The Creme Scene

Will surf for change

chimeracupkeyk — Tue, 6 May 2014 14:58:47 GMT

We took a long drive, some eight hours drive north of Manila, to go to parks? I kept my thoughts to myself; my mouth was parchment dry despite seven glasses of ice water & two cups of coffee. Still, that seemed like a far better idea than listening to the other resort inhabitants sing bad karaoke; that was always a hazard of vacationing in the Philippines, cheap or karaoke everywhere, all the time. So a park it is... Hurrah...
I guess that's interesting. The town below was once swallowed up by a tidal wave & they placed a marker on the mountain side where the water reached. There were statues of townsfolk running from the wave, which also had a statue of its own, romantically painted a powder blue & white as exaggeratedly panicked faces scream for help and pass on infants-- frozen in time for tourists.
We hustled back to the air conditioned comforts of the car; we saw past the edge of the highway. It was a drop less than thirty feet, easy enough to spot had we not been looking at the wrong way. Rock formations, shiny and sharp, jut up from the water and cut the waves. Some twenty teenagers were on the water; boys and girls, wild haired and sun burnt. They floated on repaired surfboards & waited for waves. They dodged one after the other by diving underneath; their chatter barely broke. They didn't even have to look at the rocks to dodge them.
"What are they waiting for?" Esay asked. None of us had actually surfed but those waves looked pretty decent enough to ride. They were beggars. Rock face climbers in Benguet, deep sea divers in Palawan-- throw them a couple of coins and they'd literally risk break their necks for the money. These teenagers were going to ride a wave just as it about to hit a rock formation and make turn in time to save themselves.
Paulo pointed at something. The shoreline dipped and ran away from the stone beach, the boys and girls paddled after it. Then they were skittering on the water's skin, left and right; flipping and turning. They looked like some comical sea birds fighting over a bit of discarded bait. They were tiny on that wave. Their numbers only made the hazard worse-- their boards could bump into each other, hand spans apart. Then the sea was white, they was no stony beach, just foam and brown arms high fiving. I pulled out my wallet & crumpled a hundred peso bill. I threw it at the beach. The smallest one; a ten year old at most, ran for it.
I said, "We are going back now. I am going to learn to surf."

Fly times on the DiDie

chimeracupkeyk — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 19:42:00 GMT

I knew from online sources that I, someone who spoke no English, would be better off buying a metro card than hoping to ask a stranger for directions. This wasn’t Hongkong that was littered with homesick expats eager for an English conversation, regardless of how brief. I will be hard pressed to find a person who understands English and speaks English. The second part was very important. I have been in way too many conversations where I was understood well enough but their reply just made no sense to me.

So I chose a place within walking distance to a train station on the farthest reaches of the Didie’s subway network. It was China enough to have clothes skewered by the sleeve or pant leg on bamboo poles. But it was modern enough so that the bamboo poles were on frames up to 15 stories up in a residential complex. As such, despite the rush hour traffic I find myself seated on the train.

I have been shrilled at by women who were probably insulted when I offered them my seat by my western gentlemanly ways. I would then be elbowed for being the youngest seated passenger when an elderly person came aboard. I learned filial piety within a few days of my stay.

So seated, I people watched. The leather boots of winter have given way to more fashionable suede ones. The windbreakers and sweaters are for an effect of layering, instead of warding off the cold. And in front of me, a man’s open fly was letting the cool spring air his white underwear, seemingly invisible to everyone but me. I fished out my dictionary and found the entry for zipper. I showed him the page, my finger pointing at the Chinese characters for zipper. He said something fast and frustrated. I pointed at his groin and he got this weird look on his face. I was saying your "fly is open, sir" as hushed as possible. I pointed at my own fly and made a fidgeting gesture as if I was opening in it and he gasped as I was some sort of pervert about to show him my pecker right there in the train. Fortunately a young girl, maybe fourteen, was overhearing us and happened to understand English. She explained what I was trying to say to the man. The man was blushing so hard that his ears could have burst into flames. I got off the next station and took the connecting train to my stop. In that train, everyone was wondering why I couldn't stop from laughing. My friend would later explain that in China, embarrassing situations was politely ignored; I was being a foreigner rudely pointing it out.

When it rains...

chimeracupkeyk — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:32:00 GMT

It rained one sweltering July afternoon, for hours non-stop and well into the evening. My Chinese friend said, “Like summer rain…” as if there was something to follow. I stared at him blankly.

“You know, like the saying, “Like summer rain; when it rains, it pours.”

“Oh,” was all that I could reply. My entire life I have used the idiom incorrectly and out of context. I thought it was like Murphy’s Law only by intensity instead of timing; but instead it was about the inverse proportions of rarity and intensity.

It rained today in Shanghai. In my room, listening to the skipping cadence of rain on roof, I could have been in Makati. The weather woman smiled on TV and followed a blue arrow behind her with a pen hand. She could have been telling the story of ancient sailors going back home to their families: I understood nothing she said. But the shapes I knew from Mr. Malabanan's class in high school: it looked as if her hand is the wind pushing clouds from the Philippines to China. It rained Philippine water in Shanghai. The streets hissed, giving up after a half-hearted fight and sighing a hazy mist; and the city is rescued from the torture of summer. But it cannot know the relief I felt.

I pulled out the last blazing laughter we shared, tucked hidden in my chest. It was but a melancholy ember of a smile then. I cupped it in my hands and pursed my lips into an almost soundless whisper, "Whooooooooooo?"

I crackled and roared back to life: You.

I have cursed the kilometers between us but I learned that without this distance of seas I would not have come to stretch my arms to reach for you. For too long I have let my hands fall feeble and useless at my sides when you were but an arm's length away.

It took wavelengths to broadcast what I should have said all along.

When I said I was miserable, I meant, "Make me happy."

When I said I was happy, I meant, "Let's stay together a little longer."

I will be back and thank you so much for the rain.

Catching a Moment - Old Habit, New City. Strangely Familiar

chimeracupkeyk — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:42:09 GMT

I was stretching on the corner facing Dihao Hotel at 6AM, beside a streetlamp of a bouquet of large oval incandescent bulbs that lined the streets of this block. I wasn’t the type to change my morning routine on the account that I happen to be some 300 KM away from home or that it was 14?C out on a wet spring day in Jinjiang City.
I finished stretching to notice the entire Dihao Hotel reception desk staring at me. I was wearing a tank top, and running shorts. Admittedly, it wasn’t the recommended outdoor equipment for the cusp of winter. At least, I hoped that was what they were staring at.
I started running. I pass strip malls with brands like K-Bird (whose logo is an upside-down swoosh) and Anmani (not misspelled). Beyond them, midrise housing complexes create a uniformly jagged, gray skyline. Unashamedly dotting the city were construction sites. I was watching one of those educational videos of time lapsed cocoons but I wasn’t sure if what will emerge is a dusty moth or a vain butterfly.
I ran and passed a young couple, swaggering out of a KTV bar, still in evening coats, a little more crumpled by the night but still fashionable in the morning. They had an arm about the other’s waist and eyes too tired to look at anything but their steps.
I passed an alley bustling with breakfast: stalls of deep-fried bread with pork floss and pickles; pulled noodles and beef stomach; vegetable stuffed eggrolls made right before the eyes; or dumplings, crunchy fried on the bottom, soft steamed on top with a miracle of soup inside.
I passed a bus station brimming with people rushing in or out the city to celebrate the Lunar New Year anywhere but where they were. They dragged hard case luggage, sacks with wheels built into them or muddy bottomed sports bags. Right there in the station, a mobile phone company was having a loud promo on prepaid sim cards. Judging from their buyers, it was a good deal.
I passed a new bridge flanked by ancient bilobas. Just beyond, I saw a Buddhist temple on the far bank, red brick, gold leaf, and dragons; its gardened courtyard stretched just before the river’s edge. There, some twenty, thickly coated women were doing laundry in the brown-green water, chatting noisily. My eyes stayed with them until my watch beeped to say that I needed to turn around, just past the bridge. As I turned, a single crane flew up from its little, floating island of garbage on the slow-moving river’s surface and I see the first glimpse of sunrise.

Photos: Ngotuichi

chimeracupkeyk — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:04:00 GMT

Demolition Site/ Construction Site

NgoTuiChi Demolition Construction

chimeracupkeyk — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 11:02:00 GMT

They are tearing down a small village with a name that translated to “Five Shop Town” in English. Ditches ten feet deep expose centuries of clay in varying shades of red. I see a half-torn barber shop with men’s hairstyles painted on the white tiles with nail polish. I find a counter where a fishmonger used to gut and clean his ware. Underneath, well used steel basins have left rings of rust on the floor. I peek inside abandoned houses where only the sunlight plays with dust motes. I wonder if the rubble of demolished terra cotta houses was made from the same clay the very houses used to stand on. Less than three feet away from the demolition, they have started working on the new ancestral houses. In China, new ancestral house is not a paradox.

The construction workers and the demolition workers wear the same dusty denim overalls, yellow hard hats, and thick, previously white, now mud caked cotton gloves; but the rift that separated them was not only an opposing and contradictory role but also a temporal dichotomy.

We are not the only touring group. My hosts were among the families that the government bought out of old homes. They didn’t really live in them anymore. They all had condos. The old houses will be torn down and replaced with architecturally sound and aesthetically pleasing ones. We cross paths with another group, elderly men in business suits and aging women in wool lined coats over studded slacks. I look around my own group and most of us are over sixty, except me. My age matches the workers’ better.

The construction workers are building a park of houses. They are made with glazed precast concrete made to resemble marble, tarred pine made to resemble ebony, and stainless steel that no one would mistake for anything other than from this century. Each new ancestral home has a small courtyard with a central garden of flowering plants and those curious small golden citrus fruits that the Chinese said symbolized money. Wide doors house a temple to Buddhist saints and ancestors. Old photos are reprinted directly onto black marble; the names of the family tree properly labeled in gold leaf. Sofa, mahjong table, pool table, dining table and tea table can entertain guests but no one can really call this home. Two pairs of scissors were painted on several pieces of rice paper; these are pasted on the walls and pillars. I ask what these were for. I was answered only with “tradition.”I reply with a nod and an honestly amazed and unquestioning ah.