God Bless Uncle Sam!

Trip Start Jun 05, 2006
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62
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Trip End Jul 15, 2007


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Monday, October 23, 2006

OK, so I do not talk about this much but I am not actually from New Orleans. I am from a really small Cajun town about an hour South of New Orleans (yes it is possible to live South of New Orleans.) When you live in a small town and you get bored you can easily solve that problem by loading up the family truckster with "your mom and dem" and going to Wal-Mart. In small towns Wal-Mart = Entertainmnet! Baby, that is just the way it is!! Without failure every Louisiana small town has at least one Catholic Church and a Wal-Mart to go with it. So when I saw my first Chinese Wal-Mart I got excited! I do not shop at or support Wal-Mart in the US, but I got excited when I saw one here because it was a little piece of something familiar to me. The first thing I did when I saw Wal-Mart was start looking for a place to store my backpack so I could jump into that bad boy and check it out! I quickly decided that all Wal-Marts are the same everywhere in the world, just the customers look different. It was busting at the seams with Chinese running in every which way, just scooping up the "Everyday Low Prices" I guess? The little Chinese ladies where running about frantically stacking their buggies higher then "a welfare mom on the first of the month." There are two things I have learned during my short time in China. The first is you do not get in front of an Asian women in the pursuit of a bus seat, and the second is an Asian women after the last "econo pack" of toilet tissue is no joking matter! She will bite you if she has to get you out of her way! Why do people get mean at Wal-Mart? I read in the newspaper that there are currently 60 Wal-Marts in China and are looking to expand. So Chinese people can now stock up on all the WWE wrestling and Nascar merchandise that their harts desire! Thank you Sam Walton for taking a little piece of white trash America and making it available to the world (and at such economical prices!)

Growing up as a teenager in a small town you have 3 ways to entertain yourself on the weekends:
1. You can drink beer -with your friends
2. You can have "inappropriate relations" -with your friends
3. You go to Wal-Mart -with your friends
(Those with good time management skills can combine all 3 together on a Friday night!)

Random story:
A few weeks ago while in Northern Vietnam I went on a day trip to one of the local indigenous markets. The market had really nothing to offer foreigners other then its people. They were selling pigs, knives, tobacco, cattle, etc.... The reason the market is popular with tourist and the reason I made the 3 hour trip to see it was the market is used by the local hill tribe people(minority people.) They still dress in their ethnic clothing and use the market for selling/trading the goods they produce. The people are not Vietnamese or Chinese they are from a local hill tribe "Mong." They are the oddest looking people in their strange bright colored clothing. They have huge round faces with virtually no eyes at all. They are something you would expect to see out of a National Geographic magazine, and they still speak Mong! It was just funny to see them going about their daily business at the market and then in comes van loads of tourist armed to the teeth with cameras snapping away pics of them while they were shopping. It made me wonder what would happen if one Sunday a van full of them showed up (dressed in there foreign clothing like we were to them, not knowing a word of our language)and started snapping pics of all the house wives/soccer moms buying deodorant and toothpaste at Wal-Mart. I would guess it would freak them out! The thing is that country folks have guns. You really do not want to make them nervous!


"Only takes one tree, to make 1000 matches,Only takes one match, to burn A
thousand trees" ~Sterophonics


Completely irrelevant random train thoughts:
I was sitting on the train yesterday and I started thinking (like I often do when I have 14 plus hour train rides alone and no one to talk to.) I came to the conclusion that if........
1. I had the ability to grow hair follicles
2. I was born a black man
I would have a difficult time deciding between "corn rolls" "a perm" and "an afro?" Only after hours of thought/deliberation did I finally decided that in my mind I see myself as an "afro kind of brother!"

I'm Johnny Nomad me luv you long time!
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