Valuable Lessons

Job Hunt

2010-05-25T02:39:00.000-07:00

When I was a freshly-minted graduate with an opportunity-rich history degree, I applied for a job at my hometown’s museum. The Otago Museum is about what you’d expect from something that serves a college town of 100,000 – it’s no Smithsonian, but it’s certainly not terrible. But let’s be honest – it’s not really anything special.

But a job’s a job, and I was quite pleased to be offered an interview. A thirty-minute slot on a warm January afternoon was assigned to me; I shined my shoes, tucked in my shirt, and drove my mother’s van to the museum.

It was a panel interview, a variety of interview I’ve only seen in New Zealand. Three middle-aged women were gathered at the other end of a long table, staring me down and bidding me to have a seat.

The usual questions were asked – why do you want this job, what kind of pay do you expect, yahdayahdayahdah. I negotiated them fairly well, I think, but then I tend to assume the best of my performance unless I’m presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Which makes the next events – presentation of said evidence – rather fortuitous. They asked me what I liked about this particular museum and I, all smiles and naiveté, said in what I thought was a charming fashion that I couldn’t say because I hadn’t (ha ha) actually been there.

Wrong answer.

“How,” a panelist breathlessly stammered through her rage, “do you expect to work in this museum if you’ve never even been here.”

I began to suspect that this interview wasn’t going as well as it possibly could, but I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how I was going to dig myself out of this hole. This would become a theme.

“Well, I have been to a lot of other museums that are about the same size as this one, and to be honest I’ve never found them to be that different from one another.”

Silence, as she gripped her pen so hard that I feared for its health, and furiously scrawled some notes. Something tells me they weren’t positive.

“Well,” another panelist intervened, “it’s been great meeting you and we’ll. Be. In. Touch.” As she showed me out the door, I glanced at my watch – it had been ten minutes.

It will be clear by now that the interview process has never been easy for me. The above example is a particularly egregious one, but similar examples positively (or negatively) abound. Which is a shame because, if I say so myself, I am quite employable.

The vast majority of this blog’s meagre fanbase will know this, but it bears repeating. Entry-level job interviews are almost always conducted by a low-level manager, occasionally backed up by an HR rep. HR reps, with their contagious anxiety and perpetual looks that can only be described as existential, don’t deserve an internet-lambasting; they’ve got it bad enough as it is.

Lower-level managers, on the other hand, are quite the opposite. For one, They tend to have an enormous chip on their shoulder. I suspect that this is because of a similarly-sized insecurity on their part – their place on the employment ladder is the kind is acquired not by skill or aptitude but instead by simply paying dues. This creates the type of person who has an incredible amount of expertise on the minutiae of their section of whatever organisation they work for, but very little capacity for big-picture thinking, or even, more often than not, basic social skills.

I’m substantially, and quite obviously smarter than these people, and please don’t take that as arrogance. You probably are too – it’s a really low bar.

I recently interviewed for a job at a call centre at a large Australiasian bank. It went okay, I thought – they asked me all the questions I expected, I fielded them all fairly well, and I’d even done some research beforehand to back up my answers. I didn’t mention that I actually do my banking with someone else, and nor did I tell them that I can’t really tell the difference between banks.

In short, things were looking good – they even had me come in and listen to some calls to “get a feel for the job.”

However, in the very final few minutes, after I’d put on my jacket and said my goodbyes, the lower-level manager showed me her sleeve’s final trick. Out of nowhere, she whipped out a copy of my cover letter. Shock and horror – in my application process, which involved responding to more than one job ad, I had put the name of a different employer on top of the letter.

And that is pretty bad, I’ll admit. It shows a certain unprofessionalism, apathy, and inattention to detail, three attitudes I would certainly bring to a call centre role, but which I had until now managed to hide.

“Well?” she said, shooting daggers at me.

I explained myself – that I had applied for more than one job and this mistake had fallen through the cracks. She nodded and let a smug smile pass her face at my recognizance of her authority as “team leader.”

“But to be fair,” figuring that now that we were friends again we could be honest with one another, “you did have me in for an interview anyway.”

The cogs in her assistant manager's brain ticked over once or twice while she processed what had just happened. Then it was back to the all-too-familiar tight-lipped smile and ice-cold handshake. “You’ll be hearing from us.”

Luckily for everyone involved, I never did.

Loin Fruit

2010-04-15T10:18:00.000-07:00

I’m fairly sure I did not enjoy my own birth, but I am lucky enough to not remember it. Everyone else involved, however, does remember this momentous event in my parents’ Manhattan apartment, unencumbered by frivolities like electric lights or pain meds.

This experience sounds wholly unpleasant, especially for my mother. But giving birth was just the first hassle she underwent for me and her subsequent two offspring, and it was nowhere near the most severe.

As an adolescent, I was an underachieving little snot. I never did homework, rarely did classwork, and, if I wasn’t disrupting others with one delightful shenanigan after another I was looking out the window, forming elaborate fantasies in my brain unrelated to the task at hand.

Report cards reflected this charming personality year after year. Comments were seldom positive and grades were never high. At the conclusion of one particularly memorable semester, I got a 0 in art – I hadn’t turned in a single thing.

Watching me attempt to assemble Lego structures was enough to ensure that I was clearly never going to be a carpenter – if my success wasn't academic, it would be nonexistent. What’s more, I was a voracious reader in my spare time, a paradox that no doubt drove both my parents around the bend.

So they tried everything. They tried grounding me for bad grades; they tried rewarding me for good grades. They tried helping me with my homework, they tried keeping in constant touch with my teachers. At every turn, I dodged and weaved their efforts and every six weeks my report card would indicate exactly to what extent I had done so.

At long last, they decided that the education system simply wasn’t teaching me in a way that I could learn, and they opted to homeschool me. It wasn’t really “they,” though – my father works full-time, so the brunt of my homeschooling rested with my mother.

And this is what I mean when I mention the effort she goes through for me. Not only did she elect to stay at home and teach her seemingly unteachable son, she also opted to do it not in elementary school, not in high school, but in those atrocious, puberty-ridden years of middle school.

Twelve-to-fourteen is a terrible age. It’s an age of squeaky voices and obnoxious attitudes. It’s an age where kids start to develop opinions but lack intelligence to actually back them up; in this regard I was no exception. In short, early adolescence is when school is the best thing the public service has to offer, as a full day with these "people" comes close to meeting the definition of cruel and unusual punishment.

But, like a champ, my mum took on her very own snotty twelve year old, spending every day in its entirety with me, trying her damndest to shape me into an educated person.

The reason I share this extended anecdote is because today is my mother’s birthday. And, as I take tentative steps into a well-adjusted adulthood, I’m starting to realise that I didn’t become this way on my own. I have my mother to thank, for her advice (solicited or no), for her constant support, and for her unconditional love.

Even from afar I know that she’s constantly thinking of my best interests. These manifest themselves in endless positive comments on my blog, messages with safety tips, and, probably unbeknownst to my father, offers of financial assistance.

So happy birthday, Mum. Thanks for giving birth to me and raising me. Thanks for always looking out for me and tolerating all manners of rubbish from me. You have done and are doing a great job, and for that I love you.

Where It's Due

2010-04-10T15:11:00.000-07:00

I thought getting a credit card to pay for my flight from the US to New Zealand would be easy. For one, my credit history is a rich tapestry of on-time payments and clear balances. More importantly, though, this is America. Financial crisis notwithstanding, isn’t access to credit a God-given right around here?

I was halfway there already. I’d recently opened a bank account and was overjoyed at its internet banking services. I gleefully logged in and became even more gleeful when I saw that I could apply for a credit card online. I didn’t even have to fill out much in the way of forms – they had all my information on file, so it was just a few mouseclicks before they assured me that my credit card would be in the mail shortly.

I quickly texted my aunt and uncle, whose house I get my mail delivered to, and told them to be on the lookout for my contribution to the American economy. A few days later, I received an unexpected and embarrassing reply letting me know that my application had been declined.

Bummer. Not only had a bank deemed me too large of a financial risk, but my own overconfidence had caused this information to be given to me secondhand. Through family. It was a fairly profound loss of face.

Perturbed, I called the bank, certain that it was some kind of misunderstanding. Of course, I first sat through transfer after transfer from one monotonous, distracted call-centre employee after another. While Americans tend to be absurdly friendly – indeed, so much so that this cultural feature arguably offsets the negative things like the lack of socialised medicine or the presence of pro-lifers – call centre employees are an exception to this rule.

Fair enough, too. They’re hourly workers who are asked the same few questions over and over again. They get paid whether they’re on the phone or off it, so it’s in their financial interests to make calls as short as possible. That was my philosophy when I worked in a call centre, which is possibly why I don’t work in one anymore.

I must have gone through five or six of these drones before I was put through to the holy grail of customer service: someone on commission. Not only is it in these people’s best interests to help you they also tend to be people who genuinely enjoy interacting with other people. Of course, by “help” I mean “sell something,” but I’ll take what I can get.

Bonnie was a pleasure to talk to for ten minutes or so. I told her that my credit history was entirely in New Zealand, and she responded with “Oh, what’s New Zealand like?” I told her a few choice anecdotes, she told me about her friends travelling through there, and I offered them my parents’ place to stay, an offer which she graciously declined. All in all, it was a very nice conversation, although it concluded with “sorry, I can’t help you, my job is selling identity theft insurance.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t need that.”

“Are you sure? Identity theft is....”

I listened to her spiel, then pointed out that an identity that can't get a credit card isn't particularly lucrative to anyone, including its original owner. To this she started to pitch again, and I regrettably had to hang up on her.

I started over at square one, this time asking for a credit card salesman right off the bat. I was put through to Dave who, while friendly, would probably not enjoy a friendship with me like Bonnie did. He was a tad smarmy.

I shouldn’t be too hard on him, though, because he quickly answered my question. Due to my entire credit history being through New Zealand banks, it meant that it was effectively nonexistent. My favourite American habit of unapologetic ethnocentrism was alive and well in the credit industry.

Like Bonnie, he was a shrewd salesman who knew that information doesn’t come with a commission. “We could get you something called a SecureCard.”

“What’s that?” I asked, with bated breath and sinking expectations.

“Well, you give us money - $300 minimum – and then you spend it through your SecureCard”

“Not to be ungrateful, Dave, but if I had money, don’t you think I’d just spend it?”

“Yes, but . . .”

Even for someone with very low sales resistance, I recognised that this card was little more than a wallet with a monthly fee, so when I hung up on him I felt zero remorse.

I pondered my situation, and decided that, unseemly though it may seem, I was going to have to restrict my spending to money that I have.

How very novel.

Global Warming

2010-01-14T18:28:00.000-08:00

I used to be a global warming denier. A very vocal one, at that. Every time it would come up at

the tiny liberal arts university I attended (which, it goes without saying, was a lot), I would pipe up with the insightful comment “oh, that’s not real.”

Did I believe it? Who knows. I had read Michael Crichton’s book that outlined, through murder mysteries, steamy romance, and gunplay, exactly why those who believed in global warming are not just misguided but criminal. More to the point, though, I just enjoyed people’s reactions to my statement. Global warming (or climate change, whatever) is the religion of the 18-24 demographic. Its existence is not just an opinion – it’s fact, that must be prosletised. The misguided must not be tolerated, but converted.

So, needless to say, it was pretty fun to contradict people when it came to global warming. Their reactions were perfect; the only other place I’ve encountered such vehemence is when I use my flatmate’s Xbox Live connection to stand in front of my teammates in first-person shooters, thus blocking their shot and reducing their all-important win/loss ratio. Sometimes I think people would be less upset of I were a Holocaust denier, but I have never had the stones to find out. Hopefully I never will.

At any rate, it’s been a couple years since then and I’ve mellowed a little. However, as I read the newspapers and browse the internet, I’m starting to notice a resurgence of my old opinion. This especially true now, as places like Europe and Florida experience record low temperatures, which is bringing all the deniers out of the woodwork. “SEE?!” a cacophony of columns, blogs, and Facebook statuses (statii?) shout, “we told you!”

Being a low energy person, I have arrived at the same conclusion regarding climate change as I have almost everything else – who cares? And I don’t mean “who cares if the climate is changing,” because I have to say that I do care, especially considering how I plan on returning to New Zealand in the near future. A not-very-large island in the Pacific Ocean is hardly the place to be when the waters start to rise.

What I mean is this, and I address it to all the smug deniers: why do you care if the climate is changing or not? More important than climate change, real or imagined, is a lifestyle change – one that every single one of us would benefit from. Running our air conditioners and heaters less often, hanging out our clothes, and taking the bus now and again is not going to kill anyone. Indeed, it would be a massive improvement in a day and age where obesity is on the rise, cities are designed to make walking not just inefficient but downright dangerous, and huge parts of the world are still in the recession brought on by people living beyond their means.

It’s Pascalle’s wager, but with real life as opposed to mythical conjecture. Let’s say we all make a change, get rid of our cars and bike to work, eliminating the pesky costs of fuel and maintenance and developing strong hearts and thighs that could crush someone’s head. Less radically, let’s say just half of us get rid of our SUVs and trucks and take the revolutionary move of buying a 4-door sedan. Let’s say that happens and global warming turns out to be nothing but collective delusion. Will we look back and say “god, what a waste, I’m healthy, financially solvent, and it was all for nothing?”

Somehow I doubt it.

But look at the alternative. What if global warming is a very real threat and we do nothing? Not only will the waters rise, we’ll be too fat to outrun them. So we’ll pile into our SUVs and try to outdrive them, but we’ll run out of gas before we reach higher ground. So we’ll get out and push to the nearest gas station – but when we get there our credit cards will decline because we maxed them out on our beast of a vehicle’s warranty last month.

So to the deniers: shut up. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem, and if you’re so fixated on global warming (or lack thereof) that you can’t see the bigger picture, you don’t have the analytical skills to have a valid opinion anyway.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my MasterCard and book a transpacific flight.

Grinding

2009-12-17T12:27:00.000-08:00

Reading these pages over the past year, you may think that I’m particularly inept at navigating

Vietnamese culture. You’d be right; I was inept at navigating Vietnamese culture. I never had any idea what was going on, ever, and was in a constant state of confusion.

However, this is not solely because Vietnamese culture is so incredibly foreign. My bewilderment is constant, no matter where I am. As my father’s colleague commented when I was a vacant four-year-old, wandering around, bumping into things, and falling over – “Sam is completely unaware of his environment, isn’t he?”

Things confuse me. I'm back in North America, visiting people I met while studying in the hilariously-named Sackville, New Brunswick (pop: 5,000), and I find myself, on occasion, just as befuddled as I was in Vietnam. At times, I am substantially moreso.

I went to a party a couple weeks ago and was reminded of a university tradition that is seldom spoken of but deeply universal. The Grind. This is really a special piece of Western culture, and it has not received the analysis it deserves.

It takes place in a bar with the music at maximum and the lights at minimum. Girls, pack animals to the end, stand in a circle and dance, with heavy emphasis on hip movements. Guys stand on the periphery of this circle and wait until they somehow get some secret signal from one of them that indicates that she’s up for a grind. Without further ado, he moves in and grabs her hips and suddenly they’re a couple.

I’ve given it a shot from time to time, and, with the exception of one very enthusiastic girl who turned out to not be a girl (oops), I have always met with failure.

It just doesn’t make sense to me. When a girl is approached by a guy from behind, how does she immediately know that he is acceptable? She can’t see him, she can’t hear him – what is it about him, then? Does he tap out some secret code on her lower back? Can she smell him over the stale beer and sweat that invariably defines the kind of places grinding occurs?

Maybe it’s just bitterness at being so consistently excluded from this club, but I think it’s one of the last vestiges of our evolutionary past. The whole thing does not seem very human; it’s much more of an animalistic ritual, with the ovulating females gathering in search of an alpha male who can assist them in the nature-given task of passing on their DNA.

It’s not always rainbows and sunshine, though. Two of my friends have been dating off and on for a few years now, constantly breaking up and getting back together. One night, after one of these breakups, I met both of them at a bar that specialised in overpriced beers, sticky floors, and a dance floor with lots of space to get your grind on.

Tensions were running high, as they often will in a recurrinng breakup situation. Indeed, I was wondering why they were spending time together at all, but the subsequent events soon replaced my ponderings with entirely new ones.

Here’s how they interacted. They squared off and started making idle chitchat, as if they were spurious acquaintances. It very quickly disintegrated from “hi how are ya’s” into something far more sinister. Without any trigger or justification, they were soon taking strips off one another.

“You’ve gained a bit of weight.”

“You never were much of a student, were you?”

The odd thing was, though, that they’d deliver these lines as if they were banal pleasantries, with a smile and a nod of the head. Back and forth they would go, until it finally became too much and one of them lost the smile off his or her face.

But would a fight begin? Oddly, no. Whenever one of them got particularly offended, he or she would grab the other one, march him or her out to the dance floor, and furiously grind for ten minutes or so. Then they’d return and take it from the top. This happened again and again and again, with the awkwardness rising as I was left in the non-dancing portion of the bar, taking small, fifty-cent sips of my eight dollar beer and wearing a pained expression.

Like I said, I don't get it. In my youthful idealism, I like to think that we've left mating dances with shrieking and throwing feces, but being at a university again reminded me that we have not quite shrugged off our genetic past.

But I guess DNA has to be spread somehow, and in this regard grinding is nothing if not efficient.

Full-Cream Democrats

2009-11-09T19:24:00.000-08:00

There’s something really annoying about the kind of person who does nothing but complain, offering problems without solutions. Not only is this person irritating, he or she is quite dull too.

Now, the last thing I want to be is irritating and dull, so I’m going to offer some solutions to the problem I recently explored: namely the profound lack of (metaphorical) testicles among Democrats.

In spite of my complaining, there are viable candidates still out there. Bemoaning the good old days is hardly a productive activity, as, good or bad, they’re old. More relevant to our current situation is the presence of real, living Democrats who – I think – wouldn’t chase poll numbers and cringe in the face of criticism like these last two winners have so predictably and painfully done for what promises to be a combined total of at least twelve years.

Dennis Kucinich

There’s nothing Lite about this guy. He’s an all-sugar, maximum caffeine, full-fibre Democrat. Of course, that’s why he hasn’t gotten anywhere in the mediocrity that is the Democratic party.

It’s not his Liberal-ness that impresses me, although he does have a healthy dose of it. No, as I’ve reiterated a thousand times now, a presidential candidate needs stones. And Kucinich has so many that I fear he may have a hard time walking without pain.

Let’s start in his private life. Look at his wife! She is a babe. In superficial physical terms, he is way out of his league. A man who resembles a gremlin who can attract a woman like that must have a profound amount of self-confidence, of which there has been a shortage lately amongst our Democrats.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Kucinich became mayor of Cleveland when he was 31 (a position also held by Jerry Springer a few years previous, but his career followed a slightly different trajectory). That’s a pretty impressive achievement at a relatively young age, but it gets better. When Municipal Light, the city-owned power company, went into default, the Mafia wanted it sold to (their) private hands. When Kucinich refused, they put a hit out on him.

Allow me to reiterate. They wanted him dead. His political decisions didn’t put his career, reputation, or power at stake – they put his life at stake.

This is the kind of toughness we need in the White House. If he’s not going to back away from the threat of death, there’s no way he’s going to compromise his positions for the sake of a few points in a poll or the disapproval of party hacks. This is a guy who knows what he wants, and who isn’t afraid to put himself at risk to get it.

Al Franken

My first acquaintance with Senator Franken was when I found a copy of his book Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot in my parents’ house when I was nine or ten. I read it, but didn’t understand any of the subject matter. I did, however, immensely enjoy the fact that it was full of swear words and dirty jokes. I could read it in full view of my parents who had no idea that their son was reading raunchy jokes far above his age level. They just though I had a mature interest in politics. Suckers.

But I digress. Al Franken ran for Senate after twenty years of writing edgey, inappropriate, and downright offensive material. Even though he must have known that it would be used against him, he ran anyway because he knew that ideas, intelligence, and integrity are far more important than the fact that you wrote an article for Playboy in 2000.

And what did his campaign do when his previous writing career was predictably used as ammunition against him? Did they apologise, say that it was taken out of context, say that he was different then? Hell no. I’m usually loath to put quotes in my blog as I don’t like anyone’s writing other than my own, but for the Franken campaign I’ll make an exception:

Al had a long career as a satirist. But he understands the difference between what you say as a satirist and what you do as a senator. And as a senator, Norm Coleman has disrespected the people of Minnesota by putting the Exxons and Halliburtons ahead of working families. And there’s nothing funny about that.

He went on to put amendment on a spending bill that made it okay for government contractor employees to sue their employers if they get raped, which he then stood by in the face of vocal Republican opposition. It wasn't a big-ticket issue, but it was an important one - and by tirelessly working at it, holding hearings and destroying corporate lawyers, he made it a big-ticket issue.

Put this man in the Oval Office.

Alan Grayson

Alan Grayson is the second Democrat Congressman in thirty-nine years to come out of his Florida district. One of his first moves was to attract the ire of the spineless sops that make up the vast majority of his party by calling a lobbyist a “K-street whore” when she publicly said that he – a Harvard economics grad who worked as an economist – didn’t understand economics.

Of course, the Democratic party went beserk. How dare he use language like that?! He “went too far” said a number of his pansy peers, many of whom, I can only assume, have spent enough time with to know the difference. This is the kind of thing that drives me crazy about Democrats. A lobbyist spouts some patently untrue drivel, is called on it with a swear word, and they attack the latter. And these guys wonder why they’re shut out of power for years on end.

He wasn’t discouraged, though. His next move was to weigh in on the healthcare debate, skewering the Republican’s (lack of) a plan as one that encouraged patients to die quickly if they get sick. He then went on to read out (on my birthday, thanks Congressman) the names of people who died as a result of a lack of insurance on the House floor.

Put him in the Oval Office. Put any of these guys in the Oval Office. These are just three people who don’t chew their fingernails, lunch with lobbyists and make half-assed speeches about “bipartisanship,” which, they seem to have forgotten, isn’t necessary when you won the election.

These are guys who have faith in their ideas and are prepared to fight for them. These are guys who don’t mind that, in politics, (and in the rest of life, for that matter), there are times that people will disagree with you, vilify you, call you names, even, god forbid, not like you.

These are guys are secure enough to know that that’s okay. So put them in the Oval Office and let them run the country right.

2009-10-18T06:09:00.000-07:00

I don’t care.

That’s really it. I don’t care. That sums up my position on 99 percent of stories that are on the news, and today was no exception. Indeed, I possibly cared less about today’s developing human interest story than I’ve ever cared about any other news story.

You probably know the details, but I’m going to rehash them. A family was (naturally) building a giant balloon in their backyard; their six-year old (Falcon) got into the balloon when the dad was working on it; dad yelled Falcon; Falcon hid in the attic; balloon took off; everyone panicked when they mistakenly assumed that Falcon was in the balloon; he wasn’t. End of story.

But wait, there’s more. In a postgame interview with the family, Wolf Blitzer (who has always

weirded me out) asked Falcon why he hid. Falcon’s reply was “we did it for the show.”

Then someone in the family farted, which was funny.

The internet rage machine went crazy. Over the lie, not the fart. I swear, I could hear blood vessels rupture under the pressure and fingers develop massive callouses as enraged e-warriors hammered at their keyboards with every ounce of energy they had.

And it would be kind of outrageous if he actually put him in the balloon (which, by the way, would not have been able to take off with a 6-year old). But he didn’t. The whole thing was farce, and we ate it up. Even the outrage against him for lying is playing into his attention-whoring hands; even my typing of this blogpost is giving him what he wants.

The stunt in the first place didn’t surprise me. This shit happens all the time; everyone wants to be on TV (including me – do you think I post on this blog for my health?) The surprise, and irritation, was in the moral crusade against him afterwards by the internet for lying.

We’re so quick to judge people that we forget how inconsequential their actions are. So he lied about his kid being in a balloon. Call me overly forgiving, but I’m fairly sure there are worse things he could have done.

Like lie about alleged WMDs and put the USA into a truly Vietnam-esque war.

Or getting elected on rhetoric of change but not actually changing much of anything 9 months later.

Or lying about getting a blowjob in office. Oh wait, there was a moral crusade over that non-issue as well.

This whole thing has just emphasized how dumb we are. We are so furious over small lies by normal people that we conveniently forget about the bigger lies by the people who lead us, who spend our money, and whose honesty is far more important. We’ve somehow lost – or never had – our collective sense of perspective.

And yes, okay, he wasted some public money. But again he’s taking his cues from our politicians. He lives in the Western USA, near Iowa, where billions of dollars per year are given to farmers

to keep them in what are essentially make-work jobs. He lives in a country where military spending makes up a majority of the budget yet universal healthcare still doesn’t exist and investment banks are given public money to keep them in business. One rescue operation is chump change.

So more power to ye, balloon man. You told a lie and got caught. I don’t care. You told your son to hide in the attic and play with his toys for a few hours. I don’t care. Basically, you lived your life in a slightly bizarre way that ultimately doesn’t affect me at all. Please continue doing so, and I'll continue trying to focus what limited energy I have on liars whose lies actually matter.

Democrats Lite

2009-10-11T21:23:00.000-07:00

Democrats are pansies. For years, they’ve rolled over and taken beating after beating from the less-civil, more ballsy Republicans. When they’re in the minority, they act as if they deserve it, and when they have some semblance of power, they act as if they don’t. They behave like a political placeholder between Republican regimes and they don’t want to leave their inevitable successors too much of a mess to clean up. Considerate, but ultimately not that impressive politically.

And I can hardly blame them. Look at who’s been keeping them at bay for the past thirty years – a dementia-ridden septuagenarian who seemed able to run the country in his sleep and two generations of the same straight-talkin, logic-lackin’ Texas oil family, the latter of whom convinced the nation to support a war with essentially no premise.

Of course, this was interspersed by Clinton, but he’s the exception that proves my rule – no Republican would let a bit of fellatio stand between him and the business of governing, and certainly wouldn’t do things like question the meaning of hard-to-define words like “sexual contact” and “is.”

So here’s a guide for the Democratic Party, so they can remember their roots, and maybe hark back to them. Because the profound lack of justification for Obama’s Nobel Peace prize and the self-destructive Democrat gutting of their own healthcare bill indicates that they’re in dire need of a breath of fresh air.

Jimmy Carter

I know, I know, he only had one term. But the deck was kind of stacked against him, what with a lack of Washington experience and an economy that stubbornly refused to grow.

What’s more, he had to deal with a public relations fiasco that involved him being attacked by a swamp rabbit. Life wasn’t easy.

But let’s not mention those things. Let’s talk about what became the defining issue of his presidency: Iran. What a nightmare – a President already viewed as feckless had this point underscored by the ongoing fact that there were Americans being held hostage inside their own embassy in Tehran.

He could have solved the problem and guaranteed himself re-election with a phone call, by raining hellfire and damnation all over Iran. He could have started dropping bombs and not stopped until the hostages (or their bodies) were safe and sound. Whether it worked or not, it would have guaranteed him a second term because the American Public positively loves war (at least for a little while).

But he didn’t. Instead, he sent a small Special Forces team who failed at the price of 8 of their lives when, among other problems, their helicopter got caught in a sandstorm.

Bummer.

But Carter understood – like no other president has since – that eight dead volunteer military men is preferable to hundreds or thousands of civilians, regardless of nationality. He also understood that there are more important things in this life than winning an election, and in the face of what must have been very persuasive arguments to the contrary, he still did the right thing. That takes stones that have not been seen in a Democrat since.

Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam

We often forget that the Democrats were the ones who invented the straight-talking Texas ranger. Lyondon Johnson was foul-mouthed, abrasive, and stubborn. By all accounts he was a thoroughly unpleasant individual to be around.

He was also a big fan of the war he inherited from Kennedy. These were days, remember when the Domino Effect seemed far more realistic than it does today, with Communist influence spreading all over the place. Of course, the American people were long-past their honeymoon stage that they tend to get with wars, and were demanding he pull the troops out.

Like Carter, he had a seemingly easy choice – he could stick with the war, in spite of its gutting his War on Poverty and likely costing him an election, or he could pull out to appease the protesters.

He stuck to his principles to the very end – he pulled himself out of the election race. Like I said, I’m no fan of war. But I have to admire someone who puts his ideals ahead of his political ambitions, and recognizes that, when you’re president, people are going to disagree with you, and sometimes the decision you think is best is going to negatively affect you.

Franklin Roosevelt

This guy is from a long line of toughness. His distant relation, Theodore Roosevelt, was shot in the chest while campaigning in a presidential race. Rather than do a Democrat move like go to the hospital, he crowed that “it takes more than that!” and delivered his speech as the blood seeped through his white shirt, until it became too much and he collapsed.

Of course, he was a Republican so that’s hardly unexpected.

But onto Frank. 1933 was possibly the worst year to be elected, with the economy far further in the toilet than it is now. People were losing their jobs right and left and Wall Street folks had developed a habit of shooting themselves or throwing themselves out windows. Not to mention the fact that Prohibition was still on. Things were, to put it simply, quite bleak.

So FDR spent money. Program after program after program was introduced by him and passed by his Congress, with the aim of putting people to work and getting the economy flowing again. Affectionately branded The New Deal, it didn’t work as well as World War II but even today most Americans won’t hear a word against him or it.

At any rate, after four years of this, the Supreme Court grew a tad wary of his developing power base, especially considering the political developments on the other side of the Atlantic, and struck down a few key parts of the Deal. Did Roosevelt back down, though? Hell no! He introduced a bill to Congress that would allow him to appoint an extra justice for every standing one over the age of 70 – essentially letting him play politics with a loaded court.

Luckily, it didn’t pass. But at least he tried. And that’s my point, if you’re still reading at word number 982. I didn't sign on for Democrats who answer questions about their illicit affairs and Islam backgrounds, and nor did I sign on for Democrats who gut their own healthcare bill in the face of opposition. I signed on for the men mentioned above, who played to win rather than just desperately tried to avoid losing, who were committed to their principles, not their 2nd term. As I approach my 23rd year, I long for some calories in my Democrats - because all I've seen thus far are Democrats Lite.

Generalisations

2009-09-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

In New Zealand, I’m an American with an obnoxious, obtrusive accent (that's me on the left). In America, my voice blends but my inability to drive on the right side of the road and painfully inept grasp of pop culture sets me apart as a New Zealander. In Vietnam, of course, I’m white.

Not that I’m complaining. I like to think of myself as some kind of latter-day Han Solo, albeit lacking in furry friends and a modified spaceship. I’m young yet, though.

More relevantly, I feel like my Global Citizen status has given me carte blanche to criticize and mock all of these cultures I’ve lived in and around as combined insider and outsider. So without further ado, here are some generalizations I’ve formed over the past several years.

New Zealand

The prevailing conception of New Zealand is that it is filled with laid-back, relaxed, unflappable people, incapable of getting even a little bit bent out of shape because they’re so chill.

I’m here to tell you that this is a myth. It’s an understandable myth, at least (in contrast to “swine flu is dangerous” or “public money was intended for private interests”), but a myth nonetheless. New Zealanders aren’t laid-back and relaxed. They’re just too meek to say what’s on their mind.

Examples abound. Going out for a coffee is always a surprise because quality is so inconsistent. Not that New Zealanders prefer bad coffee; they just don’t ever complain, so baristas have no idea if they’re doing a good job or not.

More startling, though, is attending university in this country.

In New Zealand, a lecturer (always a foreigner, who doesn’t understand that he’s in a nation of extreme social anxiety) will occasionally put forth a question to his class. “What do you think of this?” he’ll say, all bright smiles and naivete.

Nothing. It’s a sea of silence as everyone – save the adult students sitting in the front row who are, for some reason, on the other end of the spectrum – look to their left, to their right, but

never directly at the lecturer for fear he’ll spot-call on them.

“Tough crowd,” I imagine him thinking, “I’ll give them an easy question to warm them up.” So he does that – asks for some information the class (should have) read about the night previous,

or even something he just said. And this is where it gets really painful. Even though everybody in the class knows the answer to what he asked, and everyone knows that everyone knows the answer the eye-shifting and seat-squirming persistes, with nary a hand in the air. Time after time, I saw this single thread run through a variety of classes in a variety of subjects at a variety of levels. In New Zealand, nobody wants to stand out.

I can’t help but notice that this nation of meek, awkward people also has a rambunctious, sometimes destructive drinking culture. I’ll leave the connections up to you.

Americans

Americans don’t to have any emotional middle ground. They’re either ecstatic with joy, black with rage, laughing loudly and obnoxiously, or crying their eyes out. I’m kind of glad my

upbringing has been a mix of this and New Zealand’s stark contrast because I’m not sure my delicate system could handle this constant fifth-to-reverse shifting before dropping my emotional transmission all over the road.

Americans don’t keep anything in, either. If an American likes you, you know it. If an American hates you, you’ll hear about it. If an American just took a shit and it was a abnormal consistency combined with a worse-than-usual smell, you will hear about it, in far more detail than you ever could have imagined or would have asked for.

Americans are also phenomenally ethnocentric. This isn’t really their fault; not only do they live in a nation whose population is in the hundreds of millions, it’s also the heart of the world’s cultural output. When you’re from the same country as the soda people everyone’s drinking, TV they’re watching, and music they’re listening to, there’s really not a huge impetus to learn about the outside world.

What’s more, they don’t really understand that the rest of the world isn’t as the same way. I plan on going to Colorado in December to work in whatever capacity they’ll give me in order to enjoy the fringe benefits of an apartment on the mountain and a free lift pass. I know. It’s going to be awesome.

On more than one occasion, I’ve told an American this plan and been asked, with wide-eyed incredulity, “how do you know about Colorado? You didn’t grow up in America!”

It’s so bizarre. They simply cannot understand how someone whose entire life wasn’t spent in the USA can know that this 100,000 square mile state exists. I’ll gently point out that not only did I live in the USA for my first fifteen years, I also have a host of extended family in – you guessed it – Colorado. Even after being given this information, heads are shaken and I can tell that they don’t quite accept it yet.

American waiters and waitresses, however, do their jobs incredibly well. They chat with you just enough that you feel welcomed but not too much that you feel like they’re intruding on your conversation. Your drink order is taken immediately, they check up on you just enough. Also, when the food gets to you, it’s generally pretty good. Americans know their hospitality.

The Vietnamese

The Vietnamese aren’t casually inefficient, nor are they inefficient enough that I could cleverly suggest that they may be allergic to efficiency. No, it’s worse than that. Efficiency is the Vietnamese Peoples’ Kryptonite.

Here’s a Western cultural practice that does not have its praises sung nearly enough: the line. There’s not much to it, just a bunch of people standing in a row and patiently waiting their turn.

It’s this simplicity that makes it so perfect, though. You might have to wait, but you can very

quickly and easily judge how long you’ll have to do so for. And if you’re not at the front of this line, maybe you’ll be in the front of the next one. Everyone gets served as fast as possible.

I never noticed how great this is when I lived in Western countries because the poor, unheralded line is in the same unfortunate situation as Jodi Mitchell’s paradise (you know, the one they replaced with a parking lot). You just don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

It’s gone now. Oh, is it ever gone. It just doesn’t exist here, in any capacity. No matter the situation, be it at the post office, supermarket, or anywhere else where the number of people to be served is greater than the number of people doing the serving, there will be an unruly mob, all pushing and shoving to get in.

At the kindergarten I currently teach at, I’m trying my best

to instill this Western value in their impressionable brains, but I fear that it is an uphill battle that will eventually be lost.

If the inability to line up was the only inefficiency in Vietnam, I would be hesitant to generalize the whole country as such. But no. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.

On the theme of hospitality, eating out in Vietnam is always a mixed bag. If you’re with one or more other person, getting eighty percent of your order is doing well. And this isn’t a language thing – I’ve been out to dinner with Vietnamese people who (i assume, at least) ordered in perfect Vietnamese only to have great swathes of the meal never arrive. The novel concept of writing down orders has yet to arrive here; most places just have the waiter relay the order to the kitchen by shouting across the restaurant. Like I said, inefficient.

But the most maddening was when I was asked by my employer, in all seriousness, to take a CD

home and write down the lyrics to “wheels on the bus,” that popular children’s song we all know and some of us love.

The reasons behind it made sense. They wanted to be able to sing the song when a foreign teacher wasn’t around, and they had a hard time understanding the words, as speakers of English as a 2nd language. But the internet is available in Vietnam. Call me insensitive and precious (you wouldn’t be the first), but it strikes me as far easier (on everyone) to just plug “wheels on the bus” and “lyrics” into Google than the option they took.

And maybe they didn’t think of it. Lapse in judgement or something. So I told them! I explained how much easier it would be (especially on me, because man do I hate that song), but they would not hear a word of reason.

So the CD sits in my bag, untouched, until they figure out that Google isn’t just a more efficient option, it’s their only option.

Just doing my part, one frustrated employer at a time.

Build This

2009-09-03T20:20:00.000-07:00

Construction has started in my hometown of Dunedin, NZ. Under the catchy, if illogical, slogan of “just build it!” the Dunedin City Council (DCC) is using $85 million of money borrowed against the whole city’s credit to build a 30,000-person-capacity stadium with a retractable roof.

To put this in perspective, Dunedin is a city of not much over 100,000. What’s more, it already has a stadium that serves its purpose reasonably well. I’m all for thinking positively, but to assume that fully one half of the city will be in attendance at sports events is just a bit heavy on the optimism and light on the rationality.

But there’s been more than enough vitriole on both sides of this debate for years now, so I’m going to refrain. Rather, I think it’s time someone examined something that hasn’t been examined yet – the truly awesome other things Dunedin could do with that kind of money.

The Pool

Dunedin has a pretty nifty pool. It has a kids’ river, a wave ppool, a lap pool, two diving pools, and, the piece de resistance, the hydroslide. This is all nice, but in the spirit of the Awatere Stadium, we can do better.

Why do we have just one wave pool? We should have at least three, all with different levels of intensity. Actually, what we should really spring for is a Flowrider - a machine that makes a single, perpetual wave for surfing. Dunedin has a massive surfing subculture but it’s so cold that I fear that some people are missing out due to excessive sanity. Imagine how much more accessible this pastime would be if we changed it from an outdoor one to an indoor one!

These are fine ideas, but what I’d really like to do is throw the entire amount at the hydroslide. After all, this is the most visible part of the pool, the most prevalent symbol of the DCC's generosity, so we should make it better, stronger, and, most importantly, visible from further away.

I’m no slide engineer, but I feel like you could do a lot with the kind of money that’s being spent on the stadium. I’m thinking of something that starts ten blocks away, with an elevator to get to the top. To get there, you could either park in the enormous structure I plan to build, or simply float along the underground river (with breathing room and lights) that meanders from the slide’s exit to its entrance. I’m pretty sure you could do this for $85 million, and I would be a little more enthusiastic in my support than I am for the current use of the same amount.

Make Hills Less of a Problem

Dunedin is set up in such a way that the haves literally look down on the have-nots, with the ritzier neighbourhoods sitting on top of the ironically named Maori Hill. This is a big drag when you’re a teenager or adult who lives at home without a car (although by the time I became the latter I had upgraded to a bicycle, which didn’t help my hill troubles at all).

I want the next generation of upper-crust teenagers to be able to avoid this horror. Let’s bring back the cable car. Or, better yet, a moving sidewalk. Better than both: level the damn hill. All that dynamite and zoning would be expensive, but when you’ve got $85 million to kill the world’s your oyster.

M-16s for Everyone

Because you never know when you’re going to have to fight the power.

Dance Lessons for Everyone

Because there’s more than one way to fight the power.

The Final Frontier

I have a confession to make. When I started writing this, my mind was already made up. There’s no question as to what I think my $85 million should be spent on, and once you read this inspiration neither will there be in yours.

A space program. Dunedin’s own.

Now, I know this is revolutionary and controversial but the best ideas are. Who says space programs are strictly the purview of national governments? Just because it’s always been that way doesn’t mean it always has to be that way. Let’s get a municipal spaceship.

The positive effects are innumerable. First of all, it’ll bring in all kinds of high-end jobs. For the first time ever, pokey little Dunedin will be the destination of choice for robotics engineers, high-tech designers, and, of course, rocket scientists. Also, the image is spectacular – a space shuttle, painted in Otago blue and gold, hurtling at thousands of miles per hour to infinity and beyond.

Of course, space programs cost more than $85 million but then so do huge-capacity stadiums with retractable roofs. So, just like with the stadium, I’ll get outside, private investors involved – there’s a real market for space tourism for millionaires, and I don’t know how they feel but I, for one, would rather my interstellar flight took off from lush New Zealand than the desolate wasteland that is the Russian Federation.

But I’m not the final authority on such things (like I am on medicine, beauty, biking, movies, and literature). So please, utilize my comments section. Tell me what you’d like to see $85 million of what is (at least partly) your money spent on.

And don't be shy - it's okay if your idea only benefits a select group of special interests.

Ice Never Tasted So Good

2009-08-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

If you ever get a cold in

Vietnam

, lock yourself in your room until it’s run its course. If you don’t, you risk compounding and extending your sniffles through sheer stress and frustration.

For one, there’s a myth that will haunt you. When you’re not raised in “don’t drink cold drinks when you have a cold,” it’s very easy to mock the irrationality behind it. But then, I can’t be too condescending, as it’s just as irrational as the Western “don’t tell anyone you’re pregnant in the first trimester.”

In any case, the no-ice myth is just as irritating as it sounds. I first experienced it when I was on a holiday with four local women I barely knew. They were incredibly nice but were, for a variety of reasons, excruciating to spend time with, so I tried to abandon the trip a day early by feigning a cold. It didn’t really work – by the time I had formulated my plan, the morning bus had already left, so I ended up leaving only marginally earlier than I was originally going to.

More importantly, my fake illness meant that for the entire day I was denied cold drinks. A round of refreshing iced teas would arrive at our table, but before I could get my hands on one, one of the women would say something in rapid-fire Vietnamese, immediately after which it would be snatched away and replaced with its piping hot evil twin. There are few things less pleasant than sweltering in the Vietnam heat while drinking something made from freshly-boiled water.

Like all myths, this one annoys me because of its profound lack of logic. When you have a cold, what you need most in the world is hydration. Water, orange juice, Gatorade- anything to keep your fluids up. It’s not easy to choke down hot tea in the tropics, and it’s impossible to drink a lot of it.

But I made it through this ice-free day and went on with my life. Four months later, I actually got a cold, and the whole process repeated itself, albeit with different people.

Usually, I let my immune system take care of my illnesses, as I figure the boys could use the real-world experience to supplement their grueling training regimens. But when a café I frequent literally refused to serve me iced tea – supposedly for my own good – I decided to make an exception because I didn’t want to cause unacceptable loss of face by screaming at a kindly waiter who was just trying to help me out.

So I went to the pharmacy and described my symptoms, expecting something like sudaphed. Instead, I was given a three-day course of ten pills a day and advice to spit phlegm out my mouth to avoid a chest infection. I took the former and knocked them back, thinking to myself “when in Vietnam…”

I’m retrospectively reminded of an interview I once saw with my hero, Seth Rogan, who talked about when he got a cold and, for some reason or another, drank bourbon to cure it. Like him, I definitely felt good after taking my “medicine,” but “good” is significantly different from “cured.”

I was loopy. First, I felt fantastic. Cloud nine fantastic. I was relaxed, with as light smile on my face, going about my business in a fog of medicated bliss. Sure, I was still stuffy, but I didn’t really care anymore.

Then I started to feel active. And not just in contrast to the tiredness brought on by my cold. I felt like I’d washed down a pile of amphetamines with fifty or sixty cups of coffee. My fingers positively flew across the keyboard as I sat in a café and facebooked the finer points of life with everyone who had the pleasure of being online at the same time as me.

Then I left the café, bought some lunch, and entered the next stage. All that energy had its price, and I was exhausted. More exhausted than, I think, I’ve been in my entire life. I collapsed on the couch, leaving my lunch half-finished, which is probably a first for me. Leaving my lunch, not sleeping on the couch.

I woke up in a fit of paranoia. Everyone was out to get me. I was jumping to conclusions about people I’d met that weren’t just unreasonable, they were absolute fantasy. I’ve never been a particularly paranoid guy, so this was a brand-new and wholly unpleasant experience.

I went to take another nap. This time, however, I was in a strange no-man’s land that wasn’t alert, wasn’t tired, but certainly wasn’t normal. I would close my eyes and lapse immediately into incredibly vivid dreams while still being aware of my body, pillow, and blankets. They were a cross between dreams and hallucinations, and were thoroughly unrefreshing.

All through this, by the way, my cold remained completely undiminished. And I’m not a doctor, or even anything approaching an expert in the sciences, but all these effects seem profoundly worse than some sneezes and coughs. In the medications’ defense, I was distracted from my cold for awhile as I turned my brain to these more pressing matters. Maybe that was its purpose.

I opted to avoid the cold medication in the evening, but still went to work, where I felt a bit bad over the fact that all the Vietnamese teachers were now coughing and sipping hot water. I couldn’t resist some smugness, though –those same teachers had been religiously wearing masks when I came in hacking and coughing the day before, not to protect themselves from me but to protect themselves from the dreaded H1N1. Suckers.

Over the next few days, I recovered with little fanfare. Now I’m a first class citizen again, being served the same drinks as everyone else. Ice never tasted so good.

Things I Don't Understand

2009-08-18T19:52:00.000-07:00

There’s a lot I don’t understand. In fact, the amount of things I don’t understand outweighs the

amount of things I do by an enormous factor. When something is marked down 30 percent, why

do people buy three of them? Why do people drive to the gym? Why do people stretch their seatbelt over one shoulder so that passing police think it’s on but don’t go all the way and click it in properly?

This last one, which I witnessed in the USA, was a particular mindblower. While I support fighting the man as much as possible, this is a situation when the man’s going to have the last laugh – especially when you’re in an unsocialised, second-rate hospital with your credit being destroyed by the minute after you fly through your windshield.

Moving to Vietnam has done precisely nothing to improve this foible of mine. Indeed, it has compounded it. Where my own culture confounded me enough, a foreign one is, as I’ve said a million times before, a whole new world of weird happenings. So here is a summation of the irritating, the infuriating, and the inexplicable.

Fruit Prices

I know by now that a smoothie from a streetside vendor costs 7,000 dong (about $NZ0.70). I also know that if I go to a vendor I’m not a regular at that I will be charged 10 or even 15 thousand dong for the same smoothie. This used to put me into a rage at the principle of being overcharged based on my white skin, large body, and pointy nose, but I’ve become much more complacent about it. After all, it’s really only a token amount more, especially when the same smoothie would cost $5 in NZ.

But I draw the line at fruit. Rather than charge slightly more than or even double the going rate, fruitsellers love to try to charge me three to five times as much. And I just don’t understand it. Not only will they quote me a price that is at times higher than expensive, non-tropical New Zealand, they will also often refuse to budge from that price.

It’s not very logical, really. Rather than sell me fruit at a slightly-higher-than-average rate, the extortionate rate assures that they make precisely zero dong in profit as I walk away in a huff.

Of course, when I go to the next stand my energy is so sapped from the first one that I accept, with no argument whatsoever, a price that is only marginally lower (to the tune of three or four cents). Maybe it’s an elaborate scheme run by all the fruitsellers, or maybe I’m just paranoid.

Motorbike Parking

This makes sense in theory. You park your motorbike, a guy hands you a ticket, watches it while you’re shopping, working out, or drinking, and then when you’re done you give your ticket to the man, who gets your motorbike and sends you on your way.

They probably do this in the West too, but I’ve never been swanky enough to go to a place with valet parking; I’ve barely even owned a car.

At any rate, the parking guys are devoted to their jobs. If you’ve lost your ticket, it’s a big deal.

I was reminded of this at my gym a few days ago. Every day, I go there, exercise, and then as I leave the parking man sees me and gets my bike ready as I walk out. He knows it’s my bike, I know it’s my bike, and, as if to underscore the fact that the ticket’s a formality, he tears it up without looking at it when I give it to him.

So when my ticket either got dissolved by sweat or, more likely, fell out one of the several holes in my back pocket, I thought it would be no big deal. After all, the parking guy and I – we had a relationship.

No dice. Even though he knew exactly which motorbike was mine, he wasn’t having a bar of it. No ticket, no bike. So I stood there for ten minutes or so, looking distressed until, tired of hearing me talk to him in a foreign language, he relented.

As I mounted my bike, I apologized to him and tried to show him that I had a hole in my shorts by making a hole with my thumb and forefinger and pointing to it with the forefinger of another hand. It wasn’t until he recoiled in disgust that I realised that my gesture could be construed very differently.

Needless to say, I’ve been swimming for the past week or so.

But this is what I don’t understand: aren’t keys sufficient indicator of ownership? What’s more, if a thief were to go to the effort to steal your keys, wouldn’t he or she go ahead and steal your ticket as well? Simply locking your bike seems way more effective than participating in this weird charade.

Weird Lies

The most baffling thing I’ve encountered here, however, is a tendency of employers, landlords, and the like to tell me things that are not only untrue, they lack any grounding in reality.

For example. For my first six weeks here I lived in a hotel. It was a nice place, but a tad lonely. It also didn’t have a kitchen, which is a convenience I surprisingly missed, even though I literally never cook. So when I found a room in a house with some similar-aged teachers for $100 less per month, I jumped at the opportunity.

The conversation with my landlady then went like this. “Hi, I’ve found a new place, so I’m going to move out at the end of the week.”

“New place? How much?”

“$200 a month.”

“Oh, that very cheap.” (it isn’t really)

“Yes, that’s part of why I’m moving there”

“Does it have air conditioning?”

“Yep.”

“I don’t think it does.”

I furrowed my brow. “Yes, it does, I looked at it yesterday.”

“No, there is no air conditioning.”

And this didn’t happen in isolation. It’s happened on loads of other less-noteworthy occasions, but one is forever seared in my memory.

The school I work for grew tired of paying me in envelopes of cash, so they opened a bank account for me. As part of the process, I brought in a photocopy of my passport and visa (the latter of which the woman looked at and said “ooh, single!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it meant single entry, but I had to wonder what she would have thought if I’d had a multiple-entry visa).

Two weeks later, I got a phone call saying my debit card for my new bank account was ready. I went in, and was handed a shiny, new card: with the name Sram Bartob Grnovern. I pointed out that, while I was sorry to cause trouble, that is not my name, and consequently it would probably be unwise to use a bank account opened in this near substitute.

“Oh, no!” the woman nearly had an anxiety attack, “but that is your name!”

Furrowing again. “I’m sorry, but it really isn’t.”

“No! That was the name on your passport!”

Again, I said, kindly I think, that no, it wasn’t the name on my passport, as it wasn’t my name. She argued for a few minutes, but I felt fairly confident on this point so I stood my ground.

I guess it would have been easier for them if I’d just admitted that no, I wasn’t Sam Barton Grover. But ever since then I’ve wondered what social protocol I’d (so clearly) violated. Was I supposed to simply say “oh, right, that is my name. Silly me,” and go on my way?

Like I said. Bewildering.

Hiding Face

2009-08-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

Even though I grew up in the antipodes, I’m not completely cut off from the world, so I wasn’t overly surprised when I arrived in March and saw a large amount of motorbike drivers clad in masks.

AlthoughI was skeptical, I'm told that they’re a godsend, especially if you find yourself behind a truck or a bus, something that, I can now attest, makes breathing a difficult and unpleasant exercise. So maybe there's something to the motorbike masks.

The fact that they’re primarily worn by women also suggests to me that they have something to do with the national obsession with light skin, but that is, as of yet, an unproven hypothesis.

But over the past few months a new phenomenon has emerged. No longer is the mask a cloth driving accessory but it has, with the swine flu epidemic, turned into a surgical life accessory.

I’m going to go ahead and check my cultural sensitivity at the door here and be honest: these masks are really stupid. They're ineffective, superficial, and, most importantly, an enormous pain in my ass.

For one, I’m pretty sure that these masks put the wearer more at risk than he or she would be without. This is especially true with small children, who idly chew on theirs. Before long, what was once a mask transforms into a soggy, disgusting mess. Pretty gross. Also, it completely negates the mask in the first place, as swine flu is a waterborn disease. It swims sperm-like through snot and spit droplets, and will think nothing of swan-diving into that mess and delivering you a hot, fresh case of H1N1.

Not to mention the fact that walking around with that sludge on your face all day creates a breeding ground for other germs.

They’re also a hassle. Not just a small hassle, but an enormous one. If you ever think your blood pressure is too low, do this: get a job as an English teacher for 10 five-year olds, all of whom are wearing surgical masks. Not only are their already-tiny voices muffled by their so-called “protection,” they’ve also been told by their parents not to take them off under any circumstances. I inadvertently made a child cry last week when, without thinking, I reached over and pulled his mask down because I wanted to – god forbid – hear his voice in a language class.

I’m prepared to put up with hassles if it’s in the name of safety. Indeed, I’m a big fan of safety: I always wear a bike helmet, never fail to put on my seatbelt, and after a really nasty foot infection two years ago, always clean my cuts with hydrogen peroxide and warm water. So if the masks were actually preventing swine flu, I’d applaud them. “Go ahead,” I’d enthusiastically crow, “wear a mask! I’m wearing two!”

But that’s why they’re so annoying. They’re not effective at all. It’s not like they’re a little bit effective, or sometimes effective. No. A surgical mask is not a valid way to protect yourself from swine flu, or anything else for that matter. Not leaving the house is a good way to avoid the flu, as is wearing an expensive, completely impractical respirator. Or, you know, washing your hands.

And here’s the final, crushing blow to this moronic cultural phenomenon. Swine flu isn’t a big deal. I don’t know why nobody’s really said this, but let’s face it: it’s not. With an estimated mortality rate of less than half a percent, and probably, in fact, less than that because so many cases never make it to a doctor or hospital, it’s really not anything to worry about.

So, face-hiders, please, I’m begging you. For the sake of your dignity and my sanity, stop playing into the hands of the pharmacists who have shrewdly doubled and even tripled the price of their surgical masks and think rationally. Because I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

Biking in the Big City

2009-07-29T23:26:00.000-07:00

When I first arrived here, I had no problem with walking everywhere I went. That changed after two months, though, when I moved into a house that was twice as far from my work as my hotel had been. Where a fifteen minute walk was tolerable, thirty minutes, two times a day, in the sweltering HCMC heat was just a bit much.

I had a bit of a dilemma – Vietnamese food and this daily regimen had delivered me a new, svelte figure that I’d grown attached to, and knew that a owning a motorbike would soon see the end of . So I compromised: I bought a bicycle.

I used to bike everywhere I went in Dunedin, a city that, while much sleepier than this one, is also far hillier. Because of this, I figured it’d be no problem here – I’d zip around much faster, save precious time, and generally be more mobile.

And it was a marked improvement. All of those things came true; no longer is a trip to the corner store for some ice cream a twenty-minute time investment and no longer am I accosted by endless streams of motorbike taxi drivers. I leave my neighbourhood more often, and generally enjoy all the perks that come from bigger range.

I do have a few complaints, though. For one, a good seventy percent of the people I pass collapse into laughter. This is for a myriad of reasons; for one, the bike I ride was designed for the Vietnamese frame. My 100 kilograms make me resemble the clichéd gorilla on a tricycle, which I can understand is quite mirth-worthy.

I also wear a helmet, which nobody in Vietnam does on a bicycle. This is not something I understand quite as well as the above reason; an impact at speed with a moving bus, truck, car, or motorbike is equally traumatic, no matter what you're riding. So to the people who laugh at my helmet, I say this: I’ll be laughing at you when you’re in a coma.

Finally, the fact that I’m even on a bicycle is hilarious. I think it has to do with the same mindset that finds dark skin so repugnant: biking, like a tan, is for peasants, and all people of means and with any self-respect avoid bicycles like the plague. Since the assumption is that all foreigners are filthy rich (which, to be honest, we are in relation to the cost of living), it is hilarious to see one on a bicycle.

That’s not the only negative aspect of biking. Even though it’s flat here, it’s also incredibly hot. Along with a raincoat, a second shirt is now high on the list of things I don’t leave home without: far too many times have I taught a class of 13 year olds who, in keeping with the theme of my life in Vietnam, were overcome with laughter at my sweat-soaked carcass. This particular laughter, however, soon turned to watering eyes and wrinkled noses as my sweat dried and began to emit a distinctive, thoroughly unpleasant aroma.

I also often fear for my life. The motorbike reigns supreme in Ho Chi Minh City, closely followed by buses who dominate with their size, followed by cars who usually push motorbikes out of their way but are swarmed in busy times, with bicycles bringing up the rear. With the speed of a car in traffic but without the power, I literally have no control. On countless occasions, I’ve made turns I didn’t need to make, gone down incorrect streets, and pulled over to wait because the inexorable flow of the traffic made going the correct way a life or death decision that would result in the latter.

But I still didn’t mind, because I was getting around faster than when I was walking. Then I got a dose of the last thing I needed: perspective. A Vietnamese friend, fed up with driving me around and dubious of her ability to steer with me on the back, insisted that I learn to drive her motorbike. The first ten or fifteen minutes were sweatier than all my bicycle rides put together as I gingerly accelerated, certain that I was going to propel my passenger, her bike, and myself into something or someone. But soon enough I was blasting through traffic like – in my eyes, at least – a pro.

It was fantastic. I wasn’t getting worn out, I was going way faster than a bike, and finally I could dictate my own destination rather than be at the mercy of everyone else’s. All the limitations of my bicycle were dealt with in one fell swoop.

Then my friend went home, and I had to go to work. Upgrading from walking to the bicycle was a dream come true – but downgrading from the motorbike was a living nightmare. I never felt so slow or sweaty in my life as I did that day.

But I’m holding out. I’m sticking with my bicycle, partly out of commitment to regular exercise, partly because I got incredibly ripped off when I bought it and want to make my overspending worth it, and partly because I enjoy bringing it up whenever someone starts talking to me about the evils of pollution (invariably a person who, in one of life's refreshing ironies, swears by their motorbike).

It’s anyone’s guess as to how long it’ll last.

Tanning

2009-07-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

My father hates Dr. Seuss, and consequently his books were never a huge part of my upbringing.However, since I’ve worked in and around primary schools for a year and a half now, I’ve become familiar with a few of his stories.

I’m not a fan of classics like Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat, as even as a child I was irritated by the self-indulgent rhyming taking precedence over the story. However, I do enjoy a handful of the Dr's other children's books. My favourite is one I recently discovered when a child at my school asked me to read it to him: The Sneetches.

Here’s a quick rundown: some of the sneetches have stars on their bellies; some don’t. The ones who do won’t let the ones without on the beaches (the self-indulgence is, of course, present, but I’m able to ignore it). Luckily, Sylvester McMonkey McBean arrives, with an affordably-priced star-painting machine!

Of course, once he’s done that, he then goes to the other group and offers them the service – again for a low price – of star removal. And so on and so forth, until nobody knows who they are anymore and everyone can live in perfect harmony.

Dunedin’s Western location on a cultural scale combined with its (extreme) Southern location on a geographic scale has created an odd standard of fashionability for the lucrative 18-24 female demographic. On one hand, ever the pragmatists, they want to protect themselves from the city’s perpetual drizzle and winds that deliver icy chills straight from – seriously – Antarctica. On the other, Western standards of beauty demand that everyone’s skin be toasted to a luxurious golden brown.

Achieving this is made more difficult by the fact that most of Dunedin – and New Zealand’s – residents are descended from the British Isles, a genetic makeup that is not overly conducive to tanning. So they first slather themselves in fake tan, and then, with a complete lack of a sense of irony, climb into a puffer jacket and don a scarf to protect themselves - and their recently-applied coat of tan - from the elements.

Cut to Vietnam, where the exact opposite is true. Naturally, since a tan is easy to come by, people – especially women – wear hoodies in the 30+ degree weather, along with sunglasses, masks, sleeves, and socks with their sandals to prevent the slightest pigment change. If they should find themselves outside without their anti-tan gear, they’ll grab whatever is nearby, be it a book, piece of paper, or takeaway container, and hold it over their heads. Anything to avoid the sun’s brutal rays.

Vietnamese women definitely have a healthier goal, but I don’t think the motivations have anything to do with health. Rather, just like their Western counterparts, they’re trying to achieve something that is, much to my surprise (although it shouldn’t have been), completely arbitrary: beauty.

At first, I thought it was just a masochistic desire on both groups’ parts to fight an uphill battle, but recently someone spelled out the real reason for me when she said, in shocked response to my enquiry as to why she wanted such light skin “I don’t want to look like a farmer!”

Because that’s it. Even though we don’t say it in the West, it’s still at the forefront: nobody wants to look poor. It’s acceptable – indeed, even par for the course in the West – to actually be poor, with debts, loans, and overdrafts all over the place but looking poor is unacceptable.

In temperate North America, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, those with money can afford to go on holidays where they can work on their tan; they have the spare time to lounge on their roofs in bikinis; they have the extra few dollars a week to splurge on a tanning bed. Saving all of that, a bottle of L’Oreal fake tan is always just a short trip to the pharmacy or department store away: if you can’t be tan, you may as well look tan. "At least," you’re saying to the world, "I can afford this bottle."

So of course it’s the opposite here, in a country in a region where the well-off sit at desks and the poor toil the fields and sell trinkets on the streets. Here, light skin is a sign that you don’t have to work outside, that you can afford air conditioning, that you can stay inside during the hottest part of the day.

It’s all an effort to separate ourselves from the working classes. In the industrialized West, a working man or woman spends his or her days in an office, under a car, in a factory; here, the working people farm.

Of course, there are significantly more people who look middle class than actually are middle class. Thankfully, credit cards have yet to arrive here, so unskilled labourers with $20,000 cars, $2,000 televisions and assorted overly expensive clothing are not yet on the scene.

But the appearances of the middle class are available to those who have to work outside. It’s in every pharmacy and supermarket, prominently displayed and constantly being re-stocked. Made by L’Oreal, probably in the same factory as the tanning cream by pasty assembly line workers, it comes in a bottle of the same colour it promises to make your skin: milky, glowing white.

Followup

2009-06-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

I'm kind of lacking in topics this week, so it looks like all you fans are going to have to wait awhile for your thousand-word fix. In the meantime, here's the finished product of the Super Youth Commercial:

A Different World

2009-06-17T22:23:00.000-07:00

“Cultural differences?” I grandly asked myself as I boarded the plane three months ago, “what a load of baloney! People are people the world over! There’s nothing different about us, that’s all just colonial-era claptrap!”

We can learn from this internal exchange that I (thankfully) speak very differently to myself than I do to others. This is lucky because I’m not sure if my grandparents’ generation even uses words like “baloney” and “claptrap.”

More revealing, however, is the level of naivete I displayed. I was a Man of the World when I boarded that plane! I’d lived in the US, New Zealand, and Canada; I’d spent a week in Fiji and three in Scandinavia! I’d even spent five days in Hong Kong. If anyone was qualified to make such grand observations, it was me.

Incorrect. Vietnam is so foreign from anything I’m used to that at times I feel like I may as well be on a different planet. Minh, a guy who, had he been in an American or Kiwi alleyway, would be, aside from the occasional bit of spare change or bag of canned goods, completely ignored, is just the beginning.

I’m not going to wax on about how Vietnamese culture is so superior to ours, either. There’s a real tendency for people (usually college girls), to go on and on about how terrible their home country is and how perfect foreign - particularly third world - countries are.. That’s always kind of annoyed me, because it seems to me that someone pregnant with their fifth kid when the first four are malnourished or dead probably wouldn’t mind a little materialism if itt came with a a life expectancy past 55.

But I digress.

Rather than being superior or inferior, it’s just astoundingly different. For one, it’s not at all uncommon for people to live with their parents, grandparents, or other extended family until an advanced age. My most loyal readers will recall my man Quy , who lives with his parents at 31.

Not that this is uncommon in New Zealand. I’m a bit of a boomerang kid myself, using my parents’ attic as a sort of halfway house between one lifestage and another, a place to sleep and eat for free while I put together the funds to do whatever I’ve decided to do that year.

It's not just common here, though. It's expected. I asked a 26-year old reporter I met once whether he’d ever think about moving out of his parents’ house, and he turned ashen, turning to me and saying “they would be so angry.”

That’s the biggest difference, though. The ex-colonial countries I’ve spent time in are fixated on the individual; it’s every man (or woman) for his (or her) self out there. Not so in Vietnam, where the collective and the family are of paramount importance. Generations live under the same roof, with grandparents, aunts, and uncles everywhere.

It’s not just families, either. It’s groups in general. I went away for a weekend with four local women once, and on the odd occasion that I was not right next to them, I would hear my name screamed three times in quick succession in an anxious plea. Once this happened on a ferry, and I rran over, thinking the boat was sinking or I had strayed into a restricted area, or something similar. Luckily this was not the case. They just couldn’t bear for me to not be part of the group.

Needless to say, this can become absolutely infuriating.

Along with the collective mindset comes a very different concept of personal space. Whenever I try to pay for something and struggle (I’m really not used to cash, and with $1US being worth over 17,000 Vietnamese Dong, my wallet is often overflowing with bills, none of them worth more than 5 or 10 cents), the clerk will helpfully reach into my wallet and pull out the money for me. To him, it’s not big deal – he can see the amount of money he needs, and why should I care if he speeds the whole process up? Just like I can’t imagine why anyone would find this acceptable, he can’t imagine why anyone should think it isn’t.

Thanks to these differences, living in Vietnam has taught me an almost zen-like ability to control my emotions and reactions. I fear, however, that once I get back to an ex-colony, this new positive aspect of my character will be completely negated by the fact that my sense of personal space is beginning to adapt to my new country's norms.

We keep to ourselves in the ex-colonies. Striking up a conversation with a stranger, asking personal questions, and touching him or her is almost invariably construed as sleazy or salesman-like; the instant we encounter it, our guard goes up. It’s precisely the opposite here. There is absolutely nothing wrong with touching someone’s arm as you ask them whether they have a girlfriend and how much money they make;

indeed, to do otherwise would be cold and standoffish.

Touching is very much an intramural gender sport, too. In the Ex-colonies, men touch each other on very special occasions. They hug their best friends and shake everyone else’s hand. That’s it. Anything more and you’re in dangerous sexual territory.

Of course, sporting events, drunkenness, and combinations thereof are a completely different story.

Vietnamese men, however, walk around with their arms around each other, jovially jump on one another, and lay all over one another. When I got a haircut not long ago, the barber asked me something in Vietnamese, and then proceeded to massage my whole body with a vibrating machine – and I do mean my whole body. He gave my calves, stomach, shoulders, and back, a good working over.. Nervously, I wondered if I had inadvertently hired someone who offers more than just haircuts, but when he moved onto my inner thighs and simply grabbed my extraneous bits and moved them aside in a businesslike fashion, I relaxed a little.

Everything is close, in your face, packed together. It can be absolutely excruciating at times, such as when my shoes broke and I had to walk a mile in barefeet, a bad situation that was made worse by the fact that literally every local I passed pointed out that I had no shoes on. But so can theWestern tendency to constantly be aloof and too cool for school, to never tell anyone anything about yourself and never talk to someone to whom you haven’t been properly introduced.

That's Vietnam. Better in some ways, worse in others, but one hundred percent, absolutely, entirely different.

The Super Youth Commercial

2009-06-08T22:26:00.000-07:00

"SAM SAM SAM could I talk to you?”

I cringed. The last time Ms Thao, my boss, had taken me aside for a little chat had been so that she could tell me to put my tie in my bag when I walked out at the end of the day, rather than hold it in my hand. The time before, it had been to tell me to stop sitting down while I teach, as students had told their parents that I occasionally sit down, and the parents had gone on to complain.

I’d gotten a little miffed at that one. There is patently no way that a child goes home from English school, is asked how his day was, and by way of response says “it was great! The teacher sat down for a few minutes!” So it was with some trepidation that I went into a side room to hear my boss’s latest request.

“Can you wear a jacket tomorrow?”

“Sorry, I don’t own one.”

“Well can you buy one?”

Pause. “No.”

Her forehead wrinkled, giving away incredible amounts of anxiety that she tried to hide with a not-very-genuine-smile. “Do you have a white shirt?”

“Sure.” I put out a feeler. “Why?”

“We are taping an ad that will go to all of Vietnam tomorrow and we want you to look very handsome.”

This was interesting. I couldn’t really say that I expected this exact situation to arise, but its strangeness was definitely par for the course. This is a school that regularly tops itself in terms of the bizarre.

For example. Part of my job is testing new students, which I already don’t entirely understand. I sit with a small, terrified child and have him or her repeat words after me. Since the child tends to be new to English, he or she will always have no vocabulary and atrocious pronunciation; hardly unexpected. But still, I’m consistently pulled out of my classes to go through this charade.

So I carry the whole process out, and after I’m done (this is determined by when my boredom reaches its apex), a local teacher will ask me how the child’s English pronunciation was. I’ll give an answer, and be on my way.

Then, a few weeks ago, they started asking me a new question. I answered the usual pronunciation question and made to leave, when the woman said “wait.” I obliged, and she asked me another question: “how is his psychology?”

“Excuse me?”

“Psychologically? You know, his brain, his mind?” This shattered the impression I had of her misunderstanding the word “psychology.”

“I’m not sure…I’m not a psychologist,” I tried to be tactful as I gave this what I thought to be rather obvious fact.

“Hmm, yes.” She smiled and nodded. “But is his brain okay?”

“Well, I guess, but like I said, I’m not a….”

She cut me off and bustled me out of the room. “Thank you see you again.”

So I wasn’t caught completely off-guard when my boss told me why I was to dress nicely the following day, as the abnormal had long ago replaced the normal at Super Youth. On the contrary, I was flattered. Just a few short months ago, I was an embittered civil servant living in his parents’ attic; now I’m well on my way to becoming a Vietnamese TV star.

“What do you need me to do?”

“Make the children very happy,” she said as she shoved something into my face. It was all in Vietnamese, but I recognized it as a script. I was literally going to be running a scripted lesson.

Actually, I kind of liked it, as it had a song to teach the kids and a couple of games that looked fun. It was kind of amusing that from my first day on I’d just been thrown into a classroom with vague instructions to “teach these pages” for 45 minutes, and it was only now, in the presence of cameras, that I was being given any meaningful tips, but I’m familiar with the adage about gift horses and their mouths.

The next day came, and when I arrived at work the first thing the boss told me was to come down to a classroom where she had my six-year-olds ready. We were going to practice. “Great,” I thought. Even though I’d nodded and said yes, mostly because I didn’t want to be in a conversation with my anxiety-ridden boss anymore, I wasn’t entirely clear on the details of how the class was to run. So a run-through would be great. Iron out the kinks, et cetera et cetera.

The kids were sitting there, excited that their routine was being broken. I opened my mouth to begin the lesson (the first scene on the script was to introduce myself to the children, which was odd seeing how they’d had me as their teacher for months), but I was interrupted by Ms Thao shrieking. The children, it turned out, had not been sitting with their arms crossed on their desks, and today that was an inexcusable offence.

It’s not like sitting with crossed arms is a rule that just isn’t enforced. It really was completely new to everyone involved – me, the children, and the Vietnamese teacher.

We started again, with 16 little arms obediently crossed. I made it through the introduction, and moved onto the first game. This one was easy – I was to pantomime different vocabulary words, and the students would raise their hands and answer as to what it was. No problem; I’d done it a million times before.

I pantomimed my first word (apple, by the way) and eight hands shot up. They went right back into their arms-folded position, though, when Ms Thao shrieked again, possibly louder than the first time.

The problem? Today, the six-year-olds weren’t going to simply raise their hands. They were going to shout “ding-dong!” as well.

It was about here that I couldn’t stop myself from breaking out in peals of laughter every few minutes. We only had a couple hours until the cameras came, she was stressed to the max that it go perfectly, and she was calling audibles?

Luckily, that was the last time she changed the play during the rehearsal, and it proceeded without a hitch. Then she had us do it again. And again. And again. Three times we did that twenty-minute lesson, and by the third time she was shrieking that the kids’ “ding-dongs” weren’t loud enough.

Finally, she told me not to call on one girl because “she is too slow, she will make school look bad.” I asked if that wasn’t more than a little harsh, especially seeing how the girl in question was six, but Ms Thao gave a weird smile and walked away.

We had a quick break, and then our moment arrived. The cameras were here, and the children, exhausted by now, were led through their “lesson” for the fourth time. Ms Thao stood nervously outside the open door, a regular bundle of nerves.

I went through the lesson, with the children giving half-hearted “ding-dongs,” constantly looking to Ms Thao in fear and trepidation. After the introduction, it was time for a song.

The song was simple, but I messed it up. Oops. It was supposed to go “up down, turn around, up up up, down down down down, turn around and JUMP!”

I only said “down” three times. I know. Unforgivable. Ms Thao came blustering in, shrieking and flailing her arms, screaming instructions in her shrill voice to the cameraman, trying to get him to stop recording so we could start the lesson over. He snapped back, also in Vietnamese, and judging by the fact that she faded into the corner, it was probably something along the lines of “are you insane? We’re not starting over.”

But she was on edge. She hovered around for the rest of the lesson, interjecting not-very-quietly over and over again. She looked like she was about to explode.

I was getting a little frustrated. Not that I overly cared how the commercial went. I was just a little annoyed that she was such a pile of stress over the kids being happy and everything being perfect, but at the same time she was singlehandedly ruining it.

It was time for the game. And an inspiration dawned on me. I would call on the slow girl.

I did it, and it was great. The colour drained out of Ms Thao’s face as she tried to signal to me what a mistake I was making through hand gesture and facial expressions, as the cameraman had by this stage insisted on silence from her. I pretended not to understand, and called on the little girl again. And again. And again.

It was like the climatic point in a children’s movie; just as I had expected, she wasn’t slow at all. She answered the questions at the same speed or faster than anyone else. In my brain, the violins swelled, as the underdog and I stuck it to the (wo)man, who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And then it was over. Ms Thao approached me. “Are you stress?”

“Nope.”

“Oh I think maybe you are because forget not to call on slow girl.”

“I didn’t forget.”

Then I walked away, smug smile on my face, having successfully, once again, stuck it to a figure of authority, and on television to boot.

It was a good day at Super Youth.

Prostitutes, Part 3: The Clients

2009-06-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

The first topic Will discussed when we walked home from our shared workplace was how difficult it is to get a “good English breakfast, with proper sausages” in Vietnam. Since it was our first conversation, I declined to mention that, in my experience, the best place to get an English breakfast is England.

Now that he was on the topic of England (his home country, I need not mention), he expanded, going on to tell me about how fantastic it is – but only his county, called Shropwood or Devonrockham or some other absurdity; either way, he was aghast that I was unfamiliar with it. The rest of Britain, according to him, was “a bunch of lower-class football-playing louts with horrendous accents and names like Wayne.” His county was a magical place, where one could enjoy “cheese, wine, and the BBC.”

As he said this, I glanced at him and noticed that he talks with his hands perpetually raised to chest level, with his palms out. I guess it’s an upper class thing that I don’t understand, but as a firm citizen of the upper middle class, it just seemed wanky and pretentious to me.

As we crossed the street, he leaned his face towards a motorbike that had slighted him in some way, and screamed “FUCK OFF”. Looking back up to my rather embarrassed face, he jumped into topic number three and said “yes, anyway I’ve only fucked two whores since I’ve been here.”

Startled, I shuffled and mumbled, unsure as to what to say. Why would he tell me that with no conversational segue whatsoever? What’s more, it’s more than a small contradiction to wax lyrical on class and taste, and then go on to speak so coarsely.

But that’s the typical customer. I’ve never met someone who frequents this service industry and thought to myself “that’s interesting, he doesn’t seem at all like the type to pay for sex.” Rather, every time someone has mentioned their predilection for prostitutes, my first thought has been “well, that figures.”

I’ve never met anyone like these guys in the Western countries I’ve lived in. I’m not sure if the reason for this is because such men spend their lives flitting about the third world, or because they act completely differently when they’re at home.

Either way, there is a definite stereotype of the expat prostitute connoisseur. He’s usually in his forties, and has a tremendous inferiority complex. His favourite discussion topics are friends who did him wrong, how fantastic his home country is, and how terrible Vietnam is. Prostitutes are not often discussed, but they are not hidden either. They’re just a normal part of life for these guys; discussing them is like discussing my breakfast cereal. So commonplace that there’s no reason to talk about it.

But, if someone displays an interest in my breakfast choices, I’ll happily tell them (toast or cereal with yogurt; I don’t like milk. I should have more fruit but I always forget to buy it). So too with these guys and their prostitutes, and thanks to my remarkable penchant for getting people to tell me excruciating details of their lives by merely sitting there, I now know a great deal about what makes these guys tick.

They divide into two groups, and I became reasonably close with representatives from both of them. The first is the merely pathetic. Frank fell into this group. He’s a self-described hopeless romantic, who, in his mid-40s, has never married or had children, but not by choice. Rather, he is just unable to convince a woman that he is worth talking to. I’m going to try and avoid making fun of him too much, because really he’s just sad. He doesn’t sleep with prostitutes out of any kind of hate for women, or superficiality. Rather, he’s genuinely looking for love – but as the song goes, in all the wrong places.

The second type is the type Will fell into. Will is also pathetic, but he’s also an asshole. I hate to be so inarticulate, but it’s literally the only way to describe him and his ilk. As his behaviour with the passing motorbike indicates, he has zero respect for anyone who isn’t white. Actually, it even extends past that – he hates the Scottish, Irish, and Welsh as well.

He’s a relic from another era, behaving as if the empire is still at its peak, when in reality it’s nonexistent. If he wasn’t completely unemployable in his home country, I have no doubt that he’d be back there, but as it is he’s stuck in Vietnam, making far more than the average university graduate while doing far less work. It’s quite the hand he’s been dealt.

It’s quite clear why he frequents the street walkers. He doesn’t want to spend time with them; even looking at them is a bit of an effort for such a wine-drinking, cheese-eating cultured Englishman like him. He picks up women in motorbikes, does his business, and tells me about it later on.

Frank likes the whole experience. When Frank told me that he used to be a hooker patron before he gave it up, I naturally asked him which ones he preferred. It was just sad when he said he likes to pick up the women who frequent bars and sell their company and a night in your bed in addition to sex because “I need the chemistry.”

He then insisted we go to one of Ho Chi Minh City’s many bars packed with women whose job is to sit and talk to patrons and get them to spend more money on drinks. When I asked him what the point was – as it is quite obvious that these women aren’t going to be leaving the bar with anyone – he told me “maybe not tonight, but if I keep on coming back…” he trailed off knowingly, and my heart broke.

But that’s the thread that rings true for both types of men. A profound ability for self-deception. Will told me one day that prostitutes prefer him. “Really?” I said, trying (and, again, failing) to arch one eyebrow.

“Oh yes. They like me the best because I go out of my way to make sure they enjoy themselves.”

Dumbstruck, I merely nodded.

“And Sam, you won’t believe this, but one time in Bangkok, I hired a hooker who I’d walked past several times in the weeks previous, and she said ‘ooh, lucky me!’”

I groaned inwardly for the millionth time. Will’s type tend to be pretty stupid, but deep down he must know that there’s no way these prostitutes are enjoying themselves as much as he imagines them to be. Even if their sexual desires are bordering on nymphomaniacal, after eight, ten, or twelve hours of men climbing on top of them, the moans simply have to be acting. Nobody has that kind of stamina. And even if that tidbit passed him by, surely he can put together that his Thai contractor probably spoke half of her English vocabulary when she congratulated herself on landing such a handsome (and doubtless well-endowed) client.

That’s the nature of the industry. Self-deception. It’s about far more than sex; these women sell, in addition to their bodies, the idea to these sad, lonely, pathetic men that they are handsome, virile, attentive lovers, capable of driving these women to distraction. Like the tissue saleswomen, they’re selling dreams – with a side of sex.

Prostitutes, Part 2: The Girlfriend Experience

2009-05-25T21:50:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in an Indian restaurant, celebrating the fact that my diahhrea had cleared up, when they came in: an older American man and a and a younger local woman. After two months in this city, I was fairly sure I knew what was going on - she was the second variety of Saigonese prostitute, the kind favoured by older, better-moneyed men, who don't just pay for sex, but also pay for companionship.

As I strained to hear their conversation - always stilted and awkward, and always a source of mirth for me - I learned what a fool I was. I couldn't hear much through the din of the restaurant except one sentence – “you’re so much like your father was during the war.”

Oops. What I had assumed to be a dinner between a prostitute and her client was actually a heartfelt meeting between an ex-soldier and the daughter of his compatriate, who I assume had been in the South Vietnamese army.

Clearly, it is unfair to assume – as my experience indicates – that every white/local combination is paid for at an hourly rate (or nightly rate; I’m not really sure how the transaction works). But exceptions notwithstanding, there are a large amount of couples in and around the tourist area who have met through an agency, an agency that doesn't just sell sex, but rather sells a full girlfriend experience.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell an actual date from a rented one. For one, legitimate dates sit across from their partners. Prostitutes sit next to them. Obviously, really – they’re not here for conversation.Also, they cannot keep their hands off their men, who sit there nonchalantly, passively accepting all the massages but never reciprocating them.

When they do speak to their girlfriend-for-the-evening they refuse to look at her. Rather, they look at their meal or straight forward to a point in the distance. Their overall demeanor is that of a reluctant hero, of someone who would rather not have a woman hanging onto his every word and limb, but whose combination of stellar looks and scrumptious pheromones have made it his cross to bear. It's an elaborate, unnecessary charade, as everyone, from restaurant employees to passers-by, knows the truth.

Essentially every restaurant in Saigon's tourist has at least one of these "couples." The man will be middle-aged or older, and the woman in her twenties or very well-taken-care-of thirties. They’ll sit next to one another, and eat their meals.

They’ll behave in one of two ways. Both seem, to me, absolutely excruciating. Some customers will regale their contractor with stories and jokes, deliberately oblivious to the fact that she does not have anywhere near a strong enough command of English to understand them. She does, however, know exactly when to laugh and when to appear suitably impressed.

Other customers, however (mostly older, seasoned veterans of the game) do not have such illusions, which makes me wonder why they bother with the whole charade anyway. They sit there, in absolute silence, eating their meal while their prostitute sits beside them (never across from them) and does the same.

No matter which template the customer has decided to follow, the prostitute will be unable to keep her hands off her man. If they’re talking (rather, if he’s talking), she’ll underscore her laughter and amazement by constantly grabbing at his limbs and touching his chest in a lingering semi-massage. If they’re the non-speaking variety, her hand never strays from his neck, his back, his thigh, and, bizarrely, his face.

It’s this latter one that I really don’t understand. I’m not averse to public displays of affection by any means. It’s just the pragmatics of it – do these guys really need to be touched on their face while they eat? Do they really enjoy that? Personally, I wouldn't be that into someone massaging my face while I try to chew. But then, I’m not the kind of guy who rents the girlfriend experience. I say that with considerable smugness and an overwhelming feeling of superiority.

Paying someone to laugh at your jokes makes at least a little sense. I’m lucky enough to be someone who tells funny jokes, so I don’t require this service. Not everyone is blessed as me, though, so they pay for it. Fair enough.

But the non-speakers. Why do they pay for their prostitute to just sit next to them and touch them? Clearly, they don’t require the validation that the other guys do. Wouldn’t it be more efficient, not to mention cost-effective and less awkward, to simply eat alone, then hire a prostitute? They must enjoy simply having a woman next to them, even if they don't really do anything. It's just paying for presence.

I think these women have a harder job than the streetwalkers, and I hope they're appropriately better-compensated. Lying down and allowing someone to have his way with you is hard enough; pretending to be enthralled by all his stories, rendered speechless with laughter at his jokes, overcome with lust at his body, and then lying down at the conclusion of the whole show is something completely different.

This was made abundantly clear when I found myself sitting in the same café as an elderly Australian man and his contracted girlfriend. They were sitting in silence, as is par for the course, when he, out of nowhere, absolutely lost his cool. “Where is my 100,000 dong!?” He yelled at her. “It was in my wallet! Where is it?!”

The girl – she can’t have been older than me – protested that she didn’t know anything about it, but the man persisted. “You have it! You stole it!”

This went on and on, over an amount that is equivalent to scarcely more than US$5, and he used it as a platform to move onto other grievances. “You think you’re so sexy that you can get any man! Well you can’t! You can’t have me!”

The woman decided that life was too short for this, and calmly stood up to leave, which brought a degree of truth to the man's allegations.

As she was walking out, her client followed her, repeating his stunning insight over and over. She continued to ignore him, and he became more and more distraught, revealing his crippling speech impediment. Stuttering and stumbling in his old, decrepit, beaten-down frame, he stopped at the top of the stairs (which he was unable to go down without assistance) and shouted, as a parting shot “I’m n-n-n-n-n-not your b-b-boyfriend anyway!”

Never let it be said that prostitution is easy money. These women work.

Prostitutes, Part 1: Street Walkers and Riders

2009-05-18T19:22:00.001-07:00

Since it was past 9pm, I wasn't surprised when the motorbike whizzed up from behind and stopped next to me. Driving was a scantily-clad, heavily made up local woman with teased hair and a huge smile. “You wan’ massa’?” Being the seasoned Saigon resident by this stage, I knew that she wasn’t offering your standard, traditional massage, so I kept walking.

This wasn’t the case when I first ran into one. I had no idea what this smiling woman wanted from me, and I had to lean in to understand her halting English. Big mistake.

“Boom-boom?" she clarified. "No thank you,” I replied, ever polite, as the reality of the situation began to dawn on me.

“I rub your boddddddddy! Ten dollars one hour!”

“Really, I’m fine,” I said, as my thought processes clicked into gear and I realised what she was offering. I also realised that she was making it harder to move along by blocking my path with her motorbike, edging me towards the buildings adjacent to the sidewalk.

Then she reached out and stroked my bicep, which struck me as a little unfair. Were I to do the same to her, she’d balk, or charge me. But she gets to touch me for free?

Eventually, after accusing me of homosexuality with a limp-wristed hand motion, she took off. The first of many such encounters.

Vietnam’s sex industry is wholly different from neigbouring Thailand’s, with its strip clubs, sex shows, and various other very public displays of carnal affection. It is not in any way a spectator sport here; customers are all-in or all-out. This is a shame for those who, out of sensibility, fear, stinginess, or a combination thereof are unwilling risk STDs, robbery, and other possible downfalls of sex-for-hire, but for those prepared to take the plunge, the options are endless, with prostitutes of all shapes, ages, and sizes, and prices for the discerning consumer.

I must hastily clarify that I fall firmly into the former group.

I’m lucky enough to have made the acquaintance of a handful of expats in their forties, all of whom are positively aching to tell me about their experiences with prostitutes. While a tad bewildering, it is also very convenient: I’m able to get all the information I need about the whole sordid industry without having to actually do anything other then lend an empathic listening ear.

And then go on to write about it, but that’s beside the point.

From what I’m told, however, is that the motorbike women offer no delusions: you pay an hourly flat fee, and while bodily fluids are exchanged, pleasantries are not. It’s straight to business, and if the show’s over in less than an hour, the rate’s the same and both parties go their separate ways.

The reason I mention the pricing is because it lends a certain insight into these women’s behaviour. They’re only paid for time on their back; with every minute that goes by without a customer, their hourly rate goes down. Thus, they are the queens of the hard sell. Their flimsy grasp of the English language is more than made up for by their saleswomanship. They know all the tricks, and execute them far better than any dimwitted laptop, used car, or real estate salesman I’ve ever met.

They target white men walking alone. Obviously, really. Even if someone does include prostitutes among his tastes, he’s not very well going to hire one while he’s with his friends. It may not even be a matter of feeling ashamed. It’s just this: why would you abandon your friends? Sex will be available on the way back.

Not all of them ride motorbikes. Some walk the streets, pursuing potential clients on foot, and these women become more persistent as I continue to say no, rather than less so as the motorbike women do, as walking alongside someone is a much bigger investment of time than approaching them on a motorbike. So they fall into step beside me and begin peppering me with questions. “What your name? Where you from?”

I ignore them, but they still won’t leave, so I lengthen my stride, which shakes off all but the most committed– the Vietnamese are a small race, and the women especially so. If I take long steps, most prostitutes literally have to break into a jog to keep up, which is not a good situation for teased hair and litres of makeup.

I recently discovered a method of making them disappear, however. In a particularly ingenious combination that I’m surprised I don’t see more of, a team of two prostitutes approached on a motorbike. One drove, and the other jumped off and chased me in the manner of the streetwalkers. “Massa’ boom-boom? Why not?” She whined in a plaintive bleating that they all use, that suggests that the one thing that she wanted from this life was to have me, and only me, pay her for sex.

I ignored her and kept walking, but she persisted while her friend flanked me on the other side.

Luckily, I was snacking on a piece of pastry. Impulsively, I broke off a piece and offered it to her; I wish I could say that I did it because she looked hungry, or because I thought it might make her go away, but really I didn’t think it through at all. Inexplicably, however, it was like Kryptonite to her. She smiled a tight-lipped smile, said something to the woman driving the motorbike, mounted it, and left.

I ate my pastry and pondered what I had just learned. Refined ignoring skills, quickened steps, and “no’s” will eventually make these strong-armed saleswomen clear off. But all this pales in comparison to the power of the fried carbohydrate in terms of deterrence.

ANZAC Day

2009-05-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

ANZAC Day was on the 25th of April, and someone asked me if I’m upset that I’m not in New Zealand to go to the parades, wear a red poppy, and watch the 21-gun salutes.

No. But I am upset.

ANZAC Day's original intentions were reasonable: to remember the men who died during the failed 1916 attempt to take the Turkish penninsula of Gallipoli. By remembering them, we could protect future generations from undergoing the same fate. By taking once a year to reflect on the profound waste of life that the battle had been, maybe some good could come from it, and the errors would not be repeated.

But then, like a parasite, it evolved. Before anyone knew it, the holiday’s intention was not just to remember those who had died at Gallipoli, but also the men and women who fought and died in every battle of every war, both previous and subsequent to Gallipoli and World War I.

Soon enough, all these holidays (as the Canadian and American equivalents were founded on similar ideals) became not sombre remembrances of mistakes passed, but gaudy celebrations of war and those who fight in them. Or, to be more specific, celebrations of death and those who kill. Celebrations of destruction, and of those who destroy.

We fire off the guns, we parade the veterans onstage, we read poems, and, of course, we pin the blood-red poppies to our chests. But it’s all lip service. Not only is it lip service, it’s lip service that celebrates exactly what the holiday was sworn to eliminate: meaningless waste of life.

Because this is a point that is not said enough, if at all. The ANZAC Day theme is that Gallipoli was a waste, but it was a discrete waste; every other battle was worth it. And this is incorrect. This isn’t an opinion. It’s objective fact. There is no such thing as a good war. There is no such thing as a war that was worth its profound economic, social, and political, and moral cost. World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan – every single one of them is just a larger-scale Gallipoli.

World War II is everyone’s favourite. Most can agree that the other ones in my list are or were unnecessary, but World War II somehow has this sacred, mystical quality as the “last good war.” Hitler was Evil and we were Good. He was the Joker to our Batman, the Lex Luther to our Clark Kent. It was a just crusade, and justice prevailed.

Justice prevailed by allying with Stalin. Yes, we fought evil. But we fought it by siding with evil, siding with a man who was just as genocidal, just as megolomanical as the man we defeated. It's hard to accept that siding with one despicable leader in order to defeat another can be in any way described as a good war.

The Holocaust is also mentioned a lot by World War II apologists (Stalin's Great Purge notwithstanding). “Hitler was hell-bent on exterminating Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally handicapped, and a host of other people!”

And he was. I’m not going to deny that. And he succeeded in exterminating a great many. And that’s horrible. But let’s look at it with some perspective.

Hitler killed an estimated six million. This is a staggering number; it’s New Zealand’s entire population plus another fifty percent. It’s such a large number that it’s actually impossible to conceptualise.

But if that's hard to conceptualise, here's something harder: sixty million. That's the total cost, in human lives, of the war. In sheer number terms, the Holocaust was terrible. But the war, which the Holocaust is used to justify, was ten times more terrible.

Not to mention the fact that the Holocaust is an after-the-fact justification; nobody knew, or cared, when the war was raging.

The justification while it went on was that Hitler was hell-bent on conquering the world. That couldn’t be allowed; someone had to stop him!

Why? Really, why? What does an American, Kiwi, or Briton care who’s running the show in France, Belgium, Italy, or the Balkans? Why does he care enough to die over it or send someone else to do so? The French, still feeling the sting of the First World War, were quite clear about this; with their pre-war cliche of “better to be a living German than a dead Frenchman.”

We wouldn’t have that, though. Policies and men that we celebrate every year on ANZAC Day took war to those who expressly professed their lack of desire for it. We bombed their cities, wrecked their houses, killed people whose only crime had been to live on the wrong strip of land. When's their holiday? When is Collateral Damage Day? It's easy to celebrate the people and institutions who deal in death. It's much harder, and much messier, to celebrate the millions of faceless people who had it dealt to them.

Refugees trekking through the Eastern European winter on barefeet, entire families incinerated, of children starving to death. That is war. The adolescant, selfish, cowardly act of of sending boys to die for reasons defined by men who should know better. That is war. Strip away the poppies and uniforms, the parades and the salutes, the comraderie and the espirit de corps, and all those other superfical trappings we hide behind on ANZAC Day, and what is left is a gritty, ugly reality that we are so afraid of talking about that we'd rather repeat it.

I’m not upset that I missed ANZAC Day. I’m upset that a cowardly society deliberately missed its point.

Expat Mayhem

2009-04-28T02:11:00.000-07:00

One of the middle-aged women was an American whose name escapes me, and the other a Dutch woman named Helena. They had spent their afternoon in an expat bar, plowing through a couple bottles of wine each. Needless to say, they were not in any condition to drive a forklift when I arrived in the evening.

Their drunkenness isn’t particularly noteworthy. It took me a long time to learn that heavy drinking is not just the purview of the young. My parents, while not teetotalers, are certainly not boozers either. If they have two drinks with dinner, the rest of their evening is spent in the prone position on the couch. If my father – god forbid – has three drinks, my mother purses her lips and begins purposefully striding around the house, picking things up and heavily putting them back down, fraught with tension as she convinces herself that she's married to an alcoholic. Needless to say, he usually saves such deviant behaviour for when she’s out of town.

At any rate, this is why it wasn’t until I was in my twenties that I discovered that older people drink as well.

But none of the older drinkers I’ve met have been anything like Helena. She was more like the young girls I saw every Thursday and Saturday night when I lived in a university town, clad in weird outfits, clinging to one another so that if one stumbled they all stumbled, and shrieking with over-the-top laughter every time this occurred, which was every four or five steps. This is irritating in 18 year-olds, but to see someone in her mid-forties act like this is a intriguing more than anything else. For about five minutes.

She lurched from her friend to me and mine. “Whassyername,” she slurred, clutching my arm in an attempt to stand up straight that almost worked. Grabbing her to prevent her from dashing her brains out on the tiled floor, I told her. The minute she was upright again, she got distracted by something and dashed away.

While she was gone, her American friend took the opportunity to get friendly with another punter. Really friendly. I glanced over to see them shaking hands; a second glance a couple minutes later revealed that her hand had slipped into the back of his shorts, in a public display of affection that I’ve never understood. Maybe it’s a territory-marking thing. A hand that close to a biological waste disposal system is going to ward off even the most committed competition. "Back off," it says. "We mean business."

I turned my attention away for awhile, thinking that the excitement was over. Far from it. She returned from wherever she’d gone, saw her friend canoodling, and gasped. Mouth agape, she ran over to me again. “Dave, what should I do?”

“What do you mean?” I genuinely was wondering. I was also wondering if I should correct her as to my real name, but quickly determined that this was not something worth dwelling on. I am familiar with the drunken goldfish memory.

“I think I will go over and say ‘excuse me that’s my friend.’”

This did not seem productive. “Well,” I tried to be tactful, “they are both adults…” As I said this, I had to hold in a snort. They certainly were.

I don’t think she liked my answer, as she abruptly left for the second time and made the same pitch – in a voice loud enough for me to hear, the deliberation of which I am unsure of – to another table. She certainly was intent on audience involvement in what was thus far a one-woman show.

Not for long. The exposition was done; it was time for some rising action in the performance. Enter the next character, at precisely the moment that I began to grow bored.

His name was Quy and he came with a gift - a tub of moisturiser for Helena. The way that she took it, thanked him, and then proceeded to ignore him suggested to me that he was in one of those black hole-esque unrequited love relationships, where he dreamed of the day that she would put her hand down the back of his drawers, but knew, deep down, that it would never, ever happen.

My hypothesis was quickly confirmed when he, realizing that Helena would not be speaking to him tonight, took the seat next to me, which had become a rotating stage for the evening’s players. He then launched forth with a dramatic monologue, telling me about, well, everything.

He told me about Helena and her drinking, he told me how he takes her out to dinner. He told me where he lives, his age, his job, how much money he makes. He set up his character in a heartbeat, with absolutely no prompting from me. Were a playwright or a screenwriter to do the same, he’d be laughed out of the theatre or studio for writing something so unbelievable.

Helena stumbled back, distraught. “Jeff, I called my boss and told her I have a migraine and can’t come to work tomorrow.”

“That’s not really a big deal,” I said. “I mean, at least you called her tonight, right?”

“You see,” she lurched (although that is a word that generally describes walking, I feel that is the only effective way to describe her speaking style) “in sales and marketing, it doesn’t matter if you don’t come to work, as long as you meet your sales quotas.”

A Dutch saleswoman in Vietnam? This was interesting, so I asked her more. Besides, I could have sworn she was a teacher.

“Oh no, I’m not a saleswoman. I haven’t been for seven years. Now I teach.”

“You’re a teacher then?”

“No, I teach.”

I furrowed my brow, and delved a little more. “Where do you teach?” She gave me the name of a language centre.

“So you’re an English teacher?”

“NO!” I teach English!”

“Okay,” I breathed in. “You teach English but you’re not an English teacher?”

“Stop making fun of me for not being a real teacher!” And she flounced away again, in a manner that strangely reminded me of Miss Piggy.

If that exchange made your head feel like it was going to explode, imagine how I felt.

Quy leaned over. “She’s 31 you know. Like me.”

By this stage I wasn’t questioning non-sequitors. I was just triaging and treating on a case-by-case basis. This was the Emergency Room, not Diagnostics. So I finally released the snort that had been building up all evening and said “Quy, she is not. She’s 45 if she’s a day.”

He nodded sadly. I’d pointed out that the empress had no clothes. “I know this.”

The empress came back, and Quy unnecessarily shushed me.

“You see,” she slurred. “I told my boss to fuck off so I’m probably fired.”

Was she kidding? She’d told me another version of events not five minutes previous. I’d seen short-term memory loss and poetic license, but never the two combined to such an extent. In a refreshing display of maturity, I decided that mentioning this would be counterproductive. So I decided it was time to go. I’d seen enough for one night.

Helena thrust her cheek out and demanded I kiss her goodbye. I obliged, dodged her attempt to take my glasses, and stuck my hand out to Quy. He hesitated until Helena disappeared, and then, as if to conclude the play, grabbed my hand in both of his and pulled his face up to mine.

Franticly, he whispered. “Listen, listen. I have car. You take my number. You find two western women, you call me, I drive us anywhere.”

Even for this odd evening, this was unexpected. I tried to explain that he was double-handshaking the wrong guy. It's a rarity for me to have one woman on the go; a spare is completely out of the question. I tried to explain this to him but he cut me off.

“No! You have ability! I sense this! I drive us to beach! Two hours no problem!"

It didn't look like logic was going to prevail tonight, so I said okay, disentangled myself from his now-clammy hand,took his number, and left.

But the offer still stands. If you’re a woman reading this blog, from Europe, the Americas, Australia, or New Zealand, and you find yourself in Ho Chi Minh City with a spare friend, towel, and day, drop me a line - the three of us and my man Quy, we're going swimming.

The Plight of the Lowly Sperm

2009-04-17T00:59:00.001-07:00

Stress gets all of us down. No matter who you are, sometimes the little things pile up, or the big things catch you off guard. Projects, commitments, exams, essays, lay-offs, relationships starting, relationships ending, death, disaster - they can all have a pretty atrocious effect on your system as you wonder to yourself “how will I ever get through this.”

Some perspective helps. Like a circus sideshow, it's always nice to look at someone else and say "wow, at least I'm better-off than him." This has, I am fairly sure, been the reason for reality television's success over the past ten years. Nothing makes you feel better about yourself than seeing the truly inept have their problems highlighted on a national, often international, stage.

But if Big Brother's on hiatus and America's Next Top Model doesn't come on 'till Friday, there's a simpler way to gain perspective. You don’t have to look far to find it – only an eyeflick downwards, at the nearest man’s groin.

Inside that groin – it may be yours – is a major unsung hero of our time. The lowly sperm. Whatever hand life has dealt you, I can personally guarantee that it would beat his.

For one, look at where he is born, and may die – inside someone’s testicles. Maybe it’s a matter of personal taste, but this, to me, is not the ideal living space. It’s hot, it’s damp, and it smells. And it's not like it's a nice neighbourhood either - to one side is a penis;to the other, an anus. To be honest, I’d rather live almost anywhere else.

But there is a certain enviable simplicity in the sperm's life, living arrangements notwithstanding. The great questions of humanity, echoed through every culture’s art, religion, and philosophy are pretty tough: “why are we here?” "where are we going?" Sperm are not known for their artwork. Possibly this is because they have no arms or legs to paint or write with, or possibly because they do not have brains capable of such complex thought. The cynic would say so, but I’m a romantic: I think it’s because the sperm doesn’t need to ask these questions. His lot in life is clear, his fate sealed from the day he’s born.

Wait in your testicle home until you’re summoned. When you are, grab a chunk of DNA and get expelled – along with hundreds of millions of your compatriots, so you won’t be lonely – and rocket down a tube at unfathomable speeds before landing, a tad breathless, in a strange cavern. Once there, it’s every man for himself – swim as fast as you can in the race of a lifetime. If you win, you get to become a person. If you lose, you die. Talk about high stakes. Indeed, it's probably more heartbreaking to fall short of his goal than it is for any of us to fall short of ours; after all, if we fail, we can always try something else. Not only does the sperm not get a chance to set a new goal for himself, he wouldn't know what to do if he did. He's programmed to do one thing, and one thing only.

But do they ever complain? No. Do they ever refuse to take part in this event that will likely lead to their death? No. Every chance they get, they swim their hearts out, trying their best to fulfill the one goal they’ve ever had. If they don’t make it? Well, ce’st la vie. At least they tried.

It never was the ideal life, but from the 20th century onwards it got a lot worse. Regardless of their contribution to public health, the condom, the contraceptive pill, the IUD and the sponge have not been good for the business of fertilization. Imagine the disappointment of rounding that final bend, only to find the expected death-star sized egg not present. All that effort, for naught.

This isn’t quite as bad as the other options, though; after all, he must have known that the egg’s presence wasn’t guaranteed – it was just another long shot set of odds in his long shot life.

But the sponge – he smashes into it, and finds himself soaked into a material with which he is completely unfamiliar. The IUD – everything is going fine, he’s swimming along, then zap – some copper poisons him and he quickly expires.

Most painful and humiliating, though, must be the prophylactic. It is different than the others in that halts the fantasy of a chance the earliest.“This is what I train for,” the sperm thinks to himself as he grabs his packet of DNA and sits in his ejection seat “I’m going to do my host proud and spread his genes like they’ve never been spread.” He sits back, a bit nervous and very excited; or is that very nervous and a bit excited. It's such an emotional rollercoaster that he can’t tell which one takes precedence. The adrenaline is coursing from his head to the tip of his tail – he’s never been more ready in his life. He takes a deep breath, and BLAM he's off like a shot.

Smash. With a sickening thud, he hits the impermeable latex of the condom. Maybe he’s killed instantly; maybe he blacks out, then wakes up, looking around to see if anyone else made it through. Nobody did. His comrades, the men he grew up with, who he became so close with during their retrospectively short tenure inside your testicles, are writhing in pain around him. They’ve smashed into the latex, into each other; those who miraculously escaped death are trying to push their way to the front, creating a stampede that kills even more. The sperm takes stock of what is happening, and, just before he dies, realizes that he will never – and nor will anyone he knows – carry out the one task he was assigned in this world.

If he had cheeks or eyes, a single tear would drift down the former before the blackness overtakes him. But he doesn't even have the luxury of crying.

So think of him next time the world’s getting you down. Think of the sperm and his friends, laying there in agony in a condom, or even making it all the way to the egg, but a split second too late and being poisoned for their trouble. What's more, I haven't even mentioned the patently genocidal amount that end their lives on a tissue, old pair of underwear, or in a sock. We all feel, from time to time, that we were born under a bad sign, but when compared to the sperm, we’ve got the world in the palm of our hands.

With the exception of the one in a billion who make it. They, I fear, put all of us and our piddly goals to shame. So if you're looking for perspective, try not to think about them.

There Was A Dog on the Roof

2009-04-10T21:38:00.002-07:00

There was a dog on the roof. That’s not a metaphor, cliché, or long-reaching attempt at symbolism. It is a sentence designed to be taken literally; it describes real life. There was a dog, standing on the roof.

He (I can say definitively say he because Vietnamese dogs are not often spayed or neutered; hence, there are a lot of them, and their gender is far more apparent than the sexless canines I am used to) was doing what dogs do best – Being A Dog. He was doing on the roof what he would likely be doing on the ground, barking at the chaotic traffic, chasing his tail, and dashing perilously close to the ubiquitously tangled mess that is Ho Chi Minh City power lines. Being a dog, of course, meant he was having a great time doing it.

I would have kept walking were it not for the motorbike taxi driver. It being the hottest part of the day, there was a group of them sitting under an umbrella across the street from the dog, sipping cold, sweet drinks, watching the traffic go by, and idly chatting. One of the younger – possibly the youngest – drivers saw the dog, and with it an opportunity to make the beastly hot afternoon go by faster.

He ambled across the road and removed his shoe, looked at the dog, and tossed it in the air. The shoe, not the dog.

The dog was hooked. The moment he laid eyes on the flying shoe, it became more than an object of desire. He didn’t just want it – he had to have it. I could tell how deep this flowed, because it stopped his frenetic playing. Instead, he dropped his front paws down, rested his face on them, and looked at the shoe with an intensity and concentration I never thought his species capable of. That shoe would be his.

The next step was so well-thought-out that I suspected that it was not new. Now that he had the dog’s attention, the driver threw the shoe so that it hit under the overhanging section of roof. Being made of corrugated iron, a resounding clatter ensued, and the dog, convinced that the shoe had landed on top of the lip rather than smack the bottom of it, dashed over, sniffed, and, confused, slinked back to his shady spot. Then the whole process repeated itself. Dogs, while loyal and fun-loving, are not known for their intelligence. Anyone who has pretended to throw a ball for one knows this; it’s another great game that fools them every time.

Intrigued, I took a seat on the stoop next to the drivers. I expected them to be as amused as I, but when I glanced over at them, one was rolling his eyes and the other was pointing at his head. A third looked at me, pointed across the road to their friend, and told me something in Vietnamese while also rolling his eyes. Again, further evidence that this game was not new.

Then something happened that made the drivers, passersby, and indeed every shopclerk and security guard on the section of street look up and roar with laughter. He had miscalculated a throw, arcing it slightly more than he intended to, and the dog had achieved what he had been waiting for so patiently: he caught it.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a happier dog. Dogs are usually fickle animals, trying their damndest for a ball or toy, only to lose interest the second they get it. Not this one. He’d wanted the shoe for ages and now his faith and perseverance had paid off. He did a victory dance, grabbing it in hs jaws and running around in circles. He gnawed on it for awhile. He excitedly leaped into his little house to see what it tasted like in there, then leaped out and barked as if to tell the crowd “don’t worry, it’s just as good!” Then, with a look of panic, realised he didn't have it anymore, so he bolted in, grabbed it, and jumped back out. Even for a dog, he was exuberant.

The taxi driver was not quite so exuberant. One shoe was now a dog’s chewtoy; the other was in his hand, but without its mate it was useless. First, he tried to bring the dog over by repeating the trick and throwing his remaining shoe at the overhanging lip, but he soon realized how embarrassing it would be if the dog were to get this shoe too. So after a few throws, he just held his shoe and yelled.

As if he were waiting for this, an elderly man opened the window of the apartment, and an increasingly heated exchange occurred, entirely in Vietnamese. Thanks to context, though, I imagine it went something like this.

“Your dog has my shoe!”

“I can see that.”

“Can I come up and get it?”

“No. You torment my dog with that shoe every day. Now he is tormenting you.”

“I can’t drive with only one shoe!”

“You should have thought of that beforehand! I hope you burn your foot on exhaust fumes!”

And with a slam, and to the driver’s peers’ delight, the apartment dweller disappeared. One of them looked at me, grinned, pointed at his shoe, said something, and laughed.

Astonishingly, the man with the missing shoe was not done. He was going to have his shoe back, or die trying, it seemed. So his next move was to bang on the door of the ground-level shop, which was eventually opened by a sleepy-looking man (it was afternoon siesta time, after all). Again, the exchange that went from terse to heated; again, no luck for the driver.

And he walked back to his friends, looking cranky and forlorn, hobbling slightly with his single shoe. I took this as my cue to leave, and did so.

Language barriers are not always quite the impediment we imagine them to be. I was speaking English, and everyone else was speaking Vietnamese, a language which I can thus far only say “hello,” “thank you,” and “iced coffee.” But when the drivers and I shared a laugh at their friend's expense, no translation was necessary.

Probably more important, though, is this valuable lesson: throwing things at dogs is very similar to playing the stock market. Don’t do it with anything you can’t afford to lose.

Elaborate Street Theatre

2009-04-04T03:52:00.000-07:00

Much to the dismay of all respectable foreigners in Vietnam, there is a very small yet highly visible (or audible) contingent of travelers who are neither nice nor unobtrusive. They typify everything that the idea of the “ugly American” (or Australian, or Dutchman) describes. They’re loud, obnoxious, and often drunk. They patronize the locals at the best of times, and vilify them at the worst, viewing them as an impedimence between their tour bus and Vietnam.

On more than one occasion, I have been near these winners in action. Every time I do, I wish I had a sign or a shirt that had printed on it, in a variety of local languages and dialects (for clarity) "I do not know this man."

I found myself sitting at a table with a member of the Vocal Minority during my first week in Ho Chi Minh City. We were at an outdoor table in the heart of the tourist area, eating our meals and watching the world - mostly composed of salespeople - go by.

These salespeople deserve explanation.

A number of enterprising Vietnamese have taken advantage of the fact that the city’s tourists are concentrated in a small area, and have set themselves up as (very) small businessmen-and-women. Shoe shines, pirated DVDs and books, knockoff watches, sunglasses, sex – it's all on offer in the course of a five-minute stroll.

One strategy is to approach tourists dining in restaurants. Good thinking – a pedestrian is on his way somewhere, and it is not very difficult to simply sidestep a salesperson. But in the restaurant, he’s a captive, bound by his meal.

Predictably, the stranger and I were approached by a number of hawkers, all of whom we politely declined. Eventually, a woman came to us. She wasn't selling anything, but merely asking for money. Again, we declined, and it was here that he decided to strike up a conversation with me.

“They make a good living, you know.”

I spluttered a little on my beer and asked him to come again.

“Begging – it’s a damn good living.”

This wasn't a whisper, either. The Vocal Minority thinks that nobody in Vietnam can understand English, so he was, for maximum attention, using his stage voice, projecting so that the entire restaurant could hear. Reluctant to converse with someone so insightful for fear of being put to shame, I pretended I hadn’t heard, and focused on a lizard on the wall and its efforts in flycatching. Thankfully, he let me off easy, and took the social cue.

I had to wonder, as I ate, what he meant. Was he under the impression that beggars started out as surgeons and hedge fund managers, but decided to turn to the equally lucrative industry of asking people for money because the hours were so much better? Did he know something I didn’t? Call me naïve, but I don’t think begging, in any context, can ever be referred to as “a damn good living.”

But he wasn’t done yet. A few minutes later, a watch salesman approached us. The Vocal Minority looked at me, winked conspiratorially, and then beckoned the man over to his table. He then spent the next several minutes asking pointed questions about one watch: where was it made, how much was it, would it last, was it waterproof? Ten minutes were spent with the VM turning it over and over in his hands, giving all appearances of being on the brink of a sale. Then, without any warning, he said “nah, not for me,” returned the watch, and sent the salesman on his way. It had all been a game, a deliberate waste of the man’s time when a simple “no thank you” would have sufficed.

He really showed that guy.

I should mention that this man did give money to one hawker. It was difficult for me to believe, too, after I saw his displays with the other two, but once I put it together it all became clear. For a guy as special as my dinner companion deserves a very, very special kind of hawker.

These women are my favourite, because they are experts in the psychology of the Vocal Minority. They recognize that these types are notoriously tight-fisted, and they will never give money to beggars, so they disguise themselves. A woman, usually with a child in tow, will walk the streets armed with a few packs of Kleenex and gum, ostensibly trying to sell them. When she approaches middle-aged, balding tourist , he will make a big show of patting the child and giving some money. However, when the woman goes to give him his Kleenex, he puts both hands up in a show of faux generosity. “No, you take that,” he says, and the woman puts on a show of absolute gratitude and leaves, walking backwards so as not to turn her back on such a gentleman.

That’s the genius of these hawkers – they’re not selling Kleenex, they’re not selling gum, and they’re not begging. Rather, they’re selling feelings. Through this elaborate street theater production, where everyone knows their role, the hawkers are successfully selling self-worth, importance, and magnanimity.

It’s simple business. Supply and demand. Recognise these loud, brash tourists’ underlying sense of inadequacy and offer to fill it for a couple bucks. I, for one, admire these hawkers’ acumen – and if someone told me they make a good living, I just might believe it.

The Afternoon Siesta

2009-03-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Saigon rests at a latitude of around 10 degrees North. For those who weren't obsessed with geography as a child, this means it is very close to the equator, and, obviously, very hot.

I knew this before I arrived but in many ways I am more chimp than human (although I promise never to tear your face off), and refuse to really believe anything until I see it for myself. This is a character trait of mine that has gotten me into trouble over the years, and the Saigon Heat was no exception.

My first task here was to find a job, so I methodically and efficiently spent a day looking up the location of English schools and marking them on a map, plotting a route. On the following day, I dressed myself up in nice pants and a button-down shirt (the former light to keep off the heat, the latter dark to hide my sweat), packed my CV and some deodorant, and ventured into the city to pound some pavement.

The morning went fine. I got lost a few times, and nearly run over more than a few times on the chaotic, motorbike-packed streets, but this is all par for the Saigon course. The real trouble struck at noon.

Foolishly, I had thought that the morning - already sweltering - was the apex of the day's heat. This was not a rational thought, but rather the product of seven years in Southern New Zealand. Already, it was hotter than Dunedin's hottest day - in my mind, some kind of limit had been reached, and there was no way it could get hotter.

It did. Imperceptibly, the temperature rose a tiny bit with every passing minute until it was a full-blown heat wave. I wouldn't be stopped though. I was a man on a mission, with CVs to hand out, doors to knock on, and contacts to chase up. The heat must have been affecting my brain by this stage, because it was not until later that I realised that the streets - perilous in the morning - were now empty, and the sidewalks - empty in the morning - were now packed with locals on tiny stools, eating soup and mystery meat, drinking the refreshing sweet drinks that are so widely available in so many flavours, smoking cigarettes, and gossiping.

I trudged through the masses of people, shirt soaked with sweat, body screaming for water. My second warning sign then came, which I, typically, ignored: my nose began to bleed. Before I knew what was happening, a matronly streetside vendor in her early fifties yanked me into her stall, firmly telling me in Vietnamese to sit down, hold a tissue to it, put my head back. I don't speak any Vietnamese, but since these words were accompanied by her flailing her arms and roughly pushing me into a chair and forcing my head back, it was not difficult to put together the context clues.

When it cleared up, she poured ointment into it, which burned but definitevely solved the problem, and shoo'd me on my way with a few terse words, probably along the lines of "look after better yourself next time."

The language of Irate Mother is universal.

So I stumbled on, by this point in really awful shape. As I approached an English school (which would turn out to be closed), I decided to make sure I didn't have blood all over my face and stopped in a shop with a mirror to inspect. Satisfied with my lack of bloodstains - something I never thought I would be satisfied with - I made to leave.

Then I noticed something. There was no shopkeeper. There was also no staff, only a security guard who sat outside, fast asleep. I looked around the shop, and it became clear: they were all asleep. Leaned back in chairs, sprawled on the floor: every single employee of this shop was fast asleep.

It's the afternoon siesta, the time that it is literally impossible to do anything but sleep, as my sad day showed. I only wish I'd gotten the memo before I arrived.

Globetrotter

2009-03-25T05:11:00.000-07:00

My blog's focus is about to dramatically shift. Much as I'm sure the world loved hearing my thoughts on life, the fact is they get kind of old, and to be honest I only have so many. Well, not really. I have a lot. But if I carry on as I have for too long, it'll just be a succession of movies I hate, people I think are cool, and jobs I think are lame, and all you fans will start to smell a rat - and stop reading.

But don't worry. I have moved from Sunny Dunedin to Sunnier Saigon. That's right - Ho Chi Minh City, in Vietnam. So I suppose this blog is, for the time being, a travel blog. The lessons to be learned travelling are, after all, far more interesting than the lessons to be learned living in your parents' attic.

At least I hope so.

Bureaucratic Bamboozle

2009-03-14T21:09:00.000-07:00

The University of Otago, the staple insititution of my hometown, regularly sells off old computers at bargain prices. Not long ago, my father, ever shrewd, took advantage of this scheme and decided to buy one – at $150 for a desktop, how could you resist?

Even shrewder, he enlisted me as the courier. Fair enough; I’m in my early 20s and live with him and my mother rent-free. What’s more, I was unemployed at the time, so I certainly wasn't otherwise engaged. So I set off one afternoon with my task clear: meet him, collect cash, then go to the university and pick up the computer. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than an hour.

I met him and got the money with no drama. Upon my arrival at the university, though, I realized that I’d forgotten where I was supposed to go. Hardly a big issue for a problem-solver like myself; my father, knowing my propensity for not listening when people are talking to me, had emailed me my instructions, so it was just a matter of going to the library and using my old student ID to log onto the internet.

ITS Teaching and Learning Centre was my destination, and the fact that I’d never heard of this place was no hindrance. It was just a matter of a few minutes’ browsing around the university website, and my destination was clear: 444 Great King St.

I drove a few laps in my parents’ van, trying in vain to find this place. 442 and 446 were both extremely well-marked, with enormous signs dictating their street number, street name, and building purpose. The fact that 444 was not labeled thus – or at all – should probably have served as a warning, but hindsight is always 20/20. At the time, I happily tracked it down through process of elimination, and walked up to the front door.

Again, a warning sign missed. The front door wasn’t just locked, it didn’t even have a handle. I scratched my head, examined the area around it for secret levers or buttons, and found nothing. Intrigued, I started skulking around, looking for alternative entrances.

As I did so, I took in what kind of building I was trying to infiltrate. It was like nothing I'd ever seen before, and a marked contrast to the rest of the university, which is designed in a very modern style, with large doors, high ceilings, and lots of glass.

This building, by contrast, had tiny windows, a good ten metres off the ground, and the walls were incredibly thick rock-solid concrete. It was built like a bunker, perhaps designed as a sort of panic building for the university’s staff if an invasion were to occur, a keep for throngs of dowdy bureaucrats and bewildered academics to retreat to in case the oft-publicised drunken disorder and rioting by students got really out of hand. Or maybe it was just a computer building. Sometimes my imagination gets away from me.

The actual entrance was - obviously – in the back, next to a dumpster. But, again, it wasn’t a standard door. It was two, in fact, with one leading outside, a small room, and then one leading into the building, like an airlock. The door to the outside was unlocked, but the door leading in was not.

Next to the interior door, there was a phone. Next to that, a list of names and extensions, and next to that a sign instructing me to use the phone to ring the relevant person; he or she would then let me in.

It was here that I started to suspect that perhaps I was in the wrong place, because my instructions had said to go to the reception desk, and I felt certain that the door-phone system would have been mentioned.

My fruitless perusal of the list was interrupted by “can I help you?” I looked up and had to stop myself from gasping in surprise. An IT analyst had, ninja-like, emerged from the building and somehow positioned himself behind me. His appearance was not conventional. In his mid forties, he was wearing a worn-out heavy metal t-shirt and pants that looked like they had never seen the inside of a washing machine. But what was really striking was his hair – completely shaved except for a long Mohawk that extended halfway down his back. It would be safe to say that I was surprised.

I explained my predicament, and he laughed long and loud, telling me that I was in “the complete wrong place.” (As if that wasn’t obvious.) “You need,” he said, as he rolled a cigarette “to go to the ISB. You know, over there.” He gestured vaguely towards the rest of the university. Then he walked away, which indicated to me that the conversation was over, even though I had no idea what the ISB was; the closest thing I could think of was Irritable Bowel Syndrome, but that was IBS, not ISB. Although if this unclear acronym talk continued, IBS definitely wasn’t out of the question.

I never got his name. Probably Godot.

Back to the library. I browsed an enormous list of acronyms, finally finding the ITS (Information Technology Services) building. Surely, I thought, this is the one – where else would one buy a computer? It wasn't the ISB, like Godot had said, but I assumed I had misheard.

So off I walked, my confidence boosting with each step, and positively skyrocketing when I entered a much friendlier-looking building to see a cash register. This must be it!

I waited for five or ten minutes before a flustered-looking woman emerged from the back room. I explained my predicament, and she, of course, shook her head.

“You need to be at the ISB,” she told me, pushing my blood pressure up a few points.

“Where,” I asked through gritted teeth, inwardly counting to ten and reminding myself that my troubles were not this woman’s fault “is that?”

“By National Bank, on Albany St.”

Thank. God. Finally, concrete directions. As I cut through the library, I didn’t have quite the spring in my step that I’d had before but I did have a feeling of relief that my ordeal was finally over.

Arriving at the bank, I poked around it, thinking that the ISB must be some tiny hamlet attached to it, from whence computers are distributed.

Nothing. Not a single thing. It was just a bank, whose connection to the university began and ended with proximity. I sighed and went to cross the street to the library again, with the intention of using their computers for the third time. As I stood at the light, feeling distinctly sorry for myself, I glanced at my destination. Like the buildings flanking the bunker, there was an enormous sign on the library, one that I had never taken notice of until now.

I sharply breathed in as all the pieces fell into place. Loath to use a common word when an uncommon acronym will do the job, the official name for the library is the Information Services Building. ISB. The building that I’d gone through over and over again all afternoon had been my destination all along.

But no reason to despair! My journey was over! I was successful in my quest! I walked into the ISB, into the Teaching and Learning Centre, and triumphantly puffed out my chest and said “I would like to buy a computer!”

The woman behind her desk took her headphones out and said “what?”

Chagrined, I repeated myself in more hushed tones. The woman blinked, pontificated, and said, thank God, “ you’ve come to the right place, let me check your name off on the list.” Going through each name excruciatingly slowly, she finally found mine. "That will be $168.50."

“What.” Not even a question. Just a flat statement of disbelief. My father had, as you will recall, only given me $150.

Her eyes crinkled in the beginnings of a sad smile. “GST.”

G.S.T.

Northeast Valley Beatdown

2009-03-02T17:04:00.000-08:00

I wish I had been told this in advance so I could have avoided learning it the hard way: never wear glasses at nighttime in Northeast Valley. I expect you’re surprised, because this is not a guideline that one expects to have to follow, but trust me: it’s advice worth taking.

The rather idyllic picture to your left should explain why my fate was so unexpected; the valley's more-than-rather efficient name should explain where it is. No further exposition is required.

My friend and I were searching for a party for which we had been given bad directions (that was a lie. Actually, I insisted to the party-thrower that we didn’t need directions, as I knew where the house was. When it became clear that I blatantly did not, I pretended that I’d been misinformed and thus neatly shifted the blame for our aimless wandering onto her. So at least there were some victories on this ill-fated evening.)

We wandered up one block, back onto the main road, onto another, all fairly aimlessly; I really had no idea where we were going.

As we got on the main road for what felt like the tenth or fifteenth time, a group of girls approached us. “Excuse me,” one said, noticing that my friend and I are both bespeckled, “but are you guys into computers?”

My response was admittedly rude. But you could also very legitimately argue that I thought we were just exchanging questions, taking street surveys as it were. She was wondering about our interests, so I enquired about hers with “no, are you into penis?”

Evidently, I’d given the wrong answer, because next thing I knew, the girl had snatched my glasses from me with surprisingly quick reflexes.

I tried to remain calm, a task made easier by the fact that I was so surprised by her actions. So after asking for them back a couple times, I snapped “fuck off,” and grabbed.

“Oi!” I heard one of her cronies indignantly exclaim, “nobody tells my cousin to fuck off!”

Somehow, I did not think that now was the time to mention that she took my glasses from me, almost completely unprovoked, so I stayed quiet and we walked away. Turning around, I saw that the glasses stealer had flown into some weird fury, and was being physically restrained by her friends. Wisely, we quickened our step.

Looking back, we should have ran, but we put too much faith in her restrainers. Like some kind of wild animal, she broke free and ran behind me, picking up speed and force until with a crash she slammed her fist into the back of my head, knocking me to the ground.

As I put my hands over my head and she rained blows upon me, I had to reflect for a second on the absurdity of my situation. If eyewear and language choice was enough to merit such treatment, imagine the fate someone doing something worse. While I don’t condone someone else hitting her first, if her response is at all proportionate to the crime that provokes it, I know that he or she will be filled with regret immediately after.

For the second time, her friends held her back, and I stumbled to my feet. My glasses, the cause of the entire altercation, where thankfully unharmed. As we ran away, we heard animalistic screams, punctuated with her sole supporter’s plaintive pleas of “he told my cousin to fuck off!”

The Valley is mostly full of broke students and burnout “artists,” two groups that aren’t generally violent. So unless you want to break this trend, and possibly your glasses, wear contacts if you’re passing through.

Jerk Jerk Bang Bang

2009-02-27T15:17:00.000-08:00

In my brain, Wanted was inspired when some film executives got together one night and had a few beers. During a lull in conversation, one of them said “I bet we could convince the basement-dweller demographic that anything is cool if we market it enough.” It would have inspired no small amount of chatter as the idea escalated more and more.

“Give it a bunch of flash-cuts!”

“Blood and gore! Basement dwellers love that!”

“Give him a hot girlfriend!”

“Make her a total bitch!

"...who doesn't deserve him!”

“Big-name actors!”

“Sexy ones!”

“Angelina Jolie!” (NB: Jolie lost such an enormous amount of weight for this film that I couldn’t even admire her curvy figure; in its place was the figure of an anorexic junkie, which was not helped by her heavy tattoos and disproportionately large lips.)

One of the executives woke up the next day, a bit dry and with a twinge of a headache, and reminisced on what they’d talked about. “Crazy,” he muttered “but it just might work.”

And somehow it did. Somehow, a movie that has gunfights with bullets crashing into each other not once, not twice, but four times has made a ton of money. Somehow, a movie that has at least two car chases concluding with perfectly-timed flips over obstacles has garnered almost wholehearted support from critics.

Seriously.

The critics astounded me the most, because I find them to be a rather elitist, negative bunch – however did they give this a pass? A movie that involves the hero, Wesley, shooting an enemy in the face, then plunging his gun into his now-unseeing eye, then dispatching the next few enemies through the gory chunks of blood and brain matter?

I don’t expect a great deal from movies. As I mentioned in earlier posts, I love fun, popcorn action flicks like Armageddon and Independence Day. I’m also a fan of similarly unrealistic romantic comedies like Must Love Dogs and essentially the entire Judd Apatow collection, so I think I can safely say that this is not the blog of a snob.

Having established that, watching Wanted was a masochistic experience that failed to even clear my low bar of taste. Like Twilight, it is so absurd that on paper it looks like a parody. On the silver screen, though, it clearly is not. It doesn’t even laugh at itself like the greats of its genre with amusing scenes, lines, or characters. There’s no kooky side characters, a la Armageddon, and there’s not a shred of the classic wise guy/straight man comedy that was so enjoyable in Independence Day.

Nope, Wanted is straight up and down like six-o’clock, and expects its viewers to take it as seriously as it takes itself. That’s fine; there’s nothing wrong with adjusting reality here and there to suit a work of fiction. This isn’t a matter of adjusting and fine-tuning, though – in this film, reality is dramatically smashed,in hyperfast motion, into meaty chunks, then shattered in hyposlow motion into a semblance of its former self that all the Krazy Glue in the world couldn’t fix.

It’s a classic subgenre – the superhero flick. Wesley is nerdy and anxious, with a dead-end job, a smarmy best friend, and a pain-in-the ass girlfriend (who is having regular conjugal visits with the smarmy friend). In a nutshell, his life is far from enviable.

Far from enviable, that is, until one day when he finds that he is destined to do far more: join a secret guild of killers called (even though it employs at least one woman) The Fraternity.

I could literally write thousands of words about his Fraternal Exploits, which include shooting the wings off flies, curving bullets with his “instincts,” and killing someone in New York with a rifle fired from New Jersey, but I think the absurdity is better exemplified by addressing the nature of the organization itself. A group of heavily-armed, tough-as-nails men and women are given the solemn duty of “keeping balance” in the universe by killing those that fate itself has deemed unacceptable.

Okay. Bit preposterous, but we’ve all seen worse, right? I’m all for a bit of magical realism in my movies.

The ludicrousness, which previously trickled into the plot, positively thundered in a tidal wave with Fate’s chosen mode of communication. No crystal ball, no magic phone, nothing like that. The Fraternity is told who to kill through - naturally - a loom. Suddenly, the fibre bonanza I live in takes on a whole new meaning. Perhaps my mother’s seemingly harmless hobby is more sinister? Perhaps the loom that I thought just took up space in my parents lounge has an agenda I never suspected?

Upon his induction into the Fraternity, Wes undergoes a dramatic training program. But it’s not like any training I’ve ever seen or heard about. It is very light on actually teaching him anything, and very heavy on merely kicking the shit out of him. Somehow, a few weeks of this unlocks his innate ability to slow down time and make bullets curve. And don’t worry about his well-being, either – the brutal shit-kickings aren’t such a big deal because The Fraternity has a steady supply of a wax/water mixture that, if you immerse yourself in it, all your wounds are healed.

Seriously.

Like my hypothetical executives said, this movie was marketed to the basement-dweller crowd. The geek of geeks, who lives on World of Warcraft, who dreams of the day that he will realize his destiny and become an assassin for the forces of justice. Well, I’ve got a word of advice for him, a valuable, valuable lesson: recession or no, the Army’s always hiring. Your bullets won’t curve, but you’ll never take orders from a machine originally designed for rug-making, or any other textile for that matter. But if you’re not prepared to do that, turn this gore-porn, gun-porn, death-fest off and go read a book (not a gun magazine) or climb a tree (not a clock tower).

An Evening with the POTUS

2009-02-20T03:07:00.001-08:00

Around the world, we have been bombarded with presidential news for two years. Even with the end of the election, the stories persist, as the media seem to have collectively forgotten how to report on anything else.

But through it all, something important has been neglected. We’ve been barraged with issue ads, attack ads, polling data, policy outlines, and personal narratives, but nobody has asked the really tough question. Which candidate would be the best to hang out with? Who would I rather have a beer or five with, have a meal with, or go to a game with?

I like Barack Obama (and if I didn’t I would lie, such is level of passion he inspires), but I don’t think he’d be that fun to hang out with. He seems so tortured, new-age, and academic. The meal would be at a vegetarian place that specializes in arugula and wheatgrass smoothies, after that hours would be spent going to bar after bar, looking for one that serves low-carb beer to maintain his distinctive slim, trim figure. After a few of those he would become very introspective, pausing for absurd amounts of time between sentences to gather his thoughts.

As he drank more and more low-carbs, he would begin relating every conversation to his mixed-race heritage and the identity problems it presents before becoming incoherent by eleven or so (as arugula and physical fitness create less-than-optimal alcohol tolerance). After seeing him speak, it would be hard not to be disappointed by this performance.

Maybe his VP would be better, but Joe Biden’s had not one but two brain aneurysms. A big night out could trigger another one, and that would be a major buzzkill.

John McCain is somewhere around a thousand years old, which puts him in the same situation as Biden. What’s more, he’s notorious for having a volatile temper. The last thing I want to do is back him up as he fearlessly squares off against some punter who stepped on his shoe or spilt some drink on him. I’m even less inclined to give him CPR when he learns the hard way that he can’t take a hit like he could in the late 60s.

Sarah Palin? Please. I have no idea what kind of common ground I could find with an SUV-driving soccer mum who ended up in government. The only reason I would possibly spend an evening with her is on the off-chance that its conclusion would see me twisting between the sheets with this veritable VPILF.

But even if that unlikely scenario were to occur, it would very quickly be destroyed by the entrance of flannel-wearing, oil-drilling, dog-racing, salmon-fishing testosterone-pumping Northern Man that is Todd Palin. He’d throw his burly frame right through the door without even bothering to check if it’s locked and proceed to kick seven kinds of shit out of me, Alaska-style. So there’s really no good that can come from a night with Palin

It’s the sad truth: 2008 produced no leaders worth hanging out with. Bummer.

So we’re going to have to look backward. The obvious candidate for a fun time is Bill Clinton, that affable, cheery, charismatic man. I’m sure he’d give you the perfect mix of good times and interesting conversation – for maybe two hours. After that, he’d catch the eye of a waitress, barmaid, or other nearby attractive woman, and from that moment on you’d find yourself alone while he sauntered over and chatted her up. Somehow, I don’t think he’s the type to introduce you to her friend, either.

The answer to the question I posed was fairly obvious from the get-go, but perhaps not everyone puts quite as much thought into this as I do. So I’ll spell it out: George Herbert Walker Bush. Commander in Chief for eight years, partier for fifty. Even if he’s a slow learner – which his eight years strongly suggest he is – fifty years is long enough to learn how to do something right. This is a man whose entire life of eating, drinking, and allegedly snorting coke has been completely overshadowed by his successful foray into politics, and I for one think this is a crying shame.

Imagine it! The night would start during a hot summer’s day, where you and your new friend would take in a Rangers game. Even though he doesn’t own the team anymore, I imagine the fact that he was once both owner of the team and President of the country would entitle you to all kinds of excellent perks. I would expect nothing less than a private box, with all the beers and snacks you can handle.

After that, with a slight buzz on, you’d pile into a private car, which would take you to Downtown Dallas (GWB learned his lesson about drink-driving in the late 70s, and besides he has the Secret Service at his beck and call from now on. May as well take advantage of it). Once you arrive in town, you’d be dropped in front of the best, most exclusive steakhouse in Texas, where the ex-President (naturally) is best friends with all of the staff and half of the clientele. As you wash down your perfectly cooked, deliciously marinated, Texas-sized steak, George would make you roar with laughter as he relates stories from his hell-raising, high-flying time in the Texas Air National Guard.

Dinner over, off you’d go, to some of Dallas’s most high-flying bars, with light piano music and leather seats, where everyone knows GWB from his time as an oilman. He’d introduce you to the whole gang with some well-placed clever anecdote, and before long, as the whiskey and conversation flow into one another, you’d feel like you’re amongst old friends.

The night’s not over. Fun as it’s been, you’ve been around other guys all night – isn’t that a little gay? Never fear; as always, Dubya has your back. By 3am it’s last call, but that’s okay because you’ve had enough of this sausage sizzle. It’s time to pile everyone into the limo and head off to the best strip club in town. George is faithful to his wife, as all good Christian men are, but he’s still a man; he loves a good titty bar.

At 6am, you’ll finally emerge, blinking in the sun. You won’t feel great, but George, somehow bright-eyed even at this absurd hour, slaps you on the back and tells you some coffee and grease will fix you right up. Unable to speak anymore, you nod your head in assent, and he takes you to a cheap yet delicious diner that has strong coffee with unlimited refills and the biggest breakfast known to man. As you start to feel better, you and George discuss the previous night, laughing in much more subdued tones as you relate stories the other missed.

Sated and tired, he escorts you to the car. With a warm, double-handed handshake, he tells you to call him the next time you’re in town. And as you board the family-owned private jet, you know that he meant it.

I Live With My Moms

2009-02-17T18:28:00.000-08:00

Adults who live at home can be neatly divided into two groups: the passing through and the set up. Members of each group are very proud of their memberhship; they can’t wait to explain why they’re spending a brief stint living at home (with an eyeroll) or explain just how incredible living at home is, and how they wouldn’t have it any other way (with a grin and a couple thumbs up).

I am firmly in the first camp. This attitude is nurtured by my parents, who I am sure live in constant fear that I will wake up one morning, refreshed in my warm room on a cold night, and cross into the the other category. To this end, I am also sure they stay up late every night, huddled over a whiteboard, plotting ways to ensure this never happens.

Although there is a guestroom, I have been assigned to a room labeled by my father as “the adult child returning home” room, although this is a purpose it has evolved into over the years. It was originally built in a section of the attic as a room for my then ten-year-old brother. There is no door, just a set of stairs that leads directly into a single room with bright colours and walls that connect the ceiling and floor at a forty-five degree angle, as opposed to the standard ninety. It’s the ultimate tree fort, and a child’s dream room.

It’s an adult’s nightmare. The only spot in this room that I can fully stand is in the dead centre, where the two walls converge to create a triangle. Everywhere else, I must crouch. The only place I can put the bed is tucked into one of the angles of the triangle; the effect, combined with the waist-high wall that protects me from rolling out of bed and down the stairs, is truly coffin-esque. The pint-sized dimensions and bright colours make me feel like I have, through some kind of horrible bureaucratic mistake, been committed to a mental ward for children.

As my brother grew, he arrived at similar conclusions, and shifted into the room I vacated when I moved out three years ago. This left my parents with every middle-aged couple’s dream: a spare room. The possibilities were endless! It could be a weight room, a storage room – anything!

Its fate was unexpected, unless you’re familiar with my family’s particular brand of kookiness. It became a fibre studio. My mother is passionate about all things fibre. Knitting, spinning, weaving – she loves them all, and the house is positively brimming with accessories to match this love. So the spare room became the place for all these things. The bookshelf is full of brightly-coloured yarn, all organized very specifically according to brightness, shade, hue, and weight. If I were to take it upon myself to rearrange these, it would likely be the last thing I ever do – such is the level of devotion.

On top of the bookshelf is some strange spider-like contraption that looks like could either be a fibre artifact or a Spanish Inquisition artifact; the jury is still out, but either way it's terrifying.

As for the more dull colours, my (single) bed is surrounded by more yarn, in darker and earthier tones, also organized by colour. I have tried to put a glass of water by my bed before and found that this was not an option available to me; there is not enough of a flat surface to safely do so.

At the foot of my bed, there are two things: one, a pile of secondhand fibre reference books, musty-smelling and full of information that I do not understand. Next to the pile, though, is the coup-de-grace: a spinning wheel. The industrial revolution, it seems, has not yet arrived at my parents’ house, and even though there is enough yarn to keep an army warm and snug, my mother still insists on making – and dying – her own from pure wool. While I admire her commitment to fibre, I am also very confused by it.

But I have to thank them. I never want to be the guy who spends a significant portion of his adulthood as a man-child, living at home like he did when he was eleven. Sure, that lifestyle works for some, but it’s not for me. I am glad my parents not only share this value with me, but they will never let me forget it. You get what you pay for in this world, and my house is no exception: zero rent gets you the creepy room. Them’s the rules.

A Heroic Bureaucrat

2009-02-11T10:04:00.000-08:00

Fiction makes me feel about one inch tall. Bruce Willis’s Armageddon hero bravely giving his life for his planet actually brought a tear to my eye not long ago. Bill Pullman’s President Whitmore rallying the troops on the dawn of the decisive battle in Independence Day made me swell with pride as he thundered that “we will not go quietly into the night.” These are some seriously inspiring guys.
It’s also a little disheartening. Fiction or no, heroes and heroines are fantastic role models. But they’re fictional.They don't - and can't - exist or be taken seriously in the real world; for evidence of this, look no further than the US, where, in 2003, then-President George Bush tried to emulate Whitmore's flight suit and roguish personality. The results were not positive.

Where, I ask, are their non-fiction equivalents? I’m not asking for a carbon copy. Just someone who follows in the footsteps of the fictional.

There’s good news. I’ve found a hero in the vein of these. He comes with a reality check, as he doesn’t fly fighter jets or set off nuclear bombs in asteroids; by contrast, he’s a civil servant. But that is irrelevant. Courage, moral strength, and integrity are values to be celebrated and striven towards regardless of venue.

I’m referring to Richard Thomson. Readers can be forgiven for not being familiar with him, especially those from outside Dunedin. He’s the chairman of the District Health Board, a job that, while difficult, does not generally lend itself to heroism. Usually, it’s a fairly invisible position, the type upon which the spotlight is only shown when something bad happens. “Child breaks arm; given prompt care” and events of its ilk are not usually headline-worthy.

This steady, invisible positivity recently veered sharply towards its converse when an IT consultant’s lavish lifestyle was brought to Thomson’s attention. Being an attentive leader, he investigated and found that the consultant in question had been embezzling public funds from the hospital for years, to the tune of a whopping $17 million. Thomson alerted the authorities and the thieves now await sentencing.

None of this behaviour is particularly heroic. What is heroic is what happened afterwards. As with most scandals involving public service and its requisite money, a scapegoat was demanded. In truly medieval fashion, the people demanded appeasement with, if not someone’s head, then at least his or her career. In keeping with this time-honoured tradition, newly-elected Health Minister Tony Ryall asked Thomson for his resignation. He would quietly leave his job, someone would take his place, and the whole matter could be put to rest.

Thomson said no.

Thomson said, publicly, that if Ryall wanted him out of his job, he was more than welcome to fire him. Short of that, he would not be going anywhere.

It’s the proverbial calling of the bluff. He demanded that Ryall show his hand, list his reasons, and highlighted what everyone knows but has yet to articulate: Ryall has no reasons. The fraud that went on was unfortunate and shameful. However, it was in place before Thomson’s tenure. His only crime was to investigate it, a conscientious act that nobody should lose their job over.

The moral courage is tremendous. How tempting it must be to simply offer his letter of resignation and fade away. Given his experience, I’m sure he could find another job, but considering his background as a successful businessman, I’m not sure if he would have to.

But that isn’t the point. The point is that he refuses to be scapegoated for something that was not his fault. He refuses to discourage transparency by accepting blame when all he did was bring a crime to light. He refuses to be the simple, one-dimensional “bad guy” because the true institutional dysfunction that allowed this fraud is far more complicated. But most importantly, he refuses the temptation of popularity, disregards that which is expected, and firmly chooses the harder road. He doesn’t do this out of any kind of self-hating masochism, but because it is right. And that ability, the ability to do the right thing even though a thousand voices say it is wrong – that is the mark of a true, real-life, modern-day hero.

Improving the Journey

2009-02-05T17:50:00.000-08:00

If I’ve learned anything in my time, it’s that walking sucks. Walking really sucks. Mostly, it’s time-consuming. I could roughly tally up how much time I’ve spent pounding the pavement over the past several years, but I know that the resulting spreadsheet would send me into, if not a state of deep depression, then at least an uncomfortable malaise.

Walking isn’t unpleasant so much as it’s just excruciatingly boring. It’s not painful at all, which is part of the problem. If you finished a walking journey with sore legs, rasping breath, and sweat-drenched clothes, you would at least feel like you’d done something, and your endorphins would be released. But that doesn’t happen. Walking is the epitome of mild exercise; I will never understand the middle aged women I see walking around my Dunedin suburb every evening, often in pairs but sometimes, when their walking partner is unavailable, with a reluctant husband. But each to their own, I suppose. They probably don’t understand why I spend weekend afternoons telling the internet my thoughts on life, so we’re even.

Driving isn’t that great either. For one, it’s expensive. Very expensive. Where walking robbed you of chunks of your time, driving will steadily siphon away your money. If you, like me, decide to budget by investing in a car that’s older than you, then in addition to appeasing your vehicle's constant thirst for petroleum, you'll also be stuck with endless unexpected repair costs that won’t siphon money so much as suction it. Even my parents’ car, which is a relatively sprightly decade old, requires pricey maintenance on a fairly regular basis. Warrants, registrations, insurance…the list of hidden costs goes on and on, and soon enough the money you worked so hard for is mostly going towards getting you to and from work in the first place. Hardly ideal.

So what to do? Getting from here to there is a huge part of your life; you need something cheap, enjoyable, and quick. You need the low cost of walking combined with the speed of driving. You don’t want to deal with parking, but you don’t want to budget half an hour of travel time for everywhere you go. Where, you ask me, is this happy medium? Surely nothing so perfect could exist.

Well it does. Perfect is not an adjective I throw around a lot, but the bike has earned it. Everyone rode bikes when they were kids, tearing around, exploring, racing, and playing. I was well-known in my neighbourhood for having a pink girl’s bike; when confronted, which was often, I would insist that it wasn’t pink, it was light red, at which point my accusors would move on to the flowers printed on myhandlebars. Superficial trappings notwithstanding, though, I had a bike: the whole neighbourhood was my oyster.

Fifteen years later, I rediscovered the magic, and wondered what had inspired me to shrug it off for so long. Now, the most arduous distances are proverbial pieces of cake. What once took me twenty minutes now takes me five; travel time is a thing of the past. I can take meandering routes, blasting down side streets with impunity, exploring previously uncharted areas of Dunedin in a third of the time it would have taken me to walk. I can leave for work ten minutes before I’m due to be there, when previously I had to allocate half an hour, sometimes in the rain with holes in my shoes. Again: not ideal.

Of course, as with all things that are seemingly perfect, there are some downsides I would be criminal to not mention. First and foremost, especially in mountainous Dunedin, are hills. They are every biker’s worst nightmare, and can be combated in two ways. One: tough them out until your new habit makes you fit enough to handle them. This is a great option if you have drive, ambition, and an enormous tolerance for pain.

I don’t know about you, but that isn’t me. So here's your second option: stairs. When you go up hills, adjust your route so that you have to go up the maximum amount of outdoor concrete staircases, a ubiquitous sight in Dunedin, and hopefully present elsewhere too. At each staircase, hop off and walk your bike up; if you are seen by anyone, you will be spared the shame of being outed as unfit, because you’re walking up stairs. Lance Armstrong would have to do the same: riding is a physical impossibility! It’s the perfect way to ascend a hill while avoiding the shameful experience of walking a bike alongside traffic, which is sure to contain at least one van full of schoolkids who want nothing more than to mercilessly mock people like you.

And crashes. Dear me, there is serious potential for crashing on a bike. This may apply to me more than to most because my coordination is more ape than it is human, but I have experienced some truly hellish crashes. I’ve pressed the front brakes at high speeds without the balance of the rear brakes; the consequences were predictably dire. I’ve lost control going down hills at high speeds, once crashing into a grassy embankment, and once, rather spectacularly, into a fence that was high enough to stop my bike in its tracks, but not high enough to stop me from continuing on at the same velocity, flying over the fence and down the hill behind it, like a latter-day, clumsy superman. Luckily, through some miracle, I was okay, save a bit of embarrassment, and I brushed myself off, untangled my bike from the chain-link, and carried on.

So get a bike. Buy one secondhand, buy one new; go to the dump and shell out a dollar for a fixer-upper. If you're lucky enough to have friends or family with unused bikes, liberate theirs. I promise you, you won't be dissapointed. But please, wear a helmet.

You're welcome.

What Twilight Taught Me

2009-01-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

I haven’t read it, by the way, or seen the movie. My knowledge of Twilight is completely based on conversations I’ve had with fans, who have managed to infiltrate every single part of my life. What’s more, the Twilight fan is no ordinary fan. She (it’s always a woman) doesn’t just love Stephenie Meyers’s series, she lives and breathes it, and does not hesitate to tell innocent bystanders not only that it’s her favourite, but exactly why it’s her favourite. I have managed to be surrounded by these types for months now, and therefore feel I have enough knowledge to definitively inform the world why I will never, ever be reading or watching them.

But enough about my expertise.

I’m not going to launch into any attacks on individual fans; this town is far too small for such carry-on, and I hardly want to go about alienating people. But there is one thing that I have heard from literally every fan that bears mentioning. “He’s real pale but, like, he’s also real hot. Isn’t that funny?” This is always done with an enormously incredulous tone. Rather than tonally shift upwards on the last couple words, every word is turned into a question, creating an effect that cannot be accurately described in a written medium.

The tone is always accompanied by a furrowing of the brow, like a Cro-Magnon being upon presentation of a cigarette lighter in action. Fair enough, too. Pale, and hot? The mere thought of it has blown my mind, and I haven’t even been confronted with it on the big screen like these fans have at least three times.

The plot is pretty basic: your standard forbidden love affair. Think Romeo and Juliet, and the bones of Meyers’s Masterpiece is pretty clear. Bella’s in love with Edward, who is beautiful (in a pale way, of course), and who loves her too, but because he’s a vampire he also wants to eat her. Obviously, the dramatic potential is huge as these two try to reconcile these conflicts and be together.

I have two favourite plot points. Here is one: Eddie is a vampire, which means he doesn’t age. So while Bella, the love of his life, is in her mid-to-late teens, he is no less than a hundred years old. Even though he has the body of a teenager, encased behind that beautiful milky skin is the brain of an old, old man. But fans seem to either miss or purposely ignore this fact: far more romantic to concentrate on his predilection for human flesh than the fact that their illicit love is extreme paedophilia without the window-dressing of wrinkled skin, false teeth, and memory loss.

But that’s number two. My absolute, number-one favourite aspect of Twilight is its sequel, New Moon. Because Eddie is so consumed with his desire to feast on Bella, he leaves town at the beginning of the book, to nobly protect Bella from his primal urge. So, after a several-month period of depression, Bella meets another man: Jacob, the Native American with long hair, dark skin, and gentle eyes. He’s no Ed, but if you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with. Besides, at least he’s human, without the supernatural baggage Ed brought with him, right?

Wrong! He’s a werewolf! Bella has some truly awful luck. I was a little pleased to hear this new relationship development at first, but was disappointed when I learned that Jake is the last variety of mythical creature she encounters, much less dates. I had dreams of the third book focussing on her clandestine affair with a misunderstood minotaur who, behind his bovine torso and human legs, has a kind soul and is only looking for someone to love.

I could picture the love scene so vividly – steam puffing out his snout as he advances towards Bella, looking at her with wonton lust. But that would be all Meyer would deliver; being a Mormon, her faith heavily influences her writing, so she keeps it PG\. Except for the flesh-eating, of course.

At any rate, it wasn’t meant to be, and the very forbidden love affair between a young woman and the minotaur from her school remains unwritten. Someday, maybe I will write this story that so very badly needs to be told.

So what does Twilight teach me, other than the fact that marketing alone can make a best-selling series and box-office bonanza of something that sounds more like a parody than anything else? Considering the amount of otherwise smart, decent women who are into it, it reveals one thing: there really is no accounting for taste.