Swim across Sun-Moon Lake

__________________________________________

I picked up Akiko from the airport at 10pm. It is really quite late, yet we had to drive another 3 hours to the mountain area so I can attend the swim in the morning. I was really sleepy during the drive, had to ask Akiko to keep talking to me. My weak mind and body often shut down around 11 pm. Along the way, I was still trying to spot the cute betel nut girl in transparent box for Akiko to take picture. That was the only excitment.

Grace came to greet us, I fell into deep, deep sleep right after my head touching down the pillow. When Grace woke me up around 5:30, I sadly felt it is so true the good time is always so short (however, I was the only one who had good sleep since Akiko, Grace and Kevin couldn't sleep the whole night).

I had no breakfast, drowned myself with 2 cups of coffee, refused to wear the wetsuit and jumped into the lake at 7:45. (We cheated our way into the first few batches to get into the water, pretending we were some other group... very bad. It would be better to get it over with soon before twenty thousand swimmers all jump in).

The water was cold and wavy. I started to feel dizzy, headache followed. I felt very much like to throw up but thinking I should better do it when I reach the other side. Also thinking I am the youngest in the group, should not lose out to other older guys. What's more important, there is a free lunch box for every swimmer. It didn't feel like a 3.3km swim, I reached over in little bit more than an hour and polished my lunch box before everyone else.

We took the boat ride back to where we started. In the boat, a friend said that he was stopping over in one of the floating platform for a break and saw a girl holding the rim of the platform, looking very troubled. He walked over and asked if he can help. The girl's face went red and the mid-age woman next to her said "Oh, it is really no big deal, she just cannot pee". Obviously it is not that easy to pee in water.

Uncomfortable to Live

Need a pretty picture to give the eyes a break.

______________________________________

I have tried to think what is the thing making me uncomfortable to live in Beijing (or in China), I think the very huge factor is the feeling that you cannot trust anyone, with the same token, you are not trusted, either. Especially if you are Chinese, your trustworthness is seriously challenged if staying in the hotel in China.

The foreign chain hotels are somewhat less obvious, however, you are not greeted with broad smile in the breakfast room or reception counter as your caucasian-looking fellow guests. The breakfast room staff constantly wonder whether you are a sneak-in for free meal and the conceige would run after you if seeing you holding the hotel umbrella. The hotel is always assuming you are taking advantage of them, regardless big or small. If you think this is already bad, the local hotels are make you feel like it is their mercy not to ask you to put down $5000 deposit before letting you get the key to your room.

When checking out, the front desk would make a phone call to some secretly-hide person in your floor and ask him/her to quickly check your room if you have taken the TV set , lamp, fridge, toilet, etc., (I cannot think of anything good to take in the room). If the person is not responding or slow in action, the front desk personelle would stare at you with smile as if saying "yeah, we will clear your name of being a freaky theft in a few minute".

Full of Youself

I was reading a Chinese doctor’s website. He was about to publish a book which summarize his life-time experience and knowledge about Chinese medicine. I agree that his work is quite impressive, what I cannot understand is his tone.
He completely looked down the western medical theories and repeatedly alleged the western medical research and body check up (judging a person’s well being with a set of universal and standardized indices) simply kills people. He accused other doctors of murdering. In those articles, he sounded the only way to the ultimate truth. All health problems can be resolved if his instruction is followed. The self-inflation and self-endorsement in his writing is beyond my comprehension.

He might have saved a lot of live but there is no need to punish others who are also working toward the common goals. Who has given him such a confidence as if he has understood fully the natural rhythm of life? In spite of his medical knowledge, I think he is bloody shallow and narrow minded. If he stubbornly believes his way is the only way, will there be any other attempts to mix in others’ expertise into his knowledge stream? I cannot imagine he can outgrow himself from now on. Perhaps there is no need to outgrow for an old guy. Hey, I think it is damn boring to live that way until death.

I have observed some old men behave that way. Celebrities or not, they are quite successful in their own ways, yet unbelievably full of themselves. Perhaps the people around them praised them too much, too constantly, that they started to believe they are the only savior in the world (but believe me, they rarely do anything big apart from bragging about how BIG they are). Condemning others in the same fields seems the only way to make themselves more important.

Perhaps those successful and low-profiled are too secretive and discreet for others to observe. Yet I long for inspiration from them rather than those ego-manias.

Sex in the Hotel

I was woken up by my neighbor one night, a girl’s persistent and mundane moaning penetrated the wall and it was around 2 am. The rhythm sounded so uneventful, I cannot help but think that must be one hell of boring sex. I heard the heels walking out after the door closed. As I thought I am finally going to get some quietness, the guy started to snore. This might have a lot to do with the symmetric layout of the 2 adjacent rooms. My guess is that our beds were arranged head-to-head, separated a thin wall.

When meeting Mai the other day, I cannot help but raising the questions about how hotels deal with the fact that the guests do invite call girls into their rooms. Mai works for the prestigious 5 star hotel, and she said, the hotel does know what is going on and, though not encouraging, neither banning those in the premises. That’s the essential part of business. The rooms would be filled as long as the guests don’t cause any trouble. She mentioned some girls would come to the hotel with a roller in tow. That does inspire a lot of thoughts about what are inside the luggage. The hotel even deactivates the elevator keycard control, so that the guests don’t need to come to the lobby to fetch the girls.

The scary thing is that she alleged the hotels share a blacklist of guests. Some people were known to have SM or threesome (it is a mystery to me how hotels know what the guest is doing).

We are What We Eat

I am not a fussy eater although I think I know how to tell good restaurant from bad. But I always set my expectation at the moderated level, in order to avoid the disappointment. In Tokyo, the competition is so severe that every restauarant works toward perfection to distinguish themselves from peers. I haven't tried the top-grade Chinese or Malaysia or Vietnamese yet (the regular ones don't do very well). The safest bet is to go Japanese (however, Tokyo has very decent Italian and French, even the not-so-famous ones are good).

I was following my colleague on Friday night to look for a place to eat and drink. We had this trip a couple of months ago, even the order of restauarnt we checked, and got turned down were identical. The restaurants were definitely not the chain stores (although I think those izakaya or yakitori chain stores in Tokyo are really good, at least you get what you expect), those were the quiet, elegant, indepedent eateries in Kagrurasaka area. We were sent out by the apologetic waiter without exception, they were all fully-booked on Friday night.

I think when you reach certain age (or stage of life), what you eat and where you eat have turned into part of your life style. It also explains to the world about what you are. That's why my colleague refused the chain store? (At the end, we had no choice but going to one of those, the distaste surfaces on his face).

I am getting very picky about beer recently, I started to realise non of the bottled beer has fine-enough bubbles yet they don't taste fresh at all. Suppose the beer is not chilled properly or even if the beer glass is not frosty, basically this is a beer not worth drinking.

Some experiment carried on blind tasting of the same wine in ordinary wine glass and extremely fine, delicate wine glass. 99% of the time, the blindfolded drinkers were tricked to think the fine glass carries a higher graded wine.

The line between oridinary food and excellent foods is extermely fine, the same ingredients might produced differenet results only due to very small deviations the ways foods are prepared or served. Getting old is great that you are bounded to get more picky and fussy, we call that developed tasted.

What Makes You Want to Poo

I am always curious how laxative makes us want to poo. The western medicine laxatives has many forms, such as to simulate the intestine mucosa, to penetrate stool with more fat and water, to tell intestines not to obsorb water thus hydrate the stool, or to bulk build stool with more fibre.

The Chinese medicine thinks the lung and large intestine are linked. Dr. Lin once told me a case about a nonstop coughing child. After drinking the herb medicine, the child's mother called Dr. Lin with furious voice. "My child was having the diarrhea, the watery feces was all black and stinky!". The doctor then asked "How about his coughing?" The mother replied "Ur..., it's stopped.".

Dr. Lin explained this case examplify the reverse of "Lifting the teapot cap and the tea starts to flow". The cough was induced by congested intestines, once the debris clears up, the "chi" or whatever regains the movement.

Typhoon Came with me to Tokyo

The weather in Tokyo was dramatically different from Beijing, it is humid and sticky, typhoon is coming in town. I had very fond memory about Typhoon in my childhood. Every kid preyed hard the school would be closed the next day. We listened to the news intensively, anxiety level rose as the newscaster annonced one prefecture's school close after another.

Sometimes the weather man was wrong about the gust wind speed the night before, we would have got a beaudiful day when waking up in the morning, and then jumped out to the streets and met up with other equally excited kids in the park. Or if the weather was really too bad, the wind blew up the trees in parks and nonstop rainfall created the flooding, blockout followed, kids could have great time, too. We played with candles in the night when there was no TV but battery powered radio. When the wind and rain died down, we ran to the flooded street, trying to build any floating device with whatever handy (and tried to stand or sit in it). Of course, parents only found out that we were playing in the worse hygene nightmare a few hours later (maybe they were busy bucketing out water or whatsoever), came calling us home and sprayed the sterilizer all over us. Ha ha ha, that was quite fun.

Going back to school after the typhoon vacation was not that fun, we had to clean up the mud-filled classrooms (where the tables and chairs were all disarrayed). And the worse part was the not-very-creative writing class teacher would ask us to write something about Typhoon among all other zillions brilliant ideas of writing.

6 Weeks Away from a Wash Machine

The chipmunks in Lake Louise are very aggresive. Armed with the cute look and gesture (standing with their hind legs with tiny hands folding in front of the chest), they are ruthless mockers. We were sitting at the picnic table, happily devouring the brilliant cheese and bagel, the little devil jumped to our laps, climbed to the table top via our racksack, grapped the peanut butter-crackers package as if there is no one looking.

I immediately associated them with Stephen King's story about a devil squirrel, didn't want to touch them but screamed like a little girl. The squirrel ran away with the peanut butter spread.
__________________________________________

My scheduled project in Taipei was cancelled due to an unexpected Merge and Acquision on the client's side. I then am shipped to Tokyo to help out with another project (I feel deeply sorry for people who follow up my work, I didn't document it very well). My laundry has built up like a volcano waiting to explode. My mom would better handle them if I am home today, :'(.
The first thing I do after arriving the hotel in Tokyo is to put on my plastic gloves (please see my previous post, hotel survival guide) and started hand wash my laundry.

Although we do have allowance for cleaning clothes, like 50 bucks a week, I feel stupid to spend more than the money to purchase my socks to get them washed. Laundry detergent is really amazing, simple steps of soaking and rubbing yield the muddy water with unidentifiable sediments floating on surface. That is very satisfying, hey, I am getting something clean! Rinse, twist dry and hang actually are not that fun, however, cannot be avoided.

Have heard a dirty joke (don't know why I was reading a lot dirty jokes in my youth, have studied most of existing dirty jokes and can immediately recognise any variation of them before the punch line comes up). A couple nickname love making with "doing laundry". One day the guy requested the emergency laundry handling and the girl was busy. When she got around to the guy, he said he has done the handwash.

The Love of a Mother to a Son

Pay attention to the shadow, that's me!

_________________________________
In my long haul flight to Vancouver, there was a pair of mother and son sitting next to me. The mother looks in her early forties, but giggling like a high school girl while talking to her teenage son. I feel a bit sick seeing it, what is she doing without a mother's supposingly demeanor. Perhaps she is still seeing her adolescent son as a 3-year-old?

I have been thinking how a father/mother should act toward the daughter/son. Confucious teachings taught Chinese that boys and girls should not sit at the same mat since the age of 8. But he forgot to say much about parenting. I have seen cases where the controlling parents bonded together to treat their children as their belongings (parents decided what the children do and who they date, in the name of It-is-all-for-your-good). But nothing is freakier than the special bonding between the opposite sex of parents and children. The incest taboo is heavily encarved in every culture, perhaps that explains why we are so sensitive about it (or it is just me? Typing out the word "incest" is nearly enough to send the chill down my spine).

My father is not a stereotype Chinese father, in the sense that he likes to hug, kiss and even bite us. I was bitten in my forehead and chin as a child. It sure was weird but he was simply showing his passion. I put an end to all those in one winter morning. My father came to my room to wake me up, and I think he was trying to kiss his teenage daughter good morning while she was in bed. I went absolutely blister and kicked him off my bed as hard as I could. He was very hurt (maybe also physically?), and didn't talked to me for a while. We have never touched each other since and I don't regret it. Basically I don't like to have physical contact with anyone but my boy friend, I think. Sometimes the urge to touch someone might be induced by the need to form a quick bonding. This was observed in apes (check out the book "the apes in the offices). Pretty handy gesture for insecured people.

I have heard story that the daughter in law woke up in the middle of night seeing the mother in law sitting in the bed she shared with her husband, stroking her husband's hair and looking at him dreamily. Very revolting.

However, I think there might be less tension between me and my father if we had better handled this undeniable stress between father and growing-up daughter. Yet the other piece of advice to those control-freak parents, go get some life for yourself and stop being a boring person.