Guangzhou is the arsehole of the world. It really, really is. They've taken off all the market stalls and food kiosks off the streets and replaced them with mega shopping malls and MacDonalds. The Chinese food there is no better than a sausage, bacon and egg fry up with extra oil, and the air will kill you. The service staff at the hotel do not have name tags, they have number tags, and there are mega traffic jams on every storey of the 5 layered 8 lane highway because the vehicles on it are mostly trucks transporting livestock and industrail waste from fuck-all in nowhere to fuck-all in inudstrial hell.
I had the strangest week stranded in a hotel in a manufactured luxury estate a distance away from the city where the well-heeled GuangZhou denizens move to when they have enough money to leave the hell of monotonous, drab, polluted exsistence along the highways of the city. (It's really, really terrible. Think the oldest, crappest HDB estate in Singapore, except 3 times as high and 20 times as expansive). Really, Singapore is a great place when I think about it. The more I travel, the more I realize Singapore's really nice to live in, censorship and the lack of easily available trippy candies aside.
So I was stuck out in this weird hotel that had an imitation of every century of Italian architecture since the 16th century dumped in together, along with Ionian pillars and motifs from Greece's golden age. It was mostly a business trip that I had no part in, but did have quite a bit of fun translating for (well, I did the translations when we went out to the some of the more informal things.) I was quite surprised at the fact that my Mandrin was good enough to get some very basic idea across. Although I didn't know how to say things like 'safe deposit box' and had to describe it as the 'thing you put expensive things in that is located in the closet'.
Richard, C and myself were mucking about in the neon coloured shopping area of the city on the first evening after we'd just had the most surreal dinner at this fat bastard tim-sum place with certain members of Genovian aristocracy; it was the most... Proper... tim-sum meal I'd had all my life. Chinese people don't really care if you use your hands to eat... much less put your elbows on the table. But oh well. Slurping your tea is a very rude thing to do I suppose.
There was this woman wearing a weird t-shirt with english words on it that she didn't understand, and it said, ' Lost Dog, reward, 5000 kisses'. And C and Richard tried to be funny while I was shopping for cheap crap in the store next door to the one she was working in and attempted to pick both her girlfriend and her up. Richard didn't of course, but when I came out, C was asking me to translate some bullshit for him. Everything was in this weird translation confusion state and I ended up asking them if they'd like to date C and one of the girls ended up saying she was really more interested in Richard, and then he started telling them that he was a priest and that he could marry the girls and C up in an instant. And all sorts of bullshit like that. And the girls asked if C was already married and I said of course not, and they refused to believe it.
We went back to the hotel and I chatted a few girls up, and on our last day there, there was this lovely girl called Autum Flower who said Richard was a really sweet chap and that we were so tian mi mi and all sorts of other romantic sappy things that make me cringe to type down. Because the truth is always harsh, and I am a terrible, hopeless romantic, Really.
Ethan has written me a couple of emails since, and he's told me it's made him very sad to have me talk about my boyfriend. But there isn't anything I can do about it, is there. We've avoided talking about our realities and the people we've been dating for so long it simply isn't a natural relationship of any sort. There's this whole part of my life he's never known about, and he's not really in love with me of course, he knows nothing about me. He'd think I was a whore if he even knew about half the things I got up to. And maybe I am, but what does it matter. My choices in my life are mine and I regret nothing.
It' been rather strange because lately I've started to feel like Richard has in some way replaced my religiousity and taken up the time I used to spend with God. Not that I used to spend much anyway, but I've just felt less need for... God. My beliefs are still the same, although I've been wondering of late if the afterlife really does exsist,
My dad used to tell me that everyone, when they approached death, would start to think about God and the spiritual. But then how about the people that died instantly in a freak accident? What then. Maybe God is just something people that cannot do anything else because they are so ill think about because it makes them feel better, and it is all they can do. I don't know anymore really. But I still believe in a power greater than myself, and I suppose that's all that's really important. Everything else in inconsistant.
xoxox
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