Új! (pronounced "ooh-ee") = New! Cold cherry soup. I tried this stuff years ago when my beloved Hungarian ex-roommate Olga whipped some up in Hong Kong. No Hungarian model ever leaves home without a ...
I may have slept too long on composing this entry: my Euro vacation is over and I'm back in Albuquerque; so much has happened between then/there and now/here that I feel like I'm trying to write abou...
I always scold myself on the kinda-rare occasions that I buy emergency socks or underwear instead of doing laundry: like, how wasteful and disorganized. How contemptible! But oops, life got so entrop...
Vienna was not really part of the plan, but I ended up here on a layover, awaiting a train to Budapest tomorrow morning. Arrived after midnight and just got back from a long walk around: maybe my blo...
Black Forest Folk.German highways don't just look immaculate when compared to the Bud can-strewn Adopt-a-Highways of the States and the styrofoam/cig butt/dead body/tea bottle graveyard roadsides of ...
Gasthaus in Bad Bodendorf: restaurant, hotel, one-lane indoor bowling alley, time warp:1982: A very good year for bowling.Nobody bowled, but I knew I would've won. Eradicator!Spargelsuppe: cream of w...
Hey dudes. As of today, I'm on Euro vacation: warm greetings from the Continent.I had a li'l layover this afternoon in the World's Second-Worst Airport (London Heathrow), just long enough to flip thr...
My brother took me on a raft flotilla down the Rio Grande yesterday.Bro is about to finish engineering school, and he perceives the world in such an interesting, engineery way. Quoth Everest as we fl...
I packed up and left Hong Kong about a week ago. It was the least frantic packing-up-and-leaving situation I've enjoyed in a long while: I organized my stuff more than an hour before I had to leave f...
Frequently asked question: Did you buy that thing?Answer: Usually, no. I've been traveling for so long that my acquisitive impulse has been crushed like a hideous Taiwanese bead sculpture in an overs...
Q: Do I have more pics and shit from Taiwan?A:On my last day in Taipei, I took the subway to the northern outskirts of the city, where the 'burbs give way to mountains. At the subway station, most pe...
Hint:
As expected, Taipei has yielded up some good gems. We have a lot to talk about.The other day, my friend described electronically-translated, no-sense-making Chinese menus as "poetic." Huh. I always j...
I went impulse shopping in the travel agency and came out with a weekend trip to the Republic of China. Greetings from Taipei! Look at all those Japanese cars driving on the right-hand side of the ro...
I possess a finite amount of good taste, and I choose to apply it to books, music, snacks, and congee flavors. Crabmeat and roe congee:Sweet-potato flavored Kit Kat:I just don't have enough available...
I can hear my next door neighbors perfectly. They fight a lot but they like to get busy! They're doing it right now. The girl groaned, in Canto, "fai di!" ("hurry up!"). I was like, ooh, harsh, but t...
Mandarin pop enthusiasts, I have a favor to ask of you: does anyone recognize the first song in this video (it starts at about :20)? Can you hook up the title and artist, or an mp3? Sorry to make you...
Are you guys more into plastrons or carapaces?I would like to shake hands with the bitch who could wear these impractical shoes for more than an hour without the universe somehow ruining them. Puddle...
If you're interested in the fashion industry, you may be aware that at Prada's S/S09 runway show back in September, several models stumbled or fell down on the catwalk. The company later explained th...
On the personal tip, dear reader, I've been discombobulated. I've been working a lot whilst conquering the most pustulent and cystic breakout of my life. Ugh: clients have looked at my face, grimaced...
My Hong Kong agency emailed me: "Elyse, we have castings for you, we have jobs for you; we're waiting for you to get your ass down here, thanks." I arrived in Hongers an hour ago; my heart was breaki...
"Hey Elyse, where'd you get that unsightly abrasion on your ass?""Well, I was balancing on a velour-covered eraser-shaped plywood prism precariously propped on a tripod inside this velour-lined plywo...
My second-favorite baller (after Shaq): Michael Qiaodan of the Xicago Bulls.
"Shanghai Slice"The song is "Wètètié Maré by Muluqèn Mèllèssè, from Ethiopiques 1. Hope you like it!
I'm still pretty high from Chinese New Year. The prolonged break from the frustrations of ladypose moil, combined with the fact that I'm reading The Travels of Marco Polo, a mostly-true catalog of Ma...
Could somebody please press the little green button on the stop time machine? I'm not ready for the Chinese New Year holiday to end yet. I need one more week.One more week to have eight-hour walkabou...
My New Year's Day was perfect. Even if I have the bare minimum of "work" to do for my agency, it's just not the same as having a whole day off. Even one casting can occupy a huge portion of daylight ...
Chinese New Year! Oh my god! Chinese New Year! It's almost 12:30am and there is MAYHEM in my 'hood! Fireworks have been exploding CONSTANTLY for hours and hours! Burned shreds of red tissue paper fro...
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