Olfactory hallucination?

Or is someone in my building baking a fruitcake???   It seems highly unlikely.  I am just about the only foreigner within nearly a mile in any direction.  And ovens are just about unknown in Chinese kitchens.  Baking is one of those arts they never seem to have developed in these parts.   Must be just the brain tumour acting up again.

Haiku for the week

Wandering bemused Through a  large deserted house. The heart's emptiness.

New Picks of the Month

Since my two little blogs are about to pass their third birthday (gasp), I thought it would be appropriate to delve back all the way to the opening month's output for my latest archive recommendations.   On Froogville I direct  you towards What job do I do?, one of my favourite autobiographical nerblings.   And on The Barstool, it has to be The All-Nighter, a celebration of what we love best (and fear most) about the drinking culture here in Beijing.   Not sure if/when I'll be able to add these links in the sidebar.  Still mighty troubled in my blog access...

In the not too distant future

You see, this is how my mind runs....     A little while ago I was pondering on the curious phenomenon of using full stops ('periods', if you must, Yanquis) after each word to suggest a heavy and threatening emphasis, the kind of choking rage that gives a sputtering hesitancy to your speech.   Yes.  This.  Kind.  Of.  Thing.  Dammit.   I'm not a big fan of it myself, but it seems to be almost ubiquitous among our American cousins these days.   And it is, I think, fairly recent.  Probably, in fact, a product of the e-mail/IM/SMS era.   I fell to thinking that it might be possible to discover its first occurrence, and maybe even to track its dissemination from there.     And then it occurred to me.....   The biographers, philologists, and sociologists of the future will operate almost entirely on the basis of such online researches.  Whatever 'privacy' tools we try to avail ourselves of now, I'm sure further evolutions of Web technology will make it possible not just to trace everything we write online but to reconstruct our entire browsing history too.  And when this is the case, charting the history of 'memes' may become a far more interesting field of inquiry than recording the mundane particulars of the fragile and ephemeral human beings who propagated them.  The great prize for these researchers of the future will be to identify a Patient Zero for every quirk of language, a first instance from which the virus of linguistic innovation has spread.   But however thorough our immersion in online culture becomes, and however omnipotent may be the tracking tools developed for resurrecting our personal Web histories, there will always be inexplicable lacunae in the record, baffling breaks in the chain of causation.  Where a language meme seems to have made such a leap, to have broken out in more than one place simultaneously with no demonstrable online link between its users...... well, the researchers of the future will be sorely vexed.  They will shake their heads dolefully, and surmise - with a pitying sigh - that this must then have been the result of a Real World Interaction.   Or RWI, as they will soon become known.  Although they will, of course, be increasingly rare and unimportant, and scorned by the generality of the population who find the Virtual World so much more stimulating.   This is the future.  Oh, yes.

More flakiness in Chinese journalism

I was watching the news on CCTV9 - the "international" channel of the state television company here - over the weekend, depressed to hear more threatening rhetoric in response to a proposed visit to Taiwan by the Dalai Lama.   The report quoted someone - a Taiwanese quisling from the Kuomintang political party, I believe - decrying the visit as "politically motivated" and "likely to destroy cross-Strait relations".  The item then concluded by saying (I kid you not), "And Al-Jazeera reported similar comments."   Now, Chinese journalists are notoriously bad - even worse than Chinese academics! - at distinguishing secondary from primary sources; but even so, this was quite a staggering lapse.  Indeed, even the intention behind the phrase is somewhat baffling.  Is this supposed to be implying that the celebrated Arab news agency is adopting an editorial stance that joins in condemnation of the DL's possible visit?  They didn't seem to be saying quite that.  Or is the fact that Al-Jazeera is reporting such condemnations seen to grant them an imprimatur of greater credibility and significance?  (And is it only laowai cynics such as myself who wonder if, by contrast, other news sources of even greater fame and influence - such as, oh, I don't know, the BBC perhaps - considered this story undeserving of comment?)   My parsing of this comment was this: "And this isn't just one self-serving, rent-a-quote politician saying this.  Oh no.  Lots of people are saying it.  But we're too lazy to tell you who."     I assume that the native English speakers on the editorial staff at CCTV9 don't work at weekends.  Either that, or they're not trusted to work on stories about any of "the three T's".  Or perhaps they're just so beaten down by the relentlessly dismal quality of the material they have to work with that they've given up trying.

The weekly bon mot

"Try to cherish the questions themselves, like locked doors, like letters in an alien tongue."

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Film List (cribbed)

It has of late become a 'tradition' that I end the month with a post about my love of the cinema, but I am rather thwarted this month by limited access to my blog - and to much of the rest of the Internet.   Instead, I shall simply refer you to my blog-pal Stuart who at the start of this month produced a great piece on China's Top Ten Cinematic Strops, fine movies which somehow or other got the Chinese authorities all riled up.

The caged bird squawks!

The numbing inconsequentiality of those last few posts should not be taken as a sign that I have succumbed to the dismal Twitter-ing mentality.   Oh, no.  I'm just enjoying being in touch with my blog again, revelling in thumbing my nose at the censors.   You see, I just remembered that during the last big Internet clampdown (beginning of June) I set up Blogger access via my e-mail account.  And it works just fine.   Ha, ha, suckers!  What are you going to try now?  Block my e-mail as well?   Well, they might.  It has been known.

Just for the hell of it

I have to go down to the local police station in a moment to try to re-(re-re-)register my "temporary" (er, 5 years and counting) residence.   I am tempted to wear a t-shirt I inherited from my pugnacious brother which bears the slogan: "Which part of FUCK OFF don't you understand?"   But then again.... I don't like to be unnecessarily confrontational.   And it's not written in Chinese.

So.....

I've been back 9 days, and I only just got around to unpacking properly.

Wisdom of the txts

Remarking to some friends via SMS on my "week from hell" last night, I tried to strike an optimistic note by concluding, "The worst is over."   What I actually wrote the first time was: "The worst is ever."   Yes, indeed.

Haiku for the week

To hear the silence Amidst the relentless roar: A knack of sages.     A knack I thought I used to have, but seem to have mislaid....

Bon mot for the week

"Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversations."

Elizabeth Drew (1935- )

An idealised Irish history

The other week I was reading Virtual History, a collection of essays on counterfactual historical scenarios edited by my Oxford coeval Niall Ferguson.

In Ferguson's introduction, he quotes this joking history of my ancestral homeland, supposedly written by the anonymous "AE" in 1914. "Progress", you see, isn't always forwards.

The small holdings of the 19th and 20th centuries gradually come into the hands of the large landowners; in the 18th century progress has been made and the first glimmerings of self-government appear; religious troubles and wars follow until the last Englishman, Strongbow, leaves the country; culture begins; religious intolerance ceases with the disappearance of Patrick, about 400 AD, and we approach the great age of the heroes and gods.

The omnibus analogy (theme & variation)

I thought I'd written about this on here before, but it seems not (my archive has become so vast that I'm now finding it difficult to search through - and impossible to remember - all of my previous posts).

There is a well-worn humorous observation on the phenomenon of love droughts (something on which I am a world expert) which goes:

"Women are like buses. You wait around for one for ages, and then three turn up all at once."

The dejected and cynical often add corollaries such as:

"But then they don't stop for you!"

Or:

"But they're not going where you want to go."

My unhappy experience on Sunday night prompts me to suggest another such variant (one which seems particularly appropriate to my own romantic experience, alas):

"Suddenly you're spoiled for choice. But they're all strangely dysfunctional."

Trying to get back from Oxford to London for a mid-evening pub rendezvous, I was confused and distressed to find that the (normally very reliable - I've been using it ever since it was first launched some 20-odd years ago) 'Oxford Tube' express coach service was encountering some difficulties. The bus waiting at the stand was mysteriously 'not in service'. The service is so frequent that there's usually a second one on hand waiting to go as well, but not on this occasion. When another bus did finally show up, it was also displaying the dreaded 'not in service' sign. Although departures are advertised as being "every 12-15 minutes", it was nearly 20 minutes before we were able to board (the second bus - which had finally removed its 'not in service' notice; although the driver didn't seem any too confident about this). There had already been quite a gaggle of people waiting when I arrived at around 6pm, so I deduced that it had probably been at least half an hour since the last bus left. Not a good start to the trip.

But it got worse. The bus crawled through Oxford (road works, one-way systems, and the addition of several new stops on this route have stretched what used to be a matter of a 10 or 15-minute run from the city centre to the outskirts of Headington into more like 30 or 40 minutes). Then it broke down at the Park & Ride on the edge of the city. Another bus came along 15 or 20 minutes later, so we all got on that. Unfortunately, a woman with a perpetually screaming baby also got on and chose a seat directly behind me.

That might have driven me quite mad - except that 10 minutes or so later, the second bus stopped in a layby just outside Oxford. And remained stopped. Several minutes passed. We thought the driver had just got out to open the luggage bay doors for some new passengers. But the new passengers disappeared somewhere and so did the driver. No announcement was made about the reason for the delay. Nearly 20 minutes passed. I got out to see what the hell was going on. The driver was preoccupied with trying to close the door to one of the rear luggage compartments (which had developed a faulty latch, and pretty clearly wasn't going to close). So preoccupied that I couldn't get a word out of him! To my horror, I discovered that there was another bus parked just ahead of us which had also developed some kind of problem (I don't think this layby was a regular stop: the new passengers who'd initially been trying to get on our bus were people who'd been stranded by this breakdown)! Luckily a third bus had just pulled up behind us, so I quickly hopped on that before the rest of the passengers from the two stranded (and nearly full) buses realised that rescue was at hand - most of them, I imagine, would have to wait quite some time more before another (fully functional bus) came along.

So, here we had, in quick succession, at least 3, possibly 4 or 5 or more buses on this particular service, all breaking down. That's a bit much to be just a coincidence, isn't it? I wonder if there's some sort of crisis of undermanning in the maintenance department of this bus company over the weekends? Perhaps strike action or sabotage by disgruntled engineers? Or foul play by a commercial rival??

It can't be just my bad karma, surely??

Bon mot for the week

"No one realises how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow."

Lin Yutang (1895-1976)

List of the Month - Tales of the Unexpected

I try to take a fairly free-form and improvisatory approach to travelling; I try to be a good boy scout (not that I ever was one; it's just an expression, you understand) and be prepared for anything; I try to expect the unexpected.

But still, occasionally, Life takes me by surprise, sneaks up on the blind side.....

I seem to have had an unusually large number of such odd - as the Chinese would say, unexpectable - experiences on this latest holiday of mine.

So, here they are....

12 Things I Never Expected To Be Doing On This Holiday

Seeing some Shakespeare (King Lear)

(And paying about twice as much as I ever have in my life before for a theatre ticket!)

Making my first ever total clearance in a game of pool

(At least, as far as I can remember. It must certainly be the first one in a very, very long time. It was only on a half-size kiddies' table at a friend's house, but still..... a very pleasing achievement.)

Listening to Belly's 'King' album again for the first time in ages

(It was a great favourite of mine when it first came out in the mid-90s, but it might be 10 or 12 years since I'd last heard it.)

Catering a dinner party, at very little notice, from a woefully unstocked kitchen

(Thank heavens for Gordon Ramsay's Fast Food!)

Having my first serious asthma attack in about 30 years

(Sadly, this forced me to cut short my weekend in Bath, where I encountered the severe allergy problem.)

Going to see Brüno

(I was dragged along to it, despite my vigorous opposition.)

Drinking in a Swiss (?!) pub

(in a quiet suburb of Oxford... )

Being serenaded by the septuagenarian mother of one of my hosts

(with a delightful impromptu rendition of the traditional Tyneside schoolchildren's song Geordie's Lost His Penker)

Being publicly fondled by a sexy singing star

(All just part of the show, alas.)

Getting stung by a bloody wasp

(Also for the first time in about 30 years; hence my exaggerated anxiety that I might have developed a fatal allergy to the little bastards in the interim!)

Taking part in a pub quiz

(And oh, so nearly winning! Although I am somewhat ashamed that I knew Paris Hilton's middle name... )

Walking 'home' past Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, after midnight, in the pouring rain

(Oh, who am I kidding? That happens every time I go there!)

The Saint of Lost Things

I suffered a minor disaster at the beginning of last week when a clutch of coach and rail tickets I'd just bought for the last leg of my travels around the UK mysteriously went missing..... and I had to replace them at the last minute (thereby inflicting grievous budgetary harm on my already puny reserves of cash).

A friend I was meeting for dinner that night suggested that I call upon the assistance of St. Anthony - a quaint custom in her family which she claims has proven apparently efficacious for her on a number of occasions. I confess I'd never heard of this saint before (any of them: Wikipedia recognises half a dozen or more holy men of that name; but this site suggests that there are two who may be responsible for the 'lost & found' duties in heaven). St. Christopher is really the only such "helpful" saint I've come across. And I'd never thought him of much use, since I'm sure many hundreds of people each year must perish in shipwrecks and plane crashes while wearing medallions with his "protective" image on them.

I was loathe to have any truck with such batty Catholic superstition. And it seemed to me that any "intercession" by St. Anthony on this occasion would just be annoying rather than helpful, in that I had already shelled out for new tickets, and thus discovery of the originals would merely prove that the unfortunate accident had been the result of my own foolishness rather than external foul play. And so, indeed, it proved: the dratted tickets turned up as I was leaving for the station next morning, hiding in plain sight (as lost things always seem to do), exactly where I thought I'd put them, the first (and seventh and eleventh and...) place I'd looked for them. Damn.

St. Anthony, I feel, has drawn a particularly thankless job from the heavenly employment agency. Lost things (and missing persons - the other part of his brief), after all, usually remain lost, and thus bring incalculable inconvenience and heartache into the world, even to the most devout of Catholics. And even if he does come through for you, 9 times out of 10 it's probably going to be too late to make any difference, and - as in my case - he's just going to add to your vexation by showing you that the lost things weren't really "lost" after all. He seems to me to be one of those divine agents who is more of a punisher (albeit of a relatively mild degree most of the time: a horrid taunter and teaser, but at least not a smiter) than a bringer of succour.

Who'd be St. Anthony? Not me!

Another Edinburgh joke

"Life is getting very strange these days. Schoolgirls now dress like prostitutes. And the prostitutes dress like schoolgirls. It's confusing. You don't know whether to offer them money or sweeties."

Overheard at The Fringe....

The weekly haiku

Time to turn homeward,
Adventures now forsaken...
Weary of the road.

Damn, holidays are so bloody exhausting. I'll need a nice long rest when I get back. But I won't get one.

Strange reminders

I recently discovered that there's a diner across the road from Newcastle railway station called psb.

Who knows why? Perhaps these are the initials of the owner(s).

They are probably unaware that in China this acronym designates the Public Security Bureau - an especially feared, reviled, and derided institution even by the generally sorry standards of police forces around the world. Not the kind of associations you'd really want to invoke in marketing your small business.

In the last few days, I seem to have been finding these odd little China references everywhere I look. I fear I am starting to become homesick.

As the Buddha might say....

I have been bitten on the wasp by an ankle.

However, when I said this to my hosts after returning from yesterday's run, they thought I'd gone a bit doolally.

Indeed, perhaps I had. I was bitten - stung, I suppose I should say - within minutes of setting out, and didn't want to abandon my last opportunity to enjoy this magnificent route around Arthur's Seat. So I kept plodding on - despite the very considerable pain and the hypochondriacal fears of an imminent collapse into anaphylactic shock. A more-than-usually gruelling experience it was, I can tell you.

A friend of mine concussed himself a few weeks back. Trying to reassure his doctor wife over the telephone afterwards, he told her that the Prime Minister (a common befuddlement test medical personnel use) was... Tony Blair. He has subsequently tried to maintain that he was joking. Although Gordon Brown's premiership has been eminently forgettable.

Of course, currently the answer to this question would be Peter Mandelson. But I wonder how many head trauma victims or medics are going to know that?

The path not (often) taken

The other day, while on my morning run in Edinburgh, I decided to take the Innocent Path.*

It's not often that happens with me.

* Yes, it really is a hiking/cycling route in Edinburgh, shadowing a disused railway line.

Another landmark

This post (or this one) is - amazingly enough - the 3,000th to appear on my two blogs, Froogville and Round-The-World Barstool Blues (in a little under 3 years!).

How do I do it?! And why???

An Edinburgh joke

"The men in this town are like the stalls in the public toilets. If they're not taken, they're full a' shite."

A lady of Edinburgh comments on the local shortage of 'good men'.