My Electric Toothbrush

vosechu@create-on.com (Chuck Vose) — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 21:50:00 -0500

Firstly I’d like to thank Panasonic for making such and excellent toothbrush as the Sonicare. Not only has it lasted almost an entire month without needing a charge, it’s also really good at what it does. Secondly, I’d like to thank Mitch Hedberg for giving me the humor to realize that like many electricity driven mechanical devices (escalators, toothbrushes,... okay that’s really it), when they break they still work for their original purpose.

This brings me to an excellent point: in America if an escalator was broken it would be roped off so that nobody could mistake it and stand there for an hour getting mad about their lack of movement. In China, except at Wal-mart (big surprise really), not only do people still use dead escalators, any efforts to rope them off would be ignored. The only thing that seems to stop people from using dead escalators is a huge blockade of shopping carts which can’t be navigated around. I’m still unclear whether this blockade was created by confused customers or employees.

(For background, the escalators at Wal-mart are inclined planes with some sort of attachment mechanism for carts so you don’t have to hold them all the way up or down the escalator. We’re unclear about how this works but I’m theorizing that it could have been confused customers trying to get up the escalator then getting their cart stuck on it, panicking, and ditching the cart for a nearby one and sneaking off into the shadows hoping any of the thousand people around them didn’t notice their snafu. Of course it could have been employees too but that’s much less amusing.)

Okay, so escalators and blockades: check. No wait, one more story about electric walls. It’s a little hard to explain the Chinese fascination with electric walls but I’ve come to believe that there is a deep-seated desire to surround yourself with glass or metal cages that beep at you when you’re too heavy, holding the doors open, or just because a beep is necessary. Usually the beeps are polite but sometimes the makers of the cages are more creative and build in a horrible wail or a screeching buzz just for added effect. In essence, I spend probably 2/3 of my travel time walking by/through, or riding in a very cramped metal cage that likes to beep, buzz, or wail at me at random moments. I think it will probably be one of the things I miss most when I go back to the states because there is nothing that keeps you on your toes quite the same way. Today I’m going to the fabric market with a friend. I’m excited to see how the whole thing works though I lack the money to actually purchase anything at the moment until my paychecks come in the mail (crosses fingers).

I’m also going to start carrying around a little book to write down my realizations when I’m around town. I have lots of things to blog about but usually by the time I’m home they’ve all been forgotten. So instead I write about my electric toothbrush which is the only interesting thing I’ve seen in the last 20 minutes.

So yeah, in case you were wondering, things are going well. I’m broke but that will hopefully be fixed soon and my sister is coming to visit me on March 27th so I’m very happy. But of course this means that if you want her to bring something back you should put in your orders now. :)

Wishing you all well!

The Vose Way: Tag Beeping

My Electric Toothbrush