How to Tell If You're a Degenerate Dope Fiend

I have asthma in Hong Kong.

Not because I'm asthmatic.

Because I don't have it in America, or Japan, or Singapore, or Korea.

Hong Kong's pollution is so bad that my body responds asthmatically. This week has been pretty rough. The winter in general can be trying, simply because we get cold air from the north, i.e. China.

Is that the economy I smell cookin'?

In fairness, I can't really blame China for not buying into the whole environmental thing. I can sincerely understand how they might view such things with suspicion:

"Let us get this straight... You guys have an Industrial Revolution and gain global prominence, even dominance. Then, when we're about to do the same thing, you justhappen to get a case of the Guilties and try to tell us that we can't do the same thing. Please speak to our representative in this matter, Chuck. U. Farley."

China isn't really my point here. To be fair, I'd probably have asthma in a lot of parts of Taiwan, too.

Besides, it's not as though Hong Kong doesn't produce a mind-boggling amount of pollution domestically.

But it's in the interest of capitalism, so it's okay, right?

I don't spend much time on Hong Kong Island. I am a New Territories resident, and to be honest, I prefer Kowloon. It's closer, has better DVD shops, and is, for me, much more fun, entertaining, and good for my slowly improving Cantonese.

But alas, not all is rosy in Kowloon.

I spend most of my time there wandering the streets of Mong Kok, my favorite district. It has the best DVD shops. It has the best theaters.

It has lots of women from the PRC ready to show you how useful the 'mother tongue' can be. Good thing I have no desire to speak Mandarin.

It also, unfortunately, has the worst pollution. It can get really, really bad for me sometimes. I start wheezing, my face turns red, and I start coughing spastically.

It really scares the chicken when that happens.

Seriously (?), it can get bad.

It gets so bad I wouldn't even want to try to 'call chicken,' so don't take the previous joke for some kind of admission.

If I start coughing, I won't stop. It irritates my throat, and chances are that at least one person in the most densely populated place in the world is sick.

Chances also are I'll walk by them, too.

So Mong Kok makes me sick sometimes.

Not as sick as Lan Kwai Fong, though.

Mong Kok is supposedly the most polluted part of Kowloon.

It is also, like so many other parts of Hong Kong, rather, uh, informalabout matters legal, moral and otherwise; I need a license to teach English, and cannot legally paint a space I rent, but I can be a tattoo artist just by saying I am. I can pay a woman to do all manner of unspeakable(hand signals communicate what language cannot)things to me.

Or another woman, while I watch and take notes.

For a little more money, they'll even act like they enjoy it.

But that's not my point.

Mong Kok's multi-faceted laxity works in my favor when I am ill (or bored).

"I need cough medicine for a strongcough" is Esperanto for " Go in the back and get me the good shit."

I buy a lotof cough syrup. I am not proud of it, but I like to sleep. Which coughing prevents, or at least interrupts.

I buy so much cough syrup that some dispensaries are like bars where the bartender gets to know his regulars. I walk in and the guy behind the counter doesn't even talk to me, he just goes to get what he knows I need. They even let me buy more than one bottle at once: "You're so big..."

They're not the only ones who tell me that, but they're the only ones not lying.

I buy so much cough syrup that I know where to get the regular syrup (10ml contains 5mg codeine phosphate) and where to get the strongone (5ml contains 10mg codeine phosphate).

If you take that one, clear your calendar. You're doing nothing, and doing a lot of it.

For better or worse, I can actually function under the influence. It makes me stop coughing, my various injuries hurt less, and I generally relax a little. I can sleep without hacking myself awake.

It makes bad movies better. Because the best/worst thing about cough syrup is that it ruins your short-term memory. If a movie is crap, it won't matter 10 minutes after you watch it. Because you'll forget it.

But this blessing is limited to watching movies, not buyingthem. If you forget buying a film, you run the risk of buying it again.

Especially if you own a couple thousand DVDs.

So if I admit anything in this entry, it is the undeniable truth that I drink enough cough syrup that my memory fails me during DVD-buying forays.

A recent organization of the DVDs I have at home yielded the following redundancies:And its not like these films are worth the multiple purchases...

It's bound to be worse in my office. In fact, it's very likely that there are even more copies of thesefilms in my office. I don't have the heart to look.

Or maybe it's just because I'm too... sleepy...-El Dopa