Resolved

My mom's one and only goal for the 2010 is to watch more TV. Or from another angle (she says), come home from work earlier. I find her resolution laudable. I would only add that she should probably make it a goal to quit asking people if we're calling it "twenty ten" or "two thousand ten" and just go with whatever the CNN news anchors start using (we all need a North Star).

I've been at my sister's house in Salt Lake since Saturday night and just now as I was digging through my many suitcases to find my deodorant it occurred to me that I must not have put on deodorant since I got here if I'm scrambling to find it now. Thus, be it resolved that I will apply deodorant every day of 2010... unless I run out and don't remember to get any at the store. Or if it's not within arm's distance of where my toothpaste is. Or if I'm already layered up when I remember about this resolution and it sounds like too much work.

See what happens?

I prefer to make goals I'll probably end up doing anyway, like wear pajamas as many hours in the day as possible or eat an entire box of Lucky Charms in one weekend.

Both of those goals are within my reach since I'm back to working at home and living in the land of plently (cue video of my almost crying when I walked through the produce section of the grocery store with my mom).

I've spent the last two weeks at my parent's house in Colorado and every day was more grateful than the last to be home. What could be better than a White Christmas, brothers that will laugh at any nonsense that comes out of my mouth, and cleaning out my boxes from BYU to find such gems as: a paper titled "Descartes and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" (profound and nuanced, I'm sure) and a note from a roommate informing me "a guy will be here today to get the bird out of the dryer. Yuck!" HOW on earth did I forget that a bird got stuck/caught/trapped(?) in the dryer? I mean, that's like epic.

So, my friends, out with the oughts, in with the... teens? Sure, why not.

Peace out suckas!!!

Mama I'm coming home! Aka I'm leaving on a jet plane. Aka it's the end of the road. Aka...more cliche songs anyone?

After smuggling grossly overweight bags on to the plane and stocking up on Kindle books, I'm at the Cebu airport ready for the long road home.

In about 24 hours I'll land in Denver to a bag of baby carrots, my parents, and my bros. I have been grinning from ear to ear all day. Swear on my life, I sung in the shower this morning. First time ever... As in, ever. I feel like a little kid or something, and I'm not even embarrassed.

To everyone who patiently listened to my complaints, boring stories, new insights on what it's like to be alone all the time, you freaking saved my life. Much love to the whole universe right now, cause this is an awesome day.

I'll be home for Christmas baby.

Taipei

Here's the thing about Asia: there's absolutely nothing I could finish that sentence with. And that's what I love about it.

There isn't a neat compartment in my brain where I can store the things I see (and especially smell). My thoroughly Western education didn't mold my brain to easily know what to do with the concepts and ideas behind Eastern medicine, Eastern philosophy, Eastern religion, Eastern food, Eastern family life, etc. For someone who enjoined scantron tests and a well-outlined syllabus, it's an uncomfortable feeling. As someone full of opinions and an obnoxious attitude of Knowing, I thought I'd leave this experience with a whole lot more things I know and can spout off. "Oh well, see, in Southeast Asia, they do things like this..." But I can't do that. Even if I had something to finish that sentence with, I probably wouldn't. So I won't be coming home with a thorough comprehensive of this completely other (in every sense of the word) part of the world, but rather a deeper appreciation of how nuanced culture is and amazingly, a lot fewer opinions about Asia and even America than I had before.

BUT, I will come home with a lot more pictures than I had before! This weekend I trucked on up to Taiwan for my last trip before I leave and LOVED it. My friend Amy was a teacher there for six months and the pictures and stories from her experience were at least 25% of the motivation for wanting to move here in the first place. I'm fairly certain she had about 1,000 more authentic cultural experiences in Taiwan than I have had in the Philippines. But I did have to frantically pull up the internet browser on my phone to figure out how to eat one of the meals I was served in Taipei. That counts for something, right?

After hitting up destination: Taipei Temple, my plan was to head over to Taipei 101 (the world's tallest building for at least one more month, thankyouverymuch) and a few other monuments in that part of the city. I got turned around and couldn't figure out which direction the metro was in. In my wanderings, I saw my destination down the very street I was walking. Without even thinking it out, I headed in that direction. Way easier to just walk down the street to the thing than to find the metro, make a few transfers, and have to locate the building again. Plus, I can see it! Can't be that far... (famous last words, right?).

Remember how I said it's the tallest building in the world?? Yeah... you can see it from basically everywhere in the city at the right angle. It ended up being over an hour a way, but an incredibly pleasant walk (thanks to flower markets and Sufjan Stevens' Christmas Album). It was a little over 3 miles from where I was which is basically the equivalent of seeing the Washington Monument from Pentagon City or the Empire State Building from the Financial District and thinking it's just a quick stroll down the street. I'm a genius (more on that later).

Here is the Taipei 101 after 20 minutes of walking. Gotta be just like 5 more blocks, right?

View from the top on a hazy and perfectly crisp day. Will you mock me if I tell you that it felt kinda weird to be cold?

Exhibit B in my spatial reasoning abilities... numerous attempts to get myself and the building all in one photo. Yeah, it's not rocket science... either I need a photographer 100 yards away, or I need to get much further from the dang thing.

SUCCESS!

If someone wants to buy me a book on Buddhism for Christmas, I would greatly appreciate it. I've been to enough Buddhist/Taoist/Confucianist temples to make it completely absurd that I still don't really know what's going on.

 

I do know they like to make offers of lots and lots of fresh food though! At another temple there were a full-on KFC meal.

Outside the craziest night market ever. It usually only takes nighttime and/or finding a park for me to fall in love with a city. I'm easy to please.

I think the signboard said walking to the end of this path barefoot could cure cancer or something or other. Actually I'm pretty sure it listed every organ in your body and what this path could do for it. It's not that I doubt it, I just couldn't make it past two painful steps to see if all my wildest dreams would indeed come true.

The museums in Taipei blew my mind - this is at Museum of Contemporary Art. And here I was thinking American contemporary artists had the weirdest/craziest/coolest stuff ever. I stand corrected.

What is this, my kitchen sink? Gross.

The Fine Arts Museum had AMAZING installation pieces... most of which I was banned from documenting.

Why I didn't pretend like the car was going to fall on me or I was being poked in the eye by a light fixture I'll never know.

I heard through the grapevine (aka church aka yes, I know I'm awesome) that the annual Nativity Pageant in Taipei was going down that evening. In my mind, I'm like, well, it's Sunday night, I don't drink, my flight doesn't leave until 1:30am, what the heck else am I gonna do? So I trucked all the way up to the amphiteater and was treated to the most incredible pageant ever. It was the full freaking deal: 1/2 in Mandarian 1/2 in English, missionary duets, spotlights, backdrops, angels appearing over the night sky. Oh, and I did I mention Mary entering on a horse?

 It finally felt like Christmas. Now all I need is a DVD from Brian that he wants to watch but can only justify buying as a present for me, Anne waking up earlier than everyone in anticipation, and Mom up with night-sweats worried about the equality of gifts both in amount spent and number dispersed and it will really be Christmas.

Ok final (in this post) story about me being an idiot. The root of the problem is the same in all of my I'm-a-genius stories: me trying to beat the system.

I landed at 1am on Friday and took a bus into the city that took like an hour. I wasn't sure how to find the same bus to get back to the airport and I sure as crap wasn't going to pay 40 bones for a taxi. So Sunday night as I was figuring out my game plan I noticed a metro stop not too far from where I was for the airport. Sweet! methinks. 

Did I consider it weird that nothing I read said that the metro was the easiest way to get to the airport? Weird that it took me an hour to get into the city from the airport but was going to take me twenty minutes to get back? Weird that I had driven an hour on the FREEWAY on my way in and not through city streets? Nope, didn't even cross my mind. I was WAY too proud of myself for beating the system. When I was checking out of the hostel I almost asked them about it but my actual thought was, "No, I really don't want to hear them tell me that a bus is easier when I can CLEARLY see on the map that the airport is like RIGHT there. I don't know if they're just behind the times or what but I've got my plan and no one's going to keep me from it."

I didn't even think of all of these weird things when I arrived at the airport to two janitors and a completely empty departures board. I checked the date and time on my ticket three times before finally running into a group of guards who found the image of me with my bags and ticket endlessly amusing.

Who knew Taipei had two airports? Given that I live in a city that has the exact same setup you'd have think the thought would've crossed my mind somewhere in the process. Not to mention all the other obvious signs above. So I did what I always do in these situations: played it cool on the surface so the guards wouldn't have more material, panicked beyond reason inside, and still looked for ways to beat the system. I so did not want to pay a taxi so I scrambled around and found a bus headed for the other airport. For the record: this is what a bus from one airport to the other airport at 11pm Sunday night looks like:

I'm pretty sure we stopped 900 times in the hour long bus ride and I shaved at least six months off my life from the stress of it all. I made it an hour before my flight and got on with no problem-o. So the moral of the story, as always, is that you really don't need to be the airport as early as they tell you (Dad). Except when you go to the wrong airport, then all bets are off.

Grammer Woes

Look, I'm usually not the one to make a public display of unfortunate mix-ups with the English language (ESPecially when it's not someone's native tongue), but I just think that if you're going to publesh something or paint a phraze on the back of a car/cab/trike, you should probably bust out the spell check before doing so...

I'm not saying it doesn't, but that is and singular subject so you're probably going to want a singular verb.

 

"Days of moments is a great pleasure"

Indeed they are my friend.

 

"I can stop fallen in love with you."

I don't think that's quite the message he was hoping to get across.

 

Things and Stuff

While greater minds mull over troop surges and write articles based on other people's articles and/or Tweets about the mighty Tiger, I spend my time wondering if I always like the So You Think You Can Dance dancers who are Mormon because they are Mormon or because they are good dancers. ("How much of what you liked about me was because I was a dancer and how much because I was me?" Name that movie.) I think it's one of Life's Great Questions that I'll really never be able to answer. Except I'm 90% sure Mollee is Mormon and that homegirl is annoying enough to be an EFY counselor.

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Ask for elephant puns and ye shall receive: if I've inspired anyone to ride an elephant in the future, I hope you will use one of these puns that I lacked at the time of my last posting (courtesy and trademark Ryan Simmons):
-Trunk Yeah!
-Elephant? 'ella Fun!
-Dumbo? There's nothing dumb 'bout it!
-Long Ago in a Galaxy BarBar Away
-During these hard economic times, riding an elephant to work helps me save hundreds monthly on Snuffeluplegas.

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I've never understood why large numbers used in stories or ads that I have no context for are supposed to have an impact on me. Maybe others aren't as visual as I am and I'm projecting my preferences on the world, but does anyone have a good reference for when 10 tons of something is moved, or spilled, or lifted, or stolen? The best examples I can think of are from environmental ads (and this coming from someone who would not be upset with being called a tree-hugger)... something like, the average American uses XX gallons of water per year/day/week/month!!! Um, ok... Is that like, a lot? Like, how much is that compared to what I drink in a year/day/week/month? How many swimming pools are we talking? Nope, that wouldn't help either. What about in comparison with how many gallons a German or a Russian uses? How about this: you tell me how many gallons you think I should be at compared with where I am and I'll see if I can shave my legs faster.

It's like at BYU on Earth Day when they would put those huge pallets of compressed garbage in Brigham Square to show how much waste is thrown away at BYU on an average day. Never once did that do anything for me. BYU's a pretty big school, right? So I dunno, 30,000 students + facility... my expectation of how much waste that amount of people would generate doesn't seem totally out of proportion with what's stinking up the quad, but who knows? Is that like, more than we should be throwing away? What else should we be doing with stuff? If you're saying we should be consuming fewer processed foods and one of the positive outcomes is that there is less non-biodegradable waste then I could get behind you, but that's a different point entirely. Right now it's just a pile of junk in neatly formed boxes that's obstructing my people watching...

[I was trying to find a pic of the famed garbage stack on Newsnet and I found the perfect quote to further illustrate my point: "Americans are throwing away about 42 million newspapers each day, while at the same time nearly two million trees are being cut down in the United States each day." I mean, that sounds bad and all, I guess? Maybe? What percentage of trees in the US are we talking here?]

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Sunday night I found You've Got Mail on cable and watched every minute of it from start to finish, even though I've seen it maybe 20 times and probably own it. I find it next to impossible to not watch You've Got Mail, Overboard, the training sequences from Rocky IV and A Few Good Men when they come on TV. If they ever showed Apollo 13 or Center Stage I'm sure those would be on the list too. I don't even always enjoy watching them (especially Overboard), but it feels like a compulsion. TBS has no idea the power they wield over my free agency...

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I just need to get this out there: I've seen The Twilight Saga: New Moon twice now. On two separate occasions, I drove to the movie theater, bought tickets, and sat through the entire movie. Once I went with my co-workers on opening night and last Saturday I took the girls from my English class on a little G.N.O. Since the last thing this Internet needs is another person mocking a movie that doesn't seem all that worse than all the crappy romantic comedies out there, I won't give a bunch of excuses on how "I just totally went to laugh at the cheesy lines and people who are way too into it." (Although I like to think that's partially true for everyone). The first time I saw it, I was entertained all the way through. If not by Filipinos shrieking at the top of their lungs every time Bella and Jacob hugged, then by trying out different theories to explain the jean short thing. Either way, $2.50 well spent. [I still would like to give voice to my mom's perfect assessment of both movies: "If I wanted to see a bunch of depressed teenagers mope for two hours, I'm pretty sure I could've done that at home." (We as Gardner kids were all lovely and boisterous children and are now fairly rational adults, but were moderately to severely dramatic teenagers. Thus putting us on par with every family in the universe.)]

I know that island living has fully permeated my reasoning and decision making capacities when my thoughts on Twilight have gone from "I freaking hate that book and cringe when I see it in people's houses" to "eh, I think it's lame, but so long as people aren't saying it's their favorite book they've ever read, we can still be friends" to "if it's your favorite book - enjoy. List in on your Facebook profile for all I care. More power to you." Either I've slipped into totally apathy or I've finally reached a zen-like state of tolerance and acceptance but either way, it feels good.

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Finally, I have declared myself the winner of best search engine query that somehow led someone to my site. It truly needs no introduction or elaboration:

"how i know if keanu reeves is planning to burn down my house"

Bangkok

The only comparable place to Bangkok for me is Disneyland. How dare I say something about a place that doesn't even have Space Mountain, right? But especially in the tourist spots, it's a bit surreal. Everything is multi-colored and glitters in the sun. However, I don't think my sister would shriek at any of the sites as loud as she did when she saw Minny Mouse... LAST YEAR. At first my Mom and I thought she was excited so her kids could see Minny, but no - she bolted off on her own to go check it out. Oh to be a kid at heart.

Anyway, Bangkok. It was beautiful and you should know I came inches away from running away with one of the hundreds of hippies we ran into. Except I didn't... I'm pretty sure the combo of me and one of those hippies would've had the travel grime and filth of 5 or 6 people, so for the sake of our kid's hygiene, I opted to come home husbandless (mull over that logic for a minute...).

Mormonism doesn't have nearly enough lying down. I could get behind this.

Look Mom! It's me and a bunch of white people pretending to look around temples thoughtfully like we know what's going on when really we just want to get nice pictures!

Having to rent a long skirt to get into the Grand Palace totally made me feel more legit. 

And here you thought that other lying (laying?) Buddha was the biggest/best they could do... please.

This flower market felt like New York City... and believe me, it felt good.

If you're interested in a market an hour from the city where you're trapped in a boat and the vendors have hooks that can keep you as long as they'd like, this is your spot! Except I was sold mango sticky rice as I was gliding by a food canoe, and that was cool. And delicious.

This is me, riding the bull. I mean elephant. Where is the Simmons Family/Simmones when I need a good pun about riding an elephant?

I could totally see Donald hanging out here. I wish I were cultured enough to have a better reference point than Disneyland. You'd would've thought going to the International Cinema at BYU at least two separate times would've given me more material. Not to mention being the proud owner of multiple books and library cards.

So in sum, Bangkok is pretty. And cool. And neat. Someone get this fool a Thesaurus...

Thanksgiving?

If Thanksgiving is being celebrated across the globe, no pie or stuffing is consumed, and no one wishes me Happy Thanksgiving or tries to one-up my gratitude for snowboarding with their gratitude for the Plan of Salvation, did Thanksgiving even happen? I vote no and give myself free reign to visit Boston Chicken as many times as I want when I get home.

But still, it was a pretty rocking Thanksgiving. The big day itself I was in Saigon, Vietnam with my co-worker Chase (it also happened to be his birthday!).

I love seeing barrels of food and not recognizing any of it. Except I really don't want to carry it across the square.

I have never see so many motorbikes in my life. It feels like being in the middle of the pack of cyclists at the Tour de France (cause surely I know what that's like). I thought crossing the street would be the scariest thing we did... BUT then Chase (who is still young enough to think he's invincible) got his mind set on renting one and without question sitting on the back of that thing on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City was a lot more terrifying than crossing the street.

Raising the roof, Reunification Style.

Not even to pose for a picture, Chase went over and wanted to touch the grass. Cebu isn't exactly lush.

Now that's just completely adorable.

Artists, lots of em.

Thanksgiving dinner. I opted for pumpkin ravioli... seemed fitting.

We spent a good chunk of the day at the War Remnants Museum. It was sobering, depressing, shocking, disturbing, emotional... you name it. Most of the really tragic images I made myself look at but no way did I want pictures. The saddest were all of the children who have serious issues from Agent Orange. I had no idea what to do with all of it... every part of the city is still defined by the war. The aftermath still affects their daily lives and I don't know how to explain it, but it's just present everywhere you go. 

Our tour guide at the Cu-Chi Tunnels (where farmers and members of the Viet Cong would hide when US bombers flew overhead) told us most Vietnamese people are ok with Americans for three reasons: 

1. They want us to come back and buy stuff so they're happy to see us.
2. They know how much anti-war sentiment existed in the US at the time and recognize that we weren't the ones dropping the bombs.
3. If they were to remain angry with every country who invaded or disrupted their country, they would pretty much have to hate the world and they don't want to do that.

I thought the second reason was compassionate and the first and third were depressing. There is a lot of complexity and nuance and context surrounding the war that I don't pretend to understand, so I'll just leave it at that. Plus, some of the museums and videos were comically biased; but I imagine that's how a lot of other countries would feel about our museums, so I didn't demand to see a manager or anything. 

Our visit to the Cu-Chi Tunnels was pretty nuts too. The whole time we were at the grounds I kept getting myself mentally prepared to go down cause I wanted to know what it was like. Apparently they've made the tunnels wider to accommodate Western tourists (um, gulp), and it was still horrible. We had to crawl on our hands and knees and it was incredibly dark.

Can you see the terror in my eyes and the sweat beads on my forehead? Not quite...

This is a little bit better, but yeah... you thought I was scared of butterflies? Not as much as I'm afraid of enclosed spaces. Right before we went down the guide reminded us that once we're in, we can't come back out cause there are lots of people ahead of and behind us. Yeah, please don't say that. It was ok until the girl in front of me hit a fork in the tunnel and said that neither way looked like where we were supposed to go. Of course I panicked... I mean, hello! That's the whole thing with claustrophobia - the main fear is not being in a small space, but feeling like you won't be able to get out if you need to. So I sat there in terror with my heart pounding while she tried both ways and couldn't figure it out. I noticed we had passed a light several yards back so I made the people behind me back up a bit and escaped out a small exit 50% of the way through the journey. I'm giving myself two thumbs up and a pat on the back for 50%.

Solely for Nathan and Brandon: U.S.A.? Eh?

I made myself feel better about the atrocities of the world the only way I know how: giving money away. In this case, to a Vietnamese puppet show. I don't know if it would have been more or less funny if we had spoken the language, but as it was, it was hilarious. 

 When in Asia... throw up the peace sign as often as possible. It helps with blending-in purposes.

 I was just going with the energy of the photo... the space seemed to call for it.

This place looked like a pagoda graveyard. It was weird and cool.

Two thumbs up for Vietnam and for a weird but memorable Thanksgiving. I'll put the pics from Thailand up tomorrow. And not that anyone's counting, but I blow this popsicle stand exactly three weeks from today. Hey-o!