Fifty Cents for an Iron Sickle

2007-09-06T17:27:00.000+08:00

Come forth young urine, and flow from the bowels of human excrement to the white porcelain of the lavatory bowl.

Your journey has ended, and yet just begun...

2007-07-27T15:10:00.000+08:00

There is one difference between the world of satire and the world of mainstream corporate and political indoctrination:

The satirists advertise the fact that they are talking shit.

2007-07-21T01:35:00.000+08:00

Sometimes I feel an incredible love for the world. It tears me apart. We are human beings. We have children, lovers, wifes. Regardless of our religion and upbringing. Whether we choose to fly the plane that drops the bombs or press the trigger which releases the rocket propelled grenade. Whether we fix the evening meal or stitch the open wound. We are human. And as a certain playwright once said,

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

2007-07-18T15:32:00.000+08:00

Dear John Howard and Co,

You are all power hungry no-balls cunts.

Signed,

Wintervacation

Life of a young man

2007-07-17T21:21:00.000+08:00

I wrote this four years ago almost to the day:

I’m steadily achieving a clarity of mind which I have been unable to find for the last few months (or as long as I can recently remember – like maybe even while I was at high school, I’m not entirely sure). By clarity of mind I mean that I’m not constantly worrying about what I’m doing, what I’m not doing, what’s ‘real’, what I should do in life (and what if I get it wrong), am I a good/bad person, will I fail/not suceed at something and so on. I mean, it’s still there but it’s not enveloping me like it has previously. I tried to take a lot of stuff on my shoulders and I don’t think you (I) can do that directly – I become unproductive and stagnant. Like you can think so much about what should be done and what you’re not doing and what’s wrong with your life and the world but if you let it control u dealing with it becomes impossible. Ok, it’s like this. Just say there’s this huge stone u want to move. If u try and deal with it all at once and take it on your shoulders you know it’ll break your back and you’ll never get it anywhere. But you try anyway, cause it seems like the ideal way to move the stone. But then you realise you can break it up and focus on moving smaller parts of the stone, and that succesfully moving little parts of the stome are an accomplishment in the first place. And then u realise that you’re lucky to have a stone to move in the first place, and although other people may be moving bigger stones faster than you’re moving your stone, and instead trying to copy the path other people have made with their stones, and comparing your stone to theirs, you realise you’ve still got your stone and if you focus on moving it, however insignifacantly, you know it’ll go somewhere. And you also realise that it’s nice to rest against your stone every once in a while, instead of constantly trying to move it. And of course, people often come over and help you move it, or combine their stone with yours so you have a bigger stone.

So, in my case, I’ve been resting on my stone for a while, or moving it back to where it was previosusly to see if the earlier spot was better, or moving less recognisable parts of it, a combination of the three actually. And because I hadn’t moved my stone forward for so long, I began to wonder whether I could move it at all, and I began to think that I needed to move it all at once in the right direction, even though I didn’t know where that was. But I’m starting to move little bits, or at least beleiving I can move little bits, and I’ve also found comfort in the fact that whether or not I move the stone at all, it’ll be gone soon enough, and I won’t have the choice, so I may as well see how much further it can go.

2007-07-17T06:54:00.000+08:00

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
Even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand o'er your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

- Bob Dylan, Masters of War

2007-07-16T15:22:00.000+08:00

Today is a day I resent my country.

The black stain of fascism is now spreading through Australia like a terminal urethral cancer eating away at the insides of a seemingly healthy young woman. The economy is strong and incomes are high. But we are destroying our humanity.

New police laws coupled with ministerial jurisdiction and a xenophobic immigration system have put a grown man, a doctor, in a detention centre. Without charge after 12 days of police detention. He was granted bail by the courts, the minister moved swiftly to cancel his visa.

The justification is protection from terrorism. Protection from evil. Protection from inhumanity. But unfortunately, inhumanity breeds inhumanity. Wars create fighters. Ignorance for the rule of law in a society breeds a lack of respect for justice administered in that society.

The arrogance and power-greed of White Man trudge on, bulldozing the lives of life-givers, fathers, mothers and children.

If an individual looses faith in the established rules and order, because the rules have been designed to imprison and marginalise them, what avenues are left to voice their concerns?

Violence...perhaps?

TGIF terror poll

2007-07-05T16:55:00.000+08:00

Coming every Friday. And in this case Thursday afternoon. Wintervacation's original and o-so-interesting, polls!

Vote in my poll!

On the immigration debate

2007-07-05T09:31:00.000+08:00

Please listen, Philipe Legrain talking on migration, audio link here.
You might have to skip forward about a third of the way through the broadcast. You need realplayer.

2007-06-28T16:18:00.000+08:00

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here 2 tell u
There's something else
The afterworld

A world of never ending happiness
U can always see the sun, day or night

So when u call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
U know the one - Dr Everything'll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cuz in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own

And if de-elevator tries 2 bring u down
Go crazy - punch a higher floor

Prince - Let's Go Crazy

2007-05-30T11:02:00.001+08:00

'government has gagged debate on the fairness test'

- is it just me or is there inherent irony in that statement?

2007-05-02T13:09:00.000+08:00

Just for arguments sake, I made my last post at 12:30am on Tuesday morning. Here's what came out in the Sydney Morning Herald, that same day, an article about Malcom Fraser's, former Liberal Australian Prime Minister, criticism of Howard's use of fear politics.

I'de just like to make this heard...somewhere

2007-05-01T00:24:00.000+08:00

We.

As in - you, me, your grandmother, the postman - are living in an era of global fascism.

You are living in fascist times.

I'm going to bed now. I just had to make that truth heard. Because I suddenly realised that most people don't know, or don't want to know, that they are living in backward, suppressive, dictatorial, unfair, violent times. Because they can avoid the truth.

But I can't. And this will help me sleep. More importantly, it will help my neighbours sleep, as it will prevent me from screaming my hatred and despair at the whole present State Of Things out my bedroom into the night air.

Am I happy? I'm not blindly happy, but I'm getting better.

WV

- Oh, and if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I give you a stepped plan excuse to not remain ignorant:

1. Look around your world.
2. Read George Orwell's 1984
3. Search Arundhati Roy's transcripts, speeches or books and listen to/read them
4. Look around your world again.

I wonder

2007-04-18T20:06:00.000+08:00

Gun culture.

In other news, I wonder.

I wonder if my thoughts are a construction. I wonder if they are a construction of my upbringing, the school I go to, the circles I turn in. I know they are. But if they are, who am I? And where is the world going? And can I make a value judgment about it? Can I choose to be righteous, successful, intelligent, philanthropic?

Who doesn't want to be a good human being? Who is damaged? Who isn't? What does being a lawyer mean? What does focusing on profit maximisation mean? What does opting-out mean? What is drug use? What is reality?

What is caring? What is selflessness? What is science and what has it done for us? What is meaning, and what is the structuralised meaning in language? And where has it gone? And was it ever structured? And if it wasn't, how was it meaning?

What is modern, post-modern, valuable? What is evil and what is good?

What is the difference between a double espresso and a soy decaf late? What is getting drunk?

What is disease? What is war? What is terrorism? What is poverty? What is inequality?

Who is at fault?

What should be done?

Who should do it?

Where am I? Not in time or space. Where am I in the dimension of life?

edit: who reads my blog?

2007-04-07T09:58:00.000+08:00

2007-03-07T14:35:00.000+08:00

aaaaaand I'm back in Sydney :).

billboard

2007-02-26T10:35:00.000+08:00

demolition

2007-02-24T17:55:00.000+08:00

Terrorists have ambitions of empire

2007-02-24T15:36:00.000+08:00

Terrorists have ambitions of empire, says Cheney - SMH 23/02/2007

I knew it! That must be why they have military bases in the Japan, Europe, the Middle East, the Pacific, hell, the middle of Australia. That's why they're starting wars with sovereign nations under provenly false pretenses. That's why they have ignored the international organisation of countries which was formed to enable diplomatic decisions on global issues (the UN).

Wait a second! That's America!

I think my head is going to explode.

2007-02-20T12:41:00.000+08:00

JOHN HOWARD has turned up the political heat over Iraq by committing 50 to 70 more troops - SMH 20/2/2007

50-70 troops? How many soldiers does it take to change a lightbulb? Cause that's about all the use they're going to be.

WV's wordplay for Tuesday

2007-02-13T11:33:00.000+08:00

The text below is taken from a Sydney Morning Herald article regarding John Howard's recent comments about American presidential candidate Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq by 2008. The quoted text is Howard's speech:

Senator Obama's call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq by March 2008 was also matter of Australia's national security (Howard)

"If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats."

"I do not apologise for criticising Senator Obama's observations because I thought what he said was wrong. If America is defeated in Iraq that will be catastrophic for the West and it will have tremendously adverse consequences for Australia."

"The greatest current threat to the quality of the alliance would be a sense in the United States that Australia had deserted her in her hour of need,"

Well lets have a look here:

Senator Obama's call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq by March 2008 was also matter of Australia's national security (Howard)

The logic presented by Mr Howard in this sentance seems to be that if American forces were removed from Iraq, the security of the nation of Australia would be put under threat. Would the various groups and forces fighting Australian and American foreign intervention in Iraq, having suceeded in their goal of freeing the country from foreign military intervention, decide it was then time, when the troops are removed, to launch an offensive in a country on the other side of the world? The more likely assumption is that a withdrawl of force would actually lead to a softening in anti-Australian sentiments from the various military organisations ('terrorists' as they are commonly known) causing violence in the middle east. The public rhetoric of organisations such as al-Quaeda support such a conclusion.

"If I was running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and pray, as many times as possible, for a victory not only for Obama, but also for the Democrats."

Al-Qaeda is a military organisation that uses violence to achieve its goals. In this sense, it is similar to the militaries of American and Australia. The difference being that American and Australia are sovereign states and thus assume moral supremacy when they use bombs, tanks and guns to kill people and destroy other sovereign countries in the name of a safer world. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before the American and Australian invasion of Iraq. Local resistance by such organisations grew out of a situation of foreign intervention. The country is now entrenched in civil war and there are arguments that if foreign forces withdraw the situation will further deteriorate. But it is questionable if the situation could deteriorate any further. There are daily bombings and people on all sides are being killed every day. A withdrawl of foreign forces could lead to a softening in the killing, as hapenned in Afghanistan. Granted there are still massive problems there, but at least people aren't being killed as they were during the conflict period.

"I do not apologise for criticising Senator Obama's observations because I thought what he said was wrong. If America is defeated in Iraq that will be catastrophic for the West and it will have tremendously adverse consequences for Australia."

Was America's defeat in Vietnam catastrophic for the West? We must remember that the wars being fought between the middle-east and the west are being fought on middle-eastern soil. They are wars were eastern military organisations tied to no particular nation state are fighting the foreign powers of western sovereign states. A defeat for the west in this context would lead to less violence. This is mainly because these are ideological wars, they are fought on the basis of values and religion. They are not geographical wars because the 'terrorist' military organisations have no country to call their home. The wars therefore cannot be won on geographical grounds, as the invasion of Iraq has shown so clearly. The terrorists in Britain were home grown. In this context, continuing to use military force will only fuel the violence. Diplomacy and recognition are thus needed. An avenue not once, not ever, considered by America or Australia in dealing with these military organisations.

"The greatest current threat to the quality of the alliance would be a sense in the United States that Australia had deserted her in her hour of need,"

American parliament in both houses is now ruled by the Democrats. The Democrats initially opposed the Iraq war and are looking to removing troops by 2008. It is hard to see how Australia's alliance with America would be threatened if we choose to pull out troops in the near future as well. Also, It is impossible to imagine that the world's only superpower, who is fighting technological wars it has initiated in countries outside it's borders on the other side of the world, is 'in her hour of need'.

fireworks

2007-02-12T18:33:00.000+08:00

Chinese new year's a coming baby!

2007-01-25T12:45:00.000+08:00

I'm in Vietnam. Will blog when the internet becomes more interesting than beach and cheap seafood. Photos when I get back

peace

WV

for the last time,

2007-01-18T12:20:00.000+08:00

Hewitt is a fuckwit.

2007-01-17T02:28:00.000+08:00

Two photos. But yeah, there's a purpose here. This is the late night Muslim snack joint. They fry up just about anything except pork and you can have it with noodles or rice. I don't think people are aware there is quite a large Muslim population in China. Especially southern China. A lot come up from Malaysia and other SE Asian countries. Anyway, the food is good, and awfully cheap.

2007-01-16T22:33:00.000+08:00

sweet potato sweet potato!

2007-01-15T12:25:00.000+08:00

This is the honeyman. He walks around the cafes we frequent trying to sell watered down honey with a constant, chiseled-in, smile on his face. When he's not selling honey he's smoking copious amounts of tobacco through a bamboo water pipe or snoozing in the lotus position at various shady spots on the sidewalk. His speech is unintelligible and he's almost definitely a little crazy, but he appears happy.

2007-01-14T12:56:00.000+08:00

There are stories to these photos and I should be telling them. This was taken near the water's edge of a relatively unknown Chinese port city on the way to Hainan. The old woman in the bottom left of the photo is sorting through garbage for used wooden barbeque skewers with the slow persistence of aged and weary hands. I assume they will provide here sustenance for the day. She is pilling them up on the edge of the garbage, below the black garbage bag on top of the concrete blocks. You should be able to see them if you look carefully. She did not once visibly recognise our presence. Rare in a country where people will sit and watch you play cards for hours on day long train journeys because you are white.

2007-01-13T20:36:00.000+08:00

I'd just like to once again point out the obvious. Basically, why the political leadership of Australia, America and much of the rest of the west is full of shit. John Howard responded to Bush's speech regarding more troops for Iraq by claiming that if there was not a continued military presence in Iraq and Allied forces withdrew it would be a win for terrorism. Let us follow a little train of logic on this,

1. there were no 'terrorists' in Iraq prior to the American invasion,

2. the original reason for invading Iraq was because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (which it didn't),

3. it is generally understood, even admitted by American military leaders, that much of the violence in Iraq is being caused by civil war between rival religious groups.

This is the problem with the concept of 'terrorism'. What is terrorism to you? What is a terrorist to you? Is a US soldier who sits in a tank and fires shells at residential housing a terrorist or is the 16 year old Iraqi kid who fires back with a Russian made AK-47 the terrorist? Who is more morally in the right? Who's cause is more important? Whose blood is more valuable?

Who started it!? And should that really matter?

What really troubles me is that because John Howard has made a decade long career out of feeding the public bullshit, the public mindset has become bullshit. Orwell named it 'doublespeak'. Where you use language in a way which destroys meaning. You know what you're saying is bullshit, but you say it anyway, at the same time believing in it yourself if you're really good at it. Look it up on google for more definitions, or read George Orwell, 1984.

Anyway, enough of that. Also, beware of French-Canadians. I won't go any further than that but they have special powers which you should watch out for. Especially if you're competing with them to chase women.

2007-01-12T12:53:00.000+08:00

2007-01-11T19:04:00.000+08:00

Do blind people go to sleep really easily? If my eyes were closed all the time, I think I'd go to sleep really easily. But then, maybe if you're blind, its more difficult to go to sleep, because you can never close your eyes. It must be an interesting experience waking up as a blind person. I'm gonna try and wake up with my eyes closed and actually get up. I'll let you know how it goes.

2007-01-10T19:18:00.000+08:00

2007-01-09T16:56:00.000+08:00

2007-01-08T20:57:00.000+08:00

2007-01-08T15:19:00.000+08:00

chocolate sure is yummy

2007-01-07T11:59:00.000+08:00

'Australians spend more on chocolate than they do on helping poor countries' - SMH, 7/01/2007 (wholey shit its 2007, where's my hover board damnit!?)

Me, personally, I spend more on chocolate flavoured worm tablets than i do on helping poor countries. And I'm not even a huge fan of chocolate. And I live in a poor country, so I really don't have the 'too far away' excuse. I could walk outside right now and find a person within five feet of my main gate, hell, fifty people, who have less disposable income in a year than I have in 2 weeks.

But its cold outside.

PS fuck you google and your American imperialism spellcheck bullshit. Flavored is spelt flavoured in the rest of the English speaking world. Get with multinationalizm.

that z was on purpose, it isn't even a word...

Photo a day 2 weeks!!

2007-01-07T04:40:00.000+08:00

There was a, ahhhh, earthquake in Taiwan and it broke a 5 out of 6 of the major telecommunications lines from the outside world to China. So, although it doesn't really seem to have made news in the west, the whole of south-east asia has been struggling with extremely slow internet for the past two weeks.

What it means for me is blogging becomes even more of a chore than it normally is. However, I've just finished exams and final assignments. With the ceremonial 'drink till 6:30 in the morning and feel like poo for most of the day' now out of the way. There's little else to do for the next two weeks except go to the internet cafe, buy pirate dvds and complain about the cold.

Because of my life is boring, so to speak, and because I have a wonderful camera which my parents bought for me at my disposal, I'm going to start carrying my camera with me everyday. And to provide myself extra motivation, I'm gonna post the best photo of the day on my blog each day. Can you believe it?! Daily updates! I've said it, I probably won't go through with it, but you heard it and disheard it here first.

poo

2006-12-28T20:51:00.000+08:00

There has been an earthquake in the sea between China and Taiwan which has severed major telecommunications lines to the mainland. I have an assignment due on the 5th which relies on online databases and newspapers for source information. I can barely access any foreign internet sites and it could be like this for weeks. Can anyone spell 'extension' ?!

For some reason blogger is still plodding away...

2006-12-28T12:07:00.000+08:00

I met a Chinese guy at a speaking assessment I was helping mark for a friend here last night who's english name is 'PC Fan'. Apparently he likes computers...

Today I almost went crazy at the supermarket checkout

2006-12-20T09:52:00.000+08:00

Today I almost went crazy at the supermarket checkout. The comsumption driven drive of thousands of Chinese flocking to buy had weakened my sanity, and beeping, mini-laser beam sounds of scanned goods almost threw me over the edge. Well, not really, but I had a moment of serious passive aggression which culminated in me sticking my tongue out at a young dude who was walking past the other way. Why do you ask? Because the cunt stuck his tongue out at me first when he released I was staring back at him.

And now someone is drilling into a wall below me and this mass-housing apartment block makes it sound like he is drilling directly into my eyes. Trey is shouting at the air to make it stop. Cars are beeping. I just got another fucking text message weather report which I never wanted and don't know how to get rid of. The fucking mobile company sends you sms spam here. Fuck.

Feeling better after that,

WV

P Fucking S. As I was about to post this entry the power went out in my entire block. We studied for today's listening class by candlelight. There was a traffic jam outside my house this morning and people just started beeping. Everyone started beeping. It was like monkeys banging an abandoned ant hill.

DURKL what?!

2006-12-18T12:00:00.000+08:00

I have a bone to chew about mainstream trends in contemporary 'cutting edge' young fashion. It doesn't mean anything. It is the antipathy of meaning. This would be ok, if it was anything new. But Warhol was doing it half a century ago. Its like these companies are striving for originality in unoriginality. I will sound cynical but I blame ultra-capitalism. Style can be bought, from the same company. A first hand price for a purposely manufactured second hand piece of clothing. The following is the 'about me' bio from a clothing company I stumbled across on the net today called DURKL.

The company ethos outlined in the following paragraphs sums up the absolute self mutilating masturbation of thought, creativity and culture these companies represent. If it sounds like your kind of deal, then sadly, I'll see you at the beach with your atkins diet breath, aviator sunnies and latest coloured plastic sandles. I'll be wearing my high school PE shorts and my dad's old sunnies. And you better not fucking judge me.

"The road:

Like most brilliant companies, DURKL was dreamt up over a few sixers of Zima and a pack of Kool's. Finding a word that rhymes with Steve Urkel was tough. We did it though. We simply smashed the word "dogonit" with "urkel" to form DURKL. Its obvious right? We all got sick of saying "dogonit Urkel," so we simplified. Pretty hardcore I know, but hey, we grew up on the wrong side of the traXXX.

After sobering up from all them Z bombs, the DURKL style and mentality coalesced. Clothing, and more, that would be ultra-sweet, even to 'droids. If androids dig your threads, then you know you are doing something right. Cyborgs are a totally different story though. Don't mix the two up, please. 'Droids drink Sunny D and have no sideburns, whereas 'Borgs prefer Capri-Suns and wear black leather fanny packs.

In early 2004, DURKL set out to design and print shirts that combined whit with past/future absurdities. As a result, the DURKL lifestyle infected and is still infecting people in the know throughout the world. DURKL delivers you a dose of hard reality with a side of the sleazy. Our threads can be found all over the US, Australia, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, England, and North Korea.

DURKL bought white tigers in early 2005.

The man behind DURKL is a trilingual breakdance, kung-fu, and bird calling legend from Washington D.C, a nationally known fresh juice aficionado, a local designer, and a duel Guinness Book of World Records holder. He held and still holds the Guinness Book record for the most expensive orthodontist bill as well as the record for spiking the most Middle School punch bowls. He has stolen a hell of a lot of lunch money and roller bladed a hell of a lot of miles. He claims to have had a hand in changing yoohoo from being an attention-grabbing-word into a chocolaty beverage. His weapon of choice is lazer beams, and his favorite human being is J-C.V.D."

Why China is amazing

2006-12-17T18:37:00.000+08:00

This afternoon, I'de just stepped out of the newsagent having purchased some stationary. The hope is that a few nice pencils and a writing pad will make my research assignment more bearable.

Squating on the buisy pavement, on his or her little ownsome, was a child of 'nappy wearing age' adjusting with one hand a small plastic bag (the kind you get when buying small groceries) around his/her bottom area, calmly involved in the process of releaving oneself. In the other hand was a furry, fluoroescent pink cuddly toy, which, after the plastic bag was properly positioned, once again become the child's centre of attention.

The concept of the decadence of the West really comes to mind here.

Go the toddlers of China...

2006-12-13T17:14:00.000+08:00

A foreign English teacher here in Kunming informed us of the first thing she heard from her school's Chinese head of English teaching with regard to his own English proficiency, "my grammar is much perfect".

2006-12-12T22:08:00.000+08:00

oh yeah, people still dying in Iraq, go war

A different world view

2006-12-12T16:53:00.000+08:00

A different world view (click for audio) from what you hear on the news. Click here for transcript.

2006-12-09T12:25:00.000+08:00

Half of the people can be part right all of the time,
Some of the people can be all right part of the time.
But all the people can't be all right all the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that.
"I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours,"
I said that.

- The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Talkin' World War III Blues

(thanks James for this one)

2006-11-29T18:13:00.000+08:00

My sister said that it is illegal to sell round fishbowls in France because it makes fish go insane. My fish is in a roud fishbowl and me thinking whether it is going insane, whether what my sister said is true, whether it is depressed, is making me go insane. But only a little.

I have become a disgruntled person. I react to cars beeping outside my window by shouting at the air. I sit here and rearrange my balls, stretch my testicle sack and think about how my butt is getting sore sitting on this seat. Now I wonder what being sexually frustrated actually translates to. The weather is cooling and my feet are cold.

I had chronic diaoreaha for like most of a day on saturday. Diaorreaha, apart from being imposssible to spell, becomes part of normal operations here. A friend of mine keeps getting the runs from this street food savory pancake lady outside uni but he just keeps going back. Thats just the way it is.

Have you ever looked at a solid poo you've just produced and felt really proud of it? Like you've really achieved something? I have, and do. That's what living here does to you. This morning I plopped out a well-formed cylindrical, digested poo and I stood up, turned around and marveled at it. It made me smile. It made my day better. It was like waking up on the right side of the bed.

I have 8 email accounts now. Three with gmail, 2 with hotmail 1 with yahoo and one with my uni. One day I aim to consoidate them all into one spectacular conglomerate of accounts but right now I just can't commit to a single provider. I also worry whether people will try to contact me on old addresses.

Oh yeah, with the diahorrea thing, I hade a train of thought thing going there. Sometimes when I'm sick I think about dying. I'm like, what if I die from this illness? What a shit way to go. And then a little bit later I always end up telling myself, oh well, not much you can do about it, sit it out you little sicko. And then being ill becomes a bit more enjoyable again. I've always thought that when I've gotten sick. Ever since I was really young. Do other people get that?

Has anyone who previously thought they were incapable of producing music learnt an instrument or learnt to sing as an adult? I want to know.

Good movies I've watched recently: Thankyou for smoking, The Departed

things i hate about sanya, and in a broader context, china

2006-11-09T20:55:00.000+08:00

- I am a walking, white, male, human size 100 renminbi note, thus, I am treated like a walking, white, male, human size 100 renminbi note.
- taxis drive on the pavement beeping at me.
- Noodles are shittier and three times more expensive than they are in kunming.
- Holidaying Russians can't dress or operate a good nightclub. Thus the nightlife is reduced to badly dressed Russians in bad, overpriced nightclubs.
- Everything has a price on it.
- Re the last point, the showers at the beach are 10 kuai
- People drive petrol sand buggies up and down the beach.
- The Chinese can't swim.
- It's takes a long time for street food to get from the wok to my table. As in a long time, like more than 5mins.
- the mosquitos hide on the floor. ON THE FUCKING FLOOR. Big white walls and they hide on the floor.
- It's dirty.
- There is disgusting, kitch, beach highrise hotels jutting into the sky like big fat, dry white shits with absolutely no urban planning whatsoever. Except the architectural shape of the buildings is worse than if they actually resembled the physical structures of foeces.
- There are private beaches
- You must pay for deck chairs on the beach
- I cant take anything valuable down to the beach beacuse it will probably get stolen
- just Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,

WV

The Laowai Chant

2006-11-02T15:48:00.000+08:00

This is a little song we been working on. Especially satifying singing it to our chinese flatmates. Muahahahaha,,,

中文：

老外，老外，老外,
我现在找女朋友。

老外，老外，老外,
比中国人厉害。

老外，老外，老外,
中国女生都爱。

老外，老外，老外,
每天喝酒很快。

[chorus]

awhhhhhh!

Hello, DVD. Hello, DVD!

pingpongpingpongpiiiing!!!

Pronunciation:

laowai laowai laowai
wo xianzai zhao nupengyou

laowai laowai laowai,
bi zhongguoren lihai

laowai laowai laowai,
zhongguo nusheng dou ai,

laowai laowai laowai,
meitian he jiu hen kuai!

[chorus]

awhhhhhh!

Hello, DVD. Hello, DVD!

pingpongpingpongpiiiing!!!

English translation:

Foreigner, foreigner, foreigner,
I'm looking for a girlfriend.

Foreigner, foreigner, foreigner,
I'm stronger than Chinese.

Foreigner, foreigner, foreigner,
All young Chinese women love me.

Foreigner, foreigner, foreigner,
I drink beer very fast every day.

[chorus]

awhhhhhh!

Hello, DVD. Hello, DVD!

pingpongpingpongpiiiing!!!

halloween pub crawl

2006-10-29T14:18:00.000+08:00

You know those times when sitting down to write a long overdue entry just seems like the most uninteresting, dificult to achieve activity you could possibly do? This is how I've felt recently. Even though right now it's a choice of write, watch another video, sleep or delete old emails.

Anyway, we had a party and I've got some photos. So I'll at least show you them. It was a friday night halloween pub crawl. We decided to do it the week before, got out fliers on the wednesday and finalised costumes on friday afternoon. We would have been happy with 20 people. There ended up being more than 80, with some seriously cool dress-up effort:

This is Trey, my good friend from Texas. Very appropriately dressed as a nerd and preparing to explain the rules of the pubcrawl.

Awww, nice photo. Extra points for couple costume pairing.

Mark came as a tribal man, considering he hasn't cut his hair in 8 months he didn't really have to try that hard to dress up. Chrissy came as wednesday from the addams family. Ups to both of them, they made the aniseed liquor jelly shots, provided the weed sprayers and generally did most of the organising.

Group photo with the koreans and a few europeans thrown in for good measure. Off the top of my head there were, over the course of the night, representations from Australia, America, China, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Vietnam, Slovakia, France, Italy, Austria, Spain, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, Germany, Quebec, Canada, Laos, etc.

The last person out of each bar after the whistle was blown had to carry a 10kg watermelon to the next bar. Here's one of our Italian friends getting stuck with the first stint. Her boyfriend ended up carrying it for her and got more and more disgruntled as we walked. Mission accomplished :)

The Russian dolls from Quebec. Awesome costumes and extra points for team effort. These guys were hillarious.

Trey waiting at the door penalising people who didn't walk into the bar backwards (this was one of our rules) with sprays of cognac mixed with iced tea.

I was already quite drunk by this stage and still two bars to go. Trying to look zombie in photo with old flatmate bree. We had a few pirates, whose swords came in handy when I had to fight off an attack of peanut throwing from the balcony of Chapter One. The sweet smell of revenge came as I jabbed various protruding body parts with that plastic sword...I think its broken now.

Here's limbo. This Korean friend of ours was one of the tallest guys there and he won. This is him warming up, he flipped over more than vertical and beat all the short little girls. The men celebrated especially hard, remembering far too well past limbo defeats at the hand of short, flexible, competitive women.

Here go the Russian dolls. Hillarious.

Now, the particular method Trey used to hold the limbo pole/pool stick this was starting to get a bit worrying. Especially seeing as I was on the pointy end of the cue. Luckily, I managed to escape physically unscathed, but not quite aware of the extent of my mental damage.

Never underestimate the power of alcohol to increase your yoyoing skills dramatically. Look at that rock the baby!

And to finish, another great photo of everybody's favourite couple. These two just oooooz style.

Build it and they will come ;)

2006-10-20T20:32:00.000+08:00

Today was another good day in Kunming. I woke up to the sound of cars communicating to the rest of the world at around 7:30am this morning. Pressed the snooze button on my alarm a couple of times. Began the slow jive into conciousness which led me to the realisation that I had two exams to sit before 12am.

The exams came and went and I was back in bed before midday. Woke up at 3, ate half a tuna, lettuce and mayo sandwich and James decided we were going to go to a driving range. Arrived at the driving range at around quarter to four and lo and behold, the driving range was a sports stadium.

Stadium had a school carnival going on so we sat and drank coke and complained about how long they were taking to clear out of the stadium. For about an hour and a half. Then we walked downstairs and told the girl we were tired of waiting. She told us to wait till 6. So I said, 'I've waited so long my shit is dry' (in Chinese - I love this saying). Anyway, she wasn't pleased, and either were me and james, so we blew that joint.

Thoroughly dissapointed but too high on life to let it get to us, we browsed a sports store before beginning a walk to the central french supermarket that has luxuries like deodorant, uncle tobies muslie bars and durex condoms. Started raining though, so we high-tailed it to the Holiday Inn. Thai restaurant, 18th floor, city view - fine dining Asia style.

After consuming a much delicious meal of green thai curry, tun yum soup, beef strips, thai spring rolls, fried vegetables and crappy Chinese wine, we caught a taxi back home.

Which is were I am now. The evening promises to be a good one. Going over to someone's house for predrinks then out on the town. The thais are playing mazhong in the living room and I'm blasting scissor sisters.

Happy days,

WV

Mr Ill Dropped the Bomb

2006-10-10T22:36:00.000+08:00

Ever thought to yourself, 'I'm gonna need a serious porn addiction to get through this one'?

I just did.

In other news, Lost is a long, painful, constipated shit of a tv show. And I'm being forced by my sister to watch the first season again. Because she lives in Japan. Because she's removed from the rest of the world. Because she's addicted to television and I'm addicted to the internet, which incidently, is in the tv room.

I have one more day in this small little city called Aomori at the top of Honshu before heading down to Tokyo for a few days. Photo-blog will come upon my return to the middle kingdom. Get excited.

Chinese wisdom for friday

2006-09-29T16:15:00.000+08:00

wintervacation says:

- A thousand pre-arranged agreements on price will not sway the rip-off minibus driver from ripping you off.

- The no-smoking sign in a Chinese net-cafe is like China's socialism. It's there, it exists, but it might as well not.

2006-09-28T21:08:00.000+08:00

Today i went to the great wall. It was good, but dissapointing. It is, after all, just a wall.

Chinese wisdom for the day

2006-09-20T13:34:00.000+08:00

james: yeah. socks in your ugboots. good idea.
me: yep.
james: yeah, you don't wear socks and your ugboots get all stinky. and too hot. defeats the purpose of ugboots if your feet are too hot and really smelly.
me: yeah.

me: ah, the cat has been let of of the hat
james: isnt it the cat has been let out of the bag?
me: yes! but cat rhymes with hat goddamit!

2006-09-10T20:17:00.000+08:00

Me and james went to metro with the idea of buying 'useful' things for the apartment and came back with a case of coronas and a 3kg tin of olives.

Oh yeah, and thai rice.

I stumbled across a toga party at the Speak Easy last night

2006-09-09T14:11:00.000+08:00

I stumbled across a toga party at the Speak Easy last night. Thinking back, Ancient Greek clothing, American college party tradition and a Chinese nightclub make for a good time.

Liquor crawls into my mind and taps his little finger on the attic door of my brain. The thoughts I've stowed away from myself arouse and blink their eyes in the haze. A few hours later they are fully awake, popping out all over the damn place!

2006-09-09T13:14:00.001+08:00

Biography dot com most popular searches:

1. George W. Bush
2. Johnny Depp
3. Shirley Jones
4. Fidel Castro (Ruz)
5. Oprah Winfrey
6. Brad Pitt
7. Adolf Hitler
8. Angelina Jolie
9. Princess of Wales Diana
10. Bob Dylan

- who the fuck is shirley jones?

2006-09-05T15:43:00.000+08:00

Well. This is the first time in my life I've felt really moved by the death of a person I didn't know, in person.

Steve Irwin was an anomally. A rare reminder that our reality is our reality. We don't have to be what the human world tells us to be; what the human world judges as right and wrong.

I remember looking forward to the crocodile hunter on schoolday weeknights. It was the kind of show you could indulge in alone. Laugh to yourself secretly, laugh at him, with him - the great majority of the time, at him. The guy had an unique comic presence about him which he seemed oblivious to. But he wasn't an idiot. I'de see him running from a goannah or holding a venomous snake by the tail, over-emphasising something along the lines of, "Now. Look at him. He's getting angry. He reeeeally wants to bite me. Wow! Look at that!", while he seemingly pissed the animal off even more. But he had this little twinkle in his eye which said, 'I know this is comic genius, I know I'm entertaining and getting my point accross at the same time".

He was bastardised in the media. But yeah, a story's a story. Whatever. He stuck to his beliefs. He knew what he was doing was right. And he kept doing what he was doing. Fame nor public pressure destroyed him. In the end it was nature, and I'm sure if he had to die prematurely, he wouldn't have had it any other way.

He was a good guy.

the long march

2006-08-21T12:42:00.000+08:00

the journey began with an official salutory photograph with chairman mao - mandatory upon leaving university for summer holidays.

this was fallowed by a salute to my own vanity, totally appropriate in Hong Kong, where the place literally breaths status and noveau richness,

we went up one big building and got to see another. That one on the left is the international finance centre - one huge symbolic prayer shrine to virility for the impotent, money hungry men and arrogant security guards who work inside what is otherwise known as 'The World's Largest Penis Inferiority Complex',

these people had all congregated here to see me because I'm white. I signed a few autographs before escaping to burn my tongue on some beefy canto noodles,

this is the view from a hanglider I hired and flew off Victoria Peak - the big hill in Hong Kong. It was so hillarious watching all those sucker tourists below me who had to scrounge for a spot to grab a photo at the lookout point, and then wait for an hour for the tram, which hasn't been uprgaded since the opium wars, to take them back down the hill. Suckers!

this dude had just thrown a cheezel up in the air and was trying to catch it with his mouth...I can't remember if he caught it or not,

the head of this dried fish is a macau speciality. The rusty hooks give it a distinctly metalic flavour. Make sure you've had your tetnis shots,

this looks like a harmless budhist shrine but it was acutally a liquid explosive bomb. I disarmed it though. Thanks McGyver,

this is modern china in one picture,

these babes kept giving me the eye while I was waiting for the bus to go back to Macau. But when I went over, they played all hard to get, telling me to speak up cause they couldn't hear what I was saying. And they just stood there like prudes, I think they were fridget - one of them couldn't stop shaking. So I ditched em,

this is me assimilating with chinese culture,

thse kids all have giadhia now...if they didn't have it already,

I took this girl out for dinner cause she said she'd split the bill with me but when I got back from the bathroom she'd eaten all the food.

Lucky she was damn hot, otherwise there woulda been trouble,

muslims congregating, do i need to say more?

I stumbled accross this factory with all these old statues. They were all pretty crappy though. Dirty, old, and lots were broken. And they weren't even for sale!

I pooed on the road here - I thought it was the culturally appropriate thing to do.

blogger unblocked in china!

2006-08-19T15:16:00.000+08:00

That's right folks! Who knows how long its gonna last! But one things for sure, this blog's about to get a whole lot more interesting...NOT.

net cafe edit: edit

2006-08-18T20:38:00.000+08:00

I like Chinese. Well, I like them as much as I like any 'race', but thats another issue. In case it was/will be taken wrongly - sarcasm ppl, sarcasm. And if you still don't understand, 练习你的英文.

net cafe edit:

2006-08-17T21:31:00.000+08:00

Chinese pop music mufucking bites. It's making me an aggressive rascist. I'm pretty sure it was passive until now. But right now I want to break something...and everything around me has made in china on it.

Chinese net cafe

2006-08-17T20:34:00.000+08:00

Dude next to me is playing some kind of dance dance revo shit and smoking a cigarette. In fact this whole cafe is one big, young, culturally revolved, fag toting 'work unit' of chinese youths wearing fashionable clothes and getting fat on kfc.

The train from shanghai to xian smelt good for the first ten minutes until I noticed the soft scent of stale urine eminating from my head pillow. Although I could have been mistaken. It could as easily have been wafting up from the rather rotund looking nappy of the young baby two beds bellow.

Im going to see the teracotta warriors tomoz. I know I'm gonna be dissapointed. In fact, I already am. Teracotta-warrior, what was that narcissistic little chinese emperor thinking? Those two things don't go together! Who makes a warrior out of the material your mum uses to pot her geranium, pave her patio!? Make it out of steel, or bronze for fucks sake! Louzzzzzzzzzzzzy.

Mcdonalds has become my tummy's new friend. Ronald's fear of getting sued has made his premium big macs the perfect recovery food for my stomach, which has been struggling with the cocktail of bacteria you recieve free of charge with most restaurant meals in china.

I'm out!

WV

shanghai email

2006-08-12T11:38:00.000+08:00

Sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Stefan's been in China forawhile. Where's the email? Where's the email? Where's the email stef? Whatya been doing? How many Chinese wife's you got? Do they know you're not a communist yet? Have you worked out how to make billions of dollars out of billions of chinese so we can all buy a pacific island and live happilly ever after, naked and frolicking in nature, like we were supposed to do?

The truth. The truth! I'm a foreigner in a familiar land. The three syllables, "wai-guo-ren", float around me like a unique body odour. Waiguoren means foreigner, and as I walk down the street, climb the mountain, wonder why I have to show my passport at the internet cafe, this word surrounds me. It jumps out of the irrepresible little mouths of young children like a cat out of a hat, "Look. Mum. Waiguoren!". It is muttered by old couples, by families. Jesus - the dogs who used to bark at me, only me, at my apartment block every day, seem now to have been secretly barking my fellow residents to attention: "waiguoren, waiguoren, waiguoren!". Sometimes I will hear it and jump to attention, turn my head, hoping to shock the
person who uttered the words, thinking that this will maybe make them more wary, that I do understand, that I am not a totally oblivious vessel from a different world.

But then, The East is advancing toward The West. Or the west is seeping into the east like algae growing in a stagnant old pond - depending on how you look at it. Old classic American hits waft out of record stores. Department stores have top brand fashion outlets, coffee chains, toilets that don't require you to squat. In Shanghai, Pepsi and Coke battle for streetscape supremacy. Pepsi signs line the streetlights of a boulevard here; a six-storey coke bottle on a building corner there. In this sense, it's all a bit like home really.

So yes, I'm a foreigner in a familiar land. And I feel, well, I feel pretty good. Don't think I could do it forever, but right now (stomach issues, and me being a cultural anomaly, aside) China is an enjoyable place for stefan to be.

BUT I WANNA GO HOME!!!! HELP!!!!!!!!!!

...just kidding ;)

So utterly fucking bored right now

2006-08-03T15:37:00.000+08:00

Sitting in a net cafe in Macau, grounded like a paraplegic basketball player who's just fallen out of his chair. There's a typhoon on the way to China and all transport has been cancelled. Two and a half hour fucking bus journey cancelled. Hundreds of thousands of people without transport. The slow, iron wheel that is the Chinese mainland transport system has ground to a soggy halt.

Earlier this morning,the smell of our geriatric air conditioner woke me like a swift fist to the middle of the face. Well, not really. I was woken by the monotonous buzzzzz of my feshly purchased, plastic smelling, Palm TX PDA. But the first reason sounded more romantic.

The truth is. Macua is as much a Portugese enclave as Sydney is home to the Koori Aborigines. The difference being that in Macua's case, the Portugese were the colonial power, not the other way around. Thus, the old buildings with their old-wood stench of regality, religion, cuisine and white picket fences remain for travelers to marvel at.

Macau's main present day attraction is its casino's which cater to Hong Kong residents on weekends. They surround the old part of town and new monstrosities are popping up everywhere. China's well greased iron wheel of money never stops. At least not here.

Which reminds me. Fuck pretentious security guards. I don't care if it's in your job description, or if some fat-fuck jerkey muncher reported it to you from behind a security camera monitor. Go check the toilets for bombs instead of asking me to move my backpack closer to the wall so the fucking 'public space' aesthitics aren't compromised while I wait for my girlfriend to go to the toilet. Shiiiiit.

What else? Oh yeah. Iraq, sixty people died the other day. There was an article heading a week ago that read something like, "14 people die in day of relative calm in Iraq". I though last night, "shit, what if 14 people being killed in a day in my country was normal, or was a good day". Anyway, must suck being Iraqi.

peace

WV

2006-07-27T00:42:00.000+08:00

These are the days that define us.

When we sit here after three coronas and a little tipsy cause we haven't drunk much alcohol in a long time. When we hear our best friends have got a cheap flight to come visit us and we suddenly remember just how good friends they are and how many good times we've had together. It's exciting.

When we realise it's better to write without inhibitions. To write is enough. My friend got up and sang 'Let it Be' in a Chinese karaoke bar tonight. She sung it hopelessly, but she got up and sung it. And she's a better person because of it. A better person than me.

To live is enough. As long as living means not forgetting who you are. Not forgetting that getting up and singing a hopeless karoake song is better than looking cool. Not forgetting that somewhere along the line you did forget. Things became hazy. You began to believe other people and their view of the world. You listened to your teachers. You got a job. You drank beer. A fart became a social misdemeanor. Tears took years to come. You grew up...a little...every day. Imagination sank into your subconcious. The world was explainable, but somewhat less complete, less understandable.

But luckily you, I, remember. I have friends who still say 'fuck it'. Who smoke weed because it feels good. Who sat with me at the top of the hill while we waited to throw oranges at the bus. Who will go to eat pies at 2am in the morning, cause fuck, pies are tasty, and the company is good, especially in the middle of the night.

Feel good.

We're rich motherfuckers, and not just in monetary terms.

Now some photos

2006-07-04T22:30:00.000+08:00

I got a pocket full of arcade game coins and a head full of bad memories.

An American friend of mine went home yesterday. He loves WoW. In fact, he loves anything computer-gamey at all. So we went to dinner, then went to a games arcade, then did karaoke till six in the morning. Some of the highlights included Sweet Home Alabama, Twist and Shout, Locomotion, O bla di o bla da and so on in that vain.

Shiiiiit where AM i going with this?

2006-06-24T10:34:00.000+08:00

So yes. Yesterday evening involved drinking.

Chinese kids in b-boy dress-up sat at the table opposite me looking cool.

I'm really pissed with the last two lines of that poem. Anyone think of a better word that rhymes with window?

A girl from uni knitted me a scarf. How can I show my appreciation? I can't knit, I can't really make anything in particular.

I'm vegetarian in China from now on.

There are wealthy people in Kunming. You'll see a porsche boxter or an Audi S6 drive past a donkey pulling a peasant's trolley full of produce fresh from the countryside. On my street, in the city.

'Socialism with Chinese Characteristics' - Deng Xiaoping, Leader of China, 1978-89. More like 'Capitalism with Socialist government...and Chinese Characteristics.' There were no beggars thirty years ago.

It's been raining all morning. Patting away my little thoughts and anxieties.

Supposedly there is a whole community of American families living in northern Kunming. With nice apartments, swimming pools, children dressed in white and church on Sunday. We never go there, they never come here.

My listening class teacher got married last weekend. It was a Christian wedding.

Hi China, I know you're still here, somewhere...

Come on baby light my fire

2006-06-24T03:56:00.000+08:00

alcohol consumption is:

- fuck you I'm playing the doors loud at 3:53am
- fuck I'de like to fuck you
- my head hurts
- I should drink water
- I'm sitting at the computer naked in the dark
- and it feels great

2006-06-21T16:02:00.000+08:00

'there is no such thing as illegal immigrants, only illegal governments' Asian Dub Foundation - Colour Line.

The world beneath my nose

2006-06-16T16:19:00.000+08:00

In the world beneath my nose
Runs a valley to my toes.
I’ve found a tree and stolen time.
A useful strife,
one splendid chance to ponder life.
The wind is slight,
My music plays,
Green foliage softens the sunlight.
Thoughts awaken, stretch
And stroll into consciousness.
I close my eyes.
Tiny hidden insects tickle my skin.
But my mobile calls,
And brings a sky of sorrow.
Reminding me of an unquenched desire
To throw it out a window.

2006-06-12T12:47:00.000+08:00

Anyone know where i can get english language broadcasts of the world cup matches live on the net. This is fucking ridiculous!

EDIT: FUCK YEAH.

to my readers

2006-05-30T21:19:00.000+08:00

It's sad. I thought my blog would be more interesting because I was living in China. Silly little me. In actuality, I give you the same boring rants, but now they are an extra few thousand miles, and few thousand years of cultural difference, removed from your daily life. So what do I do? Because this is public domain, not a private journal. I want and expect people to read it.

I've tried photos, I've tried poetry, I've even tried storytelling. Now I think I'll try me.

I'm slouching in front of a tv I don't understand. But still it comforts me like a pet you've had for years lying in the corner of the room. Although I'de never know, the closest pet relationship I had was with a tortoise in my pond who bit my finger when I stuck it in the water and hibernated sporadically for months every year. But I can imagine. Whenever I think of pet/human relationships my mind conjures up the image of an old widow sitting alone in her house knitting woolen sweaters with a cat in her lap. Now that's cultural conditioning.

We've had no hot water for three days. We survive on solar and its been raining since thursday. Bree braved the cold to wash her hair. She hasn't washed in two days- it can wait till tommorow morning. I showered at the gym thankyouverymuch.

I've stopped to watch a feature show about hamsters on CTV7. It's mesmerising. Closeups of hamsters running on wheels, running through plastic mazes, eating a peanut out of a woman's hand. Her finger looks like it has been specially nail-polished for the camera. White petals on pink nail.

Sam's talking to me on msn...just remembered, must listen to guns and roses when I go to bed tonight.

Enjoy life. (Is that a Coke slogan?)

2006-05-27T12:05:00.000+08:00

We can actually read and write some Chinese now. This is our flat advertisement, supplemented by a wonderful drawing by Matilda.

It's peach season. As I walk down my street I dodge the flying peaches. Discarded in the custom of taking one bite, tossing the peach, and then continuing with the bargaining process for basket after basket of peaches direct from the countryside.

Experience

2006-05-20T11:36:00.000+08:00

Oh joy, the life of a traveller. Yesterday was a splendid trip down memory lane. It took me all the way back to Berlin, New Years Eve, 2002.

Oh the memories! Some time that afternoon I shifted my nonchalant gaze from a featureless beige ceiling to the only window in the room, intent on inspecting the festivities from a viewing pane which provided a glimpse of a few building rooftops and a rather unexplosive sky. I could hear the fireworks though. The consistent pop of disturbed air glided into the room and left me reflective. The world was going on. Somewhere, nearby, lots of people were having lots of fun, together. I knew what I was missing but it didn’t make me sad. Three weeks of travelling alone and three days in hospital had already dulled my already weak sense of social purpose.

I’d purchased and eaten vegetarian spaghetti from a kebab house down the road from my hostel. The Accused. When I sat down to eat it I was tired, lonely and cold. I’d walked round Berlin all day. Peered at the street lights reflected in the ice sheets forming over a small waterway and shivered; visited a big, dark, empty gothic church; walked around the German parliament and its memorial to the Jews and Nazi Germany. I peeled off the steamy plastic take-away container and peered at my meal. Jabbed at it with my fork a little. Sighed inside. It had little bits of beef mince in it. Crap, fuck, fuckwit shop owner. Two voices of reason wriggled into my consciousness, my Mother’s, of course, and the Do’s and Don’t’s section of my Lonely Planet. But at the same time a voice which has been with me long before I could understand my mothers tongue, and one which I personally have always found hard to resist, ordered them silent. It was My Stomach and he ordered me to eat. Bad move. He regretted it.

I spent the next twelve hours alternating the two holes which mark the beginning and end of the digestive process over a toilet bowl. I couldn’t even return to my room, it was too far, there was an extra door in the way. Brief pit-stops were spent on a conveniently placed couch outside the bathroom. In the morning, I walked downstairs and fell asleep on a pile of beanbags. The receptionist came and brought me a cup of tea. I drank it, then went upstairs and sat on the toilet again. When I came back down he told me I should go to the hospital, I could walk there, it wasn’t far. It wasn’t far!? I’m explosive man, come on! But I went, there wasn’t really anything left in me anyway. I felt like a lost ghost drifting down the street, but I found it and after a while, was admitted.

They almost took my appendix out, I was on a drip for four days, I didn’t eat or go to the bathroom for three days, I woke up one night covered in my own blood after my drip fell out. But that’s another story. I’m meant to be talking about yesterday.

Yesterday I’d been sick for two days. My nostrils were a tributary of green slime. My throat was as sore as I can remember in living memory. My whole body ached and I was struck by the kind of lethargy which made it difficult to get up and get a glass of water. I wasn’t getting any better either. So I called a friend. Smart move Stefan, smart move. She has almost finished studying to be a paediatric nurse here, she’s from Beijing originally but has been in Kunming for a while, she got me my teaching job. I met her at the hospital and we went and saw a doctor.

Yun, that’s my friend’s name, walked straight in and found one of her teachers, me in tow quietly assessing the general appearance of the place, which you really shouldn’t do in China, because huge cracks in the floor and dirty walls doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad hospital here. I also caught a glimpse of a young female doctor with a surgical face mask on, who struck a striking resemblance to an assassin you’d see in a Japanese ninja movie. So I got my first little bit of paperwork and went and saw a doctor.

One remaining constant about my foreign hospital experiences is that there always seems to be an invisible woman dying awfully loudly in a bed in the same room which I am admitted. She does not receive any treatment, not even a side-glance, while the doctors calmly assess the patients with runny noses and mild fevers.

I explained to Yun what was wrong with me and she communicated it to the doctor and then the doctor asked me what was wrong with my anyway, as doctors do, and should do. So I explained. Did I have a fever? I don’t know, don’t think so. She took me temperature, 38.5. Hmm, yes, I had a temperature and suddenly felt it, geez it was hot in that cramped room with the invisible woman writhing in agony behind me. I wiped my brow. She took a look at my throat and mumbled the Chinese word for serious, then told Yun to come have a look. Yun made a noise I interpreted as a bad noise, she agreed. At that point, I also explained that I’d just got back from Thailand and had been bitten by lots of mosquitoes. Malaria, maybe, no? No, throat infection, but we’ll do a blood test.

So off we went. I had to wait behind a little boy and his father at the blood test clinic. He saw me and stared. Fair enough little boy, I know I look different, I know what you’re thinking, ‘foreigner, foreigner, god, foreigner, look, foreigner, so different, foreigner, so strange, foreigner…’ and so on. I’ve felt that look a thousand times. But I got my revenge. He cried, he bawled, just like any little boy or girl from any country would, when faced with the gross, unexpected injustice of a needle prick in the finger, followed by blood extraction from that prick. So blood test and then a ten-minute wait for the results. You can actually watch them peering into the microscope and mixing samples from behind a glass dividing panel from where you sit. China - like restaurant, like hospital. Then back to the doctor.

No malaria. But I needed antibiotics and a drip, oh the wonderful drip again! So we went off and paid for my consultation, $4, and my antibiotics and 4 drip bags and blood test, $25. Collected the little vials of medicine stuff, went here, went there, got pushed in on a couple of times, were told this little bit of paper wasn’t complete, this other one wasn’t clear enough, so on. At this stage I just couldn’t stop thanking Yun enough, she revealed to me her foreign friends had come to call her Supernurse, I concurred.

Eventually we found a bed in the outpatient department and they paired me with another waiguoren (foreigner), a seventy nine year old German man with a fever, sore throat and aweful hospital temperament. Over the course of the next four hours he’d raise himself like a mummy every fifteen minutes and demand to go home. The absolutely lovely head of the Chinese Medicine Department, who had worked in Germany for two years and could speak German, was overseeing him and would plead with him to no avail ‘bitte, bitte!’, before ordering him in terse German to lie back down, to which he reluctantly obliged.

She was hilarious, every time she had to deal with him she would mumble in Chinese about how troublesome and difficult this old man was, how she wanted to hit him, asking me and Yun if we agreed, we would nod and laugh. It was Friday evening, she had plans, she was working overtime for no extra pay, so this one patient could talk German to someone. I found out that every Chinese hospital has a Chinese Medicine Department. She made me Chinese medicine tea and felt my pulse for five minutes to assess my heart, my health, my general well being. She gave me my first acupuncture I’ve ever had. A needle in each earlobe - pressure points for the throat.

So yeah, I got a shot of penicillin in the bum and my drip started flowing. I even got some noodles. Bree and Matilda, Aussie classmates, came and saw me, and then had to evacuate the room when the old German went to piss in a container. But they came back and stayed for a while, which was nice. Yun stayed the whole time and even dressed a blister on my foot – lifesaver, Supernurse! Then I went home with a little red receipt and some Chinese herbs feeling a whole bundle better. I’m going back today for some more drips, they love their drips here; give them out on a whim.

So there you go, be a little afraid, but don’t be bored. You’re sick, you can’t do anything about it. Enjoy the hospital experience. I do, if I can.

another day of bombings and shootings

2006-05-17T07:38:00.000+08:00

Just in case you'de forgot, people are still dying in Iraq. Keep on rocking free world.

2006-05-14T12:28:00.000+08:00

A thought occured to me the other night, patience and stubborness often come together in a person. I think they are often a manifestation of the same base quality, an internally generated willpower which shuts off external influences/concerns.

I should be studying.

Here's a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

The True Encounter

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf! Wolf!"—and up would start
Good neighbours, bringing spade
And pitchfork to my aid.

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.

and another,

Grown up

Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?

How's life people?

The land of tourism

2006-05-06T19:29:00.000+08:00

I got angry at Thailand this morning. She was too nice. Too inviting. Her waters too shallow and warm. Tourism is supreme here and it's making people angry. The burden of a service lifestyle, service culture. I feel like I'm walking through a kind of upside down China town world. By this I mean the following:

China town is a place in a foreign country where Chinese people go, with Chinese stores catering to expat Chinese as well as a little of the local population. Thailand is a place where foreign people go with foreigner orientated stores catering to foreigners, with the odd pocket catering to Thais.

Then, this afternoon I slowly forgave here as I spent two hours floating in the warm water bath of ocean outside my bungalow.

2006-05-05T19:58:00.000+08:00

Been diving and snorkeling and eating seafood the last week, life's tough huh? Gonna give the diving a break cause my sinuses are playing up and we kinda seen most of Koh Tao's dive sites anyway. Done 9 dives, 2 on the back of a massive hangover sustained while drinking 'buckets' with a british boy and girl.

Dive sites are good, but kinda sad, the human influence is ever present. Over fished and over dived. Lotsa fish, but no real big ones, no squid, no lobster, rubbish, etc.

Mark's good, but he's been overtaken by mosquito bites, scratching them feverishly every now and then. Malaria, oh oh! I think also the punishing reality that it really is too hot and humid to study here, unless you first achieve some kind of buddhist zen state/find a table near aircon, is making him a little perterbed (god, that word looks as horrible as it sounds).

But yeah, it really is beautful here.

How's life people?

and now for the photos,

2006-05-03T21:55:00.000+08:00

Alas, I was warned.

I was warned about Thai bar girls, about prostitutes, about riding in tuk tuk's and boys that looked like girls. Unfortunately, I was not warned about random, innocent enough looking guys who, realising you are catatonically drunk, try wank you off after talking to you for a while. Enough said.

You have been warned.

2006-04-29T23:20:00.000+08:00

Of all the near death experiences in the last 48 hours, I must admit that the most harrowing of them all was self inflicted.

Ok, well, that's awefully dramatic isn't it? But jeez, its not every day you worry about flying China Eastern Airlines, and then slowly descend into lower and lower forms of transportation.

Our Thai friend from school was flying back home with us for the May break. She did us the service (service?) of telling the taxi driver, so he didn't take us on the run around, that we needed to get to the train station from the airport as quickly as possible - we had a train to catch.

There was no seatbelt in the back. He proceeded to ask us how much time we had, to which we replied, "um, go fast...well not too fast...we need to be there soon...but you don't need to rush..." He began weaving through traffic. Eeeeek! 120km on the freeway and Mark's looking at the map of Bangkok. Taxi driver decides to pull uot his own map and show Mark where we are on it. I helped out by trying to make sure our driver didn't rear end anyone/drive off the road while his eyes were in his lap.

Next the tuk tuk man. Who redefined the traffic weave before attempting to take us to his friend's house to look at stuff so he could get free petrol. No way man! No way!

After that the night train was an absolute blessing, and the ferry to Koh Tao wasn't too bad either. But then I made the mistake of hiring a scooter. A manual scooter. I can't drive scooters. I can't drive manual. So, like, 45mins later and I'm still hooning round the island with my big dark sunnies on and my hair permanantly held vertical. Got totally lost and stopped to look at my map, so some English idiot decides thats his cue to hitch a ride. Sure man, I'll take you...I'll take you down with me!

Anyway, to cut a poor ending short, we made it, we ate delicious kebabs (thanks sofi), and now im gonna go enjoy a bit of my saturday night before going to sleep in a humid, 30 degree, no aircon room.

Alas, life's tough,

WV

btw, that monk was playing on his mobile phone just before I took the photo.

2006-04-25T22:54:00.000+08:00

I was just watching a tv broadcast of a Robbie Williams album debut concert in Berlin and it suddenly struck me. There was no difference between it and Hillsong. Post-modern deconstructionalist idealism here I come...

the unnamed masses have spoken...

2006-04-25T17:58:00.000+08:00

Tee hee hee. We've been nauty, now we've been warned.

It seems the man downstairs, who entered our apartment a couple of weeks ago wildy gesticulating and blurting-off in local dialect because our music was too loud at 10:30pm on a Friday night has burst his little temper bubble again.

This time, however, he's opted for the anonymous message on the door,

Which translates to,

In the afternoon siesta time (12:30-14:30) please turn your music down.

After 23:00, please turn your music down.

Your cooperation is appreciated,

'ten thousand grains of corn' (Many) thanks

- Oh well, could have been worse, right?

2006-04-24T22:03:00.000+08:00

Bra producers bust out D cups as breasts grow
(Shanghai Daily)
Updated: 2006-04-24 09:29

A recent report suggesting Chinese women are growing larger breast made headlines around the country, but it wasn't news to bra makers, many of whom have been producing larger cup sizes for the last year.

Some underwear companies have even created sub-brands specializing in larger bra sizes.

Most lingerie companies say they started producing the larger bras within the last year.

Hong Kong-based Embry Group, for instance, began reacting to the trend last year by halting production of small-sized bras for some of its product lines.

"We don't produce A-cups for some bras with larger chest circumference now as demand is low," said Li Na, an official with Embry, which has counters in most of Shanghai's department stores.

"At the same time, we increased production of C, D and E-cup products and also found sales booming," she said.

Zhang Jing, a saleswoman with the Triumph brand at Landmark Plaza said she's surprised to find many women under the age of 20 need bras with C, D or even E-cups.

"It's so different from the past when most young women would wear A- or B-cup bras," she said. "You will never expect those thin women to have such nice figures if they are not plastic."

Taiwanese underwear brand Ordifen is another to act quickly.

Feng Wei, an official with the Ordifen's design, development and research department, said the company began making more C-cup products last year based on sales feedback and an internal survey.

"We make and sell products differently in various areas based on data collected in those places," said Feng. "For a time we only made A and B-cup bras for many categories of products but now C-cups have become a major focus especially in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing."

While there are no numbers to prove breast are growing quicker in large cities than underdeveloped areas, many salespeople say they have noticed that trend.

As sales of larger bras are busting out, Embry opened special counters for its bigger-cup bras under the sub-brand Comfort in February and is planning to set more of such outlets around the nation.

The Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology released a report last week saying the average chest circumference of Chinese woman has hit 83.53 centimeters, up nearly 1cm from the early 1990s. The growth trend is credited to women eating more nutritiously and taking part in more sports. ¡¡

Wintervacation says: I totally agree! The young women here have big boobs man. Like some have really seriously large boobs. I reckon it's all the milk stalls everywhere. But yeah, go Chinese modernisation!

Papaya

2006-04-24T18:51:00.000+08:00

mmm, yummy! Get it while you can! Get it while it's cheap!

Currently doing an essay on Intellectual Property Rights. Which I haven't started.

Eeeek! Eeeek Eeeeek!

Current ideas/thoughts. The silly, totally crap, seemingly ingenious ones that come at night. So yeah, feel free to steal, IPR's can eat my ass dirt:

- orgasm rollercoaster for adults (well, yeah, adults, duh)
- thank god for the christians (get it, thank god)

Mwam mwam mwam mwam mwam.....

Overexposure never looked so tasty!

Current mood:

courtesy the late great Pablo Picasso.

China today: horns still beeping. 20 cent breakfast wrap still very, very delicious.

Note to all people seeking out a gym membership

2006-04-18T07:24:00.000+08:00

Don't sign up to a gym further than 5 mins away from your house unless you are:

a) anorexic
b) a gym junkie

It'll just be a waste of money otherwise.

Humanity is stupid

2006-04-16T12:47:00.000+08:00

Humanity is stupid. Mainly because we think we're smart. Because we create our own definitions of intelligence, which are based on our own reasonings. And it might just lead to premature death as a species.

Currently reading: A short history of everything

Currently web-researching: scientology

On a more positive note, I spent a good deal of my day yesterday pouring water on other people, and getting totally drenched myself. Fully clothed, on an overcast day. It was Thai New Year and we went to the local minority culture park to participate in the celebrations. It was really fun.

Pouring water on random people seems more applicable to my concept of a worthwhile existence than most of what humanity does.

2006-04-12T00:29:00.000+08:00

Do you ever get the semi-concious urge to headbut someone randomly? I do. Strange huh?

To all those stressers out there. Don't worry, you'll be dead soon enough anyway.

Chinese television has too many adds. If you ever come here. You were warned. They are either about pots and pans, woman's beauty products or health remedies.

I think I saw a racoon on the way home today. I though it was a cat but then I noticed it had a really long tail and was running in a wierd kind of hop. Is that racoon like? How the fuck should I know?

I wish I could run faster. I'm bored of playing cards. I bought a big bunch of bananas today. They'll probably go off before I eat them all.

I'm constantly dissapointing myself in totally minor ways and its getting really annoying.

Jeeeeeeeeez.

My street

2006-04-10T21:06:00.000+08:00

This is a section of the street I live on. By day, row after row of car repair workshops. By night, by late night, family living rooms. Here, the workplace doubles as the tv room, the study, the place to wash your hair in a plastic wash tub. I can't stop feeling grateful that not only do I not work around the constant smell of paint and glue, but I don't have to come home to it either. Everyone seems pretty happy though...

2006-04-03T00:41:00.002+08:00

RIP to this guy, Bob Carlos Clarke. His photos fucking rock.

Young at Heart

2006-04-02T12:06:00.000+08:00

China was not what I expected. I have experienced Asia before. I went to Singapore as a child. At the end of 1999 I spent a month trekking through Nepal. In 2004 I spent three weeks in Japan, travelling north from Tokyo. But China is different. Kunming is different, and I should have known.

Kunming, I knew, was a city of roughly 4 million people. Just like Sydney, I thought. It was closer to Ha Noi than Beijing. The weather was good. Kunming, the Spring City. There were sprawling, green, public gardens. It was more laid back than other Chinese cities.

None of this, admittedly limited, prior experience and knowledge prepared me for the sheer life of this place. The people. The cars. The streets. The markets. The bacterium.

Life spews out of the urban landscape. The roads flow like rivers. Cars, trucks, buses, electric bicycles, mobile food stalls, a woman on rollerskates. All are swept along in an orderless flood of mutual awareness of each other's presence. The streets are littered with temporary shops. Pineapples on sticks. Locksmith on wheels. Socks and underwear laid out on a blanket.

Amongst all this, and holding it all together, are the people. People are people, but one thing which has really struck me about China is the youthfulness of the mind here. How it almost prospers in a work environment which seems, relative to Australia, exceedingly harsh. Thus, the focus of this piece will be the apparent ability of many Chinese to stay forever young.

Young at heart begins with youth of years. Young children, three to ten years, are everywhere in China. They wander the streets seemingly unsupervised, often well after dark. They also man the street stalls. A 10 yr old boy asleep with his face in his hands, a pile of pineapple peels lying at his feet, a full days work still a few hours away.

On the second or third day of my arrival I witnessed a young boy, barely three years old, walk to a street kiosk with a plastic bag in one hand and bundle of small notes in the other. He bought some kind of packaged chip food, took the food in his bag and returned to his parents, who I just realised were waiting for him about 10 metres away. ‘Jeeeez’, I thought, ‘people grow up fast here’.

There is no day care for those who aren’t wealthy (practically everyone). So the children go to work with their parents. I walk through a fresh produce market on the way to school everyday. There are young children everywhere. I have seen them sweeping the floor at the front of their parents’ stalls with miniature brushes. It is not uncommon to see a ten-year-old child with a baby sibling straddled to their back. There is always at least one child hunched over a couple of stairs or a spare bit of space on a fruit and vegetables table, with a pen in hand and paper in front, studying away while the world goes past around them.

Yet amongst this hectic childhood lifestyle, youthful fun flourishes. It is not uncommon to see young children sitting round a table on the street, at 10pm on a weeknight, playing cards. I once witnessed two kids having the time of their life, holding onto the back of their father’s motorcycle as he revved it lightly, just enough so they thought they were actually stopping him from driving away. The kids use materials salvaged from unfinished apartment complex entrance gardens to make sand creatures and fight with wooden swords. I’ve been hit with a flying dishcloth when the primary target deftly jumped out of the way. Toddlers double up and ride careering into the backs of your leg on plastic cars, as you attempt to browse stalls at the second hand market. In short, play is well and truly alive, and allowed, in China.

Grown ups here maintain a delightfully surprising youthful fervour too. Maybe it is a sign that I myself am getting on. The ‘adults’ who surround me, my fellow students, my teachers, seem as unwilling to be fully and officially grown up as I do. Yet there is something particularly shameless about indulging the youthful mind here.

Maturity is not gauged on whether you are willing to play a game of musical chairs with a bunch of strangers at a university party where there’s no alcohol and no discernable In Crowd. It just fun, so you do it, and you bloody well enjoy it. I’m a little cautious to admit it, but the most fun I’ve had in a while was trying to sticky tape toilet paper and newspaper to the clothes of a girl, in a competition to see which group could create the most interesting outfit from materials provided in under five minutes.

Our teachers go out to lunch with us. The other day a teacher invited us all over for a tea ceremony. We sat and watched her wedding video. Two of our teachers came to a house warming party the other night. They stayed longer than many of the students. One got into the baijiu and started dancing with some of the Thai students; the other spent the whole night chatting with one of the UTS girls. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen in Australia, but the social barriers of age and status-implied maturity seem less restrictive to having a good time here.

There appears to be more time to observe fun as well. There is a little garden and paved area between the exit to my apartment building and the street. There are usually a few people tottering around, hanging up washing, shampooing their hair, taking out the garbage. There are also always a few little mutts running around, guard dogs no doubt, playing in the grass, barking at strangers, lying in the sun. Often, as I walk to and from school, there will be a few people just standing watching the dogs play, entertained by the simple enjoyment the animals are providing themselves.

Fascinatingly, it is the older members of the population who are often the most irrepressibly young at heart. Several weeks ago I went on a field trip with a Chinese girl from uni’s mother and aunties. There were five sisters in the girl’s mother’s family and they are all at the age where their own children are well and truly grown up. We arrived at a grassy lunch spot and before we even had time to get comfortable, several of the aunties were organising a playing field for a few group games.

We played a Chinese game which resembled the ‘tips’ you play in Australia as a primary school student, and a number of other simple, fun, team games. It was really enjoyable. When it was over, we all noted the irony that old Chinese ladies had reintroduced us to games we hadn’t played since childhood.

Old people get out of the house, sit on the street, and just watch life go by here. They do it in Sydney too, but it is usually a lone person that you see, struggling up to the shops, taking a break at a bus shelter, before returning to the couch and television. That’s if they’re lucky enough to not be in an old age home.

In Kunming, the elderly appear from everywhere (generally at around 10pm on a weekday I have noticed) and congregate. They leave the house for the sake of leaving the house. They go down to market and buy fruit and vegetables for the day, or they just sit and chat amongst friends. It is rare for me to not get at least one random smile from an elderly person as I walk home everyday. Granted, the elderly have a tendency to smile at you for no particular reason no matter what country you are in, but there’s more of it here!

To elucidate it bluntly, the general synchronised movement of old people here is so prolific that on the one day I have a 10am start, I have to forgo my walk through the market to avoid getting bogged down in a sea of wandering grandmas and grandpas.

I have spent a little time considering the possible reasons behind the apparent abundance of youth here. But nothing I can think of provides definitive explanation in any practical sense.

One theory is that youth is tied more physically to old age in China. Grandparents look after the children. Everywhere you look there is a old man or woman, face covered in wrinkles from decades of smiling, navigating slowly down the street with a plastic bag of groceries in one hand and walking cane in the other. A sleeping baby strapped to their back.

It is possible that this physical proximity to the young keeps the elderly in touch with the young mind. I have personally noticed the apparent need for old people to be in the vicinity of the very young at family Christmases. If there is a young mother present with her baby, she will often find it exceedingly difficult as the day goes by to pry her newborn baby from the arms of, say, a mother in law. Here the oldies get their youth fix all day long.

Returning to my earlier reference to China’s relatively harsh work environment, it is possible that adversity actually promotes fun, humour and stress release. History has shown that adversity can foster creativity, as with the black chain gangs in America and the development of blues music. Maybe the need to survive also keeps us young. People in Sydney are faced with the adversity of impending deadlines and relationship issues, and the less well off still struggle with day to day finance, but there’s almost too much time to get caught up in things that, in the big picture, don’t matter all that much.

Maybe the external context of my situation has warped my judgement. The positive ‘culture shock’ of landing in a totally foreign environment. In a couple of month I may find that the negative energy of pushy old ladies at bus stops and the thinly masked despair of young street beggars begins to override the youthfulness abundant in other aspects of society.

But right now, it is spring here in the city of eternal spring. As I sit at my computer by my bedroom window, it is half past five in the afternoon and I can hear children laughing and playing on the ground below. The sun is shining and rising above the dull, but now unobtrusively familiar, sound of far off horns and unseen machinery, is the sound of birds singing to each other. You would have to try pretty hard to be pessimistic in such an environment, don’t you think?

Good Morning

2006-04-02T10:09:00.000+08:00

It's Sunday. I'm watching Mozart being played in a Chinese soap opera on television. There are long periods of no talking and longer profile shots of death stares. Looks like an attempt at Young and the Restless.

Yep, definitely an attempt at young and the restless. A woman just threw a bottle of acid in another woman's face. Everything dramatic on television is slow-mo here. It's positively hilarious because it accentuates the already mediocre filming standard of Chinese television.

I went to my local market yesterday to buy some fruit. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and a young pickpocket was scoping his prey. I returned home with half the fruit I intended to buy and no wallet. The kid got enough money to last him a month or so, but he's probably got an old minder who will take all of it off of him. Thaaaaaaaaat's China. Well, one of the few negative aspects I've experienced so far.

I have a cultural impressions report due tomorrow night for UTS. Aaaaaargh. Forced reflection.

Just found a Chinese version of Humphrey B. Bear. Surprisingly, the set is better than the Australian version. Just proves how ridiculously hopeless that television show is. Annoying, fat, socially inept, gesticulating bear.

Photo time!

This is us having late Chinese New Year celebrations in an abandoned lot with Sangzi's aunty's left over fireworks,

A man sitting reading his paper in front of a building in the process of being demolished. Why not?

One of the millions of grandparents who look after their grandchildren while the parents work,