Guest Diary: Eleven airplanes and one bottle of bai jiu
I’ve known Brian Dominguez since the late 1970s, when we both were very tiny people. Since then, I have grown to be a normal-sized human being, and Brian … well … let’s just say that my girlfriend Bliss — 5-foot-2 and petite — outweighs him. Despite his stature, I still consider Brian one of my best friends in the world.
Brian and his wife Jill — actually two inches shorter than Bliss — spent 14 days in China starting on February 20. I traveled with them … and we went all over the damn place. Starting and finishing in Shanghai, we hit Beijing, The Great Wall, Kunming, Lijiang and Xishuangbanna. Brian and Jill brought some amazing weather with them. They also brought an amazingly huge medicine bag. Jill is somewhat of a hypo … a hypo … Jill is very careful when it comes to health. (My favorite items from the medicine bag: two sterile syringes and two sets of “sterile” chopsticks. Yes, they brought chopsticks to China. They didn’t use the chopsticks — but I ended up using one of the syringes. Thanks to a poor choice of socks, I had to pop some nasty blisters after a two-day hike in ‘Banna.)
Anyway, the purpose of this post was to welcome you to read Brian’s journal from the trip. Brian’s mom has described his collection of entries as “voluminous.” I’d say that’s accurate. There are also plenty of photos on that page, several of which were “borrowed” from yours truly. If you’d like to comment on anything in Brian’s Guest Diary, you can do so as a comment to this post. Brian’s site is not a blog.
- Go here to read Brian’s journal.
- Links to my photos from Brian and Jill’s visit: Shanghai, Beijing, The Great Wall, Kunming and Lijiang/Baisha. (I have yet to upload the final installment, from Xinshuangbanna. I’ll do it soon. Promise.)
- You may remember Brian and Jill from their wedding last May.
- Brian is director of GeorgiaGO. Jill works for the Girl Scouts. (No, she has nothing to do with the cookies. I asked.)
03.24.2005, 7:45 PM · Guest Diaries, Photos · Comments (3)
Flavored condoms: Ice Cream, Green Tea and … Ordinary?
While Bliss paid our bills recently during a trip to a typically unfriendly neighborhood KEDI market — many bills get paid at 24-hour shops here in Shanghai — I perused the condom display rack, always good for a laugh. Always, indeed. Flavored condoms. Ice Cream. Green Tea. And, my personal favorite, Ordinary.
I find the concept of flavored condoms humorous to begin with, but I’ve also never had to taste a condom. So I guess they serve their purpose. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, right? (Or, in this case, it actually prevents it from going down.) Ice cream? OK, I guess I can undertand this one. But there are many flavors of ice cream out there. Let’s hope it’s not Mississippi Mud Pie or Moose Tracks or Brownie Batter or anything that ends in “nut crunch.” Something like Karamel Sutra seems appropriate. But, hell, it’s probably Green Tea Ice Cream.
Which brings us to our next condom flavor … Green Tea. You know that awful bitter aftertaste that green tea leaves in your mouth sometimes? I can’t imagine spunk tastes much worse than that. But this is China, so we have condoms flavored to taste like Green Tea. Now, the Sex Herald tells us that “the right cup of tea will turn us on.” But I would imagine that if a Green Tea Condom is already inserted in your mouth, getting turned on is not really the issue. Finally, we have the Ordinary flavored condom, which I think is the wild card here. Ordinary what? An ordinary condom? Latex flavor? If so, does that really count as a flavored condom? Or perhaps Ordinary means what we all really hope it means. Maybe the Ordinary Condom is flavored to taste like a penis.
- To see a bigger version of the photo, click on it or click here.
- The photo quality is not great because I only got to take one shot. After the first one, I got yelled at … a lot. They don’t like it when people take photos in 24-hour stores, I have learned. Perhaps they arrange their condoms in a top secret manner. Click here for a photo of the shopkeeper’s hand.
- These are Wonder Life brand condoms. Their English slogan is “For Happy Hours By Two.”
03.24.2005, 4:35 PM · Featured, Humor, Observations · Comments (5)