Listening: And I've been living too hard to believe that things are going to get easier now. I'm still trying to shake off the pain from the lessons I've learned.
What's my problem? Why can't I get hit on by HETERO GIRLS not GAY GUYS?
Right now, I'm blogging from my room. That's right. From my room on Nantucket. Not the coffee shop. Not the library. Not my friend's place. From my room on Nantucket. See, I got this kick ass roomie in Cambridge who sent me her extra wireless router so I tapped into my Nantucket roomie's cable modem and now I have full wireless bars anywhere in the apartment. Before, I was scamming wireless off of the people across the street, but it was really spotty once I got to my room at the other end of the apartment. Now, I don't have to worry about it. I can chat without worrying about getting cut off. I can watch streaming shows and movies from my room. And I can blog in bed if I want to. I know that it seems like such a small thing, but when you take the crack pipe out of the addict's hands, or give him marginal crack, you'd better believe he feels the withdrawl.
In other random occurrences, last night, one of my pals from the restaurant played at the muse last night. He's one of the few people on island that I know who likes and can speak intelligently on house music, rave culture, the club scene in Boston and so on and so forth. So, in support, almost the entire kitchen staff (with the exception of Chef and the intern who is only nineteen years old) along with a few front of the house kids rolled in to support.
The music was deep, dark, and tribal. Not nearly as deep as I like it, and a little more evil than I like it as well, but it was a great night for Nantucket standards. We didn't get to the Muse until around midnight and I was kind of content on hanging out on the sides and drinking my beer as I bobbed my head and neck to the beat.
Lo-and-behold, two of my non-restaurant friends (my snarky friend who runs one of the coffee shops in town, and her pretty attractive blonde friend), roll in. A piece of information for those who don't know my snarky friend. She's a out lesbian. That piece of information will come in helpful in about three minutes.
Anyhow, so I get coaxed onto the dance floor by my two friends and we're having a good old time. I like my friends. I find them hilarious. The blonde is beating off men with a stick. My snarky friend is dancing, well, like she dances, which is, well, the only way to describe it is hilarious.
We're all dancing and this guy comes up to them that they seem to know and they have a little "what's up?" conversation. So he introduces himself to me, and proceeds to try to twirl me. I'm like, "Err... dude. This is weird." He then asks me if I'm gay. I say, "Not so much." He then says, "All of the time or some of the time?" So, I'm thinking to myself, "What the fuck?!?" But instead, I answer, "I'm pretty sure I'm NOT gay ALL of the time, but to each their own." "Absolutely," he replies. "I love these girls," he says pointing to my friends, implying that since I was a guy dancing to house music with at least one lesbian, that I'm gay. "Yeah," I say. "They're pretty cool." That's where the conversation ended and he went off to presumably hit on someone who was gay.
See, that whole interaction might have been different if the gay guy was actually a hot straight girl. See, hot girls need to be hitting on me. Okay, maybe not HOT girls, but at least relatively attractive girls. Or maybe I should just start hitting on the attractive girls more. Seems like all of the ones I know right now have boyfriends or are too young to order alcoholic beverages on their own.
You know it's funny, they say that the thing about eighteen year-olds is that you get older by they stay the same age. It's a true saying. The thing is that, sure, they're the same age, but when I get the bludgeoning blow that they're eighteen (actually, usually nineteen in my case), I think to myself, "Oh! It's so wrong!" Sometimes, they're just too hot and you don't know what to do about it. It's an awful, evil conflict, but at least it's not as awkward as the gay guy was hitting on me.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Day 26: Everything I Think About Fades Away
Listening: I don't wanna talk about it, how you broke my heart. If I stay here just a little bit longer, if I stay here, won't you listen to my heart.
What's my problem? I can't remember people's names.
I've been back on the east coast for forty-four days, in the country for fifty-one. All I think about is my time in Asia, but after even just fifty-one days, memories begin to fade. I can probably recount every single day that I was away, but little details seem to slip away into oblivion. There was a time where I could tell you the names of every single person on my Halong Bay trip, but now I can only remember the twins (Sophie and Clover), Stu, Paolo, Craig, AJ, May, and that's pretty much it. I can only remember Julia, Kate, Jen, Bina, Marion, Carol, Oliver, Sandy, Pauline, Sitka (though I don't even know if that was how it was spelled), and, of course, Chloe from my time in Luang Prabang. I met many more in those places, but I seem to have forgotten their names. I have pictures of them. I remember what they did and what happened when I was around them, but I just don't remember their names. I can remember where they're from too.
The point is that my memories are slowly growing halos, and I'm sure that it won't be long before it's all just a haze, much like the time I spent in Europe. It's not to say that I don't remember anything that happened or everything I saw. I remember it all, but the finer details continually seem to escape me. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the Indian chick that cooked in Toronto whom I met in Paris. I can't even remember the name of the restaurant that she worked at. I don't remember the name of the vinstubes that I ate at in Strasbourg, though I could find them in my Michelin Guide.
It makes me sad that I lose the details. It makes me wonder if I should have given in to all of the people that I met on the trail and joined fuckin' facebook. I guess it would have allowed me to remember people better. The other edge of that sword is the idea that I originally made my stand on. If we were really good friends, you know where and how to find me and I'll keep in touch. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of Julia, Paolo, Erin, Jen and Lydia. I shared such amazing times with them.
The weirdest thing about coming back is that no one really asks me at all about my time abroad. No one asks for stories or any of that. No one wants me to talk about it. It's all I think about, and no one asks. I think the one person that I talked about it at length with was Sam. One afternoon before I came down to the island, I spent four hours taking Sam through my trip with maps and pictures. I told her a few of the stories that didn't make it into the blog for some reason (like where I got headbutted by a British dude for making a "yo mama" joke while riding on a tuk-tuk to the bowling alley in Luang Prabang, or making another British guy who was twice my size tap out due to a guillotine choke on the boat on Halong Bay). I think that my friend Gabi wants me to do that for her too, but it just hasn't happened yet.
I want to talk about my time in Asia, but at the same time I don't. I don't know if I have the vocabulary to accurately express how I felt in each place or what everything looked like without the filter of the camera. I don't know if I can express how things really were. I can't explain how things tasted different than they do here in the States. I can't convey just how present I was in my own life.
I don't know why it's so hard to be as present in my life while I'm here. I'm wondering if I could be more present if I were in Boston. My life consists of me going to work at half past noon, working until half past ten or eleven o'clock, going back upstairs and showering after two beers, staying up until four in the morning for absolutely no reason, and then going to sleep only to wake up in time to shower before work. As Sam calls it, I'm a bit of a factory worker these days. Just doing my job and that's it.
At least I'm not going out like the other kids are doing. One of the other cooks went out on his "Friday" night. He and another cook dropped a hundred and forty-three dollars. That is ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE DOLLARS! In a single night! No food included! It was all liquor. I don't want to be that guy this year. I'm into battening down the hatches and putting everything away. Of course, I still want to live a little, but mostly, I want to save.
Speaking of spending, I have been researching scooters for a long time. I have wanted one for a long time. Originally, I was going to buy a new one in Boston, but I opted out of it, because I didn't want to drop three thousand plus incidentals on a really good one, or a thousand on a crappy Chinese one that would be hard to get serviced. Then, I saw a sign on the bike shop in Nantucket. They're selling their used scooters for eight hundred and fifty dollars. It comes with two helmets, so all I would need to do is buy a chain for it. It's a pretty popular Korean scooter and I looked the model up online and it seemed to be a slightly above average scooter. As some people say, maybe your first car shouldn't be a BMW, maybe I shouldn't buy a primo scooter right off the blocks. Maybe my first motor vehicle should be a bit of a beater. So that's why I'm thinking of buying one of these used scooters. When it's time to leave the island I can still bring it back up to Boston, and I would be able to work at some restaurants that are a bit harder to get to. So there are a lot of pros and cons.
Anyhow, I'm looking for some opinions. Should I get it? Should I not? Why would you say what you say? I need some definitive input.
Well, I gotta get out of this coffee shop. Gonna go over and meet my friend for dinner. We're cooking tonight because we're trying to be cheap. Another one of my friends here caught a shitload of striped bass. I got us a couple of pieces of it for dinner. It should be delicious. I mean, really, two professionals cooking something at home, no doubt it'll be good.
What's my problem? I can't remember people's names.
I've been back on the east coast for forty-four days, in the country for fifty-one. All I think about is my time in Asia, but after even just fifty-one days, memories begin to fade. I can probably recount every single day that I was away, but little details seem to slip away into oblivion. There was a time where I could tell you the names of every single person on my Halong Bay trip, but now I can only remember the twins (Sophie and Clover), Stu, Paolo, Craig, AJ, May, and that's pretty much it. I can only remember Julia, Kate, Jen, Bina, Marion, Carol, Oliver, Sandy, Pauline, Sitka (though I don't even know if that was how it was spelled), and, of course, Chloe from my time in Luang Prabang. I met many more in those places, but I seem to have forgotten their names. I have pictures of them. I remember what they did and what happened when I was around them, but I just don't remember their names. I can remember where they're from too.
The point is that my memories are slowly growing halos, and I'm sure that it won't be long before it's all just a haze, much like the time I spent in Europe. It's not to say that I don't remember anything that happened or everything I saw. I remember it all, but the finer details continually seem to escape me. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the Indian chick that cooked in Toronto whom I met in Paris. I can't even remember the name of the restaurant that she worked at. I don't remember the name of the vinstubes that I ate at in Strasbourg, though I could find them in my Michelin Guide.
It makes me sad that I lose the details. It makes me wonder if I should have given in to all of the people that I met on the trail and joined fuckin' facebook. I guess it would have allowed me to remember people better. The other edge of that sword is the idea that I originally made my stand on. If we were really good friends, you know where and how to find me and I'll keep in touch. There isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of Julia, Paolo, Erin, Jen and Lydia. I shared such amazing times with them.
The weirdest thing about coming back is that no one really asks me at all about my time abroad. No one asks for stories or any of that. No one wants me to talk about it. It's all I think about, and no one asks. I think the one person that I talked about it at length with was Sam. One afternoon before I came down to the island, I spent four hours taking Sam through my trip with maps and pictures. I told her a few of the stories that didn't make it into the blog for some reason (like where I got headbutted by a British dude for making a "yo mama" joke while riding on a tuk-tuk to the bowling alley in Luang Prabang, or making another British guy who was twice my size tap out due to a guillotine choke on the boat on Halong Bay). I think that my friend Gabi wants me to do that for her too, but it just hasn't happened yet.
I want to talk about my time in Asia, but at the same time I don't. I don't know if I have the vocabulary to accurately express how I felt in each place or what everything looked like without the filter of the camera. I don't know if I can express how things really were. I can't explain how things tasted different than they do here in the States. I can't convey just how present I was in my own life.
I don't know why it's so hard to be as present in my life while I'm here. I'm wondering if I could be more present if I were in Boston. My life consists of me going to work at half past noon, working until half past ten or eleven o'clock, going back upstairs and showering after two beers, staying up until four in the morning for absolutely no reason, and then going to sleep only to wake up in time to shower before work. As Sam calls it, I'm a bit of a factory worker these days. Just doing my job and that's it.
At least I'm not going out like the other kids are doing. One of the other cooks went out on his "Friday" night. He and another cook dropped a hundred and forty-three dollars. That is ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-THREE DOLLARS! In a single night! No food included! It was all liquor. I don't want to be that guy this year. I'm into battening down the hatches and putting everything away. Of course, I still want to live a little, but mostly, I want to save.
Speaking of spending, I have been researching scooters for a long time. I have wanted one for a long time. Originally, I was going to buy a new one in Boston, but I opted out of it, because I didn't want to drop three thousand plus incidentals on a really good one, or a thousand on a crappy Chinese one that would be hard to get serviced. Then, I saw a sign on the bike shop in Nantucket. They're selling their used scooters for eight hundred and fifty dollars. It comes with two helmets, so all I would need to do is buy a chain for it. It's a pretty popular Korean scooter and I looked the model up online and it seemed to be a slightly above average scooter. As some people say, maybe your first car shouldn't be a BMW, maybe I shouldn't buy a primo scooter right off the blocks. Maybe my first motor vehicle should be a bit of a beater. So that's why I'm thinking of buying one of these used scooters. When it's time to leave the island I can still bring it back up to Boston, and I would be able to work at some restaurants that are a bit harder to get to. So there are a lot of pros and cons.
Anyhow, I'm looking for some opinions. Should I get it? Should I not? Why would you say what you say? I need some definitive input.
Well, I gotta get out of this coffee shop. Gonna go over and meet my friend for dinner. We're cooking tonight because we're trying to be cheap. Another one of my friends here caught a shitload of striped bass. I got us a couple of pieces of it for dinner. It should be delicious. I mean, really, two professionals cooking something at home, no doubt it'll be good.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Day 19: Homeless
Listening: It took six whole hours and five long days for all your lies to come undone.
What's my problem? I dread the next five months.
Over the past three weeks since I have re-entered into American society, I have felt the "ZEN!!!" feeling that I got from Asia fade away from me like the tan that is quickly fading from my skin. And like my tan, my "ZEN!!!" was a thick dark coat over the cynic that made deals at the end of last season to ensure that he would have employment, and the worry wort that didn't have enough confidence in his skills to say and believe that he could just drop into Boston and have a job.
I hate being a man of my word sometimes. It means that I feel like I have to do what I say even if my ideals and goals have changed. I have to put what I want on the back burner to appease my honor. I have to swallow it and digest it like the bite of durian that everyone else at the table seems to like, but I no longer want to even have in my mouth.
I wrote that passage about twenty one days ago, two days before I left the mainland of American and marooned myself on this island for the second summer in a row. I would have posted it then, but Sam said that it made me sound like kind of a little bitch that thought that the chef owed me for doing him a favor. Well, it is kind of how it sounded, but I kind of liked the prose.
Before I got here, I thought I would be getting a pay raise regardless of whether I lived above the restaurant or not. When I got here, I found out that I would be getting a pay cut and that I would be working an extra day every two weeks. When I brought it to the attention of Chef, now I'm making exactly what I made last summer, but I'm still working one extra day every two weeks.
Also, in the kitchen, though things have changed, a lot has stayed the same. Two line cooks didn't return to the kitchen, and two new ones have taken their place. And by taken their place, I mean to say that their roles both on the line and in the social order of the kitchen have been filled. We have the older guy who has a lot of experience, who thinks he's too good to scrub and sweep, and when he does so, he does it half-assed, but after years of being in the industry is not simply a line cook, but he's JUST a line cook. And the other is the young talent highly regarded by chef and everyone else in the kitchen, who seems to talk down to me like I'm an infant sometimes. Yeah. I'm back to the bottom of the hot line pecking order.
A little bit about that. I understand being at the bottom of the hot line pecking order. I know I don't have a ton of experience, and I know that I don't know how to do absolutely everything. However, this is my second season in this kitchen and somehow I thought I would have earned a little bit more respect. I guess that I have not.
This makes me think of what I had left in Boston. Before I left, I had at least two people who wanted to hire me without me even saying that I wanted a job. I almost blew off Nantucket just so Paul wouldn't feel bad about poaching me to work at his new joint on the Vineyard. People in Boston want me to work with them. Sometimes in Nantucket, I feel as if people work with me just because Chef hired me, not because they necessarily think that I have something to offer. I feel like I left a whole lot of respect behind in Boston, along with my feeling of home.
Speaking of the word "home," I feel like I am without one. I have been without one for a year. A year ago, I came to this island and dislodged myself from the place that I had lived for the past eight years. I had come to this island to dislodge myself though. My plan was to get myself traveling, to become a bit of a journeyman, to cook and live in other places. One year later, I'm back where my journey started, so I really haven't gone all that far.
During my three months abroad, I never once felt homesick. I wished that my friends could be there with me in Asia, but I never once wished that I had been back in Boston with my friends. I have been here for nineteen days and there isn't a day that goes by that at least for a few seconds I wish I were back in Boston sitting at my coffee table with Linh and Sam, drinking wine, watching "How I Met Your Mother." I want to be relaxed, and here I'm just not that.
As it is right now, it's just me and one other guy living above the restaurant. Over the next two months, two more cooks will move upstairs with us. I'll have to share a room with one of them. It doesn't give me much room to keep to myself. The common room isn't nearly as inviting as it was last year when it was Brit and me at the end of the season and Jo-Jo during part of the season.
I find myself being the clean freak again. Everyone knows that I can explode in my own personal space, but when it comes to common areas, I feel like it needs to be clean all of the time. I think that shoes should come off at the door to reduce the amount of crap that is trekked through the house. I can only imagine how much more of a shit hole the apartment will become once two more guys move in. I think that the whole cleanliness thing is why I like living with women more than men. That, and everyone is jockeying to be the alpha male. I can't stand that bullshit. That's what it really is. It's bullshit.
To make it all more interesting, I can't seem to sleep. I haven't gone to sleep before a quarter past three in the morning since I got here. I have tried. I have laid down to sleep and just couldn't trick myself into sleeping. So, now I don't even try. I stay up and watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Asia. This insomnia had better go away soon, because I'm running out of TV shows to watch. I go to sleep at four and wake up at noon, just in time to go to work. Well, at least I'm not going to the bars and spending money.
It's five months though. Five months. I can do five months. If I can be an accountant for five years, I can be a cook on an island that I don't feel at home on. It will be an exercise in humility. It will be a test of my patience. Maybe it will make me a better person. I have no idea. I'll try to keep up the positive, up-beat attitude that I put on the first day I made it back to the island. Hopefully, I won't drop that front. If I do, who knows what'll happen.
In five months, I'll be back on the mainland. In five months, I'll regain my sense of home and I'll try to pare down my belongings and try to figure out a new way of becoming a journeyman without having to feel like I'm not in an environment where I can thrive. I need to get back to thriving, and it's not going to happen here. I can hone. I can focus on refinement of some of my skills, but I don't think I can thrive. I don't think my happiness lives here on this island. It's a start, though, to realize something like this. Sometimes finding things out is a process of elimination. In five months, Nantucket will be eliminated from where my life will take place.
What's my problem? I dread the next five months.
Over the past three weeks since I have re-entered into American society, I have felt the "ZEN!!!" feeling that I got from Asia fade away from me like the tan that is quickly fading from my skin. And like my tan, my "ZEN!!!" was a thick dark coat over the cynic that made deals at the end of last season to ensure that he would have employment, and the worry wort that didn't have enough confidence in his skills to say and believe that he could just drop into Boston and have a job.
I hate being a man of my word sometimes. It means that I feel like I have to do what I say even if my ideals and goals have changed. I have to put what I want on the back burner to appease my honor. I have to swallow it and digest it like the bite of durian that everyone else at the table seems to like, but I no longer want to even have in my mouth.
I wrote that passage about twenty one days ago, two days before I left the mainland of American and marooned myself on this island for the second summer in a row. I would have posted it then, but Sam said that it made me sound like kind of a little bitch that thought that the chef owed me for doing him a favor. Well, it is kind of how it sounded, but I kind of liked the prose.
Before I got here, I thought I would be getting a pay raise regardless of whether I lived above the restaurant or not. When I got here, I found out that I would be getting a pay cut and that I would be working an extra day every two weeks. When I brought it to the attention of Chef, now I'm making exactly what I made last summer, but I'm still working one extra day every two weeks.
Also, in the kitchen, though things have changed, a lot has stayed the same. Two line cooks didn't return to the kitchen, and two new ones have taken their place. And by taken their place, I mean to say that their roles both on the line and in the social order of the kitchen have been filled. We have the older guy who has a lot of experience, who thinks he's too good to scrub and sweep, and when he does so, he does it half-assed, but after years of being in the industry is not simply a line cook, but he's JUST a line cook. And the other is the young talent highly regarded by chef and everyone else in the kitchen, who seems to talk down to me like I'm an infant sometimes. Yeah. I'm back to the bottom of the hot line pecking order.
A little bit about that. I understand being at the bottom of the hot line pecking order. I know I don't have a ton of experience, and I know that I don't know how to do absolutely everything. However, this is my second season in this kitchen and somehow I thought I would have earned a little bit more respect. I guess that I have not.
This makes me think of what I had left in Boston. Before I left, I had at least two people who wanted to hire me without me even saying that I wanted a job. I almost blew off Nantucket just so Paul wouldn't feel bad about poaching me to work at his new joint on the Vineyard. People in Boston want me to work with them. Sometimes in Nantucket, I feel as if people work with me just because Chef hired me, not because they necessarily think that I have something to offer. I feel like I left a whole lot of respect behind in Boston, along with my feeling of home.
Speaking of the word "home," I feel like I am without one. I have been without one for a year. A year ago, I came to this island and dislodged myself from the place that I had lived for the past eight years. I had come to this island to dislodge myself though. My plan was to get myself traveling, to become a bit of a journeyman, to cook and live in other places. One year later, I'm back where my journey started, so I really haven't gone all that far.
During my three months abroad, I never once felt homesick. I wished that my friends could be there with me in Asia, but I never once wished that I had been back in Boston with my friends. I have been here for nineteen days and there isn't a day that goes by that at least for a few seconds I wish I were back in Boston sitting at my coffee table with Linh and Sam, drinking wine, watching "How I Met Your Mother." I want to be relaxed, and here I'm just not that.
As it is right now, it's just me and one other guy living above the restaurant. Over the next two months, two more cooks will move upstairs with us. I'll have to share a room with one of them. It doesn't give me much room to keep to myself. The common room isn't nearly as inviting as it was last year when it was Brit and me at the end of the season and Jo-Jo during part of the season.
I find myself being the clean freak again. Everyone knows that I can explode in my own personal space, but when it comes to common areas, I feel like it needs to be clean all of the time. I think that shoes should come off at the door to reduce the amount of crap that is trekked through the house. I can only imagine how much more of a shit hole the apartment will become once two more guys move in. I think that the whole cleanliness thing is why I like living with women more than men. That, and everyone is jockeying to be the alpha male. I can't stand that bullshit. That's what it really is. It's bullshit.
To make it all more interesting, I can't seem to sleep. I haven't gone to sleep before a quarter past three in the morning since I got here. I have tried. I have laid down to sleep and just couldn't trick myself into sleeping. So, now I don't even try. I stay up and watch TV shows that I missed while I was in Asia. This insomnia had better go away soon, because I'm running out of TV shows to watch. I go to sleep at four and wake up at noon, just in time to go to work. Well, at least I'm not going to the bars and spending money.
It's five months though. Five months. I can do five months. If I can be an accountant for five years, I can be a cook on an island that I don't feel at home on. It will be an exercise in humility. It will be a test of my patience. Maybe it will make me a better person. I have no idea. I'll try to keep up the positive, up-beat attitude that I put on the first day I made it back to the island. Hopefully, I won't drop that front. If I do, who knows what'll happen.
In five months, I'll be back on the mainland. In five months, I'll regain my sense of home and I'll try to pare down my belongings and try to figure out a new way of becoming a journeyman without having to feel like I'm not in an environment where I can thrive. I need to get back to thriving, and it's not going to happen here. I can hone. I can focus on refinement of some of my skills, but I don't think I can thrive. I don't think my happiness lives here on this island. It's a start, though, to realize something like this. Sometimes finding things out is a process of elimination. In five months, Nantucket will be eliminated from where my life will take place.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Day 85: Re-entry & Touchdown
Listening: If you catch me at the border, I got visas in my name. If you come around here, I make 'em all day. I get one down in a second if you wait.
What's my problem? I understand everyone talking on the street.
Most of my time in L.A. was spent getting over jet lag, which I'm not entirely convinced that I'm over. I'm still waking up at eight in the morning, which is a rarity for me in the States, and I'm getting all yawny at around three in the afternoon.
Although I didn't check off all of the things on my Los Angeles list, I'm satisfied with what I did, where I ate, and what I saw. I think that Los Angeles isn't a city for someone without a car. Everywhere looks close to each other on a map, but then you realize that the scale of the map is such that one inch is five miles or something dumb like that. And as much as I loved the weather there (when it was near a hundred degrees and bone dry), I don't think that I would ever visit the city again unless I had a friend living there (which I did). I barely ever saw a taxi, and the mass transit didn't look like it really went anywhere of consequence.
As I drove around with Junko, I found out that the shitty areas looked just like the nicer areas, but without the nice architecture. It all looked the same to me. It was all palm trees (not bearing fruit like the ones in Asia), and buildings. Okay, well, now that I'm thinking about it, they didn't look ALL the same. There were buildings built around pools like "Melrose Place" (yes I just referenced a Aaron Spelling show), and there were motels with kitschy signs, but not much popped out at me. My jet lag and my car narcolepsy could be to blame though.
There were a number of memorable things that happened while I was in Los Angeles, besides being the first house guest that my pal Junko has had at her new apartment (which has real spiffy potential). I got to meet Keiko Agena, who played Lane on Gilmore Girls, and who one second looks like Lane, and another second looks like someone in all black and a blue wig, and not at all like the character. It was a thoroughly confusing and befuddling moment for me when I was told that the girl in the blue wig was Keiko after seeing her fifteen minutes earlier in glasses and "normal" street clothes.
I also got to meet Karin Anna Cheung from the movie Better Luck Tomorrow, who I realized looks exactly as she did in the movie, but much more girl-next-door than I anticipated. And while we're on the general topic of being a starphucker, I did see Jane Krakowski from Ally McBeal and 30 Rock in the airport.
Okay, I really wasn't a starphucker, but I was thinking to myself at the time I met/saw each of them, "Hey, I'm meeting/seeing (insert celebrity here). Whoda thought that'd ever happen?" The only thing that would be more entertaining is if I had a kid who had play dates with Angie Harmon's kid.
I did make it out to Disney in Anaheim. Junko got us California resident discount "2fer" tickets where you could go to one park one day and the other park on another day. On our first day at Disney, we went to Disney's California Adventure. I have to say that I had low expectations. My parents had given me negative comments on the left coast Disney parks, and after seeing Hong Kong Disneyland, I thought that it would suck just as bad. Okay, suck is the wrong word. I'm thinking, maybe it wouldn't be as unimpressive.
To be completely honest, I loved Disney's California Adventure, even though I was thwarted by the gods in my effort to ride a ferris wheel. If you didn't know, I love ferris wheels, and it just so happened that the one in California Adventure is currently closed for the moment. It think it might have to do with the new water and light show that they're trying to install in the middle of the park.
But other than the thwarting done by the ferris wheel gods, I had a great time. They had two attractions there that they have at Walt Disney World in Florida. They have the ride called Soarin', which kind of takes you on a hang glider ride over California, and, more importantly, Toy Story Midway Mania. Midway Mania is perhaps the best ride/game that Disney has come up with in a long time. It's a ride where you stop in front of 3D screens and use a gun to play different carnival games like a ring toss, or throwing darts at balloons, or throwing baseballs at plates. It's a ridiculous amount of fun. One time in Florida, I think my family and I played three times in a row at the end of one night. Yeah. It's that much fun.
Aside from those attractions, the roller coaster was good fun. Also, they had Turtle Talk with Crush there as well, which is an attraction where the audience interacts with Crush, the turtle from Finding Nemo. I saw this attraction in Florida, but I think that the crowd was just right when I was in Anaheim. We had a great crowd and Crush was hilarious throughout the whole thing. I thought that Crush was only supposed to interact with the kids sitting up front, but instead he interacted more with the adults. After one woman asked Crush how old he was, he asked her the same question. The cast member host reminded him that it was impolite to ask women their age, and Crush said in a flat, "I know, I know" tone, "I know. It's impolite to aske the dudettes how old they are. I should just assume that they are all twenty-one or twenty-two, sometimes for the second or third time..." It was fantastic.
The parade for Disney's California Adventure is all centered around the Pixar movies. And I had to say that I thought it was a better parade than what they put on at any of the other Disney parks. The only one that I have ever thought was better was the "Tapestry of Nations/Dreams" that ran in Epcot around the year 2000.
Two days later, Junko and I went to the Disneyland park, which is a lot like the Magic Kingdom park in Florida. Much like Hong Kong Disneyland, I was really disappointed with the size of the castle. I realize that they can't all be huge structures, but c'mon! It's an iconic castle. Don't you think that it should be a little bit bigger. Other than that, I was pretty pleased with that park as well. There were many attractions that had the same names as attractions in the Magic Kingdom, but there were many subtle differences (all of which I pointed out to Junko). For example, the Haunted Mansion was same-same, but different. The walk from the stretching room to the "doom buggies" had the two bust sculptures whose gaze follows you as you walk by, which are later in the ride in Florida.
Of the two rides that were brand new to me, the Matterhorn Bobsled roller coaster, and the Indiana Jones Adventure, I have to say that the Matterhorn was disappointing, and the Indiana Jones Adventure exceeded my expectations It was actually a good ride. It was so good that Junko and I went on it twice and I noticed more things in the ride the second time around.
Perhaps the best revelation of the time in Disneyland came when I went to the Enchanted Tiki Room. Ever since they changed the one in the Magic Kingdom to include Iago from Aladdin and Zuzu from The Lion King, I have been bummed out. I used to love the Enchanted Tiki Room as a kid, and the song that went along with it. I mean, how can you not love the chorus, "In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room. In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room, where the birds sing words and the flowers croon, in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room!"
I went into the attraction noticing that it didn't say "Under New Management!" like it does in Florida. I was very excited. I hoped that they hadn't fucked with this one. I hoped that they kept it pure. I hoped that when I went in I wouldn't see Iago or Zuzu. And when I heard them calling for Jose to wake the rest of the birds, I was elated. It was the original, the one from my childhood, the pure Enchanted Tiki Room. It was truly a treat to see that show again, as dumb and as lame and as cheesy as I'm sure a lot of people find it. I loved it as a kid, from the birds to the flowers to the chanting totems.
Disney needs to learn to not fuck with good things. They fucked with Imagination in Epcot (They should have kept the original ride and as creepy as Michael Jackson is, they should have kept the Captain EO 3D movie). The fucked with The Living Seas in Epcot. Granted, they did do good things to Pirates of the Caribbean in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, there are so many things that have disappeared or have been changed in bad ways.
Another great moment came right after Junko and I entered the park and went through our first attraction (the tour of Sleeping Beauty's castle). Directly to our left as we walked out was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride! Yeah! That's been gone from the Florida park for over a decade. I missed that ride for a long time and I thought that it was gone forever. I thought that it had been retired. To my delight, it was there. So, my trip to Disneyland was like turning the clock back to when I was ten and both Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and the Enchanted Tiki Room existed in a way that I wanted to remember them.
Aside from the Disney and the celebrity moments in Los Angeles, I did other cool stuff. I went to go see a girl that Junko was tutoring play soccer. By play soccer, I mean play soccer on a professional soccer team. It was the Los Angeles Sol against the Bay area's FC Gold Pride. The Sol won with a brilliant goal at the beginning of the second half.
I also went to Santa Monica and hung out in the sunshine. Oh yeah, I had In-n-Out Burger for the first time, which wasn't half bad, but wasn't as epic as I had anticipated.
Now, I'm in New York City. I got back to the east coast three days ago and came down to New York two days ago. I'm in my pal Brian's wedding tomorrow and needed to be here for the rehearsal dinner and to pick up my tux. Luckily, as I was the last person to get measured, and did so from the other end of the country, my tux fit perfectly.
The wedding buzz is all a little bit crazy. It's going to be a big wedding of two hundred and fifty people. Of those people, I know maybe eight of them. Six of them are the groomsmen, and two of them are the bride and groom. I guess you can say ten if you count Brian's sister and her husband, but she didn't remember my name even though we've met about five times. Surprisingly, two of the groomsmen who I thought never liked me, one I know for sure didn't like me, actually communicated with me. It was caught off guard. I went in thinking, "Hey, I'm a groomsman. I'll yuk it up with the three guys that I know and that I like and that like me... or at least I think they like me." But to my surprise, I'm kinda kickin' it with everyone.
****Continued on Day 94****
Well, the wedding is over, and it was a ton of fun. If you didn't know, I was a groomsman. I was last in line, shortest of the bunch, and was paired up with an eleven year old bridesmaid. Yes. Eleven years old. She did think I was hot though. Apparently, Brian's sister went up to her and said, "Hey, at least your partner is hot." to which she responded , "I KNOW!" So I'm at least a hit with eleven year olds. Me and Hannah Montana have it MADE with eleven year olds.
The wedding itself was a lot of fun. Brian picked out some kick ass tuxes and I would be lying if I didn't say that I looked hot. I mean, I was hot, temperature wise, but I was also looking damn good. I was trying to chat up Brian's cousin, Dawn (unfortunate name, but ridiculously good looking girl), but it didn't go so well. One of Brian's fraternity brothers, Kendall, got her to dance a few times, but from what I hear, she just couldn't get him to go away.
Another person that I was a hit with was Brian's aunt (?) Valerie. The totally excellent wedding band played a lot of great, swingable music, and I was looking for someone who could follow. She happened to be the one. She was an amazing follow for someone who hadn't ever lindy hopped or done any sort of swing dancing. We danced for like three or four songs over the course of the night, and they were all really good dances.
One of the funniest parts of the night, for me, was when the incredibly hot wedding singer started to bust into "It Takes Two" by MC Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. Of course, she only knew the first few lines of it as it was kind of a bridge into another song. But I did a bit of taunting, so they continued the song and I went up and rapped the rest of it. It's so funny, because about ninety percent of the people there had never met me before, and those who had met me before really didn't get the impression that I could bust a rhyme. It was a lot of fun. I think I impressed the hot wedding singer as well.
While I was down in NYC for the wedding, I ended up hanging out with a couple of my favorite people from my Colby days, Rob and Jill. They recently purchased a condo in Hoboken, which was in a really nice neighborhood. It's really close to the main drag without being so close that it would be annoying. It was funny, because I met up with them on the day that they had taken off of work in order to move. I didn't know exactly where they lived in Hoboken, but when I got to the cross streets that they said that they lived on, I just followed the movers into their new condo. Didn't, and still don't know their address.
Anyhow, I'm back in Boston now. Sam arrived back here a few days ago as well. I'm completely unsettled and completely befuddled by my situation. I now have a mere week before I head down to Nantucket, a place, at the current moment, I'm not all that thrilled to be going back to. I have no income, no real responsibilities. I'm trying to get together with friends, but tend to be a bit flaky lately with calling people back or even calling people when I tell them that I'll call them.
Instead of preparing myself for going to Nantucket and cleaning up my life here in Cambridge, I have been volunteering at the Chez. I worked at a charity event, helped cook for some private parties, and cooked some Cuban sandwiches for the Mayfair event that happened this afternoon. I didn't need to do any of this. Marsoir asked me to do the charity event with him (where we kind of got tanked), but other than that, it was all pretty much me saying, "ya need any help?" I think it was good to get me back into the groove of being in a kitchen, but it was also a pretty good distraction from my apparently big case of re-entry depression.
So, I've been kind of in a weird mood lately. I've been up and down. I've been energetic and I've been fatigued. Little things irk me and I can't seem to let go of my time in Asia. I'm constantly annoyed by "Americans" and our "civilization." I'm upset that it costs $4.14 for a quart container of pineapple (which isn't even really full and comes out to be about a half of an average sized pineapple) when I used to get a whole, fresh pineapple, cut and cleaned as I'm asking to purchase it for less than a dollar. I know that people in southeast Asia say dumb things on the street, but here in America, I can understand the vapid things that are being said about this, that, and the other.
I find myself thinking about the consumerism in America a lot. I find that I'm walking by a lot of the stores that I used to go into thinking to myself, "Gee, I really don't need anything." I look at the people on the street with all of their bags of brand name whatchamabobs thinking that they paid five times as much as it would have cost in Bangkok, Saigon or even Hong Kong. There's nothing that tastes as good as it did over there. The buildings are boring. Everything sucks.
I talked to one of my best pals, Frank, while I was in NYC. He said that it seemed like I thought that America was beneath me now. I told him that it wasn't the case. It was just that I have never necessarily felt like I belonged here in America. I don't think status quo. I don't think like the rest of the country, I don't think. Maybe I do, and I just have an ego problem. I think that I just don't fit and that I can't make a difference here in the States. Over in Asia, though I didn't fit either, I think that I could make a difference there. I think that I could do something good that could affect people. I think that I could carve out something good over there, whereas, when I think of life in the States, I'm not so sure. Who knows though?
So I'm just chalking this up to a bit of re-entry depression. I'm hoping that when the sun shines in the States again, and the temperature gets back up into the high eighties and low nineties, I'll feel better about my life and won't be as anxious to escape back to the far east.
Anyhow, I'm sorry about not having posted much since I have gotten back to the States. I will try to keep writing on a regular basis. I'll get back to updating you all on my mundane American life. Maybe things will get exciting. Hopefully they'll get exciting. And for those of you who have a sense of humor, I think that this will be my theme for the summer:
What's my problem? I understand everyone talking on the street.
Most of my time in L.A. was spent getting over jet lag, which I'm not entirely convinced that I'm over. I'm still waking up at eight in the morning, which is a rarity for me in the States, and I'm getting all yawny at around three in the afternoon.
Although I didn't check off all of the things on my Los Angeles list, I'm satisfied with what I did, where I ate, and what I saw. I think that Los Angeles isn't a city for someone without a car. Everywhere looks close to each other on a map, but then you realize that the scale of the map is such that one inch is five miles or something dumb like that. And as much as I loved the weather there (when it was near a hundred degrees and bone dry), I don't think that I would ever visit the city again unless I had a friend living there (which I did). I barely ever saw a taxi, and the mass transit didn't look like it really went anywhere of consequence.
As I drove around with Junko, I found out that the shitty areas looked just like the nicer areas, but without the nice architecture. It all looked the same to me. It was all palm trees (not bearing fruit like the ones in Asia), and buildings. Okay, well, now that I'm thinking about it, they didn't look ALL the same. There were buildings built around pools like "Melrose Place" (yes I just referenced a Aaron Spelling show), and there were motels with kitschy signs, but not much popped out at me. My jet lag and my car narcolepsy could be to blame though.
There were a number of memorable things that happened while I was in Los Angeles, besides being the first house guest that my pal Junko has had at her new apartment (which has real spiffy potential). I got to meet Keiko Agena, who played Lane on Gilmore Girls, and who one second looks like Lane, and another second looks like someone in all black and a blue wig, and not at all like the character. It was a thoroughly confusing and befuddling moment for me when I was told that the girl in the blue wig was Keiko after seeing her fifteen minutes earlier in glasses and "normal" street clothes.
I also got to meet Karin Anna Cheung from the movie Better Luck Tomorrow, who I realized looks exactly as she did in the movie, but much more girl-next-door than I anticipated. And while we're on the general topic of being a starphucker, I did see Jane Krakowski from Ally McBeal and 30 Rock in the airport.
Okay, I really wasn't a starphucker, but I was thinking to myself at the time I met/saw each of them, "Hey, I'm meeting/seeing (insert celebrity here). Whoda thought that'd ever happen?" The only thing that would be more entertaining is if I had a kid who had play dates with Angie Harmon's kid.
I did make it out to Disney in Anaheim. Junko got us California resident discount "2fer" tickets where you could go to one park one day and the other park on another day. On our first day at Disney, we went to Disney's California Adventure. I have to say that I had low expectations. My parents had given me negative comments on the left coast Disney parks, and after seeing Hong Kong Disneyland, I thought that it would suck just as bad. Okay, suck is the wrong word. I'm thinking, maybe it wouldn't be as unimpressive.
To be completely honest, I loved Disney's California Adventure, even though I was thwarted by the gods in my effort to ride a ferris wheel. If you didn't know, I love ferris wheels, and it just so happened that the one in California Adventure is currently closed for the moment. It think it might have to do with the new water and light show that they're trying to install in the middle of the park.
But other than the thwarting done by the ferris wheel gods, I had a great time. They had two attractions there that they have at Walt Disney World in Florida. They have the ride called Soarin', which kind of takes you on a hang glider ride over California, and, more importantly, Toy Story Midway Mania. Midway Mania is perhaps the best ride/game that Disney has come up with in a long time. It's a ride where you stop in front of 3D screens and use a gun to play different carnival games like a ring toss, or throwing darts at balloons, or throwing baseballs at plates. It's a ridiculous amount of fun. One time in Florida, I think my family and I played three times in a row at the end of one night. Yeah. It's that much fun.
Aside from those attractions, the roller coaster was good fun. Also, they had Turtle Talk with Crush there as well, which is an attraction where the audience interacts with Crush, the turtle from Finding Nemo. I saw this attraction in Florida, but I think that the crowd was just right when I was in Anaheim. We had a great crowd and Crush was hilarious throughout the whole thing. I thought that Crush was only supposed to interact with the kids sitting up front, but instead he interacted more with the adults. After one woman asked Crush how old he was, he asked her the same question. The cast member host reminded him that it was impolite to ask women their age, and Crush said in a flat, "I know, I know" tone, "I know. It's impolite to aske the dudettes how old they are. I should just assume that they are all twenty-one or twenty-two, sometimes for the second or third time..." It was fantastic.
The parade for Disney's California Adventure is all centered around the Pixar movies. And I had to say that I thought it was a better parade than what they put on at any of the other Disney parks. The only one that I have ever thought was better was the "Tapestry of Nations/Dreams" that ran in Epcot around the year 2000.
Two days later, Junko and I went to the Disneyland park, which is a lot like the Magic Kingdom park in Florida. Much like Hong Kong Disneyland, I was really disappointed with the size of the castle. I realize that they can't all be huge structures, but c'mon! It's an iconic castle. Don't you think that it should be a little bit bigger. Other than that, I was pretty pleased with that park as well. There were many attractions that had the same names as attractions in the Magic Kingdom, but there were many subtle differences (all of which I pointed out to Junko). For example, the Haunted Mansion was same-same, but different. The walk from the stretching room to the "doom buggies" had the two bust sculptures whose gaze follows you as you walk by, which are later in the ride in Florida.
Of the two rides that were brand new to me, the Matterhorn Bobsled roller coaster, and the Indiana Jones Adventure, I have to say that the Matterhorn was disappointing, and the Indiana Jones Adventure exceeded my expectations It was actually a good ride. It was so good that Junko and I went on it twice and I noticed more things in the ride the second time around.
Perhaps the best revelation of the time in Disneyland came when I went to the Enchanted Tiki Room. Ever since they changed the one in the Magic Kingdom to include Iago from Aladdin and Zuzu from The Lion King, I have been bummed out. I used to love the Enchanted Tiki Room as a kid, and the song that went along with it. I mean, how can you not love the chorus, "In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room. In the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room, where the birds sing words and the flowers croon, in the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki tiki room!"
I went into the attraction noticing that it didn't say "Under New Management!" like it does in Florida. I was very excited. I hoped that they hadn't fucked with this one. I hoped that they kept it pure. I hoped that when I went in I wouldn't see Iago or Zuzu. And when I heard them calling for Jose to wake the rest of the birds, I was elated. It was the original, the one from my childhood, the pure Enchanted Tiki Room. It was truly a treat to see that show again, as dumb and as lame and as cheesy as I'm sure a lot of people find it. I loved it as a kid, from the birds to the flowers to the chanting totems.
Disney needs to learn to not fuck with good things. They fucked with Imagination in Epcot (They should have kept the original ride and as creepy as Michael Jackson is, they should have kept the Captain EO 3D movie). The fucked with The Living Seas in Epcot. Granted, they did do good things to Pirates of the Caribbean in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, there are so many things that have disappeared or have been changed in bad ways.
Another great moment came right after Junko and I entered the park and went through our first attraction (the tour of Sleeping Beauty's castle). Directly to our left as we walked out was Mr. Toad's Wild Ride! Yeah! That's been gone from the Florida park for over a decade. I missed that ride for a long time and I thought that it was gone forever. I thought that it had been retired. To my delight, it was there. So, my trip to Disneyland was like turning the clock back to when I was ten and both Mr. Toad's Wild Ride and the Enchanted Tiki Room existed in a way that I wanted to remember them.
Aside from the Disney and the celebrity moments in Los Angeles, I did other cool stuff. I went to go see a girl that Junko was tutoring play soccer. By play soccer, I mean play soccer on a professional soccer team. It was the Los Angeles Sol against the Bay area's FC Gold Pride. The Sol won with a brilliant goal at the beginning of the second half.
I also went to Santa Monica and hung out in the sunshine. Oh yeah, I had In-n-Out Burger for the first time, which wasn't half bad, but wasn't as epic as I had anticipated.
Now, I'm in New York City. I got back to the east coast three days ago and came down to New York two days ago. I'm in my pal Brian's wedding tomorrow and needed to be here for the rehearsal dinner and to pick up my tux. Luckily, as I was the last person to get measured, and did so from the other end of the country, my tux fit perfectly.
The wedding buzz is all a little bit crazy. It's going to be a big wedding of two hundred and fifty people. Of those people, I know maybe eight of them. Six of them are the groomsmen, and two of them are the bride and groom. I guess you can say ten if you count Brian's sister and her husband, but she didn't remember my name even though we've met about five times. Surprisingly, two of the groomsmen who I thought never liked me, one I know for sure didn't like me, actually communicated with me. It was caught off guard. I went in thinking, "Hey, I'm a groomsman. I'll yuk it up with the three guys that I know and that I like and that like me... or at least I think they like me." But to my surprise, I'm kinda kickin' it with everyone.
****Continued on Day 94****
Well, the wedding is over, and it was a ton of fun. If you didn't know, I was a groomsman. I was last in line, shortest of the bunch, and was paired up with an eleven year old bridesmaid. Yes. Eleven years old. She did think I was hot though. Apparently, Brian's sister went up to her and said, "Hey, at least your partner is hot." to which she responded , "I KNOW!" So I'm at least a hit with eleven year olds. Me and Hannah Montana have it MADE with eleven year olds.
The wedding itself was a lot of fun. Brian picked out some kick ass tuxes and I would be lying if I didn't say that I looked hot. I mean, I was hot, temperature wise, but I was also looking damn good. I was trying to chat up Brian's cousin, Dawn (unfortunate name, but ridiculously good looking girl), but it didn't go so well. One of Brian's fraternity brothers, Kendall, got her to dance a few times, but from what I hear, she just couldn't get him to go away.
Another person that I was a hit with was Brian's aunt (?) Valerie. The totally excellent wedding band played a lot of great, swingable music, and I was looking for someone who could follow. She happened to be the one. She was an amazing follow for someone who hadn't ever lindy hopped or done any sort of swing dancing. We danced for like three or four songs over the course of the night, and they were all really good dances.
One of the funniest parts of the night, for me, was when the incredibly hot wedding singer started to bust into "It Takes Two" by MC Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock. Of course, she only knew the first few lines of it as it was kind of a bridge into another song. But I did a bit of taunting, so they continued the song and I went up and rapped the rest of it. It's so funny, because about ninety percent of the people there had never met me before, and those who had met me before really didn't get the impression that I could bust a rhyme. It was a lot of fun. I think I impressed the hot wedding singer as well.
While I was down in NYC for the wedding, I ended up hanging out with a couple of my favorite people from my Colby days, Rob and Jill. They recently purchased a condo in Hoboken, which was in a really nice neighborhood. It's really close to the main drag without being so close that it would be annoying. It was funny, because I met up with them on the day that they had taken off of work in order to move. I didn't know exactly where they lived in Hoboken, but when I got to the cross streets that they said that they lived on, I just followed the movers into their new condo. Didn't, and still don't know their address.
Anyhow, I'm back in Boston now. Sam arrived back here a few days ago as well. I'm completely unsettled and completely befuddled by my situation. I now have a mere week before I head down to Nantucket, a place, at the current moment, I'm not all that thrilled to be going back to. I have no income, no real responsibilities. I'm trying to get together with friends, but tend to be a bit flaky lately with calling people back or even calling people when I tell them that I'll call them.
Instead of preparing myself for going to Nantucket and cleaning up my life here in Cambridge, I have been volunteering at the Chez. I worked at a charity event, helped cook for some private parties, and cooked some Cuban sandwiches for the Mayfair event that happened this afternoon. I didn't need to do any of this. Marsoir asked me to do the charity event with him (where we kind of got tanked), but other than that, it was all pretty much me saying, "ya need any help?" I think it was good to get me back into the groove of being in a kitchen, but it was also a pretty good distraction from my apparently big case of re-entry depression.
So, I've been kind of in a weird mood lately. I've been up and down. I've been energetic and I've been fatigued. Little things irk me and I can't seem to let go of my time in Asia. I'm constantly annoyed by "Americans" and our "civilization." I'm upset that it costs $4.14 for a quart container of pineapple (which isn't even really full and comes out to be about a half of an average sized pineapple) when I used to get a whole, fresh pineapple, cut and cleaned as I'm asking to purchase it for less than a dollar. I know that people in southeast Asia say dumb things on the street, but here in America, I can understand the vapid things that are being said about this, that, and the other.
I find myself thinking about the consumerism in America a lot. I find that I'm walking by a lot of the stores that I used to go into thinking to myself, "Gee, I really don't need anything." I look at the people on the street with all of their bags of brand name whatchamabobs thinking that they paid five times as much as it would have cost in Bangkok, Saigon or even Hong Kong. There's nothing that tastes as good as it did over there. The buildings are boring. Everything sucks.
I talked to one of my best pals, Frank, while I was in NYC. He said that it seemed like I thought that America was beneath me now. I told him that it wasn't the case. It was just that I have never necessarily felt like I belonged here in America. I don't think status quo. I don't think like the rest of the country, I don't think. Maybe I do, and I just have an ego problem. I think that I just don't fit and that I can't make a difference here in the States. Over in Asia, though I didn't fit either, I think that I could make a difference there. I think that I could do something good that could affect people. I think that I could carve out something good over there, whereas, when I think of life in the States, I'm not so sure. Who knows though?
So I'm just chalking this up to a bit of re-entry depression. I'm hoping that when the sun shines in the States again, and the temperature gets back up into the high eighties and low nineties, I'll feel better about my life and won't be as anxious to escape back to the far east.
Anyhow, I'm sorry about not having posted much since I have gotten back to the States. I will try to keep writing on a regular basis. I'll get back to updating you all on my mundane American life. Maybe things will get exciting. Hopefully they'll get exciting. And for those of you who have a sense of humor, I think that this will be my theme for the summer:
Friday, April 17, 2009
Day 78: Airlock Two
Listening: Without your sweet kiss, my soul is lost, my friend. Now tell me how do I begin again?
What's my problem? Re-entry depression has hit again.
Eventually, I plan on having a big summary entry. You know, a lot of top fives and such. For now, I'm just getting accustomed to the American life being lived around me. I got off the plane at around half past two, two days ago. It took me an hour or so to get my luggage and get through customs. I stated on my custom forms that I had foreign food with me. When they asked, I just said I had candy. I totally forgot that I had a bottle of Thai Red Bull (stronger than the American stuff) for Pies. I also forgot about the Caba seed that I got from my trek in Chiang Mai that has been sitting in my backpack since then. Not really legal to bring foreign seeds into the States... But oh well. The way they were going, I could have probably smuggled in a live tiger... on a leash... with big flashing neon blinking lights that pointed to the tiger saying, "Tiger, motherfuckers!" and it still would have gotten through. All they did was ask me what I did for a living and what kind of food I was bringing in. Don't they know that all chefs are vagabonds? Silly border control, Trix are for kids.
My final days in Hong Kong were a little surreal. I could feel my trip coming to an end, tying me up in ropes and squeezing. I was tired though. My trip was largely spent with me on the run from city to city. Aside from my time in Chiang Mai and Koh Samui, I never spent more than a week anywhere. Even in those two places, I went on treks out of Chiang Mai for three days apiece, and in Koh Samui, I spent four of the days in Koh Tao, really and one day in Koh Phangan. So, I was always on the move. I wasn't like Julia, who just spent three weeks in Nha Trang working as a promoter for Red Apple Bar. Next time... no schedule, and I'm going to work along the way. No commitments for when I'm going home and no timelines. I'll come home when I'm, as they say, goddamn good and ready.
Anyway, Hong Kong was a crazy place. When I was staying in Kowloon, I was in a room a foot wider than a twin bed with a one square meter bathroom that had a sink, a toilet AND a shower, and a square meter that allowed the door to the room to open. That's EXACTLY how big it was. It was tiny. It was so tiny, that it was almost comical. Junko said that it sounds like a Japanese capsule hotel, and it very well might have been, but I think that a capsule hotel would have been a little bit nicer, at least the furnishings.
My time in Hong Kong was spent trying to get the lay of the land, for the most part. I walked around quite a bit, all through Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island as well. For two days, I had Candy and Simon guiding me around. They were so stressed out trying to figure out where to take me. Apparently, they don't go out very much, because everything is so expensive and the crowds are huge.
The first day I met up with them, we started by having dim sum in Times Square near the Causeway Bay station on the MRT. This was unlike any dim sum that I have ever had. There were no carts. There was only a menu. Two days prior when I went to go search out dim sum on my own, Candy texted me and said, "Ummm, I don't think you'll be able to order." I didn't believe her. Apparently, though, nowadays in Hong Kong at least, there are very few places that do the cart thing. It's all order a la carte. This dim sum, though, was something different. It felt much more high end, and the presentation of the dishes were really quite amazing. To top it all off, it was delicious. I think that my favorite thing that I had that morning was the Lo Bak Go, or turnip cake. It was cut into cubes and then fried and topped with this really great spicy sauce. I'm so used to the turnip cake just fried on a griddle and slapped on a plate with some sweet sauce, but, no. This was presented in a puffed basket of some sort. I had no clue what it was made of. I think it was something that could have been presented in a fine dining restaurant as an appetizer.
From there, we walked through Wan Chai, the financial district with all of their crazy buildings, and then to the midlands where Simon wanted me to try these king prawn wontons. Two words: fucking amazing, They were huge too. They were so good that I went back on my second to last night in Asia. They were perfectly seasoned with huge pieces of prawn in them. From there, I was taken to a VERY popular Hong Kong milk tea place, where I had, probably, the best milk tea that I've ever had in my life. I went back there on my second to last night as well.
I was already stuffed at that point. It really made no sense, but I was. I could have totally missed another meal in there, because the food coma from dim sum already had me reeling. I was totally waddling as if I had a food baby. We decided that we needed to walk it off a bit, so we took the ferry back across to Kowloon where we went to a bunch of the night markets.
When you travel in southeast Asia, you find out what the local night markets have. By this, I mean, you see the first five stalls, and it's the same for the rest of the eight blocks of markets. It's all, as they say, " Same same, but different." In Bangkok, you see the same cheesecloth shirts, the same table runners and placemats, the same wine bottle holders, and the same kitschy tees. In Luang Prabang, it was parasols, pants, skirts, scarves, coffee, and, of course, tees. In Hong Kong, it was Chinese dresses, Buddha figurines, Hello Kitty knockoffs, watch knockoffs, and bags. It was all same, same, but different.
We walked around for a long time. We started at Tsim Sha Tsui, which is at the bottom tip of Kowloon (actually the stop where my room was located), and walked up past the Mong Kok station, which is three stations away. I think the equivalent for the Bostonians out there would be if I walked from Porter to Kendall on the red line without diverting from the path of the train. It was a long ways. After a long bout of walking and shopping, where we actually bought very little, we ended up having sushi near Mong Kok. It was one of those conveyer belt sushi places, but we were actually in a booth away from the conveyer belt. The sushi was pretty good, and kind of avante garde. I had a seared foie gras sushi with gold leaf. Strangely enough, it only cost the equivalent of five US dollars. It tasted fine. And really, who can say no to duck fat? I also had a silverfish sushi, which is a lot like the salmon roe sushi, but instead of little red beads on top of the cylinder of rice and nori, it was a pile of little white fish with tiny black eyes. It was interesting, and surprisingly good.
By the time we had finished eating, and by eating, I mean for the night, it was ten o'clock. They went home and I went to sleep. Deep sleep. Coma sleep. Food coma sleep. I had done a lot of eating, but I think it was training for that last big night of eating on the town.
The next day, I met Candy and Simon at Central Station, where we went and had breakfast at a Hong Kong version of Denny's. Well, like Denny's as in it's a chain, but not like Denny's as in the food is actually edible. I had some noodles in soup for breakfast. I figured eggs are easy to come by in the States. Noodle soup is less easy to come by. Especially on the island. From there, we went to the Big Buddha out on Lantau Island. It's the biggest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha in he world, but not the biggest outdoor, biggest seated or biggest bronze Buddha. I found that to be an amusing little factoid from my guidebook.
In order to get to the Buddha, you have to either take a bus, a taxi or the cable car. We opted for the cable car, because it was the most novel of all of the methods. That, and they had just started this thing called the Crystal Cabin, which is a cable car with a glass bottom. That was what we wanted to take. When we got in line, the wait said ninety minutes. Yeesh. Ninety minutes. But we did it. It was ninety minutes to get to the ticket counter. Then, at the ticket counter, we were told that to get a Crystal Cabin, we had to wait another two hours. We opted out. So we took a regular cable car.
The cable car was nice though. After being in the cable car, I actually thought that I would have been pissed if I had gotten the Crystal Cabin knowing what I knew then. The regular cable car gave a fine view, and bubbled out a bit so if you put your forehead against the window, you could look straight down as if there was a glass bottom to the car.
At the top of the cable car, it was like a giant tourist trap all of the way up to the Big Buddha. Since we had been queued up for the past three and a half hours or so, we were hungry. We ended up at a pretty crappy restaurant. It came with mediocre expectations and delivered what would have been considered lower. I had fried rice and it wasn't all that good. I feel like we should have gone to the noodles in soup shop instead. Oh well. Hindsight.
The Big Buddha itself was pretty cool. On the steps up to the Buddha, I took some pictures. I actually took a picture of me making a funny face behind this older woman and Candy was in there doing the typical Asian pose. If you don't know what that is, well, you need to go watch more Asian tourists. I realize it was a bit juvenile, but it was funny at the time. Simon was laughing so hard that he could barely keep the camera still enough to take the shot. I have to say that it's one of the more amusing photos that was taken on my trip.
After we spent more time getting to the Big Buddha than actually AT the Big Buddha, we headed back into town to a crab spot in Causeway Bay. The meal started off pretty slow with some sauteed morning glory, but soon the fireworks began. Razor clams in garlic and black bean sauce made its way to the table. They were perfectly tender and wonderfully flavored. It was the exact way that I love eating clams, but these razor clams were so much more tender and delicious. There was absolutely no rubbery-ness. The razor clams were followed by some snails in a spicy sauce which were good, but were a bit on the rubbery side, as snails can get. However the pinnacle of the night was the typhoon-shelter crab. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT! I had the best prawns of my life in Bangkok, Thailand, the best Lobster in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and the best crab of my life in Hong Kong and it blew the prawns and the lobster out of the water.
****Continued Day 81****
That night, after I said my goodbyes to Candy and Simon, I headed off to the night market on Temple Street. I planned on buying more trinkets for people, but nothing really struck me. I did, however, end up going to a fortune teller. I know that I don't really believe much in this stuff, but I thought it would be fun to see what an old Chinese man could tell me about my life by looking at my hands and my face.
He started off by telling me that I use my imagination for work, that I deal in ideas so to speak. He said that I'm very good at getting others excited about my ideas and that I'm very good at getting others to do things for me. Then he asked me what I did for work. I told him that I was a chef. He said that that made sense. He then proceeded to tell me how the features of my hand were telling him that I would live a long life, more than ninety years, and that I shouldn't marry until later in life. I asked him what later meant. He said, definitely not in my twenties (good thing I dodged that bullet), and that now would be okay, but it would be better to wait. He said that I will do very well financially for the next twenty years, but that in my fifty-first and fifty-second year, that someone would try to take my wealth. He said that I would do financially well over the next twenty years if I don't gamble, specifically in casinos. He then proceeded to tell me why certain features of my face meant that I would have a good life. For example I have a strong nose, which I guess means that I will be lucky with money. He said things about my chin and my ears which I don't remember so well, but were all very positive things. I was hoping to hear a balance of positive and negative, but it was ninety percent positive. He also told me not to marry anyone born in the year of the rat and that my most compatible friends would be born in the years of the tiger, goat, and dog.
All in all, I'd like to believe that this is all true. The one thing that I was told not to do was gamble, so I think I can handle that without too much trouble. But when I think about wanting to believe the fortune teller, I have Ethan Hawke's voice in my head spouting the line from "Before Sunrise" saying, "Yeah, of course you do, you know. You pay your money, you get to hear something that makes you feel good about yourself. If you want, maybe there's a seedy section of Vienna, we can go buy a hit of crack, you know. Would you like that? Yeah?" Then, I think, it was merely some good entertainment. I mean the reading did last about a half an hour or so.
The next morning, I packed all of my stuff and headed to Hong Kong Disneyland. I took the MRT all of the way there, and on the special Disnelyand Line, the cars are much more plush with velvety benches and bronze statues of Disney characters, not to mentioned the Mickey shaped rings for the people who were standing to hold onto and the Mickey shaped windows. When you get to the Disneyland stop, the train instructs you to have a "magical" day.
Hong Kong Disneyland was altogether a bit disappointing. Everything was much smaller than what they have at Disney World in Florida. Well, if you think about it, a "land" should be a lot smaller than a "world," no? Regardless, I went in with higher expectations and, well, they were not met. I really could have seen EVERYTHING in Disney in less than five hours, given proper conditions and timing. There weren't many things that I was impressed with. I think that the thing that I was the most impressed with was the fact that they gave out individually packaged chopsticks and Chinese soup spoons with all of the meals. I thought that was kind of spiffy. It came in a neat little sealed package too. I'll post a picture later.
The other thing that I thought was really cool was the fact that they dealt very well with the multi-lingual-ness of the clientele. For instance, when you go to the Jungle Cruise, there are three lines, one for Cantonese, one for Mandarin, and one for English speaking "jungle guides." At the Stitch Encounter, there were different times for different languages, one hour for each of the languages. In the Festival of the Lion King show, it was done in English, but there two monkeys who spoke in Cantonese, telling people what was happening. And also in the High School Musical show, there were two people talking in English, and one in Cantonese.
Probably one of the most amusing things that I saw in Hong Kong Disneyland was the Muppet Mobile Lab with Dr. Bunsen & Beaker. Everyone knows them from the Muppets. For the Mobile Lab, they cruise around the park interacting with guests. Now if you can imagine them interacting with guests in English, imagine them doing it in Cantonese. It's perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever seen or heard. I didn't understand a single word that Bunsen said, but I was rollin'. I took a couple of videos that I'll post later.
Finally, the most impressive thing that I saw at Hong Kong Disneyland were the women. Jeezus were some of the girls who worked/danced in the park hot. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I really can't say anymore about it. There were just some attractive girls employed there.
But anyhow, I'm in Los Angeles now. I've been here for the past five days. It's been a bit of an adjustment coming back. Everyone speaks fantastic English, it's a dry heat instead of a humid, muggy heat and... well, those are the only good things I can see about being back in the States now. Everything here costs more. There are no more street vendors, or if there are, they're expensive, or they're selling something that's tortilla based (which I can't eat). I miss the cheap-cheap nature of southeast Asia. To top it all off, I'm still quite lagged. I hope I can shake it off by the time I have to be in Brian's wedding. Well, I'm actually going to go to sleep now. I have to be on a plane tomorrow. Click my heels three times.... Too bad I won't be there for long. I'll write more about Los Angeles in the next few days.
What's my problem? Re-entry depression has hit again.
Eventually, I plan on having a big summary entry. You know, a lot of top fives and such. For now, I'm just getting accustomed to the American life being lived around me. I got off the plane at around half past two, two days ago. It took me an hour or so to get my luggage and get through customs. I stated on my custom forms that I had foreign food with me. When they asked, I just said I had candy. I totally forgot that I had a bottle of Thai Red Bull (stronger than the American stuff) for Pies. I also forgot about the Caba seed that I got from my trek in Chiang Mai that has been sitting in my backpack since then. Not really legal to bring foreign seeds into the States... But oh well. The way they were going, I could have probably smuggled in a live tiger... on a leash... with big flashing neon blinking lights that pointed to the tiger saying, "Tiger, motherfuckers!" and it still would have gotten through. All they did was ask me what I did for a living and what kind of food I was bringing in. Don't they know that all chefs are vagabonds? Silly border control, Trix are for kids.
My final days in Hong Kong were a little surreal. I could feel my trip coming to an end, tying me up in ropes and squeezing. I was tired though. My trip was largely spent with me on the run from city to city. Aside from my time in Chiang Mai and Koh Samui, I never spent more than a week anywhere. Even in those two places, I went on treks out of Chiang Mai for three days apiece, and in Koh Samui, I spent four of the days in Koh Tao, really and one day in Koh Phangan. So, I was always on the move. I wasn't like Julia, who just spent three weeks in Nha Trang working as a promoter for Red Apple Bar. Next time... no schedule, and I'm going to work along the way. No commitments for when I'm going home and no timelines. I'll come home when I'm, as they say, goddamn good and ready.
Anyway, Hong Kong was a crazy place. When I was staying in Kowloon, I was in a room a foot wider than a twin bed with a one square meter bathroom that had a sink, a toilet AND a shower, and a square meter that allowed the door to the room to open. That's EXACTLY how big it was. It was tiny. It was so tiny, that it was almost comical. Junko said that it sounds like a Japanese capsule hotel, and it very well might have been, but I think that a capsule hotel would have been a little bit nicer, at least the furnishings.
My time in Hong Kong was spent trying to get the lay of the land, for the most part. I walked around quite a bit, all through Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island as well. For two days, I had Candy and Simon guiding me around. They were so stressed out trying to figure out where to take me. Apparently, they don't go out very much, because everything is so expensive and the crowds are huge.
The first day I met up with them, we started by having dim sum in Times Square near the Causeway Bay station on the MRT. This was unlike any dim sum that I have ever had. There were no carts. There was only a menu. Two days prior when I went to go search out dim sum on my own, Candy texted me and said, "Ummm, I don't think you'll be able to order." I didn't believe her. Apparently, though, nowadays in Hong Kong at least, there are very few places that do the cart thing. It's all order a la carte. This dim sum, though, was something different. It felt much more high end, and the presentation of the dishes were really quite amazing. To top it all off, it was delicious. I think that my favorite thing that I had that morning was the Lo Bak Go, or turnip cake. It was cut into cubes and then fried and topped with this really great spicy sauce. I'm so used to the turnip cake just fried on a griddle and slapped on a plate with some sweet sauce, but, no. This was presented in a puffed basket of some sort. I had no clue what it was made of. I think it was something that could have been presented in a fine dining restaurant as an appetizer.
From there, we walked through Wan Chai, the financial district with all of their crazy buildings, and then to the midlands where Simon wanted me to try these king prawn wontons. Two words: fucking amazing, They were huge too. They were so good that I went back on my second to last night in Asia. They were perfectly seasoned with huge pieces of prawn in them. From there, I was taken to a VERY popular Hong Kong milk tea place, where I had, probably, the best milk tea that I've ever had in my life. I went back there on my second to last night as well.
I was already stuffed at that point. It really made no sense, but I was. I could have totally missed another meal in there, because the food coma from dim sum already had me reeling. I was totally waddling as if I had a food baby. We decided that we needed to walk it off a bit, so we took the ferry back across to Kowloon where we went to a bunch of the night markets.
When you travel in southeast Asia, you find out what the local night markets have. By this, I mean, you see the first five stalls, and it's the same for the rest of the eight blocks of markets. It's all, as they say, " Same same, but different." In Bangkok, you see the same cheesecloth shirts, the same table runners and placemats, the same wine bottle holders, and the same kitschy tees. In Luang Prabang, it was parasols, pants, skirts, scarves, coffee, and, of course, tees. In Hong Kong, it was Chinese dresses, Buddha figurines, Hello Kitty knockoffs, watch knockoffs, and bags. It was all same, same, but different.
We walked around for a long time. We started at Tsim Sha Tsui, which is at the bottom tip of Kowloon (actually the stop where my room was located), and walked up past the Mong Kok station, which is three stations away. I think the equivalent for the Bostonians out there would be if I walked from Porter to Kendall on the red line without diverting from the path of the train. It was a long ways. After a long bout of walking and shopping, where we actually bought very little, we ended up having sushi near Mong Kok. It was one of those conveyer belt sushi places, but we were actually in a booth away from the conveyer belt. The sushi was pretty good, and kind of avante garde. I had a seared foie gras sushi with gold leaf. Strangely enough, it only cost the equivalent of five US dollars. It tasted fine. And really, who can say no to duck fat? I also had a silverfish sushi, which is a lot like the salmon roe sushi, but instead of little red beads on top of the cylinder of rice and nori, it was a pile of little white fish with tiny black eyes. It was interesting, and surprisingly good.
By the time we had finished eating, and by eating, I mean for the night, it was ten o'clock. They went home and I went to sleep. Deep sleep. Coma sleep. Food coma sleep. I had done a lot of eating, but I think it was training for that last big night of eating on the town.
The next day, I met Candy and Simon at Central Station, where we went and had breakfast at a Hong Kong version of Denny's. Well, like Denny's as in it's a chain, but not like Denny's as in the food is actually edible. I had some noodles in soup for breakfast. I figured eggs are easy to come by in the States. Noodle soup is less easy to come by. Especially on the island. From there, we went to the Big Buddha out on Lantau Island. It's the biggest outdoor, seated, bronze Buddha in he world, but not the biggest outdoor, biggest seated or biggest bronze Buddha. I found that to be an amusing little factoid from my guidebook.
In order to get to the Buddha, you have to either take a bus, a taxi or the cable car. We opted for the cable car, because it was the most novel of all of the methods. That, and they had just started this thing called the Crystal Cabin, which is a cable car with a glass bottom. That was what we wanted to take. When we got in line, the wait said ninety minutes. Yeesh. Ninety minutes. But we did it. It was ninety minutes to get to the ticket counter. Then, at the ticket counter, we were told that to get a Crystal Cabin, we had to wait another two hours. We opted out. So we took a regular cable car.
The cable car was nice though. After being in the cable car, I actually thought that I would have been pissed if I had gotten the Crystal Cabin knowing what I knew then. The regular cable car gave a fine view, and bubbled out a bit so if you put your forehead against the window, you could look straight down as if there was a glass bottom to the car.
At the top of the cable car, it was like a giant tourist trap all of the way up to the Big Buddha. Since we had been queued up for the past three and a half hours or so, we were hungry. We ended up at a pretty crappy restaurant. It came with mediocre expectations and delivered what would have been considered lower. I had fried rice and it wasn't all that good. I feel like we should have gone to the noodles in soup shop instead. Oh well. Hindsight.
The Big Buddha itself was pretty cool. On the steps up to the Buddha, I took some pictures. I actually took a picture of me making a funny face behind this older woman and Candy was in there doing the typical Asian pose. If you don't know what that is, well, you need to go watch more Asian tourists. I realize it was a bit juvenile, but it was funny at the time. Simon was laughing so hard that he could barely keep the camera still enough to take the shot. I have to say that it's one of the more amusing photos that was taken on my trip.
After we spent more time getting to the Big Buddha than actually AT the Big Buddha, we headed back into town to a crab spot in Causeway Bay. The meal started off pretty slow with some sauteed morning glory, but soon the fireworks began. Razor clams in garlic and black bean sauce made its way to the table. They were perfectly tender and wonderfully flavored. It was the exact way that I love eating clams, but these razor clams were so much more tender and delicious. There was absolutely no rubbery-ness. The razor clams were followed by some snails in a spicy sauce which were good, but were a bit on the rubbery side, as snails can get. However the pinnacle of the night was the typhoon-shelter crab. HOLY. FUCKING. SHIT! I had the best prawns of my life in Bangkok, Thailand, the best Lobster in Nha Trang, Vietnam, and the best crab of my life in Hong Kong and it blew the prawns and the lobster out of the water.
****Continued Day 81****
That night, after I said my goodbyes to Candy and Simon, I headed off to the night market on Temple Street. I planned on buying more trinkets for people, but nothing really struck me. I did, however, end up going to a fortune teller. I know that I don't really believe much in this stuff, but I thought it would be fun to see what an old Chinese man could tell me about my life by looking at my hands and my face.
He started off by telling me that I use my imagination for work, that I deal in ideas so to speak. He said that I'm very good at getting others excited about my ideas and that I'm very good at getting others to do things for me. Then he asked me what I did for work. I told him that I was a chef. He said that that made sense. He then proceeded to tell me how the features of my hand were telling him that I would live a long life, more than ninety years, and that I shouldn't marry until later in life. I asked him what later meant. He said, definitely not in my twenties (good thing I dodged that bullet), and that now would be okay, but it would be better to wait. He said that I will do very well financially for the next twenty years, but that in my fifty-first and fifty-second year, that someone would try to take my wealth. He said that I would do financially well over the next twenty years if I don't gamble, specifically in casinos. He then proceeded to tell me why certain features of my face meant that I would have a good life. For example I have a strong nose, which I guess means that I will be lucky with money. He said things about my chin and my ears which I don't remember so well, but were all very positive things. I was hoping to hear a balance of positive and negative, but it was ninety percent positive. He also told me not to marry anyone born in the year of the rat and that my most compatible friends would be born in the years of the tiger, goat, and dog.
All in all, I'd like to believe that this is all true. The one thing that I was told not to do was gamble, so I think I can handle that without too much trouble. But when I think about wanting to believe the fortune teller, I have Ethan Hawke's voice in my head spouting the line from "Before Sunrise" saying, "Yeah, of course you do, you know. You pay your money, you get to hear something that makes you feel good about yourself. If you want, maybe there's a seedy section of Vienna, we can go buy a hit of crack, you know. Would you like that? Yeah?" Then, I think, it was merely some good entertainment. I mean the reading did last about a half an hour or so.
The next morning, I packed all of my stuff and headed to Hong Kong Disneyland. I took the MRT all of the way there, and on the special Disnelyand Line, the cars are much more plush with velvety benches and bronze statues of Disney characters, not to mentioned the Mickey shaped rings for the people who were standing to hold onto and the Mickey shaped windows. When you get to the Disneyland stop, the train instructs you to have a "magical" day.
Hong Kong Disneyland was altogether a bit disappointing. Everything was much smaller than what they have at Disney World in Florida. Well, if you think about it, a "land" should be a lot smaller than a "world," no? Regardless, I went in with higher expectations and, well, they were not met. I really could have seen EVERYTHING in Disney in less than five hours, given proper conditions and timing. There weren't many things that I was impressed with. I think that the thing that I was the most impressed with was the fact that they gave out individually packaged chopsticks and Chinese soup spoons with all of the meals. I thought that was kind of spiffy. It came in a neat little sealed package too. I'll post a picture later.
The other thing that I thought was really cool was the fact that they dealt very well with the multi-lingual-ness of the clientele. For instance, when you go to the Jungle Cruise, there are three lines, one for Cantonese, one for Mandarin, and one for English speaking "jungle guides." At the Stitch Encounter, there were different times for different languages, one hour for each of the languages. In the Festival of the Lion King show, it was done in English, but there two monkeys who spoke in Cantonese, telling people what was happening. And also in the High School Musical show, there were two people talking in English, and one in Cantonese.
Probably one of the most amusing things that I saw in Hong Kong Disneyland was the Muppet Mobile Lab with Dr. Bunsen & Beaker. Everyone knows them from the Muppets. For the Mobile Lab, they cruise around the park interacting with guests. Now if you can imagine them interacting with guests in English, imagine them doing it in Cantonese. It's perhaps one of the funniest things I have ever seen or heard. I didn't understand a single word that Bunsen said, but I was rollin'. I took a couple of videos that I'll post later.
Finally, the most impressive thing that I saw at Hong Kong Disneyland were the women. Jeezus were some of the girls who worked/danced in the park hot. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I really can't say anymore about it. There were just some attractive girls employed there.
But anyhow, I'm in Los Angeles now. I've been here for the past five days. It's been a bit of an adjustment coming back. Everyone speaks fantastic English, it's a dry heat instead of a humid, muggy heat and... well, those are the only good things I can see about being back in the States now. Everything here costs more. There are no more street vendors, or if there are, they're expensive, or they're selling something that's tortilla based (which I can't eat). I miss the cheap-cheap nature of southeast Asia. To top it all off, I'm still quite lagged. I hope I can shake it off by the time I have to be in Brian's wedding. Well, I'm actually going to go to sleep now. I have to be on a plane tomorrow. Click my heels three times.... Too bad I won't be there for long. I'll write more about Los Angeles in the next few days.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Day 74: What Has Two Thumbs And Is A Big Fucking Pig?
Listening: Well, if you are what you eat, in my case, I'll be sweet so come and get some. I'm so over it.
What's my problem? I could get used to this.
This guy!
I'm back on the MRT, on my way back to Disney. Since my last post at around five o'clock, I have had a bowl of noodles with king prawn wontons and beef, a Hong Kong style milk tea, some takoyaki, an assortment of tastes from a high end Asian grocery store in the basement of the Sogo department store, and some dried vegetable and pork chop congee. In my bag, I have a sakura mochi, which I intended to eat on my trip back to the hotel until I realized that I'm not allowed to eat anything on the MRT, and a Beard Papa sakura cream puff, which I intended on eating back in the room. I have a cinnamon bun and a coffee cake for breakfast tomorrow as well. Yeah. I'm a pig. I guess I'm just getting my fill before I head back to the States. Fucking America. Why can't we do food right? Well, we can do some food right, and even better than the original countries could, but we're getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to Asian foods. Can't I just get 'round the world delivery?
What's my problem? I could get used to this.
This guy!
I'm back on the MRT, on my way back to Disney. Since my last post at around five o'clock, I have had a bowl of noodles with king prawn wontons and beef, a Hong Kong style milk tea, some takoyaki, an assortment of tastes from a high end Asian grocery store in the basement of the Sogo department store, and some dried vegetable and pork chop congee. In my bag, I have a sakura mochi, which I intended to eat on my trip back to the hotel until I realized that I'm not allowed to eat anything on the MRT, and a Beard Papa sakura cream puff, which I intended on eating back in the room. I have a cinnamon bun and a coffee cake for breakfast tomorrow as well. Yeah. I'm a pig. I guess I'm just getting my fill before I head back to the States. Fucking America. Why can't we do food right? Well, we can do some food right, and even better than the original countries could, but we're getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to Asian foods. Can't I just get 'round the world delivery?
Day 74: Kinda Short For A Stormtrooper
Listening: But it's not forever. But it's just tonight. Oh, we're still the greatest.
What's my problem? I have one full day left in Asia.
So, I've been busy the past two days. I've been hanging out with Candy and Simon. I have found out a very important thing about Hong Kong. There are two things to do here. Eat and shop. There are very few cultural places to go see, not that I made a huge effort. I'll save it for the next time. But, the three of us ate our faces off. The first day we hung out, it was dim sum, wontons, milk tea, and sushi. I feel like there was more in there than I'm remembering. Yesterday, it was noodles, fried rice, typhoon-shelter crab, razorclams, snails, morning glory, and some Chinese coffee milk dessert. Yeah. There was a lot of eating.
I'm at the MRT Station blogging, because I haven't had time or a place to blog over the past two days. I'm back in Hong Kong after checking into the Disneyland Hotel just to get some more quality food before I head back to the States. I checked out the park for a few hours and saw a few shows. The funny thing about Hong Kong Disneyland is that everything seems shorter. The castle is DEFINTITELY shorter than any other Disney castle that I've seen. I'll have to look closer tomorrow.
Anyhow, I have to go. My 15 minutes of webtime is almost up. Next post may be from the airport. Who knows?
What's my problem? I have one full day left in Asia.
So, I've been busy the past two days. I've been hanging out with Candy and Simon. I have found out a very important thing about Hong Kong. There are two things to do here. Eat and shop. There are very few cultural places to go see, not that I made a huge effort. I'll save it for the next time. But, the three of us ate our faces off. The first day we hung out, it was dim sum, wontons, milk tea, and sushi. I feel like there was more in there than I'm remembering. Yesterday, it was noodles, fried rice, typhoon-shelter crab, razorclams, snails, morning glory, and some Chinese coffee milk dessert. Yeah. There was a lot of eating.
I'm at the MRT Station blogging, because I haven't had time or a place to blog over the past two days. I'm back in Hong Kong after checking into the Disneyland Hotel just to get some more quality food before I head back to the States. I checked out the park for a few hours and saw a few shows. The funny thing about Hong Kong Disneyland is that everything seems shorter. The castle is DEFINTITELY shorter than any other Disney castle that I've seen. I'll have to look closer tomorrow.
Anyhow, I have to go. My 15 minutes of webtime is almost up. Next post may be from the airport. Who knows?
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