I set my alarm last night for 9:00 am and sat down to finish Lost in Planet China, by J. Maarten Troost. I had been savoring the last few of chapters for a couple of days because I don't really have anything else to read after this and haven't gotten my library card yet. Anyway, I was exhausted last night and towards the last few pages I started to nod off. Not many people know this but I am a habitual sleepwalker. No really, it is bad. Normally I don't travel far, but sometimes I will wake up confused, standing in the middle of a room wondering why I am trying to urinate into a potted plant.
After 375 quality pages, Troost decides to end the book with a questionably fictional scene of himself getting trapped in North Korea when his rented boat dies feet from the coast. From the boat he can see a rally and the soldiers are watching him wearily as his powerless dingy floats closer and closer to the shore. I was able to drag my way through to the last page and finish the book before immediately succumbing to exhaustion. The final passage was not the last I would think about the terrifying consequences of landing on North Korea's shore armed with nothing more than an American passport......
Next thing I knew I was in Kim Jong Il's palace handcuffed to a chair and the Napoleonic dictator himself was interrogating me in Korean. After a merciless browbeating, I was released from the handcuffs and forced to move to a chair to await sentencing. Suddenly, my interrogator went from energetic and terrifying to stiff as a board. At this point the people around me switched from speaking Korean to English and informed me of a little known secret, Kim Jong Il is actually dead and has been for years. North Korean officials just re-animate him whenever it is necessary (Terrifying right? Who would have known...). At this point I was expecting a sentence of at least 15 years of hard labor and I had no doubts Big Bill would not be making a return trip to bail me out.
Luckily, before the verdict could be laid down I started to wake up. Regaining consciousness was not immediate, it took me a couple of minutes to put together why I was standing in the middle of my room muttering to myself. Even when I finally realized what had happened it took me a while to calm down. The dream was so vivid and I am not exactly living in the most comforting environment (I will explain in a later post but let's just say quite a few ghost stories have originated from my apartment complex). Sensing it would take me a little while to get back to sleep I reset my alarm to 10 am and started to laugh a little bit. Before long I was out again.
At 7 am I was shook out of bed by the smooth vocals of Akon and Snoop Dogg. Apparently, my Chinese neighbor woke up this morning and wanted to share his good fortune with rest of us. For the next three hours he played "I Want to Love You" and two other Cantonese pop songs on repeat. Three hours! I doubt he has a clue what one word in the song means, let alone what "winding and grinding up on that floor" is, but as I have learned throughout my travels American pop music is king no matter what language you speak. It was so loud that no matter how hard I slapped the wall it was impossible for him to hear my protests. I gave up and buried my head for a couple of hours trying to get back to sleep.
Anyway, this is my blog I have set up to share with you what I am up to this year. Most of the time I will probably sharing pictures and videos of the year, and relating stories that I find interesting. Macau is an amazing city and I hope you enjoy reading.
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