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.

It's my third f*cking typhoon since I got to Hong Kong. I'm tired of this sh*t.f

I heard about a guy, a single father, who blogs about his life and makes more money than he ever made in any of his jobs in his previous life. He says he's astounded that, by writing about his life as a single dad, he would be paid as much as he gets. I imagine he is more consistent about his blogging than I am... I imagine that if he blogged the way I do, he would be currently unemployed and on the dole.

For anyone who still bothers to check this blog for the infrequent updates, you recall (amongst the passings of Ted Kennedy and Michael Jackson and whatever other remarkable events in world history that I have missed because I have been apartment hunting and trying--and failing--to register for classes) that I wanted to write about the differences between Hong Kong and Taiwan. I thought I would start with the most blatantly obvious one: the language.

I spent one month learning the official spoken language of the Republic of China/Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, and one of four state languages in Singapore. Then I wanted to come to Hong Kong. Ooops. There are vast differences between Mandarin, the "official language", and Cantonese, the dialect spoken in Hong Kong as well as some other places--I think Guangzhou province and Malaysia. The two dialects are usually unintelligible to other Chinese language speakers, but for outsiders, the difference is overwhelming.

The reason is because all Chinese dialects depend on tones to convey, not just meaning, but vocabulary. There is a HUGE difference between the word "ma?" which means "what" or "huh" and "Ma!" which means someone is getting yelled at. It's important to hear and identify pitch dynamics made by the speaker. And this is where the dialects become tricky. There are roughly four ways to say "Ma" in Mandarin, but Cantonese has twice as many tones; so to me, it's the difference between a four piece band and a nine piece orchestra—much more difficult to pick out the individual parts.

But I find that I'm still able to communicate in this nine-tone land. Unlike Taiwan, Hong Kong has English as one of the two official languages (although perhaps for not much longer; some believe that era has passed). Public transportation, signs and information is all in English. Serviceworkers, scholars and young people generally all speak good basic English. So I can get by. Luckily, my summer term learning Mandarin can be put to use too. Many people living in Hong Kong are mainlanders who speak the national language. Also, for those Hong Kong Chinese who learned a second language, Mandarin is much easier to learn than English. With what I learned this summer, I can generally order food and complain about the weather to anyone who cares to listen. Chinese of both Taiwan and Hong Kong are usually quite pleased to find a westerner who cares enough to learn their language, but are not too patient to teach you or wait for you to figure out what you're trying to say yourself, so they generally either speak in English or gesture that it's time for you to be on your way. At least my classes will be taught in English.

So why did you spend a month learning a language you can't even use at study abroad, you ask? To that I say, shuddup. Just so you know, Mandarin is the most spoken first language in the world (according to my newcomers' briefing at the college). Anyways, I didn't just learn the spoken language...I also learned maybe 100 or so characters...roughly 3 percent of what I need to know to be what's considered literate. Whatever, it's good for one month of study. So shuddup.

Knowing some of the written language has actually helped me a lot in ordering food. I can read enough of a menu to know the difference between rice gruel and rice noodles. To me, a registered gourmand (read P.I.G.--hog) this bears significant and pragmatic applications to my daily life. I could talk extensively about the menu, but I'll leave that for another day.