Friday comes round again

Undreamt vistas break
From a peak in Darien -
The first day at work.

Yep, they want me to start that job TODAY!! Here goes.....

The Second Door

A strange day for me.

I appear to have been offered that job I was agonising about at the end of last week.

I appear to have accepted the offer.

I still can't quite believe that I have done so.

I suppose, under my 'Three Doors' system described yesterday, this would be a 'Second Door' choice. It's quite a big change for me, but not The World Turned Upside Down. (It just feels like it at the moment, because I've been a directionless bum - and enjoying it - for so damned long now.)

Somehow, though, this just isn't sitting comfortably with me at the moment. This doesn't feel like me. I should be a 'Third Door' kind of guy, dammit!

Bad haircut, bad karma

Getting a haircut in this country is a major ordeal.

The most competent, cheapest, and least hassle option is one of the white-coated roadside operators. For 3 or 4 kuai, they'll give you a nice short trim, and they won't waste their time about it. Of course, there are some serious hygiene issues about their equipment - but I figure if they don't draw blood, I'll probably be all right. In my first year here, I regularly used to use an old girl - I thought of her as The Nit Lady - who set up her little wooden stool in an alley beside the Drum Tower. Alas, she disappeared. Indeed, most of these sidewalk barbers seem to have disappeared. There are still lots of white-coated freelance masseurs lining up in front of my local park, but a street haircut is getting harder and harder to come by. Perhaps this is another symptom of the 'civilizing' of Beijing that the local government is attempting to impose prior to the Olympics.

After considerable shopping around, I had found a large hairdressers' shop that seemed to be pretty reliable. It was a little more than 20 minutes' walk away, which was a bit of a pain-in-the-arse, but they were cheap and they didn't usually give me too much hassle.

Amongst the anxiety-causing quirks of a Chinese hairdressers' shop (this list does not attempt to be exhaustive - there are so many) are these:

1) They are unfamiliar with any kind of hair that isn't long, thick, straight, and black.

2) They want to wash your hair before and after the cut - because they can charge you more money this way. It is often very, very difficult to persuade them that you have only just stepped out of the shower and your hair really doesn't need washing again.

3) They really, really want to use masses of styling gel and mousse and colour on your hair, because..... well, it's just more fun for them that way. And Chinese kids love to experiment with naff, punky hairstyles - why are foreigners all so strait-laced?

4) They often want you to choose your style from a book. An enormous catalogue of magazine clippings of film stars. It doesn't matter how much you tell them you don't want a 'style', you just want a trim, like it is now but shorter..... Oh, no: they insist that you point at a picture. And the pictures are all horrendous. You search in vain for a younger George Clooney..... and eventually begin to wonder if you'll have to settle instead for a lank Brad Pitt or a piratical Johnny Depp.

5) They have no concept of urgency. Even a simple trim ("How many times must I tell you? No washing, no styling - just a trim!") can easily take an hour or more. No matter how obviously impatient you become with them. No matter how many other punters are waiting for service. Everything must happen in its own good time.

6) They love to work in a collective fashion - haircutting by committee. We foreigners are still such a novelty for many of them that everyone in the shop will want to gather round to watch. There will be frequent pauses for discussion amongst all the hairdressers. You may even find each of them wanting to take a turn at doing some of the cutting. See 5) above.

7) They are terrified of making mistakes (perhaps especially with foreigners), and so will typically trim your hair half-a-millimetre at a time..... pausing every few minutes to ask nervously, "A little more?" "A lot more!!" See 5) above.

8) They all think they're Vidal fucking-Sassoon: they're ridiculously perfectionist - even when they've finished, they will faff around for another 5 or 10 minutes making imaginary 'tidy-ups', snipping infinitesimal slivers of hair off here and there. See 5) above.

Oh god, I could go on. I have more than once been tempted to just shave my head completely (I have in fact bought myself a set of electric clippers for the purpose: they are ready and waiting for that moment when my patience finally snaps once and for all).

Of course, I have evolved my techniques for dealing with this kind of hassle now. I show them quite clearly at the outset how much I want taken off the top, off the sides, off the back; I tell them quite clearly what time I intend to leave; I remind them regularly of the need for a bit of hurry-up by pointing dramatically to my wristwatch. It seems to work.

And for the past 18 months or so, I have been loyal to the one shop. That's been a big help. They know me there. They understand my little foibles. They can comprehend my smile-and-mime approach to overcoming the language gap.

Well, they used to be able to. Over the past few months, all the staff there who recognised me seem to have left. Indeed all the hairdressers appear to have left. The last time I went there, there seemed to be only two cutters (and one pair of scissors!) for a dozen or more work-stations. I smiled-and-mimed for all I was worth. I pleaded. I wept. I even tried to speak some bloody Chinese to them (always a tactic of desperation, and never very efficacious). No use - I just could not get them to cut my hair.

So, yesterday, I tried out the hairdressers next door to my apartment. The one that is always worryingly empty. Needless to say, that was a mistake.

It seems there was only one - shockingly young - male hairdresser on the premises. And he was 'busy' (i.e., pondering, consulting, resting.... not actively doing very much) with another customer. So, the boss's wife thought she'd have a go. She was a rather clumsy and diffident woman. Left-handed - that was alarming in itself. Or maybe she just wasn't sure which hand to hold which implement in, and had decided, for some obscure reason, that the comb needed to be wielded with greater precision than the clippers and should thus be assigned to the right hand. Anyway, she did not appear ever to have cut hair before. It was comical, but also appalling: watching in the mirror, I became dangerously detached for quite a spell - enjoying the slapstick performance for a while, until I came to my senses again and realised that this was my hair she was butchering. I humoured them all as best I could, tolerated her ineptitude for a long time, hoping for a sudden improvement - but eventually I had to put my foot down and demand some remedial attention from the (at least vaguely) competent young man. He managed to salvage the situation, just about - but it's definitely not one of the better haircuts I've had in my life. And it's not very short, either. I'll have to go through this hell all over again in a couple of weeks.

I wonder, in fact, if the whole strange episode wasn't some kind of prank amongst the staff - perhaps they were betting as to how long I would put up with this totally unskilled woman fumbling around my head. Oiveh! What have I done to deserve this??

What's behind the Third Door?

I was discussing various 'self-help' systems with my friend The Life Coach the other day, and, in a moment of facetious inventiveness, I created an outline for one of my own. Initially it was conceived as pure parody, but now I'm seriously starting to wonder if it might not have real commercial potential.

I'm going to call it Three Doors™ therapy.

In essence, it is this:
There are Three Doors in front of you. Which one are you going to step through?

Beautifully simple. It presupposes that you are going to move forward (not stay where you are, or try to go backwards). It presupposes that you always have choices. It limits those choices to a manageable number.

The image of the doorway is so familiar, so beguiling. The act of opening a door, and stepping through it, is so elementary, yet so empowering - as in a fairytale. It is almost impossible not to feel a childlike thrill of anticipation about that moment of revelation when we turn the handle, pull the door open, and discover what lies beyond. It is such a familiar, easy, everyday act that we can readily imagine doing it, are eager to do it, will find few excuses to hesitate; curiosity will always win out over apprehension.

Of course, what lies beyond the doors will be defined by the clients - perhaps we'll call them Seekers (or Openers?) - in the course of consultation. The aim is to identify their problems, refine their possible courses of action, give them an irresistibly simplified decision template.

I have been thinking that the basic guideline for differentiating the Three Doors (though it might sometimes be modified a little from this, according to the nature of the question being asked) would be this: The First Door is essentially the door of the status quo (but we will not allow passivity or stagnation: even the least demanding, least challenging Door will require some change; we might call this one The Same, But Better); The Second Door is an option of 'safe' change - not minor, but not pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone too agressively; and The Third Door is the route of radical change - the left-field, the unexpected, the "out-of-character" option.

Even the mathematics of it appeals to me: 3 is such a compelling number. We might even develop our action plans on the basis of series of 3 successive 'Three Doors' choices - giving us, within a fairly short timeframe, 27 different possible outcomes.

The possibilities of this are enormous. (Anyone interested in discounted 'trial' sessions during the development phase??)

"Every journey begins with the opening of a door."

Twiddling the knobs again

The boys down at Kafka Central have been surprisingly underemployed this month. In an instant of bored mischief they threw the 'Block Blogspot' switch again. I think it was probably the weekend before last. Most of us Blogspot bloggers in China entirely failed to notice at first, because we now all routinely use the alternate routing option on the Firefox browser (spread around the Chinese Internet a couple of months ago by Shanghai-based blogger, Yee), which is - thus far, fingers crossed, knock on wood - unknown to, or at any rate unmolested by those pesky Kafka Boys.

One must presume that this latest blocking of Blogspot pages was prompted by anxieties about the possibly 'subversive' effect of blog-based discussions of last Monday's 18th anniversary of the suppression of the 1989 student protests here. In general, the level of interference with normal operation of the Internet has been very low compared with the last few years I've been out here: e-mail providers seem to have been untouched (Gmail was down completely for a few weeks last year, and Yahoo Mail would go through periods of being very, very slow and/or occasionally suffering long delays in transmission), and Google searches on sensitive topics related to the protests are being allowed (you just can't follow any of the links!). However, Wikipedia pages relating to those events (with one possibly significant exception that I may return to in a later post) are all being blocked - even via Anonymouse. Moreover - somewhat inexplicably! - this year all searches on Amazon seem to be being blocked, not just those on TAM-related titles. Overall, then, an extremely patchy and haphazard censorship regime here in China - comme toujours.

More of a mild irritation than a major obstacle - although it may reduce Tulsa's contributions for a while, since she is apparently not able to use the Firefox dodge from work.

Does anyone else out there have fuller information on this latest Net crackdown??

Omar & me

A favourite joke from Punch (during my '70s childhood) - England's leading humorous magazine for over a century, but now alas defunct. I have been reminded of this by Leah's gratuitous use of the term "castration anxiety" (most recently here).

It was in fact a cartoon, but I have been unable to find it on the Internet.

Another oddity which helped to fix this in my young mind (apart from the fact that it's very funny.... and depressingly appropriate to me) is that I once saw it reprinted in a Polish newspaper - but the caption, instead of being a single pithy sentence (or three), ran to a short paragraph. Is Polish a hopelessly verbose language? Or had they changed or elaborated the story quite beyond recognition? I never found out.

Anyway, the joke:

One of the Sultan's most gorgeous concubines, clad only in skimpy, diaphanous silks, is lounging provocatively on a divan, idly trying to seduce the rotund attendant who stands nearby holding an enormous ostrich feather fan. He is quite unmoved by all her charms.

Peeved, she taunts him: "What's the matter with you, Omar? Have you no ambition? Do you want to be a eunuch all your life?"

Yes, that one's always had rather too deep a resonance with me - particularly now that the possibility of a 'straight' job is hovering over me (sword-of-Damocles-like) for the first time in several years; particularly now that I am once again mired in doubt, hesitation, excessive caution about making a move on the woman I currently adore. "What's the matter with you, Froog? Have you no ambition?"

Last refuge of the scoundrel?

"Patriotism is an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."

Another smart line from George Jean Nathan. He's got so many of them, I think I might rely on him for my weekly bon mots for the next month or so.

A love letter to Amy Hempel

For anyone interested in learning a little more about Amy Hempel, the author of the micro-story I posted on Friday, there is a wonderful essay - 'She Breaks Your Heart' - on her 'minimalist' style, by Chuck Palahniuk, in the online LA Weekly from 5 years ago (I think I'd better cut & paste this before it disappears from the archive).

Palahniuk admits to a hesitancy (something most of us feel, I think) about meeting his literary idols, for fear they will not be quite so impressive in person - but apparently he came through a brief conversation with Amy Hempel with his adoration intact.

I've never read any of Palahniuk's books, though they have quite often been recommended to me by friends. I discover that he is an adept at the art of self-promotion - go check out his website, The Cult.

Ronnie's Rocket

I mentioned last week in my "8 things you didn't know about me" post that I began my love affair with football as a Hereford United supporter when I was a small boy. And I remembered with special pride having witnessed one of the greatest moments in football history, that Ron Radford goal.

It might not look like that much on this little YouTube clip (taken from BBC 1's 'Match of the Day' programme), but trust me - it was a screamer: Ronnie was only just inside the Newcastle half when he started cantering forward, and was still well over 30 yards from goal when he met the wall pass and smacked it. But it gains so much from the context also: this was the greatest 'giant-killing' feat ever in the English FA Cup competition. Hereford at this point were still a non-league side, many of their players only part-timers; whereas Newcastle were one of the best 4 or 5 teams in the country, and were almost universally expected to win comfortably. This goal came - out of nothing - barely 5 minutes from the end of the game, a game in which we'd fallen behind quite early on, and in which, despite labouring valiantly and having most of the ball, we'd never really looked much like scoring. There might have been a few longer and/or harder shots over the years, but I don't think there have been any that were this crucial, that produced such an overwhelming explosion of emotion in the crowd.

It was a mere formality that this goal should win 'Match of the Day's Goal of the Season competition that year. At the end of the 1970s, it also won Goal of the Decade. It was shown on the BBC on FA Cup Final Day every year throughout the '70s; and well into the '80s, I think.

There's even a little China reference attached to this memory for me. My good friend Richard, who first enticed me out here in the early '90s when he was teaching at a small university in Hankou, professed ignorance of this classic football moment. I was sceptical, incredulous. He's a bit younger than me, but not that much: he must have remembered all of those Cup Final Day rundowns of "great moments in FA Cup history", always culminating in that Ron Radford goal.

We developed quite a little debate in our regular correspondence (approximately fortnightly, for most of the 4 years he spent in China - and real letters, too; ah, the days before e-mail!) as to which of us had the aberrant childhood experience or the faulty memory. He insisted this goal couldn't possibly be as momentous or well-known as I supposed. I berated him for having no knowledge of anything beyond the confines of his native Huddersfield.

Luckily, I was soon able to proffer some convincing evidence that my perception of this goal as a key cultural landmark of 1970s England was indeed correct. Nick Hornby's football-themed autobiography Fever Pitch came out at this time, and became a huge bestseller. Its gimmick was to draw parallels between Hornby's personal life and his experience of his beloved game of football. The book is almost entirely focused on his obsessive support of the Arsenal team. There are only three short chapters that are not about Arsenal: one is on Cambridge Utd (who Hornby briefly supported when a student), one is on the Brazilian national side,.... and one is on that Ron Radford goal. I sent Richard a copy in Hankou as a Christmas present that year. Even he now had to admit that this was probably the most famous goal of all time.

And I was there......

The problem with the Chinese education system

One of them, anyway. Amongst the problems.....

Last weekend, I was delivering a teacher-training seminar for a group of Chinese primary school teachers. The topic this week was 'British culture', and the exercises (designed by a friend of mine who organised this training course) were based around a trivia quiz. The first half of the session involved discussion and 'mingling' activities where the students were primed with most of the answers and had the opportunity to share information amongst the different table groups. The second half was the quiz itself - to test their memory and understanding of what they had learned in the first half.

I made it quite clear - at least three times - that the quiz was to be a TEST, a competition between the 5 table groups; that the students could only discuss the answers - quietly - with members of their own group; that they should not help the other groups or shout the answers out.

Within about 30 seconds of the start, one of the young women (they're all women.... that in itself might be seen as one of the problems with the Chinese education system: very, very, very few men become teachers) stood up and walked across the room to ask another table the answer to the first question. I intervened to send her back to her own table, gave her a mild roasting, reiterated the rules of the quiz. While I was doing this, a couple of teachers on the tables behind me were doing exactly the same thing. I was projecting a little controlled anger at this point. The students, only briefly cowed, took to passing notes to each other instead - quite brazenly, right in front of my nose. Utterly flabbergasting!

Here is the problem with the Chinese education system: more than in any other country in the world, I think, cheating is a way of life. In any test situation, it is a natural, almost an instinctive, an automatic response for just about everyone - even University graduates, even schoolteachers.

Of course, they would probably try to justify it as "collaborating, in a true socialist spirit of selfless collective effort"; but cheating is what it is, and it is absolutely rampant over here.

One of my students at a Beijing university a few years ago told me a very revealing story about how she came to realise that "cheating was wrong". She had been the star performer at mathematics in her middle school, so had routinely shared some of her answers with her classmates (the teacher took no effective action to prevent this); but on one occasion, her paper was being passed around the room for so long that she didn't have time to complete all the questions herself. "I realised then that cheating could harm my own results."

There doesn't seem to be any particularly strong ethical framework in Chinese culture - certainly not on the issue of cheating. People here just don't seem to grasp the idea that it might be an absolute moral wrong: they're only interested in the practical consequences for themselves, in whether they can get away with it.

Just recently, another of my former students told me that she had been approached to act as a 'ringer' in sitting the College English Test (a wealthy acquaintance of hers had been unable to graduate because she could not pass this requirement on her own). I'm happy to report that she refused, and I would like to think that her motive in so doing was at least partly one of pure morality..... but she soon began telling me how worried she was about the possibility of being caught, and how damaging that might have been to her career as a schoolteacher.

She probably needn't have worried on that score. I don't think anyone would have given a damn - either about catching her, or about punishing her if caught. I have heard countless examples (and witnessed a fair few myself) of students being allowed to openly use crib sheets in exams, or use electronic dictionaries, or send text messages or make phone calls to get help; of invigilating teachers actually offering help to weaker students in the course of the exam; of principals offering to procure 'ringers' to take exams for weak but well-connected students; of exam results being re-written, or simply ignored, to allow weak but well-connected students into top high schools, Universities, etc. At the first set of exams I supervised here in Beijing (in a private college that was running a foundation programme for a bachelor's degree in Finance & International Trade at a British university), I discovered that every single one of our students was using the textbooks (despite it having been made clear that this was not to be an 'open book' exam), and our Chinese teaching assistants who were supposed to be invigilating them (and who were well aware that textbooks were not allowed) were taking absolutely no notice of this at all. I have seen similar things many times since.

The whole education system here is corrupt to the core. Yes, it's a very competitive system; but the competition is largely meaningless, it has very little to do with genuine academic attainment. Depressing. And it doesn't bode at all well for the country's ambitions of becoming an economic superpower.

Perhaps it was always thus in this strange country. The Granite Studio had an interesting post the other day on the very similar problems that bedevilled the notorious civil service entry exams in Imperial China.

Traffic Report - blog stats for May

Yes, the gradual scaling back from my ridiculously prodigious output of the past couple of months has begun - but I'm taking it in baby steps. Last month I still managed 58 posts and nearly 17,500 words on here.

Nice to see things livening up in the 'comments' sections at last - thanks to the appearance of Earthling as a rival to dear Tulsa's status as No. 1 Commenter, Tulsa herself instituting an online 'tea party' with a bunch of her other blog-friends, my old 'retainer' Snopes putting his head round the door occasionally, and the eternally argumentative British Cowboy blowing his cigar smoke and his trenchant opinions in our faces on a regular basis. Thanks for the interest, folks; keep it up.

Host/hostess

I was chatting with my good friend The Chairman the other night about 'micro-fiction'. I had thought such ultra-short stories to be a relatively modern, American fad. However, The Chairman was convinced that he'd read one of Kafka's lesser-known stories (he couldn't recall the title) that was less than a page long, perhaps only a single paragraph. An early forerunner of the genre? I don't know this one - does it ring any bells with anyone?

I think the word limit for these oddball narrative miniatures is usually these days set at 250 (although I'm sure you may find both longer and shorter allowances). I used to have quite a good anthology of pieces of this length, prizewinners, I think, from an American competition of a decade or so ago. One of my favourites of these was this piece, an extremely concise and elegant joke by Amy Hempel, and one which thumbs its nose at the narrow word limit by using a mere 55 words. (This is quite widely published on the Internet already, I find..... so I hope she won't mind my 'compromising' her intellectual property rights. Please think of it as free advertising, Ms Hempel.).

I suspect this piece has also resurfaced in my mind in the last few days because I am about to play at being a host again myself - Caren (one of my occasional commenters here) and her fiancé Niels are coming to stay for a few days. And the apartment is a complete tip.... so I really ought to be doing something about that, rather than wasting my time blogging.

Enjoy the story.

Hostess by Amy Hempel

She swallowed Gore Vidal. Then she swallowed Donald Trump.

She took a blue capsule and a gold spansule - a B-complex and an E - and put them on the tablecloth a few inches apart. She pointed the one at the other. "Martha Stewart," she said, "meet Oprah Winfrey."

She swallowed them both without water.

Is it SAFE?

I've never been much good at job interviews. I probably have one of the lowest job-to-job-interview ratios of anyone alive. Friends have often tried to encourage me with such well-meaning platitudes as "Just be yourself". The trouble with that is that I am a workshy hypochondriac with a threadbare CV and absolutely no respect for authority. Somehow, I just don't seem to fit most people's 'ideal employee' profiles.

These interviews always remind me inexorably of the infamous dental torture scene in Marathon Man, where the tormented Dustin Hoffman, who has not the faintest understanding of what he is being asked or why, starts blurting out everything he can think of, in the hope that something will be the 'right' answer that will stop nasty Nazi Olivier probing the cavity in his molar. "No, it's not safe at all. It's incredibly dangerous." "Yes, it's very, very safe. You wouldn't believe how incredibly safe it is." And so on.

I've just been through that ordeal again. Three times in the space of just over a week. I can't remember the last time I had to suffer it. I don't think I've really had any job interviews while I've been in China. I mean, I've had a few - but generally the key, if not the only question was, "When can you start?" Employers over here - whether Chinese or foreign - tend not to be all that discriminating.

Amazingly enough, I appear not to have completely torpedoed myself this time. In fact, there have been several heavy hints that they regard me as the outstanding candidate and will almost certainly make me an offer.

They've been a bit naughty, really, I think. They actually asked me, "If we offered you the job, would you take it?" Come on, guys - no fair! You already have all the power in this situation. Now, you've just got to run through your candidate list in order of preference, making offers until someone says 'Yes'. You can't be fannying around with all this 'what if' and 'would you' crap. That's just not the way the game is played.

And besides, it's a LONG time since I had the pleasure of being able to turn down a job I was offered.

My problem here is that they are being tightwads about the money. Worse, they have backtracked rather from the (admittedly, purposefully vague) indications on salary they gave me at the initial interviews last week. I was pitching for 20,000 RMB per month, and was told that should be possible. In fact, I had been regarding that as a minimum, had been hoping to prise a little bit more out of them. I had also been expecting (optimism or naivety??) that figures quoted would be ex-tax (I've got rather used to the 'all in cash' economy that prevails here). Alas, no. In fact, there appears to be a grave danger that I might actually have a significant tax exposure both here in China and back home in the UK. And the salary they're now mentioning is only 75% of what we'd originally discussed. With tax deductions, it might end up being no better than 50%. Ouch.

OK, I was perhaps being a little greedy. Initially, the position will only be half-time, so it's not utterly abysmal remuneration (at least not by depressed local standards). However, I can often make 2 to 3 times as much just noodling around doing the little bits of freelancing I do now, and that's after tax. Although I should be able to keep up some of this freelancing during my remaining "free days" of the week, I will almost certainly lose most of it. Taking this job is likely to result in a significant drop in my income.

On the other hand, it does offer 'stability', 'respectability', 'career prospects'. I have reached a point in my life where I am questioning whether I can afford to keep on spurning such things.

Bugger, bugger, bugger - it is a difficult decision. (Well, it might be. They haven't made a formal offer yet. I'll have to wait until next week.)

One of my friends, a trainee 'life coach', sent me the text message last night: "The life coach in me would ask: What do you REALLY want to do?"

I replied: "Sarah, dearest, that is precisely my problem: I haven't got THE FAINTEST IDEA! The gambler in me is reaching for a pair of green dice..."

Haiku time

A slew of questions,
Far more questions than answers:
Hollowness within.


Ah, yes, job interview blues. There's probably a longer post on this coming later....

Don't shoot the pianist

He's been having a stressy week.

Gor blimey - I miss one day of posting, and I'm immediately getting 'abuse' from my new compulsive commenter, The Earthling.

Forgive me, my impatient readers. I will from time to time miss a day, or even two or three. It's not the end of the world.

And it's not as if you don't have stuff on here to keep you busy. I did post a lot at the end of last week. There are two lively comment threads currently running, here on Froogville and here on the Barstool, as well as the ongoing 'bad joke' collection point over there. And I've recently posted a 'top picks' guide to my early archive for both blogs, here and here. That's lots for you to be reading and commenting on if I should happen to go 'silent' for a little while.

I did actually have a couple of posts I was starting to write yesterday morning, but I had to abandon them unposted because I was in danger of running late for my morning's work. I quit the apartment in a blur at about 7.30 am for my nightmarish commute down to the CBD on the Subway. Two-and-a-half hours of 'teaching' at a law firm. Then a brief discussion with their accountant about the important issue of getting paid. Then calling in a few favours from one of the students to get free photocopies of the umpteen documents I need to support my visa renewal application (I'm not actually getting a new visa at this point, just a duplicate of my existing one for my new passport). Then a mad dash across town to the PSB Passport & Visa Office - OK, arriving there at 11.30-something was a bad idea because that's when all the foreigners have a window to go there.... but three-quarters of the staff are already on their lunch break: queues out of the door. Had to give up on that. At least had the opportunity to nip home again for a 15-minute 'splash'n'dash' - a change of shirt and a lunchtime sandwich, and picking up the crucial tax receipt for the law firm's accountant that I had forgotten to take with me that morning. Then had to hop in a cab up to the University district for another arduous spell behind the microphone. Then another long cab ride back downtown to deliver the tax receipt to the accountant.

Phew. At least, by 4.30 pm I was free - to enjoy a restorative walk in the hot sunshine. But I had by then been frantically 'on the go' for 9 hours with scarcely a break, so I think I deserved it. And it just so happened that my best pal Tony "The Chairman" was making a rare trip into town yesterday (he's living in a distant northern suburb this year, so I'm not getting to see that much of him), so I wasn't going to get home for another 6 or 7 hours yet. No, I hooked up with His Chairmanliness for pool, drinks, dinner, and a nostalgic return to the pub quiz we occasionally used to do in our early days here (we were only a few points off the top spot, despite having a team of only two). I did get home again relatively early last night (11 pm or so), but was so utterly exhausted that I fell into bed almost at once.

That's why there was no posting yesterday. But actually, almost every day is like that for me - and most days you still get a few posts out of me.

So, don't complain too much.

Tulsa's got a brand new blog

Yes, by some strange cosmic coincidence, at the very moment on Saturday when I was ribbing her about her having to live on my comment pages because she had no blog of her own, Tulsa - my No. 1 commenter of the past 6 months or so - finally got around to setting up a blog for herself: The Constant Socialite.

Of course, I worry that I have goaded her into doing this. And I fret that she may now desert my blogs, as she spends more time on her own.

I try to console myself that I will not so much be losing a flatmate
as gaining a timeshare in a holiday villa.
(Yes! I now have somewhere where I can go and comment!)

She has been a very good sport by responding to the '8 interesting things about me' tag - despite having been absurdly busy at work over the past couple of weeks. Go check it out. But then come back.

Socially distrubing content

The notion of trying to enforce a 'real name registration' system for Chinese bloggers has been floated by the powers-that-be for some time, but I don't know that anything has ever come of it. The picture above of eternal rebel Bart Simpson proudly displaying his 'Chinese blogger' card was created to pour sarcastic scorn on the idea. I think I picked it up on the Net at least a couple of years ago; and I can't even remember where it came from now (although I strongly suspect it was from, or at least via, the egregious davesgonemental).

The government's latest engagingly bonkers scheme is to try to promote a 'code of conduct' for bloggers, which may include resurrecting the 'real name registration' ideal. I was alerted to this by a short item in last week's Asia Media round-up (the story was picked up from The South China Morning Post, but most of their website is available on subscription only). The scheme - still at the draft proposal stage (where it may, with any luck, languish forever) - is described as voluntary; although it is also suggested that service providers should uphold the scheme by refusing to register bloggers who will not agree to its terms - which sounds kind of 'compulsory' to me. The scheme is the brainchild of the Internet Society of China (one of those bizarre Chinese entities which is purportedly an NGO but is in fact nothing more than a government propaganda mouthpiece), and the article cites its main aim as being "to stop people who use blogs to spread socially distrubing messages". Oh dear. Well, I think we know what they mean.

Needless to say, I am opting out of any such scheme. I think this country has a whole lot more trube than is good for it. We're all woefully over-trubed, and we need as much dis-trubing as we can get. Tulsa, Earthling, and the rest of my 'crazy gang' of 'distrubing' commentators, are you with me on this?

PS Although this particular article is slightly marred by some faulty English, Asia Media (a news monitoring and collation project run by the UCLA Asia Institute) is in general a very good potted source of news about this region of the world. You can sign up for a weekly digest to be sent to your e-mail account.

Join the great Smoking Debate

A rare "cross-post", this, from my "black sheep blog", Round-The-World Barstool Blues.

I had hoped my observations over there last week on Beijing's new Face bar might prompt an interesting discussion in the comments on the evolution (or decline?) of the Beijing bar scene, or kick off another round of the ever-ongoing Beijing v. Shanghai debate.

Well, the comments are still open for such contributions, and I would welcome them.

However, at the moment that particular comment-thread has been taken over by a ding-dong debate between me and my opinionated bar buddy The British Cowboy on the issue of public smoking. Anyone else care to join in that one?? Go on......

The week's bon mot

"No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched."

George Jean Nathan (1882-1958)

I have a new 'hero' for providing the weekly nugget o' wisdom: Nathan was America's foremost drama critic of the first half of the 20th Century, a close associate of H.L. Mencken, an early champion of Eugene O'Neill, and a celebrated wit.

Remembering

Today is not a day for light-hearted blogging, but for reflective silence. Tomorrow is the 18th anniversary of one of the sorriest events in this country's recent history.

There are many grim photographs of that day - tanks, soldiers, mangled bicycles, broken bodies - but I prefer, for now, to focus on this. The horror of June 4th has tended to eclipse in our memories the vibrancy and the optimism of what had preceded it, the student demonstrations that had held the attention of the world for six gloriously sunny weeks through the Spring and early Summer.

There were no human casualties (as far as I have ever been able to gather, although this remains a point of some controversy) in the Square itself - only this statue, and the hopes it stood for.

8 (More) Things You Didn't Know About Me

Well, I've just been 'tagged' to come up with a list of 8 things about me that are "interesting, unique, or unknown". I receive this cyber-baton (brick through the window?) from the intermittently prolific Jeremiah over at The Granite Studio. (J is a Ph.D candidate, over here doing research for his thesis on Qing Dynasty history. I have been meaning to write a puff for his rather fine blog – mostly on Chinese history, but with occasional more contemporary stories and personal quirks as well - for some time, but.... Well, I don’t want to appear to be too much of a blog-slut, so I am trying to limit myself to one blog recommendation per month. It's a new month, I suppose...)

Now, I don't really approve of this 'tagging' practice. It is a potentially onerous imposition on a poor blogger's time. Even more alarmingly, it is a form of 'virus', and could - if it continued to spread as exponentially as it aspires to - eventually quite overwhelm the Internet.

I don't like the use of the word 'meme' to describe these potentially destructive fripperies either. It seems to be attempting to confer an importance (cultural? sociological?) on them that they don't really deserve. And I just don't think it is an accurate use of Richard Dawkins' fairly narrowly conceived term (a 'meme' replicates content, automatically, as a result of the perceived usefulness or attractiveness of that content; these Internet 'tag' games replicate only a format, not the specific content, and they do so only through compliance with the explicit request or instruction to replicate, not because of any innate 'evolutionary advantage' in so doing).

However, laying such qualifications and objections aside, I don't wish to appear to be a curmudgeon. And I've nothing better to do this morning. So, here goes....


1) Despite never having had a driving licence, I have driven an armoured car and a Land Rover (ah, the joys of army reserve training!).

2) I have a tendency to fall in love with the sound of a woman's voice - particularly a fine singing voice. I have for many years had a raging crush on Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies (undiminished by the discovery that she was rather older than I had thought, and married).

3) The weirdest job (and there have been some weird ones) I have turned down in China was being an MC for a Spring Festival gala for foreign diplomats at the Great Hall of the People. It was to be unpaid (although we were promised an engraved glass trophy to commemorate our participation). It was also to be completely unscripted and unrehearsed (this is China!). When they threw a chaotic-sounding game show segment into the mix at the last minute, I politely backed out. As did all of my friends who had been in discussion with the Ministry of Culture about it.

4) The film I have most enjoyed showing to Chinese students (in the Beijing Normal University a few years ago) was 2001: A Space Odyssey. They sat through it in fascinated incomprehension - slack-jawed, wide-eyed, completely silent from start to finish. It so far transcended the bounds of their imagination that they had no terms of reference with which to try to interpret or discuss it. In the deep hush of the lecture theatre I fancied I could actually hear the sound of minds boggling.

5) I once went to an AC/DC concert wearing a suit (and ear-plugs). I was en route between two job interviews at the end of my University days, and was travelling very light.

6) I once went to an Arthur Andersen careers presentation wearing fishnet stockings (underneath my pinstripe suit trousers). I was going to a performance of The Rocky Horror Show at Oxford's Apollo Theatre immediately afterwards. And I wasn't that concerned about getting the job!

7) I was hopelessly spoiled as a sports fan in my early life. I was born in (and grew up around) the tiny 'city' of Hereford, on the Welsh border, and so became a supporter of the local football team there as a toddler. At that time, they were enjoying a period of astonishing success. They were dominating their semi-pro league, had a couple of dazzling, 'giant-killing' runs in the FA Cup (famously beating top clubs, West Ham and Newcastle, and only narrowly losing to Leeds Utd - then the best side in the country); and when they finally won election to the main professional league, they achieved an unprecedented, meteoric rise through the divisions, winning promotion from the 4th to the 2nd in only 4 years.

Of course, it was too good to last. They had risen too far, too fast - and promptly dropped again just as quickly. They then spent 15 years or so propping up the bottom of the lowest division in the league.... and are now 'non-league' again. Heady times, for a while, though. I think the first game I ever went to see live was the celebrated FA Cup Third Round Replay clash at home against Newcastle - in which we got a late equaliser with The Greatest Goal Ever Scored By Anyone In Any Competition Ever..... and went on to scramble a last-gasp win in extra time.

It's not right. It's not good for you. It doesn't prepare you for the lifelong frustration and disappointment that is the inevitable lot of sports fans everywhere (unless you cheat by supporting Man U or the Yankees). It was rather too painful a contrast with the pitiful under-performance of the national team (England contrived to fail even to qualify for the World Cup finals during the 1970s).

The last game I saw live was China v. Japan in the final of the Asian Cup at the Workers' Stadium three years ago. The bad juju I have brought to following England over 4 decades has obviously carried over to the Chinese team now that I have started supporting them. China were undone by a goal that was an outrageously obvious handball. It was the Maradona "hand of God" all over again. Everybody could see clearly that the Japanese forward hit the ball into the goal with his forearm. Everybody in the entire stadium. Except the referee and his linesman. Ggrrrrr.......

8) The "most irritating thing about me" - according to a friend at University - was (and possibly still is) that I "always monopolise the prettiest girl at the party.... and then don't sleep with her."



And there you have it.

Ah, but the insidious thing about this 'tag' malarkey is that you are supposed to 'pass on the challenge' to a bunch of other bloggers of your acquaintance.

Yes, well, I don't really like to consider myself a 'blogger' (not in the classic sense!), and I don't really read blogs very much - so, I'm not really "acquainted" with many other bloggers (apart from Jeremiah himself – and I assume that the rules of these things prohibit 'returns').

I will pass on a very humble, apologetic, take-it-or-leave-it-and-please-don't-feel-obliged-to-bug-any-of-your-friends-with-it request to participate to those bloggers who have been kind enough to leave me comments here on Froogville (and/or over at the Barstool): moonrat, earthling, and, of course, Leah (though she is probably far too busy with making preparations to join us in China to be bothered with such nonsense). I'd also like to extend the invitation to two rather interesting bloggers I've recently been introduced to as friends of my über-commenter, Tulsa - AKA:omg and Home in Kabul.

Tulsa, of course, doesn't have a blog of her own, but shares mine, inhabiting my comment pages as a kind of benign - or symbiotic - parasite. She will no doubt contribute her own list of '8 Unusual Things About Me' in the comment thread here.

And now.... ho, hum: back to work.

The Secret Life of Cows

As a postscript to this week's series of reprinted 'Cow Theory Economics' jokes, I had wanted to post the classic early Gary Larson cartoon 'Cow Tools' (I believe it is featured in the 'Prehistory of the Far Side' collection. It was so surreal as to be quite incomprehensible, and was initially rejected for publication.). Unfortunately, it does not appear to be available on the Internet (well, I couldn't find it - any help, anyone?). So, you'll have to make do with this instead.

DON'T PANIC

Ah, the annual rush to renew my Chinese visa - how I loathe it! Every May/June the same - 5 or 6 weeks of bureaucratic frustration, gut-wrenching anxiety, and desperate brinksmanship.

The process is additionally complicated for me this year because my passport is due to expire shortly after my current visa; which means that I must renew my passport before I get a new visa; and also - perhaps - renew/transfer my old visa to the new passport before I get a new visa. (Moreover, I am waiting to hear on a new job, which might actually provide me with a visa free of charge - rather than requiring me to once again go through the irksome rigmarole of utilizing guanxi, 'dummy' contracts, or 'fixer' agencies. Alas, their decision timeframe is just too long drawn-out for me to be able to depend on them to bail me out.)

Now, when I handed in my old passport for replacement at the British Consulate a couple of weeks back, I was assured that I could simply carry my old passport around with me as proof that I had been issued a valid Chinese visa - no need to get a new visa for the new passport. I was much relieved. Sceptical, but relieved. When I collected the new passport this week, I was told that the Public Security Bureau had just issued a new directive on this: it was imperative to transfer visas to new passports as soon as possible; apparently this had been 'the rule' for years, but they had only just decided to start enforcing it. The Consular staff didn't know what the time limit for transferring visas to new passports was, or what the penalties for breaching it might be, but were suggesting that "within 7 days" was probably sensible.

It's been tough to find a free moment to go around to the PSB visa & passport office this week, but I managed to get over there after only a couple of days. Turns out the time limit is "10 days" (I've no idea whether there's any firm basis for that; and I omitted to try to clarify whether that was "10 calendar days" or "10 working days", or whether the clock starts on the date of issue [29th May] or the date of collection [30th]. We should assume the worst.).

However, I had been rashly assuming that - since all we are talking about here is copying an existing visa rather than issuing a brand new one - that the process would be relatively swift and straightforward. WRONG. No, apparently I have to fill out a full application form again - including getting an official stamp from my employer. Now, that could be problematical, since I don't really have an employer. Last year, through friends of friends, I was able to persuade a manager at one of the major Chinese language schools to apply for my visa and 'Foreign Expert' certificate for me - by signing a one-year contract with them that we mutually agreed would never actually be enforced (by the prevailing standards of subterfuge required to get 'legitimate' visas out here, this is very mild - scarcely 'dishonest' at all). Unfortunately, I have mysteriously mislaid all of her contact details, and I suspect she is no longer working with that school. Even if she is, I have grave doubts as to whether she will be willing to fill in a bunch of paperwork on my behalf again..... just to get a duplicate visa for a measly three-and-a-half weeks.

The trouble is that unless I can get this duplicate of my existing visa, I might not be able to get any other kind of new visa either. I rather fear I might have to leave the country - on or before the 7th June - in order to get a new visa. And if I don't, I may be left with no valid visa, no way of acquiring a new visa - and thus no way of leaving the country??

Calm, calm, calm. Deep breaths.

I'm working near the British Consulate a couple of days a week, so I think I'll drop in there again to ask their advice on this.

The one possible ray of hope I see is that my old passport does not appear to have been "cancelled" - so I may be able to continue to use that (to leave the country, to get a new visa abroad) up until the current visa in it expires on 28th June.

Then again, maybe my contact at the English school will come good after all. Or maybe I can get some help on this from my various other guanxi. Or maybe I can find a reliable 'fixer' to work his arcane and expensive magic for me. Or maybe I'll just start screaming & gibbering in public places, and get myself arrested and deported. Or.......

Cows of many countries

The final tranche of 'Cow Theory Economics' illustrations; -

A FRENCH CORPORATION

You have two cows. You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION

You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION

You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 2 cows.

You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka.

A SWISS CORPORATION

You have 5,000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.

AN INDIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows. You worship them.


A BRITISH CORPORATION
You have two cows. Both are mad.


AN IRAQI CORPORATION

Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the **** out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy....

AN AUSTRALIAN CORPORATION

You have two cows. Business seems pretty good. You close the office and go for a few beers to celebrate.

A NEW ZEALAND CORPORATION
You have two cows. The one on the left looks very attractive.

Another slightly morose haiku

Familiar stranger:
Sad, thoughtful, much older than me.
Face in the mirror.