I’m back, and I hope you realize that when I disappear its because I’m having too much fun to consider wasting an hour in a stuffy internet cafe.

Today is New Years Eve and yesterday marked two months since I apprehensively boarded that JetStar flight from Taipei to Singapore, and so its time for a little change up. I love telling you where I am and what I’m doing, but I can ramble about other things, as well.

Surprisingly, my “baby” controversy has sucked in more people than my mother and sister. Their approach has been lightly badgering me about my use of the word, calling it immature and Austin Powers-ish. Both solid comments, indeed. Once, my mother lectured me (at length) about calling my closest girl friend “babe”, remarking that it belittled her and women in general. At the time, I was studying both feminism and the philosophy of language. In true mother fashion, however, it was a lecture and not a debate, and so all my rebuttals were ignored or misunderstood.

Indeed, the best argument against my (over)use of the word was a comment on my last post (”On the islands”) by a mysterious bystander who has observed the comment-board conversation with growing interest. I assume we are friends from Toronto, “baby baby baby baby baby”, but who are you?

At any rate, I have decided to approach this in a quasi democratic fashion. Help me choose a replacement word because, as the post mentioned, “baby” is simply too played out and I need a shred of originality on this website.

So here are a couple of words I’ve considered, try saying them in the following example sentences and tell me what you think.

1. sailor 2. doctor 3. barber 4. head tribesman

“I’m in Laos, xxxxxx, Laos!”

“Those are some fantastic pants, xxxxx.”

“Two Beer Laos, xxxxxx, and four glasses.”

Any help on this issue would be appreciated, and of course write in ballots will be accepted and, likely, used instead of the four ideas I came up with (I especially like barber).

Oh, and after an amazing eight days on Don Det in the four thousand islands, I sped up to the capital Vientiane (which might be the only capital city in the world that still wakes its visitors up with roosters at four in the morning) and then a few days later to the tourist mecca town of Vang Vieng. This town is bursting at the seams, and people are sleeping on hotel lobby floors in preparation for New Years tonight.

I hope all of you have a ridiculous but safe New Years, and know that at exactly 12 noon on the 31st (if you are in eastern North America) I was singing and dancing and kissing complete strangers (I hope!).

HAPPY NEW YEAR, BARBER!

Add to Facebook, Google or any other service

Share This