Human PinBall Guest Post #3

Human Pinball here, in less than 8 hours I will be leaving the land of chopsticks and fried noodles - been here over 3 weeks - the only clean clothes I have are the ones I will put on at 5am and wear the following 28 hours. I gotta tell ya - you always scrub extra hard and extra long in the shower when you know your next one will be a day and a half later. Anyway, back on track...so I finished my last meeting at 6pm, cabbed back to the hotel - threw on some casual clothes and a pair of flip flops and headed to the MTR - ( subway ) at rush hour. ONLY a good mother would ride the subway across town to go to ToysRUs to buy her baby boy a video game - because there is not another darn thing in this town that I could buy that him that he would like more. So the good mother rides the MTR packed in like a can of sardines- getting her usual stares and even has to switch trains. Gets to ToysRUs -buys a cool GameBoy DS Game...mission accomplished.

So thought I would do a little window shopping before calling it a night. There are shops EVERYWHERE in Hong Kong - it is a shopper paradise. From the most expensive handbags & jewelry to the street vendors selling Hello Kitty ink pens and everything in between. In some parts ( the tourist area called Kowloon) they just about drive me nuts yelling for my attention. It sounds like this... "MISSY...Missy...Missy ... buy a copy handbag, buy a copy watch?" And my all time favorite - "Miss America, Miss America, copy handbags, copy watches," or "do you need a tailor?"

So I go to where the locals shop and no one yells at me but tonight was a real smorgasbord of weirdness. My first stop was Maple - a trendy young girl shop - cute stuff - lots of jewelry & accessories - great prices. I buy my older daughter clothes there almost every trip. On display in the front of the stores was a Long Shirt that immediately caught my attention....First...let me explain before I go any further... A lot of people in Asia like English words on their clothing and sometimes, well a lot of the time it just doesn't make sense. And sometimes it is bad words.... once on a transfer bus in a Chinese airport I saw a little girl that was about 8 years old - cute as a bug, her shirt had what looked to be a short paragraph from a Harlequin Romance novel on it and it had the "F" word in the paragraph 2 times....I doubt if her parents spoke a drop of English, so it wasn't like I could tap them on the shoulder and say..."hey, your baby is wearing inappropriate words... - they looked like a totally normal family...I pretty confident they had NO idea what that cute little princess shirt with flowers and crowns on it had a Fabio story on it. And I have seen lots of words that just didn't make sense. (Buttinski note from Normal Girl....I attended a gift show where alot of Asian importers were displaying, in February. I saw a wall with word signs. Among the LOVE LIFE LAUGH signs was KITCHENTOILET. They try but don't quite hit the western mark.)

But back to the long shirt... I think it wins for the strangest compilation of English words I've seen on a single piece of clothing. The first line says You Guys Rock - then it says - It's the dog's short and the dogs bullet...next line.. She's DaBomB! ... next line... Hearts Stars Anchors Charms and BLABBARD - ( Blabbard - i think that is the stuff on your butt and tops of your legs after you turn 40) and last but not least in big giant letters it says... MilkShake and Pimp Juice.... Which made me say - what they heck???? I did a double take and took a picture with my phone.

No sooner did I round the corner until I almost bumped into a walking cup of McCafe' and it occurred to me....maybe this is the Pimp's Juice. He needs this caffeine buzz so he can stay awake and keep an eye on his girls... Oh but it didn't end with the walking cup of coffee...

a few feet from the "Java Who Wore Tennis Shoes" was a group of American Indians - yes I said American Indians, the kind that have feathers on their heads.... and they were playing a Simon and Garfunkle song and at that point I decided to call it a night and go back to the hotel - I was getting a little afraid I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone or Candid Camera.

USA, here I come,

HPB