African Tour:Nairobi

Jomo Kenyatta International Airport
Nairobi, Kenya
After a few days at Kruger National Park and driving around the Mpumalanga countryside, Nairobi was like a different world. Not only is it by far the largest city in Kenya, it is also the gateway to all of the country's national parks and reserves. Everyone who goes to Kenya goes through Nairobi. The mix of international tourists and more locals than any other city in Kenya makes for an interesting, and a little tense, atmosphere.

The entire company stayed at the Sarova Stanley Hotel in the Central Business District. I always preferred houses and apartments, but this was not a bad hotel. It was a little less generic than typical business hotels and it was smack dab in the middle of the CBD. The hotel had a swimming pool that I never got a chance to use, a restaurant that I only saw at breakfast, and a tiny gym that most of us ignored because it was pretty much useless.

Nairobi at its best.
Just outside the hotel was the Jamia Mosque, Kenya National Archives, and Memorial Peace Museum. A little farther away was the Nairobi National Museum. As with most mosques, heathens are not allowed inside the Jamia Mosque. The outside was surprisingly unimpressive. The Kenya National Archives houses the “largest Pan-African art gallery in Africa”. The Memorial Peace Museum is a small memorial to those who died when the American embassy was blown up in 1998. The Nairobi National Museum is a larger than expected natural history museum that focuses exclusively on Sub-Saharan Africa. Between the hotel and the museum was the Maasai Market on the banks of the Nairobi River. It was like any other handmade tourist crap market, but it felt more authentic, for some reason.

We were only in Nairobi for a few days and we worked on all of them. That left little time for exploring, except late at night and early in the morning. The hotel staff told us not to go out after 22:00. They were not even subtle about it. They just came out and said it was too dangerous for foreigners. The CBD is supposed to be the safest part of the city. The hotel staff disagreed.

Not that any of us were going to get murdered if we walked outside the hotel at night. Probably just robbed. Scams are exceptionally popular in Nairobi. We were warned about fake police wanting to check our passports, strangers claiming this ATM is broken and we should use that one over there, good samaritans telling us some tourist sight is closed that day and offering an alternative, friendly people trying to start conversations while their accomplice picks our pockets, and the old international favorite, shady taxi drivers who take you some place you really do not want to go.

One of my favorite scams was one none of us had to worry about. Apparently, some children in Nairobi will approach strange men and loudly claim to be the child they abandoned. The goal is to embarrass the “father” enough to give them some money to go away. Since we were all women, and did not look at all like any of the children, none of us saw that one first hand.

Having already traveled a bit before we reached Nairobi, I was not unfamiliar with the concept of nefarious locals who prey on naive tourists. I met a few taxi drivers in Bangkok who were not entirely honest and was told by a local that the Grand Palace was closed while I was walking away from just visiting the Grand Palace. Stealing my passport is difficult in any country since I never take it with me when I wander around a city, I only use secure ATMs, and I have spent enough time in New York to know how to defend against pickpockets.

Even so, I encountered two obvious scammers in my brief time in Nairobi. One was a middle age man claiming to be an undercover police officer. He never asked to see my passport, but he showed me his badge for about a tenth of a second. From what little I saw, it looked homemade. I know nothing about Kenyan police, but there was nothing about this guy that made me believe he was legitimate. His cheap suit was too large and the way he carried himself looked like someone who had never gone through any military or self-defense training.

Our conversation went something like this:

Scammer: Are you lost?

Me: Not yet.

Scammer: It is not safe in the street.

This was in broad daylight on a reasonably crowded road.

Scammer: I can help you find the way.

Me: To San Jose? Do you know Burt?

Scammer (completely ignoring everything I say): The American embassy is moved. (pointing) It is now that way.

I never said anything about going to any embassy or that I was American. But to a lot of people, if you are white, you must be American.

Scammer: My car can take you.

Me: Pass.

I turned around and walked away. The entire exchange happened too quickly for me to fully realize that he was trying to get me into his car. I prefer not to think about why.

I looked it up later and they did move the American embassy. In 2003. We were relatively close to the old site, which is now a monument to the 1998 bombing.

The second scammer was a longer conversation, but one I still do not understand. I was maybe half a kilometer east of the hotel when a man roughly my age told me he worked at my hotel. He never mentioned the name. He only called it “your hotel” or “the hotel”. He said he worked in the kitchen and was getting ready to make my breakfast. It all sounded completely innocuous at first, other than his refusal to use the hotel's name. I talked to him for a while because, in the highly unlikely event he actually did work for the hotel, he might have some good stories to tell. The people who work behind the scenes are usually the most interesting. Unfortunately, when I asked him for directions back to the hotel, he pointed south.

After some small talk, he asked me if I could help him move some boxes. This really caught me off guard. He said it was for my breakfast, so it was only fair that I helped. I wondered if he had ever met an American tourist before. The more I declined his offer, the more upset he got. He really wanted help moving those boxes. In the end, I walked away, just as I had with the undercover police officer. The good news about Nairobi scammers is that they take no for an answer.

I understand what the fake cop was after. He wanted me to get into his car. I have no idea what the fake hotel employee wanted. Unless he legitimately wanted me to help him move boxes.

Nairobi on any given day.

Bereavement Tour part 1

Didier is still in Taiwan. There is still paperwork that needs to be filled out and Yi Jun's family is currently arguing over her life insurance. I think everything should go to her children, as she specifically requested. But it is not up to me. Didier is also trying to avoid going back home without his wife. It will happen sooner or later, but he is not ready.

Though I only met Didier once before Yi Jun died, I am the closest thing he has to a friend in Taiwan. He knows Yi Jun's family and me, though he does not know them especially well. It kind of seems like Yi Jun did not particularly want to live in Taiwan. When she was married to an American, she lived in Michigan. When she was married to Didier, she lived in France and Ohio. Yi Jun and Didier used to visit Taiwan during the New Year and special occasions, but Didier was largely unfamiliar with the culture. In me, he saw someone who knows the culture and can speak to him in a language he understands. I like to think I can speak French on a good day, but we mostly communicate in English. And I knew Yi Jun in a way that makes more sense to him. Her family knew young Yi Jun. We knew the more modern, adult version.

During Yi Jun's last round of treatment, Didier stayed in her sister's house in Chiayi and the hospital hotel. After the funeral, there was no point in staying at the hospital, and he did not want to spend any time in the sister's house, so he went to Tainan. Getting from Chiayi to Tainan is pretty easy, and Didier is comfortable with trains, but he had no idea how to get around once he was there. His phone call started our grand tour of Taiwan.

Before going back to France, and possibly never coming to Taiwan again, Didier wanted to see all the sights that Yi Jun talked about. Getting around the west coast of Taiwan is pretty easy without a car. The slow trains are not at all on time, but they go to pretty much any city you would ever want to see, and most stations are downtown. The high speed train is far more reliable, cleaner, and comfortable, but only one high speed station is in a city center. Most are not even in the largest city of their respective counties. The stations were built out in the countryside where there were large enough patches of empty land. Had Didier taken the gaotie from Chiayi to Tainan, he would have actually gone from Taibao to Gueiren. Chiayi's station was convenient, in his case, since Yi Jun's hospital and sister are in Chiayi County rather than Chiayi City, but Tainan's station is practically in Kaohsiung. I think the hospital was built close to the Chiayi (Taibao) station on purpose. Most stations have free shuttles that take you to the city, and there are ample taxis at every station, but every shuttle and almost every taxi requires at least some knowledge of the language. Foreigners are better off with the xiaotie, which has stations in the middle of each city, though all announced changes are in Chinese.

Today's language lesson: “xiaotie”™ is not a real word. I made it up. The high speed train is 高鐵 (gaotie). The slow speed train is actually 臺鐵 (taitie). Somewhere along the line, I started calling it 小鐵 (xiaotie), which is a bit of a pun, though not a very good one. 高 (gao) and 小 (xiao) are opposites, and rhyme. 臺 is short for 臺灣 (Taiwan), and does not even come close to rhyming.

Didier was going to travel around Taiwan alone. I thought that might not be the best idea. It is certainly possible, but probably not ideal while grieving and not entirely thinking straight. When I offered to help, he assumed I only meant guiding him around Kaohsiung and that he should take the train from Tainan, even though there were places in Tainan on his list. What he did not realize was that I could drive to his Tainan hotel in under 45 minutes. At his hotel, he showed me his list of all the places he wanted to go. He vastly underestimated both the size of Taiwan and the travel times by train. It is a relatively small island, but he had enough sights for a month of travel. I had a car that could reduce travel times, but I also had a job that required my participation.

I knew he was never going to see everything on his list, so I concentrated on the highlights. We were already in Tainan, so we started there. Tainan is an old city and has a great deal of historical sights. Most of them are outdoors and it was raining ropes. Didier thought it was a typhoon. It was certainly typhoon season, but this was a light drizzle by comparison. Instead of Chihkanlou, or Anping, or any of the temples, we went to the Chimei Museum. The outdoor grounds are nice, but the indoor museum is what you want to see.

I had to go to work, so I was going to Kaohsiung with or without Didier. He had a lot of Kaohsiung on his list, so he took the free ride.

I have lived in Kaohsiung for a little over a year. There are parts of the city I have yet to see myself, but I know enough to show someone around. From a French point of view, Kaohsiung is a large, crowded city. From a Chinese point of view, Kaohsiung is pretty small. To experience the culture, you have to go to night markets, food stalls, and places where people are generally packed together like lemmings. Didier is from France, where they are struggling with a bit of a plague right now, and most recently lived in the United States, which refuses to settle for anything but first place. The last thing he wanted was to be in a crowd, especially in a culture that considers it unlucky to cover one's mouth while coughing or sneezing.

So I took him to Fo Guang Shan. Outside of ceremonies and special occasions, the monastery is rarely crowded, and the museum is large enough to seem empty on most weekdays. It is also probably a pretty great place to experience right after burying your wife.

I may not be the best guide for Kaohsiung, but I know a thing or two about Fo Guang Shan. I spent some time there last year and know a few of the monks personally. I introduced Didier to my former laoshi and reminisced around campus while they talked about the meaning of life and death for a few hours. Didier still has to go home without his wife, but at least he had an experienced shoulder to cry on and heard something more meaningful than the usual platitudes most of us never adequately know how to express. Didier felt a little better, and we went to the museum where other monks gave him a tour through a few thousand years of Buddhism. When we went to the monastery, it was lightly raining and looked like there was more on the way. When we walked out of the museum, the sun was shining and birds were happy. Didier saw it as a sign. I saw it as autumn weather.

One of the places Yi Jun talked about the most was Kenting. Taiwanese love Kenting. It is the Hawaii of Taiwan. Having been to both Hawaii and Kenting, I disagree. Kenting is in a tropical monsoon climate zone, making it far hotter and wetter than Honolulu. When I was in Hawaii, it would rain for an hour at most and another hour later, you could never tell it was anything but sunny. If it is raining in Kenting, you will not see any sun that day. Hurricanes almost never hit Honolulu. Typhoons hit Kenting all the time.

But it was at the top of Didier's list and only a two hour drive. Most people go on the weekends, but my days off are during the week. We went on a Tuesday. The last time I went to Kenting was a Saturday in the middle of summer. As it turns out, the place is far less crowded on a Tuesday after the school year starts.

The beaches in Kenting are easily the most popular in the entire country. I have no idea why. There is nothing particularly wrong with them, but they are small, usually crowded, and swimming is either highly discouraged or completely illegal. Most people just go to take pictures for the Facebook. Sunset is the popular time, even though the beaches face south and east. Didier is from France, which has a few nice beaches down south and some enormous, sprawling beaches up north. He was not impressed with Kenting.

We spent most of our Kenting time at the national park. Even with the tropical climate and intermittent rain, it is an easy park to hike, with ample trails and paved staircases. You could easily spend a few days exploring the entire park, but we had a few hours. We had no plans to spend the night in Kenting, and I had to show Didier the night market.

Despite the popularity of the beaches, most people go to Kenting for the night life. Several streets downtown become a large night market after sunset. Normal shopping streets during the day take on a carnival atmosphere at night. You can play old style arcade games, like that one where you try to throw a ping pong ball into a tiny fish bowl with an opening too small to fit a ping pong ball, or the one where you throw dull darts at underinflated balloons. Most people stick to buying cheap crap. And, of course, everyone goes for the food. It is not a night market without countless food stalls selling everything from 愛玉 to 仙草. Didier avoided the night markets in Kaohsiung, so Kenting's night scene was essential.

Kenting has plenty of hotels, most of which have plenty of rooms available this time of year. But it is only a two hour drive to Kaohsiung and I was busy the next day, so we did not spend the night.

Hualien was on Didier's list, and I recommend Taroko Gorge wholeheartedly. It is easily Taiwan's best nature site. It is also about as far from Kaohsiung as you can get. Leaving from Kenting would be much easier, though not faster. Whether Didier decided to go to Haulien or not, I was unavailable. I could have put him on the xiaotie, but then he would be on his own in a place that requires some form of transportation, or at least a bicycle. The rainy season technically ends in September, but it has been dragging on longer this year, and since hiking Taroko Gorge in the rain is not the best idea, he decided against it.

I like Didier's idea of traveling around the country and seeing all the sights Yi Jun talked about, but she died at the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the school year. Most vacation days are used up by the end of summer. At any other time of year, I probably could have found people to take him to most of the places on his list.

Professor Hailey

I taught a university class last week. Obviously, as a visiting lecturer in a single class, I can't call myself professor. I can't even call myself a lecturer. You get no title for one day's work. If anything, I am that lady who came in that one time. Some of the students called me laoshi, but that was more about being polite than anything on my CV.

Am I qualified to teach a university class? Not in the least. And yet, I did so in Hong Kong two or three times. That was because the actual professor of that class wanted someone to come in and explain to her students how screwed up the educational system is in the United States. I was the only American who could communicate with her students that she could find on relatively short notice. Rather than teach the class, I simply talked about my experience with American public education and answered, or tried to answer, about a million questions. I was nothing more than a guest speaker.

On another occasion, I spoke to a different class at the same school about American politics. This was at a time when American politics were considered the most divisive they had been since the Civil War, and yet, compared to today, seem like a quaint and innocent distant past. While I have no interest in discussing American politics with Americans, it can be an interesting subject in a classroom full of Chinese students. Absolutely none of them regurgitated a single talking point from any of their favorite “news” shows. They only used their own words and were open to actually discussing the subject. I don't remember exactly how much I was paid, but I remember thinking that an American teacher would love to get that much money for so little work.

My tenure as a professor in Kaohsiung was something different. An actual professor at my sister's school had to go out of town for a family situation. Rather than cancel her dialectology class that day, she asked me if I could be her substitute. Reasonably, I pointed out that I am neither a professor nor lecturer, have no teaching license or certifications, and have not taken a dialectology class since 2015. I assumed that the university had some form of substitute teacher system in place. Surely, they must do something other than cancel a class whenever the professor is unavailable. But looking at my own time as a student, I cannot remember ever having a substitute teacher after high school. When the professor was out, class was canceled that day.

As a substitute “professor”, all I really had to do was follow the real professor's lesson plan. The book does most of the work if you read the unit, and most of the students came to class prepared. But the lesson plan was written by and for their professor. As someone new and different, the class had a number of questions for me. Fortunately, no one asked if I was at all qualified to teach the class. They probably assumed that since I was standing at the front of a class at their university, I must have the right to be there.

Dialectology is the study of dialects, obviously, and a fascinating subject. I don't know the first thing about most of the languages on this planet, but the one or two languages I know have a wide variety of dialects. Chinese dialects are so varied that some people consider them separate languages. If English has anything in common with Chinese it is the vast number of mutually intelligible, and sometimes unintelligible, dialects around the world. Just as someone from Alabama might have difficulty understanding someone from Scotland, someone from Xinjiang might have difficulty understanding someone from Fujian. The dialects can be wildly different, but the languages are the same, more or less. The people from Xinjiang and Fujian can read the same words, as can the people from Scotland and any literate people from Alabama.

My students for the day were well aware of the differences in Chinese dialects. While they all learned Chinese in Taiwan, many of them had traveled to various parts of China, where almost no one speaks Taiwanese Chinese. Even the few who have never set foot out of their home country have seen movies and TV shows filmed in a hundred different dialects. With so many Chinese people on the planet speaking a language that has existed for thousands of years, the variety of dialects is completely natural.

What the students all seemed surprised to learn was that English has almost as many different dialects as Chinese. They know that it is spoken everywhere the British subjugated the native people, but they also know that it is a new language. When watching English-language movies and TV, they mostly see American shows with actors who learned how to speak in the most generic of General American accents. Even the British and Australian actors on American TV are trained to use a General American accent. Someone with a good ear for accents and dialects can tell you where most of the top Chinese celebrities come from. Despite the hundreds of Australian actors in American movies and TV shows, Americans point to Crocodile Dundee as an example of an Australian accent because everyone else had to master General American. When I was in junior high school, I took a theater class on the Mid-Atlantic accent. I think that one is pretty noticeable, but no one uses it anymore.

Since I am from Minnesota, I speak with a slight Upper Midwestern accent and occasionally use words and phrases like boughten, spendy, skol, you know. This means that when I say dot and daughter, the vowels sound the same, as do bot and bought, stock and stalk. To people in other parts of the United States, those vowels have different sounds. Pin and pen sound completely different to me. Mary, marry, merry all sound the same. Roof has a shorter vowel sound than boot, casserole is hotdish, couch is sofa, cola is pop. To most Americans, Minnesota means the characters from Fargo, but that was obviously an exaggeration of how they speak up north. Most Minnesotans sound like Dakotans. And those of us with theater training can use General American if necessary.

To my Chinese students, everyone who speaks English sounds the same. Just as the students all sound the same to English speakers. To me, they sound Taiwanese, which is a world away from Hongkonger. I'm starting to hear a difference between northern and southern Taiwan, but that could be my imagination. Too many people in Taiwan grow up in one part of the country and go to school in another part. After school, they might go back or stay. All the movement around the country makes it much harder to pinpoint accents and dialects. China is much easier. When you meet someone from Shanghai in Xiamen, you know they are from Shanghai right away.

But the biggest surprise in teaching the class, hands down, was the use of cell phones. Back in my day, phone use was strictly forbidden in most classes. Today, it is their most useful tool. Almost none of the students bought a physical copy of the textbook. They all had it on their phones. It took me a while to get used to everyone staring at their phones when I asked them questions or read bits from the book. As an American, my first thought was that there is no way to know if they are looking at the book or just screwing around on their phones. But I got over that pretty quickly. This was a university class. Every one of them had to earn their right to be there. Though not exactly the most prestigious university in the country, it is competitive enough that coasting through is not an option. This was not a general education class. To most of the students, it was required for their major. Paying attention was in their best interest. Of course, that is true with most classes, but these were not American students. Announcing your laziness and stupidity are not considered cool in Chinese culture.

A few days later, the actual professor told me that the students liked having me as their substitute teacher. Of course, that could simply be a case of something new and different to break up the routine. She asked me if I would be willing to substitute again, if needed. There is no way I could ever make a career of this, especially since I already have a career that takes up a good deal of my time. But I can see myself in front of another class again someday.

New Driver's License part 1

Sooner or later, you have to get a driver's license. I had one when I lived in Hong Kong, even though I rarely drove in Hong Kong. I think I drove in Mainland China more than I drove in Hong Kong. But on either side of the border, you need a license. I also try to drive as much as I can whenever I go to other countries. An international permit only works in conjunction with a valid license, and I let my Minnesota license expire a long time ago. Having a Hong Kong license was the only option that made any sense. So even though I had no car and no real need for a license in Hong Kong, I got one. It was pretty easy.

I have no need for a driver's license in Kaohsiung. I have no car and have yet to drive at all in this city. I could rent a car with my Hong Kong license and international permit, though that would likely confuse the people at the rental counter. I can show a license and ID from Hong Kong, but if they want to see my passport, that would bring a third country into the mix. If I really wanted to confuse them I could show my Taiwan ID. But if I have a Taiwan ID, I should not be using an international permit and license from some other country. Hence my new driver's license.

The procedure for getting a driver's license in Taiwan is pretty similar to Hong Kong. You take a written test, you take a driving test and they put your picture on a card. The practice is wildly different.

In Hong Kong, I took the written test in English. I figured, since it was offered, why not. I know English. It was easy. If you know basic rules of the road and a few China specifics, you can pass the written test. Just keep in mind that left and right are reversed in Hong Kong. That part is easier for people from the United Kingdom of South India and Australia Africa.

The driving test was pretty much like the driving test in Minnesota. You drive around, go where the guy tells you to go and don't hit anything. But the roads of Hong Kong are infinitely more dangerous than the roads of Minnesota. Being a good driver in Minnesota is nothing like being a good driver in Hong Kong. In China, defensive driving is not a suggestion. It is an absolute requirement if you want to live. Sooner than later, someone else on the road will go out of their way to kill you. You can practically fall asleep while driving in Minnesota, as long as you know what is in front of you. If you are not fully aware of everyone from every direction at all times in China, you will die.

In Taiwan, I started to take the written test in English. I figured, since it was offered, why not. I quickly realized why not. It is a computer test, so you don't see the next question until you have answered the last question. That was why it took me a while to figure out how messed up the test was going to be. Knowing the basic rules of the road was not an issue. The problem was whoever translated the questions into English does not know English.

The following are actual questions on the test.

True or false:

I make discover from two passenger whisper conversation are the drug dealer, to helping my country I must take at police stations therefor not allow them escape.

If true, it is my legal responsibility to detain dangerous criminals. I never signed up for that.

When green light say pass driver should attention of car and pedestrian illegal going in red light easily cause accidence.

This might seem like an easy one, but the correct answer is false. Drivers should not pay attention to anyone running the red light, according to the driving test. Maybe this explains why no one does.


Multiple choice:

If car driver is found snack on road will punished (1) find number plate will detaine 3 month (2) find roadway safety lecture (3) find roadway safety lecture number plate will detaine 3 month.

This could be interpreted as saying that eating while driving is illegal, but I looked it up and it is not. Holding your phone while driving is illegal. Eating is perfectly acceptable. But apparently, it is illegal to find a snack on the road.

If driver wish uphold national honor, promote social state ability, family happiness (1) say no on them (2) drive after serious accidence with car (3) double passenger fee.

What? I like to think I am pretty good at translating Chinglish into something legible, but I have no idea what this means.

I stopped taking the test after the national honor question and asked the clerk if I could start over again in Chinese. She was surprised that I did not understand the English, but agreed that it would be better to start over than to fail and have to wait a week to take the test again.

The Chinese version was straightforward. Anyone who knows basic rules of the road and a few Taiwan specifics can pass the test. And none of the questions on the Chinese version mentioned snacks.

Year of the Pig

2018 was the year of the dog. Maybe that explains a lot. 2019 is the year of the pig. Supposedly, that means it will be a good year for friendship and love. Let's hope so. The world could use a little more of both. It is also supposed to be a great year to make money. Because pigs are successful. This is where they lose me. Other than Wilbur, McMug, and Napoleon from Animal Farm, I cannot think of any successful pigs. In China, most pigs get chopped up and served on sticks. That is not my definition of success. I think, in general, the Chinese zodiac spends too much time on money.

The Lunar New Year is always after the Solar New Year. Some people consider the Sun male and the Moon female. As a man, the Sun always comes first. This year, the Lunar New Year starts a full month after solar New Year's Day. It can be anywhere from three weeks to almost two months after New Year's Day. The constant date change is pretty easy to get used to, but no one ever seems to know when the new year will begin until around November or December. That can make it difficult to plan things. I can't tell you when Thanksgiving will hit in 2019 without looking it up, but I know the exact date of Christmas or New Year's Eve for the rest of my life. That makes it much easier to plan trips.

Every holiday in China is based on the Chinese calendar, but we use the Gregorian calendar for almost everything else. The calendar on my phone is Gregorian, but it also has little red numbers under all the black numbers. Today is the 1st day of the second month, but also the 27th day of the twelfth month of the previous year. If you ask anyone what the date is, they will say February 1st. Ask anyone when the Lunar New Year starts, and they will say February 5th, even though New Year's Day is, by definition, on the first day of the first month. Every Chinese month starts on a new moon and the year starts on the first day of spring.

It is almost as confusing as the Hebrew calendar they use in Israel. But I never really lived in Israel and was rarely there during any of the big holidays. I never had to convert days and dates, except Shabbat, but that is pretty easy to figure out. Just like China, everyone used the Gregorian calendar. So Shabbat started at sunset on Friday and ended at sunset on Saturday, even though the Hebrew days were something else.

Another great thing about working in Amsterdam is that I will not have to convert any calendars.

A Invicta Cidade do Porto

While I was struggling with Spanish, made harder by the fact that the language of Barcelona is Catalan, we went to Portugal. Catalan feels like a dialect of Spanish, but I'm told it branched out of Latin, independent of Spanish. In writing, Catalan looks similar to French, but the pronunciation sounds slightly more Italian. Not that it ever really mattered. Everyone I met spoke Spanish. If you grew up in Catalunya, you learned Spanish in school. Older people were even forbidden to learn Catalan when they were younger. And a lot of people in Barcelona speak English. Except at Tim Hortons, for some reason. No one who works there spoke English. Fortunately, I know how to say, “Diez timbits para llevar, por favor.” What flavors? That is why pointing was invented. Even if everyone in the donut shop speaks the same language, you point at what you want. Except at Krispy Kreme. Then you only have to tell them how many boxes of glazed donuts you want.

Portuguese is a horse of a different color (un caballo de un color diferente, probably something diferente em portugues). In writing, it looks similar to Spanish, but nothing sounds the same. Read something aloud in Portugal the way you would read it in Spain and the person you are speaking to will have no idea what you are talking about. Let them read the paper and they will understand it completely. It reminded me of Chinese, except that Portuguese and Spanish are entirely different languages while Chinese and Chinese are region specific.

We spent a week in Portugal, in the small coastal city of Porto. By Portuguese standards, Porto is considered a large city. It has about as many people as Richmond, Virginia, so I consider it a small city. When you live in China, anything with fewer than 5 million people is a small city. Under 500,000 is a tiny village. Porto is one of those little European villages that likes to think it is an old city. As an American, I'm supposed to be impressed by how old it is. Porto was founded almost one thousand years before my home state. But again, living in China changes your perspective. By the time Porto got its own flag, China had already had a hundred civil wars, rebellions, insurrections, uprisings, insurgencies and revolutions. One hundred might sound like embellishment or hyperbole, but I'm probably low balling it.

We flew to Porto even though there are plenty of trains to and from Barcelona. The idea was that planes are faster. But with a train, you buy your ticket and get on the train. You can arrive at the station five minutes before your train leaves. There are probably restrictions on what you can bring in your luggage. Bombs and rocket launchers might not be allowed. But no one ever checks. Bring whatever you want on the train. Airports are a little more strict. Water, of all things, is forbidden. You can bring water on the plane, but you have to buy the $10 bottle from the airport. A two hour flight takes seven hours, at least. Then you have to get from the airport to wherever you are going. Airports are rarely anywhere near the city center. Train stations are mostly downtown.

Downtown Porto was a nice looking city. I can't say it was the best looking city in Europe. There is too much competition for that title. But it was nice to look at, especially at night. The lights along the river and across Ponte de Dom Luis I were far more subtle than anything I see every day in Hong Kong. When you are in Porto, you have to walk across the bridge. It's like going up the Eiffel Tower. You never see the locals doing it, but it is always packed full of people.

We rarely used the metro, but it looked like your typically efficient European public transportation. And it has to be. Porto is a hilly city. It's like San Francisco on steroids, with cobblestones instead of smooth pavement. And more hills. San Francisco has the Embarcadero and Golden Gate Park. I never saw any flat areas in Porto. Even the riverbanks went from water to hills. Walking around the city counts as a daily workout. There are a couple of streetcars, so you can get around and still see the city, but they are overpriced and don't really go anywhere. I think they are strictly for the tourists.

When I walked around, I saw construction. Everywhere. I don't know if it is always like this because of all the old buildings or I came at the wrong time, but it felt like every corner I turned led to more scaffolding and large machines making heavy noises. Mercado do Bolhao, easily the most famous market in the city, was completely closed for renovation. There was a temporary market a block away, but it was much smaller and had absolutely no charm.

It was also impossible to walk anywhere without a busker around the corner. I only saw one or two in Barcelona, but they were out in force in Porto. I can only imagine what it is like at the height of tourist season. Most of them were not especially good, but they all played songs I recognized. One busker at the Ribeira stood with his back to the river and sang “Tiny Dancer”, “Imagine” and REM's “Nightswimming”. He only had an acoustic guitar and a weak voice, but he obviously loved what he sang. Hearing familiar songs in public is becoming increasingly rare the further I grow out of touch with today's music. The buskers of Porto, at least, were as stuck in the past as I am.

Just outside the city, at the mouth of the Douro River, is the Atlantic Ocean. As oceans go, it was a nice change of pace. There were long beaches along the Foz do Douro, but it was still not good beach weather. It was a sunnier day than when I went to the Barcelona beach, but it was still October. I'm sure the Atlantic Ocean is colder than the Mediterranean. I have nothing to back that up. It's just an assumption.

In Porto, we stayed in a hotel that called itself an apartment. The Barcelona apartment was an actual apartment. It looked and felt like an apartment, and had obviously been around a while. The Porto “apartment” was shiny and new. It had a tiny kitchen and separate living room/bedrooms, but it felt nothing like an apartment. Since we were only there for a week, it never really mattered. A week in a hotel can be a nice break. For a month or two, a genuine apartment is always better. Hotels can get old pretty fast, and you always feel like a visitor. In an apartment, you can pretend you actually live there. The funny thing is, I spent twice as much time in Barcelona as I did in Paris a few years ago, but I felt more like I was living in Paris. Maybe it was a greater familiarity with the language and culture. Or maybe I just like Paris better. Barcelona seems like a good place, but I never felt any real connection. Maybe I have to go back some day.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 12/29/17

How long does it take to walk from one place to another? This is where knowing the place you are writing about comes in handy.

This story takes place mostly in Los Angeles. I have been there, but I'm far from an expert. I have relied heavily on Google maps to tell me which neighborhoods are where and what streets go from here to there. I mention how Sunset Boulevard starts winding at Hamburger Hamlet and changes abruptly at the border between Beverly Hills and West Hollywood, how it twists and turns like crazy near Will Rogers State Park and suddenly ends at PCH. One of the characters talks about Gil Turner's on Sunset and Doheny. There is a fair amount of detail about Sunset Boulevard in the book. I don't think I have ever set foot on Sunset Boulevard.

But when it comes to travel times, Google is useless. They have their maps with driving directions, but those are questionable. And some of their routes are ridiculous. Their estimated walking times for Hong Kong seem to ignore all traffic and construction. I'm sure their driving estimates are just as bad. If they don't take traffic into consideration, what's the point? A city like Hong Kong will always have traffic and construction.

One of the characters walks from Stoney Point to an apartment in Chatsworth. How long would that take? I don't know. I'm going to say 30 minutes. A running joke in this story is that it takes 30 minutes to drive to even the nearest places in Los Angeles, so I might as well make walking take 30 minutes as well.

45 minutes from the Peak Tram?
Uphill?
In 90% humidity?
Good luck with that.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 12/12/17

It might be a few generations before computers are ready to replace a human proofreader.

I typed the word “snigger”. Apparently, I have never done that before. At least not on this version of Word.

“I'd never do that,” he sniggered.

Makes sense to me. Spell check wanted me to change “snigger” to a much worse word with a very different meaning.

I generally ignore any and all spell check programs. That might be dangerous. No one types every wrod properly every time. But typos should reveal themselves during the editing stage. And if I mix up homophones, spell check will never notice. “He new he wanted to where his Christmas Satan hat too make his skin Les pail.” None of those words are spelled incorrectly. There is not a single squiggly red line.

So Microsoft developed their own grammar check. It is terrible. Just for fun, I ran a grammar check on the book. It wants me to change “is this a miniseries?” to “is these a miniseries?” I don't want to change that. Some differences are a matter of opinion, but this one is just wrong. It also wants me to change “is this a different battle?” to “is these a different battle?” Come on. That's just illiterate. Maybe you can argue that since “miniseries” ends in S, grammar check thinks it is plural, but “battle” is singular. Even so, it thinks “is these a ...” is correct. Is these a? Be these a? No blue lines.

Most of the spelling “errors” are proper nouns that Microsoft has never heard about. I had to add “Angeles” to the dictionary because it kept underlining Los Angeles. I would never expect them to know every city in the world, but is Los Angeles an obscure little village?

Sometimes, the spelling suggestions are just crazy. It wants me to change “campout” to “cam pout”. Compound words can be a matter of opinion, but then why not suggest “camp out”?

One of the flight attendants quietly approached Alicia during the pre-flight safety video.

The top spelling corrections are “per-flight”, “ore-flight” and “pee-flight”. Pee-flight? What kind of book does Microsoft think I'm writing? And what is an ore-flight? This is not a book about miners.

“Are you trying to sniff out if I'm a lesbo?”

Lesbo is slang, so I can understand it not being in the dictionary, but the options are “boules”, “bootless” and “boneless”. Who accidentally types “lesbo” when trying to type “boules”? That's some serious, and seriously Freudian, dyslexia. But “boneless” is appropriate.

“She doesn't do walk-ons.”

The top corrections are “walk-nos”, “walk-ins” and “walk-obs”. I have never even heard of walk-nos or walk-obs.

When Tyler lotioned Cheryl's back in turn, she felt goose bumps running up her neck.

Spell check suggests “motioned” or “lotion ed”. I can see people typing “lotion” when they meant “motion”, but “lotion ed”? “When Tyler lotion ed Cheryl's back in turn, she felt goose bumps running up her neck”? That is simply wrong in any universe.

They saw DVDs of the Maddie O'Laine movies, but that was like watching someone else.

The corrections are “DVD” and “DVD s”. I realize that people don't seem to understand apostrophes anymore and will type “DVD's” when they want it to be plural, even though that is possessive, but spell check is supposed to know more than some teenager on Facebook. “They saw DVD...” and “They saw DVD s...” are as wrong as wrong can be.

Her first date was with a young sommelier, played by a struggling actor and graduate student at USC.

The top corrections are “isomerism”, “somewhere” and “slimmer”. Sommelier is a French word, so maybe it should be changed to freedom server, but isomerism is the arrangement of atoms. I can assure you that her date was most certainly not with a young isomerism.

They all went to Gracias Madre, a popular Mexican restaurant in West Hollywood.

“Cadre”, “Madge” and “Padre”. Gracias Cadre might be a good name for a restaurant, but it definitely changes things. The interesting part is that padre is in the dictionary, but not madre. Maybe Microsoft thinks madres should stay in the kitchen, but not have any acknowledgment in their efforts.

Cheryl nursed her niçoise salad and sat silently during most of the conversation.

“Nisei” and “noise”. Spell check knows Nisei but not niçoise. It hates the French but not the Japanese. I guess that is a step in the right direction. But what is a Nisei salad? Maybe I don't want to know. Now, maybe “Cheryl nursed her noisy salad and sat silently during most of the conversation” works, but that is not what I want to say.

She was Anita Lickalott, a young coed at BJU.

“Allotropic”, “Littoral”, “Glottal”. I can see it not knowing Lickalott. Obviously, that is a joke name. Allotropy is another chemistry term, but this book is not about anthropomorphic chemistry characters. Anita Glottal fits, although that would be far more esoteric than I intended. Anita Littoral has nothing to do with it, unless the implication is that she is always wet. But again, Lickalott is better. The scene in question is not supposed to be subtle.

If you ever write an educational cartoon about chemistry, feel free to use Anita Allotropic.

The Great Wall of China29. Side Effects

According to everyone, I will recover somewhere between six months and two years. Most of the bigger milestones happen in the first six months. That is when they decide if you are going to come back all the way or if you better get used to something that will never be the same again. Generally speaking, at the two year point, that is the way it's going to be.

Except seizures. I never had any, and they took me off the anticonvulsants pretty quickly. But, this is the fun part, they could pop up at any time in the next four years. So you know all those jobs you can't have if you are susceptible to seizures? Those are all off the table. I will not be a truck driver, crane operator or military explosive ordnance disposal specialist any time soon. My dream of juggling chainsaws on a tightrope over a ring of fire at the Olympics are no more.

Some of the side effects that may or may not pop up in the next six months to two years include headaches, seizures, dizziness, depression, anxiety, irritability, emotional instability, difficulty concentrating, memory loss, hormonal disturbances, obsessive compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, electrolyte abnormality, loss of motor control, loss of range of movement, formation of aneurysms and meningitis.

I am also at risk for changes in personality – disinhibition, apathy, impulsiveness, hypersexuality, loss of initiative, rage without provocation, inappropriate humor, poor social interaction, excessive swearing, lack of empathy, compulsive gambling, drug use; cognitive deficits – distractibility, impaired conversational skills, reduced processing speed, disrupted insight/judgment/train of thought; executive function deficits – problem solving, planning, multitasking, abstract reasoning. Further down the road, I'm at greater risk for diabetes, stroke, epilepsy, brain tumors, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

So there's always something to look forward to.

I have already had plenty of headaches. Fortunately, they are not nearly as bad as I expected. During surgery, they cut nerves. As they grow back, it feels like tiny knives. It comes and goes, and a little ibuprofen goes a long way. Sometimes just holding my head makes a big difference. Nurse Xihua in Beijing gave me a great tip for dizziness. Whenever I get up from lying down, I turn sideways and lift my head up slowly. This is supposed to be better than rising like Dracula. I'm also supposed to avoid roller coasters for a while, but we don't have any of those outside of Ocean Park, which I'm boycotting anyway.

Dr Chen said I had a pretty good attitude. Maybe he was being sarcastic, but sarcasm is rare in China. I remember doing a lot of bitching and moaning in the hospital, but he seemed to think I was optimistic. I was always highly motivated to recover. I want to go back to work. The longer I wait, the harder that will be. Dancing is like playing a sport. The less time on the sidelines, the better. You want to get back into the game as soon as possible.

If the lack of empathy, disrupted judgment, rage without provocation and problem solving deficits ever kick in, I can always go into politics. As far as apathy and excessive swearing, fuck it. I don't give a shit about that.


The Great Wall of China part 1

Hailey's Novel Diary – 12/7/17

I'm a little concerned about the structure of the book. Most of the chapters take place in multiple locations. Rather than set up each new scene with an expositional "one day later" or something that spells out to readers that it is a new scene, I simply move from one to another. With different characters in a different location, it should be obvious that it is a new scene, but obvious is not what it used to be. Online, what used to be called obvious is now considered subtle. Subtle is now mass confusion.

My instinct is that anyone who reads books will easily understand. I'm hardly the first person in the history of the world to do this. But what kind of books are people reading these days? If you are used to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, my books are never going to tax your brain. But a lot of people read a lot of crap. Modern authors dumb down far more than they should. It is not their fault. Modern publishers insist that everything has to be dumbed down because they don't have much confidence in their readers. Maybe they see books like Fifty Shades of Grey on the bestseller list and realize that Austen and Dickens had a very different audience.

It is all serials about vampires and zombies now, or books designed solely for a movie adaptation. If the great American novel is written today, it will probably never be published. It would not test well with teenagers.

The Great Wall of China13. And When the Sky Was Opened

I remember waking up in an unfamiliar room. It was either nighttime or all the lights were off. No one else was in the room, but I could tell I was in a hospital. In a hotel, I would have been lying on my side or curled up. Here, I was lying down while halfway sitting up, with my legs stretched out flat. There was a hospital curtain next to my bed and the kind of machines you do not normally see in a hotel room.

A second later, I woke up in a bright room with people rushing around. It was all noise and general chaos. Everyone was talking at the same time in what sounded like a dozen different languages. I would swear that at least one person was speaking Klingon.

The first time I realized that a nurse was giving me a sponge bath, I thought I was dreaming. We call it a sponge bath, but there were no sponges involved. It was also not nearly as exciting for me as it would be for men watching with the remote in one hand. It bothered me that the nurse never washed my hair, but I thought I was dreaming, so I never said anything. I don't want to consider myself vain, but I like to think I have nice hair. I use a Chinese shampoo that gives Asian women that silky shine. Where I come from, my hair color is nothing special, but here, women often dye and fail to match it.

The first time I woke up with any certainty that I was actually awake, I had no idea where I was. It was like the first morning on vacation when you wake up in a hotel unsure exactly where you are for a second. Only this lasted longer. I had no concept of where I was, what time of day it was, how I got there or what I was doing. I could see everything around me, but nothing made any sense. It was like an important system file was missing from my hard drive. When I realized I was lying upright in a bed, it still did not make any sense. It was obviously not my bed or a hotel bed. It did not even feel like a bed.

Eventually, I decided that I was in a hospital. I could not imagine why I would be in a hospital, and hospitals have a distinct iodoform smell. This one did not. But everything around me looked like a hospital. There is a Nicolas Cage movie where he wakes up in what looks like a hospital room, but it's actually a rooftop freight container. He should have been able to smell the difference. But he was part of an elaborate con. I was relatively certain that I was not. The time of day, or even what day it was, felt unimportant under the circumstances. Something put me in a hospital.

The Great Wall of China12. Wild Peonies Couldn't Drag Me Away

Back in the ER, the doctor asked me about Jeanne Moreau, who had died a few weeks earlier. We discussed her movies and how important she was to the world of acting before ER Doctor asked me if I had ever ridden in a hot air balloon. I knew that I had, but could not remember the last time. It has been too many years. The Great Wall of China would probably be a great location for a float in the sky. The view alone must be amazing.

We stepped into the balloon's basket just before it rose up above the hospital. A nurse stood on the roof of the hospital, chopping chives and throwing them into the basket. When we got higher, there was a young Chinese boy on the lawn dressed like Huckleberry Finn and shooting spit wads from a straw up at the balloon. ER Doctor screamed at him to stop, but I was not worried about it. I did not think a spit wad could hurt a hot air balloon.

I was wrong. When the balloon burst, we fell to the ground. We were maybe 50 feet high, at most, and we fell quickly, but it took forever before we hit the ground. We were moving comically fast, Keystone Cops fast, but the ground was in no hurry to make impact. While falling, ER Doctor looked around the balloon for anything that could stop us. I just watched the scenery. The last time I flew over the St Croix River, it was so beautiful. I closed my eyes and pictured it.

We hit the ground hard, but I felt no pain. When I sat up, I was in a dentist's chair, facing a wall with one of those Hang In There, Kitty posters. The cat was looking at me. It was only a poster, but I felt like it was speaking to me personally. That tenacious little kitten wanted me to know that everything was going to be ok.

I could not see the dentist, but I could hear him preparing the drill. I don't have any particular fear of dentistry, but they should really change the sound of that drill. He pushed the chair back, and all I could see were bright lights in my face. I could hear the drill, but I could not see it or the dentist. All I could see was bright dentist office light flooding the room.

“Step into the light,” a male voice whispered before faintly laughing.

“That's not even funny,” a female voice said as clear as a drum.

Walking in a large field of pink peonies, I could see the Emerald City in the distance. I did not feel at all compelled to walk toward it. I knew the wizard was just another lying politician, but there was nothing else in any direction. It was all flowers as far as the eye could see. I had to decide if I wanted to make my way to the city or just relax right there in the field. After I took my shoes off, I started walking.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 8/1/17

There is a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard west of the 405 freeway called Cafe 50's. The name drives me crazy. Since it is a 1950s themed restaurant, with 1950s decorations on the wall, soda fountains and waitresses in ugly diner uniforms, it should be Cafe '50s. The apostrophe before the decade replaces the century – 1950s becomes '50s. Everyone knows that, right?

No one cares about grammar on Facebook, but this is a business. Not only does the sign over their door read “Cafe 50's”, but so do their menus and everything on their website. They are saying that it belongs to Cafe 50. I really don't think that is what they mean.

I don't know how accurate their '50s theme is. I was born long after, as I'm sure were most of the customers and people who work there. But it's a restaurant, so it does not have to be historically accurate. But is it too much to ask that a '50s themed business know the difference between the '50s and 50's?

Sometimes you have to do a lot of research when you write a book. Since this one takes place in Los Angeles, I have had to look up a lot of streets and landmarks. I have been to the city, but the more I look into it, the more I realize how much of it I never knew.

Something I don't have to research are the plays and playwrights I'm mentioning. One of the characters is from New York and is more familiar with Broadway than Sunset. That gives me the chance to drop a few names that don't normally come up.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 6/28/17

Does any man in this day and age refer to breasts as “jugs”? I don't know, but the character in question is a jerk, so I'm keeping it. That sounds like something a jerk would say. Jugs, hooters, bazooms.

Obviously, breast is the real word, so a lot of people don't use it. We humans are embarrassed by our own bodies. How many people can't say “breast”, “vagina” or “penis”? We teach our children weird slang words like boobie, hoohoo, peepee, winkie. Humans are strange.

Chapter 12 starts out with a scene that is a callback to chapter 10. They might be too close together. I might want to space them out more, but for now, they are where they are.

In standup comedy, a good callback usually comes at the end of the routine. But they can certainly come in the middle, or anywhere else.

Eddie Murphy's Raw was on HBO the other night. That was unusual in itself. HBO Asia almost never shows any of HBO's standup programming. Constant dialogue is a lot harder to translate and most of the jokes make little sense to a Chinese audience. Comedians like Jerry Seinfeld are completely lost in translation. In Raw, Eddie Murphy actually mentions people who don't speak English and how they react to his shows.

But Eddie had a lot of callbacks only a few minutes after the setup. And the show ends on a really strange note, at least by today's standards. Maybe it made more sense at the time.

It's also surprisingly sexist, but probably did not seem that way at the time. Eddie's comedy sexism certainly does not seem nearly as hateful as today's internet misogynists.

The funniest thing about Raw today is the opening scene. In it is an unknown Samuel Jackson. He is even in a movie that is 90% standup comedy. He really is in everything.

English #1 Ok

Ever since I moved to Hong Kong, other expats and would-be expats have asked me about English teaching jobs in Hong Kong. I could never tell them anything because I have never taught English in Hong Kong and I never really knew anyone who did. Until now.

When Lily went to Canada just before her father died, she lost her job here. When she came back, she had 90 days to either get a work visa or leave the country. When I was in Jerusalem, she got a job. Now she works in a cram school.

Cram schools are essentially where students go after their regular school to study whatever subject they are not testing as well in as their parents would like. Most cram schools are English, but they also have math, science and whatever is in demand.

Not that many years ago, foreigners flocked to East Asia to teach English. It was considered an easy job that paid well and left plenty of time off to party and go to bars, not to mention all the cheap and easy travel opportunities that you only get when you live in East Asia.

Those days are over. It is still easier to travel around Asia when you live here, but too many foreigners flooded the market. Now, the schools can pick and choose more than they used to. That means more competition for jobs and more qualifications and requirements needed to get what few jobs are available.

The bare minimum government requirements are a bachelor's degree from a recognized university, no criminal record and native English speaker status. You have to be from the UK, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand or South Africa. If you are from anywhere else, they assume you are not a native English speaker, no matter how good your English might be.

Now that there are too many foreigners looking at too few jobs, more schools are requiring degrees in English and previous teaching experience and/or certification. It is also easier for them to discriminate based on nationality. They have always preferred Americans, Brits and Canadians, but they used to take whoever they could get back when there were fewer foreigners. You are also out of luck if you happen to be over a certain age, black or Asian. Ironically, most schools don't want Chinese Americans, even if English is their native language and they were born and raised in America. Some ads will even state “No ABCs”, meaning no American Born Chinese. Since these are English schools, they should probably come up with a different acronym.

Not only are there more foreigners than there used to be, but schools are moving more toward internet and virtual classes. That means each school needs to hire fewer teachers to teach more students. Instead of 1 teacher for every 20 students in a classroom, they can have 1 teacher for 100+ students online.

Lily lucked out in a few ways. She is young, female and Canadian. Schools like all of those things. She has also been living in Hong Kong for several years. That tells schools that she is not going to run away any time soon. Hiring someone right off the boat is always dangerous. You never know who can't handle living in a foreign country until it is too late. And she already had a work visa, so she has already been government approved. That makes life a lot easier for the schools.

Lily just started working at her school, so she does not have many amusing stories yet, but from what I have heard from other EFL teachers, she will have plenty sooner or later.

Spam

Blogger is pretty good at blocking spam. Almost all of the garbage automatically goes into the spam folder. If I ignore it, it is eventually deleted by magic internet fairies. Sometimes I will look at the spam folder because sometimes they put legitimate messages in there. Today, I found this:

My wife and i have been very more than happy when Raymond managed to conclude his homework through the entire ideas he received out of the web page. It is now and again perplexing to simply choose to be giving out tactics that many most people might have been selling. We really recognize we have you to thank for this. All the explanations you have made, the simple site navigation, the relationships your site make it possible to instill - it is most impressive, and it's really making our son and our family consider that that concept is interesting, and that is pretty pressing. Many thanks for all!

I don't get it. What are they trying to sell? Most spam lets you know right away why it is spam. Take this snake oil to make your dick bigger. Give us money to win the green card lottery. This one is obviously spam since it has absolutely nothing to do with anything on this blog, but what is the point? What does the spammer have to gain here? There was no link to any website. There was no phone number or e-mail address to contact for a quick scamming. Clearly, it was written by someone who does not speak English or, even worse, by Google translate, but how do messages like this benefit anyone in any way? What if I saved it from the spam folder and let it post. What good would it do the spammer? Now that I have posted it where people might read it, what good does it do them?

I don't understand spam.

An American in Paris part 3

Packing for a month long trip is never easy. Lily says we should just buy clothes when we are there. That is not really something my bank account thinks I should consider. I'm sure Paris has plenty of great clothes, but most are probably not compatible with Hong Kong's climate. I'm sure clothes made by a professional French couturier cost a little more than clothes made by children in some Chinese sweatshop somewhere. That's a joke, of course. Most of the clothes here are made in Vietnamese sweatshops.

There is also the issue of language. I studied French in high school, but I'm pretty sure the people of Paris don't sound anything like the old worn out CDs we had in the language lab. If everyone talks with subtitles, I should be ok, but if they talk as fast as they do in movies, I'm screwed.

Lily is from Canada, so she thinks she can speak French. But she is from Winnipeg, not Quebec. There are more Native Americans in Winnipeg than French. More people in Winnipeg speak an Asian language than French. I have been told by a few French people that Canadians are hard to understand when they speak French anyway. It's like when Americans go to England.

Weekend in Xiamen part 4

The big sights in Xiamen are Gulangyu, Nanputuo Temple, Xiamen University, Zhongshan Park and Zhongshan Road.

We went to Gulangyu on our first trip to Xiamen and we absolutely hated it. There was nothing wrong with the island itself. It might even be pleasant on its own. The problem was that you can't really see it with millions of people milling about. Literally millions of people. It reminded me of Disneyland on opening day, only the people on Gulangyu were much angrier.

A quick ferry ride gets visitors from Xiamen Island to Gulangyu, but they cram the ferry as full as they possibly can. Even fuller than that, really. If you don't want to stand in a giant ashtray and smell what everyone else just ate, don't take the ferry. Gulangyu is an island with no connecting bridges, so there is no other way to get there. It is technically illegal to smoke on the ferry, but smoking laws are merely suggestions in China. Since pretty much everyone smokes, those suggestions are always ignored.

Once you are pushed off the ferry by the mob, it is still unbelievably crowded. Chinese people naturally push their way everywhere and this island is wall to wall people pushing to get to whatever they want to see. There is an observation deck on the highest hill, but getting there was an absolute nightmare. I have seen lions on the Discovery Channel that were more polite to the zebras they killed than the way most of the people on Gulangyu acted in their mad lust to be the first at everything.

We also went to Nanputuo Temple on our first trip. That was another place that is probably nice without millions of people all pushing each other. We did not even bother attempting the top of that hill.

Our first trip to Xiamen was in the middle of June and this one was at the end of May, so maybe we did not pick the best times to go. It might be less crowded in January. Maybe some of these places are better when there are only hundreds of thousands of people.

We never went to Xiamen University, on either trip. We never saw the point. There is supposed to be a nice lake at the university, but our hotel was next to a lake, so we never bothered.

Zhongshan Road is a major tourist shopping street. We went there on our first trip with mixed results. This was where we saw the world's filthiest Walmart and a woman urinating at the front door. There is nothing else on Zhongshan Road besides tourist shopping. Since we already knew that, we did not go back.

What we never saw on our first trip was Zhongshan Park, so we went there this time.

Life On the Amazon

When you have a book on Amazon, it needs to fit into a set category. If it is a mystery, it goes in fiction/mystery/whatever sub-category works best. If it is your personal memoir about your time spent in prison, it goes in non-fiction/memoirs/crime. If it is yet another zombie story, like we need more of those, it goes in fiction/horror/zombies.

Barnes & Noble, on the other hand, does not invent their own categories and sub-categories. They use standard BISAC codes and put every book into its coded category. Every physical store might not have a section for every possible category, but their online version should put every book in the right place.

When I wrote Hailey's Bali Diary, I never would have guessed it would be categorized as travel/Bali. It is not a travel book, yet is surrounded by Lonely Planet and Frommer's. On the other hand, I could never tell you which category suits it better.

Nudist Cruise was put in travel/cruises. That makes more sense since it is about what happens on a cruise. It seemed to be the right move because it sold very well in that category. It hovered around #5 for several months. Sometimes it would go higher or lower, but it stayed in the top 10 for a long time. I think that's pretty good, especially since almost everything else in the top 10 in that category is from travel publishers that sell millions of books.

Then Amazon moved it to literature & fiction/erotica and sales plummeted. I have no idea why they moved it. There is nothing erotic about the book. It is mostly about not being a nudist on a cruise ship full of nudists. Any nudist will tell you there is absolutely nothing erotic about nudism. Maybe Amazon considers nudism erotica, but I don't think so. There are other nudist books that are not in the erotica category.

The funniest part is that erotica is not even on their list of categories. If you write erotica on purpose, there is no way to let them know. Somewhere along the line, Amazon decides what is and is not erotica and puts it in. In the case of my book, they messed up. The worst part is, there is nothing I can do to fix it. Everything at Amazon is automated and it is exceptionally difficult to speak to an actual person. They respond to e-mails with computer-generated form letters that don't do anyone any good.

It all seems pretty stupid to me. Their unwarranted change benefits no one. Since it went from a bestseller to buried in the backroom, not only am I losing money from their mistake, but they are as well. They make money on every single thing they sell. While it was in the travel section, it was selling and they were making money. Now that they hid it away from impressionable eyes, it is dead and they are getting nothing. Their piece of the pie was never going to make them millions of dollars. Not from anything I write. But I don't see why they would want to throw away even a tiny crumb, especially in this economy.

Mean People

Why are people so hateful to each other? I guess I can understand people who know each other and have a reason to hate each other hating each other. Maybe something happened between them that they just can't get over. What I don't get is total strangers screaming their hate at someone they do not even know.

The woman who does http://housewifedownunder.wordpress.com just announced her retirement from blogging. I'm not exactly her biggest fan. I don't even know her name, but I've been reading her blog occasionally for over a year. She has great stories to tell about being an expat in Australia. If you are thinking about moving to Australia, check it out.

She is done with blogging because she got tired of all the hate people send her online. When you have a blog, or any kind of website where people can comment, you will get negative comments. Sometimes it is constructive criticism, but only rarely. Usually it is simply people who want to make everyone else as miserable as they are.

In her announcement post, she defends her decision to not post the ugliest comments. I don't think she has to explain that at all. It is her blog. She does not have to post any comments at all if she does not want to. We have gotten so used to being able to say anything to anyone at anytime that we have forgotten the fact that not everything in the world is an open forum for any and all opinions.

I used to keep comments on my blog open to everyone no matter what crazy thing they wanted to say. The only comments I ever deleted were blatant spam. If you want to increase your manhood, you don't need to read about it here. Just check your e-mail.

Then I started moderating comments. Someone got really angry about something I said. I don't even remember what it was about. I just remember thinking that I should probably do something about it as soon as the death threats started. I never took any of it seriously. Most of the angry people online are all talk anyway, but there was just too much negativity to ignore. I don't need all comments on my blog to be sunshine and rainbows, but I think there is already enough hate in the world. There is no reason to post more here.

Blogs are easy enough to deal with. You can moderate comments, block certain people or turn off comments entirely. What is harder are other social media sites where you have no control. If you interact with people online, you will be subject to hate. It is inevitable. They say movie stars should never read their own press. Reading too many negative reviews can get to you eventually. Online, we are all movie stars, in a distorted way. People can and will feel free to say to us whatever pops into their heads. For whatever reason, a lot of people are more free with their negative comments than they are with saying something positive.

I wrote a couple of books. I will probably write more in the future. I know having a few books available in a few places is not anything like having a New York Times bestseller, but I enjoyed writing them and I don't see any reason why I should not continue doing it. When you write a book, whether it sells or not, you have to expect a few bad reviews. Nothing in the history of the world has ever been written that everybody likes. I realize that the things I write about are not going to excite everyone. I realize that my writing style is not everyone's cup of tea. The funny thing is that when you look at the reader reviews of anything by Shakespeare, people complain about his content and style. I read a review about Romeo and Juliet complaining that the two families should not have been fighting. That's pretty much the point of the story. Someone is going to complain no matter what.

I know it sounds like I'm complaining about negative reviews. I'm not. I do not have enough to complain about. What I'm really complaining about is how the negative people share their opinions more than the positive people. I think most people in this world are generally positive, but they are a silent majority. They are more likely to keep their opinions to themselves. The angry people are the minority, but they share their opinions far more often.

It has reached the point where you have to have very thick skin to be online. No matter where you are online, people are going to share their hate with you. Some people will join in the hate just to fit in. Hopefully, most people just ignore the hate. Too many people hate everything and everyone. If you are sensitive to what total strangers say about you, you will just have to stay offline. If you are a sullen teenager just looking for any excuse to kill yourself, you should really throw your computer away. The internet is like a loaded gun in your mother's dresser.

There used to be a time when unhinged people were confined to their basements. Only the walls and their imaginary friends heard their ranting and raving. Now the internet lets everyone connect with the rest of the world. You don't have to have all your marbles to talk to people or give your tirade online. You can harass a blog writer until she gives up and quits. You can even write a book review with absolutely no ability to form a coherent sentence. That is like a blind person writing a movie review, but that is how the internet of citizen critics work.