I am in downtown Chicago with the kids this weekend. NO laptop. I have aniPhone with no SIM. But it has a camera: look out, world!!!
I am sitting in the hotel lobby using the free Wi-Fi, trying to blog via my iPhod thingy. Ok. Seriously? How the fuck does anybody type on this thing?!?! So far I have accidentally published this post twice. Ugh. FWIW, Here it goes…
At the in-laws. Can’t talk. I mean, it will not look too good if I remain attached to my laptop or my Blackberry or my fake iPhone, aka CONNECTED, the way I am at home. I can hide in the bathroom and tweet though.*
* I am absolutely not kidding about hiding and tweeting from the restroom… I sent a picture of the ladies room from Old Ebbitt to Wicked Shawn because she has been made to notice my strange habit of checking out ladies rooms wherever I go. I get excited about nice bathrooms…
And I absolutely love restrooms that make political statements, but only if they are left-leaning, liberal ones like those at the Luna Grill & Diner in Dupont Circle.
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So we “visited” the White House today. It was over in 30 minutes. No sightings of President Obama. I was absolutely crushed over that. We did get to see all the fancy rooms looking even fancier now with all the Christmas decorations. (This of course begged the question of: What do people SEE when there is no Christmas tree inside every single room?) We spent more time in the UNofficial gift shop across the street including having our pictures taken with the cardboard POTUS and the First Lady. Apparently, one of the requisite poses is of the famous photo taken of JFK at the Oval Office with John Jr. poking his head out through underneath the desk. Is it just me or has Monica Lewinsky forever ruined that iconic image for you too?
Nothing is allowed when you tour the White House; you are allowed basically your cellphone (which has to be turned off), wallet and car keys. When I saw a sign that says
PASSHOLDERS BEYOND THIS POINT ONLY.
I was so tempted to risk being tackled by the secret service and take a picture of it, for you, because the P was missing. Instead I have this underwhelming photo to show for:
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As a result of our trip to the White House, I spent the entire day out and about, including a jaunt to the trendy Dupont Circle, without my purse, i.e. NO lip balm, NO lipstick, NO compact, NO hairbrush, NO Kleenex, NO hand lotion, NO touch-up.
The horror.
I did take way too many pictures of the Washington Monument. What? I like reading the articles.
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This is turning into a travelogue, so I will stop, BUT not before I show you the most interesting thing I saw today. Kudos to my husband for pointing it out as a good blogging fodder:
At the Air and Space Museum, there is a small exhibit calling your attention with the intriguing question:
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Can you be a Stewardess in the early 1950s?
with 8 flaps emblazoned with categories such as Height, Weight, Age, Race, Marital Status, Education, Appearances.
5’2″ to 5’6″, 135 lbs. max, White, Never married, 2-year college or registered nurse, AND… [our favorite] Attractive – “Just below Hollywood” standards.
I have a phone (with a camera, like every other phone nowadays) and I am not afraid to use it…
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These boots are nice, right? But I am not showing them because they are sexy. These boots were spotted 2 hours into a mountain climbing route...
This is what most of the paths on those mountains look like...
And this is what the mountain peak looks like...
I am sitting in the United Airlines lounge, home for the famous automatic beer pouring machine, (not quite) halfway back to Chicago, but already I stop talking to people in Chinese, and I am transitioning to my American self again. (My apology for falsely reinforcing the dichotomy of East vs. West. This is strictly personal: I no longer feel the need to look smaller by haunching or sucking in my guts, or to look cute and agreeable, or to bat my eyelashes innocently. Feel free to expand. Take all the space you want. Of course, I will still complain about any non-Asian person trying to impose such a rigid contrast between East vs. West or subscribe to the idea that Asian women are oppressed. Bite my contradictory, non-consistent ass if you wish.)
First of all, I just want to thank all of you to continue to visit my blog even when I am not able to reciprocate. Sometimes I feel that blogging is ultimately a selfish act. Or rather, the reason why I blog. Or rather, the reason why I started blogging which has undergone some significant change over the course. It is selfish because when I have limited time and energy and am forced to choose, I almost always choose to post blogs rather than to read and comment. It is both selfish and self-indulgent and at the same time, an act of self-preservation as I need to jot down what’s swirling inside my head so I can clear it through the process.
When I hit the publish button, it is in the ether, in some sense, no longer my concern.
Of course, most of these are random things I found amusing of which I kept mental notes so I could regale an audience at a dinner party one day. Who am I kidding? I don’t think there is any dinner/cocktail party in my stars. So I put them out there. Voile! Carte blanche. ’cause my mental Post-It pad is as thin as the free ones you find on the desks in hotel rooms.
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I was assaulted by a wall of pink cuteness at the airport, a place you kind of expected to be safe from a culture that encourages its womanfolks, young and old, to be cute and adorable.
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Kawai. Japanese for cute, adorable. 可愛 in Chinese. It is a cultural obsession.
When I packed for this trip, I consciously left out tops that are too revealing, knowing that any indication of self-professed sexuality would be frowned upon. Unfortunately, I misjudged and two of my shirts, when I lean forward, reveal my cleavage, and this caused some visible discomfort in strangers, both male and female. At first it was quite puzzling to me: judging by the amount of advertisements devoted to breast augmentation, next only to those devoted to weight loss naturally, you’d think that people are at least used to the idea that boobs exist. Isn’t this contradictory?
Paradoxically, this actually falls in line with the schizophrenic idea of the female ideal: If you know Manga and Anime, you know we want our women to be Innocent + Sexy. Somewhat different from the Madonna + Whore paradox, we want our women to be CUTE. Juvenile. Forever 16 or 18. (Can you imagine La Madonna dressed in pink and adorned with Hello Kitty?)
I am pretty sure there is an entire dissertation worth of theorizing here but I am just going to do Stream-of-Consciousness which is to say, I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about and I am just going to type them up as thought clouds appear.
Someone asked me how much I drank when I was home. The answer is none. I do not drink when I am with my family because first of all they assume/prefer to think that I do not drink. Furthermore, the ability to hold your liquor is not something that will add to one’s desirability (not that I am looking to be desirable, being married and all, but you know what I mean…)
I am getting a clearer idea of why I always feel so out of place when I am home: I feel awkward, physically. Even if I were rail thin, Bulimia thin (which would be just about right according to the standards here. Ha!), I would still have been too tall. Cuteness and I simply do not mix. It was already like this when I was in college: I tried to dress the part, cutesy prints, flowery adornments, frilly edges and all, but there was always this gnawing in the back of my head telling me how ridiculous I looked trying to look adorable when I was towering over 80%* of the female population, and probably the male too.
Puke.
I am so relieved now to be sitting here, sipping my Bloody Mary, showing my cleavage, surveying the world, narrowing my eyes and sitting in a manner that suggests Yes, I know I am sexy and you want a piece of this.
Incidentally, I was informed that in many restaurants and all self-respecting KTVs (Karaoke with all private party rooms) in Taiwan, you can find a mini version of the urinal in the men’s bathroom for puking. Ingenious, isn’t it? We should get these into the bars in the U.S., and of course, in both MEN’s and WOMEN’s Rooms.
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* Number pulled out of my ass, in no way scientific.
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This kind of explains the tag “You can never go home again” and why I do not really like to talk about the conflicted feelings I have towards home…
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Dear Costco,
I don’t know how you did it. But you won.
I shop at the Costco near our house in the Chicago suburbs right before every one of my trips home and throw money at you as if money were grown on trees: vitamins, vitamins, and more vitamins. These are popular items that will sure to please everybody back home. The tiny shelves in my parents’ already cramped bedroom proudly display the vitamins and nutritional supplements that promise to improve the condition of ailments from A to Z like a mini drugstore. Don’t get me wrong: I appreciate your role in my parents’ happiness and pride as they tell their friends which one is for what and the fact they were all brought back from the USA by their wayward daughter. Something to show for.
Ever since your appearance in Taipei, you have become the new love of people here. They love you so much that there are now 3 of you. The one inside the city proper is so crowded that you need to station employees in the street, trying to entice people to drive to another Costco “8-minute drive away” with a coupon for a free drink. I rolled my eyes at the craziness of this all. It is ONLY Costco, people.
Yes, I will confess. I visit Costco every time when I am in Taipei: I go with my family so they can replenish their supplies. It is one of those regular mundane boring things I do not get to do with them. So yes I am paying my dues. When I walked in yesterday, I was at first floored by how exactly like my Costco it was. Eerie almost.
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Everything looks the same at first but once I got into the thick of it, I noticed a lot of differences. Kudos really for finding the perfect formula to adapt a quintessential American warehouse shopping concept (and seriously, you really need massive pieces of land to support this concept, no?) to the small island of Taiwan. You started with smaller packages since people have not as much storage space, are accustomed to making more frequent shopping trips, and are in general more frugal. Instead of giant rolls of Bounce paper towels, the ones sold in Taiwan are half the size. I wonder whether you have heard stories of old folks washing, line drying, and reusing Bounce, driving their children in sane with a house full of sheets of Bounce in varying drying stages. Nevertheless, I was very impressed with the homework you have done and continue to do.
As I was rolling my eyes at the exuberant crowd and their shopping carts piled high with goods, I was at the same time WOWed by the unique items you have managed to source and stock in the store: Frozen, ready to heat, Chinese dishes. I believe you have single-handedly changed how Chinese women make dinners at home.
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Whiskey Tasting in Costco. (And yes, sigh, Christmas stuff in Taiwan now too...)
I became dejected as I mentally calculated the pros and cons of smuggling some of these frozen dishes in my suitcase, esp. the “Buddha Jumping Over the Wall” which traditionally takes a lot of time and work to prepare and in no friggin’ way would I even attempt to make. But you cheered me up with tasting tables, esp. this one, that I KNOW will never be seen in my Costco.
I left with souvenirs for people back in the U.S. purchased from Costco. Don’t tell me you do not find it ironic.
Either way, I am not able to escape you. You got me in and out.
You won.
Sincerely,
A loyal Costco member
p.s. Would you ever consider REVERSE-import the Costcos in Taipei into the Chicago area?
It always feels kind of surreal when I am home. In fact, what I called “home” is an apartment I did not grow up in. It is home simply because my parents live here, with my nephew who, instead of my two elder brothers (long story…), takes care of them.
I am a different person when I am over here for many reasons. It is even stranger to come home by myself because I am all of a sudden the lone girl in the family who everybody wants/needs to take care of. My father keeps on asking me whether I am hungry even after I have been stuffing my face non-stop. My mother won’t stop asking me whether I am cold; she is wearing a thick jacket while I, a short-sleeved t-shirt. The night when I arrived, when I was not paying attention, she unpacked my suitcases, put away all my stuff, hung up all my clothes and even folded my underwear. My nephew and his fiancée will not let me lift a finger because, even though we are only 9 years apart, I am still his aunt. I am an elder and he has to be respectful. So the rules says. Sometimes it is simply AWESOME to be Chinese.
People often ask me what I do when I go home. Eh. Nothing exciting really. I am chaperoned around to eat, eat and eat some more. I also go to a lot of department stores because that is what my mother likes to do. Judging by the crowd and the lines outside of many popular restaurants, these are also activities enjoyed by 90% of the people in the city.
Just like every other big city around the world. Right?
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I grew up in an area in Taipei right next to the then only airport. I have always been fascinated by and loved airports because to me back then, airports meant adventures and exotic places that I could only dream of, and more importantly, I only got to go there when my father came home from his stints abroad and we were there to welcome him.
Now that I travel for work on a regular basis, airports are now simply a transition place. They are simply some place I have to pass by, to tolerate, before I get to where I have to go.
Airports in general do not go through drastic changes. They stay the same for a long time. And that is why whenever I step into an airport that I have been to, even from a long time ago, I immediately get this sense of familiarity.
Yeah, I have been here. I am oriented. It is not scary at all…
Of all the airports I have been to, Narita outside of Tokyo occupies a special place in my heart. Unlike the other airports, even O’hare my “home” airport, Narita is not simply a point of transition for me. I must have come through here more than a couple of dozen times, half of the times on my way home. It is the same each time. As I step onto the wide walkway from the jetway, my heart starts pounding. It’s like before that I have been holding my breath, not sure that I would make it home. But now I am in Tokyo, I am only one 3-hour flight away from home. It’s real. I am going home. I get excited and emotional. And then quickly, my happiness takes a detour when I remember how soon I will have to go through this airport again.
It is a long walk of complex emotions as I move from the plane, through the security check point, and then to the gate for my flight to Taipei. Sometimes I dread saying goodbye so much that I have this irrational urge to turn back.
I want to show you the best thing at the Narita Airport: the automatic beer pouring machine. Look at the perfect foam on top! In order to make this video I had to have a second beer. Oh the sacrifice I made for you guys!
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I have made it a habit to take pictures of the view outside the window as I fly. Today as the plane was approaching the airport, the view outside so mesmerized me that I forgot to put my iPhone away. I ended up with 82 photos. I strung together these and the other photos I took on my previous trips to New York and Boston and made a 30-second video:
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As I was going through my photos on Picasa, I noticed the Geo tagging actually showed the landing path of the plane into Narita Airport. For a dork like me, it is beyond cool.
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Here is one of the pictures I took to show you the reason why I was mesmerized as the plane descended into Tokyo today.
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The most exciting, most surreal, yet most unnerving, and embarrassing part of the evening with David Sedaris (yeah this totally sounds like I spent some intimate hours with him, doesn’t it? THIS is why I have a blog: so I can alter reality with the power of my words) came when, more than half way through the book reading, he said that he often would get 10 copies of his books in a foreign language and would keep a copy while giving the rest away. “I just got this book today. It is in…” Chinese. Please let it be Chinese! I thought hard. My fists tightened. “… Chinese. So if anybody here who can speak Chinese, please come to the book signing table after this, just come to the front of the line and I will give the book to you.”
Oh my god! I cannot believe this is happening! oh my god oh my god oh my god!
“Me!” My heart pounding, my head spinning, I forgot I was in the middle of a jam-packed auditorium, I shot up, yelling, my right hand outstretched. Fortunately, the theatre was darkened. As fast as I stood up and made a fool of myself, I sank back down in my seat again. Fortunately I was surrounded by the enlightened, liberal type so I only detected smiles and shared joy from my seatmates.
When the show was over, I stood up and immediately was crushed: the crowd swarmed the exits and there was simply no way for me to make a quick getaway. I decided to resign myself to the inevitable fate: I would be late to the table and the book would have been claimed, for shirley I cannot be the only Chinese person in the whole theatre…? If I give up hope now, it will save me from some debilitating disappointment. When things are too good to be true, you know it is too good to be true…
When I finally inched my way to the lobby, I got into a line that was surprisingly short. When I congratulated myself for the relatively short line, the lady in front of me kindly informed me that the line was for purchasing the books. I fought the crowd that were leaving the theatre to the other side of the lobby and saw a line that snaked along the corridor all the way back into the auditorium. As I accepted my fate and walked towards the end which I could not even see, something clicked. I did an about-face and marched to the front of the lobby where the table was.
“Excuse me, sir.” I said to the man that was at the very front manning the line. “During the book signing, he said he had a book in Chinese to give out and if anybody speaks Chinese, they should come to the table and ask for it.” I was so relieved when he did not dismiss me as an opportunistic nutjob and instead referred me to a lady who seemed to be in charge of the event. I repeated my line and she said, “Oh yes! Let’s see. We need to talk to his, ugh, his…” And she ushered me to the table as Mr. Sedaris was sitting down at the table.
I wish I could tell you that we had a sincilating scintillating conversation. Or that we hugged. Or that I took millions of pictures of him with his arm around me. (“Absolutely no photography allowed.” Several signs were strategically posted around the theatre, with one right by the table). Or that I licked him for the gals (after all, there was NO sign that said “Absolutely NO licking allowed!”)
Everything happened so quickly that I had no time to mentally prepare myself (and yes I knew I would meet him at book singing but I was expecting to psyche myself up when I was waiting in line! And no, I am not complaining about being able to skip ahead hours of waiting…) I was simply tongue-tied and brain-dead.
“So you speak Chinese?” He cocked his eyebrow. *melting*
“I can actually read this book. You see the two words literally means ‘Fire’ and ‘Flame’. And this is in traditional Chinese which means the book is from Taiwan and that’s where I came from!” I rattled off. He did not seem impressed or interested actually.
“I’ll give you this book and I can sign it for you. What’s your name?”
“Lin. L-I-N.”
“So Lin. What are you doing here?”
HUH? Is this a trick question? Should I say “I am here for your book reading?”
“Uh. I… live here?”
Certain that this answer was not enough, I added in rapid succession, “I came in 1993 and got my Ph.D. in theatre, got married and I’ve never left since.”
UGH. WHY did you tell him this? What the fuck does he care about this?! You are such an idiot!
“Is this book for you too? And it is Lin, L-I-N?” He asked as I handed him my copy of Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk. I nodded and idiotically pointed to myself.
I had an out of body experience right then and there observing and criticizing myself and yet there was nothing the out-of-body me could do to change the course.
“So, Lin, what are you doing here?”
I want to die. Ok, maybe that’s a bit too dramatic. I want to cry. I have no idea what he means by this question. Is it philosophical? Existential? Is he asking me about the meaning of life?
“What are you doing here?” He asked again.
“I came, I got married, I had kids, I never left. And now I am in suburban hell.” I said, barely able to catch my breath.
THAT. is my best shot. W.T.F, Self?!
Now I want to die.
“Well, it’s very nice meeting you!” He extended his hand and I shook it. After that there was nothing else I could do but leave, trying to ignore the murderous daggers shot from the long line of people waiting to be up close and personal to brilliance.
I walked out of the theatre and I began to cry.
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I know this is what you are thinking right now... I am sorry, ok?!
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On the way home I could not concentrate on driving at all. I kept replaying everything in my head (Yeah, like you haven’t heard that before…) obsessively going through every tiny detail in my less than one minute of face-to-face with David Sedaris.
It felt as though I was given the chance of a life time and I blew it. <— Yes, I am a drama queen. The Court Jester in the Kingdom of Hyperbole. The rational side of me could see this perfectly. Now.
I wanted to kick myself but of course I couldn’t because I was driving, speeding away in the darkened highway besieged by sudden torrential rain.
“What are you doing here? What does he mean by that? And why did he ask me the same question more than once? Is it a code? Did he want me to tell him a joke? Did he want me to tell him something more than mundane?”
Then it hit me. I wish I had made up some sort of story about my ending up where I am. I should have said I was an acrobat. A magician. An origami artist. I should have said that I ran away from the circus I was traveling with and I am currently hiding in middle America, trying my darnedest to blend in.
I could picture his mind going, “Damn. How come of the 2 billion Chinese people in the world, I gave my book to the most boring one?!” <— Yes. This is gross self-aggrandizement. The rational side of me could see this perfectly. Now.
All I wanted was a do-over. To turn back time so I could regale him with my wittiness. The bizarre, funny, yet strangely universal story of how I landed here. In this way, the story I told would be eerily similar to his.
Instead, I raced home and collapsed in my conviction that I would never be given an once-in-a-lifetime so grand as this one and the self pity that I had gone and wasted it. <— See above. Thanks.
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It took me the whole day staring at the autograph, and finally asking my son to decipher it for me, to realize the word is not feces or feeble but feeling.
If anybody needs me right now, I’ll be wallowing in my chamber with my smelling salt.
O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!
When I learned that David Sedaris is on a tour for his new book Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, I knew I had to do something. I checked his agent’s website and saw that he would be in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for a book reading, in addition to book signing. Since I did not think I would be able to fight the rabid fans in downtown Chicago for the book signing, the book reading at Riverside Theatre in Milwaukee sounded like something worth driving 1.5 hour to. So I did.
I am glad I went. First of all, when I asked the bar tender at the bar in the basemen which was EMPTY how much a beer cost, she said with a sheepish grin, apologetically, “4 dollars…” I tried to suppress my smile. This theatre is not called PABST Theater for nothing! What’s more: a cranberry with Grey Goose cost $6, $2 more and you got yourself a double! I fell in love with Milwaukee right then and there.
A book reading by David Sedaris is everything that you may have expected and more if you have listened to appearances on NPR or his audio books, watched one of his appearances on David Letterman. Here are some random things I can still recall from last night while still overcoming the shock…
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“I want my hand to know what excellence feels like”
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I want my hand to know what excellence feels like.
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It’s not just that they’re stupid, my family — that, I could forgive. It’s that they’re actively against knowledge…
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“I should be used to the way American dress when travelling, yet still it manages to amaze me. It’s as if the person next to you had been washing shoe polish off a pig, then suddenly threw down his sponge, saying, “Fuck this. I’m going to Los Angeles!”
I laughed till tears came out when he said he would really like to know a person’s political leaning before he engaged in a conversation when the person made a comment such as “None of them want to work, that’s the problem”, and also when he realized the two men behind him were complaining about Obama (and not Bush/Cheney), “Isn’t it amazing how quickly one man can completely screw up a country?” But Obama had been in the White House for 6 months! All that hate. You don’t think we can hate too? Think you can out-hate me, asshole?
As I watched an old lady… I noticed her bumper sticker that said “Marriage = A Man + A Woman”. *pause* As I watched this old hag *The entire auditorium broke into a hysterical hooting* … … There should be a law against people parking at handicapped park spaces from making opinions. “You’ve got the best spot already. So shut the fuck up!” *More hooting and applause*
On upon learning about barn owl ring bearers which will swoop down to the groom wearing a leather glove and delivering the rings, and upon the delivery, will be rewarded with a live mouse or some other small animals…
For the first time, for all the right reasons, I really want to get married!
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Here is a great joke for you at an interview. You know how at the end of a job interview, they always ask you whether you have any questions? Ok, so here, here is the question you are going to ask:
What’s the difference between a Camaro and an erection?
I don’t have a Camaro.
I feel sorry for people who have a Camaro and women because you cannot tell this joke.
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This post has taken me more than five hours to put together because I did not want to screw it up. Well, time spent does not guarantee quality but it surely adds to the quantity. It has gone on too long and it is already, in fact, 4 am on Monday. I should stop here and continue my tale of how I got the Chinese version of When You Are Engulfed in Flames from David Sedaris.
In closing, I will leave you with this to ponder…
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One of the best t-shirts David Sedaris has seen says this:
I’d call you a cunt but you lack the depth or the warmth.
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The Chinese version of his book puzzled Mr. Sedaris: for some bizarre reason, there is a cat, a dog, and an embossed pipe in the middle, on the cover.