Paddy Goes Native - Not Exactly

Keeping up two blogs is fuckin' killin my social life - not to mention destroying my sleeping habits (which were fairly bizarre to begin with). And then I log on here thinking I might find significant intellectual engagement of sorts, but discover that Wop has been playing with colors. Sweet Jesus man! The image returns of WOP dressed up in his Buster Brown outfit, complete with straw hat with that ribbon hangin down the back, holding a huge round lollipop, jumping up and down waving... I understand that no one out there but Mulgrew will identify with that verbal portrait ...and no, I havent been drinking. Oh, and I haven't been smoking either. Can you believe it? Of all the fucking places to go on this planet while trying to quit smoking, China has got to be the worst. The entire country is one giant smoking section; I'm sure there must be some sort of federal tax imposed on non-smokers. Maybe it's part of the attempt to curb the population increase. Anyway would be fuckin brilliant; if I were still smoking, which I'm not at the moment (will be 10 days tomorrow).

As an alternative, I visited Jing'an Temple (the rainbow colored swaztikas called out to me) and lit up in another way. Though the insense didn't quite satisfy like a Lucky Strike, the bowing kept me distracted enough to avoid the smoke shop for another hour or so. (I was reciting the Hail Mary by the way, for those of you out there thinking I was searching for some sort of non-existence.Pffft!) Apparently I missed the Festival of the Bathing Buddha, but I gotta figure that in this heat and humidity the ol' Buddha is just bathing in sweat, which is a bit of a turn off as festvals go in my book.

Ok so this temple dates back to like AD247, but not really since most of it was destroyed in the mid-19th century (probably by some long-nosed, white ghost barbarians after the monks refused to beg for opium), and yet the only bit of information my guidebook wants to tell me about the place is that some wise-guy named Khi Vehdu ran the temple in the 1930s, that he was almost 2 meters tall (what is that, like 6ft?), had a large following (posse more like it), and that each of his seven concubines owned a house and a car. Golly! No wonder there are more and more monks signing up every day. I'm not sure if it's the concubines, the cars, or the Burger King on the back wall of the Temple. Well at least we all know why the Buddha is so happy.

Ok, so a few hundred gong-smacks later I realized I fail miserably with the sincere Buddha thing and moved on to Tai-chi.