Category: Uncategorized

If you want an accurate depiction of what Myanmar is like, you should watch Stallone’s First Blood, First Blood Part Two, the third one which I cannot remember (Rocky III maybe?), and the newest one, Rambo, or as makes sense to me, Fourth Blood. First Blood doesn’t really give you any ideas about Myanmar, as it is just Rambo killing Americans in America, but for your own good and for a more followable plot, I suggest you watch it as well. Fourth Blood was actually set in Myanmar, but I don’t know about the other ones. So, watch Fourth Blood especially carefully.

Being there for a week really opened my eyes to how many men I could kill in one day. I mean, I killed everyone. Bow and Arrow, gun, bare hands, bamboo shanks up the shank, you name it, I killed a man with it.
I think, no, I know, that mainstream media doesn’t properly represent a place like this. I suggest that when you see pieces of Myanmar from Lloyd Robertson or Kevin Neuman, or even Peter Mansbridge, believe very little of what you hear. If you are going to trust anyone as to the status of a foreign land, trust the writing of Stallone. He has never told a lie.
I visited a place called Kalay, north part, near India. A friend stays there. The people were so nice, nicer than any person i’d ever met, that I don’t see how Stallone could kill any of them….

When I was in Rangoon I met a friend. He is about 50 years old and is from Myanmar. He is famous worldwide for poor English that is nearly impossible to decipher. He talks like he is speaking in hieroglyphics, but not even that simple. When he heard I was in town he traveled all night by foot (i think) with a giant bag of dry fish and peanuts slung over his shoulder, meant as a gift for the special visitors. He was also sure to mention that lunch was his responsibility. But the way he said it was, “You eat. My duty.” Unreal. This changed my life.

But now I’m in India again. Caught a sleeper train from Kolkata to Bangalore, and now I’m chilling in the technologically advanced world of Bengaluru. Tourists are crawling all over this city and this whole country. I think it all started with a little blog I call Balls of Rice, two years ago. I was obviously the first white North American male to visit India since Jesus did before his ministry.

Right?

Myanmar goes through the same test as every country that i’ve been to.

The food: I haven’t had any yet. I’ll update this at the end of the week. It smells like Northeastern India food and looks more like thai food. I’m expecting it will be great, and I’ll love it.

The girls: I haven’t met any yet. But if any of them come ask me to marry them, I probably wouldn’t say no. But I might not say yes.

The intangibles: This category could be long. Being the country it is, tourists have to stay in certain hotels, or so i’ve been told. So our hotel only runs in USDollars and something called Foreign Exchange Currency (FEC). Neither make sense to me. I’m in Myanmar, use your own money. Also exchanging money isn’t easy either. Rupees are not well liked in these parts. So a -1 for that.
+1 for the fact that their money is spelled Kyats and said Chets. That is what i’m talking about. Stick it to the English man. You know how i feel about phonics. or if you don’t, now you do. I hate them.
+1 for all the people on the street. They are all very friendly, and not because they want to get to know my wallet or my ass. They seem just generally cool.
-1 for lakes that cost money to walk around.
+1 for Buddhism.

Myanmar. After one day, it’s the weirdest place I’ve seen in my life. We’ll see what a week does to me.
Hopefully it’ll be Rangood.

The underlying theme of my trip has been, besides learning Hindi in a multiple language (but rarely Hindi) environment, besides seeing how dirty of a hotel I can get/how dirty my feet can get, besides seeing how long I can go just using my hand (you know what I mean), besides dudes asking me for sex (it happened again. Do I put out some sort of gay vibe?. Besides all these, the theme has been marriages. Not solely mine, or the lack of mine, but there seems to be a wave of proposal, love marriage, wedding and divorce talk these days. Not that I didn't hear all this garbage in my two previous trips, but now some of my friends are getting married, small boys are proposing to girls, and people are questioning my intentions as this is my third trip in three years. (Hey man, I'm married to the land and it's curry. If a girl comes along it's not my fault. It's the curry's.)

Here's a few stories from my trip. A girl's husband left her, but not until after poisoning his baby inside her, or that's the rumour. A couple married love marriage, a big deal where they came from. A friend left by his wife, alone with his new child, remarrying very shortly after.

I am just lucky that most dudes here don't get married until around 30. So I've got ten years until all my friends get married and there's a serious wedding fest like Canada last summer. And I've got about ten years until I should worry about my own dowry.

The reason I bring this up is to invite you to my wedding next month, the 31st of April, TwoThousandNine. If you're serious about coming, RSVP to NicWedsPotofcurry@yahoo.co.in

I guess Canada isn't the only place that the wedding fever is blazing hot like a chili on a nipple. Raja calls the male reproductive organ area the mainpoint. It seems completely logical here to find a wife by closing your eyes, spinning around with your mainpoint hanging out to guide you. I could be married by next week if I wanted. If the dowry includes a good enough curry, I would have to say yes.

The village. I’m in Kalapani, a village within a city in Guwahati. When you are there, you think you are hours away from civilization, except for all the pollution. But then you climb a mountain and you can hear the city’s growl, horns, and see the buildings behind the haze, and you realize that you are still in the city. But the village part of the city. The part of the city without electricity or running water. Weird city/village.

Then I come back to the city for an evening. I cry from the dust storms and black smoke, although I truly enjoy the scent, my eyes that are coated with contacts made of some breatheable super material become dry like a Muslim’s beard on Holi Festival. Then I go to the saloon to get a shave. I was waiting at the saloon, the hairdresser R.K. was busy hanging out at some other shop, and some man came to me, spoke very little English, but enough to tell me that he wanted to show me his office in the same building as R.K’s saloon. I agreed. I usually let anyone abduct me and serve me whatever food/drink they want, and leave shortly after. This guy took my up the stairs saying things like, ‘OK OK, Office, yes, good.’ Then I heard a quick, ‘Let’s fuck.’ come out of his mouth.
I stopped. His tone was more threatening than playful, but for my lifestyle choice, either way isn’t for me.
He said he was joking. But I don’t think he was. I was going to tell him that I respected his lifestyle but that I didn’t enjoy the Indian rolled roti.
I told him a few things without using the word he used.. I walked by and I left. He laughed.
I got shaved. I rode a rickshaw. I bought a Hindi dictionary. I rode a rickshaw. Epic times.
But don’t worry mom. This isn’t the first time this has happened. It really isn’t.

The village has nice tiny Nepali people cooking me food. The city has creepy young business men wanting to get it on in their office.

Weird times.

I hate extremely long blogs. I can’t stand reading other people’s good times, especially when you strain your finger scrolling down the window nineteen times. So I will break mine into three seperate ones. Read them as you wish.

On the bus, the windows are horizontally sliding windows, that you share with those people in the front and back of you. I slid my windows back six inches so I could put my arm out and catch some air. My stomach wasn’t feeling too good from the unreal back and forth driving of the Aizawl roads. I was worried what the next 20 hours would be like. Then all of the sudden, the lady behind me slammed the windows back my way, damaging my hand slightly, as she loudly puked over her husband and child. Suddenly my stomach was feeling pretty ironclad.

First, Aizawl…. Supreme was just one of my friends to visit while back in my second home. If you haven’t heard yet, his name is Supreme. His wife Mary and kids Shristi and Christopher..

The first day I saw him he promised me chicks. His words, not mine.

I went to his place for tea and his family was sick. The kids, the wife, the maid. So we had tea, I left, and came back in the morning, with his promises of chicks ringing in my head. He told me his wife, Mary, was now Sikh, so she could not attend school for a while. But it actually turned out she wasn’t Sikh, she was just in fact, sick. Difference.
He cooked me a fish curry breakfast with rice, boiled vegetables and some chilis, and after he insisted that I enjoy the mouth freshening power of the betelnut. One minute with the pan in my mouth and I was in a very firey spiral. Suddenly the mashed rice conncoction he was feeding his 1 year old son didn’t look so good. Suddenly Bob the Builder on the TV was making sense. Suddenly I wondered how people enjoyed the flavour. The spins hit me 2 hours later in the middle of a job interview at his office. A girl brought her credentials on paper and Supreme grilled the B. Ed. graduate asking what caused the lack of rain in Rajasthan and how WWII affected India. I was present the whole time, sitting next to her, staring everywhere else but at Supreme. After this he took me to a classrom where he hid one of his 27 year old teachers, she was in the middle of class. He introduced me to her, not the class, and told her I was a good man, told me she was a good woman. I think he was hoping for a proposal, I think she was hoping for the same as me, a proposal, but I still had the spins so I decided I didn’t want to make
any hasty decisions while under the influence…
He sent me home. The next time he spouted ideas of me owning and operating a professional agency where he exported Indian professionals to me in Canada and I got them jobs and because of that collected a percentage of their salary. Then he showed me his magic stove, cooked me an omlet and asked if I watched Hot movies on my iPod. Then he told me that all Canadians he had met are good looking, with the exception of Tyler and Eric. Too scrawny he said. His words, not mine.
Great man, great family. One of the best.

SPORTS SIDE NOTE: This has been a weird week. Carbo, fired? Where’s the love in that? At least give him a week’s notice and let him ‘resign’. I haven’t watched a game in a month and a half, but I can’t imagine that the problem was him. The problem was that I left the country. Bob Gainey, if you really want to win, hire me and/or give me season tickets!

Aizawl Part Two.

Supreme wasn’t the only friend I visited in this fair city. I had a birthday/anniversary party for a friend Daisy with her husband L.B. I spent way too much time with another old friend, Hratchung/Pan, Pan the betelnut man. He took me places I never want to go again, namely stupid girl’s houses and other boring locations. As well as my mother from Aizawl, a red toothed old sports shop owner, who has seen better days. You don’t care about these people, you just want to hear a funny story or clever line about how I was dry heaving out of the opposite end for two nights.

I also made some new friends. Walking down the street at night, a man from a balcony yelled at me, “Foreigner!” I was pretty sure that instantly after this I would be massacred from the back by a group of Mizo teenies ready to steal my passport and eat my flesh. But that didn’t happen. He called me up to his very hip and trendy cafe and gave me some free pop. We talked for a while, then I had to be back at my hotel for the incredibly early curfew. I told him I’d meet him again on the weekend, so I kept my word. I showed up at 7, like he told me to, and he began to give me free food, drinks, massages. This cafe was more like a nightclub, without dancing, than it was a cafe. Loud awful music, discoball, but few scantily clad women. There was a birthday party at the table beside me, and Mizoram being a dry state, there was some illegal drinking going on. At least four bottles of whisky were flying around and a karaoke party began. I just sat at my table, sent some texts (yeah, i got a phone. believe it.) and talked with the cute hostess, Tlungpui/Elaris. I met the Al Capone of India. If Aizawl was his MooseJaw, what would his Chicago have been? Regina?

But being the struggle free man of all men that I am I’d like to say that this trip has been all curry and no ring of fire. All chili and no heartburn. All squatter and no splatter on the ankles. But the beauty of this trip has been followed by a cloud of cynicism and frustration more than ever before, about my life, as well as others. I think I’ve learned more about myself this trip more than ever before, which is maybe why it’s been harder.

Or maybe I’m just thinking up things to complain about because life is too good. Too much good food, friends, weather and everything that it’s becoming too perfect and I want out. Like it’s been in Regina before, just too good so I complain and run away. I’m a complicated man/immature child so it could be either.
What I do know is that tea, nine times daily is in fact necessary, curry three times a day is in fact the best thing on earth, and if you’ve been to India and didn’t fall deeply in love then you were in the wrong places.

Of the three times I’ve been to Aizawl, this visit would rate at the bottom. Likely because my hotel closed at 9pm so I had to arrive there at 830pm because they actually closed then, so I would go to my room, listen to music alone for hours. This trip had the friends in it, but just not the with the same intensity. Also, being my third trip there, it seemed all too familiar, like being at home. People weren’t that excited to see me, beecause they saw me like three months ago. Places weren’t quite as sweet as they once were, because I tasted them three months ago. But don’t get me wrong, it was, however, an epicly good time that I will hold dear in my soul. Forever…

Next..

This is one of my favourite things to do now. My words are usless, so take someone else’s verse and suck on it.

“If they gave gold statuettes, for tears and regrets, I’d be a legend in my time.”
-Johnny Cash

“This world is a graveyard, and it’s sucking the life out of everything I love. I can’t take this, but I can’t break this.”
-Horizons. I am not 100% sure this one is completely accurate, but I love it anyways.

“We are made of love, and every fracture caused by the lack of it.”
-Sleeping at Last

“Poker Face”
-Lady Gaga/the worst name since AllSaints.

“I love this record, but I can’t see straight.”
-Some awful dance music

The Bus leaves at 4pm, arrives at an unknown time. I go from Aizawl to Guwahati today. A trip less than 600km and it takes more than 24 hours. Should be a bedazzling ride.

Today I found myself so bored that I decided to plug in the TV in my room and watch 13 Going On 30. I only made it to the part where she taught everyone how to dance the Thriller dance. Then I killed myself. Twice.

I’ll tell you about Aizawl when I get free internet. Internet here is 50cents per hour, so I don’t think I can afford to type for hours… But maybe next time.

If you don’t hear from me in a week, I was abducted by a group of Assamese militant gangbangers and am weaving Assamese towels for 50paise a piece. Two million towels and I’ll be a rupee-millionaire/$2000…. Almost.

I change my mind more than a teenaged girl that loves rap and goes to church.

Manipur. Look it up on a map. Chances are good that you don’t know where it is. I was there and I barely know. When i first arrived, i was quite upset. It wasn’t at all India, not the India I love. But at the same time, it wasn’t at all Mizoram, not the Mizoram I love. It was like an unhappy medium, where everyone had guns and split-up churches.

The place seemed to have heavy christian influence, but disturbances causing murders and strict curfews were still in effect. It’ll make you wonder. It really will. Will it?

I only get really sick when I eat at friend’s houses. Street food doesn’t phase me, but when Indians make Indian food in a way that regular Canadians can eat, then it just rips me apart. They call it ‘loose motions’. Sounds like a Holly Springs song. I am dizzy writing this, pinching off a steady liquidy stream for the past hour. And my $2.50 hotel last night didn’t offer very luxurious toilet systems (it seemed to flush what I dispensed into it…)

I love it. I dread settling down and staying somewhere for more than a week, but that’s life. But not mine. But is it?

Aizawl is nice. Not as nice as I remember it, but still, nice. A second home just isn’t the same when you are alone and as weak as my bowels.

Babu and the Man from Bhutan

Sounds like a children's novel illustrated by Robert Munsch. Can't you just see the pictures? A Buddhist man and an Indian man in all sort of Munschy adventures.

I met a man named Babu. I met him when I walked into his 'hotel'/dhaba/restaurant and sat down. He looked at me and laughed. Had I food on my face, did I look more awkward than usual? The place had no menu, they make you the only thing on the menu, rice, dhal, chicken, two other anonymous curries. Menus are for places that cost a month rent for a meal. I somehow ordered a plate between my little Hindi and his little English. It was a $1.25 meal. He and his wife, Indira, a Christian love-marriage couple, cooked it for me. It was good, not great. They had cooked the rice an hour or two before and served it to me cold, along with two cold curries. I have gone back four times or so, each time I learn more Hindi, they learn more English, the food gets better and cheaper and I further realize that these people are living the life I want. Dirty in a dirty tiny restaurant, cooking food you love for friends, laughing at foreigners, not caring at all. It is like heaven but
without all the awkward thees and thys and more cute Nepali wives. Tonight they cook me beef, which is a big deal, believe me. You try to run a restaurant in Hindu haven and serve beef, you might just be murdered. So keep it on the downlow. The nameless restaurant in the part of the world no one knows, is cooking beef for a white guy. I think the secret should be safe.

I met a Buddist man, Tashi, from Bhutan playing carrom with a group of shopkeepers on the street. He had great English and the beard of a goat so I gave him a chance. I went to his restaurant, which was also his house, where he served two dishes and illegally sold booze. He was so incredibly nice that my Canadian instincts told me that he was drugging me and that I'd end the night the butt end (literally) of his pleasure and then skinned alive and my meat used as chicken and sold to old Hindu drunks in their Momos. But I didn't. He walked me to my hotel and said goodnight, rapeless. He took me to his place for Bhutanese food, dried beef and spinach. An unreal welcome from a friend of eight hours.

Then there is another list of 50 others I've met, 50 other dishes I've ate, and 50 fifty year olds that I'd date.