I’m sitting in a cafe in Victoria, British Columbia, with a paper spread out in front of me and my hands hidden beneath the table. In them I’m holding a pair of chopsticks and a glass jar filled with steamed vegetables and brown rice. By telling myself I might get the boot for eating ‘outside food’ in here I’ve turned lunching into a daring game that gives me the light adrenaline kick I’ve missed since I quit shoplifting.

There’s some excitement behind the counter now; something’s happening outside. Baristas and a couple regulars make a move to the window to check it out. With the cafe staff distracted I mash a recklessly large mouthful of carrots and kale. Next I step over to see what the fuss is about. Across the street a couple of junkies are making off with a huge pink I-beam that was propping up a freestanding stone wall. This was the climax of an epic struggle that began a few weeks before. The junkies would start sawing, the cops would show up and confiscate their saws, they’d steal another saw, go back to the I-beam and so on: a pointless sub-plot running parallax in the cycle of the addict.

With the price of scrap metal shooting through the roof an economic bottom feeder can run some serious game these days. Check Laos: with so much ordnance hiding in the jungles (more bombs were dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war than both sides dropped during the entire second world war) and such cheap metal detectors to be had, rice farmers are finding dry season work in the jungle filling their baskets with bomb casings. So what’s the deal? Why are the prices high enough that Laos peasants are taking the risk of handling a live cluster bomblet and drug addicts in BC are willing to engage in behaviour that comes very close to resembling work? You already know the answer: China.

Yes, somehow importing all these building supplies and erecting clammy concrete cubes translates to having a booming economy. Apart from the cold floors and damp walls the best feature of these monuments would have to be the plumbing: your no-flush squat toilet taps right into the sewage mainframe. This means your toilet exhales the smell of the communal sewage directly back into your bathroom. It’s not all bad, though, not every Chinese building project is a misinterpretation of modern comfort.

For example, last month while I was hanging out in Kunming, I met up with these guys who told me about this huge statue of Optimus Prime that was plunked in the parking lot of an obscure car dealership. We checked the maps and jumped on the bus to check it out. Normally I don’t do sight-seeing because every time you do a piece of your soul breaks off and floats away forever, but fuck it, I made an exception for the king of all robots.

- Willem Betts