I swear it was yesterday I was living in Hong Kong. All of a sudden, two months have gone by... and even longer since I wrote anything.
I still remember coming to Singapore, on Christmas eve nonetheless. Readjusting to the new location was a struggle, but not because there's anything wrong with Singapore. Imagine yourself blindfolded, and spun in circles until dizzy; when you take off your blindfold you are what is called “disoriented”. This time, imagine yourself blindfolded and spun, and then teleported to an unrecognizable place. That's being unoriented, and that's exactly how I feel every time I land in a new city.
The other thing I felt when I first arrived in Singapore was the intense tropical heat. Wow. Only a few miles north of the Equator here. But, as a consequence of hopping from country to country (and losing all sense of currency conversion to boot), I've acclimated to the sweltering heat and humidity.
See, when I left home in June last year, it was around 104 degrees in Tucson, and past 110 degrees in Boulder City, Arizona, where I spent my last weekend. That's around 45 degrees Celsius, btw. The temperature in Taiwan the following weekend, was around 32 degrees Celsius; somewhere in the mid 70s, perhaps. But the humidity was awful. In Taiwan I sweat a lot on the way back and forth to the class.
But when I got to Hong Kong, holy crap...I smelled like a wet dog. Every day. Within one hour of taking a shower even. I was tired of it. But my Tom's of Maine organic deodorant with hops just wasn't making the grade. Looking for some sterner stuff, I went to one of the pharmacy shops you find every eight feet or so, and perused their pit-stick section. No Toms of Maine, of course. And no pure deodorant. Everything was an antiperspirant.
Personally, I'm against the use of antiperspirants. They use aluminum to shut down your pores, so you don't sweat. Not sweating is not natural. It's like fire suppression--not natural--and we wonder why California burns down every year. Plus, there are concerns in the paranoid-hypochondriac community, fueled by limited scientific research that generally goes unnoticed, that aluminum causes brain damage later in life.
I have enough of a problem now getting my brain to do what I want it to, so I said phuket and went next door to a traditional Chinese medicine place. You've seen it in movies like "Gremlins." The narrative goes: the dumb and afflicted westerner wanders into one of these dusky herb and animal-part-filled stores, where the ancient shopkeeper understands English, but speaks at length in his own tongue as he ducks back behind the counter. He returns, draws forth a dusty sandalwood box, blows off the dust and opens it to reveal the cure-all made of tiger's penis. Or Mowgli. Either way, the Westerner, discomforted but obligated, pays and leaves, skeptical and eager to disappear.
In my case however, standing in this brightly lit, clean to the point of sterile apothecary's office, I had no reason to be nervous. The guy at the counter had already said hello to me in English, so I knew I could tell him about my problem But there was a woman with him, and it was either wait, or interrupt him and tell him, Hi, I'm a Westerner and I smell bad, can you help me? So instead, I floated around the store, pretending to look at the products behind glass in the white cabinets. A man from the back came out, so I asked him. He went into the back of the store. I was so excited because my fantasy was playing out. I started thinking he was going to find that secret Chinese medicine that was going to not only clear up my smell, but make me 3 inches taller and straighten my teeth. He came back out again, with a spray can in his hand. The old Chinese medicine vendor recommended Lysol for my armpits. I've since relented to using an antiperspirant, in spite of my concerns regarding aluminum. Of course, who's to say. Do the people who tell us fluoride is bad say that aluminum is good? Who are the experts here???
Post Script: I ditched the antiperspirant and got something even better. Many years ago in a dusty bar in NYC, a friend of mine told me about a rock that solved his chronic odor problem; he just rubbed the rock under his arm the way you would rub a baseball into a mitt, and his stink was gone, he said. Sometimes, he used it on his feet, too. Cynical, I asked him when he got into new age hocus-pocus feel good crap. But he was adamant it's the real deal. And he was right. The rock is actually a crystal salt, which dissolves a little in your wet armpit and creates an acidic environment in which bacteria can't survive. I got one and loved it, but lost it in Ireland (if you don't lose it, it lasts forever; I think I had my first one for 2 years) and didn't get another until a friend I made in Hong Kong told me about a store on the island that stocks them. She said she'd got one there. So I went there and got one. Later on she asked me if I ever went to the store and picked one up. I said I did. She asked, in her bright cheery Australian-accent, How does it work? To which I replied, you just rub it under your armpits.
This year marks the year of the rabbit. That's according to the Chinese Lunar calendar. Anyone born under the sign of the rabbit is born in 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, and in 2011. (Well, it becomes complicated for anyone born in January or early February--since the Gregorian calendar isn't a good match for the Lunar one, these Jan and Feb babies actually fall under the year of the tiger.) The horoscopic descriptions for rabbit-born folks varies from website to website.