Macao Day 5: The A-Team Eats Fried Chicken

NOTE: This is from August 17th, posted late because my horoscope told me to...

               How hard is it to get fried chicken in Macao? Not hard if;

1) You speak Cantonese
2) You can read Chinese characters
3) You know where you live and can communicate it to people
4) You don't care which restaurant you get the chicken from

              The other three Fulbrighters and I, Rosa, Lexi, and Lin, have the capacity (as a group) for (1) and (2) above.

              We had just finished proctoring our second TOEFL exam and were ravenously hungry and aching for an adventure after the marathon of misery that is proctoring the TOEFL (for a colorful description of TOEFL duty, see my last post). Rosa mentioned, having been in mainland China before, that the KFCs in China are really good--better than the states. It was with this in mind when we once saw a KFC delivery mo-ped and took down the delivery number written on its side. We didn't where there was a KFC on this island (we asked several people at the school I teach at, but inquiries into its location were filled with rumor and great mystery) but we found the phone number! Also the mo-ped was proof that they delivered to our area. We began scheming a way to order some delicious Chinese special fried chicken from KFC that combined the best of American gastronomical entrepreneurial zeal and the spices of a 5,000 year old culture.
          
               It was not going to be easy.

              We faced not insignificant challenges in achieving this oleaginous treat; first of all we didn't know where this KFC was located so picking up the chicken was out of the question. We do have an ace-in-the-hole; Lin speaks Cantonese but not enough to talk about specific types of chicken and what to order (we are very unfamiliar with the Chinese KFC menu and so ordering over the phone--without the ability to point to things--is tough). We also don't know how to communicate my address in Cantonese (but I know the Portuguese version!) thereby making phone ordering difficult. In summary, we don't know WHAT to order because lack of menu, we HAVE to order over the phone because we can't take directions and no one we ask knows where it is, we can't tell the delivery person--even if we could order--how to get to my apartment or the address in Cantonese.

              I want to take a moment to address our motivation. You may find yourself asking, "Wow, that sounds like a pain in the ass, why not just get some awesome Chinese food? You are in China! Dump the American stuff and go around the block and get Chinese food! You can get KFC when you come back to USA...weirdo". That is true. That was my first thought as well, but there was a confluence of factors that fated us to the chicken chase. Not to sound grandiose about this but the three other ladies and I have something in common, and it increases exponentially in groups. As Fulbrighters, we are an eclectic group but down to each person we are nothing if not over-achievers and problem solvers. We don't like giving up and we don't like obstacles. We hate them. We are here to surmount obstacles. KFC has become an obstacle. It is no longer about the sweet, sweet promises of oily chicken. It has become about being masters of our fate! Why do we want the chicken? Because we can't have the chicken, dammit!!! We would rather spend the next 10 months chasing down this KFC than let this chicken win! This is personal now.

            So after figuring out the challenges above in getting the chicken we hatched a scheme. Lexi suggests going to the library (we didn't have internet access in our new offices yet) and using the public computer to find the Macao KFC.  We run to the library. We go on the computer. We find only Hong Kong KFC (Hong Kong is like a 40 minute ferry ride away). Alix suggests we use that KFC's page to look up the menu. Yes! We now know what to order! Rosa reads Chinese characters and so we look at the menu...in Chinese! We start listing all the food we want (by the pictures, of course) and Rosa writes them down. Our four faces are pressed almost simultaneously against the computer screen as we drool and start listing our favorite foods. Food, glorious food! It is "Oliver Twist" in the library internet lab.

            With what to order now in hand we needed someone to call the KFC and order the food, but our only Cantonese speaker, Lin, can't read chinese. We think. We need someone who knows where I live and speaks Cantonese...THE DOORMAN!! We all exclaim as we run to my building, like four little Sherlock Holmes hot on the trail of our quarry. The answer lies with the doorman! The game is afoot, Watson!

            We get to the doorman, 4 sweaty, yet well-dressed, Americans clamoring as we push a piece of paper filled with food orders at him. Lin, explains to him that we want to order food and we need his help and we don't know where I live and if he could just tell the guy where I live and how to get here and please, please, please read this paper to the phone. She says all of this as the crumpled paper with our order is extended to him like a precious stone...He looks at Lin, then me...then all of us and tries to decide whether or not to call the police or perhaps the mental hospital...he decides.

            He looks at Lin, "Bla Blabla".

           The three of us, in unison look at Lin...Lin turns to us, "He'll do it!". We suppress high-fives and group at the doorway of the doorman's office in the lobby as he and Lin talk over the phone with the KFC. They talk. After a while there is too much talking. The order seems in peril. We hang on pauses and terse exchanges as if the very ground under our feet may give way with the ebb and flow of the phone conversation. Finally, Lin turns to us and says, "the total is 224 petacas". They all look at me...I do the math--that's my area-- (for those that know me that's the sign of how unpopular math is in the group--I'm the expert) the total is about 80 petacas too high, but, after having weighed the benefits of this tenuous phone conversation with the Chinese KFC, I give a nod, "Screw it...just say 'yes'".And with that we hung up the phone. Not but 40 minutes later our food arrived and we pounced on that giant sack of food like jackals after the famine. Having feasted we recline in my living room, fat and happy with our victory over fate. We reflect on the team work it took to secure this meal, and we decide jointly that this will probably go on all our resumes...

              I love it when a plan comes together.

Macao-wabunga!

Hannibal

Lin and I, at the doorway while the Doorman talks to KFC...

To the victor goes the spoils! Our feast!...look at the bones...

Macao Day 4: "If You Still Have an Ink Pen...You Have Failed This Test, Please Leave."

NOTE: This blog entry is from August 16th and 17th (I'm catching up!), it was posted late because I was born this way, people!

                     Stand in a room pacing back and fourth for 3 hours while 200 people stare at you in stupefied indifference. You can't talk and you can't eat. This is exactly what proctoring the Test of English as a Foregin Language (TOEFL) here in Macao Univeristy is like. One of our many duties as a Fulbright Grantee here at the University of Macao is to help administer the TOEFL for incoming students. We have to do this three times. I have already done it twice and I'm thinking of drinking some sewer water just to get sick enough to miss the last test. It's like being in an increasingly faster and faster centrifuge of boredom and tedium that will eventually make you vomit and pass out.
                     This delightful task starts thus: you help a mob of students check in (students btw that create e-mail names that they obviously didn't think about before giving out as their admissions contact because they figure not a lot of people will be able to understand them, e.g. one student blushed when I pointed out that his e-mail on the check-in sheet was "MasterDick2334@*****.com"), then you have to spend an hour (AN HOUR!!!) as a room of 200 students try to fill out 6 fields on one form; name, student number, test booklet number, test form number, language spoken, etc. Every conceivable error possible in answering every single one of those questions is committed in the hour it takes to get everyone to fill this section out. As a proctor (there are 5 of us per room of 200 students) you are crisscrossing the room back and forth attending to the confused and apathetic. It's battlefield triage on the beaches of Normandy.
                   It's not that the students are not intelligent, indeed, they might be geniuses...in their own language. I could be talking to the Stephen Hawking of Macao, but when operating in English these students might as well be eating paste with their bare hands off the floor. I am not unsympathetic; in Mandarin, when trying to order lunch here (where they speak Cantonese), I have received many stares from behind the food-counter that suggest this all would go much smoother if only I wasn't so incredibly stupid. If I had to order lunch in Chinese with a number two pencil and a scantron I would devolve a couple of millennia too.
                  I would like to think these students are so frustrating because they are culturally trained to be reserved when confused or not to impose so as not to lose face but that's bullshit--it is much better to think of these people as exactly what they are and what exists almost everywhere in the developed world; dear-in-the-headlights, apathetic to the point of coma, completely lost incoming freshmen. They are just out of secondary school, spent some summer months dorking around and now are looking down the barrel of 4 years of misery in a college system they have no experience in. You add the language factor and suddenly you are running a 400-meter sprint in the mud with concrete shoes...drunk.
                An illustrative example: the announcer for the test, with the microphone and his best radio voice, announces several times at the beginning of the test that all ink pens should be put away. If they are not, the students will accidentally use them on the pencil-only scantron and end up not having their tests counted. The reminder goes out 4 times, calmly, and spoken ever so slowly (as if trying to get a parrot to repeat the phrase); "Please  put  away  all  ink  pens. There are no pens allowed on your desks or on this test.   You    do    not    need    ink    pens   for    any    purpose,    they are useless today and should be put back into your bags... right     now.     Please,     do     not     use     any     ink     pens.     Thank you". A few moments pass by as the proctors fan out among the lost souls and one of us runs up to the announcer to let him know we are still finding people using ink pens to fill out their names. The announcer, one of our English teachers from the States named Richard, (who, by the way, really does have some radio experience and is able to affect a smooth gravel-wrapped-in-velvet voice) repeats as slowly and clearly as possible (convinced, perhaps, that he used too many words last time...), " No    ink    pens,     please." [he holds up a pen and shakes it back and forth, as if the ink pen itself was shaking its head in disapproval] Do    not    use    ANY    ink pens.    You    do    not    need    any    ink    pens."
                           The other proctors and I continue squirreling our way throughout the throng of students as they heroically attempt to fill out their name and student number and, incredulously, continue to find pens. The level of frustration amongst us proctors starts to wax as we hold up, high in the air, like Braveheart animating the Scottish armies, every ink pen we find in the students' hands or desk. Richard seeing this, his own cockles rising, gets back on the microphone, "[hypothesizing his air has been much too reserved and warm, adopts a more..stern, paternal, attitude about this whole pen thing] okay, everyone    look    at    me....NO PENS. alright? NO PENS. PENS? NOooooo." He then holds up a pen again, this time expressing pantomimed shock at discovering it in his hands, he swiftly, bending slightly at the waist and knees, gestures the pen down underneath his imaginary desk in an arch-like motion. In this way he has modeled the correct action, in a non-verbal, and hence arguably universal fashion, to take upon any student finding a pen in his or her hand or on his or her desk. He caps this gesticulating skit with more verbal directions, thereby reinforcing the put-your-pens-away concept, "    NO    PENS.     ALL PENS SHOULD GO AWAY." Every sentence takes on a more metaphysical connotation, "PENS ARE BAD. WE MUST REMOVE ALL PENS".
                       After an hour we are ready to take the actual test (not true, it turns out; upon inspecting the students' forms as they take the test we find glaring errors in their names and ID numbers according to a list we have for double checking). This is actually the boring and tedious part, apparently the hour-long didactic nightmare we just experienced was the fun part. The next two hours crawls by with the speed of a glacier. The time for the test finally, mercifully, runs out and we collect the tests. We tell the students they may leave and they bolt out of the classroom, released into a renewed second life free from the test. As we sort and count tests I look at their renewed freedom longingly...a convict yet to be released.
                       I make the students sound insufferable but in reality it is a mutually tedious affair. Those students that understood all the directions, the first time, also had weary, jaundiced looks on their faces as they begged for a swift end to this test. It was an inattentive minority that dragged this out for all of us, really. Also I was surprised by how different the Macao students are from mainland Chinese students. The Macanese (that's the word we use..yes, yes, it sounds like Mac-and-Cheese...) students reminded me so much of American freshmen, so unlike the eager and eager-to-please Chinese students I have known before. In fact in briefing after briefing from our supervisors and co-workers we are told that a significant amount of these students show up late to class, ignore you during lectures and try to slide by in their classes because they just want to graduate and work. As I hear these things I smile slightly as I think, "Throw in some binge drinking and a mediocre sports team and your in America, baby!"

Did You Know?...In English medium schools in China, students get to choose their English names. Some REAL life, self-selected, English name examples; "Easy", "Happy" and "Angel"...they would fit in well in East L.A.

Macao-wabunga, indeed.

El Carlos (friend of Banana)

Macao Day 3: Pepe Lepew Does Macao

NOTE: This is a belated blog from Sunday, August 15th, I am posting this late. Why? WHY?! Stop being a blog Nazi, dude!

                    His name is Henri. He is French. Very French. When I meet him there are three things that dominate the conversation; he likes hitting on the girls here (use your best Pepe-Lepew accent: "Eet ees easy Cahlos, you goh to ze park and talk to zem and voila! in 5 minoot you have zer fone numehrs"), he hates Chinese food--he scowls at the mention of passing up McDonald's to go get noodles--and he is a *touch* lazy ("Eet ees too Fahr" is a common answer to any request to meet him more than 20 feet from any bus station...). In a word: he is AWESOME. I meet him through a co-worker as we, my three other female Fulbrighters and said co-worker, walk back from lunch. He is on the way to go swimming and, after asking our co-worker (his friend) if she wants to go swimming, wastes no time in hitting on my companions. This seemed to be an involuntary thing, like blinking or sneezing, and it did not stop, even while ogling women in every plaza we went to. I <3 Henri!

                   Later on, Henri convinces me to text him so we can meet and he can show me how he picks up foreign girls, without the restricting presence of "zee Girls" (as he calls my co-workers). I quickly take his number and agree to meet later that evening at the arcade, but to see Macao with my co-workers. Around 8pm, We meet up; him, my co-workers and myself. We spend the evening with him as our reluctant yet surprisingly effective tour guide.Within a few hours we see practically all of Macao, including the call girls that roam the lobbies of the nicer hotels here like used car salesmen on a busy lot, shows at the MGM and the Wynn resorts---A mechanical puppet display in the lobby and a water fountain show, respectively. We eat $4 MOP per plate sushi (less than $1 USD per 4 pieces!) I even ate chicken wings at McDonald's. At the end of the night Henri informs us that we have seen all that Macao has to offer. Everything. That's it. He has lived here for 4 years. The Samuel Johnson of Macao he is not.

                 We part company and he sees to it that we find our way home safely (for all the bluster he is actually quite a good host and considerate, if not terse). On the way out he nods to me, in a tacit appointment-making gesture that assures me he still wants to take me to the plazas (sans zee Girls) to show me how he does what he does best and even quickly manages to arrange one of my co-workers to "tutor" him in Mandarin ("Oh, joo speek Chinese? Joo cahn teech moi...") then playfully bounces away skipping, with his tail wagging in the air behind him. Oh, Pepe!

Macao-Wabunga!!!!

Carlos

Macao Day 2 & 3: Cone or Cup? I Don't Know, Which One Fits in My Pants Better?

NOTE: This blog entry is originally from August 14th and 15th, being published today because of a delay borne from my inability to access the internet without a 1/2 mile hike up a hill in 90% humidity on the hottest place I have ever lived...

                  In sweltering heat and humidity (87 degrees F, 92% humidity) the days pass by slowly. I have been here 3 days and already I feel like it's been a week. I am hyper-aging. Saturday and Sunday were spent exploring. Our well-humored and spritely supervisor, let's just call her "Summer", took us out to dinner Saturday to welcome us. Summer is one of those people who has wisdom and experience from an impressive list of travel destinations across the world yet still retains great optimism and surprising elan for...well, anyone! She's one of those people that makes you think anything is possible and ends expressions of frustrations with a huge warm smile as if trying to convince herself that even the most frustrating moments are little gifts. Either that or she's trying to convince herself not to crack. She speaks about the joys of finding a cute pair of shoes in a Hong Kong marketplace as easily and with the same even-tempered sanguine tone that she speaks about narrowly avoiding an express kidnapping while riding in a bus in Mexico City ("The  kidnappers were sooo obvious with their signals to each other I just jumped off the bus unexpectedly as the doors shut before they could grab me...[big smile]") She is capable, inspiring, knowledgeable and great at managing people. She is James Bond and Marry Poppins rolled into one.

                  She is not great at directions however. When explaining how to get to her favorite noodle restaurant she gives me the entire path via landmarks, or as close to landmarks that there are here: "Just walk past the shopping market, keeping it on your left,  around the block in front of the BNU [a bank, I later learned] and pass the McDonald's on the right hand side and walk almost until the 'Watsons' [a pharmacy, I also later discovered] but don't pass it. There will be 3 or 4 restaurants, I don't know the name of the place, it's the one with a new window and pictures of noodles on the front window, even though the noodles in the pictures look like tofu. " It might be that the address system is unreliable (see my previous post about the address system..."Banana" would be proud of these directions...)  or it might just be a "Summer" thing. But this confusing form of giving directions happens more than once, and from many different people. It seems like Macao brings out the most confusing in people. Ironically, to get anywhere here you have to know where EVERYTHING is. Also names of restaurants and streets are useless to us foreigners; the street names are in Portuguese AND Cantonese but I speak English and a touch of Mandarin. Even natives don't know the names of streets (especially the Portuguese equivalents) and normally telling you would be useless because you wouldn't know when you got there anyway.

            ...But, I digress. The dinner Saturday was amazing. Summer took us to a dumpling restaurant where we stuffed ourselves with 8 different types of dumplings and then we walked past a marketplace and ate street cart dumplings (better than it sounds) which was a prep for the Chinese fruit gelatto (I had the lychee) at the end of the tour. Our food tour took us past the colonial Portuguese cathedral ruins and half of Macao. It was like a Food Channel show starring ME! It's called "How will Carlos get food poisoning this time?" Much like all of you, I can't wait to find out...

Did you know?...that in Macao gelatto is a popular snack...but it's not eaten, rather it is stuffed directly down the front of trousers and in armpits to avoid heatstroke on the walk back to the bus station.

Macao-Wabungaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!

Carlos

Macao Day 2: I Have it on Good Authority That There are no Ghosts in My Apartment

 NOTE: This post originally dates from August 15th but due to Macao being in China and logistical realities being what they are...I was not able to post this entry then. Better late than never...

            It wasn't that I didn't appreciate the advice, it was that it was given at all--that it felt necessary to the author--that worried me;

No matter what anyone tells you, there are no ghosts in the apartment.

            When I read this, I looked up from the letter and started looking around in sudden and powerful paranoia. Is that creaking noise in the corner them? What about that pulsing noise? ...Probably the Air Conditioning...or it's the 1,000 years-old Chinese ghost that will steal my penis in the middle of the night for his soup!!!...The letter started off so optimistic too;

Congratulations! You have finally made it to Macau [sic] and are about to embark on a year of excitement and intrigue

             I was standing in my new apartment in Macao which I entered for the first time. My predecessor in this teaching position, a Fulbright Grantee, left me a letter to introduce me to the apartment and Macao. Generally speaking, it was a useful and considerate letter that soothed me after having spent 14 hours travelling and having arrived in a foreign place. "First off, I left you some things." The things he left me were awesome! A water boiler for tea and oatmeal (super useful!), a bunch of books on China and travelling guides (score!), DVDs and the best part: "I left you a cell phone...all you need to do is buy a SIM card". With this one act he saved me $50 and a long walk.

                   The advice he gave me was considerate and quite useful, yet honest.  For example: "The bed is clean at least from me. I always used a mattress pad and those weird stains were from someone else (the only reason I am telling you this was because I was so grossed out by them that I did not sleep in it for a month after I arrived)." I later found the mattress he was talking about and it was fine but there was a spare in the next room that looked like it was used in a snuff film.

         "There are some gifts in the freezer, I didn't think it would be civilized to pour them out." I walked to the fridge opened the door to the freezer and sure enough: Hooch!!! I <3 this guy!

         Filled with the effluvium of human kindness I returned to the letter sipping on vodka and that's when the advice took an odd turn: "No matter what anyone tells you, there are no ghosts in the apartment. I never saw one or heard one. When you are here alone the first couple of weeks you may think you hear one, but trust me it is just an old building (at least that is what I told myself!). One of the GA's [Graduate Assistants'] grandfather is buried outside and she says he protects this apartment." This is about the time I looked out the window and realized that the cool looking park outside my window is actually a Chinese cemetery. I also was a bit leery about the prospect of a Chinese ghost "protecting" me, how does that even work anyway? Is this like prison? Is his "protection" free? I hope he likes cigarettes, because that's all I'm willing to give...

        Anyway wherever you are, Guy-who-wrote-the-letter (not going to use his name); thanks! I appreciate the help and the generosity. Now to gulp down the "gifts" you left me and sleep in the bathtub with my sports cup glued into place--so that the ghosts cannot get me ;P

Macao-Wabunga!!!

Carlosh
         

Macao Day 1: Damn you, "Banana"!

NOTE: i wrote this my first day here August 13th, posting it a bit late due to logistical details (READ: logistical nightmares)

Wow. Just...wow. So today I just landed in Macao...what to say?

Well for starters it is so incredibly, amazingly, why-oh-why-God, hot and humid here that any activity conducted outside the refuge of AC is to invite torrents of sweat to flow on/under clothes. Mind numbing sweat. You'll need talcum powder just to scratch your nose because this place is an island in the South China sea and it is August.

Otherwise this place is awesome! It is beautiful, with every other bend around a corner showing slits of tropical paradise views between towering apartment buildings and ostentatious casinos. Being on an island, there are 360 degrees of views looking either at Mainland China, the very Vegas-esque views on Macao peninsula or the South China sea. I will post pics when I get a camera!

My Mandarin is proving somewhat useful while it seems English gets some play but not much when you descend amongst the hoi poloi. Example: I ordered dinner tonight in a hole-in-the-wall restaurant by artfully using several hand gestures and other flailing pantomimes to order noodles and pork. It was delicious!!! Of course the restaurant got packed and so soon my table was imminent-domained by the wait staff and a terse (but friendly!) worker in a blue jumpsuit was placed with me at my table. Our conversation over dinner consisted of me rejecting his offered cigarettes and me pointing down to my noodles and excitedly saying in Mandarin what I thought meant "Lo Mein noodles good!" but by the look on his face might have been "I want to have your baby!". I spoke  Mandarin (badly) and he spoke Cantonese (?) so the language barrier was significant and effective. Either way I left with dinner checked off the list and a potential romantic interest...haha.

Speaking of childbirth; The bus system was a confusing, painful and sweaty hours-long ordeal that ended with me crying. I tried to catch a bus to meet the other peeps from my Fulbright program at their apartment. I live in Taipa, an island connected to the Macao peninsula by a bridge, and they live in central Macao. I am perhaps [switching over to google maps tab to get a good guess...] 6 km away from them. I could speed walk it in 30 minutes...but the heat!! So I get on a bus in my dinner clothes--fancy stuff!--and hit the bus. Bus 25. Not complex. I am cocky as I jump on the bus. Flashback to the initial 2 hour tour my patient and oh-so-painfully-kind student helper, Yupi (I <3 Yupi!), gave me when I landed. Referring specifically to the bus situation we had this exchange:

Yupi: this is the bus stop you use to go Macao. Get on bus 25...do you see the stop?
Me: [looking at casino across the street from the university] yeah, yeah, cool...look, a Casino!
Yupi: Uh...yes...uh...this is important, when bus come, you must ask "You go Macao?" because bus 25 go two ways...you must make sure of the right way...or else you lost...Understand?
Me: So how many people does Macao have?
Yupi: uh...500,000 people...did you hear about bus? it is important because--
Me: WOW!!! did you say 500,000?! that's Cwazy! Hey, that dog has three legs! awesome!

Now, flash forward to my dauntless mounting of aforementioned bus:

Me: Hello bus driver!
Bus Driver: [coughing, avoids eye contact]...
Me: [finds seat, starts to think about dinner]

It goes without saying that the bus is going the wrong direction. It goes south (as oppose to north, where my destination is...) thereby--after a 30 minute bus ride--putting me at the farthest point from my destination possible while still technically being in Macao. At this point I realize I screwed the pooch. This is the moment where I also realize that I am alone on the bus. The driver decides to take a break and since this is the terminal destination of the bus, asks me to get off. Before getting off, in a place with no taxis and completely unrecognizable to me, I open my map and ask the driver how to get to Macao to meet my friends. Here's how that conversation went:

Bus Driver: Xia che! [translation: get off bus please, my American friend, I am going on a break]
Me: Hello bus driver! [opens map] How do I get here? [points to destination on map]
Bus Driver: [coughing, avoids eye contact]...
Me: [finds seat outside of bus, starts to think about dinner]

long story short, an hour (and a few more petacas) later, I get to the vicinity of my friends. I look around the neighbor hood for their adress but here is how the address works in Macao:

USA: Street Name, street Number, City, Zip

Macao: Street Name (written in Portuguese on map but written in Chinese on building), Street Number (Have yet to see this written on any buidlings...this gets you to a general area of the street), Name of group of apartment buildings (e.g. Hong Chong Garden), Name of specific building (YES!!!! I said name, buildings have NAMES!!!??), Apartment Number, Country

After another hour of looking for a building name (I just called out hoping it would respond to it's English name, like the dog in little Orphan Annie, but to no avail) I just ducked into a restaurant and ate my aforementioned dinner (my first meal in Macao!!!). Got back on a bus and headed home to my apartment.

Did you know? ...that the Macao address system was designed by a parakeet named "Banana" back in the 16th century? Strange but true.


Macao-Wabunga!!!!!

Carlos