The past 5 New Years in Review

Again comes another end of the year, and while celestially speaking this is quite an arbitrary moment in time to break one year from the next, it's cultural rituals like this that get us to look back, reflect, and remember. Living in the past isn't the way to live life though. The past doesn't exist any more, and it can never exist again. Every moment that we pass through is like this. But the past leads us to now, and into the future, so to guide us forward, we need to understand the past.

I don't know why I've always liked to use intervals of 5, but today I decided to recall where I was each of the new years these past 5 years. I'll start with the 2003 new year.

2003

In 2002 I was a sophomore at UMass. In September I had just come back from an internship in DC, and I was mentally burning out. Probably one of the most confusing times of my life, my newfound "passion" of activism was burning me up with disillusionment, and I just wanted to run far far away.

My family decided that for the winter break, we should all go to Hong Kong, and that's what we did. On New Year Eve my Auntie Chan Tai and family and Auntie Winnie and Family shared a dinner with us in TST 尖沙咀. From the window we could see the reflection of fireworks in the glass building across from us. My brother and I wanted to go to Lan Kwai Fong for the countdown. Turned out we did nothing but stand in a line, zig-zagging the blocks. Ever since about 15 years ago when several people died and many were injured when people fell and caused a domino effect (Lan Kwai Fong is a nightlife center on an incline) police in HK have strictly controlled and directed the crowd. We never got to Lan Kwai Fong. Oh well. This picture was probably taken a few days before that.

Also memorable from the trip was going to our uncle's fish farm near the border with China (Shenzhen). It was the first time ever in my life being in a rural area, although you can see the advance of urbanity in the hazy horizon.

My friend Melissa was in Hong Kong at this time, on exchange at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK). Maybe it was her that gave me the idea, but when I got back to the US, I applied for exchange at CUHK, as well as for transfer to various UC schools (anywhere I could escape to).

2004
I didn't learn my lesson from New Year 2003. Back to Lan Kwai Fong for New Year 2004!

So I ended up going to CUHK, where I started my self-prescribed psychological healing process by bringing chaos to my soul. Not only did I have other-worldly energy for learning Chinese, but I did a 180 on most of my beliefs (from gender roles, to globalization, culture, etc), or just dropped my beliefs altogether as if trying to start anew.

So during winter break after my first semester at CUHK, most of my exchange friends left, except for Amy and Kar Wai. My uncle who lived at the Chinese border was soon to be forced off his fish farm because the land was bought up by some real estate developer. I brought Amy and Kar Wai there to check it out on the 31st. At night we walked around TST, and then to Lan Kwai Fong. Amy is entertaining herself in the above picture with the cap of a Watson's bottled water, as we stand in line. The same thing happened as the previous year with my brother, we never got there on time, and we didn't even hear any countdown.

A bit before New Year I went on my first backpacking trip in China, and has been one of my most memorable travel experiences. This picture is taken in Yangshuo China, near Guilin.


2005
What can I say, I don't remember what I did for this New Year (probably stayed at home in Wilbraham, MA). After my 2 semesters at CUHK '03-'04, an internship at a non-profit in HK in May, and then Beijing for language courses and homestay in the summer, I came back to UMass for fall '04. Throughout that time I had my first relationship, quite a rocky one, but one that I've learned a lot from. Probably because I brought chaos to my soul, but never restored peace, I felt that my time wasn't over yet abroad. I hurried through my semester to graduate early, and left for Taiwan in January (via Hong Kong for some more rockiness in my relationship which continued on and off). But just like my disillusionment with fighting the good fight, my otherworldly energy for learning Chinese dropped to hell, and my project of bringing chaos to my soul had left me numb already in 2004, and thus into 2005. Here's a picture from UMass.



2006
Returning to the US from Taiwan, I largely thought my living abroad days were over, and feeling pretty empty and purposeless, I was hoping my PhD program at SUNY Albany would bring me back on track...any track would do.


For New Year Eve, I did the countdown thing in Northampton, Massachusetts, which is a college town with Smith nearby. But despite its small town center and mostly suburban housing, it's got a sort of mini-urban feel in the center. Plus, it's not unusual to see same-sex couples holding hands, as its a very queer-friendly place. This second picture is taken of me and Beverly at Frog Pond at Boston. We did a road trip from Albany, to Amherst and Northampton (countdown pic), to Wilbraham (my home), to Boston, to Salem (nice witch museum), to Providence, and finally to New York city to drop Beverly off at Columbia. We started the trip as good (flirtatious) friends. We ended the trip as boyfriend and girlfriend.

2007
And I thought my living abroad days were over! Through all my globe-trotting, the only reason why I went back to live in the US was because my family is there. Otherwise, I probably would have just stayed in Asia, straight out, working and living. As a compromise and balance, I wanted to take all my summer opportunities to live that different life. But a summer in Thailand teaching English turned into a year.

This is a video taken in Phuket on the 31st. It's the first time I've spent my birthday (yes, Jan 1st is my birthday), and New Year Eve with a girlfriend (and thus my first New Year kiss). The motorcycle is a taxi motorcycle. In Thailand usually you can fit 2 passengers behind the driver (in Cambodia you'll see up to 5 or 6!) We'd just got to Phuket from the airport, and after checking into the hotel, took the moto down to the beach. Fireworks were going off in the front while we sped down the yellow Xmas lit street (Thailand loves the color yellow as it represents the king). The night was spent in classic romantic movie style, at an amusement park where I won a cute (as in Japanese hello-kitty cute) tea-set by winning a darts game (pop a balloon with every dart you throw), and going on the ferris-wheel.



From Phuket, we took a boat to PiPi island, which was one of the places devastated by the '05 Tsunami. But the island has recovered nicely for the most part. And the fish look really nice in the beautifully blue water.

As for my personal development? Let's just say that I got a caustically bitter email in the early part of my time in Thailand, 'causing me to really dig deeper, and think back to my 2 relationships to realize I needed to change. My time in Thailand was the year things began to snap into place.

2008

And now, here I am in Hong Kong, at least until April. My plan for New Year Eve is to meet in TST with my friend Nancy, whom I met this past summer in Boston through BCCJ.


So that's the past 5 years in review. Let's see what the next 5 bring.

Christmas in Hong Kong (and layers of technology)

"Kev Jumba," the fan asked in his video response to the number 1 most subscribed comedian on Youtube. "Speaking of names, and race, you're Chinese right? Why is your name Kev? It makes no sense to me...you're Chinese!" (not an actual quote...just an approximation pieced from my memory)

Mark Poster in his book Information Please thinks of the internet as a way to bring chaos to your soul. Bringing chaos to your soul was conceived by Nietzsche, basically as an exploration of self-identity, putting yourself out of your comfort zone, out of your familiar world-view, almost to the point of a masochistic psychology, all in order to emerge out of this interior battle with a new cultural innovation. "One must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star." Poster thinks that the internet is a system that brings all sorts of individuals into exposure to other unfamiliar individuals, bringing the whole global society into chaos, producing cultural innovation in the end.

That's the abstract theoretical background I provide for now. If somebody can't conceive of an Asian person having an English name, then they'll have to learn to conceive of an Asian person with an english name. Likewise, Christianity, Christmas, and Christmas caroling all find their origins in the west, and sure, we could link it to the evils of European imperialism - but we shouldn't think of it as globalization as much as we should think of it as glocalization.

In Hong Kong, Christmas time is not time for family, but time to go out with friends, walk amongst the crowds, get drunk, party, etc.. That's how Western-imported holidays are like (esp. Haloween and Xmas), family-centered holidays are of course the traditional Chinese ones.

During Xmas, unlike for New Year and Chinese New Year, there are no fireworks, people are just walking around on the streets. But since Christians in Hong Kong are more firm believers than your average Christian in the US, you get caroling with strong religious overtones ('caroling' in Cantonese, bouh gaai yam, translates as spread the great gospel)
[please bear through the beginning...I walk around later]


And finally, I end with video of an event taken a couple weeks back. The layers of technology involved here are a bit much! There's my camera which is recording video of my nieces and nephews in Hong Kong webcamming with their cousins (my nieces and nephews) in America who are playing videos from their camera of sledding into their webcamera. Did you get that? Video from their camera->their webcam->our computer screen->my camera->youtube video about transnationalism and childhood friends reuniting through webcams and cameras.

The Three Styles of World Salsa (that I know of), and other social commentary mixed in...

...this is a long entry, but I think it's a really interesting one (of course...I wrote it). If you really don't have the attention span, at least scroll down and watch the youtube video to get a small glimpse into my life here!

I've danced Salsa in three parts of the world - Thailand, Hong Kong, and Albany New York, and I've come to a conclusion about regional cultures (call it race or ethnicity if you really want) and styles of dancing salsa.

Now, most people already know this, but Latin Americans in general dance very naturally, and haven't taken any lessons (not I say "in general"...I'm not making essentializations or stereotyping here). They've picked it up since childhood, and tend to dance much more naturally, less for show, less ball-roomy, but more expressive, more in the moment, more intuitively. And I'm not basing this on what I've heard, but from seeing Latin Americans who came later to the club in Bangkok, or from those I saw in Albany.

The polar opposite to this is the showy, ball-roomy style, that's less improvisational, but much more flashy, and definitely requires at least some lessons in the beginning to pick up the basics of the language. Most of the world wouldn't know this, but I think cultures of East Asia are exemplary soil for producing some incredible dancers. It comes with a very structured and ordered culture that you can see expressed in all corners of Hong Kong, from the extensive underground passages and tunnels, which are protected from stale air by jet-like fans at entrances and exits; an incredibly planned out subway system that rarely requires you to go further than a leisurely stroll across the platform when you need to change lines, and an employee who goes around the library with a clipboard, marking down desk id numbers in order to strictly reinforce the rule that if your belongings are at a desk and you're not physically present there for 30 minutes then this constitutes a 'reservation' and your things will be removed.

This is the kind of structure ideal for flashy ball-room moves. Of course you always need some improv skill to make your dance organic and not mechanical. But my point is relative to the other style.

And then you have the middle of nowhere, neither-nor style exemplified by Albany Salsa...which unfortunately corroborates the stereotype that white people can't dance. White America has a culture definitely less structured than say Hong Kong's - just look at the stale greasy and rusting subways of New York or Boston, or the fact that McDonald's in Hong Kong has a button at the cash-register you can push that counts down 1 minute - if you don't have your food in that time, your meal is free (or something like that...I don't know if they still have this though). I'm not saying that this kind of thing is good...it's quite horrid for the workers actually (today at KFC I saw big black letters painted on the wall behind the counter a bit out of sight from customers but clearly staring the employee in the face: "Yes! I Will". Such an obvious sign of exploitative control; so impressive how fast they can pull things off). Anyway, this is all just a tangent to my point I was trying to make, that Albany dancers don't have the structure to dance flashy and ball-roomy, BUT they don't have the natural improvisational skills either! There dancing style is horrid in my opinion, and I only wonder and hope it isn't so that this is what the general scene looks like in America.

And the community! Is so much stronger in Bangkok and Hong Kong than it is in Albany. In Albany it's horrid! Every ten girls/women I asked to dance, nine of them said no. It seemed like most of them were kind of tribalistic, sticking with their group of friends, or their significant other the whole night and never intermingling with anybody else. In Bangkok and in Hong Kong, everyone who dances Salsa in the city knows everybody else who dances Salsa in the city. I don't have to ask girls/women to dance, they come right up to me and ask, I barely get any time to rest. I just stand around and they'll come up to me. I don't even know them! They're total strangers! Now, I'm not saying that this happens automatically. It happens only because I ask one girl to dance with me in the beginning, and others see. If a girl/woman is a member of a small salsa community in Bangkok or Thailand, she tends to be a more open person, and has less regard for gender roles. So they like what they saw, so they want the same thing and so approach me. It's a highly consumerist society here...get what you want and consume its use value.

So I leave you with a microcosm of a glance into HK salsa. This is a birthday dance. I got one in Bangkok too. See! That's how strong the community is in these cities...we all know each others birthdays! and sing the birthday song and eat cake with the birthday girl/boy too!

Most of the acquaintances from the small salsa community and Capoeira community in Bangkok had the same reactions when they saw me: "Ow! I thought you left!?"

"Ow," said with a sharp raise in tone, is a common Thai expression that doesn't quite have an English equivalent. Perhaps a mix of "huh?" or "hey!" together, you'd usually say it if someone did something that confused you, or surprised you, or both. Just picture both eyebrows raising up as one says "Ow!?"

One of my Farang friends (Farang is equivalent to the Cantonese "Gwailo," - white foreigner) said to me "I thought you'd died from a Motorcycle accident or something!" He was a friend from the salsa scene I ran into a lot, and it was our running joke that we'd always greet each other with "so you're still alive!" because we were both motorcycle drivers in the chaotic streets of Bangkok. I guess he never got a farewell from me, and not having seen me for 3 months, assumed the worst.

I ran into him at the new salsa club, Dream. Fogo Vigo has been closed to dancing! Apparently the Brazillian club did not have a "dancing license," and was thus forced to close by the police. I think what this really means is that they refused to pay a bribe demanded by the corrupt police force.

And at the school I used to teach at, I just popped in to say hello. Children can be intensely boisterous and mischeivous in one situation, but totally shy and irresponsive in another. Most of them exclaimed a "teacher Felix!" when they saw me, but got quiet and mumbly when I asked how they were doing, how they liked the new English teacher, and if such and such a student was still around. As always, the fifth-grade girls were most talkative (now sixth-grade!)

"Teacher, you come back to teach?" Amy asks.
"No, I've come back just to say hello. How do you like your new teacher?"
"Uh, good." Cream says not so enthusiastically.
"Teacher, you come back to teach!" Amy says.
"Really? You want me to come back and teach?"
"Yes!" Amy and Cream say simultaneously.
"You liked my teaching?"
"Yes!" Amy and Cream say simultaneously. I puzzle over this a moment.
"So does the new teacher ever play games with you?"
"No, teacher," Amy says to me with excited dissaproval. "Never! And so much homework!" I quickly realized that they missed me not because I was a good teacher, but in fact because I was a bad teacher. They missed me because I was an entertainer. But that's all in the past.


Strangely, walking around Bangkok, it felt as if I'd never left. But now that I've come back to the US, it's like everything in Bangkok was a dream. Memories from distant places always seem to end up that way - like dreams that one day you yourself begin to doubt whether they ever really happened.

10th Anniversary of Hong Kong handover

It wasn't quite independence, it was a handover, from British rule to Chinese rule. But my impression was that a lot of Hong Kongers liked British rule, some of them so reluctant to be under China's political administration as to migrate to other countries. But after the economic downturn, things have looked up in the city, and I sense that for Hong Kongers, as long as there's a means of living, and nobody much bothers your way of life, then they couldn't much care for who was in charge, nor whether they've got a vote or not. Fireworks and theme songs turned out to be what they are - performances, just for show.

This is the view I got from TST East, too far away to hear them play Andy Lau's “中國人” Sorry for the poor quality! But at least I went, whereas most HK'ers don't bother, saying "it's too crowded...what's so great about it anyway?" People made a big deal that they made the shape of some fireworks into the characters for Chinese people "中國人" ...which you can see from 3:17-3:27. But I get the biggest kick from the non-stop steady "WAA!" throughout the whole video.


My friends' and my rendition of the 10th anniversary song, which they play over and over again in the MTR stations, "香港此總有你" - translated "Hong Kong has you in the end." The Karaoke video shows various scenes like horse-racing and the HK-stock exchange, while I sang the corny Mandarin one-line response "because you are here!"

"Yeuhng Ga"

After having a curry dinner in Mong Kok with Irene, Kar Wai, and Agnus, I hurried over to Prince Edward to the Sports Facility no.2, walked late into the squash court turned-into G. Capoeira Brazil Hong Kong beginner lesson floor. After a few jengas and other basic moves, Squirrel and Mona Lisa (these are their Capo nicknames) gave me gifts of black sesame-themed snacks. "I was the one that went travelling, I thought I was supposed to give the gifts!" I said.

"We remembered how much you like black sesame!" they said to me, referring to an inside joke from the dinner of my last night in HK a couple months ago. "Thanks!" I said to them, "I got you gifts too, from Japan, but I forgot to bring them out today!" After the lesson I went with the two of them along with the Mask (another Capo name inspired by the fact that Mestre thought he looked like Jim Carrey from The Mask) for singing Karaoke. We sang until 2 in the morning, me trying to pull out every single Chinese song I could sing, since the English songs I sang didn't seem to inspire any sense of fun from them. The Mask said he'd call in sick the next morning, while Squirrel sent me a text in all capital letters when I was at the airport, telling me she was really happy so she wasn't tired and work was OK. Before I went to the airport, I had lunch with Mona Lisa so that I could give her the gift I'd intended for her and Squirrel. She was the only one out of them all who wasn't working, since she'd just graduated from City U. Of course, I asked the standard question of what she wanted to do next.

I was struck by the importance of "Yeuhng Ga" in her job-search...which literally translates to "raise/support family." It's the standard custom in Hong Kong to financially support your parents as soon as you graduate and get a job. This isn't a secondary consideration, it's a guiding and principle factor. New grads choose their jobs and direction in life based on the necessity to pay up to their parents; interest and "calling" don't seem to factor as much into it as it does for new grads in the US. Yet, the HKers I've talked to seem to accept this responsibility of "yeuhng ga" without reluctance...without taking it up as if it were some burdensome chore their parents pushed them to do. Even if the parents have enough money, my friends give them money just out of symbollic gratitude.

Mona Lisa wants to be a school teacher. I, on the other hand, have no idea what I want to be...which is an attitude that seems to plague many American new grads. After our lunch, I flew to Bangkok, where I'd indulge in nostalgic reveries and nighttime licentiousness for the next 4 days and 4 nights.

Hong Kong

I spent both my nights in Hong Kong in the rural hills and sparsely populated area called Yuen Long. Most tourists who visit Hong Kong see the uber modern and newly built dimension of the city. Even the Po Lin monastery big buddha, which didn't exist over a decade ago, can now be reached by aerial cable cars from Tung Chung, one can now see at the transfer subway station for the newly opened Disneyland there is a special line where the subway cars have mickey-mouse shaped windows, and the Victoria peak has been topped with a brand-name shopping complex.

But as I have a penchant for old things and history, I like to look underneath that all and see what once was. For example, Kowloon Walled City. "Originally established in the eighteenth century as a far-flung outpost of the Chinese empire..." it was never really a city. When the British took Hong Kong island and Kowloon, China kept the walled area to keep a military presence there to guard against England. But when the New Territories were ceded over, Kowloon Walled City became a political no-mans land, neither China nor England owning it. Squatters took up residence there, but there was no rule of law, no police, no garbage collectors, no sewage. Electricity was illegaly and slyly tapped from the main grid. Some of this information I garnered from a book I just finished called Gweilo, memoirs of a British boy's childhood in Hong Kong. I found myself in Mong Kok two days ago, drinking Pacific Coffee coffee, reading his book, and then walking over to his urban "playground", especially touched when I went to the spot of my favorite anecdote from his book. There was a "Plink Plonk man" who played the Xylephone on the streets and his pet monkey dressed in traditional Chinese mandarin uniform danced mechanically to his music.

All went well until one day when, halfway through 'Marching through Georgia', the monkey finally managed to bite through its leash. I was on the opposite side of the road and watched the whole drama unfold.
In a flash, the monkey was up the nearest tree. The music stopped abruptly and the plink-plonk man stood up to survey the situation. The monkey was out of reach, the tree too stout to bend and the remnant of the leash too short to be grabbed.
At first, the musician tried to sweet-talk the monkey down, holding up a piece of a bun. The monkey just peered down through the branches. Not to be hoodwinked by this, it then slowly, strip-tease fashion, divested itself of its ludicrous costume, letting each piece drift to the ground where the musician collected them up, folding them as he might those of a child. His attention taken by this task, the plink-plonk man's eye was briefly off the monkey which, holding on to its little cock, gave it a few masturbatory tugs before proceeding to urinate upon its erstwhile master.
It was a moment or two before the musician realized what was happening. He unwisely looked up to be hit in the face by the full stream. This not surprisingly drove him into an irate frenzy, cursing the monkey at the top of his voice, throwing the clothing at it and then pelting the monkey with unripe olives, some of which it caught and returned with considerable accuracy, the hard fruit bouncing off the musician's head.
Tiring of this game, the monkey headed off down the street, swinging Tarzan-like from tree to tree, always keeping just out of reach of the musician who ran below, jumping up to attempt to grab the dangling leash.
It was pure pantomime and, by now, had gathered a crowd far greater than any the plink-plonk man could ever have hoped to collect through is music. He ran along behind the escaping monkey, his face wet with urine, his fists clenched, pleading, cussing, cajoling and threatening the creature by turns. His swelling audience, meanwhile, hooted with laughter, shouted spurious advice and encouragement to the escapee.
At the junction of Emma Avenue and Soares Avenue, a network of electricity wires spanned out from a junction box. The monkey, blithely swinging through the foliage, was unaware of the danger. The plink-plonk man saw it and tried in desperation to turn the monkey back. Enjoying its liberty, it ignored him. There was a violent blue flash accompanied by an equally brief high-pitched squeak. The lights in the shops flickered. A few bulbs exploded. The monkey was instatnly immolated. All that was left was a charred corpse stretched between two wires, adrift of smoke and the acrid smell of burnt hair.
The plink-plonk man sat on the curb, his feet in the gutter, and broke into tears. The crowd, now subdued, dispersed.
I never saw him again.

I went to the junction of Emma Avenue and Soeares Avenue. There was no more network of electiricity wires spanning out from a junction box.

The more I travel, the more I realize that I don't like taking short touristy trips, and that I'd rather go places with a purpose. If it is a totally new and foreign place for me, staying there a year should be the minimum prescription...so that I can wholly immerse into the fabric of the social and cultural web of the place. This I like to call "travel." If you're not a traveler, you're a tourist, and the tourist is easy to spot. Usually the tourist carries a camera and a guidebook, like the lonely planet, buys a copious amount of tickets to historical sights, cultural shows, or goes often for massages, spas or beaches...and does not meet many, if any, local people. If I'm to be a tourist, I've decided it's best to bring parts of "home" with me, since I won't have the time and resources to make the country a part of my web of homes... I'd bring maybe some friends or family I'd like to get closer with, otherwise if travelling alone I'd jump into the Capoeira or Salsa scenes.

Capoeira and Salsa, I've especially discovered, are the languages I'm somewhat fluent in, and that are more universal in communication than English or Chinese in my travels. Nowhere have I gone where I couldn't find a group speaking them.

These days I'm reading several memoirs to see how I can write my own. I highly recommend From Heaven Lake.

human waves

We took the bullet train from Tokyo to Osaka at a speed that blended all the colors outside the window into long flowing lines of light. Osaka was the capital of Tokyo right after an emperor united all of Japan, and built the famous Osaka Castle, and merchants and others sprang up their homes in the surroundings. All traces of that were bombed into nothingness, turned into a thing of the past, and all have been reconstructed with fake models as reminders of what once was, and concrete buildings of shopping and flashy neon lights of red-light and other entertainment districts.

After visiting the castle and walking down the shopping streets, we did karaoke last night, my sister, brother and I. I thought it was a significant moment that the three of us were together, singing The Little Mermaid:s Under the Sea...which was a song we all sang to watching the movie for the hundredth time and the hundred-and-first time. My brother gets crazy when he sings K, curling up and sticking his feet in his sky, screaming into the Mic.

Today we went to an Onsen - Japanese for Hot Springs. They separate the areas for Men and Women. Everybody is naked. This is a scene that one would never see in the US. Other things you would never see in the US is the formality and upbeatness of employees here, like the girl who passed flyers out to us today, if she were American she probably would have had *blah* and *boring* circulating through her blood in all her actions, passing things out meekly. Everybody gets really close and squished together in the Subway as well, when it:s rush hour and people need to squeeze in like clothes in an overpacked suitcase. New Yorkers would yell back and scream if they ever got pushed like that. America seems to have a culture of *personal spaces* and *personal bubbles* that are never to be violated or penetrated. It:s unfortunate, because riding that train, being encircled by hundreds of bodies was a heart-warming experience, like being enclosed in a protective womb, I didn:t have to hold onto anything because there was nowhere to fall too...the human waves of the train would catch me.

July 1st - 10th Anniversary of Hong Kong's handover to China

Landing at Hong Kong International Airport, I looked in my passport to see that it was only 2 months ago, exactly, that I left. Two of my cousins, Jing and Cheung, came to pick the three of us up - my mother, my father, and I. As we walked out into the sauna-humid Hong Kong air, I noted the lack of any sensationalist feelings in myself over being here, which means this place just feels like another city that I go to, like Boston, New York, or Albany...and it feels just as close, in some ways closer to me than it is closer to my mother, whom has never been to Temple Street - a narrow street surrounded by an eclectic mix of daaih paaih dohng outdoor eateries, stalls of cheap plastic toys for sale, palm-readers who mystify their appearance to increase business, and sex stalls that include dildos, whips, and other such toys. Our hotel is just blocks away from here.

Red and green auras of light hovered in the cloudy night sky as we drove there, perhaps remnants of fireworks and lazer shows commemorating the handover. Two couples, friends of my parents, surprised us at our hotel and brought us down to eat at a restaurant. As they jabbered away, Jing and Cheung sat in awkward silence, evincing to me one of the pitfalls of Hong Kong culture - strangers don't know how to talk to one another. The most that was spoken between them was "M hou haak hei, sihk la!" Don't be formal/courteous, eat up! So my parents and their four friends caught up over life, as I watched the dancing and singing on the TV overhead, an uninterrupted commemoration program, as we all chowed down various parts of pig, the fat, the meat, and the intestines, served over rice.

To the skies again...

When my friends in Thailand asked me if I'd come back and visit, I said "sure!" When they asked me "when? In a couple months? At least within the next year?" I had to be down to earth and tell them the truth "It probably won't be for another several years. Sorry...I don't have any plans to be back in the near future. I won't have the money!" Well, I was wrong! I'm gonna have to tell Friendly's tomorrow that I'm taking off three weeks!

Jun 27 - Jun 29 Los Angeles [to visit my sister]
Jun 30 - Jul 02 Hong Kong [Jul 01 there will be a democracy demonstration and fireworks to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong handover to China]
Jul 02 - Jul 10 Japan
Jul 10 - Jul 12 Hong Kong [to meet my HK Capoeira buddies in the Roda!]
Jul 12 - Jul 16 Bangkok [to meet my Salsa lady-friends on the dance floor, and my Capoeira buddies in the Roda!]

Memoirs (2)

I've begun work on my travel memoirs. As I'm digging through my old blogs photos, and videos to jot my memory, I've found these videos.

This is on our trainride in Southern China. It gives us a short glimpse into rural China...dirt roads, almost no cars, and just these sparse small villages.


Here's a bar with ethnic minorities singing folk songs, and Cantonese and Beijing tourists (and me) relaxing with some bottles of beer and consuming their culture. My other 2 friends were sick and resting at the guesthouse. The language isn't Mandarin or Cantonese, but a local Lijiang dialect.

Memoirs

I've began work on my travel memoirs, which is my real full-time job now, and I'm going through old photos and old blog posts to jot my memory. This photo is of the inside of a sleeper-bus in China. You can see my foot at the bottom, and the aisle that is obviously filled with boxes heavier than I. The sheets they gave us made our hands black, and I could smell some exhaust leaked into the bus, which combined with the chain-smokers' smoke must have taken years off our lives considering that nobody opened a window.

Grupo Capoeira Brasil Hong Kong Batizado 2007...

...is over :_( I learned a lot, and made a lot of friends. This is really the way to do things when travelling. If you want to make friends, join the local capoeira group =)

Grupo Capoeira Brasil Hong Kong Batizado 2007

Now I'm back home, engaged in my various projects: looking for a summer job, learning Chinese, capoeira, and miscellaneous.

Pictures of my wonderful friend Hang

Picture Album

By the Pearl River - that unmoving stale and brown body of water that was to become the reason for the city's relative wealth.

Hang's cat

Final Days in Thailand - Tribute to various Thai-isms

I've made it to Hong Kong, and I've been spending my days taking Capoeira lessons, visiting relatives and friends, and getting ready for my trip to Guangzhou. But here's a wrap-up overview of the two and a half weeks that I spent in Thailand after India:

PHOTOS!
1. Bidding farewell to my Capoeira Thailand group with a King of the Hill roda and dinner and drinks

2. Various photos taken throughout the year I haven't yet shown

Personal Reflections
In a lot of ways, leaving Thailand was more heart-breaking than leaving Hong Kong or Taiwan was, but in a very good way. When someone is lost in the world and doesn't know his/her place in it, s/he easily grasps and gets attached to familiar things out of an unconscious desperation, and doesn't wish to let go, which were my feelings for Hong Kong. But once we know who we are and start to live with purpose, then we develop a love for a place in an unattached way, like I did for Thailand. No matter how silly some different cultural customs may have seemed to me at first, I knew I would miss them when I left....here is a tribute to the special aspects of Thailand that I will miss:

Tribute to Various Thai-isms
1. Weaving and threading through Bangkok traffic (comparable to LA traffic) on my motorbike.

2. Dim Sum! People will laugh at me for this: Can you guess what my final meal was in Bangkok, at the airport? Pad Thai perhaps? Tom Yum Gong? Papaya Salad? Nope! Dim Sum! I like it in Bangkok (BKK) better than Dim Sum even in Hong Kong. I like it in BKK because the food is bitesized (HK dim sum is collossal compared to BKK dim sum), they have dim sum I haven't seen in HK, and I have to admit, I think they put more MSG in dim sum in BKK, very tasty =) (but unhealthy, I know). Most of all it's the atmosphere: it's a small shop unlike the huge cafeteria style places in HK. Plus, you pick from several raw dim sums on display that they then steam there for you.

3. Lady-boys: being gay is almost synonymous with being transexual

4. Pointing the soles of your feet at people is disrespectful. I read in the newspaper that Thailand has banned YouTube.com because they would not remove a video that shows a pair of feet above the king's head.

5. Speaking of banning websites, pornsites are blocked in Thailand, but brothels are as common on the streets of Bangkok as bars and clubs are in any American city (partnership between government and brothel owners?). They even have brothels the size of big hotels. Yet, prostitution is technically illegal. Talk about unenforcement.

6. Public parks are much livlier in BKK than in any other city I've seen. Usually in other cities, you'll only see couples sitting on benches, kids chasing pigeons, some people taking naps or reading on the grass, and roller-blading or jogging. But in Bangkok parks I see all that and badminton, jugglers, break-dancing, large groups of middle-aged folks dancing arobics to techno music, and at one specific park capoeiristas and traditional Thai instrumental music.

7. When you buy a bottle of water or a coke at a convenience store, they put it in a small plastic bag and throw in a straw so quickly that you have no time to say "no thanks". Buy the tiniest thing, and they still stuff it in a plastic bag for you. Plenty of times I see the customer take the item out of the bag as soon as they step out, throwing the bag and straw right away. Thailand is the most plastic-wasting country I've ever been to.

8. Prices! A movie ticket normally doesn't cost more than 4US$, and sometimes just 3US$ if you buy tickets in bulk!

9. Nose-picking scenarios:
On a date...talking romantic things and flirting...suddenly while she's talking she's picking her nose...
Or...in class, after asking a question, boy raises his hand yelling 'I know! I know!' all the while digging into his nostril with pinky finger.

10. Many things to tribute na! No room here. You go see for yourself na!


Sometimes we need songs or other forms of artwork and expression to remind us of the places we've been. I have the Thai national anthem memorized, as well as the popular Pali Buddhist chant. There's also the melody of Sasern Pra Baramee - the tributary song for the King.



And thus ends my time in Thailand. Overall, I'd say that it was a chapter of my life where I seriously slowed down the pace of my life, looked around, and really tried to see things that my eyes had forgotten how to perceive. It was a time that I really owned up to my faults and genuinely looked for a way to change. I also learned the true meaning of love. Well, a lot of this was possible because of my trip to India, but still, Thailand was important nonetheless. And plus, I got a whole lot better at interacting with little kids. I may visit the country again in the future from time to time to visit people.

Next travelog: Hong Kong

In India, things that... / RIP Canon Digital Ixus V2

Things That Surprised Me
The non-existence of toilet paper.

Things That Interested Me
Trucks requesting, sometimes begging, for you to honk your horn.














Things That Frustrated Me
1. People stared at me so much that I started staring back at them. Imagine what it's like to play several staring contests with complete strangers in a foreign country.
2. Transportation is regularly late, beit train or bus, expect 1-5 hour delays on departure.

Things I Liked
1. Children - These two posed, and then ran back after every flash to see themselves on the camera, then ran back in front of it for another. This went on for about 15 pictures.
























Things I Never Figured Out
1. STDs...if anyone can clarify what it stands for, please do come foreward and enlighten me!















AND finally, it is official. My 4 and a half years companion of a digital camera took it's last picture on March 6th, of this Cricket match in Bodh Gaya.

While bribing the train attendant to let me stay in the sleeper car instead of the overflowing sitter ("stander" is more like it), I dropped my camera on the floor. I thought nothing of it, since I've dropped it many times before. I put it back in my pocket, only later to feel an incredible heat. The battery must have exploded or something. I only managed to salvage the memory card.


:_(

Delightful Darjeeling

I've just returned back to flat land, in Siliguri West Bengal, on my way back to Bodh Gaya. Darjeeling, despite the fact that it was freezing and foggy, almost changed my mind about doing this Buddhist pilgrimage. I was seriously debating whether to just forget about the meditation course, and just stay in Darjeeling a few more days, and then from there spend the rest of my week delving deeper into Sikkim, the province even more deeply wedged into the Himilayas, squished between Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan. Partially I was upset that it was so foggy that I couldn't see Mount Everest. I came all this way hoping to see the Earth's highest point of land, and I couldn't! Even the Everest museum in Darjeeling was closed. What bad luck!

Fortunately, I did really appreciate the ambience of the town. Nepalese, Tibetans, and Bhutanese outnumber Indians there.

When it comes down to it...I really, really love these borderlands that defy America's simplistic ideas of race. In reality, there are no such thing as a White race, Black, Asian, Aboriginal race, and then "mixed race." In fact, everyone is mixed race. I really felt a feel-good warmth in my heart to see an entire community of people who looked half-Hindu, half-Chinese, half-white, half-whatever.

As for my health update, my bald head got sun-burned in Bodh Gaya. For the first time the surface of my head hurt, "this is a strange-feeling headache I've got," I thought to myself, until I touched it and little sheeths of skin snowed down like confetti.

My Whereabouts

I'm now in Darjeeling, known worldwide for its tea leaves, and for sitting at the "base" of 4 of the 5 tallest peaks in the world, including mount Everest. I say "base" in quotes because from the feeling I get looking down...I feel like i must already be on Everest! Man, just riding in the jeep-taxi made me feel like I was in an ascending airplane, and everything below the size of ants.

You may be wondering: "why is he in Darjeeling when just yesterday I read that he was in Bodh Gaya all ready to study Buddhism and meditation!" Well, the 10-day retreat basically keeps the participants in one compound the entire time, meaning I can't get out...the point is to really focus on the subject matter, and really meditate deeply on our own thoughts whilst having as little outside interference as possible. So, it starts on Friday (the 9th), so if I waited 'til after the course finished, I wouldn't have time to see the highest point in all the world. So after checking into a room at the Bhutanese Monastery at Bodh Gaya, and researching all the meditation offerings in town, I went right back and haggled with the monk not to charge me for the room, since I didn't even sleep there for the night! He was hesitant, but in the end, didn't charge me. I wasn't surprised, he's a Buddhist Monk after all...although i did sense a bit of irritation inside of him at first that he was suppressing.

The train ride was a bit of a crazy one. Everything was full. But in China and in India, they have no qualms about selling "standing" tickets. It really felt like a moshpit inside the train...some guys were even sleeping on the upper racks where you're supposed to store carry-on luggage. You really have absoultely no room to move even just an arm. I couldn't take it anymore, so went over to the sleeper cars, where one upper-class Indian businessman was in the same situation as I. After paying one of the attendants, he slept in a storage cabinet, and I slept underneath a bench in that area between two cars, next to the 2 restrooms. This for 13 hours. Not as bad as that 29-hour ride in China sitting in a non-reclining 90-degree seat.

Day 1 - Kolkata

I'm now in Bodh Gaya, after a freezing 8-hour sleeper-train ride that I got on last night at 8:35 PM. I had tried updating with a blog entry, but the Internet Explorer kept crashing on me...now I have to write everything again!

Things I didn't expect
1) I wasn't expecting so much traditional clothing to be worn by the women. The older generation wasn't much of a surprise, but girls my age I saw walking on the street were all wearing either saris or salwar kameez's (dress-like tunics and trouser combinations accompanied by long scarves). It didn't conform to my Bollywood-watching impressions of jeans and such.

2) I was stared-down like no other. There weren't many tourists in Kolkata, especially compared to Thailand...and tourists I saw were usually white...making me an exotic specimen. I mean, I got turning heads, even groups of people circling me and silently staring at me up and down, no joke.

3) The weather. I was expecting sweltering heat. Instead it's cool and dry here.

I arrived at the airport in the morning, welcomed by the familiar crowd of eager taxi-drivers waiting to prey on tourists, "hello, where are you going? Taxi?" He followed me for about 3 minutes before finally giving up on me, as I reached the bus stand and took a 1-hour honk-fest/nausea run through the labrynth of the bustling streets (9 Rupees / 20 UScents). And then walking into the train station made me feel like an ant running into an over-crowded ant-hill, bumping this way and that not knowing where to go or how to buy a ticket (every counter mysteriously directed me to another counter which then would direct me to another counter and after 1 hour I finally got to the right place). For lunch I had an 8 rupees (18 UScents) lunch of rice and veg-curry. It reminded me of the noodle-soup I found in LiJiang, GuangXi China for only 25 cents that I was so proud about, because it was super cheap yet super good food that's not so easy to stumble upon.

I can't seem to upload my pictures, will try next time.