Mood:  irritated

Again, I do respect foreign culture to the max, but seriously…. Can anyone tell me the cultural signifigance of hawking a loogie on the carpet of a 5 star hotel?  Or perhaps the need to blow a farmer snot at the dinner table?  Maybe you could even figure out for me the reason it’s ok to hang your toddlers bare ass over a restaurant garbage can to take a dump, or fill an ashtray with urine?

Normally, I feel bad about knocking other cultures.  This subject however continues to perplex my mind here.

From the time I get up in the morning and make my way down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, I have the privilege of hearing men, women, and even sweet elderly  grandmothers working up a nice big loogie to spit on the floor of the hotel.  Even at dinner the other day, the girl at the next table not once, but twice felt the need to loudly extract her phlegm into a cute and wiggly little puddle beside her chair.  At which point, my dinner tastes somewhat less ‘yummy’...  And if you think your stomach is turning by reading this, try eating beside that every single day.  I don’t really think it’s something I will try to respect or even get used to. 

Something else that bothers me are the toddlers with no covering on their ‘bathing suit area’….. I get the fact that some are just too financially strapped to buy diapers, but WHY oh WHY is it ok to take your kid to the steps of the restaurant and let them evacuate their bowls where people have to step over to get in the door???  This one really gets me going… 

Heidi and I went yesterday to KFC so her 1-1/2 year old daughter Zoey could play on the playground and eat some chicken nuggets.  She soon realized that she had forgotten to bring socks (as you are not allowed to wear shoes in the play area).  The last time we were there, Zoey had stepped on something sharp in the play area and had a sore foot, so Heidi decided that this time Zoey could keep her sandals on.  The floor was waay dirtier than her shoes anyways!   About 3 minutes passed, and a Chinese lady came over and told us ‘NO SHOES! NO SHOES!’ so Heidi had to then remove Zoeys shoes if she wanted to continue playing.  Ok, fine, rules are rules.  Then came along two other children.   We thought, oh that’s good, Zoey has someone to play with.  It was then that we noticed one of the toddlers had the ‘open bum’ concept and was playing in the play area with his junk hanging out, and his bare ass smiling away.  His mom took him to the bathroom briefly, and then returned to play.  Where did he go?? Oh, the slide of course!  He had a hard time sliding due to his bare bum, so he basically inched his way down the slide over and over again.  So let me get this straight… Not allowed to wear shoes on the disgusting filthy floor, but SUUUURE, NO PROBLEM, you can let your kid leave skid marks on the slide for my child to touch with her hands and then eat some chicken nuggets, I don’t mind!  Hey, why don’t we invite grandma over to hawk a few greeners on the monkey bars?  Seriously, yeah, while we’re at it, bring over Uncle Jin to rub his junk on the ladder, afterwards we’ll go grab some chicken wings.