Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Comforts of a bus ride

The other day on the bus we witnessed quite a usual for the location, but still a bit disturbing (somewhere in the backgrounds of the common sense) situation. There was this dude who decided to make himself at home right there and then.As usual the people around took it in as something quite in the line of the ordinary, but the poor fellow in front of the relaxing passenger - though at first he tried to nonchalantly look outta the window, - in the long run started smelling something fishy and even feeling some pangs of what he probably at first thought to be those of conscience, but in time gathered it to be the touch of the stale toenails.
He stared at the people around him in disbelief as if asking them to be witnesses of an injustice, looked at the feet in question, exchange a couple of muffled words with his buddy, BUT said not a single word to alleviate his sorry situation, and the rest of the ride was sitting as stiff as a pole trying not to lean against the back of his seat.

The question here is what I would have done? What would you do? As a laowai who knows not the rules of appropriate and amiable behavior (involving maximum personal discomfort and desire not to make any move at any cost) I would have at least help the dude to wake up and teach him a lesson in manners in my broken and funny Chinese, to which the guy would have replied "Oh, he speaks our language quite well", not giving a single reference to the situation, but he has his face to save. And yeah, I am that bad. And inefficient, because little would have changed in the behavioral patterns of that individual human entity...

Putting their feet up is a trend among the people here, and they know what they are doing. Once in Hainan island we were on a route bus and a guy sitting by the window put his foot up on a rail - the seat near him was empty and his leg took almost all the space in the small two-seat section. I looked on as a lady came up and for the lack of other available seats had to sit near the guy. As a real gentleman he of course took his foot off the rail. After all that's exactly what any real gentleman would do at the approach of a lady... The contrast between a barefoot peasant with calloused soles and a well-dressed tourist seemed to be nicely balanced by this gallant act - and just in time - because as a real weathered gentleman the cavalier couldn't keep his foot up in the immediate proximity of a dame, that is why he raised his other foot - the one farther from his accidental companion. It was only then that the universal balance was struck to a tee, and everybody rode on jollily - the guy having leveled up his face, the lady perched on the edge of a chair, and the whole bus chit-chatting in the most content manner possible.

And I not judging anybody, just a snapshot of reality - and I want to improve nobody but myself.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

Today's graphorrhea

Gentlemen, have you ever smelled freshly plucked mangoes, the way they come undone from the tree that is bowing down to you under the burden of almost ripe fruit, ripped off tenderly but mercilessly by a fair maiden whom you raised up, holding just under her knees from the back, so that she, smilingly and ravishly could gather, as per her frolicsome request, the yet a tiny bit juvenile, but already heavy and astringently succulent green offspring of the fructiculose tree? A freshly plucked mango does not smell like their kin you meet at supermarkets or on the hawkers' carts... It gives out a lingering and unbearably fresh smell, the odor that stays on the girl's hands as you are lowering her down slowly against yourself at the same time turning her face towards you; this scent whets your olfactory appetite, making you bury your face in her palm, drawing in the fragrant amalgamation of the fruit’s aroma and her skin...

Well, I have to admit to watching the movie Perfume the other day, and the linguistic representation of the osmetic-semantic connections did probably get to me. Or it could be the result of today's amazing change of the weather when in the morning the rain raged against my window panes, and in the late afternoon the cloudless sky slowly gave birth to the chiseled half-moon. The trees breathed out intoxicating flavors which you could literally drink in and metaphorically swim in. Not too bad a conclusion of an otherwise eventless day, gentlemen.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Writers' bog

...While I fidgeted with the possiblities of the title for this post, having to choose between writer's block, writers' blog or something else as original as those two, a slip occured, and I think a writers' bog is what it is going to be about.

Some interesting stuff in line of pepping up creativity -
100 words per day from many 'writers' may be a tiresome read, but it might definitely be a good habit-establishing exercise, in agreement with Tolstoy's (?) remark - not a single day without a line.

Another interesting idea -suggested byand is based on the hackneyed image (at least among my favorite images) of a writer smudging a napking at a bar with uneven hardly distinguishable lines, in fear of losing that volatile thought, the one that, - if correctly nurtured, - might grow into a poem, a story or even a novel... I still got a couple of such napkins/coasters myself, with some juvenile poems or half-thoughts, which, clumsy as they are, still nudge me to decipher the doodles and mayby turn them into a story.

The project is called
Several contemporary authors were asked to fill a napkin with their off-hand streams of consciousness. You can see the actual writing which, - if saved and printed, - may serve as an invaluable autograph of a future prise-winning author.

Warning - rough language/images around some of the beads of letters threaded upon the lines of unleashed preternaturally twisted fantasies.

phhh - i guess I did my 100 for today : ))

PS - And for the dessert - another grotesque Jack-Londonish ~ Hemingwayish masterpiece from Woot! - thanks to Nat!

Sometimes I really miss Dad. I’ll never forget this one time when I was six years old. I was watching Dad work in the backyard, wishing I could be big and strong and in control the way he always was. He noticed me there and called me over. With a twinkle in his eye and a hand on my shoulder, Dad told me, “Son, there are only two things that people really want in life: sex and money.” Then he went back to stashing his counterfeit money under the false floor in the toolshed.

I know if Dad was still around, he’d add HDTV to the list. I only wish he’d had the chance to see the Vizio VX20L 20LCD HDTV’s super-sharp, lifelike 720p resolution. Its 20”, 16:9 screen and ultra-slim form factor would have fit easily into the fallout shelter he built us for Christmas. He always was the handyman type – I wonder what novel uses he’d have found for the HDMI connector and the PC input. Oh, how he would have loved to watch his Israeli Special Forces training videos on this valuable, sexy HDTV.

But no. Dad is gone, and I accept that now. I’ve learned that sometimes in life, the people we love have to flee to Colombia under an assumed name and shack up with a prostitute. That’s just the way things go. It’s nothing personal. Whatever he’s up to now, I’m sure he’s got more important things to do than contact his family. But still, sometimes I wish I could see him again just for a few minutes, to tell him face-to-face what a crazy bastard he is.

Original here.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Here is a good one

Was checking essays today - there was a joke I'd never heard (and which is probably a chestnut here among the natives), but it is oh so fahquing (C) true. Here it is, - with some embellishments I couldn't refuse myself employing:

- If you ask a Chinese student what weather it is now, s/he will blush, look down, move the lips repeating your question, look at you, look away and be silent.
- If you ask a Chinese student what weather it is now, and provide a multiple choice (a) good, (b) bad, and (c) rainy, the answer will pop up in a jiffy. (not necessarily the right one, but hey, who's perfect?)

That's mighty hilarious if you've been in touch with the educational system here and the eternal fight for independent thinking - or, at least, some kind of class activity.

Good they are laughing at it themselves, the girl who used this joke got an extra plus and is up for a star sticker on her forehead later.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Get a thrill!

Amazing project. Thrilled me, but if you heard about it before, just take it easy.
Anywho, there is this international KEO Project, dedicated to launching a satellite into the space (it is supposed to cut the circles around the Earth orbit for a few years - see below) and which will (reportedly) land back on our planet in about 50,000 years. The biggest fun of it is that besides sealing up in the capsule some blood, air, earth and water samples, everybody of us the contemporary earthlings is offered to write up to 4 pages of anything we want addressed to the dwellers of the future (whoever they will turn out to be, given that the Chinese civilization is of course 5,000 years old but only a few chosen can pretend to understand the language used back about that time). The digital scrolls will be recorded on a specially trained disc, and this offer is completely free of charge. Jokes aside, the whole thing is pretty nifty. Without much ado anybody can join in and reveal him/her/itself to their great-great-.....-grandchildren in all the wit and eloquence.

Another fun thing of it is this: China turned up in the top of the charts having sent the most number of messages to the KEO project (which is not surprising given the population of the country and the desire to reproduce [here I mean re-production in the purely copycatting sense of the word]). So if you haven't yet marked your existence in the annals of KEO I don't know what you are waiting for.

The only amazing incoherence is that even though China is number one in posting to the future, www.keo.org seems to be banned in China (use your favourite proxy if you are located in the Middle Kingdom). Are the guys posting up too much already or are they divulging something the grandkids are better off not knowing?

PS - Yeah, I forgot to mention - those guys are officially discussing the messages (having anonymoused them)) on their web-site, so even if your letter doesn't reach its Perfect Future destination, somebody may have some fun off it in the Continuous Present anyways. But who cares, it is a noble task and a richly deserving act, plus it broadens your horizons.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Victory Day

C ДНЕМ ПОБЕДЫ!