A week or two ago, or maybe more I met Pi Chi’s family. When you work six days a week in a country where most foreigners work four the days all just blend together. She had been after me to meet them for some time and I had been putting it off as much as possible. My reasons were selfish and practical. I knew that once I met them I would be expected to participate in more family activities, and I have never known that not to be a gigantic pain in the ass. I also knew that I would only have one chance to make that first impression and no matter what I did or said later on they would always know me as whomever they decided I was when we first met.
This becomes more important when you live in a place where the foreigners have a deserved reputation for banging the young locals and skipping town and country. These people love our overpriced products and inferior cars, but they tend to be a little suspicious when some slacker who works two hours a day and dresses like a Venice (CA) surfer dude with one of those idiotic goatees is knocking boots with their daughter. When your daughter is dating a foreigner you will face one of two outcomes. He will either use her and throw her away, possibly with child, or worse, marry her. Like most racist people Chinese parents want their daughters to marry one of their own kind. The goal is to find a young Chinese man with a good job and a reputable family. If he drinks too much and stays out at KTV all night and slaps her around a little that is ok. Tradition is tradition.
Pi Chi’s father was a career soldier. He spent his entire adult life in the military. His two oldest daughters are married to Chinese men with stable jobs and reputable families. They own their own houses, cars and children. His youngest daughter (who recently received her PhD in chemical engineering) is engaged to an “astronomer”. They have bought a house together and are waiting for it to be built before they get married. His youngest child, and only son, recently entered the military. Pi Chi is the middle child. Having five children is extremely rare around here and a source of pride for the father. As the head ICU nurse at a very large and possibly famous hospital she has already broken with tradition to choose a career over a husband. Her younger sister will probably continue with her career when she is married, but Pi Chi was the trailblazer. She is already a bit of a rebel, but bringing me into the fold cannot make her parents happy.
Or so I thought.
Her mother likes me. She said I am handsome. She is older and, like almost all Chinese, has poor eyesight. And to be fair she is likely comparing me to all the Chinese men her daughters brought home. She speaks no English, but has been friendlier to me than any mother of any woman I have ever dated. Most of them did not care for me all that much. And the fathers usually wanted to see me roasting on an open flame with a spit up my ass and a shiny pinch of Washington apple between my cheek and gums.
I had already met Pi Chi’s younger sister so I knew that she was friendly, although usually pretty busy as chemical engineers are for all I know. This particular family gathering was to celebrate her birthday. I had intended to score some major points by offering to pay for the entire lunch, which would have been a generous offer since this was a fancy restaurant in a large building overlooking the river. What made it more expensive was the fact that these people ate like the government was going to ban food tomorrow. Having been to two Chinese weddings I have seen how they eat at celebrations, but those occasions were a ritual fast compared to this. The food just kept coming and the family just kept shoving it into their pie holes. After two hours of constant eating we all left the restaurant and went to the parents’ house for birthday cake and more food. Amazingly none of these people are grotesquely obese. The way they eat they should all look like Americans.
I did not pay for the prodigious meal because, as I was told, it is tradition that the person with the birthday pays for everything. That worked out well for me since there was such an endless parade of food. I have no idea what it all finally cost, but it must have been considerably more than the egg sandwich I get in my town. I just have to remember not to let them invite me out to eat on my birthday.
Most of Pi Chi’s family do not speak any English, which should really cut down on banal conversations about the weather. It is hot and humid. It was hot and humid yesterday. It will be hot and humid tomorrow. It is always hot and humid. Her father made no effort to say anything to me, but I really did not see it as a personal slight. He was old and tired and barely spoke to anyone the entire afternoon. Her younger sister speaks rudimentary English; advanced by local standards. Her oldest sister’s husband speaks some English, but he cannot tell the difference between a gerund and the Grand Canyon. I found him amusing anyway. I was sitting between him and Pi Chi. He is the kind of person who likes to take charge of a situation, so he was the self-appointed welcome wagon. He could easily be an American car or insurance or car insurance salesman. He was very proactive, and his motivational paradigm was clearly outside of the box. If such business babel exists in Chinese I am sure he uses it. He also said that I was attractive, although I chose to assume that he meant it in the most heterosexual way possible. Separately, and through my interpreter (Pi Chi), both of Pi Chi’s older sisters said I was attractive, making a total of four such observations in a two hour period.
Further proof that the Chinese are batshit insane.
29 July 2005
10 July 2005
Photographs Of Bali
Tabanan, Bali
Gianyar, Bali
Ubud, Bali
03 July 2005
Bali, Indonesia
“Get a total privacy without heading the crowds and let your family get their own dreams to the reality. Traveling with the family include your kids with no doubt of the children when you want to spend moments away from the kids.” - Villa advertisement
Ever since I arrived at my school I have been hearing about what a great tropical paradise Bali is. Boss Lady loves the place so much that they have been there more often than anywhere else. They would rather go to Bali than Europe any day. From what they and other people have told me, Bali has calm weather, clear skies, wide beaches, excellent hotels, exceptional scenery, the finest food, friendly people, and is inexpensive as far as tropical paradises go. Various people had been selling me on this place for well over a year. With all the hype, and my last trip out of the country having been to Africa, my expectations were high.
Bali never stood a chance.
The original plan was to take a nice relaxing vacation at a private villa on Bali. When you do not have to fly halfway around the world it really is not all that expensive. Although Bali has plenty of hotels, a private villa is the way to go. Most villas have private swimming pools and private courtyards. Kitchens and bathrooms tend to be outdoors, with usually only the bedroom and living room indoors. With an all year tropical climate, having a villa that is mostly outdoors makes sense. A good villa is surrounded with enough walls and landscaping to ensure complete privacy.
This was going to be my first relaxing vacation in ten years. Most of the time I go to some busy city or someplace where I have to wake up at dawn to do whatever one is supposed to do, and more often than not I travel to multiple destinations within the trip. Bali was supposed to be easy. You fly in, hang out until you have to go home, then go home. In between one can take a dip in one’s private pool and maybe have a nubile nymph or two give one a number five. The kitchen was an important amenity to me. I do not have a real kitchen at home and I miss cooking the way I used to in the real world. But the most important thing to me was the pool. After not entering a pool in years I went swimming again in Africa and have been jonesing for it ever since. This was a good plan.
Life generally does not adhere to the original plan. If it did we would all be cowboys and princesses. I wanted to be neither, but I once said that if I had the money I would buy an industrial size refrigerator that dispensed unlimited chocolate milk. This is no longer a priority for me. I have not had milk of any flavor in about 100 years.
My first mistake was having Pi Chi make all the travel arrangements. She speaks the language and is more suited to dealing with the local agencies that have all the great package deals. The Chinese love to go to Bali and every travel agent in the country has several packages available at any given time. Unlike me, Pi Chi actually works for a living, usually well over ten hours each day. When she is wrestling a patient from the gelid grip of death it is somewhat inconvenient to return phone calls and look over itineraries. She also has a tendency to change her mind after something has been booked. Not that I am complaining. Combined with the fact that the local travel agents are generally pretty lazy and love to do everything at the last minute this made for an unrewarding trip planning experience.
Circumstances and convenience led us to choose a five day stay at what appeared on their website to be a really nice villa resort. This meant that we would have a few days left over that I really did not want to spend at home. My job is neither hard nor terribly time consuming, but it does require my presence six days a week, which means if I want to actually go anywhere I have to do so during the breaks. Wasting any part of a break at home is not an appealing option.
Given Bali’s location I figured spending the remainder of days in Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur would be a good idea. I would like to see the Petronas Towers before they become average sized buildings. However, all of the package deals we were looking into included direct flights from Pi Chi’s city to Bali, as any good package would. Changing the return flight would be phenomenally expensive even though the cities in question are very close and more or less on the way. The cheapest option would be to fly home as per the package and then take an additional flight back down to Jakarta or Kuala Lumpur. This seemed pretty stupid to me. The only reason I chose those two cities was because they are near Bali. If I have to fly home and take a separate flight elsewhere I might as well go somewhere I would rather go.
This is where Mickey Mouse comes in. Pi Chi and I had previously discussed taking a trip to Disney World in Florida some day. This is one of those distant plans that will most likely never happen. We talked about both California Disneyland and Disney World. I prefer Disney World since I have been to Disneyland far more often, and as long as we would have to fly halfway around the world an extra 4000 kilometers would make no difference. During the month or more it actually took to put the Bali trip together Pi Chi saw some advertisement somewhere that mentioned very good discounts to Tokyo. Going to Tokyo for three days seemed like a waste. But then it occurred to us that Tokyo also has a Disneyland. We could fly to Japan for the sole purpose of visiting Mickey and friends. We had both been to Japan on more traditional trips, so why not.
Originally we were scheduled to go to Bali first and Tokyo afterward. One of the many changes reversed that. Overall this was a good idea, but it meant the loss of a very nice villa resort to which I really wanted to go. This resort was pretty much what sold me on the idea of going to Bali in the first place. The resort we settled on was not nearly as good.
As is usually the case my last day of work before the break was entirely too long. I will not mention how many hours I normally work because it is just sickening, but this day was almost three times longer. It was the longest day I have ever worked here and the longest day I have worked since my fourteen hour per shift airline job. You should not need a calculator to figure out that I do not currently work what anyone considers full time hours. An abnormally long day here (typical day in the real world) would not have been such a bad thing had I not had to be at the airport by 5am the next day. When you consider that the train that took me to the town where I spent the night got in at 1am, this meant very little sleep before dealing with all the long lines and security hassles that are the joy of international travel. By the time we actually settled into our Tokyo hotel I had been awake for 26 hours. This seems to be the case most of the time I travel, so I was not at all surprised. The difference was that this was my first trip abroad with Pi Chi. Had I been alone I would have gone to sleep immediately, but she dragged me out on the town to do some shopping. At the time I was bottling up a few litres of resentment, but I got over it. She does not go to Tokyo every day and it was pretty much her only chance to do any non-Disney shopping on this trip.
What made going to Tokyo before Bali the right choice was that it was a pretty hectic trip. Bali was relaxing, despite the utter ineptitude of the resort staff. Bali itself is a pretty scenic island. There are too many tourist traps and far too many tourists, especially Australians, but the sky and ocean are the appropriate shades of blue and green. Getting away from the tourists is easy, especially if one has a private villa. If it takes an hour or more to get somewhere via a decimated dirt road it is probably not big on the tourist agenda. If it is near the beach and has a Hard Rock Café, odds are there might be a tourist or two about.
When it became obvious that my expectations for this trip were higher than Pi Chi’s we agreed not to complain about any negative aspects that would inevitably arise once we were there. So I will do all my complaining here.
The pool was the biggest disappointment. The private pools in the villa we originally booked were most likely exactly what I wanted. The resort we went to was new and had clearly not worked out all the details yet. The pool was not actually a pool, but a large bathtub with only cold water. Bali is a tropical island, but it is never so hot that one would be willing to swim in frigid water. It was large enough, as bathtub pools go, but it was entirely too cold.
All the other problems with the villa were pretty minor as far as I was concerned. A lot of things broke. We had to call the front desk about the main door handle, the bathtub knob (both of which they fixed immediately), the bathroom door (they never got around to that), the pool (they could not fix that), the refrigerator (I figured it out on my own), and the various light bulbs that burned out daily. On our second day, housekeeping turned the refrigerator down all the way, ruining some of our food. I put a stop to that practice with a few choice words. Whenever we wanted a taxi it took quite some time for one to arrive. As a new resort, none of the drivers had any idea where it was, and the resort’s car service was far more expensive. I had been told by someone who has been to Bali several times that one can hire a car and driver for about NT1000 per day. We tried to do this through the resort and their rate was closer to NT9000 per day. Realizing that any resort would have excessive rates we asked various drivers what they would charge. No one came close to NT1000. Eventually we had a taxi driver shuttle us around with an informal agreement that he would turn off the meter while we were at some site. In return he got what the locals consider a pretty good tip each time I paid him the fare for each leg of our journey. In the end he probably cost us about NT4000 for the day.
Our kitchen did not have as many cooking implements as it could have, but I got the chance to cook like I have not cooked in years. The resort usually has one of its chefs prepare breakfast for the guests in their villa, but I wanted to do my own cooking. I had them just bring the food and leave, which caused no small amount of confusion. Plus Pi Chi comes from a culture where the woman does all the cooking and the man sits around waiting to be served, not that she has any desire to cook for me. My wacky foreigner ways may have jostled everyone else, but it worked for me.
Look at that scenic oven
There is nothing like that at home
And there is the matter of massages. Bali is known to some as a haven for massage. The island is littered with spas of varying quality and cleanliness. I got the number five after all, but a nubile nymph in a predominantly Muslim country is not the same as in Europe or Japan. Mine was neither nubile nor a nymph, and for some reason was unwilling to oil her bare breasts and rub them all over my body. The only thing bare or oiled were her hands. Apparently this is what they mean by “legitimate” massage. Pi Chi’s masseuse was equally aged (late 20s to early 30s) and neither of us was impressed by the massage. She went to a spa later in the trip by herself and said that it was much better. Her two or three hours away were the only time we spent apart the entire trip. It was pure heaven. [Note to me: Delete that if she reads this].
Overall I have mixed views of Bali. It looks great on film, and some of the beaches “allow” topless sunbathing. More or less. But this particular resort really made a bad impression. If I ever go back I will definitely go to the original resort. But I doubt I will ever go back.
Appropriately, Indonesia has a few thousand other islands.
This trip highlighted yet another difference between Western and Chinese thinking. Pi Chi keeps her expectations low. That way if things go wrong she is not too terribly surprised or disappointed. This certainly explains what she is doing with me. I expect a certain level of competency and ass kissing commensurate with the amount of money I am paying. The Chinese sit back and take a great deal of crap from whoever happens to be dishing it out. After five thousand years of emperors and dictators it is their natural attitude. As an American I will inevitably take a great deal of crap, but I will bitch and moan about it every step of the way.
Looking back on this trip it occurs to me just how petty all my complaints are. There are billions of people who would love the opportunity to experience the pain and suffering of our broken villa. As I was writing the paragraph about having to work an actual shift and catch a plane the next day I was thinking about how many people would gladly take a flight with little or no sleep if it meant going to some tropical island. When I was in Africa I had a moment of complete contentment unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life. Just to be able to reach that point should make it difficult to whine about broken doorknobs and other crap that has no significance long after the entire experience becomes a faded memory.
But that pool still could have been better.
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I have no qualms about disseminating creative works for the public benefit when the author is duly credited, but if you use any of the writing or photography contained herein and try to pass it off as yours, that just shows you are a big pussy who is too lazy to come up with your own word usements or shoot your own digital paintings. You should be ashamed of your dipshittery.