Good Work if You Can Get It

Would you like an all-expenses paid trip to Japan? Of course you would. Who wouldn’t?

Super sleuth Pipi just found an article suggesting that such a free trip is possible, courtesy of the Japan Tourism Agency. Unfortunately, the article is heavy on non-essential information, like why they’re doing this (something about wanting to know how to make the country more gaigin-friendly, to use an expression borrowed from an ex-patriot friend of mine) and light on what I really want to know, which is how do I get myself invited?

If anyone finds out, please let me know. You can have the window seat on the way over.

God Will Provide (But Bring Your Own Tissues)

I’ve been in China two weeks and it’s getting to me. Or maybe it’s just Beijing, which I’ve left only once in this time. Whatever the case, the novelty of being in China is beginning to wear off and the struggle to adapt to the culture is starting to wear me down. I’m tired of the spitting and staring, I’m tired of the effort it takes to make myself understood, I’m tired of people fighting each other (and me) like animals to get on public buses, I’m tired of squatting, and I’m tired of the gritty black dust that coats everything, including my nasal passages, which have been producing something the color and consistency of a mud slide all day.

This particular evening, I realize that I am not just homesick. I am physically ill as well. I’m in no shape to have dinner with anyone, but this is exactly what’s happening. I have quarantined myself as far as possible from other diners at one of the local dives catering to backpackers, but my isolation seems attractive to an Australian man in his late twenties who asks politely if he might join me.

I have always been under the impression that all Australians are Crocodile Dundee-sized loads of fun, so I say yes without hesitation. This one, though, has an odd idea of a good time. He tells me he is about to leave the relative comfort of Beijing for a stint working as a missionary in Mongolia. He says he’ll be arriving on the steppe at about the time of year when food is starting to run short and temperatures are beginning their plunge toward a constant -40. Adding to his list of challenges, he speaks not a word of Mongolian.

I wonder how he’s going to survive when I feel like this city of skyscrapers and running water is killing me. When I ask, though, all he says is, “God will provide.”

As if to underscore the fact that this kind of statement of faith invites no discussion, he changes the subject. “Do you have a philosophy?” he asks. I don’t. I have a cold. I’m blank. “Avoid cities,” I finally say, hoping this response makes me sound like I operate on a higher plane than I really do.

He tells me that his philosophy is that, “God made us, and we should do everything we can to serve Him.” I instantly feel like the most vapid creature in China. He continues, explaining that he is compelled to bring God to the people because, “God is very, very, very good, and people are very, very, very bad.” It’s just that simple. He says he doesn’t believe that people are capable of being good on their own, and that in fact, “Left to their own devices, they become worse.”

Kind of like a cold, I guess.

A Silver Lining

Several months ago, I wrote an article for Curve magazine. Between my submitting it and it’s running, the magazine was sold to an Australian publishing firm.

This immediately seemed like good news from a reader’s perspective, because I know the magazine has been struggling financially, and lately, I’d been seeing ominous signs. For example, I noticed that nobody was contacting me to ask for an author photo, or bio info—and they always run that kind of thing along with feature articles. And the magazine abruptly cancelled an anniversary party, which seemed like a very bad sign. I really like Curve and so under the circumstances, I’m glad they found a new publisher because a sale implies that someone sees a future for the magazine.

Of course, regime change also means people lose their jobs, and that’s not good. I knew that the editor I had worked with lost hers, so I worried that my article would be ignored by the new team. Happily, I just had an email exchange with the new editor-in-chief, and she said she still plans to use it.

Even better, she said that she liked my piece, and that it “rang true” to her as an Australian. What a relief! If I’d thought months ago there was a chance my article would turn out to be me telling Aussies what Oz is like, I never would have pitched it in the first place.

Of Course, the Space IS Free for WWI Vets

I found this little memorial walking along San Pablo Avenue in North Oakland. I know it’s a little hard to tell what it is, partly because I forgot my camera and had to take this photo with my crummy cell phone, and partly because it’s a sad little thing that you have to get very close to to identify.

This monument turns out to be a memorial to Oakland residents killed in World War I. In the town fathers’ defense, it was dedicated in 1921, when it’s very likely that this plot of land was not yet a parking lot. (Or located in a slum.) But now it is, and the obelisk has to be fenced off from the rest of the parking places so no one will hit it.

Is this really the best we can do?

What Just Happened Here

Nothing much; yesterday’s posting was just me doodling around, trying to write down some of my memories from a long trip I took to China in 1992. For some reason, lately I’ve been thinking not just of things that happened while I was there, but of the people I met as well.

China in 1992 was not a destination for everyone. You didn’t just find yourself there because, say, your Eurorail pass allowed you a few days at no extra charge. Most of the Westerners I met had been driven there by fairly powerful forces, and just about all of us could be divided into those who were looking for something, and those who were escaping something. Gunther was a seeker. He was quite a bit older than I was (exactly the age I am now, as a matter of fact), and at that point in my life, I was not as receptive to his new-age spirituality as I might be now.

Okay, actually, I still think the whole “hot stomach” thing is a little weird. But I did like the guy, and his words of advice on dealing with frustrating situations you have little hope of changing have stuck with me all these years.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the photo that ran yesterday is an actual photo of Gunther. He and I and a number of other backpackers I was traveling with at the time had just gone for a camel ride, and we were now playing on the enormous sand dunes that exist on the outskirts of Dunhuang.

Funny, I remembered him as being bigger.

Once Upon a Time in Gansu Province

Gunther is a vegetarian, and I wonder if that explains why he is in China and not at home in Germany. When I ask, however, he tells me he’s here among the sand dunes in Dunhuang to learn about traditional Chinese medicine.

Gunther tells me a lot of things; for a guy who is not speaking his native language, he talks a lot. Some of his stories are strange, like the one about the time he broke the veggie faith, ate some pork, and immediately became afflicted with what he calls “hot stomach.” That meal ended when Gunther found himself compelled to leave the table and run into the nearby hills, stripping off clothing as he went, “because I had taken on the characteristics of the pig I’d just eaten.”

Our conversation turns from food woes to the ways traveling in China can try your patience. I ask how he copes with common frustrations like being overcharged, or lied to by ticket vendors.

“In those situations," he says, "You can let it go without saying anything, and then you have nothing.” I nod, thinking of the times when nothing is exactly what I had to show for whole afternoons spent at train stations.

“Or, you can make a scene and try to get your way. But you’ll probably still have nothing." He pauses.

“And now, you’re angry.”

Can I Buy You a Sugar Coma?

The chocolate fountain was a serendipitous find, but it wasn’t the chocolate we’d come to Las Vegas for. We’d come to Las Vegas for chocolate from Max Brenner.

Max Brenner, in fact, is probably the only force that could get a shade-loving creature such as myself to the desert in August. I would not have picked a mid-summer date to launch a chocolate store in Sin City, but Max did, so off we went.

The Las Vegas Max Brenner is only the third such store in the United States, the other two being in New York and Philadelphia. We were so excited to have one opening in our own time zone that we got there the a day early, and were in line as the store opened the next morning.

The American store is different from, but just as good as the ones we remembered in Australia. The Las Vegas store had savory food on the menu, but vacations are too short for that. In spite of it being before noon, we had a chocolate peanut butter crepe, and hot chocolate, followed by the most intense sugar rush we’d had in years. We had to do a few laps around the Caesar Forum shops to walk it off.

The next night, we went to see Max after dinner and had magic drinks. One had Chambord and liquid chocolate straight out of a spigot as its active ingredients, and the other was a white Russian made using melted white chocolate instead of cream.

To our great excitement, Max himself was there that night, celebrating his opening by ordering dessert-drink shots for the house. He also recognized Pipi and me from the day before, and sent a plate of chocolate truffles to our table. This was, of course, the very last thing we needed that evening, having barely recalibrated our blood-sugar levels from the day before. But how could we resist? I’ve never been the kind of person who receives drinks and treats from men across the room. But in the fantasy land that is Las Vegas, chocolate runs in the taps and I am that kind of woman.

Dream Come True? Or Just a Dream?

Here’s a good example of the kind of surreal thing that seems normal in Las Vegas. It’s a two-story high fountain running three different kinds of liquid chocolate, all encased in glass. Why? Who knows. Probably because they can. (Found outside a candy store in the Monte Carlo casino.)

A Break With Reality

We were in Las Vegas. Never mind where, because the weekend was such a blur of flashing lights, shimmering heat, and synthesized slot-machine noises that I can’t always remember what events took place where. (And I’m not exactly trying to recall something that happened in my childhood. This was less than a month ago.)

I think we were at the Bellagio Casino. It was somewhere between New York, New York, where we’d picked up some theater tickets, and the Mirage, where we wanted to see the tigers. We were attempting to get from the South Strip to the Mid-Strip without taking a cab and without dying of the heat. (The TV news said it was 106 that day, though Pipi talked to a local woman who said that the news lies all the time and that her car thermometer read 115. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I am a complainer, so I believe it.)

At the probably-Bellagio, we passed through a courtyard full of fanciful plants. Some were clearly real, like the palm trees that shaded the area. Some, like the giant wooden mushrooms labeled “fungus humungous,” were obviously pretend.

But a lot of the shrubbery fell somewhere in between. In the middle of the space, for example, there was a large bed full of what looked like very short sunflowers. Each one was exactly the same shape and barely a foot tall. They were growing (if that’s the right word) through greenery so thick I couldn’t see the ground they were planted in. They looked live enough, but each flower was so uniform, and the roots seemed so deliberately hidden, that I’m still not sure if I was looking at a real field of bonsai sunflowers or an elaborate hoax fashioned from trimmed, store-bought stems.

But Vegas is kind of like that. It strips you of your ability to tell fact from fiction. (Also inside from outside, male from female, and appropriate from inappropriate. It’s perhaps the least binary place I’ve ever been.)

New Passport

I received a puzzling, official-looking envelope in the mail today. In it, to my surprise, was my new passport. I’d renewed it long enough ago that it wasn’t at the front of my mind, but not so long ago that I’d begun to worry about it.

I’ll miss my old passport, which had some really cool stamps (Mongolia!), not to mention a very fresh-looking photo of me taken 10 years ago. But the new passport appears to be made a little more durably, and has some interesting new design features. The frontispiece has a quote from “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and a facing page reproduces the preamble to the constitution, for the benefit of citizens who didn’t commit it to memory watching Saturday-morning television as children. Later pages have watermarks including patriotic quotes from all the usual suspects and some I didn’t see coming, like the Mohawk Thanksgiving address.

Best of all, the last page notes that, “This document contains sensitive electronics.” I’ve been chipped! Knowing this makes allows me to work up a good head of liberal paranoia while still feeling like I’ve got the latest gadget everyone’s talking about, a real Bay Area perfecta.

My new photo’s not great. I think I look a little haggard (especially compared to my old passport picture). But doesn’t everyone look a little rough after an international flight? I expect to breeze through customs for the next decade.

Why Did the Chicken Cross The Road? Maybe to Get to Kragen.

Have you ever seen a chicken trip over a spark plug? Neither had I until this morning’s walk through the Temescal neighborhood. I was on a residential street and I startled two hens pecking at something on the sidewalk. They got flustered, as chickens will, and went careening into a driveway. That’s where one of them ran right over the car part that someone left lying on the asphalt. She squawked and flailed and seemed to remember in mid-air that she could sort of fly, so she flapped once or twice and tried to look like she’d meant to do that. It was funny, and strange, but just par for the course in this green, gritty city where people practice both animal husbandry and car maintenance in their front yards.

Now That You Mention it, I Am a Little Obsessed With the ’80s

I have always believed that all blogs are equal, but that some are more equal than others. If that doesn’t sound like an entirely original thought on my part, I can’t help it; I just write like George Orwell.

No, I do; it’s official. The website I Write Like told me so. I gave it a couple of hundred words that I wrote for the Dallas Morning News on Mongolia, and it diagnosed me as sounding like the Animal Farm writer. I can live with this. I liked Animal Farm, loved the language in 1984, and have to admire a guy who has been down and out in both Paris and London.

So who do you write like? Try it out and see for yourself.

I’m Not Alone

Here’s an interesting article about another compulsive person walking all the streets in a Bay Area city. This guy walked every street in San Francisco, which has 1,200 miles of road, over the course of seven years.

The mileage of San Francisco’s streets surprised me, because I thought I’d read that Oakland, which covers a much larger geographical area than San Francisco, has only 800 miles of road. Oakland is much less dense than San Francisco, however, with streets less tightly packed together, so that probably explains it.

Interestingly, this man employed a trick I’ve heard from other walkers, which is to tackle bad neighborhoods in bad weather. Apparently thugs don’t like to get wet or cold.

Mission Accomplished

Fueled by a steady diet of Tim Tams and adrenaline (Why did I think June had 31 days? Why did I not realize my mistake until June 30?), I managed to get my article on Alice Springs, Australia submitted to Curve Magazine on time. This is a relief. If all goes well, look for it on a newsstand near you in October of this year.

Separated at Birth?

Somebody once told me, or maybe I read it, or maybe I made it up completely, but in any case, I used to believe that Hong Kong had the largest concentration of Rolls Royces in the world.

I visited Hong Kong in 1989, not long after I learned (or imagined) this statistic. I wasn’t there long enough to confirm anything, but I did notice an awful lot of the luxury cars around, far more than I’d ever seen in my life up to that point.

I wouldn’t have guessed that slightly downtrodden North Oakland had anything in common with the capitalist theme park that was Hong Kong back in the day, but it does: The neighborhood also has an anomalous number of Rolls Royces. Last week I saw two in one day, one under a tarp, and one cruising the streets. That’s at least one more Rolls Royce than I had previously ever seen in one day in any part of Oakland.

Coincidence? Well, obviously, but it’s always interesting to discover the odd things that radically different destinations can have in common.

On the Not-So-High Seas

One other interesting thing about North Oakland, which is separated from the San Francisco Bay by the city of Emeryville, is that a large number of residents seem to own boats. I don’t know if there are really more watercraft here than in other parts of the city. It could be that the boats, usually parked in driveways, are just more visible for some reason. In any case this landlocked neighborhood seems to have an unusually strong nautical bent.

Discovering North Oakland

I’m still working on my walking project. I’m in north Oakland right now. Usually when I mention this, the person I’m talking to will ask what the neighborhood is like, although I think what they really want to ask is if I feel safe there.

The safety question is easy enough. The simple answer is yes. If I were part of a gang, or a sex worker, or there to buy drugs, I’d probably feel differently, but my experience so far has reminded me of west Oakland: I leave trouble alone and it ignores me, too. (Of course, I keep my eyes open and my cell phone handy.)

As for what the neighborhood’s like, that’s harder to put into words. It’s not the city’s prettiest enclave. It has a few Victorians but most of the houses are boxy little post-war bungalows. There are some abandoned houses, and for some reason, there’s more litter than in any other part of the city I’ve seen yet.

But it’s far from bleak. There are pocket parks, and community gardens, and chalked hop-scotch courts on the sidewalks—all signs that people aren’t locked in their houses.

So what’s it like? Kind of like this photo, which shows a tiny patch of flowers that someone planted and then made a protective fence around at the base of a no-parking sign: kind of rough and gritty, but not without surprise little slivers of beauty.

R.I.P. Erik Fitzpatrick

Here’s something interesting that I found recently in Oakland, where we’ve raised the impromptu street shrine to an art form. Anyone can put together a soggy collection of flowers and teddy bears for a fallen comrade. In the East Bay, we do it in style. This is one of the more original offerings I’ve ever seen.

This shrine is on MacArthur Boulevard, the commercial strip nearest my house, implying that while I never met Erik, we may have been neighbors. I do feel I know him a little now, judging from the idiosyncratic things mourners have left as offerings, including chalk, vodka, bubble soap, and a dead, flattened turtle.

I don’t know what happened, but I note that he died quite young. (He was, in fact, the same age as my sister, which will probably always seem way too young for bad things, even when I’m 100 and she’s just 95.) My condolences to the family of Mr. Fitzpatrick, and to anyone who cared enough to put together this creative tribute.

NileGuide

Here’s a travel site I found out about recently through a former co-worker of Pipi’s. It’s called NileGuide. The site is more of a travel planning site than a place to book tickets, and it features lots of content. At Travelocity, we used to dream about getting to write about travel without having to worry about selling anything, and NileGuide seems dedicated to doing just that. Best of all, they use a lot of freelance help, and I’ve been talking with the editors about contributing. It looks like I’m going to do some work on spec (publishing-speak for “without any promise of payment”) and if they like it, it may develop into something more regular. (And paid.) We’ll see how this turns out. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!

Commissioned!

A few weeks ago, I pitched an article on Alice Springs, Australia, to Curve magazine. Today, I heard back from them and it was good news: They want me to go ahead and write it.

I’m not exactly going to retire on the commission from this piece, but I’m excited about it nonetheless. I really do like Curve, which I’ve been reading since the magazine and I were both new on the scene. The editor also seems to share my general ideas about length, content, and tone, and gave me a generous deadline, so I’ve got a good feeling about the project.