Let’s see…I need to still do China, and I’m procrastinating on that one because we saw a lot and there’s a lot of other non-touristy, sort of sociological observations about China that I need to take some time with in order to do a good job. So I figured maybe I’d do Hallowe’en weekend and Macau and I’ll do China in a couple days.

You will note that I haven’t written anything about the election since it happened. I’m sure you all know how depressed and frustrated I feel, and others have written more eloquently than I can anyway. I’m still totally pissed as well, but I also recognize that we need to do both what the other party does and what they do not do – to wit, we must work hard to define the essential issues that guide voters’ decisions in this country (as the Republicans have done, incredibly successfully, this time around) and we also need to be the party that reaches out and works hard to bring unity to the country and find the middle ground (which the Republican party has not done, and intentionally so). I mean, there are lots of things we need to do, but those two are central to our success as a party and as a country.

I both enjoyed and suffered through this long debate via email – essentially a lot of ‘reply to all’ commentary – and it became clear to me that too many secular liberals think they know what’s best for the country and believe that it’s simply a matter of bringing it to the heathens in the desert, just a missionary exercise where we go out to the land of the Wal-Marts and conduct some conversions. It’s much more complex than that, obviously, and it’s apparent that we need to listen more than we talk and allow our cup to be emptied from time to time in order to make room for more tea. Telling someone that they’re wrong and stupid and ignorant over and over will not win anyone’s hearts and minds, and while this administration is deplorable, the Republican party is not evil in its essence. The party used to stand for small government and low taxes and other basic issues – y’all can’t tell me that, especially in light of the Patriot Act, you are not in favor of small government, and who the hell supports high taxes anyway? But this is the conundrum that the country and both parties find themselves in as a result of this administration – this administration does not represent the original essence of the Republican party. It is a fallacy and a trap to either vilify it or defend it as such. It’s like the Vatican – the Vatican does not represent the Catholic religion, the essential teachings of Christ, and the people need to take back the Church from the Vatican. Likewise, the Republicans must wrest their party back from this Administration and everyone must take their country back.Never mind the fact that this election looks like another theft – that’s another issue altogether, and is almost too devastating to contemplate. It’s hard to leave the country and renounce your citizenship, though. If y’all came to the Kongsfordshire like me, you’d still be paying US taxes (though you’d be saving a bundle and having a great time, let me tell you). Oh, by the way, buy Canadian dollars. The dollar of the Great White North is doing great these days and the US dollar is taking a fucking tumble. There’s no end to this spending spree in sight, and even one of my DCM bankers joked this afternoon about how there doesn’t seem to be any concern about fiscal policy in this administration, so convert your USD savings into Euros or pounds or Canadian dollars. You’ll thank me. Consult your financial advisor first, though.

Ok, so: Hallowe’en weekend. Hooray! My moms insisted that I go out if I had plans, and I sure did. Went out on Friday night with A and some other person and had a drunken time. Met A at Stormy Weather, this bar at the top of Lan Kwai Fong, and had some beers before heading over to the Foreign Correspondent’s Club to meet this other person, who is a member. Having treated A to about ten beers a few weeks back, and since this other person was a member of the FCC (no cash allowed), I didn’t spend a dime that night. We had some drinks and snacks, listened to some live jazz, and then A and I headed back to Stormy while this other person went to the computers at the FCC to email his mommy. He was a little pensive that night – not his usual ego-integral self – so we decided to stop bothering him, basically. Headed back to the Fong, got shellacked, and walked home. Fun, but unremarkable. I vaguely recall making soup at 12.30 in the dark, seeing only the big white potatoes in the manhattan clam chowder, while my mom asked how my night was and why was I making soup so late? The next morning she told me she could tell I was lit because she could hear me giggling constantly as I ate.On Saturday, mom and I headed to Stanley to shop, enjoy the sun, and have some yummy tapas at a place called El Cid. My buddy T doesn’t think the food is that great but I think he’s a little bit of a food snob or something – it was good. I wasn’t really sure what I could complain about. Tasty prawns, spinach and filo with cheese, beefy bruschetta, and some other crap I can’t remember. Calamari with a tangy remoulade, and one other thing. Oh! Gazpacho, very nice. And good sangria. We headed back in the afternoon and knocked out some more shopping – I got these fresh fuckin’ kicks (New Balance of course) and then we headed up to Victoria Peak around 7pm for a killer dinner at the Peak lookout. I had….vegetable samosas (ok, stop making fun of me) and a great Aussie Angus steak, and moms had some risotto goat cheese balls and, uh, fish I think. And a great bottle of Aussie shiraz. The Peak Lookout is a great place to go for dinner – all stone and lush landscaping and pretty lighting and great service. Very nice spot. It’s cooler up on the Peak too, which makes for a lovely dining experience. We ate outside.Then it was home to drop moms and off to a party in Soho on Elgin street – some friends of that aforementioned mommy-emailer and A’s named C and A. Great folks. I didn’t know anyone there (Emailer was going to be very late and A and some other people I met the night before had not showed yet) so I chatted with some nice strangers and tried to endure the heat. It was fucking hot in there. Tiny apartment, one AC, and thirty people crammed in there. Straight East Village style. Met a lot of nice folks, though, and some of the people I met the night before finally showed, including Charlie and Joanne, a sweet, super-friendly couple who just ran the NYC marathon this weekend. Hooray for them – they were running for the HK Cancer Research Fund and had raised over 63,000 HK dollars as of race day. Friendly, smart, nice people. I hope they did ok – Charlie is a total marathoner and adventure racer, but Joanne had only done a half-marathon before this race so she might have needed some encouragement toward the end there. I told them to put their names on their shirts – that shit is the bomb. They are probably the coolest couple I met in Hong Kong, and some of the friendliest people I’ve met in a long, long time.Jesus, I’m not even to Macau yet. Well, I left at 1.30, just as some Joker was showing up, and headed to bed since we had Macau in the morning. I wasn’t lit this time, just….nice.Sunday morning we got up and dealt. I felt pretty good since I had stuck to wine and generally took it easy after my dozen-drink night on Friday. The ferry over was mellow, and we first went to the Temple of A-Gao, the Chinese goddess of the sea and mariners. I think I may have broken this down before (maybe in an email to someone), but legend has it that this poor girl could not get free passage on any boats except for one with these two fishermen. They went to sea, and a typhoon appeared and destroyed everyone’s boat but theirs, and at that point the girl revealed herself as A-Gao. For their gratitude, they built this temple. And when the Portuguese arrived, they called it the Port of A-Gao, or Ma-A-Gao. Macau. Get it, suckers?

The temple was steep, with many levels and stone stairs carved into the rock outcroppings and boulders. There were little temples here and there where people could purchase and light long incense sticks and plant them in front of the temple and pray. Very serene and beautiful except for the throngs of people clambering all over the place. It was packed. We saw these huge hanging cone-shaped spiral coils of incense burning in groups of five and ten, hanging among the bamboo, and several of the large boulders had Chinese characters carved into the face which were painted in bright red. One stand of bamboo had graffiti carved into the stalks, and since they too were Chinese characters, it looked much cooler and more elaborate than your standard park-bench tapestry of “Joe + Kate”, “Fuck” and so on like you see in the US. I’m sure they said the same shit – but what if they didn’t? What if they were prayers or something? What, you think I’ma learn Chinese just to find that out? Shit coulda said “Gallagher likz da ballz” and I’m standing there taking a picture of it.

After the temple, we decided to walk through the local neighborhoods and sort of wind our way up toward the Ruins of St. Paul’s church. It was really amazing to get out of touristville and see the narrow streets with small, ground-level shops of every sort, telephone lines crisscrossing everywhere, and tall, narrow tenements with window grates, laundry, and other accoutrements des apartamentes. You know, when you’re a tenement, you gotta accessorize. We passed bakeries, seafood and meat markets, toy stores, paperies, repair shops, hardware stores, you name it. I could not help but think of the early tenement neighborhoods of New York, all packed in with shops at ground level and small living spaces above and everybody knowing your business. This version was more cozy than threatening, and no one tried to jimmy us on the head with a club and take our money, so it didn’t like, you know, completely remind me of New York in 1860, but you could feel it. The club, that is. On your head.The names of the streets and stores are probably the most perfect, succinct symbols of the melding of Portuguese and Chinese culture: Chi Seng Motocicletas. Edificio Kan Kei. Travessa de Chan Loc. Like the UK, Portugal has given Macau back to China, but like Hong Kong, the influence of the previous colonists endures.We passed a wet market, a huge open-air covered market in a warehouse that displayed all kinds of fruits and vegetables and stand after stand of whole fish and shellfish. Everything looked delicious, but as a Westerner you had to wonder about the frequency – or even existence – of the Health Department.

We continued our journey through winding streets, dodging scooters and hustling up steps, passing among churches and old theaters that were purely Portuguese and quite beautiful – soft clues and yellows, iron gates and shuttered windows…just beautiful. We reached a square leading to the church where we encountered once again the tourist life of Macau – from nameless shops to McDonald’s and Giordanos and shit like that. We made it to the ruins – basically a wide, tall façade of the church, since the rest of it burned during a typhoon long ago – and only spent about ten minutes there because there was not much to see and we were mad, mad hungry at that point.

It was time for another trip to Fernando’s.

We grabbed a cab to Fernando’s and had an awesome, well-deserved lunch; salad, the garlic prawns, some fried rice with peppers, pork, and pieces of prawn, and of course the killer bread. And a great bottle of Portuguese white wine. I had a beer, too, and moms and I ended up getting a little nice. We checked out the gardens and trees and such behind the restaurant, finished our beers at one of the outside tables, and took our buzz to the black sand beach where we took some photos and just got philosophical.

After a while, we decided to take a cab to the ferry and head home. It was a long day, with lots of walking and an afternoon of imbibing, and I slept like a rock on the ferry. We just had pizza and salad that night. It was a great last weekend of sun, laughter, and exploration, our final weekend together before work would once again make the days, and our time together, brief.

Peace.
CB