Leader of the pack

There is a vicious dog in the neighborhood. She is not very big, but she is mean, baring her teeth and growling like she wants to kill someone. I think Mimi and I are on her menu.


Unfortunately, we ran across the little brown mutt yesterday. She came running over a hill and was MAD, about to take a bite out of one of us. I swooped Mimi into my arms to protect her, kind of like this:

(Apparently this is common behavior for dog owners. It looks somewhat less silly when I do it though, because Mimi's no bigger than a baby.)


With Mimi slung over my shoulder like a burping baby, and loaded with all the information that I saw on National Geographic's "Dog Whisperer" TV show this past Sunday, I stood my ground, pointed my finger at the mean brown dog, and in my best teacher's voice told that dog to cut it out and go home.


After a minute or two of this, the dog tucked her mean teeth back inside her mouth and seemed to calm down, but didn't go away. My goal was to send that dog packing, back to her home (her unattentive master lives in my apartment complex). I was going to win this battle.


I continued wagging my index finger at her, telling her in English to go away and leave us alone, when all of a sudden a Chinese man, a neighbor, walked up with the most incredulous look on his face. He looked at the mean dog, then he looked at me and said, "She understands English???!!"


It felt like I had cotton in my ears, because surely he didn't just ask that. He knew the mean brown dog was not my dog and that we were having an unfriendly standoff.


"Huh?" I asked.


"Does that dog know English?" he wanted to know.


All sorts of inappropriate answers swam through my mind. 'Yes, I hold a weekend class for all the dogs in the neighborhood.' Or maybe some response like, 'Yes, dogs are bilingual, didn't you know?'


But I didn't want to make him feel bad, because he was dead serious. He was probably also feeling really defeated, thinking these dogs knew more English than his own child. So I broke it to him gently and explained that the neighbor's dog doesn't know English, only knows my meaning by my tone of voice. 


He nodded like he kind of understood, but as he walked away, I think he still thought I had taught English to the dogs in the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure he was wondering why I would bother to stand there and talk to the dog in English if the dog didn't understand English anyway. He found the whole scenario rather perplexing. I guess they don't talk to dogs in this country.


After the neighbor had gone, I pointed to the mean dog, told her one more time to go home, and she tucked her tail and went back home over the hill.


National Geographic will probably be calling soon.


_______
Footnotes:
1. The photo is random. I don't know the person or the dog in the photo.
2. Mimi understands basic commands in both English and Chinese, because she hears them all the time. She doesn't speak any languages though, thanks be to the Creator. :-)
3. I would call animal control on this dog and owner, but the dog looks like she just had pups, so that would be mean of me to call her in right now. She was mean way before she ever had pups though, so it is not just the protective instinct kicking in.
4. Living overseas is pretty doggone interesting.

Sweater weather

A week of holidays

It's the national day holidays this week (October 1-7). It's like the 4th of July without the cookouts and heat. It's a week in which everyone gets off work at the exact same time. Next to Chinese New Year, it's the biggest travel week of the year.

No fan of the fan

The dog days of summer have ended, so to save electricity, I ran the fan at night instead of the air-conditioner. All my local friends say to never sleep with a fan on, because it will cause colds. But in America I slept with a fan on me all the time and never got a cold. So it just doesn't make sense that it could happen in one country and not another.


But every single time I try to disprove this "fan will make you sick" theory in Asia, I only prove them to be correct. I slept with a fan on me last weekend and now I have a bad cold. They may have to tear down another forest to replace all the tissues I've used in the past week.


I don't understand the fan thing, but I believe it. I'm done with sleeping with a fan on me. In Asia anyway.

Sweet little mutt 'o mine

 

Top: What a beauty!

Bottom: She's either

A: sniffing the air

B: doing neck exercises

C: being a snobby dog

Your guess is as good as mine! This dog has a mind of her own.

Note to those who could care less about my dog: My parents have met Mimi and like her quite a bit, so these pictures are for them. Other people post pictures of their children, I post pictures of my dog. Check back again soon and if you're lucky, maybe I'll have something you like better.

Gonna dig me a hole and crawl into it

Imagine, traffic so atrociously crowded that cars cannot reasonably get through town. The solution? Build a subway system to alleviate traffic! But during the 4 years of construction, the already crowded traffic will be detoured down 2-lane roads and make transportation even a bigger nightmare than it was before a "solution" was hit upon.

Sadly, this is the main road through Bamboo Forest. It has been torn up. And just about every road in town either looks like this or is a crowded detour road for cars trying to avoid the construction.

I have been in Bamboo Forest for three years now, and it has pretty much looked like this the whole time I have been living here -- in fact, it is getting worse! Getting across town is almost impossible. Trauma comes to those who try. It seems it will never end. Someday, presumably, we'll have a lovely subway system and all the annoyance will fade into our memories. But for now, we have chaos, mayhem and short-circuited nerves.

This is another view of the main road.

Will it ever end? 

Have passport, will travel

I am in Hong Kong for about a week. My visa has to be renewed, and I had to come here to get it done. I turned over my passport two hours after I arrived in town, and now all I have to do is sit around for a week for it to come back to me. I took a few days to roam around Hong Kong, but it is not really vacation (I have a lot of work to do that I can do on my computer). I used to live here, so I have visited old friends, done some sightseeing, and such as that. 


Since May, I have traveled in five different countries. Twenty-somethings think that's fun. I'm not in my 20's, so, you know, I find it half exhausting and half fun. :-) Hong Kong is definitely the best place in the world to have to wait around for a week though!

Stuff you don't see every day...

...unless you live in Hong Kong.

How about a cup of sun tea on a hot day? Be sure to flavor it with dead bees overnight.

I don't know, maybe it's just me, but besides the fact that the worship of false gods is distasteful to me anyway, it seems rather irreverent to light one's joss sticks with a blow torch.  

I think this is a painting of the false god, painted on the door to a temple. Looks like some cartoon character. You don't scare me!!!!

You've probably seen incense sticks before. In China they often burn them in public restrooms in an attempt to eradicate the bad smell. Yep, incense is burned in temples and restrooms. There's something really weird about that. But I digress. The above picture is of coiled incense that's hung from the ceiling.

Coffins for sale. Yep, right next to a repair shop, next to the bee tea shop, right in the middle of everything. So if you go out to the convenience store to buy a coke and a bag of M&M's, be sure to pick up a coffin on your way home.

I can understand if the guy played a flute or guitar, 'cause it is really popular in the Chinese world to play your music in public ... but why would a person carry such a heavy instrument to the train station to play it? Would you carry your grand piano to the station to play it? 

These are the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom. 

Little House on the Prairie

Between July 1st and September 9th, the grass at my apartment complex was not cut. Not even a little bit. On about September 1st, I pulled a random piece of grass, took it up stairs and measured it. It was 30 inches long. That's nearly a yard long (no pun intended)!

Poor Mimi would walk on the grass and get lost in it. It was taller than her. It also contained bugs. Last year they cut the grass once a month (which is not so great either), so I don't know why this year they took over two months to decide to cut it. Presumably they'd rather have the money themselves than pay someone to come cut it. The farmer who cuts it uses a weed eater.