It's amusing that, after writing a bit about ham radio and speaking with distant, far-off Japan, I have managed to locate an old friend in China via the power of the Internet.
I last saw Nino back in 1994, shortly before I embarked on an ill-fated move to Mexico, and he headed off to China to teach English for awhile. I got a letter or two while in Mexico City, and then he vanished. He was part of a crew of four of us who used to hang out in a graveyard in Hopewell, NJ, sitting upon the homey grave of Amos Sked and his wife Mary Jane, who died in the early part of the 20th century. We'd...uh, "relax" a bit, then play our music...guitar, banjo, flute, and a small keyboard (that would be me, playing the Casio SK-1, battery-powered, with a good sampled piano sound, all tinkly and high-noted). Nino played the banjo, and he took it with him to China, where he planned to teach his students to sing "Home On The Range."
It's been awhile since the Oral Fixations--that's the band, y'see--played their odd, rambling versions of Dylan, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, and Poison (long story) tunes. I had planned to put up a "Where's Nino?" page on this site at some point, but yesterday, after entering his name into Google for the 30th time, I got two hits, once of which had Chinese Unicode next to it. The website was for some sort of food-marketing company, based in China, and Nino was quoted on the homepage. Sort of a "satisfied customer" blurb. I sent a note to the site's webmaster, explaining that I suspected that this particular Nino might be an old friend of mine, and asked for an e-mail address.
Not knowing how well the recipient read English, I phrased the e-mail formally, requesting assistance with my quest. Judging by what little I know of Chinese poetry, the theme of long-lost friends and reunions seems to resonate within their culture. I was pleased to recieve a reply the next day from Funny Wang, the webmaster. (Really). Funny was very happy to be able to assist with the reunion of two old friends, and wished me success. I sent an e-mail to the address he provided and, after seven years, I found Nino.
It turns out that he's been married to a woman from Shanghai for most of those seven years, and has two kids. He's working for an Asian division of Mars, trying his "damnedest to get the Chinese consumer to realize the joy of eating M&M's." He had given a blurb to a friend in Beijing, who put that blurb on his website, which is what generated the Google hits.
After seven years of randomly searching: bam! There he is. The mind boggles.
This, of course, was foretold at a week ago when I wrote about the Flavia coffee system...invented by Mars, the company Nino works for. Synchronicity, anyone?
