The Stereotypical Cruise

The evening shows that feature "Direct from Las Vegas" probably means "Retired from Las Vegas."

Forty year old male performers sashaying to oldies and shaking their butts on stage before singling out and serenading fifty year old women off stage. Those moms scream like little girls for Justin Bieber.

Kids order room service for eight plates of chicken tenders at midnight and then want five more plates of cookies.

Seniors inch along the hallways, blocking the restaurant entrances, with their rolling walkers somehow cruise along just fine on bingo  nights.

Seniors weaving bingo cards into garlands for their hair and wearing them to dinner.

Bingo lady in the middle. Sorry for the blur. It was a quick creeper shot.

Seniors who love the cruise so much that they don't leave the boat when we dock at ports.

Older couples, without walkers, dress up to the nines to their own theme every night. Boas. Retro glasses. Caps with little spinning helicopter blades on top. Pill hats. And they whip out awesome dance moves.

Ostentatiously classy families that sit next to the top deck window, sipping champagne, and habitually ignoring pudgy junior who is trying not to fiddle with his bow tie.

College students making out in the jacuzzi on the top deck shamelessly (best way to make sure nobody else joins you!) while everybody else is shielding his/her face in parkas from the whipping Alaskan wind.

Tourists trying to earn back their cruise money, one pound of food at a time.

"Washy washy, happy happy!!" chorus by friendly filipino staff holding anti-septic spray bottles at the restaurant entrances. It's amazing how many different ways there are to sing washy washy. Reference for future parenting.

Wife gets picked for Deal or No Deal cruise edition. Last five suitcases. She's on a winning streak. She wants to take the $532 offered her and end it. Offstage, her husband shakes his head emphatically. She hesitates and keeps playing and loses it all. Final haul: fifty cents and a frustrated couple.

Audience members that get excited by a Deal or No Deal "celebrity sighting." Oh. Good. They are talking to each other again now. Glad that the game show did not ruin their marriage.

Standing up

My three friends and I squeezed onto the train, waving our tickets above our heads to part the sea of sweaty bodies standing in the aisle, while trying not to trip over the checkered canvas bags that briefly summed up a migrant worker's life in the bruised thermos, love-worn girl calendars, and paint-splattered bundle of clothes.

This was the old-style train from Yang Shuo to Shanghai and we held in our hands tickets that would guarantee us four hard seats for the 22 hour ride. We had splurged on plane tickets to backpack in the lush, moutainous region of Southern China so we struck a compromise with our excel budget sheets and opted to train our way home.

The train rolled away from the station, groaning, as us girls tried to sweet talk strangers into switching seats with us so the four of us would not be separated. The father, green soccer shirt stuffed into worn suit pants held together with a fake Crocodile belt, and his son were slow to agree. The young girl, with dark liquid eyes, quickly nodded and moved to our seats on the other side. While the father was muttering and groping for his shoes under the seats, a slip of a woman, holding her sleeping baby, slid between the crowds in the aisle and sat down on the father's new seat that we promised him.

Mr. soccer shirt, ousted by the little woman and her baby, towered over them, incessantly tapping his fingers on the headrest. The mother had a standing only ticket and her arms ached from the weight of her child. So she avoided the glare of the father and let her body lean into the seat for momentary reprieve.

The father roared for justice and demanded that we give him his original seat back, which would not solve the seating problem because then one of us would be standing instead. We hesitated, torn by our instinctive Christian spirit to give up our paid seat for the mother, but not quite ready to endure the agony of standing for 22 hours, especially for a passenger who intentionally bought the standing only ticket.

By now, the whole car, for sheer lack of entertainment, turned to look at the foreigners who had caused such a scene. The amahs, the wrinkled old ladies with peppered hair and flabby mouths, pointed and passed judgment. The foreigners were clearly wrong. They forced the mother out. Their hearts were like dog liver. They always thought they could do whatever they wanted. Just like when the Western devils came with their armies and carved up China. Ayah!

We were clearly on the wrong side of history (or public relations) and in danger of being pushed out of our seats. So my friend stood up, arms spread to address the whole car, and explained the situation. Seven adults with seven paid seats. One mother with standing ticket. Would anybody, with a standing ticket but is now sitting on an unoccupied seat, please stand up?

Silence. Eyes looked away. Fingers fiddled with loose buttons.

Then, rustling. A fifteen year old girl, with clipped-up bangs and checkered shirt, stood up.

Faith in humanity restored. Or just in outsourced moral dilemmas.

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Left to right: Good Samaritan, Madonna and child, and plenty of Pharisees

What would you have done?

Things are heating up

Gilbert, Arizona. So hot that I yelped when I tried to close the car door. We left the car windows cracked when we got out in case the windows burst from the heat.

We apparently broke a record today at 114 degrees Fahrenheit (around 47 degrees celsius). The last record was at 113 degrees in 1991. Crazy.

J took me hiking to see some petroglyphs (ancient etchings by Native American Indians) along a parched pottery-red trail, lined with equally thirsty cacti. Since I had stayed up the night before, catching up on all my work emails, J didn't wake me up till 9:00 am. We set out with J shaking his head, hardly believing that we were crazy enough to head out at this time. Aside from being a little surprised at the assaulting heat, I felt confident, determined even to show that I was well-fortified by the Hong Kong summers. Once on the trail, I was more generous with taking photos than sips of my water bottle. I wanted to save my H20, for the time when my cells actually cried out for it. I drank in the surrounding scenery instead, rattling off questions about the make up of cacti. 

So I was a little confused when my legs started missing their target rocks. My ankle buckled on narrow ledges. I was pricked by a "jumping cactus," which buried its sharp spines through my shoe into my foot. And my head felt light.

But otherwise, I felt perfectly fine. And I didn't even want any water. 

J became insistent. He kept stopping, refusing to go further until I took sips every few steps. He carefully led me down slopes with loose rocks. He hurried to head back once we saw our first petroglyphs. And he kept refilling my water bottle with his every time I turned my back. 

Later, when we were back in the car, J explained to me that I started to exhibit the symptoms of dehydration, especially the decreasing desire to drink water. Apparently, people died of dehydration in Arizona, found with all their hiking gear and full bottles of water all the time.

Hmm. I still think that J overreacted though.