When Israeli Snails Talk

In between agonizing over Hebrew labels of chips at gas stations, pulling up Bible references of Christ's ministry at Capernaum/Sea of Galilee/ Jerusalem, and mediating the younger siblings' rivalry in  their Tiny Towers game app, I watched the ancient world fly by outside the window.

Sometimes, we would pile out of the car, reverently survey the holy sites and share how dipping our hands into the waters that Jesus walked on added color to our understanding.

Other times, we were just kids, road tripping on any country road, squashed in the backseat and annoying the heck out of our parents.

After a particularly frustrating morning of Hebrew road signs and a few (or ten) missed turns to the Sea of Galilee, my mom snapped her head back and yelled at us to stop joking about irrelevant stuff.

We gave it a moment of respectful silence.

Cody: Do you know what the Sea of Galilee said to the sea gull?

Me: I see Sisi. Wait . . .  I was blind but now I see?

Jody: See ya later, sea gull!

Cody: Nah. It said, "I'm single!"

Jody and I looked at each other and ate another hazelnut wafer.

Cody: Yeah, I didn't get it either.

----

Soon, our mom crumbled and joined in. 

Mom: I have a joke. A snail went to the Salt Lake and said uh oh, this was the Dead Sea!

We waited.

Mom: Put that on your blog! It's my first joke! I made it up last night before going to bed.

(Before you judge, let me say that my mom has the best Chinese fart jokes. Ever. Perhaps our hummus diet this week and collective indigestion inspired her. Cody will try telling them in his Mandarin class next time to see if he scores extra points.)

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We weren't the only ones taking liberties.

A Chinese tour guide sat solemnly on a rock and started intoning her version of biblical stories to her nodding atheist tourists:

"Once there were fishermen who gave up their fishing boats to follow Jesus because they thought they would get better lives once He became King. After He was crucified, they were mad because they had to start all over again. So they came back to this village and tried to fish in vain until Jesus came back from the dead and helped them catch fish. Then they realized that they were not very good at fishing so they became teachers instead."

Next time I'm contemplating a career move, I better read up on the apostles.

Camels on the road side always makes me feel like 

Lawrence of Arabia.

Hummus. Falafel. Shawerma. Tehina. Chicken Shishlik. 

These soldiers like photos. And texting.

Tile paintings in Armenian Quarters.

Somehow Cody can make crossing himself with holy water at the place
 where Jesus fed the five thousand look like he just stole
 an ancient relic and hid it Indiana Jones-style.

Peddling outside the Garden of Gethsemene.
My proudest tourist shot.

Two Truths and a Lie

Beneath the red plastic streamers hung from the yellow lamps in a cheerful effort to look festively Asian, we sat in silence, trying to figure out what we were going to say.

This was our church group ladies' Chinese New Year party and we were playing two truths and a lie.

We had just finished a round of ice breaker bingo, with pregnant women bumping against moms worried about their teenagers, asking each other about the characteristics on our bingo sheet. Somehow I felt a little pegged. Sisi, was your favorite class Math? Did you hide underneath the blanket with a flashlight to read a book? Have you eaten bear before?

But then again, I was a disappointing serial "no" when I got asked the Did you paint/ water ski/ sew/ sing solo in a performance? I didn't realize that I was such a game sinker in bingo. Of course, that meant that it was that much easier for me to win.

So, two truths and a lie.

I scrunched up my nose trying to figure out ones that were crazy enough but not so scandalous that the ladies got worried about me leading the church groups for teenage girls.

The first few who volunteered were uber spiritual and sweet. The lies: I got baptized when I was 22, not 21! I was a modern dance major, not ballroom dance major! I never got my scuba diving license because I wasn't heavy enough to sink into the water!

Then there was the moment everybody loudly laughed when one of the American moms said that she was once married to a Chinese man. But the kicker was that that wasn't the lie. Major faux pas. Blame it on the game.

Two people left. The other lady was still furiously scribbling and scratching out hers on a piece of paper, looking more nauseous by the minute.

So I smiled and weaved my stories:

1. I was bitten by a copperhead snake and did not realize it.

2. Adam Levine, from Maroon 5, opened the door for me at the 

Sundance film festival and I didn't recognize him.

3. I kissed a boy and did not remember it. 

They guessed wrong twice. 

Then we were onto the last one. 

She swallowed hard, avoiding eye contact. 

Her lie? 

Back in 9th grade, she had skipped the first day of school.

God bless little church ladies who couldn't lie just for the bragging rights in a game. 

Pilot: The Contact List Riot

If The Office did a China version, then an episode might look something like this:

The HR department releases yet another directory because of the many new hires. The upstairs office looks at it and riots.

The problem? The contact list isn't alphabetically arranged according to people's names.

This random decision made by a non-English speaking clerk gives rise to an overly dramatic speculation of hierarchical rankings and subtle "who's hot and who's not" messages hidden within the excel rows of phone numbers. Emotions run high. People memorize the order in which the names appear and quote them back and forth. Ha, we may be in the same pay grade but I'm really higher than you! He didn't perform as well last month so he got demoted to #26 on the list! This must be an HR conspiracy to sow distrust!

[Commercial break]

Staff members whisper back and forth during lunch. Oh did you hear? #12 is actually the HR director's second cousin twice removed! Bu hui ba? Oh yes, I saw him borrow her phone to make a call the other day  . . . they must be close.

#20 storms into the boss' office. A lot of table slapping ensues. Mr. 20 is offended by a bunch of stuff, one of which is that the boss' assistant is just a recent graduate but yet she's #2 on the list.

#23 no longer smiles at #2.

[Even longer commercial break]

There's another new hire. There's another new contact list.

It's not alphabetized. And the orders of the names switched again.


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Disclaimer: Any resemblance to real office life is just a big coincidence. Totally not based on my own personal experience from the last two weeks, which is a pity because the absolute truth is much more entertaining.

Respect Girl's Camp

I've learned my lesson: If you don't want to get sick and miss girl's church camp, do not make fun of it.

But you have to admit, having to be in charge of a group of teenage girls that is called the "Hard Core Testimony Givers" is quite something. Even though I had a really hard time coming up with a cool chant, I think we did come up with a bomb first aid skit that would give the "Charity Chargers" and "Wonder Witnesses" a run for their tithing money. Think Elizabeth Swan/ werewolves/ little red riding hood theme with a classic Asian tragic twist.

Either way, I was struck down with the flu so I, the only girl, never mind camp counselor, who hadn't been to girl's camp before, didn't get to go. So I resorted to the only sensible alternative - felt sorry for myself and gorged on West Wing episodes. Oh Sam Seaborn.

101 Chinese Nights

I told a story today about Miss Kallie Strawberry, Miss Sisi Potato, Mr. Porter Banana, and Mr. Andrew Watermelon. We all masqueraded as berries to infiltrate the strawberry gang. Together, we stopped a fruit and vegetable territorial war just in time.

The kids loved it. They even kicked their parents out of the room so I could finish my story. When I was done, the six year old little girl grabbed my hand and asked me to sleep over.

My earlier stories of trading bread with golden bars inside for visas from consulates weren't as popular. Maybe I'm getting better at making up stories. Or perhaps the kids just don't understand that getting a visa is a lot harder than winning a food war.

---

My phone is half-way broken. I can't hear anything on it. I was originally hoping to wait till October to get the new iphone so I could play fruit ninja. But then I also kind of want an android just so I could hear "DROID" all day long. I miss it.

Any suggestions?

Office Lady #11

Our company was making promotional videos and mobilized almost everybody at the office to be a part of the shoot. I didn't land a major role because apparently I didn't look enough like a factory girl.

But I did get recruited to act the part of office lady #11. While I was waiting to get filmed, I started chatting with my colleague, Elvis, who was supposed to act as the customer. That was when I found out that he was an ex-soldier, a catalougue model, and now a micro-credit salesman. I then shared a few stories of my own and started showing him photos on my computer of the time when I accidentally ate sheep @%&@^.

 "Cut!"

I looked up, startled. The crew had been filming us the whole time. And apparently the director loved me. Because I was such a natural. And he praised my little touches of pointing to the computer and smiling. All of a sudden, I was being added into scenes left and right. The marketing department even awarded me a company USB for contributing so much to the video.

So I just want to take this opportunity to thank my parents. And Kenji for constantly using me as a film object for his documentary classes. And the director for seeiing in me the potential to play office lady #11. And of course, for the support of my imaginary fans. I love you all.

Mosquito Dreams + Chinese Bets

I slept fantastically well last night, considering that the mosquitoes were having a party at my house. But as usual, mother dear made life so much more bearable by leaving behind tons of putting-mosquitoes-to-sleep pallets. They're tiny rectangular-shaped disks that you insert into mousepad-like machines that supposedly put mosquitoes to sleep so they won't bite you. America should import those in serious quantities, trade imbalance or no.

So why am I up at 3 a.m.? Well probably because I kept wondering what they were dreaming about. The mosquitoes, I mean. Do they have nightmares of a huge force crushing the wind out of their figurative lungs and then being crushed to death? Do they somehow find meaning to their existence as consistent nuisances?

Plus, it's so sticky hot over here. I'm aware that I have an air-con but somehow I feel like I have to win some non-existant bet to show Jayne, Dawn, and Hwanhi how Chinese people cool down. Apparently, during our last roomie (plus honorary roomie Jayne) sleepover before my parents came, I had told Jayne to just calm down when she complained about being hot while I was swaddled in my comforter. I eloquently explained to her the age-old wisdom that my grandma passed down: When you are calm, you are naturally cool. All this while I was semi-conscious. I remember none of it, but by golly, I will show Jayne how it is done - in true humid Shanghai style.

So I'm blogging - to stay calm and use my jetlag to document some momentary lapses of rationality.

--
So much to do today! Finish editting thesis (does it ever finish?!). Get haircut. Have lunch with a government relations lady to learn about customs in greeting Chinese officials. Get a facial + massage. And open a bank account so I can get paid.

180 minutes

T - 3 hours

I'm going to give myself three more hours of obsessing. Then I'll send it to print. And walk it over to the Maesar building. Hand it in. Thank Shauna. 

And be done.

---

Then I can start planning my next adventure and swear that I'll never come close to writing a thesis again. But we all know how bad I am at keeping promises like these.

Dear Provo

Dear Provo,

I think I've figured it out. You're schizophrenic.

In Katy Perry's words, "you're hot and you're cold; you're yes and you're no . . . "

It's ok. We're all confused about our identity at different points in our lives (exhibit A: me).

Can I recommend you a counselor? My cousin, Tiffany, is a fantastic social worker.

Maybe I can even pretend to get you a discount code.

love,

Sisi

Christmas Alert!

Stop global warming now if you love Christmas! Reliable sources have claimed that Santa Clause might not have as much time delivering presents this year due to the fact that the North Pole is melting. The jolly old man and his elves are too busy fixing the leaks in their roof.

So douse that open fire that you are roasting your chestnuts on - they're releasing unprecedented amount of carbon dioxide. Instead of wrapping paper, just switch to the generic, brown recycled paper bags that they give out at Macy's. And last but not least, don't harbor those fugitive reindeer - their overgrazing is causing desertification and our loss of carbon sinks.

Any other ideas to save Christmas?

Copyright-worthy word

Last night, my friends and I were going strong hitting the econ books at 1 a.m. (which was not a good idea since our test was at 7 a.m. this morning). Somewhere in between trying to figure out the myriad of questions on how much ice cream sundae Ooh Soofat (seriously) likes to eat, talking about things like circumcision and drinking milk, and eating a chocolate mug cake at midnight, we came up with a fabulous new word:

FEMONOPOLY :[fem-muh-no-puh-lee]
- noun, plural- ies

1. Exclusive female control over/access to the boys in a certain area
2. The dating market condition where there is one girl to multiple guys
3. Example: In a study group situation

Disclaimer: I was not the only girl in my study group so I'm guessing that my situation was a competitive market where you better be the most efficient at attracting "buyers" (min Average total cost = price = marginal cost!).