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!

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?

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

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!

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

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:

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

The world beneath my nose

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.