The Irony of Figgie Pudding and Beating Up Scientists

For years scientists have been trying to figure out why our kids go to school so early. Recent breakthroughs indicate it’s because they have to milk cows or do farm stuff in the afternoon, but this has been highly contested because no one knows how to milk cows or what “farm stuff” means. Others have hypothesized that it’s something to do with football, but most scientists usually got beat up by football players when they were in high school, leading them to reject this theory. Whatever the case may be, I have to get up in the dark every morning before Dunkin Donuts turns their lights on, so I can walk my daughter to the bus stop.

Getting up at 6 a.m. makes sense for some people, like really old people that go to bed at 6 p.m. or people that perform needed services - like liquor store clerks. But every morning when I look out at the moon shining on empty streets with an occasional stray dog running across them, I am completely baffled why I am awake. I talked to the principal of my daughter’s school and he assured me they are working on the problem, but there was this thing he called “tradition,” the same phenomenon that forces us to sing about Figgie pudding, and tradition states kids must go to school before roosters set their alarms.

The irony of this situation is that kids actually don’t like to get up early. I did a survey of my two daughters this morning and it turns out that getting them out of bed is synonymous to having the dentist remove all their teeth and rub salt into their bleeding gums. Later interviews I did with them, yelling at the bottom of the stairs that they were going to miss the bus, seem to indicate they would like to get up at 9 or 10 or like just stay in bed all day and not even go to stupid school.

So the other day when I was trying to find the Little Dipper, waiting for my daughter to put her shoes on, I had this brilliant idea. Why don’t we start school with the rest of the world? Normal people like data entry technicians and post autistic economic theorists go to work long after daylight has been established. Why don’t our kids? It was such an epiphany, like the sun had just come out, which it hadn’t. I’m going to research this idea - right after I’ve had a nice long nap. 

The Age of Stuff

Sorry I’ve been gone so long. My wife, two daughters and I just successfully moved out of Taiwan after nine years and now we live in Indiana, which, of course, is in Pennsylvania. This whole move - packing and unpakcking - has made me ponder the deep questions of life. Mostly: where does all this stuff come from? Which has made me realize something very profane. We live in “The Age of Stuff.”

To explain this intriguing concept, we should probably start with a timeline. First there was the Age of the Dinosaurs – cool!, then along came The Age of Computers, followed a few minutes later by The Age of Internet Porn, which was spurred on when Lindsay Lohan got drunk with Paris Hilton. But somewhere back in the 80’s stuff was invented by Sharper Image, who is extinct, but you can still find remnants of  them at Ross. The Age of Stuff enabled the rise of countries like China and India and Walmart, who made a enormous amounts of stuff that we buy every time we go camping and/or to the beach. Today the Age of Stuff even has its own holiday.It’s called Xmas.

Back in the pioneer days, at Xmas kids would get a straw doll their mother had made out of tree bark because straw was too expensive. At dinner pioneer families would all gather to feast on their only chicken, all quietly realizing they would not have eggs the rest of the winter.  

Today at Christmas, kids open so many presents their hands get sore and they get bored and have to take a break to play video games. “Ooos” and “Ahhs” are reserved for items starting at 100 dollars, and only then if gifts are electronic.

But stuff is more than just buying to give to people who don’t want it. Stuff is about buying things to sell at garage sales. Golf clubs, exercise equipment, and DVD’s were never meant to actually be used. They are purchased for the sole purpose of being passed from one garage sale to the next - sort of a spring tradition.

In the Age of Stuff you don’t have to do anything to get stuff. It just sort of accumulates around you. You go out for a walk, and you come back with stuff stuck to you like a bad case of static clean. If you go for a drive with your windows open, people will hurl stuff into your car. People have so much stuff they are paying to fill garbage dumps and mini-storages. Stuff is everywhere. Stuff is everyone. (Whatever that means. It sounded profound.)

Which brings me back to my present state. My family just spent months getting rid of stuff. Then we move into our new home in Indiana (Pennsylvania, not Indiana), it’s been a month, and already we’re thinking storage shed. In the age of stuff, you can’t stop it. Stuff is. (also profound sounding).

nathan lindberg

Moving to America: Putting My Life in Boxes

I heard somewhere, probably Paris Hilton’s tweet, that the top three most traumatic events in life are 1) death of a spouse 2) public speaking (especially when no one is in their underwear) and 3) Donald Trump holding public office of any kind. Shortly after those is “moving,” which my family is in the middle of.

The concept of moving is deceivingly simple because it can be put in one pithy sentence. “Put things in boxes and send them away.” But it’s kind of a like a hippie saying “Stop war.” After the initial declaration, it gets complicated. 

The thing about moving is that all those things you put off until tomorrow, all those miscellaneous drawers filled with stuff from your pocket, all those piles of papers from lawyers you’re trying to forget, all those broken novelty figurines you were going to glue the heads back on, and all those gifts you never exchanged, well all of them have to be dealt with. It’s a procrastinator’s nightmare. Tomorrow has arrived.

My house now is a mess of boxes and piles of stuff and piles of stuff in boxes and piles of boxes in stuff. If an IED went off in my house right now, no one would notice. Unfortunately, the end is nowhere in sight. A single drawer can take up an entire afternoon, no alcohol involved. Each knickknack has to be reminisced about and sighed over before it can be throw in the garbage. Sometimes things might even need to be saved.

Do I save the first book I ever read to my daughter? Do I save out of focus photos my dad took of family sitting on sofas looking overfed at Thanksgiving? Do I throw away all those letters from the IRS I never opened? Normally, I’d just put those things in a drawer to sort tomorrow, most likely by my grandkids - not yet born.  But with moving, you have to put off being a procrastinator.

My family’s move is compounded with the fact we are shipping our things from Taiwan to Pennsylvania, and we have to pay by the pound. That means sending a can of Coke would cost about fifty cents – not really worth a can of Coke – but is it worth a giant bottle of glitter glue I bought at Costco? Each minute brings a new decision, and stuffing it in the closet is not an option.

Yet through all the despair, I think there are good life lessons in moving. Learning to let go of CD’s I haven’t listened to in seven years. Facing the fact I will never wear size 32 Levi’s again. Realizing throwing away a Christmas card from 2004 is not insulting my friend’s family. And, yes, okay, the edible thong was probably not as romantic as I thought. But more than anything, I’ve learned how much moving sucks. In fact if anyone has any public speaking to do, it sounds like a nice break right now.  

Old Person Guide to New Fangled Music

I was at a hoedown called Spring Scream a few months back looking for some good old fashion death metal when a thumping sound attracted my attention. At first I though someone’s Ford had blown a rod, but then I realized it was music. The only trouble was I didn't see a band. There was just one guy on stage with a laptop. I asked a whippersnapper standing nearby what was up and he explained to me that I was listening to techno. Whatever happened to good old fashion gansta rap, I asked him. Unfortunately he had already run away before his friends saw him talking to me.

Have you been asking yourself why it is that no one listens to the radio but there seem to be DJ’s everywhere? Have you noticed “rock and roll will never die” is now being sampled in songs without instruments? Have you wondered what music will sound, or look like, in the next few decades? Well I have no clue. But a few friends at Spring Scream did, and they told me.  

DJ’s are the easiest to explain. You remember when you were at a party (yeah, that long ago) and there was one person whose job was to change the record every 20 minutes? Well, that’s a DJ. Maybe you were a DJ and didn’t even know it. Of course, on stage, DJ’s push buttons not flip discs. Their job is to select music, then synchronize all the beats together so you never know one song has ended and another has begun. That way you never realize how high on meth you are. Some DJ’s do extra stuff like shout “hey” in a microphone or have studio photos taken of them looking really serious.

The mystery about DJ’s is how to tell if one is good or not. Do they push buttons very auspiciously? Even more puzzling is that sometimes they brag to have been voted number eight DJ in all of Queensland. What does that mean? What actually is a good DJ? What is Queensland? Well, my friend Michael told me a good DJ feels the crowd and is able to select the perfect music. It’s like when you were at a party and everyone was laughing and drinking and wanting to do the Macarena and you put on Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” At that point everyone would say you had failed to “rock the house,” but more or less were a “buzz killington.” Fortunately for DJ’s, all techno-house music-trance sounds exactly the same, so it’s really hard to put on something inappropriate.

If, like me, you are still not convinced being a DJ is nothing more than saying “Hey, look at me! I’m on stage!” then you need to hear another young person’s advice. I think her name was six Jagermisters-Red Bulls, because at that point of the night that’s the only name I remember. The first thing she told me about DJ’s was really pragmatic. She said if you hire a DJ, you don’t have to worry about music at your party. They figure it out, or they are fun suckers – and don’t get paid. The second thing she said made a surprising amount of sense. She said DJ music takes everyone’s eyes off the stage and on to the people in the crowd. I mean, who wants to watch some dude standing in front of a lap top? I can get that at any Starbucks. So with DJ’s it’s like. “Look at me, I’m dancing with you, and oh my God I’m so high on meth that I’ll never get an erection.”

Okay, like most of life, the role of DJ becomes gray very quickly. While some DJ’s yell out “hey” a lot, others actually mix songs in what is called a mash up, smash up, bastard pop, or about 30 other terms invented five minutes ago. Remixes are another thing where you actually change stuff in a song, so it sounds not as good as the original. At some point you have to admit that these people change songs so much they are actually making new music, and thus can’t be sued. At that point they are called artists.

It’s easy for an old timer like me to criticize these so called artists. The Sex Pistols never remixed anything. Nirvana didn’t have computers. The Clash never dubbed stuff... However, I actually like the idea. It used to be that actually playing an instrument got in the way of playing music. Guitar is hard to play. Consequently, you got guitar virtuosos like Yngwie Malmsteen who really knew how to play but whose music was as boring as a 30-minute blow job in a porno. Now people can bypass instruments and get right down to what really matters. “Look at me! I’m on stage!” 

Remember AOL, Tandy, "the Jackson 5ive," and waffle shoes? No? Well don’t bother reading this.

For all you old 40 – 50, and even a few 30, somethings trying desperately not to feel old, here’s a few memories sure to ensure you fail.

Dig this, man, I remember when…

-I bought my first computer, turned it on, typed “do something” and it did nothing,

-I sat down at my brother-in-law’s computer, and did my first Internet search on something called “AOL.” Suddenly there were pictures of bare naked ladies all over the place,

-having an email address was a sure ticket to prestige and respect,

-computers in high school were “Tandy,” a Radio Shack brand that saved information on cassette tapes,

-microwaves were new, really big, and some were made that would “brown” things for housewives that didn’t trust them,

-there were housewives,

-CD’s came out and friends of mine said they totally gagged them with a spoon and they would never part with their eight-tracks,

-Pong was the only video game you could play at home and for some reason it was fun,

-only rich people had “color” TV and remote controls were the size of a Snoopy lunch box and we got four channels, two of which were Canadian,

-my brother-in-law got a “car phone” bigger than a snoopy lunch box,

-my parents bought one of the first Toyotas sold in the States and it was such a piece of junk they garbaged it a year later,

-the Russians were the Dark Side, and we all watched “The Day After,” a TV show about nuclear holocaust, then had discussion groups at the high school about how we did not want to die nor glow in the dark,

-Communists were lurking behind every hippie ready to turn us into mind slaves,

 -I typed my homework on a typewriter and had to use one of those stupid typing erasers which inevitably tore the page and I ended up handing in something that looked like the dog had digested it,

-I got my first “correcting” typewriter” that had a little digital screen to preview what I printed, or erased until I made a hole,

-cameras used something called “film” which ensured 90 percent of your pictures were out of focus,

-cartoons were mostly on Saturday morning, and all had morals like “love is all you need – dig, man?”

-Michael Jackson was a boy in one of those cartoons called the Jackson 5ive,

-looking up the spelling of Jackson 5ive, or looking up anything for that matter, entailed going to the library, looking in the card catalogue, copying down some cryptic code, then wandering around basement for hours before you figured out someone had already checked out The History of Cartoon Spelling,

-gas hit a dollar a gallon, and we all thought cars would soon be studio apartments (check out a movie called “Americathon” – people live in their cars – oh, and on a complete tangent, Jay Leno boxes his mother – see YouTube),

-minimum wage hit $2 an hour!

-the first local mall opened, then closed because three others had opened, then re-opened, then closed again, now it’s a box store,

-people smoked cigarettes not only in bars, but in restaurants, elevators, movie theaters, and bathrooms,

-people drank beer while they smoked and drove in cars that didn’t even have seat belts,

-Playboy magazine first showed pubic hair,

-the first McDonald’s came to town and suddenly all high school students had a goal to cruising,

-some shoe company named Nike had big “waffle” soles, used for the new invention of “running,”

And, furthermore, that was one really long sentence.

But I also remember when we still used these stupid combustible engines that actually burned fossil fuels and made smoke and… oh, yeah. And I also remember when Israel was at war with all its neighbors and Muslims swore they would desecrate it and no one got along and it was like one never ending crisis… oops. And the Soviets were bogged down in Afghanistan and could not escape and… well, it’s a little different. Oh, and I remember when the economy plunged and no one could get a job and… well, I guess that’s more like déjà vu. Also, there was prejudice everywhere, 3D movies were all the rage, and no one liked politicians.

All right. Whatever. I’m looking forward to writing this in about 30 years when I remember the time when people still had wars, there were energy crises, and people hated each other because God told them too. Those would be good memories to have in the far distant past. 

Chinese Language Torture

In the past nine years of attempting to learn Chinese, I have finally come to this conclusion: Mandarin Chinese was made to make people feel stupid – particularly me.

The thing about Chinese is that it’s not like English. In fact the only thing it has in common with English is that English is really hard for Chinese speakers to learn. You see, Chinese has these things called tones. What that means is you can say the exact same word but at a different time of day, and it will change from “ask” to “kiss.” Which meant I made my teacher less than excited every time I raised my hand.

With tones you can attempt to say you ate some dried fruit and end up copulating with it. But more likely you’ll confidently try out some new phrase and end up spouting complete gibberish, which will garner a few polite nods and glossy smiles. Like I do every time I go out in public.

Luckily I have two expert helpers: my eight and 11 year old daughters. My wife, who’s Taiwanese, gave up helping me a long time ago, but my daughters are in public school and so they sympathize. They patiently tell me to stop being naughty with fruit and then translate to stupefied neighbors. It’s helped me navigate the supermarket, but I have yet to look seriously at a newspaper.

You see, as hard as speaking Chinese is, it’s as easy as a Texas gun license compared with writing. Chinese don’t have letters; they have lots of pictures that are so badly drawn you really have no idea what they are. A picture of a pig looks like a sea monkey, not the kinds on back of comic books, but the real ones, you know, brine shrimp that look like baby tapeworms. Those pictures are combined with random lines in such a manner so that no human, except my eight-year-old daughter, could ever remember them. Writing them is humanly impossible – with the exception of 1.2 billion people who don’t count because they had Chinese Tiger Moms.

Needless to say, I’m not the best student. Luckily the Taiwanese are nice enough to smile glossily and nod instead of shake their heads. They understand because they are all required to studied English starting in the 3^rd grade, and they know how stupid English spelling iz. Now pass the dried fruit, I’m in the mood.  

Cut the Military

Cut the military! Cut the military! Cut the military! I'd like to say that so loud it would start a war. I’d like to put it to a song and sing it on YouTube, but it doesn't fit with Lady Gaga’s tunes.

Want to save money? Why hack social security? Why slash education? Why indeed when the US spends more money on our military than the rest of the world put together? Cut, cut, cut, like a rabbi with a new born son, cut, cut, cut that military budget. Why not?

Why not stop shoving money down a toilet in Afghanistan? Why not pull the plug on military bases like Japan? Remind me, why are we in Japan? Didn’t that war end with sock hops? And what are we doing in Germany? staving off the Soviets? What about terrorist? How are we doing against Osama Bin Laden? Not much better than the war on drugs. Well, at least we won in Iraq, so…why doesn’t it feel very good?

It’s time to stop this nonsense. We ship off our young so they can have their limbs blown away and come back psychotic. And what is it all for? When we help, everyone hates us. We don’t help, and everyone hates us. We win, and everyone hates us. We lose; we hate us. We can’t please any of the people any of the time. Why bother?

Let’s build up our infrastructure. Let’s make sure our bridges don’t collapse. Let’s finally figure out how to stop using oil. It’s a much worse drug addiction than crack-cocaine. Let’s do what we are good at. Let’s make more cool movies, awesome video games, and ridiculous apps. Let’s go to Mars. Let’s pay out record bonuses to teachers. Let’s take all the money we blow up on the military and give it back to the people.

Oh sure, there are all sorts of reasons we should spend money on the military. But it’s time to face the fact that most of them are psychotic. We have this illusion that we are running around solving the world’s problems and the world would fall apart with out us. Who is going to make people like Israel? Who is going to foil Kim Jung Ill’s diabolic plan to rule the world? Who is going make the Moslems shop at Walmart? Probably not us. We can’t even balance our own budget.

Let’s face it; no one really likes us. We run around with our big guns, big boats, and unmanned drones attempting to solve problems, but people just put up with us because it’s easier than making us upset. People have to solve their own problems. It doesn’t work if we try to solve them for us. And right now we have a bunch of problems at home. It’s time to make like a Catholic and withdraw. Tea Party superheroes, stop attacking unwed mothers. The real Cadillac is the military. It sucks up a quarter of our budget and gives back a massive world headache. You really want to cut spending, cut bombs. Sure someone is going to hate us for doing it, but they already do anyway. It’s time to retreat and get back to reality. Sing it with me to whatever tune you like, even country. 

Advice from a Pussycat Father

If my wife is a Tiger Mother, I guess I am a Pussycat Father, which inevitably will be abbreviated.

You may have heard about Professor Amy Chou's book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" which was briefly in newspaper headlines as "You're a Terrible Parent." I didn't read the book either, nor do I have any intention of lying and saying I will. But I did see her interviewed on the Colbert Report, and I think that pretty much entitles me to comment on it. Besides, my children's mother is a Tiger Mom, and that's nothing compared to a Tiger Wife. 

According to Chou, and Steve Colbert, her book is supposed to be funny, but newspapers only quoted the serious parts. She discusses Asian mothers who won't let their kids be in school plays, go to slumber parties, and/or smile. That is why Asian kids do well in school and the rest of us smoke pot and play video games. Already many American editorials have come out criticizing Chou and saying how kids need to have a social life and freedom to express themselves, get high and play Call of Duty. My blog is pretty late in the game, so late that Chou’s 15 minutes were about 20 minutes ago, but I feel since my wife is Chinese, my two daughters go to Taiwanese public elementary school, and I have taught in Taiwanese public schools, maybe my 2 cents is worth three, even with deflation. 

I've seen both sides up close and personal. I’ve seen my students come in looking like zombies, studying seven days a week, 10 or more hours a day. The better they are, the more they have to study. The reason is because their whole education is based on tests. Starting in the second semester of first grade, nearly all Taiwanese students nation-wide have competitive tests about every seven weeks. Many parents will do anything to get their kids ahead. And this of course includes no slumber parties, no school plays, no video games, and no smiling.

The result is they are amazing students whose math ability passes mine in the fifth grade. I know that first hand because when my daughter asks me to help her with her math homework, I have no clue. But there are side effects to this kind of education. They include severe lack of sleep and any resemblance to a childhood.

It would be easy for me to criticize the whole system, step up to the pulpit and tell all Tiger Mom’s they need to allow their kids to play more video games and smoke more pot, but I can’t do that. See, I went to public school in Anacortes Washington in the good old USA. Although I had a good time, it had its faults. Athletes were worshiped and scholars were put upside down in garbage cans. Wearing the right clothes was almost as important as not admitting you studied. Cliché groups roamed the halls bullying anyone who looked different, and getting a C meant showing up most of the time. I think we could do better, but for Americans, it works. Over confident and cocky, Americans have come up with such things as the Internet and MTV. We can’t do math, but we think of really cool things when we are high.

And in Taiwanese society, as well as what I know of many Asian cultures, their systems works for them. Think about their economies right now. Is someone from the West going to start preaching to China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. they need to get rid of school uniforms and start football leagues? Sure I agree that their education systems could be better too, but just like ours, that does not make them bad.

That said and done, I bitch about Tiger Moms all the time, just ask my wife. Slumber parties are fun, school plays are cool, and I’ve even heard video games are awesome. Why not take part in them? Life is not only about trying to get the best test score so some day you can get a job making tests for kids. However, Chou and Asian Tiger Moms do have some good points. Studying can be very rewarding in the long run, even if getting stoned and playing video games might be more appealing in the next 15 minutes. Personally, it would be nice to have a mixture of both. Yes, you can go to the slumber party… if you finish your homework first.

  

SuperBowl XLV Champions: Homeland Security

It was a hard fought battle, but in the end I would say that Homeland Security put in the extra effort it needed and pulled it off. I know there are those who would dispute, but I think when all is said and done, Homeland Security won the Superbowl. 

Some of you with normal TV might have missed the action. What happened was a couple of days before the Superbowl The U.S. Attorney's Office of New York and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (a.k.a. "the man") closed down a bunch of websites that stream sports for free. Undoubtedly, some of you are saying "I get sports streamed for free all the time; it's called TV."  But I live in Taiwan, and for some reason the only games on ESPN Asia seem to be billiards and cricket, two sports I will never live long enough to understand - or care about. Anyway, thanks to the Internet, my friends and I can actually watch the Superbowl, although due to the time difference, we are forced to drink beer on Monday morning. 

So yesterday, at 7 a.m., on the last day of Chinese New Year vacation, I drug my wife out of bed and we drove to our friends Kevin and Rayne for a traditional Superbowl party. Everything started fine. We had bacon and eggs, dried fish snack, Japanese Pringles, and spiked coffee. It looked as though we were going to run away with a clean victory, watching the Superbowl online problem-free, but then at the beginning of the second quarter, Homeland Security struck. Like a juggernaut, it struck swift and hard as the screen went blue and the fatal words "disabled due to copyright infringement" popped up. We scrambled, trying other reliable streaming sites and even regular TV (I think a rerun of the Northern Thailand Billiard Titleship was playing) but all to no avail. It appeared that the tide had turned, Homeland Security was going to steal away a victory, and spiked coffee stomachaches were all for not. 

However, England pulled through. Accented commentators taking a day off from the other football (a.k.a. soccer) were streaming steady, and the picture was better also. Again we felt in control of the game, and we thought victory was ours. That's when Homeland unleashed its counterstrike. Flash! Blue screen! ...  disabled. The battled continued to Sweden, then Spain, then a language no one could identify. Sometimes there was sound, sometimes none. Sometimes players were in high definition, and sometimes the looked like old 70's cop shows. But time and time again, we were slammed by the blue screen as Homeland Security relentlessly shut down our offense.

In the final two minutes we were back to British commentators who were wondering why everyone had some much padding on. We thought we had finally pulled off a victory, but BAM! The connection sucked and just as Roethlisberger was hailing Mary, all froze. Then the game was over. 

Some may argue that we watched, and thus we won, but I would argue frantically and constantly trying to find a new link in between Spanish commentary pretty much means we lost. Homeland Security was successfully able to make it inconvenient to illegally stream the biggest sporting event in American history. It just goes to show that when the government wants to, they can actually do stuff on computers. What's next? making it slower to steal songs? Blotting out naughty parts in porn? Who knows what tricks Homeland Security and the American entertainment industry has in store. But there is one thing we can all count on: Making affordable legal online options to expand business models and actually bring some new services that don't just try to duplicate old media will be fought tooth and nail until victory is Achieved! Go Homeland Go! ...or, maybe just until Google finds a way around them. 

By the way, who won the game?

100 years of giant bunnies

I was thinking about how similar Chinese New Year is with Christmas. Everyone gets a week off, people exchange gifts, and families gather to overeat. But as my mother-in-law put fish eggs with scallions, stewed pig’s knuckles, pickled jelly fish, and fried chicken feet on the table, that thought quickly scampered away.

Happy New Year, by the way. February 3 marked year 100, and the year of the rabbit. That means it’s been 100 years since there was a Chinese emperor, and for some reason rabbits are important. I think it’s because it marks a whole new season of marketing cartoon bunnies. It probably also means in about three months there are going to be a lot of unwanted pet rabbits. I think it’s my 13th Chinese New Year as an expat in Taiwan. And while it’s a lot of fun, a lot of it I just don’t get.

Lantern Festival, for instance, is this day during Chinese New Year when lots of people display lanterns and the rest of us stand in line to see them. These are not your ordinary lanterns you use for an evening walk to the outhouse, these lanterns look more like floats in the Macy’s Parade. This year, appropriately, they’ll all look like giant rabbits. Some of them are fun, but after you’ve seen a dozen or so bunnies the thrill is pretty much gone and I’m ready to go home and watch TV. My wife tells me that I become bored so quickly because Lantern Festival was not part of my childhood, like making handprint turkeys or getting pillowcases full of candy while dressed as a zombie. She’s right, and that’s probably why a lot of the Chinese holidays don’t make sense to me. I just don’t have the history for them.

But this is also why they are really fun. I’m completely free of the guilt and weight of tradition. You know what that is. Something like, “It just wouldn’t be Christmas if we didn’t make those terrible cookies no one has ever liked.” Or, “We have to invite Uncle Larry. Even if he sits alone smelling funny, ‘tis the season.” Instead, of awkward commitments and overworking, I get a week of unmitigated rest. Which is great, but leads to both the best and worst part of the holiday.

Taiwan is about the size of Maryland, but four times as many people. China is much more so. When all Chinese get a week off, everywhere gets real busy. Every road, park, shopping center and bathroom is overflowing as more and more people try to enter. However, this gets back to one of the best points. Since every place is so crowded there is absolutely no reason to try to go anywhere or do anything – even see giant lighted bunnies. If you are going to sit in your car and not move, you might as well just sit on your sofa and not move. As I said, unencumbered laziness takes over.

So, Shin Nyan Kuai Le, spring is just around the corner, I’ve got about 30 old science fiction movies to watch, and mama just cooked up some sea slug. Cheers!

Nathan Lindberg