Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

Sep 26 2001

I had a terrifying dream last night. I was in some…

I had a terrifying dream last night. I was in some medium-sized city, perhaps DC, and it was under a WTC-style attack, and nobody knew where or how it would happen. I went up to the roof just as a huge C130, painted olive drab, was swooping down out of the sky and heading just a little to my left. It looked like it was going to slice in between the building I was standing on and the one next door. Its wings hit both buildings and the rooftop began exploding towards me. I realized that there wasn’t any place for me to go, and I wrenched myself awake. It was some time before I was confident enough that I wouldn’t be returning to that dream to go to sleep again. But I did return. I can’t remember what was going on, but it was the same general situation.

This might, of course, be an indirect result of sandwiches and the several different types of alcohol I imbibed last night at 45, along with Dean, Graham and eventually my friend who informed me of the job offer yesterday. Also present was a short Taiwanese girl named Rita. She was sitting with Dean when I got there, but he didn’t seem entirely happy that she was there. When Graham arrived, still dripping from the wet windy weather outside, we politely excused ourselves and went upstairs to a table, but Rita didn’t take the hint and followed us up. I didn’t think much of it until she began trying to enter the conversation. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being part of a conversation, but her contributions were a tad, shall we say, kooky, even if you don’t take the alcohol into account. At one point she said to me, “You speak Mandarin and Chinese? Wow!”

Another time she was talking about how many Taiwanese fawn all over foreigners, and I said I hated that kind of behavior. “No!” she exclaimed. “No, no, no, no! You love it!”

No, I assured her, I detest it. But she was adamant. “No, you foreigner! You cannot feel that way! You love it! I am Taiwanese! I hate it!”

Okaay…

At another point she asked me the question everyone wants to know: “Do you have Chinese girlfriend?” I said no, I didn’t.

“How many Chinese girlfriend you have before?” she then asked.

“None,” I replied. She stared at me, shocked.

“I don’t believe!”

“It’s true,” I insisted. She stared at me some more, and then a sly grin appeared on her face.

“I think maybe you….homosexual!”

“Yeah, maybe I am.” But she was shaking her head.

“No, I just joking.”

When I didn’t say anything further, trying to shift my attention back to the others, she burst out laughing. It seemed I was a hit of some sort.

Needless to say, our interaction with Rita quickly descended into the kind of polite nodding one reserves for escaped lunatics while one is waiting for the authorities to arrive and take them away. She didn’t take that hint either, however, and stuck around until we left around 1am. Luckily I didn’t have to pretend to be out of business cards; I really was fresh out. A close call, actually.

In between Rita’s odd interjections, the rest of us discussed the new job opening, which, it turns out, isn’t at all definite just yet. It sounds interesting, but Graham probably needs it more than I do at this point. Still, we’ll see what happens. This month has really thrown everyone for a loop; it’s hard to keep up with everything all the time.

The following cell phone commerical is on the radio all the time these days:

(sound of cell phone ringing)

Woman with ridiculously high-pitched voice: Eee!* What’s that sound? It’s wonderful!

Randy Businessman: Oh, that? Why, that’s my cell phone!

Woman with ridiculously high-pitched voice: Wah-ooh!** It’s so great!

Randy Businessman: Yes, isn’t it? It’s proof that I am a superior male with a large penis. Have sex with me!

(sound of cell phone still ringing)

Woman with normal-pitched voice*** in the background: Someone answer the damn phone!

*Taiwanese women use “Eee!” as a cutsy exclamation. Foreign men who were taught Chinese by their Taiwanese girlfriends can also occasionally be caught saying things like this, which is pretty damn funny if you ask me.

**Taiwanese of both genders usually say “Wah!” where most English-speakers would say “Wow!”. But since English is so fashionable, many Taiwanese try to convert their “Wah!”s to “Wow”s by tacking an “ooh” at the end, making it “Wah-ooh”. Obviously, this sounds stupid, but since 99% of the time they’re using it on other Taiwanese people, nobody seems to realize how lame it comes across.

***Taiwanese women with normal-pitched voices are seen as less attractive than Taiwanese women with artificially high, sickly sweet, almost childlike voices.

posted by Poagao at 6:54 am  

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