Let's take a journey together.
Imagine you get on a plane and fly to Hong Kong, on your way to Macau. When you reach the Hong Kong airport at 2:30pm, they tell you that because you were forced to check your tripod in Vietnam (something that NEVER happened in the US), you will have to wait for the 5:00 ferry to Macau, rather than the 3:30 ferry. You don't argue. You know that arguing with the lady at the desk isn't going to get you to Macau any quicker. You quickly realize that you are stuck in the no-man's land between arrivals and immigration which contains almost no place to eat or get a beer. So you sit in the rows of seats for two hours, thankful you have a good book to read if you could only find a place to sit where people aren't talking loudly (more difficult than it might seem).
Finally you are allowed to board the boat and get on your way. The boat ride tends to be one of the funner parts of the trip because you pass the airport runway and see the entire process of planes taking off and landing; something that I always find fascinating. If I'm not in the plane, planes are awesome. When I'm in the plane, I just want to not be in the plane. Anyway, this particular ferry has been getting used all day, and consequently has a crusty build up of dried water all over the outside. This means that you can see exactly nothing out the windows of the boat. Five minutes after departure a ferry employee hands you a slip of paper that you need to fill out in order to gain entrance into Macau. You slap yourself in the head because, despite making this trip half a dozen times in the past, you have yet to remember to pack a pen so you can fill the form out on the boat. This means you will have to fill it out at the immigration area while everyone on your boat, and a thousand other boats, rushes ahead of you in line. Again you are thankful for your good book and it's escape. (Bill Bryson -At Home. Seriously, go read it).
You arrive in Macau, wait in their immigration line for 20 minutes, fight through the throng to pick up your tripod (being careful that backpack doesn't make your shirt ride up giving your fellow passengers a show of your ass crack) and walk out of the terminal. Pass the gypsy taxi guys that want to charge you quadruple what a normal taxi to your destination costs. When you exit the building you find the taxi line to be 35 people deep. So you stand in line, watching the sun slowly set, realizing that all those evening photos you'd spent the day composing in your head won't get taken now because you aren't going to make it before dark. After all, you've only been given from the time you arrive until 6am to document the entire project (in this case somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 square feet of private gaming salons), and that's assuming everything is ready to go when you get there (Hint: it's never ready to go).
So you left at 9 in the morning, missed lunch, and skipped dinner so you could start work. You aren't in the best mood. Then you get the priveledge of spending 5 hours trying to focus on photography, all the while paying attention to chairs that aren't straight, flowers that aren't centered, chandeliers that don't line up with furniture and 150 ladders in your way. This all happens while simultaneoudly fighting off an endless parade of security guards telling you you aren't allowed to take photos. By 10pm you feel like you might implode. You're so hungry you think your body might actually turn itself inside out. Salvation comes in knowing that one of the most fantastic gelato places on the planet is just a five minute walk away. After the day you've had, it would be really great to munch on some fabulous ice cream.* That would be just the thing to cheer you up after a day of waiting around so you could stay up all night and work. Because that's the majorest bummer of the whole thing. You wake up at 6am, hang around being bored (or reading a good book) all day long knowing that you have to stay up all night, and there's nothing you can do about it. No preparations to be made, no time for a nap when you have $10,000 in camera gear at your feet in an airport. Ice cream would really hit the spot right now. Despite knowing that security might not let you back in once you leave, you can't wait. You must eat something or risk collapsing on the marble tile. Silently you pray you haven't waited too late and the ice cream shop is still serving.
*I know it's not actually ice cream, but I still call it that. Is it cold? Is it creamy and delicious? It's ice cream. Until I find a store that has different sections for gelato and ice cream, it's ice cream. It's like the difference between sherbert and sorbet. They may call it sorbet at Pallazzo, but in Mississippi, it's sherbert. Deal with it snobs. I dare you to comment and correct me on the differences, geeks.
The ice cream shop is open! It's a wonderful place. Even at 10pm the store is bright and colorful, and the workers seem genuinely glad you decided you needed a cool treat, very unlike the jerky security folks you've been haggling with all evening. There aren't any emo Ben & Jerry's workers here, no. You know how when you go in Hagen Daaz and you act as if you aren't sure what you want, so you ask for samples of 12 different things? Inevitably the sales person knows what you're up to. You want ice cream, but you're too cheap to pay $8 for a scoop. To make up for the loss you sample everything else so you feel like you didn't just get gypped on ice cream. That's normal, right? Well this place is different. They actually encourage you to get samples. Take as many as you want. Do you want to try two flavors together? three flavors? Sure, here you go. You can sample every flavor in the place and then leave. They don't care. Amazing. And the ice cream.... *
*I've never really considered myself that into ice cream. I like it. It's good. I buy it occasionally, but I never eat a lot. I can't eat a pint in one sitting. But this place. It's so good that I almost force myself to call it gelato. It transcends ice cream. And the flavors are strange and amazing. Sesame and ginger and durien and other things I've never heard of. I will risk not doing my job, a job with a hyper-strict deadline, to eat this stuff. It's that good. But I digress...
So you're working through your customary 12 samples, savoring every new flavor, when your eye falls on this:
About10 inches tall it's just sitting there on top of the glass freezer that holds the ice cream like a dog turd on top of a cake. You stare at it as you move into slow motion sample eating, lost in thought. The first questions that come to you are: What is that? Is that supposed to be a stripper dancing on a pole? And then you will laugh, when you see that that's exactly what it is. But what you won't realize in that moment is that you will be haunted by this thing for weeks to come. Your mind will be flooded with questions everytime you happen upon it.* What is it made of? Is it edible? Did someone order it? Why would someone order it? Who thought that up? Why is it in front of the prices? Did someone find it worthy of display when they finished making it? Was it a gift from an autistic kid? Does the owner of the shop know it's there? Is this in celebration of strippers? Mocking strippers? Is this ice cream shop for adults only?** Should I ask about it? Is it for sale? Does this have something to do with the Lunar New Year? and on and on and on.
*I'd actually managed to forget about this thing while I was trying to think of something to write about yesterday (no such luck on that one), when I came across the photo on my phone. Now it's like having Moves Like Jagger stuck in your head for 10 days straight (yes that happened to me after hearing an entire bar do an impromptu sing along with the chorus one night). Sure it may be the best pop song of 2011, but after ten days of "I got the mooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-ooo-oooves like Jagger" running through your mind, you might feel differently. I know I did.
**I'm always in the shop late at night because that's when I shoot stuff in this particular spot, so I've yet to see a kid under the age of 17 in there.
The questions start to flood in as you turn away from the thing to make your purchase. Mid-turn you remember that you can't ask anyone about it becasue no one in the shop speaks enough English to explain the significance of the Play-Doh stripper on the cookie pole. You'll order and eat your ice cream, and you'll still enjoy it; but the rest of your trip will be spent wondering what it is that you saw.
I think the most curious thing about it is where it's placed. I actually spent time framing up this photo to give it some context. The sculpture is sitting in front of the only placard bearing the price for the ice cream. This means that if you don't have the prices already committed to memory, then you have to see this thing to make sure you have enough money to make your purchase. Now that we've gotten to this point in the entry, I'm sorry I didn't take another photo to give the sculpture a little more context in the room at large. At the time I wondered why it took me actual minutes to notice it sitting there, and then I wondered if people that come into the shop notice it at all. I tend to get transfixed by the ice cream. I get to eat at this place so rarely that it takes a lot to change my focus. If people do notice it, do they take time to ask the 99 questions it inevitably generates? Or does it just make sense to people more in tune with the Macanese culture? We may never know.
After another 24 hours spent being tortured by this thing I decided that this is what makes living in Asia so fantastic. I can't imagine any scenario in which you would find this in an ice cream shop in America. They're places for kids and families. The ice cream shop we go to in HCM has a playground in front of it. Children + Families = Ice Cream Shop. That's how I'd always done that math. I'd never done Potentially Edible Stripper + Possible Cookie Pole = Ice Cream Shop math before. But that's why we're here. To do the math in strange and unthought of ways. Sometimes things make perfect sense: when it's chilly out, you have socks that separate your big toe from the rest of your toes so your flip-flops fit right -smart. But there are many more things we can't explain surrounding us all the time. Sometimes they overwhelm us, but many times they're just intriguing and confusing, which is really fun. After all, if stuff like this didn't exist, I wouldn't have much to write about in this here blog.
Which brings me to today's deep thought. I had to get up and go get a snack to have it, but here it is. I didn't realize how many hang ups I had about the way things are "supposed to be" until we moved here. When we lived in the US, Target was supposed to have toilet paper and staples. That's what they do. Wal-Mart doesn't do burgers, so they hired McDonalds to put a restaurant in their store. It just makes sense: we sell cheap and crappy products; maybe we should add a place where people can also get cheap and crappy food.* It's not like that here. All the "supposed tos" are upside down. Places that sell computers are supposed to sell routers and modems, but they don't. Places that cut hair aren't supposed to also sell fresh squeezed juice, but there's a place that does just that across the street. It does not make their juice inherently less tasty than Jamba Juice either, it's just a strange juxtaposition of offerings. No one says, "I'm gonna go get some juice, a shave and a haircut" in America do they? Maybe they do and I just had to move around the world to experience it. And I suppose they do say it here, it's just in a language I can't understand. Isn't that interesting?
*I won't go into the American strangeness of placing a place where you can sit and eat inside a place you go to buy groceries. Think about it for a minute. Everything you need to make the thing you're eating is available the exact same building. Not only is it available, but it's likely cheaper, and you might get to have that thing you really like twice. There is some assembly required, yes, but it's all there. But still we sit and eat something we're perfectly capable of making ourselves while sitting inside in a place that is built to do exactly that; empower us with the necessary items to make it ourselves. The Wal-Mart thing is an especially interesting case. It's likely you can buy hamburger at Wal-Mart that is better quality and tastier than McDonalds, but I've never seen a McD in Wal-Mart that didn't have a line of people in various stages of perspiration inside. Somehow that is normal, but juice and a haircut is weird and gross. I said I wouldn't go into it, but it looks like I just did.
No comments:
Post a Comment