Terms and Conditions may Apply

My bank sent me an email the other day with the subject line, “We’re Updating our Mobile and Online Banking Service Agreement.”  Here was the first paragraph:

We may add, delete or change the terms of the Service Agreement at any time. We'll let you know of changes when legally required and will try to notify you of the nature of any material changes, even when not legally required to do so. We may communicate changes by either mail, email or a notice on our website (where we will also make the updated terms available). Continuing to use the service after the date changes are made means you agree to the updated Service Agreement.

I’m willing to bet you’ve received a similar email within the past six months from a bank, cable company, social-media website or some other large agency unless you are living under a rock or are in a coma.  Actually, even in these last two circumstances you probably have received a similar email; you just don’t know it yet.

And joyful tidings they bring, these emails, don’t they?  My bank was rubbing in the fact that they can add, delete, or change the terms of our Service Agreement at whim, so even though we originally agreed to “ABC”, they can alter that to “BCWXYZ,” or whatever else is likely to make them the most money.  At any time, mind you, which means that if they change the agreement this morning and think of an even better swindle this afternoon, they can change it again to that, and go off and award one another bonuses for thinking for another way to skin the customer. 

They may communicate these changes “by either mail, email or a notice on our website,” or peradventure they may communicate the changes by just opening the top window of their corporate headquarters and shouting in my general direction.  It’s really the same difference to me, because my only recourse, if I happen to learn of the changes and don’t approve, is to stop using their services, which they know I won’t do, because it’s so much hassle to pull all my money out, close my account, and open up with another institution that will be sending me similar messages within a few weeks.

So here’s what I would like to know:  who exactly died and made them king?  Why do these organizations get to unilaterally decide when agreements are to be changed? 

Here’s a story a friend told me a few years ago.  A man received an unsolicited credit-card invitation from a bank.  He didn’t care for some of the provisions in the agreement, so he scanned it into his computer, set the interest rate at zero percent, removed the limit on his credit, and eliminated the fees the bank proposed charging him.  Then he printed this amended agreement, signed it, and sent it back to the bank.  The bank responded by sending him a credit card, which he started using according to the rules of the agreement he had signed.

In due course (brace yourself for a shock), the bank took the man to court because he had violated their contract—the one they had sent him.  He responded by pointing out that he had sent them a counter offer, and that they had signified their agreement to it by awarding him a credit card.  Of course, the only signed document the bank officials could produce was the one stipulating the customer’s terms.  And here is the really shocking part of this story:  the court sided with the individual, ruling that the bank was obligated to abide by the terms that it had essentially agreed to by issuing the credit card.  If they had been too careless to review what they were agreeing to, well, that was their problem.

I would like to report that this happened to the bank sending you or me amendments to our agreements, but sadly this happened in Russia.  But here’s the thing:  doesn’t it buck you up a bit to consider that it did actually happen somewhere?  Doesn’t the notion that some bank somewhere on the planet took it in the shorts just this one time bring a tiny smile to your face and go some small way toward restoring your faith in the idea of a just universe?  Yeah, me too. 

So here’s what I am wondering.  Why can’t I send a message to my bank (or you to yours), saying something like the following (Subject line:  I’m updating our Banking Service Agreement)

In exchange for my maintaining an account or accounts with [bank’s name], and allowing it the use of my assets, [bank] agrees to assign to me one (1) share of its common stock every time I log onto its website or utilize one of its ATMs.  Continuing to allow me access to any of my accounts after receiving notice of this change means that [bank] agrees to this updated Service Agreement.

Now why doesn’t the world work in this sensible way?  If banks (and other entities which we must interact with) are allowed to unilaterally abrogate and alter agreements they have signed with us, why can’t we do the same?  While I’m waiting for an answer to these questions, I’m going to try to find that fellow who edited his credit-card contract.  I’d like to buy him a beer.

A Lamb Basting

A few weeks ago my daughter was awarded a PhD from an Australian university, so I did what a lot of proud parents would do:  I submitted an announcement of the achievement to the local paper.  In the announcement was some background to the doctorate, including her two prior degrees, so you can imagine my consternation, when the article appeared in print, to read that she had not in fact earned a master’s degree at Oxford, as I had supposed, but a baster’s degree.  My wife and I had been telling friends and family that she had been fooling with nano-particles and the like, but it seems that actually the most expensive part of her post-secondary education was spent honing her skills with gravies, broths, and bouillons.  Who knew?

It makes one wonder what treatment others’ significant life milestones receive in this paper:

“Franz and Lisette (now Mr. and Ms. Dayte-Pitt) were marred Saturday in a lavish outdoor ceremony at Quingling Park, overlooking the Puget Sound.  Said the pride, ‘It made our bedding so special to have all of our friends there to participate with and encourage us.’  The deception followed immediately at the same location...”

Or, “Come Monday, there will be a notable vacancy at the county Superior Court—the honorable Milo Q. Floozle called it a careen on Friday, hanging up his judicial ropes and embarking on a well earned retirement.  Although he spent more than 20 years as a deputy persecutor with the county, it was his seven years on the wench at the Superior Court that gave judge Floozle the most satisfaction...”

Or how about, “Alfred R. Stellenbosch entered peacefully into rost with the Lard, surrounded by his family, including his daughter, who had just arrived after being awarded a taster’s degree from Harvard.”

I am sympathetic to the plight of small-market journalism; I seem to hear weekly predictions of its imminent demise.  But that sympathy is tempered when I discover that my own local paper is so careless in running a simple “local student makes good” piece, turning what should be a proud announcement into an object of derision—“Ha ha!  A baster’s degree!”  This carelessness is even harder to excuse when, as in this case, all the editor had to do was cut and paste the scrupulously proofread announcement that was submitted electronically.  After an experience like this, what faith can I have in the accuracy of the paper’s more challenging articles, which require reporters to go out, ask questions, check facts, and write up the stories from scratch?

Plus ça change, plus ça change...

Well, we’re...back—I was going to say “home,” but I’ve learned to choose my words more carefully.  We’re back where we started from, let us say instead.  One of our first discoveries was that in our absence the old house had been home to a pack of Homo americanus rusticana (American hillbilly).  Of course, the habits of rusticana vary from place to place, but our set seemed to have two overmastering preoccupations—a passion for hammering or screwing fasteners into walls and woodwork, and a deathless hatred of window treatments:  blinds mangled or missing; screens torn; screen-frames bent; sills stained, scratched, sawed, and scorched.  It must have been stirring times here of an evening, with all the inmates hard at work on their individual projects.  So we have spent most of the last six months trying to restore the house to conventional habitability again. 

But the house was only the first thing we noticed—change now seems to be everywhere we turn.  For instance, while we were away, dogs became people.  Now we discover that they wear what bipedal people wear, go where bipedal people go, eat what bipedal people eat, and for all I know vote for members of congress to protect their interests.  It will take some getting used to.  Furthermore, I understand that corporations are now people as well, but, of course, that’s not as surprising, since they’ve had their own members of congress for years.  As Robert Frost might have put it, “The dear only knows what will next prove a person.”

Our home town has changed as well, in that it has somehow been transformed into a tourist destination, to the delight of local merchants and the exasperation of local residents.  Wander downtown now on a weekend afternoon, and you’ll soon find yourself shuffling along in the wake of Ethan, Tiffany, and Baxter, listening, whether you will or no, to a conversation like this:

Tiffany:  Wasn’t that a darling art museum?  I didn’t know they could make such beautiful things out of fish line!

Ethan:  I’ll say.  Cool Beans.  Baxter liked it too, didn’t you, Baxter?

Baxter:  (sniffs)

Ethan:  Hey, I’m kind of hungry.  Let’s stop in this bakery and get a cafecito and a palmier or maybe some madeleines.

Tiffany:  Ah, but hon, no.  Look, there are ten darling shops on this side of the street, and at least that many on the other side.  I think we should get to the end of the block before we eat.  Besides, Baxter can’t have French pastry—the butter makes him break out.

Ethan:  Well let’s let him decide.  What do you think, Baxter?  Are you hungry?

Baxter:  Woof!

Ethan:  See?

Sadly, we miss most of these enlightening exchanges because we rarely go downtown anymore, for the simple reason that there is virtually nothing downtown a non-tourist would want to buy.  The pharmacy, hardware store, stationery store, etc. were pushed out to make way for wine bars, art galleries, cafes galore, and shops selling fair-trade place mats and the like.  So it’s lucky for the merchants that they do have the tourists:   they’d be starving if they were foolish enough to rely on people like us to earn their living.

Because evidently we are not the only anti-capitalist subversives in our town:  Kathryn has recently stumbled upon a Facebook group called “Buy Nothing Bainbridge,” whose cohort are dedicated to re-distribution on a massive scale of unwanted possessions.  This is not barter, mind you.  People simply post pictures of things that they have but don’t want, and others arrange to come relieve them of the items, gratis.  Already, Kathryn has picked up a pair of wellington boots, a compost bin, a mailbox, and half a dozen blank notebooks.  Last night someone posted a picture of the bone from their dinner roast, a good deal of meat still on it, and asked if anyone would like it for the quadruped person in their family.  Tragically, I am not making this up. 

Kathryn has quickly formed an addiction to this particular group, and is constantly checking throughout the day to see what new treasures are up for grabs.  I have urged her to seek counseling, or at least to look for (or found) a group called “Acquire Nothing Bainbridge,” where people just hold onto the stuff they already have, and don’t try to fob it off onto others.  So far she has shown little appetite for making the switch.

So you can see that much has changed since we upped stakes in 2008, not least within ourselves.  Where to begin describing those changes?  Give me a while to think on that.

Service vs Servicing

This is a story in two parts with the world’s easiest quiz at the end.

Part 1—Caveat

Q:  When is a loaner phone not a loaner phone?  A:  When you hold it for more than 14 days.  This happened on a recent visit to the US—I needed a SIM card for my mobile phone so I could make calls and send texts while there.  Now, I have lived in countries where a SIM card cost the equivalent of USD $5, and it came with $5 credit on it.  But this wasn’t one of those countries, as I soon realized.  The first store I entered wanted $50 for a SIM card, and it came with a “plan,” meaning that the company would continue to extract money from my account every month until it went dry or I cried “uncle.”  I declined.

But I really needed a SIM card, so two days later I went into a T-Mobile store and repeated my request:  I was in the country for about three weeks, and just needed to be able to communicate with friends and family—nothing fancy—could they provide me with a SIM card for this, sans plan?  Yes, they could, for $35.  This still seemed a bit high, but by then I was becoming reconciled to the prices.

But their SIM card didn’t work; my phone was locked, according to the T-Mobile representatives.  I knew it wasn’t, because it had worked perfectly well with SIM cards in at least four different countries.  But they had a solution for me:  they would give me a “loaner phone,” which would work with the SIM card, and at the end of my trip I could just return it to any T-Mobile store and collect my deposit of $50.  This was a sub-optimal solution:  I didn’t want to be hauling around a strange phone and its packaging, and then have to return it all at a later date; besides, I would be leaving the country from a different city at the end of my three-week trip.  That was no problem, they assured me—they had stores everywhere.  So I gave them a $50 deposit, took my loaner phone and receipt, and departed.

But here was a problem—the first time I tried to use the phone the other party couldn’t hear me, so I returned to the T-Mobile store.  There a different representative confirmed the phone was a dud, and he would have given me another loaner except that this was the last one they had.  So he called around to other T-Mobile stores in the area and finally found one that did have a loaner for me.  I should explain here that all this time I was being driven around by an aunt, nearly 90 years old, and that she had been left out in the car during these exchanges.  So I was anxious to expedite things.

At the next store I was given another phone and the assistant and I confirmed that it  worked.  He tried to send me away without a charger, but I noticed the omission, and so was able to get one before I departed.  I was starting to think that T-Mobile was not top shelf as regards attention to detail, but I was mistaken.  Their assiduous attention to some details became apparent on my next visit to one of their San Francisco stores, at the end of my trip.  That was when they told me that because I had held the phone for more than 14 days, it was no longer a loaner, but was mine to keep and cherish forevermore.

I protested to the store manager that this 14-day limit had never been mentioned in either of the two stores I had previously visited, but he was unmoved.  He pointed out that it was outlined in bold at the bottom of the receipt for my deposit on the loaner:  the only way to get my “deposit” back was to return the phone within 14 days.  And when I got out the magnifying glass I was able to confirm that it was indeed in bold, and so stood out somewhat from the rest of the microscopic text.  I pointed out that none of the representatives had told me of the 14-day rule, despite my mentioning that my trip was three weeks long, which presumably should have set off alarm bells with them.  But he cut that short, and said that if he had been in my position he would have made sure he understood all the conditions of the contract before leaving the store, and 90-year-old aunts in hot cars be damned.  He didn’t actually come right out and say that it was dim and irresponsible consumers such as me who were making things so maddeningly difficult for modern businesses, but I could tell that he thought it.

And, of course, because I am dim and irresponsible, I didn’t think to draw his attention to the fact that these conditions were printed, howsoever minutely, on a receipt; that receipts are typically given at the end of a transaction, after money has changed hands; and that it used to be considered poor form to introduce new and salient conditions at that stage of negotiations.  I mean, you might look for this type of ex post facto legal chicanery on a “receipt” from Geech’s Payday Loans, for instance.  But you don’t (or at least didn’t formerly) expect them on receipts from companies claiming respectability, such as, for instance, the third-largest US mobile carrier.  Imagine paying a bill at a restaurant and getting a receipt stating, in 2-point font, that unless you remove your car from their parking area within 14 minutes, it will be towed at your expense.  Apparently the stalwart T-Mobile manager would be perfectly satisfied with a restaurant operating on those principles, and he probably checks his dinner receipts to see if something of the kind appears.

Trying to end on a positive note (for I was clearly chagrined to learn that I would never see that $50 again), the manager pointed out that since the phone was now my very own, I was free to use it as I pleased.  Unfortunately, certain laws and the manager’s patently uncooperative demeanor prevented me from using it in the first way that came to mind, and since the phone was almost certainly locked, its highest and best uses back home in Australia probably would have been as a paperweight, a pocket-sized chopping board, or as a flat object to skip as far as I could across a still body of water.  So in the end I gave it to my son to play with.

I have to admit that writing this out has been cathartic, but not perfectly so.  I figure it has given me about $20 worth of pleasure to vent my spleen at the shabby business practices of T-Mobile, which means that I am still $30 short on the “deposit” they have on permanent loan from me.  So if anyone can suggest something I could do to lose them $30 or more worth of business, I would love to hear from you.

Part 2—Let there be light

Two days after our return to Australia, I was up and showered early:  a technician was due to arrive “between eight and ten a.m.” and I wanted to be presentable. This was to perform a service we had arranged before our departure, which was to replace all the inefficient, incandescent overhead lights in our rented home (13 in all) with brighter, energy-saving, LED lights.  After my recent experience with T-Mobile, I didn’t really expect the tech before the early afternoon, if ever, but no, he rang the door bell right at 8:00.  He was efficient and was also friendly without being obsequious, a balance that seems impossible for some workers to strike nowadays.  He was finished and on his way by 8:30; our illumination since then has been much brighter and cheaper.  Oh yes, and we didn’t pay anything for these lights or their installation, since the process was funded by the state government as part of their program to make Victorian homes more energy-efficient.

The Quiz

Which story above contains an example of customer service, and which contains an example of customer servicing (as in “Let’s go have a beer while the bull is servicing your cow.”)?  See?  I told you it was an easy quiz.

Rubbed the Wrong Way

        I had never had a professional massage before I left the U.S.  No, that’s not quite right—let me start over.  I’d never paid for a massage before leaving the U.S.  I’d had massages before, of course, but they had all been the efforts of amateur enthusiasts, and so came gratis.  Besides, most of that was way back in my college days.  As far as professional massages go, I’m not sure that I’ve had one of those to this day, but now I have at least paid for a few.  These have all been in Asia, basically because they are cheap enough here to indulge in now and then, and a person would be a fool not to give them a try when the rates are so reasonable.  They can be wonderfully relaxing when done right.

        So far I’ve had paid massages in Thailand (firm up to nearly painful, but ultimately very nice), Vietnam (gentle and very relaxing), Cambodia (gentle, relaxing, and unconscionably cheap--$10), and southern China, where they tended to go for the Thai approach in the establishments I visited.  Basically, however, the treatments have all been pretty similar, with a regional variation here and there.    

        I am in northern China now—Jinan, in Shandong province—and last weekend I decided to see what sort of massages are on tap here.  A whole new experience, is the short answer.  Here’s what happened.

        I found a likely looking business and entered it with a sort of wary confidence.  Every transaction is an adventure when you don’t speak the language, and this goes double when you mean to go into a strange establishment, remove most of your clothing, and let someone you don’t know grope you a while.  So the first hurdle was making sure I was in the right sort of place, and hadn’t, say, wandered into a pet-grooming salon through misapprehension of the Chinese characters outside. I knew the Chinese word for massage, however, and could make the appropriate gestures, so I was soon put at ease on that score:  they did massages here. 

        The menu was all in Chinese, however, so I picked something in the mid-price range and hoped for the best.  The hostess conducted me to a room with about six severely reclined chairs, all empty, and gestured to the middle one.  I believe she told me to make myself at home, but, since it was all in Chinese, I wasn’t entirely sure.

        She left, and I removed my jacket, shoes and socks, hoping that I had taken off enough, but not too much, to make a good impression.  Presently, my masseuse appeared—a plump, pretty woman of 25, as I subsequently learned.  She was carrying a wooden tub of hot water with rose petals floating in it.  She placed this on the floor and motioned for me to roll up my pant cuffs and deposit my feet in the tub.  As I did so, she produced a small foil envelope, from which she extracted a moist, mask-shaped piece of towel.  By gestures she invited me to place this over my face.  I complied, but didn’t feel any more relaxed for it.  The combination of my feet in hot, rosy water and my face under a cold, wet towel wasn’t doing it for me, so I tried to strike up a conversation with my masseuse as a diversion.

        As I expected, she spoke very little English, and I soon exhausted my repertoire of Chinese phrases:  “I am an English teacher;” “I want to get off the bus here;”  “That’s very expensive;” “I like tomatoes.”  But we managed to find out a few things about each other nonetheless.  Her name was Juen, she was a native of Jinan, and although I was twice her age, she insisted on seniority in the partnership because she was masseuse number 59.

        Presently she hauled my feet out of the bucket and then coddled them for a good long while, which seemed to give her great satisfaction, but was wasted effort as far as I was concerned.  I know that for some people a foot massage is heaven, but not me.  Maybe I haven’t been wearing cheap enough shoes, but throughout my life my feet have generally looked after themselves.  I would find an ear massage equally rewarding—ah, but we’ll get to that.  For the moment, however, Juen seemingly could not do enough for my toes.

        “Are you going to paint them or sculpt them when you get home?” I asked finally.

        “Shen me?”

        “You seem to be committing them to memory.  Have you named them all yet?  They feel wonderful now, but shall we move on to other topics, so to speak?”

        She laughed.  “Wo ting bu dom!”  She gave my foot a final rub and reached for a towel to dry them.  It was then that the strangeness first intruded.  From somewhere she brought out a glass globe about half the size of those containing live goldfish that you used to win at carnivals.  But this one was of thicker glass and had a smaller aperture.  Within the globe was a small patch of white cloth.  She sprayed some clear liquid into the globe from a plastic bottle and clicked a lighter, igniting the cloth.  She immediately clapped the globe over the bottom of my foot and, as the flame extinguished itself, a suction was created which grabbed the flesh on the sole of my foot and held on.  She ran this globe up and down my foot a few times and then peeled it away.  It separated with a loud pop as the pressure was released.  She repeated this on my other foot.  “Well that’s new,” thought I.  She then signaled that I could remove the damp mask, which I gratefully did.

        Next came the leg massage, but I could tell Juen’s heart wasn’t in it.  I was still wearing my jeans and neither of us enjoyed it much, so she soon desisted.  She left the room with the tub and returned bearing more equipment.  She now reclined my chair fully and settled on a stool above my head.  “Ah, the head massage,” I thought.  “That’s always good.”  Instead, a bright LED light was snapped on at my temple and Juen was soon running a Q-Tip briskly around the inside of my ear.  This made me squirm a bit—it was too clinical or janitorial to be relaxing—and I began to fear that I had mistakenly contracted for the ladies’ facial treatment or something.  But the other ear had to be done too, of course to maintain balance in the universe, so we got through it while I looked forward hopefully to a brighter future.

        By and by she discarded the Q-Tip and then brought up something that looked like a paper horn such as one might blow at a New Year’s celebration.

        “What’s that?” I asked, shying somewhat as she moved in.  She smiled sweetly but said nothing, and then my fears were confirmed as she began to insert the thin end of the horn into an ear.  “No, I think I’d rather not,” I began.  She hesitated, but then spoke very slowly and clearly in English.

        “It’s all right.”

        I really wanted to believe her.  “You sure?”

        “Yes, it’s all right.”  So there we were.  She finished inserting the horn, held it there, and then, as expected, there came the click of the lighter.  She had lit the other end of the horn.  This was even less relaxing than the globes on the feet.  It sounded as if she were holding an ear trumpet over a bowl of Rice Crispies, and Lord, how big the flame looked in my peripheral vision!  I could feel the heat of it on my cheek, and knew it was burning closer all the time.  After perhaps 15 seconds she blew it out and re-inserted it in the other ear.  This time the flame was even closer, of course, but Juen withdrew it before it could scorch me.

        For some reason the flame refused to be extinguished this time, so Juen placed the horn, still burning, in a thick glass ashtray beside my chair.  She then took up one arm and began to work on that.  I tried to relax, wondering how one might conveniently remove soot marks from the ears.

        Perhaps half a minute later there was a loud crack and tinkling of glass as the ashtray shattered from the heat of the flaming horn.  Juen provided a running commentary in Chinese, and finally smothered the horn by throwing my damp facial mask over the smoldering remains.  Then she tittered, which I found most alarming of all, as if it were the most amusing thing in the world to have an ashtray explode at one’s elbow.  She said something, still giggling, which I can only imagine was along the lines of, “Boy, it’d smart to get a shard of that in your eye, wouldn’t it?”

        But she attended to business now—the normal sort I had come to expect in massages—and I started to relax again.  She had me remove my shirt and flip over, and for a while she did a creditable job soothing tense muscles in my back.  Then she left the room and returned with what looked like a tackle box.  This boded ill.

        Lying face-down, I didn’t see much of what happened after that, so I can only report what it felt and sounded like.  She first put what seemed to be a thick cloth mat over my back, and then draped a lighter cloth on top of that.  Next I heard the ominous sound of her spray bottle as she squeezed the trigger again and again over me—for hours, it seemed.  I thought of Montag, in Fahrenheit 451, hosing down books with kerosene.  Then there came a pause as she weighed her words.

        “When it is hot, tell me.”

        “Uh, what are you—?“ I began.

        “Don’t move your body,” she added, enunciating slowly and clearly.

        “Not a smidge.”

        I heard the click of the lighter, and a bright, quavering glow leapt up in the room, as if a centenarian’s birthday cake had just appeared.  Plainly, some sort of pyre was now alight on my back.  I could have read by the illumination, if I’d had a book. 

        It’s strange, the thoughts you have at times like these—I mean times when absolutely nothing in your previous years of existence gives you any guidance on how to behave.  A random phrase swam up through my consciousness from those faraway years at Cherry Chase Elementary:  “Stop, drop, and roll.”  Well sure, if it comes to that, why not? 

        From the tops of my eyes it looked as if Juen were waving her hands, but I couldn’t tell how or why.  I waited for her to say something (“Oh shit!  Oh shit!”), and was reassured when she didn’t.  Nor had there been a shriek and clatter of fleeing feet—good signs, these.  But then, as my back began to roast a new thought occurred:  “Disgruntled employee?” I asked myself.  What better way to tell the boss to go to hell than by calmly bar-be-queing a foreigner in the main parlor?  (“Let him try to get the smell of that out!  Ha!”)  And there had been that disconcerting giggle when the ashtray went off like a grenade.  Perhaps not an entirely full deck here, young Juen.

        But meanwhile my back was beginning to smoke, and I wondered how long I was expected to hold out.  Newspaper headlines formed themselves unbidden in my imagination:

Massage Business Gutted by Fire:  Foreigner Blamed

“He moved his body,” worker says

        “Uh, it’s getting a bit warm,” I remarked, and Juen instantly flipped the mat up over the flame, snuffing it.  I was enormously relieved, of course, and she, of course, repeated the process twice more.  She wasn’t disgruntled, I decided.  She just wanted to give me my money’s worth, and perhaps she had a marshmallow that she was determined to finish toasting.

        But eventually it ended and I heaved one or perhaps two relieved sighs.  Then I heard the click of the tackle box being opened, and a line from a movie flashed through my mind:  “What fresh new hell is this?”  There was the tinkle of jostling glass, and I turned my head to see Juen extracting hundreds (apparently) of the small globes my feet had met previously.  This was clearly the grand finale, so I turned my face down again and dumbly waited for what was to come. 

        It didn’t take long:  the click of the lighter, and a moment later I felt a very sharp pinch on the lower right side of my back; another click and a matching pinch on the left.  And so on, marching up my back, until there were eight or ten globes, each trying to suck up as much of me as they possibly could.  Now, dear reader, please think back to the tormentor of your childhood—the one who loved to pinch you just to see your reaction.  Maybe it was a teasing uncle, or maybe a sworn enemy at school.  Think how you writhed under their ministrations and tried to get away.  Now imagine that feeling multiplied by eight or ten up and down your back—strong, cruel, tireless pinches that never weaken or move off the spot that they’ve seized.  I shifted slightly—I couldn’t help it—and discovered I now sounded like a woeful wind chime, as the globes clinked against one another.

        “How, uh, long do they stay there?”  I tried to sound conversational, unconcerned.

        “Ten minutes.”

        “Ten minutes!?”

        “Okay, okay.  Five minutes.”

        “Ah, God.”  I took deep breaths and tried to distract myself with memory exercises, but those five minutes still dragged out interminably.

        “It’s very red,” Juen said after a while, just making small talk.  “Very red.”

        “I’m sure it is,” I conceded, and we lapsed into silence again.

        At last, pop, pop, pop, off came the globes, and I heard Juen replacing them in the tackle box.  I turned over and looked wanly at her.  I was as relaxed as a person might be when leaving a bruising but walk-away car wreck.

        “Okay, that’s all,” she told me, and then remembered something.  “Oh, 24 hour, don’t—“ She made scrubbing gestures on her arms.  “It’s not good for your healthy—for your body.”

        “Don’t wash.  Absolutely,” I agreed immediately.  “Give the tissues a chance to re-attach themselves.  No point losing flesh unnecessarily.”

        “Okay, that’s all!” she repeated, smiling.

        The hostess was smiling too, as I paid, and she delivered the speech she had clearly been rehearsing.  “We welcome you back to our massaging!”

        I smiled warmly in return.  “Yes!  Don’t hold your breath!”

        This pleased her.  “Sank you!”

        “You’re most welcome.”

        Back home I stripped off my shirt in front of the mirror to see what hath Juen wrought, and my mouth dropped open.  There on my back were two rows of tennis-ball-sized hickies, the worst the color of ripe bing cherries.  “My God, I’m disfigured!” I sputtered, probing them gingerly to see if they might not be just hideous illusions.  I had seen these marks before, on men in the dressing rooms of other massage establishments, and had assumed they were the symptoms of some horrible disease—perhaps the consequences of a lifetime of debauchery.  But now I had them, and I understood.  I had paid good money for them, moreover.

        That was last week, and these souvenirs are still visible, though mercifully fading now.  Still, I have decided not to contract for any more massages here in Jinan—the practitioners are too addicted to pyrotechnics for my taste.  I’ll save my money for Thailand or Vietnam where the only things they set fire to are perhaps candles for ambience and the occasional stick of sandalwood incense.

Brew-haha!

        Here is a piece of advice if you ever want to do something in China—go out to dinner, say, or buy an electronic gadget, or visit a park or a museum:  multiply the amount of time such an errand would take back home by five, and you should be fine—assuming that “back home” isn’t somewhere else in China.  I say this in light of visa issues that have beset me since September 1st, when the Chinese government changed their policies: I now have to get the more costly and time-consuming Z visa, instead of the one I had previously been told to get.  A Chinese friend once did a study contrasting learning styles and expectations of British and Chinese students.  I can’t remember all her results, but I recall that one of her findings was that Chinese students have a “much higher tolerance for uncertainty” than their British (and, I daresay, American) counterparts.  No argument here!  A Chinese worker, coming to the UK, wouldn’t bat an eye at similar visa tribulations, whereas, for the first time in my life a doctor has recently convinced me to start taking blood-pressure medication.  Coincidence?  Possibly, but it’s still good prophylactic medicine since I apparently will be facing more uncertainty as I head back to China soon—if not quite as soon as anticipated.  Still, the place has some compensations, one of which I wish to touch on now. 

        In an article published the same day as the infamous visa changes referred to above, the BBC world service ran an article calling the U.K. “Europe’s ‘Addictions Capital.’”  And it kind of hit home with me because, frankly, I am part of the problem—I’m an addict.  Moreover, I don’t know if it is an aggravating or extenuating fact to say that I didn’t even acquire my addiction here; I brought it with me from China, along with the means of satisfying it.  To cut it short, I’m hooked on Chinese tea; I adore the stuff.  And no, it isn’t just a myth or a stereotype that a lot of tea is drunk there—it really is true.  When I landed here last November, I was carrying about 2 kgs (4.4 lbs) of various kinds of tea, unsure of its availability here in the U.K.

        In China, shops selling all sorts of tea are still found everywhere, from upscale shopping malls to dusty back streets of every city and town.  In addition to tea proper, there are a number of herbal infusions, as they are sometimes known, made of the dried leaves, bark, and especially the dried flowers of many different plants.  Some of these are drunk merely for the pleasant taste, but most are reputed to have medicinal properties.  Rosebud tea is apparently a big seller, though I haven’t tried it.  My personal favorite among the herbals is chrysanthemum tea, which makes a splendid mug before bedtime.  The same friend who conducted the study above also introduced me to “exploding pod tea.”  That’s not it’s real name—I don’t know what that is—but it is a mixture of various dried flowers, seeds, sugar crystals and whatnot, plus one specimen of what looks like a pecan in the shell.  But when you pour a few pots of boiling water over this “pecan,” it bursts open like the pods in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and releases a gelatinous mass that resembles eel spawn.  But it’s delicious, and it’s also wonderfully soothing to a croaky throat, so we keep a few packets on hand for the winter months.

        There are many varieties and grades of regular tea (Camellia sinensis—the name gives away its Chinese origins, and China is still the world’s leading tea producer), of course, but I lack both the space and the expertise to go into that extensively—mostly I lack the expertise.  But I will just mention a couple of my favorites because, to quote the international credo of the ignorant, “I don’t know much, but I know what I like.”

        First there is green tea, which seems to be preposterously good for you.  According to Wikipedia,

Recent studies suggest that green tea may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer, promote oral health, reduce blood pressure, help with weight control, improve antibacterial and antivirasic activity, provide protection from solar ultraviolet light, increase bone mineral density, and have "anti-fibrotic properties, and neuroprotective power."

Test results are still pending on claims that drinking green tea also increases your odds of winning the lottery and makes you irresistible to would-be lovers.  Me, I just like the mild nutty flavor, especially since I learned how to make it properly.  Apparently the reason my green tea was often bitter in my pre-China days was that the water was too hot.  I found out that the proper way to make it is to boil water and then let it cool to 75 to 80 °C (167 to 176 °F) before pouring it over the tea.

        But as much as I love the green teas, my heart, or at least my palate, belongs to pu’er (or pu-erh) tea, most of which comes from Yunnan province.  How to describe it?  Have you ever held a handful of dark, loamy earth that was so rich—and smelled so rich—that you could almost imagine a bean or a tomato plant sprouting before your eyes and starting to push out leaves?  What would a tea taste like, brewed out of earth such as that?  That’s easy:  it would be horrible, of course—full of muck, and grit, and pebbles, and decomposing cabbage leaves, and bits of earthworms.  But imagine if you could brew a tea that tasted as good and wholesome as that earth smelled.  Well, that’s pu’er.  And unlike green tea, it needs boiling water to bring out its best flavor.  Some people actually throw the tea into the pot and boil it together with the water.  It never goes bitter—at least, I have never tasted bitter pu’er.  Moreover, you can repeatedly pour boiling water into the pot, and pour out cup after cup of delicious tea.

        The pu’er I buy normally comes in disk form, as shown, wrapped in paper. 

Like good wine, it improves with age, or so I am told.  To make the tea you break off a piece from the disk and place it in a teapot of the size that children used to use when hosting play tea parties, and you pour boiling water over it. 

  

This first dousing is merely to “wash” the tea, however, and is instantly poured away.  You then add more boiling water, and this is what you pour into cups for drinking.  This is done immediately—there is no need for steeping the tea, although doing so does no harm; as I say, it does not go bitter.  The Chinese drink this tea in small cups—some the size of an egg cup—but I play the western philistine and have mine in a standard coffee mug.  But you can keep adding boiling water over and over, especially if you are using good-quality pu’er, and pour off mug after mug of splendid tea.

        But it’s not all deliciousness and reduced blood pressure when it comes to Chinese beverages, of course; there must be a dark side, a yin to the tea’s yang.  And this is baijiu—pronounced, with amazing appropriacy, “By Joe!”  It literally means “white liquor” or “white wine,” but really it is simply distilled malevolence, bottled evil.  The Chinese seem to regard it as the pinnacle of alcoholic spirits but in this, as in much else, they are mistaken.  I’ve tried it twice—the first time out of curiosity (I had heard so much about it), and I regretted the experiment for most of the next day. 

        The second time it was part of a special dinner, and I was assured that this was “good baijiu.”  Still, it tasted the same as it had during my first encounter, which is to say as if it had just been decanted from a Coleman fuel can.  My companions made sure my glass was never less than half full, so I got a fair dose.  I never became drunk; all I felt was a sort of increasing dullness or boredom stealing over me, a realization that I didn’t really have anything interesting to say, and was not much interested in the conversation of my dinner companions either.  But I do recall with perfect clarity everything we talked about.  Even so, my friends seemed a bit worried about how much I had taken on board, so they insisted on walking me home, actually taking my arm as we crossed the road.

        The real baijiu adventure was the next day, however, with the most singular hangover I’ve ever experienced.  Its main feature was an incapacitating mental torpidity, as if I had been somehow painlessly concussed.  Just as I hadn’t been drunk the previous night, so now I didn’t feel sick or have a headache.  Instead I just felt as if half of my brain had been removed, and the remaining portion wasn’t up to much.  It was impossible to concentrate on anything, or rather, my mind would just attach itself to one small subject and think three or four simple thoughts about it, refusing to move on to anything else.  And those three or four notions would chase each other around in my brain repetitively like a tedious carousel.  This went on all day; productive work was entirely out of the question.  It was a profoundly disturbing glimpse of what life as a member of congress must be like, and I have given baijiu a very wide berth since then.

        So that’s a brief taste of what’s brewing in China.  I still have a lot of tea left over because when I came away I didn’t know if I would ever be going back.  Now I need to find it an appreciative home, since I do not intend to carry it back with me, coals-to-Newcastle-fashion.

Five Years In – Coming Full Circle…

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." ...

Five years ago next month we left Bainbridge Island, WA our home of 20-years with a plan, or at least guidelines for our new semi-itinerant lifestyle.  Our goal was to live our retirement before retiring and without digging into any retirement savings, to live in interesting places rather than merely visiting as tourists, to work and pay our taxes but to not put down roots.  The latter, of course, meant travelling light and moving-on with reasonable periodicity: a reasonable minimum stay in each country would be one year with a maximum of two.  Five years in, how have we fared in adhering to these guidelines?

On the first two points I think we deserve top marks.  We’ve succeeded in  enjoying a premature retirement having visited some of the wonders of the world, lived for many months of the year under sunny skies, shared some fine cultural experiences, and enjoyed a pretty free and easy life-style, all while keeping our savings account in the black and on a slight upward trajectory.  But what about our third guideline which stipulates a  ‘minimum of one-year, maximum of two’ in each country?  Well here we have been less successful: we spent two years and three months in Australia, then five months in Vietnam followed by eight months in China (me), and fifteen months in China (Steve).   My plan on arriving in England last year was to increase our average by sojourning for two years here but, sadly, it is not to be – so much for plans…  While I was busy planning, others around me were reaching their own conclusions about life - Natasha came to the realisation that her  university supervisor was never going to secure funding for her to complete her PhD at Oxford, while Steve discovered that he doesn’t enjoy living in England.   Too bad because I’m thoroughly enjoying being back in my homeland and love my job at the Jenner Institute!

And so, five years into our adventure we are going to loop back and return to the beginning – to Australia!  (We will follow our daughter who will undertake a CSIRO-funded PhD at Monash University.)  However, we will return measurably altered by our experiences and, inevitably, our second sojourn in this amazing country will be different.  When we arrived in Melbourne in October 2008 it was with a sense of adventure but also anxiety - would we be able to find somewhere to stay?  How did banking work in a foreign country?   How would we file taxes and obtain visas?   How did the health system work?  How would we get around?  I laugh at these trivial concerns now.  Five years on we’ve negotiated a rental in Hanoi (albeit one with decidedly dubious plumbing); managed to get non-convertible currencies (Vietnamese Dong and Chinese Yuan) out of their mother countries; dealt with the tax systems in several countries (or, rather, our fabulous accountant has); managed to secure a series of rabies shots for Steve in Hanoi when he got  bitten by a dog, and ridden in, and on, a huge variety of vehicles from motorbikes to rickety buses to tuk tuks.  Returning to Australia will be easy from the practical perspective!  But how have we changed as people, and how will these changes become manifest on our return?  I’m concerned that we’ve lost the ability to commit to a place.  It’s too easy, once one gets into this peripatetic mindset, to just up sticks and move on when things get difficult eg. when Steve finds himself missing the exoticism of Asia.  We didn’t want to put down tap roots in a place, but it was not our goal to become incapable of establishing rootlets!

On the plus side, travelling has allowed us to establish what is really important to us as individuals.  I’ve learnt that I can’t live in an environment without external intellectual stimulus – I thrive in a city like Oxford where there is easy access to the arts, public lectures and an educated populace.  However, I’ve also learnt that I can’t handle long, grey British winters!  Surprisingly, food is more important to me than I had thought – endless meals of greasy, stringy chicken, rice, and fibrous greens in China got me really depressed.  I know now that food can affect one’s mental well-being and it makes me wonder how any child subsisting on rice alone can focus on their studies in school and be happy at home.  For his part, Steve has learnt that he thrives on the external stimulus of ‘exoticism’.  I’ll let him define in a later blog exactly what this means to him.  Will he be able to cope in staid Melbourne even though it’s an intensely cosmopolitan city?  Will constant interaction with his EFL students be enough to sate his desire for the exotic?  Or will he be forever mourning the absence of excitement and colour in the street and the sights and smells of street vendors?  I worry that he has been alienated from the Western world forever!

In my last blog, written over a year ago, I related my feelings about coming ‘home’ and ended with that timeless Tolkien quote: ‘Not all those who wander are lost.’  Now I’m forced to the realisation that we might be!  It is common knowledge that travel provides the traveller unrivalled insights into the world and, more importantly, into themselves.  (I am reminded again of Tolkien’s oeuvre and of the changes Sam and Frodo underwent during their journey.)  Knowing oneself and one’s personal priorities in life is a key first step, but finding a place where one can live once these personal discoveries have been made is an even bigger second step.  Let’s not forget that in the end Frodo never could settle in the Shire after returning from his adventures  but sailed away with the elves.  Maybe it’s not those who wander that we should worry about, for indeed, they aren’t lost; instead it’s the wanderers who return who need guidance!