Because Dell outsources its support to locations around the globe, in Eakin’s experience, it is better to pretend to be Spanish-speaking customer than it is to be an English-speaking customer. “I always press 2 for Spanish when I call the Dell support line. The Spanish-language support staff is bilingual and often speaks better English than the standard English-speaking support staff.”
I randomly stumbled into a subway car that the TTC portioned out for the Contact photo exhibit.
News Feed highlights what's happening in your social circles on Facebook.
Mini-Feed is similar, except that it centers around one person. Each person's Mini-Feed shows what has changed recently in their profile ...
Written on a WM6 Smartphone ... Oh! The irony.
I've been working on these damn Chain of Custody charts and they were getting on my nerves. Just then, I noticed the charts I'd been drawing for weeks and had been circulated to half the company had multiple, glaring mistakes in them.
In my state of utteral exhaustion and fruss-ssstration, I blacked out. It was sort of like dying. Of complete dispair.
I think my subconscious mind was trying to keep myself alive. And the first image it pulled up was a friend I hadn't seen in a long time. I had flashes of all the fun times we had. I knew her now for almost two years and it's always cool whenever I hang out with her. Just the positive thought alone made me jolt right up. And I was grinning like a idiot in front of my computer screen.
This is the coolest thing ever! I had been sleeping for 4-5 hours a day the last few weeks. I don't think I'd lasted another hour. But that little jolt got me awake and productive all-day -- including the gruelling afterwork meeting I had with my boss and my boss's boss.
I went to her house to thank her right away. She wasn't home. But I bumped into her on my way back to the subway.
I started telling her all about what happened and started telling her how glad I was that we're friend. I think she was a little freaked out. But, oh well, she is always super cool.
So if you are reading this, bud, great big hug and super-thank you.
… What is impportant to remember is that most relationships break up because the partners are unhappy with each other, and no one is to blame: not yoou, not your partner, and not you partner's lover. Even if someone acted badly, or was dishonest, your primary relationship tends to end due to their own internal stresses.
- Ethical Slut
I am a little afraid of my own force of will. Feeling mentally drained and weak. Neither feeling fully able to stand by myself or stand together with other people. Like under a cloud.
Not sure if I will ever do anything I can be proud of. I was one of those library kids: my mom used to take me to the library and i'd take back 6-7 books. Writng has always been a big deal for me. Not sure if I can ever give back all that I have taken in this life from everyone elses books. Have not written stuff of worth in 6 months. Going desperate. Anxiety making me sleepy.
Still reading Ethical Slut. Like it very much. But. Not sure if lifestyle described is for me. Don't really like sex that much. (Which in itself is a worry for me.) But do not feel monogamy is right either. Nor longterm onanism. Thinking about what to do with rest of sexual life. Worried.
Still thinking about Macau. Many things makes it not worthwhile to go. But. There are lots of advantages. Just concerned whether I am making decision impartially. Or, whether I am just pushing myself because I am feeling that the air is leaking from my life here. Am I deluding myself to go because of some form of mental escapism? I don't need to making the right decision, I just want be sure that I don't mind-fuck myself into things.
Anywho these are the stuff I worry about.
It's kind of true, isn't it? But isn't that partly the point?
In the allocation of public resources and the drafting of policies, there are always going to be winners and losers.
The police, as far as a paramilitary organization, serves the interest of some over the interest of others.
The police, from a public perspective, are gauged not by their effectivness in the apprehension of criminals, but by their effectiveness in reducing crime. The assumption is that the former leads to the latter, but the police can employ other methods.
Harm-reduction and community policing are both ideas that crimes can be prevented before they start. The other thing the police can do, as insurances companies do, is to target demographic groups that are statistically more likely to commit a crime. This is neither legal nor just, but it is something the police might be tempted to do.
Intimidation of those groups might yields the kind of results that the police are judged by; perhaps in a more cost-effect manner (albeit, in the short run) than other methods. Arresting criminals invole court costs. Thounsands of people hours in paper work and filing.
As an organization with resource constraints, the police would have an incentive to externalize these costs: persecute minorites that are most likely to commit crimes so that they would be too afraid so that crime statistic would go down, and create more social problems in the long run. But sense of equality and future rises in crime rates are not the concerns of the current administration of the police services.
So,
Winners: Middle class white people and the police.
Losers: Minorities
Simple problem of economics.
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I go by them almost everyday. Most of the time I don't even notice. The subway train going so fast; they are just a sliver of shadow under the orange lamp lighting the tunnels for those interspersed constrution work the TTC pretends to do once in awhile.
The grass stays.
The grass seems to die once in awhile. Then it comes back at different places. Though by what earthly cycle their never ending nocturnal existence should tell them the coming and going of seasons, what clue or signs that tells them if the sun is close of far?
Life for the grass, as far as I cam tell will always be dim. Why live? Grow tall to when light is lit from the ground? Waste precious energy for seeds of children who will steal those same few precious energies?
The life of grass must be a happier one than mine: they are so willing to live it even when they are so far down.
It's a massive social commentary about the ascent of China as a economic power and the influence of Western ideas and capitalism in the city.
It's funny. In Macau, my uncles were always warning me about Mainlanders. "They'll kill you over 100 patacas," all my Macau relatives said to me.
Words. A promise. Pride. Manhood. What are these things that can be bought for a few hundred dollars?
I was thinking about money again - still - on the plane over the Artic. The Continental flight I was on had a duty-free catalogue that sold a similar bike for a good price.
So. Everything I want to say about the place, beyond the money, the new shiny cars, and the massive casinos. Old Macau. Of the raggled above-store appartments. The coffee shops with the undrinkable coffees. The constant haze of cigarette smokes. Dai-sam-ba. Old herbal tea. Short sleeve shirts.
I was watching the movie and all over the crystalisation of the real reason to go. The closeness and intimacy. The narrow streets. The press of people. And their slow, rough, and friendly talk.
Perhaps we saw the same things.
Tried a somosa, but not as good as the one in scarborough.
I was on Continental again. But this plane was much better. Had movies on demand. So I stayed up for most of the flight and watched a bunch of movies I probably should see but normally won't for the lack of time and patience.
At Ocean Park right now. People are going nuts over LeLe and YingYing.
Pandas are just really big squirelles. Tree-rats with super sharp claws.
I am in Tsim Sha Tsu, just a block from Chungking Mansions. Chungking is rather notorious with the locals since it is mostly occupid by foreigners. Non-white foreigners. Some of my relatives were apprehensive of the Africans and South Asians. But it seems like the dal here is alright.
My great grandfather moved to Mexico. My grandfather moved to Hong Kong. My dad went to Canada.
If I come back to Macau, it would kinda finish off the east/west cycle of my family's migratory pattern.
Economic opportunities aside, I rather like living in Toronto. Maybe it is a genetic wanderlust.
I am a little charmed by the ease of life. It's really relaxed living here. Despite what I was told. The place is so small. So unlike Hong Kong. It's almost like Newfoundland -- except with Chinese people and casinos.
The little Australian school girl is clutching her head like it's about to explode. I guess some people gets their sea legs faster than others.
I am suprisingly good. I usually get motion sickness and vertigo. But somehow, getting the window seat really helped. I can see the wave and the wake of the other ships coming. My body makes the adjustment. Instead of seasickness, I am getting a free rollercoaster ride.
All that is left now for me is to wait until Sat when I ride the ferry back to Hong Kong.
I like Macau a lot. Beautiful scenery. Beautiful women. (Comeliness is something of a job qualification here.) Lots of job opportunities. Rent is cheap. Investiment good. Government is a bit shady, as they recently indicted the Public Works Minister for fraud. People here seem fairly content. The rising income gap between casino and non-casino workers is raising some tension. Also, the rapid changes to the landscape and the influx of foreign workers are raising dissatisfaction amongst long time residents.
Officially, I am a permanent resident of this little pennsula with all the attending rights and privleges -- including preferential hiring for positions.
I'll have to see.
All are buried at the New Western Cemetery, near Mong Ha Fortress.
In case, I forget.
I spent Chinese New Year in one continuous party of family and friends. Traditionally, New Year lasts 18-20 days. At minimum, people celebrate for three days.
Oliver Stone was right. It really is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Year's Eve all rolled into one. Observing the New Years is a mixture of superstition, ritual, pmp, civic religion, communistic responsibility, class identification, commercialism, and spirituality. I am glad I came back at this time to witness the fullness of it in a Chinese place.
I had lunch at my Second Uncle's house. He had to work later on that night. The family dinner had to be moved to a family lunch.
I arrived a little early and waited as my aunt prepared the various dishes that are required: sugar dumplings, broiled chicken, steamed fish, roast ribs, lotus roots.
Each dish had a reason to be there on the table. The lotus root is a homonym for longevity. Sugar dumplings for the fulfillment of wishes. A meat dish to represent the three realm of existence: air, water, sky; pig, fish, fowl.
Ritual of worship had to be performd befoe we could eat: they took almost an hour. We burnt incense and made offerings of rice wine to our ancestors (my grand parents,) the sky god, the earth lord, the local god of the particular appartment level (level 3.) There is also a neighbourhood shrine at the end of the road. My uncle burnt "hell bank notes" and gold ingots made from river reed paper. All the dishes we ate were first offered to the spirits and gods. We took turns in worship from the eldest to youngest, from male to female.
Afterwards, all the married people gave red envelopes to the unmarried. Usually, this means that the elders had to give. But since my younger cousin got married this year, there was a reversal of circumstance where she and her husband had to give me money. I guess I kinda fucked up the normal course of the social condition right here in Macau.
Little ceremonies are observed during the meal whose origins and meanings are not fully understood or lost. I had to eat a second bowl of rice -- possibly to signify personal growth and progress. For dessert, we had to have sugar dumplings served in odd numbers.
There are others. Candles are burnt in twos, but incense in threes. Debts must be completely repaid. New pants (but not shirts) are worn. There is even a tradition (thankfully no longer observed) to not wash one's hair for the duration of the whole New Year's celebration (20 days.) The seventh of the first month is considered to be Person Day: it's every person's birthday on that day. (My father used to add an extra year to his actual age. He would say, "Well, my birthday is in July, but I have to add the seventh of the first month as well.")
There are other small ceremonies and observances that I am sure I missed. I had to ask my relatives about many of them. But even they do not fully understand the meanings and ramifications of all of the things they do; they just do what they had always done from year to year and from generation to generaiton.
Later that night, I had dinner with my father's friend's family. They are middle-class -- versus my uncle who is of the working class. They had slightly different traditions than my uncle. Worship of ancestors was roughly the same. But they had different dishes for dinner to signify for things I am unaware of.
They put little red envelopes of money on top of mandarin oranges. It's an homonym: "over mandarin oranges," "picking (as in picking fruits) good fortune. They also had a giant cherry blossom plant hung with litle ornamental red lanterns and decorative red bows -- almost like a Christmas tree.
After dinner, I was drafted by my father's friend to setup the New Year display window at his store. We hung red posters with gold letterings and a likeness of the god of wealth.
I had dinner on the next day with my second-cousins. Four generations of their family gathered for dinner. There were easily forty people. This is already the more casual dinner. In previous years, I was told, they had a few hundred people for the family get-togethers.
They are an old family in Macau and had the most traditions. I was not present for most of them and I was told that they don't observed many of them now. The only thing I was told to do was to fill the tea cup of anybody who gave me a red envelope. And I was busy. I had never received so many red envelopes in my life. My pocket bulged an extra two inches. There was lots of drinking and eating.
Macau is a very happy place to spend Chinese New Year. Firecrackers are legal! In fact, highly encouraged. Every store owner burn at least two packs to welcolme the new year. My father's friend burned a massive pack, the size of a machine gun cartridge in front of the store. Passer-bys were warnd, "Siu pow jaern!)
I went to the night market with my little cousin. The night marekt is traditionally a place for merriment during the New Year. Balloons, flowers, and pinwheels were sold everywhere. They had even shut off the massive fountain in front of the former Portugese colonial legislative building and placed over it a giant ornamental display of a golden rat.
As we headed back home, all along the Macau street, all thru the night, the rat-ta-tet-tet of firecrackers burst randomly like exhuberant celebratory twenty-one gun salutes. People are bustling and pushing and hawking and eating and laughing and drinking and making their way in no hurry to the new year.
To celebrate, I opened a savings account!
Two days ago, I went to dinner with my uncle. Stir-fry, Shanghai-style, knife-cut noodles. Eggs with prawn. Two fairly common dish I had regularly in Toronto. Back home, the flavour is flat. In Macau, the loops of noodles shone in the florescent light and slips from clawing of my chopsticks. The prawns were a little mushy and the eggs a bit watery and smooth.
The taste, though. Each bite was a flare of flavour. I couldn't really describe what it was. Was it the spice, the cooking by propane fire, or the addition of a simple something?
My aunt asked, "Does your mother use olive oil or peanut oil to cook at home?" It was one of those make conversation questions that one family member asks another.
"I sometimes use olive oil when I cook --- I find it healthier. It also has a better flavour. My mother likes vegitable oil. It's cheaper. We don't have peanut oil in Canada."
"What is vegitable oil?" She asked.
"It's made from soy beans. There isn't vegitable oil in Macau."
My aunt shook her head slowly.
So, the secret ingredient is peanut oil.
I paid five pataca's for admission to go inside the Pawnshop Museum on Rua dos Mercadores (New Road.)
There are many pawn shops in Macau, but this one dates back to 1900's. The shop still kept most of the layout and practises from that era.
When I was young, across the street from my father's tailor shop was a pawn shop. I used to play with the pawnbroker's son as he and I were the same age. We played skip rope inside his father's store amongst the Rolexes and jade bangles. Twenty years later, I have to pay 5 Patacas for admission to enter my former playground. O, how time and fate confounds us all!
Everytime I go out to eat, nobody would let me pick up the tab.
"Treat me back when I go to Canada," they all said.
Since it's New Years, there were lots of end-of-year get together dinners. Also, not having to pay for accomidations helped significantly.
However, I haven't made any major purchases yet. Except for a pair of Reeboks on sale for 210 Patacas ($30 Canadian.)
I have to get my major purchases done this week.
What did I see? More projectors showing random stuff on fabric.
In either case, I tried talking to the curators about the local art scene in Macau. They seemd somewhat optimistic, but I can't seem to find any vibrancy to the community. There is two or three galleries that show contemporary art. They don't seem to hold readings or special exhibts or even arts festivals.
I asked them about arts funding in the SAR and they could only answer in generalities.
I'll try asking other people about this topic.
What the fuck, I thought.
"Why the hell did you say that," I said.
"You keep looking around at all the girls."
"What?"
"You checked out every single girl that passed by."
"Oh," I said, "I am ususally pretty happy when I see pretty women."
"It's kind of disgusting and embarassing." My cousin is 19. He gets embarassed by everything.
"Whatever. I think it'd be insulting if I saw a pretty woman and I didn't check her out. How else would she know that I thought she was pretty? Besides, it is the will of nature."
My cousin kept on walking and didn't say anything.
We walked into the mall and round the escalator up to the second floor. The whole complex was overrunned by women in leggings and short shorts. Black locks of hair highlighted with burgundy. Berrets. Flashes of sliver necklaces under fluffy scarves. Faces applied with foundation and peach color blush and lips stained with pink lipstick.
My cousin look straight ahead through all the displays of carnality. Unprompted, he said to me, "My dream of an early marriage is ruined."
"What?"
"I wanted to get married at 18. But I am already 19."
"With that girlfriend of yours?"
"Yeah."
I teased him a little, "When do I get to meet this lucky little vixen?"
"Um, maybe you shouldn't."
"C'mon! It'd be fun."
We turned into store that sells anime-goth gear. I had difficulty telling apart women's age since I got back. I'd seen what look to me like a twenty year old women walk around with their nineteen year old daughter. Pre-teens (I think they are pre-teens) in black huddled around a pair of Doc Martens.
"So," I asked my cousin, "Is it normal for people to want to get married early?"
"No, usually they don't have the money."
"So it's an issue with money. If you had money, you would've gotten married last year?"
"Sort of. Not exactly."
I was getting hungry. For a lark, I asked him to take me to a McDonald's. The McD's in the SAR's have a Pork Burger. I had not had it in years.
There were even more girls of non-descript age here. Pretty, pretty women somehow all looking seventeen. My cousin watched me eat as he nibbled on some french fries. I was pretty, pretty distracted by all the pretty, pretty people.
"I gotta go see my girlfriend soon," my cousin said, almost nervously.
"OK, let's go together!"
"Um, let's not."
I desisted on this line of conversation and instead went to the bathroom.
By the time I got out, my cousin was waiting for me at the front door, holding my bag.
He leaned into me and whispered, "A really hot girl with a large handbag just went by."
I pretended not to hear him properly and yelled out, "What? Did you say the bag was hot or the girl was hot?"
"Fuck," mortified, my cousin said, "You are such a dick."
He got on the bus to see his girlfriend and I went off to do my own tourist-y crap.
***Note***
In everyday talk in HK/Macau, unmarried women are refered to as "little women" which I translate as "girls."
We talk most of the day about what kind of running shoes he likes. It more or less reinforced my perspective of the parochialism that is here in Macau. He thinks Hong Kong (a forty minute ferry ride costing 138 pataca -- half a day's wage) is faraway. He wants to go there so he can buy shoes to impressed his friends.
I was thinking about how I'd been endlessly bitter about many growing up in Canada. But I am, now, so glad that I did.
Other people I had talk to gave me the same feeling. There is a lack of openess, independent thought, and freedom for personal development here.
I wasn't intending to stay; mostly, I came to Macau to see some relatives and also to see the place I was born. Re-examine my roots.
It's strange. The whole place is booming ... sort of. Especially at night, the lights of the casino and pawn shops lit permanently the streets along the waters. Massive labor shortages for all industries of pleasure.
It would be a little bit more difficult for me to find work here as I cannot read Chinese with any reliability. I suppose I can find work here at the Wynn or Venetian. Or maybe one of the airlines. It's hard to say. I don't really want to stay in the first place.
Right now, I am typing this inside Noite e Dia Cafe, on the bottom of the Hotel Lisboa and it's many casino rooms. Below me are the shopping arcades where Mainlander prostitutes circle endlessly, asking single men to go upstairs.
Working here would be working HERE. I just don't know. Canada is a very good place to live. Even if the taxes are high. I spent most of yesterday with my new brother-in-law (a cousin-in-law by Western reckoning.) He was extoling to me the virtues of returning home. Mostly, it has to do with the endless financial opportunites available in Macau right now. Low cost of living, a conservative and unskilled workforce, and rapid GDP growth mean a smart person can grow wealthy here. Millions. (But probably not billions.)
Everybody seems to have a different side on the benefits of the many casino construction. I guess it is the counting of winners and losers. Who stands to make money off the new casinos and the transformation of Macau into the Las Vegas of the Orient.
I met with my cousin's aunt and had dinner at her house. She ordered out from this little takeout place inside of an alley on the side of the hill.
They sold those little pots of rice cooked and served inside the original pot. They charged 8 Pataca deposit for the each pot.
I spoke with T., an old family friend. He is a few years older and we sort of grew up together. He always got made fun of by his family; they used his name as a byword for stupidty and incompetence for years.
He was a really good person, but the pressures from his ultra-competitive family had always made him kind of hard. I remembered that he used to try to lash out in acts of rebellion that was ... well ... he wasn't very good at being a rebel so it just made him look like a try-hard and people just made fun of him more.
I was sitting at his father's table after breakfast and he strolled out in his pajamas cradling a newborn.
"T.?" I asked confusingly, stunned by the crossing image of him as I met him last as a confused teenage and now, fatherhood.
He smacked me in the back of the head. A brotherly "fuck you" gesture.
He was taking the baby to the vapourizor. His son's broncii are phlemed up. I wanted to talk with him. I hadn't seen him in ... what? ... fifteen years? I asked him how he was.
Conversations are like paths, y'know, how ways lead onto ways. He sold insurance. I asked him how he liked the job. I probably shouldn't have done that.
He launched into a massive diatribe about all jobs are equal, that everybody starts on the bottom, and everybody have to specialize to be somebody. Then he kind of said how my father was a bit of a dillettente and how I should never be like him.
He told me to come back to Macau so I can work hard and be a real man. Canada is a place for fun and games, he said.
I didn't disagree with him. I told him that my problem was that I couldn't really read Chinese.
"What?" he said, "then you're a fucking failure. I had much less education then you did, but when I came back to Macau from Canada after high school, I could still make my way. What the fuck is wrong with you?"
I can't really disagree with him. In fact, I wasn't really feeling bad about it. I suppose, if it came from anyone else, I would be pretty offended. From T., I don't know, he has been called a failure most of his life. He, from the looks of it, is doin okay in Macau. As if I was hearing beyond words I knew what he was saying: don't get fucked.
He had to live so much of life equating love with success.
He actually mean very very well by all the stuff he was saying. He was really concerned for me. I felt really good, if somewhat embarassed, by it all.
He remembered and cared after all these years.
I wanted to see them. So I spent most of the day pretending to be gambling addict with money to burn.
I have to say: security is lax. Most of the guards seems uncertain as to what to search for. The Toronto Metro Reference Library has tougher guards. They only care whether I was carrying a gun or not. They just took a cursory look at my bag; they didn't even look at all the compartments. This was generally true in all the casinos I was at. I understand that they have cameras in every part of the casino, but they are more for spotting cheaters. I wonder how long it will be when somebody rob one of these casinos.
I was at the Sands, Wynn, StarWorld, Lisboa, Ventian. The Lisboa (both the original and the new Grand Lisboa) seem to have the most experience workforce. They also seem more geared towards separating the visitors from all the earthly belongings. Gambling is intensely done. Counters to buy chips with VISA cards is right near the tables. Pawn shops are right inside.
I understand that the Ventian and Sands are more geared towards "family" orientated entertainment. They have higher traffic flow, but the visitors seem to take a more relaxed view with Lady Luck.
All the casinos follow a basic employment pattern: a watcher for every two dealer, a pit boss for every two watcher, and a manager to to every six to eight active tables. I assume the floor manager is around somewhere. And of course, the Eye in the Sky. Cameras in the ceiling about 1-2 meters apart.
There is a sort of racial order here. Portugese security guards and dolled up greeters. Mecanese dealers and floor staff. Cleaners are mostly mainlanders. Australians are generally guys in real suits. One of the Directors of Gaming at the Wynn sounds Aussie from his accent. I didn't really find any Americans. But they have, I think, Russians and Japanese girls as exotic dancers. The gamblers are 95% mainlanders from tour groups. I didn't get to see the High Stakes area. I was told that this is the quietest time because people are busy at work until Chinese New Year.
I had been huddling at the Starbucks here. I can only find two so far in all of Macau: one at the Ventian and the other at the Wynn. The lai cha in Macau is cheap and much better in Toronto, but I find that it kind of low on the caffine scale. I am living on Double Espressos at the from the great Seattle giant.
This whole Starbucks thing is kinda funny. I feel like a gwalo. But I get these massive headache that won't go away until I have a Espressos. It's far more expensive than anything else in Macau. Lai cha at the coffee shop down the road from my place only cost 7 Pataca; Starbucks is charging me 18. That is about the price of a breakfast here. But that is still only $2.50 CAD, so I find it acceptable.
I walked thru half of Macau in a half-day. It wasn't intentional. I met up with my uncle (my mom's friend) at his store. He has a business in Macau supplying uniforms. They are very busy right now. Chinese New Years here mark the end point of the business year ... in the same way that Christmas marks the business year in North America, even if the financial reporting year may be on April.
They are rushing some stuff. So I was left to my own devices. I was just trying to find a nice little wonton noodle shop to have a little lunch in the Ho Lan Un district. It is much older than everywhere else. The streets are mere laneways and mopeds are the primary form of transportation. Unfortunately, I think I came at a bad time, most of the stores in the old district are going under. Cataclsymic changes are happening in Macau. New money from the casinos is pushing prices. Everybody is telling me about how things used to be cheaper. Cost of labor, as the casinos are draining the labour pool has pushed wages up.
My Second Uncle (on my father's side) told me that the price of lai cha used to be 5 Pataca at his favorite restaurant. It's now 6.50. (Still cheap by Canadian standard, roughly $.90.) The other problem is the speed of market adjustment. While wages are about 10000 Pataca a month at the casino, many people in other industries still only make 6000 Pataca. Housing costs are also rising. It's hard for me to say for certain how much inflation is in Macau without looking it up from their Economic Council. But it looks like this inflationary spell is affecting the lower strata much more severly. Somethings like energy, transportation seems to have remained the same.
I saw the Sands and the Grand Lisboa. They pretty much tower over everything else. In fact, the older district of Macau somewhat resembles Hong Kong and Bombay of the late-'70's. Mopeds, mixed-commercial and residential units no higher than 4-stories, lack of large chain stores. This forced me to do some serious self-evaluation: I had always assumed that I came from a smaller version of Hong Kong. Macau, in fact, is highly under-capitalized. I with some trepedation would almost like to use the word "backward."
Also, I noticed the general skill level in Macau is low. Hong Kong, I found, the labor force, even at the middle strata, to be slightly lower than in Toronto. Macau is much, much lower. Clerical postions seem to only demand high school education. Sales people in Macau are motivated, but have little salesmanship training. In Hong Kong, at least, the store clerks rushes you to buy crap. In Macau, they seem confused by more complicated requests. In Canada, the clerks makes you feel like they're your best friend, so that not only will you buy something now, you probably want to come back a few months later to buy more stuff.
On a different note, I saw my old kindergarten and elementry school. In fact, I live right behind the place where I spent grade one. I was woken up this morning by the little kids practising English in the language labs. It's a weird experience. I always felt that the place was like a prision. Looking at it now, it seemed small with it's high walls and gates.
I saw a little bit the most important landmark in Macau, the Ruins of St. Paul's. I was going thru the tourist shopping district. I guess I'll go back later, as the museums and Monte Fort are also there.
The colors. I love talking about colors. In Macau, the Portugese influence meant that most of the buildings are yellow, lime green, and pink. Although, at least, nowadays, most of the roads are no longer cobblestones.
I visited my Second Uncle's house near the Rua da Barca. He told me that it was my grandfather's old house. I was suprised. I used to come to my grandfather's house everyday for lunch and afterschool. I couldn't recognize any of it. My uncle hadn't even renovated in twenty years. I simply don't remember. Everything was small. The doorway, the kitchen. The bathtub is half-lengthed: you have to kneel to bath. My Second Aunt apologized to me when I was there for dinner. They had ran out of propane. A tank is to be delivered tomorrow. Meanwhile, she can't really cook anything for me to eat.
And another suprise. My Second Uncle's daughter, my cousin, not only got married last year, she is five months pregnant. By Chinese reckoning, I'll be an uncle soon.
There is a lot of other stuff that is very significant, but only to me. Like, I saw the hospital I was born in, my father's old house, the cemetery my grandparents are buried. I will go back to many of these places again, so then would be a better time to talk about them.
It was malls, malls, and more malls. Then some outdoor malls. I was completely overwhelmd by the number of bright lights and dollar sign numbers. Things were not as cheap as Kowloon, but -- my God -- I felt like I'd been ripped off most of my life in Canada. Even things like Converse sneakers and Columbia Jacket (all real) were cheaper after tax.
My cousin took me to a Japanese Restuarant and I had a Sashimi on rice. It was okay. Works out to be around $7 Canadian, but slightly smaller.
My cousin and I talked about various things. I think I was waaay too much prying about many personal issues. But, y'know, I don't know when I will have another chance in my lifetime to ask him these questions.
He is an accountant. Corporate Tax Expert. I asked him about his working conditions. He tells me that it's tough. He is expected to work 10 hours a day and 5-6 days a week. This not just during audit time; it is his normal time. He has to work even more if the workload pilesup.
He asked me about real estate in Canada. He was interested. I told him that now is not the time because of the structural crisis in the MBS market.
We also talked about consumption and savings a lot. He was so suprised when I told him that the average savings rate in the US is -10%. He thinks Americans are crazy. He said that he and his peer saves anywhere between 50-70% of their income. I was boggled. He told that becaues working conditions are so poor, they all want to retire early: at age 40. I told him about how in Canada, some people are sueing their employers becaues they are being for to retire at 55.
Hong Kong is nice to visit, but I don't think I want to ever live here. Everybody is super-competitive. I wonder what the ROI for small- and medium-size enterprises are. Cuz margins are so low in everything here. They seem reliant on high volumes.
And Hong Kong seems to have a strange devotion to money. We went to Statue Square, which is right next to the Legislative Building, overlooking the water to Kowloon. In the middle is a statue to a former manager of HSBC. This is he first time I heard where they commemorate a banker in this fashion. My cousin explained to me that this dude was responsible for moving the headquarters of HSBC from London to Hong Kong a houndred years ago... and along with it, KMPG. This move eventually made Hong Kong into a financial centre for Asia.
I turned around and there was the World Headquarters for HSBC. I looked around and everywhere were towers named after banks. Indonesian and Phillipino domestic workers all gather here on sundays for a picnic. They are eating apples, pastries under the shadows of glass.
Yesterday, my auny and cousins took me to Mong Kok to shopping. Afterwards, we went to the the Star Ferry at Tsim Sha Tsui. We saw Hong Kong Island and the Central district across the waters.
We ate inside the mall and I order a pesto pasta from a Japan-style pasta place..
I am suprise to see the mountain in Hong Kong. And the greens.
The cars on the highway are also different: skinnier and longer.
Mostly it has to do with the palettes that are so different. A very loud visual statement that this is somewhere else.
Welcolme to Hong kong.
Another 2 hours too go. My ETA is 9:35pm. I am about hour and a half late.
I finished Elmore Leonard's City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit. It's very fresh. I don't know what to think unless I read more books of his.
We're almost over continental Russia. Asian Russia. Asia. The sun is weak at rising. Like the winter is getting to it too. At best, it can offer is some faded orange and yellow on the skyline. Who can blame the sun for laziness. It is -60° C outside.
The short sojourn to Manhattan was not so bad.
A one-way ticket to NY Penn Stn is $15.
A one-way ticket to NJ Penn Stn is $7.75. From NJ Penn Stn, a PATH subway ride to the WTC site or to the NYC Penn Stn is only $1.50.
The PATH is kind of slow, less frequent, and slight confusing for travellers.
But I guess flying to NY via EWK is not as bad as I had originally thought.
I always just rode on the MTA everytime I come here. This is something different.
I actually saw it the last time I was at Christopher Street, but I didn't clue in as to what it did. And now I am riding it.
The trains are rather squat, but much cleaner and less busy. It is a little different frm the train I took. It's cheaper too. Only $1.50.
I think it's suppose to take me to Newark where I can take something else to the airport.
I took the train from Newark. New Jersey is eerie in the overcast light. The train running by the water and various steel structures, derelict and half-submerged. Arrays of chimneys giving burnt offerings to the industrialized great beyond. This place that is so necessary to NY must so resemble some ancient necropolis.
Coffee. Shitty joe coffee in NYC is always quite good. Good enough to push away the dreamy, cloudy light of the day.
I got a seat all to myself. By the window too.
It's so early. A minute after takeoff, I could still see the yellow crowns of streetlights as thin out lines of residential cul-de-sacs.
Our slowly lifted thru the clouds. The wing is washed by the sky shower. And I saw the sky above turn a deep-purple: sunrise. The city below disappear just as the purple turns rosé-wine pink.
The sun has risen offering a promise with a gift of a small rainbow peeking slightly from the white clouds.
Somethings I will get to do:
- Full pomp of Chinese New Year in it's 15+ days of glory
- See electronics 2 years before they are sold in canada
- Light coat / no coat in Feb.
- Clubbing in Hong Kong
- Sweet black sesame soup
- Cow intestines cooked in star anise for sale in little roadside carts
- Cheap Lai-cha
I appreciate all the hugs friends have been giving me. Hugs are really good. Going to Asia is completely nerve-wrecking.
I suppose hearing all year last year from people telling me about their identity changing experience final persuaded me to go. Hari, Patrick, Leah in particular stuck out in my mind. Shit.
Where is home?
The last ten years, I have been telling myself the comfortable lie that I am special. I am Asian: let the masses of white fuckers twist in the wind. Let them clutch to their imaged sub-identities. I don't need them. I was born with mine.
But it isn't really true, now, is it?
Despite all of my protestations, I am still a Bananna Boy. Below the skin, any hint of Asian-ness is but a drop in the vast sea of a thru-and-thru Westernized Man. Plain yogurt with a splash of vanilla. I am not an alien in the strange, Western lands; I am a white man marginalized by the accident of birth and skin colour. It's almost a social disability -- like a lisp.
The last twenty years have been like playing dress up. Playing both, neither, one, or the other. But the core of core is always someone else. No one.
The preparation of the trip is a confrontation of the lie. I am not ready. I will be a stranger in my yellow skin to the billions of other yellow skins. A rough rock dropped into the stream in warble twists.
It's all in the little things. The thousands of small affections in speech and manner to portray the persona of a certain kind of person. But my persona -- as a architype -- only exists here. I won't be me outside of North America; the social self I wish to project cast too short of a shadow to span oceans.
I mean here, I know how fast I am suppose to walk in the subway to tell people that I am too tough to rob. What is a "brisk and confident" pace in Hong Kong?
14. Too many people in the world are obese.
15. People who eat are selfish and unrealistic.
16. Only fat people are attracted to fat people. Do you want pigs to like you because you are one of them.
20. If you slap a fat person you can see a shockwave ripple over their skin. That's disgusting.
29. Fat people are so huge, yet people look away from them as if they don't exist.
30. The only time people do notice a fat person is when they get in the way of that beautiful thin girl walking by (ok that sounds really horrible i know.)
47. Fat people make their country look bad.
48. Big people sweat more and they smell bad.
When I was shopping the other day, I went into a shop and tried on a skirt.
It was the smallest size available, and it was too big!
I felt so fabulous.
I mean, it dropped down from my waist, and when I tried to wear it on my hips, it was too long.
Even the shop clerk complimented me on my thin figure.
I hope this keeps me motivated, but I'm a bit sad that I can't exercise for another few days.
- from Perfect Elegance
Clench your butt all the time. Guys like a nice ass and you burn calories too.
