Tonight I ran beneath a crescent moon, thick like a section of orange, the color of lightning, surrounded by inky night speckled sparsely with stars. Golden Beach is the best place to run in Tainan. It’s relatively close to town and there’s rarely anybody on it at night.

I run there only at night, usually on Mondays. Ever since I started running at Golden Beach my Monday run has become something I look forward to.

Golden Beach is not a nice beach. It’s very dirty. There are always teacups and bottles and bags and Styrofoam littering the shore. Oyster trapping season has just finished and the trappers have, as usual, cut loose the old traps that are too old to use next season. So right now there are giant stacks of collected bamboo on the beach, and long piles of washed up bamboo lying lengthwise along the water line.

Most of the poles are as thick as a baseball and the length of two cars. If I go running at high tide, when the waves are pushing the poles up into the piles where they rattle around and a few roll back out by the wave, my run is like an Atari game, me watching the poles, timing their movements and leaping between them while trying to maintain my rhythm.

I run in bare feet so I need to run at the waters edge. If I run in the dry sand I risk stepping on broken glass. But if I run in the sand that has been washed over by the waves I can see the ground because the lights from the highway reflect off of the flat wet sand. I’ve seen thousands of tiny sand crabs, frightened by the sound of my feet, darting into the ocean in front of and around me. They come very close but I’ve yet to step on one.

I’ve also found that in Taiwan crave the feeling of seeing afar. After a week in the city, in the classrooms and alleys and city streets where you can rarely see more than fifty meters in front of you, my eyes yearn to stretch out across a horizon – any horizon. When I run at a Golden Beach they wander across the sky and the beach and the flat strip of multicolored lights that stretches across the black water of the Taiwan Straight.

But the reason that I really love running on Golden Beach at night is the same reason that I love going to the morning market. Running at Golden Beach gives me the same feeling that I get when I walk in the early morning sunlight among the butchers slaughtering chickens with tiny knives and the bamboo hat-wearing farmers with gummy toothless smiles. When I run on Golden Beach with the bamboo and the sand crabs and I look up at the moon (the moon looks very different on a tropical beach than it does in the high Canadian Rockies) and gulp the salty seaweed air, I remember; this is exactly why I moved to Taiwan.

I’m sitting here at my desk gazing out the window, trying to put to paper some kind of goodbye letter for my last issue behind the wheel of Xpat. But as I reflect on my time working on Xpat, and in Taiwan, I’m filled with a single emotion: gratitude. So, instead of saying goodbye, I’d like to thank all of the people who helped me make Xpat what it is today.

I would like to thank:

The good people of Taiwan for providing me with the opportunity to create this magazine and for putting up with the astounding amount of bullshit they receive from the ignorant and unappreciative portion of the foreign community
The foreigners who show our host country people the courtesy and respect that they deserve
Paul Andrew for his dedication from the first moment of the first meeting at McDonald’s nearly three years ago
Cindy Loo and Chris Scott for unwavering participation and excellent work on every issue
Rebecca Xiou for bringing in translations on time, but even more so for being a dear friend
Jeremy for showing me the nature of boundaries, and how flimsy they are
My tree-planting supervisor Matt for demonstrating to me the only way to lead – by example
Kurt Cobain for introducing me to the raw emotion of artistry
Kerouac for spouting streams of saintly spontaneous prose
Cervantes for a noble and timeless hero
Dostoyevsky for The Brother’s Karamazov; if you only read one book for the rest of your life, read this one – within its eleven-hundred pages you will find the greatest story ever written and everything you’ll ever need to know
Donovan for advice and support
Garret for thinking more and believing less
Hemmingway for illustrating the importance of a clean, well-lighted place
Twain for unimpeachable integrity and spawning American literature
Hunter S. Thompson for never backing down
Vice Magazine for picking up where Dr. Gonzo left off
Dante for the Divine Comedy
My parents for making me read instead of watch TV
David Lynch for hours of brilliant confusion
My brother Ben, for buying me my first tape: Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine
Ani Difranco for doing it her way gracefully and brilliantly
Bjork for being splendid unique
The Mars Volta for renewing my love of music
Danielle for sleeping on the beach and running through rice fields at dawn
Ghandi for showing that the only real strength is strength of will, and that violence is the weapon of the weak
Buddha for being. And not being.
Picasso for painting Guernica; a morbid billboard-sized depiction of the Fascist bombing of a town by the same name, and for solemnly telling the Fascist fuckers when they asked him if he was responsible for the creation of the painting, “No, you are.”
Emily for yoga on the dance floor and friendship as thick as blood
Mickey for being an incredible animal and caring for my dear sister
Jana Mattie for showing us how fragile we all are; something we could forget no more easily than we could forget her beautiful smile, piercing eyes and unending kindness
Steve for listening during troubled times
Emilie for a year and a half of abandon and adventure
You for reading

Sincerely,
Matt Gibson

Most recent athletic feat undertaken by Taiwanese ultramarathon champion, Kevin Lin: Running 6,920 km across six countries, and the Sahara Desert, in 111 days

The average distance run per day: 62 km

Total number of Taiwanese to play Major League Baseball: 4

Number of Taiwanese MLB players, present and former, of aboriginal ancestry: 2 (Chin-Feng Chen and Chin-hui Tsao)

Number of the Taiwanese MLB players, present and former, from Tainan City and County: 3

Day of the year that the most collect calls are made: Father’s Day

Number of people killed by falling coconuts each year: approximately 150

Number of people killed by sharks each year: approximately 10

Reaction of some octopuses to extreme stress: Eating their own arms

Oldest defense secretary in the history of the United States: Donald Rumsfield

Youngest defense secretary in the history of the United States: Donald Rumsfield

Worst defense secretary in the history of the United States: take a wild guess

Which came first, the chicken or the egg: The egg, as concluded by a panel of scientific and philosophic experts last year

Name of the first company to offer genetically designed hypoallergenic (non-allergy inducing) kittens: Allerca Inc.

Cost per kitten: USD$3950

Product’s popularity: There’s currently a two-year backlog of unfilled orders

First-ever genetically modified pet sold: The GloFish®

Date GloFish® first entered the US market: December, 2003

Colors of GloFish®: Starfire Red™, Electric Green™ and Sunburst Orange™

Suggested retail price: USD$5
Factor by which the volume of land used to produce genetically modified crops increased between 1996 and 2005: 50 (from 4.2 million acres to 222 million acres)

Countries that saw the greatest increases: Brazil and India

Percentage of normal baby rats that die within three weeks of birth according to a recent Russian study: 6.8

Percentage of baby rats born to a mother fed a natural soy diet that died within three weeks of birth (same study): 9

Percentage of baby rats born to a mother who was fed a GM soybean diet that died within three weeks of birth (same study): 55.6

Percentage of soybeans grown in the United States in 2006 with GM traits: 89

Taiwan’s policy towards labeling GM foods: Products containing more than 5% GMO ingredients must be labeled as such. Products containing less can be labeled “Non-GMO”

Percentage of GMO ingredients that must be present for mandatory GMO labeling in the EU: 1

Percentage of GMO ingredients that must be present for mandatory GMO labeling in Japan: .1

Canada and the United States’ policies for mandatory labeling of GMO foods: nonexistent

Percentage of processed foods containing GM products in the United States according to the Grocery Manufacturers of America: 75

I pen this letter from a remote stretch of shore on Kootenay Lake, an enormous, unmolested body of water hundreds of kilometers long, slung in a deep valley in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains. As a child I spent countless summers running barefoot through these cedar forests. Today is the first time I’ve reclined on this quiet shore in more than 1,000 days; 1,000 days since I’ve lain on this rocky beach, smelled the clean mountain air perfumed with cedar and gazed at a night sky flooded with more stars than darkness. It’s sunny, but not hot. The waves lap at the pebble shore where I sit against driftwood in the shade of a poplar tree. I should feel at ease but I don’t. I’m lonely and I’m frightened.

Lonely because I recently parted ways with my partner, and frightened partly because I’ve suddenly re-entered North American society after a long absence and I find myself uneasy among hordes of large hairy white beasts with booming voices and a penchant for ceaseless small talk. But I’m scared mostly because I’ve flung myself into a torrent of brash life changes that promise to keep me in turmoil for months to come. In the past six months I’ve thrown away everything that’s been important to me for the past two years.

I’ve begun the process of packing up, tucking away and selling off three years of my life in Taiwan, including this magazine. Xpat hasn’t been a bad experience. On the contrary, it’s quite fulfilling and has been more successful than I ever expected. But I never wanted to be a publisher or an editor. I want to be a writer – so I’m quitting.

Taiwan has treated me wonderfully. Better than I ever expected. I have wonderful friends here, a job that I enjoy, a benevolent employer and a workplace filled with kind and gracious employees. But, I never planned to live in Asia (I’ve always been more inclined toward a Latin culture), so after three years, I’m preparing to leave.

And I broke up with Emilie. Intelligent, kind, adventurous and beautiful Emilie, with whom I lived, slept and traveled with for more than half of my Taiwan life. She is a great person, yet I felt that we couldn’t stay together because our relationship didn’t fit with the Future I seek.

All of the above changes that I’ve suddenly heaped upon myself are for the same reason: they don’t fit the over-romanticized traveling-writer Future that I contrived as a child running barefoot among these mountain cedars.

And now I’m frightened; afraid that I’m flinging away these precious things in search of an over-idealized Future—that might not exist. I’m petrified that one day I’ll look back and think, “I just should’ve left well enough alone.”

But, when it comes down to it, I’m even more afraid that one day I’ll look back and think, “Damn, how’d I get stuck here? What happened to traveling? And writing?”

When my mind turns to the uncertainty of my future my stomach twists with excitement and fear – 20 percent excitement and 80 percent fear (similar to my feelings previous to moving to Taiwan). It’s a mix that, in the past, signaled I must push on because I could never forgive myself for giving up such an exciting and challenging prospect. So, I will.

I don’t have much of a point to this self-indulgent treatise about the changes in my life except to tell you that fear of change has so paralyzed my mind that it can’t even fabricate a more suitable topic for this letter. And also to share with you a morsel of wisdom imparted to me by a friend. After assaulting him with a windy monologue—similar to this one, which concluded with, “It looks like I’m in for a lot of change,” he replied: “It’s the only constant.”

And so it is.

The future is mine and the future is yours. Take it while you can. It’s frightening and irresponsible, but it’s easier to throw yourself into change now than to spend the long twilight of your life looking back on the things you wish you’d done.

Recklessly Yours,
Matt Gibson

At least once in their career, most English teachers in Taiwan stand in the unique position of naming children, or encountering a Taiwanese person, young or old, with a desire to assume an inappropriate English name. Sometimes kindie teachers, spurred by lack of sleep and unmetabolized alcohol, give kids wacky names for their own amusement, but more often Taiwanese people choose these names themselves and are unwilling to give them up despite the protest of their conscientious foreign educators and friends. Either way, Taiwan is a cornucopia of strange, incongruous, and hilarious names. I scoured various Internet bulletin boards in search of the most ingenious, insulting and comical English names that local xpats have come across. Here are the best that I found.

20) Cash
The funny thing about this name isn’t that some Taiwanese kid heard it in a movie and picked it for a name—it’s that I can actually punch the name into Google and find two dozen inept hip-hop artists who chose this name on purpose without realizing how ridiculous it sounds.

19) Pizza
Well, at least it’s better than Hamburger, or worse—McDonalds (which I was very glad not to have found).

18) Zigga
This kid was named after a DJ scratch sound. Now, no matter how dorky he may be, this kid can go anywhere English is spoken and be cool. He could walk through East LA in horn-rimmed glasses and an argyle sweater, and all the Latinos would drive by and yell, “yo, wassup Zigga,” and offer him a ride.

17) Snatch (female)
The guy who posted this one wrote that when his friend, this elementary schoolgirl’s teacher, suggested that she change it she replied, “No, I like Snatch.”

16) Easy (female)
The poster of this name said that the girl chose it because you have to smile in order to say it. I hate to tell you this sweetie, but that’s not why he’s smiling.

15) Facial (female)
I don’t think I need to comment on this one.

14) Titty (female)
My god, how many sexually suggestive female names are there out there? I swear this is the last one.

13) Swallow (female)
Okay, this is the last one.

12) Zeus
Sometimes kids have the balls to do things that we all really want to do, like stick their hands down their pants in public, pick their noses and wipe it on their pants, or choose to be named after the god of the gods. Well done.

11) Turbo
The poster of this one wrote that if you ask this guy why he named himself Turbo, he’ll stand up, do a James Brown hip thrust and proclaim, “because I’m turbo charged!” I have nothing but respect and admiration for this man.

10) Peter Pan
The poster claimed that this guy was actually a pilot for Singapore Airlines. Unbelievable.

9) Sorry (female)
Scene: A local bar
“What’s your name?”
“Sorry.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sorry.”
“What’s your name?”
“Sorry.”
“What’s your name…”
(Drunk foreigner breaks out in hysterics as the unimpressed Taiwanese girl rolls her eyes and contemplates changing her name to ‘Easy’ like her friend who’s now being pampered by a crowd of smitten foreign men).

Urine (male)
Why would you do this? There’s no explanation, not even that you don’t speak English.

7) Panda
It’s not such a great name in English, but I have this friend whose English name phonetically translates to “tricky panda” in Chinese. When he told me I was so jealous it made me sick. Mine means “lucky forest” or something stupid like that.

6) Booger
The poster said he asked the kid why he chose it and the kid replied that it was because he liked the game Boogerman, and because “it sounded dangerous”.

5) Iron
Apparently this is the name of a personal trainer at California Fitness. He must speak English and must have known exactly what he was doing. He’s the Taiwanese equivalent of those moronic hip-hop artists who name themselves ‘Cash-something’.

4) Jackhammer
This guy is probably Iron’s drinking buddy. On Saturday nights they sit around in bars wearing blinged-out fake diamond dollar-signs around their necks talking about Hummers and wrestling. Then they drive around in their low-rider Honda Accord blaring Justin Timberlake, stopping at betel nut stands and trying to pick up the betel nut girls. After countless rejections they rent a bunch of porn videos and go home together.

3) 203
Hands down, the most unique name in the list.

2) Flagellum
This word refers to the tail that sperm use to swim up the vaginal canal. What is this person trying to say?

1) Jesus Gun
This name kicks ass. Right now, somewhere, an avant-garde indie musician just read this and is now dreaming about album covers for his future band.

*Special thanks to Forumosa.com, the discussion threads of which supplied the vast majority of these names.

All the weird names that one Kindergarten teacher claims to have given to students:

* Arbloo
* Stuka
* Libo
* Zoot
* Carny
* Bleefstoop
* Kib
* Nailgun
* Hoorno
* Asp
* Deet
* Zingermeyer
* Oreo
* Messerschmitt
* Hole
* Lapper
* Tarpy

Xpat Magazine June, 2007

The largest retail company in the word: 7-11

Amount of money American Airlines saved in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first class: USD$40,000

The year that the first Wal-Mart opened: 1962

Wal-Mart’s world ranking in terms of economic output, if it were to be considered a country: 20th

The number of corporations that, if considered to be countries, would rank among the 100 largest economies in the world: 53

The method employed by the Fumin County Government in China’s Yunnan province to improve the feng shui of a mined out mountain: they spray painted the barren mountainside green

The percentage of the earth’s original forested area still standing: 22

The number of trees on average that it takes to print the Sunday edition of the New York Times: 63,000

Number of times that the total amount of paper used by US businesses in one day could circle the earth: 20

Percentage of women in the world who will ever wear a diamond of one carat or more: 1

Factor by which the bacteria on the average office desk outnumbers the bacteria on the average office toilet seat: 400

Average life expectancy of an enemy combatant in a Chuck Norris movie: 4 seconds

The top three pirated software producing countries in descending order: Vietnam, China and Ukraine

The top importer of US made spaceships and parts in the world: Taiwan

The country with the most mobile phone’s per capita in the world: Taiwan with 106.45 phones for every 100 people

The percentage that Taiwan’s GDP increased from 1980-2000: 210

The only country whose GDP increased more during the same time period: China (382%)

Percentage of Taiwan’s population that lives below the poverty line: 0.9 (the lowest of all countries listed)

The number of terrorism acts committed in Taiwan between 1968 and 2006: 1

The only South-East Asian country never to have been (officially) colonized by a Western power: Thailand

The jail term a 61-year-old Thai man was sentenced to after attempting to copulate with an elephant: 15 years

His excuse: The elephant was a reincarnation of his late wife and he “recognized her by the naughty glint in her eyes”

The percentage of men and women respectively that have told lies to sleep with somebody: 34 and 10

The proportion of Americans now carrying a viral STD: 1/5

The proportion of people carrying an STD that experience no noticeable symptoms: 80

Two unsuccessful methods employed by officials at the Bangkok Zoo trying to encourage a pair of pandas to breed: Giving the pair a mock wedding and showing them ‘panda porn’

Percentage of the all websites that are pornographic: 12

Percentage of search engine requests pornographic in nature: 25

Percentage of internet users that view porn: 42.7

Top three pornography producing countries in the world in descending order: China, South Korea and Japan

The year that the Chinese government officially removed homosexuality from its list of state recognized mental illnesses: 2001

The year that Phoenix Satellite Television launched China’s first gay-focused T.V. show: 2007

The amount of money that one Chinese man offered to pay in a web ad seeking a woman to pretend to be his mistress so that his wife could beat her up: approx. $400 USD per 10 minutes

The definition of ‘Lookism’: discrimination against or prejudice towards others based on their appearance

The average hourly earnings of men with “below-average looks” and “above-average looks” compared to the national average in North America respectively: -8.9% and +5.4%

The average hourly earnings of women with “below-average looks” and “above-average looks” in Shanghai: -31.1% and +9.7%

The personality traits that people to attribute to ‘attractive’ people based solely on their appearance: successful, contended, pleasant, intelligent, sociable, exciting, creative and diligent

Marilyn Monroe’s dress size in the 1950s: 16 (approximately the same as a size 12 today)

Catherine Zeta-Jones’s dress size: 6

Percentage of women dieting at any given time: 44

Percentage of American adults who think they’re obese: 19.8

Percentage of American adults who are obese: 30.5

Number of new anorexia and bulimia patients each year in the U.S. according to Naomi Wolf’s feminist classic The Beauty Myth: 1,000,000

Percentage of American women suffering from anorexia or bulimia (same source): 60

Factor by which one study found the above statistics to be overstated respectively: 13.3 and 120

Number of Hairdressing Industry employees in Britain: 180,000

Total number of professionals working in skin care salons, nail salons, and barber shops in the U.S. in 2003: 1,600,000

Percent increase in salon professionals working in the U.S. between 1999 and 2003: 24

The labor market situation of salon professionals according to one beauty school directory: There’s a “severe shortage of licensed salon professionals”

The worlds first and second largest exporters in the “Beauty and Jewelry Industry” respectively: China and India (39% of global exports)

The world’s first and second largest exporters in the “Apparel and Fashion Industry” respectively: China and Pakistan (41% of global exports) 8

The apparent center of the fashion world: China

Top three plastic surgery procedures in the U.S. in 2005, and the surgeries performed: liposuction (324,000), nose reshaping (298,000), and breast augmentation (291,000)

Total spent on cosmetic plastic surgery in the U.S. in 2005: $9.4 billion

Total number of cosmetic surgery procedures performed in the U.S. in 2005: 10.2 million

Percent change from 2004: +11

The Greek goddess of beauty: Aphrodite

How she was born: Kronos castrated his father, Ouranos, and threw his penis into the sea which caused it to froth, and from the foam Aphrodite was born

“…there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and not try to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain.”
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) American Beauty (1999)

I met a guy when I first moved to Taiwan. Let’s call him Stan. Stan was a nice guy. He was also an insecure guy who nearly obliterated the greatest relationship that he ever had – all because of his neurotic compulsions regarding beauty. His relationship was saved only by an act of great strength and devotion by his girlfriend at a crucial moment–she kissed me right in front of him.

Stan wasn’t an abnormal guy in regard to beauty. He just wanted to control it. I think that’s a pretty normal compulsion for a 20-something male. I know that damned-near every time I’m away from my girlfriend for more than seven minutes I slip into paranoid daydreams that she’s stolen away into the arms of her secret lover with whom she’s laughing wickedly about my naïveté. It makes me want to shadow her, break into her e-mail account and call her randomly to see if I can hear somebody else breathing in the background. But I don’t. Partly because I know that this sort of thing would bring a swift and unpleasant end to our relationship. And, when the paranoia has subsided, I know I’m being foolish and that control is the obsession of the insecure.

Stan didn’t know this. You see, in Canada, Stan was a bit of a dork. A pleasant soul, to be sure, but his thick-rimmed glass-wearing, rosy-cheeked baby-fat face and too-shy-to-look-up-at-the-waitress-when-he-orders demeanor didn’t get him far with the ladies. I can’t say for sure because whenever the subject came up, he dodged it with the agility of a youthful matador, but I’m certain that he came to Taiwan a 26 year-old virgin.

Of course Stan was, as are most foreign guys when they arrive in this heterosexual white-man’s Shangri-la, pleased as a big bowl of fruit punch. I remember the day he and I walked down the street (he actually was jiggling like a bowl of Jello in his white pinstriped button-up shirt and dark blue jeans), when he told me; “Sal, I’m never leaving this place. I’m gonna’ find me the most beautiful girl in this town, I’m gonna’ court her, and I’m gonna’ marry her.” This statement disturbed me.

“Court her?” I exclaimed. “Did you just say you’d ‘court her’?” Howling, I walked into a row of scooters and knocked them down and fell on top of them in a heap. “Well, you’re certainly going to be fighting them off with sweet lines like that.”

Nevertheless, Stan found his maiden. She was a Taiwanese teacher at his school. She was a plain, beautiful woman who wore long skirts and button-up sweaters. She rarely spoke, and when she did it was barely a whisper. She was innocent, shy, and very conservative–just what Stan was looking for. Stan was taken with her immediately. He wasted no time making an appointment with her parents (with a translator), to ask for permission to date their daughter. They ardently approved. Kiki was also quite impressed.

Things progressed quickly for Stan and Kiki. They went on dates to movies and bookstores. Kiki’s parents were ecstatic about the couple and encouraged them to get more serious. They didn’t have to push hard. After only five months Stan proposed and Kiki accepted. I found this news much less humorous than Stan’s ‘courting’ statement.

“Dude, you’ve only been seeing her five months,” I argued. “Wait a while. You haven’t known her long enough.”

“I know that I love her,” he replied, “and that’s all I need to know.”

“How can you know that?” I asked. “Her English isn’t that good. You hardly know her.”

“It’s not what we say that matters. It’s how we feel.”

Holy Jesus, I thought to myself. He’s living in a goddamned Kevin Costner movie. I tried one last argument to avert certain disaster. “If you love each other, and if you’re going to be together forever anyway, then why rush? Why don’t you take some time, save some money and have a big wedding with your family?” I argued.

“Because I want her to be mine, and I don’t want to wait,” he said with wide desperate eyes. I knew then that I couldn’t change his mind.

The engagement changed Stan and Kiki’s relationship. Kiki had achieved an important goal for a conservative young Taiwanese woman: cementing a relationship with a stable and reliable breadwinner. She was passing into adulthood and had made a very good start–especially in her family’s eyes. Now Kiki, who had previously been unbearably shy, gained a new confidence and became more outgoing. Where previously, she’d sit stiffly at a table in the corner seldom speaking, now she’d chat amiably with Stan’s friends, and even strangers, when they were out. She’d even have a few drinks when the mood struck her.

This scared the hell out of Stan. He was content for Kiki to cower in the corner, too frightened to talk to anyone. It was safe. But now that she was opening up he became frightened. Stan had never had a long-term girlfriend before. He’d always been rejected. His insecurities convinced him that if Kiki started making friends with other people she’d realize that he was a loser and leave him. He finally had a girl that wanted to be with him and he saw her slipping away.

So, Stan did what any red-blooded, bull-headed, run-of-the-mill guy would do: he tried pathetically to take control of the situation and nearly wrecked everything.

Stan would get drunk and angry when they were out. He’d feign conversation with friends while peering through beady red eyes across the bar, watching Kiki socialize gaily. Eventually he’d abandon his companions wordlessly, stumble across the bar and pull Kiki outside by the arm and yell at her. Sometimes after these ridiculous tirades they’d come back inside and sit silently at a table for a miserable drink or two, but usually they’d just get in a cab and leave.

What Stan didn’t realize was that Kiki attributed her newfound happiness to him and was even more enamored with him than ever. I know this because Kiki told me one night in the bar. It was, in fact, on Stan’s birthday–the night that Kiki kissed me. We were at the bar and Stan was monstrously sauced and he was hugging everybody. He trapped me in an uncomfortably tight embrace, one hand on my ass (by accident…uh, I think) and told me, “I luf ya man. Shiriushly. I knaw ahm drenk, bet I relly mean it. I luf ya.”

It was touching.

But then, as Stan gently caressed my buttock, he caught sight of Kiki. She was standing with Todd, an acquaintance of ours notorious for having slept with innumerable Taiwanese girls. They were watching us and laughing, probably making quips about Stan’s drunkenness and our latent homosexual tendencies. Stan was enraged. His already red face turned bright crimson. He walked straight over to them and let fly an awful diatribe.

“What are you laughing at?” he shouted. “Do you try to make me look like a fool? It’s not enough that you run around like a little tramp flirting with all the guys in the bar. You gotta sit here and laugh at me with him? On my birthday, no less. What, are you sleeping with him? Well, you’re not the only one. He’s the biggest man-whore in town. He slept with three different girls just last week. You probably got syphilis from him–just what you deserve you little sl…” Kiki slapped Stan and ran out of the bar.

The other Taiwanese girl who had been standing with Kiki and Todd stood rigid and silent. Her face was pale and her eyes wide as she looked at Todd, who returned her gaze sheepishly. At that moment a different Taiwanese girl strode purposefully across the bar up to Todd, tossed her drink in his face, kicked him in the shin and left.

Stan wandered off somewhere. To get another drink, I suppose. After a while Kiki came back into the bar and sat down next to me. Her face was streaked with mascara.

“I don’t know what to do, Sal. He gets so angry, but he have no reason. He worry me talk with others, but he can’t understand that he give me the power to meet people. Before I meet Stan I so shy. He a wonderful person, but I make him so angry. I tell him if he don’t want me talk others I stay home, but he worry I meet others when he gone. I don’t know I can marry him. I must stop this. You Stan’s very good friend, Sal. What I should do?”

“He’s worried because he loves you so much. He tries to stop you from talking to other guys because he’s afraid that he’s going to lose you. You need to get very angry at him, Kiki. You need to show him that if he doesn’t stop this he will lose you.”

“Ok,” Kiki said somberly. She stood up. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Wordlessly she marched off. I followed her. What had I done? She found Stan leaning on the bar. She smacked the back of his head and, after the impact slowly registered through the blanket of alcohol, he turned around.

“What the hell?”

“You very bad!” Kiki screamed. Everyone in the room stopped and turned to watch. “You always think I want talk with other guys. You think I so bad. But you so bad. I very nice with you. I do everything you want me do. But you always think I want other man. I don’t want other man. I love you.”

“Oh yeah?” he retorted. “Then what were you doing with Todd, eh? I don’t know why you’re even with me. Every time we go out you run around talking to so many different guys.”

“I talk them because they your friend. You leave me by myself. I need somebody with me talk. They with me talk.”

“Sure, that’s all you want. I know how you Taiwanese girls are with foreigners.”

“How?”

“I know what you want.”

“What? You think I want kiss other foreigner? Ok. I kiss other foreigner.” Then Kiki turned around. I was standing right there. She grabbed my ears, nails digging into the flesh, and thrust her face against mine and held it there. When Kiki let me go I looked at Stan. His face was pale and deflated.

Kiki gave him a fierce look and said, “Now you leave me alone.” She turned and walked off.

Kiki went to the washroom, cleaned up her face and returned. She walked right past Stan and I, and joined a group of our friends on the other side of the bar. “It’s over,” Stan moaned. “I’ve lost her. I gotta go talk to her.” He started to get up.

“No dude.” I replied and pushed him gently back on to his stool.

I spent the rest of the night next to Stan, who, pale and quiet, chain-smoked and watched Kiki float from group to group chatting carelessly. Finally, after several hours, Kiki glanced over at us from a table. She excused herself, stood up, and walked over.

“Lets go.” She said to Stan. “Ok.” He replied. They left the bar arm in arm, Kiki vibrant with her head high, Stan slouched and ashamed. I found out that they’d made up when Kiki delivered my wedding invitation the following week. She thanked me for my advice and hurried off to continue her deliveries. I opened the invitation. The cover was white with a picture of two doves, one in a nest in the bottom corner, and another in the top, opposite corner flying towards its companion. The inscription read, ” If you love something set it free. If it returns to you it will be yours forever. If it doesn’t, it was never yours to begin with. ”

Stan and Kiki were wed a month later, and Kiki got pregnant right away. I later commented to Stan that Kiki had gotten pregnant very quickly, and he told me that he and Kiki had conceived the first time they made love. His expression was odd when he told me this, and I asked why. Then he told me that their first time had not been their wedding night. It had been the night that Kiki kissed me.

Idyllically yours,

Sal

The fastest elevators in the world : Taipei 101′s high speed lifts, which travel at 17m per second

The world’s tallest building : Taipei 101 at 509m tall

The world’s largest proposed building : Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE, expected to be completed in 2008, will be 800m tall

Price of a new Triumph Rocket III motorcycle in Taiwan : NT$1,220,000

The size of the engine on this mad machine : 2294cc

The largest engine size for a motorcycle in Taiwan that can be legally driven without a special driver’s license : 150cc

Rolling Stone magazine’s opinion about Canadian 80′s rock band Triumph according to one review : They were “mutant hoseheads”

The only homosexual comic book character with the ability to kill Superman : Triumph

His method : Draining all of the “solar energy” from Superman’s cells

The reason Triumph’s sexual orientation was never revealed in the comic : The writers “didn’t have an appropriate storyline to deal sensitively with that issue”

The population of Triumph, Idaho, USA : approximately 350

The tourism slogan of Idaho, USA : “Great potatoes, tasty destinations”

Record recently attained by Claudio Paulo Pinto : best ‘eye popper’ in Brazil with a 7mm ‘pop’.

Distance Pinto claims he can bulge his eyeballs out of their sockets : approximately 11.5mm

Current ‘eyeball popping’ world record : 11mm, held by Kim Goodman of Chicago, U.S.A.

The amount of money that Mark Giorgio chased over the edge of a bridge (he dropped it) in Palmetto, U.S.A. : $20

The distance he fell : 50ft into the Manatee River

Distance he swam to recover the bill : approximately 100 yards

His comment to the local newspaper about the incident : “I got my money back, hell yeah!”

World record for most kicks to one’s own head in one minute : 42, held by Michael Lloyd of Midland, Texas, USA

World record for highest fall survived without a parachute : 10,160 meters, held by Vesna Vulovic

Name of a new energy drink manufactured by Redux Beverages : Cocaine

Amount of cocaine in the beverage : None

Amount of caffeine : 280 milligrams

Reaction of Dr. Charles O’Brien to the drink : “Just a bad idea and…a very bad name”

World Record for fastest time to drink one liter of beer : 1.3 seconds by Peter Dowdesell in Carlise, PA, USA

World Record for Farthest Spaghetti Nasal Ejection : 19cm held by Kevin Cole of Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA

Fastest text message ever : 160 character text in 43.24 seconds held by Kimberly Yeo of Singapore

The 160 character phrase used in most speed text messaging contests : “The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human.”

Number of arithmetic world records broken by three Taiwanese siblings aged 8 to 13 years old in Kaohsiung in December, 2000 : 4

Length of time it took 13-year-old Wang Chia-lu to multiply two 8-digit figures correctly : 25.08 seconds

Length of time it took him to multiply two 13-digit figures correctly : 26.51 seconds

Length of time it took 12-year-old Wang Yi-hui to add two 100 single-digit numbers : 18.98 seconds

Length of time it took 8-year-old Wang Hui-yin to calculate the square root of a six-digit number : 10.48 seconds (more than 50 seconds faster than the previous record of 63.8 seconds)

Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski’s brother-in-law’s defense for an extravagant bachelor party held for his son with Tyco company money: “It wasn’t like a three-ring circus…there was only one dwarf.”

World Record for the longest “midget toss”: 11 feet 5 inches1

Event at which the record was made: British Midget Tossing Championships 2002

Penalty in Ontario, Canada for tossing a midget: “a fine of not more than $5,000 or…imprisonment for a term of not more than six months, or both.”

Amount of money a professional tossing-dwarf can earn: more that $100,000 USD per year

2 Duration 1.14m-tall Manuel Wackenheim fought a French ban on dwarf-tossing that left him unemployed: 2 years 2

The result: he lost

Age of an East Indian girl who married a dog to ward off an “evil spell”: 9

Manifestation of the “evil spell”: she had a tooth rooted to her upper gum, a bad omen

The size of the dowry a Sudanese man paid to marry his neighbor’s goat: $15,000 Sudanese Dinars (approx. $50 USD)

The reason behind it: He was caught copulating with the goat, and village elders decided he must pay the owner a dowry and marry it

Last known status of the marriage: still together

According to a state approved West Indian textbook for 14 year olds, why a donkey is like a wife: “It has to toil all day, and, like her, may even have to give up food and water.”

Why a donkey is better than a wife (same source): “while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master.”

Number of donkey weddings in Madras, India in 2003 in an attempt to bring rain: 5

New Zealand’s top producer of greenhouse gasses: belching and flatulent livestock

The governments initial proposed solution: a flatulence tax (later abandoned)

Number of calls in 1998 Southern California resident Al Niño received complaining about his effect on the weather: more than 100

Number of calls he received with blame for a stranger’s daughter’s loss of virginity: 1

Number of calls he’s received thanking him for improving the weather: 1

World Record for longest time standing nude atop Mt. Everest: 3 minutes

The accomplishment that George W. Bush expects to be his legacy, according to a senior White House consultant: “saving Iran”

The reason that Canadian Minister of Defense Paul Hellyer called on Canadian Parliament to discuss the best way to deal with extraterrestrials: he’s “so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war.”

The name of a series of Brooklyn-based hip-hop parties aimed at young, white people: Kill Whitey

Attendees eligible for free entry: anybody who brings a bucket of chicken

The cost of one professional anus bleaching in Los Angeles: $75