We walked about half a block under the trees strung with neon smiley-face lights. At the first intersection we came to, we saw a taxi with his 空车 ‘open car’ tab up and the light on on top of the car. John waved to him to see if he was actually open—a lot of seemingly open taxis drive by, and sometimes taxi drivers flat out refuse us. The driver waved back, so we walked around the front of his car to get in, still seeing no indication that he would not accept us as passengers.

A lot of taxis are older and not-so-gently used, so the doors stick. When John pulled on the handle, his door didn’t open easily, so John tugged harder and suddenly the handle snapped off in his hand. We didn’t know quite what to do as the taxi driver started yelling at us from inside the vehicle. John opened the front door to put the handle in the passenger’s seat. As we walked around the front of the car, the taxi driver continued shouting and swearing belligerently at us in a mix of Mandarin and Shanghai-nese.

“What the fuck am I supposed to do?” was most of the stuff I caught.

In situations like this, I find it best to pretend I do not speak Chinese, since if I misspeak I could say something wrong or, in worst-case scenarios, inadvertently say something incriminating or that indicates wrongdoing. So as the driver cursed us out in the middle of the street, we stood there, trying to calmly explain, in English, that it had been an accident. After a few minutes of his belligerence and getting nowhere, we walked about ten feet away to an intersection, trying to figure out what to do.

A Chinese girl and her two friends who were at the intersection asked us in English what happened. We explained what happened and the girl said, “I think this is none of your business,” meaning that this isn’t something we could deal with. It was an accident.

And then, just our luck, a motorcycle cop rode up.

Local policemen are generally feared in China. They are frequently among the most corrupt, unfair officials around. They are known as self-serving, open to bribes, untrustworthy, and fairly disinterested in the conventional idea of justice. So when the cop stopped his motorcycle and took off his helmet, I felt that nothing good could come of his presence.

The driver hooted and grunted at us to come back over to the car. He shouted his story indignantly to the cop, waving the wayward door handle in the air. The girl at the intersection came over with us, and a nosy little crowd started forming around us.

The taxi driver insisted that we had ignored the red digital writing on the top of the taxi that said 电调. I only noticed it as he mentioned it, and had no idea until he said as much that it meant that someone had called to reserve his taxi and so he was not, despite all appearances, on duty. He went on to say that John yanked at the door handle with all his strength three times, miming the action so vigorously that I protested and John coolly explained he just reached to grab the handle and pull like one would any door handle.

The Chinese girl helped us tell our story—actually, she did a very good job defending us. What’s nice about pretending to not understand is I can make sure that things are kosher, that no one’s telling us one thing and saying another. And she was saying the right things. Nosy passers-by shouted their opinions to the taxi driver. And though they were speaking the mostly-indecipherable Shanghainese, I think I caught that they were saying it was just an accident, and how would the laowai know that your sign meant that you were on phone-reserved assignment.

The cop stood in the middle of the circle, totally silent. He looked completely uninterested and said absolutely nothing, instead letting the onlookers and the taxi driver debate about who was at fault and what should be done.

Somehow, it was suggested that the just way to resolve this would be to have John open another locked door of the taxi. If the handle broke, the driver would be at fault; if it didn’t, John would be at fault. I’m not sure how this is perceived as a fair solution, and in fact see it as a catch-22 for us—we break a second handle, we’ve just broken half his door handles. We don’t break it and it suggests John was using uncalled for brute force the first time. It was such an absurd suggestion I told John he absolutely should not do that—but he’s not dumb enough to do that anyway.

Obviously, what the driver wanted was compensation—I was worried about how much he was going to try to weasel out of us. This is a big problem in China, actually—people are afraid to help those who are hurt or in trouble because they are afraid of being blamed. There are many stories of good Samaritans who help only to have the family of the victim turn around and blame the good Samaritan and bleed him or her for tens of thousands of yuan. Car accidents are not resolved through insurance, but through payoffs.

When it was suggested we pay him 30 or 50 yuan, I felt relieved that we wouldn’t be forced to pay too much. John was understandably perturbed about the idea of paying this guy for an accident that was in all probability, bound to happen eventually. Our Chinese defender had left, since we had been standing there debating for at least 20 minutes, so a mother with her young son told us that it was best to just pay. The driver was losing his time and business, and if we didn’t want to pay, we would have to go to the police station and fight about it for hours and fill out paperwork and probably pay anyway, so we may as well save ourselves the time and just pay.

Eventually, we paid him 50 yuan and got him to write out his information and that he had received our 50 yuan. The cop stood by impassively, as mute as a Charlie Chaplin film. What does he get paid for anyway?

I found it interesting that while there was a police presence, he kept his distance from the whole thing and let it play out on street-side small claims court. It’s an interesting sense of People’s justice—don’t get the officials involved and come to a general or popular consensus using the nosy people who are inevitable drawn to the scene.

We took the metro home that night.

In a month, I am moving back to the States.

I haven’t told a lot of people about this, just my family and my school. I’m sorry for those close to me who have to find out through my blog, but it’s been kind of my dirty little secret for a bit. I’m afraid people will think I’ve given up and reverted to the “normal” way life is supposed to go, that I just couldn’t hack it abroad and am returning to the sterile comforts of ‘civilized’ society.

After talking about his experience in Shanghai and linking to my last post on his blog, my buddy Gerald at positive-ecology.org said

I wish I could give great advice on how to learn to handle cultural differences with equanimity, but I can only repeat my girlfriend’s words: just adapt to the situation.

So I wondered if I have failed at adapting, if I have done so without equanimity, and if I just can’t hack it. But I don’t think that’s the case. I HAVE adapted to the situation—I speak the language, I eat the food, and despite the fact that it is detrimental to my blood pressure, I still take the metro to work. Instead of only taking taxis like many foreigners do, I push my way through crowds and get body-checked on the sidewalks. I have adapted to the situation, but that doesn’t mean I LIKE it.

It is not easy to decide to leave. The only life I’ve had on my own has been China. The fact that I’m not all on my own now makes the transition easier, but the fact is I’ve been fantasizing about leaving since Christmas. It is time for me to start my new adventures. The reverberating silence on the blog reflects the lack of stuff I feel I have to write about.

My new adventures start September 19, when John and I take a late night flight to Vietnam (so if you’re getting tired of all my recent reflections, adventure travel posts are soon to come!). We’ll be there for 10 days, fly back to Shanghai for a night, and on the morning of the 30th, leave for a quick visit to Phoenix and then on to Florida, where our American life will take place. But lest you think I’m falling back into a ‘normal’ life, let me assure you, our life there is temporary. We are hoping to be out and living in Europe within a year.

I feel bad about leaving my job—the school is such a wonderful place to work and I know I’ll never have a job that combines great hours, great pay, and great people all in one like that again.

Though I know I’ll miss the students and teachers, in all honesty, I’m looking forward to some of the comforts of my home county. I’m sure I will quickly tire of the sterility and expense of America, but I see this time as a much-needed bit of relief.

So it will be time for me to explore the strange and foreign somewhat-tropical land of Florida. I have never been there, and how could I complain living on the beach? John has promised that we will explore the Caribbean and many parts of Florida, and since the Internet will now hold him to that promise, if you all will follow me back to America and out again, I promise there will be new adventures and puns abound on Plate of Wander.

And here I am a year later, telling you that the charm long ago began to wear off. I don’t care about the great job market, high salary for low work time, or the cheap taxis. Even the fabulous food does not excite me as it used to. Instead, a gritty resentment has worn these joys thin.

For reasons I can’t pinpoint, China has made me an angrier person. I think part of it is just getting around. Transportation and organization here is so haphazard and careless that walking along the road or taking a taxi or riding my bike (in Huzhou; I refuse to do that here) brings me within breeze’s reach of death or roadkill. Having my life balanced delicately on the skill of Chinese drivers is not something that soothes my temperament.

Individually and in manageable-sized groups, most of the Chinese people I’ve met or worked with have been friendly and generous. But as many Chinese tell me, 中国人太多了。 There are too many Chinese people. And the problem is that when you get them in a group of more than say, ten, they collectively tend to go against all Western concepts of courteousness. [I’m not saying one concept is not ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ but that the two are at odds with each other.]

Frequent readers of this blog and people who know me know that I don’t like making generalizations. But I’m about to make one that is true: Chinese people en masse do not understand the concept of 先下后上, or let the people on the train get off before you get on. There are even yellow lines and arrows on the floor in front of every subway door to indicate where to wait while your fellow country-people alight.

Instead, those waiting to get on stand right in the center of the doorway, as do the people waiting to get off. So when the doors open, a clash of sides reminiscent of Braveheart or some other violent war film results right there in the metro station. And since Chinese people do not get in line, this is a particularly bloody battle best left in the hands of Mel Gibson or Quentin Tarantino. And that is a compliment to neither of them.

Standing RIGHT in front of the doors:

Many people also seem not to have mastered the issue of stand on the right, walk on the left. On the other hand, I have lost a lot of weight leaping up the stairs two at a time just to get past the people on the escalator who are too oblivious to take a step to the right.

In China, personal space is defined as “Mine to defend” and any free space is “Mine to claim.” When I walk down the sidewalk, I am shoulder slammed on a regular basis, because when I move a bit out of the way for someone coming at me, I expect him or her to do the same. But here, they don’t, so they just walk right into me.

These sound like petty grievances about China. But these things grow over time– getting shoved and slammed and jostled about is fairly demoralizing. I’ve just reached the point where my excitement about being here has been dissolved by isolation and frustration.

Sometimes China can seem like an asylum; I feel like I’m crazy, unable to just accept people body-checking me on the sidewalk or in the metro.

I have been in this asylum for a long time without respite. As a result I have forgotten what life outside of China is like.

That’s right folks: I have amnasia.

I forget using a clothes dryer. I forget using a dishwasher, a garbage disposal, central heating or cooling, driving, buying shoes large enough and pants long enough. I forget grape jelly, expensive produce, full-sized ovens, water colder than room temperature, free water, free refills, and refrigerated eggs sold in cartons.

I honestly believe that the factor that has had the most impact on my state of mind is that I have not been home since last July. I have not seen a member of my family in more than a year. Skype is no substitute; virtual hugs do not suffice. I know my family misses me, but I am so often left to wonder, do they think of me? Have they grown used to me as a disconnected voice over a bad phone connection? It is driving me insane. Thankfully I have John, or I would be facing all this in solitary confinement.

But since I feel no desire to live out the rest of my life in the United States, and instead intend to spend it around the world, this is something I will have to learn to accept.

I miss my family. And I want to go home.

I suppose that Plate of Wander has been somewhat akin to a long weekend of late. It’s been a hiatus, a sabbatical, call it whatever you like, but here starts a new season of Plate of Wander. A new season with a new cast, a new location, and a new plotline.

This season, there’s a lot of backstory. You may remember John:

Well, I moved in with him and his roommate/fellow ballooner/Texan cowboy, Josh:

Two guys and a girl sharing an apartment in Shanghai. All we need is a whacky neighbor, an overbearing mom, a clueless dad, a quirky best friend, and an apartment out of our price range and we’ll have the next smash-hit sitcom. Or trashy reality TV show. It depends on tone.

We live in one of the hundreds or thousands of anonymous high-rise monstrosities.

I left Huzhou, the place I made my life for nearly two years. It was a difficult place to live, isolated and dull. Huzhou was not a mistake, but if my life in Huzhou were a steak, it would be ultra really totally well-done. There was a little goodbye dinner for me and TJ. All the teachers in the department came; some of them were surprised my Chinese was good. That’s because in the nearly 2 years I shared an office, they said nary a word to me.

These ladies talked to me every day, Hebe and Laura. I am so grateful to them for all they did for me.

The next day, I was on my last bus to Shanghai.

Shortly before I left Huzhou, I backed out of a contract I signed with a Chinese high school in Shanghai in order to take a job at a kindergarten that paid a lot more. The very first time I taught young kids, just a year and change ago it was an utter disaster. Now I’m teaching 4-to-7-year-olds a 50 some-odd hours a month (I told you it paid well).

Going from teaching shy, disinterested, self-conscious 21-year-olds to fire-cracker munchkins screaming at tinnitus-inducing levels is somewhat of an adjustment. However, it is extremely refreshing to ask a question in class and be met with a squealing chorus of “Teacher, teacher, let me try!” instead of the deflating sting of collegiate silence.

There are a lot of perks to the new school: instead of agonizing every Sunday night about what to teach the next week, I now have the soothing relief of a curriculum. I walk into school and have a lesson plan handed to me by one of the Chinese teachers, who are all incredibly friendly and helpful.

But best of all are the students. They are so dang cute; some of them are really really smart, others are trouble-makers. I get lots of questions like “Teacher, how is your hair so curly?” “How can you speak Chinese if you are American?” “How can you live in China if you are American?” and “How do you know English?”

And even better, I get cute kids who love me. In particular one student, Tony, in my youngest class, who can’t go three minutes without climbing onto me, usually by grabbing my neck, and kissing my cheek and saying “I love you.” One of the teachers, Annie, took this photo when we made noodles:

Do his eyes not make your heart murmur? Those eyes will definitely get him into and out of trouble one day.

Besides the job, there’s a lot we need to catch up on. So hopefully I’ll stick to my resolve to update regularly as before, because my life is changing quicker than I can type.

Also, check out my new photography page (because I can’t insert a link at the moment, look under the column “Inside” on your left, the last one entitled “Photography”), which has a nice little slideshow of my favorite shots. I’m planning to build up my own little photography empire, and this is one of the first steps. So click through and re-live your favorite Plate of Wander shots, and a few I’ve not posted before.

Last week I had the bittersweet pleasure of seeing my students at their most angelic. John came to stay with me during the week, and I decided that instead of lesson planning, I would pawn him off to my students. This wasn’t just me being lazy—interacting with him is a really good opportunity for them to practice communicating with a non-teacher, real live English speaker.

There was the inevitable glamour factor of a foreigner; all of my classes oohed, aahed, and applauded when John walked in behind me. And for the rest of class, they were, for the most part, perky, attentive, smiley, and responsive.

First I let them think of questions they had for John, and then they could ask him. While we covered the basics like “Where are you from?” and “What do you do?” the students were too preoccupied with questions like “Are you ellis’ boyfriend?”, “Do you like Chinese girls?” and “What kinds of girls do you like?” to find out where he lives or how tall he is (6’6”!).

On Tuesday’s first class, Serena bravely asked if he liked Chinese girls, what kinds of girls he likes, and if, by chance, he likes girls like her.

Someone was smitten!

John kindly replied by giving her a hug.

And making her a balloon.

He totally made her day.

Lisa took the initiative and tried some twisting herself.

And got a hat from John.

I can’t get my students to do this even when I offer candy as a bribe reward.

John had Aha pose for his tiger.

A palm tree for Superluck

And a game for Peach.

Since when do they like class so much?

John even got a few normally shy students to talk to him, like Melissa, who held an impressive conversation with John about what kind of girls he liked. Go Melissa!

Next, Chetty, a very strong student, asked John if he liked to dance. John took that as his cue to ask her to dance. After a lot of giggling and mouth-covering, Chetty finally agreed to dance with him.

He taught her the box step.

I think he wanted to teach these students the Can Can.

John tried to get the ambivalent boys to participate by building a hoop and ball, but they still weren’t too into it.

Thursday morning is my favorite class, and somehow topics turned once again to dancing. Before I knew it, John was lifting Jelly and twirling her in the air.

Then he was chatting with Peter, another student of the normally shy persuasion, but Peter really came out of his shell.

He was John’s assistant. John does a trick where he asks people to blow on the tip of a mostly inflated balloon, and when they do he does something with pressure so that he can squeeze air into the part the person is blowing on, so it looks like they’re blowing air into the balloon from the outside. He did this to Peter.

And then Peter tried four or five breaths to do it on his own.

Didn’t quite work the same way.

It was a real treat to see my students be happy in the classroom. Usually they’re sleeping, texting, daydreaming, or reading other books, try as I might to get them to pay attention. So seeing them laughing, smiling, and listening was a glimpse of how I wish class was every week. Sadly, they’re just not as enthusiastic about English as they are about inflated latex.

I think I’ll let John finish out the semester for me.

And so it is that I found myself taking pictures of an event for my coworker’s (TJ’s) cousin’s friend, Jonathon, and his roommate, John. Because no part of that sentence is confusing.

John and Jonathon, when you ask what they do, say they bring joy to people using latex:

Jonathon also goes by Fudge, so for the sake of clarity, I will refer to him as Fudge, like his shirt does, for the duration of this post.

John and Fudge are balloon artists from Florida. Yes, like flowers and dogs, but they do so much more than that. They definitely earn the ‘artist’ label. Go to John’s website for a few more examples of what he can do. The dress is pretty amazing.

Since they offered to let me stay with them over the Expo weekend, I offered my photographer’s services as pay through trade. That weekend they were working for Tudou, a Chinese video website.

They worked the crowd for about 40 minutes, during which they made more than I make in a month.

Yeah.

Fudge went out alone first, so I followed him around first as he wrote things on balloon thought bubbles and got kids and their parents to scream and plead for one of his balloons.

I can’t tell who wanted the kids to get a balloon more: the kids themselves, or their parents.

There were endless shouts of “Hello! Over here!”

Balloons go over really well here. I’ve seen John and Fudge turn grown adults into wide-eyed eager kids anxious for a balloon monkey in a palm tree or overtly phallic balloon objects. But that’s a different post.

After about 15 minutes, John came out to do his thing.

John is really good at emoting and making silly faces for the adults kids.

He made a hat for a whole family.

As well as flowers and monkeys and all other kinds of hats.

The ladies just throw themselves upon John and Fudge for their balloons.

Sometimes balloons pop by themselves, sometimes John or Fudge trick an audience member into grabbing one and having it purposely deflate as soon immediately.

After another ten or fifteen minutes, another entertainer came out. His schtick was getting 4 or 5 people into a giant balloon.

Eventually parents started putting their kids inside the performance circle so they could run up to John and have a better chance of getting a balloon.

He and Fudge made a Mickey Mouse as a grand finale.

The people in charge liked it so much they asked him to make another after the gig, and then someone else requested a Hello Kitty and a flower and a heart and all sorts of things.

I had a grand old time running around and taking pictures of John and Fudge and also the audience. The plethora of cute kids really made for about 400 photos.

After the gig we went to dinner and then to Cold Stone for dessert. When we walked into the Cold Stone, the people behind the counter recognized John and Fudge and expressed disappointment that they hadn’t come in to the Cold Stone during the performance. Immediately, John and Fudge whipped out balloons and started twisting them into hearts and flowers. They, and even the manager, liked them so much they gave us an extra free ice cream with Oreos and a coupon for ice cream next time. Good deal!

John and Fudge really liked all the photos I took, so when I move to Shanghai at the end of next month, I’m going to hone my craft and make myself available as an event photographer. So if you or anyone you know happens to need a photographer, email me at ellis (at) plateofwander (dot) com.

Oh my Lady Gaga, Becky, look at her butt. It is soooo big.

And in class yesterday I had my kids writing letters to Dear Abby asking for advice. One student wrote a letter saying: Now that the weather is warm I want to wear slippers [flip flop sandals] to class. The school director says that slippers are not enlightened, but my feet say “I want to breathe fresh air!” What should I do?

Guess who wears flip flops every day?

Oh my Lady Gaga.

I’ve been shuttling back and forth between Shanghai every weekend for about 6 weeks now. That means I was in Shanghai for the opening of the World Expo, which has been pomp and circumstanced out the Yangtze. Ever since my arrival in November 2008, 17 months before the Expo, there have been electronic countdowns and saccharine sky blue Haibaos littering Shanghai and the surrounding area. Even the blackboards in my classroom are painted with Expo propaganda.

The government has stepped up the ‘civility’ vigilance. People are discouraged from going out in their quilted pajama sets, which they do with astonishing frequency even in a city as cosmopolitan as Shanghai. Street crossing marms whistle fiercely if you try to j-walk or if you don’t stand on the curb while you wait for the light to change. New, larger, more comfortable taxis, with drivers who speak a bit of English, are skulking the streets. And where vehicles used to drive through toll booths, everyone is now stopped, identified, and searched (though the searching is either lax or random, I can’t tell which, since each trip I’ve made into Shanghai has resulted in a different degree of security).

Basically, the Expo is a big deal over here. Or at least, everyone’s pretending it is. It may just be me, but I don’t get the hype. I’d never heard of the Expo, and it wouldn’t exactly be out of character for the PRC to make things seem more important than they actually are. What? I totally didn’t just say that.

Either way, I’ve heard a lot of Chinese people say how proud the Expo makes them to be Chinese. I’m not saying they don’t feel proud to be Chinese or that they shouldn’t feel that way, but patriotic/nationalistic pride is really drilled into the general population, and the Expo is like a Face orgy.

Not that I’m cynical. In fact I’ll probably cough up kuai to go the Expo and see what all the fuss is about.

And of course, nothing important can be done in China without fireworks. And since the Expo is the post-Olympics climax of Face, China ignited enough of the gunpowder they invented to sever Shanghai from the mainland and crash it into Taiwan. Gotta keep an eye on them!

I thought the fireworks were supposed to start at 8, so we got a place on a bridge at the shore of the river around 7:30.

There were already plenty of people out.

8 came and went, and I was getting hungry. Then a random foreign photographer said the fireworks weren’t scheduled to start until 10:30.

Um, no. We made our way to a convenience store to procure snacks and were informed that the fireworks would actually start at 9:30.

We made it outside just in time to see the initial explosions.

If this were an American thing, I know there’d be people tailgating, barbequing, snacking, and littering the street with so many beer bottles that the roads would sparkle reflecting the sky.

Instead, people stood around patiently, just chilling and waiting.

Definitely not a party.

We didn’t have the best view. Aside from a television, I’m not sure where the best view would be. But there were enough fireworks for that not to matter. I even oohed and aahed.

The smoky red sky and chest-rattling pops made the city seem like a war zone being invaded, but since everyone was calm and happy, my imagination could only go so far.

By the time the show was over, the streets were flooded with pedestrians, and traffic had come to a complete stop. In fact, I didn’t see cars move for about an hour, and there were people crowding the sidewalks for at least two. But no riots, no parties, no dancing or grilling or drinking. No rowdiness at all. Incredible.

The Expo weekend was also the May 1 holiday, which is a government holiday, but Chinese people work even on holidays. I was called back to Huzhou early to judge and English competition. Those things are less fun than rubbing sand all over your brain, and the fact it was on a holiday seemed like an even greater injustice.

I mean come on—Expo weekend! We should all be celebrating China’s greatness with fireworks-induced tinnitus and breakfast in bed.

Holidays here aren’t for fun or rest—they’re for promoting society and taking part in activities. But this year we got about 30 minutes of fire-sky respite. And some nachos as consolation.

Though Huzhou has certainly been good to me, it is not an ideal place to live for a young single American girl. Aside from eating, drinking tea, playing majiang, and going to KTV there’s not much to do. There’s no live music, no movie theater, not one museum. Heck, there is no mozzarella.

I have a tendency to worry far more than necessary, and when you combine a job hunt, writing additional essays as the next stage of the Foreign Service exam, familiar lesson planning anxiety, and anxiety anyway, well, you’ve got a tall foreign pot of worry fretting out her curls.

My fretting should have eased when I found a new job at the end of last month. I signed a contract for next school year with a company that operates out of high schools in big cities around China. The program prepares high school students for application and acceptance to universities abroad in Britain, Australia, and the US. In the interview, they asked me to describe my ideal teaching experience, and I unknowingly described their school almost to a T.

I told them I wanted to be in Shanghai or Beijing. When pressed for a preference, I said Beijing without much forethought. But after my flurry of Foreign Service essays, geographical worry resurfaced: my grandparents, Nana and Papa, are planning to be in China in August. They planned to be in Shanghai at the end of August and beginning of September, just when I would be starting school in Beijing. Not sure if our dates in Beijing would line up, I begged my new employer to switch me to Shanghai so that I could be absolutely certain that I would not miss Nana and Papa Do China: Redux. The last time they were in China I was a matter of weeks old. I think it has changed since 1986.

This week, my future employer very kindly acquiesced to my request. I enjoy Shanghai’s (expensive) charms, so I’m perfectly content to move there—they not only have mozzarella, they have Tex-Mex.

Unfortunately, some of my friends are moving away just as I move in, but I’m hoping that as I adjust to the city life, I’ll meet some new friends. What is really important to me is to spend that time with Nana and Papa. I had the extreme good fortune of growing up 10 minutes from them. Being separated by a whole planet isn’t easy.

So that is my announcement: over the summer, Plate of Wander will, barring any strange turn of events, move to Shanghai over the summer.

That means it’s time to start worrying about a moving company and where I’m going to live/keep my stuff before I can move in to my new apartment. Stay tuned for Plate of Wander: Vagabond Summer.
I’m a little scared, I’ll admit. But I guess if I can move myself across the Pacific all alone, I can move 170 kilometers alone too.

But I’ll still let my dad do my taxes.

I expect you to come when Huzhou life has reached its predictable static lull, when life is nothing but the constant roll of class-gym-dinner-bed repeat. But when I actually have something to write about, it is very inconsiderate of you to stick around. Trying to get you to leave is like trying to sweep every grain of spilled flour out from underneath a refrigerator.

It’s especially inconsiderate given the murtabak I ate for breakfast that Saturday morning in Melaka, the delicate yet crisp pan-fried dough cradling lamb and onions.

Eddie’s rice and curry

And tandoori (I think?) chicken with crispy skin:

There were the vegetables, which would not have been on the table unless I had insisted that we eat some smidgen of fiber sometime during our trip.

Blogger’s Block definitely doesn’t want me to tell about the side of egg roti…

And the sugar I subsequently sprinkled on top.

You hold my words hostage for our visit to Tan Kim Hock, a store with stack after wobbly stack of snacks and delicacies and goodies. Dried prawn strings, coconut candies, coffee candies, palm sugar, cookies, cakes, nuts, gummies and things I’d never seen before.

Tan Kim Hock also has great cendol, but you didn’t want me to tell anyone that, did you blogger’s block? The lads all ordered the durian cendol but since I wanted to enjoy my cendol I opted for straight-up palm sugar.

Palm sugar. Nooooooooooooooooooooom. Nature’s sweetened condensed milk.

Clinton continued to test the laws of physics driving us back to Kuala Lumpur, but I’ve been informed by one of the lads that’s all censored subject matter. Let’s just say, that weekend the Formula 1 was in town, and I suspect that their skills paled in comparison to Clinton’s.

None of us were hungry for lunch, so instead we went to an air conditioned shopping mall to burn enough energy to make room for dinner. We parked the car, took the escalator out of the car park, and immediately found ourselves in the food court. We exercised self-restraint and walked right through with out activating our digestive systems.

HA!

Yeah, right.

I indulged in some mediocre carrot cake.

And a veggie samosa.

And some fried Chinese snacks Clinton brought over. It’s not a meal if you don’t say it is!

We waddled slowly through Bukit Bintang, in and out of an A&W, where Clinton unsuccessfully tried to buy a mug.

We shuffled over to another mall, the one with the indoor amusement park. After the lads were finished drooling in the Sony store, we heard loud bangs. “What is that?” I asked.

“Canons,” said Jason.

This answer isn’t quite so ridiculous when you consider that at our hotel in Melaka, the Indonesian Army was conducting exercises and the first morning, we awoke to the harmonies of canon and machine gun fire.

Strangely enough, there were not canons being fired in the middle of Malaysian metropolis, but instead, fireworks.

Whodathunkit?

Dinner at Overseas Restaurant, though an especially tough spatial challenge, was a requirement in both principle and gastronomy. The place was buzzing with diners of every nationality. This was The Cantonese place to eat.

Eddie was very excited. [Photo by Jason]

In an unprecedented show of practicality, we ordered only four dishes. Stir-fried vegetable that looked and tasted like lettuce but which, Clinton assured me, was not lettuce:

This is good Chinese food. Though it’s oily, the predominant flavor is the vegetable and an enhancing slick of ingredients (I think soy sauce?). The oil should just be there to help the medicine go down.

And some short ribs.

When I’m stuffed, I find I have a harder time eating protein than I do carbohydrates. I only ate one of these, but it was aromatic and sweet but meaty and succulent.

And light, perfect steamed fish:

Though it was far too small, even for four full stomachs.

And some egg sauce rice, just like the dish we’d had the night before, just with noodles instead of rice.

Consistency of a setting Jell-o mould, deliciousness factor of a carbohydrate oasis.

Somehow, three desserts ended up on the table. Taro cake:

Coconut pudding:

Some ice thing with jellies that looked like leeches:

After dinner, we retired to the hotel for a few hours. Around one AM, Jason and Clinton went out for a drive and Eddie took me out for an early morning of dancing at the club Zouk. Dancing, like chocolate and coffee, is a relatively new like of mine. It took me years to figure out how to not feel stupid and just dance. Not that I don’t look stupid. I just stopped caring.

The only places to dance in Huzhou have terrible music; the places with acceptable music (though nothing recognizable, save for Happy Birthday and no I’m not joking) don’t have much dancing. So to be in a club with Lady Gaga, Akon, Rihanna and more with someone who liked to dance was a huge treat for me.

Sadly the club closed at 3, so Eddie and I spent almost two hours at a Nasi Goreng stand talking and cooling off beneath the fan. A few hours later, the four of us ate an un-photographed delicious brunch of noodles, noodles, and more noodles. Clinton kindly schlepped me to the airport, and before I knew it, I was back in Huzhou.

I’d like to publicly extend my thanks to the lads. Jason did pretty much all of the planning, which is a huge undertaking. All three of them treated me so well and showed infinite generosity, and Clinton and Eddie hardly knew me.

So thank you, lads. Fabulous way to turn 24, and I’ll never forget it.

And to you, Blogger’s Block, seriously. Can’t you go bother someone else?

Yours Forever Bloated,

Plate of Wander