Macau, I hardly knew thee
Good morning, blogadiers. As you can tell, I’ve changed the title of the blog to better reflect the current state of affairs. It is now much more accurate, albeit less specific.
The first place that was not Malaysia that hosted Sarah, Peter, Fay, and me was Macau. We’re just working through the “M” countries right now. Just need Mauritania and Monaco, which I assume must be close by.
So what do we know about Macau? The Portuguese were here. I can’t really say what they did other than leave a bunch of signs for me to grasp at with my knowledge of Spanish. It kind of looks like Zapf Dingbats threw up on the road signs. I’m not one to judge, but that’s bull crap. Most words shouldn’t end with çao. Portuguese just ripped off Spanish and consistently misspelled it.
On a related note, what happened to Portugal, anyway? Used to have an empire, now has a literacy rate second to Costa Rica. (Not an insult, really. I’ve been there and they can totally read.) But still, how does an empire get away from you like that? I’ve lost my glasses before, but I usually end up finding them beneath a book. Portugal, did you remember to look under a book? What was the last place you remember seeing your empire? Is it on you head? Sometimes when I can’t find my glasses I’m still wearing them. Look into that, Portugal. Get your empire back, otherwise your legacy will be making tourists wonder why people in Brazil speak such bad Spanish and a bunch of signs that lead to casinos in an island country that’ll be swallowed up by China in another 50 years.
By the way, whoever came up with that whole Las Vegas of the East idea was brilliant. Since Macau has zero to less-than-zero resources it really helps the economy to set up a system where people will gladly lose money in exchange for watching blinking lights (albeit a lot of them).
Look around, gamblers, the casino’s doing really well. They manage to keep up with a no-doubt-massive electricity bill and still employ a platoon of middle aged Macanese whose sole job is to give away free drinks.
Meanwhile, most of the gamblers need to take the free drinks just to keep from dying of thirst. You want to get rich from gambling? Open a casino. And if you can’t afford that buy stock in the Macanese electric company- you won’t regret it. They couldn’t use more energy if they took over all the electric chair executions from Texas.
The casinos are also rich enough to employ women without access to adequate clothing. Apparently “Tokyo Nights” at the Grand Lisboa is some kind of sexy less-clothes-than-usual dance show. Sarah and I will be spending four nights in Tokyo in August, and I’m pretty sure the show would only create unrealistic expectations for a typical evening in Japan’s largest city. It is worth noting, however, that in all the advertisements, the women were shown topless, but with small cartoon daisies covering particular parts of their bodies. (Impossible to know what parts they were actually covering though. It could’ve been an extra set of feet, albeit small ones.) At first I thought this might’ve been exploitative, but then I realized how kind and charitable this casino was to give obviously deformed women to jobs!
“Oh doctor, my child is a freak! She was born with cartoon daisies on particular parts of her body!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, the good people at Grand Lisboa will surely employ her when she becomes old enough.”
Imagine the difference: in Malaysia, such women would live lives in utter secrecy, never able to show themselves as the flora-fauna hybrids that they are. But here in Macau they are enjoyed as freaks of nature with luck-conferring abilities much like Leprechauns and Care Bears, and as a result are tolerated as such.
They must be pretty lucky because after simply staring at their many pictures over the course of several hours, Fay, Peter, Sarah, and I hit the jackpot with our dinner choice… albeit at another casino.
Ah, the Sands’ all-you-can-eat Vegas style buffet. Although last time I checked, there was not as large of a selection of cooked jade welks in Vegas, it was still definitely the best $28 I ever ate.
I destroyed the velvety sashimi and accompanying pile of ginger first before realizing that it wasn’t just the food that I missed eating, it was the ingredients that I missed working with as well. So for the next hour or two I created a “found meal” much like I used to do back in my food service days at Whitman. It’s pretty simple, you just make a dish that the wait staff has served you without realizing it. Like I bet they didn’t know that when they put out smoked chicken, bread, salad and dressing, they gave me everything I needed for the perfect chicken Caesar sandwich. I also made my version of an Asian chicken noodle soup (I think it had pork and duck in it) and Asian nachos (fried wanton crisps with raw salmon and wasabi sauce).
Some could call me uninventive, but when life gives you Asian lemons, make Asian lemonade. I was pretty much the proudest of my three desserts though: coated ice cream balls two ways, a volcanic cream puff sacrifice, and sweet sushi (rice krispies bonded together with whipped cream topped with mango slices liberated from a fruit torte). For those of you that know the joy of Top Chef, I imagined I was presenting my food to the judges and humbly accepting their harsh critiques.
That night we left Macau for Hong Kong, and slept soundly, Tokyo dreams of jade welk fairies dancing in our heads.
The first place that was not Malaysia that hosted Sarah, Peter, Fay, and me was Macau. We’re just working through the “M” countries right now. Just need Mauritania and Monaco, which I assume must be close by.
So what do we know about Macau? The Portuguese were here. I can’t really say what they did other than leave a bunch of signs for me to grasp at with my knowledge of Spanish. It kind of looks like Zapf Dingbats threw up on the road signs. I’m not one to judge, but that’s bull crap. Most words shouldn’t end with çao. Portuguese just ripped off Spanish and consistently misspelled it.
On a related note, what happened to Portugal, anyway? Used to have an empire, now has a literacy rate second to Costa Rica. (Not an insult, really. I’ve been there and they can totally read.) But still, how does an empire get away from you like that? I’ve lost my glasses before, but I usually end up finding them beneath a book. Portugal, did you remember to look under a book? What was the last place you remember seeing your empire? Is it on you head? Sometimes when I can’t find my glasses I’m still wearing them. Look into that, Portugal. Get your empire back, otherwise your legacy will be making tourists wonder why people in Brazil speak such bad Spanish and a bunch of signs that lead to casinos in an island country that’ll be swallowed up by China in another 50 years.
By the way, whoever came up with that whole Las Vegas of the East idea was brilliant. Since Macau has zero to less-than-zero resources it really helps the economy to set up a system where people will gladly lose money in exchange for watching blinking lights (albeit a lot of them).
Look around, gamblers, the casino’s doing really well. They manage to keep up with a no-doubt-massive electricity bill and still employ a platoon of middle aged Macanese whose sole job is to give away free drinks.
Meanwhile, most of the gamblers need to take the free drinks just to keep from dying of thirst. You want to get rich from gambling? Open a casino. And if you can’t afford that buy stock in the Macanese electric company- you won’t regret it. They couldn’t use more energy if they took over all the electric chair executions from Texas.
The casinos are also rich enough to employ women without access to adequate clothing. Apparently “Tokyo Nights” at the Grand Lisboa is some kind of sexy less-clothes-than-usual dance show. Sarah and I will be spending four nights in Tokyo in August, and I’m pretty sure the show would only create unrealistic expectations for a typical evening in Japan’s largest city. It is worth noting, however, that in all the advertisements, the women were shown topless, but with small cartoon daisies covering particular parts of their bodies. (Impossible to know what parts they were actually covering though. It could’ve been an extra set of feet, albeit small ones.) At first I thought this might’ve been exploitative, but then I realized how kind and charitable this casino was to give obviously deformed women to jobs!
“Oh doctor, my child is a freak! She was born with cartoon daisies on particular parts of her body!”
“Don’t worry, ma’am, the good people at Grand Lisboa will surely employ her when she becomes old enough.”
Imagine the difference: in Malaysia, such women would live lives in utter secrecy, never able to show themselves as the flora-fauna hybrids that they are. But here in Macau they are enjoyed as freaks of nature with luck-conferring abilities much like Leprechauns and Care Bears, and as a result are tolerated as such.
They must be pretty lucky because after simply staring at their many pictures over the course of several hours, Fay, Peter, Sarah, and I hit the jackpot with our dinner choice… albeit at another casino.
Ah, the Sands’ all-you-can-eat Vegas style buffet. Although last time I checked, there was not as large of a selection of cooked jade welks in Vegas, it was still definitely the best $28 I ever ate.
I destroyed the velvety sashimi and accompanying pile of ginger first before realizing that it wasn’t just the food that I missed eating, it was the ingredients that I missed working with as well. So for the next hour or two I created a “found meal” much like I used to do back in my food service days at Whitman. It’s pretty simple, you just make a dish that the wait staff has served you without realizing it. Like I bet they didn’t know that when they put out smoked chicken, bread, salad and dressing, they gave me everything I needed for the perfect chicken Caesar sandwich. I also made my version of an Asian chicken noodle soup (I think it had pork and duck in it) and Asian nachos (fried wanton crisps with raw salmon and wasabi sauce).
Some could call me uninventive, but when life gives you Asian lemons, make Asian lemonade. I was pretty much the proudest of my three desserts though: coated ice cream balls two ways, a volcanic cream puff sacrifice, and sweet sushi (rice krispies bonded together with whipped cream topped with mango slices liberated from a fruit torte). For those of you that know the joy of Top Chef, I imagined I was presenting my food to the judges and humbly accepting their harsh critiques.
That night we left Macau for Hong Kong, and slept soundly, Tokyo dreams of jade welk fairies dancing in our heads.
Comments
When we next see you, looking forward to your making us sweet sushi!!
Forgive this crudely chiseled reply ... I seem to have misplaced my computer keyboard. Perhaps it's under this book on my desk... the 1953 copy of The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali which I just found at an estate sale for 50 cents. Darn... not there! Oh well, I'm sure my keyboard will turn up and as soon as I find my glasses and my empire, I'll have no trouble finding it.
Lots o'love,
Annie