Lusting for leather and chrome

Los Angelenos love their cars. No, they don't just have a special fondness for these vehicles that leads them to buff them on the weekends and take them in for regular tune-ups; there seems to be a bizarre, unhealthy sort of emotional dependence going on.

Many sacrifice rhyme and reason, shelling out more money than they have on a beautiful new car just because it feels great to drive. Some give little nicknames to their four-wheeled friends, and defiling another person's car can be just cause for any sort of crime of passion.

In LA, not only are you what you do, you are what you drive. Your car is an extension of your bedroom and it's not uncommon to see people on the freeway doing all sorts of things behind their panes of glass, apparently unaware that we are all flying around in see-through bubbles that can really be seen through. Yes, really, that means we can see you.

None of this is really new news, but this year I think I've stumbled upon another bizarre little story in this morass of strangeness.

Every day, after I get off the bus, the route I walk home brings me from a main street around a corner to the small residential street Christina and Alan live on, up to the top of the hill where perches their little house. About halfway up the street, every day I pass by a woman sitting in her car.

It's a large-ish white sedan, pretty clean, seems fairly new. Especially to someone who knows nothing and cares less about cars, it seems incredibly average and unremarkable. Except for the fact that every single day, there is a woman camped out in the driver's seat like it's her living room couch.

She has the radio turned up to noise-polluting levels, tuned to some obnoxious talk radio that is mostly ads and then a lot of other shouting done by the DJ's themselves. This is not enough sensory input for her, so she resorts to flipping through what look like B-grade celebrity gossip magazines, or coupon pages of the Sunday paper, or something equally riveting. Sometimes her right hand is moving mechanically from bag-of-some-crap to mouth while eyes remain fixed on the page in front of her.

She's there on the weekends, too, pretty much all day it seems. I wonder ... has she ever thought about getting out of her car and walking inside? What's so scary in her house? What's it like to be a lump of mush?

And since nobody walks in LA, not much of anyone really seems to notice she's there. Everyone flies by in their cars, protected by their own slabs of glass and metal, totally unaware.

What makes one turn into a lump of mush? What happens to make sitting in your car listening to trash, reading trash, and eating trash the most attractive option for killing the remaining time in your life?

From Scratch

Today was someone's birthday in the office.

You all know what that means: standing around uncomfortably and trying to chat over mid-afternoon cake.

Before the guest of honor even arrived we had already used up our easy chit-chat (how's work, how were your holidays, how about that rain). So, cake in hand, the conversation among this small group of people who have nothing in common naturally turned to ... cake.

Bigwig talked about a cake mix he usually gets from Costco where you only add water; however (climax to the story coming....) he bought a different brand this time. Upon getting home and reading the box he discovered you actually have to put in eggs and milk. And not only do you have to put them in, you have to whisk the eggs. So, he asked, what's the difference between that and making the cake from scratch? And then (punch line ... here it comes....) he told his kids "I made this cake from scratch!"

Everyone chuckled politely. I thought mistakenly this was a conversation I could actually participate in so I piped in about how there are so many things you can't find in China that there are expats put a lot of energy into making things from scratch. I very briefly mentioned David's cheesecake quest: how do you make cheesecake in a land with no graham crackers? No cream cheese? I'll give you a hint: you start with yoghurt, then make your own cream cheese.

I said that I make pumpkin pies every Thanksgiving, starting with an actual pumpkin. A whole, raw pumpkin. Silence followed. Then, aforementioned bigwig said, "You must have a lot of tiiime in China". Time was drawn out, slowly dribbling out of his mouth like something he didn't want inside him. His words carried a tinge of, not envy, but disdain.

Is having time a sin? Is having time a sign of laziness? Is baking bread from scratch, is chopping vegetables every day, is walking up six flights because there is no elevator, is sweeping because you don't have a vacuum cleaner, is all this somehow wrong? Or is enjoying it the part that's wrong?

It's Friday evening right now, as I type this, and I am home from work a bit early after a week where I have literally only been home in time to go to sleep, then get up before dawn and leave the house again. I'm making more money doing this than I ever did in China, but I haven't cooked a meal in weeks, I haven't managed to finish a book, I haven't gotten any exercise. But those silly things are only for people with tiiime. Not us civilized folks.

There are few things more alienating than coming home.