the funny thing about humidity is that it amplifies whatever weather you're experiencing. it makes hot weather even hotter. and it makes cold weather cling to you. the one solitary lesson that i have learned since moving OUT of the bay area and INTO asia is that bay area weather is ideal.
us kids that grew up there are used to hearing it - blah blah, yeah, we know we're lucky, whatever, can we go eat now? but seriously. in humidity, important things like towels and laundry don't dry. (and dryers, being an american fixation, are uncommon in asia. fucking don't ask me why, because they're the ones with the humidity issue.) and when towels and laundry don't dry in under, let's say, 3 days, they start to emanate this funk. sour washrag funk. my sister associates the smell with hong kong, and logically so, because if your towel at home smells like it does here, you'd throw it immediately into the washer, crank it to hot water and dump in all the detergent you can find. but when your towels smells like someone dragged it in the gutter here, you shake it off and dry yourself off as normal, knowing you just changed towels yesterday.
that is irritating as shit, you know.
so last night i topped off my mcdonald's meal deal #9 consumed at 5:30 pm with two greasy-ass slices of pizza, a bowl of cream of mushroom soup, pasta with ham and peas and ground meat of some variety, and chicken wings. oh yeah, and mashed potato with escargot. 'sets' are big here - you don't just order pizza, you order a fucking banquet. the typical hk breakfast is a set; so you order your macaroni in chicken broth with ham or your instant noodles with jia choi and pork, and you get two pieces of texas toast (crusts sawed off and soaked in margarine) and two fried eggs. i am still wondering why hong kees are so friggin tiny. they eat like paul bunyan. everyone orders a beverage of sorts - either lai cha (hot or cold), or lemon tea, or coffee. biann and i always order coffee with breakfast, and it comes with about 20% coffee and 80% creamer. asians like their drinks creamy as shit (with fake cream, preferably) and their bread soft like pound cake. it's interesting how an entire region can cultivate a specific propensity for textures and tastes.
eating breakfast at home seems to be a rare occurrence. on weekends, we always head downstairs and consume bowls of noodles or some rice plate. i bought some whole-grain bread (aha!) i managed to find in the supermarket downstairs and toasted that for breakfast before my cousin B got up this morning, and he seemed baffled that i made my own breakfast when i could so easily just go downstairs. one night i stayed home by myself and made dinner, and B wondered aloud about it for 3 days. he was completely confused as to why i would buy and cook food when i could so easily not engage in that whole thing and plunk down $25 hkd for a decent meal.
i think it boils down to regionalism. americans have space, so they have large homes and spend lots of time and money making that space very comfortable and nice, and want to spend time in that space. hong kees do not have space - they have tiny shoebox apartments (that smell like sour towels) and spend as little time as possible in them, and the thought of making food at home (if you can afford to eat out frequently) or staying in on friday nights is completely foreign. it's unnecessary, as well, because most corner places in hong kong serve some pretty fucking good food and it's cheap. take one look at the retail breakdowns and you'll see - apparel and accessories make up about 85% of the shops in a mall, the other 15% is food or coffee establishments. you don't have the huge home furnishings market in hong kong, you don't have people interested in making their apartment look like a crate & barrel catalog. there's no nesting compulsion because when your shit is like, 450 square feet, you don't have that many options.
it's like when we were in brazil - i wondered out loud why all the young couples we saw together were always completely making out. saadiq pointed out that all young people live at home with their parents, so the only private time (as it were) that they have with their bfs or gfs is when they're out at clubs or in the park or beach. that perspective was like, seeing google earth for the first time. of course. of course there are explanations for that. of course not the whole world is america. duh.
currently reading: write on, by elizabeth george. she's a mystery novelist and the book is about teaching the craft of writing. i've always been sort of arrogant about my writing, on one hand extremely private, and on the other, sort of presumptuous. WHAT can YOU teach me about writing? i've been writing fiction since i was 7, i know how to fucking write. but i am so foolish sometimes. writing a novel is a marathon, and i have dabbled in the occasional sprint. i wouldn't know how to research a novel, profile a character, or pitch an idea to a publisher if i got slapped in the head with all 3 at once. i highly recommend it if you one day aspire to be published, and if you want your shit to be good. i think i have the sensibility of writer, but i don't have the skills to sustain a long-term project. i have to learn these things.
(p.s. one of my favorite things is getting older. my mom doesn't like it because when she was my age my sister was born and she's got this deep hankering for grandchildren, but i do. every day you learn something new. you learn how dumb you are about something you've always been good at, you learn how to be patient, you learn that your friends and family are so important when you've never previously given it much thought, you get to know yourself and by doing this, make your contributions to the world so much more effective and significant. kumbaya. let's hold hands now.)
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