Amanda goes to school and learnz a new word. Or two.

… …

backpacker: based on a fashion style popular in the mid to late 90s where people involved in hip-hop wore large backpacks. Originated by graf writers who kept all their cans and nozzles in the packs, the style caught on quick with the suburbanites and rock kids who didn’t want to stray too far from their style but still wanted to have a hip-hop flava. People use it now as a derogatory term for nerd-rappers, hippy-hoppers, and other fringe hip-hop followers, referencing the fact most of the listeners are suburbanites buying or co-opting into a certain style.

shoegazer: so named because the musicians in these bands stood relatively still during live performances, whilst concentrating on their effects pedals on the floor, hence the idea that they were gazing at their shoes. Could be used to describe bands such as Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Verve, et al.

For reasons I don’t feel like explaining here/again, I have recently gotten back into my life-long love of musical exploration. This came about in stages, starting with that “25 albums that changed your life” meme, (which I was inspired to take quite seriously) and got me thinking about the progressions (and plateaus) in the development of my musical tastes. I remembered how much I loved the feeling of hearing new music – and by new, I mean new to me, I am not super caught up in being all cutting edge and dissing shit as soon as it hits the mainstream. So, I started to take advantage of recommendations of friends and strangers, hit up iTunes, and re-energized my iPod.

~Happy 4th of July~

I woke up this morning under grey Hong Kong skies knowing that I was going to be working and that most people I knew could give a crap that it is the 4th of July. Frankly, most people I know anywhere seem to take the holiday in stride; it’s like a good barbecue situation under sunny skies and such, mostly a day off. I can get with that. Especially since I am at work. But this has been a very “independency” week over here. Canada Day and Establishment Day both going down on the 1st of July and now us bloody Americans ringing in another big night at the local bars, for sure.

Canada Day actually makes me laugh a little bit, and not just because it is Canadian… but because it celebrates the British North America Act of 1867, which is sort of an independence ruse. It gave Canada permission to be “federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland” by the Queen’s Most Excellent Majesty. So, that’s cute. But they did tear it up over here on Wednesday because as luck would have it the date coincides with Establishment Day in the Kong, so for Canadians, it is like a real holiday. In a somewhat related way Establishment Day celebrates the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom to the PRC. The difference being, China doesn’t play and they effectively ended British political participation. This is not to say it ended the British influence, but no one is talking about her Most Excellent Majesty. In fact, they are mostly protesting for universal suffrage, which has yet to be extended to the people of Hong Kong. This also gives me a bit of a chuckle, because voting in Hong Kong is a funny concept. As a Special Administrative Region of the PRC – it honestly doesn’t mean shit. And I do not mean that in the whole, whiny, “My vote doesn’t matter” kind of way… I mean it actually would be meaningless. HKSAR operates under Beijing Rules. But it was a cool march through the city. I missed the fireworks.

On this July 4th though, I sort of feel like Bill Pullman in Independence Day, when he declares: “Today we celebrate our independence!” This is clearly overstating the reality of the news, but I am going to revel in it anyhow because as I stretched out and took my first sips of wonderfully hot and strong coffee I was inundated with the news of Sarah ‘GFY’ Palin’s resignation. Priceless. Of course, I am sure that this is somehow related to her belief that she has a legitimate shot at the White House in 2012, which if true would be a sure sign of the coming of the Mayan prophecy – the end of the world as we know it. [Actually, I am well aware that this is not what the Maya indicated with their prophecy, but if Spalin makes it to the White House, I might hope it to be the case.]

Sarah Palin is such a mockery of everything good about politics in America. And sadly, that could actually get her elected (maybe I will march to rescind universal suffrage in the US  next July 4th… I kid, I kid… kind of.)

Now it has started to rain in the SAR and so sitting in the office is less annoying. To all of you guys at home, have a great holiday weekend.. I would SO love to be in Bolinas with the Benders or Encinitas with the McColls or Vegas with the girls… but for now, I am just going to go and wish all the British people I know a “Happy Fourth!” in my most annoying sing-songy voice, ’cause that is how I get fireworks over here in the SAR on the Fourth of July.

Bolinas, 2007

I am not a fan of opacity. I support translucence.

Tonight I made an executive decision that my beverages should not ever be opaque. This pretty much rules out milky shit (and bubble tea and horchata and that is just fine with me.) I will make an exception for camel colored coffee beverages. And fruit shakes in SE Asia. Other than that, light should be coming through. Of course, translucence does not guarantee success, as demonstrated by the Harafoush cocktail we ordered tonight on a dare (and did not consume) at Habibi. [The recipe? ALL house spirits, Midori, lime juice.] We tasted it. It was awful, in spite of an attractive color and obvious translucence.

After extended contemplation on the merits of required translucence in beverages it became clear that actually, in general, translucence would be a preferential characteristic in people (not necessarily literally, though I did love the Visible Man/Woman when I was little), business and most interpersonal interactions. It seems like it would be an overall general improvement.

The determination was made that opaqueness and dullness were not synonymous, but that being opaque had more to do with being duplicitous at worst and inducing regurgitation at best. Or wait, maybe I have that backwards. TEither way, translucence is prettier, lighter, sparklier and more open to possibility than that which is opaque. Opacity indicates the degree of difficulty in perceiving or seeing through something, as well as blockage and the impossibility of disambiguation while maintaining integrity. Conversely, translucence suggests lucidity, clarity and transmission of light, while not being transparent which is also sucky (mutual exclusivity = L-to-the-a-m-e).

According to Erickson and Kellogg, social translucence has three characteristics: “visibility, awareness, and accountability, which enable people to draw upon their social experience and expertise to structure their interactions with one another.” Currently, the trend is moving away from translucence – even though it seems like the opposite is true. Consider the main ways we choose to relate with each other: blindly. That is opaque, possibly transparent, but often missing some of the characteristics mentioned above.

This conversation made me think of the Miranda July film, Me and You and Everyone We Know. What we see and are allowed to see… July has a great perspective on this, far beyond the literal and her characters are radiant.

So, while rules can be tedious and lead to all sorts of problems with disambiguation… I think the translucence over opacity rule is a good one to adopt. At the very least, I would much rather transmit light than the alternative. And milk, like Crocs, really – never a good choice past the age of six.

It Is A High Rise World Out Here

I live in the jungle. But I work in the Concrete Jungle. And man… it is a jungle out there. I would say it is cool, but that is clearly not the case in the subtropical summer… nor could it ever be the case if you are familiar with the urban heat island effect, which is always in full effect in Hong Kong. Suffice it to say that it is, at the very least… stimulating.

Why so serious?

Yesterday was Establishment Day in the S.A.R. Not nearly the hullabaloo it was in 1997 when they celebrated 10 years since the former colony was returned to China from the UK, but a public holiday none the less (I was disappointed that they did not take the opportunity to have fireworks… or if they did I missed them so they must have sucked.) The more relevant part of this story, at least for me, is that I did not have to work. This meant that I got to hang out at home on a truly gorgeous summer day and sip coffee and listen to music and hang out in the garden and take photos and generally do whatever I felt like. This may be the definition of true luxury when life can be so serious. I spent my morning doing anything that I felt like doing. I chilled with my cats. I walked down to the beach. I drank a lot of really good, strong, Indonesian coffee. I downloaded a bunch of new (to me) music. I played with my camera. I read. I colored. For realz.

And I thought, “Damn, why is it so easy for everything to seem so serious?”

I took the ferry into town in the late afternoon and went to yoga with my cousin. I love the yogis at my yoga studio and I know that should I leave Hong Kong finding such a plethora of authentic (Indian) yogis will be difficult.

After yoga, I touched base with my friend Rob who had just done a quick round trip to Shanghai and had some time to play before he flew out to Bombay [okay, okay, Mumbai.] We met up and were faced with what is always the most perplexing conundrum in Hong Kong – where to eat.  Thai? Italian? Vietnamese? Indonesian? Malaysian? Dai pai dong? “Fusion”? Shanghainese? A lovely dilemma. We opted for one of our favorites – Nga Trang. Perfect for a hot summer evening – cool food, lots of lemongrass and Saigon Export lager.  We talked about life – our issues, our stories, our dramas… and they suddenly all seemed pretty manageable.  Nothing is that serious. It just is what it is.

I caught the 8:30 ferry back to Lamma and stood outside on the back deck to watch the Hong Kong skyline go by. I looked up at IFC against the night sky and remembered when they were filming Batman Returns here. And I of course thought of the epic performance by Ledger in the film. Standing on a boat headed back to the island I currently call home, listening to good music… I thought, for sure… “Why so serious, la?”

Getting off the ferry I bumped into a friend and we decided to stop in the Island Bar and have a beer since it was such a nice night. Cold, Asian-named, yet German-brewed, lager and a balmy night at an open air bar.  On saying our good-nights I headed over the hill through the jungle to my house that over looks the Lamma Channel of the South China Sea. This was a holiday well spent and considering it all, I thought, indeed…

…why so serious?

He thinks I am The Shit, I know because he told me so.

A soul mate’s purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life…  they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I don’t really write about much personal stuff on here. I mean, I know I write a lot about stuff that I like, or I am interested in, or that is important to me… but I generally do not get too personal. That should not surprise people who know me well. While outwardly quite forward, I keep the real stuff, the stuff that is fragile, dirty, imperfect, fucked up, embarrassing, tender, most precious… locked up pretty tightly. I often giggle to myself when I hear people say they know me. Very few do. I understand that this is a fundamentally flawed way to live. I also understand that it can make being close to me – err…. tedious, to say the least. I cannot say that I know where it comes from. Perhaps from being an only child with a very tightly wound up perfectionist psyche.  I think it has to do with the experiences I have considered EPIC FAILURES when I have shared myself with people only to be totally disappointed in the outcome. Perhaps it is something else altogether. Sometimes when I watch my LBFF I see parts of myself so clearly in him [throwing the picture away because he made a 'mistake,' wanting to be alone and sullen because something that he did had unintended consequences that he could not control and did not like] and I so want to free him from the burden that I know these behaviors can become. But those will be his struggles, they cannot be faced by anyone else. This is one thing I know.

It is easier to be angry. Or funny. Or sarcastic. Or witty. Or pretty much anything else besides being vulnerable or lost. This becomes obvious with just a cursory look at the way people act all around us. In the news, in politics, in Hollywood… everywhere. People go to a lot of trouble to project the person they want to be to the world and the ultimate cost of that is losing who they really are down to the core. We do not consider that cost because we are looking at the sort term expenditures of appearing foolish or naive or pathetic or needy if we are more true to ourselves. This is one thing I have learned.

Hooch.

As a word, hooch is very amusing to me. And, as I am increasingly interested in etymology, [evidenced by my love for the way the Urban Dictionary demonstrates the transitions of word use] hooch has become even more entertaining. Not to mention, my more concrete experiences with hooch: always amusing, interesting and entertaining.

The term hooch finds it’s origin as a derivative of the name of a Tlingit group from Angoon on Admiralty Island in Alaska (east of better known Sitka for geographers in the house). The Hutsnuwu people (the name literally translates to brown bear’s fort) were the first alcohol entrepreneurs in the area and all locally produced liquor came from there for some time, and so ‘hoochinoo’ came to be  metonymic for booze. Hoochinoo, shortened to hooch eventually became the slang term for all home brews, specifically those produced and distributed illicitly. [As an aside, my girlfriends and I used the word hooch to use as a noun/adjective to deal with morally ambiguous girls/behavior - ourselves included of course - in high school and were etymologically correct in our usage as explained here. Clearly we were smart and scandalous, always a winning combination.]

I read about hooch, initially, as a term related to the super successful 18th Amendment to the US Constitution. In efforts to legislate the health and morality of Americans (remember The Drunkard’s Progress?), Prohibition mostly just set the organized crime syndicate up for permanent residency in the US. Bootlegging became the most glamorous sort of way to illegally turn a buck. I mean, Jay Gatsby had it going on for sure.

You could be totally suave and criminal which is great way to combat the limits of mutual exclusivity. And how could providing a service that everyone wanted be all that bad? Okay, well maybe that is overstating it, but regardless the market for hooch was big business. As it remains.

I wanna be your bootlegger
Wanna mix you up something strange
Braid your hair like a sister
Maim you like a hurricane

Rum running, or bootlegging was the way hooch became available to all the willing and waiting desperate for a drink. When I hear bootlegger I always visualize the big giant glasses that are shaped like boots that they used to use at Gordon Biersch in San Francisco. (They may still – I have not been there in eons.)

Though I think it is far more likely that flasks were concealed in boots, the above image remains firmly entrenched in my mental files. Most of the liquor was coming from Canada (places aptly named Whiskey Gap, AL) or the Caribbean. But there was a pretty good trade in home brew going on as well. Nearly US$40 million worth of liquor was entering the US by 1924, five years into the Volstead Act and there were estimates of upwards of half a million speakeasies in operation by that time as well. People knew how to get the hooch. The small scale producers were suddenly the go-to guys in a strange industrial reversal. And so the hooch came out of the hills and into the mainstream.

Anyone who has ever had home made spirits is familiar with the flambe sensation that you experience as you knock ‘em back. Gives a whole new interpretation to ‘fire in the hole.’ This ethanol based delight is not a new thrill, but has recently been tapped for it’s biofuel potential. I find this funny in light of how people have often referred to these harsh grain alcohols as ‘rocket fuel.’ Perhaps people have been right about it all along. Just think, hillbillies may be leading the way in the biofuel revolution. I love this mental image.

Out of unlabeled bottles, and sometimes jars better suited for preserves, I have sampled my fair share of the hooch. Some of the most memorable include: homemade Everclear at the fairgrounds in Petaluma (not a successful combination); someone’s grandfather’s recipe for mescal outside of Guadalajara (fire on the mountain, seriously); home brewed ouzo in Athens (very questionable decision which led to —>); special recipe unlabeled retsina (and a headache that words will never quite be able to describe); “dad’s raki” offered up to me and my mom by the bartender in the pub in Heraklion – no charge – (I think the first time I was ever intentionally drunk in my mom’s presence); grappa from a street vendor in Brindisi, Italy waiting for a potentially terribly bumpy ferry to the islands; hazipalink from a generous proprietress of a hostel in the dankest part of Budapest; another type of raki swilled surreptitiously behind oil drums in a shipyard with the Russian crew members who sneaked me off of a Princess Cruise ship in St. Petersberg so we could go to an underground club where I have no idea what we drank, but it was definitely on fire; ’special recipe’ rum  from a jam jar in Alice Springs (a ton of potential there… but stymied by the company); something clear (and snake/scorpion free) at an underground pub near Ho Hai Lake in Beijing – no idea of the name, but a familiar game; and most recently, Calvados, made on the neighboring farm of a friend’s wife in France, suffice it to say I am glad there was a limited amount of it and I was walking home.

What is the joy in drinking hooch? I think that is has much to do with the novelty since illegality in the (majority of the) above mentioned examples was not in question. It may be the best way to get sense of the true local flavor. And inevitably leads to new discoveries and adventures.  That is definitely worth the headache I woke up with this morning after a couple of my neighbors and I managed to work our way through the Calvados-laden table pictured below.

Metal Lunchboxes and LPs… A measure of my childhood.

Today the King of Pop died. To me… this was a big deal. It really made me stop and remember. Being a kid. Dancing. Singing. Crushing. I still love watching the sidewalk light up in that Billie Jean video and the falsetto screams. And you know, Michael shut down Twitter and YouTube. Amazing. Sad. At the same time Farrah Fawcett lost her battle with cancer. And in reflection, all I could think about was my old light blue, metal Charlie’s Angels lunchbox. It was the shit. Pure and simple.

Michael Jackson was an icon. Far beyond that, really. There was nothing he did that did not garner the highest order of attention. And for better or worse, I figure if people have such vehement emotions about you either way, you must have done something meaningful. Everyone in my age group will remember the hype as we waited for the release of the ‘feature length’ music video for Thriller. And then we also got to learn who the hell Vincent Price was. Material for comics and pundits and zealots and anyone else who wanted to get in on it… whatever. At the end of the day, no one ever danced like Michael. His showmanship is indisputable. Off the Wall was one of my first LP’s and I still love that record. Every song. And I still wish I could move like MJ.

In her way Farrah was an icon too. Everyone remembers this poster, seriously who didn’t consider it’s sexiness? It holds up today… nipples and all, she looks fucking great. Her life got a little soapy down the stretch, but she always kept it interesting. Her hair-do still rocks and where do you think Roller Girl and Drew got their ideas anyhow?

I suppose it is a sign of my age but when I think of these two, I will always think of that brick wall and my light blue lunchbox. Their contributions to my cultural composition is firmly rooted back there in the 1970s. I see no point in extolling the negatives that inevitably crop up when we go through the media version of Kubler-Ross’ model of the five stages of grief. In the public eye these stages seem to translate roughly as follows:

• Denial —> Sensationalism/Shock value (first one to press wins the big $$$)
• Anger —> God, that person was so fucked up – they deserved it. [Think Jimi, Janis, Jim, Jerry, Kurt, Anna Nicole(?), Heath]
• Bargaining —> Well, we won’t print the death photos if we can get the tell all from the maid.
• Depression —> Dammit, we are no longer selling magazines, let’s dig up some more shit…
• Acceptance —> Okay, the scandal doesn’t sell anymore, let’s commodify and franchise – I see potential branding here!

After the predictable bandwagon of shock drove by, I noticed a huge wave of, “Michael Jackson? He was a pedophile! Let’s not forget about that! Just ’cause he could dance? Please! He was a sick pervert!” People mostly left Farrah alone because it is in incredibly poor taste to dole out shit to someone who has died of cancer… but do you remember when she went nuts? Because she did. But I don’t care – she will always, always be Jill Munroe to me. And if you don’t remember bargaining with your girlfriends about who got to be Jill or Kelly or Sabrina, you did not come of age in the 1970s [I will not go into the arguments over which Hardy Boy you got, because I believe some of those arguments are still going on - though Parker Stevenson seems to have won out in the age game, sorry Shaun.]

If you remember MJ for being a pervert you sure missed a lot over the span of some 30 years. And frankly, it’s your loss.

I used to worry that my grandma thought I was going to hell because I was not baptized. My mom assured me that this was not the case, but I wasn’t sure. And I thought a lot about what hell would be like. Now I think I know. Hell is where you are faced with every indiscretion and fuck-up of your entire life, indefinitely. Forever. You look at any mistake you ever made straight in the face without respite. And if you feel pretty good about that right now because you’re thinking you would never ever be so messed up as Michael… I would point to Mark Sanford, the current poster child of the “Glass Houses” phenomenon and tell you to be fucking careful.

Two of my favorite things from childhood. Gone. In a day. And, yeah, both of them had gone a bit wonky in the past decade or two. But I cannot work out how that might matter, even a little bit. Here is to kicking ass in heels and [high-waisted] bell-bottom jeans and living life off the wall.

Don’t stop till you get enough…

Michael.

Networking: Really? Yeah, not so much.

Alright, so last night I went to this ‘thing’ with a friend of mine I have been trying to get together with for a while. I thought it was like a wine tasting event, and to be fair there was wine. Lots of it. And some good food too. But there was an ulterior motive happening. This was a networking event.

Ummm… by the way? I don’t network.

This could be the effect of not being an official member of the private sector, like, ever. Or it could just be that I am anti-social. Or a jerk. I am not totally sure. But last night I went along and really, the cartoon above? That is pretty much spot on. When we arrived at the event, we were greeted by a lovely woman who told us to put our name cards in the box for the lucky draw. [Issue #1: Yo no tengo name card. Not to worry, no one really wins anything in those give aways anyhow.] After we took care of the business side of things out front it was time to go to the party in the back. [Issue #2: Subtle mullet reference here - business in the front... partay in the back - is intentional.] We were immediately greeted by, let’s call him French Uber Networker (F.U.N.) who is clearly a pro and was letting us know how it was done.

“Good evening ladies! How are we tonight? My name is F.U.N. and I am with BigFUN in shipping and logistics. Here is my name card. So, your name?”
“Um, right, yeah, I am Amanda. I don’t have a name card, but well, here, my friend does.”
[Here friend, who actually has quite a bit of networking potential stepped up to the plate and hit a solid double.]
“Oh! You work for XXXXXX! They are sure getting active – there are several of you here tonight!” [Go F.U.N.!]
[At this point wine arrived. Thankfully. But I was not to be let go so easily.]
“So, Amanda, what do you do?”
“Oh, yeah, um, I teach. I don’t really network. Actually, I am sort of useless at this kind of thing.”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha, ‘useless’! No such thing! Here, have you met [other FunGuy] let me introduce you to…”

And so it went.

Perusing the crowd, there were not too many people there who I would put in the “Wow, you are interesting, let’s talk,” category. There were also not so many who I would put in the “Hmm, not so interesting, but cute so let’s not talk,” category. Frankly, the folks were sort of like a Chinese desert: kinda sweet, a little over dressed, and definitely not so necessary or memorable. I talked to most of the people there at least in come capacity and I don’t think I was noticeably rude. I stopped taking name cards pretty early on, which was an unpopular move, but honestly, what was I going to do with them? Yeah, that’s right, chuck ‘em. So really I was just looking out for the environment, and as a Kiwi/Canadian sponsored event, I am not sure they could really complain about that. But, it was cool to have a gimmick – mine being the whole “I don’t network” thing, and it was a basically successful strategy. Every guy that initiated conversation had the same three points, in the same order (they must have a script or something somewhere): 1. My name is… 2. I am in… 3. My wife/girlfriend and I… I was not aware I was wearing the Completely Obvious Single Girl Placard, but I must have been. I tried to overhear how they modified their script when dealing with other dudes, but to no avail, the background noise was outrageous.

The wine was flowing and the food was pretty good. The scene? Well, humorous and definitely improved with each glass of sauvignon blanc. The people there seemed to be fairly familiar with the whole protocol. And perhaps it is actually a helpful business practice – I cannot really say, but for HK$100 to eat and drink as much as you want for three hours? I can see why they do the circuit, good business practice or not. It was the cheapest night on the town I have had in the Kong in ages. And, by the way? Someone did win the door prize. Go Henry! A bottle of the red they were pouring and a new way for F.U.N. to introduce you – “So, have you met our lucky draw winner of the night, Henry? Henry is in……..”