Minneapolis Freedom

Sometime around the end of last year Pi Chi got a paper accepted to a conference in Minneapolis. This was a great source of pride for her immediate supervisor since presenting at an American conference is seen as a much greater accomplishment than presenting at a conference in Mongolia or one of those former Soviet republics; the lesser European countries. Immediate supervisors and people in charge always put their names on publishable papers even though Pi Chi and I do all the work. This is standard practice around here and explains why I have never seen any paper in any Chinese medical journal with only one author. The reason I read Chinese medical journals is because Pi Chi sucked me into her world and insists that I translate every paper she submits to these conferences. The reason she wants me to do this is because every paper I have translated for her and her colleagues has been accepted by these conferences and eventually published somewhere. Papers they write on their own tend to get rejected faster than Charles Nelson Reilly at communion. The only credit I have ever received was a brief mention at the end of her Minneapolis presentation. And that was only because I put it in.

While it is true that Pi Chi does all of the research and none of it would be possible without her medical education and experience, my participation should not be underestimated. I have the paradigm shifting skillsets to fill correlative studies of nursing attitudes toward patient autonomy in direct action erythropoiesis suppressing hematology units at scalable healthgiving organizations with enough differentiated proactive facilitational bullshit that everyone wants to hear more. But it is time-consuming since I rarely know what Pi Chi is talking about and her colleagues usually make as much sense as some old bearded dude sitting on a cloud who created dark matter 6,000 years ago and is so fond of his mud pie people that in between plagues and killing off first born children he sent his own first born in after knocking up some homeless unwed teenager so that he could brutally punish his son capitally in a blasphemous effort to vanquish our violations of arbitrary farming codes some other bearded dude wrote on a brick after tweaking at a flaming plant, but everyone still has to light candles when they see the zombie son’s mother in their mashed potatoes and tell pedophiles who loiter in dark closets while wearing concealing robes about all of our thoughtcrimes in order to be revanquished even though we have already substitutionarily atoned via the aforementioned executed criminal/bastard child who demands that we eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to join the coven.

But I make her colleagues pay an exorbitant fee. I am not completely stupid.

Pi Chi generally likes to present these papers in the easiest way possible since her goal is to get them published. The conferences are merely a means to an end. But the people in charge of the Minneapolis conference really wanted her to give a lecture on all the bullshit I wrote and her hospital generally pops its tiny cork over anything that happens in the United States as long as they can attach their names. This meant more work for me since a lecture requires her to interact with her audience rather than simply read a script that makes little sense to her. So, brilliant as I am, I put a little joke at the end of her presentation that told the genuine English speakers in the audience that English was not her strongest language and that without the help of her brilliant translator, who would not be in attendance, it would not be all that easy for her to answer detailed questions on the subject at hand. I do not remember the joke but I remember that it told people to back off without making her look stupid. When Pi Chi asked me if anyone would actually laugh I told her that they would just to be polite.

We spent a good deal of time rehearsing for her lecture since I was undecided about going. A month or two after being accepted in Minneapolis the same paper was accepted to a conference in Durban. The Minneapolis conference was scheduled for March and the Durban conference June. This is not a problem for Pi Chi. Her hospital is more than happy to pay for both conferences in the same year since a prestigious organization is in charge of the Durban conference and the other is in the United States. That does little for me since being the translator rarely gets me a free ticket. Flying halfway around the world three months after flying halfway the other way around the world is the kind of thing on which my bankbook frowns. Given a choice I would rather go to South Africa in austral winter than Minnesota in boreal winter. Pi Chi wanted me to go to Minneapolis, but I knew that she would probably not go to Durban without me. And I really want to go to South Africa.

South Africa has a bit of a bad reputation on other continents. Part of this stems from the fact that all African nations have a bad reputation on other continents. The irony that is lost on most North Americans is that all continents have a bad reputation on other continents. The rest of the world does not worship your people nearly as much as you think they do. No matter where you live. Chinese people love Chinese culture. Ask one hundred Chinese what culture in the world they are most attracted to and one hundred of them will say Chinese. When they travel it has more to do with checking a place off the list than experiencing the culture. I have spoken to at least three Chinese people about this so you can be assured that it is an irrefutable fact.

South Africa is to the Chinese what Columbia is to Americans. If you go there you will die. You will be shot, kidnapped, robbed and sold into slavery. The fact that crime in Columbia has decreased significantly in the past few years is irrelevant. As is the fact that most crime in South Africa has nothing to do with tourists. There is very little danger as long as you stay away from the $10 prostitutes and leave your “Arrest Mandela” t-shirt at home. But tell that to a Chinese person and they will ask you what a Mandela is.

Sometimes I find myself surprised by how little the little Chinese people around me know about the world around them. None of my students can tell you who Gandhi, Hitler, Mao or Caesar were or why they are notable. But they all know Dangmu Kelusi (湯姆克魯斯).

Pi Chi is not too terribly excited about going to South Africa, but this is an important conference and I have been telling her how hard Africa rocks since I went the first time. She was far more excited about Minneapolis. That is in the country of United America, where the streets are paved with marshmallows and chocolate and everyone has exciting adventures in cavernous rent controlled apartments with their five best friends. South Africa is in the country of Africa, where everyone is ceremoniously eaten and dies of bubonic plague. We went back and forth about which one I should go to but she eventually agreed with me. It seemed odd to let her go to my country without me but I am not from Minnesota and there is nothing I can show her there beyond whatever I looked up online. I am more familiar with the culture and language than she is but that is usually the case whenever we travel. As a little Chinese person, she knows little about the world around her. I would be more useful to her in South Africa. Minneapolis has few Big Black Men with voodoo drums just waiting to shoot, kidnap, rob and sell you into slavery.

I printed up a map with points of interest and a few restaurants that I decided she might like and sent her on her way. I told her to try some of the local exotic delicacies like apple pie and mashed potatoes and to steer clear of the white people. Her mission was to bring back Tootsie Rolls.

Before she left she brought back some American money from the post office. This is not the unusual part. Banking is commonly done at the post office around here. Whenever I travel I usually exchange currency at whichever airport is most likely to have whatever currency I need for wherever I am going. Pi Chi does it at the post office.

Having not lived in the United States for some years I have not had any need to handle American currency. When Pi Chi brought some new bills home I was disappointed. Despite all of our crimes against humanity, wars of convenience, destruction of our only planet, incomparable greed and hypocrisy, Americans have always had one thing that made us better than the rest of the world; our money never looked as gay as every other country’s. It was black and white with a little bit of understated green. Bills were symmetrical and uniform. American dollars were never as fruity as euros. Now they are.

After Pi Chi went to Minneapolis I took a few days off work. It was one of the best vacations I have ever had. No airports, no inept security drones, no kindergarten seats. Just chillin’ out, maxin’ and relaxin’ all cool at the crib, yo.

Before Pi Chi went to Minneapolis I was giving serious thought to whether living with someone for the rest of my life was a good idea or not. I like living alone. I like sleeping alone. I like eating alone. I love traveling alone. Peace and quiet at home is a rare thing for me and I pine for it regularly. But a funny thing happened while she was gone. This was the longest we had been apart since we started living together. She usually calls me whenever she is away and those phone calls are often an interruption and sometimes a nuisance. She has been known to call me just to tell me that she will call me later. As if to prove my point, she just called me as I was typing this. This is not an amazing coincidence since she generally calls often. She asked me if I wanted some cake. Chinese cake is more like a small bland muffin that tastes like it was made last month. I usually say no. While she was in Minneapolis I started looking forward to her phone calls. She usually called just before she went to sleep which was just as I was waking up.

Our relationship was not necessarily in trouble and her trip to Minneapolis did not necessarily save it, but it did not hurt. While she was gone I started looking into information about getting married in South Africa. There are no residency requirements and it all seems fairly simple. But it turned out to be too expensive and the way we planned our trip did not help.

The conference is in Durban, which is a nice little town but if I am flying all the way to South Africa I want to go to Cape Town. Cape Town is one of the world’s great cities. And since we were going to South Africa, Pi Chi thought it would be a good idea to see some animals. She likes cheetahs and she heard my story about getting very close to a family of cheetahs on the Serengeti more than a few times. We decided we might as well go to Kruger National Park.

Flights into South Africa from out of Africa are more likely to go to Johannesburg than anywhere else. The dates of the conference and the days that her hospital are willing to do without her mean that we will have a few extra days before the conference and plenty of time after. Obviously Cape Town will come after the conference. But the timing makes Kruger difficult. I wanted to stay in the park since that is where all the pop and parties are. But the park’s gates close at sunset and if you are not in before then you are the unluck. They say it takes about six hours to drive from Johannesburg to Kruger if you avoid the scenic route and our flight makes it impossible to get there before sunset unless we spend the night in Johannesburg. But then we would lose a full day at Kruger. And I want to take the scenic route since I do not drive that way very often. We decided to drive rather than fly because the planes into Kruger are small and infrequent and we know we will have too much luggage. Pi Chi always travels with too much luggage and all those conference materials will only make it worse.

But at least in Minneapolis I did not have to carry all of that crap.