My Fantasy Girlfriend - Patricia Hodge/Phyllida Trant

This lovely red-headed actress has been ubiquitous on British TV for nearly 40 years now, an even more regular face than others of my 1970s nostalgia picks in this series like Jan Francis and Gabrielle Drake. And she epitomises many of the qualities, both in looks and in character, that I most often tend to be attracted to in a woman: the height, the flame-coloured hair, the strong jaw and vertiginous cheekbones, of course; but also a suggestion of uncommon intelligence, or of a species of shrewdness, anyway, and a self-reliance, a certain toughness and steeliness of purpose too, and of course a provoking aloofness, an intoxicating whiff of patrician hauteur (ah, yes, the unattainability thing again!).

Ah, but I did not love her in everything she was in (she tended to get typecast rather as snooty upper-class totty), and she was not overall one of my more major crushes. No, whenever I think of Ms Hodge and melt, I am thinking of her as Phyllida Trant, the lady barrister who was a kind of protégée of the wily but disreputable old soak Horace Rumpole in several episodes of the long-running ITV series Rumpole of the Bailey. [I was reminded of this series by a comment-thread exchange just the other day. Although I never had the slightest interest in practising criminal law myself, I'm sure it was Rumpole, along with the earlier Crown Court (which used the compelling gimmick of having a real jury deliver a verdict at the end of a scripted trial played out over a week of daily episodes on lunchtime TV), that was mainly responsible for nurturing my insane desire to become a barrister myself.]

Ms Trant ultimately disappointed me - and countless other male fans, I'm sure - by marrying another barrister in her chambers, the amiable but drippy (upper-class twit!) Claude Erskine-Brown. Until then, she had been my perfect embodiment of the single, professional woman. Luckily, I didn't really follow how that came about. I suppose I only saw the first four or five seasons, before heading off to university and all but abandoning TV. The series carried on for the best part of a decade more, but I only caught a random handful of the later episodes.

Gosh, there's something about lady barristers! I don't think it was just the loveliness of Ms Hodge/Ms Trant that implanted this particular erotic fascination in my mind. The prim simplicity of a black business suit, the stark contrast with the crisp white blouse, and then the black tights or stockings, of course, yes, the stockings.... damn, there's even something oddly fetching or provoking about those godawful horsehair wigs (they make the scalp itch something rotten; and I regard it as my chief consolation for having failed to make my way in the profession myself that at least I escaped the torture of having to wear one of these darned things; perhaps it's the sympathy trigger that makes a woman wearing one seem attractive - it makes us feel sorry for her?!).

Uniforms in general, of course, are commonly perceived to have a frisson of sexiness about them - something about the aura of power they emanate, perhaps... and the sharp tailoring? In addition to that, though, I think there's something particularly alluring about the way that a strong personality manages to shine through even more strongly in defiance of a costume that's designed to depersonalize. And, more so than almost any other uniformed ladies (such as air stewardesses or traffic wardens), female barristers are necessarily formidably intelligent.

Yet, despite the poise and power bestowed by their academic pedigree and their vital role in the judicial system, there's also usually a beguiling air of vulnerability about them, a sense of the struggle they must undergo to assert themselves in what is still a predominantly masculine - and often rather sexist - arena, or an intimation of discomfort in maintaining the facade of 'male' toughness that is so often expected of them in their work. Lady barristers, I have found, are often a tad intimidating, sometimes even downright scary... and yet I almost always want to give them a hug.

My days of law school, Bar school, and pupillage were a dizzying succession of ephemeral infatuations. Another reason, perhaps, to be grateful that I didn't make my career at the Bar....

Another 'final countdown'!!

Interest in my 'drinking blog' has, after a worrying lull, apparently started to pick up again a little in the last week or two, and - according to the Sitemeter widget in the sidebar - the accumulated visitor total is now nearing 50,000.

This landmark should be passed (assuming the world doesn't end tomorrow!) within the next few days.

I have decided to offer a prize to whoever can convincingly claim to have been Visitor No. 50,000. (I've moved the counter up to the top of the sidebar for a while to make it easier to keep track!)

Do leave me a comment here if you think it's YOU.

The End of Days?

I just stumbled upon this story which informs us that certain religious nutjobs in the States have declared that the end of the world is going to take place tomorrow, Saturday 21st May 2011. No specific time is mentioned, I don't think; but I suspect it's likely to be around noon, on Central Standard Time (how the good folks of the Bible Belt set their watches).

Ah, well, strictly speaking, this is not yet quite the end. No, it is to be the time of The Rapture - as calculated from a close reading of The Bible by an 80-year-old Christian radio broadcaster called Harold Camping. The Rapture is the snatching up of the righteous from the Earth to meet with God in Heaven (or perhaps just to be taken for a thrilling flight through the clouds - Biblical references are unclear on this point). Christian nutjobs disagree as to whether this event precedes or is simultaneous with the Second Coming of Christ. Camping, I gather, takes the view that it precedes it, and ushers in the period of Tribulation upon the Earth, culminating in the great battle of Armageddon; then we get the Second Coming and the Millennium of Christ's rule upon Earth. Mr Camping, however, regards the Millennium as more of a metaphor (but the Tribulation and Armageddon are not?), so... Armageddon is the End of Everything. And that will be exactly 5 months after The Rapture, on 21st October. You have been warned. At least I'll have one more birthday; but it might be a rather sombre affair, overshadowed by being the Penultimate Day Of Existence.

So, the world won't end tomorrow. But it will be the start of very bad things.

Of course, we probably won't know for sure whether Mr Camping was right or not straight away. The 'righteous' are probably so few in number - and such dull people! - that their disappearance may go unnoticed. And the very bad things might not immediately seem that much worse than what we've been experiencing anyway - wars, revolutions, earthquakes, tsunamis, nuclear meltdowns, bird 'flu in humans, the continuing proliferation of Starbucks and McDonald's. With all of this going on, The Antichrist is going to struggle to get himself any airtime.

Still, it makes a fellow glad to be an atheist...

[Mr Camping had previously predicted September 1994 as the beginning of the End of Days, but graciously admitted to a "mathematical error". He seems much more confident this time. I hope he won't be too disappointed if he proves to be mistaken again; he seems such a genial old buffer.]

The weekly haiku

Sculptors can give up,
Discard blunt chisel, brittle stone.
Teachers must endure.

The TV Listings (8)

A roundup of my video postings from the first quarter of this year:

The Comedy/Movie Channel

Movie trailer spoof - to accompany my Film Taglines Quiz, I post this funny clip of top Hollywood voiceover artist Hal Douglas sending up all the clichés of American film trailer narration.

An incredible journey - e-friend and occasional commenter Cedra Wood posts a video about her work on Kickstarter to raise some cash to help with a forthcoming painting trip to Australia this summer; so I give her a boost on here too.

Father Jack's finest moment - another St Patrick's Day treat: a favourite bit from the UK Channel 4's cult '90s sitcom (a surreal piss-take of the Irish priesthood), Father Ted. [Unfortunately, embedding clips of this show seems to be very comprehensively blocked, so you might as well go straight here.]

Year of the Rabbit Rebellion - a gruesomely funny political cartoon (produced, I've since been told, by a group of young animators from Taiwan), which references a number of the most notorious examples from the last few years of the Chinese Communist Party's ineptitude, corruption, and abuse of power.... and suggesting that this could be the year when the docile rabbits (the ordinary people) start to fight back against the bullying tigers (the ruling cadres). Oh, I wish, I wish.  

Australian Citizenship Test - a little cartoon history lesson to celebrate Australia Day.

Homeless voiceover star - an uplifting story (well, initially, at least) from the States about a homeless man whose 'golden voice' gave him a shot at stardom as a radio announcer.

The Music Channel

Manic Monday - I don't need much of an excuse to post the video of The Bangles' 1980s hit (penned by Prince). Didn't we all have a crush on Susannah Hoffs 25 years ago?

Sally MacLennane - for St Patrick's Day this year I post this great rabble-rousing singalong from The Pogues (I was particularly pleased to find a clip of them performing the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test, a BBC2 music show that was one of the foundations of my childhood, my life...).

Star Wars Medley (John Williams is The Man!) - a great piece of fun from Salt Lake city acapella group Moosebutter, with split-screen lip-syncing from YouTube super-nerd Corey Vidal.

Hold On - the original video and a great live performance of one of my favourite Tom Waits love songs.

Bohemian Rhapsody - the original Queen video, a live performance at Wembley Stadium, a LEGO video, the opening scene of Wayne's World, an acoustic version of the song by classical guitarist Edgar Cruz, and.... the rather wonderful American rock-grass outfit Hayseed Dixie doing their take on it.

Caramel - a delicious love song from Suzanne Vega.

Harmonica solo - French harmonica virtuoso Laurent Maur was visiting Beijing at the end of last year, and I was privileged to hear him play a couple of times. Here's a great clip of him playing with a full orchestra.

The Sports Channel

Wot - no sport this time? Apparently not. Sorry.

The safety valve

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote that conditions in China could soon become ripe for some kind of revolution, because of a likely dramatic slowdown in the rate of economic growth whilst the demands and expectations of its rapidly expanding middle class remain on the rise and increasingly go unmet.

However, that observation overlooked one key factor which, I think, is the major contribution to China at present apparently continuing to be (enviably or regrettably?) 'revolution-proof'.

It is simply this: the overwhelming demand of the great majority of the new Chinese middle class, or of very large numbers of them anyway, and one which is really not at all dependent on the Chinese government for its realisation, is.... to get the hell out of the country.

China has some of the lowest levels of social trust in the world, and - I would say - some of the lowest levels of respect for its political system and its leaders. But a lot of the people who are most likely to find their aspirations for a better life here frustrated, and who are most capable of expressing their dissatisfaction about that in a cogent and influential manner, do not hang around here to brood on their discontent - they emigrate to Canada (or Australia, or New Zealand, or anywhere else that will have them) as soon as they possibly can.

If 'the West' really wanted to bring down the Chinese Communist Party (and I, for one, increasingly tend towards the view that they should).... I think a ban - or a massive cutback - on Chinese immigration would be all that it would take. If the starting-to-be-rich all had to stay here, they would have to find some way of making this country work better - not just for themselves, but for everyone. But the starting-to-be-rich and the lucky-to-be-educated have an easy way out. And everyone else is too poor and too powerless to lobby effectively for change.

Mr Grindtooth again

I'm doing a business training course for a Chinese state-owned enterprise this month.

It's arranged through an 'English school' run by a Chinese university (god help me!).

Thus.... a course is thrown together in a headlong rush, by people who know nothing whatsoever about teaching or course planning, and without any consultation with the poor bloody trainers who will be delivering it... without any level testing or needs assessment of the intended students... and, as far as I can discern, without even any meaningful discussion about the course structure or purpose with the people responsible for booking it.

Still, I don't have to worry too much any of this headless chicken stuff because at least "all the course materials will be provided" for me.

They provide one book.

It's a self-study book rather than a classroom workbook.

Most of it is based on listening activities, which work particularly poorly in a classroom setting (and they've given me a very large group for this course; nearly twice as big as you'd hope for in an intensive business skills-focused course). Moreover, it's very high level listening material - content-rich, employing some sophisticated vocabulary, and delivered in a variety of non-standard English accents, many of them Eastern European. It's just too darned difficult for most of my students. 

[It has become something of an article of dogma in TESOL circles that foreign learners should be exposed to 'authentic English' in all its richness and variety. Cambridge Exams are particularly keen on this use of European non-native speaker accents for their Business English Certificate. I see the virtues of this in principle. Unfortunately, in practice, I've just about never met a Chinese English speaker who can cope with it at all. Their comprehension just falls apart if they're listening to audio only, and being confronted with a non-standard accent and idiomatic vocabulary.]

And even if I did make use of all this inappropriate listening material and adapted the other exercises in the book to classroom use, it's only about 12 to 15 hours' worth of material. I have 28 timetabled hours to fill.

So, the book is all but discarded, and I have to create most of the activities and materials myself.

But the school likes the feedback I'm getting so much, they're asking me to do a course for a different group of students on the same topic next month.

Oh dear: it is supposed to be exactly the same course, using exactly the same book.

But at least it's only 15 hours this time.

Just ONCE before I leave this country, I'd like to work with someone who actually gives a damn about course design. I fear it's never going to happen.

This is (one of the reasons) why I do not like working for Chinese universities.

Bon mot for the week

"A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops."

Henry Brooks Adams (1838-1918)

An important lesson

A couple of weeks ago, while trying to find some amusing pictures for a Cinco de Mayo post, I happened upon a selection of funny Mexican gravestones (it seems to be a well-established national genre).

I couldn't help but be reminded of this classic bit of Belloc. [And I am glad to have just now found a free edition of his poems to download in PDF.]

Lord Finchley

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the duty of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.


Hilaire Belloc  (1870-1953)

Foul play... or ill luck?

It appears the infuriating glitch I suffered with Blogger the other day may have been down to random gremlins in the system rather than culpable ineptitude on the part of the Google drones who maintain and update the facilities on the site.

The sudden scrambling of the account settings (changing my online username?! sacrilege!!!) was but the first in a veritable tsunami of anomalies - and Blogger was taken offline for a full 24 hours yesterday, while techies toiled to plug all the leaks. It's rather a relief to learn this. I had been starting to worry that perhaps my account had been individually hacked. (And - call me paranoid, if you will! - I wouldn't rule out the possibility that some of Blogger's problems were the result of malevolent interference by employees of the Chinese government. The CCP really does hate blogging that much!)

It appears the maintenance/repair job involved the ("temporary") loss of some data, as Blogger/Blogspot was rolled back to its Wednesday state, removing posts I'd put up on Thursday or Friday. I'm relieved to have got them back now. However, there have been a number of other irksome bugs: timestamps have been changed all over the place, some category tags have been strangely scrambled, 'scheduled' future posts (i.e., yesterday's haiku) did not appear at the specified time, and some recent comments have been deleted (and not yet restored).  Ggrrrr.

Still, at least we're back.

The weekly haiku

Sunlight so perfect,
The world seems joyous, carefree.
Soon it grows too hot.

We've had a couple of really perfect days this past week or so: too perfect to last.

Don't be evil!

And I'd say that 'evil' encompasses wanton mischief as well, Sergey. And staggering ineptitude and obtuseness that is likely to needlessly cause aggravation and inconvenience to others.

Yes, I am once again royally pissed off with Google. 

Some of their techie assclowns somehow decided a few days ago that it would be cool to tweak the account settings - without telling anyone - in such a way that your Google account, instead of displaying the online username that you've been using for years, would now show your actual first name from a completely different set of data.  WTF?

Really, chaps, you should never, never, NEVER change the way someone's personal information is accessed or displayed without giving them some say in the matter beforehand. For me, it is (I hope!) merely a brief annoyance. For some people (especially in the paranoid and repressive country in which I live), preserving one's online anonymity is essential to keeping oneself out of prison.

Google, you should be ashamed of yourselves. And I hope the assclowns responsible for this monumental screw-up are soon out of a job.

Say it in llama

• t
• h
• e

• d
• a
• l
• a
• i

• l
• a
• m
• a

• i
• s

• r
• e
• a
• l
• l
• y

• a

• v
• e
• r
• y

• n
• i
• c
• e

• c
• h
• a
• p
• .

A number of friends - knowing my llama-fetish (and, indeed, my Lama-fetish) - have sent me notes about this Llama Font site recently. Hours of fun. Days of procrastination.

The after-scent of a sunny day

Walking home on Saturday evening, I was struck by an uncommonly heavy aroma hanging on the breeze - sweet, very pleasant in fact (not at all the typical hutong smells of public toilets, fouled drains, and questionably 'delicious' local foods), and oh-so-familiar, yet I couldn't quite place it at first.

Of course - pineapple. 

Quartered, freshly peeled pineapples, stored in buckets of weak syrup to keep them moist and served on a stick, are a popular summertime street snack in Beijing.  And last Saturday - one of the first really sunny days to fall on a weekend this year - was obviously a bumper day for the pineapple vendors. On that short walk home, I must have passed dozens of sanlunche (the flatbed tricycles which are still the primary means of delivering produce here) parked up on the side of the street, piled with shavings of pineapple skin - like the found collage below.

One of the better things about the Beijing summer - although I don't think I've ever encountered quite such an intensely pineappley smell on the night air before. This was a somewhat freakish occurrence, but a very pleasant one.

Bon mot for the week

"It is a great ability to be able to conceal one's ability."

François de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

List of the Month - uses of the Jasmine Flower

There have been many theories advanced about the true nature of China's 'Jasmine Revolution', the great political non-event of the year here so far (well, apart from the National People's Congress, of course).

These seem to be the main ones:

1)  It was a ruse by Chinese dissidents to provoke the police and government into a heavy-handed overreaction that would engender greater public opposition.

2)  It was a ruse by Chinese police and government to flush dissidents out into the open.

3)  It was a ruse by unknown mischief-makers - Chinese or foreign? - to make either or both of the above groups look foolish.

4)  It was a conspiracy by the CIA (or some other 'foreign power') to try to embarrass or destabilize the Chinese government.

5)  It was a conspiracy by 'the Western media' to make China look bad.

[Ahem - most of the Western media has no such agenda (and the Chinese government manages to make itself look plenty bad enough without any help from anyone!). However, it does suffer under an imperative to fill pages, and many Western journalists - Americans especially - were rather over-eager in jumping all over this trifling 'story'.]

6)  It was a ruse by McDonald's to generate free advertising.

7)  It was a ruse by KFC - or some other fast-food competitor - to get the Wangfujing McDonald's shut down, or to drastically reduce its custom.

8)  It was a malicious fiction propagated by China-bashers - especially cynical old bloggers like Froog here - to try to make it appear (which is obviously not the case) that not everyone in China is happy and carefree under the rule of the Communist Party.

9)  It was a hoax, plain and simple - an 'innocent' prank which has had some very unfortunate consequences.

10)  It was a genuine attempt - but a woefully misconceived and half-hearted one - to create a unified focus for the numerous disparate voices of discontent here.

Take your pick. I rather suspect it's a confused mélange of a number of these. The one thing that is clear is that the very nervous Chinese Communist Party fairly crapped its pants at the suggestion that something like the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings might start to emerge here, and has used the flimsy - perhaps entirely fictitious - 'Jasmine' Twittering movement as a pretext for the biggest crackdown on political dissent since 1989.  [Supplementary theory: Minister of Public Security Zhou Yongkang had his budget enormously expanded during the run-up to the Beijing Olympics and the PRC 60th Anniversary celebrations in 2008 and 2009, and has resisted any reduction of his new empire since. With such vast financial and manpower resources now at his disposal, he has to find ways of keeping busy. I fear this is almost certainly a major factor.  Erratum: I read an article just recently in the Western press which mentioned Zhou Yongkang as being still the head of Public Security, but in fact he was bumped upstairs to the State Council quite some time ago, with Meng Jianzhu apparently taking over the Public Security portfolio from him at the end of 2007. So, it's probably Meng rather than Zhou that we have to thank for all the increased goonery in recent years.]

Recently, on The Barstool...

I seem to have fallen into a habit of doing these little rundowns of highlights from my 'dark side' blog Barstool Blues every six weeks or so (I fret that this may imply that good stuff is becoming a little too infrequent over there... Nah!). Thus, we are once again about due.

Well, just last week, I was getting a little 'political' on the blog, complaining about how the government's paranoia here is creating a climate of fear in the modern art and rock music communities, and banishing this year's music festivals to venues far outside of Beijing (which probably means I won't be going to any of them).

On a chirpier note, the approach of summer (well, here's hoping - it's turned a bit gloomy again the last few days) prompted me to put together a little list of my favourite places for drinking outdoors.

And amongst the last of my picture posts about my trip to Malaysia in February... I found a bar I want to buy, and was fascinated by a cheap local whisky that is actually made from 'whisky' (or, rather, 'whiski')!

Musical posts have included Lebanese multi-instrumentalist Abaji (who played in Beijing as part of the Jue Festival at the end of March), a Russian cover of The Beatles' Come Together by a Siberian throat-singing band, and a selection of versions of the impossibly poignant Scots/Irish farewell song, The Parting Glass.

I've also commented on the many idiosyncrasies and inadequacies of the upcoming annual Bar & Club Awards from leading local expat magazine The Beijinger, and have offered up my own suggested shortlist for the 'Best Bar' prize.

And I've just added another 'Best of...' collection of favourite posts from the beginning of last year...

Lots to entertain you there.

The weekly haiku

Shy summer pauses
Wipes its feet outside the door
Spring blossoms linger

A week into May: it ought to be HOT by now. But it isn't. What's going on?

Limits to growth

When studying the French Revolution and the English Civil Wars as special topics in my History A-Level, I was powerfully struck by the observation of a number of writers on these events that such upheavals seemed to be precipitated not by conditions of absolute deprivation - food shortage, natural disasters, chronic deflation, etc. - but by a mismatch between economic growth and rising middle-class expectations. These two great political cataclysms actually followed on from periods of rapidly increasing prosperity. The problem is that such rapid growth leads to an expansion of the middle-class, and it tends to be the middle-class - educated, aspirational - who are most likely to make demands of their government, and most likely to get stroppy if those demands are not being adequately met. Moreover, rapid growth engenders rapidly rising expectations, particularly amongst this voluble middle-class - expectations which may, indeed, start to rise faster than the economic growth that could realise them. And if the economic growth rate tails off, even slightly, while middle-class aspirations and expectation of public goods continue to rise as quickly as during the preceding boom decades, a dangerous 'expectation gap' suddenly appears. This is when revolutions happen.

China is facing such a slowdown. As I observed back at the start of the global financial meltdown, after a decade-and-a-half of consistent double-digit annual GDP growth, even trimming down that growth rate by two or three percent is going to feel like a recession here. China's growth has dipped back into single figures over the past couple of years. And the government - suddenly mindful of the need to find a more sustainable path of development! - is projecting a rate of just 7% per year in the new Five-Year Plan (although that will almost certainly be exceeded, at least for a while; nevertheless, the days of 11% and 12% annual growth are gone).

Even without this deliberate reining in of the economic juggernaut, it would seem that China might be about to hit a brick wall anyway. I was interested to read this recent article in The Economist (about this paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research by Barry Eichengreen, Donghyun Park, and Kwanho Shin) which suggests there is a critical threshold at which rapidly developing economies find their growth rates abruptly tailing off towards the lower single-digit level of the advanced economies. The researchers have come up with a very precise figure for this threshold: a per capita GDP of $16,740.

China is set to hit that mark within the next two or three years. Furthermore, these researchers have identified a number of risk factors which make a sudden and violent slowdown around this threshold more likely, if not inevitable: an undervalued currency (oops, China), a protectionist attitude (oops), weak domestic consumption (oops), a low ratio of workers to dependents (One Child Policy - oops), and high or irregular inflation (yay, China! until recently, but now starting to look like another oops).

Within a decade, China's growth could have slumped to 5% a year. And a lot of people - especially the middle classes - are going to be very, very grumpy about that.

This - historically - is how revolutions happen.

[Of course, revolutions don't have to be violent, bottom-up convulsions; they can be achieved in a gradual way, guided by an enlightened leadership, without too much economic damage or loss of stability. But what are the odds of the Chinese Communist Party being able to pull off something like that? Not good, I fear; not good at all.]

Another cinematic coincidence

I've been having a quiet week, attempting to save money after a rather wild month in April - staying in with my DVD collection most nights. On a whim, I started revisiting some of the classics I remember from my undergraduate days, but have perhaps not seen since - or not for a very long time, anyway. And so it was that I came to watch on consecutive nights.... Paul Schrader's American Gigolo and Brian De Palma's Scarface.

Fine films, both - though perhaps not quite as good as I'd thought, starting to show their age a little. However, the overwhelming question that formed in my brain after this was......  Oh my god, did every early-80s thriller have a Giorgio Moroder score??

No, just those two. And I'd completely forgotten the fact - if I'd ever been consciously aware of it. Perhaps it was a self-protective amnesia. The man could knock out infectious pop songs, right enough, but he couldn't sustain the creativity for a whole movie. If you absolutely must have a synthesiser score, I'd take John Carpenter over Moroder any day.

I start to wonder if I am not somehow subconsciously inflicting these 'coincidences' on myself.

Then again, Hollywood is such an incestuous little world, perhaps such 'coincidences' are in fact incredibly common, and even someone as quirkily observant as me simply fails to notice them most of the time.

What was that?

On trendy Beijing shopping alley Nanluoguxiang, Cultural Revolution era kitsch is very much the flavour-of-the-month (very largely "thanks" [I'm not so thankful about it myself] to the runaway success of one of the earliest boutiques down there, the British-run Plastered T-Shirts).

A little while ago, I spotted this mousemat down there - with the baffling slogan:

All for wife eats to calculate everything painstakingly.

Well, that's how it's rendered in the "English version".  My Chinese isn't up to deciphering the original (Help, Weeble? Anyone?); and I'm afraid it's a bit difficult to make out in this hastily taken snapshot below (god, I hate my digital cameras - but that's another rant!!). I suspect it's an exhortation to housewives to take an especially prudential approach to budgeting for their food shopping.... or something.

A perfect day

Weather-wise, at least.

Low pollution, high wispy clouds, deep blue sky; temperature rising to the middle 70s, but cut by a light breeze.  Bliss.

Now, occasionally Beijing's rut-prone weather settles into spells like this for several days, or even a few weeks at a time.

May and June can be beautiful months here.  But, more often, they soon become too fiercely hot... and smotheringly humid as well.  Which is it going to be this year?  Fingers crossed.

New Picks of the Month

A couple more oldies-but-goodies from this month three years ago...

From Froogville, I pick Holding it all in - for the Olympics - first and best (so far) of the My Crazy 'Art' Ideas series.

And on Barstool Blues, it has to be In search of... the Yanjing Brewery, wherein - after years of thwarted or postponed plans - I finally got around to taking a tour of my local beer factory.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for April

Gosh, have I finally managed to scale back to something like a sensible level of output in my blogging? 18,500 words still seems a bit steep, but it's barely half of my monthly record! I should endeavour to keep my volume of posting at something like this, I think.

Last month, there were 36 posts and nearly 10,000 words on Froogville.

There were 33 posts and around 8,500 words on Barstool Blues.

There seems to have been a little bit of a surge in interest in Froogville in the last couple of the months, with daily visits now running regularly well above 150 (200 or 250 on Mondays!), and with a much lower 'bounce rate' (according to Google Analytics, though I'm never sure what to make of that). We've had our first (as far as I recall) visit from Singapore. And we possibly have a new 'fan' in Jalandhar in the Punjab (he/she has apparently dropped in at least twice, for quite long spells): please identify yourself in the comments.

The Barstool, however, has suffered something of a slump in 'popularity'. I must try and think of some way of sexing it up a little...

Bon mot for the week

"A foreigner translating Chinese is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It's only amusing if you wear a plaid waistcoat."

Froog

A little tease I directed at my friend The Weeble a while back, when he was slated to take part in a 'translation slam' event. I found the idea of trying to produce translations live, in public inherently ludicrous. Indeed, I couldn't help but be reminded of Monty Python's live outside broadcast of Thomas Hardy starting his new novel (link includes text and the audio clip).