JUNE
2005: JULY, MAY, APRIL, MARCH, FEBRUARY, JANUARY,
2004: DECEMBER, NOVEMBER, OCTOBER, SEPTEMBER, AUGUST, JULY, JUNE

Tuesday, June 28, 2005 - The skies of Shanghai are dark as night. I got caught in a torrential summer rain and now sit in this air-conditioned office, cold and wet. I am warmed by the thoughts of BK Shanghai, of eating dog tomorrow night for Mike's birthday and of the fact that by now its probably not raining and a very muggy 33 degrees outside. Burger King opened it's first Shanghai store - and first of the mainland. They have locations in Hong Kong and Taiwan, but no one really knows if that's the United States. They're at Guam status. Principalities, municipalities, Special Autonomous Regions - I'm not here to argue over the semantics. I'm here to talk about BK Shanghai. Throngs of jubilant Shanghainese waited throughout the night for the opening of the store at 7am. That's speculation, but it can't be far from the truth. Although they don't serve breakfast, like McDonalds, but their flame-broiled whoppers, hamburgers seasoned with a spicy mala sauce of southwestern China and "have it your way" style will surely convert the chinese masses to real American fast food and lift the McDonalds veil from their black eyes. Actually I'm not even sure if McDonalds serves breakfast, in all my time in Shanghai I've never been up early enough and at a restaurant to inquire. The BK on Khao San Rd in Thailand served up delicious, healthy, low-calories bacon McMuffin de-lites.

So I made it to BK for lunch with Pedro. Actually it was breakfast, even at 1pm, which is morning for me since my work day starts at 5:30pm. I ordered a whopper, fries and a coffee. Pedro ordered a grilled chicken sandwich combo meal. Since we were foreigners, we would have been totally incapable of ordering food on our own at the counter. That's why a nice Chinese girl assisted us in broken English. I tried to order a combo meal with a coffee instead of cola, but I have a feeling she turned that into a combo meal, hold the cola, plus an additional coffee. Pedro lost his fries and cola in the exchange. I paid 28 yuan ($3.50) for the food while Pedro found a table. There was a bill of rights on the wall, which would serve as a great picture right about now, but we didn't have a camera, camera-phone, or photographic memory. [Fortunately for everyone I returned this evening and added the Bill to Profligate Son]. It was in Chinese and English and started with something to the effect that "you have the right to break-dance while placing your order." There were many strange "rights" that the establishment had bequeathed its patrons, and I doubt any of them translated very well. I will have a hard time explaining why a Chinese diner would want to break-dance when placing his order, and what that has to do with requesting no pickle or tomatoes on the whopper. I plan to request this, but even if I request it in my best Chinese I suspect I will get double tomatoes and pickles, no meat. A middle-eastern (possibly) man in a suit stopped by and asked us how we were enjoying our meal. He brought us two Burger King visors. I wanted to discuss with him the Burger Buddies phenomenon that had swept the States in the late 80's. It was one of the high points of my life, I reckon. I'd be downtown danville, running the streets with my crew on my bike, stopping by Father Nature's shed for a gummy rat, then the Bullpen for baseball cards, then Burger King for some Burger Buddies. They were $0.25 and a big mouthful, but pure bliss. We'll see if the Shanghainese are ready for them. "We are enthusiastic about our new restaurant in Shanghai," Greg Brenneman, chairman and CEO of Miami, Fla.-based Burger King Corp., said in a prepared statement. I don't know if that was the entire statement, or if he possesses the same level of enthusiasm in the bedroom.

Saturday night was epic. I saw Paul Oakenfold at DKD, and it was one of those shows that you'll (or I guess it should be I'll, though we all have had those shows, hopefully) remember for a lifetime. I don't know how I was able to get so close, stay so close, dance without a mosh pit and be able to survey what this DJ-demigod was doing so easily.

I got off work around 7pm and walked to Da Niang Dumpling shop for some beef, vegetable and shrimp dumplings. I picked up some mixers on my way to Amy's place and arrived around 8:15. My tonic was actually some variation of sparkling lemon water, as I suspected. Amy and Lisa were getting ready, and would be for a long time. Joy to be a guy and spend two and a half minutes deciding what to wear and getting ready. They commented on this, and I commented that this outfit and this body and face was no accident. I drank red bull/ vodkas, then added some orange/pineapple juice and waited in the family room listening to Oakenfold selections while the girls took turns burning themselves with the curling iron. Adam, a friend of Lisa's came over. The girls eventually joined us for drinks, and we set off to DKD around 10:45. We rendezvoused with Alex for a moment and headed in. We'd bought tickets a few weeks earlier, but they had a few tickets left. There was complimentary wine or champagne - something in between - for ticket holders, so we grabbed on and headed into the fray. I'd never been to DKD, but its a decent club. Not as new or slick or hip or LA as The VIP room, but it didn't need to be I guess. Adam ordered a round of Long Island Ice Teas. I argued with everyone about the ingredients in a Long Island Ice Tea. Some double up the vodka, but most recipes contain gin, the devil's spirit, the scourge of the liquor aisle, my longtime foe and nemesis. I paid my 65 yuan and gritted my teeth. That was the most gin I've drank in over 11 years. I feel like a niche alcoholic, back on the wagon (or is it back off the wagon). Make no mistake, I can stop drinking gin anytime, and have, for another 11 years perhaps, until I'm a victim of circumstance.

The resident DJ sucked. He looked like a barback lackey with his id card slung around his neck. He didn't dance, didn't smile, played basic beats and was oblivious of the packed house. I was out there with Lisa, Amy and Adam, inching closer as we sensed Oakenfold's imminent arrival. Or maybe this night would be one of those Chinese tricks where they advertise some impossible evening just to get people there, and don't feel dirty or reproachable when they don't deliver anything. But he showed, around 1am. The resident DJ looked scared and awkward as hell handing off to Oakenfold, but for good reason. Paul Oakenfold is currently the number 8 DJ in the world according to The DJ List. Oakenfold is responsible for too much in the world of hip-hop and electronica to get into here, but let's not forget that he's largely responsible for the meteoric rise of Ibiza an, as an A&R man, signed an unknown Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff.

Oakenfold was amazing. His trance rises and falls with crescendos and decrescendos, affecting the crowd in an indescribable way. There's a good chance that anyone reading this doesn't give a shit or know anything about trance/electronic music/whatever you want to call it - but there is music of this genre that beats on forever - noise that becomes repetitive, uncreative and boring very quickly. Then there's good trance/electronica, and Oakenfold is a purveyor of this. I suppose it has to do a lot with the venue and the vibe and other elements, but its rare to have the opportunity to see a DJ of Oakenfold's caliber at at such a small club. The floor was crowded for the first hour, but it opened up an hour or so into his set. I watched the artist mix and blend, play with the crowd, smile at the front row girls and take in the whole scene. Oakenfold's been playing this scene for 20+ years, but loves his gig - or he's a great actor. Like a Tony Hawk - top of his game for so long, out of love. It's like me and eating fried egg sandwiches, after all these years, I only get better at it.

While waiting for the bus to Xuhui today, I took a look at some jewlery and knives being offered up on a sidewalk blanket. Among the items was the leg of a tiger - bones still intact. The claws were enormous. The vendor knew the word for tiger, and tried to work a sale. He had a tiger's tooth. I imagined someone in the Serengetti saying, "Damn poachers! It'll be three days before those legs hit the streets of Shanghai!" I didn't buy it.

I'm at Burger King again. If Mike put in two solid meals here today, why should I be any less American. Actually I think its working the other way around. They're out of all chicken sandwiches. As I entered tonight, two laowei girls were walking out. One commented, "It's like a pilgrimage." Except this one is much more holy and instantly gratifying than most. Indeed it is a pilgrimage. Nearly 50% of the patrons are laowei. This is witnessed by the fact that at the three tables near me, there are three separate couples - all western guys and Chinese girls. Gott bless America.

Friday, June 24, 2005 - When your work day doesn't start until 5:30pm every night, 9am can be early. But Game 7 of the NBA Finals is on, and as a 29 year old, 6"4' American abroad, more sleep will be sacrificed for the heavy burden of my questionable responsibilities. I have little wagered on the game. I don't care much for Texas, or Detroit for that matter, but I don't dislike either place enough to wish their team a Game 7 loss. I've never been to either place, so I'm forced to judge each place on what I've seen in the media, which can always be counted on to give objective and unbiased reports. I heard that on Halloween in Detroit, lots of people started fires in abandoned (for the most part) houses and buildings. That sounds like a fun night for regular folks like you and me, but the police wouldn't have it and shut it down. Like Halloween in Isla Vista. How many rings does Robert Horry have? And why the haircut for Ben Wallace? So much change makes me want to listen to more Guns N' Roses and REO Speedwagon. 12-12 with 4:05 to play in the first. I'll celebrate with a pork chops, eggs, hash browns and coffee breakfast. My average breakfast (when there is food in the fridge) would represent the largest breakfast most Chinese people have ever had. Everything in excess. I had a nice dinner last night at Wuyuan (which one might translate to 5 yuan, or $0.60). Gongbao jinding. I don't care if kung pao chicken is an americanized chinese entree, its delicious and satisfying every time here. The restaurant was crowded for the only time that night when I arrived, so I got to eat with the waitresses and cooks. I am a very funny person in China. My humor transcends age, race, social status, gender and culture. People have called me a great healer, but I know not my art well. I struck against the table with the cooks. They thought it was uproariously funny (wait, that adjective is only reserved for simple-minding film critics of John Hughes movies) - nonetheless, they all got a great laugh over my dinner selection. I've seen other Chinese people order it, so its not blatantly a laowei dish. I decided to teach them the translation. It's a tricky one, but they caught on quickly: gongbao jidan becomes kung pao chicken. They already knew chicken, so the kung pao was not a big shift, especially since its a chinese word, though likely Cantonese. The waiters and waitresses joined in the mirth. If they were laughing at me, instead of with me, I decided I would tell them I was French and I their food was only fit for animals. Fortunately it did not come to that. I offered my meal to them, and they refused, as nearly every Chinese person does whenever I offer them my food. I think they need to politely refuse twice before acquiescing the third time. One of the waiters dug in to his tofu, pork and rice and opened two beers. I asked him why he needed two big beers, to which he replied, roughly translated, "beer very good". Gott bless all the social alcoholics in Shanghai.

One good thing about watching the Finals in another country are the ridiculous commercials. Commercials are always ridiculous and entertaining in other countries. Nonetheless I'm compelled to buy a nice Nikon camera and go skydiving, work up a sweat playing against Yao Ming on a rural basketball court - enough to refresh myself with the pseudo Amino Supil energy drink, and become the coolest kid in school when I show up in a perfect copy of Steve Nash's jersey. I find it heartwarming to read the sms/emails that come in from around the world. Like Omar, from Turkey, writes, "It doesn't matter who wins the ring, there will be no losers." So true. If I buy an expensive pair of red and white basketball shoes, I will be able to dominate a village of African tribesman playing on a dirt court. They will make me their new king, place me on a throne and carry me around the court. That's marketing!

So San Antonio won the game and the series, which leaves a shade more despondent than ambivalent. I suppose Ginobili will get the MVP, marking the beginning of a long, slow death to the proud tradition of American sports. Next thing you know they'll let the Canucks play baseball with us.

One of my students last night digressed on nearly every question I asked him so he could talk more about his spirited search for women. I share his enthusiasm, but mine is not for women but rather for helping sick orphaned puppies get a proper education. He went on at length about finding women online, finding women in other countries, the deficiencies of women in China and went on to shock and bewilder his colleagues with his knowledge of Thai lady-boys. The class [keep in mind that this was a business English class at a small corporation] was eager to learn more about the kratoys, and I shared my limited and varied experiences with them. Maybe in-depth knowledge of lady-boys will be more helpful than the techniques of a proper handshake. Mike spent an hour this morning talking with a student Japanese girls and their techniques. Boys will be boys...

I think its time to help some orphaned puppies...

Summer, 2005 - The Editorial Team at Privileged Life Enterprises would like to extend a humble apology for the lack of any kind of update, until this day, the 19th of June, two thousand and five. After five months of hustling from one internet cafe to another and composing works of extraordinary fiction, we opted to take a few weeks off. There has also not been anything to write about [which hasn't stopped us before, right?]. Bottom line, this month has been too felonious, too damning and too libelous to get anything beyond the communist censors. Everything would get white-washed into - "went out after a late-afternoon breakfast, met up with acquaintances and went home a bit later".
So, what's been going on? I left Hong Kong on the first of the month. I had tried to depart HK on May 30, which would have brought me back to Shanghai almost 5 months to the hours after I'd left. Even at the main Hong Kong train station I got the same news I'd heard all over Asia for well over a year - "No, no today, you come back tomorrow". There was a train to Beijing that day, Shanghai was indeed the following day. I headed back into Kowloon and very reluctantly checked into a dorm room. I was tired. I was traveled out. I was broke and hungry and had a bag of dirty laundry and useless crap that I'd impulsively bought, thinking it would be cool to have on my wall someday. I walked around Kowloon all night, ducking into interesting alleys, reading in bookshops, rationalizing the cost of beer and wondering why Hong Kong felt so much like a Shanghai-London-New York-San Francisco-Singapore combination. Strange vibes on Nathan St.
The train ride was long and uneventful, but I made some good progress on Don Quixote, of which I have not made further progress. On a side note, I've lost some sleep on the further vs. farther dichotomy. Merriam-Webster clearly states that the two words are fundamentally interchangeable, with only partial specialization, but it seems that there is a small and vocal minority, of which I may be a member, that believes farther should be associated with distance, and further with addition, or possibly abstract distance. There's a scene in Sean Connery's "Who's the man now dogg?" Finding Forrester where Jamal, the protagonista, says, "You said my skills extend farther than the basketball court. Farther relates to distance, further is a definition of degree. You should have said further". You do the math.
45 minutes before the train arrived in Shanghai, I knocked a pillow off my middle bunk. It fell onto the table below, knocking a thermos of steaming hot water onto the belly of an older Chinese-Canadian. He jumped up and danced around like he was walking on coals. His was not a dance of joy, rather one of contempt. He was not happy. I saw the wet mark on his crotch and felt bad for spilling water on his pants and making it look like he'd wet his pants. When he returned wearing a new pair of pants and showed me the blood blisters from his third (?) degree burns on his stomach, I felt a bit worse. There was nothing I could do, so I kept my mouth shut and waited until we got into Shanghai to escape into anonymity.
I've returned to the usual routines in Shanghai. Teach English, get dinner, go out to disreputable cantinas to assuage my mighty thirst. It's a damn social scene; the dvd night has been relegated to maybe once a week status. I picked up work quickly at Mike's place right next to Jinan Temple - Web International. That English Corner class lasted two weeks before the McDonalds incident. I was told that I'd take some students over for an informal EC across the street to McDonalds. We'd get some dinner and chat for a few hours. Sounds great. When I walked over with Sue, her marketing associate was setting up signs and a whiteboard. Hmm, this is turning into a classroom. Right next to the registers. It turned out that it wouldn't be any students, but McDonalds employees. This was corporate training for the insulting rate of 120 an hour. I started it up and chatted my students up. Kate spoke fairly good English and had worked at this McDonalds for two years. I don't know why. Another guy spoke ok English, two years as well. I'm not sure why every McDonalds employee I've ever come in contact with in Shanghai has not been able to understand my "hamburger" or "Coke. Umm, coca? Coca-cola? kuhla?"a; I wanted to take the class downstairs where it was quieter and more private, but that would put a serious dent in the promotional aspect of pageant. I just imagined if I'd come in for a burger and seen some laowei teaching employees just what they put in a Big Mac everyday. I probably have the best laugh of my day. In Asia, there are highs and lows, and then sometimes you find yourself in McDonalds on a busy dinnertime evening, teaching fast-food English to their fry-cooks. Strange. I'm not sure where on the spectrum it should be. I quit the next day.
I'm working at a company called Learning 365.com. It's a block from one of my old apartments, two blocks from my last apartment, and 40 minutes by bus or metro/foot from my current apartment. It's an online learning school, where students all over China can login and study online, then participate in some webcast/webcamera classes. I thought I'd be teaching English, but that hasn't really happened. Saturdays and Sundays I interview some prospective English students to determine which level they should go into. Days like today, Sunday, see me working about 45 minutes out of 8 hours on interviews and the subsequent reports, and about 7 hours on my site. I don't care that there is no visible improvement or additional content or pictures, the staff here is very busy arguing about stuff like the guiding principles of the enterprise, and what the official mascot and company colors should be. Our fight song is "Our Lips are Sealed". It was a hotly debated decision, but a recent karaoke session Laticia in Data Mining convinced General Hashimoto, Lead PL Image Consultant, to swing his vote to the Go-Go's camp. "It doesn't matter what they say / In the jealous games people play /Our lips are sealed."