Half a World Away: Part I

Listening: Excuse me please, one more drink. Could you make it strong, 'cause I don't need to think? She broke my heart. My grace is gone. One more drink and I'll move on.
What's my problem? I already miss Asia.

It's the evil holiday's eve and I'm back in the United States. I'm at the comfortable home of two good friends in San Jose, California, which is warmer than Shanghai and cooler than Hong Kong. Since I've been back, I have had In 'n' Out burger and some barbecue. I've had salads and vegetables, two things that I had been missing during my time in Asia.

Jet lag has hit me pretty bad this time around. I wake up at weird times and am sleepy at weird times. Sometimes I just can't seem to keep my eyes open. I have tried coffee. But the thing that seems to be lagging the most is my mind. My mind is stuck in Asia. I still want to be there with its lack of good veg or not.

In a few hours, I'll be heading to the airport to catch a flight to Canada. Honestly, I wish I had a flight back to China instead.

What is it about Asia that has a hold on me? Europe doesn't have the hold on me like Asia does. Asia fills me with more of a feeling of belonging than most places that I have ever been.

Shanghai, in particular, made me feel most at home. As I walked through the streets, I looked like everyone else for the first time in my life. When I talked to locals, they were surprisingly western. There were expats and domestic transplants. There were Americans, Canadians, Taiwanese, Shanghai ren(people), Sichuan ren, Filipinos. But unlike New York City, I looked like the majority instead of yet another minority who couldn't possibly be a real "American."

In Shanghai, I couldn't possibly be an American. Where was I really from? All I could tell people then was that I come from Guandong ren. But walking down the street, I was just one of them. It was amazing.

So, for right now, I'm in America. I have plots, designs and plans to move to Shanghai in the works. I have been networking with chefs and restaurant owners in Shanghai, and they're waiting for my CV(resume) to arrive in their e-mail. The current plan is to build up some start up cash in Boston over the next six or eight months so I can land in Shanghai and be out of work for a few months as I search for a job.

The next year will be a kind of limbo. I hope to save up at least six or eight thousand dollars to land with, or else it will be a quick trip.

Well, it's time for me to go. If you're waiting for details on my China trip, I will be blogging retroactively once I get back to Boston. For now, I'll continue to post in the present tense, and as I am about to go hang out with family, I am presently tense.

Day 2: Scene Stealers

Listening:
What's my problem?

I woke up at seven in the morning, an hour improvement from the day before, still a little bit disappointed that Isa wasn't in town. I was really hoping that I wouldn't have to use my guidebook at all. Since I had gotten in on a Thursday, and my first full day was a Friday, I was hoping, at least to spend the weekend with her. I mean, come on. I'm visiting from half a world away. Exactly a twelve hour time difference. I make time for my friends when they come into town.

Anyhow, by the time I had cleaned up, checked e-mail and looked for a hostel to move to for the next night, it was nine and the streets were bustling. Even when I woke up, I knew what I wanted to have for breakfast. I had to have another one of those scallion pancakes. This time, I wanted to get one with an egg on it, as I had seen some other people get the day before. Unfortunately, when I got there, they were nowhere to be found. Their cart was there, chained up to where it was the day before, but no one was cooking. So, instead , I went to the place on the corner.

Vendor: "Ni yao shem me?" (What would you like?)
Me: "Err... Bao zi?" (Err... buns?)
Vendor: "Ni yao jiu rou bao? Cai bao?" (You want pork buns? Veg buns?)
Me: "Umm... Liang ge jiu rou, yi ge cai." (Umm... two pork, one veg)

The vendor then picked up the steamer that contained the sticky rice shumai.

Me: "Wo ye yao liang ge zhe ge dong xi." (I also want two of these things.)

It cost me around twelve Yuan (just under two dollars) for all of my bounty.


Jiu rou bao


Sticky rice shumai

-up at 7 out by 9
-dumplings & rice wonton
-Nanjing Rd
-Checked out Phoenix Hostel
-Renmin Park
-Marriage Market
-Museum of Contemporary Art
-Walk to Jing An
-Potstickers on the way on Nanjing Rd
-Jing An
-Walk to Tian Zi Fang
-Swing dancing empty
-Hip hop dancing competition
-Shopping at Tian Zi Fang (Popigist)
-Swing Dancing (Orchid, Sabrina, Ken, Eriko, Iris)
-Dinner at Chopsticks (Sichuan)
-House of Blues & Jazz
-Asleep at 3AM

Day 1: Where Are You?

Listening: When I look at my china girl, I could pretend that nothing really meant too much.
What's my problem? China's convenient stores don't work like SE Asia's.

When I opened my eyes, the sun was already starting to rise. It was six in the morning. I was in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar room, in an unfamiliar city, in an unfamiliar country. I wrapped the heavy duvet around me and buried my head in the pillow.

"Mrrrrraaaaawwwwwwhhhhhhhh," I emoted, muffled by the pillow, as I stretched my limbs.

After a few moments of staring at the ceiling, I stepped out of bed and looked out the window. I was lucky. My room faced the river, so I could see all of the crazy architecture on the Pudong side of the river. At six in the morning, though, all of the shops on the street below were still all shuttered up.

It's amazing how light can change a place. The previous night, the streets seemed sketchy, dark and ominous. During the daytime, the streets just seemed like streets, like it was anywhere. People were walking to get to and from work. There was no litter. Cars drove by.

After cleaning up and checking my e-mail, I was out the door by eight o'clock.

Throughout all of my travels, I have always been able to locate foreign, pay as you go SIM chips for my cell phones in convenience stores. Whether it be at 7-Eleven, Lawson's, Circle K, AM/PM, FamilyMart or Kwik Stop, I've always been able to find them there. I must have walked into eight or ten convenience stores and I couldn't for the life of me get a prepaid SIM card.

Now it was important that I get this SIM. Flashback to a year and a half ago. I was in Hoi An, Vietnam, where, after my German roomie moved on, I decided to split a room with a gorgeous girl from Shanghai. Over the past year and a half, we had kept in sporadically; a message here, a message there. As I tell most of the people that I meet on the trail, I told her that if I were ever in the area, I would make a concerted effort to go and see her.

This has worked many times before. One time, I had a two night layover in London on my way to Amsterdam to see my pal Ed. I used that layover to see my friend Lianne, who I had met in Cinque Terre a few years earlier. Two summers ago, I took my one day off from work and flew to New York City to meet up with my friend Jade from Australia who was passing through. So, for me, a big part of coming to Shanghai was to reconnect with the friend that I made in Vietnam.

As I searched frantically for a SIM card, I went in and out of shops until I got to East Nanjing Road. Nanjing Road is one of the biggest high end (with mid and low end too) shopping roads in all of China. They have everything from Cartier and Tag Heuer to Louis Vuitton and Gucci. The eastern most six or so blocks are all pedestrian, so there are crowds of people, little trollies to take pedestrians from one end of the pedestrian arcade to the other.

It was there that I ducked into a China Mobile store. I thought that, of course, I would be able to get a pre-paid SIM card there. No dice. Apparently, in order to get a SIM card there, you need to sign up for a plan. In order to sign up for a plan, you need to have a resident identification card. I didn't want a plan and I didn't have a resident identification card, so I was shit out of luck.

As I walked down East Nanjing Road, I was still on the lookout for SIM card, but all I saw were Giordano's, Adidas and Starbucks.

The day that I was in San Jose, before coming to China, I was at a Japanese dollar store with Linh. In Boston, and in San Jose, I had been looking for travel chopsticks to take with me, because I knew that I would be eating a lot of street food. I would be eating at a lot of places where I would be using those crappy, wood, break-apart chopsticks. I just wanted a better pair to help me save the environment. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a good pair in the States.

However, as I walked down Nanjing Road, I spotted a Yunhong Chopsticks shop. Now, I knew nothing about this company. I knew nothing of the fact that I would see this shop name in almost every city that I visited. I also knew nothing of how to bargain in China. I also didn't realize how much more things cost on Nanjing Road than they do in other places.

So, I go into the Yunhong Chopstick shop and I see them. I see exactly what I had been looking for. These travel chopsticks were ebony and stainless steel. They came apart and the tips packed into the handles, so they were half the length when put away, and came with a ripstop nylon case on a carabiner. I knew that I had to have it.

In southeast Asia, I was used to bargaining out in the night markets or even in some of the malls where people were hawking black market goods. I never really shopped at any name brand stores, so I had no clue that I could have bargained. There was a price on the chopsticks, so I assumed that since there was a price written, that's the price it sold at. I later found out, not only was I wrong about having to pay a written price in a shop, but I found out that I probably paid way too much. I ended up paying a hundred and something renminbi (aka RMB or Yuan). It was the equivalent of around thirteen dollars. I justify buying the chopsticks at that price several ways.

1) They were EXACTLY what I was looking for.
2) I'll NEVER have to buy another pair of travel chopsticks.
3) I was ignorant.
4) The chopsticks WERE made of ivory and stainless steel.
5) There was a pretty girl selling them to me.

That's right. I said it. There was a pretty girl in a business suit selling them to me. All of her fellow shop girls didn't want to talk to the lao wai (foreigner), because either my Mandarin was just so bar or they were ashamed of their English. But, the cute girl muddled along in broken English and I muddled along in broken Mandarin. I think if I could have tipped her (literally and figuratively), I would have.

It was also good that I bought the chopsticks from that girl, because after I paid, I was able to ask her where I could find a SIM card for my phone. She pointed me down a street off of Nanjing Road, doing her best to motion with her hands on where and how far to go.

Still on my way, I stopped into two convenience stores just to be given the same answer that they didn't carry SIM cards. After a few blocks, I came across an intersection that had a number of street food vendors. There were people selling food out of carts and some that had corner store fronts. I asked one of the vendors where I could find a SIM card and she pointed me down the street parallel with Nanjing Road, at a tiny little storefront.

Inside the storefront were all sorts of telephone parts, from old dusty rotary phones to old Nokia's. It looked like a phone graveyard the size of a shoebox. Inside the shop, there was a skinny old man along with an old woman who was fast asleep on a chair. As I walked up, the old man greeted me with a toothy smile that was black around the edges. He wore a thin light blue, almost white, button down shirt, a pair of dirty chinos, and plastic sandals. He seemed affable.

Note: My Mandarin is awful. I do not speak standard Mandarin. My grammar and syntax is all fucked up. So, what I was saying to this guy was followed by strange looks from him and effort on his part to figure out what I was saying.

Me: "Ni you mei you... uhh... SIM card?" (Do you have... uhhh... SIM card?)
Him: (something I didn't understand in Mandarin.)

I pull out my phone, rip off the back plate and battery, and show him.

Him: "Ahhhh... You. You." (Ahhhh... I have it. I have it.)

He ducks under his counter display case of grossly outdated phones and pulls out a stack of square envelopes the size of CDs or DVDs. He looks through the stack and pulls one out. It says China Mobile on it.

Me: "Ji kuai?" (How much?)
Him: "Yi bai kuai." (One hundred Yuan)
Me: "Wo ke bu ke ye kan kan?" (Can I see it?)
Him: "Ke ye." (You can.)

I opened the enveloped, inspecting it carefully. It was printed with a price of a hundred RMB on it and didn't seem to be tampered with. I pulled out the card and popped out the chip and put it into my phone.

Me: "Wo yao kan kan zhe ke ye gong zuo." (I want to see if this will work.)

The phone works! So I immediately pull out Isa's phone number and call her.

Her: "Wei?" (Hello?)
Me: "Isa, It's Jason! I'm in Shanghai! What's going on?
Her: "Jason! I'm not in Shanghai right now. I had to leave town for work. I'll be back in a few day."
Me: "Aww, man! That sucks. So when do you think you'll be back?
Her: "Wednesday or Thursday."
Me: "Okay... Well, this is my number. Give me a call when you get back into town and we'll get together for dinner or something."
Her: "Okay. I talk to you in a few days."
Me: "Bye!"

Needless to say, I was a bit down about the fact that I wouldn't get a chance to see Isa. I had only planned on staying in Shanghai for four days, but I'll be damned if I get to Shanghai and I don't see her.

It's still morning, and I had my primary goal for the day out of the way, so my mind shifted to my constant goal: to sate my hunger. Being the guy who delves straight into the culture, I knew where I had to go. So, I paid the man with the mossy smile and the affable way about him and headed back to the crossroads where I saw the street vendors.

On one corner was a fruit vendor, another corner had someone with a cart selling, something I don't remember, but the money corner had a woman selling buns filled with pork or veg and shumai that was filled with sticky rice. If I walked just past the bun lady, there was a couple who were making fresh scallion pancakes.

At EXNE, we had scallion pancakes on the menu. The sous made the dough, put it through a pasta roller to roll it out as thin as humanly possible, brush it with oil, sprinkle on the scallions, roll it the short way so it looks like a long, long snake, then coil that to make a ball, and squish it to make a pancake.

The couple in Shanghai had a different method. The wife would have the dough in a snake the size of my arm, girth and length. She would then cut off pieces the size of my fist. With each of these fist size dough pieces, she would use the heel of her hand to smear the dough into pieces that were three inches wide by five or six inches long and flat. She would brush with oil and sprinkle with scallions, roll it up so it looked like a cinnamon bun and would hand it to her man. He would then take the scallion cinnamon bun, put it on the griddle and smush it with a weight that looked like a giant boardgame piece. It seemed so much easier and quicker than what was happening at EXNE.


The scallion pancake stand


The strips and scallion cinnamon buns


Pressing the pancakes


First breakfast in China? Fuck yeah!

That scallion pancake cost me one and a half Yuan. Let's break that down, shall we? There are six and a half yuan to a dollar. That pretty much makes that scallion pancake cost less than a quarter. It was probably the best quarter that I have ever spent.

From there, I walked back to Nanjing Road and walked the promenade all of the way down to its end where it meets People's Square and People's Park. On the way there, though, I saw all sorts of crazy things. There was one store that had a huge saltwater aquarium with sea turtles and sharks. There were people dancing with fans for exercise, and everyone was taking pictures.


The view down Nanjing Road


Strange people dancing


Turtle in the aquarium

A lot of the time, the way I approach cities is that I will just wander aimlessly. Maybe not completely aimlessly, but I won't really say to myself, that I have to go somewhere. I spent a good few hours wandering around People's Park. The park itself is huge. It has green areas, museums, restaurants, an amusement park and sitting areas. It even has metro stop entrances all around it. At one part of the park there were at least a hundred children and accompanying parents feeding pigeons. It was pretty cute.


Kids feeding pigeons

I entered People's park on the north side and exited on the south side, and after consulting my book, I figured that I would go try to check out Cybermart. It was supposed to be a good spot to pick up cheap electronics. I was kind of in the market for a new phone, but I really didn't want to spend all that much on it.

I look at the map in my Rough Guide to China, and try to figure out where it is. It looks pretty self explanatory, but when I get there, it's nowhere to be found. I keep walking around and walking around thinking that I might have missed it. I walked around until I found myself at Xintiandi.

Xintiandi is a little area with high end shops and restaurants that are housed in buildings designed to emulate the shikumen style of building from the 1860s. I had been walking and looking for Cybermart for quite some time, so I decided to take a load off, enjoy some coffee, and do a little reading.

It was a beautiful day outside. There were people all over the place and I was happy that the coffee house had an outdoor seating area. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to my book or my guidebook. I spent most of my time watching people and trying to listen in to what they were saying. For every conversation in Mandarin, I heard at least one in English or French.

I found one conversation particularly interesting. It was between an older white guy and a younger Russian woman. It had seemed as if they were on their first date. It was totally sketchy and lecherous. I think that the only question in my mind about the little date was whether there was some payola involved.

After a good hour or so, I decided that it was time to get a move on. So, I headed east towards the old city. I had no real intention of going into the old city. I just kind of wanted to go into that general direction, because it was just south of where my hotel was.

On my way there, I found what I had been looking for and nothing that I had been looking for. Cybermart. That's right. Cybermart had moved, and it just so happened that I walked right by it on the way to the old city. Since I was still in the market for a new cell phone, I walked in. Immediately, I was accosted by vendors. People are trying to wave you over to their booth. People are guiding you over by hand. It's a lot like Panthip shopping plaza in Bangkok. You almost feel dirty the way they're trying to usher you over and sell you stuff. They don't even know what you want or need. They just want to bring you over in case they have something you want.

Cybermart is split up into four or so floors. So, I went up to the cell phone floor. Let me tell you something, there is a lot of crap out there. There are a lot of crappy knock offs out there. You know, things that say "Sumsang," "Nokeea," and "Marola." I knew that if I was going to buy a new cell phone, I would want it to be a smart phone with the Android operating system. That meant that I needed to buy a real thing, not a knock off. It turns out that the real ones cost even more in China than they do in the States, so I bugged out among all of the grabbing hands telling me that they would give me a special price.

When I finally got to the old city, I was thoroughly disappointed. Sure, there was a lot of cool architecture, but it had all been converted into one giant tourist trap. There were hundreds of vendors all selling the same crap. And when I say crap, I mean, craaaaaaaaaap. If this crap was measured in terms of equine crap, this was no pony crap. This was full on clydesdale monster crap. It was here that I first uttered the words that I would say regularly throughout my trip, "Who buys this crap?"

As I made my way into the center of the old town, I found myself in the City God's temple. It was a pretty impressive functioning temple in the middle of the city. What impressed me most about this temple was that it had a Buddha for every birth year. I think that there were around seventy of them, at least, and like the Chinese zodiac, it goes in cycles. I know that there are more than a dozen of them, so I don't remember exactly how long the cycle is. There were some very cool ones, and some that were rather milktoast.


City God's Temple


One of the cooler Buddhas


The Buddha of my year

From there, it was an easy jump to see Yu Yuan Garden. Yu Yuan is a classic Ming Dynasty garden. What's extraordinary to me about this garden is how big it is despite the fact that it's in the middle of the city. It's not like People's Park where it's big and open. It's more of a garden of chambers. There are gates and doorways that lead to open spaces with either water features, rock sculptures, trees, or green area. There are pavilions to sit in, fish to feed, places to feed your desire for quiet contemplation. I was constantly surprised by how big the garden was. I felt like it was the never ending chain of gardens. I heard that during the height of the summer, Yu Yuan is packed, and it's body to body (and not in a good way). When I was there, there were people there, but it wasn't by any means crowded. I think I hit it just at the right time.


A pavilion at Yu Yuan


Some of the stonework in the paths of Yu Yuan


Roof detailing


Tell me this isn't awesome.





After I got out of Yu Yuan, I was crazy hungry. I knew that there were supposed to be really good xiao chi (small eats) in the old city, but my guide book wasn't really all that helpful in getting me to them. I saw a sign for soup dumplings so I immediately went in. When I got there, there were no soup dumplings to be found. I was kind of irritated, but I was so hungry that I stuck around. I ended up ordering some other boiled dumplings there, but in reality I probably should have left.


Meh dumplings.

After the snack, I was really zonked. It was around five in the afternoon, so I retired to my hotel to take a brief nap. It was totally what I needed, but when I woke up, I was hungry again. So, I walked back down Nanjing Road, hoping to find something tasty. I walked a long time, and found myself near the West Nanjing Road metro stop. Over there, there were a bunch of restaurants that all looked affordable. It turns out that during my time in Shanghai, I would spend a great deal of time in this area, but this night, I made a bad choice.

I looked for a place that had a menu that I liked and that had a relatively busy dining room. It ended up being a noodle bar. I don't even remember what I got there. I was so meh about it.

What was excellent was the walk back to the hotel. By the time I was finished, the sun had finally set. In fact, it had taken me so long to figure out where and what I wanted to eat in addition to eating slow, that it was about nine at night before I was finished. It was dark out, but as you walk down Nanjing Road, you get the feeling that you're in Vegas. The lights coupled with the architecture is, in a word awesome, and not in a cheesy way.



The crappy thing about walking down Nanjing Road at this time of night is that you get harassed. I had read the guidebook before stepping off the plane, so I knew all of the scams. Just on the walk home, on the pedestrian promenade, a couple of girls came and begged for food, though they didn't look poor or homeless at all, two sets of other girls tried to get me to go drink coffee or tea with them to "practice English," and three guys tried to get me to go with them to see girls for a "sex massage." It was unbelievable.

By the time I got back to the hotel, it was half past ten and I was beat. I spent a lot of time walking that day and I still hadn't adjusted to the time zone. So, even though it was a Friday, I was spent.

Day 0: Turbulant Landing

Listening: Stay on the streets of this town and they'll be carving you up alright. They say you got to stay hungry. Hey, baby, I'm just about starving tonight.

What's my problem? I'm afraid of the dark?

It was dark when I arrived in Shanghai. Customs was kind of a joke. Not to say that they just let anyone breeze by, but for a strict communist regime, I expected to at least have my bags opened is not a body cavity search. Well, I wasn't expecting a body cavity search, but even at passport control there was at least one hottie telling people to move along.

At the baggage carousel, I encountered a middle aged white guy wearing a Red Sox cap. Apparently, he was on my same flight, and I used this opportunity to knock the rust off of my typical icebreaker of, "So, where you from?"

It turned out that he was from Southie but he worked in Michigan. Small world. It was a pretty good ease into a place where I knew I wouldn't feel at ease. Apparently, he had a woman "friend" who was a local and was going to see her. I know that I have woman friends in various countries, but when I hear that a middle aged white guy has a woman "friend" in a foreign country, it automatically throws up a red flag in my mind. It's not that he was the typical overweight, balding, poorly dressed middle aged white man in khakis and sneakers. He was a respectably good looking middle aged white man in jeans and a button-down shirt in smart shoes. Even though he had a baseball cap on, I could tell he had a full head of hair, but that was neither here nor there. The red flag went up, and once a flag goes up, I tend to let the ruling on the field stand.

When we got out of customs, we parted ways. I immediately looked for the bank that was partnered with my bank in the States. I found out that I could withdraw money from those ATMs without any service charges. I would only have to deal with the current day's foreign exchange rate.

Travel Tip: When traveling abroad, go to your bank and find out if they have any partner banks in the country that you're traveling to. It can save you tons on transaction fees. It's also a good idea to notify your bank as to your international travel plans so they don't freeze your account for potential fraud.

The problem was that I had the bank name listed on a piece of paper deep in my pack. I knew that the bank had the word "Construction" in the name, but, as I quickly found out, there is more than one bank in China that incorporates the word "Construction" in it. I didn't know that. So I go to the first ATM with the word "Construction" on it, ICBC or International Construction Bank of China. I put in my ATM card and it tells me that it can't give me any money. I'm like, "what the hell?!?" I tried it three times to no avail.

There was another ATM next to the ICBC ATM, so I sucked it up and used my other ATM card in the other ATM. The fact that my primary ATM card couldn't even pull out cash, let alone pull out cash without a transaction fee worried me, so I pulled out the maximum that I could get.

When I get out to the cab stand, I see the guy from Southie again. He says that his woman "friend" lives in Puxi (west of the Huangpu River). I thought that I was going to Pudong (east of the river). He asked me if I wanted to share a cab and that we could drop me off first and then him. However, since that red flag was still there, I opted out. I knew nothing about Shanghai other than the cursory knowledge I picked up from my Rough Guide.

I hate taking taxis in places that I'm unfamiliar with. There's so much potential to be literally and figuratively taken for a ride. I had my hotel details printed out in both Chines and in English and showed the cab stand attendant the paper. The cab driver and the attendant exchanged words, and the paper was handed back to me and I in turn handed it to the cab driver when I entered the cab. He started driving, but after twenty feet or so, he stopped, popped out of the cab and went back to the attendant to, only what I could assume, ask him a question about how to get there.

The roads between Shanghai's Pudong International Airport and The Bund are virtually empty at half past midnight. We flew long the freeway on fly overs and elevated roads, watching the bright lamp post pass me by, not only from in front of me, but from the roads beneath me.

A few times in the journey, the taxi driver asked me, I think, little questions on how to get to my hotel. I was damned if I knew, but I used one of the few phrases that has stuck in my head from my three years of Mandarin classes, "Dui bu qi. Wo ting bu dong. (I'm sorry, I don't understand.)"

When we did finally pull up to the hotel, I figured out that the straight shot that we drove was, in fact, the right way to be going. The only misgiving that I had was that the trip was about a third more expensive than I anticipated. It was late. I was hungry, and I had a large enough stack of Maos in my pocket, that I let it go. On top of that, my guidebook was two years old. As I found out, China changes very rapidly.

Now, when I got out of the cab, I immediately thought to myself, "What have I gotten myself into?" The area around my hotel, when I looked around, seemed rather desolate. There were large, four lane streets, but not a lot of lights. The lone light source that I saw from the corner that my hotel was on was my hotel and the convenient store next door, which, conveniently, there was an entrance into right from the lobby.

When I went to check in, the lobby desk was empty. There was a man in a suit sitting at the public use computer, playing cards, rockin' a cigarette that needed to be ashed five drags ago. Immediately, he snapped up off the stool, dropping his butt into the ashtray, and ran behind the desk.

He greeted me in Mandarin.

"Check in?" I said.

He looked confused.

"Umm... reservation? "

I pulled out my printout from agoda.com that had all of my check in information.

"Ah. Hao, hao. (Right, right) Check. In."

As he pulls up my reservation in the computer, a rather attractive girl in a black business suit appears out of nowhere and makes her way behind the desk. She takes my passport and processes it with the scanner and asks me for the first time, but far from the last time over my trip, where my entry point was. See, it seems that the person at passport control didn't really stamp hard enough, so the Pudong details weren't really legible. I must have had to answer that question at least twenty times when checking into hotels and hostels.

Traveler Tip: Always check your entry and exit stamps when you go through passport control. If they miss-stamp your passport with the wrong date or people can't verify your entry and exit, you're the one liable. If someone stamps you with the wrong date and your visa is "expired" because of that date, you might get booted from the country.

After I checked in, I'm brought up to my room. It's small, as promised on the internet, but it's enough for me. It's a hell of a lot more luxurious than any of the other places that I stayed during the rest of my travels. The guy from check in leaves me and I look around the room. My room was supposed to have an in-room safe, but I couldn't seem to find it. I always book my first few nights in a comfortable room with an in-room safe so that I can adjust to the new time zone without having to worry about other people in the room with me and the safe so that I can spend the first few days with most of my valuables locked up free to roam about the new environment with only cash and ID in my pocket.

When I figured out that there was no in-room safe, I went back down to reception to ask where it was. The people at reception didn't understand what I was asking for, so we turned to the computer. Luckily, I knew that Google knows all and that it has a translator. So I typed the word "safe." Then he typed back asking me if I thought that the hotel was "unsafe." I reworded my question. I told him via Google translator that agoda.com said that there would be a safe locker or safe box in the room that I could keep things in. Then there was the "A-ha!" moment in his brain. He told me that there were no in-room safes, but if I wanted to keep anything at the front desk, it would be perfectly safe there. I declined.

Upon returning to my room, I unpacked, locked up my Pacsafe to the shower door handle with the towel draped over it, re-packed and headed back downstairs to fill my incredibly empty stomach. I asked if there were any places still serving food around the hotel. He pointed me up the street, the dark sketchy street.

Reluctantly, I started walking. To be honest, I was a little creeped out. There was no traffic on the road. There really wasn't anyone walking on the streets, save for a couple of groups of drunk kids (as opposed to winos). Lamp posts flickered at times, and storefronts were closed up. Aside from the convenient store at my hotel, I found two other convenient stores (none of which had local sim cards), a 24 hour fast food noodle shop and a KFC. I was unimpressed with the selection after four blocks, so I kept walking. It just seemed to get bleaker and bleaker. So, I turned around, went back to my hotel and walked a few blocks perpendicular to the street I was walking on. Nothing. So, I resigned myself to going to the fast food noodle joint, because I'll be damned if I'm going to support KFC's takeover of the world. That, and bums LOVE to crash at KFCs, at least in China.

That first meal in China wasn't bad... but it sure wasn't good. It was a beef noodle soup that was lacking in any real flavor. Sure, it was cheap and it filled the tank, but you knew that there was no love going into this food. The girls working the register were just short of falling asleep, as was the rest of the staff if they weren't playing cards. The one guy who was in there when I walked in finished as I was waiting for my food. I was the lone man in a restaurant, something I aspire to never be.

By the time I got back to my room, it was half past two in the morning. I survived, what I thought, was the sketchiness of the street, but was still a little bit wound up. So, to the convenient store, I went. One beer down the hatch and nighty-night.

Day 0.5 - Can't a Guy Get a Break?

Listening: Ships may never leave the dock, but it don't matter, but it don't matter. Ticks may never hear a tock, but it don't matter, but it don't matter.
What's my problem? I've got bad wing-person luck.

Well, I'm on my long haul flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong where I'll be laid over for a couple of hours before continuing on to Shanghai. The flight is almost over. I have just over two hours left to go before we land. So far, I have used my twelve hours airborne rather well. I've slept a little. I watched "Iron Man II," "The Hurt Locker," and "Cyrus." And I started reading Lost on Planet China.

The food, this time around, was a little sub-par compared with the past flight that I had with Cathay Pacific. The worst part about it was the fact that I was so hungry that I scarfed it all down with a quickness. To tell you the truth, I'm still hungry and I'm debating getting a free cup o' noodles that you can ask for.

It's amazing how parched you get on long haul flights. I've been drinking water like a madman since the fourth hour in the air. I started off with a gin bloody mary and had some South African beer with lunch, but after that it was just tea, water and some airborne. An hour or so ago, I sat back in the galley and sucked down four glasses of water.

My flight to San Jose, which was also somewhat of a long haul flight was less than what I expected. For the first time in years, I flew Jet Blue for a leg that was longer than the distance between Nantucket and JFK International Airport. I remember Jet Blue being a really good flight. And I have to say that I have definitely had worse. However, there were several things that made it kind of crappy.

The first thing that happened was that my little personal entertainment module was on the fritz. It was on the fritz for my entire row. See, that was one of the reasons that I picked the Jet Blue flight to San Jose instead of Delta. Reason number one was that it was a direct flight with no switching of planes and no layovers. Number two was that I would spend four hours traveling instead of eight. Finally, reason number three is that I thought that I might actually have the entertainment of my choice on the plane.

As you can see, reason number three didn't really happen. I just kind of crashed out, wrote a blog and re-read the section of my Rough Guide on Shanghai (and I still feel thoroughly ill-prepared). I also watched over the shoulders of the people diagonally in front of me as the San Francisco Giants, yet again, shamed the Texas Rangers. Occasionally, over my headphones, I would hear cheers whenever someone scored, but, overall, I was in a sad little cocoon next to a guy who was neither interesting nor talkative. Someone around me, though, was dropping major ass throughout the entire four hour flight.

As far as reason number two goes, well, that almost went out the window. We were supposed to take off at 4:25PM. We didn't start boarding until 4:45PM. By the time we were all in our seats, it was probably around 5:00PM. We start backing out of the gate when the lights in the cabin goes dark and all of the TVs shut off. Apparently, the auxiliary generator went kaput and we had to go back to the gate so that someone could fix it. They assured us that the generator on the fritz is never used during flight, and only on the ground or at the gate. I have to say that it did kind of worry me, but what're you going to do? You can't just unbuckle and say, "fuck dis shit, I'm outta here and I want my money back too!"

But all in all, I did get to San Jose just fine. I chilled with my pals and had some cocktails and some bibimbap.

As far as this current flight goes, it's much the same as it pertains to the people that I'm sitting near. I was actually originally ticketed to sit in a middle seat, something that I despise. Luckily, the two guys on either side of me were together, and there was a third guy who had an aisle seat behind me. So I traded my middle seat for the aisle and I have to say that I was pretty happy about the decision. I like to walk around at least every three hours and crawling over people ain't my idea of a good time. I don't like other people's asses in my face, so I don't like putting my ass in others'.

But next to me are two, seemingly nice, but quiet, older Indian women. It seems like there are a lot of people on this flight who are Indian. I think that Hong Kong may be a big hub to get to Mumbai or Dehli or something.

Across the aisle from me is a VERY attractive girl, who I noticed in the gate area. What I didn't notice was that she had a little tag on her jacket that said, "Sister Lo, The Church of Jesus Christ for Latter Day Saints." I saw that tag when she sat down and it broke my heart. To top it all off, she had a bible that was three inches, by four inches by three inches. Fucker was thick, and looking over her shoulder, it was highlighted like a motherfucker. What leads people to try to be conversionists? Why can't the just be normal attractive girls that I can ooggle without being disgusted with both her AND myself?

Something that I've noticed on these two long haul flights that I have never noticed before.... No matter how short I am, my inside knee always aches after a little while. What I mean is that if I'm sitting in a seat to the left of the aisle, my left knee hurts, and if I sit to the right of the aisle, my right knee hurts. The fucked up thing about it is that I'm short. I have about a twenty eight inch inseam, if not shorter. I can only imagine if I were one of the guys that I know who are six foot or taller. How the hell do they do this without wanting to amputate their legs at the knee? I, for the most part, can stretch out my legs, but I bet that my pal Manni has his knees up to his chin. However, for some reason my inside knee still hurts (today it's the left knee).

A lot of people have been asking me lately if I'm excited to go to China. Sure, I'm excited. But my excitement this time around is quite different from my excitement when I traveled around Europe and when I traveled southeast Asia. I feel like this time I'm much more nervous and scared of what I may encounter. I have heard rumors about a lack of personal space. I have heard rumors of rudeness, but I have no real clue what I'll be encountering and how it will all affect me. Will I be turned off by the motherland? Will I feel violated by the lack of personal space? I have no clue. Will I have trouble getting from point A to point B without being able to speak or read Chinese? All of these things scare me. They're nothing like what I had dealt with on my other travels. The backpacker route has been relatively well worn in Europe and southeast Asia. Not so much in China. It is done, but it's not as easy as it is in other parts of the world. Keep in mind that it wasn't until recently that China really opened its borders to tourism, let alone budget tourism. Will I be able to hack it?

Anyhow, that's where I am with the traveling right now. I hope to post this when I get to Hong Kong, before I head off to Shanghai and maybe encounter the Great Firewall of China. So, if this is the last you hear from me, know that I'm hungry, parched and that my left knee hurts, but chances are that I'll be stuffed to the gills with dumplings in under six hours. Boo-yah, bitches.

ADDITION! - So, I'm in Hong Kong's airport and 60% of their food court is under construction. That means the remaining 40% is swamped. And THAT means that I don't have enough time to get a snack before I board. SONUVA..... I guess that really does mean I'm going hunting the second that I check into my hotel. So. Hungry. Must. Find. Food. Too bad I can't just gnaw on an air hostess.

For God's Sake, Smedley, Bow Your Head And Have Some Respect!

Listening: A moment of silence.
What's my problem? Good teachers die.


During my time in college, I had two professors that really impacted me. Two professors that to this day, I would still take a course from, despite my lacking use for college academia and classrooms. One is the everlastingly funny Jenny (formerly Jim) Boylan who I had the luxury of having for two semesters of creative writing workshops. The other is the now late, great, Charlie Bassett.

I learned of Charles Bassett's passing a couple of days after I left the island. With all of the chaos of getting a visa, packing, and seeing people that I hadn't seen in six months, I hadn't had time to properly memorialize him.

I remember my first day of class with him. The class, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, met in the basement of the library and it was a class that I had been trying to get into for a long time. It was a large classroom with desks arranged in a square with a larger desk at the head of the square closest to the blackboard.

All of us students were there waiting for the legendary Charles Bassett to make his entrance, I found myself wondering what was so good about this professor that everyone, whether they were an English or American Studies major or not, wanted to take his class. Had the college been in a third world country, one would have had to bribe a mid-level beauracrat with a handshake on the sly to get a spot in the class.

Now, enter Charles Bassett.

A stocky man wearing khakis, a khaki sports coat with patches on the elbows, white shirt, and a maroon knit tie, carrying a leather briefcase charged into the room. With haste, he throws his briefcase onto the desk, runs his hand up and down his perrenially red face a couple of times before running it through his mop of white hair and exhaling. Little did I know that this was how every one of his classes began.

From there he launches into his engaging discussion of modern American novelists while calling some by their last names and others the endearing name of "Smedley." His teaching style not only dropped mad amounts of knowledge into the beer-laden brains doing their best to wake up, but entertained in a style that could only be described as vaudeville. Bassett was a true raconteur, spinning insights, drawing in his audience and getting them to add to the story as well.

I have taken a number of Hemingway classes over the course of my educational career, but none were as enlightening or as fun as the one with Bassett. He got excited about concepts and prose and got us all excited too. He got whipped up into such a state where spittle would collect at the corners of his mouth and could occasionally project itself onto some poor, unsuspecting co-ed.

Bassett had a zest or a zeal for life that should be aspired to by anyone, anywhere. You could tell that he had a limited attention span for bullshit and a limitless love for beer. On any given evening you could have found him, not at home, but at the pub hanging out with his beloved students and the students who loved him as well.

He had infinite patience for the earnest (and the Ernest), having all of the time in the world for a student who needed help with, not only his class, but with the classes of his colleagues.

When I think of Charlie Bassett, I think of the type of educator that every educator should strive to be, and every student should have the opportunity to learn from. If everyone was as passionate about their chosen profession as Bassett was, the world would be a better place. People would accel in their fields and would raise the level of intellect and imagination of the world as a whole. Unfortunately, not every professor is like Bassett, and not everyone chases the dragon like he does.

So, those who were lucky enough to be in his jovial presence, and who were insightful enough to look past the lessons of the class and see the lessons of the man, it's now our obligation to carry his spirit with us. It's up to us now to live with the zeal that he did. It's our job to pass on the enthusiasm. It's up to us to try to be the next Charles Bassett, although it's a tough order to live up to that, whether we do it in the classroom or out in the world.

So, to Charles Bassett, I raise a pint... or two. I can only hope and aspire to live with the passion, the compassion and the insightfulness that he did.

T-4 Hours To Lift Off: My Kit.

Listening: Fear not when or fear not why. Fear not much while we're alive. Life is for living not living uptight until you're somewhere up in the sky.
What's my problem? Woke up too early, went back to sleep, woke up late, now no time to get sum'in to eat.

Coffee in hand. E'rything alright. Got a few hours b'fo my flight. Throwin' down blog. Showin' my kit. Makin' nine-to-fivers jealous li'l gits.

Well, that's a first. Never have rapped on a blog. If you're curious, I was channeling my inner Jay-Z.

It's 12:38 right......NOW. In a mere few hours, I'll be on a direct flight to San Jose. So, for both insurance purposes and to let people know what I'll be hauling around with me for the next couple of months, here we go with the kit list!


The Shoes: Keen Briggs Shoe, Keen Newport H2 Sandals, and POS flip flops I got in Ko Phangan.


The Pack: EMS Long Trail II. It's been a long time since they stopped producing this pack, but it's gotten me through a couple of trips around Europe, and a trip through southeast Asia. No reason to switch it up now.


Packing Cubes... An invaluable way of keeping your clothes and your pack organized.


(Starting in the upper left and going clockwise and then in) Mountainsmith Tour Pack (aka Man Purse), EMS Pack duffel, 3 Liter drybag, Pacsafe 100 Travel safe, pack towel, coolmax sleep sheet, laundry bag, money belt.


5 pairs EMS quick drying Techwick drawls, 2 pair Smartwool hiking socks, 2 pair Smartwool "Comfy" socks, 1 pair lightweight socks, 2 pair EMS convert pants, 1 pair Gap recruit pants, 1 pair imitation Billabong swim trunks, 1 pair Thai style pants.


1 EMS fleece vest, 1 North Face water resistant shell, 1 Oakley water resistant hoody, 1 Hot Chilli's long sleeved thermal, 1 Banana Republic synthetic long sleeved tee, 1 H&M long sleeved tee, 1 Hanes Tee, 1 blue H&M tee, 1 Express wrinkle free dress shirt, 1 cotton/linen shirt Ieva gave me, 1 Kenneth Cole short sleeved polo style shirt, 1 Mammut short sleeved button down shirt, 1 Patagonia short sleeved button down shirt.


Printed out pertinent info including copies of passport, copies if visa, airline reservations, hotel reservations, maps to US consulates, passports with extra photos and immunization card, 2 notebooks, 1 pair spare glasses, business cards in case, HOOT!, front pocket wallet with cards, chain wallet with cards & passport card, 3 Benjamins, keys, diver's logbook & safety chart, change pouches with foreign currency, Rough Guide to China and J. Maarten Troost's Lost on Planet China.


Universal plug adapter, voltage converter, USB SD card reader, Acer Aspire One & charger, Blackberry Pearl & charger, 160GB iPod Classic, Voda earbuds, USB AC adapter, Black Diamond Gizmo headlamp, 8GB, 4GB, & 32MB SDHC cards, Hong Kong plug adapter, watch, Canon extra battery & charger (not pictured: Canon SD890 IS Digital Elph & 8GB SDHC card)


Toiletries... Who really gives a fuck about this stuff? And I'm short on time.


Laundry gear.

This is all of the stuff staying in San Jose and going to Vancouver with me.


The trusty Samsonite carry-on.


Leather Jacket from Florence, Adidas wooly hat, Quicksilver sweater.


1 3-button black suit, 1 pin-stripe gray vest, 1 pair gray Gap pants, 1 skinny black tie, 1 silver DKNY tie, 1 Victorinox pocketwatch.


3 Button-down shirts.


1 Pair Gap jeans, 3 pair Old Navy cotton boxers, 4 random tee shirts, 1 pair EMS hiking socks, 1 pair Hanes cotton socks.


1 pair Timberland boots.

So that's everything I'm leaving the house with, including what I have on. There may be a few odds and ends missing like the Sharpie I keep in my pocket and my eyeglass cloth, but for the most part it's accurate. It's now 1:39PM. I plan on leaving the house in about a half hour. It's certainly coming down to it.

Oh yeah. If any of you have SKYPE, I just joined, so I can chat with people on the Acer that I'm bringing with me to China. So, send me your info and I'll link it up to you.

*Whew* I feel like I'm ready but I'm not ready to go. I have 36 hours or so of time in California before I take the twenty hour trip to Shanghai. I should be blogging before I head over the ocean. If I don't and if the Great Firewall of China stops me from blogging, don't panic until December 22nd.

And if I never return, remember: Life is short. Put tasty things in your mouth.

T-5 Days: Small Time Spies

Listening: I'm a failure at heart, but it seems I succeed when my heart feels the need to be helpful. It doesn't happen much and as a result, it's a rare thing.
What's my problem? Not being organized enough

You know in spy movies when a spy is on the run and he needs to make a break for the border? You know how he opens a drawer and pulls out five different passports and several different currencies? Well, I have one passport and several different currencies. Just five minutes ago, I opened up my secret spot that holds several envelopes and pouches. After sifting through the contents, I pulled out my Hong Kong and my Thai currencies for my trip. That's right. I have multiple currencies at hand. Yes, it's true that some of those said currencies no longer hold any value (Czech Krounas), and some countries' currencies hold very little value (Cambodian Riel), but I hold onto them for the hell of it.

I realize that it's not much, but some of these currencies are going to be enough to buy me snacks at airports in Hong Kong and Bangkok, two places that I will probably be going through during this trip (unless I decide to ditch the familiarity of Bangkok for the possibilities of Kuala Lumpur). So, I currently have 210HKD ($27.07 USD) and 220THB ($7.35 USD). See. Small time spy stuff. A real spy would at least have a thousand US dollars of each.

Anyhow, I have almost everything taken care of for my departure. My visa was a bit of an ordeal. See, I went down to New York City on Thursday to submit my passport to get my Chinese visa. I opted for the expedited service so that I could pick it up on Friday so I could come back to Boston on Saturday. It didn't work out so well. See, on the website, I recalled that the office was open from nine in the morning until half past noon, and then again from half past one until five in the evening. So, when they told me to pick the visa up on Friday after two in the afternoon, I thought that it would be fine if I picked it up at three. I didn't bother to look at the claim slip or the paper on the door to the consulate. It clearly stated that the hours were from nine in the morning until half past two in the afternoon. So, when I rolled up at three, the place was locked up tight. BASTARDS! It had already been a bad enough day with me locking my phone in my buddy's apartment and missing the train that would have gotten me into town right on time to meet my other friend for lunch. So, I did go back up to Boston on Saturday and trek back down on Monday to pick up my visa. Eight hours on a bus in one day. I guess it was just training for my flight to China, huh? It's not like I haven't done long haul flights before.

The good part about my trip to New York City was that I went and ate at Fatty Crab. I have to say that this was really kind of like a place that I would want to own and/or work at. It's a tiny joint in the West Village that serves Malaysian inspired food. It was loud, dark and rowdy. The bar had four seats. The rest of the dining room had a cramped thirty-two seats. You could see into the three-man line. They were unabashed by their use of pork and deep frying. They used clay pots. The music was loud and unapologetically contained explicit lyrics. Honestly, I think that Boston needs a place like it. A family joint, it is not. And there should be a place in the restaurant scene for that. Unabashedly adult.

I ordered the crispy fried pork and pickled watermelon salad to start with. It had six or seven one-inch cubes of deep fried pork belly, six or seven one-inch cubes of watermelon, smaller bits of pickled watermelon rind, and a salad of thai basil, cilantro, and scallion on top. I say, "Ga' DAMN! that was a good salad." I followed that up with the Lo Si Fun, which were short rice noodles with chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms in a really rich sauce. When I say rich, I mean RICH. It was so rich that I wasn't sure if I could finish it. It didn't help that they amused me, mid-coursed me and threw some dessert cake at me. I think everyone gets amused and desserted, but I got a very good mid-course of pickled roasted beets over a spicy mayo. At first, I wasn't so sure about the combination, but by the fourth bite, I was really digging it. And I don't even like beets all that much.

Anyhow, if you're in the NYC, go check out Fatty Crab. It's pretty cool. I almost think that I wasn't hip enough to be eating there. But I would try it anyways.

Well, it's late and I have to spend five hundred dollars on travel insurance tomorrow. It should be a good time. So cheers until next time.

Day 134: Last Sprint

Listening: They say time will make all this go away, but it's time that has taken my tomorrows and turned them into yesterdays. And once again that rising sun is droppin' on down and once again, you, my friend, are nowhere to be found.
What's my problem? Having no idea what it will be like in China.

I have a mere six more days before I make my exodus from this island and another fourteen before I skip the country. I can feel the tension in my shoulders slowly releasing and I feel like I can breathe a little easier.

I've been counting down the days until my exodus from the island for a long time, for almost half the season. I knew pretty quickly that it didn't feel right, but I am a man of my word and a man of commitment. So, I stayed. As I talk about leaving with glee, one of my friends seems disappointed in me. She loves the island. And, though she doesn't want to stay for the isolated, cold winters, she believes the simpler life is for her.

We had a brief conversation last night as we walked to a bar. I said that of the few things that I will miss about the island, one of them is the incredible view of the stars. She said that Nantucket was a beautiful place. And, to that, I said that a place can be beautiful and not for you at the same time. That's what this place is. It's beautiful and not for me at the same time. It's a place I would come to for a weekend to hang out at a beach and have a nice dinner, but I would never live here again unless something drastically changed in me. Nantucket, much like Lyon, France, was a beautiful place, but it just didn't sit well with me. It wasn't a place I wanted to spend much more than one single night.

The schedule of my life over the next couple of weeks is pretty rapid fire. This weekend is Hogtoberfest at American Seasons, which should be even more amazing than last year. Whole roasted pig's heads on the tables and charcuterie up the whazoo. Tuesday, one of my best friends will be picking me up from the ferry. Hopefully, I'll get to see his new digs and maybe his new pup. Wednesday is another one of my friends' birthday. Hopefully I'll get to buy her a drink or a plate of pig tails. Thursday, I'll be heading to NYC to apply for and hopefully receive my expedited visa to get into China. I'll be down there for a couple of days, hopefully having dinner with some friends and just relaxing. I think I'll be catching a ride back to Boston with a friend of mine, so I can go to the 10-course Dante's Inferno dinner on Sunday with a few friends. Between then and November first, I'll be preparing for my trip to China.

I don't have a whole lot left to do for the trip. I have to book my first few nights of hotel in Shanghai so I can adjust to the time zone without the potentially crazy backpackers. I also have to buy my travel insurance. As far as gear goes, I think I only need to buy a new headlamp and maybe a few new pairs of socks.

The tough part for me will be the actual packing. I'll have to pack for my trip around China in late fall where it might get chilly and maybe a couple of weeks in southeast Asia where it might get steamy (the way I like it) all in my backpack. Then, I will need a separate suitcase for my time in San Francisco and Vancouver for the holidays, where it will be downright cold and I will also need some dressy options. I'll be leaving the nicer stuff in my suitcase in San Francisco while I'm in China, but it really will be hell trying to decide what's going where with me. As always, everything that I take with me abroad needs to be relatively quick-drying, and it can't be anything I would cry about losing or ruining while I'm on the trail.

The new addition to the pack this time around will be a netbook. I was thinking about buying a netbook to bring with me just in case the great firewall of China blocks me out of my blog and my photo storage site. The thing is that when I get back home, I'll never use the netbook again, because I'm a Mac guy. When it came to light that my brother was looking to purchase a netbook, the plan came together. He would buy the netbook, I would pay for some of it and I would use it until I got home and hand it off to him. It's a great arrangement. If something happens to the netbook on the trail, I just owe him the money for it. I'll be able to keep a great record of my trip and it'll be small and light enough for me to carry around.

So for right now I'm looking at travel insurance, Shanghai hotels, and maybe a few cooking classes in China. There's a culinary tour in Xi'an for $60 (roughly) which takes you around the Muslim quarter and introduces you to the Chinese Muslim (Hui) cuisine. There are also a few different classes that I have found in Shanghai as well. I really want to take a more intense course, though. The questions are is these types of classes are offered, how much they cost, and if I can afford the time.

Something else I'm really excited about is that if I end up going back to Thailand where it will be warm, I'm planning on going to Wat Bang Phra, a Buddhist temple where they do old school Buddhist tattoos of protection. I feel that these days more than in the past, I could use a bit more protection. It would be a really cool experience to get the tattoo in the traditional bamboo needle. I'll probably get one either on the back of one of my shoulders like the one that Angelina Jolie has. I think that the other place I would consider getting it would be on my calf or my left forearm. It'll have to be one of the last things that I do in Thailand though, if I want to hang out at the beach. See, you can't really go in the ocean if you have a fresh tat. If I'm in Thailand I will most definitely be taking a dip in the crystal blue water and hanging out on the soft white sand.

It's funny. Last time I talked to my mother, she said that she thinks that I should plan a family vacation for the four of us. When I think about doing it, I know that there's no way it would ever happen. Between the facts that my father likes his concierge, and I like hostels with bars with cheap beer and people doing things on a shoestring, I don't think the accommodations would ever line up. My parents like things to be relatively planned out, to be like cattle led from one grazing area to another, whereas I like being able to dip at the drop of a dime. I left Hue, Vietnam a whole lot earlier than I thought I would. The same thing with Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I also like that I stayed longer in Hoi An, Vietnam and Cinque Terre, Italy. When you're with three other people, you don't get that freedom. And I don't think that my parents would buy the whole, "I'm going ahead... I'll meet you in the third city on the trail in a week...." thing. Four people means that four people have to have their bladders synchronized, their food desires coinciding, and their interests catered to. It's almost impossible to do that with one other person, to spend an entire backpacking trip with another person for more than a week and not take time off. Forget the fact that they'd have to carry their luggage on their back and wash their clothes in sinks. So, yeah, I don't see it happening.

Anyhow, I have to go. It's my last night off on the island and it's also prime rib night at Kitty Murtaugh's. I love me some prime rib.

Day 83: Estimates

Listening: It's like the more money we come across, the more problems we see.
What's my problem? Taking stock of potential expenses...

Flight Boston-San Fran/Jose RT: Delta Dollars=FREE!
Flight San Fran-Shanghai, Hong Kong-San Fran: $900
Flight Hong Kong-Bangkok RT: $200
Hostel/Hotel for 49 nights: (Avg $30/night) $1470
Food for 49 days: (Avg $25/day) $1225
General train/bus travel in-country: $750
Flight San Fran/Jose-Seattle: $250
Bus Seattle-Vancouver, B.C. RT: $55
--------------
Minimum Total: $4850

*OUCH*

Day 72: Need.

Listening: I saw her today at a reception. A glass of wine in her hand. I knew she would meet her connection. At her feet was her footloose man.
What's my problem? 200+ covers even on Mondays

Just a quick note. Maybe a longer one down the line. Sometimes, when it's been raining for the past three days off that you've had and you're not talking to anyone outside of your place of business and you're not stimulated intellectually, the world throws you what you need.

This morning, I woke up earlier than normal. I ran some errands. I was supposed to have breakfast with my pal, but he didn't respond to my text in time. So I went to Black Eyed Susan's on my own instead.

There was a pretty sizable crowd outside the joint. It is the apex of the season, and the people wandering around the streets are enough to make me go bonkers. But, as a solo diner, I was able to secure a seat at the bar rather quickly.

I was seated next to this other solo diner who struck up a conversation when she saw that I was reading a book about Bangkok. From there, the conversation just flowed. It was a solid intellectual conversation, probably my first in months. It was nice to just connect with a real person, if only for a couple of hours while we drank our coffee and nibbled on our scrambles.

It was a complete breath of fresh air. I wish I could find more like her on the island. Unfortunately, she's really only here for a week, though she owned a bike shop on the island for 12 or 14 years.

It would be nice to find more like her. Maybe I just need to find more solo diners. Where I would find them on a vacation island, I have no idea. See if they're reading a book and comment on it. Never know when someone's going take your mind off of tomorrow and put you in a good place in the present.

Day 65: Fit.

Listening: I’m getting weary waiting for the harbor lights to change. I’ve forgotten what I do it for but I tread water just the same.
What's my problem? I'm a bit of a square peg.

When I was six, I moved from outside of Boston to the suburbs of St. Louis. In St. Louis, I was the new Asian kid. I didn't fit in very well or find myself well-liked by the masses. When I was twelve, I went to a new school. It was a Catholic school. I was a devout Athiest. From there, I moved to Chicago and I was exposed to this whole multicultural world that I had never been exposed to. In Chicago, I had friends in all sorts of cliques, but I don't think I really ever belonged to any of them. After being there for five years, I became a city kid. And what did that city kid do? He went to a college in rural Maine. So I was the city kid in the rural college. I was also the kid who liked house music. I wasn't the kid who was jammin' on Phish or Dave Matthews Band. I came out of college with an English degree, and not so promptly got a job as a mutual fund accountant. I wasn't exactly the model of the accountant. I could get the job done though, and I hated doing it. When I finally got my head out of my ass and quit the day job to become a cook, I was finally doing what I loved and I was hanging out with people I wanted to hang out with. However I was still the cook who was a white collar worker. Now I'm a cook on an island full of rich people. In a kitchen where I fit but I don't.

The whole point of that bit of exposition is just to show you how I have never felt like I've belonged anywhere that I've been really. I think that the only places that I really have felt that I have belong were in hostels as I have been traveling. It just dawned on me that the reason I felt like I belonged there was because I was in a place full of other people who didn't really belong where they were. We were all people from different parts of the world who were in one place that wasn't home. We all belonged as people who didn't belong. Epiphany.

Sometimes I just want somewhere that I'm supposed to be. I want to feel like I belong somewhere. I don't feel like I fit anywhere. Sometimes it kills me. I want some full time cohorts. A mob. A gang. Even if just like Mao, a gang of four. It's tough being at the age I'm at and doing what I'm doing. Many of my friends are making bank and are settling down with marriages, houses and kids. Sometimes they say to me that they're envious of the life I live, cooking for a living and traveling the globe. Don't get me wrong. I love traveling the globe and I enjoy cooking. The money isn't great though and the security is even worse. The hours are so bad that the only people you meet are the people you work with or the people at other restaurants.

I like multi-dimensional people. I'm not saying that restaurant people aren't multi-dimensional, but if you get a bunch of us in the room together, the only things we talk about are restaurants, food, how much we drank or who we fucked and we got them to do. Even if two restaurant workers went to the same foreign country, they'll only talk about it for five minutes before it comes back to food, booze and fucking. I want to hang out more with people who bring other things to the table, and sometimes foray into the arena of food, booze and fucking. I want people who talk about books and far off places. I want to be down with people who want to talk about technology and agriculture (from here on out to be referred to as T&A). I want to talk with people who have different views on what art is, what's good for the body and good for the mind.

So, I'm looking forward to getting out again. China, China, China. I have already e-mailed my friend Isa in Shanghai and my friends Candy and Simon in Hong Kong, who I visited last time I was in Hong Kong. I've bought a Rough Guide book for China and have started researching on the internet whenever I get a chance to. I know that I'll be starting in Shanghai and I'll be going to Guangzhou. Suzhou is so close to Shanghai that I'll have to take a trip out there. What I'm debating is whether I try to get up to Xian to see the terra cotta warriors, or whether I should try to get up to Beijing, or whether I should stick to the southeast and then head back into Vietnam and Thailand where it'll be warmer. Really, I'm just looking forward to belonging where I don't belong again.

A bit about guidebooks... Frommer's sucks. Fodor's sucks. Both have their information really shoddily put together. It doesn't tell you really much at all about the cities or what besides the few touristy things there are to see. They're much more geared to the people who want to be spending $100+ for a hotel room every night. The Frommer's China book that I got from the library has the most awful maps as well. There is no scale as far as how far things are from each other and how long it takes to get from point A to point B. It just blows all of the way around.

Lonely Planet is, generally, a good guidebook. The problem with Lonely Planet is that everyone and their mother has the Lonely Planet guide to wherever from here to Timbuktu. This means that any hostel that's in it is going to be 90% booked up, and the prices will be much higher than in the book. The same goes for any restaurant in it as well. That's why I decided to go with the Rough Guide. If I really want to get the Lonely Planet (who by the way has EXCELLENT maps), I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find a knockoff copy of it somewhere along the way, or even just pick up one that someone has left at a hostel. I have looked at a few different Rough Guides and they have good information that's well organized, good maps and it's not just the touristy things.

I can't wait to book my airline tickets. Once I do that I REALLY know I'm going. I'm sure I'll book them sometime in September or maybe in October. I got me some time.

So, today I got a text message from the world's best ex-roomie, who sent me a package of treats and some DVDs to pass the time with. She said I should join Facebook finally. I'm still giving some thought to it. For a long time I have been adamantly against it. I don't know what Facebook would really do for me. Most people know where I am and what I'm doing. But, increasingly, other people are using it to tell other people where they are and what they're doing. Should I join and make it "easy" on myself, or should I fight the fight and fight for my friendships? I mean, if they're not connected to you outside of cyberspace, why should they be connected to you IN cyberspace? I have no idea the answer to this question. All I know is that I can't really think of any of my friends who AREN'T on Facebook. And it's not like I'd be posting pictures of me scantily clad taking hits from a beer bong and improperly fondling a senator's daughter. But who would be my "Facebook friends?" My real friends? People I met during my travels? Cooks? To join or not to join... Next thing you know I'll be twittering my face off about how I haven't shaved in a week and my face is itching. No one wants to know that shit.

Anyhow, I've been at the coffee house ALL DAY LONG, as it has been raining, yet again, on my day off. The woman at the counter just called her daughter "princess." I think she's setting her daughter up for massive disappointment or an ego that no one wants to deal with. Irresponsible parenting. I'm going to look at some airfares before I bounce out of here. The place is about to close anyways.

Day 58: Security

Listening: On a different day, if I was safe in my own skin, then I wouldn't feel so lost and so frightened. But this is today and I'm lost in my own skin. And I'm so lonely I don't even want to be with myself anymore.
What's my problem? I don't know where I'm going or how I'm going to get there.

Fifty eight days on the island. A third season. I really thought it would be better this year, but not so much. It's not to say that it's as bad as the place I was in Cambridge, but it's certainly not going as well as I would have hoped.

I think my winter in Cambridge shook my soul a little bit and I haven't quite recovered. It doesn't help that there's much more of an insider/outsider vibe in the kitchen this season, of which I'm on the cusp at best. Add onto that I'm not cooking my best for some reason and it becomes a pretty stressful workday.

Socially, well, I'm not all that social. I've been pocketing ninety percent of my take, doing my best to spend as little as possible. I have very limited internet access and no television. So I end up watching movies on my computer or reading. I've been reading so much that I've finished five of the seven books that I brought down to the island with me. For a while I was going through a book a week. If this continues, I'll have to be purchasing some new reading material.

Anyhow, lately I've been down a little bit thinking about my future. See, my parents are so paranoid about the future that they have passed part of it onto me to the point where sometimes I can't enjoy now because I'm too busy worrying about my future. I despise this. The only time I can really let go of it is when I'm traveling. I think that this is because when I'm traveling, the future is in such small increments of time. Where will I go tomorrow? Will I pick up and leave or will I stay another day? Should I push back my flight? I don't have to worry about my next paycheck or how I'm going to pay for my Depends when I'm old. I just have to worry about where I'm going to lay my head and what should I stuff my face with.

But I have been thinking lately.... I've been thinking about actually starting my life. How am I going to do it? What will I be doing? Where will I be? Who will I be with? How will I afford it? It sucks and I don't want to think about it. Furthermore, I have been wondering if I am, in fact, talented enough to achieve any of my potential dreams. And even if I am talented enough, will other people think I'm talented enough? How will I be able to pay to get myself off the ground?

Sometimes thinking about all of this makes it hard to keep the faith or believe in anything. Do you stay the course and potentially end up alone, broke and forgotten, or do you suck on the shotgun that is my parents' way of thinking of sell-outing-ness and security with a bland life? The ideas of either sickens me to the pit of my stomach. It makes me want to suck on the non-figurative shotgun at times (but we won't be doing that... the taste is too minerally, I'm guessing).

What do I do? What do I do?

Since I haven't really been able to find what I'm looking for in Boston, and certainly not on the island, I have been thinking about moving cities. The short list right now is San Francisco, Chicago, Portland and Seattle, mostly in that order. I can't say if I'll find what I'm looking for in any of those places, but I know that right now, Boston isn't working for me. Actually, ideally, I would be working outside of the country. How I would do that? I don't know.

Maybe I just need to go. They say that "Necessity is the mother of invention." Maybe I need to go and I need to feed myself, therefore I will find a job. If that were to happen, I know my parents would be freaking the fuck out. But the question, I would pose to them (and I am in a sense, because I know they read this) is would you rather have a child that is out there trying to make it happen, or a child who is sedentary and who wants to suck on the aforementioned shotgun? I just want to enjoy my life, including the times in between travel itineraries. But the eternal question, yet again, how will I afford those Depends?

On a subject that won't lead back to adult diapers, a number of people have told me that I should write a book. To that, I have told them that I wouldn't know what I would want to write about. I've been thinking about writing a book about leaving... leaving towns, cities, jobs, people, ideals.... That's my current thought. I even have an idea of an introduction which would summarize why they shouldn't listen to me about anything and who they should listen to. Maybe I'll start working on that.

Right now, I'm getting kicked out of the coffee shop. So, no more internet for me. Hope you enjoyed this foray back into blogging.

Day 7: Yeah... Barely Been Here A Week

Listening: I guess there's got to be a break in the monotony, but, Jesus, when it rains how it pours.
Throw on your clothes, the second side of Surfer Rosa, and you leave me. Yeah, you leave me.

What's my problem? Going through internet withdraw.

Just like on Lost I haplessly got marooned on an island. After being there for a good amount of time and weird stuff, I get off the island. Just when I think my life might return to normal, I have to willfully go back to the island.

So, here I am. Back on the island.

I'm back working on The People's Republic of Nantucket after an attempt to get back to working in America. I had every intention of staying at the job I started in January. I believed in the project, but found myself not being believed in and also not having respect for some of the workers. I was frustrated and disappointed. I dreaded waking up to go to work in the morning. I found myself wanting to stab my sous chef. I ran the image in my mind over and over, much like one of those delusions that Ally McBeal used to have.

When I arrived on the island, I was welcomed with warm hugs and high fives. It's really quite touching knowing that so many people are excited to work with me and see me again. The even better thing about the staff where I'm working is that there are only two new people in the kitchen (we have six people who are staples or repeat offenders), and there is only one new person in the front of the house (there are eleven staples/repeat offenders). All of them were psyched to see me. I can't even count the number of squealing "OH MY GOD"s I got over the past week.

Unlike the past couple of seasons, I'm not living in the staff housing above the restaurant. Instead, I am living on my own in the cottage behind the restaurant. I have to say that it's nice having my own space. Sometimes I wish I had someone living with me too, but I definitely don't miss sharing a room with another cook.

The downside to this is that there's no internet in the back cottage. The guys upstairs are stealing internet off of someone around the neighborhood, but due to the fact that the cottage is directly behind the walk-in refridgerator and at ground level, I don't get any wireless signal. They're thinking about getting internet upstairs, so I might be able to get a signal from them, but there's no guarantee.

Anyhow, I have to go back downstairs now. I have my first day off on Thursday. As it has been over the past couple of seasons, it's supposed to rain. To make it even better, the movie playing at the movie theater that night is going to be Sex In The City II. Yeah. Like I'll be going to see that. The good thing is that I'll probably just stay home or go to the coffee house. I plan on putting a rod in the closet of the cottage so I can hang my clothes. But other than that It's just reading and writing. It should be a good time. Maybe I'll make some use out of my Nantucket library card. They're almost as good as Netflix, and they're cheaper.

Anyhow, off to bed.

Self-Medication

Listening: You see the trouble with me; monkey see monkey do. There's no you in tomorrow. A better offer came through.

What's my problem? Only 10 more months 'til re-evaluation time.

I'm here at a coffee house in Davis Square with free wifi forcing myself to blog. I am forcing myself to write, because I haven't written much at all over the course of this month.

It's been a trying month. It's been a lot of work this month, and not fun work. I find myself not really enjoying myself at work. There are a lot of reasons that I haven't been enjoying myself very much at work. First of all, I work upstairs in the actual kitchen while the other two are working downstairs. This is a blessing and a curse. While upstairs, I get to be alone in my thoughts 85% of the time. I put on my iPod and listen to whatever I want to listen to, whether it be Smashing Pumpkins, Faithless, Badly Drawn Boy or Hall & Oates. I get to see sunlight through the pass. And best of all, I, more often than not, do not have to deal with the sous-chef.

On the other hand, I'm by myself. There's no one telling funny stories about other cooks they knew who did this, that or the other. There's no joking. There's not a lot of helping and collaboration. It's just me.

The actual work that I'm doing isn't all that complex either. I'm doing a lot of blanching and poaching. I'm doing a lot of knifework as well. I've become the human immersion circulator. I keep things at constant temperatures for long periods of time by temping them out every X number of minutes. I roast. I make a vinaigrette occasionally. Sometimes I make a puree or a sauce. Mentally, it's not all that challenging. Don't get me wrong, it's an important part of the business of running a restaurant. It has to get done. I'm the guy doing it. Everyday.

During service, honestly, the pickups are for dum-dums. I could rock my station any day of the week no problems. During the slow part of the season on Nantucket, we were rocking three and four pan pickups. Here, I don't really think I have anything beyond a two pan pickup if you count the pasta boiler as an actual pan. The plating is pedestrian. There's no real thought for me during service. Sometimes I have to help the sous plate stuff (which is also really easy). Sometimes I have to help out chef to plate some things from the fryer as well. Sometimes I swoop over and call some tickets when it's busy as well. Still, it's all really easy.

My input isn't really going anywhere in the restaurant. I haven't put up a single special. I haven't really contributed much to the menu, with the exception of suggesting that we put a poached egg add on supplement to any noodle dish. Prior to that, my only real contribution that was taken was the way that the dumplings were plated. For the first couple of weeks it's as if no one could find a nice way for five dumplings to sit on the plates that the restaurant had.

There have been a lot of complaints on the nights that we're slow. Everyone wants to know how to get more people in the door. We've been featured in the Weekly Dig, Stuff @ Night, The Improper Bostonian and the Boston Globe's food section. Chef's not doing anything about marketing or publicity to get more people in. He's not twittering or updating the facebook with pictures of food or nothing. He thinks that just cooking is enough. That's just one part of the BUSINESS. It's a business. There's the art side of things, which are the ideas, the food, the tastes and textures. Then there is the business side of things, the numbers, the accounting, the food costs, the expenses and most of all the growing of the business, which includes marketing. In this day and age of viral marketing and social networks, you really need to put yourself out there and get people thinking about your business. You need to take every opportunity to reach out to people, to get them in the door and then get them to come back and bring someone else who will come back. Chef doesn't get the fact that we need to get out there and get the word out there.

I have recently told some of my friends not to come in. In fact, just yesterday, I texted my pal K that I wanted to shoot myself in the face. She asked if she should come in for dinner with her friend that she was planning on meeting. I told her that I was sure that there were more fun places to go.

When we first opened, I was gung ho about it all. I was constantly telling my friends to come in and eat. And they did. And they came back. And they brought more friends. I believe in the project. The hours were long, but I believed in the project. I believed that we were learning the ropes. I believed that some of our problems stemmed from just being new. When you see that the problems aren't going away, you start to lose heart. When you're not learning as much as you thought you would be learning, you lose heart. You start as the only positive person in the kitchen. You then move to the guy who's putting on a good face in an attempt to get everyone else to be positive, and then you move to being a guy who is just trying to get through the week, then the day then the hour. Sometimes I feel like that guy.

Probably the most frustrating part of work for me is, was, and will continue to be the sous-chef. He sucks. I have zero respect for that man. I try to make the best of it, but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't want to tear that man to shreds. He's disorganized, inconsiderate, holier than thou, sucks on the line, can't plate worth shit (even easy plates), can't expo worth a damn when he's on the expediting station, and worst of all he's a dirty cook. When the night is over, there's oil splattered everywhere, bits of veg all over the floor, and just a big mess under his station. It's almost disgusting. I understand that cooking can be a messy business, but it really doesn't have to be nearly as messy as he makes it. It's like Pigpen from the Peanuts cartoon. Oh, I sooooooo want to kick him in the balls every day. Yesterday, he decided that he wanted to use my veg knife to cut a scrubby. I asked him if he was "fucking for real."

It's tough being in this environment knowing that last year I was having the time of my life in Asia, and knowing that if I want my old job back on Nantucket, it's waiting for me. It's hard for me to know that I probably could be making more money elsewhere, but I took this job because I believed in the project. It's hard to know that I could have taken a job at a place with a nationally recognized name, but I took this job because I believed in the project and it was the type of food that I wanted to do. What do you do when you find yourself doubting the project? What do you do when you feel like the project isn't doing for you what you thought it might?

I'm a firm believer that you can do anything for a year. I'm doing my best to give this a year. I am strong. I have a will. I am a good cook and I care about food. I just need to get through the next ten months, or the next month, or the next week, or the next day, or the next service, or the next hour.

To deal with this all, I've been doing a lot of self-medicating. Drinking. I'll admit it, as of late, I have been drinking a whole lot more than I ever did on Nantucket. For the first time in a while, I drank so much that I felt like complete crap all day the next day. That was Friday night's drinking affecting Saturday. So I've been on the wagon the past few days. I dunno how long I'm gonna stay on it, but I'm going to try to stay on it for a bit. It's hard when you spend so many hours with so few people that you actually enjoy the company of. It's even harder when you spend so many hours with some people that you actively dislike. Drinkin' ain't the answer though.

The answer is other people. It's tough when you work odd days. Daytimes are solitary because everyone is at work. Nighttimes during the week are rough because 9-5ers have to wake up in the morning to go to work. It's even worse that I have split days off too. I have Mondays and Wednesdays off. So Monday night I can't hang out late if I wanted to because I have to work on Tuesday. The same goes for Wednesday. I can't skip town for a "weekend." None of that.

I have had some nice nights though. There was a great evening at Sel de la Terre and one at Eastern Standard that was nice. I'm meeting a few new people, and hopefully will be meeting a few more. I'm on the hunt for some dates who would be interested in my endless culinary babble.

Enough about the not so fun side of my life. There have been amusing bits in my life. Today, I saw a host of interesting people out on the streets. Out in front of Dunkin Donuts, there was a girl in patent leather pants and funny colored hair. She looked grossly out of place. In front of me on the walk to the coffeeshop where I am now, there was a DUDE wearing gray sweatpants and Uggs. I repeat, A DUDE. Here at the coffee shop, there was a Silent Bob lookalike, a girl who looked like an eastern European model, and a guy who looked like a cross between Peter Pan and a pirate. He was wearing a poofy green shirt with a mandarin collar, a black leather belt tying it off that included a loop to hold a sword or something (though there was no sword in it), a pair of black pants and a green bandana that matched his shirt. He had glasses and muttonchops. It was quite a sight. It was so amusing that I had to tell my friend Mona about it over instant messenger.

In other news, which really isn't news, I'm still plotting my escape from the country. I've been reading my book on planning around the world trips. It can be done for as little as $10,000, but that means you won't be enjoying yourself very much. You can do it for as much as $100,000, but really? Wouldn't you rather buy a house? I'm trying to reach a goal of $30,000 with a $5000 landing cushion. I plan on traveling for a full year, trying to get little jobs under the table. Maybe I'll cook. Maybe I'll teach some Engrish. Maybe I'll work at a hostel. But, I will be away for at least a year. I think it will take me at least two years to come up with the capital if my current expenses stay as they are. I plan on going everywhere. I want to go to Tibet, Israel, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, New Zealand, Australia, Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Portugal, Spain... I want to go EVERYWHERE. I don't want an intense plan. I want to wing it. I want to see if I can get friends to meet up with me along the way. I want to see places I've already been before again! It's thinking about these things that keep me going. It keeps me solid.

Last year, on this very day, I was having a miserable time in Vang Vieng, Laos because the group that my pals Jen and Adam were with were having internal conflicts. To be honest, the guy causing the conflict was a huge douche. A year ago tomorrow, though, I met Julia. I'm a few days away from meeting Chloe. And I'm ten days away from meeting Paolo, Sophie and Clover. I miss them all so much. I wish I was back there, dirty, sweaty, with my life on my shoulders literally instead of figuratively.

Man, I need a hug.

Finally, I'll leave you with some viewing. For those of you who don't know what Jamie Oliver is trying to do, watch this. The world is in dire straits. I would love to do more than just sign Jamie's petition, but I'm in no position to do so. All I can do is continue to cook with good, fresh foods. Seriously, watch this.



This is what it looks like when we break down pigs.









Hope you enjoyed.