I woke up with half a bean burrito smeared over my face and a skull-hemorrhage of a hangover but I was still reasonably chipper. The night before, some guy with a permed ponytail fiddled his way into my heart at a small Beijing bar. He strummed out songs on his Spanish guitar that would have sent a flamenco troupe into a blithering frenzy.

The whole next day I shimmied around my apartment with those divinely plucked tunes still echoing in my head. Suddenly, my Motorola Razor began to vibrate and when I picked it up some Starbucks representative was telling me that I had won a return ticket to New York because of some contest I supposedly entered while in Hong Kong. "Holy Enrique Igelisas," I said. "I'll pack right now, I'm leaving today."

I'd never seen New York City. And for a one-time conqueror of the discovered world I knew that was kind of slack. To think that it took a coffee corporation to finally get me there, I mean, is there nothing that a man with a frappuccino in his grasp cannot achieve? I touched down at JFK and headed straight for town. I had an AMEX card that needed a good swiping or two.

After splurging on bags full of goodies for my homies, my mom and arranging for a hyperbaric chamber to be shipped back home, I decided to kick back at my suite in The Plaza. I switched on the HDTV in time to catch an advertisement calling for people to appear in a quiz show called Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The title sums it up really: contestants' winnings escalate with each multiple-choice question that they answer correctly. Hey, what the hell - another cool million could really give my vintage t-shirt business a push along.

First I had to fill out an application and I decided to go under the alias Eric B Rakim because I didn't want to attract any unnecessary attention. About an hour later I got the call - I was in, they wanted me as a contestant. I caught a cab straight to the studio and boy, the tension was palpable. As the show went live, you could see the anticipation on the other contestants' faces.

This could after all, be their ticket out of Loserville. However, this is a game for only one eventual candidate and that person would be the one who answered the elimination question first. It was dead simple: "According to the recent Mercer survey, what is Asia's second most expensive city?"

"Was it A) Hong Kong B) Beijing C) Seoul or D) Tokyo?"

I locked in A) Hong Kong faster than a decapitating-Jet Li-roundhouse-kick. And wouldn't you know it - I was the first to answer. I was going to play for the big bucks.

During the ad break the host, Meredeth Viera, told me to take deep breaths and remember that I had 'life lines'. This means that if I didn't know the answer to the question I could phone a friend, ask the audience or get the multiple choice answers narrowed down to two. "No problem," I told her. "Let's make some goddamn money."

I couldn't believe the first question. It was surely a sign that today was going to be my day. Meredith asked: "Which of these Romantic-era poets wrote a poem devoted to the Mongol leader Kublai Khan?"

"Was it A) Keats B) Coleridge C) Wordsworth or D) Lord Byron?"

"Lock in C, Wordsworth," I snapped back. "Lockety-lock it right in."

I was grinning from ear to ear but the bemused expression on Meredith's face started to make me nervous.

"I'm sorry, Eric," she said. "The correct answer is B, Coleridge."

Holy mother of deadbeats, how on earth did I get that wrong? My face turned whiter than android blood. I was ushered off the set into the cold streets of Manhattan, where neon signs buzzed above like giant vampiric insects in a digital jungle.

Contact the author at kublaimeister@gmail.com

(China Daily 06/27/2007 page15)