America: The Land of Milk and Honey and Paperwork and Really Big Pizzas

When you spend six years living in Asia, coming back to the USA becomes both an exciting and a frightening proposition. Yes, I felt amped up thinking about the things I missed. Decent live music and Applebee’s and Taco Bell. Things like that. There’s also the worry that everyone will be armed and dangerous and your Chinese fiance will get elbowed in the face by an angry Trump supporter who heard her say ‘ni hao’ and flipped. What you find is that things are pretty good here, somewhere in the middle of what you anticipated.

In other words, Applebee’s isn’t that great, and no one is threatening to shoot or elbow your girlfriend.

But a lot of my friends have asked me what adjustments I’ve had to make. So I thought I’d write a quick blog post, where I’ll briefly touch on a few things that have surprised me since I’ve come back to The States.

1) People Like to Talk to Each Other – The other day, I was in Walmart, waiting in line, and the lady behind just started talking to me. Struck up a random conversation. It was nice, and it got me thinking about the people in South Korea and China. I started to ask myself, did I ever see people talking to each other while in line? I don’t mean to me – I didn’t speak the language – but to each other? I don’t believe I ever did. Likewise, at the bus stop here in Vegas, someone ALWAYS starts talking to me. But at the bus stops in Asia, everyone always stood in silence and waited solemnly.

Personally, I like the perception that a stranger is your friend, and I like the frequent little conversations I’m having. I’ve concluded that the USA is chatty, and it’s kind of fun.

2) The USA is Obsessed with Sports – Man, there are sports everywhere here. The NFL, the NBA, college football, college basketball, high school sports, fantasy sports. I turn on my TV during the weekend and I’m bound to find sports on. It’s amazing how Asia isn’t like that at all. Sure, Korea had it’s baseball league and that was popular. But other than the KBO, there wasn’t really much, and I don’t recall seeing many people dressed up in the jersey of their favorite team. Not like here, where half the men I see apparently still have fantasies about playing for the Cowboys. Thinking back to China, I don’t believe anyone cared at all about sports, apart from, I guess, their rampant love for playing ping-pong. The emphasis on athletics is amazing in the USA; whereas in Asia teenage boys and adult men seem to get their excitement from video games and drinking large amounts of alcohol.

3) Advertising is Ingrained in our Souls – Jingles. I only remember one in Asia, which was for HomePlus in Korea. Otherwise, commercials consisted mostly of attractive people using the product and looking attractive. Here, commercials are inescapable and far more sly. They play brain tricks, and people seem to love them. Hanging out with some friends, a commercial for Jeep Grand Cherokee came on and everybody started happily signing Cat Stevens’ song “Free to Be.” In my classroom at a middle school in Vegas, we were about to start watching something on YouTube when a Capital One advert starting playing; when I went to skip the ad, the students all cried “no!” like their hearts were breaking and then sat transfixed while Samuel L. Jackson talked about interest rates. Our programming is apparent and kind of sad. Whereas in Asia, you just buy what the sexy person tells you to buy.

4) Bureaucracy Is Everywhere and Is Expensive – A few months ago, I sauntered into Lens Crafters with my glasses. I told them I wanted to buy some contacts and I handed the lady my glasses to scan. That’s how I did it in Asia. Hand over the glasses, they scan it with some machine, then they sell me contacts that match the strength of the glasses lenses. Takes five minutes. But here, not so much – I was told I needed a doctor’s perscription in order to buy my contacts. The vision test would take 2-3 hours and cost $110.

This is America. Everything needs a document, every document costs money. To get fingerprinted for my new job, I had to 1) pay a fee online 2) go to fingerprint place with receipt from the online fee and get printed 3) go to office of employer with form from fingerprint place saying I was printed in order to get another form giving the fingerprint place permission to share the fingerprints 4) go back to fingerprint place to give them the permission to share form. It took forever and, of course, cost money. But that’s the procedure. There are battles from wars that have less documentation than my fingerprinting did.

5)  The Grocery Store is Great – In Asia, about 50% of the grocery store is comprised of cheap sausages. There are sausages all over the place, and the chicken breasts sit out in the open and are as warm as urine by the time you get them home. Meanwhile, the grocery stores in America are true examples of American greatness. Want a giant pizza that will feed your entire apartment building? You got it. Want tomatoes? We’ve got six different kinds of tomatoes. Feeling in the mood for some Middle Eastern food? Well we’ve got Falafel and pita break and tahini sauce. In Asia, I couldn’t even find olives.

Okay, that’s enough for now. Need to stop writing. Got a big day ahead of me here in America: gonna watch some football, enjoy the advertisements, and eat a pizza the size of an ice skating rink.

 

One Night in Russia with a Bunch of Damn Crazy People

I was only supposed to be in Moscow for three hours. This was my connecting flight – from Seoul to Moscow, from Moscow to London. I wasted time eating candy bars and trying to fix my hair in the bathroom mirror, unaware that I would end up getting stuck in the Moscow airport forever, seemingly living there like Edward Snowden.

A mere twenty minutes before my flight, I got into the queue, looking at my watch and wondering why we’d missed the scheduled boarding time so badly. There was a short American girl in front of me with long brown hair. “I heard somebody say that the flight’s been canceled,” she said, shaking her head. “God I hope not.”

I agreed, as I’m sure everyone else would have too if they heard her. I highly doubted there would be anyone who’d say, “Oh, I wouldn’t mind it. Today, tomorrow, next Wednesday, whenever. I’m in no rush. Not like London’s going anywhere!”

Some more time passed and then we were all led away from the flight deck and into a large empty waiting area. We were told that there was a problem at Heathrow and all flights had been canceled. So that was that. We would be spending one night in Russia, in a hotel next to the airport. There was a process though that would take some time, because they had to give us special visas or something to that effect, make sure we weren’t secret agents sent in from the West to find and rescue Pussy Riot.

“This is ridiculous!” the girl with brown hair shouted. “How long are we going to be stuck in this waiting room?”

Hours, it turned out. The Russians collected our passports and disappeared with them. We were told that we had to stay in the waiting area and, as the name of the area implied, wait. Time ticked away and little by little everyone started losing their minds, yelling at the poor blonde lady working at the desk or voicing their displeasure into the empty air.

“This is incompetence!” some dude hollered. “Either get me to the hotel or let me out of this waiting room!”

“Where is my passport?” a lady complained. “Where did he go with it? I am so unhappy right now! I want my passport back!”

Tension filled the room like the smell of rotting vegetables constantly fills my apartment. People’s moods got worse and worse, their faces drenched with sweat and hatred. It was like being stuck in the control room of the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, only not with Kennedy, but with a bunch of lunatics who didn’t know what the heck to do except complain about the Russians.

“This is the worst airport I’ve ever experienced!” someone announced. “I’m never coming here again!”

Well, why would you? Suddenly a voice came over the loud speaker, originating from a new airport worker, a tall man standing behind the counter. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “we apologize for the inconvenience. As a token of our apology, we will be offering free passes for the Executive Business Lounge to our passengers bound for Heathrow. Please come up to the desk and claim your passes.”

In the blink of an eye, the rage evaporated. People rushed to the counter to get their passes to the Executive Business Lounge located inside the airport terminal with the sort of enthusiasm I would have had if they were offering free shots of vodka. Furious frowns disappeared. Shouts of hatred ceased. The Executive Lounge had turned this angry mob into a bunch of bizarrely happy and content individuals. The waiting area, in an instant, had become Whoville on Christmas.

“Fabu Foray! Dabu Doray! Business Lounge blah blah blah blah!”

“This is great!”

“I’ve never been in the Business Lounge!”

I stood there and stared. What the hell was wrong with these people? Is that all it took, some passes to the airport business lounge, to appease them? Five minutes ago they were ready to loot the place and hang the blonde desk woman from the rafters, and now they had huge smiles on their faces, as if they were going to break into song and dance. For some reason I pictured them singing “It’s Raining Men” of all songs. Hallelujah. The passports came back and we were given a choice of going to the hotel or spending the night in the business lounge. I went for the hotel while others filed out, dancing their way to the lounge.

The next morning I returned to the airport and saw the girl with the brown hair.

“Did you go to the hotel?” I asked.

“No, business lounge.”

“How was it?”

Her hair was all messy and there were bags under her eyes. “It wasn’t anything special.”

We boarded the plane and headed off to London. I hoped that the stewardesses had some upgrade passes to First Class, just in case somebody tried to hijack the plane and had to be persuaded not to.

*

And In Your Bank, I Deposit My Sanity

Sometimes I think about how much simpler life was when I was a kid. There were so many things back then that I didn’t have to worry about. Paying taxes, watching the height of my cholesterol rise, getting hair on my nipples, impotence, and, most importantly, having to remember a million passwords. When you’re a kid, a password is just some random noun that you have to mutter to get your friend to let you in his tree house.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Bagel sandwich.”

Bam. You’re in. That’s all it took. But then I got older, and passwords got increasingly more complicated. I started needing passwords for just about everything. My email, my WordPress account, online banking, my ATM card, the electronic lock on my door, stopping Gort from destroying the earth. Everything. And not only were passwords becoming more prevalent, they were getting more involved as well. A simple noun or a sequence numbers didn’t cut it anymore. Nope, for my own protection, passwords must include capital letters, numbers, and at least 8 characters, so that hacking into my Facebook page has become as difficult as cracking the Da Vinci Code or getting a girl’s phone number (for me anyways). In the future, one can only guess that passwords will get even more complex, requiring everything from punctuation to emoticons to strange symbols.

“You want in? What’s the secret password?”

“Oh. It’s Bill/198228/!?!/ ; ) /The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.”

All of this is to preface how I recently lost my mind in the bank, and all because I forgot a stupid password. I’d been living in Beijing for about a month when it happened. After getting my first paycheck from my new job, I ran off to the ATM to cash in, thrilled, ready to pull money out and do something awesome with it, like go to McDonald’s or buy a mop. I switched the ATM from Chinese to English and followed the instructions, not realizing that soon the horrors of modern security would entrap me, like a fat man who puts an alarm system on his jar of Slim Jims.

“Invalid Pin,” the machine said. I got two more chances, and then the machine cut me off.

“What? I only get three shots?” I said to myself. “I was just warming up.”

The next day, the same scene repeated. Thus, I found myself sitting in Bank of China, a paper slip in my hand with a number on it, waiting to see a bank teller who probably spoke no English. Three hours passed. Finally they called me up. “Hi,” the bank teller said, “Please show me your passport.”

“Oh,” I said, “I, um, don’t have it.”

And that was the end of that. Back on the bus, a total failure. But I returned to the bank the next day, this time equipped with my passport. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours once, shame on you. Make me sit there pointlessly for 3 hours twice, then you have a lot in common with the last two Lord of the Rings movies. Anyways, I ended up waiting a mere hour and a half on the second trip, before finally being called up to the teller.

(Apparently banks in China have notoriously poor service, due to the fact that they’re all government run. This leads to them being seriously understaffed and not particularly motivated by the ‘customer is always right’ mantra.)

“Nee Hao!” I said, enthusiastically. Then I tried to explain what was going on.

The teller was baffled. She called over the manager, who could speak some English. “What is the problem?” she asked.

“Well, it’s my fault, really. I can’t seem to remember my pin number.”

“I see,” she said, motioning to a keypad on the counter in front of me. “We can help you change it. Just type your pin number on the keypad.”

“Um, but that’s the problem. I don’t know it.”

She looked confused. “You don’t know it? Try to guess.”

I typed in a few numbers, again failing miserably. “Can’t you look it up in the computer or something?”

The manager practically burst out laughing at this suggestion. “It is your secret number. How are we supposed to know what it is?”

I stared at her like she was crazy, and she stared at me like I was crazy. “Because you’re the bank. You’ve got to have the number on file someplace…”

The teller twisted the computer screen to show me. “See?” the manager said. “In our computer system, in the password spot, it just says xxxxxx.”

“So how do I change it?”

“You can only change your password by typing in the original password.”

“What? This can’t be happening. Don’t you have a procedure for what happens when someone forgets their password?”

“No.”

“But this has to have happened before? Are you telling me that nobody has ever forgotten their password before?”

“No,” she said. “You are the only one.”

She really said that, and she was serious. It was not a sarcastic statement. We decided, finally, that I would have to fill out a form declaring my card lost (or something to that effect), and in one week the bank would be able to wipe the pin number out of the system and replace it. “Fine,” I said. “While I’m here, though, I’ll need to withdraw some money.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Huh?” I was beginning to get upset. I told myself to keep cool. “I have no food. I need to eat. What do you mean it’s impossible?”

“It is impossible to withdraw money without putting your pin number in.”

“But I’m here,” I said, my voice wavering with desperation. “I have my ID. Here’s my passport. You know it’s me. Are you seriously saying I can’t have my own money because I forgot the pin number?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I cannot let you withdraw from your account unless you type in correct number. It is for security.”

The next twenty minutes were not the proudest moments of my life. I yelled. I demanded my money. I lectured the manager on the nature of passwords, how they’re supposed to stand in for identification when there’s just a machine there, nothing that can look at a person’s proper ID, and how this was insanity, the importance of the pin surpassing my being there, in physical form, me, my body and face, my real identity. Who was I? Had I become some number in a computer that nobody knew? I shouted until the security people came over. Five o’clock came and the bank closed. I refused to leave. I accused them of stealing my money. I had to eat and they were killing me. Again and again I waved my passport around and stated my name.

What did it matter? I’d lost the key, forgotten the combination to my locker, and I eventually left the bank with my head held low. Defeated. Rejected. Over a month would pass before the bank finally resolved the forgotten pin number problem. In that time I did what any person living in the modern world would do, and I put every last living expense I incurred on my credit card. See, MasterCard believes it’s really me…as long as someone keeps paying them every month.

I sat in my apartment after the bank incident and thought about things. I could lose my passport, have my face sawed off in a terrible carpentry accident, change my name to Cap’n Crunch, and none of that would make much of a difference, not as long as I kept track of all my usernames and passwords. A digital version of me had taken my place, like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as if I woke up one morning and I was gone, replaced, by some sort of computerized file.

What if the entire universe is based on code, and most of us just don’t know it? The cure for cancer, the key to finding love after forty, the secret to losing back fat – they probably all exist, somewhere, and are just very powerfully password protected.

*

The Strange Spot On This Planet That I Call Home

Back in November, I interviewed for a job in Beijing, China. Two weeks later, I’d signed a contract. A few months after that, I was on a plane to Beijing Capital International Airport. What greeted me – the place where I found myself – let’s just say it wasn’t what I expected. Yesterday was nice and sunny and so I went for a stroll and took some pictures. And thus I present to you my new home, for better or for worse. Cheers!

This is the outside of the campus where my apartment is. Right off the bat, I want to say that my school is quite awesome and that I really believe there’s some good stuff going on. It’s a school I’m proud to be teaching at. Yes.

What follows is my journey any time I wish to go off campus. Out in front of the school is a two lane highway. A public bus comes about once every ten minutes. Apart from the bus and some cars, the area is really empty.

Evidence of emptiness.

The bus takes about 15 minutes to get into town (not downtown Beijing, that takes 90 minutes) and stops running at 7:30 pm. Now, if I don’t feel like taking the bus into town, there is a village. It’s a short walk. Here are the stairs that mark the starting point.

Up the stairs, and down the winding path through the trees.

Four minutes through the trees brings us to an exit. The village is close.

Now it’s a walk down this stretch of road. Again, this isn’t the Beijing I had pictured. But, like anywhere, one gets used to the surroundings. Especially when there’s a random head by the side of the road.

We’ve finally reached the village. Hurray!

Here is the grocery store. There are always dogs outside…

…and exciting rides for kids.

In all seriousness, the village is pretty depressing. It’s an extremely poor area. Last semester, my school brought in children from the village’s elementary school, so that the wealthy kids attending my school could talk to the village kids and learn about their lives. My school planned to involve them more this semester, but we were told that the elementary school in the village was shut down. Closed. No one seems to know why, or what the village kids are doing now that they don’t have a school.

Village barber shop. Reminiscent of Super Cuts.

Probably it’s needless to say that I wasn’t too pleased to be living here at first. But I’m getting into it. It’s okay, nothing to complain about. Here’s Mickey Mouse. At Disney World, they say it’s a small world after all. That isn’t really true. The world isn’t small at all, but when you stay in one certain place long enough, I can see how it feels that way.

The Girl with the Flowered Underwear

Of all the curious idiosyncrasies of the human race, people’s unique behavioral
blips, I’ve always been baffled by the decision some strange individuals make to wear underwear that has flowers on it. It’s definitely not sexy, unless one has a fetish for wallpaper, and from a strictly aesthetic perspective, a floral print can only be visually pleasing to those who think quilted Bounty paper towels are fine art. Mind you, I’m not against underwear that has personality – in fact, I own one pair of boxers with the Super Mario Brothers on it and another that retells the Little Red Riding Hood story (literary lingerie, there’s an idea, market it if you have the time). It’s just that flowers seem tacky. Grandmotherish. And flowers are also the most obvious vaginal symbol I can think of (right, Georgia O’Keefe?); a girl with flowered panties is sort of like a guy wearing tighty whities covered in bananas and The Washington Monument.

One Sunday evening, I found myself sitting in my room, the nervous breakdown that I’d been having for the previous three weeks beginning to subside slightly. I’d been hiding all weekend, terrified at the idea of seeing another human being, wanting only to be left alone, in the dark cavern of my apartment, taking shelter in my cave like an agoraphobic bear or an early 2000s Bin Laden. I’d hear people outside in the lobby of the apartment building, talking and laughing, and my heart would pound. Why were they out there? When would they leave? Their presence was cancer, a black widow spider hanging above my bed on its string, they were there to get me, I had to stay safe. The building was full of threats. Stepping outside my apartment was Russian Roulette, spin the barrel, pull the trigger, listen for noise.

For over a month I hadn’t done any laundry because the laundry room was down the hallway and I was too petrified of people to force myself to go. I figured it was easier to wear the same dirty underwear, BO scented shirts, and soy sauce stained jeans than risk running into someone in the public laundry room. But on this Sunday, the hallway was quiet, and I was feeling adventurous. I threw some clothes in a bag and literally sprinted across the lobby to the laundry room. The washer was all in Chinese and I had no idea how to work it. Whatever. I tossed my clothes in, poured a bunch of detergent on top like a Canadian eating pancakes and going heavy on the maple syrup, and punched buttons until the machine started. What was the worst that could happen? I’d either end up with clean clothes or turn the apartment building into The Impossible.

Forty five minutes passed. It was time to make the transfer to the dryer. I gave myself a pep talk, pumping myself up, like someone does before walking over hot coals, and then I darted back to the laundry room. There was only one dryer not currently in use but, to my horror, someone had left clothes inside it. I cursed under my breath and ran back to my room. Twenty minutes later I repeated the process, pep talk, 15 meter dash, dryer check. The same clothes sat in the dryer, left and abandoned, shed and forgotten, the same way cats leave their fur all over the place.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. I knew that I didn’t have it in me to come back again. Whoever was doing this was torturing me. I opened the dryer and started taking the clothes out, throwing them on top of the machine. To hell with it. My head ached. There’s a privacy agreement inherent in any Laundromat and I was breaking it, smashing it with each t-shirt or sock I tossed out of the dryer’s warm circular metal embrace.

And I would have kept going, had it not been for what I was unearthing. Panties. Lots and lots of panties. Whoever was responsible for this had washed a record amount of underwear, lifetimes worth. Flowered panties, tons of them, descending from the dryer, falling down onto my face, like I was an opera singer and the crowd was pelting me with roses.

How could I leave some girl’s underwear out in the open for anyone to gawk at? I only wanted to dry my clothes, not humiliate anyone. Anger filled me as I held the girl’s floral patterned panties in my hand. I imagined that if I was single, maybe one day I’d have a romantic hook up with one of my coworkers, bring her back to my apartment. Things would get heavy, bra unlatched, and I’d slide her jeans off, only to recognize this same pair of flowered panties snug around her hips. Passion would die right there. The lights would have to come on, and instead of sex, she would get a long lecture on laundry etiquette.

“Hours! You left your clothes in the dryer for hours! What kind of girl just leaves her panties in a public space like that? Have you no decency?!?”

It was no use. I put all of the mystery girl’s clothes back in the dryer, then took my soaking wet laundry and stuffed it in my bag. Returning to my apartment, I hung my drenched clothes around the place like I was redecorating, putting socks on bookshelves as if they were family photographs.

“I finally did some laundry,” I sighed. “I should feel happy.”

It was true. I was alone and safe, with wet clothes sitting in my closet, while some stranger was out and about, possibly having the time of her life, her laundry a minor detail of her day, already forgotten.

*

Psychedelic Panic Pizza, Heat 120 Seconds

So many unexplainable things happen every year, it was only a matter of time until the fantastic reached me. UFOs in Jerusalem. Spontaneous human combustion on the Seoul subway. The high ratings for Honey Boo Boo. Things like that. And then last week, I had a personal experience that walked the same path, out of our reality and into another one. I probably sound facetious, but that’s just out of habit – after 25 years of being a sarcastic asshole, it’s difficult to sound sincere. As crazy as it sounds, this post is done in true sincerity. It is the story of how I had an intense journey, a trip across the dark side of the mushroom, brought on by a microwavable pizza bought at Walmart.

I’m aware of how crazy it sounds. People don’t have their perception altered by pizza, and the worst thing microwaveable food can do to a person is give them a muffin top. My rational side understands this. But then I think back to what happened, and I shudder.

It all began around 5:00 PM on Wednesday. I needed to pick up a few things, so I took the 21 bus from my school to the Walmart located in Chang Ping. The bus was packed and the ride was hell. I’d been in an edgy mood all day, and the crowded bus/crowded store didn’t help any. I bought some crap, and then wondered what to eat for dinner. I haven’t had pizza in ages, and I came across some microwaveable ones in the frozen food section. Not DiGiorno or Mama Celeste or anything like that. I found a different brand with a promising name – Pizza Delicious.

Now let’s pause for a moment to analyze the box. First, let’s note the text used to spell the words “Pizza” and “Delicious.” Clearly, this is the same font utilized by The Grateful Dead and other bands of the psychedelic era. The box sort of looks like a poster you’d see hanging in Haight-Ashbury in the late 60s. Secondly, notice the green swoosh above the words. It’s as though they’re telling you this pizza will take you places, another galaxy, the sixth dimension. Hey Mr. Spaceman, won’t you please take me and my Pizza Delicious along, we won’t do anything wrong. Thirdly, note the shape of the pizza. It sort of looks like an LSD microdot with toppings.

Turn on, heat for 120 seconds on high power, drop out.

The pizza pictured on the box is one thing, but the monstrosity inside was a whole different story. Here, below, is what I discovered upon unsealing my Pizza Delicious.

Yes, I know. It looks like scrambled eggs thrown on top of a dry pita. After microwaving it, the enormous mountain of frozen cheese melted, revealing a hidden assortment of mushrooms, sausage, and corn. No sauce to speak of. Although it still appeared to be made by someone with dementia, I was starving and so I decided to eat the thing. The crust had a nice sweet taste to it. The glob of random items on top had no taste, which might have been for the best.

About twenty minutes after I ate the fucker, strange things began happening. I felt euphoric, lightheaded and blissful. Everything seemed hilarious and I couldn’t stop laughing at shit on my Facebook newsfeed. At the time, I thought I was simply in a good mood. In hindsight, the pizza had obviously intoxicated me, making everything appear wonderful. That all changed when I made the poor decision to go to sleep.

I woke up at one o’clock in the morning. My proprioception was gone. I felt as though my body had vanished on me, like I’d been drawn and quartered in the night and all that was left of me was a torso. Where were my arms? I couldn’t feel my legs. I was hysterical. I stood fast, looking down on my body’s completion, a dandelion that hadn’t had its appendages blown off yet. Still, something felt incredibly wrong. I was drowning, sensations sinking into the interior of my head, my brain fluid was a green river carrying away my thoughts. Skin burning, sweat soaking my hair. I had to move, couldn’t stay still or I’d die. I ran out into the living room and turned on all the lights, kicking my legs, hopping up and down. Hands had gone numb, feet were tingling. My blood was out of circulation, red light stopped, my tongue had fur on it. The dryness in my mouth was unbearable, it felt filled with cotton, and I started drinking water but that only made me vomit burp, acid filling my throat as if I had some kind of internal straw running down into my stomach and I was sucking the liquid up through it.

In reality, I was having a panic attack. I’ve had them all my life, and they never seem to get any easier. I felt so incredibly helpless. I saw the pizza box in the trash, laughing at me, the bastard had poisoned me and was going to kill me. Why the fuck did I eat it? Obviously the pizza wasn’t right, a death trap, as smart as eating raw beef. Part of my mind was convinced this was the BIG END, that I was going to faint and never wake up. The other part of my mind tried to stay rational. I had to find my neutral space, create an environment that would settle me down. In the meantime, I’d keep running around the living room. Stopping could prove fatal.

It took two hours before I was able to sit still. I had to find the right amount of light (full darkness except the soft glow of my desk lamp). The silence was terrifying, and so I put on Joni Mitchell, turned her voice to the exact volume I needed. I made myself tea. And ultimately I laid in the bed and let the calmness take over. My body started to reappear, gain focus, as if I was looking at myself through a camera and adjusting the lens. Eyes shut, I saw two black birds fly up to the top of my skull, its morning, twirling in circles, intertwining, a braid of dark hair escalating through the sky. A feeling of full relaxation overtook me. Shear delirium, I was split into two, a child and its own care giver. The idea was beautiful. All of this, the entire experience, had a purpose, and I could sense that inside this gentle division.

I was a patient and a nurse, an infant and its father. I could feel my own forehead for fever, kiss my own bruises. Fuck, this is what the Pizza Delicious needed to tell me. That I could take care of myself, not be afraid, that I was my own protection against the world and against death and maybe against myself as well.

In the morning, I felt exhausted. I took a hot shower.

Everything was back to normal, and I wanted to cry.

*

The Sheep Cafe: Cause Nothin’ Complements a Latte like Livestock

As a fan of random, pointless things, I was drawn to Seoul’s “Thanks Nature Cafe.” With all these Starbucks everywhere, little independently owned establishments need a gimmick to survive, and the Thanks Nature Cafe has…well…a unique one. Mixing high-end coffee with a small herd, the cafe is home to not just one, but two (yes two!) sheep, who live in a pen right outside the front door. Why? Don’t ask questions like that. Just drink your coffee and behold the wonderful sheep decor the interior boasts.

The sheep live in a small fenced off enclosure, down in the center area between the coffee shop and a few stores. There’s a little doghouse (sheephouse?) for them to go in when they feel they’re lacking privacy. In the summer, the weather gets too hot for them to handle and the sheep are taken away. I’m not sure if this hurts business, but one would guess it would, just as removing the animals living in other coffee shops likely diminishes their revenues as well.

What more is there to say about the Sheep Cafe? Um, not a whole lot. I’m told that the place makes visiting Australians feel at home, and that the cafe owners frown upon shearing. Really, though, I’m happy places like this exist. As much as I love Starbucks, it hasn’t exactly helped in making life less boring. Take Starbucks and its copy-cat knocks-offs and add them to all the ubiquitous corner stores and supermarkets and fast food joints. Human consumption has gotten really dull, the art of sitting in a chair at a table and putting something in one’s face. At least by having the two awkward sheep outside, I felt like I was experiencing something different. Taking part in a special happening, including myself in a hip scene.

I read on PBS.org that sheep can recognize each other and can also recognize human faces. In addition to making me want to write a really bad mystery story (picture this – police lineup of criminals, a sheep brought in to identify the murderer), knowing this makes me want to go back to the Sheep Cafe. I want to be recognized. I want the Starbucks girl to tell me apart from the other customers, but that never seems to happen. Maybe a couple ewes will take the time to notice. It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Tension and Fury with the Elderly on the Seoul Subway

Part One – In Which I Bash an Old Lady with a Suitcase

The Seoul subway is packed, just like always, and, also like always, I’m in a shitty mood. It’s mid-January and I’m headed to the airport, on my way to Hong Kong, a giant green suitcase containing half of my worldly possessions by my side, ready to make the trip with me. To get to the subway train, I must go down a staircase. I lift my suitcase, carrying it with both hands like a battering ram, and head down the stairs, taking the first step at the exact moment the train arrives. Approximately 8 million people get off the train and start walking up the staircase, flooding it, a tidal wave of Asians, coming right at me.

I sigh. I’m hugging the wall on the right hand side, as I feel I should be. One would think the people going up would do the same, two lanes, street traffic, headed in opposite directions, but they’re not. They’re spread out. This doesn’t deter me. I put my head down, the green suitcase held out before me, and walk with great speed, gaining inertia as I descend.

“Excuse me!” I yell. “Coming through!”

People duck out of the way, dodging me and muttering angry things in Korean. At least they’re moving, and I’m getting close to the bottom. But then I see an old woman, right in my path, walking up the stairs while texting. Why is an old woman texting? Why hasn’t technology passed her by, and who the hell is she talking too? Probably the retirement home, to tell them she’s escaped. She’s completely oblivious. It’s like a game a chicken and one person is asleep behind the wheel.

“Watch out!” I shout. That seems more pleasant than, “Move, bitch, get out the way!” The old woman continues towards me with her head down. I decide not to veer off, as I have heavy luggage and she should be the one that moves, and we collide. The suitcase wallops her good. She staggers to the side a bit and lets out a furious scream, shocked by what’s happened. I respond by saying “Pay attention!” and then make my way to the end of the staircase.

I don’t look back. It wasn’t my fault.

Maybe she’s learned a lesson about the dangers of texting. Or I’ve given Old Lady 21^st Century something to blog about. Because she probably has a blog, with an upcoming entry called, “The Damn White Bastard Motherfucker.”

Part Two – Things Get Tense with an Old Man

Mid February. Back in the subway station, a black suitcase this time, containing the second half of my worldly possessions. Another flight, the last leg of the move. I’m standing on the platform waiting for the train, my suitcase beside me like a son (in a bag, I dunno). There’s no one else in the general area and I’m poised to drag my luggage right onto the train when it comes. And then another person appears.

He’s old, probably in his sixties, with wrinkled skin and an Oakland A’s cap. Despite the fact that I’m obviously first in line, the old man doesn’t fall into place behind me, but instead stands directly next to me. I start to feel tense. There’s no reason for this – it isn’t crowded. Why can’t he just let me and my luggage get on the train first? I know that he’ll push his way by me. It’s happened a million times before with these old Asians. I grit my teeth. There’s no way I’m letting him ahead of me.

The train arrives, doors open. I pick up my suitcase and start heading on. The old man goes darts forward, and I feel his body press up against me, trying to push his way past. I guess I could simply let him go, but that’s ludicrous, and instead I position myself in front of him, cutting off his path. He doesn’t yield. Pushes harder.

That’s it. I’m pissed.

I turn and put my hand directly in the center of his chest and shove him back. “Stop it, God damn it!” Like the old woman I bashed with the suitcase, he’s shocked. I make my way onto the train and he steps on after me with hate in his eyes and his jaw agape. “Can’t you wait a second?” I say. I’m sure he doesn’t know a word of English but I don’t care. “I’m getting on the train. Don’t fucking push me.”

Riding the train, I start thinking. Really, if I’m honest with myself, standing on the platform before the train came, I was kind of hoping he would try to push past me. I wanted to do something, make a stand, just as I wanted that old lady to keep walking up the staircase so I could ram her with my suitcase. In truth, I was sick of Koreans being rude on the subway, and I was salivating at the opportunity to confront someone.

“My God,” I thought, “I’m like the George Zimmerman of the Seoul subway.”

Sometimes, standing up against something, be it thieves in the neighborhood or rude people on the subway, becomes a matter of personal need, an action waiting for a target. Maybe I shouldn’t have been such an asshole on the subway. I looked up at the monitor to see where I was.

Dorimcheon. I looked back at the old man and hung my head in shame.

I’d gotten on the wrong damn train.

*

I Don’t Want To Shower, I Don’t Want To Blog, And I Don’t Want To Eat Brain

I could feel the funk settling in. My floor was littered with unwashed clothes, and I hadn’t showered in two days. That’s the thing about depression – there are generally signs of it everywhere. See, depression doesn’t sneak up on you like Oscar Pistorious’ girlfriend on Valentine’s Day; it slowly makes itself at home. One day you sleep until noon but shrug it off. Then, before you know it, you haven’t shaved in two weeks and you’re suddenly listening to a lot of Joni Mitchell.

Well, at least that’s what happened to me. Relocating to China was beginning to wear me down, bum me out. Moving someplace new, really, is a lot like buying a porn magazine. Sure, the new issue of “Juggs” is thrilling for a day or two, but pretty quickly it gets boring, depressing to own, and you want it to go away. So was the case with China, at least in the early stages. The first few days were fun, but then I didn’t want to see its breasts any more, metaphorically speaking.

“Hey,” I said on the phone, calling one of the school coordinators, “I don’t mean to complain, but I can’t get any hot water in the shower.”

“Oh, you know it gets turned off, right?” she responded.

“No, I had no idea. What time does it get turned off?”

“7:30 AM.”

As soon as the number left her mouth, I knew I would not be showering again. Sure, getting up at that time would be fine when classes began. Until then, while the school was on vacation and I wasted the two weeks away memorizing the lyrics to “Blue” and attempting to feel better about myself by watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” there would be no way I’d be able to wake in time for the hot water. No, I would become dirty and disgusting, like a homeless person or someone vacationing with Carnival Cruise Lines. I considered my options – taking a cold shower or investing in a good bottle of cologne and bathing in the style of so many great Italians before me – and decided to just sleep more.

Writing this blog also seemed impossible. The Great Firewall of China was proving to be a greater foe than I had anticipated. Without exaggerating, I seriously spent about 10 hours trying to put a stupid Mitch Hedberg picture in my AIDS post, getting kicked offline by the proxy server over and over again. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “When I read there were Internet blocks in China, I didn’t expect that to apply to me!”

And then there was food. It took about a week to find a grocery store that stocked it. Finally I did, and I ran back home with delight, having purchased a whole chicken, cooked rotisserie style. I got home and cut it up with kitchen scissors. Starving, I devoured it. At one point, I was trying to gnaw the flesh off some part of the chicken – what appeared to be a wing – and was having trouble. I took the chicken from my lips and looked at it.

“What the hell is this?” I thought. Right after that I rotated it in my fingers, like it was back on the rotisserie, the image turning right side up, and that’s about the time my heart stopped. “Dear God…it’s the head!”

Yes, apparently the head of the chicken is not removed in the grocery store, and I had been nibbling on it. It was a horrifying sight to behold. Brown, soft and gelatinous, its empty eye socket stared up at me. “Fuckin’ shit!” I screamed, throwing its face back down onto my plate. It had to go, immediately. I grabbed a fork and thrust it down upon the chicken head, puncturing it through one of its eye sockets. Dinner had turned into a nightmare, and there was a gooey brown head on the end of my fork like a piece of fudge brownie from hell.

Afterwards, the chicken head flushed down the toilet, I sat on the bed and shook. I felt like a murderer. Terrible thoughts ran through my head. I pictured purchasing a bucket of KFC and opening it to find Colonel Sanders’ decapitated head inside.

Thankfully, things started getting better. Just as depression is quite apparent at its onset, it’s easy to tell when it’s left too. Things began to make sense and a new routine started to form. Plus, I got my passport back, which meant a quick trip to Korea to see my wonderful girlfriend, and if anything can get a guy over the self-loathing that comes from having eaten something’s scalp, love can.

*

I’ll Take the AIDS Test when I’m Finished Studying!

There’s nothing less fun than having to take an AIDS test. Pregnancy tests aren’t fun either, but if those turn out positive, as a guy, I can take the girl in question on Maury Povich and hope somebody else knocked her up. And if that doesn’t work out, at least I’d get to be on Maury Povich. You’ll never see Maury doing AIDS tests:

“Well, I’m holding the results of the test in my hand,” Maury would say as I sweat bullets up on the stage. “With 99.9% accuracy…you sir…are not the father!”

“What? It was supposed to be an AIDS test.”

“Oh, yeah. About that…you got it.”

It just wouldn’t be good TV. Likewise, a show about my attempts to get a Chinese work visa would make for equally bad television.

“On today’s very special episode,” the voice-over guy would say, “Bill is required to go to a Hong Kong hospital and undergo a full health exam, including an HIV test. Viewer discretion is advised: this episode contains adult themes and isn’t entertaining.”

Really though, the doctors and nurses at the hospital in Hong Kong couldn’t have been nicer. They had me in and out of that place in about an hour, as though they were the Jiffy Lube of health examinations. I was told my results would be back in a week, and I nodded, knowing I’d be spending the next seven days freaking out.

Not that I thought I had HIV. But having the test put the thought in my head. It’s like, you never think about certain things until somebody brings them up. “Don’t you want more in-depth labels on food?” a person might say. “Aren’t you worried about what you’re eating?” Um, why? Should I be worried about what I’m eating? What’s wrong with what I’m eating? Is it going to kill me? Oh my God, it IS going to kill me, isn’t it? I’m such a fool!

So because somebody felt it was necessary that I take an HIV test, all of a sudden I became convinced that I had it. I walked around Hong Kong humming Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia” song, imaging myself on the Real World, being harassed by Puck. One night I stood by VictoriaBay and got super dramatic, thinking that when the test came back positive, I would leap into the bay at night and commit suicide. No one would even know why I did it, the test results kept secret thanks to HIPPA laws. Everyone would simply assume it was due to my despair over “Gossip Girl” getting canceled or the Phillies signing of Delmon Young.

My anxiety was at an all-time high when I finally got an email from the hospital, saying I could come pick up my test results. The tone of the email was neutral, which I considered to be a good sign. After arriving, the doctor sat me down in a chair to go over everything.

“We did a blood test,” she said, “and you’re blood type A positive.”

My heart skipped a beat. “Relax,” I told myself. “She said A positive. There was no I or D or S.”

She proceeded to go over the rest of the results. I was HIV negative. I breathed a heavy sigh in relief. Then she told me my lungs had pleural thickening. “It’s not a big deal,” she said, “but it’s something to be aware of.”

“My lungs? Thickening? Is that because I smoke?”

“No,” she said, “pleural thickening is usually caused by exposure to asbestos. Smoking is very bad, though. You need to quit.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Asbestos?”

I was dumbfounded. I thought asbestos poisoning was something that went out after the New Deal. How had this happened? I told myself that if one thing doesn’t kill you, something else surely will.

“Well, thank God you can’t get AIDS from old buildings,” I thought, leaving the hospital with my chest X-ray in hand, so I could show my pleural thickening to all my friends.

“Tune in next week,” my voice over guy said, “for a very special episode, in which the happiness of being HIV negative is somewhat muted by a 30 minute coughing fit.”

*