adoring children.

After she makes her purchase but before leaving the store, she removes the console from its packaging and puts in a game. As she exits the store with the console in her hands, suddenly she's transported to a bustling street in NYC or San Francisco and as she passes and makes eye contact with a lovably nerdy-but-hip guy who thinks his passive-aggressive manipulation makes him a nice guy, it switches to his viewpoint.

Now she's transformed into a gorgeous model with huge tits and the latest style of clothing, and as she makes her way toward home, the nerdy guy and other men start following her. The commercial ends with a crowd of horny men shuffling after her zombie-style, shouting, "Booooooooooobies," and fades to: "XYZ Developer: We'll put a baby in your belly."

Although I realized that the guys weren't staring at me -- even though I was looking fabulous, of course -- but at my entry-level DSLR and they were undoubtedly silently judging me. "Look at that XTi. She doesn't even have an external flash. How does she plan on taking good photos without one? God, I bet she's got her ISO set to 400. And what's with the 50mm prime? Jesus." They had a point.

The place was crawling with these camera commandos, the amateur photographers who come dressed and equipped like they're about to raid a terrorist enclave. They've sporting cargo pants and carrying step stools so they can better use their $3,000 lenses to zoom in for colposcopy-level close-ups. Or to take photos of congratulatory flower arrangements. If I didn't think one already existed, I'd start a blog called, "Why The Fuck Are You Photographing That?"

Because of these, I couldn't get close to most of the girls/women dressed up for the cosplay competition, nor did I stick around for the Miss AGS 2008 contest (in which Charrmy, Easter and Kiddie were contestants), so I had to content myself with taking photos of the neglected male cosplayers. Woe is the man who loves to dress up but who gets no love from the masses. Because, you know, it is a little creepy. And not hot. So, here's my brief tribute to this unsung hero and his sword:

After walking around the convention center and taking photos of people dressed up as characters I have absolutely no familiarity with, I headed back toward the 15,000-square-foot Sony exhibition area to see what games were coming out for the PS3 or were already out for the system but I hadn't played yet.

Microsoft didn't have a presence at the show, which wasn't that disappointing because I no longer own an Xbox, mostly because I like hardware that doesn't frequently commit suicide and I'm not that into online gaming.

Now that Sony has unveiled PlayStation Home, though, should the urge ever hit me to have a harem of sad, lonely men wanting to hump my avatar, I have that option. Sony had an area decorated as a living room devoted to this abortion of a "community-based service," but they wouldn't give me the rubber ducky consolation prize if I didn't stand in line to play around with Home.

So I moved onto the 18-and-over room hidden behind a black curtain. I'm not sure why the 50 Cent game was out for anyone to play, but Resident Evil 5, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Killzone 2, Fallout 3, and Resistance 2 weren't. I didn't get a chance to play any of the games in there because it was so crowded and the Sony people were overly generous in the time allotted to each person (including the guy who spent about 5 minutes breaking apart crates in RE5), but I've already beaten Fallout 3 and only care about the release of Resident Evil 5.

After I left the adults-only section and was preparing to leave, I played a few other titles, most notably WipeoutHD (which made me not want it after contemplating downloading it when it finally became available on PSN Asia), Crash Commando (which spurred my husband to download it, so he could go online and insult teenage opponents to vent his daily frustrations), Soul Calibur IV (playable Darth Vader was lame but I hate all things Star Wars because I'm empty on the inside), and Street Fighter IV (yes, of course, the American character is obese).

The day ended with us having dinner at Thai Hut and walking toward the subway to go home, along the way passing by the numerous clubs with mamasans and prostitutes trying to solicit clients to go inside. A woman in front of what might have been a club and what might have actually been a new restaurant called out to us, "Want some Thai food?" And I answered, "No, thanks, I've already eaten." I'm still not sure which one of us was serious and which one was trying to be funny.

American Gringa Gweilo: Domestic helpers

2008-12-21T16:39:00.001+08:00

[This is the first part in a series of articles examining cultural differences between the United States, Brazil and Hong Kong, the three countries in which I've lived.]

In the 1920s, my great-grandmother was a maid at a boarding house in New Jersey. She ended up marrying the owner's son, but her mother-in-law never accepted her because she was "just the help."

At that time, before most Americans were considered part of the middle classes, the large gap between those with money and those without encouraged a deep cultural divide of labor and identity. Middle-class women felt entitled to domestic help because to do the mundane tasks of maintaining a household were largely beneath them, but once more and more Americans moved into the middle-class and there was a smaller (native-born) base from which to hire helpers, having domestic servants was in many ways considered a form of exploitation.

These days, how many Americans can afford a housekeeper? A nanny? A driver? How many Americans would feel completely comfortable even having one or admitting to it in mixed company without expecting a little criticism thrown their way?

But in many countries, if you indeed have a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of, it's expected that you'll hire workers to take care of the drudgery of your existence.

When I visited friends in Brazil for the first time, before making the move there, their domestic helper spent an average of 8 hours/day, 3 days/week making their small apartment spotless. She washed the bathroom before and after I took a shower. She made my bed. She made lunch for me, usually rice and beans, steak and a tomato salad.

It made me uncomfortable because I know how poorly my great-grandmother was treated but that in the hierarchy of the time, she was expected to do everything with a smile and to act as if she were grateful to be in the presence of her "betters," who had deigned to throw the poor wretch some scraps.

After moving to Brazil and in with a roommate, I had a housekeeper, and I hated it. It wasn't my choice, she came with the apartment. She'd clean for 7 hours/day, twice a week, doing everything from bleaching the hell out of the kitchen to washing, ironing and folding my underwear. None of that Merry Maids, sweep-the-dust-under-your-media-stand, in-and-out-in-2-hours bullshit. And she earned, from us, about US$50.

On an intellectual level, I understood that Brazil is a developing nation with a mostly un/undereducated, unskilled population and that with few opportunities to rise to the middle-class and to take on more professional work, there are only a handful of avenues of legitimate employment for a Brazilian in the lower classes to pursue.

On a personal level, it made my skin crawl to witness firsthand the kind of hierarchy that my great-grandmother was forced to live under, with everyone knowing their "place" and not fighting it.

So, it was, as you can imagine, with great enthusiasm I learned that housekeepers are cheap and plentiful in Hong Kong, perhaps even more so than in Brazil, and I was getting one whether I liked it or not because my husband wanted one.

But most part-time maids work illegally and if we employed a full-time foreign housekeeper, due to laws in Hong Kong to protect domestic servants, we'd have to let her live with us, provide vacation and medical, etc. While I'm more on the slovenly end of the spectrum, not so much that I need someone following me around all and cleaning up my messes.

In our neighborhood, there are a few housekeeping businesses advertising their services. They place photos of the women in the storefront, along with statistics on their skills: cooking, cleaning, childcare. Kind of like Final Fantasy rankings for maids.

Instead of choosing one of them, though, my husband's Chinese co-worker offered his maid as a loaner to clean our apartment every two weeks. For five hours of work, excluding laundry and cooking, she supplements her full-time salary with about US$40. The average monthly salary for a live-in maid, who is expected to take care of every aspect of running a household including picking up the kids from school, is about US$450.

Much like my intellectual rationalization of hiring domestic help in Brazil, I know there are few ways that an Indonesian or Filipina woman can legitimately earn that much money, but I can't help but feel guilty that this woman is spending her Saturday afternoon cleaning out my cat's shit from his litterbox instead of being at home in the Philippines playing with her kids. We try to sneak in a few extra dollars when we pay her, but she always gives it back.

At least in Brazil, I came away with the impression that most Brazilians treat their domestic helper as a part of the family. Maybe the poor relations of the family, but unlike in the United States, it didn't seem a strictly business arrangement. In Asian countries, though, foreign maids are all-too-often treated inhumanely -- forced to sleep on the kitchen floor, deprived of food, beaten, raped or even killed. While Hong Kong does offer more protection for helpers, I've seen employers berating their helpers in supermarkets for getting the wrong brand of toilet paper, and the country even banned a famous singer from hiring maids.