The Chris Quiz

My only responsibility in the 40th party was to make up some sort of game. I’ve never been a good Pictionarian or much for charades so I made up my own test. Here it is. See how many you can get right. Many of the answers are highly negotiable.

Super Easy Multiple Choice

1. What is Chris’ usual breakfast?
a. Cheerios
b. Bangers and mash
c. Congee
d. Whatever is left on the kids’ plates (nasty!)

2. What is Chris's favorite book?
a. Chicken Soup for the Middle-Aged Soul
b. Charly
c. Anna Karenina
d. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

3. Which movie would Chris prefer?
a. Fried Green Tomatoes
b. Ghost
c. Beaches
d. Anything with Godzilla in it

4. Why did Chris major in Botany?
a. Easy – he’s sort of crazy
b. He liked plants
c. He always wanted to open a lawn mowing company
d. Everybody knows all the hottest girls major in Botany

5. Why did Chris go to law school?
a. Easy – he’s sort of crazy
b. He liked John Grisham books
c. He always had a passion for justice
d. What else are you supposed to do after graduating in Botany?

6. How would you describe Chris's current state of hair loss?
a. Pretty thin on top
b. An awkward stage of male pattern baldness
c. Starting to look to comb over-ish
d. All of the above

7. How many times has Chris told you the story about army ants coming through his house in the jungle?
a. five or more
b. two or more
c. zero (if you pick zero, you're asking for it)

8. What best suits Chris’ musical tastes?
a. Seriously boring classical
b. Ella Fitzgerald and friends
c. Zydeco/klezmer fusion stuff
d. A mix of today's hits and yesterday's favorites

9. Where did the scar on Chris’ forehead come from?
a. Attack by a knife-wielding madman
b. Surfing accident
c. Bad paper cut
d. I’d rather not go into it

10. What is Vitello’s, the restaurant where Chris worked in high school, famous for?
a. Veal parmesano
b. It was once owned by Dean Martin
c. It was the place Robert Blake (supposedly) shot his wife
d. It was often frequented by Erik Estrada

11. What is Chris most proud of?
a. His cute kids
b. His highly efficient dishwasher loading skills
c. The fact that he’s never done the Macarena
d. Having eaten one pot of lentil soup for twelve days straight as a missionary

Word Problems

12. Chris, a monkey and a lion are stuck on an island with a coconut and a little rowboat. The island is one km from the safety of shore and only two people can go in the boat at once (the animals and the coconut all count as people, don’t ask me why). The lion will eat the monkey, the monkey will really bother Chris with his non-stop yapping and the monkey and the coconut sometimes play chess together, but always end up arguing. What is the fewest number of trips they can make to all get to shore safely?
a. One
b. Two
c. Three
d. I think this question got on here by accident

13. Chris has an important appointment 5 kilometers from his house. His driver has a “flat tire”, i.e., he’s eating lunch with his girlfriend. A taxi costs $5 and takes 5 minutes. The metro costs $1 and takes 10 minutes. When do you think Chris will leave the house?
a. Five minutes early
b. Ten minutes early
c. How long does it take to walk?

14. When they turn 40, many people are filled with a profound existential angst due to the fact that there’s not much to look forward to except a long slow descent towards decrepitude and the grave. Plus you gradually start to get that old man smell. What will Chris most likely do to combat this?
a. Become obsessed with golf equipment
b. Run a marathon to demonstrate his youthful vigor to himself (and to anyone he could casually mention it to)
c. Buy a cheesy sportscar
d. Make a stupid Photoshopped T-shirt of Jenny

15. Chris, the monkey, the lion and the coconut are still stuck on the island with a little rowboat. Apparently, you didn’t do a very good job of answering the earlier question. Suddenly, a rat appears and gives them a flare gun. Man, where’d he come from? The monkey high-fives the rat and the coconut looks disturbed. What should Chris do next?
a. Yes, definitely
b. Wait until they see a bigger boat and shoot off the flare
c. Shoot the lion
d. I’m totally confused by this whole thing

One More Super Easy Multiple Choice

16. What do you wish Chris on this momentous occasion?
a. I wish him a long and healthy life
b. I wish him a year supply of fresh and juicy eels
c. I wish he’d mind his own beeswax
d. I just don’t want to hear anything else about that stupid coconut

Matching

This section is really only here to make those of you who have done terribly so far can feel better. If you don’t get 100% on this you should probably just go home.

17. Where was I born?
18. What’s my birthday?
19. What’s my sign?
20. What was my favorite TV show as a kid

a. Virgo
b. Inglewood, California (ex-home of the Lakers)
c. Gumby
d. September 1st

Tally up your answers. If you got more than 10 right, send your score to Chris for your free gift. Please include US$5.00 cash for shipping and handling.

40th Birthday

Jenny threw me a great 40th birthday party a couple of weeks ago. I’m officially middle aged now. It was really beautifully done, in true Jenny style, and a lot of fun. I’ll post a couple of pictures in a few days when I’m back in Shanghai (I’m in Hong Kong for the next couple of days). It was a mix of expat friends (who are all foreigners) and work friends (who are all Chinese). Everyone had a good time. We had it at a friend’s house who is a partner at Deloitte. Their house is huge and I think some of my Chinese colleagues were a bit wide eyed. I figured it must have been a bit like getting an invite to a big bash in a Beverly Hills mansion. Despite my attempts to dissuade them, some brought some gifts. One was a set of Peking Opera masks hand painted by one of my employees on egg shells. I found it quite touching.

Amusement Park Darwinism

We went on this crazy ride at the Ho Chi Minh City amusement park that was like a version of It’s a Small World with these really cheesy looking dinosaurs in it. Some rubber toothed dinosaurs were set up to pop out at you when you went around a turn. They definitely succeeded in scaring you, but they were so goofy looking it was just funny. How about the ape-man and the snake? Is it is pet python or is it trying to kill him?

The kids were really into this poster outside the dinosaur ride. I was forced to give an explanation of evolution that conformed to the visual, which the kids found very authoritative. It went roughly as follows - first monkeys walked around on all fours, which was probably pretty boring since you couldn’t see very well, plus your hands were always dirty and just plain muddy on rainy days. Eventually, one got really mad about this situation, picked up a stick, stood up and started yelling. Fortunately, the artist captured this very event.

After that a fairly straightforward evolutionary process kicked in in which the monkeys gradually got taller, less hairy, happier about their clean palms plus the sticks they carried got better. The picture was clearly painted before vintage t-shirts, cargo pants and hand sanitizer were invented. That would have been the next picture. Why did I spend a whole semester studying evolution in college when I could have just gone on the dinosaur ride in Saigon?

The Sphinx of Saigon

We went to this crazy amusement park in Ho Chi Minh City the day before Jenny came to meet us. This followed the basic pattern of finding activities that at times included levels of danger that would have been impermissible with a full parental complement. Anyway, it was like a giant State Fair full of sketchy rides. One of my favorites was the Sphinx, a faux Egyptian haunted house place. Abby insisted on visiting it as she felt she had developed a certain expertise in Egyptology by watching “Scooby Doo and the Pyramid of Giza” on the flight down to Vietnam. It had some scary fake mummies inside that sat up when you walked close by. Abby’s verdict – scary, but somewhat lacking in authenticity when compared to the Scooby treatment of similar content.

Almost Lonely Planet

I thought this was kind of funny. This is in Ho Chi Minh City. The Chinese are good at DVD pirating, but I'd never seen pirated books until I got to Vietnam. These are fake Lonely Planet books. The paper seems to be thicker and the pictures were mostly black and white. The asking price was about US$4 per book. You’ve got to hand it to these guys for knowing their market – if you’re looking for a place to sleep for US$10 a night, there’s a decent chance you’ll be interested in a cheaper way to help you find it.

Phu Quoc

Our next stop was a little island called Phu Quoc in Southwestern Vietnam. There is a big very developed tourist island in Thailand called Phuket. This place is sort of like Phuket with almost no development. Get there while the gettin's good because you can see the build up beginning. Now the economy is pepper farms (the black spice kind), squid fishing and one little fish sauce factory. Almost all the roads are dirt and at night you can lie on the beach and see the Milky Way. I hadn’t seen it in many years, since camping way up in the mountains in the Western U.S. The kids weren’t even sure what it was when they first saw it. Anyway, here are a few pictures. Double click the small ones if you want to see them better. My good friend and tennis doubles partner in high school died a few years ago of skin cancer so since then I’ve been a big enforcer of these high sun protection swimsuits for the kids. They don’t seem to mind yet. (Jenny is pregnant so I’m required to keep posted pictures of her at a minimum at this point, which I believe most women other than Demi Moore or Britney Spears will completely understand). You could buy seafood at these little shack-ish restaurants on the beach and they’d cook some right on your table. Super fresh and super cheap. The beaches were beautiful. No waves, a la Apocalypse Now, but that is better for the kids anyway.

Tuk-tuk

Here are a few more Cambodia pics. One night when I let the kids pick the restaurant, they picked Indian food to my surprise. We eat it once in a while on Saturdays in Shanghai. When I was little I would have assumed that Indian food was what Navajos or Hopis ate and I had no idea what that was. Anyway, we got to and from the hotel to the town via tuk-tuk or a sort of trailer thing hooked on the back of motorped. The kids loved it. They used to have versions of these in Bangkok where the motorcycle and the seat were sort of one unit – think Sophie Ellis-Bextor riding around Bangkok in the Spiller video of “If this ain’t love (groovejet)”. I heard those have been banned there now.

After Cambodia it was back to Vietnam via prop plane on Vietnam Airlines.

Temple of Doom

The coolest part of Cambodia are the Khmer temples. Real Indiana Jones stuff. Here are some pics. Double click if you want to see more detail.

This is where the absence of a maternal influence really came into play. We climbed up some really steep and slippery pyramids. The kids were clearly instructed that if they didn’t follow my strict instructions they would not only fall and get seriously hurt, but I’d also get in huge trouble with their mom. Luckily, compliance was reasonably high and no one fell.

The Circle of Life

We ate lunch at a restaurant next to one of the more remote temples in Angkor Wat in Cambodia.This is a good example of the plunging levels of hygiene that I found acceptable under the circumstances. The kids loved this place. It had dirt floors, no walls and there were some workers sleeping in hammocks about 10 feet from the tables. A dog wandered around the place as did a chicken.

We ordered chicken with rice and the kids asked me whether the chicken that was walking around and eating the spilled bits of chicken with rice was actually a cannibal chicken and if it would end up getting eaten next by other people who wanted chicken to eat. Then Abby started reflecting on The Lion King and the circle of life.

Best of all somebody spotted a walking stick on the ground in front of the restaurant. Its one of those weird bugs that actually does look like a stick with legs.

Rice, Sprite, cannibal chickens, dogs and walking sticks. What more could you want?

Beat that Rain Forest Café!

Stuffed Animals

One of our stops in Saigon was the building where the former South Vietnamese government was officed. The décor was basically left as it was when the tanks rolled in in the late 70s so there was a certain grooviness to the place. The high point from my kids’ point of view was the ex-President’s office which had a variety of mangy looking stuffed animals in it. Not teddy bears but small dead carnivores. If you’ve got a taste for taxidermy this bad, I’m not sure that you should be running a country anyway.

The Garden of Earthly Delights

On our trip to Vietnam we spent a couple of days in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. We hired a tour guide who took us to one temple that was full of these graphically illustrated pictures of all the absolutely awful things that happen to you in the afterlife if you don’t mind your p’s and q’s while in this mortal coil. It reminded me of a Hieronymus Bosch painting I saw once in Spain called “The Garden of Earthly Delights”. Anyway, the tour guide was happily chatting away to the kids about grisly punishments such as having your legs chopped off by a blue guy with a cow's head or getting eaten by long-fanged snakes while you’re tied to a stake. The kids were mesmerized (and scared). It was a bit freaky for me too. Fortunately, all thoughts of eternal doom quickly vanished when a little cat walked by and the kids ran after it.

Heart of Darkness

We recently got back from a vacation to Vietnam and Cambodia, a perennial family-friendly destination. I told people at work that we rented a motor boat with a machine gun mounted on the back and headed up river. I think they sort of believed me.

We booked the trip before we realized that Jenny, being pregnant, couldn't take the needed malaria medicine for the Cambodia leg, so we decided that I'd go on first Cambodian leg (3 days) with Abby and Ben and then we'd meet up in Vietnam after that.

Needless to say, with me alone at the helm the acceptable hygiene level dropped way down, the danger level went up and I think the general fun level went up quite a bit also. Once we got back together in Vietnam things normalized, but we still had a good time.

Anyway, I'll try to post some pictures etc. of the trip soon.

Remote problems

Does this happen to anyone else with little kids? This drives me crazy and it seems like it happens every other day. First, the back cover of the remote gets lost, found, lost, found, etc. The batteries drift in and out during the cycle. Eventually the cover gets irretrievably lost. Then the batteries are just gone most of the time or at least one of them is. Then I try to tape the batteries in, but that's apparently just as much temptation because the tape gets torn off and batteries just disappear again. Asking where the cover or the batteries are is absolutely useless. I'll ask if anyone knows where the batteries are and get an answer like, "No, but can we get a dog?"

Notorious

We watched this movie again recently. Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman in 1950s Rio de Janeiro. This is the disturbed and twitchy Cary Grant of the Hitchcock films he did and not the goofy romantic comedy Cary Grant. And Ingrid Bergman… Rio looked so clean and elegantly exotic – every one dressed up for day to day life. Great stuff.

I remember when I was in high school there was a theatrical re-release of a series of Hitchcock movies – Rear Window, The Man who Knew Too Much, Vertigo, etc. A new one would come out every 3 or 4 months. I would rally my friends to go see them and they were great on a big screen. They weren’t at too many theaters, but I remember going to an older theater on Hollywood Boulevard, which hadn’t been cleaned up at that time. My friends were pretty reluctant at first, but after seeing one of these on a big screen people started wanting to go. Plus it was a little offbeat, which had an appeal to a certain sort of LA high school kid. LA was a fun place to grow up.

Bienvenidos a Guangzhou

I saw this ad in the back of a cab in Guangzhou (near Hong Kong) recently. I just thought it was sort of weird. Its hard to read, but its an ad entirely in Spanish for a sourcing coordinating company. How many people that understand Spanish ride in the back of cabs in Guangzhou?