Preggers

WICHITA, Kansas - A quick note: I hate Blogger. I hate Safari even more. I hate it when they team up and crash the computer and delete massively clever blog entries in the process.

War of the Worlds is on the television. It's a really intense movie for a summer blockbuster. It's daring and actually has something to say about terrorism and the post 9/11 world. And might also give me nightmares tonight, and not just because Dakota Fanning is really creepy.

Dakota Fanning is a child, and that's what I wanted to talk about today: children. People here in Kansas seem to have children pretty young. There's a woman at work. She has two children: aged 25 and 20. The 25-year-old has two kids of her own, aged 5 and 2. The younger daughter has a newborn baby. That's three grandchildren, and she's not as old as my mother. My mother will be lucky if she has three grandchildren, period.

The average age of a woman's first childbirth is now about 25 years. Here I've met people who's first kid was born long before that. Children right out of high school isn't uncommon. Some people actually do get married when they are 18. We ran a story in the paper the other day that treated it as a normal thing, not something to hold up as a model for delinquency. Hardly the kind of thing that would run in the New York Times.

I don't think there's anything wrong with teen pregnancy. Some people at age 17 are ready to have a child. Others are not, but they have children anyway. I certainly didn't, but that doesn't mean some people can't choose to do it.

I do hope to make it out of Kansas without fathering any offspring. We'll see.

Excuse Me While I Play God for a Moment

WICHITA, Kansas - There are two sides to every story: the part that goes in the paper and the part that doesn't. The great mission of the reporter is to find information, the great burden of a reporter is to select which facts to broadcast.

There are times as a reporter, including here in Wichita, that I've had information that I wanted to share with the general public but couldn't. It wasn't a question of whether the information was relevant or valid, or even true -- it was that this information was not obtained in a way that makes it runnable in the paper.

Newspapers have very good reasons for the standards they employ. They are in many cases excellent reasons. Legal obligation. Being able to confirm information. Not reporting something until the full truth is known.

But this also means that people who know the system of the paper, what we can publish and we cannot, sometimes come off better in print than those do not. Oftentimes these are people who already have trouble with traditional avenues of power: minorities religious, ethnic and racial. But what can I do? I'm more than happy to print their side of the story, but it needs to be presented in an acceptable way. If they refuse to do so, there's not much I can do.

This might be too vague to make sense, but I'm sure you understand that in a case like this I can't provide examples. Here are some historical quandaries:

1. Should the newspaper report the name of the Kobe Bryant alleged rape victim?
2. Should the newspaper allow informants to criticize the government if they refused to be identified? Under what circumstances should this be allowed; ie it affects a war or national security?
3. Does gossip belong in a newspaper? What if people like it?

This feel is a common among reporters. Maybe it's why newsrooms are always full of rumor and gossip. The spoken word is the only way these interesting stories are getting told.

It doesn't solve the problem. Remember this Chinese idiom: 口说无凭立字为据. "Spoken words fly away, written words remain."

To the Stars

GODDARD, Kansas - A friend from work wanted to check out the observatory on Lake Afton. I certainly didn't have anything better to do, so we set off going west with a couple of other people.

The journey was on a country road, through the Kansas of my imagination. There were cows aplenty, in a large fenced-in grazing areas, two-lane roads that went straight as far as the eye could see. The conversation was cow tipping. This was Kansas, although every few miles there was an "exburb" development -- the trappings of suburbia artificially placed even farther outside of the city than originally planned. It seems like an odd combination: to live in the country as if it was still the city. But many people, not just here in Kansas are signing up: exburbs are the fastest growing areas in the United States.

Lake Afton is a country campground 20 miles outside of Wichita. Around one end of the lake is a small observatory. I say small but I really have no idea what the average size of an observatory is. I do know the movie "Contact" with Jodie Foster, and in that movie the observatory was much bigger. This looked more like an elementary school with a dome sticking out of it.

After paying our $3 admission fee (for a two-hour program; I love Middle America prices!), we were escorted inside the dome. The schedule pointed to a five point program this evening:

1. Jupiter
2. Vega
3. Planetary Nebula
4. Space Globules
5. Milky Way

It seemed a tad front-loaded to me. Jupiter's cool, and I've heard of Vega, but Space Globules just aren't my thing.

Our instructor screamed astronomer: approaching 50, white pants with a white shirt, nervously running through a presentation he's probably given 30 times.

"Jupiter is the biggest planet in the Solar System," he said -- three times.

I heard much about why Vega is blue, nebula are decaying stars and the comparative sizes of Jupiter's moons. I've since forgotten it all, so that speaks to how worthless it was.

Outside the observatory, we were back to cow tipping when two men approached us and wanted us to look inside their telescopes.

"Is it yours?" I asked one of them, as looked at the M51 Galaxy.

"Hell no," he said. "I couldn't afford this. It's his. He's a pharmacist." The telescope was nearly 10 feet tall -- I had to look at most objects with the help of a step ladder.

They showed us several objects -- the Owl Nebula, a spiral galaxy and M13 -- that brought the sky to life more than rehashed physics lessons inside the telescope. The view from the telescope wasn't terribly clear anyway, the lens wasn't terribly long. But the visit out there was enough to remind myself of the strange things that are above us every night, but usually blocked out by Taco Tico and Wal-Mart signs.

Hot Hot Hot

WICHITA, Kansas - The heat wave is finally over here in Kansas. The temperature was over 100 for five days straight, and pretty close to that the three days before. It was pretty brutal, but no more so than the dozens of other places in the country with similarly hot weather. But since all news is local, we were out heavily covering this story. I even wrote a couple pieces on it myself.

Weather is always news. There's no arguing with that, people love to hear about the weather, its extremes. And weather has meaningful effects on people's lives, just as much if not more than city council votes and declarations. Sometimes you need a laught, and this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer made my week:

" I don't get this weather. It's crazy.

Have you noticed it keeps getting hotter and hotter?

It seems to happen this way every year, especially in July and August.

I can't understand it.

Here at the paper, we are trying to understand it, too.

We sent out a team of reporters yesterday, who fanned across the region.

When they came back, they reported: It is hot everywhere! Very hot!

The city editor said: You mean everywhere?!

They said: Yes, everywhere!

He said: This is front-page news!

And so it was done.

Read it all here.

Big Gulp

Wichita, KANSAS - We're in the middle of a heat wave here. It's really, really hot. The temperature has been over 100 degrees for the past three days, and the three days before that weren't much cooler. Today it was 108 F. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 110 F. Even on the Asia scale, that's 44 C, and pretty damn hot.

Busy reporters who are moving around town all day need to keep hydrated. This means hitting the water cooler dozens of times each day. When the need for fluid is combined with the need for caffeine, I'm off to Quiktrip. Quiktrip -- or just QT -- is the consummate Kansas gas station. There's everywhere here. Elsewhere Mobil may battle it out with Sunoco or Exxon for dominance, but the battle is already over here. A large, white QT sign dots every other corner, and no one seems to mind. The price of gas is fair compared to the national average, and there's a large selection of food to be found inside.

What Quiktrip is really famous for is beverages. They don't just have Coke and Pepsi: there's Diet Dr. Pepper, Blue Gatorade, and even their own energy drink, Rooster Booster. This being America, the drinks come in the following sizes: 16, 22, 32, 44, 52 and 64 ounces. I know some people have a long ways to go, but if you're driving 64 ounces without stopping, there's a serious problem with your bladder, or you have an onboard privy.

The thing that bugs me about the drink system is the pricing. Unlike 99.999% of items in the world, more drink does not equal more price. It costs 59 cents for 16 ounces, 69 cents for 22, 79 cents for 32, but only 59 cents for 44! Apparently, 44 ounces are what Quiktrip is famous for, so the price is cheaper. Apparently it used to be 44 cents. I definitely know that it's stupid. It makes me feel guilty for wanting the smallest size (a perfectly adequate 16 ounces). Too often, I'm tricked into getting 150% more soda or slushee than I want because of some kind of ingrained belief that it's wasteful not to get the best value drink. If that's not a Communist way of thinking, I don't know what is.

Mack'd

BELLE PLAINE, Kansas - The following is a letter that I sent to the McDonald's Corporation after a recent experience in Belle Plaine, Kansas. This is the first time in recent memory that I've been moved to send correspondence to a company, but I think this time warrants action.

Dear Sir or Madam:

I am writing to complain about a McDonald's off the Kansas Turnpike in the town of Belle Plaine. It is located inside a service station just off the northbound section of road. I stopped there on Sunday in the middle of a journey between Wichita and Oklahoma City, for a quick snack and to refuel.

I decided to grab a bite to eat at McDonald's, it being the only restaurant in the service provider and a normally reliable food option. There was a line, but it took less than two minutes for me to place an order. I decided to try your newest menu item -- the Chicken Snacker and a small order of fries. Your dollar menu is genius. I was on the fence about eating or just pushing down the road, but there is something tempting about the idea of only spending $1 on a bite to eat. But I didn't actually spend $1 -- I spent $3. That's not too far from an entire meal, for less food. Pretty damn clever.

But I didn't care, I just wanted my food. No one gave me my food, rather the person behind the counter placed my receipt on the counter and did nothing. The next person in line was helped. Occasionally, a young man of maybe 16 came over, looked at the receipts and went back in the kitchen. At first, he didn't bring any food, but then he started to fill orders. A hamburger to an eledry women, a series of values meals for a large family from Texas. The orders came and went, but mine did not arrive.

Time slipped by on the digital clock posted on the wall. I ordered at 12:47, soon it was 12:57, then 1:02. No explanation, no apologies. Just people sitting around, not giving me a chicken wrap. I asked the person where my food was, the response I got was: "it's not ready yet." Then, five minutes later, I was told, "You need to wait some more." Then some time later the food was thrust in my face with a dirty look.

I've been to McDonald's. I understand I'm not getting the best food in the world, or the most attentive service. But I don't expect people to be overtly rude, and I certainly want the food to fast, especially when I'm on the road.

I must say, the chicken snacker was quite good (much better than that Fàn-tastic Sandwich you have in Hong Kong). I write because there's something wrong with this McDonald's, they don't seem to be able to handle traffic the way every other McDonald's in the world does. I'm sure it's a training issue, and something that can be sorted out. I hope someday to revisit the Belle Plaine McDonald's and have a prompt, friendly delivery of a Chicken Snacker.

Thank you.

To all those "Foreign Friends" out there

WICHITA, Kansas - This is a story from the book of China.

As I have already written, last month in Pingyao a young girl of perhaps 18 approached me as I was trying to make my way from the train station to the old section of town. She was annoying, pursued me and wanted to practice her English, but couldn't really think of anything interesting to say. You might recall that I eventually escaped by hailing a golf cart and telling them the name of a hostel I remembered from a tourist brochure. Everyone lived happily ever, or at least I did.

That's the plot of the story, but I want to revisit today because of something that young woman said. After about 10 minutes of conversation, I asked why she was sitting at the train station, waiting for American gentlemen such as myself to disembark, instead of say sleeping or playing with her childhood companions. "Because I like to meet the foreign friends," she said.

It's a phrase she kept returning to during our 45 minutes together. "Here's where foreign friends like to eat," she said. Then she took me in the direction of a hotel, to which I asked why we were headed that way. Even in China it seemed a little early for "massage." She told me this hotel was very famous, because "it was the first hotel in the city where foreign friends were allowed to visit."



My god, yes I definitely wanted to stay at a place where foreigners were once locked inside, paying $150 for poor service and surly looks from security guards. I was there to see a Ming Dynasty wall, not a garish hotel built in 1974. I declined the chance to hang out in a historical hangout of foreign friends.

That phrase bugs me, more so than the ubquitious 老外. Foreign friends -- a direct translation of 外国朋友 -- carries with me a sense of an exotic resource. These are people from the more advanced world, from which we need to extract services in order to accelerate our growth as a nation. This might be governmental reform, remaking the banking industry, or in the case of Pingyao, learning English. What makes it so troubling is that it reduces the encounters between visitors and residents to just a simple commodity market.

Ma Dawei addressed this in his learned talk back in April. "Always make sure you know what each person wants to get out of a relationship," he said. The Chinese won't want to be friends with you for nothing, you need to offer them something in return.

Maybe I'm naive, but I think the relationships and friendships I'm slowly making here in Kansas are different. I don't think they're based solely on acquiring skills from one person or another. I hope that's true, because I'm not in the mood to be anyone's "foreign friend" right now.

Return Diner, Return Traveler

WICHITA, Kan. – There's plenty of "Ethnic" food, as it is regrettably known around here, in Wichita, you just need to know where to look. Thanks to my friend Ryan from Hong Kong, a couple nights I ate at Café Asia.

It was my first Asian meal since, well, Asia.

The restaurant's decor and location weren't impressive: a small space hidden at the back of a strip mall in the north side of town. Inside there were tablecloths hiding tables that looked straight out of a cafeteria and a collection of Buddhas and postcards on the plain walls. At one corner there was a section of DVDs, with a sign: "Not for Sale." Children of the owner watched them when they came to the restaurant after school.

I studied the many-sectioned menu. There were "Appetizers," "Chinese Favorites," "Chef's Specialties," "Thai Items," and "Combination Plates." Each one had several dishes, with the ingredients explained in grammatically correct but sometimes confusing English ("pork with pieces of sliced vegetables cooked together").

The menu, did however give away that the restaurant was owned by a Malaysian family. The Chef's Specialties were all Malaysian, the rest was just a drab mixture of Chinese and Thai that most Asian restaurants in small-town America feel they need to offer to ensure a crowd.



I asked the waitress for Nasi Lombok, the Pad Thai of Malaysia, and something I ate quite frequently when I visited the country.

She looked surprised. "Oh, I've heard of that. Yes, yes I have had that once. We don't have that here."

I wound up getting a kind of sweet Malaysian noodle, which were pretty good, but the real point of that request an excuse to converse. I told the waitress of my travels in the country, and in turn she told her story.

She was from northern peninsular Malaysia. That's why they had Thai on the menu, because the country is quite close to the border so people knew how to make some of the dishes. She also knew some Chinese people in her hometown, so she knew something about that cuisine, too. Business in Wichita was fine, if not booming. She longed to make a return visit to her home country. She'd done it once before. Maybe next year.

On the way out the door, I said goodbye to my new Malaysian friend. She'd been very friendly, talking for nearly 20 minutes, pausing in between to help other customers.

"Wait," she said, "Take this."

She pushed a piece of paper into my hand. I opened it when I got outside. I was expecting a menu, for my return to the restaurant. Instead it was a tourist brochure, for my return to Malaysia.

A Generous Serving

KANSAS CITY - I think there's a line between being friendly and being annoying. But that's just me, and clearly my definition isn't in line with the local customs here.

Yesterday evening we pulled in from a long day of driving (and a diversionary stop in Albany, Illinois: home of Indian burial mounds and the Desperado Casino in southern Iowa) to collapse at a hotel and get a bite to eat. This being Missouri, we wanted to try some barbecue. I inquired where the nearest place was at the front desk.

"Oh, just go down the street. Be careful crossing at the light," our receptionist said. I think she was trying to make up for putting us in a room with a king size and a roll away.

At Rudy's, we were served a mountain of food. I'm still on Asian portion sizes, but this was massive by any measure. The server, in suggesting this "sampler plate" described it as containing "eight slices of ham, ten slices of roast beef, four ribs and a stack of fries." She left out the six pieces of bread, but managed to rattle off this monstrosity with incredible nonchalantness.

It was nearly ten when we got to eating, which is really late for an area of the country that prides itself on eating "supper." We had a large side dining room to ourselves, and an extra-inning match up between the Kansas City Royals and the St. Louis Cardinals.

I sat there, trying to eat the meal for nearly an hour. A very large black woman came in from time to time to check in on the game and see how we were doing. Very full, thanks.