sushipanda

Just some stuff:

- I added some links to older pictures (from my pre-China life, for instance) in the Photos section; it’s on the right hand side under the title “Older Photos.” This was previously accessible through the legacy version, but I thought I’d just consolidate all the pictures here so people can see how much more useless I’ve come to appear on film.

- Tina’s friend Ling, who has been a presence here in China on CCTV and who last I heard is getting her journalism master’s at Berkeley, wrote an article for Time about the prettying-up of Asian males. The funny thing was, I was fascinated by this article prior to hearing about it being written by Ling, when I came across it at my neighborhood hair salon. I couldn’t help but laugh at all these metrosexuals spending vast sums of money on their narcissistic little asses, only to turn out looking like a bastardized version of prince, or worse yet, a woman. Of course, I had to struggle to read all the fine print as my face was caked in a very fine and expensive layer of avocado cream, and I had to interrupt my reading several times because the 800 RMB pedicure I was getting from Jean-Pierre Wang was too disruptive to handle.

- The LA times has this great piece on the “second wife,” or mistress, of many prominent public officials in China. I couldn’t believe the amount of money some of these old men were throwing at their concubines, and just for status and sex! I immediately called up my sugar daddy and told him that if he really wanted to keep me, he’d have to thrown in that Lexus too. Fucking ingrate.

- I finally made it onto Shanghaiist! No, not as a writer, but close: they somehow got their hands on a picture of me and posted it. Now I’m a pseudo-celebrity here in Shanghai. Here’s the pic and the story.

Visiting my sweetie, Latecia

Ok, dear reader, I am about to tell you a story that will start sounding very inane and inconsequential, but I promise that it will morph into a potential saga that will keep you riveted for many posts to come.

Ok, so I’m full of shit, but I need a sounding board, so who cares.

Loyal sushipanda followers will remember that I lost a beloved black Banana Republic jacket a few weeks ago at Guandii. I’ve been on the prowl ever since, looking for a suitable replacement. After dragging a few coworkers to Gang Hui last Thursday, one of them kept a watchful eye while shopping with her boyfriend over the weekend, and pointed me towards the “4 You” boutique in the Shanxi Road Parkson, where she said I could get a decent replacement for about 1100 RMB.

Translation for all of you non-Shanghai-ers: I’m a total loser.

Anyway, since I’m so massive compared to everyone else in this two-bit town, the boutique didn’t have my size, so I wandered around the store unsatiated and disappointed. Finally, I identified a suitable replacement that, from a distance, seemed to echo the energy that the forever-lost jacket essayed. And, blinded by the 730 RMB price tag, I made an impulse and walked out into the polluted Shanghai evening air, simultaneously relieved that I had made a purchase while disappointed that I had to settle for something so inferior.

Since I had some more time to kill before dinner with Mike, I subwayed over to Huangpi road, where I knew a UNIQGLO existed. I had read an interesting article about how they were trying the cut the legs out of GAP back in the US, and thought it might be worth checking out. Instinctively, I gravitated towards the coat and jacket section, and gasped as I saw a 90% authentic replica (oxymoron watchers, on guard) tantalizingly reachable on the rack. I brushed the coats aside, looking for a price, and the stumbled back in horror as I saw the tab: 299 RMB.

The cruel and dark fates had had their laugh. I called several local friends, some who told me that there was no way I could return the first coat I bought, others who said I had nothing to worry about. In any case, I spent all day today and will continue tomorrow and the next to recruit as many Shanghainese women as possible with which to surround myself when I go back to the Parkson on Saturday to try to get a refund. It’ll be my own personal army of bee-yotches who, if all goes to planned, nag the store clerks into submission. Stay tuned, I’ll be back to the post the dramatic conclusion in just a few days…

Perhaps riding dutch up and down Shanghai has finally taken a toll. Or maybe I shouldn’t blame the person sitting behind me, but take a good hard look at my fat ass in the mirror. Either way, Julie finally succumbed to my smothering love and had to get her first part replaced.

A lonely part, naked in the dark

After taking the day off from work (hey, this was a serious emergency), I rode to a bike repair shop close to my house. I walked in on four Chinese dudes shoveling food into their mouths. I asked them if they fixed bikes, and they nodded in the affirmative, and then I stood their like a fool for two minutes while they ate before I realized that their nodding didn’t actually mean they were about to get up and help. I stuck my head in again and they were still eating; apparently, business takes a backseat to a greasy lunch. I pooped in my hand and threw the feces at them, then rode Julie away, gently stroking her and whispering: “It’s going to be OK, baby, it’s going to be OK.”

The next shop was closed, and right when I was about to give up and go home and shoot Julie in the spokes, I came across a tiny shop with a 14 year old kid feeding a caged up beagle. I should have known that putting Julie in the hands of this sadistic little brat would be a bad idea, but time was short, so I asked him to replace the pedal and then closed my eyes and held my breath.

I now have the Luke Skywalker of Shanghai bikes: apparently, he couldn’t replace just the pedal, but had to remove the silver pedal crank entirely. As dark fate would have it, the only crank he had left was a black one, which meant that Julie’s two cranks are now like Paul McCartney on the right and Michael Jackson on the left. Well, MJ from the early 80’s, that is.

It don’t matter if you’re black or white…as long as you can get me to the convenience store out front, I will always love you, you freak of a bike

I think Julie will be OK, though. I rode her home and, though it wasn’t the same as that day I popped her cherry out of Carrefour, I felt even closer to her and her mismatched pedal cranks. “It adds character,” I purred to her, and indeed it does. And anyone who dares laugh at my bicycle will have to deal with the wrath of my feces. And the Force. But mostly the feces.

Pearl is a machine.

Saturday was another one of the birthday celebrations that included tons of drinking and incoherence. By the time I arrived at Guandii, the bulk of the gang had already done the all-you-can-indulge Japanese thing, and it was the rare moment when I was sober and able to observe these creatures without blurred, alcoholic vision of any kind. Lucy pointed this out when she stumbled up to me as I approached the table, wrapped her lithe arms around my neck and burped: “Eric, I’m drunk and you’re not. Tell me what’s wrong with this picture.”

Bonnie makes a welcoming offer, while Chace and Luce flip out in the background. A bemused Mikkel looks on

To Pearl, seemingly nothing. Her eyes half drooped open and a self-aware little smile hanging on her lips, she projected a “I’m trashed but I own this club” vibe that rattled across the dance floor. Forget the fact that she could hardly stand; her body had been programmed to the likes of Kanye West and the Neptunes ever since she stumbled across this temple of hip-hop that is Guandii. One moment dropping to the floor per Lil’ Jon’s request, the next pointing at her toes, then spanking some imaginary ass. All of this while maintaining an air of invincibility, of cockiness, of utter drunkenness.

“Bonnie, you’re keeping me from the floor, you birthday bee-yotch!”

“Eric, I’m so drunk,” she whispered to me as she was simultaneously flopping booty all over the table. For one second, I really did think she was about to keel over, as she grasped desperately for something on which to rest her writhing torso before finally settling on first a waiter, then a trash can. Then, some huge hit came on and before I knew it, she had bolted to the stage and was gyrating with birthday girl Bonnie and the rest of her inebriated cadre.

Pearl is a machine. She’s like my IBM Thinkpad that I use here at work; consistent, reliable, looks good on any elevated platform. I often think back to the first time I ever saw her, when she was burning off calories at Babyface with a fever that smacked of a pre-sack linebacker. I asked Eddy’s friend: “Is she a local?” And he laughed and patted me the shoulder: “You think a local can dance like that?” Perhaps only if she were running whatever O/S that Pearl had installed. And as a cloud of hash and weariness settled upon the table, and I was was near death from all the hugs and smacks on the ass from a clearly spaced out Chace, out of the corner of my eye I saw Pearl lying amongst the detritus, eyes closed, head cocked back…and ass shaking to Dr. Dre. Incredible.

The only sober ones

Last Friday I was bestowed with the honor of interviewing potential new hires. Yes, it’s college recruiting season everywhere around the world, except in Canada, where the entire nation now relies on the following site for future employment (Keith, I expect a commission for that). I was assigned three young’uns to interview for the entire afternoon, which was daunting given how my brain doesn’t really start functioning unless it’s between the hours of 5pm-9pm on Saturday nights. The idea of asking the same set of questions three different times and forcing myself to nitpick each of their responses was something that was going to be quite a challenge for me.

I always thought if I managed the whole hiring process, everything would be so much more efficient. First of all, the only screening question that would be necessary would be: “Male or Female?” Once you filter out all the dudes, then the follow-up questions would be, in order: 1) are you married, and 2) how badly do you really want this job? Then it’s all improv from there.

Of course, I’m kidding. The benefit of working for a reputable MNC is that the people who make it this far and are sitting in front of me sweating bullets are usually super-bright and super-hardworking. For any of you looking for a great example of irony, look no further than the fact that super-slacker like me ends up deciding the fate of these overachievers.

Although to the untrained eye, the Chinese population is the model of heterogeneity, there’s actually quite a melting pot if you take a closer look. One of the ingredients in this pot is the upwardly mobile, aggressive, career oriented college graduate hungry for success and vindication. Since I was interviewing these people, I tried to be as serious as possible prior to meeting them, to give all their hard work and effort the proper respect.

Of course, that lasted less than ten minutes, when one of the interviewees started describing a recent outdoor event he/she organized for his/her class. The description went something like this:

I dropped my pen and had to shut my drooling mouth with my bare hands. Of course, through the rest of the interview I had visions of dozens of stoned Chinese MBA students running around naked in the forest, which absolutely undermined any sense of objectivity I was trying to instill into the interview process. Sure, I realize that there is a slight communication gap, and this particular interviewee was using the word “high” as a synonym for (pick one) “rush,” “happiness,” “joy.” Still, I couldn’t help but categorize her as a stoner in my head, and so I eventually just stopped the interview midway through and offered her the job.

Now she knows how to live life…drinking

My industrial engineer co-worker Annie is about to embark on a fantastical adventure: a year and a half working in New Mexico! I have fond memories of New Mexico, particularly at Roswell when Wil and I were filling up on gas when the attendant came out and gave a sermon on the virtues of domestic abuse amongst immigrants. I hope she’s not planning on going to Roswell anytime soon.

So in the spirit of things, I helped to organize her farewell party last week, which consisted of dinner and then drinks. The “drinks” portion of this was a vital component of our agenda, as a few weeks ago when she was biz traveling in Malaysia, I saw her on messenger and started chatting with her about various data that I needed to complete an analysis. After much serious back and forth, she suddenly cyber-blurted: “Eric, I’m drunk!”

Since 99% of the people who work in this office consider a sip of beer to be excessive drinking, this was quite a pleasant surprise coming from this diminuitive, doe-eyed human being who ostensibly did nothing but cook dinner for her husband and industrial engineer things like crazy. “I never knew what it was to live life until tonight,” she wrote.

Charles, I’ll miss your big mouth

Thus, the drinking. Marching with her department mates up the stairs at JZ Club felt like accompanying lambs to the slaughter; I always get tense and nervous when I am asked to drink with serial non-drinkers. I did my best to refrain from tearing off my clothes and jumping up and down the table once the bottle of vodka arrived, while the others refrained from drinking the strange conction of alcohol and orange juice in their glasses. The only person who was game was Annie, who engaged in a toast with straight vodka. The other highlight was seeing the other engineers pour a double shot into their manager Charles’ glass when he went to the bathroom. Those mischievous pranksters! I’ll never underestimate the potential for chicanery from industrial engineers ever again.

Well, I’ll miss both Annie and Charles as they head off to New Mexico to enjoy the beautiful sky and the chilly xenophobia. In the meantime, I’ve made it my goal to seduce every remaning industrial engineer in the office to the dark side, which is why I’m bringing Carlsberg mini-keg to their weekly game of cards from now on. It begins.

Slacking on from work can be quite dull sometimes as well, so let me regale you with tales of how this very American office is to me in this very Chinese city:

- There is a young analyst here named Nina who just this past week has diligently strived to speak only Engish in the office. This is quite a daunting task, as even now all the sounds emanating from the surrounding cubicles are in Mandarin or Shanghainese. This wouldn’t be anything worth noting except for the the fact that Nina speaks English like a robot. She enunciates with extreme fervor, and does it in such a monotonous drone that I want to turn her around like Vicky the Robot from “Small Wonder” and unscrew her back panel and jiggle around some wires. I half expect to see steam coming from her ears as she malfunctions and knocks down all the cube walls by rocking side to side along the corridor.

“I need Energon cubes!

- One of the more meaningless requirements of my job is that I am an approver of requests from engineers to buy stuff. There’s a fancy SAP system in which these requests get filtered to me, and they don’t move up the corporate approval ladder until I give it the green light. It’s this process that I consider my own personal fiefdom, and as such I’ve added so many stipulations and requirements to each request that the engineers are probably dizzy with repression (which is OK, since we’re in China and all). One of said requirements is an excel form that I created and have mandated them to fill out and attach to each request; sometimes, a straggler or newcomer will fail to do so, in which case I ignore their request until they come knock knock knocking upon my door. Accordingly, I tell them how critical it is that I get the form from them, and when they oblige and send it to me via e-mail, I stash it away without looking at it and then wait a few days more before I finally approve their request. This is called “abuse of privilege” in whatever country you go to, and I love it. This is why you should never buy my company’s stock when I am part of its payroll…unless it is severance payroll.

- One day I was walking to lunch and did a double take as I saw the name tag on someone’s cubicle: Pinocchio Wang. That had to have ranked amongst the top few weirdo names that I’ve run into here in Shanghai. When Judy taught English she mentioned to me that one of her students named herself “morethanzero,” which today remains #1 (#2 is some dude who named himself “Heather”). I ended up teaching a class in which Pinocchio enrolled, and I got to speak to him for a little bit. I have to say, the guy is full of shit.

- People who work here are generally very diligent and polite, and they often compliment me on how good my Chinese is. It’s either that, or how good my English is. That’s a frightening thought, since the only things I speak are a very rare French dialect based out of the eastern mountainous region of Belgium, as well as pig latin. In actfa, eryva ellwa.

- It is my observation that the false rumor mill here is quite vicious. Very recently, it got back to me that my reputation around the office was that of a philandering, egoistical, predatory, callous, narcissistic waste of a piece of flesh. And that was the first accurate rumor I had heard all year.

Believe it or not, this is the first time in nearly two weeks that I’ve been able to sit here at home for a good length of time to watch DVDs, pound one out, update the site, and other totally productive activity. Of course, I spent most of it sleeping, as my body was crying out for me to just lie there and be still for a minute. Thankfully, I listened, and hopefully my life will settle into a pattern of normalcy for at least the next week, when Mike will celebrate his birthday and Steve will come back for a three week visit, which will be the perfect storm of insane body destruction.

In the meantime, I have a chance to reflect on the past two weeks, which consisted of both empty and fulfilling Halloween and post-Halloween binging, a Friday-Friday romance, three ktv sessions, a hairy crab day, a bike ride to People’s Square that was not just me and a backpack, a wedding banquet, one stolen jacket, one lost cell phone, and plenty of Guandii. Even Clint, who had just endured a marathon 12 hour birthday session, was marveling at my stamina. Unfortunately, I was well on my way to zombiehood at that time, so I just tried to claw at his eyes and eat his brain.

Even the promise of sweet icy Taiwanese desserts could not deny my urges to avoid being awake

Shanghai, of course, moved on briskly without me, and while ignorance is bliss, sometimes it’s generally just ignorance. I hadn’t realized why people were asking me if I was OK with them ordering chicken, until I realized that bird flu had been steadily creeping towards the Shanghai borders these past few weeks. It’s OK though, since I was able to get a pack of Tammyflu from the fake market at Xiangyang. I also got to negotiate it down from 200 RMB a box to about 50, so I’m sure I’ll have the last laugh.

Oh shit, I’m looking at the box now; the real drug is called Tamiflu and there’s a huge waiting list for it in the States, isn’t there? F*** me.

Anyway, the weather has turned for the “slightly better,” and while poor Lucy got bit four times today at dinner, I’m not getting the same mosquito problems I was having just a few weeks ago. Maybe because I haven’t ventilated the house in three weeks, which is probably also the reason why it smells like old people in here. I tried to go out for a bike ride today because the weather was so nice, but I ended up getting my exercise from bending down to rinse my backside during the shower, and spent the rest of it trying to negotiate some more sleepy-sleep before work next week. I’ve got some good stories to tell, some of them consisting of actual murder and death, but right now I’ve got to crawl back into bed and remember that I’m a human being after all and not some sort of incoherent, brain-dead squawker of non sequiters and gibberish. Judging from my last post, I still have a bit of a ways to go.

Never had a better Guandii experience. I believe that is enough said. Happy Birthday, Clint; Happy Birthday, Quiana. Let’s celebrate again next week

Though not on a boat this time around, there is nothing like sitting on a bus for three hours to pick at crabs with very little meat and drinking with your buddies on a Sunday afternoon. Can’t wait for Crab Day 2006