Chinese Foot Care

This is not going to be very exciting so you might not want to read it unless youre bored.
So this weekend I found myself at a chinese foot care specialist. I had gone to visit a friend, Oziris, and we were helping our chinese friend Hong celebrate his birthday. Anyhow, 4 of us ended up at a chinese foot care specialist and we all goot foot massages. It was a new experience for me. There were big comfy sofa chairs and we each sat in one and leaned back and had our feet soaked and rubbed by old chinese people. There was 1 man, and 3 girls. There was soft lighting and soothing classical chinese music. Accompanying the music was a large plasma screen tv showing scenes of death and destruction caused by the earthquake in china. It was a strange juxtaposition. The sound was off on the tv and you couldnt hear what was being said. It was a satellite station of some sort and it was just news photage of collapsed buildings, dazed, bleeding people, and corpses. There was lots of crying and hopelessness on the screen. All this, with the soft soothing music and old chinese people rubbing our feet. The guy next to me seemed more concerned with his cellphone and his text messages than anything else. This seemed equally surreal to me as both the tv and the old chinese people rubbing our feet seemed to demand attention. I cant imagine how he was able to focus his attention on that phone, but I guess its a skill. It occured to me that it was a day of learning about chinese culture. I thought I knew quite a lot about chinese culture. But that day I learned how to do a tea smoked duck chinese style (something I saw on a cooking show), and all about chinese foot care.
The next day I undid all the good footcare by walking barefoot from my friends apartment to the beach. She lives in Venice LA and it was only a 10 minute walk. But it was enough to mess up the bottoms of my feet. That was yesterday and they still feel sore. It was however, worth it to go and stand in the ocean. I only went in a little past knee deep, but it sure felt good. Something primal about it. Makes me glad I live near an ocean.