When I first started living abroad, I was happy to rough it and make use of what was cheap and locally available. But now, a seasoned expat, I have found as time has gone by that when living abroad, creature comforts and reminders of home become increasingly more important. Little by little, with the opening of international brand stores and perhaps an increased demand for foreign goods, the creature comforts I use to have to schlep back from the US with me in an extra duffel are becoming more widely available here. Until 2007, I was importing tampons since only expensive, baby-sized Playtex were available in Thailand. A couple years ago, I started seeing Cetaphil face wash sold at pharmacies. I discovered with glee that Quaker Oat Squares, my favorite cereal, can be bought in the international grocery store (though a box goes for a whopping US$12!). And now, this weekend, Bangkok welcomed one more of my creature comforts:
Yesterday, T and I went to see the much anticipated Alice in Wonderland. We had been looking forward to it since seeing the preview months ago and couldn't wait for the Tim Burton darkness and the Johnny Depp weirdness. However, within a few minutes of the movie beginning, while T was fully engrossed, I was already painfully bored and disappointed.
This telling of Lewis Carroll's fantasy adventure is passionless and flat, leaving the film to rely solely on the gratuitous, not-well-integrated 3D special effects and distracting computer-generated animals. Alice, played by Mia Wasikowska, was two-dimensional and entirely forgettable except for her haunting paleness and perfectly-formed, pouty, tulip lips. Though showing valiant efforts to carry the film from soulless obscurity to a colorful and memorable work of art, even the Mad Hatter, played by Johnny Depp, flaunting his familiar brand of costumed craziness, and the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Cater and reminiscent of a Blythe-cum-Chucky doll, could not sustain the plot nor this viewer's interest with their melodrama.
While much of the film has already faded from my memory, the one piece that remains with me is the dress worn by a towering Alice while at the Red Queen's castle. Cobbled together by the queen's peons upon her demand, possibly from curtains, as she suggested, it is eye-catching and feminine with a rockstar edge that the ethereal, bland Alice never seemed to possess.
This shot of Alice's red dress make it look more Martha Washington than rockstar, but in the film, the costume was captivating.
As a kid, I watched a VHS recording of a 1985 made-for-TV version of Alice in Wonderland over and over again. Though the sets and costuming were very low-budget, all characters were played by real people, which I prefer, and there were musical numbers thrown in, which added a stage-like quality to the production. The cast was star-studded, with a number of 80's TV personalities (Telly Savalas, Sally Struthers, John Stamos, Scott Baio, Sherman Hemsley!), a wacky Carol Channing, a tap-dancing Sammy Davis, Jr., and a melancoly Ringo Star, among others. Below is a clip of the caterpillar, played by Sammy Davis, Jr. and his singing and dancing routine with Alice. Ah, nostalgia.
Like most people, when I read George Orwell's futuristic novel, 1984, the premise seemed entirely fictional. The concept of "Big Brother is always watching" was chilling, but with the exception of rough resemblances to true totalitarian governments, it was far from any reality I knew. Orwell intended for his Big Brother to represent a figure head, god-like dictator who, like the Boogie Man, instilled fear in the hearts of civilians, consequently ensuring that they behaved themselves and adhered to the Party's laws.
When Orwell wrote 1984 in the 1940's, he probably never imagined that decades later his fiction would not be so far from reality. On Wednesday, an article in the New York Times, "China's Cyberposse", describes the growing power of cyberspace's version of Orwell's Big Brother. In China, online forums have become meeting places for computer savvy vigilantes. The forums offer a place for people to air their grievances against seemingly anyone who colors outside of the lines of society's implicit rules. With discussions surrounding the issues raised (cheating husbands, animal abusers, child molesters, opinionated bloggers), the angry cybermob gains momentum until someone calls for a lynching, or in their terms a "human flesh search". This is where the frighting consequences of connectivity come into play. Through diligent research and detective work, the web community tracks down all available personal information of the perp, including phone number, address, license plate, work place, friends, family, government ID, etc., and makes it public whilst demonizing the offender, leading to job loss, embarrassment, and ultimately, self-banishment.
The idea of a cyberposse is very similar to Big Brother, potentially keeping citizens in check through its powerful omnipresence and omnipotence. While it's inspiring to see a group of people working together to fight injustices, the human flesh search raises some important questions regarding human rights, particularly personal privacy and the right to due process (which is not considered a right in all parts of the world).
Are cyberposses as law enforcers a wave of the future or will privacy laws and the desire to preserve personal rights stamp out this vigilante movement?
When I saw this article in the New York Times today, I was both kind of horrified and incredibly curious. I have always had a (I admit it, sometimes politically incorrect) fascination with little people, so when I saw that there was an entire theme park in China manned by dwarfs and midgets, I got really excited. T and I were thinking about going trekking in Nepal next month, but maybe we should change our plans and go to Kunming instead.
In all seriousness, the article does raise some interesting points about China and the public's perception of disabled people (this was how little people were referred to in the article, but I not sure it's really appropriate). The park has received a lot of criticism from Western groups like Handicap International and Little People of America, Inc., but the park creator and employees argue that Kingdom of the Little People has created jobs for those who otherwise wouldn't have opportunities and it has created a unique community and support system for the employees. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that one actor in a Swan Lake parody, "a crowd pleaser in which male dwarfs dress up in pink tights and tutus and wiggle their derrières", claimed that when the audience clapped, he felt proud. Maybe something got lost in translation.
Kingdom of the Little People: Politically incorrect and offensive or beneficial for the height-challenged people of China?
Last week, for a colleague's birthday I made mini cupcakes. The recipe was fairly easy. I had made the full recipe (Chocolate Salted-Caramel Mini Cupcakes) once before and wasn't so successful with the caramel part, so this time, I just stuck with plain cupcakes.
I think my (annoyingly unpredictable) oven doesn't heat evenly, causing the cupcakes to grow funny-looking smurf hats, which I end up carving off before decorating.
Vanilla cream with chocolate buttons (some sprinkled with cocoa) and chocolate with shredded coconut.
Today's Happiness Reminder: Giggling ourselves to sleep last night (It was after midnight, so I'm counting it for today!) and meeting T at home today for lunch.
Our weekend at tropical island paradise was just what the doctor ordered. We regrouped after a tiring and awkward trip and remembered that we could still let our guards down and be best friends. We sat under beach umbrellas and read; we floated in the clear water; we trekked to the other side of the island for mid-day drinks and lounging; we had intense intellectual debates about raising children and unconditional love; we watched bad TV; we sat on the beach and watched the sunset; and we laughed. It was the sweetness I had been missing. It's so easy to find when we escape the daily distraction and stresses of our lives in Bangkok. The challenge is to figure out how to maintain that carefree love on a day to day basis.
***
I have decided that I want to try to think of one thing every day for which I am grateful. And, not something like "my family" or "my health". That's far too easy. I'm thinking something that made that particular day shiny or sweet or memorable. I think this will help me remember that my life is pretty good, even when things are bad.
Today, I had two Happiness Reminders:
1) When my boss/mentor referred to me as his friend when speaking with a new colleague
2) When I found out that, after more than 2 years of work on it, my graduate thesis was published today and many of my friends and family congratulated me and shared my excitement via Facebook
I am an American who has called Bangkok home for three plus years. I can sing the alphabet backwards and recite all 50 American states in alphabetical order. I wish I could play the spoons, had a non-temperamental full-sized oven, and had more clothes that were "outside of the box".
[The title of this blog is a bit misleading. I am now nearly a fourth of the way through the second quarter of my life. But who's counting?]
