poo

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...

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

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?!

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

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...

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".

oh yeah, people still dying in Iraq, go war

A different world view

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

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)

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

- 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

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

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 ;)

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

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

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.

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

Chinese wisdom for the day

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!

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

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!