Haiku for the week

Distances treble,
Even shortest walks exhaust.
World of ice and snow.

It has been a miserable week here, a week of virtual 'house arrest'. Things have got a bit better now. But I fear more snow is on the way.

Prisoner In A Sea Of Glass

I have a slightly shaky sense of balance. I was never able to make any progress with ice-skating (although I did essay it several times when I was living in Toronto a decade ago), nor have I even been tempted to try skiing. Activities like those, that require you to be permanently slightly off balance, frankly, terrify me. I didn't even much enjoy going on the slides when I was a kid.

I have an exaggerated, almost phobic horror of breaking a bone (and I have managed never to do so - apart from a few, unconfirmed, hairline crack injuries sustained during sports).

Therefore, the possibility of falling over on an icy pavement - and maybe breaking something - produces an almost debilitating anxiety in me. (It's not exactly an irrational fear, given how expensive expat medical treatment can be, and given that I don't have any health insurance; but it is, I concede, probably an excessive fear.)

This problem is exacerbated manyfold for me by the fact that none of my shoes or boots seem to provide ANY GRIP AT ALL in the slippery conditions which have prevailed in Beijing since the New Year.

The first few days were the worst, since little or no snow-clearing had been done over the weekend. But even now that most of the sidewalks have been cleared, a variety of hazards remain. Much of the snow melted by gritting is particularly treacherous, a mixture of water and tiny ice crystals which can, at times, be super-slippery. Much of the melted snow has almost immediately refrozen, producing long thin slicks of ice - often almost invisible 'black ice'. And much of the snow hasn't been cleared at all, but after a day or two of steady tramping has been packed down so hard that it presents just as glassily smooth a surface as the ice patches, but more perilously uneven. It doesn't help that, outside of the major streets (where I assume they must have used some sort of steam-hose, or maybe a chemical solvent to scour the sidewalks so thoroughly), the typical Chinese methods of snow clearing involve scraping with a snow-shovel or brushing aside with a whisk broom - both of which tend to leave a fine residue of polished, compacted, super-slippery snow in a micro-thin layer across the whole road or sidewalk, or at least in obstinate icy nuggets that refuse to be dislodged or dangerous little ridges lurking in the gaps between paving slabs to ambush the unwary. (Oh yes, and most Chinese sidewalks feature a strip of raised indentations, supposedly to help direct the blind [although I don't think I've ever seen a blind person availing himself of this supposed helpfulness]. These are a bit of a trip hazard at the best of times, and made out of some very slippery ceramic-like substance; when they get wet or icy, they're lethal. I wonder if they aren't in fact part of a savage plot to euthanise the blind population.) It's usually safer to trudge through the slush in the bicycle lanes.

There's been no snow-clearing done at all in the lane leading to my apartment. I'm only 300 or 400 yards from the main road, but for the last few days it has been like running a gauntlet, and has been deterring me even from venturing out to the local 7/11 (a walk that usually takes me only 3 or 4 minutes, but now requires more like 10).

Trying to get any significant distance across town is even more daunting. Taxi availability - usually so generous here - has shrunk to nothing: half-hour waits are becoming the norm, and many people are being forced to take their chances with the 'black cabs', the unscrupulous unlicensed operators who may try to hold you to ransom for any fare they care to name. The subway and buses are, therefore, packed out - uncomfortably, dangerously so.

Thus, you don't have much choice but to walk almost everywhere. Or rather, slither.

And I find that just too exhausting - emotionally, more than physically. Half a dozen slides and wobbles and near-falls every minute or two rapidly wears me out.

I rather fear I shall be trapped here in the new Froog Towers until we get a decent thaw. That might be at least another month. Oh god!

Hubertina Hildebrand says Hallo

Well, that was a nice surprise for me in my Inbox this morning! I hadn't heard from Hubie since our little fling in Heidelberg in the summer of 1991.

Ah, no, that was just my imagination running away with me there for a moment. I've always found something oddly sexy about the Germans. Well, German women, you understand. Perhaps it comes from my being German in the maternal line.

Alas, it seems that Internet spammers are becoming more devious - and multilingual! - these days.

Well, perhaps not multilingual. Hubertina's message looked plausibly German at first glance, but on closer investigation a number of words seemed to be misspelled or non-existent (not that my German is up to much, but I checked a couple of words I didn't recognise in some online dictionaries).

Mitarbeiter fuer Testeinkauf bundesweit gesucht. Bewerbung bitte an.....

Testeinkauf, anyone?! I had thought perhaps Fräulein Hildebrand was concerned about the state of my testicles, and was offering me some miracle medicine to enlarge them, or shrink them, or even them up, or something. But it seems not.

Just randomly generated gibberish, I suppose. You can do that in any language. (I think there must be a program like that they use to write Chinese political speeches.)

A breakthrough for Chinese poetry farmers!

Yes, I've been watching the propaganda drivel and unintentional laugh-fest that is China International Television (CCTV 9) once again.

I had the lunchtime news on in the background while I made a sandwich a few days ago, and one of those vowel-mangling lady presenters came out with an intriguing opening line for a story that brought me rushing to the screen to find out what it could possibly mean. She said something like, "Do you believe classical music can help your poetry?"

She then repeated variations of this phrase a number of times more. I was certainly prepared to entertain that proposition. Listening to more Beethoven might help improve my sensitivity to scansion (I often have a bit of a tin ear for metre, I'm afraid). Perhaps Bach would instil more structural discipline in me. Yes, this did seem beguilingly possible. Perhaps they were really on to something here.

Unfortunately, I soon discovered that my 'poetry' was not the kind of poetry this item was talking about. Oh no.

Actually, they were dealing with poultry. It was that inability to properly voice l's completely messing up the preceding vowel sound as well problem again.

The reporter was talking to a Chinese chicken farmer who is convinced that playing Chinese classical music helps to de-stress his hens and increases their rate of laying eggs. Fascinating stuff, in its way - though hardly world-shatteringly original. And no help at all with the sonnets and the limericks.

Traffic Report - the blog stats for December

December tends to be a particularly profuse blogging month, for good reasons and bad. Work slows down, too much time on my hands, a vicious seasonal depression takes hold. On the other hand, there is a lot of party activity to report, and a certain amount of Christmassy goodwill and nostalgia pouring from my keyboard. It's one of those months where Barstool Blues generally gets a bit busier than Froogville.

So, in December 2009 there were 48 posts and around 15,000 words on Froogville, including a humorous year-end roundup of the year's most eccentric posts.

And there were 54 posts and more than 22,000 words on Barstool Blues (can that really be right? I distrust that wordcounter!) - climaxing, of course, with my Annual Beijing Bar Awards.

Traffic has been a bit slow over the holiday period, with no new 'exotics' for quite a while - only my hardcore followers in the the UK and the USA are still looking in at the moment. Please, tell your friends - it's an 'open house' party!!

A Happy New Year to you all!

A bon mot for the New Year

"Between the twin abysses of The Unknown and The Forgotten there soar the mountains of The Imagination."

Froog

New Picks of the Month

Now that I have full access to Blogger restored - after three or four months of rather limited functionality - I am able to change the links in the sidebars for random recommended posts from my 'early days'.

On Froogville, my new selection is The Curse of the Three Adjectives, one of the most nightmarish aspects of trying to teach English in China.

And on Barstool Blues, I offer you this piece on the important concept of Valuable Drinking Time.

Snow

It started snowing in Beijing some time on the night of January 1st/2nd (I remember noticing it dimly on my way home, but I was pretty drunk at the time). It continued intermittently through much of the day yesterday (though I wasn't paying too much attention because I was mostly asleep). From the depth of snow on the ground this morning - a good 6 inches or so - I deduce that the intensity must have ramped up a little overnight. And it has started fairly snowing like the clappers in the last hour or so.

I am torn between a childish delight at the prettiness of it, and a curmudgeonly irritation at how damn difficult it is going to be get around today - shortage of taxis, uncleared sidewalks, sodden shoes, grump, grump, grump.

I think the curmudgeonliness is winning out these days. Probably a sign of middle age finally taking hold....

Haiku for the week

Day dawns in greyness,
Greyness begins the new year:
Weather of the heart.

Awards Season

The end of the year is upon us once again, and with it come a lot of annual reviews and polls and prizes and awards. And once again I have failed (as far as I know) to merit even a nomination for any kind of blogger plaudit. (Well, I was named a Superior Scribbler at the start of this year, of course; but that's a bestowed by a friend kind of honour rather than a triumphing in a competitive vote one, the result of the favourable opinion of one reader rather than many.)

Rather than just sulk about it, I thought I'd invent some awards to give myself.

Most Prolific Blogger of the Year

Getting on for 1,000 posts this year, between my 2 (er, 3) blogs. Crazy. Logorrhoeic.

Most Alcoholic Blog of the Year

My alternate blog, Round-The-World Barstool Blues, of course - which has catalogued my meanderings through Beijing bar life on, I would guess, well over 200 nights out over the past year, including at least two 16-hour binges. Not many people have that kind of dedication. Some bloggers put their heart and soul into their writing, sure; but I give you my liver too.

Most Uncomfortably Personal Blog(s) of the Year

I know, I know, I'm rather too introspective - and ruthlessly frank - at times. Between the two blogs this year, you have been able (if you were so inclined) to chart an odyssey of spiritual torment - stressful interactions with landlords and letting agents, disintegrating professional relationships, a perpetually thwarted love life. If you think this makes uncomfortable reading, what do you think it is like to live it??

China-Basher of the Year

I have mocked the country's lamentable English skills, continued to foment splittism in the Western regions through my coded picture posts, and even dissed the national "birthday" celebrations. No contest, surely?

Most Diverse Blog of the Year

I mean, where else would you find posts on topics as varied as the population dynamics of vampirism, a satirical take on the Chinese government’s attitude to Tibet, a sketch of an opening for a novel about sniper duels in Sarajevo, an essay on Ancient Greek profanity, a dozen Twitter-length ghost stories, a modern art review, a commmentary on “China’s 60th birthday”, the usefulness or otherwise of St Anthony, the first truly comprehensive theory of history, the endless amusement value of Chinese condom brand names, a roundup of favourite film quotations, a meditation on the psychology of ‘bad taste’ jokes, some wise words on censorship, advice on how to make Chinese friends, memorable cinema-going experiences, speculation on the causes of the severe drought in China this year, North Korean chat-up lines, abstract photography, an innovative business idea for an exclusive men’s club, the shortcomings of Beijing taxi drivers, the sex life of Chairman Mao, astronomy (and The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy!), a satirical rundown on some of the most conspicuous elements of “Chinese-ness”, a defence of the “Ponzi scheme”, gay penguins, the difficulties of translating classical Chinese poetry, possible poltergeist activity in my kitchen cupboards, a 1940s advertisement for a non-existent product, the odd outbreak of paranoia, a tribute to Bon Scott of AC/DC (and a passing jibe at Mao), the poverty of scholarship in Chinese academe, the bizarre delights of Victorian magazine advertising, and the Dalai Lama in a Santa hat…. and some speculation on what Internet archaeologists of the future will make of all of this? Really, where??

I feel so much better now.

A Happy New Year to all my readers

(if I have any left after all that).

A slight lull in blogging?

Well, here on Froogville, perhaps - just very slightly, over the last week or so.

It's all been happening over on Barstool Blues, you see - quite a flurry of end-of-year posting over there. Just in the last few days I've added Little Frank, a companion Christmas story to this one, and a further rundown of my favourite Christmases spent in Beijing.

And today is THE BIG ONE - I've just added my annual Beijing Bar Awards post. Please, go and take a look. And add your own views in the comments.

Guanxi explained

A few years ago a friend sent me a series of diagrams like this, illustrating key differences between 'Western' and Chinese culture (said to have been created by a Chinese girl who's emigrated to Germany; I didn't originally know the source, but I've learned that it's a graphic designer called Yang Liu). This is one of my favourites, on the concept of networking, or guanxi, as the Chinese say. On the left, we Westerners are stuck in our tightknit little groups, rarely breaking out beyond one or two degrees of separation. On the right, for the Chinese, everyone is connected to everyone else, albeit very tenuously. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone in a position of power, a chain of reciprocal favours can be initiated - that's guanxi!

Among the musicians

The apartment complex I've just moved into is still government-owned (well, I guess everything in this country is still government-owned, but in the last few years a lot of residential accommodation has shifted to 'private' ownership on long - but rather tenuous - leases), and dedicated to one of the classical musicians' unions. A lot of the original tenants, like my landlord, have chosen to sub-let to make some extra money for themselves, but the majority - it would appear - are still living here, free or on a heavily subsidised rent.

Hence, I am surrounded by music for much of the day.

On one of the first occasions I walked over here, carrying some of my things to begin moving in (it's only half a mile or so away from my old apartment, and I didn't trust my movers with some of my delicate possessions - computers, cameras, and so on), I was greeted by the sound of someone in my block playing a bamboo flute. That was quite beautiful.

Unfortunately, I haven't heard that again. Most of my neighbours seem to have pianos. (My apartment was supposed to have had an upright piano, which I considered a very attractive feature. I have a few friends who play a little, and might have appreciated the opportunity to practice for free round at my place. And I was seriously tempted to try to learn myself. I am more than a little miffed that my landlord and his wife made a last-minute decision to remove it, so that their 10-year-old daughter could start learning - without telling me, or making any adjustment in the rent!) Not all of them are piano-players. There's a guy over to my right somewhere who knocks out some decent Chopin once in a while. But the neighbour to the left appears to me to be an exponent of some other instrument who is just trying to work things out on the piano - he obviously knows music, but doesn't play at all well (on one of my first days living here, he spent a couple of hours or more hacking away at Lara's Theme, again and again nearly-but-not-quite nailing a passage - it was a strange torture, indeed).

And on the floor below, for two or three hours in the late afternoon and early evening almost every day, we have someone practising who's really not much good at all. I think it must be a kid. I suspect, in fact, it is the kid who threw a 40-minute hysterical, abusive tantrum at his parents the other day. There hasn't been any more piano practising from that apartment since. I wonder if the kid has won his battle to give it up? Drama in the hutong.

Although being surrounded by this - often not so musical - plink-plink-plink can occasionally get a bit irritating, it's not really one of the more annoying neighbour noises one might be exposed to. Often, indeed, I find the sound of a piano strangely restful, even when it's not being played well. And at least it's not happening (much) at night, or in the early morning, only during the day (when I ought not to be in that much; but work has gone dead at the moment). And the noise is relatively muted, even from my closest neighbours (my letting agent told me that the building was specially designed with sturdier walls to improve sound-proofing - I was sceptical of that, but maybe there's something in it).

I am starting to feel awkwardly out of place, ashamed, guilty in this environment. I feel I don't really qualify for residence among such talented and dedicated people. I have a guitar and a harmonica which I hardly ever play - daunted by the difficulty of mastering the instruments, despairing of ever being able to become as good as I'd like to be (it doesn't help that I know so many guitarists in this city, six or seven really excellent players, people I know I could never begin to emulate). I'm starting to think that I should start to make a serious effort with them again, start trying to play regularly. Just to fit in, you know. Peer pressure.

A study tip for my Chinese readers

In a spirit of seasonal magnanimity....

Here is the number one piece of advice that I have given to (and had ignored by) my Chinese students over and over again in my years of teaching here.


Learn how to use a dictionary properly when 'learning' new words.


The Chinese education system stresses rote-memorization (I suppose it's the only way to learn the character writing system), and many Chinese do indeed have impressively well-developed memories.

Unfortunately, rote memorization is not a good way to learn vocabulary in another language. Many of my students have bragged to me about how they can "learn" 10, 20, or even 50 new words at a sitting. They are sadly deluded. No, you can't.

The problem, as I touched on in my last War on Chinglish post (further highlighted in the comments) is that errors so easily creep into dictionaries and word lists, and such errors are then quickly hardwired irrevocably into usage if students rely on parrot-like repetition of lists of definitions as their only means of assimilating new vocabulary. Often the definitions they learn are not outright wrong (though often they are), just incomplete or misleading. But most Chinese students will never become aware of these shortcomings because they don't refer to English dictionaries very much, or pay attention to how the words are actually used in the authentic listening and reading passages they encounter. For rote learning, students want to have a simple Chinese equivalent for each English word - and, much of the time, no such equivalent exists. And so, for example, we find Chinese students unable to distinguish between give, send, bring, take, carry, and see off because they are all identified with the single Mandarin word song, 送.

Trying to learn long strings of words is a waste of time. However good your memory is, new words won't 'stick' if you try to absorb too many at one time. Focus your efforts on a more manageable number. I usually recommend 5 or 6 at one time as a sensible maximum to attempt.

Learning one-word Chinese 'equivalents' of English words is a waste of time, and will lead you into numerous Chinglish errors. By all means, try to relate new English words to your native vocabulary (especially when you are a beginner), but be wary in doing so; always try to refer to an English-only dictionary as well. In order to truly 'know' a word and be able to use it appropriately you need to know not only its basic meaning but its range of meanings and the circumstances in which it most commonly appears; rules of use, common collocations, its synonyms and how it is distinguished from them. You can only get that from an English dictionary, not from an English-Chinese dictionary.

I usually also recommend my students to try the following exercises every time they're learning a new word:

a) Copy out the English dictionary definition of the word.

b) Try to write a definition or an explanation of the word in your own words in English.

c) Following example sentences in your dictionary and/or textbook, write a few sentences of your own which clearly illustrate the meaning of the word.

d) Try to write further sentences in which you can imagine you might actually use the word yourself.

e) Read these sentences aloud, to practice saying the word (and begin assimilating it into your listening & speaking vocabulary).

Do try this, please. It really helps.

Just memorizing lists of Chinese definitions of new English words does you more harm than good.

A year-end bon mot

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

The Tea Tower (A Christmas Story)

The thing that persuaded me to stick with my first job in China (with employers from hell) was that it was based in a very cool neighbourhood, right in the heart of the city. I was barely half a mile away from the ancient Drum and Bell Towers, and I had a view of them from the window of my regular classroom on the 4th floor. The Bell Tower, I feel, is much the more aesthetically pleasing of the two (pictured above from its sister tower, on this travel website); on clear, sunny days I would often gaze at it wistfully during my classes, drawing comfort from it, reviving my drooping spirits.... dreaming of my escape when the bell rang.

It became a regular place of refuge for me and my two fast friends of that year ('The Three Amigos') whenever we had a break in our working day. We soon came to know it as The Tea Tower. Like most 'historic monuments' in China, these Towers attempt to pay their way by renting out part of their floorspace to various commercial enterprises. The ground floor of the Bell Tower is a teahouse which attempts to flog overpriced speciality teas and souvenir tea sets to the hordes of foreign tourists who visit. This teahouse functioned as a finishing school for young girls attempting to qualify as tour guides (I never quite found out how this worked, but I've found the same thing in one or two other places - there used to be a similar teahouse in Ditan Park, for instance, where the staff were all trainee tour guides). These were some very charming and impressive young ladies; mostly from quite modest backgrounds, they'd never had the opportunity to go to university or even, in some cases, senior high school, but they'd educated themselves by their own efforts, to the point where they all had very serviceable English, and occasionally a smattering of some other language as well. We Amigos used to hang out there pretty regularly, singly or together, whenever we had a break between classes or a free afternoon, shooting the breeze with these delightful young girls. They would let us sample some of the cheaper teas, and we'd try to give them some help with their English - and chat with the tourists sometimes, giving them a friendly welcome and answering their questions about life in Beijing. The girls would also sometimes escort us up to the top of the Bell Tower to enjoy the impressive view over the city - without having to pay the usual 10rmb fee.

Four of them became particular friends: we invited them round to our flats in the college for small parties a couple of times (an evening watching DVDs at my pal Frank's place, and a Bonfire Night chilli cookout at mine), and took them out to dinner on my birthday. After six months or a year, they would move on to tour-guiding (or something else), but we kept in touch with them all for some time more.

And on Christmas Day that first year, I played Santa - turning up at the teahouse in the scarlet tunic and cotton-wool beard and handing out boxes of chocolates to them. I think this was the first time in my life I'd done this (well, I dimly recall a costume party back at university where I went as Santa and tried to persuade 'naughty girls' to sit on my knee - but perhaps we'd better draw a veil over that), and it would be another four years before I'd do so again. It was the highlight of my Christmas that year. (I also went in and ho-ho-ho-ed at our favourite local restaurant of that time - The Legitimate Businessmen's Club, as we called it - to give a huge box of chocolates to the three lovely waitresses there, and a Chinese chess set to the young chef who'd taught me how to play. I urged the girls not to eat all the choccies before I came in that evening, but..... they wolfed the lot within the hour.... thereby probably tripling their calorie intake for the week.)

Of course, it was too good to last. Good things in China seem to be especially ephemeral. The girls' supervisor in the teahouse was a sour-faced old battleaxe who resented the frequency of our visits. She objected that we were taking the girls' time away from the paying customers (although we took great care never to do that), and eventually she 'banned' us. We speculated that she might have had a more self-interested motive for this, rather than doing it purely out of meanness and stupidity. There were various bonus regimes in place for the girls if their sales of tea and knick-knacks exceeded certain targets each month. The group bonus for reaching the highest threshold was quite a generous amount, but the target was set at a somewhat unrealistic level and the girls had never come close to meeting it. Until we came along - in October and November that year they qualified for the big bonus twice in succession. Well, OK, October is the peak month for tourism; but not that much better than August and September; and things are usually slackening off rather badly in November. I do think the welcoming atmosphere we helped to create there for foreign tourists - effectively adding two or three additional (unpaid) staff to the sales team! - gave a little boost to the girls in earning those bonuses. If they hadn't made those targets, the supervisor would probably have got to keep the money - or some of it, anyway - herself. That's the way things go in China.

So, the great days of 'The Tea Tower' came to a sorry end. But we had five or six glorious months - those were some of my happiest times in China.

Snow business

.... like show business!

Yet more Christmas punsterism. Forgive me.

A few weeks ago, the students of the University of Wisconsin at Madison took advantage of a heavy fall of snow to have a massive snowball fight. They were hoping to get into the Guinness Book of Records - but, as it was all a bit impromptu, no Guiness representative was able to get there to verify the number of participants (must be a pretty tricky thing to do with an event of that kind, anyway!). Better luck next time! Apparently, they do this almost every year.

It seems, according to Wikipedia, that the official American record is still that set at Michigan Technological University nearly 4 years ago. However, a new - Guinness-recognised - world record was set on the 14th October this year by this monster snowball fight in the Belgian city of Leuven, with a tally of 5,768 participants (how do they count them??). They had snow that early this year in Europe????

I think this is an even better snow fight, though. Pity it's an ad for a really crappy beer; still pretty funny.

It doesn't look like we're going to have a White Christmas here in Beijing this year - but a man can dream.

Season's Greetings to all my readers!

A Christmas Daily Llama

The Daily Llama in a Santa Hat! Well, as near as I could find. [I understand his health isn't great at the moment. I wish him a swift recuperation, and many more years of life.]

And who is that rather gorgeous lady beside him? A Christmas quiz for you!

Scary Santa

I watched Jeunet and Caro's La cité des enfants perdus again the other day. I'd forgotten that this was the opening sequence. It reminds us, helps us to understand that the whole Santa concept is deeply weird, and can be - really, perhaps, should be - deeply disturbing to young children.

I was at a kids' Christmas party just the other week where one little girl shrieked her head off at the arrival of Santa and had to be taken home.

I was glad I wasn't playing the role this time. I had been at the previous year's event. (I was gratified to learn later that one particularly cute four-year-old had pronounced that she much preferred last year's Santa. If only her mum had such good taste....)

The Christmas Card list

Hymer Trimming

Arthur White

Chris Mars

Wee Viv

Chris McR

Di Wright

Mayor Daseby

Mary-Ann Bright

Ant Mayall

'York' Chris

Mrs B. White

Christmas punnery! There are doubtless many versions of this (although, oddly, I couldn't seem to dig any up on the Web). I think I first saw this done in The Goodies' Christmas Album, circa 1975. This is a hastily concocted version of my own. Longer and better variations are certainly possible - but I rather like this because it does include a few names of people that I've actually known (not the Mayor, obviously, but some of the others).

Jollymerryhollyberry and all that!

Not exactly getting in the Christmas spirit

The Internet gremlins are still poking fun at me, even now that I have shelled out cash for "unfettered access".

I am finding it next to impossible to leave comments on Blogspot blogs. For some reason (I suppose I may try going to one of the Help forums to see if I can get an answer on this), the 'comments' form is still refusing to load in Firefox (I had thought this recently emerged problem was a side-effect of having to use Tor as my proxy, but evidently not). Even more bizarrely, the only way I can leave comments via Firefox is by clicking on the 'comments' tab for individual posts in the 'Edit Posts' screen of Blogger. Of course, there already has to be at least one comment on a post before this will work; I am precluded from leaving a first comment myself via this route. And why, WHY does this work, when nothing else does?? It's baffling.

And, in Explorer, attempts to leave comments keep getting crashed by those annoyingly nanny-ish 'This site contains both secure and insecure information - are you sure you want to send?' pop-ups. Unless, that is, I am signed in as the Blog administrator - in which case this problem seems to disappear. However, I generally log in to Blogger through Firefox; and Explorer doesn't recognise when I'm logged in through a different browser. And I can't log in separately through the comment form, because of the 'secure/insecure' nonsense again.

So, I have to open Blogger in Explorer, log in..... and then I can visit Blogspot blogs in Explorer, and leave comments as 'Froog'. Why is this so hard?

Oh, oh, there's another wrinkle yet. I had forgotten to log out of Blogger in Firefox. Google/Blogger deemed it 'suspicious activity' that I was trying to access my account in two different browsers (but on the same goddamn computer!) at the same time, and closed my account. It has demanded that I change my password (because, obviously, an 8-letter password is going to be much more secure than a 7-letter password; especially when it's emanating from the same computer as the allegedly 'suspicious' activity!!!). And, since there is no way of communicating with Google/Blogger, I cannot complain about how daft this is. I just hope I'm going to be able to change my password back.... before I forget what the new one is.

Google/Blogger, this is NOT the way to wish someone A Merry Christmas.

Snow Song

If you take any interest in contemporary popular music, you probably heard of Fleet Foxes at least a year ago. Apparently, their self-titled debut album won rave reviews and appeared in a lot of year-end 'Best of...' polls last year. If you're from their native Seattle, you might have been following them for 3 or 4 years now.

But for me, living in the cultural isolation of China, they are a new discovery - and I would still be in ignorance of them if the invaluable JES had not introduced them to me in this post last Friday (do check that post out for another of their songs and a couple of brilliant excerpted reviews).

I'm not sure how much I love them. I find most of their lyrics a bit too determinedly opaque for my taste, and their unique 'sound' does begin to pall after a while. Then again, maybe I've just overdosed on them a bit these past few days. They are clearly a very talented and innovative bunch of musicians, and they are creating something that is quite out of the ordinary. I'd expect them to be not just a short-term vogue, but a major force in contemporary music.

YouTube user neutrinoo appears to have posted the whole of their first album (sound only), if you want to sample more. Harder to find, there were also a couple of EPs - Fleet Foxes and Sun Giant - prior to the album. Quite a lot of live performance clips are starting to appear too, but the only other actual video I've been able to find is for this song, Mykonos. They've been so busy touring for the past couple of years that a second album keeps getting put back, but there should be one out around the middle of next year.

However, of all the stuff of theirs I've listened to in the last five days, it's the song above, White Winter Hymnal, that I just can't get out of my head at the moment: the music (and the video) are quite mesmerising.

(Caution: If you attend to the lyrics, it's not nearly such a pretty little song as it sounds. If Brian Wilson had chosen to write something about a teenage gang slaying, this might have been it.)

More Keats & Chapman

Some years ago, I ventured to make a few attempts to emulate the elaborate punmanship of the great Irish humourist Flann O'Brien's Keats & Chapman stories. This was my favourite of these efforts.

Keats and Chapman, continuing their warm but occasionally fractious companionship into the 1930s, are discussing the recent phenomenal success of the film 'King Kong'. Keats, brimming as ever with the enthusiasm of youth, is eager to go and see the film, but the older Chapman is wary of the huge crowds at the cinema. Also, more generally, he decries the crude populism of the film's producers, which, he feels, is sullying the artistic potential of the promising new medium - or, as he puts it, "Odi profanum vulgus, et RKO."

[For the benefit of Moonrat, perpetually perplexed by puns, and of any other readers who were denied the delights of a Classical education, "Odi profanum vulgus, et arceo" (pronounced 'RKO') is a famous opening line of one of the Odes (III.i) of the Roman poet Horace, meaning something like "I disdain the unholy mob, and fence it out." RKO Radio Pictures was the company which produced the first - and best - King Kong in 1933.]

Finally....

After more than 7 years of enduring variously crappy Chinese Internet connections....

after 2 years or so of massive censorship interference and steadily disappearing web-based proxies....

after several months of gradually disintegrating functionality with Tor/Privoxy/Firefox....

finally, I have signed up to Witopia.

And, oh my good god, it's FAST.

[Not without a few teething problems, though: the installation was fiddly. Connection to the chosen server often seems to fail first time. And Explorer has got its knickers in a knot with "the new add-on" and crashed a couple of times. Moreover, many of the problems that have been bugging me lately - limited user interface in Blogger, inability to leave blog comments - are still plaguing me, so I must assume that the problem lies with Firefox rather than with Tor. But, you know, overall - WOW! This is a brave new world of Net-browsing!!]

Strangeness in the neighbourhood (3)

Somewhere just to the north of my new apartment complex there is a big government building of some sort.  Well, I know there's a hospital hereabouts, but I'm not sure if it's that.  I wonder if there might be an army base off one of the hutongs I haven't yet discovered.   You see, we get rather a lot of very loud, very shrill exhortations to love the Party and so on blaring over a tannoy at odd hours of the day.   And most mornings at 10 (possibly every morning, but I don't notice it unless I'm in my study on the north side of the building) we get March of the Volunteers, the national anthem.  This is not a tune I want to be hearing that much of.