Adventures in Prostitution, or: I’m definitely going back for those dumplings
Posted from: Beijing
Javi and I got medicinal foot massages from the prostitutes at the bargain brothel down the street from my house. I first noticed the brothel on a walk one day; the sign outside says “24 hour foot massage”, and there’s a dumpling restaurant in the basement. Man, I thought, massage and dumplings at 3:00a.m.! Beijing has everything. (more…)
Hong Kong: Where the Money Meets the Road
Posted from: Hong Kong
Hong Kong is a never-ending commercial paradise of pristine luxury goods, tiny cakes, delicate food and refined, respectful manners. No one shoves their way onto a packed subway car, smokes in enclosed spaces, spits gobules of phlegm in your general direction, breathes in your face, bothers you while you’re reading, screams in restaurants, or pokes you just to see what will happen.
“This city is lame,” I said to Charlie, as yet another person politely waited their turn for the escalator. (more…)
Ruminations on Chinese Noms
Posted from: Beijing
The staff of Seven Treasures Pond, our local Buddhist vegetarian restaurant, greeted us with such enthusiasm us that Kyle was sure they were secretly cannibals. “No one’s that happy to see you unless they plan to cook and eat your bubbling flesh,” he insisted, sniffing the appetizers. They fattened us up on a ginormous, boiled-at-the-table bowl of watercress, fake meatball, jujube and five spice soup. If this is Buddhism, I thought with a face full of lotus root, then namo-freakin-amituofo. (more…)
Welcoming the Year of the Dragon
Posted from: Beijing
This is my fourth lunar new years in China, and I really did try not to get so swept up in the revelry that photos fall by the wayside. I did manage a few pictures and some video, but along the way what I’ve found is that our camera is woefully inadequate to capture the Bladerunner dystopia that Beijing becomes during New Years week. Some choice selections: (more…)
Spicy Duck Tablets and the Blue-Headed Man
Posted from: Beijing
During the last three days of 2011, my sole purpose in life was to wait for my furniture to arrive, while intermittently darting downstairs to buy basketfuls of vegetables and jian bing (chewy flatbread).
Yes, I was wildly excited about defeating the TaoBao ordering process by actually buying something, but it turns out that checkout is only half the fun. Now that I’ve got the hang of it, ordering is easy. Delivery, on the other hand, can apparently only happen when you’re at least two blocks away, slathered in massage oil, with two young spa attendants waving aromatic orange peels in your face, and it involves twelve successive phone calls from the freight driver, four calls from the property management office, two red stamps, three signatures, six lords a’leaping, and the personal heavenly blessing of the Jade Emperor himself. (more…)
Breaking News: People who can’t attach photos to email are legislating about the internet
Posted from: Beijing
After several years spent with a picket sign in one hand and a brick in the other, these days my political platform typically consists of the word “Meh”. I like to pat myself on the back for being too pessimistic to believe in anything except individual human responsibility. Governments shall rise and fall, shit shall happen, life shall go on. But the more I hear about SOPA and the Protect IP act, the more I sense my withered inner activist shaking off the coils of eternal slumber.
If you’ve never heard of SOPA or Protect IP, here’s the skinny:
PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.
Sad thing is, I think it’s only a matter of time before a bill like SOPA or Protect IP is passed. If it doesn’t happen now, it’ll happen when some unfortunate event occurs that opportunistic legislators can use to make everyone who opposes the bill look bad. The comments section of a website will spark a celebrity suicide, or some kid will download a pirated slasher movie and kill his parents or whatever. Name your tragedy. “We have to do something,” legislators will bluster, and they’ll set about happily paving the road to hell. What’s really kind of amazing is that it hasn’t happened sooner.
So yeah, I think it’s inevitable. But I’m not willing to see it pass without at a hefty dose of public ire. (more…)
TaoBao Christmas Miracles: Surviving the Chinese Ecommerce User Experience Apocolypse
Posted from: Beijing
I spent the better part of Christmas Eve morning sitting in an empty concession stand outside of Solana shopping center waiting for the two very confused young ladies behind the counter to figure out how to bake a pizza slice.
“Why does this oven have so many knobs?” whispered one to the other, loudly. (more…)
Last Rites in Columbia, First Rites and Guanxi in Beijing
Posted from: Beijing
In my final days in South Carolina, faced with an empty house and no internet, I actually bought a jigsaw puzzle. The analog kind, with actual pieces you can actually lose. And on our very last night, myself and a nameless collective of miscreants wrote a note about the origins of Blue Stalin on a paper plate – the last plant-based writing surface we hadn’t packed yet – stuffed it inside his hollow, hollow head, and left him in a bed of leaves in an undisclosed location.
I had forgotten how much of travel is waiting. The good traveler knows how to make waiting bearable. Waiting for the dryer to finish the last load of laundry so you can finish packing. For the shuttle to come. For the plane to take off, and immediately thereafter, for the plane to land. For the jetlag to wear off, for it to be early enough to fall asleep or late enough to get out of bed. But the waiting’s over. We’re in Beijing, finally, finally. (more…)
Artifacts of the Excavation: Exhibits from a Minimalist Lifestyle
This post is dedicated to Rusty Farrell, CEO at Truematter, who told me several months ago that he “appreciates my minimalist lifestyle”.
I thought about that comment far longer than I’m sure Rusty intended. I examined everything I own with a new eye, wondering “Being a minimalist and all, do I really need this?”. But when, during the early stages of packing up the house for my upcoming move, I found my plastic silver cat amputee ashtray with inbuilt fan (more on that exciting development below), I decided that, no, minimalism is probably not an ism I have any claim to. (more…)
Swiss Retro Ecommerce Web Elements set for Smashing Magazine, or: Trials, Tribulations and the Pixel Grid
Posted from: South Carolina
I was just recently asked to design an ecommerce icon set for Smashing Magazine and after a several week long row with Photoshop during which I threatened to set its ruler states to “picas” and leave them that way forever, it’s finally done.
Doing design work for Smashing is terrifying in the way that asking Stephen Hawking to review your long division would be terrifying. You’d hand in your sad little equation, worn thin from your eraser, and pray only for the intelligence to understand all the myriad, cryptic ways in which he’s going to pity you. (more…)