Where is Mrs. Stevo?

Mrs. Stevo zai nar?

Ou est Mrs. Stevo?

Can you answer the question? I can, but Mrs. Stevo is my wife, I have a tad more insight.

Remember the contest I had, the one I meant to continue but never did? There was a secret and no one could guess what it was.

The secret — was/is — is that I am now a bachelor. Mrs. Stevo has left me, for the time being. No, this isn’t a separation that can be resolved by counseling.

My delightful lao po is working somewhere in jolly ole England, and has been for two months. She will return to China eight months from now. Her task: Teaching Chinese to British high school students (I’ve met the students, her resolve will be tested).

So, here I sit. Alone.

I thought I would enjoy the freedom for a week or two before the loneliness set in, after she left in September. That enjoyment last about seven hours. I woke up a few hours after retiring, rolling over, stretching my arm toward the warm, soft body that wasn’t here.

Mrs. Stevo in London. You gotta love the hair flip.

She was gone.

Really gone.

I was alone.

I’ve come to grips with the loneliness. Luckily, my job keeps me hopping (running to stand still is a better description) and I don’t have a lot of time for personal feelings. That’s probably for the best. My thoughts wander to her during the quiet moments, the down-time, and I again feel like a silly teenage boy that writes flowery sonnets to his absent beloved.

Yuck. Been there, done that. I’m a man! Show no emotion. Brave the world, like a stoic.

Ummm, okay.

Here’s to you, Mrs. Stevo. I raise a glass to your adventure, and one to myself to numb the occasional pain of our separation. The weekend is almost here, dear friends. Send a quiet toast to the small Asian fireball on English soil. Or to me, the middle-aged 16 year old trying to figure out iambic pentameter.

We are all waiting for something: For riches, enlightenment, inspiration, happiness, a soulmate. Waiting for  grandeur, almost unobtainable. Waiting for Godot. Waiting for Guffman.

But we often wait for other, more mundane things as well:

Waiting for the Chinese holiday dinner rush.

As my blogeagues do: Here’s the music.

The host and hostess of the Mid-Autumn Festival show.

I’m usually on stage when the estate puts on a show. My phone rings when they need a foreigner that cleans up nice and is generally sober. I have always lamented not being able to shoot the performances I’m in. Waiting in the wings, a forced smile on my face, trying to remember my lines, generally prohibits photographic adventures.

As the Mid-Autumn show wasn’t televised I wasn’t needed. I didn’t even know the extravaganza was taking place until I wandered by. Not being able to read signs has drawbacks. It was hot, I was tired, but I trotted home for my Canon EOS 40D and my new Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L USM IS lens.

People stared as I walked the quarter mile from my apartment to the outside stage. Carrying the camera, with a giant white lens attached, I felt like an armed soldier on patrol. I think some machine guns weigh less than the 40D with a 70-200 USM IS attached.

I pushed through the crowd, not as bad a boarding the subway, but holiday crowds, especially Grandmother with grandchildren appearing on stage, can be formidable foes. The lights went down and the music came up. The beautiful hostess, in a shiny sequined dress appeared, a dapper man at her side. As the orchestra started their first number the local press photographers appeared.

I had seen them before. While waiting in the wings at previous shows, I cursed them. They looked and acted just like their North American counterparts. Journalist and photographers must be the same the world over.

I did not want to be in the paper. I don’t want any photos taken of me (from 1993 to 1998 I think there are two photos of The Stevo in existence, one being a driver’s licence mugshot). Ironically, it was once me waiting, camera and flash at the ready, stalking stage-bound quarries. Turn about is fair play, someone said.

Children dancing as part of a Mid-Autumn Festival Show.

I shot, and shot, adjusted my exposure and ISO settings, and shot some more. Practice makes perfect, and I’ve only had the Canon EOS 40D for two months. We haven’t bonded yet. We’re getting closer, but our relationship has not yet been completely consummated.

The band did a second song and I lowered my axe. As I adjusted the ISO settings, I saw a Chinese photographer, with same gear as me, pointing his giant zoom lens in my direction. I pretended I didn’t see him. Another photographer, I saw from the corner of my eye, slyly trained his lens on me.

Crooning by the lanterns.

It’s been hot in south China as of late. Okay, it’s usually hot nine months of the year, but the last two weeks have been damn hot. Imagine:  A red-faced, white man, dripping with sweat, holding a camera and ginormous zoom lens. Yeah, a great newspaper photo.

A group of dancing children bounded on to the stage. I raised my camera. In my haste I had only brought one memory card. I didn’t have many shots left.  I fired away.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a weak flash. When I lowered my camera I saw an old man standing ten feet away. He held a video camera and was shooting stills of me, unabashed. A print photographer would have been more discrete. I’m sure he’s a neighborhood monitor and immediately sent my photo to someone in charge, with exclamations of a foreign reporter being present.

My card full, I beat a hasty retreat. Yeah, the new lens, attached to a Canon EOS 40D, rocks, but I stand out even more in a crowd.

Is it possible to die of bacon poisoning? This isn’t a question often asked. I may be the only person in the history of humankind to raise this query.

I love bacon. I ran gleefully home when my local store starting carrying the plastic-wrapped, fat-streaked, heart attack-inducing meat product. I cooked the entire ½ pound package of pork goodness and ate it all in one large sandwich.

Gluttony is a sin, but why one of the seven deadlies I’ll never know. I had a Jewish coworker at summer camp that ate bacon like a hungry savage each time it was served. She knew it was her only opportunity to consume the smokey breakfast without religious stigma.

I did find this gem on an article entitled: Stop poisoning your sex life: minimize your intake of five kinds of food, and your beefsteak will continue to sizzle well into your adulthood.

1) Fatty meats: More bacon means less porkin’. Myth has it that gorging on red meat is manly, but fatty cuts of beef, bacon, sausage and full-fat luncheon meats can be wack for your wood. “Most men know that saturated fat and cholesterol narrow the arteries that nourish the heart and increase risk of heart attack,” Lieberman says. “But they also narrow the arteries that carry blood into the penis, which contributes to erectile dysfunction [ED].” These arteries, by the way, are some of the smallest and will be the first to jam up with plaque.

Perhaps I have evolved beyond the need for intimate contact with my wife. If we had children they would want to eat my bacon, leaving less greasy treats for me. How much is too much? Is it possible to OD on bacon, requiring medical intervention? Is bacon poisoning a possibility? I don’t know. A quick search of Google pointed to some pages regarding traditional food poisoning, as well as illness induced by nitrates and a nasty host of bacon’s chemical companions. I’m too lazy to dig into the matter fully. I’ll consider myself a case study. When I find myself in a Chinese ER, sweating pork fat, the truth will be known.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. Friedrich Nietzsche

Captured: Shenzhen, China, October 2005.

Today in history: On July 31, 2006 a slightly bitter expat English teacher married a gentle Chinese lass. In the registry office he couldn’t read the form or make the appropriate pledge. The frustrated official eventually gave up and allowed him to sign his name, skipping the pledge.

The newlyweds ate dinner at KFC and spent their wedding night in an unlicensed hotel.

Things improved.

Wo ai ni, Mrs. Stevo.

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