Playing With Words

I like words. I like words in particular that don't exist. One of my favourite episodes of Duckman, for example, involved a running gag surrounding the fictitious word "proxyglossoriasis" (spelling approximated) which is supposedly a disorder in which one replaces the word one intends to use with the next word in the dictionary. The effect is hysterectomy.

I also like using the word "spectabulous" -- coined by Greg Porter of BTRC, if memory serves -- which is defined as "being so good that you have to invent a new word to describe it". (It's a portmanteau of "spectacular" and "fabulous" you see.

In that vein, there is a word I use which I also coined. It is a portmanteau of "China" and "anaphylaxis": chinanaphylaxis. It means "having a psychological allergic reaction to living in China".

Today was a big chinanaphylaxis day.

I knew it was coming. It's Spring Festival time and this is when the Chinese are at their most Chinese. Today, in particular, was visiting the relatives who visited us yesterday (as previously blogged). The day was a disaster from the beginning onward. I'll gloss over the gory details of getting there and just let you imagine an unhappy rant about people who can't seem to communicate what they've got planned for you, where it will be, when it will be and how many places you're going to stop off at in between for indeterminate lengths of time. Because, apparently, actually telling people what is planned for a day is a State Secret whose revelation in advance is punishable by death. Or something.

Anyway, that set the tone for the rest of the evening. Which consisted, basically, of me sitting in the corner of an apartment and playing my Nintendo DS. (Thank GOD -- or at least Misha -- for that thing!) I would get called up to eat or to play the trained monkey for a while every so often, but mostly people around me were having a great time socialising, talking, reading, watching TV, etc. while I was bored out of my skull.

Insert here a long, unhappy rant about a culture for whom the word "no" means "he's just being polite, so let's force him".

And the worst thing about it all? Nobody was doing this to hurt me. Nobody at all was saying "what can I do today to piss Michael off the most". They were just doing what good Chinese hosts and families do. It just unfortunately was badly timed (c.f. above re: the horrific trip there) and badly executed ("culture clash" is the term bandied about most often). So not only was I aggravated most of the day, I had nobody to actually point fingers at as the malevolent source of the aggravation. This actually makes things worse.

The day wasn't a complete write-off. The food was good (although not as good as the food cooked by my mother-in-law). I lost track of all the dishes, but the best one was the tripe with mixed pepper. The stir-fried squid with mixed pepper was a damned close second. And my darling wife accidentally referred to "Andy" as "Candy" and then looked charmingly perplexed when I mentioned that I doubted Andy went to Mexico for that kind of operation....