I may have already said a word or two about the Chinese being the most selfish drivers in the world. This is a point I simply can never exaggerate. I see all manner of vehicles run red lights, drive on the wrong side of the road, drive in multiple lanes at the same time, make left turns from the right hand lane, make right turns from the left hand lane, make u-turns from the outside lane regardless of light color, swerve into oncoming traffic, change lanes regardless of traffic, jump in front of cars going twice their speed, abruptly stop in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, block traffic at every opportunity and park absolutely anywhere. I do not witness these activities occasionally or once a month. I see people drive like drunken monkeys every single day that I drive. I have seen these people do all of these things at night without their headlights. I drive home on a road that has no street lights for a good twenty minutes. This stretch of road has no houses or businesses to light the street. The only light I can ever see is from my headlights and other cars. So when another vehicle comes directly toward me from the opposite direction without any headlights I cannot see it until it is entirely too close. And when I honk my beleaguered horn at them they always get angry.
The funny thing about Chinese drivers, aside from their complete disregard for the rules of the road and any semblance of common sense, is that they are always personally offended whenever anyone honks at them. When they drive dark colored cars in the wrong direction on black unlit roads at night without their headlights they cannot fathom why anyone would honk at them. Nothing in their brains register that perhaps they are doing something amiss. The Chinese mentality is that if you honk at me then you are clearly the bad guy, no matter what batshit retarded thing I am doing. And yet they freely honk their horns at each other. That is not some exotic ancient Chinese cultural prerogative. That is simple hypocrisy.
Just today I honked at a scooter driver who came within inches of hitting the Wife’s car while he drove his scooter with one hand, held a baby with the other and ran a red light to make a left turn from the wrong side of the road onto the wrong side of the road at night without headlights. I did not honk because he was endangering the baby. According to his culture he was not. I did not honk because he ran the red light or because he was driving on the wrong side of the road without lights. If I honked every time I saw such things the horn would no longer be operative. I am surprised it still works as it is. I only honked because if he had not turned his head around to look in the direction he was driving I would have slammed into him. I hit the brakes as soon as he ran the red light, but since he was driving like this is England I had far less time to stop than I usually do in similar circumstances. When he stopped, literally inches in front of me, my hand was still on the horn. He looked at me as though I had just shot his dog. How dare you honk at me, is the general reaction one gets from local drivers.
I almost always honk at intersections when I have a green light and I cannot clearly see the cross traffic. That is probably annoying to people living there but, and this is foreigner thinking, I think a collision would be worse. The Chinese roadmakers were smart enough to place directional dividers on some of the roads. This prevents cars from swerving into oncoming traffic. A good thing, I say. But the dividers are almost always loaded with large bushes or trees. This makes it impossible to see any cross traffic at intersections until it is too late. Most of my green light near collisions are at such intersections. On roads without the dividers I can usually see the cars that are going to run the red lights in enough time to hit the brakes and wonder what it is about red lights that these people find so confusing.
I usually honk at any vehicle that I almost hit while I run the green light and it runs the red light. One day a scooter monkey that I came very close to killing stopped dead when I honked at him, but not when his light was red or when a car came inches from killing him, and changed direction to follow me. I think he was trying to chase me. Chinese drivers love to chase people whom they imagine have wronged them. I suppose ignoring all traffic rules is not dangerous enough. But I find it hard to be intimidated or impressed by a tiny person on a broken down scooter. If he had a better scooter that could drive above 30km/h what would he do? Wave his fist in the air at me? He could slam his scooter into the Wife’s car. It would not be the first time. That car has several scratches and dents of unknown origin. They were most likely given to it while parked. Leaving a note is not the Chinese way. He could wave his metal rod at me. This is not a euphemism. More than a few Chinese drivers keep bats and metal rods in their cars for the sole purpose of trying to intimidate other drivers. When I honked at a driver who clearly thought that merging into another lane means speeding up to hit the car in front of him and this particular driver waved his metal rod at me I waved a finger back at him. That is the only metal rod I need. Although on another occasion I showed another driver my umbrella when he showed me his metal rod. I think I confused him.
So where are the police? That is a good question. The local police are largely corrupt, incompetent and Chinese lazy. The local news often shows footage of police officers sleeping in their cars or having sex with prostitutes while on duty. There was an infamous photograph of a police officer leaning against his car, casually huffing a cigarette while someone was dying in a fatal car “accident” half a block away. He could have been the first on the scene and possibly saved a life, but he was Chinese and they are not the most observant people in the world. Unlike American police, Chinese police do not become cops so they can bully people and carry guns to compensate for their own inadequacies. Chinese police become cops because they fail most aptitude tests and it is a pretty laid back job. Despite or because of the inherent laziness and inefficiency that all Chinese share, there is very little serious crime. Ninety percent of a Chinese cop’s job is dealing with traffic “accidents”.
Cameras at occasional intersections issue fines to cars and trucks that run the red light or drive over 20km/h above the speed limit. The police seem to feel that this is good enough. The problem is that there are not nearly enough cameras and everyone knows where the few are. Even if you did not already know about them you can see them early enough to slow down or, heaven forbid, actually stop at the red light. A bigger problem is that they are not sensitive enough to catch scooters. Any scooter can run any red light anywhere without consequence, other than the occasional fatal collision with a larger vehicle. But the very real threat of death is not enough of a deterrent to these people. They need the state to take money out of their pockets for them to give half a shit.
And that is the main cause of the problem. No one here gives a shit. It is not that they do not know any of the rules. If we assume that half of the drivers on the road have a driver’s license then half of the drivers on the road must have passed the written test. The English version of the written test is incomprehensible, but I have to assume that the Chinese version makes sense. To pass it you have to have a basic understanding of general rules or guess very well. If at least half of the drivers know three fourths of the rules then why do ninety nine percent of them drive like drunken lemurs? Probably because they are without hyperbole the most selfish people I have ever seen in my entire life. Every one of them seems to think that they are the only vehicle on the road and that they are the masters of all they survey, which is generally only the few feet in front of them. Chinese drivers appear to be physically unable to see anyone in any other direction or other people more than half a car length ahead. Eyesight cannot be the problem. You can get glasses 24H even in the smallest towns. It is mostly a sense of entitlement that they are infinitely more important than anyone else and everyone should always move out of their way. Which is odd since Chinese drivers, and indeed Chinese pedestrians, are incapable of moving out of anyone’s way under any circumstance.
The selfishness reaches beyond the road. Someone will always push their way to the front of every line at every bank, post office, grocery store and government office. The smarter businesses have done away with lines completely and force everyone to take a number. But even then there is always someone who thinks it is their turn right now. Whether on the road, at work, indoors or outdoors, the Chinese all think they should always be first all the time.
It was in this environment that one of my favorite students was almost killed.
Sunny is a happy, friendly, polite child. At least she was before the “accident”. I noticed these qualities in her on her first day at my school because a polite child is rare around here. Most Chinese children are rude, spoiled brats. That might be an exaggeration. Most of the hundreds of Chinese children I have met are rude, spoiled brats. Any foreigner who has ever worked here will say the same. Their spoiled nature has nothing to do with income. I lived in a tiny dirt poor farm village for a few years and most of those children were rude, spoiled brats. In fact, those children were worse overall than the big city children I deal with now. And their parents could barely afford to pay for food, shelter and education. Cell phones and MP3 players were unheard of. Most of my big city students have cell phones and electronic devices that I have become too old to operate. But they are either less spoiled than their village counterparts or I have become more tolerant of the spoilage.
I am not the most polite person in the world. I have probably thanked five people in my lifetime. I cannot remember the last time I said “please”. When people say “hello” to me I usually reply with either, “Yeah, whatever” or “What do you want?” I used to blame this on my upbringing, if you can call it that. I was not raised to say “please”, “thank you” and “yes, ma’am”. I doubt I have ever said “yes, ma’am” out loud. At least not facetiously. I was raised to say, “Yeah, whatever” or “Just what the fuck do you want?” But eventually we all reach a point where we can no longer blame our parents or our childhood. I was a rude child because I did not know any better. I am no longer five years old. Not even close. I know better. My education and ability to communicate extends far beyond whatever I learned as a child. What I say and how I say it is entirely my responsibility. So when I think someone is rude that should tell you something. Most of these children are far more rude, selfish and spoiled than I ever dared to be at their age.
Some are not. A few of them say “please” when they want something and “thank you” when they get it. I even have one student who thanks me when I hand him a test paper. Most of the students are less than enthusiastic about taking tests. I have a student who should be as rude as can be. He never does his homework, he rarely pays any attention in class and he fails most tests. But when he wants to borrow a pencil he always says “may I” and “thank you”. Most students simply say, “No pencil” or “Give me pencil”, to which I respond, “No.” They all have backpacks full of books, notebooks, toys, rulers, scissors or razors, but pens and pencils seem to be a rare commodity.
Some of the students are just happy all the time. Sometimes I try to relate my own childhood to their experience in order to better empathise with whatever is going on at any given moment, but this happiness just baffles me. I used to have a student who was so happy all the time that she was prone to fits of laughter for no apparent reason. If I called her name to answer a question she would laugh before answering. And she was always smiling. I never knew why. In contrast, there was another student in the same class who would cry at the drop of a hat. I tried to be sympathetic but it quickly became obvious that he only cried when there was a test or I called on him to do something. During breaks he would run around the hallways and laugh with the other students. He was only depressed when someone expected something of him. Both of those students are no longer at the school, possibly because I no longer teach that class. Whenever schedules are arbitrarily changed and I lose a class, students always leave. Boss Lady II does not see the connection.
Sunny was always in the happy category. We had a test on her first day at the school and she asked me a question that simply blew me away. I cannot recall what she said, but she said it with perfect grammar. This is an extremely rare event around here. Grammar is not something that anyone cares about. Students, parents, other teachers all focus on vocabulary and conversation. I might very well be the only teacher in the country who tells these students what the rules are and why they make sense. I have never seen a single English book for children in this country that has the words “noun”, “verb”, “adjective”, “article”, “pronoun”, “preposition” or “conjunction”. All of my students know those words and can give examples of what they are. The more advanced students know adverbs and interjections. The few students at my school who are not in my classes have no idea what any of these words are or what they mean. I can tell most of my classes to write sentences in the simple, perfect and continuous tenses and most of the students can do it with minimal mistakes. My more advanced students can combine perfect and continuous. If I say any of these words to other students they will look at me like I am speaking in Esperanto. I once asked a Book 9 student who was not mine if something was singular or plural. She had no idea what I was talking about. They learn the difference in Book 2.
When Boss Lady II casually mentioned that Sunny was in a car “accident” I seemed to be the only one who gave a shit. Some of the Chinese teachers thought that maybe someone should send her a card or something. Fuck that, I thought. What hospital is she in? I will visit her even if it means driving for 45 minutes amongst the Chinese. In an incredible stroke of luck, more so for me than her, she was at the Wife’s hospital. This was convenient for several reasons. I could walk there, thus alleviating my need to drive around people who are hell bent on having people visit me in the hospital. I could go at any time rather than only going before work as I assumed I would since it seemed likely to me that she would be in a hospital near her home. And the Wife works at the Wife’s hospital. In fact, she is a head nurse. This means that I can easily get information that would be tediously difficult to get otherwise and I can be a hero by bringing a head nurse into a patient’s room. This is a major score to these people, though I was far more interested in the information gathering aspect.
From Boss Lady II I found that Sunny was in an “accident”, her mother was driving but probably survived since she was the one who told Boss Lady II about it, and she was at the Wife’s hospital. From the Wife I learned how the “accident” happened, what medical procedures Sunny had already undergone and which she will likely have in the future, how long she will likely be in the hospital and at home in recovery, and where she specifically was in the hospital. At any other hospital it would have taken me all day to simply confirm that she was there.
It is worth noting that I gained access to Sunny’s medical information not because I am sleeping with a head nurse but because anyone can gain access to anyone’s medical information. Knowing the Wife simply made it much faster. Privacy is an alien concept at Chinese hospitals. Any reporter can walk into any hospital and get any information about anyone who happens to be there. And they routinely do. When a celebrity is in an American hospital the news reports simply say that there is no word yet on whatever they want to talk about until some doctors holds a press conference and tell the world whatever the patient wants the world to know. When a celebrity is in a Chinese hospital the news reports immediately tell everyone what bodily orifices all the tubes are in and when the patient last had a bowel movement. I was about as horrified as I am capable of getting when the wife of a prominent politician was in a car “accident” that severed one of her legs and caused all kinds of internal damage and the television crews were right there in the emergency room with a camera in her face, asking her all manner of idiotic questions while the doctors were trying to prevent her death.
Another curiosity about the Chinese is that when I asked Boss Lady II what hospital Sunny was in, she wanted to know why. I would have thought the answer obvious, but I have spent years stating the obvious so I went against my better judgement and told Boss Lady II that I was going to pay a visit. She quickly pointed out that Sunny is no longer my student. An arbitrary schedule change some months ago saw to that. Apparently, visiting a student who was recently almost killed in a car “accident” is unusual, but visiting a former student is unheard of.
Sunny was asleep in the passenger seat. Her mother was driving while heavily medicated. Sunny woke up in the ICU with tubes in her body and surgical wounds in her abdomen. Her mother walked away without a scratch, as often happens. The asshole who caused it is unscathed while innocent bystanders are killed or maimed.
The prevailing Chinese attitude seems to be that while Sunny’s mother was obviously at fault she had no choice. She had to get home and she had to take her medications. Call me a foreigner, but I think there were other options. I know nothing about her medications or why she takes them so I cannot address that. But I am fairly confident that there were other choices to driving.
Taxis are abundant around here and relatively cheap, with rates slightly higher than Thailand and lower than Korea. And taxi drivers will probably not stare at Sunny’s mother with mouths wide open when she tells them where she wants to go in Chinese. There are also much cheaper buses, though they do not go everywhere. And there are hotels, motels and tiny dirt cheap shacks all over the place. If one cannot drive right now there are always alternatives.
Sunny’s spleen is permanently damaged. Part of it was removed during her first surgery and they will probably take all of it in the coming weeks. Without a spleen she will be more susceptible to sepsis and bacterial infections, and she lives in a place that is always susceptible to SARS, bird flu, pig flu and whatever the next pandemic will be. Most vaccines will be useless to her, and the older she gets the more likely she will develop pneumonia, renal failure and/or heart failure. She will have to take medications for the rest of her life and is at increased risk of stroke, heart attack, arthritis, bone necrosis, gallstones, kidney necrosis, ocular hemorrhaging, hypertension, various immune reactions and fetal retardation and spontaneous abortion if she is ever pregnant. But that should not be much of an issue since she now has a large scar just below where her left breast will one day be. This will make her largely unacceptable to most Chinese men since this culture values appearance above all else.
This all happened because her mother drives like a Chinese person.
Update: Sunny returned to school in April as enthusiastic and happy as ever, although more pale than usual.
10 December 2010
06 November 2010
Drove From Paris To The Amsterdam Hilton
We did not drive. We took the train. Nor did we stay at the Hilton. We stayed at a much better hotel as far as we are concerned. The Hilton is in a horrible location within walking distance of nothing but the park. Even the Concertgebouw or Cuypmarkt would take about 30 minutes at Pi Chi speed. The closest tram line goes to a few places but one would need to change trams regularly.
Our hotel was on the Nieuwezijde, around the corner from the Jordaan and very close to Centraal Station, from which you can get a tram, train or bus to practically anywhere. John Lennon never had peace at this hotel but we could easily walk to Haarlemmerbuurt for me and Negen Straatjes for her. It was all but on the good side of Nieuwendijk so we were surrounded by food.
Comparing the food of Amsterdam and Paris is not entirely fair. French cuisine is famous all over the world and beloved by snobs and fat people who sniff their own corks before they drink their wine. The French literally invented Michelin stars. Although why people take dining advice from a tire company is beyond me. Maybe this is why people eat escargot.
Nederlands cuisine is about old salted fish and ground up mammal chunks in plastic casings made of dried intestine and skin. I would rather eat in Holland than France any day.
French cheese is soft, runny and smells as bad as French cheese. Nederlands has Leiden, Gouda and the superlative Edam cheese from such places as Leiden, Gouda and Edam. Edam from other countries cannot compare to a true Noord Holland Edammer.
Then there are French fries, which no one outside of the United States calls French fries. Except in some parts of the English speaking world where French fries refer to the American version; shoestring McDonald’s fries. The best frites I have ever had were in Belgium, which seems reasonable since they invented it. French frites are nothing special, but there is a shop in Amsterdam on Nieuwendijk near Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal that has some excellent frieten. And of course real frites are served with mayonnaise. As an American once eloquently told me in Amsterdam, “Only a fag puts ketchup on fries.”
Something the French got right was the bread. Good bread at home is difficult to get, while you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting good bread in Paris. I believe this is how dining choices were made during la Revolución. Holland is not known for its bread but there is plenty of greatness out there if you know where to look. Melted chocolate chips on toast may seem odd the first time around but once you have had it you wonder why you never thought of it yourself. And by you I mean me.
There will always be people who argue about wine versus beer. France might have the best wine in the world and Holland might have the best beer, but I have not had a drop of alcohol since 1987 so I would not know. But from what I remember Irish beer is not too bad while American beer tastes just like old cat urine. I always preferred wine to beer but my drink of choice was vodka any day. Whoever invented Long Island Iced Tea is a genius.
which used to be a church but is now the conference center for the hotel where we stayed
In between all this gluttony Pi Chi and I managed to see a bit of the town. She claims to have been in Amsterdam before but this was on one of her whirlwind Chinese tours where they visit 100 cities in five minutes. You can see more of Amsterdam on a postcard. Because of her Chinese traveling ways she had never been to the Rijksmuseum. This is like going to Paris without visiting the Louvre or going to 南投 and not visiting the bamboo museum. Lamentably, the Rijksmuseum is in the middle of a 10-year restoration program and only about .04% of their collection is available. But admission is still full price. What really bothered me was how little Rembrandt there is now. I happen to think Rembrandt was the best artist anyone has ever heard of. His etchings are particularly impressive. There used to be hundreds on display at the Rijksmuseum. When we went there were none.
The first time I went to the Rijksmuseum I was wandering around and turned a corner to see Het korporaalschap van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch looming prominently over a large wooden room. It was displayed in a manner befitting a masterpiece. They had a cushioned bench in front of it and you could just sit there all day. In the abridged Rijksmuseum it is against a plastic wall in a small plastic room that looks more like a modern art museum than a national museum dedicated to one of the great periods of art. There is nowhere to sit in front of it and there are security guards preventing anyone from lingering too long. I understand the need for security on a painting that has been vandalized several times but I see no harm in letting people sit in front of something they are too far away to touch. Pi Chi’s first experience with Rembrandt was like hearing about the Mona Lisa all your life and then finally seeing a tiny painting behind thick bulletproof glass from a distance.
Since the current Rijksmuseum is so small we had plenty of time to walk down the plein to the Van Gogh Museum. Van Gogh never really did anything for me but he is Pi Chi’s favorite and if you want to see his work the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam is possibly the best place. I do not especially like how his work is displayed in chronological order, and the building itself seems inappropriate, but it has a pretty good collection for a single artist.
It was raining on museum day. This was a little disappointing since we had just come from Paris, which had been unseasonably warm and almost always sunny. I had wanted to take Pi Chi to Vondelpark while we were at Museumplein but it is better seen in the sun. By the next day the clouds cleared and the weather got warmer. There had been a big storm before we arrived and the local weather people said that winter would hit about a week after we left. It turned out that 10/10 was lucky after all.
On a sunnier day we went to both Rembrandthuis and Anne Frank’s Achterhuis. I have been to both several times but after the mini-Rijksmueusm I was on a mission to show Pi Chi more Rembrandt. The great thing about Rembrandthuis is that it is rarely crowded. I have never seen more than a dozen people there at any given time. The bad news is that it usually houses very little of Rembrandt’s art. Unless of course the Rijksmuseum is under renovation. Many of his etchings that were previously displayed prominently in the Rijksmuseum were now in his old house. Pi Chi was impressed by his use of light in simple pencil sketches and agreed that he was probably more skilled than Van Gogh. But Van Gogh is still her favorite. I think if I can tolerate her ingestion of duck face and fish eyeballs I can probably live with her preference for post-Impressionism over the Golden Age. This will probably cause tension between us in the future, but nothing a lifetime of subtle manipulation and brainwashing cannot fix. If nothing else, getting divorced is very easy around here. If she ever goes to Jackson Pollock it may come to that.
Anne Frank’s former house is always more crowded than Rembrandt’s. I suppose that is a good thing in many ways. Unfortunately, the rooms where she and her family hid are empty and look nothing like they did at the time. Pi Chi said she went there during her big European tour, but she still knows almost nothing about Anne Frank’s life or why she was in hiding in the first place. Man’s inhumanity to man is something Chinese schoolchildren learn nothing about. And Chinese adults curiously lack much curiosity about the world around them. I was going to use this visit as an educational tool and hope that all the available information would help Pi Chi understand that something unimaginable actually happened. But the line to enter the house went around the corner and circled the Westerkerk so we never went inside. What Anne Frank went through is indescribably worse than waiting in line for over an hour, but I doubt being rushed through what is now basically a few empty rooms would tell Pi Chi much of anything. And there is all that shopping just down the street.
Pi Chi loves to shop. I may have mentioned this before. Taking her on safari would be pointless. There is no Crabtree & Evelyn on the Serengeti. But a city like Paris has shopping toujours. While we were in Paris I convinced her that the more she bought in Paris the more she had to drag around when we went to Amsterdam. This only made her want to shop in Amsterdam more. When the weather improved I wanted to take her to Vondelpark. She wanted to shop. So I took her to PC Hoofstraat, often called the Rodeo Drive of Amsterdam by people with little imagination. I sold it to Pi Chi as the Champs-Élysées of Amsterdam because she has no idea what Rodeo Drive is and I was not imaginative enough at the time to come up with anything better. Unbeknown to her it is also very close to the park. She was happy to see a famous and overpriced clothes store whose name I cannot recall but not quite as happy to see that it was closed for some reason. My opinion was that we should move on to the park. Hers was to continue shopping.
So we compromised and went to the Cuypmarkt, which is the kind of shopping that does not make me want to decapitate small birds and is still relatively close to the park, though not as close as we were earlier. At the Cuypmarkt she looked at and touched everything while I stumbled across a bakery with the best scones I have ever eaten. I cannot emphasize this enough. These scones were the best food I had on this entire trip, and my opinion of the superiority of Hollands food is legendary, having been noted in such places as several paragraphs above.
Having temporarily satiated her shopping addiction, Pi Chi finally agreed to go to the park. She wanted to take a tram, which is completely unnecessary from Boerenwetering. It also turned out to be a bad idea since there was a bit of a marathon going on that day and the tram lines near the park were diverted. We knew nothing about this. All we knew was that there was going to be a marathon at some point in time while we were in town. We did not know it was on this day and that it went through the park. As we sat on the tram and I saw the Munttoren it occurred to me that we were not exactly going where we wanted to go. But it fit in nicely with Pi Chi’s plan to ignore the park and do more shopping at the Dam.
This led to our best decision of the day. She would go shopping while I wandered around. We were on our honeymoon and there was no conference here to separate us but we have known each other long enough to know that sometimes she should do what she wants to do while I do what I want to do.
I have spent some time in Amsterdam, though not nearly enough. It is my favorite European city in the world and it comes a very close second to the undisputed greatest city in the known universe, Nieuwe Amsterdam, often called “New York” by the locals, or simply The City since all other cities are pale imitators. There is little of Original Amsterdam I have not seen inside of the Ringweg. But give me an OV chipkaart and an afternoon and I can come up with something.
Once upon a time you had to use something called cash to ride public transportation in Amsterdam. This was inconvenient since coins must be removed from pockets and inserted into metallic devices in a timely fashion and since some of us rarely have all that much cash to begin with. Then the Gemeentevervoerbedrijf came up with the strippenkaart, which made riding a tram or bus much easier and brought Amsterdam into the computer age with other large cities that already had similar card systems. When Pi Chi and I arrived in Amsterdam I was confident that my experience and mad skills would make traveling about the city as easy as it always is. But sometime this year they changed the system and replaced the strippenkaart with the new chipkaart. And no one bothered to tell me. There is very little difference between the two and it takes about half a second to figure it out, but after telling Pi Chi how awesome I am it just made me look like I had no idea what I was talking about. And this was one of those rare situations where I really did know what I was talking about.
One of the great things about Amsterdam is that it is incredibly easy to get anywhere you want to go. Every district is small enough to walk around and going from one area to another only requires a short ride on a tram, bus or the new metro system. Bicycles are an easy way to get around if you are one of those people whose head does not explode after pedaling for 20 minutes. People who like to give out warnings will warn you that the locals ride a little faster and with less enthusiasm for traffic rules than do tourists, but where I live absolutely no one follows any rules of the road or common sense. Cyclists in Amsterdam are little old ladies from Pasadena compared to everybody on the road here.
Spending the day wandering around the city on foot and hopping on a random tram whenever my feet tell me to is my idea of paradise. Amsterdam is a difficult city to get lost in and the trams go everywhere. If where you are does nothing for you, get on the nearest tram and see where that goes. I did this on my first visit many years ago and always had to stop at shops to get more change. The cards make life much easier.
But this is an activity that Pi Chi has absolutely no interest in. She wants to know where she is at all times and needs to know that she is on the right path to wherever she has planned on going. Whenever we travel together I have to set aside free time for myself if I want to stray from the itinerary. But this means more shopping for her, so everyone is happy.
Another great thing about Amsterdam is the relaxed attitude of its people. Amsterdammeren are the most polite people in the world and the nicest I have ever met outside of Africa. This led to a very permissive policy on mild recreational drugs and a large congregation of legal prostitution around the city’s oldest church. But unlike red light districts of most major cities, children can safely walk de Wallen, though they cannot buy anything. There is always talk of crime and the city has closed a number of windows and coffee shops in recent years, but most of the criminal activity is something visitors will never see. The area is very safe for pedestrians but probably not as safe for human traffickers and drug dealers. They tend to leave civilians out of their internal disputes.
This live and let live attitude places a good deal of emphasis on the live part. Amsterdam drivers will stop at red traffic lights, unlike Chinese drivers. They will also stop at green lights or in the middle of the road if someone is crossing in front of them. Pedestrians have the right of way and drivers willingly accept this. Chinese drivers have no concept of right of way and would rather run over their own mothers than stop.
If I walk around Paris with a giant suitcase I have to move out of every smoker’s way and can never use sidewalk ramps because the person standing there is too busy smoking to move aside two feet. If I walk around Amsterdam with a giant suitcase every single person will move out of my way. When I was on a narrow sidewalk they actually stepped into the street rather than force me to walk in the street. I could not believe it. People showed basic consideration. At one point I was walking on a narrow sidewalk with Pi Chi’s giant suitcase and a man carrying a large box was walking toward me. We both stepped out into the street and not a single car came close to hitting us or even honked its horn. This is unheard of where I live. If I walked amongst the Chinese with any size suitcase I would be killed swiftly and with great prejudice. There is a city north of Amsterdam that has no traffic lights or stop signs. Accidents all but disappeared after the signs were removed. I am inclined to think that if we did that here there would be mass carnage in the streets, but no one pays any attention to traffic lights or other cars anyway so I doubt it would make any difference.
Note the lack of scooters and blue trucks hitting people
On our last day in Amsterdam I finally got Pi Chi to Vondelpark. It is one of the world’s great city parks, slightly smaller than London’s Hyde Park and about nowhere near the size of New York’s Central Park. Ask the typical Amsterdammer where their favorite part of the city is and most will likely pick Vondelpark. It has everything you need in a park and is completely safe for women, children, dogs and nude sunbathers. Vondelpark is one of my favorite spots in Amsterdam and I try to walk the length of it every time I visit the city.
Pi Chi was not impressed. The park is not in any of her travel books and it is not a place that she can brag about visiting.
I cannot sleep on planes. It has nothing to do with any fear of plummeting from thirty thousand feet in a four hundred ton fireball. It is certainly not the excitement of the adventure that awaits. If you thought that you clearly do not know me well. I can never get any sleep on planes because they cram us in like we won a free boat trip to the New World from 18th century Africa. Serial killers on death row have more personal space than anyone who flies “economy class”. It is impossible to get out of your seat without getting intimately close to the people next to you. Unless they move. But I generally fly on planes full of Chinese people. They will not move until the plane lands and the captain reminds everyone to stay in their seats. I was on a flight to somewhere and as soon as the plane stopped all the Chinese people got up and started taking their crap out of the bulging overhead bins. The seatbelt sign was still on and a voice from above told everyone to stay seated but Chinese is as Chinese does. The plane then moved again and people tumbled like mahjong tiles. Pi Chi was alarmed. I thought it was funny. Pi Chi is a nicer person. But sometimes people need to fall on their ass to remember that actions sometimes have consequences. And Chinese people need constant reminders that they cannot all be first all the time.
You could always pay six times as much for a first class ticket but I cannot. One would think that struggling airlines would make some kind of effort to make long flights more comfortable for those of us in the cheap seats, but as long as we put up with the class system they will keep giving better service to the people who pay a small fortune and charge more and more from those of us who cannot afford it. The Airbus A380 is the largest passenger plane ever built with something like 50% more cabin space than the 747. Does that mean there is more leg room in last class? No. They simply put in more seats.
Some airlines brag that their first class menus were designed by celebrity chefs. These are not the same menus we get in low class. In fact, there are no menus in low class. Your options in low class are stale microwaved crap or stale microwaved shit. Condiments include salt, pepper and toothpick. Except on Asian flights where salt is unlucky. Your beverage selections are a tiny plastic cup of Coke, juice or water. Nobody has Pepsi because Coke plays hardball. They did not get as large as they are by being nice. Some Asian flights only serve water or tea. Except in first class.
When I booked the flights months ago I ordered vegetarian meals for both of us. This pissed off Pi Chi no end. Vegetarian meals on Asian flights are stale rice and soggy vegetables. European flights usually serve stale pasta and soggy vegetables. On one or two flights in Africa I had some kind of omelette pancake object. Breakfast is usually those plastic eggs you get at hotel breakfast buffets.
I pointed out to Pi Chi that the only difference between the vegetarian meal and the carnivore meal is a big chunk of animal in a gravy of blood and urine. The stale rice and soggy vegetables are still there. She was still very unhappy about it. She does not feel she has eaten until she can feel Thumper’s sinew blocking her colon. On our flight to Europe I got one of the flight attendants to give her an extra abdominal fat and hormone meal but she still bitched and moaned about it for entirely too long. So I let her eat the rice and vegetables on the way home. She always brings a large bag of food on any flight longer than a few hours anyway. She will never starve.
One area where airlines have improved their service over the years is in entertainment. You used to watch a single movie on a single screen at the front of the cabin. This was worse than trying to watch a movie at a drive-in. Especially when the fat salesman next to you tries to get to second base. Now even the people in the cheap seats have individual screens and a wide variety of choices. If you are on a 15 hour flight you can watch enough generic Hollywood movies and American television to make you long for the days when everyone watched the same movie on the same screen at the front of the cabin.
I have not kept track of American television since I left the country to pursue my dream of playing professional ping pong at traveling puppet shows. I do not know who most of the current celebrities are and have no idea who is in rehab right now, and when I saw a list of nominees for the latest Emmy awards I had never heard of most of the people and had never seen any of the shows. On the plane I watched episodes of “The Simpsons”, “The Sopranos”, “The Office”, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “30 Rock”. Of these, “The Simpsons” was the only show I had watched previously. And it might be time for them to retire. “The Sopranos” episode meant nothing to me since I had no idea who everyone was and what the conflict was about. But I was surprised to find that the plane version retained the original language. “The Office” was incredibly banal and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “30 Rock” seemed like every other formulaic sitcom. But in all fairness I watched the entire episode of each show. I started to watch episodes of “The New Adventures Of Old Christine”, “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “Samantha Who” and one of those “Law And Order” shows but I simply could not. The best television I saw on that plane was something about Jamie Oliver cooking pasta in his backyard.
The movie selection was a horse of the same color. The “family” movies were all cartoons and stories about talking animals. The comedies were movies that fans of “Everybody Loves Raymond” probably watch. The dramas were the same superhero and Michal Bay movies that litter the Blackboster at home. In the “classics” category were such iconic films of yesteryear as “Meet The Fockers” and “The Da Vinci Code”. There was nothing made before 2000.
I spent most of the flight listening to compilation CDs of piano sonatas while Pi Chi watched a vampire movie with people I did not recognize and some predictable romantic comedies where they figure out each other’s secret plan and break up only to realize that they really are meant for each other despite all their differences.
Our flight from Hong Kong was delayed for about an hour because of a medical situation. A Chinese voice asked if there was anyone with medical experience on the plane. Pi Chi was about to get up but changed her mind when she saw a few people walk toward the flight attendant who seemed to be in charge. I asked her why she was not going and she said that there were other people. I suggested the possibility that those other people might not have her 18 years of experience. She then got up and walked a few rows ahead of us and sat down next to an old woman. While everyone else went to the flight attendants, Pi Chi went directly to the patient. I have no idea how she knew that this was the person who needed medical assistance. Perhaps it is that 18 years of experience.
Chinese culture dictates that the older person in any given profession is in charge, regardless of ability. Most of the people who went to the flight attendants were nurses with very little or very specialized experience. They were all obviously younger than Pi Chi. There was an older woman who apparently spent more time in management than actual nursing, but the patient preferred Pi Chi. Another odd thing about Chinese medical culture is that the patient is in charge. Doctors ask patients what they want to do.
Once the chain of command was worked out, Pi Chi went back to examining her patient. She quickly determined that there was some kind of diabetic situation going on. I only heard bits and pieces of the entire process.
Eventually an old white dude meandered from one of the better classes. He was a doctor but spoke no Chinese. Pi Chi tried to explain the situation in English as best she could but her medical English is much funnier when there is not a medical situation. I heard her say “I agree” to the doctor and he walked away, never to be seen in lowest class again.
The reason the flight was delayed for an hour was because the old woman refused to leave the plane. Pi Chi, the doctor and the flight attendant in charge all agreed that she should get off the plane and go to a Hong Kong hospital. But Chinese patients are in charge and she wanted to go to her local doctor at home. The pilot refused to take off until someone assured him that the old lady was not going to die on the plane. I assume either the doctor did this or perhaps one of the emissaries that were sent back and forth from the mystical land of the front of the plane to the back end where all the action was taking place.
When Pi Chi returned to her seat the head flight attendant thanked her profusely and gave her a complimentary tiny plastic cup of water for her troubles. She also got a free plastic piece of crap along with her shopping. Yes, Pi Chi also shops on planes. Anyone who knows her should not be surprised. When the flight attendant asked if we needed anything else I suggested an upgrade to business class, but this was met with laughter.
I was not joking.
01 November 2010
Honeymooning Down By The Seine
Pi Chi always wanted to go to Bora Bora or Palau for our honeymoon. Bora Bora is a few lottery tickets out of our price range and Palau does nothing for me. Although I suspect if I ever go there I may change my mind. Sometime during the summer one of her papers was accepted to a conference in Mexico City. The conference was scheduled for right in the middle of what would be our honeymoon. I have not had real Mexican food in years and would gladly go to Yucatan or one of those places the Love Boat docked just to eat, but I do not want to honeymoon in Mexico City. I do not want to go to Mexico City for any reason. I convinced Pi Chi that Mexico City is not the greatest vacation spot in the world.
But then the head doctor type at her hospital got his own paper accepted. He wanted to go because he has relatives in Los Angeles and the easiest way to fly from here to there is to connect in LA. The hospital will pay for any trips to anywhere up to a point as long as a publishable paper is involved, and the head doctor offered to pay for the business class upgrades he required. The original plan was for Pi Chi to go with him and two other nurses to Los Angles for two days and then on to Mexico City for the conference. I was not in the equation for several reasons. I had already made my opinion of Mexico City clear and Dr Head was not going to pay for me to fly business class and stay at a nicer hotel. Dr Head also has a bit of a crush on Pi Chi, not on me.
The idea of Pi Chi flying to another continent with the boss of her boss did not bother me. She constantly reminds me of how old I am and this guy is even older. He is also a doctor, and working as a nurse for as long as Pi Chi has has convinced her that doctors are the last people you want to have any extracurricular relationships with. Plus if you draw a line between Brad Pitt and a baboon, he is much closer than I to the baboon. This does not imply that I am near Mr Pitt; only that I am farther away from the monkey.
We decided that we could honeymoon in Palau after the conference.
My primary concern with Pi Chi going to Mexico is that it is in Mexico. She comes from a culture where one can walk down the street while counting one’s cash one just removed from an automated teller machine. She and pretty much every other woman around here regularly leaves her purse open. Car doors are not always locked and parking a car anywhere is always an option. Your grandmother and young child can walk down any dark alley at any time of night. Guns are very illegal and kidnapping is unheard of. You could have your child wait outside while you go into a KTV for special service and she will still be there when you come out.
This is not Mexico City.
Most of your Chinese types are scared shitless when it comes to South Africa. They see it the way June Cleaver might see Florence and Normandie. It is generally assumed amongst the Chinese that any visit to South Africa will result in death and destruction. Or at least some kind of syringe attack wherein a large black savage forces AIDS-infected blood into some innocent Chinese arm. The Chinese are unapologetically racist and blacks are far higher on their terror alert chart than whites. And these are people who tell their children that whitey will eat them while they sleep if they are bad.
When we went to South Africa I had to convince Pi Chi that she would not only survive, but would likely not face any type of crime whatsoever. Not that my Magic 8 Ball is ever very accurate, but I know that most crime in South Africa is racially segregated. Black criminals mostly target black victims. White criminals mostly target white victims. There are simply not enough Chinese in South Africa for Pi Chi to worry.
When she decided to go to Mexico City I told her that all her paranoia about South Africa should apply. This has less to do with my own prejudice against cholos and is more about every statistic sheet in the world telling you that a foreigner is over one thousand times more likely to be kidnapped in Mexico than in South Africa.
But I liked the idea of having some time at home alone. I am fully prepared to spend the rest of my life with Pi Chi. It is worth mentioning that I assume I will not live very long. Regardless, there are times I just want her to get out of the house. If she went to Mexico for a week or more I could get some peace and quiet. Pi Chi is like a child in some ways. She told me this just yesterday and I agree. If we are both home at the same time I cannot do anything that does not involve her. She needs my constant attention when I have things to do, but is perfectly self-sufficient when I have no plans.
On the other hand I was never really comfortable with her going to Mexico without me.
Before I could worry about it Pi Chi got a paper accepted to a conference in Paris. This solved everything. Pi Chi loves Paris because it is where rich snobs shop and it is where I proposed. A honeymoon there seemed appropriate. But then she had to tell Dr Boss.
The Paris and Mexico conferences were at about the same time. She had already accepted Dr Head’s offer and turning it down would only make her lose face. This is a big issue to these people. But Paris is Paris and nobody around here talks about all the great shopping in Mexico. Dr Boss was disappointed, especially when the other nurses backed out and he had to go alone, but he paid the fees for her paper to be submitted to the Mexico conference anyway.
Pi Chi was one step away from getting a visa to Mexico and now she had to get a Schengen visa. This took longer than it should because she likes to do everything at the last minute and there is a new rule that forces some foreigners to get health insurance. Apparently the Europeans are tired of people from countries with universal health care going to their hospitals for every minor thing. People around here go to the hospital when they sneeze. Americans do not need insurance because we can have an appendage severed and talk about sleeping it off.
For weeks I told Pi Chi that if she did not get the visa in time I would go without her. She thought I was joking but once everything was paid for I was going to go no matter what. As much as I like spending time alone at home, I like traveling alone more. Pi Chi wants to see the history and culture long enough to say that she saw it, whereas I have been known to sit in front of Het korporaalschap van kapitein Frans Banninck Cocq en luitenant Willem van Ruytenburch at the Rijksmuseum all afternoon. It takes a lot longer to really see the painting than to say its name. Conversely, Pi Chi can spend an entire day in a department store picking up every single item while I stand against a wall like a zombie humming Krofft Supershow theme songs to my imaginary hand puppet friend, Lester. In a place like Paris I want to go to the Louvre, Montmartre and that sandwich shop on Rue d’Anjou. They have very good sandwiches. The less time I spend at Louis Vuitton the better.
We arrived in Paris at the end of an unusual warm spell and the weather could not have been better. Unfortunately, the weather could not have been better so everyone who was in Paris at the time was out on the town. We walked down les Avenue des Champs-Élysées because that was where we first went on our first trip to Paris. It is our Memory Lane. That was where we ate our first ridiculously overpriced meal, where we saw Woody Allen’s “Match Point” and where Louis Vuitton drained the very essence of whatever was left of my soul. We have since learned that eating in Paris need not require a bank loan. There was a large line to enter Louis Vuitton so just having a quick look around was never an option. Apparently people are willing to wait in line all day simply to enter Louis Vuitton. There was no line on our first trip but that was in January. Everything has fewer lines when the beggars taking a leak on trees get stuck. And the theater was playing nothing but crap.
Walking down the Champs-Élysées was like walking in Tokyo Disneyland. Except that every single man, woman, child and dog in Paris smokes. If you have ever been to Tokyo Disneyland you know that it is just stupid crowded. Kind of like the Champs-Élysées on an unusually warm October afternoon.
I have mentioned once or twice to anyone who will listen that the Chinese are the most selfish people in the world. They drive the way they walk and they walk as though no one else is on the planet. The more crowded it is the more oblivious they are to the existence of others. But I found people acting Chinese in Paris.
When I was a child we were supposed to move out of the way of adults. This was something they called courtesy. As an adult I find myself moving out of the way of children. If I did not they would run into me. They are probably staring at me with their mouths wide open, but they cannot see me anyway. I could walk down the street maniacally wielding a flamethrower and lightsaber and everyone would still walk into me while staring directly at me. I also move aside for old people. This seems normal to me. But it is alien to not only the Chinese but also Parisiens. On the Champs-Élysées I saw old people moving aside for adults who moved aside for children. This seems backward to me. Perhaps because I am old. I should have been a child after children were put in charge.
Something that bothers me but probably should not is when people completely block the only available path even though they likely know that other people exist. Chinese people always stop in doorways and at the ends of escalators. Always. If there is only one way to walk through there is probably a Chinese person standing there. And they love to jump in front of me and come to a dead stop. But this is less annoying on foot than it is in a car. This trip to Paris showed me that Parisiens are just as inconsiderate as Chinese.
When I am photographing popular landmarks I usually lean against a lamp post or wall-type object. Not only because this helps stabilize the camera but also because it gets me out of everyone else’s way. When I wanted to photograph the Louvre from large steps where hundreds of people were walking I stood behind a couple who were sitting on the steps. Pi Chi asked me why I was standing there and not in the middle of the steps where inconsiderate tourists were taking their pictures. I pointed out that by standing behind the couple I was not blocking the flow of traffic in any way. This blew her mind since, as a Chinese person, she would have never considered it. The couple also offered me protection since most of the traffic was moving uphill and I was facing the same direction.
When we arrived in Paris we wanted to check in to our hotel. Because we are conventional like that. We, meaning I, dragged a large suitcase through the city’s metro system and on the sidewalks near our hotel. We had a large suitcase because Pi Chi likes to bring what she knows she needs, what she thinks she needs, what she thinks she might need, and what she thinks she might possibly want to look at or think about looking at at some time during the trip. She would have loved living in the age of steamer trunks. She could almost fit what she brings on a weekend trip into one of those.
The Paris metro system if very efficient and goes pretty much everywhere within Paris. But it sucks fat hobos if you have a large suitcase. Escalators are rare. Elevators even more so. There is probably a reason I have never seen someone in a wheelchair on the metro. Most of the stations and transfer areas rely on a labyrinth of stairs. I think the people in charge of the Paris metro are under the impression that regular humans do not carry large suitcases anymore. They may be right since I was the only person I saw carrying a large suitcase. It could be that the large suitcase types use taxis, but taxis in Paris are more expensive than lunch on the Champs-Élysées.
When we finally got out of the metro I had to drag that suitcase to our hotel. Unfortunately, we arrived in Paris at the end of an unusual warm spell and everyone who was in Paris at the time was out on the town. When I am walking down the street and I see someone with a large suitcase I move out of their way. Not because I am a great hero but because it is the decent thing to do. And I do not want to get hit with that large suitcase. But when I am walking down the street with a large suitcase I have to move out of everyone else’s way. And at least half of them blocked my path, forcing me to take the long way. And they were all smoking. I found myself thinking that maybe the Chinese are not alone in their selfish assbag ways.
My faithlessness in mankind was fortunately restored when we returned home and I had to drive to work. Nothing shows the selfishness of the Chinese like their driving.
The hotel on our first trip to Paris was on the Right Bank, in the 8th arrondissement. It was on a quiet residential street between a Monoprix with excellent cookies and a metro stop, not too terribly far from the Champs-Élysées. It was a very nice hotel and a good choice for a honeymoon. But it is beyond Pi Chi’s hospital’s price range. Our hotel on this trip was on the Left Bank, in the 5th arrondissement’s Quartier latin. Pi Chi was not impressed with the hotel, even though I convinced the front desk clerk to give us a room with a balcony for no extra charge by promising her our first born, until I took her past the selfish smoking assbags and around the corner where she saw the Seine and this:
She also liked the fact that the hotel was completely surrounded by food.
Pi Chi and I are fundamentally incompatible when it comes to food. She eats the standard five Chinese meals each day. Breakfast is whenever they wake up, usually early. Brunch is not like an American brunch but rather a quick meal after you get to work but before lunch; about 9 am. Lunch is at noon. It generally lasts 90 minutes and the entire country stops. Afternoon tea is another quick meal after lunch and before it is time to go home; usually around 3 pm. Dinner is at 5. There is also a standard snack time anywhere from 10 pm and midnight.
I eat two meals on a slow day. More likely one meal and a snack. I rarely wake up before 9 am. Experience has shown me that eating when I wake up is a bad idea so I tend to let a few hours go before I have breakfast. By then lunch is ending for the people around me and Pi Chi has already eaten three bowls of soup, a dozen dumplings, a bowl of noodles, a bowl of rice and various parts of various mammals. I usually have a bagel.
Pi Chi will have another two bowls of soup, more dumplings, more rice and/or noodles and even more chopped up carcass by the time I get home and have dinner. Sometimes I have rice. Sometimes I have noodles. I like to live on the edge.
We never eat at the same time. I could never possibly eat as many meals as she does and even if I did we would not eat together. She works banker’s hours. I work babysitter’s hours. We never eat the same food. Chinese people like Chinese food. When they travel abroad they seek out Chinese food. When I was in Kenya my driver told me that Chinese tour groups always bring crates of food with them. There is little Chinese food on the Serengeti. I have nothing against Chinese food but I like a little variety now and then. I make most of my own food while Pi Chi buys from “restaurants”. This is not nearly as expensive as it sounds since a restaurant could be little more than plastic stools around some guy’s blue truck. And the little stalls really do have better food than most real restaurants anyway.
On rare occasions Pi Chi will eat something I have made. She thinks I am a great cook and often begs me to make something for her. Keep in mind that she gets most of her food from shacks and trucks so her definition of great cooking might not be the same as yours or mine. But whenever I make something for her she takes a bite or two and never finishes. I would take this personally but it is less about taste and more about the fact that she probably snacked on tiny fishes and dessicated fruits the entire time I was making her food. Even some quick sautéed tomatoes with garlic, basil and olive oil on grilled garlic bread takes longer than the noodles and fish eyeballs she gets from the back of a truck. She simply does not have the patience for my roasted potatoes and mushrooms. And I never make Chinese food.
On our first trip to Paris Pi Chi mostly ate at a Chinese restaurant around the corner from our hotel. I ate food from all over the place. The only time I can get genuine non-Chinese food is when I travel. Most of the foreigners around here go to places like Thailand and Amsterdam for the drugs and whores. I go for the food. I usually eat like a Chinese on vacation. In quantity, not quality. I ate a lot of sandwiches on our first Paris trip. A sandwich is such a simple thing but so hard to do at home. You cannot make a great sandwich with mediocre bread. Predictably, Pi Chi’s favorite Paris sandwich was at the Louvre. Paris is engorged with sandwich stands but the one she liked the most was from an overpriced tourist shop.
Since the hotel on this trip was surrounded by restaurants, I never ate at the same one twice. We were within a very short walk to Italian, French, Mexican, Greek, Indian, Tunisian, Thai, Japanese and Chinese. The local Monoprix did not have cookies but there was an Arab pizza shop nearby with horrible looking pizza and some of the best cookies I have ever eaten. They also had very cold Pepsi, which is a find in a city that prefers tepid Coke. I took the Pepsi challenge a long time ago. Pepsi is like mother’s milk. As far as I know. Coke is like brucellosic dog urine. Nevermind how I know. Oddly enough I did not have a single sandwich on this trip.
Pi Chi loved being surrounded by a variety of restaurants.
She mostly ate Chinese food.
in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper
The purpose of our trip was to honeymoon but what made it possible was Pi Chi’s conference. So while her goal was to get her paper published my goal was to do the things I could not do the last time.
I hobbled around Paris on a cane during our first trip because I was having a bit of gout. This did nothing for my sandwich intake but severly limited my ability to climb towers. I was completely caneless on this trip and managed to climb Sacré-Cœur (255 steps), Arc de Triomphe (284) and Notre Dame (387). We also went up Tour Eiffel and Tour Montparnasse but they have elevators. I am not the most athletic person in the world. Two or three hundred steps are something to me, especially on very narrow spiral staircases. At the top of each of these buildings I was breathing like a stoner at the end of a 10k marathon and my heart was racing like a Chinese person trying to be the first in line to the free spoonful of peanut butter at Costco. At the top of the Arc de Triomphe, our first such climb, Pi Chi thought I was being facetious until she checked my pulse. Then she suggested I sit down sooner than later. While waiting for blood to go back to my brain I saw two children who had just climbed the same steps running and jumping around. “That is why I never give up my seat to children”, I said to no one in particular. Their father laughed knowingly. He was a big sweaty piece of cow meat so he felt my pain.
You would think there are ample places for Americans and other feeble people to sit at the end of all those stairs, but there rarely are. Arc de Triomphe has a single bench for a few thousand people. Sacré-Cœur has stone seats built into the tower but no one seems to know they go all the way around, so everyone stops at the end of the stairs. Notre Dame has nothing. Just too many people in a very small space after climbing too many steps.
The views from all these towers are quite good, especially Sacré-Cœur, and it truly was a once in a lifetime experience. Because there is no way in hell I am climbing all those steps again.
Sometimes I get a free day to myself on trips with Pi Chi. In Bali Pi Chi went to a day spa while I kicked it by the pool old school. In Durban I got to hang with meerkats and explore the questionable side streets while she was at her conference. We never spent any time apart during our first trip to Paris but I arrived a few days before she did so I got to look around on my own. During this trip she had her conference. This left me with plenty of time to just wander around, which I think is the best way to explore any city. She prefers to go directly to the places in her Chinese tourist books. If it is not in the book it is not worth seeing. And even when it is in the book it should only be seen for the sake of being seen. Pi Chi took a trip to Italy before I met her. She went to something like five cities in five days. She can say she has seen the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, Ponte Vecchio and Piazza San Marco but she knows nothing about them and she never really saw anything.
When I go to a place like Paris I will likely visit Tour Eiffel. It is the law, afterall. But I also just want to walk around without having any idea where I am or where I am going. This is usually the best part of any trip for me and where I find the most memorable experiences. I have walked past Pont Neuf I have no idea how many times, but I cannot remember anything specific without seeing photographs. But casually mention Pont Louis Philippe and I will immediately remember wandering beyond Notre Dame and around the 4th arrondissment until I accidentally stumbled on a protest march on Boulevard Henri IV to the Bastille. As I made my way through the crowd to cross the street a television news crew pointed their camera at me. So I raised my fist and chanted “Résistance” along with the protestors. I have no idea if I was on the local news, but I never made it onto CNN’s repetitive loop of five images per story. The protest was about raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 and the people were pretty pissed about it. All was peaceful that day and it was a righteous indignation/street carnival atmosphere at the Bastille, but after we left the country things started to get violent.
From the Bastille I wandered around more quiet streets and found myself at le Mémorial de la Shoah. I have been to a few of these places and they are always too depressing. Mauthausen was eerily quiet in the cold and snow. The Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima is like any big city park. Except that it has monuments and statues to innocent people who died for no reason and a museum that graphically tells the whole story. Das Mahnmal für die 65.000 ermordeten Österreichischen Juden und Jüdinnen der Shoah in Vienna is for Jews what the Vietnam Memorial in Washington is for baby boomers. The difference in Paris was that a survivor was there and talking to people.
I am not Jewish. I have never been Jewish. I never will be Jewish. My people left Holland centuries before Germany invaded. My family had no direct involvement on either side. I had an uncle who converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish woman but I doubt he was ever very frum about it. I have seen all of Woody Allen’s films to date but otherwise I have no particular interest in the culture or religion.
But there is something terribly impressive about a people who not only survive thousands of years of persecution and near extinction but also manage to thrive wherever they go and assimilate into the local society while keeping their own culture intact. Many cultures have been destroyed from far less.
I understand why some people do not like them. They are different from the people around them. That is always asking for trouble. And Israel is so bereft of political nous that even though Americans think all Muslims are terrorists, they also invariably side with Palestine over Israel. But when you talk to someone who actually lived through the Shoah none of that matters. This is not a movie you can pause to go into the kitchen for some Ding Dongs. This is a real person describing what really happened to her and everyone she ever knew. This is far more depressing than an empty death camp.
I defy any of these deniers to talk to any survivor and still claim that it never happened. And if they can then that is irrefutable proof that they are assholes.
And, yes, I chose to end this here. I have no idea how to segue from the murder of millions of people to the pizza I had for dinner that night and do not want to try.
27 October 2010
So You Want To Be Married By A Chinaman
The first time I got married I knew nothing about how to get married. I also knew nothing about being married but that is a separate issue. California used to have a long list of do’s and do not do’s if two wanted to marry. I believe they have since relaxed their policy, although homosexuals are still forbidden to marry, pending decisions by some old dudes who wear robes and wigs to work. The first wife and I decided it would be easier to get married in Las Vegas. At least that is how it worked out.
We met at work. The next time I saw her we talked about Faulkner’s “A Rose For Emily”. That was good enough for me. The next time I saw her after that I asked her out. Our first date just happened to be on a holiday weekend which just happened to end on my birthday. So we spent the whole weekend together. This is why her father never liked me. He assumed that I deflowered his daughter on our first date. What he probably never knew was that we did not have sex at all that weekend and that horse left the barn long before I met her. She had planned to go to Las Vegas for her birthday before we met. With someone else. But he left the scene before I arrived. The Chinese would probably say it is unlucky to marry someone on a vacation if you are the replacement.
But marriage was never the reason for our trip to Las Vegas and we really never thought about it until the last minute. I proposed on her birthday. Because I am romantic like that. She never said yes. She actually said, “Yikes”. I suppose in hindsight that means something. We decided to get married in September.
Getting married in Las Vegas is very easy. You go to one government office to get the license and another to have someone say you are married. I believe the entire process set me back less than $50. No planning is required. You need not hire a coordinator, band, florist, photographer, cake or venue. No dresses or tuxedos are necessary. No months of endless decisions and changes of mind. No food tastings at overpriced restaurants. I did not even have to show any identification. She did, to show that she was over 18.
We had someone at the government office take our picture, but this was in a more innocent age when you had to have pictures developed in a lab. Kind of like “CSI” without the technodance DNA montage or sadoerotic homicide. When we got back from Las Vegas we dropped off the film at the local Sav-On, as was the custom. They fucked up the roll with our wedding pictures and gave us a coupon for a free roll of film.
Afterward she felt guilty because she had already told her family that she was getting married in September, and here she up and married without her mother. So we went ahead with the September gig and never bothered to mention Las Vegas. This meant I got to spend the next three months dealing with endless decisions and changes of mind, venues, photographers, florists, food tastings, cakes, dresses and tuxedos. I felt guilty that she had no wedding pictures and agreed to pay for an overpriced professional photographer who seemed like a bit of an idiot to me. Today those pictures are in a box at my brother’s house. Unless he threw them away.
The cake was the only easy part. I already knew where to go and I knew it would taste great. It only cost $30. And now that $30 cake is my most vivid memory of that day. It was a very good cake.
Four years and a month or two later she was living in the garage of some woman’s family she just met. A month or two later she was living with some old guy she met at work. They took a trip that she and I were originally supposed to take. He and I have the same first name. Read into it what you will.
When I say old guy I should note that he was 40 at the time. This is not an age I consider old. But she was 25, so he was an old guy.
A lifetime later I found myself living on the other side of the world in a strange and exotic land of mosquitos and motorized land vehicles that cannot stop at red lights.
I first saw Pi Chi at a train station and, frankly speaking, I thought she had a nice ass. She still does. We did the talking on the phone and e-mail thing for an amount of time that I simply cannot remember until we went on our first date. The truly amazing part is that her English blows. Even more so at the time. Her e-mails were incredibly difficult to read and took some effort on my part. When we spoke on the phone I understood maybe half of what she was saying and she understood even less from me. As bad as her English was, I knew even less Chinese. I could say numbers and order food but that would have gotten us nowhere.
I lived in 崙背 at the time and she lived in 高雄. Obviously this proved troublesome. For our first date I took the train to her. She took me to a famous beach and we watched the famous sunset. We wrote our names in the sand with a stick, neither of us able to read or pronounce the other’s. She noted that my name was unlike that of famous monosyllabic movie stars such as Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise. I gave her an endlessly fascinating history of Holland lesson and we discussed how awesome I think Amsterdam is. We never discussed the genealogy of her name. I assume it is Chinese.
We had dinner at the famous Smokey Joe’s, or Smoking Jio’s, Pi Chi style. She had shrimp linguine and I had the Mexican pizza, which was neither Mexican nor a pizza. Smokey Joe’s is actually famous around here. It and a few other restaurants are owned by Amy, a local who lived in the United States for a few years and came back home to open an American restaurant with large plates and a bunch of crap hanging on the walls. The place is decorated with totem poles, a large cigar store Indian and merchandise that is probably offensive to many American Indians. The food is not really American, but it was the closest thing I could find while living in 崙背. We used to go every weekend until we found other places, I got a kitchen at home, I got tired of their burritos and they repeatedly increased their prices while decreasing their serving sizes. A take away burrito used to fill a large paper plate. Now it fits in a standard lunch box and costs twice as much. It probably helps if you know the size of lunch boxes around here. They are small boxes used to hold one’s lunch, equivalent in subject matter if not shape to those folded Chinese take out boxes in the US and nothing like the Land Of The Lost lunchbox I had as a child.
Incidentally, I agree with everyone that the Will Farrell movie was stupid, but so was the original show. The guy who played Will could not act his way out of a trash bag. “Dr Shrinker” was always my favorite. That was one mad man with an evil mind.
At the end of our first date Pi Chi took me to the train station and we waited at Starbucks for my train. This is notable because we never go to Starbucks. Neither of us drink coffee and I am old enough to think that $5 for a cup of coffee is absurd. I think $1 for a 330ml can of Pepsi is pushing it. That would be 12 ounces in 美國英語.
Two years later I took Pi Chi to Paris and proposed. That would be some good alliteration if her name were pronounced that way. She was the first woman I ever proposed to who actually said yes. Though none technically said no, so I am batting a thousand. I assume that is good. 1000 = 100% apparently. I have no idea why 100 does not equal 100 in baseball. No one has ever mistaken me for a sports enthusiast.
Four years later we got married. She wanted to get married on 10/10 because that is a lucky day. I said as long as it was not 12/8 I would be ok. She had no idea what I was talking about. Can I be married to someone who knows almost nothing about John Lennon? Time will tell. She knows who the Beatles are and now knows more of their music than ever before, thanks to me. But George Harrison is her favorite.
We were going to get married on 10/10/06 but she developed some thyroid problems. Half of the people who work at her hospital have or will have cancer. The other half kill themselves. Suicide is a popular recreational activity around here. Pi Chi has told me of many nurses at her hospital who killed themselves because their boyfriend left them, their boyfriend would not marry them or their boyfriend went back to his wife. The men kill themselves when the local KTV closes down. Suicide is not as honorable as it is in Japan, but it is a socially acceptable solution to petty temporary annoyances. When I am finally killed in a traffic “accident”, the police will probably label it a suicide since whoever killed me will blatantly lie about what happened and it is impolite to blame 美國人. Crime investigation here is asking everyone what happened and taking someone’s side.
We eventually chose 10/10/10 because that is a lucky day and pretty easy to remember. But then while we were waiting, society decided that 9/9/99 is the luckiest day of all. By then it was too late. Not because 99 is 1999 but because we had already made an appointment for lucky 10/10 and everybody else wanted super lucky 9/9. The year 99 is 2010 to you and me.
There are at least three ways to get married around here. You can book a banquet room at a famous hotel or restaurant, invite everyone you have ever met, pay US$100 per person for everyone to eat duck face and fish eyeballs, watch people poorly sing KTV on stage and sneak out to sign some papers; or you can put up a tent in the middle of the street, invite everyone you have ever met, pay US$90 per person for everyone to eat duck face and fish eyeballs, watch people and maybe a stripper poorly sing KTV on stage and sneak out to sign some papers; or you can go to the Household Registry Office and sign some papers. We chose the latter. Pi Chi thinks that street tent weddings are tacky. I agree. I think that paying large amounts of money to feed horribly overpriced horrible food to people she barely knows is not fiscally prudent. She disagrees.
It is unlucky to be frugal with weddings. People spend the exorbitant amounts they do so they can brag about how much they spent. This is an impressively materialistic society that gorges on ritual and conformity. Feed everyone pizza and you lose face. Feed them a glazed duck’s ass and you bring honor to your country and family. As long as you paid five times more than it is worth.
If $100 per person does not seem like much to spend at a wedding, consider that even a snob can get a meal around here for less than US$3. Fish eyeballs outside of a wedding cost nowhere near $100. Wedding food is not made from better ingredients or prepared by celebrity chefs. There are no rare delicacies that one cannot find from a street vendor. This is not lobster and caviar versus a Big Mac and onion rings. The pig testicles at weddings are fried in the same way at night markets. The food is simply priced much higher because people want to say they spent much more than their friends. Keeping up with the Chiangs.
I told Pi Chi that we could have a duck face wedding if she pays for it. Apparently that is unlucky. Oddly enough, most of the things she does not want to do turn out to be unlucky. She also does not have that kind of money. Her original guest list was 200. And that was only on her side. My side will probably be a little lower. $100 X 200 = a lot of money. I do not have a calculator handy but that has to be at least $200. Maybe more. If I spent that kind of money on eel rectum for people I will never see again I would have to kill myself. And that would cause undue alarm in the KTV community.
Pi Chi agreed to get married the easy way on the condition that we have a reception at a later date. I agreed to that on the condition that she pay for it. Unless we could do it with far fewer people and at a much more reasonable price. But that would be unlucky. She agreed to pay for the elaborate reception if I pay for the wedding cookies. Wedding cookies are a stupid tradition where the wed give ridiculously overpriced cookies to everyone who will show up at the wedding. The cookies themselves are nothing special and are more like crackers than cookies. The high price comes from the elaborate boxes. The fancier the box the better you are. If your neighbor gives you a fancier wedding cookie box you might as well kill yourself. I could wrap up saltines for a fraction of the price and call them traditional American wedding cookies but then Pi Chi would never be able to speak to her family again.
I agreed to pay for the stupid cookies if we only had to give them to family members who lived in her mother’s house at some point in time. She agreed to that if we had a small dinner for said family some time before the reception. We have not yet negotiated who will pay.
At some time in the near future I will likely find myself in a room full of complete strangers, watching them eat duck face and listening to old people scream into their KTV microphone. I will be completely miserable but Pi Chi’s family will be happy and that is why she wants it. That will make her happy and that is why I will do it. But I swear or affirm to Buddha or any other graven idol that there is no way in hell I am paying for it. Compromise should not require bankruptcy.
We went to the Household Registry Office and signed a few papers. Pi Chi gave them her national identification card and within minutes my name was on the back. Women have the names of their fathers and husbands on their ID cards. There is also a space for the husband’s compulsory military service. That space remains blank on Pi Chi’s ID. I gave them my passport and alien resident card and within minutes they made several copies. My passport is new and not accustomed to being xerographed but the old one was copied more than a “Mighty Pirates” DVD in China.
Once everything was stamped we were legally married. The entire process cost less than US$5. It was only so high because I wanted an English version of the marriage certificate as well as the Chinese version. The entire process took about 30 minutes. It only took so long because I wanted an English version of the marriage certificate as well as the Chinese version. They wanted an American address for the English version so I gave them the address I always use whenever anyone wants an American address. It is a real address and someone with my name lives there. Or at least he did ten years ago. I have no idea if anyone has ever sent anything for me to him but I can only assume that it would be somewhat confusing to receive something from a government agency in Chinese. I have no idea why these people always want an American address from people who do not live there. We could have finished sooner but the clerk had to type up the American address, print out the paper, let me correct it, type it up again, print it out again, let me correct it again, ad tedium.
The English and Chinese versions of our marriage certificate have my local address, not the American address I gave them.
We took no pictures of the blasted event because Chinese wedding photographs are about spending too much money on a photographer at exotic or at least amusing locations. They are usually taken before the wedding and shown at the reception. They have nothing to do with documenting when the chain was attached. So soon I will probably have overpriced photographs of myself in a pink suit and Pi Chi in a white dress in front of some waterfall somewhere, but just like every other time, I have no pictures of the actual wedding day.
Legally wed and with reservations and appointments we were on a plane to the real world within hours.
And it was a woman who married us, but Chinawoman sounds stupid.
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