China

At the beginning of September I flew into Zhengzhou, China. I'll be staying here for three months and as it's not a tourist city I won't be regaling you daily with tales of adventure. I do intend to write some entries on my life in China in general and specific events if they happen. 

Your first question may naturally be, why Zhengzhou and why for three long months. I can only say that  there is a woman involved and quite possibly some voodoo, which would explain all the chicken blood. So much chicken blood.

As I mentioned, Zhengzhou is not a tourist town. I think the population breakdown is 99.999999% Chinese and then me. Nobody I've encountered thus far speaks more than a few words of English. This leads to me doing a lot of pointing and pantomiming. I've stopped rubbing my belly to indicate hunger though as my Buddhaesque frame leads people to think I'm giving them good fortune.

The thing I like most about Zhengzhou so far, other than the aforementioned woman of course, is Starbucks. It's almost completely empty and has comfortable chairs and free wifi. On the occasions that they play a western song I can even imagine that I'm home.

Why I Don’t Have a Tattoo

I don’t think anybody has ever asked me why I don’t have a tattoo; that may be because I spend most of my days barricaded inside a self-made shelter that can only be described as part fortress, part homage to Bollywood. Or, it may be because, after having spoken to me once, the majority of people decide never to do so again. That being said, I thought, what better topic for a blog post than something that nobody has ever expressed interest in?

The reason I don’t have a tattoo can best be illustrated via a story. When I was in high school, I loved the band Twisted Sister. I don’t mean that I merely found their music enjoyable, I thought they were the best band ever (yes, even better than Warrant and Stryper). Their album “Stay Hungry” was not only the soundtrack to my lonely high school years but also became my life philosophy, leading, ultimately to a considerable weight problem. Perhaps a healthier album title would have been “Don’t You Think You’ve Had Enough Pie?”

In order to show my devotion to these rock gods I paid a friend to paint the “Stay Hungry” album cover on the back of my jean jacket. He did a stellar job and I proudly wore that jacket around until I could no longer take the twice daily beatings I received from the significantly younger, jealous kids. I ended up giving the jacket to Goodwill and in my heart know that some young Guatemalan refugee is currently getting the snot kicked out of him. Circle of life my friends. Circle of life.

I have more than enough naturally (according to several well respected veterinarians) occurring things on my body to be embarrassed about that I don’t need to add more. A full back picture of Dee Snider gnawing on a bloody thigh bone may be nice for some* people but I’m lucky that a group of good Samaritans was able to drag me out of the tattoo parlour and give me a good ass-whooping before I could go through with it.

*I'm using 'some' here of course to mean 'no.'

Waiting for a Bus

Yesterday I was waiting for a bus on the east side of the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. It was raining a little bit so I stood inside the delivery bay to avoid getting wet. There were a couple of odd characters there. One was a 50ish man wearing a tank top who had more hair on his back and arms then I’ve ever seen on any human being or most animals. There was a sheep that passed away recently that would have given him a run for his money but that’s about it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek_(sheep). The other was a 20ish guy who looked so happy to be alive that the cast of Glee would reject him for being too chipper. Guys wearing rainbow chaps and riding penis floats in the Pride parade would think he was overdoing it a bit.

I only take this bus on occasions when I have to run an errand along its route and I’ve never seen more than one other person waiting for it so two was not usual, but manageable.

The 50ish guy kept rustling around with his torn plastic shopping bag and fiddling with an old vinyl album. The 20ish guy kept smiling with his brilliant white teeth.

There were a few people milling about the artist’s entrance and finally one of the security guards said “I guess you guys are waiting to get an autograph.”

Now it all started to make sense. The hairy monster had brought his vinyl album to be autographed by Elvis Costello who was playing there later that night. I assume he was in the building doing sound check at the time I was there.

Now the security guard and Smiley were having a lovely conversation that I was in the middle of and knew that if my bus came I would have to rudely run right between them to catch it.

I was hoping Elvis would come out while I was there and the bus came as I was in the middle of shaking his hand. Then I could just blow off Elvis Costello and hop on the bus, but that didn’t happen.

The bus came while the security guard was telling us about his massive vinyl collection and, as nobody was actually at the stop, the bus drove right past. I took off like a shot between Hippy Dippy and the security guard, waved down the bus and got on. I was then chided by the driver who said “you can’t be hiding.” Yes driver, I’ve been playing hide and seek all day with you guys and not one of you even came close to finding me. Next I’m going to play tag.”

I'm Not a GPS

As I was going to work today a woman stopped me on the street and asked if I knew where 18 King St. was. She then pointed to a building with a huge number 18 on it and said, "is that it?"
I didn't immediately answer and she said "are you familiar with the area?"

I think there is a difference between being familiar with an area and knowing the exact location of every building within a 3 kilometre radius. Usually "familiar with the area" questions are along the lines of "is Yonge St. this way" or "is there a Tim Horton's around here?" Not "can you direct me to the nearest Halal butcher with a sour disposition but sweet cuts of beef?"

That Don't Add Up

I should rename this blog "Sh*t My Monkey Says" but she's not my monkey, she's a monkey for the world. The latest ridiculousness that she was trying to convince me of is that the month of October 2010 has five of each day; that is, five Mondays, five Tuesday, five Wednesdays, etc.. I'm no mathematician but when I multiply seven weekdays by five, divide by the core temperature of the sun, convert to an absolute value, factor in Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, and carry the two I get a value of 35. I checked my calendar and, just as I suspected, October only had 31 days in it. What could possibly be amiss.

The fact is that October actually has five Fridays, five Saturdays and five Sundays. Oh my goodness - a month that has five each of three consecutive days? Surely the gods must have worked in unison to make this the most special of all months. I dug a little deeper. I was working on my own DaVinci Code here. Internet stories abounded that this kind of thing only happened once every 823 years; oh what a wonderful time we live in.

But wait . . . I thought August 2010 had the same phenomenon. Yes, there it is; five Sundays, five Mondays and five Tuesdays. In fact, every single damn month that has 31 days, from the beginning of time to the end of time, will have five each of three consecutive days. Let's say we start a month on a Sunday, as August 2010 did, count 28 days and we end up on a Saturday. Thus far, each day has occurred four times but there are three days left. We don't just tack them on randomly:

"I have my pilates class on Wednesday so let's add them there."
"Arrgh matie I have my pirates class then too, I wholeheartedly concur."
"So we'll have seven Wednesdays in August?"
"Aye aye - for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a . . . "
"Will you idiots shut up. For one thing, we have no control over the calendar, this is a bake sale, and secondly the days will just continue in sequential order."
"Shiver me timbers . . . this lemon meringue pie is phenomenal."

Call on line 666

I used to work at a summer camp. There was a time when I thought I would like to mold the minds of our young future leaders. I wanted to be a teacher and the summer camp gave me experience that I was unable to get sitting at home lecturing to puppets (although the kids were only slightly more responsive). My experience at the camp quickly beat the desire to be a teacher (and very nearly, the will to live) out of me.

But this entry is not about the summer camp in general but about a specific event. There were five camps spread around the city and each had a coordinator. One summer the coordinators were given beepers. These were the days long before cell phones and the job of the coordinator involved a lot of roaming around so we weren't easy to get a hold of.

Each week the coordinators would have an off site meeting with the district supervisor. On occasion there would be a camp emergency (crying child, crying counselor, bleeding nose, sucking chest wound, decapitation) and a coordinator would have to miss the meeting.

On this particular occasion, we went to McDonald's after the meeting. While sitting and chatting one of the coordinators got a page, checked her beeper, screamed hysterically and threw it on the table. For you see, the page was from none other than the Prince of Darkness, Lucifer. Yes, the number that appeared was 666. I was flabbergasted that not only would the devil use such a pedestrian method of communication but that he would page someone knowing they'd have to call back and foot the exorbitant long distance charges of phoning Hell. But I guess nobody ever said Beelzebub was considerate.

Now, are you sitting down, because it wasn't actually the devil calling. Turns out it was just the coordinator who didn't make it to the meeting. I could have sworn it was one of the little prick kids from my camp. If this kid wasn't the devil he was most certainly a close relative.

Anyway, I suppose you're wondering about sucking chest wounds. They are not, as I thought, a hickey on the teats. A sucking chest wound is when the chest cavity has been pierced and air is sucked into the cavity through the wound on inhalation. They are obviously dangerous for the sufferer and no picnic for the person treating the wound. I once lost a wristwatch and half a turkey sub in a sucking chest wound.

And how come that mute guy never answers me?

Yesterday, while driving, Monkey spotted a man walking on the sidewalk. The man had a white pole with a large rubber tip. Many of you may already know where this is going. Monkey said, "what's he looking for?" She thought that he was holding a metal detector and looking for precious coins on the sidewalk; because the sidewalk of course is where you really need a metal detector. If you are able to detect a coin buried beneath the concrete are you really going to get out a jackhammer and start drilling away on the miniscule chance that you've found an ounce of gold instead of just an old sardine tin lid. Anyway, I replied that as the man was blind, he was probably looking for anything.