The Reality of Powerpuff

This week, I was told, twice actually, that I was "too nice."

I guess it's a compliment and a constructive criticism meshed into two little words.

They want me to change. But what is the alternative supposed to look like?

I guess the Powerpuff Girls got it wrong. People don't really like "sugar and spice and everything nice." Not really. But I'm not too hot about becoming Mojo Jojo either.

A Breakfast Proposition

She accused him of loving himself, his novels, his casual female friends more than her. He slapped her because she was going to elope with another man. She broke down when he walked out and begged him to stay --

I rubbed my eyes and put To Have and Have Not face down. Staying a night in a sketchy motel across from the train station was probably not one of my best ideas. I think I woke up every fifteen minutes because of the rumbling in the pipes. And now I was hurrying back to Suzhou right before work. Hemingway was giving me the worst headaches.

"You don't like Hemingway?"

I looked at the guy sitting next to me. Standard height, baseball hat, probably a two-day scruff. An American. East coast?

"He's ok. It's just too early in the morning for infidelity."

"Well, how do your afternoons look like?"

I glanced quickly, using my BYU ring check skills. Yep. Married.

". . . I work."

Gosh. Men.

Boys can skip this post

One of my colleagues who was in charge of getting deals for our online purchasing program (think groupon style shopping cart with discounted necessities for frontline workers) pulled me aside today. She was sent some samples from potential product partners and wanted me to give her the reassurance to try them.

She whispered to me that she had found a magic product. It's a type of small cylinder that women could insert into themselves during that special time of the month. It would suck all the blood out and store it until the tube was extracted. She speculated that it also had bonus contraceptive functions because people wouldn't be able to do it with that thing still in there.

I had no idea what she was talking about until she told me that the product was called "Small Auntie" (playing off "Auntie Flo"?).

Wow.

She was talking about tampons all along. And she wanted a demonstration of how it worked.

Somehow I just wasn't in the mood to give a 28 year old woman a sex talk. I did tell her that she should look up the facts on tampons again and stop waving the "Small Auntie" pamphlet around.

I can already see it. My legacy in China will be the introduction of tampons to frontline female workers. What a dream.