Protected: Talk Like a Man

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Joy Ride

We landed in Jeju island, the Hawaii of Korea, and rented a car. It had a GPS! And spoke in English, even though it said all the Korean streets in Korean, which we couldn’t understand. The GPS had cartoon characters of buildings we passed, even though they looked nothing like the real buildings. The GPS even gave us warnings of upcoming speed bumps, even though there weren’t any people and hardly any cars on the road. The buildings we passed buy had random words in English, like White Castle, which was a Korean BBQ joint. The streets were so wide and so clean! And we rented a hybrid and it was so quiet! We even turned off the radio to listen to the non-noise.

There’s nothing like China to make even a small resort island in Korea make you feel like a country bumpkin excited about the modernness of what the Koreans call the honeymoon getaway quiet island.

We checked into the hotel and there were two Japanese toilets and random digital buttons on the walls that I didn’t know managed what, so I pressed all of them until random numbers showed up.

I still don’t know what those digital panels are for.

The flat screen was so big! The air conditioner didn’t blow right at you, and the two bathrooms had Bliss shampoo and conditioner. I told the French Gentleman we had to hide them so they would give us more tomorrow, because Bliss products are definitely things I have no shame in stealing so I can use them in China.

The Korean BBQ place for dinner was so quiet without all those Chinese people! And everyone greeted me in Korean and I didn’t know what they were saying so I just smiled back.

The air smelled like real ocean.

The most exciting part was driving around, like two high schoolers who finally got their drivers’ licenses. We could stop when we wanted. We could go when we wanted. We didn’t need to find a cab, nor call our drivers. We went to the convenience store. For fun. Twice. The Korean version of 7-11 had all sorts of goodies and we didn’t know what anything was. I looked through all the yogurt drinks because milk products were now safe to drink here, and picked out the ones with the pretty apple pictures. I’ll have to tell you how apple yogurt drink tastes like. They had Cheetos! Though the Korean version was kinda sweet, not very cheese flavored, and totally gross. I threw out the entire bag after the second Cheeto, just because I could, because Cheetos are cheap in Korea!

It was like manhattanites going to Walmart – it is so so nice and exciting going on vacation to live like the rest of the people in the world.

It’s only been 4 hours into our vacation, and I love Korea already.

Overheard in Shanghai

I like taking random walks through Shanghai because you never know what you’ll stumble across. The last time I walked into a ridiculously pimp hotel and ate unlimited dessert at 11pm on a Wed night all by myself – if you have never dined solo in a ridiculously pimp place where the wait staff is super nice to you because they think you don’t have friends, you are missing out.

Today, on a random Mon night, I stumbled across an Octoberfest party. Let me rephrase. I totally crashed it. I heard music from the street, wandered in, realized there was a decent live cover band playing ’80’s American music, and decided to check it out. There was a lady in the front checking tickets and I just confidently walked in. Inside, the Chinese waitresses were wearing those weird German bar maid outfits, and the Chinese were rockin it out on the dance floor. Three guys and one girl were alternating partners back and forth – so two guys were always dancing with each other. One guy was twirling the other guy around, then they slow danced, and then switched partners.

I love it when guys are comfortable with their sexuality.

The band was Filipino, which was why they they were good – sometimes. They’ve been alternating between Chinese and American songs. It’s kinda like you suffer 3 minutes through a really crappy song in hopes the next American song makes up for it. They played one Chinese song that made me want to skewer my eyes out, and then next minute they sang One by U2, one of my all time favorites (and the only U2 song I like), so much I actually switched tables to get closer to the band and bopped at my table all by myself.

Too bad I’m at a clearly open bar and I don’t drink beer.

I’m at a bar by myself with a bunch of beer-drinking dudes because of the music, I swear.

Protected: A Day in the Life

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Barbie World

My Chinese coworkers asked me if I thought Barbie was pretty.

What!? Isn’t Barbie all boobs, legs, and hair?

Does Barbie even have a face? If she does, it’s as tiny as her feet.

The only reason I liked Barbie as a kid was because you could change her clothes. And the girl could do splits.

My coworkers said Chinese people thought Barbie was pretty.

I asked why.

They said, as kids, the only dolls they had had white faces. Like, Barbie and all the other blond big eyed dolls.

I didn’t get it. For a country where every single person was Chinese, nobody thought of making a Chinese-looking doll?

But apparently, no. They said, the first dolls to come into China were imported from Mattel and all the other American companies, and then the Chinese just copied them. So all the kids just played with Barbies and other American dolls, real or counterfeit.

Even then, the Chinese knew how to copy things.

So then all the Chinese kids were taught that Barbie was how a pretty girl looked like, and they all thought, then, she must be pretty.

They blame western dolls for the being reason why they think big eyes and tall noses are attractive.

The world’s most populous country has a crush on a girl whose boobs are bigger than her head.

I guess considering the doll options, it’s not like anyone ever argued that Hello Kitty was hot.

I Stand Corrected

The Singapore Airlines flight coming out of Singapore was way better than the flight coming out of Shanghai. To be fair, maybe it was because the latter was a red eye, but I blame China.

After being miffed by my flight inbound (https://funkychickeninchina.wordpress.com/2013/09/05/singapore-sling/), I showed up outbound at the Singapore Airport at the wrong terminal and had to take the little trolly that got me to my check-in counter exactly 30 minutes before boarding. I was pretty sure that was against the rules, but they didn’t say anything, so neither did I.

Running late, I still felt like it was still my duty to check out the Singapore Airlines lounge and see if they at least had decent food and alcohol. Priorities.

The lounge was great. They had multiple bottles of wine, and didn’t know which was good, so I tried all of them. But I didn’t want to seem like I was one of those ghetto people who just wanted to load up on free airline alcohol, even though I totally was, so I lined up several glasses and poured a bit of wine into each one, and swirled and sniffed before I took a sip. I made sure to stop, swirl, take another sip, and ponder a moment before moving to the next glass. I made a whole production out of it. Discerning wine snob trumps looking like a poor college kid, when you’re flying the world’s best airline.

Never mind I was wearing flip flops and a backpack that I had literally bought in college.

I had to get going, so I dumped some Indian food on a plate (it was mediocre), totally eavesdropped on the people behind me (you get good gossip when foreigners look at you and assume you can’t understand English), and stole 3 magazines and a newspaper. Because foreign magazines are expensive in China.

I arrived at my gate a little late. A little late as in there was nobody around, and a frantic little stewardess ran up to me and asked me if I was the remaining passenger yet to board. Why yes. She smiled, bowed, and was so ever pleasant.

In my life, I’ve made two flights depart late because I took my precious time getting to the gate, and the people were not so nice on those other flights. One was my sister’s fault, which indicates this is problem is genetic.

I got on the flight, they gave me champagne right away, to my delight, and offered me an array of magazines. They had Vogue. Oh my! I’ve never read a Vogue in my life, and after reading one, I know why. The table of contents starts on like page 100 after all those ads, and it takes about 5 separate “see page…” continuations to finish an article stuffed between even more ads. That magazine has got to be the most ad-revenue profitable magazine in the world. And I loved every minute flipping through the 4-inch-thick magazine, because there is nothing as decadent as sitting in business class looking at pretty clothes you have no intention of ever buying, because at least the fashion is not fobby and the models aren’t filled with Asians trying to look white.

As an aside, there were two ads next to each other in Shanghai. One was for a Chinese brand and the model looked so white, she had to at least been a halfie with some seriously dominant European genes. Between the big eyes and high nose and western features, the only thing Asian about her was having black hair. And I’m positive even the hair was more brown than black. Next to her was a Shanghai Tang model. Shanghai Tang is a Hong Kong brand that has clothes with “Asian influences,” made for white people, because the Chinese wear overpriced “Asian influence” clothes as much as Americans wear pilgrim outfits. Incidentally, the Shanghai Tang ad had a slanty eyed Chinese girl, whose eyes were smaller than anything I’ve ever seen on the streets here. But she sure did look Asian.

So you can imagine my delight seeing runway fashion created for white people, on white people. It made me feel the world was back in order.

Flipping through the magazine, the airline stewardess continued offering me wine, and I continued to drink it. They continued to offer me food, and I continued to eat it. It was great.

And oh yeah. The stewardesses were hot this time.

Singapore Airlines, I will be taking you again.

The China Effect

First, I should probably stop ragging on China. It’s not … that … horrible. And I lead a life I will probably never live again. It’s kinda like being a reality TV star. You don’t always recommend it, it kinda messes with your head, but you know you won’t always be in the place and time in your life to do it again, and it’s a super different experience that you know you’ll one day look back fondly at. It’s a weird, charmed, amusing life that I have. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is probably the only reason I am still here.

That being said, Singapore is my new favorite place in the world. It was Hong Kong. And then Malaysia. And now Singapore. Because they are lush, clean(er), become amazing when compared to China, and remind me of home.

You’re in trouble when you go to Malaysia, the “next China” which has yet to develop, to feel like home.

Singapore looks nothing like the US and is filled with yellow and brown people. But the entire city looks like a garden. There are free parks everywhere, the lushest and most manicured rainforest-looking parks you could imagine. The food is amazing, though it seems the cheaper the meal is, the better it is. My most amazing meal was one for 8 USD for whatever leftover Indian food they had on the hot plates of the only place open at 11pm, plus a mango lassi. I proceeded to later in the trip have a full on meal with oyster, sea bass, and fois gras infuse with chocolate and pineapple – tasted better when separated than all together as the waiter suggested – but not nearly as good as the Indian food that was out on the counter all day.

Funny, I didn’t love Singapore that much the first time I was there when I lived in NYC. I thought it was ok and super fobby. This time, it felt like paradise. I loved everything about the place, except for the accents, because the Singaporean accent is the only accent almost as bad as the Hong Kong accent, which is the only accent I can think of that is worst than the Mandarin accent.

I will definitely come back to Singapore when it gets cold in Shanghai this winter.

Protected: The Best Two Days Ever

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Singapore Sling

My work sent me to Singapore on Business Class on… Singapore Airlines. Because the other flight option was China Eastern Airline, and an airline with “China” in its name is not even an option when your company is paying for this trip.

Singapore Airlines is supposed to be the best airline in the world. Where the stewardesses are supposed to the hottest and the airline gives the best service.

Even as a girl who isn’t into other girls, I was pretty excited.

The check-in counter gave me two lounge passes. One for the VIP lounge, one for a restaurant where I was allowed to order for free whatever I wanted. So excited!

I went to the VIP lounge first. This lounge at Pudong Shanghai airport was co-shared with Emerites and all the other good airlines.

The last time I was in the VIP lounge in Paris on Air France, they had wine and cheese and desserts and all sorts of random goodies. Hell, the last time I snuck into the American Airlines VIP lounge in Shanghai, my friend and I got wasted on wine and cocktails and smuggled instant noodles into our backpacks for our flights back to the US (we didn’t have the foresight to figure out how to get hot water into our noodles on our economy flight, so I gave the noodles as a present for my mother upon my arrival. Lucky girl.)

So, this Singapore Airlines VIP lounge was gonna be good!

I arrived, and first of all, all the wines were from China. Ok, that was just wrong. If given a choice between wine from China and a glass of piss, I think I would have to think about that for a moment.

Second, all the food sucked. For a VIP lounge of the best airline in the world, even instant noodles would have been better than the yucky over-cooked and dried looking and dried looking food they had. I did take some cut up fruit, though they looked so soggy I actually wondered half-bite if the soggy fruits were gonna give me the runs during my flight.

However, they did have some massage chairs! Now, that was more like it. And serendipitous because I hadn’t had time to get a massage before heading to the airport. Since moving to China, I always get a massage before flights. You pick up some spoiled habits living here.

I plopped down on the massage chair, figured out how to use the machine, and after about an hour of reading magazines I couldn’t understand in Chinese (though great pictures!), I realized the head rest smelled like dandruff.

Time to check out the free restaurant.

I now only had 10 minutes to boarding, and ordered nachos and a glass of wine. The waiter said they could make the nachos, but if I wanted them in 10 minutes, it would have to have no cheese on it. Because they needed to melt the cheese on top of the chips, and that would take 20 mins.

What the heck is nachos without cheese? Were they gonna give me just chips?

So I said, don’t melt the cheese, just stick the un-melted cheese on top of the chips. And that, ladies and gentleman, is how I enjoyed nachos at the Singapore Airlines free restaurant – chips and cold shredded Mozzarella cheese.

I finally boarded, and got to my Business Class seat.

Ok first of all, the stewardesses were not that hot. They were actually borderline un-hot. Better than US-based stewardesses for sure, but I’ve definitely seen hotter Chinese stewardesses on budget Chinese airline companies, which was disappointing.

And, the guy next to me had taken off his shoes…and socks. And had his legs crossed so his feet were in my space. Like, the seats were wide enough that his feet weren’t touching me or anything, but they were awfully close. And his pointer toe was longer than his thumb toe, so to add salt to injury, his feet imposing in my space were funny looking.

Hey, I had bare feet too, but that’s because I wasn’t wearing socks in the first place. You wear socks onto a flight and you should keep them on.

To make this even more traumatizing, they welcomed me with a “welcome drink” and asked if I wanted water or champagne. I said I wanted water AND champagne. The guy gave me water and walked away. I had to literally flag him down to get the glass of champagne.

I’ve gotten free champagne easier at da club snitching another table’s bottle of bub.

After this lackluster experience, I was quite disappointed. And couldn’t figure out how to pull my seat down.

Only, when I did, I realized my seat reclined all the way down. I had a flat bed seat! Awesome. I played with all the other buttons and then finally the “flat” button until my seat really was completely flat.

I was almost asleep when the stewardess asked me what I wanted to eat. She had a menu. I ordered everything. Literally.

And ordered a glass of Tawny port (my favorite), a glass of champagne, a glass of Riesling (it sucked), a glass or Bordeaux (now that was good), and a second glass of port.

Finally, the awesome flight I was hoping for, 2 yucky lounges and one barefoot neighbor later.

Why must life be so hard?

White Girl

Asia is a great place for white guys with Asian Fetish. Not to state the obvious. And not to belabor this point, but the ability to actually communicate with the girl doesn’t seem to be a big problem for some of these guys.

Call me nuts, but the Chinese accents, especially the bad ones, really hurt my ears. Both in pronunciation and grammar. I can’t stand it. To be fair, I’m sure my American accented Chinese is really hurting their ears, too.

So there. Even.

However, you never really see the white girls with Asian guys. Not that much the US, and especially not in China.

I asked my driver why Chinese guys don’t go for the white girls. Because god knows the dating of white boys in China is scary at best, and hell if I went out to (unsuccessfully) date a local when I first arrived, I couldn’t have been the only expat to want to try the local cuisine.

He said, Dating a white girl is just weird. He said they are too different, and that there would be nothing to talk about. He also said the white girls were too big, and that even a tall Chinese guy would think the white girl made him feel small.

He then asked why white boys liked Chinese girls.

Wow, where do I even begin with that one.

I asked him if Chinese guys would ever date a white girl, and he said, Doubtful.

He then said white girls just seem really foreign. He said, even though I grew up in the States, I seemed very Chinese to him.

I guess that’s a compliment?

Which is funny, because the company secretary told me the second she saw me, she could tell I was foreign. It’s kinda like how in the States you can spot a German tourist – they’re white, but they kinda walk and dress a little too… euro? I had pressed her on why I seemed different – I wanted her to say I walk kinda manly, because ABC’s walk like athletes compared to locals. I can’t explain it. Locals aren’t dainty, but the prissy Shanghainese ones walk all super wussy like they have no muscles and are gonna fall over. The country bumpkin ones walk like they’re taking a piss at the same time, legs all open and stomping in the air. The ABC’s, they’re more muscular to begin with, and walk with more of a sense of purpose, though that’s not to say they have a prettier walk. You can even spot the ABC guys because they’re more muscular than both the locals and the European Asian variety.

We’re also the country that invented Powerbars and Jazzercise.

So white girls aren’t popular in China because they are too big, which makes me wonder if local guys think ABC girls look like they can beat them up.

In China, I guess everyone loves a local Chinese girl.

Good grief.