"Connecting" with "friends" in Minneapolis

7/30/11

I am in Minnesota, staying at the Hilton in Bloomington. I am here on business, taking part in top secret corporate espionage. There is a wedding going on in the lobby. The bride is a woman of Laotian extraction. I met some of her bridesmaids in the lobby this evening and I heard them speaking a language which I assumed to be Cambodian. When they informed me it was a mix of Laotian and Cambodian, I told them I had been to Cambodia and Laos and found them to be beautiful countries. They were very drunk and immediately accused me of going to south east Asia for some sexual tourism. I tried to tell them that I was there with my wife to travel and discover their beautiful country, but they would have none of it. They were very defensive and convinced I was there to sleep with young Laotian whores. 

This is the legacy of Western sex tourism in their region. They treat me like a whoremonger and assume that I see them as whores. They soon go back to their iPhones.

Everywhere I go, everyone has his face buried in his "smartphone." It is a mechanism to avoid human connection. I am outside in front of the Hilton, enjoying a balmy summer night, hoping to strike up a conversation with a Midwestern local, and all around me I see people with their faces in their apparati, “connecting” with their “friends.” A sad state of affairs indeed.