Paz Follow Up

Dear Friends-

This has nothing to do with China. Only Paz the Maid.

I travel to San Jose for work a lot. To tell the bosses some stuff about my trips to China and Taiwan because they think I know what is going on.

When I travel to San Jose I stay in the same hotel every time. In most hotels, I like to drink the in-room coffee in the morning. It's better than walking and/or waiting. In Asia that means powdered coffee in your boiled water. They put water boiling machines in most rooms because people don't like cold water. Plus the water will make you sick.

In San Jose, you have the little coffee machine with the little filter/packet things.

Recently, the San Jose hotel remodeled. They added these big dresser things with giant flat screens on top. Inside the dresser thing is the coffee maker. The problem is that you have to open the doors, find the plug and run it outside the doors and around the side of the dresser thing. The result is a fair amount of fiddling around and then a lot doors, cords and coffee making stuff running all over the place. You have to be careful not to trip over the plug or doors when you come back to the room. Just for a cup of okay coffee.

This evening I got back to the hotel and was working for at least an hour before I noticed that someone had taken out the whole coffee maker (which is on a serving tray) and placed it neatly on top of the dresser thing. That way you can close the doors, easily run the cord into the outlet on the side of the dresser and find all the coffee making stuff without sticking your head inside the dresser.

Unbelievable.

I don't know if I was mad or happy. It's briliant and maddening all at the same time. I can just see the housekeeping lady shaking her head as she placed the coffee maker in the obvious place. Probably very similar to Paz the Maid placing all my money in the most obvious place someone should put their money.

I miss Paz the Maid!

Paz the Maid

Hello Friends-

Here is a tidbit that I probably didn't mention earlier.

While I chose to eat entirely questionable street food and ride on the back of motorcycle taxis that my mom would disapprove of, I also lived in a pretty sweet condo.

And I also had a maid.

Enter Paz.

Not a once a month cleaning lady. Paz was a twice a week professional maid.

Chinese maids in Shanghai usually charge around 2 bucks an hour. But they steal from you and iron silk stuff and use the vacuum cleaner in unusual places. Okay- they don't all steal but when you pay them the same amount as a medium pizza and you are living in Shanghai, you or your friends are bound to run across a shady lady who doesn't yet understand referrals.

Paz charged 4 bucks an hour. She was from the Philippines. She was a referral from the manager of the Ritz Portman in Shanghai. They left town so she needed a gig and it turned out to be cleaning my place twice a week. She wanted more but I mean- I was never there....

So....Paz cleaned the crap out that place. In addition to the usual deep cleaning, she cleaned and pressed all the laundry, washed the dishes, put all my stuff in better places that I could ever think of and did the grocery shopping for me.

At first I was a little paranoid due to all of my friends' stories about their cleaning ladies jacking their stuff. So I would come home and be looking for cash I left lying around or whatever. I was pretty sure Paz was stealing from me. But then I would always find my dough in a neat little pile in a place that made way more sense than the stupid place I had it in originally.

So basically I would come home from my high flying foriegner job every night only to find out that a lady who makes four bucks an hour is way smarter than I am and probably a harder worker.

The topper was after a couple of months of Paz-work, I was sitting there one morning looking at my running shoes (which spent a lot of time splashing around in the dirty, dirty Shanghai streets). I realized that they were freaking spotless. And then I realized that it wasn't because I was avoiding the putrid mud puddles in the alleys that I was jogging trough. It was because Paz was cleaning those mofos. Either she was an over the top pro- or her workload was very, very light. Either way, I was stunned and amazed....

Probably Paz was not overloaded. I was her only job. Sometimes I would call her and I could hear the TV blasting and all of her Filipina cousins laughing in the background. And it was a stretch to have her show up twice a week since I was never there. But my place was absolutely spotless. Shanghai is on the top ten list of most polluted places in the world, but I will never live in such a spotless condo ever again. Guaranteed.

Besides the topper of having a spotless place and spotless running shoes and never having to do laundry or dishes is having someone do all of your shopping. "All of my shopping" consists of milk, juice, bananas, bottled water and beer.

The topper of toppers is coming home with a hand written note from Paz that says

"Dear Sir,

The laundry is cleaned and ironed, the dishes are done, you room is cleaned, I have purchased the groceries you asked for and the beer is in the fridge.

God Bless You.

Paz"

I want to go back to China..........

Beer Robots

Hello from Tokyo!

Dear friends-

If you are still reading this internet blog website, way to go. I still have more stuff to write. So we both win.

Since I came back to America, I have been spending a lot of time on airplanes going back to China and Taiwan as well as to California to tell the bosses what happened in China and Taiwan. It's pretty funny because the bosses believe I have some kind of Asia magic when in fact, I am missing 4,000 years of cultural training which makes me essentially clueless when it comes to understanding Asian insanity.

Anyway, back to the airplane. For the trouble of enduring long hours stripping down for rent-a-cops and touching elbows with strangers, you collect enough frequent flyer miles to become an "elite" flyer. They sent me an email that said "congratulations" on your new status. Way to go me. That's like congratulating the tractor driver at the dump on making the biggest pile of trash. Well done!

At least that is how I felt before.

On this last trip to China land, I had a connection in Tokyo. I had no idea before, but my frequent flyer card gets me into the lounge in the Tokyo airport. The lounge is pretty cool because the waiting area is jam packed with people from every country in Asia. That means no body space, no lines and lot of yelling into phones, at each other and at the gate agents. But much like when the guns finally stop firing on Luke's x-wing fighter on the Death Star run, you bust through the madness of the waiting area and roll in the luxury of the lounge.

I don't think I have written much about Japan in the past. We have an office in Japan so I have done a few business trips there and I went there once for a long weekend (Japan is freaking expensive when you don’t have an expense account). One thing to know about Japan in comparison to China is that while China is entering the modern world, they are still operating in a zone comparable in some ways to the US in the 50's (or maybe the turn of the last century). Japan in contrast is basically the freaking future. It is an ultra-efficient, ultra-modern, ultra-polite, ultra-clean utopia. At least a Japanese version of utopia. Their electronics are so cutting edge that they aren't available anywhere else but Japan. They have automatic everything. My friend has actually had his hair cut by a robot before. Granted he has an Asian bowl cut, but still.

So back to the lounge. Not only was I pumped to be out of the insane waiting area at the airport. But I was also overhelmed by the fact that they have self serve beer. And in further proof that Japan is the future, it isn't really self serve, because it is actually a beer robot. You place your glass in the machine, it tips the glass for a perfect pour, tips in back to level and dispenses a nice head of foam to top it off. I was almost laughing because I was so excited once I figured out what I was supposed to do. Unfortunately the tiny Japanese lady next to me did not want to high five the awesomeness of the beer robot.

So I chugged probably more glasses of Asahi than I should have due 1) the awesomeness of the beer robot and 2) the looming Chinese flight with the inevitable pushing, yelling and people pulling stuff out of the overhead just before take-off.

Sorry that is probably too long of a story to just to tell you about a beer dispenser but I thought it was cool. So in conclusion, while the communists may be riding the white hot economic miracle (or house of cards; you choose), they will have to suck on the fact that Japan has beer robots. And trust me, once you realize the genius of the Japanese beer robot, you also will feel that your overall quality of life is lacking….

Maybe I will write some shorter stories later….

Cheers!

A Day in Lhasa

Potala Palace as seen from the Yak Hotel

I thought I would backfill some of the stuff that happened in Tibet. Tibet is China by the way. I wish those French dudes who extinguished the torch and those adrenaline junkie hippies who hung their sign on the Golden Gate Bridge would have realized that. Embarrassing the Chinese on a worldwide scale is a horrible way to effect change. It also means I get stuck in a cut rate Hong Kong hotel waiting for a visa to get into the mainland. But that is a different story.

As I wrote earlier, Tibet was sweet. We stayed at the Yak hotel in Lhasa. It was sunny there. A day in Lhasa went like this.

Wake up. Be happy that you don’t have a splitting headache from altitude sickness.

Go to the rooftop restaurant for funky eggs and powdered coffee. Enjoy the view of the Dalai Lama’s palace through the smoke rising from the rooftops.

Take a shower. Hope the hot water holds out.

Meet your clueless but really fun Chinese “guide”. Appoint someone to negotiate the agenda for the day (everything is a negotiation with the Chinese).

Buy altitude sickness pills.

Follow the guide around looking for rental bikes. Start to get annoyed when she can’t find any.

Finally get some bikes. Test the brakes. Decide they suck but there are no other bikes around.

Jump into crazy Lhasa traffic on the way to the first attraction. Be happy that you have experience riding in Shanghai.

Enjoy the Dalai Lama’s summer palace. Try to figure out what the heck the guide is talking about, then ignore.

Feel a little ripped off when the security guard comes over to tell you that your guide has no idea what she is talking about.

Feel better when your guide gets super pumped about the Dalai Lama’s flower garden and asks you to take her photo (with a crazy Chinese pose).

Jump back into crazy traffic to the next attraction. Eat a lot of dust from dump trucks.

Stop for food at a Tibetan joint along side the road. Enjoy yak meat and noodle soup for 8. Pick up the tab (3 dollars).

Arrive at a monastery.

Play with beggar kids.

Realize the place is closed. Convince an old monk to let you check out the place where they pound drums and blow those big horns.

Decide to ride bikes up to another monastery at the top of a hill.

Realize that riding a crappy Tibetan bike up a hill sucks. Grab onto a passing truck full of monks for a tow.

Get stared at for 20 minutes until your forearm is burning from hanging on.

Arrive at the monastery.

Feel ripped off again when you find out it is closed. Tell your “guide” when she arrives 30 minutes later.

Enjoy the view of Lhasa anyway.

Play “no brakes” on the way down the hill (first one to use brakes loses).

Say goodbye to your awesome guide.

Eat pretty good yak based food and horrible Tibetan beer at the hotel.

Decide to go to the little Tibetan bar in the alley.

Get waylaid by a loud crowd outside the hotel.

Take pictures of Chinese cops confiscating a Tibetan street vendor’s food cart.

Get nervous when the crowd starts yelling at the cops. Stop taking pictures when the cops start looking at you.

Leave.

Enter the Tibetan bar.

Order scotch that they don’t have. Feel better when the mom instructs the 9 year old girl to go get the whisky from an undisclosed location in the darkened alley.

Drink beer and play cards while the little girl runs for scotch.

Feel good that you are paying a week’s rent for the bar.

Teach the little girl how to play hearts while you drink the scotch.

Get hungry.

Go outside and buy several unidentified things on sticks from a guy with a grill.

Ask the little girl if you can play with her plastic helicopter while your “food” is grilling.

Aim poorly. Fly the helicopter into the side of the bar.

Watch plastic explode in all directions.

Feel as bad as a person can feel while she stares at the broken toy.

Tell the mom that you will pay for it.

Realize she won’t take your money because you have spent more in her pub than anyone in the last 3 months.

Forget the whole thing when the food guys yells at you that your grilled stuff is ready.

Finish the whisky.

Walk down the street for sight seeing.

See something going on in what looks like an upstairs bar.

Decide to go up.

Realize you are three white dudes in a beer joint/dance hall with about 500 Tibetans.

Assess.

Go to bar.

Order three beers.

Make friends instantly.

Get ushered to a table right next to the stage.

Enjoy a dancing yak.

Get invited to do a Tibetan version of the Macarena. Fail at learning the dance.

Get a little freaked out when the dudes won’t stop feeling the hair on your arm.

Tell each other it is a cultural thing and order more beer.

Finally realize that you are supposed to go visit orphans the following day and get out of the yak dancing bar.

Head back the Yak Hotel.

Hope you don’t have altitude sickness but just don’t realize it from the whisky.

Enjoy a good night of sleep at 12,000 feet.

River Snails

Here is a tip:

Don’t eat the river snails from the food stalls on the sidewalk in Shanghai. Apparently river snails in China tend to make people crazy in the brain due to some kind of worm or virus.

Another tip:

When you make a beer run from the sidewalk food place at night, take the corporate controller with you. Otherwise, when you come back, you might find that he is chowing down on river snails with his new friends who he can’t understand.

Finally:

If you do make the mistake of leaving your corporate controller unattended and in fact you do find out that he has been dining on nasty river snails, DO NOT freak out and start telling him that he needs to stop eating those things immediately. That will only add to his stress for the next 6 weeks while he waits for the symptoms of river snail insanity to appear.

Sweet.

Stick to the more desirable items like fish heads. Or whatever that stuff is in the middle.

Blowout Chinese Fights

Dear Friends-

As I mentioned earlier, I came back. But I now I went back.

I thought I would have to do something crazy to see something crazy enough to write about. But China never disappoints.

I just arrived in Shanghai. The flight starts with a 10 hour flight to Tokyo where your meditation skills are tested by the crying baby that inevitably sits in your section.

Arriving in Tokyo is actually not too bad because the Japanese are so polite and the place is eerily clean and quiet.

Boarding the flight to China is when it all goes downhill though. It is always a festival of pushing, shoving, little old ladies trying to lift giant bags, Shanghai girls with way too many bags of Japanese products banned by the commies and dudes coughing on you. I am over that though. That's just how it is from time to time. I do get a kick out of trying to predict who will stand up and try to open the overhead compartment when the airplane is taxiing (it happens 75% of the time).

Tonight we were treated to a blow out Chinese fight on the airplane though. That is a first for me. I would see blow out arguments on the street all the time and definitely on the train (you are in my seat, no I am not). But never on an international flight.

I couldn't quite figure out what was going on but all I knew was the lady two seats in front wanted to stay and all ten of the flight attendants and the ground crew wanted her to leave. She was screaming at them and had herself buckled in for dear life. I do know that sending the Japanese to try to remove a Chinese migrant worker (just a guess based on her bags made out of canvas) is a good way to escalate any situation.

It is kind of hard to describe a Chinese blow out fight but you just have to imagine lots of yelling and red faces. I don't know why they do it but I heard it had something to do with saving face once you take a stand.

The best part is that after the Chinese lady had decided to make her seat her own little Alamo for a while, the other Chinese passengers started to yell at her, the flight attendants and each other. At about the time the flight was supposed to depart, at least 20 people were standing up in my section and half of them were yelling. At that point, I think the airline just decided to let the lady ride before everything blew up even more.

I think that in America, this would be extremely alarming (as in, we don't need no terrorists or crazies on the airplane). In China (or flights bound for China), it is normal.

China does not disappoint.

I am sure I will have more later.

Dear Friends-

I came back.

In China, they like to state the obvious so they will just come out and say “I came back” or “You came back” even though you are both well aware of what just happened. The only thing is that in China everything has some hidden meaning that I can never figure out. So when they tell you “I came back” they are probably telling you that they have just lost all of their money and their father is in jail but you would never know. That’s probably why everybody is always smiling at me. They know I have no idea what is going on because I am missing 4,000 years of cultural training. Smiling sure is better than giving people the bird in heavy traffic though.

Anyway, I came back. No hidden meaning. Just stating the obvious.

Some people told they were “learning” stuff by reading my internet website. I recommend that you don’t brag about your new brainpower if you think you are getting smarter by reading my half-baked ideas. Most likely, the Asian people you talk to will want to come over and beat me up for my lack of understanding of pretty much everything.

Some people also said that when they read my blog website that they thought I hated China. Actually, I really like it there. By “really like”, I mean “experience of a lifetime”. The food, the people and the action are entirely engaging at all times.

Anyway, I thought I would update this website to let my friends know that I got out alive. I seem to have come into contact with the right motorcycle taxis, questionable street food, rogue communist cops and rookie drivers passing on blind corners. Except for when I didn’t.

I got some more stuff to write about when I get some time and a bunch of photos. Plus, I am going back there for business trips. So if I see some wierd things happening (inevitable), I will try to add the action to the blog website. So I came back, but I am also going back (no hidden meaning).

Enjoy a few photos and check back later.

Strange Idol Worship

Tea Fields

Hot Pot---A Brilliant Way to Eat

Tibetan Orphans at Dickey Orphanage in Lhasa. These kids have no connections in China or Tibet (which is also China) so they are basically hosed. Really cute though and if you stop by they sing for you and show you their stuff (which is like nothing).

Tibetan Beer---Avoid

They use bamboo for food, hats, boats, chopsticks, doormats, dinnerware and in this case, scaffolding. Bamboo tastes good.

The Cormorants go fishing for the local guys. They tie a rope around their neck so they can't swallow the fish though. Nice.

EXTREMELY questionable street food. REALLY good though.

Some temple/place for farmers to nap in the south of China

Fairly typical meal. The plastic tablecloth makes it easy to spit the bones on the table. Gross? Maybe. Really tasty? Absolutely.




Sunset over the seawall near my house in The Republic of China (Taiwan). See previous posts about Chinese missiles pointed at Taiwan if you are confused.