"Jeez, there’s foreigners all over the place these…
“Jeez, there’s foreigners all over the place these days!” said a moving company man in the elevator as the door closed behind me. I would have told him I agreed with him if he’d given me the chance. It could be due to the state of the economy in the US or some other factor I am unaware of, but there are definitely a lot more foreign faces in the crowds here. Only 70-80% of them are white males being led around by Taiwanese women, a substantial decrease from previous years. I grew tired of noticing them years ago, and most seem content to leave it at that. But every so often I come across the busker in the underground passageway, the street singer in the West Gate District, or the English-teaching buffoon on TV that makes me wince a little in embarassment. This generation of foreigners may not be as bad as the businessmen who came over in the 70’s and can still be seen today in bars across the “Combat Zone” making fun of the locals and slapping waitresses’ asses, but at least the businessmen aren’t seen adorning buses dressed in cute animal outfits to promote English cram schools. I can’t decide which is worse.
I have eaten at the Q-bar twice in the past three days, and I am still illness-free. Either I now have a healthy resistance to Typhoid or the staff there has started washing their hands. I realize I might not have gotten it there; I could very well have gotten it elsewhere, but I still feel uneasy going there to eat.
On a brighter note, I received my Amazon order. For the first time since I became a Bloom County fan in Junior High School in the mid-80’s, I now possess Bloom Country Babylon: Five Years of Basic Naughtiness, which includes many cartoons I’ve never seen before. I remember my parents including the last Bloom County daily strip in a letter to me in Taiwan so many years ago.
I also purchased a lot of comic books, including some Batman, Astro City and Marvels, as well as an Adobe Premiere tutorial so that my next project doesn’t suck quite so badly as the last one.
Just got back from Dean’s, where we watched, or tried to watch, the pilot to The Sopranos, but the DVD player was skipping so badly we had to abandon it before the ending. It was particularly frustrating because I think the show wasn’t too bad and I wanted to see how it ended. Still, playing with Evil Cat was fun as always. I, for one, had no idea you could play shuffleboard with a member of the feline species.
And finally, I am happy to announce that the winner of the coveted “Best-looking Hawaiian Guy Known to Poagao” award goes to Erich Ian, whose website I found through the Mirror Project.
