The year is 2010, New Year’s Eve or thereabouts, going on 2011.
Here I sit in a cheap yet serviceable hotel room in Taichung, Taiwan, waiting to be greeted the next day by the agency errand girl who will ferry me to my new life of teaching the future leaders of the island nation English.
As my idea of late-night television at this moment is trashy sitcom re-runs and overly enthusiastic advertorials for hi-tech mops from hype men who appear to be on stimulants, consider my shock as, in search of entertainment, I lazily dredge the late-night airwaves of Taiwanese cable television.
It is at this point that I discover a game show, the likes of which I have never witnessed in all my days in the land of the WASPs.
Scantily clad young Asian women blow things vaguely yet unmistakably intentionally shaped like phalluses.
They get put in compromising positions.
They play with liquids meant to symbolize particular bodily secretions.
As one is wont to experience in Asia, a rush of confusion and titillation in equal measure grips me at the same time.