disney is one big fat wonderland of big fat people. everyone in the happiest place in the world is fucking OBESE. no kidding. coming from the city of drugged-out skinnies, being among these fatties makes me feel like i'm swimming in yellow wiggly fats cells. now when i pick up that lindt truffle or golden wrapped rocher, i think three times, three hundred pounds and three thousand cellulite dimples- then unwrap the chocolate and pop it into my mouth anyway. i will work it off i tell myself.

i haven't seen one decent looking person in this place and fede and i feel like supermodels.

amazing how america is very good at creating economies out of nothing-orlando from swamp to swamped with mid american tourists. vegas from desert to decadence. palm springs literally bare land springing palm. everything is so fake, manicured and deliberate it is painfully unstylish. but you gotta hand it to them for having the creativity and entrepreneurship to create a worldwide attraction of simply land, concrete, some lights and music.

and while i will probably never come back to disney world, i am glad i came because it cemented my desire to not have kids (not for a while) - nuh uh, i am not standing in line for 2 hrs because my little brat wants to sit in the dumbo the flying elephant ride or running to the bathroom and have to unwrap dirty diapers when i could be on my second round of space mountain.

back from egypt and ready to rock and roll. but first a little about the trip.

thought i might go mad being in close proximity with family for extended period, but i think we've actually all been able to come to a comfortable point of knowing just how to get each other right to the edge, but just careful enough not to push anyone over. so thankfully no horrid fights and crying, only lots of warm egyptian bread, too many lecherous arab men, and three sisters dancing like superstars to all the latest music videos on mtv.

egypt is truly a wonder in many ways. one expects the sphinx and pyramids of giza to be magnificent, and standing at the base, being drawfed by their sheer magnitude, they are nothing but magnificent. but less talked about are the graeco-pharoahnic temples which seem to be monuments of opulence that somehow have sprouted out of nothingness- column after beautiful column after beautiful column and then you start to think erm dudes, i think you're overdoing it- since there are no roofs to support anyway. walls are carved from floor to ceiling by hand and a craftsman probably dedicated his whole life to one wall (and you thought your job was boring?). what got me thinking the most is the paradox that egypt is- the very same river and resources that bore a great ancient civilization 4000 years ago, now runs through a laggard state no where near its glorious past.

i prepared myself for egypt by buying a lonely planet guide which i saw all over the country- clutched preciously onto by other american tourists trying to take the road less travelled. and i thought i would educate myself with a little egyptian literature so on mr media mogul's recommendation, i also armed myself with the cairo trilogy by naguib mahfouz (nobel prize winner no less) - which turned out to be quite a gem.

most of the time my sisters and i were being harassed by egyptian men who would call out to us as we walked by. when we did stop, they would come up, take our hands and ask how many camels in exchange for each of us. of course they would offer the most for jia wen because she is 19- young and nubile, age of ripeness and unspoiled by time. i was probably way past my prime for them and jun still looks too young and isn't voluptuous enough for their taste. they behaved that way with foreign women and i'm sure they would never take such liberties with their own women. this, and the fact that we hardly saw any women walking around or working, made me realize how true the subjugation of my sex is in the arab culture (which i've always tried to believe was getting better).

we did the whole cruise up the nile and spent a day at the red sea which was beautiful and i regret being sick and not diving, although i cannot think of a better reason to return now.

we then headed to cairo where we spent 3 days mostly stuck in traffic and smog. there is no sense of order, if only that everyone understands the disorder. everything operates in sh'allah (in god's will) in egypt- from how long do you think it will take us to get to so and so? to how much does this cost? we hardly ever got a solid response and mostly were told "as you wish", to which the fastidious asian in us are like wtf?? just fucking tell us already!! cairo is a city of almost 20mln and there is no space for cars to park. so they literally line themselves up bumper to bumper, and in cairo the convention/rule is to NEVER engage your handbrake because your car WILL get hit on the bumper as someone nudges his way into ANY space he can find between two cars parked parallel to each other. oftentimes, cars will even park perpendicularly in front of another, blocking it from coming out of its lot...but never fear because the owner of the blocked will simply push the obstacle out of his way.