It's been a busy week in Blogland for me this week. It is rather sobering to reflect that my prodigious output on my two blogs (well, three if you count BookBook as well) is only a small part of my writing effort. I am also a frequent commenter on several friends' blogs, and a prolific e-mailer and text-messager.
Here are just a few brief highlights from the many exchanges in these various media that I have been involved in this week:
Text message, from my friend DD to me:
"No, it was fine. I was mesmerised, until I got bored."
(Re: My apology to her for having dragged her along to an especially weird and not particularly involving Xiao He gig at the new Yugong Yishan music club last Sunday.)
E-mail, from me to Moonrat:
"I'll settle for 'tsunamis' if it's all getting too complicated."
(Re: Her plan to print some T-shirts with selected examples of her boss Robert's hilarious 'Gems of the Day'.)
".... nowhere too far east of Gongti. My 'dark horse' suggestion would be Kro's....."
(Re: Discussion of where to get wrecked while watching the Superbowl next Monday morning.)
"..... immediately after the Benylin incident....."
(Re: One of the famous low points in The Bookseller's career of insanely heavy partying.)
Blog comment, a rare moment of intellectual semi-seriousness over at The Granite Studio:
"Later versions of the Iphigeneia story [Agamemnon's daughter, who was sacrificed to the gods to procure a favourable wind for the expeditionary fleet to sail against Troy] transform it into a "just testing you!" prank of the Abraham & Isaac variety, and have the young girl miraculously rescued by the gods at the moment of death."
(Re: The prevalence or otherwise of human sacrifice in early European and Chinese societies.)
Blog comment [forgot about this one at first!] to the Imagethief (who was chiefly responsible for first luring me into all this blogging malarkey 3 years or so ago):
"No, China mobile doesn't really know who I am or where I am. But they may occasionally know where my handset is when I don't."
(Re: The latest scaremongering story in the Western press about supposed 'Big Brother' surveillance in China via the mobile telephone network.)
And there was more. So much more. These are just a few of my favourite snippets.
I do in particular commend you to the excellent Granite Studio (lots of great stuff on there in the last couple of weeks: owner Jeremiah, after considerable teasing of me in recent months for the verbal incontinence of my blogging, has suddenly begun to outstrip me in his output), which is this week celebrating its escape from the on-again-off-again-on-again censorship tribulations of Blogspot. Teething problems with the server have meant that thus far the supposed greater accessibility/reliability of the new arrangement have yet to prove themselves...... but, touch wood, things seem to be operating smoothly now. I have got involved in a couple of bracing exchanges there this week: here and here.
2 comments:
Of course, he that lives by the text message dies by the text message.
Yesterday, I had been trying to get hold of several different people with differing degrees of urgency regarding plans for last night and this afternoon, and was struggling to elicit a single response - from maybe 25 or 30 messages.
Eventually I managed to browbeat Tulsa into replying, whereupon I commented to her ruefully: "So - it's just The Choirboy, The Chairman, Dishy Debs, Sexy Sarah, Big Chris and The Man In Black who are spurning me, huh?"
"I'm sure there's an explanation," she attempted to console me.
"Yes: they hate me," I replied.
Yes, yes, I know - sometimes people are too busy to reply, especially in the evening when they're out and about. They might not even notice incoming messages until hours later. And sometimes - rather too often here in China - messages simply fall through the cracks and never get delivered.
However, some of those messages of mine were sent during the day. And I believe only one or two of those people were actually out and about last night. And I don't believe there were any problems with the service. So, that is a fairly exceptional concentration of spurning.
It gets a fellow down.
OK, in amongst that lot, we apparently had one inadvertently still-on-mute phone, one lost phone, one unexpectedly being on a plane to somewhere or other, and two out-and-abouts. These things happen. An unfortunate combination of circumstances for a single evening, though. Oh, the tyranny of coincidence!
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